Chapter Text
The first five years of Heiress Pyxis Black’s second life were spent basking in the love of her parents. Lady Meliana Black nee McMillian was a gentlewoman in every sense of the word: kind and gracious to strangers, she was soft and nurturing and enveloped her young daughter in veritable clouds of love. Pyxis loved her wholly and every day that she woke up to soft arms and a sweet smile, every night that she went to bed with kisses on her brow and a hummed melody in her ears, the loneliness and pain from her first childhood under the stairs receded just a little farther. She was her father’s pride and joy, his princess, and his affection enveloped her utterly. Lord Arcturus Black’s uncompromising strength, the way his stern countenance softened a little every time he saw her, the tingle of the protective charms he renewed on her every night before bed forged the foundation of this newfound security she slowly began to believe was hers.
She tagged after her older brother Orion, at first because of how he reminded her of nothing so much as a very young version of her godfather: Sirius’ eyes and cheekbones and curly hair had very clearly come from his father. Then as she grew to know and love her brother for himself, their time together branched into elaborate games of hide and seek, epic treasure hunts, and illicit visits to the dwarf hydra her father had set to guard the townhouse gates. The first time she escaped her nanny elf to explore the front garden, she’d met the serpentine guard monster and promptly charmed the beast by hissing outlandish tales to it - stories of trolls and thestrals, hippogryphs and acromantula. She’d been both surprised and pleased to realize she retained parseltongue, but promptly determined to keep it a secret which only increased her brother’s awe at how she’d charmed the dangerously lethal beast their father had forbidden them to seek out.
Pyxis’ very favorite days were when Auntie Elladora came to visit and brought her cousin Dorea along with her. Being the same age, the girls were encouraged to spend time together and on Pyxis’ part, she clung to the girl who had once become her grandmother with fond hope that this way she could maybe once again, eventually meet the parents that had once sacrificed themselves for her. Perhaps she could even be her father’s godmother, that would certainly be a prank worthy of the Marauders. The two girls played tea party when their mothers were watching and Potions & Pirates when they were not. Pyxis taught Dorea to tiptoe so quietly through the creaky townhouse that they regularly startled an indulgent Kreature as he went about his tasks, and Dorea held Pyxis’ hand with such honest and innocent affection that the still dark and lonely corners of her heart slowly warmed.
Every time some Black relation or other crossed the doorstep into Number 12, whether to consult with her Father as paterfamilias or to visit with her mother, the wards chimed softly and she felt the welcoming echo of the Family Magick deep in her core. After spending most of her first life entirely alone in her Family Magick, she luxuriated in the feel of the full and complex web of familial magicks that encompassed her. Occasionally she’d sneak into the drawing room and trace the names of the family tapestry with her finger; seeing the artifact whole and glowing with power only strengthened her resolve to make this second chance at life count. She could not bear to see this weaving once more scorched by hate with so many names blackened in death.
The winter following Pyxis’ fifth birthday, once she could reasonably explain her literacy with excuse of being a very bright child yet avoid the increased scrutiny she might incur were she thought to be prodigy, she dove into the Black Library. Her mother despaired of ever imparting the necessary social graces if she refused to pull her nose out of a book, her father warded away the darkest books and teased her that he’d never expected to have a Ravenclaw for a daughter, while her brother merely rolled his eyes and proceeded to pull her bodily away from the stacks anytime he was not otherwise engaged with Heir training or their cousins. For her part, Pyxis had to clamp down on the utter rage and fury that rolled through her magic the first time she saw the Library in all its glory. She knew Orion would never have allowed a book to be lost, stolen, or destroyed in his adult tenure as Lord Black and could only assume that it was Molly Weasley’s future ‘cleaning' of the house that had seen the shelves lose over half their volumes. She’d worked her way through much of what was left in those bleak years after the war; her studies giving her solace and distraction from the desolation that had plagued her days and the terror that stalked her nights. Now she methodically set herself to enjoying the rest: absorbing spells, exploring histories, and delving into entire branches of magic to which she’d never been introduced in her previous Hogwarts career.
