Rodolphus Lestrange
Since they didn't have to reckon with ministerial wizards in Edinburgh, Julian and Roy went there through Apparating. It was already dark when they arrived in the evening at a quarter past six. The three-storey old buildings that bordered Leamington Terrace could have done with a new coat of paint, but otherwise looked well maintained.
There was a taxi parked in front of number 5. At the front door, the boys found the name Williams, which apparently belonged to a flat on the first floor. Julian hesitated, looked at his friend.
"I'm pretty nervous, you know? Just this morning I had no idea ..." He broke off.
"Come on, now ring the bell," Roy nodded at him encouragingly.
Julian took a deep breath, held it for a moment – and pressed the bell button.
There didn't seem to be an intercom. The door unlocked with a low hum. The two entered and went up one floor. They stopped in front of the door marked "Williams". For a moment the peephole darkened, then the door was unlocked from the inside while Roy took a step back behind Julian.
Standing in the doorway was an elderly but still vital-looking man whose greying hair had largely withdrawn from the top of his skull, but whose features Julian recognised from the mug shots of the Daily Prophet's old issues – the only pictures of his grandfather he had ever seen.
The old and the young man stared at each other. Then Julian asked softly:
"Grandpa?"
Without another word, the two hugged each other and held each other for minutes while they had to choke back their tears again and again. When they let go, Julian pointed to Roy:
"Grandpa, may I introduce Roy MacAllister? He's my best friend, it was important to me to have him with me."
"I've already read about you in the Daily Prophet, Roy," Rodolphus said as he shook Roy's hand and stepped aside to let them both enter the flat.
"Do you get it regularly?" asked Julian.
"No," the old man replied. "A subscription could be treacherous, but a colleague of mine is a Squib, he often leaves me the issues he has already read. He doesn't know who I am, he thinks I'm a Squib, too. – Excuse me, I wasn't expecting anyone, so I didn't clean up."
He led them into the small living room. There was no need to apologise: Considering that it was the home of a single man, Rodolphus' flat was fairly neat and tidy – presumably he was using a tidying charm – and a certain rest of sloppiness only made for a cosy atmosphere. Rodolphus conjured three full teacups.
"Are there many Squibs living in the Muggle world?" Julian demanded.
"More than you would expect. I think every Muggle knows anyone gifted with what the Muggles call supernatural perception. I prefer to make friends among Squibs – to pure Muggles I would probably seem slightly eccentric."
There was a pause in which grandfather and grandson looked at each other.
"I would have liked to meet you earlier," Julian finally said.
"Me too," sighed Rodolphus. "Did you have any particular reason to come looking for me?"
"We read your book on the Dark Lord's Penetration Charm and deciphered your pseudonym," Julian said while his grandfather smiled. "One thing I would like to know: You dedicated the book to me – but how did you know I would read it? The odds were one in a thousand, it was in the Restricted Section."
"This book is a kind of message in a bottle. Today I believe that there is no such thing as coincidence. If God wants a message in a bottle to reach the person it's meant for, it will." He took a sip of tea. "And it wasn't that unlikely that you would look for information about the Death Eaters and read a book indexed with 'Dark Lord'. I had sent it anonymously to Madam Pince as a book donation. I'm surprised it ended up in the Restricted Section though, after all there are no instructions in it."
"And you're sure Voldemort used this kind of Penetration Charm to control his followers?"
The old man nodded. "As far as Bellatrix and I are concerned, but also many others, yes, he did. But there were also some others he didn't need to bewitch at all."
"Walden Macnair, for example?" asked Julian.
His grandfather looked at him in surprise, but nodded. "Walden Macnair, for example. How do you know?'
"We – his son and I – met him the other day."
"Walden was a scrappy adventurer. Voldemort gave him the exciting life that suited him."
"He seems to like you. When we arrived, he said something like: A Lestrange is always welcome to him."
The old man smiled again. "We got on well at that time. Walden is not what you would call a good person, but he is straightforward and has a certain dry sense of humour. And he was a berserk, death-defying fighter, just the kind of guy you want to have by your side in a crisis."
There was a long pause. The boy obviously had a question burning on the tip of his tongue, and the old man gave him time to put it. Finally, Julian began hesitantly:
"What ..." He faltered. "What actually happened with the Longbottoms?"
His grandfather did not answer immediately. He looked out the window for a moment, as if there was anything but black night to be seen.
"This," he said slowly, "is one of the questions I've been afraid of ever since I heard that the Longbottoms' son is now a teacher at Hogwarts. Do you really want to know in detail?"
Julian hesitated briefly, but then said: "Yes, I do."
Rodolphus' narration began haltingly, but then became increasingly fluent. He described how they – he, Bellatrix, his brother Rabastan and Barty Crouch Jr – tried to track down Voldemort's whereabouts after he had lost his power. He described the effect of the Cruciatus curse they used for days to torture the two Aurors they thought they knew something about.
