Merit and Inheritance
Chapter Fourteen
Some Comings and Goings
Harry thought through their situation. If Romilda was going to need support from a healer, she would be in contact with the Ministry of Magic health service bureaucracy, which meant appearing in health records, which could in turn bring her location to light. He judged the system in use in Magical Britain would probably not be useful to the Bergs who were unfamiliar with local conditions. Even so, Romilda would be wise to blend with the local scene. The cube Harry was carrying in the pocket of his robe was evidence of that.
Staying in London might not be best, because the anonymity of crowds was counterbalanced by Dieter Berg's relative ease making the connection between Romilda and Harry, not to mention the cryptic reference to Berg 'family correspondents.' Thus they'd need to reduce the likelihood of proximity to family correspondents. Harry made a mental note to settle up with the correspondents, should any of them come to light.
Harry went back to Romilda's mention of blending in with muggles. Where to go to do that? He had a thought.
"Romilda, have you ever been to Blackpool?" Harry asked.
"Just once, why?" asked Romilda.
"Muggles and crowds of transients," said Harry. "Excellent for blending-in. Holiday hotels and guest houses. There's a caravan park where you can rent, all set up, cooking and sanitary there in the unit. The only thing is you'd need to use muggle life skills. Could you do that for a week? It would give us a chance to see if there are more of your in-laws around. We could probably find someone to stay nearby and keep an eye on you."
He looked at Pansy, who rolled her eyes.
"I could do that," said Romilda. "Can I go back to my room for my things?"
"The muggle hotel near the Oxford High Street?" Harry asked.
"Yes," said Romilda. "I had expected to stay through checkout tomorrow."
"It all fits in your rucksack? Or it would with a shrinking charm?"
"Of course," said Romilda.
"Right, let's think through that," Harry said. "Is there is a lobby bar with a view of the lifts? A muggle business traveler, some kind of mid-Atlantic cypher, could sit there and watch comings and goings. If a traveling couple came in and used the lifts, went up, came down five minutes later, the cypher could watch their backs to the entrance. Meet at an agreed place and disapparate."
"Who's who?" asked Pansy.
"I'm the cypher," said Harry. "I think you're the missus, and Romilda will be Mr. Traveler."
No one had an issue so they set to work with wands, modifying clothing, hair styles and coloring.
Harry took off his robe to change it into a suit jacket. He considered leaving Dieter Berg there to guard the entrance to the lake chamber before deciding to take him along. Harry didn't know the end state of his family's transformation of Dieter into a knickknack. If Dieter suddenly transformed back to full size, or the petrification hex faded, everyone's interests might be better served if Harry were close by. Soon they were ready for their return to London, to a discreet apparition point tucked away behind a little grove in Hyde Park.
It was a short walk up a fairly direct path from the apparition point to the edge of the park. The hotel was a bit further on, but not much.
"Harry," said Pansy.
They stood across from the hotel waiting for a WALK signal.
"Uh-huh?"
"When we leave, out the door, turn right to the corner, and there is an alleyway to the right, where the hotel's wall ends," Pansy said. "See it?"
"Meet there?" asked Harry.
"Yes, I think so," said Pansy.
All three nodded.
"If we get in a fight or broken up somehow, try to get to Hogsmeade, to the Three Broomsticks. Get a room upstairs, if Rosmerta has any. She usually does. We'll reorganize there," said Harry. He looked at Pansy, then Romilda. Both nodded.
Harry went ahead. He passed through the revolving door to the street, went on into the lobby, looked around like a traveler meeting his local contact. He checked his watch. The contact must be running late. The traveler walked to the lobby bar, chose a seat where he could keep an eye on comings and goings. He spotted a left-behind newspaper and took a section to read while he waited.
Harry had ordered, and was waiting for the server to return with a large muggle soft drink, with a lemon wedge, when the out-of-town couple entered the lobby. Harry went over his work with a craftsman's eye. He didn't know what anyone else thought, but they looked to him like a couple of visitors coming back from museum stops and restaurant meals. He thought the gentleman half of the couple looked convincing, considering the raw material was a very female witch in her mid-twenties. They went to the elevator bank and pushed the button in the brass surround. Harry sipped his drink and watched the door open for the couple. The door was closing when a dark-haired woman, very thin, of medium height, stepped in front and put her arm out.
