Disclaimer: Don't own
AN: this is another request from AngelColdHeart
Chapter One: Black Flame candles
1701
A young man was looking horrified as his little sister was fed a potion three men had given her, tears in his eyes as his beloved little sister was going to be drained of life right before his eyes.
Their magic book bound together by human flesh with an eye on the front cover, was closed.
"You ugly foul beings," he cursed. "I will kill you myself." He went to stab one of the men when he was electrocuted to the point that he died. The first man looked down at him and kicked the dead body away.
"Severus, Lucius," the first man called. "Tis time to inhale the life force." The young girl sat serenely, as though she had no idea what was going to happen to her. The two dark haired males and the only blonde male went over and began to inhale her life force until the blonde man burped.
The pounding on their front door made the three men-the brothers Thomas, Lucius and Severus-made them look towards it. Thomas-the eldest brother-went to the door instantly with the middle brother Severus while Lucius was admiring himself in the mirror.
"Riddles! Where are Zacharias and Hannah?" One of the members of the village's mob shouted while holding his wife in one arm and a torch in another. "Where are the children?"
"They are not here," Thomas called. "Perhaps they took a turn in the woods?"
"We are not but humble brothers who do not know where the children are," Severus said.
"They are in here and dead as we sucked-" Lucius said stupidly only for Severus and Thomas place their hands on his throat.
Upon entering the house the mob dragged the three to the gallows and before they could hang them, the three began to sing horribly off key. The book came flying towards them and landed in front of Thomas, opened on a spell.
"FOOLS! ALL OF YOU ARE FOOLS AS ONE HALLOWS EVE A VIRGIN WILL LIGHT THE BLACK FLAME CANDLE AND WE SHALL WALK AGAIN!" He crowed and they were hung.
Now as the students at Hogwarts High School heard the history teacher Binns tell the story, a scoffing laugh from one of the students made everyone turn to look at who laughed.
A blonde haired boy who was obese to the point that even the school's nurse had to repeatedly call the boy's pediatrician and doctors about finding a way to get the kid at an acceptable weight.
"Mister Dursley might you have things to say?" The teacher asked darkly.
"Halloween is a conspiracy thanks to the candy companies," Dudley Dursely said. "It's a stupid holiday that shouldn't exist."
A dark haired boy was wincing at the blonde's words, a pit in his stomach, as Halloween was one of the days he was allowed to visit his godfathers while they were trying to get custody of him.
Harry Potter was sitting with his forehead on the table and his eyes closed, as Halloween was the day his parents were killed in a car crash.
His father James had been a detective for Scotland Yard while his mother Lily was in school to become a pediatrician while working as a nurse. Halloween was their family date night and they were taking him-little fifteen month old Harry-out trick or treating.
His godfathers Remus and Sirius Black were going to meet up with them at one of the best places to go trick or treating when they heard the news.
Sirius was a constable while Remus was a hospice nurse, taking care of those who were about to die.
Nowadays, they were tied up in court bills trying to get custody of him but the Dursleys (his relatives on his mother's side) had a lawyer who was shady and worked for the worst of the worst offenders that got off scot free named Albus Dumbledore.
At the moment their lawyer managed to make it so that Harry was allowed to stay with Remus and Sirius for the holiday week. He could stay with them for the week containing Christmas, Easter and Halloween.
He could imagine Dudley eyeing him as the rest of his gang were grinning coldly. His two best friends Hermione Granger and Draco Smith were sitting on either side of him, eyeing Dudley with disdain. He didn't want to open his eyes and once the bell rang, Harry decided to wait until Dudley and the rest of his gang left the classroom before he did.
Lifting his head up, he noticed the other students leave quickly and that Dudley was gone as was his gang. He looked at Draco and Hermione and as the three stood up, he began to leave only to bump into someone.
"Sorry," Harry apologized. "I should have been paying attention."
