dark arts

Number 2: Wedded Blitz, Lorelei’s Story

“She isn’t crazy, far from it, she knew exactly what she was doing. She was literally killing me with kindness.”

Lorelei Baudelaire does not look like the Lady of one of the oldest pureblood manors in the United Kingdom, in fact, on the day I meet with her at the family pile on the outskirts of Edinburgh she doesn’t even look like a witch. Sporting muggle jeans, studded boots, and a man’s dress shirt, with her short choppy hair and lip piercing, she couldn’t be further from the traditionally elegant and poised vision of modest femininity that we have come to expect from the old families. Perhaps that’s why her mother-in-law tried to murder her.

“When I met Zeb I had no idea he was a Lord in Waiting. He went to Durmstrang, so our paths never crossed at school, and I spent all the holidays with my muggle parents. When we met I must have been the only witch in Europe that had no clue who he was. Maybe that’s what attracted him to me.”

Lorelei shrugs, then gives a small snort of laughter. Hiking one of her knees up to rest her boot on the chaise, which looks to be antique and painfully expensive, she is the image of insouciance and I find myself smiling along with her. Indeed, it is hard to believe that back in 2004 anybody could have been ignorant of the Baudelaires. Though not technically one of the sacred 28 due to an unfortunate blip in their pedigree some three hundred years ago, the Baudelaires have long been recognised as one of the stalwarts of pureblood aristocracy, and from 2002 when Zebulon turned 17 until he wed Lorelei in 2005, his name and face graced many an eligible bachelor list in gossip magazines and society pages alike. I ask where the couple met, and am surprised by the answer.

“The Leaky Cauldron. I was there with some girlfriends letting off some steam, and he was there as part of a bachelor party. I was a few drinks in and levitating a tray over to our table when he ran straight into me and I hit the deck. He picked me up and brushed me down, all posh and apologetic. I remember thinking he had a Hugh Grant kinda vibe with a Johnny Depp kinda face.” She wiggles her eyebrows at me and laughs at her own description.

“Well, that was it really. For the rest of the night we completely ignored our friends. Spent the entire evening staring at each other and talking until I nearly lost my voice. It wasn’t until the next morning when my best friend floo-called me and started screaming about bagging a billionaire that I found out about all this.” She waves a hand dismissively around her, indicating the enormous drawing room lined with antiques.

“After she told me I assumed that would be it, I’d never see him again. We all know that pureblood princes don’t get into relationships with muggleborns, even though nobody is supposed to acknowledge it these days, and I wasn’t about to be anybody’s dirty little secret. Turned out I was wrong. I got an owl that afternoon inviting me out for dinner, and then everything just happened so quickly. We went out maybe six times over the next couple of weeks, and then within the month we’d declared our love for each other. We just clicked, you know? It just felt right, straight from the off. There didn’t seem to be much point hanging about. I took him to meet my parents, which was hilarious by the way, and then he invited me here to meet his mother.”

Lorelei summons a house elf and requests cocktails, whilst I smile to myself at the thought of Zebulon Baudelaire making small talk with her parents in a semi-detached house in muggle England. Lorelei catches the smile and returns it, her blue eyes creasing in shared amusement.

“That first time I came to the house, Anastasia was absolutely vile. She spent the entire time making thinly veiled jabs at muggles and muggleborns, never cracked a smile once, refused to shake hands with me, and when Zeb excused himself to go to the loo she offered me 1000 galleons to leave and never speak to him again. I got the feeling she was used to getting her own way, but to be honest I didn’t think much of it. I assumed she’d just, well, get over it.”

Anybody who has ever met, or indeed heard of, Anastasia Baudelaire will no doubt be unsurprised to hear that she did not ‘get over it’. Though she was all smiles for the press when Zebulon and Lorelei’s relationship was first exposed in Witch Weekly after they were spotted together at a Holyhead Harpies game, behind closed doors Lorelei received a much frostier reception. Lorelei’s eyes narrow and a sly smile appears on her elfin face.

