A.N.: Hi everyone. Instead of writing the 10,000-word dissertation due in 1 May, I decided to revise Pleiades, and I'm happy to say I'm working on Chapter 41, so I can now upload each edited chapter without breaking continuity.

The Eldest of the Pleiades

01

As a soft knock echoed on the front-door, she dried her eyes on her 'magic' handkerchief, the hand-embroidered one prone to stop anyone's tears—except her own—and paused before the little round mirror set into the engraved mantelpiece over the round fireplace; her eyes were red, her cheeks pale and tearstained, her cheekbones more pronounced than ever, though she had tried to bring some colour to her wan cheeks by going for a bicycle ride to the beach, absentmindedly collecting a basketful of fresh muscles, intent on making moules marinières for supper.

She had never been allowed to sit still; she always had to do something, and her own work-ethic meant the scent of freshly-baked bread and scones was pervasive in the little Hobbit-hole cottage she had lived in with her great-aunt: She was expecting this visitor, though they were rare. For all the travelling she had done with her great-aunt, she had spent a great amount of time in their little Hobbit-hole, carved into a gentle hill here in the middle of nowhere. The surrounding meadows were exquisite, speckled with spring wildflowers, swans gliding by idly in the little streams that carved and gurgled their way lazily through the earth. Untouched by modernity, the panelled warren and the spread of meadows and woods now seemed desolately lonely without the woman who had made it home.

Since the loss of her great-aunt, she had been unable to control the magic she could so usually handle with such dexterity: she hadn't meant to, but when William had scared her, trying to kiss her and not stopping, when she was upset and needing someone to hug her, he had suddenly turned into a gelatinous tangle of sucker-lined tentacles and deep-set eyes.

She had transfigured him back, and had fled, leaving him utterly confused: desperate to talk to her great-aunt, she had collapsed in a fit of tears as soon as she had reached the Hobbit-hole, her sobs so violent she hadn't been able to speak when two middle-aged men in sweeping robes had knocked on the door: they said they had come from the Improper Use of Magic Office, from the Ministry of Magic.

Her great-aunt had always told her she had a lot of magic, was very talented, but for some reason her great-aunt had kept her from the magical world, the one she vaguely knew existed, that her parents and the rest of her family except her great-aunt had been a part of, but she had been raised for the most part in the world of the non-magical.

Every time she had used magic consciously—the occasions becoming more and more frequent and creative the older she became—her great-aunt would take her out of school and take her travelling for a little while. Her great-aunt may not have been a witch, but she had a great many foreign contacts, and if she knew nothing of the English wizarding culture, she had learned a lot in foreign countries, particularly European, Russian, and the most ancient of wizarding cultures, Middle-Eastern, even African.

The wizards from the Improper Use of Magic Office had been staggered to realise she possessed no wand, and had never been to a magical school. She had explained, after a lot of hot tea soothed her, still crying softly, that she had received a letter from Hogwarts years ago, but had declined the offer to remain at home and take care of her great-aunt, who was far older even than her little friend Bathilda, whose finished biography her great-aunt had been in the process of self-editing before sending it off for publication.

She had been let off with a warning, but Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore had been contacted.

Maia had already sent Professor Dumbledore a note: Instructed by her great-aunt to owl a letter to him the moment she died, Maia had done as instructed the night her great-aunt had passed away, and Professor Dumbledore had arrived the next morning, to help with arrangements and things, but, he being the greatest wizard of the age, Professor Dumbledore hadn't been able to remain, and it was only this second letter to him, not from Maia but about her, that had drawn the professor to her little Hobbit-hole once again, several days later.

Maia was conscious of her magic: she had only to concentrate, and things would happen as she wished. Having gone through some of her mother's antiquated schoolbooks, discovered in a trunk in the attic one evening when she had been sent up to collect a trunk into which they could pack their things before heading to her great-aunt's friend in the Congo, she was sure she would be able to study at Hogwarts: unless Professor Dumbledore deemed her breach of the International Statute of Secrecy serious enough to endorse the Improper Use of Magic Office's suggestion that she be…punished, instead of properly tutored in the subtle and often extremely complex arts of magic.

Professor Dumbledore was a figure Maia knew from teas with her great-aunt, and from listening in on her great-aunt's interviews with Bathilda Bagshot for her biography: as a child, he had entertained her with miniature fireworks, working models of unicorns and hippogriffs, pretty things that twinkled and smelled beautiful and sounded like glass church-bells, sweets so sumptuous she could remember every detail of them to this day. When he had arrived the morning after her aunt had passed away, he had been just as she remembered, unchanged, still as stately and uncompromisingly kind as ever, and he had mourned a woman who had long been his friend: he had helped with the arrangements, her great-aunt's burial in the family plot, but he had had to leave again, but not before explaining the contents of her aunt's letter to him: With her death, Professor Dumbledore had been named legal guardian to Maia until her seventeenth birthday, and it was his decision what became of her, what he thought would be best for her.