The summer before her older brother left for his first year at Hogwarts, Pyxis developed a fascination with geology and soon had a rock collection lining her windowsills. Her mother’s tinkling laugh of good humor when Pyxis demanded her Uncle Cygnus bring her a sample of the clastic limestone that could be found on his estate was only matched by the fond indulgence that saw her father bringing her a small shard of feldspar touched by dragon fire from Gringott’s lower level where the ancestral Black vaults were housed. She enthusiastically pored over The Uncommon Wizard’s Compendium of Gemstones, Rock, and Earth at the dinner table and even convinced cousin Marius to send her muggle geology books. When her collection outgrew her windowsill it surprised no one that Pyxis sweet-talked Kreacher into magicking her up a set of specimen shelves, specially warded against dust and the touch of anyone who was not Pyxis, in which to house her collection. Any walk was likely to be paused by Pyxis picking up pebbles and cooing over the quartz inclusions. She begged Orion to owl her a rock from Hogwarts, declaring that since it was the most magical place in the whole wide world it didn’t matter what kind of rock, just that it was a Hogwarts rock. He included a small piece of very pretty lanarkite along with his letter informing his parents that he had happily Sorted into Slytherin. On Samhain, when Death’s veil was thinnest, Pyxis stayed awake once the household had retired after the familial rituals. She opened her window, sat on the sill, and with all the meditative focus honed by one whose adult mind had lived through the helplessness of a second infancy she summoned the Resurrection Stone straight from the ring she presumed adorned the sleeping hand of Morfin Gaunt. Murmuring over it in the moonlight, she pressed the pad of her thumb against a bevel until it bled. A flash of gold passed between stone and girl quicker than lightning and for the first time in her second life Pyxis felt the cool, familiar embrace of Death’s magic nestling within her own. No one noticed the unassuming grey rock, carefully situated with the Deathly Hallows marking face down, placed amongst the variety of precious and mundane stones the young Black Heiress had collected on her display shelves. By the following spring, Lady Melania Black could be heard telling her cousin Madame Reginia Smith over tea that her daughter’s precocious childlike wonder over rocks had waned and rather than practical explorations in geology, she could once again be found curled up with a story in the library at every spare moment.
Heir Orion Black returned from his first year at Hogwarts and spent the summer regaling his baby sister with grand tales of the magical school she would be able to attend in another three years, flooing at every opportunity to the Avery, Malfoy, and Selwyn households to visit his best friends, and successfully convincing his father that the charming 5th year Prefect who had taken a shine to Orion - one Thomas Riddle - absolutely deserved Lord Black’s letter of introduction to his close personal friend the Senior Undersecretary of Mysteries in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic. For her part, Pyxis was just grateful to have been born the younger sibling in the Black family. She was in no way ready to deal with a young Tom Riddle as a schoolmate. She planned to save that particular confrontation for a later date, when she was safely of age with all of the concomitant wand rights and social influence.
