Hello everyone. Thank you for your patience regarding this chapter. I hope you enjoy!
Regulus cracked his neck, walking out of his Defense OWL. It had been his last exam, and he would be leaving on the Hogwarts Express tomorrow. Emily was right, the exam wasn't as difficult as he had been expecting. There had actually been several questions on necromancy, which had thrown off many of his classmates judging by their conversations after the exam, but Emily's copy of Magicke Moste Evile had prepared him for that.
He entered the Great Hall, sitting at the end of the Slytherin table closest to the door. He watched as Barty Crouch Junior sat down next to Mulciber, just a few feet away from him. He began catching pieces of their conversation, which intrigued him.
"…now would be the time to call in your connection to your cousin, Avery."
"And why should I do that?"
"You want in with the Dark Lord before your 7th year begins, right? Well, Father's latest intel from the Ministry says that Bellatrix Lestrange has been given an object very important to the Dark Lord. If your cousin is truly that close in his inner circle, now is the time to act. Get your initiation ceremony."
Avery nodded, and turned his back to Barty. Barty left the table, and Regulus shrugged his shoulders. It wasn't surprising that Barty was attempting to use his father's connections in the Ministry to attempt to step into the favor of other future Death Eaters.
Early the next morning, Regulus surveyed his dormitory, taking in one last look to imprint on his mind. It was odd, knowing that he wouldn't be returning to the castle in the coming autumn. Soon, he placed his trunk on the train platform, and boarded the scarlet locomotive for the last time. He sat in a compartment with Emily, a bittersweet feeling washing over him. Emily was a good friend, and while he was glad to be leaving Hogwarts permanently, he would miss her.
When the train reached London, he said a farewell to Emily, and headed to 12 Grimmauld Place. He was greeted by an enthusiastic Kreacher, who told him that his parents were waiting for him at the dinner table.
Walking into the dining room, his parents greeted him warmly. They shared polite small talk, and when they asked about his summer plans, he simply stated that he would be travelling to Paris. When they inquired as to why, he stated how he had been writing a pureblood girl from Beauxbatons, and had wanted to begin courting her. This absolutely delighted his parents, who had both been in foul moods since Sirius had run away last year.
After dinner, he retreated to his room, where he planned on waiting until his parents went to sleep to apparate with Kreacher to his family's cabin. When they arrived at the cabin, he instructed Kreacher to tell his parents that he had left for Paris, and was unsure as to when he would return.
He took a breath, sent Kreacher away with a pop, and pushed open the cabin door.
It was three in the morning, and Lily couldn't sleep. She had been staring at her ceiling for hours, contemplating all of the events occurring in her life. When she had arrived home from Hogwarts earlier in the day, her parents had been happy, but Petunia was disgusted. She had despairingly voiced at dinner about how Vernon wouldn't be able to come over now that the freak was home. Lily had just rolled her eyes, and huffed up to her room after dinner. She had been in her bed ever since.
Recently, she had begun having nightmares about finding Amelia's body again, which was a lot of the reason why she couldn't sleep. She just couldn't shake the thought from her mind. During the most recent nightmare, Lily awoke realizing that there was something about Amelia's eyes that seemed so familiar, as though she had seen them on someone else. She shook her head.
It's not possible, she thought, Amelia is dead. Severus is dead too.
Severus. She still could not believe that he was dead too. Petunia had snorted to herself when she had heard the news, but her parents were sympathetic.
It was driving her mad that no leads had been discovered in regards to Severus' disappearance and death. It'd been nearly six months, yet the aurors could find nothing, though they insisted that they had been searching.
His trunk, she thought, where did his trunk go?
Her mind only came to one conclusion.
His house. Surely they must have given his things to his parents.
On an impulse, she jumped out of bed. She just had to know. She had to know if there were any clues as to his disappearance in his things. She threw on a jacket and a pair of sneakers, and began climbing out her open window.
She made her way down the street, walking about a half mile before the economic status of the neighborhood began to take an obvious downward turn. She neared the river, and began cutting through backyards along the bank, just as she had as a child. She crossed the rickety bridge that led to the other side of the river, and found herself on Spinners End. She had only been to Severus' house twice, both visits occurring only due to the rare occasion that both of his parents were out of the house.
She knew which house was his, but the darkness and sleep deprivation made it take a little longer than she expected. As she approached the back of the house, she noticed that the entire house was dark, darker than the other houses on the street. The screen door on the back of the house was unlocked, allowing her easy access into the house. She entered in the kitchen, which was filthy. There was a myriad of dishes piled up in the sink, the stench of rotting food, and an overall mustiness that she wasn't quite sure how to describe. She crept through the house quietly, coming across a larger man sleeping on the couch. On the table in front of him were beer bottles and some sort of drug paraphernalia.
Lily continued her trek through the sitting room, making her way by the front door and up the stairs. Each stair creaked as she stepped on it, resulting in an increase in adrenaline.
As she neared the top of the stairs, one door was open, showing a relatively grimy bathroom with horrible boogey green tile. She had remembered that Severus' room had been on the left of the bathroom, and so she opened that door.
She could feel the wards on this door, but they did not prevent her from entering the room. She frowned slightly when she realized how much tidier it was than the rest of the house. She remembered that during her previous visits here, the home hadn't been so dirty.
