It took a week after the troll to finally connect with Hermione, now Halloween filled the air with the smell of Pumpkin Spice, gingerbread, and decorations of live bats flying overhead in a sky of midnight blue, a full moon in effect of the in The Great Hall, skeletons waltzing around as the students eat. Black and orange streamers laced the pillars, and a giant Jack-0-Lantern sat in the front. A proud Hagrid patted it, a tear in his eye, from his garden the giant pumpkin glowed proudly.
The students filed out from dinner, most of them had gone back to their Common Room, but Hermione had lead Ash, Ernie, and Justin to a silent corner of the library.
"Where's Harry and Ron?" Ash asked the minute they took their seats.
"They're at a Halloween Bash in the Gryffindor Common Room." Hermione said simply without looking up from an old Daily Prophet she had pulled from her bag.
"I found this old Daily Prophet in the Achieves: Madam Pince was very reluctant to let me borrow it. The Prophet is dated December 3, 1988. I was sifting through thousands of papers, nothing had any information about a Charles Ketchum, but I saw this one. It made the front page, so spotting it was easy." Hermione said.
She slid the paper over to Ash, a man with a mask and a hood over his head stared with death into the reader's eyes, shaking his head.
"How do they know that is him?" Ash asked.
"It says in the article that he refused to take off his mask, but some kind of paper identification verified, somehow it was him." Hermione said.
Ash gave a scratch to the side of his head, and as Madam Pince had slowly passed by their table, he dropped his voice to an almost inaudible whispers. Justin and Ernie had to lean in even further; Hermione had read the article through a few times over so she didn't bother straining to hear Ash read the article.
"Charles Ketchum left his infant son and wife to join He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, a passionate follower, the Dark Lord truly trusted Charles Ketchum Ketchum's obsession with the purifying of the Wizarding World lead him down a spiraling dark path of torture amongst Muggle Borns and Half-Bloods, even before he became a Death Eater became so famous that a wide set man hut had been set up, but was disbanded as no leads had appeared. One peculiar trait about Charles Ketchum was, despite his hatred for Muggles, his fascination with Muggle torture. He'd torture his victims both by Muggle ways and by curses, hexes, spells, charms.
"Muggle Born and Half Bloods, blood traitors are the worst kinds of people. We must cleanse the system of such filth. However, the only good thing to come out of the Muggle world is their torturous ways. The way of these people is so violent, so vile, so cruel, so….so fascinating to me I adopted their violent ways." Charles Ketchum said, with a madding look in his eyes. "I think I'll fair quite well in Azkaban. I'll find a way out, you make sure off that."
Ketchum refused to remove his mask, stating that it would be more malevolent in his photograph.
"This beautifully detailed mask is a sense of my identity, the Death Eaters identity, to show we are united. It gives us the freedom to showcase are abilities without truly being identified. Some may call it cowardly, but we are marked men and women, we will show our faces when time permits and once this happens; everyone better watch out. It'll be a spectacular show, of our courage, of our power and most of all of the Dark Lord. Blood traitors, Half-Bloods, and Muggles will suffer by the almighty Dark Lord and his followers. I refuse to remove my mask for any photograph going public, as it'll ruin such a surprise of my own facial structure."
Ketchum's belief had filled the room with tension, his face was the most sinister, somehow determined. Yet, his determination is not likely to be of any good."
Ash finished reading the article, stunned into silence, the paper slid out of his hands off of the table and onto the floor.
"My father is completely mad." Ash said slowly.
"Ash….well, um, there has to be some kind of connection between your dad…"
"Don't call him that!" Ash snapped tears running down his face. "I don't understand, my mom kept his last name, why?" He forced himself backwards, stood up quickly out of his chair, knocking it over and ran out of the library.
"We have to tell Draco about this." Justin said
"Draco?" Hermione asked "You're friends with that fool?
"Yeah, he's helped us out a lot. He's genuine to us." Ernie said.
"Oh. Alright." Hermione said "Well, I think I'll be off to bed." She left the library quietly leaving Ernie Justin alone.
Ernie and Justin had taken off shortly after Hermione, in the hopes of finding Ash.
"We should've gone after him the instant he left." Ernie said.
They headed for the Common Room, but Ash wasn't there, then they headed up to bed but he wasn't there either. The decision to leave their dorm and Common Room came to be a very good choice. An hour later, they had found Ash in a darkened corner down the corridor of the library entrance.
"You didn't go very far." Justin said "Yet we searched far and wide for you. We thought you may have gone into the Common Room." He kneeled down next to the sitting Ash.
Ernie had sat down next Ash, his knees up with his arms around them his face buried on top of his knees. Ernie looked at Justin, who had planted himself right in front of Ash, then put his hand on Ash's upper back.
"Ash, we're sorry about…..him….there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, at least right now, especially to the fact that he's currently in Azkaban." Ernie said tentatively.
"I don't even know what Azkaban is." Ash replied quietly still making no eye contact with either of the two boys. Yet they know that he's calmed down a great deal.
