Messers. Moody, Spitfire, and Sprat
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Belladonna Black and the Forgotten Crypt
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Authors' Note: The authors of this book have made one intentional departure from established cannon as of March 2016. The birth of The Potter Children has been moved up a few years to facilitate the plot. In this Fanfic, only the books and the movies where they do not conflict with the books are considered canon, but details from Pottermore, interviews, and other sources will be included where possible.
We do not own Harry Potter. Obviously.
Memories
The four men in silver masks swept up the drive to the little house, and the gate swung open with a flick of the leader's wand. A frightened man's face flashed at the window, before he drew the curtains tightly over the glass. He swung around to see his wife and young daughter working on a puzzle of a basket of wriggling puppies in front of the fire, oblivious to the danger behind the drapes.
He crossed the room in two long strides. Scooping up the small girl in his arms, the man hid her in the first place he saw-the open closet filled with puzzles and games. Thinking quickly, the woman gathered the unfinished puzzle with her wand and returned it to its shelf. Before closing the door, she knelt before her daughter, smoothing a piece of hair away from her small face. "Sweetheart, you need to be quiet, no matter what you hear. Can you promise Mummy?" The child nodded, gazing at her mother with wide puzzled eyes, not quite knowing whether to be frightened or not by this new game. She curled up in the corner, strips of light from the slats in the door falling across her fragile frame.
A blast from the lead wizard's wand, the one with a fleur de lis pattern on his mask, turned the once sturdy door of the cottage into a shower of splinters that splattered the thick carpet. The boots of the four men crunched through the jagged mulch toward the pair cowering near the back wall. A casual flick of one of their wands caused the couple's only weapons to clatter into the far wall before falling to mingle among the other discarded bits of wood.
The shortest man, one with a dragon patterned mask, dragged the woman by her hair to the center of the room, before depositing her at the leader's feet. "You run the grocers at this little…village, do you not?" he asked in a calm voice that belied the savagery of their entrance.
"Y-yes," the woman stammered, her eyes darting between her captors, as if futilely searching for an escape route.
He smiled behind his mask, "Yesterday, a young woman with rather unfortunate brown hair bought several items from your shop, including Essence of Dittany, did she not?"
Tremors running through her body, the grocer replied, "Many people come into my store every day. I do not remember them all." He nodded at the man in the dragon mask, who muttered "Crucio," causing the woman to collapse and send screams ricocheting around the room and into the closet where her little girl curled up into an even tighter ball but did not make a sound.
When her screams died down the wizard continued speaking in his calm voice. "I would suggest you answer my questions. If you lie, my associate here will be forced to loosen your tongue and that would be unfortunate. Now, with your memory refreshed, the girl."
Her voice still raw, the woman babbled answers to the questions quite willingly for several minutes. Yes, there had been a girl. She had been alone, but bought a copious amount of food and several unusual other things, but the woman did not remember exactly what they had been. She had shoved the items into a little bag before leaving the shop hastily. There had been nothing overly odd about her, except for the fact that she had been slightly dirty, as if she had not showered in a few days.
"Where did she go after she left your shop?" the wizard continued to probe.
"The woman, confused, blinked up at him. "She turned left down the street. Never saw her again." She could not see his eyes through the mask, but he nodded. She started to shake, "No that's all I know she just…" Her protests were cut off by screams.
"That girl was Hermione Granger, Harry Potter's mudblood. Where did they go!"
"She just left…never said more than five words…please!" But the man nodded again. Soon the woman had no voice left to scream and only shook her head weakly in response. Eventually even that small response faded into motionlessness.
The fleur de lis masked wizard prodded the still form with the toe of his boot, but received no response. "That was a waste of my time," he muttered as he strolled out the open door, carelessly crunching her discarded wand under his heel on his way. His three shadows trailed him down the path, and echoed the quiet crack of wood as he left the ruined home. After they had left, the spell that had pinned the father to the far wall lifted, and he rushed over to the closet. True to her word, the small girl rocked in the corner, tears streaming down her plump cheeks without a sound. Daughter in one hand and wand in the other, the distraught man ran down the drive, never to return to the empty house again. "S-she should have just told them," he sobbed, burying his face in the girl's soft brown hair. He glanced back at the house one last time, muttering, "What does she owe him anyway? If she'd just…" before disapparating into the night.
Fourteen years later, the man who had once worn a fleur de lis mask during the midnight raids that had terrorized the countryside, was feverishly flipping through the notes he had transcribed so long ago. It had turned out to be nearly impossible to access the grounds of Hogwarts, and the wizard was forced to consider unorthodox methods. The problem had been stealing his sleep for weeks on end before a comment that had only made him laugh humorlessly to himself at the time rang so loudly through his dream that it woke him up well before dawn.
A name, a distant memory, and nine words guided him though decades of papers containing everything from secrets of the world to minutiae that had accumulated in his study. After hours of flipping through incidents best left forgotten in the corners of his mind, he finally hit upon two interesting entries. The last name is correct, he mused, but there is no mention of a daughter. She is the correct age, and perhaps it would not be out of the question to miss a useless toddler. Scanning farther down the page, his eyes lit on a hopeful addendum noting that the husband had blamed Harry Potter personally for his wife's death, even going so far as to become a useful informant. He and his daughter had moved to London, where he had been active in a cell. Well, people always did have the most interesting reactions to things. She would be going into her seventh year. Perfect. Just in time.