As soon as she had hung up his rich crimson travelling-cloak on the long row of hooks by the perfectly round front-door, Professor Dumbledore apologised.

"What do you have to apologise for?" Maia asked, perplexed.

"I left you to your own devices after you lost the person dearest to you in the world," Professor Dumbledore said. "You must forgive me, my dear."

"You're very busy," Maia said quietly: she wasn't a fool. She knew Professor Dumbledore, the greatest wizard in the world, wouldn't just spend his time waiting for letters from orphaned girls to arrive by owl. Indicating Professor Dumbledore into the parlour, Maia followed.

Polished chairs heaped with hand-embroidered cushions stood about the carved, inlaid table under the large, round window with a deep sill overflowing with plants and candle-sconces with burn-marks up the walls; two little armchairs stood around the little round fireplace, surrounded by footstools and a tiny little chair fit for a little girl, little spindly tables cluttered with photographs and trinkets, candlesticks and lamps, little bits of sewing and projects of lace-making and quilting, and little postcard-sized watercolour paintings leaning up against photograph frames, and delicate ornaments, tiny animals made of coloured glass and semi-precious stones; little vases of wildflowers dotted the room, books and photographs were stacked on every surface, and not a sign that the world had entered the technological age showed. Maia's room was a different story entirely.

"Mm, a veritable feast!" Professor Dumbledore smiled happily, glancing at the spread Maia had set out on the table, including all of the things she knew Professor Dumbledore had liked to eat when he had been invited to tea by her aunt in times past. Maia was exceptionally talented at patisserie, and English cakes and heavy puddings; her great-aunt had been a cake-fiend, could, well past her nineties, demolish an entire cake to herself if Maia didn't hide them properly. Professor Dumbledore sat down, shaking his long muscovite sleeves out of the way.

"Tea?" she asked, sitting down opposite, and Professor Dumbledore smiled.

"Thank you. That would be very welcome," he said. "I've had a long morning. And I hear you have had a rather excitable week." Maia glanced up, pouring the tea.

"So, you—you received the letter the Improper Use of Magic Office said they would send?" she asked tentatively.

"I did indeed," Professor Dumbledore nodded. "Again, I must apologise. It seems I have made an incredible oversight in overlooking your magical education—or lack thereof. I had little idea you were not receiving magical tutelage."

"I…I did receive some," Maia said, though she flushed: when she said she had received some education in magic, she meant she had found, stolen and then devoured her mother's old schoolbooks, trying to control and temper her magic as she attended a non-magical school. Professor Dumbledore gave her a look over the top of his half-moon spectacles that made her suspicious of him reading her thoughts, and she flushed again, and explained.

"I was always a fan of self-education," Professor Dumbledore said, far from scolding her for stealing her mother's schoolbooks while her non-magical great-aunt could do nothing to help if things had gone awry.

"I haven't managed to do quite a few of the spells," Maia confessed. "Some of the animals required to Transfigure, and I've only studied the theory of Potions, and I've been trying with Charms, but without a wand—"

"You have been doing all this without a wand?" Professor Dumbledore asked, looking her dead-on, and Maia flushed, again feeling like she was being X-rayed. She nodded. Professor Dumbledore gave her a measuring look, then seemed to come to a decision.

"Your great-aunt named me your guardian, until the advent of your seventeenth birthday," he said, and Maia nodded. "Therefore it is up to me to help encourage you do that which I believe will be beneficial to you. I understand, from your great-aunt's letters, that you have attended a Muggle school? And that you expect to receive a packet of letters with results from your examinations?"

"Yes. My A-levels," she nodded: Her friends all thought she was freak, due to the fact she had been taking A-level classes as a fifteen-year-old. Not the best of timing on her aunt's behalf to fall ill during Maia's exams, but that was no fault of hers, and Maia was sure she had the results she anticipated, if not better.

"And your aunt took you travelling, whenever you used magic at this school?" Professor Dumbledore said. "Taking you to visit witches and wizards in foreign countries."