“In the beginning, she just made things as difficult for us as she possibly could. When we had dates planned she would schedule in other events that he was obliged to attend so that he had to cancel on me. She would organise ‘accidental’ meetings with eligible pureblood girls whenever they left the house. If I came to the house to visit Zeb, either the gates would refuse me entry or the house elves would answer the door and tell me that Zeb declined to see me. If I somehow managed to get into the house, the corridors would change to direct me further and further away from his quarters no matter which direction I went. Some days it was funny, but at other times I could have throttled her. None of it deterred me though.

“It turned nasty around six months in. She had one of the house elves put something in my tea when Zeb invited me to a family function as his guest against her wishes. Can you believe that? I don’t know what it was she spiked me with, he won’t tell me to this day, but it made me act completely out of control. I made an utter fool of myself in front of the family and visiting guests, and the next day there were some vile stories printed about me in the Prophet. Well, that was the first time I’d ever known Zeb to lose his temper, or to speak out against Anastasia. He quizzed all the elves, and when one of them confessed he took to Anastasia with a fury like you’ve never seen. He was so angry that he accidentally shattered all the windows in the orangery. He threatened to walk away from the family completely, give it all up and live with me in my tiny flat. Wouldn’t that have been something?”

Lorelei lights up again at the thought, as she takes a slow sip from the straw in her drink, her numerous rings clinking against the glass. In the wedding portrait behind her, the painted figures of Lorelei and Zebulon smile at each other and share a chaste kiss. It is, perhaps, needless for me to say that Zebulon did not in fact relinquish the family fortune, though he did temporarily leave the home and stay with Lorelei. Two days passed, and then the Daily Prophet printed a retraction and apology, indicating that they had received information that their source was a jealous ex-suitor of Zebulon Baudelaire and that the story had been proven false. The same day, Anastasia Baudelaire summoned both her son and his girlfriend to the mansion for afternoon tea.

“It was like she’d had a personality transplant. All of a sudden the elves were calling me ‘Miss’ instead of ‘Mudblood’, and she was charming and polite. She apologised most sincerely for the ‘misunderstanding’ and told me I was always welcome at her home.” Lorelei rolls her eyes and takes another drink, doing away with the straw altogether. “I knew she was playing some kind of game, but Zeb was thrilled. He believed her, you see. Genuinely thought she’d had a change of heart.”

For the first time since my arrival, Lorelei’s face loses the sense of youthful mischief and she looks sad. Zebulon, whilst supportive of Lorelei’s wish to speak with me for this article, has never spoken publicly about his mother or the events surrounding his relationship with Lorelei. He is, in fact, notoriously closed to the press and has chosen not to be present for our discussion.

“She was lovely to me from then on. Always polite, courteous. Bought me a lovely birthday gift. Zeb was over the

“moon that she’d finally accepted me. Even I started to think that maybe she genuinely had changed her mind, maybe she was willing to move past the whole blood issue for the sake of her son. We didn’t realise how wrong we were until it was almost too late.”

Zebulon Baudelaire and Lorelei Simpson got engaged on Christmas Eve of 2004, a little under eleven months from their first meeting at the Leaky Cauldron. The specific details of the proposal were not released to the press, and Lorelei wishes to keep them private. The engagement was, however, formally announced in the New Year’s Day edition of the Daily Prophet and other society pages, and the couple were pictured in a formal portrait distributed to news outlets. Lorelei hands me a copy of the photograph, in which she and Zebulon can be seen sharing a kiss before Lorelei holds up her left hand to display a large and antique looking platinum engagement ring set with an onyx stone.

“I was so excited. My parents were thrilled for me, and me, my mum and my friends all got together to start planning. Anastasia declined to attend when we all got together, but she wasn’t nasty about it or anything, she just said she didn’t want to impose on my big day but that she would be happy to help if we needed any guidance on the magical elements. She even offered to pay for the whole thing. Zeb said he didn’t mind what we did so long as it ended up with us married, so I pretty much had free reign. We picked a date, 16 July, and then all through January and February we were just constantly visiting dress shops and hair stylists and poring over bridal magazines. It was all so exciting but so exhausting. The thing I remember most about that time is how tired I always was.