By her ninth year, Pyxis was chafing under the restriction of her father’s wards in the library. He had not however, had the forethought to ward the books on warding. After an intense study of both goblin and wixen warding tomes she was able to peel back the edge of her father’s protective wards and slip under them. Thus given access to the Black family’s entire collection of knowledge around the darkest and most dangerous topics in wixen lore, she set about singlemindedly pursuing what was arguably the darkest of them all. Hitting metaphorical gold in a small handwritten volume of several centuries in age, she liberated her mother’s wand one morning and geminio durabilis’ed herself a copy of an ancestor’s ruminations on the unutterable folly of and attendant madness that followed the creation of horcruxes. The anonymous author advocated strongly that the aspirant pursue alternate means of securing immortality. She enlisted Dorea’s aid in convincing their mothers to take them to Flourish & Blotts after tea one day and then to cover her absence as she sneaked to the next door Owl Post. She sent the inconspicuous parcel off to Hogwarts addressed to Tom Riddle, attaching a note that read “To LV, with my most sincere regards, HJP.” Harriet Jasmine Potter might no longer exist, but Heiress Pyxis Melania Black honestly had no interest whatsoever in ever again encountering the black diary that had once spilt ink and basilisk venom over her trembling hands. She could definitely deal with the repercussions to the timeline. If her interference happened to cause a young Rubeus Hagrid to face the relatively minor administrative consequences of harboring a dangerous magical creature whilst retaining his wand rights for lack of a murder charge and also keep the Forbidden Forest free of the particular horror that would be a colony of Acromantula; well, Pyxis could not quite find it in herself to regret her meddling.
In the spring of Pyxis’ 10th year, the society pages were all atwitter over the graduation and entrance into society of the newly announced Heir Slytherin. The foster-son of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Nott was hailed as a charming and utterly brilliant young man, his record breaking NEWT scores were held up as the defining benchmark of success for his generation. Pyxis determined to beat them: she had the advantage of the Black library already and she would simply apply herself to the Hogwarts collection as diligently as possible. Speculation in the political op-ed columns was rampant as to whether the long-dormant Slytherin seat in the Wizengamot would be reclaimed. Pyxis knew from her own long-past future research that Riddle’s reach into the Wizengamot was stymied by the clear provisions in the Charter of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Slytherin which required that the Heir meet certain requirements before assuming the Lordship. Indeed, until Riddle bonded with a parselmouth, and produced a parselmouth heir, the Slytherin seat would remain dormant. It was no surprise to Pyxis therefore when the society pages began gleefully reporting on the Grand Tour that Heir Theodred Nott and his foster brother Heir Thomas Riddle proposed. She knew from Dumbledore’s future tutelage that Riddle would travel far beyond the continent in search of the most esoteric magicks. It was with relief that she read confirmation in the gossip columns that the eligible young Misses and Misters of Greek and Italian Magickal Society would have the first chance to snag the heart of of one of the Heirs who had been dubbed the Dashing Duo. After that it was speculated that the young maidens and gentlemen of the British Wixen World would find their prospects challenged by Heirs and Heiresses from Czechoslovakia, Albania, and Ukraine. Not wishing to leave anything to chance, Pyxis penned an anonymous letter and sent it via Gringotts owl-redirect to an acquaintance of her Aunt Lucretia, lately retired from the Cursebreaking profession.
The morning her Hogwarts Letter came, Pyxis flooed directly to Dorea’s house and the two girls convinced their mothers, Lady Melania Black and Madame Elladora Black, to take them straight to Diagon Alley. They would return with Orion in a fortnight for their annual shopping trip for the necessities such as uniforms, potions supplies, and the procurement of the booklist, but the girls were full of the excitement that comes with turning eleven and the certain excitement over Hogwarts attendance. Dorea was all for dragging the party directly to Ollivanders, but Pyxis’ feet slowed in front of the Magical Menagerie and precisely no one had the heart to deny her clear desire to meet the residents. Dorea immediately gravitated towards the owls while Pyxis’ gaze paused on white feathers before skittering away, an incongruous expression of old grief flashing across her young face. She walked quickly past the alcove that lead to the reptile room, her face carefully averted to avoid drawing attention before finding herself in front of a litter of kneazle kittens. A strange nostalgia for the absolute hell beast her very first best friend had doted on swept over her as she noticed a curled up pile of ginger fur in the back corner of the cage. The little orange tail twitched and a pointy-faced baby kneazle kitten sauntered over to her before meowing and twitching his ear tufts to be picked up. The girls left the Menagerie with a tawny owl on the shoulder of one and a kitten in the pocket of the other. They met Lord Arcturus Black, who was most certainly not going to miss his one and only daughter matching with her wand, just outside of Ollivander’s. Dorea matched in a flurry of emerald sparks with unicorn hair and hawthorn while Pyxis’ magic rejected wand after wand. In the end she wasn’t surprised by the golden warmth that suffused her when she clasped her very own, dearly missed holly and Phoenix feather wand. As much as absolutely everything that comprised her circumstances had changed, she remained essentially herself: her magic had, after all, traveled with her.