"My aunt said it would be beneficial to make ties early in life, and learn other cultures and languages, more than it would me going off to school," Maia said; she was still wrapping her head around that, but she knew she did love her knowledge of "Muggle" literature, music, languages, fashion and culture, something her great-aunt said no witch or wizard ever learned about firsthand. Combined with the skills her great-aunt had taught her since birth—Maia had learned to knit before she could write, and had been playing the violin and the piano just as long: she made her own clothes and lace; did delicate beadwork and quilting; painted exquisitely and could cook and kept an enormous vegetable-garden and orchard, as well as chickens and bees—her knowledge of the "Muggle" world was enhanced due to her appreciation of the way they did everything by hand, and she knew about technology, owned a DVD-player (taken apart and enhanced by magic) and could drive a car. Illegally; one of her friends had taught her on his dad's farm, but she could still do it. "She was of the opinion that I could learn complex magic later in life."

"You taught yourself the basics enough that you would not be a danger to those around you," Professor Dumbledore nodded. "Very wise. However, as your aunt left you under my guardianship, I think it may be best to enrol you for the coming term at Hogwarts. Your Muggle education is at an end now, having sat the last of the examinations, yes?"

"Well, yes, unless I wanted to go to university," Maia said, thinking, "but I didn't apply; I'd like to study magic first. I can go to university any time." Professor Dumbledore nodded. "May I still come to Hogwarts?"

"Maia, your name has been down for enrolment at Hogwarts since the moment of your birth," Professor Dumbledore smiled kindly. "And, having been to visit the Scroll Room to see for myself, I believe I may have solved the problem of your living situation."

"My living situation?"

"I am not keen on the idea of you remaining alone, so soon after your great-aunt's death," Professor Dumbledore said. "I do not wish there to be any more incidents like that with your Muggle boyfriend William." Maia flushed deeply. Professor Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "I am sure not a year has gone by when girls at Hogwarts don't turn respective partners into animals of some sort. Howler-monkeys were on-trend this past term." Maia's lips twitched, and a low chuckle escaped her. Professor Dumbledore winked. "It seems I also solved the mystery of your lineage."

"My lineage? You mean my parents? My father," she added, eyes wide, and Professor Dumbledore nodded. "You… Did you know him?"

"I knew every member of your family," Professor Dumbledore said, and this time his eyes didn't twinkle; they shadowed with a sadness unbearable to see. All Maia had ever known of her mother's family was that some great tragedy had befallen them; her aunt, and Maia herself, were the last of them, and whatever the tragedy had been, it was so great that her great-aunt had never uttered a word of it. The only thing she knew of her father was that his name was Regulus. Regulus was the brightest star in the constellation Leo. Her great-aunt had told her that, according to her mother, in her father's family the names of stars and constellations had been used for generations to name their children: Maia was one of the Pleiades, and it was from this connection that her childhood nickname, Baby Star, had emerged. "And it is my greatest pleasure to inform you that your great-aunt was not your last remaining living relative." Maia glanced up over the rim of her teacup, eyes wide.

"But my great-aunt said my father had died. That's what my mother had told her," she said, staring.

"Oh, I am afraid, my dear, that your father is indeed dead," Professor Dumbledore said solemnly. "However, his brother is not."

"His brother," Maia whispered to herself, stunned. Her father had had a brother. She knew her mother had had one brother, before the tragedy. Maia had an uncle. A real, live uncle. She fidgeted in her seat, and glanced up at Professor Dumbledore, who was watching her for her reaction. "How is it that… Why did my aunt never tell me?"

"I believe your great-aunt never told you, my dear, because she had no idea," Professor Dumbledore said sadly. "Your great-aunt was what is known to our world as a 'squib', born to a wizarding family with no magical abilities whatsoever. And she would not have known to whom the name Regulus referred, therefore she would not have made the connection with his brother."

"What about… Did my uncle never know about me?" she asked. Professor Dumbledore frowned thoughtfully.

"As to that, I am unsure," he said. "Certainly your uncle may have once or twice visited, perhaps when your mother was still alive. But when I spoke to him about it, Sirius had no idea of his having a niece." Professor Dumbledore's eyes twinkled now as he rested them on Maia's face. "A very well-kept secret." Maia fiddled with the delicate handle of her very fine teacup—she had served the tea with the best service, the one her aunt always used for the best company—and licked her lips, fidgeting again, her mind whirring.

"What's he like?" she asked. "My uncle."

"Ah," Professor Dumbledore smiled. "Well, that is in part why I am here. I said I wished you not to live alone; as it is, I am afraid I cannot give you the time and attention that you deserve. There are a great many things that I need to attend to." Maia nodded; she knew this already, of course. "But having discussed your situation with your uncle, Sirius has expressed a desire to…well, to take care of you." Maia blinked, glancing at Professor Dumbledore.

