Chapter 9
The House of Gaunt
A week after that day, I was hanging around Nightshade's tree (a secret hangout founded by me and Ivy for the 'Golden Quartet' the friendship of me, the Slytherin; Ivy, the Gryffindor; Sheila Alexander, the Ravenclaw; and Ramona 'She-Cat' Capodebt, the Hufflepuff.) with Ivy, Sheila and Ramona. I had just told them about mine and Harry's lessons with Dumbledore.
"And you kept that quiet?!" Ivy demanded, cracking open a can from the twelve pack of Coke I brought along with me.
"Yeah…didn't find it all that important." I said innocently, grabbing an Oreo (from which I brought a pack with me to Nightshade's.).
"Lessons with Dumbledore…that isn't not important!" Sheila squealed "You'll be having private lessons with the Headmaster? Do you think it concerns the prophecy about your brother? Why would Dumbledore want you, then? It seems to be that Harry's the one that's been chosen to destroy You-Know-Who, why would he want you? You're just Harry's sister, and nobody knows if you were mentioned in the prophecy."
I huffed and crumpled the note that Jack Sloper, a Beater from the previous term's Gryffindor Quidditch team gave me. Did nobody in Hogwarts know that I was a person too? It wasn't just about Harry…did anyone besides Draco care about me?
"Whatever." I said, getting up "I gotta go, or I'll be late for the lesson. Tell you about it later. Meet me in here tomorrow." I said, walking out.
"See you, Hannah!" Ivy, Nightshade, Sheila and She-Cat said to my back.
I walked back into the castle and rounded the corner to Dumbledore's office when I heard something on the seventh floor corridor.
"Harmonia Nectere Passus." a male voice said through the wall.
I gulped and saw that the only person in the corridor with me was a little first year girl that was holding some brass scales, which she dropped immediately, from what I thought was fright.
"Oh, sorry, did I startle you?" I asked, drawing my wand. "Here, let me get that. Reparo." I said, tapping the ruined scales with my wand, where the scales mended themselves.
I levitated the scales up into my hand (I just loved telekinesis.) and handed them back to the little girl.
"Thanks." the girl said quietly.
"You're welcome." I said, walking away and heading to Dumbledore's office, where Harry stood waiting for me.
"Hey, sis." Harry said stiffly. "Acid Pops." he added to the gargoyle outside Dumbledore's office, which sprung to life and jumped aside.
"Hi, Harry." I said, following him up the spiral staircase and up to a doorknocker, which I used to knock three times.
"Come in!" Dumbledore's voice called from the desk.
I opened the door and pushed Harry in after two minutes of him standing there like a post. "Don't be shy, ass wipe!" I said, walking in behind him and closing the office door.
"Ah, good evening, Harry, Hannah. How have your first week of lessons gone so far?" Dumbledore asked, looking up at me and Harry.
I smirked "Very well, sir." I said.
"Have you been having fun with your so-called 'Best. Inheritance. Ever'?" Dumbledore asked, quoting me from the summer.
I gasped "I completely forgot I had Kreacher to myself now!" I squealed in delight "Oh, this is going to be a good year!" I said evilly.
"And Harry, I trust you've been busy. A detention under your belt already!" Dumbledore said brightly, turning to Harry.
I gave Harry a dark look, remembering Harry mouthing off in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Harry began to feel uncomfortable.
"I have arranged for Professor Snape for you to do your detention next Saturday instead." Dumbledore said, not as brightly but still cheerfully. "Now, as for these lessons -"
"Uh, sir?" I asked timidly, putting my hand up "Are these lessons to do with the prophecy? Will the help Harry…and maybe me…to survive?" I asked.
Dumbledore smiled "Yes, Hannah. It has a very great deal to do with Harry's prophecy. And I'm very hopeful it will help you to survive." Dumbledore said, taking a Penseive out of one of the shelves in his office and setting it down in front of Harry and I.
I gulped, having been the only one of Harry and I not having experienced being in a Penseive before.
"This time, Harry, you will be entering the Penseive with me. And more strangely enough, with permission. Hannah, you shall accompany us for the first time." Dumbledore explained, taking a vial of silvery stuff and dumping it into the memory "These lessons will entail looking into memories of the past of Lord Voldemort. Our first memory…is that of Bob Ogden."
"Who was Bob Ogden?" Harry and I asked together.
"A former Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He died a few years ago, but not before I could find him and get this memory from him." Dumbledore said brightly "After you, Harry, Hannah."
