[This week is going to be interesting week ahead. Can we do something about good ranking in the power stones. Probably in top 10.]
Antonio returned back to his house from the ministry. There were few hours remaining before he would depart for the Bones Manor to join in Edmund Bones for the dinner. Now that his case had been over and he had been legally declared innocent, he would very soon start the reconstruction of his house.
It had been a long, exhausting and demanding day for Antonio. And he had killed another man today. Overall, it was third wizard who had died at his hands.
The last time he had killed which had also been his first time, he had not even had the chance to dwell on it. The attack had been sudden and so were his actions. It had been the rush of adrenaline. And then the Aurors had been on him, dragging him off to the Ministry before the weight of the act could sink in.
Today, though, there had been time. Yet even now, he felt little more than a faint strangeness about it. No horror. No sickness. None of that suffocating revulsion people so often spoke of when they described the act of killing.
Perhaps it was because, deep down, he believed he had been right. If he had not killed then it would have been he who would have been killed. And no one would have cared. He would have been another person in the list of people being killed at the hands of the death eaters.
That thought sat with him, not as a comfort, but as a simple truth. As a fact.
Antonio spent the remaining hours in quiet rest before setting out for the Bones manor. By the time he arrived, the night had fully settled. It was a full moon night and with no clouds in the sky, for a night, the world seemed oddly bright.
"I should also get a Floo network installed in my house," Antonio muttered to himself as he apparated just outside the protective wards of the Bones estate. In its absence, he had no choice but to arrive this way. With the Floo network he could have arrived directly inside the mansion.
"You should," came a crisp voice from the lane. Amelia Bones stood waiting at the other end of the street.
"Miss Bones," Antonio greeted her with a polite smile as he approached.
"Lord Olario," she returned with a short nod before turning toward the manor.
The two walked in silence, Amelia leading him through the open doors and across the hallways until they reached the dining hall.
The long table was already laid out, silverware glinting in the light of a dozen floating candles.
On a sofa, near the hearth, sat Edmund Bones, a glass in his hand and a broad smile on his face. He rose the moment he caught sight of Antonio.
"Lord Olario," Edmund declared warmly. "The man of the moment."
"You praise me too much, Lord Bones," Antonio replied with a modest calm.
"Nonsense!" Edmund waved him off with a chuckle. "If anything, I praise you too little."
He gestured with his glass. "Come, sit, sit."
Antonio settled into the sofa opposite him, while Amelia took her place beside her father.
"Misty," Edmund boomed. "Serve our esteemed guest some drinks."
At once, there was a sharp pop. A glass of deep red wine and a platter of fried vegetables appeared on the table beside Antonio. The arrival was smooth and efficient but Antonio's eyes flickered slightly. He had clearly sensed the faint ripple in the fabric of space when the house elf had moved, something most wizards would have missed entirely.
"Let me congratulate you once more," Edmund said, raising his glass in salute.
Antonio smiled faintly and mirrored the gesture. Their glasses tilted in a silent, non contact cheer before he took a measured sip of the wine.
From there, conversation flowed easily. Edmund eagerly revisited the trial. Barty Crouch's pointed accusations, Antonio's calm counters, and finally the devastating outcome of the duel.
Amelia sat quietly nearby, watching Antonio with that cool sharpness in her eyes, but her father brimmed with approval.
"In a few days' time, you will be richer than you are now, Lord Olario," Edmund said, clearly delighted. "And you will sit in the Wizengamot as well. A fine thing indeed."
He leaned forward slightly.
"What of the House Marius? What are your intentions? Will you merge it with your own name or carry it separately?"
"Merge it," Antonio replied without hesitation.
"That is what I thought," Edmund said, smiling broadly as if the answer had pleased him deeply.
After a lord or lady took possession of another house, there were always two paths open to them. The first was to merge that house into their own. In such cases, everything, from assets and properties to debts owed and the house's precious vote in the Wizengamot was absorbed and unified under the victor's banner. The conquered name would vanish forever, remembered only in history books, while the conqueror's house swelled in wealth and authority.
The second option was to preserve the fallen house as a separate entity. This was often done for dynastic reasons. To provide a second lordship for another child apart from the elder child, or out of sentiment, to keep an old name alive.
Honour duel was not the only way someone got possession of another house. There were other methods too and someone of them friendly. Like the absence of direct descendent. In that case, people kept the name alive out of sentiment.
But Antonio had neither sentiment nor need for such legacies. The name Marius meant nothing to him, and he had no reason to splinter his inheritance. He would not breathe life into a name that had tried to destroy him. House Marius would die with Alicus, and House Olario would stand taller for it.
"Lord Olario would also have no need to reconstruct his house if he so wished," Amelia chimed in.
"The Marius mansion, though not a particularly luxurious estate or an imposing fortress is nonetheless a respectable dwelling. Forgive my bluntness, but it is far better than your current house."
Antonio inclined his head thoughtfully. She was not wrong. His own house was modest, tucked away in an obscure part of the Wizarding Britain, nothing too elite. The Marius estate, though not grand by the standards of the great families, was in an elite district and carried the air of old lineage.
I was kind of a new beginning for Antonio and it could be in a new place. It was a tempting thought. Even if he still intended to rebuild his ancestral home, the option to shift to the Marius mansion gave him flexibility.
"That is a wise suggestion, Lord Olario," Edmund added with approval.
The father and daughter said no more on the matter, letting the conversation drift to other topics, but the seed had been planted.
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