"He does?"

"Sirius finds himself in possession of a large, empty house, and with the secretive nature of your upbringing—not least, your upbringing in the Muggle world—Sirius is curious to know you," Professor Dumbledore said, eyes once again twinkling. "He does ask that I explain a few things to you, to allow you to weigh your response to him inviting you to live with him."

"What are they?" Maia asked curiously.

"Well, my dear, part of the reason you have no knowledge of your uncle," Professor Dumbledore said, "is because he has resided in the wizard prison Azkaban for twelve years. The wills of the deceased being available to those who know how to ask, I took the liberty of examining your mother's; if Sirius had not been incarcerated, guardianship of you would have passed to him at your mother's death." Maia stared. She had never known this. Her uncle had been in jail.

"Why was he in prison?" she asked.

"Ah. The crux of the matter," Professor Dumbledore sighed. "Sirius will, I think, if you ask him give you the long version of the story, but to simplify matters, Sirius was wrongly accused of the murder of thirteen people. Twelve Muggles and a wizard named Peter Pettigrew." Maia's eyes popped. "However, one year ago his innocence came to light—at least, to me. Since his escape from Azkaban two years ago, Sirius has been in hiding from the Ministry." Maia took this all in.

"If he's on the run, how can he invite me to live with him?" she asked.

"Sirius's—your—ancestral home is under such magical protection that only the keeper of the secret location may divulge its whereabouts," Professor Dumbledore said. "Therefore Sirius is utterly protected while he remains within its confines. Enemies, or Aurors from the Ministry, could press their noses against the drawing-room window and never find him. And this is why I, and not Sirius—for one of several reasons—have come to invite you to live with him. I am the secret-keeper, therefore if you wish to accept Sirius's invitation, I shall speak the whereabouts of his home, and deliver you safely there myself. Would you like to come and stay with Sirius, until September the first?"

Maia stared at Professor Dumbledore. She had an uncle? He had been wrongly accused of mass-murder! And he wanted her to live with him because he didn't want her living on her own.

None of her friends, nor their parents, had asked whether Maia wanted to come and stay with any of them, even for just a little while. Her great-aunt had left her the cottage, and all the surrounding land, in her will, and her mother had left her the contents of a great old vault in the wizards' bank Gringott's… But did Maia want to live alone? Especially if she could live with an uncle she had never known she had. What was he like?

Did she want to live with her mysterious new uncle?

A mysterious uncle wrongly accused of murder and imprisoned for twelve years and on the run from authorities for two. She imagined he must have led an incredibly lonely existence, and while she had friends at school, and pen-friends abroad, usually it was just Maia and her great-aunt. Now her aunt was gone. She understood lonely. And she had only been so for a week: she couldn't imagine how unbearable her uncle must find everything.

"I…I would like to meet my uncle," she said quietly, glancing hopefully at Professor Dumbledore.

"And he would dearly love to meet his brother's daughter," Professor Dumbledore smiled. "Especially one who has been raised in the Muggle world." He winked, his eyes twinkling, as if at some private joke. "Now then, now that's settled, why don't you start packing everything? I must try one of these scones! Did you make them?"

"I—I did," Maia stammered, wide-eyed, "er—Professor? I… Well, I didn't realise that I'd be…well, leaving today." She glanced around the parlour: if she was to leave today, she had a lot of work to do. Just clearing and organising the kitchen and the vegetable-garden alone would take all day. And the chickens! Golly, Posh, Ida, Monica Joan and Pookie were her darlings, the sweet little fluffy-legged Bantams!

"I am afraid, my dear, that time is of the essence these days," Professor Dumbledore sighed. He shook his hand enigmatically. "And it had briefly slipped my mind you bear no wand. Have a seat; we shall finish this marvellous spread while the house packs itself up. I shall leave the garden; I imagine Sirius would appreciate the privacy of the meadows while you tend the allotments and those Bantams."

Dazed, Maia sat, as Professor Dumbledore pulled out his wand, giving it a few complicated little flicks, and before her eyes the house started to literally pack itself up: trinkets; photographs; furniture; cushions; dinner-services; the multitude of books Maia and her great-aunt had been collecting throughout her very long lifetime; portraits and the little pianoforte; her aunt's writing-desk in the library; the contents of cupboards and the footlockers and cabinets; she had presence of mind enough to set down her teacup and rush upstairs to check what was going on in her bedroom.