DARK ARTS QUIBBLER The first time I got a hint that anything was actually wrong was at the Ministry Valentine’s Ball. I’d been fatigued the whole week, but I thought it was just that I’d been so busy with the wedding planning and a big project at work. The day of the ball I woke up and I just felt off, tired and kind of weak. I chalked it up to some kind of mild cold or flu, and spent most of the day resting, but when I got up to get dressed for the ball I put my dress on and it didn’t fit anymore. I’d only bought it a few weeks before, but now it was loose around my waist and bust. I assumed it was because I’d skipped a few meals and tried to use this tricky little charm my friend invented to get a better fit, but I couldn’t get the spell to work. In the end I just wore another dress.”

Over the following weeks, Lorelei’s health began to fail. She was sleeping excessively and her appetite waned significantly causing more noticeable weight loss. She saw a number of healers throughout February and March, all of whom advised that her symptoms were likely caused by the stress of her upcoming nuptials and prescribed a variety of calming draughts to no effect. At one point, Zebulon suggested postponing the wedding, but Lorelei refused.

“I was so determined to go ahead. All the planning was practically finished by the end of March and so I thought I’d probably perk up again seeing as the worst of the stressful stuff was over. I was visiting Zeb at the mansion all the time, and Anastasia would tell me how worried she was about me, and that I should be at home taking it easy. One time, around Easter, she asked me to come early to help her decorate the ballroom for an event. I thought it was weird at the time, but I went anyway so as not to cause problems. She was asking me to transfigure stones into decorative eggs, and I just couldn’t do it. My wand hand felt so heavy, and no matter how hard I concentrated the spell just wouldn’t take. I remember she was watching and smiling at me the whole time. When I gave up she told me not to worry and patted my hand, then asked a house elf to do it. At the time I thought she was being nice, but now I think she was just checking on her progress.”

A shadow crosses Lorelei’s blue eyes and she gazes out of the window at the rose garden for a moment. When she speaks again she does not turn to me initially, and I wonder what she is seeing in her memory.

“As time went on I felt worse and worse. I took a leave of absence from work, and spent most of my time at my flat. I stopped going to the mansion, because I was finding it difficult to apparate. Zeb started coming to me instead, and would stay over a lot. That’s when he started getting suspicious. He noticed that I was doing more and more things the muggle way. My flat was in a muggle area, and I had been working in muggle relations, so it wasn’t odd for me to do some things without magic, but he was the first person to realise that I was hardly doing anything with magic.

One night he confronted me about it. He lined up a bunch of glasses on the coffee table and told me to do a different spell on each one. He had me accio the first one, which worked okay, then levitate the second, which I did but I could only hold it for a few seconds. He asked me to transfigure the third one, but I couldn’t do it. Then he asked me to cast my patronus, and I remember focusing on the memory of him proposing and starting to speak the incantation and then… nothing.”

Lorelei doesn’t recall anything else because the effort of attempting to cast a patronus caused her to lose consciousness. Zebulon, unable to revive her, apparated her to St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries where she remained in a state of unconsciousness. After three days of diagnostic tests and screens with no success, on 17 May 2005 the healers told Zebulon that there was nothing they could do.

QUIBBLER DARK ARTS neck to remember me by. The healers had tried to remove it when I’d been brought in, but it was one of those old archaic type engagement rings that shrinks to size and can only be taken off by the man who gave it. Stupid bloody practice if you ask me, but that’s how they do things in the pureblood set. Getting engaged is essentially marking your future property. Anyway, Zeb had told them to leave it on because to take it off would be indicative of a break in the engagement, but when they told him I was going to die he figured it wouldn’t matter any more. So he took it off.”

Lorelei’s hospital records detail that shortly after entering her hospital room to say his goodbyes, Zebulon called for assistance. Upon removing the engagement ring he had uncovered a small circular wound, described subsequently by the healers as ‘a necrotic open lesion which leaks a black purulent fluid when pressure is applied’. Within twenty-four hours of removing the ring, Lorelei had

regained consciousness, though she remained critically ill.

