Valeriusgasse 11
"The lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride; the threshold high enough to turn deceit aside; the doorband strong enough from evil to defend; this door will open at a touch to welcome every friend." (Inscription above the doorway of a house)
The rain had stopped when Lucius and Eleanor quietly left the small hotel in the heart of Cologne. They both wore plain black clothes and quiet flat shoes that wouldn't draw any undue attention either among muggles or wizards and would largely hide their progress in the dark. Eleanor led them down a narrow cobble-stoned side-street that terminated in a dead end.
As they stood before a brick-wall that blocked their progress the red-haired witch swallowed nervously as she tried to remember the gestures that would open the secret gateway to the wizarding part of town. It had been many years since she had visited her old family home.
"Have you ever been here before?" she asked Lucius. Her husband shook his head.
"This will feel weird, then," Eleanor explained. "Wizarding Cologne is not hidden in the same way most magical places are. This area of town has been offset from the muggle world by about six sevenths of a second, so it occupies the same space as the ordinary city, but the inhabitants of the two places are unaware of each other – at least most of the time. Some houses around here do have a reputation among muggles for being haunted, though. Passing through will shift you from one time phase into the other.Occasionally people have a bad reaction to that, so prepare to feel a little queasy."
Lucius raised an eyebrow at her, and then they walked through the portal. There was a brief sensation of being wrenched sideways, then down, and she was grateful for his hands that steadied her as they took their first steps forward.
Nothing seemed to have changed. It was still dark and cool and they could hear the remnants of the earlier rain gurgling down drain-spouts and gutters. However, light and smell had shifted imperceptibly. The orange glow of streetlights was muted to the pale green of gas lights and the big-city scent of car exhaust was replaced by the smoke of wood and coal fires and the faint odor of incense.
Tall, three-story houses built from carved and painted timber rose around them, each level built slightly wider than the one below it, so the buildings seemed to lean in on them and almost blocked out the faint grey of the night sky. Turrets and gables sprouted from their slanting steep roofs and the warm light of oil lamps and torches shimmered through a multitude of small lead-glass windows.
Eleanor pulled the hood from her coat forward over her head. "Down this street here, past the fountain in the main square, and then the second to the right," she said quietly. "And remember, Cologne is not as civilized as Diagon Alley in London."
She heard a soft chortle next to her. "More like Knockturn Alley, eh?"
They stayed in the shadows of the tall buildings and as they neared the square the streets became a bit busier. They encountered a large group of goblins singing some raucous song as they walked and then stood before a stone gateway between two tall houses that contained an apothecary and a tavern respectively. Just then the tavern door opened and someone kicked out a bowtruckle who flew above them in a graceful arc, immediately hooked his fingers into the wood beams of the apothecary and clambered up towards the roof.
"Raus hier! Verschwindet, verdammtes Pack!" shouted someone from the lit interior of the public house and a moment later a wizard followed the unfortunate magical creature, though with less elegance, and landed flat on his backside at their feet. He scrambled back up and shook his fist at the open door intoning something that sounded like a rather fulsome curse before tossing back his tattered robes and stalking off into the dark ahead of them.
"Nice neighborhood," grinned Lucius.
"Well, that's part of the reason why my parents decided to move away. They just felt it wasn't a good place to raise kids," she said and pulled him into the darkness of the archway. They could hear the fountain in the square as they stepped out of the arcades and over it some angry grunting and shouting.
"They're not…" said Lucius staring at her in disbelief.
She shrugged her shoulders: "Well, it's not officially allowed, but bribes will go a long way. You can still make bets on troll-fights here."
Off to the side of the plaza a group of witches and wizards surrounded two rather mangy looking trolls, who were half-heartedly bashing each other with clubs. The crowd was cheering them and egging them on. Their owners kept prodding them with long sticks to make them madder.
allowed her to pull him along by the side of the houses.
"Well, seems folks here are easily amused," he sneered.
Finally Eleanor stopped him and pointed.
"Valeriusgasse. That's the street," she said and looked up at a carved street sign.
