„Okay," Alexandra said as she fed Wynn at breakfast, the morning after Harry returned to Hogwarts. „I have a tip. Not for where, but for what, at least roughly."
"Yes?" Alduin asked excitedly.
"Riddle worked at my great-great-etcetera uncle's shop after graduation."
Alduin snorted. "That's convenient."
"Yes, isn't it? So of course I went to have a nice little chat with Borgin. It's rather hard to refuse answers to a daughter of the family which owns your job, after all." Alexandra smiled ironically. "It's nice to know my relative's entrepreneurial tendencies have some pay-off at least. Anyway, turns out Riddle used to procure valuable objects for him, charmed them out of their owners for an absurdly low price. One lady he was continually working on was Miss Hepzibah Smith, a great collector."
"Wait," Alduin interrupted, trying to recall the family tree, "she was...sister to current Mr. Smith?"
"Aunt. One day after some time of being courted by Riddle, Hepzibah died...killed by her house-elf, they said. Riddle disappeared effectively at the same moment." Alexandra paused. "I'm almost positive he killed her, and it seems likely it was over one of her prized objects. Unfortunately – and I never thought I'd say that - I have no ties to the Smiths, so my chances of finding out any details about whether something is missing are rather limited. But in any case...Riddle, as I expect you'll agree, was not the type to care about worldly possessions beyond their practical effect. He would not have killed Smith just because she had a valuable object. If it was a very powerful artefact, then yes, but from what I understand that isn't the sort of thing she collected. She was interested in historical value, which Riddle, from what we know, normally wouldn't care about. If he intended to make it into a Horcrux, though..."
"Hm." Alduin thought about it. "It's certainly possible, though it doesn't go well with the diary we saw or Dumbledore's idea of personally significant objects either. On the other hand, he did need six of them, so...it's definitely worth at least trying to follow this lead. And if he really made an heirloom his Horcrux, then there's a good chance it could be in the Lestrange vault, since putting it there would not cause any comment, as opposed to, say, if Bellatrix just insisted on hiding an old, blank diary in there." He frowned. "I'll try to get some information about possible lost objects out of the Smiths...but I need you to work on Narcissa."
Alexandra raised her eyebrows and looked at him from where she was trying to convince Wynn to take one spoon more. "Work on Narcissa?"
"Well, she is Bellatrix's sister," Alduin said by way of explanation, and handed her a napkin as Wynn spit his food out. "If she asks for a family heirloom Bella has in her vault that she really wishes she could take out and see again, the Lestranges will take her there. They'll know that whatever it is that was made into a Horcrux isn't their heirloom, so they'll assume it was Bella's and let Narcissa take it, in all likelihood. Make up some excuse why we need to borrow something from the vault – obviously you'll need to know what it is first – and..."
"I'll have to tell her the truth," Alexandra interrupted him, wiping Wynn's mouth and cleaning his clothes with a wave of her wand.
"What? Are you crazy?" Alduin then bit his lip and gave his wife an apologetic look. He shouldn't speak that way to her, and especially not in front of their son.
"Narcissa is smart," Alexandra replied, ignoring his guilty look. "She will not fall for some stupid excuse. However, she wishes for Riddle to return about as much as we do, if not less. Not even Lucius wants him back, and she was never interested in the first place. She will do this if she knows it'll help bring Riddle down."
"She'll tell Lucius."
"No she won't. She isn't stupid. Lucius is a mingling Occlumens at best, while she is an excellent one. She knows that Riddle would pull the information out of her husband's mind. Narcissa has no trouble keeping secrets."
Alduin considered. He didn't like it at all. Trusting Alexandra was one thing, but extending that trust to the people she trusted, too, was a step further. He had to struggle to do so much even for Abdullah, and there was no one in the whole world left whom he trusted more than this particular friend. And when the person in question was Narcissa Malfoy…
"Didn't you say she'd have a grudge over that Unbreakable Vow business?" He asked.
"We've already had our little chat about that," Alexandra replied. "It wasn't pleasant, as I had predicted, but the great thing about Narcissa is that is spite of her not being a Ravenclaw, she is ever rational. She saw my point immediately, and had to concede I was right. But in any case, that wouldn't even be relevant here. Like I said, she's rational. This is about beating Riddle, and for that, she can put her personal grievances aside like the best of us." She hesitated. "I mean, of course she would not hesitate to use any information she collected against us at a later point, if she saw a reason and an opportunity, but that's a separate matter. She's not a Gryffindor, she can wait long enough that it doesn't interfere with the matter at hand."