One Saturday morning in early October of Pyxis’ first year at Hogwarts, she was chatting with her friends at the Ravenclaw table and enjoying a second cup of tea when an unfamiliar grey haired wizard entered the Great Hall carrying a wooden box. He made his way directly to Headmaster Dippet at the Head Table where the two wizards had a hushed conversation before a beaming Headmaster announced to the Hall at large that thanks to a fortuitous find and a generous patron of the school; the revered Ravenclaw Diadem had been returned to Hogwarts. The stunned silence punctuated by squeals of glee from the length of the Ravenclaw table had Pyxis imagining what a boon it would be if artifacts of all four of the Founders were to find homes in the display case beneath the stained glass windows in which the diadem had been sequestered. Before she could lose herself to such ruminations however, she was pulled along by her yearmates to the library. Spending the entirety of a Hogwarts Saturday in the library, she laughed to herself: Hermione would be so proud to see her now!
Pyxis watched the approach of Halloween of her third year at Hogwarts and felt increasingly stifled by the sheer number of people constantly in the Ravenclaw common room. Her quietly studious house was no loud Gryffindor, and insomnia had never been a problem in this second life of hers, but she missed the echoing solitude of Hogwarts corridors on cold winter nights. The formal quiet of home that wrapped around her at Grimmauld Place was a treasured comfort but she longed for the silence of pacing worn flagstones in the filtered moonlight, wrapped in the chill magic of of her cloak, unseen and alone. She missed Death’s embrace. So on Samhain evening after supper she tucked herself into a little known secret passage on the fifth floor with a book and an underpowered lumos charm and waited until the last of the prefect rounds were over before stealing over to a vaulted window seat and settling herself for meditation. She focused on the feel of cool silken folds surrounding her like a static waterfall, on the silvery pool of fabric slipping through her fingers, on the sense of safety she had always felt ensconced beneath Death’s cloak. And there, between one moment and the next, the invisibility cloak she’d once inherited from her father shimmered into being in her hands. She spared a moment to wonder whether Charlus Potter (currently asleep in the Gryffindor dorms) would wake to find his family heirloom missing, or if perhaps his father had had more sense than his son would eventually have and had chosen not to send his adolescent child to a boarding school with such an artifact. Perhaps Lord Christopher Potter wouldn’t notice it missing until he next visited the family vault. She twirled the cloak around her shoulders, unconscious tension draining from her body as she felt it anchor in her magic; a once familiar tether latching onto her magical core. She pulled up the hood and stepped out into the empty halls that echoed with nothing but her silent footsteps.
By the time she reached her Fourth Year, Pyxis decided she was old enough that spearheading a charitable endeavor amongst the society ladies of her mother’s acquaintance would be both darling and impressive rather than alarmingly precocious. She began with her Mother and Aunt Elladora along with Lady Selene Ollivander and Madam Esmerelda Forth, two New Bloods who had made very good marriages. They begin to gather support for an endowment society to facilitate future New Blood access, entrance, and acclimatization to the magical world. Between their combined acquaintance, they had a sizable sum to invest by Yule. From there it was hardly a challenge to charm Madam Hepzibah Smith into loaning two family heirlooms for the Founder’s Foundation to display in perpetuity alongside Ravenclaw’s Diadem and Gryffindor’s Sword in the Great Hall at Hogwarts. The ceremonial installation over Easter gained much public goodwill for the House of Smith and many donations to the Fund. While she certainly had no interest in spending much time admiring either the locket or the cup, it eased something within Pyxis to know that even if her warnings were unheeded neither treasure would house a shard of anyone’s soul. And it brought her bittersweet joy to imagine that Lily Evans and Hermione Granger might appreciate her efforts one day. She had grand plans for the establishment of a wellness program to provide oversight and resources for those raising magical children in the muggle world, but that was beyond the purview of even the most precocious Fourth Year and she knew it. Perhaps after she had graduated and confronted Tom, she could turn her attention to the Wizengamot and ensure that no one again had to survive the sort of childhood Harriet Potter and Severus Snape would have once endured.
