In The Eye Of A Hurricane SOLO

By the time they stumbled in the shop, having been forced to wait in a queue for use of the Floo Network (Ebony had made several pointed remarks about people who didn't have the skill to Apparate, and had then gotten decidedly cross towards one man who mentioned rather loudly that pots shouldn't call kettles black), Lucia was feeling the length of the train journey catch up to her. She stifled a yawn, moved her trunk out of the way of the fireplace so that Briar could get through... and was nearly knocked over by a flurry of black hair and excited squeals which latched itself onto her in a tremendously strangling hug.

"Willow!" Lucia laughed, hugging her little sister back. She bent down a little so as to properly get her arms around the seven-year-old and squeezed her tight. "It's good to see you," she murmured, suddenly filled with happiness at being home, with her sisters and her mother and Rosa, the house-elf, who was watching the two hug with an almost motherly pride.
"She's been on edge all day," she confided to Lucia once Willow had seen Briar and, with another squeal, flung herself upon her instead. "Even before Miss Ebony went to fetch you."
Lucia couldn't really trust herself to speak, so instead she stepped across and gave Rosa a hug as well. The house-elf stiffened for a moment, then relaxed and gently hugged her back. "It's good to see you home, Miss."

Dinner was a joyful affair, although it wasn't anywhere near as good as what Lucia and Briar had grown used to at Hogwarts. Instead, the table was graced with slightly burnt potatoes, cold beef from Tesco's, and yorkshire puddings. Lucia didn't mind. It was just nice to be back with her family again. Ebony's strange behaviour was almost forgotten as the Foxes (plus Rosa) dug in and swapped tales of the year, with Lucia basking in her mother's praise as she recounted the two out of three duels she and her partner had won.

An hour or so later, Lucia was left alone in the little room she had occupied for her whole life. She yawned to herself and collapsed onto bed, staring up at the ceiling. I must remember to ask Ebony what happened... she thought to herself, but dozed off before she had even finished the sentence in her head.

"Ebony," Briar asked, pouring slightly stale Cheerios into a chipped bowl as the Fox family (minus Rosa, who was in the shop unpacking some boxes) sat down for breakfast. "What did you mean yesterday?"
Lucia tensed, spoon freezing from where it had been about to dig into her own bowl of cereal. She wasn't sure she really wanted to hear whatever it was while dressed in her pyjamas, even though they were her favourite pair.
"About what?" Ebony replied, although Lucia was fairly sure she was just stalling for time. She had to know what her daughter meant.
Briar appeared to think the same, because she gave her older sister a look. Being so close in age, the two eldest Fox children had always been able to read each others' expressions, and Lucia was pretty certain that Briar was wondering why Ebony didn't just tell them whatever it was outright.

"You know. About the 'developments'."

Ebony seemed to think that the matter of Briar's vague sentence was not worth pursuing and took a deep breath before delivering the blow.

"I had your father legally declared to be presumed dead."

Dead. Lucia's mind fixated itself on that one word, the rest of her mother's sentence vanishing in a wave of sudden- Lucia didn't even know what it was. It was something beyond words. "He's... Father's... You think he's dead?" The words came out of her mouth in nothing more than a hoarse whisper as the cereal box slipped out of Briar's hands and Cheerios scattered all over the tiled floor.
"You. Did. What."

Ebony cleared her throat, and Lucia suddenly thought that, in any other situation, her mother would be telling Briar off for talking back to her. The Hufflepuff almost wished that she would. Instead, she paused a second and closed her eyes before opening them again, standing taller from where she had been magically directing a knife to cut up a cucumber. The knife was now lying still on the chopping board, Ebony's wand pointed towards the floor. "Legally, I've been- able to since April. Seven years..." she said, her voice a strange mix of tones: businesslike, apprehensive, defiant. "But I held off. I never- I never really-" She sank down into a chair, blinking furiously.

Willow had been staring at her mother in confusion, and now appeared to be putting something together. "There was a parcel," she said, as though bewildered. "You got a parcel, and you wouldn't let me see it, and you- and you cried for a whole day."
"I did not," Ebony denied hotly. "I needed some time to reflect."

