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Following the Bronze Line



“Ermalene Talon… is that you?”

Her eyes adjusted to the brightness of the room compared to the dim corridor she’d stepped from. The walls were covered with tapestries - family trees, she knew, from the emerald and silver one on the wall at the Nott’s. Stacks of books and heaps of parchment scrolls filled boxes on top of boxes, spilling with copies of The Daily Prophet and various other publications lined the walls. But not a single other person was there. She looked around, trying to locate the source of the voice that had called her name.

“Hello?” she called out, “Where are you?”

“Down here,” came the voice, and she noticed it was quite muffled.

At her feet was a picture frame, face down, like it had been leaning against the desk in front of her and been knocked forward. She knelt and took hold of the corner of it, pulling it up to stand. And there, in the frame, she saw him. Albus Dumbledore, looking quite serene from his chair, a book open on his lap. He adjusted his glasses as she leaned the portrait against the desk once more and scooted on her knees to be seated before it. She stared into his eyes. “Hi,” she said quietly.

“Hello,” he greeted her. His half-moon glasses finally set upon his nose the way he liked them to be, he studied her a moment. “Only forty years!” he exclaimed, “That was a great deal quicker than I thought it would be when I had Minerva put me in here…” he rubbed his hand over his thick grey beard. He stared at Ermalene, a smile crossing his face, “My, my… You look so much like your grandmother.”

Ermalene’s heart raced. “So you - you know who my family is… who my parents are, then?”

“Oh yes, indeed,” Albus said with a nod.

It was finally going to happen, she thought. She was finally going to know the full story of how it was that she came to be alone in the world and she was going to learn what her place was in the wizarding world. She was tingling with excitement.

“We have a lot to talk about,” Albus said.

Ermalene could barely breathe, “We do,” she said.

Albus studied her a long moment, his eyes squinting just a tiny bit, then he pointed to the left side of his frame. “Over there… on the wall… the third one in, the blue and bronze one. I think you’ll find it most interesting.”

Ermalene swallowed back the anxiety that was crawling through her and pushed herself up to her feet. She approached the tapestry with sweaty palms. It was of Ravenclaw, a great big raven embroidered in the center of the crest at the top, followed by Rowena Ravenclaw’s name. She knew how tapestries like these worked - they were forever updating and changing with tiny portraits and dates depicting the family lines for untellable amounts of time. These were so complex that it seemed they told all of eternity for high above the crest there were millions more names that wove between the four tapestries that took up the wall - Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. She put her finger on Rowena Ravenclaw’s name and followed the bronze line to Helena Ravenclaw and the connection to the Slytherin tapestry. “Ignotus Black,” she read, and drew her finger-tip down, “Bardyillis Talon.” She stared at the name. “Talon,” she whispered, her eyes widening. She glanced back at the portrait behind her, “Talon!” she cried, “Ravenclaw… Talon! Oh my God!”

“After all, what is a talon, but a raven’s claw, hmm?” Albus urged her, “Read on, girl. Read on.”

She brought her finger down from Bardyillis, reading aloud as her finger moved down, down, down the tapestry, “Tacitus Talon… Harwin Talon… the first, second, third, fourth, fifth… Sarino Talon...Jericho, Jerk, Olufemi, Gerhardt… the first ,second, third… Jericho… Ratcliffe, Fenric, Astor Talon… Genoveva Hardwin, Peregrine Hardwin… Kael… Saxon… Gillespie…” Her heart raced as she passed each name. There were so many stories, so many faces. She wondered what each of their lives had been like, but was too excited to linger at any name for long, her stomach flipping with excitement. “Rauf Hardwin...Ferguson, Geronimo, Kaliko, Philo, Jakayla Detlaf… Quigley Detlaf, Tecumseh, Geoffery… Marzena --” she paused, seeing the last name and her palms filled with sweat, “Oh my God. Marzena Lovegood. Fabrizio Lovegood, Bramwell, Xenophilius Lovegood… Luna Scamander.. Lysander Scamander.” She’d heard that name somewhere before, she thought. And then, before she’d figured out the answer, she stopped, seeing it at last, her breath caught in her throat.

Her picture smiled back at her.