They turned right into the narrow cobbled alley and soon stopped in front of an imposing-looking patrician town home, its sides overgrown with vines. Rows of small crown glass windows rose above them. Next to the broad carved double doors a wall plaque with the official stamp of the German Historical Wizarding Society listed the house as the home of the Sartorius family.
The blond wizard looked at her.
"So far so good," he said. "Now how do we get in without magic and without tripping the wards."
She grinned. "Easy: remember the old magical saying 'As above so below.'? Well, sometimes that doesn't hold true. Follow me."
She led him further down the narrow street until they reached a flat iron-worked grille decorated with a pentagram and set into the paving stones. After a furtive look to either side she crouched down and laced her fingers through the metal.
"Help me," she grunted.
He joined her.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Well, one of the things my parents did tell me was how they were getting in and out of the house as teenagers without my grandparents knowing. They were already dating and they found this secret passage that leads from the wine cellar to a tunnel under the street right to this exit. It was part of the old Roman water supply. The access was never warded."
Lucius helped her lift the heavy lid and pull it over to the side. The noise of scraping metal on stone seemed quite loud in the nightly stillness.
"So you are telling me we are going through a sewer to get into your home?" His lips twitched with disgust. "If I'd known…"
She laid a hand on his.
"Exactly, my dear. That's why I didn't go announcing it before I had to. Come on! Oh, and pull the lid shut behind you, please. Don't want some drunk fall in behind us."
She gripped a set of steel rungs set into the brickwork that lined the tunnel and lowered herself down. As her feet touched the ground she pulled a muggle pocket torch from her coat and switched it on. The cone of light reflected off moss and algae on the masonry and showed her Lucius further up.
He released his grip on the footholds and dropped down on the floor beside her.
"At least it's not flooded," he said and looked around. "What in Merlin's name is that light?"
"No magic," she promised him quickly, "Just a muggle invention. It runs on batteries. Here."
She held out the flashlight to him and saw him hesitate before he carefully took it from her, almost as if he expected it to turn in his hand and bite him.
"Hm," he inspected the metal and plastic casing and shone the light up and down the tunnel. "About as powerful as a good lumos flammipotens spell," he murmured. "Inventive little buggers, aren't they? Oh, and don't bore me with how it works, please, dear."
She realized with a small smile he had obviously no intention of returning the light to her.
"I wouldn't dream of it, Lucius," she said and was quite content to follow him as he illuminated a path for them both.
The tunnel ceiling soon lowered and forced them to walk in a slight crouch. Eleanor started counting steps. As they progressed the paved bottom began to fill with some of the recent rain water. The witch sniffed to see if they actually had to worry about some unpleasant surprises, but could not smell anything aside from the faint odor of mold, earth and decaying leaves. Their steps echoed along the damp brickwork and eventually Lucius stopped and looked back at her.
"Crossroads," he said. "Which way do we go?"
"Forty-seven steps," she answered. "We go straight and turn left at the next crossing. That's the branch-off to our house."
The blond wizard turned back, and just as she was about to follow him, she felt something tug quite insistently at the bottom of her trousers. She looked down expecting to have snagged on a submerged branch, but almost jumped back with a squeak of dismay when she saw a small pale hand bunched in the fabric. Soon several more hands had joined the first and the pull now became quite strong.
"Shit," she hollered, starting to kick. "We've got us a troop of heinzelmännchen down here."
Lucius' flashlight returned.
"Heinzel-what!" he called back to her and now they both saw a bunch of about twenty or thirty small man-like creatures pile out of the cross-tunnel and swarm up their legs. Their skin had the white sickly hue of fish-bellies, their eyes seemed huge and black and they cowered briefly and closed their paper-thin white lids when the light hit them directly.
Eleanor grabbed one that had clambered up all the way to her waist and threw him back in the water. His bony body seemed almost weightless, but his sharp nails left a long welt along the back of her hand as he clung on to her. He hissed when she finally managed to shake him off and immediately got up again to join the others.
"Don't let them get to your face," she gasped. "They'll try and scratch your eyes out."
