"Never considered keeping the place then?"
[1]Ignan Storm's lanky first cousin leaned on the sitting room doorframe, looking about the room. Within, a team of wizards were quietly transfiguring and packing furniture into monogrammed red velvet bags under Ignan's gaze. In response to the question, he shook his head faintly, watching the room empty of furniture. Floorboards exposed themselves after decades, spiders scuttled, and from the sounds of it, upstairs the specialist removals wizards had found a boggart. The initial shouts had turned to raucous laughter. It grated on the matter in hand.
"No. Imelda can have the furniture, sell it... We agreed."
His cousin sniffed and shrugged. A familiar voice barked at the laughter upstairs, which stopped and muffled apologies were given. Downstairs, the two relatives fell into silence apart from the older wizard's deep sigh.
Ignan felt like he could measure his life with funeral milestones these days.
Yesterday morning, had rain pelted down, unrelenting. The family had huddled under umbrellas, all dressed in black in the corner of the graveyard that looked overgrown to Muggles. Words had been spoken, just audible above the dripping of water. Just as the cold and the damp was beginning to reach their bones, the extended family and friends still alive to remember his late father had followed the family in a shuffling motion, away from where the body had been buried.
Losing his father was not the best of Ignan's Christmas presents, but it had been a long time coming. It was always the funerals that brought out the family though, vultures. He and his younger sister, Imelda
[2], had split the remaining estate from Merik's last surviving copy of his will, made when he was sane. The rest of the family had looked on in the hope of pickings, but as the will was read by Wolfgang, on behalf of the bank, it appeared Merik hadn't thought too much of the rest of the family. He left a sum of money to Durmstrang, which had not surprised anyone, as a former Headmaster.
Yesterday, in the same room, Ignan had removed his wet top hat and led the mourners inside. Merik's replacement house elf had laid out many dishes in the main living room, reminiscent of Christmas and New Year gatherings, of which this year, there would be none.
Ignan and his sister had hung by the door politely greeting each of the guests quietly, letting them express their apologies, their sincerity, their feeble attempts at pretending they weren't just there to hear the reading of the will.
Hypocrites, Ignan had thought as they shook hands and received formal kisses - practise that made his skin crawl, He was glad to wash last night.
Johann had made the trip, but had made up some rubbish to his mother and father who hadn't seen him properly in a year, that he had to look after Ignan, who didn't need looking after. But, he did share the impatience to get back to Britain with his younger relative. Imelda had already gone back to the Ukraine. No love lost there.
"I've kept a few things, the house elf will come with me."
"Gerda?"
"Is that its name?" Ignan asked rhetorically. He'd just replaced the dead one from summer, his father had outlived it.
[3]Johann nodded, eyes busy watching the removal wizards mill around, packing everything from lampshades to the dining table into the velvet bags with magic. He could still hear his father rattling around upstairs. These were the bank's removals men, confidentiality, disposal of dodgy heirlooms were their speciality. Johann resisted the wish to tell his father he knew very well that those dodgy heirlooms just found their way onto the black market.
"Did you want to pass by your place, pick up things?" Ignan asked out of the blue, sounding as if he hadn't been bereaved, that he wasn't packing up his childhood home. His usually stoic expression looked a little lost, but the emotion didn't register with his younger relative in the doorway.
"I've no space at Colin's." Johann replied quietly, "My parents are holding on to some things in the hope I'll come back." Ignan's query was referring to the place Johann used to live in, which he'd abandoned in a rush. It had been turned over by intruders that night after he had fled, and Johann had not been back
[4]. The flat had been cleared, rented to someone else, and remained a bone of contention between Johann and his parents.
"Well, I've bound the remaining photo albums for you, Ignan," Camille Storm's accent was always a joy to hear against the rest of the family's. Johann's mother was from Belgium, and had attended Beauxbatons
[5]. Somehow, she had fallen in love with Wolfgang and agreed to marry into the family - for such a polite, intelligent yet emotionally attune person, it baffled Ignan. She had not lost her good looks in the thirty years or so that they'd been married. With a kind smile, she placed a parcel wrapped in brown paper and string into the first of two crates that contained the items Ignan was keeping.
"Thank you." Ignan replied in English, as she had addressed him in such. The last of the furniture went into the velvet bags and the team of wizards moved on into the hallway, discussing amongst themselves and labelling the bags sat by the front door. "I appreciate the help," then noticing the neat wrapping, added, "Do you take orders for wrapping Christmas presents?"
Camille smiled graciously, and shook her head. She had been in the other room taking personal care of the photographs that Ignan had been in two minds about keeping. Family memories from photographs were woth the effort in her eyes, if not for Ignan, but for other members of the family, she had chided him gently an hour before.
"Has he been looking after you well?" The witch asked, gently taking his arm. Ignan was weary, and didn't resist for once. There was a strange, forgotten comfort of a woman doing that, especially a mother.
"Very well." Ignan assured her, and tried a brief smile. "I couldn't have asked for better company for insomnia."
[6] "Oh dear…" Camille replied, looking back at Johann in the doorway disapprovingly. Her son made an innocent expression.
"Not caused by him, don't worry." Ignan replied swiftly before she blamed her son. Camille gave his arm a squeeze.
"Is it good to see him back, for a bit?" Ignan asked politely, having corresponded with Camille regularly over her worries about her only son, he didn't doubt that she would try to persuade Johann to visit more.
[7][8]"Of course, I miss him," Camille let go of Ignan's arm and wrapped her arms around her son instead and stroked his messy black hair, "He needs feeding up too!"
"Mother…" Johann protested meekly, allowing himself to be manhandled by the only woman he showed affection to.
Ignan turned his gaze away from mother and son just as Wolfgang burst into the room. Dressed in pinstripe formal robes, tie with pin, he was the epitome of business.
"That's everything, but you need to check each room and sign - disclaimer that you've revealed all hidden rooms, safes, ghouls, the sort." He was tapping a quill to a stiff piece of parchment which bore an extensive inventory and a contract. Business, the family pleasantries once again cast aside, both mixed together when Wolfgang was involved. For however unpleasant he could be, he was rather useful at times like this. Houses, wills, they were just money to him.
"Of course." Ignan replied softly, taking the quill and list, he set off to take a last look round the home he had grown up in, now a shell, ready for market. It wouldn't be missed.
[Dec 30] [Snapshot] Art Thou Departing Too, My Trembling Friend?