This whole talk was less reassuring that Alexandra had perhaps hoped. But at least it was a perfectly accurate evaluation of the situation. "All right," Alduin said hesitatingly, after another moment of consideration, not really seeing another way, "but still, don't tell her what it is. Tell her we need it to stop Riddle. That should be enough."
Alexandra slowly nodded. "I won't tell her more than is necessary," she agreed.
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Harry thought long and hard with his friends about what to do for Sophie's birthday. It was Ron who came up with the idea. "I remember her liking some kind of Muggle game, treasure hunts or something..."
"Oh, right," Dean agreed, "we could do that!"
And so they did.
It was more work to prepare properly than Harry would have expected – they didn't want it to be boring, or too long, or too short...they also wanted Sophie to be able to play in a team and compete, so in the end, only Harry, Ron and Dean took part in the preparation, while the rest of their Gryffindor friends was getting ready to play with her or against her.
The portraits proved to be absolutely invaluable in this: they could serve as great indicators as to where to head next. It would be rather hard to turn a "third corner on the left" into a riddle, but a painting of singing monks? Well, that was a different thing.
The more friendly portraits were even willing to take a more active part, giving the participants riddles and tasks and rewarding them with clues. The boys made use of that assistance very happily, though in one case, they had to change the plan after they realized that one particular portrait, a knight called Sir Cadogan, was completely impossible to work with.
Harry had never ran around the castle as much as in the time that preceded that birthday, and often used his Invisibility Cloak to sneak away without Sophie noticing him.
It was on one of those trips, hidden under the Cloak and trying to find a good place to hide the next clue, when he rounded a corner and stopped dead in his tracks.
There was Horatio in front of him...wrapped around Clement Avery, kissing him and pressign him to the wall.
Harry probably made some kind of sound, but the boys didn't seem to hear him – they were, after all, quite occupied – and Harry stood there, frozen, for a good long while before he gathered his wits enough to back out of the corridor.
He walked away in a daze, and only stopped several corridors away, leaning on the wall and trying to process what he saw.
He had no idea that Horatio was gay.
True, he had never seen him with a girl until now, but he hadn't seen Fred or George either, and they were the same year. It didn't have to mean anything, did it?
It was very strange. He had known gay people existed, of course – had heard enough of Uncle Vernon's rants when he still lived with the Dursleys it would have been impossible to ignore – but it was quite different to be so...confronted with it, having it literally stare him in the face.
And one of his friends, too!
Harry had no idea what to do with that
He wanted to talk to someone about it, but from some little hints he had had over the years, he had a vague impressions that it wasn't as big of a deal in the wizarding world as it was in the Muggle one, and so maybe his friends would think he was weird for asking.
He could ask Alduin, he supposed – his cousin always encouraged him to ask questions – but this just seemed too awkward.
So in the end, after ruminating about it in the corridor some more, Harry decided to firmly put it out of his mind and go find a different place to hide the clue for Sophie.
Ron did most of his work on the game from a chair in the common room, planning the route and different tasks. Harry rather envied him that at this point, but he had to admit Ron was really very good at it.
He had also thought long about whom to ask to participate, apart from their year. In the end, they asked Ginny, Kiara and Katie. Harry considered speaking to Alicia and Angelina too, but then he lost his nerve. They were almost fifteen, if not fifteen already, and would probably think such games silly.
Sophie was thrilled by it, though.
She was on a team with Lavender, Seamus and Katie and Harry went with them to make sure they didn't go too wrong anywhere and didn't end up being lost, and so he could watch them puzzle out the clues. Seamus was the best help in that, he observed.
The weather was relatively decent, so the trail led outside and to the lake, where the treasure of some chocolate cauldrons and chocolate frogs was hidden. To get it, though, the group had to perform a short theatre sketch all together for the others once they arrived.
They huddled together to plan, and Harry ended up watching a story of his disastrous first Quidditch match of the season. He wanted to frown, but it was too funny watching Sophie play a Bludger and relentlessly pursue Katie, who was meant to be him, while spewing mild obscenities at her.
The second group enacted the scene of Susan Bones taming a basilisk with her cookies. Kiara was playing the serpent, twisting and hissing menacingly, and Ginny in the role of Susan Bones tamed her while Parvati played a damsel in distress being rescued, and Neville was hero come too late. He swung at Kiara with a sword made of a stick, only for Ginny to berate him for disturbing her nice, pet snake – Kiara was sitting down and purring at this point.
