Chapter One: An Empty Manor
Nine days ago everything had gone very still.
Curling up on her mother's bed amid thick comforters and overstuffed pillows, Allete imagined she could feel each rain drop as it hit the stonewalls and each dull plunk reverberating throughout the house. It felt so peaceful, so completely relaxed, that Allete was certain she was finally and absolutely alone. Rather then panicking, or even being the slightest bit concerned, she actually felt quite relieved. The threats had been fulfilled: She had been abandoned.
Allete had been told a million times that she was only one misstep from being left behind forever, abandoned in the most miserable bowels of the earth, left to fend for herself on treacherous streets, shipped off to Azkaban, or most frightening of all, to a Muggle Orphanage.
So as she breathed in her mother's heady perfume Allete smiled inwardly and thought that being left behind in a huge manor wasn't so bad at all. The House Elves would see to her basic needs as long as she lived. No mater how much they disliked her she knew they would obey her. She could hide and she could wait, and as long as she was never seen or heard the she figured that Charlrox Manor would be hers.
For a while Allete lost herself in that familiar fantasy, exploring the forbidden corners of the garden and tearing the obnoxious portraits off the wall, until there was an odd twitch of light at her feet. She lifted her heavy lids leisurely.
'Mzz Allete' The shabby House Elf said as he sniffed contemptuously and gazed, not at her, but at the portrait of Millicent Malfoy the rested above the large gilded mantle.
"Yes Perty?" Allete said in her warmest tones, hoping that with her parents gone, regular kindness might draw some glimmer of friendship out of the Elves, or at the very least encourage them to make eye contact.
"Theres are gentlemen have come in. Mistress says you must hide when guests come."
"Is Mistress or Master among them?" Allete said, trying to toss the statement off casually and not gloomily as she felt at the thought of her parent's return.
"Foolish girl's questions!" Pretty snorted as he curled his thick lower lip up to his nose and grunted at her through his nostrils "No-oy. Goo now! phildy girl!"
Allete sighed and rolled off the bed in tangle of gangly limbs, righting herself and straightening her pale blue robes she meandered out the door and down the hall with Perty nervously following her and encouraging her to 'Sfurrys'ups!' in his breathy, nasal voice. The portraits hissed at one another as she passed but they had long since failed to register in Allete's mind. Dead people never had anything new to say.
At the end of the hallway was a thin wooden door, on the outside it was as intricately carved as all the doors in the manor where, with scenes of a young male wizard brandishing his wand bravely at a Hebridean Black Dragon. Allete heaved and hauled the door open and stepped into the cool stone stairway that led up to the garret behind it. The door closed behind her as though the house it's self found the clammy attic repulsive. Perty flickered into existence at the top of the narrow stairway with a lantern and in it's pale light Allete climbed up the stairs.
Before she had even reached the top Perty had set the lantern down on a bare wooden table.
"Perty, would you…" Allete started to mumble about her dinner but her voice was lost in the sound of stone sliding on stone. The stairway she had come up disappeared behind a gray wall of rough stone and a final click told her Perty had managed to disappear before she could make any request.
Allete clenched her fists and took a long, deep breath. The garret she was locked in was cold and colorless with only the small wooden table and a thin mattress placed on the floor. Allete took a seat on the corner of the cot and breathed slowly "Stay Calm." She said aloud. "Stay calm and count."
And so the small young lady placed her feet together, laid her hands formally on her lap and said "One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen…"
"The woman had no taste." Dolohov said with a scowl as he rolled a gaudy porcelain figurine of a smirking troll around in his hand.
"The woman had no sense." Avery cackled. "If she had, she could have come back to this awful place and lived happily ever after, now couldn't she?" With a careless flick of his wand the drawers of the large mahogany desk flew open and page after page of parchment sailed out into the air. Avery's grin didn't falter as he pretended the mess of papers settling on the library's floor was planned.
"Clumsy git." Dolohov muttered as he turned his back to his fellow intruder to inspect the drawers beneath the bookshelves. Rustling through the old parchment Dolohov grumbled to himself. "Not here. We know it's not here."
Avery grunted and kept flicking his wand at various drawers with no apparent success. "Well if we know it's not here why are we looking? Eh Dolohov?" and with one more slipshod wave tore a large ledger to shreds and sent it's leather binding smashing into a lamp.
That last senseless spell sent Dolohov over the edge and he turned on Avery in an instance, grabbed the wizard by his robes and shoved his wand against Avery's adam's apple and hissed. "If you keep flipping your wand around like a some adolescent show-off I will drop you where you stand."
Avery swallowed hard and muttered something like an apology. With one more good jab in the throat Dolohov took a step back. "We're here because the Dark Lord willed it. Let's check the bitch's bedchambers."
"… One hundred and ninety-six, One hundred and ninety-seven, One hundred and ninety-eight, One hundred and ninety-nine."
In the faint light a smirk spread across Allete's face. Patience was something that had not come naturally to her, but when she could manage it, she reaped great rewards.