"In the end, there wasn't much left of them," he concluded his report. "Not only did you not get any information about Voldemort, you didn't get any reasonable word out of them at all. We were about to kill them, but the Aurors beat us to it and freed them. I don't think they did them any favours. A Squib acquaintance told me a few years ago that he had seen them in St. Mungo's. I don't know if they are still alive today, but they will never leave the hospital again. – And what was the point of all we did? Only to bring back this criminal we had fallen for!"
He gazed gloomily into space.
"You have no idea what people are capable of when they believe it serves a greater good. And if there is someone able to completely switch off their conscience ..."
"How is it that you are able to describe Voldemort's manipulation technique so precisely?", Julian wanted to know. "I mean ... he is not likely to have told you: I manipulated you this way and that."
"That's exactly what he did!" said Rodolphus.
Julian stared at his grandfather with his mouth open. "He told you?"
"Hard to believe, isn't it?"
A bitter smile was curling his lips.
"Someone is telling you I have occupied your conscience, I have total control over you, you are nothing more than a puppet and your soul will perish because of it – and you are sitting there agreeing to everything and believing it has to be that way!" Rodolphus stared at the floor. All of a sudden, he no longer looked like a spry sixty-year-old, but like a broken very old man.
"You know, Julian," he said quietly, "allowing him to do that to me was bad enough. But I will never forgive myself for not protecting Bellatrix! Of all the acts and omissions I regret – and there are a lot – that was the worst. Yes, I know well how she's spoken of today, I even understand it, after all her – our – crimes. But believe me, she hadn't always been like that! When we met, she was more than just a stunningly beautiful young woman, she was smart, humorous, vivacious, a bit cheeky, a bit flirtatious, but not too much – we both instantly fell in love. Bellatrix was the great, the only love of my life. She was everything to me. Even the horrible caricature of herself that was left of her at the end, I still loved. I loved her – and yet I allowed Voldemort to destroy her soul. I didn't protect her!"
He propped his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. What he had kept bottled up for years came rushing out with force.
"I didn't protect her!"
The old man's body shook for minutes with silent sobs as he struggled for composure, his face still hidden in his hands. Finally, he took a few deep breaths and straightened up again.
"Excuse me."
"You don't have to apologise," said Julian, who in turn was visibly struggling to deal with his shock. "I'm your grandson, who do you want to talk to about this if not me? And I think you are too merciless with yourself. You were under a curse yourself ..."
"Yes, you are my grandson, but it is not in the nature of things that grandchildren have to comfort their grandfathers. It should be the other way round! Besides, I shouldn't have given Voldemort the chance to enter my soul at all. You know: This kind of curse only works on those who are willing to be manipulated. Yes, I was a victim of this curse, but not an innocent victim, because it's the only curse where there is no such thing as innocent victims."
He now looked at Roy, whose presence he had hardly noticed until now. "Excuse this spectacle, Roy, you must have a terrible impression."
Roy, whose eyes were also glinting, shook his head. "I would have a bad impression if it didn't distress you."
Each of them sipped their tea, silent.
"We would have to find out a lot more about this curse," Julian finally resumed the conversation. "We believe that any unknown Dark wizard is hexing the Minister for Magic." He described their observations of the last few weeks to his grandfather. "Harry Potter who knows her very well says ..."
"Potter?", interrupted Rodolphus. "What do you have to do with him?"
"His son Albus is a Slytherin and our friend. This is how the contact came about. Harry says he's observing increasingly abnormal behaviour in her, a fanaticism and intolerance he never noticed before. The last time they met, we were there. That was when she fired him. She suddenly seemed to become a different person."
"Yes, I heard that Potter has been ousted, however, I haven't attached any importance to it so far." Rodolphus pondered. "Well, if this is the case, it would fit exactly with what the Dark Lord told us. He used to take control only sporadically at first, and only when necessary, then more and more frequently and systematically, until he finally displaced the person's soul altogether."
"We suspect," Julian continued, "the Head of Security, Cesar Anderson, is the one bewitching her because he has the knowledge, motive and, as her permanent bodyguard, opportunity. However, we cannot prove it. Besides, Harry says it needn't necessarily be a living person, but the manipulation could also come from a magical object, a Horcrux, for example."
"Both would be possible if the Unknown learned his skills from the Dark Lord or obtained information about his methods."
He explained Voldemort's methods of penetration, which were disappointingly exactly the same as those Harry had described.
"Too bad," Roy said. "We were hoping you could tell us anything that might give us a clue as to how to break this curse."
"Well, my dear," said Rodolphus, scratching his head thoughtfully. "I'm afraid if the Unknown has mastered the lord's methods, there's no cure for that. Of course, if you killed the Minister, the person in question would lose his power, but she herself would be dead, too. To her soul, that might be better than slowly dying, but you'd have to be cold-blooded killers to do it, and you aren't. And as one who has been, all I can tell you is to be glad about it."
"But assuming ... well just assuming that we were to get hold of the Minister ..." began Julian, while his grandfather raised his eyebrows in amazement, "could there be a way to neutralise the Dark wizard and his curse then?"
Julian didn't want to tell his grandfather that the kidnapping plan had long been made, but the latter understood that the question was not meant merely theoretically. Rodolphus gave a low whistle and nodded his head appreciatively.