She heard a sickening crack like someone breaking apart a chicken carcass and suspected that Lucius had decided on a more permanent solution to get rid of their attackers. The flashlight was now bouncing wildly.
"Fuck!" hollered the wizard. "Damn vermin! Get off there! Ouch!"
She knew Lucius well enough to be aware that he rarely stooped to such blatant use of profanity. He obviously was as much in trouble as her.
A moment later she had to concentrate on herself again as one of the sneaky imp-like creatures had clambered up her back and was now methodically pulling her hair out. She reached behind her, felt the clamp of sharp little teeth on her forefinger and flung another heinzelmännchen off her. The movement almost threw her off balance as several others of their attackers tugged at her leg at the same time nearly bringing her down.
"Don't let them trip you!" she shouted advice to her husband.
"No kidding," came the snarled reply and a tiny, broken, limp body landed at her feet with a splash. "No wonder no one ever warded the tunnel. – Let go! – These things are worse than any curse. – Got you!"
Seconds later the flashlight shook wildly once more and hit the water. Though the light didn't fail, it now shone through layers of slimy green algae and filled the tunnel with a sickly subterranean glow. The loss of bright, direct illumination seemed to encourage their attackers, more of which came out of the darkness to join the fight, and Eleanor began to feel cold fear grip her. They might not be able to defend themselves against all of them.
She felt Lucius' hand on her arm as he held himself steady against her and plucked another heinzelmännchen off her shoulder. She watched him snap the creature's spine and discard the small corpse. His face bore the scratch-marks of several of the imps' vicious claws.
"Lucius, I…" she began and then cried out in dismay as she slipped on a submerged rock.
For a moment she thought she might be able to regain her balance, but the pull of their attackers was too strong. Arms flailing she went down and immediately the small pale bodies swarmed all over her, tiny mouths snarling into her face. She squeezed her eyes shut and screamed.
"Immobilis," a loud voice roared above her, and immediately her torment stopped.
Strong hands gripped her arms and she felt herself lifted up.
Lucius shook her. "Eleanor, are you all right?"
At his worried, insistent tone she opened her eyes.
"Yes, yes, I'm all right. Thank you." She took a deep breath, seeing heinzelmännchen all around her frozen in various contorted poses like a grotesque three-dimensional still picture. "But you performed magic! You spoke a spell," she cried in dismay.
He shook his head at her.
"Did you honestly think I'd stand by and watch this vermin rip you to pieces?"
She shivered in her waterlogged clothes.
"But Draco, if Voldemort…"
"I'll not buy one life at the price of another," he growled. "And I sure wasn't going to die in a sewer, like some rat, not even in an ancient Roman sewer."
He bent down and retrieved the flashlight.
"So what was this all about?" He kicked one of the frozen creatures for emphasis. "Did your parents conveniently forget to mention this particular infestation?"
She sighed, pushing dripping hair out of her face.
"Heinzelmännchen are loosely related to house elves and imps, but are only common in the area of Cologne and the Rhine valley. They attach themselves to wizarding houses and sometimes even old muggle residences guarding the place and voluntarily helping the inhabitants, but they cannot be compelled like house elves. They remain wild like imps and will gang up on intruders. Best way I can figure it is that they left father and mother alone because they lived in the house these guys were protecting. Us they regarded as enemies."
"Hindsight, eh?" he taunted her, but when she drew herself up to protest she saw a grim smile curve his mouth.
His pale proud face looked scratched and bloodied and his blond hair stuck out in a scraggly mess. He slapped her on the back.
"Come on," he said. "Let's get this mirror and let's get out of here before the spell wears off."
They sloshed on until they came to another intersection and turned left into a narrow, tall tunnel that curved steeply upwards ending in a round vertical shaft with a spiral brick staircase. At the top Eleanor took the flashlight from Lucius as he pushed upwards against a wooden trapdoor that opened on old creaking bronze hinges.
They climbed out and stood in a large vaulted cellar. Pillars supported gothic brick arches, and between them wooden struts held tall oak barrels of wine. Bats hung from the ceiling, chirped to each other and blinked sleepily into the sudden light.