It was the last day of the school year in Pyxis’ second sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when she suddenly realized she had forgotten one very important thing. She’d meant to take care of it at Halloween and it had, apparently, entirely slipped her mind. She blamed Dorea and Charlus’ lovestruck canoodling and the epic prank she had helped Charlus pull on the entirety of the student population - after all, no one suspects the Ravenclaw bookworm of mischief. She only thanked the stars she had recalled this necessity before school had entirely let out, she still had one night in the castle to reclaim what was hers. It would be highly inconvenient to have to track down Dumbledore in his own home before her birthday. For having once possessed the Deathly Hallows, having once melded her magic with theirs, having in fact used their powers to catapult herself back in time and into her present life, she did not dare go through her magical maturation at seventeen without all three within her possession. She waited for the wee hours of the morning innocuously ensconced behind the hangings of her bed curtains and wished for once that she had a particular map her future godson would one day make. It would have made everything so much easier. She vaguely recalled battling insomnia in her first life, staring at the motionless names of sleeping Hogwarts residents in the carefree days before Voldemort was resurrected. If her recollections were correct, and if Professor Dumbledore held to the same patterns as he one day would as Headmaster, he should have been asleep by one in the morning at the very latest. When her tempus showed the hour to be sufficiently advanced Pyxis concentrated on the thread of ash grey that wound through her magic, focused on the remembered resonance of Hallows, and pulled. The third Hallow materialized in her hand a heartbeat later, having come quicker and easier than either of the previous two. She felt them nestle into her magic and bond to her core in an icy blossom of stillness. The next morning at breakfast she hid her laughter at the disconcerted worry that was apparent on the Professor’s face. She watched him assess each graduating Seventh Year with suspicion as he shook their hands before they boarded the ceremonial boats that would return them to the train and smiled to herself, feeling the weight of the Elder Wand in the holster secreted about her thigh.
Pyxis’ seventh year at Hogwarts was a new experience for her. She’d never returned to school after the catastrophic war she’d once lived through and she relished in the normalcy of throwing herself into NEWT studies. She had convinced her Lord Father to put off her formal introduction to society until after her graduation, so she could focus entirely on her studies. He had indulged her Ravenclaw sentiments over her mother’s fond protests, though Pyxis had been emphatically promised that the next summer would see a lavish ball in honor of the daughter of the House of Black. But she didn’t truly mind if her mother wanted to make a fuss over her, it warmed something deep within her even after all these years within a loving family to know that they truly cared for her and wanted to show her off to the world. So while Dorothea spent her weekends on Courtship Dates with her betrothed, Pyxis was free to read. She split her time between studying for the honestly ridiculous number of NEWTs she planned to sit for and making her way through the last shelves of the restricted section. Along with her entrance to society, she knew that her inevitable confrontation with a certain Dark Lord was fast approaching and she wanted to be well prepared. He might have the advantage of years spent studying abroad, but she had the entirety of the Black Library under her belt already and she was determined that this time around she would meet him as his intellectual and academic equal. Indeed, by the time examinations were past she had sat fifteen NEWTs to Tom Riddle’s record breaking 12 and was feeling entirely pleased with herself. She couldn’t wait for the results to be officially owled so she could brag to her brother, see them published in the Prophet, and prove her parents’ faith in her.