"It's a prisoner for the worst criminals. It's guarded by Dementors, they suck out the happiness, every happy memory right out of you. Worse than death from what I've heard, but he seemed pretty confident of getting out of that place." Ernie said.
"Hey Ash, let's go down to the Common Room and then get to bed." Justin suggested after a long silence.
"Okay." Ash said, as he slowly got up, but he stumbled. Ernie and Justin had risen before him, each took an arm and led him down to the Common Room.
Another late night called for no one in the Common Room, just what they hoped for. As they had entered Ash seemed to be walking on his own power again, he was followed by Justin with Ernie in the lead.
"I want to sit out here for a bit." Ash said solemnly. "Sit with me, please. Maybe we can talk about it just a little. When I say a little I mean a little."
"We need to tell Draco." Ernie said the instant Ash sat down by the fire place in a cushy chair.
"He deserves the right to know this information. Especially since he is the one whom led us onto the right path." Justin said.
Erne and Justin had sat down in the two other empty chairs by the fireplace, making themselves comfortable.
"Yeah. He does deserve to know all of this. I'm just….I…." Ash's just had swollen up, tears in his eyes welled up. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be crying in front of you."
"No need to apologize." Ernie said. Tears streamed down his face once again.
A few minutes had passed and Ash came to a hiccupping stop of crying. "It's just that…I know one of the reasons why my mom kept this a secret. It was better to tell me that he was on his path of becoming a Pokemon Master. I had been so confident, I wanted to follow in his footsteps, but now that I know the truth I do not want to follow him."
"It isn't necessarily better to lie like that." Justin said, receiving a glare from Ernie. "Draco said something about an Imperious Cruse. It must have something to do with your mom telling you that lie; keeping you in the dark like that. Now, we just need to find out what exactly the Imperious Curse exactly is. Since Draco seems to know what it is, we're going to need to ask him about it."
"Yeah, you're right." Ash said nodding off into sleep.
"We ought to get to our beds." Enrie said rising up and helping Ash up. Ash led the way into their dorm, collapsed onto his bed, and fell into a deep sleep.
"I wonder what Zacharias had thought when we didn't show up to bed on time." Ernie said in a whisper to Justin.
Justin just shrugged his shoulders, pushed back his covers and lay on his back staring out of the bright full moon, Halloween had ceased to exist and November had been born. Ernie laid down looking up at the ceiling, too.
The next day had been Sunday, the three boys had caught up to Draco and told him what Hermione had helped them discover.
"I guess her brains are good for something." He said "But your dad is completely mad, Ash!"
"He isn't my dad!" Ash said staring cold daggers into Draco's eyes.
"No need to get so defensive about. It was an honest mistake." Draco replied.
"We should really figure out how this connects all of us." Ernie said looking over at Justin, who nodded his approval.
"I don't even know where we would start." Ash said.
"We'll have to figure everything out. Maybe there are more Daily Prophets on him." Draco suggested. "We can do the mind numbing research together….and well, if Hermione wants to jump in, then…I guess she can."
Even though Ash was eager to find out further information about his dad, he tried to delay their research even longer. Days went by before they had stepped into the library, finally being forced by all three boys, he had stepped into the library with the proper permission from Madam Pince, and they searched and searched through the old articles. There had been so many, and so little of them, even for the same year that Charles Ketchum and apparently left Ash and his mother. At times, when Ash thought of this, random angry outburst were ill fitted.
"Don't think of that." Draco said. "I know it's difficult, but just don't give any thought to that part. Try to block it out somehow."
"We've searched and searched and have found nothing." Ernie said. "I don't think I can go on any more; I mean, the previous days, the following days have nothing about him at all. We've literally searched through months and months, days and days."
"Why would they not follow up on such a story?" Justin asked.
"I mean, there's no story about him before and very little about him arriving in Azkaban, but that's probably because of those horrible guards." Ernie said.
Without knowing it, dinner had rolled around and all three boys had been starving, as they were walking to The Great Hall, in the corridor a familiar and cheerful voice hit Ash's ears.
"PIKACHU!" Pikachu's face had a huge smile and it jumped right into Ash's arms.
"You act like we haven't seen each other for days and days! Instead of just hours, Pikachu!" Ash laughed. A smile across his face so big, so bright, breathed life a dulled day from constant research. Pikachu had been adamant about going into The Great Hall for dinner with the boys.
As they said their good-byes to Draco, they sat down at the Hufflepuff table, where Pikachu jumped onto the table and swiped a bottle of ketchup before a Hufflepuff girl could grab it.
"Hey!" the girl said. "I wanted that!"
Pikachu walked over and was about to squeeze the bottle onto her plate, remembering the massive amount of ketchup onto his food that one day. He placed Pikachu onto the bench next to him. It was completely content licking that ketchup and all.
For now, everything that had torn Ash's world apart seemed to be mended, quite well actually, as the three boys laughed, talked, and joked around. They talked about everything but that. From saying how they wanted to try out for the Quidditch team next year to homework, to professors, they were just living the life of normal Hogwarts students.