She looked at the large estate before her, standing just outside the wrought iron gates. They were black, and though the area was lush and green and there were fountains and trees, and for heaven’s sake there were even birds chirping it was still bleak to Madyson. It was her home, at least it had been. She’d grown up here, a lot of the time by herself. Her mother had left her alone quiet a bit once she’d reached about the age of eight. Before that, she’d lived in the same house with her grandparents. Her grandmother died of a terminal illness at a relatively young age, her grandfather had left the manor when this had happened. He died a few years later.

Her mother spent a lot of time out, and left Madyson with nanny’s when she was little. Then her mother stopped sending nannies. Madyson learned what most people don’t figure out how to do until their early thirties…how to take care of herself. It was in this place, this so-called home that she had learned to do that. As she had gotten older she’d stayed out a lot more. Her mother had lots of creepy friends over, and it didn’t help that a lot of them looked at her in distaste.

She clearly remembered being twelve and asking her why these people looked at her that way and Paris had only replied with two simple words, “Your father.”

It was then that her curiosity about her father arose, and her rebellious streak began. Madyson had asked about her dad everyday, persistently for a year. Her mother had refused her with a calm consistence each and every time. She didn’t understand how the woman was possibly unable to crack when she knew she was pulling in every effort to annoy her. Yet, Paris Devereux was a great many things Madyson had never turned out to be.

Her mother was very calm tempered, Madyson’s flared at the first sign of agitation. Madyson was a control freak, Paris handed the reigns over to someone else when it was necessary. Paris didn’t trust anyone or anything, Madyson seemed to trust everyone, even the wrong people. Her mother….as creepy as it was, seemed to know –everything-, and Madyson lacked foresight. She operated from her baser emotions.

Her eyes raked over the gates and she muttered a spell as they sprang open. She knew her mother wasn’t home, because frankly, her mother was never home. There was the chance of course, but if Madyson knew one thing about Paris is was she spent her days doing shifty things, and spent her nights doing even shiftier things. She walked up the walk way, her head flooded with memories.

She’d been thirteen when she’d lost her virginity. It had been in the back of a van, and the guy had been about ten years older than she was, but he was the drummer of the band she idolized. Their music had carried her through her darkest days and for whatever reason Paris refused to let Madyson attend the concert. She’d fucked the guy in his van for free tickets, and hey, it was the drummer of her all time favorite band, wasn’t it? Hot. Only it wasn’t. Madyson had failed to see what all the hype about sex had been then, because it hadn’t really been that great. It was uncomfortable and awkward, why did anyone do it again? She hadn’t gotten free tickets either, what a bust. She’d walked this walkway, sore, and her temper flaring. She was thirteen then, though, couldn’t do much damage.

A few years later the guy had tried out for her band and she’d destroyed his career. Karma.

She reached the door. She hated walking down memory lane. She remembered her mother had woken her by shaking her the next morning and when Madyson’s eyes finally fluttered open her mother was giving her a look of mixed anger and disgust. For a split second she thought her mother knew about the drummer, but her mother had only beckoned her for breakfast and then left, her heels clicking all the way out.

Madyson muttered a few more spells and opened the doors. It was silent in the house, it was clean, it was cold, and best of all it was empty. She wouldn’t waste any time. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought to do this before. Yet her recent encounter with Ethan or James or who ever he was had got her thinking. The boy had questioned her and seemed very concerned about who her father was, and yet she hadn’t known. She would know today, if it was the last thing she did she would know.

She apparated to the attic. The room was dark, dusty, full of trunks. “Lumos,” she muttered and her wand illuminated the room. She headed to the very back of the attic, a place where her mother had caught her wondering once and had cursed her so bad she thought her body would break. She was forbidden to go back there. Madyson hadn’t ever really wondered what was back there until she dwelled on the memory. The trunk in the back was brown with silver clasps and styled the same way Madyson’s had been for school. It was her mother’s school trunk.

She didn’t know if Paris was hiding answers about her father in there but she was hiding something and she would find out what. She found it at last, brushing away cobwebs as she knelt down and tried to undo the trunk. It was locked. Damn.

“Alohomora,” she muttered. The trunk didn’t open. Madyson glared and stood up. She did not have time for this. She delivered a swift kick to the lock, though it didn’t break. She repeated this over and over with a vengeance until finally the lock cracked. Her face was red now, anger in her, she had waited too long for this. “Fucking lock.” She muttered kicking it to the side as she crouched down again.

Her fingers roamed over the opening before she swiftly threw it open, a cloud of dust exploding in her face and she sneezed several times in a row, fanning the particles away. When the dust finally settled she leaned over, looking into the depths of the trunk. It was by no means neatly organized, which struck her as odd since her mother had a habit of categorizing and organizing everything. Her eyebrows knit together as she grabbed a stack of pictures and began flipping through them.