"Where did she come from?" Harry asked himself.
The door stopped and went back into the open position. The woman stepped into the car, taking a place in the far right corner. The door took its time closing.
"Damn!" Harry thought. He'd had to make a decision on an issue with potentially far-reaching consequences with no time to think. He decided, even if the woman looked Italian, and was a suspect member of the Berg clan, she'd gotten in the elevator with two fully-qualified, ornery witches. He didn't worry about his friends. He hoped Ms. Berg, if that was who she was, had the sense of self-preservation necessary to refrain from getting aggressive in such close quarters. Harry touched the side pocket of his suit jacket and felt the cube.
It was too late to do anything about it. With luck the stranger was just another random traveler headed back to her room.
Harry looked at his watch. Romilda assured him she wouldn't need more than three or four minutes in the room. A minute up and a minute down, more or less, and he should see the witches coming out of the elevator. Harry used his time to consider possibilities. He could competently cast silently and wandlessly, although he was more adept at some spells than others. He was very good with a silent, wandless 'Accio!'
Just to be prepared, Harry drew his wand from his sleeve and held it, concealed in his folded-over newspaper. He looked around, visualizing his imaginary contact coming in through the revolving door, exiting the men's room over there by the literature rack, perhaps sitting at the car rental desk. The guy still hadn't shown up. Harry spotted two men who looked out of place, though. Both had short hair, wore undistinguished suits and bad neckties. Something stuck out. It wasn't the suits, even though they were in London, the world's lodestone for fine men's tailoring. One of the misfits shuffled his feet. Of course! They wore the same boots Dieter Berg had on.
"Oh," Harry thought. "It gets more interesting."
Two men in rain coats and felt hats were crossing the lobby.
Lots of men wear raincoats as a contingency in changeable weather. Those raincoats are fairly short, ending four to six inches below the tail of a suit jacket, letting the commuter dash to the train or slide in and out of an automobile seat. The men crossing the lobby wore long models, below the knee, close to mid-calf, one a double-breasted camel colored trench coat, the other all leather. Those men were aurors.
Harry wondered if the aurors planned to roust the Bergs, or Berg allies. Once he'd figured out the boots, Harry had no doubt that was who they were. The aurors took their time. They didn't make sudden movements unnecessarily. They tried to avoid upsetting magicals because that could cause an accidental magical event of some kind, leading to report writing and magical repair. A few muggle law enforcement types were briefed on the aurors and could generally spot them, and muggle law enforcement could react unpredictably in the presence of aurors and misbehaving wizards. When in muggle territory, the auror's job was to shut down magic before it became an issue, quickly, silently, and if possible, invisibly.
Harry leaned back in his chair. He took another look at his watch. It had been four minutes and fifteen seconds since the elevator door closed on the witches. The aurors walked slowly toward the two men on the sofa, who seemed to have alerted to the unwelcome attention. One leaned toward the other, who frowned and gave his head a single shake. He raised a newspaper. The aurors might not have had any interest in the two men, or in anything in particular. They walked slowly, turning their heads toward one another now and then, talking as they crossed the lobby.
Harry was watching as the elevator door opened. Pansy and Romilda stepped out and turned straight for the revolving door that led to the street. The woman who followed them into the car on the way upstairs was nowhere to be seen. The two men on the couch stood up just as the aurors arrived. They sidestepped, and the aurors mirrored their movement. An auror raised one hand a few degrees and spoke once. The men stopped moving and looked confused. Harry hypothesized they had both been treated to a confundus, or perhaps an imperious.
Noticing movement from across the lobby, Harry turned his attention back to the elevators. The woman he had seen before popped out of the car next to Pansy and Romilda's. She saw them immediately and turned after them. Harry saw the woman reaching into a canvas tote. She glanced toward the two men, broke her stride for a beat, then turned back toward the witches. Harry stood, taking his paper, and headed across the lobby on an angle to the woman's course. The woman wasn't subtle. Romilda and Pansy were suddenly doves and the mystery woman was their peregrine. Harry was ready when the woman's hand cleared her bag, holding her wand.