"No problem," his eyes looked up instantly to see one of the best athletes on campus and transfer student Viktor Krum there. "Do you need help?"
"He's going to be fine," Harry paled as he looked to see Dudley there with a wicked grin on his face. "I'm going to take him home." Harry knew that Dudley and his gang were going to tickle him to the point he peed himself.
"Yet with all the walking you do you still have the looks of a pig," Draco drawled and Dudley flushed. "Do you do anything else?" Dudley's flush deepened. "Do something otherwise you will die." One of Draco's relatives had been obese and had died way before his time due to his diet, which made Draco's parents start making healthy meals.
"We will take Harry with us," Hermione added. "He's going to Sirius and Remus and they live closer to me and Draco."
It was true that Draco's mother Narcissa loved her cousin Sirius and after Sirius' little brother Regulus died due to being overweight like Dudley, she had been more self conscious about what goes in her body as well as what goes into her family's bodies.
Unlike her sisters Bellatrix (who was in a psychiatric ward due to her being crazy) and Andromeda (who had given the Dursleys the number to Albus Dumbeldore) she wanted a healthier lifestyle. She knew that Sirius' job was tough and he didn't have the time to make meals so she would make him and Remus some healthy meals that they could portion.
In retrospect Draco's father John had a pharmacy company to help with healthy life styles and had over six billion euros while Hermione's aunt and uncle were dentists and had an aversion to sugar while her father was an art collector and her mother was the curator of the old Riddle House.
Viktor waved goodbye and Draco led Harry away while Hermione glowered at Dudley as well as one of his cronies-Ron Weasley.
The boy had a horrid personality like his little sister who was suspended for wearing a very short skirt, being rude to the teachers and was caught with a boy-actually Dudley- in the janitors closet, both barely covered…all within the same week.
She had been told that if she broke the rules she would be expelled but Dumbledore found a way to bribe the school's superintendent who made Ginerva 'Ginny' Weasley only be suspended for three months.
Dudley wasn't suspended as Vernon blackmailed the teacher who caught them with something so Harry had been given detention for five months.
Now however, as Draco gently pushed Harry into the backseat, he and Hermione were in the front seat and Draco began to drive.
The moment Harry, Draco and Hermione arrived at Sirius and Remus' house, they parked the car and got out only for Remus to come out wearing a white and green striped apron.
"I just made some Halloween cookies and Cissa is here with John and Sirius combing through the candy," he told them smiling. "I think they're taking the ones they want and leaving the ones they don't for the children who would be coming by."
Harry laughed and Remus smiled at him, hugging him to his side as Harry had walked towards him.
"I was thinking tonight Harry, Hermione and I can check out the Riddle House," Draco began when his mother came out and glared at him. "I just want to see what makes the house feel haunted."
"The place is filled with negative energy," Narcissa Smith fussed as she took Harry into her arms, tickling his sides. "Such negative energy that I don't want it latching on to you." Once she stopped tickling him she went over to her son and hugged him and Hermione together.
Harry was panting as his breathing was normalizing before Remus began tickling him. He couldn't stop laughing and as Sirius Black came out in blue jeans and a black silk shirt, he started laughing as Harry tried squirming away.
"Uncle Sirius help," Harry called and as Sirius went over, he began to tickle him. "You traitor!" He almost fell to his knees in laughter.
Remus and Sirius stopped and Sirius hugged him close. Harry couldn't help himself and he cuddled into his godfather's embrace.
"I missed you kid," Sirius said smiling at him. "So much." He took Harry's face in his hands and eyed him skeptically. "Have you been eating right? Have you kept up your exercise routine?"
"I'm doing all that and have added running from Dudley," Harry told him. "He's decided to tickle torture me to the point that he wants to have me embarrassed."
"I have your baby pictures," Sirius told him. "I can show them to any potential suitors as well as tell them embarrassing stories." Harry paled and tried to look innocent before he smirked.