"Wow, you've got guts!" he said, pondering. "So just assuming you had Harry Potter on your side in this plan as well, you may have some chance of success, otherwise you haven't. Potter defeated the Lord himself, he'll probably cope with any epigone too. However, how to do it is something he will have to find out for himself, I can't give you any instructions, not even any hints. This curse is diabolically ingenious, Voldemort himself was firmly convinced that there was neither a counter-curse nor any other remedy."
"Please, Grandpa, think. Didn't Voldemort leave at least a little hint of what to look for?"
"Hummm," grumbled the old man, fixing an imaginary distant point. "Two souls in one person ... and you just want to take out the penetrating evil soul and spare the other ..."
He narrowed his eyes and looked intensely at the ceiling.
"There might be something ... Voldemort mentioned it once ..."
The boys were looking at him expectantly.
"More than a vague hint, however, it isn't. Voldemort was obsessed with anything that had to do with Salazar Slytherin – he believed himself to be his heir – and he collected not only written records, of which there are unfortunately not many, but also legends and oral traditions. During his time as an assistant at Borgin & Burkes, he made extensive investigations. He told us that according to legend, Slytherin had left behind two magical weapons, a dark weapon of destruction and a light one of healing – that is, one able to break every curse and heal every soul, effective exclusively, but irresistibly, against Evil. This would be in harmony with what we know fragmentarily about Slytherin's philosophy of magic. Slytherins ideas were dualistic, he was imbued with the idea that the light and dark sides of magic had to be in some kind of balance."
"And what kind of weapons were they?" asked Roy curiously.
"The dark weapon was the Basilisk he walled in at Hogwarts," said Rodolphus, "the light one – well, even Voldemort didn't know that. I don't think he really cared. Healing wasn't something he felt responsible for."
"What could it have been?" Julian had leaned far forward. "Maybe something like the Gryffindor sword?"
Rodolphus shrugged. "It could be anything – a weapon like the Gryffindor sword, an animal like the Basilisk, but just as easily a plant, a potion or a magical item. Two things, however, are considered certain: Just as the Gryffindor sword can only be wielded by a Gryffindor, Slytherin's weapons only serve Slytherins. And the weapon must be at Hogwarts."
A thoughtful silence followed.
"I guess we'd have to go back to the Restricted Section for a clue," Roy said.
"Do so," Rodolphus replied, "but don't expect too much from it. If Voldemort, who knew the inventory of the Restricted Section better than anyone, didn't find it, you probably won't find anything either, as new books on the subject are unlikely to have been published in the last seventy years."
"We'll ask Harry," Julian said. "Maybe he knows something that didn't make sense to him before, but does under this new aspect. Admittedly a vague hope."
Now, at last, the conversation turned to private subjects, which were far more important to both Lestranges at that moment than Voldemort and the Minister for Magic. It took several hours.
After leaving Rodolphus' house shortly after midnight, Julian and Roy did not Disapparate immediately, but by tacit agreement began to roam the deserted streets of nighttime Edinburgh, regardless of the still-biting wind.
Neither of them said a word until they passed a petrol station whose tenant was busy stuffing into a bin bag the last of the cheap bouquets of flowers with which he had boosted his Sunday business a little.
"Excuse me," Roy called, "could I have one of those?"
The petrol station owner looked at him roughly like a doctor for the insane was supposed to look at his patient.
"What do you want to do with that now?"
Indeed, the bouquets, which had certainly looked a little shabby right from the start, were now finally ruined by the storm and the cold.
"Oh, I'll have some ideas," Roy grinned. "So may I?"
"If it makes you happy – or maybe your rabbits – take as much as you want!"
Roy took half a dozen bouquets. Some distance from the petrol station, he took out his wand and, using the flower spell he had learned from Julian, transfigurated them into a dream of colours and shapes.
"I'll magic it to Arabella's bedside so that it's the first thing she sees when waking up tomorrow."
Julian smiled. "Arabella does you good. Since she's your girlfriend, you are much more cheerful and relaxed than before. Anyone can see how happy you are."
Roy became serious. "I owe that to you. Without your kick in the butt, I would have kept running away from her and from my feelings."
"What do you have friends for?", Julian replied modestly.
Roy stopped and earnestly looked at him. "Let me tell you something: Virtually everyone has friends. But I think few have a friend like you."
"Thank you!" Julian was obviously flattered. "But you, too, are a friend not everyone has. In any case, I am very grateful to you for coming along today. I'm well aware that you'd have preferred to spend the evening with her."
"I think," Roy said thoughtfully, "the lesson I learned from that evening was worth it."
"What do you mean?"
"You told me the other day that you wanted to save me from being one of those sad figures who, as old men, are pondering what they should have done in their youth. – Your grandfather could talk about anything, even murder and torture. I'm sure he's deeply regretting what he did, but it's not tormenting him. What does torment him is what he has done – only by omission – to Bellatrix! For me it was an aha moment: Even a murderer gets over his deeds more easily than one who has betrayed a great love. When I saw your grandfather break down, I understood what you have saved me from. Thank you for that."