A week later, the girl sloshed slowly through the light rain, on her way to the large gates that stood sentinel over an even larger house lit by the faint light of the full moon. It had all started with a cryptic owl a few nights ago that had delivered an unsigned letter to her bedroom window. The letter had only one line of neat script, and the owl had needed to tarry only the few minutes it had taken her to scrawl a reply. The next night a different owl had brought a set of instructions, including an untraceable Portkey, that had led her to this imposing mansion just after midnight. She still had no real idea what she would be expected to do, but the note had promised revenge, and that, thought the girl, was by far the most important thing.
A house elf in a drenched bed sheet met her at the gates and escorted her silently down the path and up the steps to the threshold of the house. As the girl passed through the doorway, she felt a spell draw the moisture from her clothes and hair, leaving her disheveled, but bone dry.
It was a quietly opulent house, of a different order than her own father's slightly grimy London flat. No bedroom here has bins in the alley beneath the window, does it, thought the girl bitterly. The portraits on the walls spoke of a history other than hate, no one sleeping in this house ever had to scrounge for their dinner, not with their father passed out on the couch. Every inch of it marble, velvet, or wood. Ridiculously beautiful. What he promised to pay me will buy me a new life anywhere I choose. Perhaps somewhere they've never heard of the name Harry Potter. Canada. An ornate rug that she couldn't identify spread across the floor, thoughtlessly used as carpeting, and the house elf that still did not speak led her up the staircase to the left and down a long hallway to an open door that led into a darkly paneled study.
A man sat in a large chair on the far side of a desk fashioned of beautiful dark wood, his face in the shadows despite the moonlight streaming in through the window. He gestured the girl into a much smaller rather uncomfortable looking chair facing him, and she timidly sat down. The man leaned forward and placed his palms on the desk, bringing his face into the dim light. The girl's stomach dropped, as she suddenly realized where she was, and wondering if she was in way over her head.
Her thoughts swirled through her head as he began to speak. "I understand that you lost someone—someone close to you—in the little conflict a few years ago. This person had information that she refused to share when asked, and was killed for reticence, is that correct?"
The girl nodded as she remembered her mother's screams. Words—lies—torn from her pain-racked body that she did not know, could not tell them no matter what they did. The screams hadn't lasted very long that evil evening, but they still echoed in her dreams every few nights.
The wizard spoke in a soft voice as he outlined the offer to the girl. "I have a task that I am unable to complete myself or through my accustomed channels—one that you are uniquely placed to carry out. If you succeed in this task, I am prepared to give you several things that I am uniquely placed to give you. I will give you back your mother, and enough gold to allow your family to make a fresh start far from here. I hear New York is pleasant this time of year. Completing this task will give you the justice you seek, although a little patience will be required on your part. Those who wronged you will see their family ripped away from them, and suffer as you have suffered." The old wizard smiled silkily as he leaned back in his chair.
Shock that she tried desperately not to show crashed through the girl. It's just not possible, she thought in confusion. Everyone knows that you can't bring back the dead, but then again there could have been something to those crazy rumors from the end of last year. But even if there is only the slightest chance he can bring her back—and if anyone knew how, he would—I have to do it. Besides, with the amount of gold he is offering, I could do anything I wanted. She licked her lips and asked, "Exactly how much gold are you willing to pay me?"
The man looked at the girl squirming across from him, and smiled to himself. It is always the gold, isn't it? Of all the things I offered her, the gold is what she wants most. He waved a hand and a small open chest appeared on his desk between them. The gleam of gold erased any lingering resistance in her eyes, but he could not help himself when he asked, "Are you not curious about how I am going to bring your mother back from the dead?" Another wave of his hand returned the chest to his safe a hundred meters below the ground, ensconced in solid granite.
The glaze from seeing so much gold was slowly cleared from her eyes as she replied dazedly, "I don't actually think you can do it, but the gold and the revenge are enough. No one can work miracles." Her gaze flitted away from the man across the table.
The wizard reached into his robes, removed a folded square of paper from a concealed pocket, and passed the parcel into the girl's waiting hand. She unfolded the paper and smoothed it out on the desk. Her eyes flickered over the two images sketched, one above the other, on its surface. The first was a rough drawing of a ring with a little stone set into the band. The other was a rough map of a patch of shoreline, with a little promontory of land jutting out into the water. She recognized it immediately—the little spit of land that for most of the day was an island—and her heart sank. Her hopes of a simple request faded back into the depths of her mind. "This ring…it's inside? How do you expect me to open it? I heard after it was found open, ripped to pieces, it was enchanted so that no one would ever be able to get in again!"
The panic on her young face showed clearly, despite her feeble attempts to hide it, and the man let out an internal sigh. "You will have to remove the spells one at a time, but that shouldn't be too difficult for an intelligent young witch like you. To my knowledge no one has been to that island for a decade. I can offer you one piece of advice…approach from the west. The east is covered with ravines." Before she could ask any more troublesome questions or change her mind, the wizard rang a small bell and his house elf showed the girl out, despite her protestations. He rested his head on his hands for a moment before getting up to pace in front of the long row of windows.
How could it have come to this? his thoughts repeated in an endless loop. Entrusting the future of everything in the shaking hands of a chance-met girl who had caught his attention only through an ill-thought comment. But what other choice do I have? She already caught me once, no excuse I could make would hold a second time. And those that I actually would trust, I cannot risk. If only that idiot Grindelwald had not lost the diary, this would not be necessary. Why did it have to be in the shadow of that damn castle?
The wizard sank with a groan into his soft leather chair. I have done what I can for the ring, and there are other items to acquire, most of them quite easily, he mused looking down at the list with six names and four items on it. If the girl fails, once my comrades breathe again we can take the ring by force if necessary.