"I should have never told you about my talk with Abdulaziz," Harry commented in the midst of his laugher.
Sophie then took out the treasure and gave everyone a bit of her chocolate and thanked them for the amazing game, and they spent an hour or so outside before it got too cold.
"Do you think," Sophie asked on the way back, "that I could tell McGonnagal I wasn't gonna hand in my homework tomorrow because it was my birthday?"
"If you're going to do that," Seamus muttered, "warn me in advance so that I can skip the class. I don't need to see that disaster first-hand."
"You could try that with Snape," Harry suggested. "That would be real Gryffindor bravery."
"More like real Gryffindor stupidity," Ginny snorted.
"I actually might have worked with Lockhart though," Kiara mused.
Seamus frowned. "I dunno. Maybe if you said it was in honour of his birthday, because you were making him a birthday card..."
"Do any of you know why Dumbledore hired him?" Katie asked. "We've been wondering about that for so long..."
Harry shrugged. "Hagrid said he was desperate, but I dunno. I mean, I feel like anyone would have been better, basically. Merlin, I think I could teach Defence better - to first years at least - than Lockhart did."
"Well, you're a Defence prodigy," Neville replied, "so that's hardly a fair comparison."
"Really?" Katie seemed interested.
Harry grimaced, unwilling to talk about his private training with Alduin and Snape, and yet feeling he could hardly explain it without that. "It's my favourite subject," he admitted grudgingly, and Ron rolled his eyes.
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Alduin was sitting in the Smiths' drawing room, chatting with four generations of the Smith family and exchanging gossip. They moved through Wynn's attempts at walking, Geralt Ollivander's first signs of coherent speech and Placidia Burke's enthusiasm for tea parties, through the chances of Maeghan McCormack ever getting married and likelihood of Yezabel Proudfoot having a child any time soon, and slowly but certainly, Alduin steered the conversation where he wanted it, to little scandals and disturbances of everyday life.
He patiently listened to Dwayne's exhausting story about how he put his wife's brother down when he did something inappropriate at dinner and then, very casually, asked: "Have you heard about that crazy house-elf Lucius had?"
Dwayne sneered. "Yes," he said disdainfully, "we've heard from Zacharias that he burst into Harry's birthday party...you know, the party where my son wasn't invited."
Alduin left that without a comment. If Dwayne had bad enough manners to bring that up, he really couldn't be helped. "That wasn't all," he merely said. "He also accused Lucius of some nefarious deeds."
"Probably quite correctly," Mrs. Smith muttered. She was, by far, the most astute member of the family.
"Perhaps," Alduin said non-committally, "but still...he is – or was, I should say – Lucius' elf. It's highly irregular, isn't it? A breach of loyalty and all that." There was a murmur of agreement around the table, and Alduin continued: "It made me wonder about how often this happens. I mean, the elves are supposed to be undyingly loyal. But how often do they go rogue or turn against their masters?"
"We've had some experience with that in the family," Mr. Smith said mournfully. "My great-aunt, Miss Hepbizah, was killed by her elf. The ministry said it was an accident, but..."
"Killed?" Alduin asked in a shocked voice. "I would never have thought...I was only considering spying or stealing or such..."
"She was a thief too, alright," Mr. Smith confirmed. "Two priceless collector pieces disappeared after the foul murder."
Alduin's expression of shock deepened. "Collector pieces? What did the elf do with them, sold?"
Mrs. Smith shook her head. "They never appeared on the market again, and trust me, we'd have known. They were unmistakable."
Alduin was now frowning, and hoping he wasn't overdoing it. "Really…," he said. "And I mean...it's just so strange...I mean, what would an elf do with heirlooms? Was there anything about them that would explain it, some connection to elves or something?"
"Nothing at all," Mr. Smith said firmly.
"Really? What were they like?" Alduin fished a last-ditch attempt.
"Oh, just very old family memorabilia," Mr. Smith said, but he sounded a little strict and Alduin though he better not tempt fate much longer. The last thing he wanted was to provoke suspicion, and so he led the talk to some other thefts in Ancient families he remembered.
He was frustrated. It was a confirmation, of sorts, but it was not enough. They need to know what to look for in particular. The Lestrange vault would be full of family heirlooms, they needed a distinguishing mark.
It was time to talk to Dumbledore again.