Severus probably cleaned it up for you, her mind whispered.
She smiled sadly as she made her way further into the room. His room was so bare. There was a wardrobe, a mirror, a bed, and bookshelf. The bookshelf had all of his old school books on it, but everything else was void of decoration, even the walls.
She sat down on the edge his bed, feeling her heels come into contact with something solid. She smiled, knowing that she had found what she had come looking for.
"Reducio," she whispered, pointing her wand under the bed, shrinking the trunk down to pocketsize.
She felt her heart rate begin to slow, the initial adrenalin caused by her trespassing beginning to wear off. She sighed, realizing how much his room still smelled like him, even months later.
She pocketed the trunk, and opened Severus' window. There was ivy along the side of the house, which she used to assist herself on her downward scaling of the house. She hit the grass with a thud, and began running back towards her house.
"Damn it!" Amelia yelled, shoving a stack of papers aside.
She had been trying for weeks to finalize their documents for the Ministry. However, real Ministry documents had a watermark that changed colour under the light, the result of some sort of charm. Her original documents had been in her trunk, which she hadn't had access to since she left Hogwarts. The same goes for Severus, so she had been trying to do this without a reference. She had planned on asking Regulus for his documents, but he had still been sleeping when she came down to the study earlier in the morning. Normally, she wouldn't be this bothered, but these documents were key to learning how to apparate and carrying their NEWT and OWL credentials under a different name.
She sighed, putting her head in her hands.
"What's wrong?" Regulus asked from behind her.
"These bloody papers!" she exclaimed, gesturing violently.
"What about them?" he asked.
"I just can't get them right."
"Sure you can."
"No, I can't," she sighed, "I've been trying for weeks."
"Can I do anything to help?"
"Do you have your original Ministry documents?"
"Yeah, give me a minute," Regulus said, leaving the room.
He returned a few moments later, carrying a single sheet of parchment.
"My lady," he joked, bowing and handing her the paper.
She smiled slightly, taking the sheet from him.
The photos on their forged documents had been transfigured from scraps of cloth to appear as them in their disguises. Amelia had used pieces of cloth from the clothes she had been making for them to make the transfiguration more reliable. An actual camera was something she had yet to purchase.
"You know, you could just try charming the pages to sparkle."
"I've already tried."
"Here, allow me."
He took her form from her hand, drew his wand, and whispered under his breath.
To Amelia's surprise, when the golden specks that flew out of his wand touched the parchment, a small seal of officiality that sparkled purple under the light appeared in the bottom left corner of the document.
"How did you do that?" she gasped.
"A little charm I learned a few years back."
"Well, do it to the others!" she demanded.
And he did.
It was nearly dawn when Lily found the courage to open Severus' trunk.
Her hands shook as she unlatched it, out of both anticipation and fear of what she would find.
After searching the pockets of his robes, she threw them aside, along with his other articles of clothing. She pulled out his books one by one, each in various stages of disrepair. She sifted through the various pieces of parchment, Severus' notes scrawled across them in black ink. She snickered at his unflattering doodles of Professor Slughorn, he'd been bored in that class since the beginning of second year.
The parchment offered up nothing in regard to her curiosity surrounding his disappearance, so she set them aside. She began looking through his textbooks instead, rolling her eyes at the loopy scrawl that filled the margins of every book.
After trucking through his Charms, Transfiguration, and Defense Against the Dark Arts book, Lily was beginning to fill discouraged. She hadn't found any link to his disappearance, just a few noteworthy corrections and spells.
She opened his potions textbook, the most fragile of the bunch. She handled it carefully, taking in the extra words inked in to the book. He truly had been a genius when it came to potions.
Lily was skimming through his notes on Draught of Living Death when she came to a realization. If Severus had sensed himself to be in danger, why didn't he just take his Felix Felicis potion? He'd been carrying the vial in a pocket on the inside of his robes ever since he'd won it, she'd seen him pull it out a multitude of times to show Regulus Black and Emily Vanity.
Maybe that's what his killer had been after – the Felix Felicis.
She knew she was nearing the end of the timeline for Severus' life in the book, reaching the chapter on Different Methods of Potions Preparation. That had been the last chapter that Severus had been in class for. She gave out a frustrated sigh, and was about to snap the book shut when her eyes wandered to the page on the right-hand side. There, Lily found what she had been searching for.
Sectumsempra – For Enemies
Her mind began racing, and she let out a shaky sigh.
She wasn't sure what to do with this piece of information. According to the Prophet, Dumbledore had been little to no help in the investigation, but she couldn't remember the names of the aurors who were leading it.
She wasn't stupid enough to perform the spell in closed quarters, but it did quirk her interest.
She scrounged through her own trunk for an older edition of the Daily Prophet. She found one of the earliest articles about Severus' disappearance. Golbeer and Calhoun. Those were the aurors.
She scrawled a quick note with the information she had discovered in his trunk and her theory on the Felix Felicis, and sent it off with her owl.
Lily shrunk down Severus trunk again, and placed it in her bedside drawer. She sighed, laying back and staring up at the ceiling.
Up next: The trio goes to Paris and things start to get a little more interesting.
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