Harry and I stuck our faces in the Penseive (me just following Harry's lead) and suddenly I found myself falling away from the office and onto a country road, with a weirdo man wearing a stripped one piece bathing costume and a frockcoat.
That was obviously Ogden, and he was setting off in the direction of the town of Little Hangleton, which, according to the sign Ogden was reading, was one mile away.
Harry, Dumbledore and I followed Ogden through the streets of the town, with an eerily familiar church and graveyard to my left, a courthouse to my right, and a strikingly handsome manor house up a hill.
Ogden turned into a large, ramshackle house, with bits of roof missing. The house looked as if it was once grand and expensive and an honour to live in. But then it looked as if it was just a refuge for homeless bums. And to tie the creepy look together, nailed to the door, was a dead snake.
"Ok, this is really creepy, let's bounce!" I said, starting to turn around when I heard a tree branch rustle and someone fall out of a tree next to me.
I gasped. The man's hair was so filthy it could have been any colour, his eyes were beady and dark and stared off in opposite directions, and in his hands, there was a short, bloody knife…and a wand.
I heard hissing coming from the scary man, and Ogden looked confused.
"Good morning, I'm from the Ministry of Magic and…" Ogden started.
More hissing.
"I'm sorry, I don't quite understand you." Ogden said sadly.
Dumbledore turned to Harry and I and smiled "You understand him, I think, Harry?"
Harry nodded, then turned to the snake on the door.
"He's speaking Parseltongue?" Harry asked.
I gasped. That was why I couldn't understand the man with the knife! He was speaking snake language!
The knife man was advancing on Ogden then, brandishing his knife and hexing Ogden, who fell backwards onto the ground, clutching his nose, from which yellowish goo was spurting.
"Morfin!" a loud voice said, coming out of the house.
The first sight of the elder man made me think of a large, powerful aged gorilla. His hair was grey, his face was saggy and wrinkled, his shoulders were broad and his arms overlong.
Gorilla-Man stood next to the weirdo with the knife, who was laughing at Ogden, who was still clutching his nose.
"Ministry, is it?" Gorilla-Man asked.
"That's right!" Ogden said angrily, shooting up from the ground as he dabbed his face "And you are Mr Gaunt, I presume?"
"'S right." Gorilla-Man said "Got you in the face, did he?"
"Yes," Ogden snapped "he did!"
Gorilla-Man sneered "Should've made your presence known, then. You can't just waltz over here and not expect my son to defend himself."
"Defend himself against what, man?" Ogden demanded.
"Busybodies. Intruders. Muggles and filth."
As Ogden did a counter-hex for the pus, Gorilla-Man spoke to Weirdo-Knife-Man from the corner of his mouth, and all I heard was hissing, but I read his mind, and he said:
"Get in the house, don't argue."
Weirdo-Knife-Man gave Gorilla-Man a look, then walked into the house, slamming the door and making the dead snake swing pathetically.
"It's your son I'm here to see, Mr Gaunt." Ogden said as he finished wiping the pus off his frockcoat. "That was Morfin, wasn't it?"
"Aye, that was Morfin." Gaunt said indifferently before saying aggressively "Are you pure-blood?"
"That's neither here nor there." Ogden said (my respect for him rising, though Mr Gaunt's attitude reminded me of Draco's.).
Gaunt squinted and looked into Ogden's face "Come to think of it," he sneered "I've seen noses like yours down in the village."
"I wouldn't be surprised, if your son's been set loose on them." Ogden said "Perhaps we should continue this conversation indoors?"
"Indoors?"
"Yes, Mr Gaunt, as I've told you, I'm here about Morfin. We've sent an owl -"
"I don't have use for owls." Gaunt snapped "I don't open letters."
I rolled my eyes as Ogden said the same thing I was thinking "Then you shouldn't complain about not having any warning of visitors." he said tartly "I am here following a severe breach of wizarding law that took place in the early hours of this morning -"
"All right, all right!" Gaunt said finally "Come in the bleeding house, the lot of good it'll do you."
As Harry and I entered the house, we saw only three rooms. A kitchen of grey stone, where a young woman was organizing pots and pans. A sitting room that also seemed to serve as the master bedroom and another room which seemed to serve as Morfin's room.
The young woman also had eyes staring off in opposite directions, and was around my complexion (remarkably pale.) and lank brown hair. She seemed to be cleaner than Mr Gaunt and Morfin, but she had the air of someone that looked completely defeated.
"My daughter, Merope." said Mr Gaunt, gesturing to the woman in the grey dress as Ogden stared at her.
