Chapter 1: The Empty Cottage
By akemi42
Summary: This is my entry for the MuggleNet contest to write the first 1000 words for Book 7. It begins with Harry returning to Godric's Hollow expecting to find clues in his parents' old home. But there is someone there waiting for him. On the encouragement of others, I plan to keep this story going.
Business was slow and the elderly barman in The Golden Stag found himself with only two customers remaining inside his cozy pub on a chilly Saturday night in September. The two sets of tables and chairs near the back wall decorated with old photographs and portraits were empty. His two customers sat at the oak counter at the front of the bar whose worn surface was illuminated by the red stained glass lamps hanging from the ceiling.
"Another scotch, please," slurred the frizzy-haired woman who regularly occupied the seat to the right of the cash register.
"Last one then," he said filling her glass and glaring at the stranger to the left. Because he had worked at this particular pub for nearly twenty years and knew most of the locals personally, he assumed the unrecognizable patron was a traveler passing through Godric's Hollow. Vacationers driving across the Wales countryside often spent the night in the quaint, little village whose quiet streets and charming inns with home cooked breakfast offered a nice break from the road. This fellow, however, was not the typical tourist who frequented the pub for an after dinner drink.
The stranger was pale with a curtain of greasy black hair that framed a face with a hooked nose and piercing black eyes. Draped in a black traveling cloak, his posture was rigid as he drummed his gloved fingers on the table. He had been sitting in the same stool for several hours sipping whiskey and gazing out the window at the small two story cottage down the road. The house was white with brown shingles and small, round windows. A short stone wall bordered the property with an iron gate blocking the pathway to the front door. It looked perfectly normal, and the bartender thought that the passing stranger would never imagine its heart wrenching story.
The house was empty now, but when the pub opened, a young couple had just moved there. They were very friendly people, but they kept to themselves. The young woman, lovely with long dark red hair, was sometimes seen in the front yard tending to her amazingly lush garden of lilies. The young man came into the bar a few times for a drink with his two friends, a handsome man with a reckless air about him and a quieter shabby-looking fellow who always seemed to look a bit ill. The barman couldn't recall the couple's names, but he did remember that they had a son. When the baby was born, the beaming father had excitedly passed around photographs of the newborn to all the customers in the pub.
Not many of the villagers had the chance to see more than a photograph of the boy because before he was old enough to accompany his parents on Sunday afternoon walks, something very tragic and very mysterious happened in that house. The morning after Halloween, the house was nearly destroyed and the bodies of the young couple were laying amidst the debris. The baby was nowhere to be found, and the coroner could not determine the young parents' cause of death. Both bodies had no marks, bruises, or cuts; the two appeared to be sleeping peacefully amidst the debris of their family home. The local police concluded with horror and disgust, that someone must have come in the night, murdered the parents and stolen the child, but they were never able to find any clues indicating the culprit or the whereabouts of the baby. There was simply no evidence about what happened and no one seemed to remember anything about that Halloween. The bartender had been closing up shop that night and he hadn't heard or seen a thing…except a strange flash of green light as he was locking the door. The house looked completely normal.
The stranger drained the glass in front of him and pulled something shiny out of his pocket. He fingered a heavy gold locket in his gloved hand as he pushed the empty glass toward the bartender indicating that he wanted another drink. He caught the frizzy-haired woman eying the jewelry from the other side of the bar and quickly returned it to the inside of his cloak.
After the tragic death of the young couple and the disappearance of their son, the cottage remained empty. Shortly after the incident, a tall silver-haired old man with a long beard claiming to be a relative arrived and explained that he had purchased what was left of the cottage. Over the next few months, he hired a crew to rebuild the house to its current state. A private funeral was held and the bodies of the couple were buried in to the backyard where they were marked with two simple tombstones. Once a month someone came to tend to the lawn and keep the place up, but it didn't appear as if anyone ever lived there. So the house remained empty and frozen in time, like a monument for the family that could have grown to call it home.
The barman's train of thought was broken. In the haunting glow of the street lamps outside, he noticed the silhouette of a person walking along the cobble stone path toward the cottage. The figure came closer revealing a young boy, about sixteen or seventeen years old. He was skinny with glasses and untidy black hair that seemed oddly familiar. He walked with determination and a sense of urgency, clutching what appeared to be a small stick in his right hand. As he rounded the corner and walked past the window, the barman saw a pained look on the boy's face, but he also sensed overwhelming courage. He watched as the figure marched forward and didn't notice the man to his left quietly rising from his stool and gliding into the cold night. By the time the faint jingle of the bell on the doorway drew his attention back to the counter, the stranger was gone.