"Then I'll tell Uncle Remus what happened to that pound of dark chocolate," Harry told him. Sirius gulped as his husband and cousin eyed him. "I don't tell, you don't tell."
"Deal," Sirius said with a nod. He did not want to reveal what happened to the pound of dark chocolate. "We don't say anything else."
Harry nodded but Remus eyed Harry warily.
"Harry…what did Sirius do with the chocolate?" He asked. Harry shook his head and pointed to Sirius. "Sirius what happened?"
Sirius mumbled something unintelligible until Hermione answered.
"He tried to melt it so he could make some chocolate candies." Harry and Sirius looked anywhere but at Remus and Narcissa.
"Did the candies turn out good?" Remus asked Sirius who nodded. "Is that why you replaced the pound?" Another nod. "Where was my candy."
Sirius smirked.
"That box of chocolate candies…" Remus gaped. "And you say I can't do Valentines Day right! I didn't buy the chocolates but the box." Remus smiled widely at him and hugged Harry close to his chest.
"I feel like I'm interrupting a moment," Harry muttered awkwardly. "But Auntie Cissa…" he looked at Narcissa with wide eyes. "I haven't actually seen the Riddle House," which was true. "I was hoping to just go look through it and do it at night tonight."
Narcissa looked at him and then at Sirius and Remus, wondering what they were thinking.
"I don't see what could go wrong with that," Remus said as he looked at Sirius. "We have that Halloween party that Cissa and John invited us to." Sirius nodded and looked at the kids.
"Don't do anything that Remus, James and I did when we were younger," Sirius told them. "I mean it."
"There wasn't that much you didn't do," Narcissa added dryly. "You and James pranked McGonagall by turning her lips and tongue blue due to the blue food coloring on the mug and in the coffee she had."
Harry had to wipe the tears of laughter from his eyes as Sirius blushed.
"She still never figured it out and I know she's in that lawyer's pocket," Sirius told her. "I know that Andromeda and her daughter Nymph is." That had stung as he thought he and Andromeda had a close bond but apparently he didn't. On top of that he knew that her daughter Nymphadora (or as she prefers to be called-Nymph) believed everything that Albus Dumbledore says was something akin to a walking God or something along those lines.
His and Remus' lawyer-Theodore Nott senior-tried finding ways to get him and Remus to have full custody yet it always failed as Dumbledore made it seem as though his clients were perfect yet with some faults while he and Remus were complete failures.
Home studies showed that Harry had a small room while their son had a huge room. Dumbledore had said that it was because 'Harry did not have much while as a fifteen month old'.
Sirius didn't want to think about the dark time where he was accused of murder though he didn't kill anyone.
However, shaking his head of those thoughts and memories, he had Harry in his arms and he smiled, kissing his godson's temple.
He just hoped that nothing bad would happen tonight.
The moment Harry saw what Sirius, Remus, John and Narcissa were dressed as he swallowed his laughter.
Remus went with the supernatural creature way by dressing up as a werewolf at work, Sirius went with the cliché cop look, Narcissa went with dressing as a dead ghost bride and John was dressed as a mummy.
Draco decided to dress up as a vampire while Hermione was dressed as a cat and Harry was dressed as himself. He did like dressing up as a supernatural creature but this Halloween he decided to just wear a hat on his head and a black leather jacket.
"You have your cellphones," Narcissa fretted. "Just call if something bad happens." Her mother hen tendency was something that Harry enjoyed quite a lot. John had laughed and led his wife out the door with Remus and Sirius behind them.
"When you three come back from the Riddle House start passing out candy and eat some cookies please," Remus called. "Sirius stop looking at yourself and come on." Sirius nodded and walked over to him, ruffling Harry's head after he removed his hat.
"Be good and just call if something happens," he said. "I love you kids." He added as he left in John's sports car-Harry was sure it was a Ferrari that was going to be Draco's soon.