"Good morning." Ogden said, receiving no answer.
Merope turned to her father and seemed to return back to her job,
"Now, Mr Gaunt, to get straight to the point, we have reason to believe that Morfin performed magic in front of a Muggle late last night." Ogden said, turning to Gaunt.
There was a sudden, heart stopping clang. Merope dropped a pot.
"PICK IT UP!" Gaunt bellowed. "That's it, grope on the floor like some filthy Muggle, what's your wand for, you useless sack of muck?"
I blinked. I completely felt Merope's pain with Gaunt. I had my own Gaunt for years…and his name was Vernon Dursley.
Merope lost her grip on the pot she just picked up and drew her wand from her pocket, muttering an incomprehensible spell, making the pot zoom to the other wall and crack in two.
Morfin giggled and Gaunt screamed "MEND IT, YOU POINTLESS LUMP! MEND IT!"
Merope hung her head and rushed to the pot, but Ogden raised his wand faster and said "Reparo." fixing the pot and returning it to Merope.
Merope's father seemed to want to shout at Ogden, but instead jeered at the poor woman "Lucky the nice man from the Ministry's here, isn't it? Maybe he'll take you off my hands. Maybe he doesn't mind dirty Squibs."
Merope rushed back into the kitchen without saying a word to anyone and returned the pot to the shelf, refusing to say another word.
"Now, Mr Gaunt, the reason for my visit…" Ogden started.
"I heard you the first time!" Gaunt snapped "And so what? Morfin gave a filthy Muggle what was coming to him, what of it?"
"Morfin has broken wizarding law." Ogden said.
"Morfin has broken wizarding law." Gaunt repeated in a pompous singsong voice. "He taught a stupid Muggle a lesson, that's illegal now, is it?"
"Yes, I'm afraid it is." Ogden said, pulling a scroll of parchment from his pocket and unfurling it.
"His sentence?" Gaunt demanded, looking livid.
"It's a summons to a Ministry hearing."
"Summons? SUMMONS!? Who do you think you are, summoning my son anywhere?" Gaunt demanded angrily. "I'm Head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad." Ogden said.
"And you think we're scum, do you?" Gaunt demanded "Scum who will rush to the Ministry when the tell them to? Do you know who you're talking to? Do you, you filthy Mudblood?"
"I was under the impression I was speaking to Mr Gaunt."
The rest became a complete violent blur, it was almost like a snippet out of my life with the Dursleys. Gaunt showed Ogden some ring with an old Peverell coat of arms on it, then suddenly rushed to Merope and dragged her to Ogden from the chain around her neck.
"SLYTHERIN'S!" Gaunt screamed "Salazar Slytherin's! We're his last living descendants, so what do you have to say about that, eh?" he added, letting Merope go, who went crawling back to the kitchen, gulping for air and massaging her throat.
After another tirade from Gaunt over ancestry and bloodlines, Ogden finally turned the conversation back to why he was there.
"I am here because of Morfin, our information tells me that Morfin performed a hex on a Muggle last night making him erupt in highly painful hives."
Morfin giggled.
I read Gaunt's mind and he was snarling in Parseltongue "Be quiet, boy.", making Morfin fall silent.
"So what if he did? I suppose you wiped the Muggle's filthy face clean, and his memory to boot?" Gaunt demanded.
"This is getting us nowhere. And it seems that Morfin is showing no remorse for his actions." Ogden said, opening the parchment "Morfin will attend a hearing on the fourteenth of September for using magic in the prescence of a Muggle and causing harm and distress to that same Muggle -"
Ogden broke off. The sound of horse hooves clip-clopping away from the house was growing louder.
"My God, what an eyesore!" a girl's voice shrieked loudly through the open window "Couldn't your father have that cleared away, Tom?"
"It's not ours." said a man's voice "The property is owned by a man called Gaunt and his children. The stories you'd hear about his son in the village."
The girl laughed and Morfin made to get out of his armchair, and after a warning glare from Gaunt, Morfin sat back down.
"Tom?" the girl said "I may be wrong, but has someone nailed a snake to the door?"
"Good Lord, you're right!" the man called Tom said "That'd be the son. I told you he wasn't right in the head. Don't look at it, Cecilia, darling."
I swallowed as dark looks were given from Gaunt to Morfin and Merope and teasing looks given to Merope from Morfin. And suddenly, it all made sense.
You filthy Squib! You rotten blood traitor! Gaunt was thinking, starting to strangle poor Merope.
