Hi all. Welcome to The Legend, sequel to The Remnant (If you haven't read The Remnant, which I highly recommend you should to properly enjoy this fic, you can find it on my profile).
Here we see Conny, Lucy, Jon and friends/enemies enter their second year. I am very much more proud of this fic than I am of the Remnant. I should warn you though, as the category suggests, this is more of a mystery fic than an action/adventure fic. It made sense to be because the main characters are Ravenclaws.
As always, I do not own Harry Potter, and make no money from this fic. I apologise for any spelling/grammar/continuity mistakes I haven't managed to find.
And again, everything in this fic is canon or canon+ (ie, I have added in my own stuff, and made up what I like as long as it doesn't explicitly break canon.)
Prologue: The Closed Gallery
It was all, in Conny's opinion, rather dull.
Room after room of paintings; hall upon hall of statues, reams of marble busts and endless walls of squiggles that were, apparently, art. The air was full of dust and vaguely artistic poppycock. It was certainly no place for two twelve-year-olds.
Yet Conny DeHayersae and her moody French friend Jonmarc Lucwitt were there anyway. They were stood in front of a square of pink canvas that had been titled 'Mort de l'avidité matérielle', which, Jonmarc reliably informed his English companion, translated as 'The Death of Material Greed', though it made little sense in either language. Conny sighed, crossed it off the little guide book she'd picked up on the way into the gallery, and walked to the next painting.
She really wished they were outside; Conny and her family were in Paris for the last two weeks of summer, staying with Jonmarc's family, both of whom worked for the French Wizarding Embassy. It had been David, Conny's father's, idea to take them to this art gallery- La Galerie Fermée- to take up the day. So far, it had been a thoroughly unconvincing experience.
"Jon, I'm bored." She complained as they wound their way through the crowds. "How long until we get picked up?"
Jonmarc checked his watch. "An hour."
"Circe." Conny swore, slipping around a rather rotund gentleman in a plaid suit. "What are we going to do for a whole hour?"
Jon affected a look of searching surprise. "We could… look at ze paintings?"
"Look at paintings? In an art gallery? Jon, that's the silliest thing I've heard, ever."
"Sillier than- 'Oh, Jonmarc, Lucie, zere is a Death Eater in 'Ogsmeade making students zombies who wants to kill me, please 'elp!', non?"
Conny scowled at him. "That wasn't silly, that was life-threatening."
"Still." He said, slinking around the corner into an exhibit on landscapes. "Oh, zis one is nice."
He pointed to a large canvas in the corner of the room. It was a winter scene, an oil painting, and strangely… beautiful. Wiry trees framed the piece, mantled in thick, blue snow cast in golden light. Far in the horizon, a castle city rose to the sky, built in smooth, white rock, banners fluttering crimson.
The two children came to a stop in front of it, craning their necks to see the painting. "You're right. It's… amazing."
Conny spared a look down at her guide leaflet. "They don't know who painted it. Apparently it was found in England and ended up here..."
"Eet's… eet feels like it 'as 'istory. Like zere's a world behind ze frame… beautiful. Probably ze only appealing English artwork I 'ave seen." Jon said.
"What about all the portraits at Hogwarts? They're pretty special." Conny said.
Jon made a face. "I don't deny zat zey are good, but must you insist on always painting ugly people?"
"You're no Pete Burns yourself." Conny said lightly, though it was unlikely he'd get the reference.
Jon gave her a questioning look, and the moment his eyes left the painting, there was an explosion.
Jon grabbed her hand as they flew with a crunch into a painting on the opposite wall. A plume of smoke erupted as part of the roof caved in, leaving rubble clattering about on the floor. Conny coughed and sprang to her feet just in time to see a dark figure moving in the murk.
"Flip-" she was halfway through a spell, her wand whipped from where it was tucked into the waistband of her skirt, when she froze and remembered that she was in a muggle gallery, and if she used magic, she'd be breaking the wizarding law.
Being inherently quite crazy, Conny charged into the cloud of plaster dust with her hands in front of her. She hadn't gone a metre before she bumped into a tall, black-clad figure.
Conny tackled him, despite being half his size and a quarter of his weight, feeling his muscles tense. He reached for his wand as he elbowed her in the stomach. Conny sprawled backwards onto the floor, winded, clutching for purchase. The man wheeled around, took a glance at her, and then barked something she didn't understand. In a sharp throb of blue-yellow light, the man disappeared.
The dust cleared and the painting was gone.
Conny scrambled up and blinked, making sure she'd really seen it. A wizard had just stolen that painting.
She took a step back and realised that something was clutched in her hand. A fat scrap of torn black cloth was stuffed in her sweaty fist. She examined it curiously, finding it of outstanding quality, with a thin, spidery pattern lancing across it- and there, at the centre, detailed in tiny silver thread, was a rearing dragon-like creature. She frowned, pocketed it, and grabbed Jonmarc's hand as they fled the scene.
Once they were outside in the sunshine, it seemed as though the painting theft could have been a dream, but the dust on Conny's jumper said differently.
"What on Earth happened?" Jon asked as they sat in a café across the road, watching the muggle police swarm the gallery.
"I've no idea." Conny said, sipping a chocolate milkshake thoughtfully. "Why would a wizard want to steal a painting?"
"It was a good painting." Jonmarc pointed out. "And many wizards are collectionneurs of fine art."
"But if wizards kept turning up and nicking muggle art, we'd hear about it more often."
Jon shrugged. "Je ne sais pas."
"Well, this time, I'm leaving it as a mystery. Likely looking into it will put me on the hit-list of yet another Death Eater." Conny said, unaware of the comic froth-moustache on her upper lip.
"Good idea." Jon laughed, observing the police. "Zey are not going to find anything, are zey?"
"Who, the muggle police?"
"Oui."
"I don't think so. It's not like wizards to leave fingerprints. I wonder what kind of cover story the Ministry will put out."
"Ceiling cave-in." Jon said confidently. "Zat was what eet looked like from where I was."
"Mm." Conny said, stirring her drink. Her summer so far had been a wonderful breather from the danger and chaos that had seemed to dog her through all of her first year at Hogwarts. She flexed her muscles, feeling the skin on her back pull taut. The long, raised scar that ran from one side to the other felt like a rope being pulled to straining point. She'd received it from seventh-year Gryffindor Quidditch captain Douglas Ohsem during the dueling competition organized by Professor Killory last year. Well, tell a lie, nothing had been as it seemed. Avery, a crazed Death Eater trying to change a prophecy about the Boy Who Lived- Harry Potter, was controlling Douglas. Professor Killory had been an agent of the ancient Coteriate, an organization that had its headquarters in a mirror of Big Ben and sought to stop people meddling with the future.
And then there was Conny herself. The things she'd done had been heroic; though sometimes she felt she'd done them for the wrong reasons. She'd gone along with Killory's crazy plan to save her own neck. Avery had seen her meddling and tried to kill her. She honestly hadn't cared that much about saving Bill Weasley, Avery's number one target, though she had anyway. It felt a bit bad- to have done all those things only for herself, but it wasn't like she'd had a choice.
This year, however, Conny wasn't planning on doing anything of that caliber. She was going to take it easy, get excellent grades, and take up chess.
She pocketed the scrap of cloth and waited for her father to pick them up.