Lucia and her sisters exchanged glances. They all knew what that meant. Ebony needed 'time to reflect' twice a year - once on the anniversary of her twin's death, and once on the anniversary of her husband's disappearance. They were the only two days in the entire year when Ebony Adeola Fox truly allowed herself to show emotion; but even then, she did it in private. The three sisters had always dreaded those days and often made excuses to be out or in the shop when they came.

"What- what was it?" Lucia asked, softly. She almost wanted to give her mother a hug, but knew that Ebony would not receive it well.

Ebony stood. "I'll- I'll bring it through, and you can see it yourself."

Lucia sat there and watched her Cheerios turn soggy in a state of melancholy shock. Father. Presumed dead. The thought had always been somewhere in the back of her mind, but she'd never wanted to acknowledge it. And whenever anyone breached the subject with Ebony, she said the same exact thing, every time. My husband is currently missing. I would appreciate it if we talked about another matter. It was the programmed response. What had happened to make Ebony suddenly take this huge step? And without consulting with her daughters, no less? (Lucia decided to bypass the fact that Ebony barely ever consulted her daughters over anything.) It had to be something huge.

"What does- what does presumed dead mean?" Willow's voice rang out through the tense silence and she and Lucia both looked at Briar, hoping that their coolheaded sister would bring some sort of order to whatever mess of a morning this was turning out to be. Sadly, their expectations were not met.
"It means," the Ravenclaw said, almost angrily, "that he might not be dead at all."
And she refused to say anything more until Ebony re-entered the kitchen, carefully avoiding the cereal still scattered across the tiled floor. For once, she didn't make a comment about how Briar should tidy up her own mess as she carefully moved some of it to the side with her foot.

To Lucia's surprise, her mother was holding a shoebox, oddly pristine and carefully neat. She placed it on the table with a sort of reverence before taking a seat. Everyone stared at it for a moment as if it were about to start floating, which in the magical world wasn't actually all that improbable. As it was, however, the shoebox stayed firmly on the table and it was Willow who took the first step. Her little seven-year-old hands reached across the table and tugged off the lid while she scrambled to kneel on the top of her chair in order to see what was inside.

The sight made Lucia gasp.

It was a wand.
And not any wand.

"Ebony... that's... that's Father's wand."

There was a pause, a terrible pause, and from that pause Lucia knew that she was right, even though she wished with all her heart that she wasn't.
But she'd recognised that wand from the moment she'd seen it: it had always been her father's pride and joy. Its elm wood was always polished to a shine and its simple pattern, so Antony had always said, showed finesse in both the wand and its owner.
Now, the wand was so different that Lucia was almost sure that she'd gotten it wrong. Surely, this couldn't be her father's wand... It was scratched and a little muddy, definitely worse for wear - and, worst of all, it was cracked along the middle and the unicorn hair was poking out. But Lucia couldn't ignore her gut feeling. "What happened to it?"

Ebony ran her finger along the wood, carefully, lovingly, as though this was all she had left. "They found it in- in Bulgaria. On the edge of a forest, half-buried in mud. They- they said it had probably been there for a few years at least."
It was Briar who put two and two together. "Bulgaria?" she repeated, face white. "But that's- that's where-"
And then it hit Lucia as well. "Marigold." Her grandmother - her Veela grandmother. The woman (if she can even be called that, thought Lucia) had hung over her family's lives for so long, like an ominous shadow threatening to expose them all. Threatening to make the world stop caring.
"Ebony?" Willow asked, voice more timid than usual. "Why was Father's wand in Bulgaria?"
"I- don't know," Ebony said, though her voice cracked part way through the sentence. Was this true? Was this the whole story?
Briar seemed to think the same as Lucia, from the tone of her own voice, but decided to focus on the more important things. "But why would Father's wand being in Bulgaria mean he's dead?"
Lucia knew. "Father's wand was his most prized possession," she murmured, glancing up at Ebony to see if she'd gotten it right. "If it was left- in that bad a state- Father would never have-"
"Would never have- what?" Willow whispered.
Lucia gulped. "Would never have left it. He'd have taken it with him. And if he didn't..."
Briar finished off. "Then he can't have been there to take it at all."