Jumping off the bed she tugged the mattress up easily and grabbed a small metal box. Popping it open she quickly palmed two small vials and shoved the box back in it's hiding spot. It didn't need to be a good hiding spot. No one but her spent much time up here anyways.
Allete dropped to her knees and laid her hands on the cool stonewall that had appeared where the stairs once were. Feeling across gently she found the seam, the place where the mortar was too thick and the bricks were raised a bit too much. Even magic wasn't perfect. Uncorking the smaller vial Allete let the contents drip slowly onto the floor. For a moment the pale liquid glowed and sputtered like molten lava then it started to climb up the wall. Allete kept pouring until the liquid filled the seam between the bricks from floor to ceiling. Then there was a strange clucking noise and the potion glowed a deep florescent purple and clung to the edge of the stones as they slid away.
Allete crept down the dark stairs, all her attention tuned to the sounds in the hall. She could make out the deep voices of men.
Cracking open the second vial Allete poured a few drops the perfectly translucent liquid on to the corner of her robe and rubbed it on the door in large sweeping circles. The door faded away beneath her hand, as though it was being erased, until it was as clear as glass and through it Allete saw a tall gangly wizard in a black cloak standing in the doorway of her mother's bedroom.
"Well, just keep looking Dolohov." He was saying. "Sure you'll find something if you keep at it long enough."
The man inside the room bellowed something Allete couldn't make out, but it sounded vicious and as he spoke another thin man in a dark cloak apparated in behind the first. Allete was surprised to see it, the new arrival had fine black hair his cloak was immaculately tailored. Even from behind he had all the airs she would expect from her a friend of her fathers, but it was unforgivably bad manners to apparate in the middle of someone else's home…
"Avery, have you found them?" The new arrival said grimly.
Avery lost his sense of humor immediately upon hearing that voice and responded straight away "No My Lord."
His Lord didn't seem to find that answer worthy of his attention and instead surveyed his surroundings with distain. As he turned down the hall Allete had to clasp her hand over his mouth to stifle a gasp. The wizards skin was pulled taunt over his features and was deathly pale. His dark eyes were bloodshot and indifferent and he might have looked more like a demon then a wizard if it weren't for the long wand clutched in his thin fingers.
Avery and Allete both watched, one overlooked and one unseen, as the pale wizard raised his wand and wordlessly sent the door on his left flying open. Only the bathroom, empty.
Allete felt horror creep up her spine as he stepped forward and with another flick her father's bedroom door stood open, and another nearly tore the old nursery door off its hinges. With no other door in the hall but the one Allete crouched behind she tried to make herself run, or even crawl back up the stairs, but her legs had gone limp. The demon wizard strode forward with his wand raised and a look of cold apathy in his bloodshot eyes and at the last instance Allete closed her own eyes tightly not wanting to meet that gaze when the door burst open.
"My Lord, I don't believe it is here." A voice said and the door did not burst open. Allete opened her eyes and saw a large man with a twisted face standing by Avery.
The Lord's wand slipped back into the folds of his dark robe and Allete saw his thin lips move though she couldn't hear the sound. "No. It is not here."
Doholov snorted, "Mycroft was not utterly brainless. He would have ripped this home apart searching for it, knowing he would pay for his failure with his life as well as his dear wife's."
With that Allete felt the feeling return to her body. That she had never expected. It hadn't occurred to her for a moment that anything bad might have happened to her parents, they were both wizards. Powerful and proud. Weakness was unthinkable. Impossible…
The man with red eyes said nothing for a long while but gazed idly down the hall. In this pause Allete found the courage to stare through the enchanted wood and examine those eyes. What she saw left her without doubt. Those inhuman eyes, the gangly wizard's quivering fingers, the complete callousness of the Dolohov's voice, her parents were dead.
When the red-eyed wizard did speak, it was no better then she had expected. "Question the House Elves" He said "When you have discovered all they know, destroy them." He apparated away instantly and Dolohov and Avery plodded downstairs without hesitation to round up the elves.
Allete sat on the stairs and she knew, knew like any decent creature would know, that she should warn the elves. Somehow. Though she couldn't think how.
There is no way. She swore inside her mind. They aren't paying attention to me… I'm supposed to be locked up, out of the way… Oh dear…
With her body finally obeying her mind again, Allete stole up the stairs in a cloud of desperate, fatalistic thoughts. Back in the tiny garret she made a pitiful attempt to summon the elves "Mino, Perty, Shillowig, Shylow. If any Elf can hear me I demand you show yourself." She only dared to raise her voice a bit above a whisper.
Allete spent the rest of the evening, the night and morning that followed in the attic, her mind swirling around and around, trying to think of something to do, knowing in her heart it was too late to do anything and sobbing in painful and unexpected bursts of grief. Sometime the next day, after the millionth time she reminded herself that she had been powerless… that it didn't mater… that she couldn't have done anything anyways… that had as good as killed them all... she fell into a restless sleep.