I gave Harry a look and read what had gone on in his mind. Apparently, Merope had taken to looking at that Tom man that was in the carriage and Gaunt was mad that she fancied a Muggle.
Ogden tried to break up the squabble, but Morfin started shooting spells at him, making Ogden run away.
"I think this will do, twins." Dumbledore said as he took Harry and I by the elbow and tugged, and suddenly we were floating up towards the office again.
The first thing that came out of my mouth when I sat down was "What happened to Merope?"
"She survived." Dumbledore said smiling "Ogden went to get reinforcements to get Morfin and Gaunt. Morfin and Gaunt were both convicted, and Morfin received three years for his previous history of Muggle hexing and Marvolo received six months in Azkaban for injuring several Ministry employees, including Ogden."
"Marvolo?" Harry and I asked together.
"You mean to say that that man that attacked Ogden was…" I started.
"Voldemort's grandfather?" Harry and I finished together.
Dumbledore nodded and launched into an explanation over Marvolo Gaunt's daughter, Merope and how she managed to get Tom Riddle (the handsome youth on the carriage with the woman) to fall in love with her and get him to help her bear his child. She used a Love Potion on him, and kept giving it to him until she realized that she didn't want to enslave him by magical means, and stopped giving him the Potion.
Big mistake. Tom left her while she was still pregnant and returned to Little Hangleton, claiming he was 'hoodwinked' and 'lied to' repeatedly.
"Poor Merope." I said when Dumbledore was finished "She reminds me of…me." I said.
"With the Muggles abusing you?" Dumbledore asked "Like Marvolo attacked Merope all the time."
I swallowed and nodded. "Yes, sir." I said.
"That is all, Hannah, you may go." Dumbledore said "I'd much like to talk to Harry alone, if you don't mind."
I nodded, standing up "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." I said before walking out to go back to the dungeons.
…
I was in my Invisibility Cloak when I went into the dungeons and I heard four people arguing in the common room.
"You have to tell her!" Blaise's voice hissed.
"Yes, Malfoy, you'd be doing yourself a big favour by telling her now instead of waiting until she finds out herself. You almost had a close shave with her earlier!" Goyle's voice said.
"If you don't tell her, I will!" Pansy's voice snapped.
"Lay off!" Draco's voice ordered "She can't know this! If she finds out, she'll be in mortal jeopardy even more so than she is now!" he snapped "And Pansy, don't even think about telling her that I'm acting suspicious." he added, glowering at Pansy as I snuck down the stairs to watch the argument.
"Draco, not telling her will confuse her! She's already wondering what's going on with you, with you not going on patrols with her anymore!" Blaise snapped.
"Blaise, think in my point of view for a minute. Except she's Duff. If you were me, would you not want to keep Duff safe from them?"
Blaise scoffed, and nodded "But I'd still tell her what was going on!"
"Blaise…" Draco almost groaned "if she finds out what's going on, and what I am…she'll be as good as dead. She cannot know. If she does, it won't matter if I succeed or fail this, he will torture and kill her and make me watch."
"Malfoy, you still have to tell her where you're going." Goyle said stupidly.
"You lay off!" Draco snapped at Goyle "You are just here to do whatever I tell you to do. That goes for you two and Crabbe as well. And I'm telling you to hold your silence! Now, go to bed." Draco ordered.
Pansy, Blaise and Goyle looked at each other briefly before going up to their dorms.
I swallowed and walked back up into my dorms, crawling into bed and staring up at the canopy.
What was Draco talking about? And who was her? And why was she in mortal jeopardy?
Then it hit me like a hockey puck to the head.
Her was me.
I was the girl in mortal danger!
But the main questions were.
What was I in danger from? And:
Why was/were they after me?
A/N: Duh, duh, duh! R+R please! Sorry for the hiatus, but I had a busy week with choir practice for the Rememberance Day stuff in my hometown, so I had to postpone my chapter writing for a while. Oh, but I was able to get a new Forum up! Look me up, it's the Potter Twins normal life. If you want to be a part of it, feel free to PM me or post in it and tell me which Cannon character (or submit an OC) you want to play/audition for. And…Hannah's going to be going to the Christmas party. Draco obviously won't be going with her. So who do you think she should go with? Seamus? Ron? Neville? Any ideas are loved for a date. And what sort of dress should Hannah wear? Ideas are greatly welcomed and I can't wait to read reviews!
A Proud Member of Slytherin House
DownWithDeathEaters
Alias Hannah Lillian Isabella Marie Potter and the Dark Lady Happy Pants. :)