She saw her mother, a younger version, smiling happily next to someone who was unmistakable for anyone else. Lucius Malfoy. Madyson pursed her lips setting several pictures of the two of them aside. She realized she recognized a lot of the people in the pictures from the community as well as being in here in the manor before as guests. Walter Avery, Adrienne Lauder, …oh my was that Macnair? Each person in the picture waved and smiled, blew kisses, winked. Macnair sat there, not looking at her, brooding. She shivered and set the pictures aside quickly, it didn’t look as though he’d taken that one willingly.

She continued to flip, she didn’t know why, it wasn’t what she was looking for. Yet, she’d become intrigued. As she neared the end of the stack the pictures of her mother grew younger. Her eyes nearly bulged out of her head as she caught one of her mother and Rodolphus Lestrange lip-locked. That was the end for her, personally, she’d seen enough.

She set the stack aside and continued to dig further. She found albums of music, tossed them aside. She found notes, cards, hair ribbons, and several other random and useless things. She dug more. A wand. Her mother’s old wand sat there in the trunk. Madyson picked it up, feeling its lightweight in her hand. She debated taking it…but then set it aside as well. It wasn’t important. Of course, as soon as she did a curiosity nagged at her.

She picked it up again, inspecting it. She gave the dark wood an incredulous look and then pressed her wand to the tip of her mothers. She wasn’t sure what compelled her to do this, but she did it. “Prior Incantato.” She whispered.

From the tip of her mother’s wand rose a miniature figure. A skull with a snake protruding from the mouth. The dark mark. Madyson dropped her mother’s wand, startled, the mark faded away. She stared long and hard at the wand…had her mother been a death eater all these years? It would explain a lot. But Death Eaters were described as ruthless. Paris Devereux, while she was quite a fix, didn’t seem ruthless to Madyson. It must not have been her mother’s wand she decided faithfully.

She set it aside and continued the dig. More uninteresting things appeared, old homework parchments, more pictures, magazine cut outs, newspaper clippings. She was growing weary when she finally found something she deemed useful. A pink and white checkered cloth book. There was hot pink calligraphy style letters sewn into the front- ‘You’ll Always Have Paris’. Madyson quirked a brown. That was stupid. At the bottom stitched in, as though an after thought, was the year ‘1976’. Oh. This was a diary. Madyson did some quick math equations in her head.

In 1976 her mother had been eight teen, in her seventh year. She did another equation, that was the year Madyson had been conceived. Jack pot.

A simple pink ribbon closed the diary, it didn’t seem many precautions had been taken to make sure no one could open it. As she tore it open she understood why, there were no words on the pages. She did a quick spell to check for invisible ink, there was none. She did a quick revealing spell, nothing. She glared, it must have a password, and it’d be the dumb thing her mother would do.

She tried to think, if her mother gave something a password, what would she give it?

“Paris.” She spoke her mothers’ name. Nothing. “Slytherin.” Nothing. “Green.” Nothing. “Ugh, god this is so fucking annoying.” Madyson said, her temper flaring again.

“Devereux, silver, pride, blonde, Merlin….oh you fucking skank whore what did you need a password for ANYWAY? Like anyone wanted to read about your life.” Madyson scowled, throwing the book down. She rested for just a moment and then picked it up again, giving it a look of betrayal before she calmly said the last thing she could think of.

“Pureblood?”

Words began to appear on the page. “Pureblood? Really? She really is obsessed.” Madyson said shaking her head. She didn’t have to look long for what she was looking for. On the inside cover her mother had scrawled the initials JAH everywhere, and in the middle was a large heart, inside it said Paris + Justin. At the bottom it said ‘I love Justin Haddock’. Madyson quirked a brow. She flipped to mid January, nine months before she had been born and looked for her mother to say anything about having had sex with anyone.

She quickly became confused when her mother talked about having slept with both Justin and another boy she’d never heard her mother mention, Jerome. She knit her eyebrows together, disgusted, and flipped on, never really reading –details-, just skimming. She was about to give up when she something tugged at her eye.

…I thought I had lost the baby, but I haven’t. I thought I’d be happier than I am but it’s difficult to be happy about it when I know I can never, ever tell Justin. And my parents…what will they think. But mostly, I’m scared to tell Justin, in fact I don’t think I will…

That was enough for Madyson. Her anger reached new peaks. Her mother had preached about her father being someone so terrible for so long, and there it was written. Her mother had chosen not to tell her father about being pregnant. She’d done it on purpose, kept a man from his child. She really was horrible. She slammed the diary shut, a cloud of dust erupting in her face and she sneezed again. Tucking the diary under her arm, remembering the name Justin Haddock in her mind as though they were magic words.

She gave one last unconcerned glance into the trunk to see if any other points of interest were in there and grabbed a silver frame out of curiosity. The boy in the picture winked at her. Her heart stopped, there was no denying it. The boy had brown hair, was rather good looking, but the most important feature stared back at her. Those eyes….they were hers and there was no mistaking it.

She ran her fingers over the portrait, making trails in the dust. “Daddy….” She whispered feeling, tears in her eyes. They would be together soon, they really would, if it was up to Madyson.

Doing her best not to cry, sneeze, or do both, she threw the unimportant things into the trunk, keeping the diary and the picture. She apparated. She’d find Justin Haddock, she would, and that journey started today.