"So are we ready?" Hermione asked as she fixed her cat ears and blue cat mask. Harry nodded as he fixed his jacket and hat while Draco fixed his fake fangs and black cape.
"I am," Harry said while Draco nodded. "So I can't wait to see the house."
Hermione looked at him curious.
"You really haven't seen the house?" She asked and he nodded. "Didn't Sirius and Remus take you?"
"They tried a few times but when Dudley heard he threw a temper tantrum," Harry explained. "So I never got the chance to see it until now."
Draco grinned, showing off his fake fangs.
"You will like it," he promised. "I swear."
The drive to the old Riddle House was long and daunting. Each turn of Hermione's sedan Harry felt as though he were a child going to some of the amusement parks that he had been denied of going to.
His fingers played with the bottom of his leather jacket, wondering how old the house really is. He wasn't good at math that much though he knew it was creepy old.
"Umm…Hermione?" She looked at him from the corner of her eye. "How old is the Riddle House?"
She smirked at him.
"It is three hundred years old," she said matter of fact. "It was created in early 1701 by the Riddle brothers Thomas, Severus and Lucius. The only reason they were caught was due to one of Zachary's friends Cedric alerting everyone in town and Lucius openly saying that they had them in the house dead."
"Them?" Draco asked and Hermione nodded.
"Zachary's sister Hannah had been taken and Zachary went after her," Hermione explained. "It was sad as they were dead-one by what we know as electrocution and the other was through black magic of the darkest kind."
"So this is the famous Riddle House," Harry said as the house reminded him of the storybook rendition of the gingerbread house the witch in Hansel and Gretel lived in. "It looks cool yet creepy."
"I agree," the three turned to see Viktor Krum there. "I…wanted…to see the house." Though he was Bulgarian he was still trying his best with speaking English. Harry had given him thumbs up which Viktor returned.
"You're doing good with the English lessons I've been giving you," Harry told him with a bright smile. "Really good."
Harry had been asked to give him some English lessons and during their time Harry began to slowly develop a crush on the seventeen year old exchange student. He kept it to himself as he knew that they couldn't be.
Ginny Weasley herself had claimed 'dibs' on him and gave some people subtle threats about going after her 'future husband'.
"Well what do we have here?" Harry's small smile faltered as Dudley's voice spoke from the side. Harry turned to see Dudley and his gang there with Ginny Weasley dressed as a nurse with the tiny skirt and the bodice of the outfit being tight around her chest. "Why don't we make this interesting."
"Are you going to be inside and listening to the tour guide?" Draco drawled. Dudley snickered.
"Why don't you go in there and light the black flame candle," Ron asked with a sneer. "Or are you too chicken?"
"Why don't you do it as I know that you're a virgin," Hermione told him. "Also why do you? It's dangerous."
"I dare you to light the black flame candle," Dudley said with a glower at Harry. "Go on and do it."
Harry was nervous though he decided to go through the tour that Hermione was giving him, Draco, Dudley, Ginny and Viktor as she knew everything about this piece of history.
"The rumors about Thomas having multiple partners could be true but his most famous lover is the-what we would now call criminally insane-beautiful Cassiopeia," Hermione told them in a lecture like voice. "Though she was is most famous yet she wasn't just his but Severus and Lucius' as well." She nodded. "She basically had a reverse harem back then."
"She's my kind of girl," Ginny said with a flirty smile at Viktor. "She got all the men that she wanted."
"What's a reverse harem?" Dudley asked, completely clueless. Harry smirked.
"In some Japanese mangas that Draco and Hermione read for fun," Harry spoke as he eyed his best friends. "The number one genre is basically a person-a female in this case-with a number of males. If it's the reverse it's a male with a bunch of females." He tapped his temple. "For the male it's known as a harem, for a female it's a reverse harem." He looked thoughtful. "I wonder how many of them have been adapted into anime?"
"I'll give you a list and you can read some of my collection," Draco told Harry. "It could help you with your artistic side." Harry blushed as Harry enjoyed art.