"This way," said Eleanor and pointed them to the exit of the wine cellar.
They opened an iron mounted door and walked along a narrow corridor that led to yet another spiral staircase.
"We are now in the round tower at the side of the house that you could see from the street," the witch explained. "The rest of the house is made of timber frames stuffed with plastered whitewashed wattle, but the tower is stone and could be held against attackers."
She felt his hand on her back.
"Are you reverting back to being an art historian?" he taunted her, but she felt the warmth of humor in his voice. "Don't worry about giving me the museum tour, my dear. Where's the wardrobe from the photo that holds the mirror?"
"Second floor," she said, tacitly acknowledging that he had a point.
She led the way back out of the tower and down another corridor. Many of the doors that led off it were propped open with red velvet cords strung across the doorways to allow visitors to the museum a glimpse inside the rooms. The dancing cone of the pocket torch illuminated bedrooms and studies, a library and a laboratory.
"Here, that's the governess's bedroom. This is where my grandmother slept," she said and unhooked the cord that barred their entry.
The oak planks of the floor creaked softly as they moved inside a cozy wood-paneled room with a low ceiling.
"Wait," said Eleanor, stepped up to the row of small windows on the far wall and quickly closed the heavy, dark blue velvet curtains. "Now they can't see the light from the street. Here's the wardrobe."
She opened the hinged double doors of a slightly lopsided cupboard and Lucius joined her to illuminate the interior.
"Yessss!" she called out in triumph. "There it is!"
She lifted herself up on tiptoe and stretched to reach for an item Lucius could not see. Moments later as her hands closed around it the air seemed to shimmer briefly and he now realized she held a brown round cardboard box with a golden symbol of an Egyptian eye painted on it.
He followed her as she walked over to a low davenport and set the box down.
"Let's take a peek," she said and carefully lifted the top off the container.
Lucius looked over her shoulder and could not recall ever having seen such total blackness.
"Gods!" he heard her exclaim softly.
It seemed to her she had just lifted the lid off outer space, an outer space of absolute emptiness and lack of light. This universe didn't even contain stars, like the world at the end of all time when entropy would have finally extinguished the last spark of light and warmth.
She knew the box was merely about ten inches high, the concave mirror no more than fifteen to twenty inches across with an inner curvature of perhaps five inches, yet the depths into which she looked seemed to stretch into eternity. The mirror even sucked the light out of the atmosphere around them. Everything around her seemed suddenly pale and dim and almost insubstantial.
Something pulled at her mind now, tried to draw her in.
"Who are you? Declare your will," boomed a vast cold voice in the depths of her thoughts.
She leaned forward and almost gave in, almost touched the glass, when she felt Lucius' hand on her shoulder.
"Eleanor? What's wrong?"
She jerked back with an effort of will.
"Merlin, this thing is the most powerful magical artifact I have ever seen. Did you not feel it? That mirror is almost sentient, but in a completely inhuman way," she said in awe. "Wermuth was an unsurpassed master of his craft."
She turned to her husband and looked into his keen, grey eyes that regarded her gravely.
"It's just a mirror," he said, but his glance searched for an explanation.
She compressed her lips. How could she explain the strange and frightening connection she had begun to feel?
"If anything can, this will kick Voldemort's pants," she promised him with conviction.
He nodded slowly.
"It did something to you just then. I think…" his voice trailed off and he suddenly clamped his hand over his left forearm with a hiss.
"Lucius!"
His nostrils flared.
"The mark. I can feel it. He is trying to reach me!"
She felt panic rise in her.
"I can declare the mirror for defense. We can block him…"
"No, wait," he interrupted her and pulled back his sleeve.
She peered at the design of the skull and serpent on his skin.
"See, it's not getting black under the shielding salve. He can't get through."
She raked her fingers through her wet hair.
"He sensed the magic in the tunnel, though. He's searching," she sighed.
He nodded grimly.
"Yes, and the longer we delay the stronger his suspicion will get, and the greater the danger to Draco. Let's pack up the mirror and get back home."