The walls of the cosy little room stacked floor-to-ceiling with books, another few tottering piles composed of DVD cases, with stacks upon stacks of records, the parts of the room where the walls were visible were completely papered with exquisite watercolours and sketches, framed quilting samples and embroidery, record-sleeves, and a five-foot-wide corkboard framed with an ornate white-painted antique frame, completely plastered with letters; drawings; sketches; photographs; fabric swatches; magazine cut-outs; cinema and theatre ticket-stubs; concert and festival playlists; cards and postcards; notes and doodles. The pretty little desk, leather-topped and stained, worn and scarred, was cluttered with photographs; pots of knitting-needles; paint-brushes and makeup: the few shelves were stacked with recycled-leather journals in a rainbow of colours, neatly embossed with the letter M in the lower-right-hand corner, held up by a Rolleicord camera and a miniature chess-set that had once belonged to her mother (the tiny, exquisitely-carved pieces halfway through a game with herself); sewing-boxes were piled high, surrounded by bolts of fabric, jars of buttons and beads, needles scattered around; a large flat-screen television, charmed to work off magic in conjunction with her enchanted DVD-player, sat in the corner: her record-player stood on the deep-set windowsill amid a little garden of flowers and herbs, the window open and a bee buzzing at a pale-blue violet: a dress-form stood, also surrounded by bolts of fabric, half-finished projects and mood-boards of inspiration for clothing propped against the wall of books, samples of embroidery and beadwork glittering in the sun as it splashed across the worn parquet floor, glinting off fallen needles and tiny seed-beads: on the dresser stood a selection of board-games, more records, more books, a pretty knitted bunny and a jar of lily-of-the-valley: a polished violin lay on the hand-embroidered feather cushion on the little rocking-chair in the corner of the room, by the exquisite doll-house replica of her family's ancestral home, a place Maia had never been due to the tragedy that had reduced her mother's family to two. A '50s red doll's pram contained her childhood toys; a fluffy chick with a powder-blue bow, gift from her family when she was born, an ancient teddy-bear, and an exquisite doll in likeness of herself, with a full, hand-sewn wardrobe.

There were photographs everywhere, evidence of her foreign holidays with Diane and her exotic friends, and trinkets she had brought back from their travels, like elegant ladies on their foreign tours in olden times.

Professor Dumbledore chuckled at the expression on Maia's face as she realised he had followed her to the room, and could see it in such a state.

"Creative chaos," he chuckled. "It reminds me greatly of my own room when I was a teenager. So many books."

"I'm a bit of a glut," Maia winced guiltily.

"I think, a separate trunk for your personal possessions," Professor Dumbledore said, twiddling his wand again. "You shall want them closer at hand than the rest of your belongings, I think?" Maia grabbed her little brown-leather cross-shoulder handbag, with a lip-gloss and the little pound-sterling she had, and watched and ducked as everything in her room organised itself neatly into the trunk. Her jaw had dropped by the time Professor Dumbledore neatly closed the lid of the trunk with a soft click. She stared about the room.

For a moment she could see the tiny little room her miniature bed had been set in, when she was two years old and orphaned, clutching her doll and her little chick, crying for her mother to read her "Bedtime for Baby Star".

"I had forgotten the walls were blue," she said, surprised. She sighed. "We never usually packed very much when we travelled. We always came back with far too much." Usually books and trinkets, sometimes even furniture; a lot of cooking recipes and hands-on experience in the world.

"That explains your rather magnificent library," Professor Dumbledore chuckled. "I know few your age who possess a collection quite so large."

"Some of the books were my mother's," she said softly. "Most were kept in storage, in the big house." The "big house" was what her aunt had called their family's ancestral home, but, Maia and her mother had always lived in the 'Hobbit-hole' for privacy—then Diane had come to live in it with her, instead of moving into the Big House, full of the memories of people long lost.

Walking out of her home, it felt odd; it had never seemed so…barren, but it felt somehow…light. A great weight had lifted from seeing it so sparse, so…new. It felt as if it was ready for her to start filling with her things, to put a full-stop at the end of her aunt's tenure as mistress and begin her own with a clean slate. Professor Dumbledore set up some very complicated protective enchantments on the property, including the meadows and woods, assuring her she could return whenever she wished, and offered her his arm. Glancing curiously at it, Maia tentatively latched onto Professor Dumbledore's proffered wrist.

"Now, I plan to Apparate with you to the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix," Professor Dumbledore said solemnly. "I seem to recall the sensation when first Apparating takes some getting used to, however, there is no need to be anxious." Maia nodded. "Then we shall depart. The location of the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix resides at number twelve, Grimmauld Place."

A.N.: Please review!