He enjoyed collecting some paintings-like Van Gogh's Starry Night-and drawing alongside sketching.
He was currently in the middle of creating a comic book about a human cat hybrid solving crimes and it's set like a noire movie.
From what Draco and Hermione had seen of it made them want to read more as it was compelling.
"Yet she died a very horrible death," Hermione told them, taking them back to the historical lecture and not on her manga obsession with reverse harem mangas. "She had been burned at the stake after accusing a few of the men of being warlocks."
Harry winced as he looked at Ginny's horrified face.
"Were there any other lovers?" Draco asked and Hermione paused.
"There was one but it's classified as a rumor," she looked at them. "Among the Riddle siblings there was another set of siblings who died a few months after the Riddle siblings named the Peverell Siblings-Antioch, Cadmus and Ignotus. The rumor is that Ignotus Peverell was the favored lover of Thomas but no one knows the truth."
"Any others?" Viktor asked weakly and Hermione shrugged.
"The rest are rumors actually so whether or not they're real I don't know," she admitted. "Even I don't know all the rumors about the brothers and their love lives."
"What rumors do you know?" Ginny asked.
"I know the rumors of Cassiopeia, Ignotus," Hermione closed her eyes as she thought about the rumors her mother told her. "There was a rumor of Lucius with a woman named Rowena and Severus with a man named Godric." She opened her eyes and shrugged. "Those are about it actually."
Harry eyed the book in the glass, feeling a sense of foreboding from it.
"Is it really made out of human skin?" He asked and Hermione shrugged.
"I'm honestly not sure but it looks like it," she told him. "Even that freaks me out as well as the eye."
The moment she walked off he eyed the book again and this time, the eye on the book opened and stared at him. He gulped and paled as he thought the eye was staring into his soul.
Once Ginny and Dudley left the tour Hermione gave and went outside, Piers eyed her costume lustfully. She smirked and went into Piers' arms.
She knew that she was like Cassiopeia but it wasn't really her fault that a lot of the boys at the school were okay.
"They're going to light it so I'm going trick or treating…hoping for a lot of treats," she mused as she walked on with Ron behind her. "I just want to see what can happen tonight."
Dudley smirked and waited for the two virgins to light the candle.
"So what's supposed to happen once the candle's lit?" Draco asked as he eyed the candle curiously.
"Well if a virgin were to light it," Hermione said as she read the history book that her mother Jane left out and open. "It will allow the Riddle brothers to walk the earth again."
"Do you believe they…were…magical?" Viktor struggled to ask.
"I don't really believe in the magic they used," she said with a sigh. "I do believe in magic but on a logical side this kind of magic…it's dark soul magic that shouldn't exist yet it's rumored to be real." She moved her blue cat mas and held it in her hand loosely. "I want to believe that all magic exists but yet at this point I can't."
Harry looked at Draco who held a lighter out for Harry to grab.
"We do this together?" Draco asked him and Harry eyed the lighter warily.
"Do we have a choice?" He retorted and Draco laughed, shaking his head. "Let's get this over and done with." Taking Draco's hand that was holding the lighter in his the two lit the black flame candle.
The moment the black flame candle was lit thanks to Harry and Draco being dared to do it, the power went out in the house before all the candles lit up. While Draco dove for cover, Harry tried to hide only to find his ankles had been tied to the place where he was standing. Looking up at the gasp, two men pounced on him, tickling him while the third was bouncing up and down, cuddling his blonde hair with a grin on his face.
"It has been a long time," one of the men purred as he was tickling Harry. "So long since we last stepped foot on this wooden floor." He looked down at Harry with a smile. "How long has it been since we've walked among the living?"
Harry couldn't answer as he was being tickled to the point of wheezing but Hermione answered him, her throat choking the words out.
"It's been three hundred years." Her eyes were wide. "You three are Thomas, Severus and Lucius Riddle." She ended up fainting.