“Ermalene Talon,” she whispered, letting her fingers trace the bronze thread that spelled it out. She bit her lips. “My father’s descended directly from Helena Ravenclaw,” she said.

“Yes,” Dumbledore answered.

“That means I’m directly descended from Helena Ravenclaw.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore was nodding excitedly.

Ermalene stared at her name and followed the thread from her name to the name of her mother. Felicity Cooper. The dates below her mother’s portrait indicated that her mother had died when she was a baby. She touched the tiny embroidered portrait, staring into the woman’s eyes, then turned to the portrait of Lysander Scamander, whose dates indicated he was still alive. Albus was right, she did look a lot like him… and even more like her grandmother, Luna Scamander. She ran her fingers over their portraits.

Then she noticed there was a second thread on her father’s portrait frame… and she followed it down to a second branch. Medusa Peverell Gaunt had given him a second daughter -- Astarte Merope Gaunt. She stared at the names. “I have a half sister,” she said.

“Yes, you do,” Albus replied.

Ermalene stared at her sister’s portrait. They looked so much alike except that instead of the pale blonde hair that she’d evidently inherited from her grandmother, Astarte had black curls and thick dark eyebrows like her mother, Medusa.

Ermalene looked back at her father’s picture and she realized suddenly where she’d heard the name before. It was the name of the man who’d sent the patronus to Harry Potter when she, Andy, and Bill had gone to the auror’s office at the Ministry. She remembered Harry Potter telling the other two aurors not to tell Luna about the patronus --- that he’d had a chance to bring a long-dead son home to his heart broken mother --- he’d been talking about her father, about her grandmother. She turned to the portrait of Albus Dumbledore, “Where is he?” she cried, “Is the tapestry accurate? Is he alive?” she begged.

“The tapestry is accurate,” Dumbledore replied, “But I cannot tell you where he is. I only know the things the tapestries tell,” he explained. “I’ve been in this Hall for nearly forty years.”

Ermalene rushed back to him. “Lysander Scamander -- I mean… my father -- sent a patronus to Harry Potter at the auror’s office yesterday. I was there. I heard the patronus’ message. It was a magpie. It said that he was being held captive in the Great North Woods by a gorgon!” She glanced back at the tapestry. “Medusa,” she whispered. “Medusa’s the name of a gorgon, in Greek mythology. But this Medusa is his wife, according to this tapestry.”

“The tapestry doesn’t know relationships, only that there is a child between two bloodlines,” Dumbledore replied. “The tapestry would know no difference between spouse and captor.”

Ermalene was kneeling before the portrait again, her palms on her thighs. “I need to find him.”

Her voice was full of certainty. There wasn’t a question, there was no hesitation, only the blatant, obvious fact that she had to find her father. She’d been put into an orphanage, not because she was unloved or unwanted as she’d assumed all these years, but because her father had gone missing, kidnapped in the North Woods, and her mother had died.

This didn’t answer why somebody didn’t want her to find the records of the adoption at the orphanage, though, but she’d figure that bit out when she got to it. For now, she’d gone from being an adopted child to being a child with a very real chance of possibly being reunited with her father. She needed to know everything there was to know about the Great North Woods and Gorgons and how one goes about defeating one. “Is there a library?” she demanded, then “Of course there is, this is a school. Where is it? I need to make a plan and --”

“I know that you are eager, Miss. Talon, but there is still many things for us to speak of that we have not quite yet gotten to,” Dumbledore’s portrait said, “Not the least of which is a prophecy that --”

“But if I wait,” Ermalene cut across his words, “The gorgon could kill my father. You understand, don’t you? We can continue the talk once we’ve rescued him.” She stood up suddenly. Dumbledore stammered, trying to talk to her, but Ermalene was quick. “I’ll come back,” she promised, “Once we’ve got my dad, I’ll come back. But I can’t just let him die and Harry Potter was ready to act at once - I’ve got to help - I can’t just stay here --”

Ermalene rushed out of the Hall of Ancestors, leaving Albus Dumbledore staring after her with one finger raised in a cautionary sort of way, but she’d already left. And what was worse, the gust of air moving through the Hall from the slamming of the door caught the portrait - just right - and with a shudder ---

“Not again,” Dumbledore groaned.

--- the portrait tipped forward and landed face-down on the floor of the Hall.