“The first few days are all a bit foggy to be honest. They ended up bringing in a specialist healer from China, and I just remember endless hours of chanting and a lot of pink smoke. They told me later that she was using a type of ancient oriental magic that draws impurities out of the body and rebalances something or other in your system. Whatever she was doing, I think she pretty much saved my life.”

Zebulon Baudelaire, however, was not witness to this extraordinary magic as he was being detained by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, who had been contacted by the St Mungo’s team. Under questioning Zebulon explained that the engagement ring had been a gift from his mother after he advised her of his intention to propose. The DMLE files detail Zebulon’s recollection that when he expressed doubt, as he did not feel the ring was Lorelei’s style, and requested a different one his mother was very insistent that it must be that particular ring as it was ‘tradition’. Anastasia Baudelaire was subsequently arrested at the Baudelaire mansion in the early hours of 20 May 2005, but to date has refused to give any statement.

After four weeks of treatment, at the end of June 2005 Lorelei was released from St Mungos. Whilst she had made a full physical recovery, Lorelei was unable to perform magic without losing consciousness and she therefore moved back in with her muggle parents. Lorelei flushes when recalling her future husband’s response to the situation.

The wedding went ahead as planned in July 2005 whilst Anastasia was on remand awaiting trial for attempted murder and posession of dangerous dark artefacts. The ring was later studied by eminent curse breaker Geraint Wickersmith who testified at Anastasia Baudelaire’s trial. On examination of the jewellery he discovered an inscription on the base of the stone, hitherto hidden by the setting; “Tu prends ce qui est à moi, je prends ce qui est toi” (You take what is mine, I take what is you). His analysis indicated that the stone of the ring had been imbued and cast with an old blood magic and held a powerful curse. When worn, the ring contracted to fit the bearer and almost imperceptibly pierced the skin of the finger. If the blood beneath did not belong to a Baudelaire, vengeful, malevolent magic would slowly but continuously seep into the bearer and would first dilute, and then ultimately eradicate the bearer’s magical core, causing death.

At trial, Anastasia Baudelaire initially presented a defence that she had been unaware that the ring held a curse, however a search of the mansion uncovered correspondence between Baudelaire and her late husband’s sister, Veronique Sokolov, in which the women discussed how best to remove the threat to the Baudelaire line and Sokolov suggested using the ring, which had been in storage at Gringotts. Following the presentation of this evidence Baudelaire changed her plea to guilty and was given a life sentence in Azkaban. A warrant for Sokolov’s arrest as an accessory remains live, however, she has not entered the UK since the early 2000s and the UK does not have an extradition treaty with Russia.

As we reach the end of the story, and the end of our cocktails, Lorelei’s face regains the mischievous grin that marked the start of our discussion.

“You know what tickles me? She hated me for my heritage, but it was the fact that I’m muggleborn that allowed me to survive. At the trial one of the healers said that typically with these kinds of things when a person’s magic is killed off they go with it. Their best guess for why I survived is that being magical isn’t the core of my identity. I was, to all intents and purposes, a muggle until I was eleven, and then I’ve always had as much of a life in the muggle world as the magical world. Magic was a big part of who I was, but it didn’t define me, and it simply never occurred to the prejudiced old bag that anything could be more central to somebody’s identity than their magic.”

Over several years of treatment under the curse damage team at St Mungo’s Lorelei has regained some of her magical ability, though she will never again be able to perform complex magic. She advises me with a smile that as long as she can apparate or can summon things when she doesn’t want to move, she doesn’t really mind, and having seen how at ease she is I believe her.

As our interview concludes, I ask Lorelei the same question I ask all of my interviewees. I ask her how she has been marked by the dark. She says nothing in response but removes her wedding ring, an unusually thick gold band, and reaches out her hand for me to take. Wrapped around her ring finger is a magical tattoo, a reminder. Golden words flow around a deep black circular scar and glint in the fading light of the afternoon.

“The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.”

by u/neeshky