"Accio!" Harry thought, visualizing the wand flying into his hand. Catching the wand without missing a step, Harry moved on the woman just as she turned slightly, apparently looking for her missing wand.
"Darling, there you are," Harry said, smiling as he let her feel the tip of her own wand in her back. "I found the most incredible place for dinner, you're going to love it!"
Harry dropped his hand but stayed close. He bumped the woman's left shoulder lightly with his right, just to let her know he was there.
Despite their plan, the witches had stopped a few yards outside the door, just out of the way, in the direction of the corner. The gentleman traveler, Romilda, shot the witch a look.
"Luciana!" said the gentleman. "Just in time. We're off to dinner at La Cueva. Of course you'll join us!"
Romilda/Mr. Traveler slipped her arm under the stranger's and turned at the corner, continuing to the alley they'd seen earlier.
"What is this La Cueva? Where are you taking me? I know who you are, you're a whore, in disguise!" said the woman.
"Welcome to Britain, Madam," said Harry. "We hope you enjoy your stay with us!"
"Can you two navigate back to La Cueva?" Harry asked.
"Oh, certainly," said Pansy. "I remember it well."
"Wonderful!" said Harry. "Madam and I will see you there."
Harry and Madam popped into existence on the tiny strip of sand at the mouth of the cave.
"Inside, quick," Harry said, encouraging the woman with a grip on her upper arm. They had no sooner stepped off the sand when the woman began to rant.
"Where have you taken me, you kidnapper? There are two good men watching my back, they are probably killing the whore and her whore-dog-robber right now and they'll be here to kill you any second," said the woman, declining to engage in a civil debate.
Pansy and Romilda popped into existence on the tiny sand strip and hurried inside.
"Madam," Romilda said in greeting, still in her Tourist Man guise. Harry was pleased to see she was not using names just yet. Once the subject knows a name it's hard to take it back. If you have to make sure the name never leaks, there is only one way to do that.
"May I?" Harry asked. Romilda and Pansy nodded.
"Madam, your name, please?"
No response.
"Please state your name."
The woman was silent.
"Well, then, we'll give you a name," said Harry. "How about Romilda?"
"You will never call me Romilda nor will I answer if you do! That is a whore's name. A murdering whore's name! She killed my husband, the murdering whore!"
She sat silent again. Romilda looked ready to speak, but Harry held up his hand, cutting her off.
"You give me no choice. Throughout your interrogation we will have to address you as Romilda. Romilda Berg, I think," said Harry.
"Never!" screamed the woman. "My name is Marcella, Marcella Berg, and that murdering whore killed my husband."
She spat a good load on the floor of the cave.
"Then who was Romilda Berg?" Harry asked.
The woman swelled up and howled.
"She was a murdering whore who my father-in-law fancied. She plied him with her whore sex. She convinced him he was young again, he could perform as a man. He fell for her like a schoolboy. He sat under our grape vines and told my husband what she would do in their bed at night. Nasty things. Indecent. He was an old man, too old to be thinking about young women. She promised him a baby, a man can father a child at any age, she said. He was taking her to bed at seven-thirty, eight o'clock. He had been unable to complete the act for decades and she worked and worked and found ways to get him to the finish. He'd tell my poor husband about it the next day, sitting under the grapes and sipping his glass of wine. It drove my husband crazy."
Marcella stopped to catch her breath. She was panting like a dog. It was very humid inside the cave. Something luminescent, a lichen or similar, glowed its greenish glow from the sweating cave walls. The temperature had dropped with the onset of darkness but the moisture made the air feel thick.
"My husband, Derek Berg, was a good man. He was a good husband to me, before the whore drove him crazy. He would inherit his father's title when my father-in-law finished his course and we planned to live out our lives together, quietly. When the time came our portraits would be hung over the family's main dining table."
"Where was that, Madam Marcella?" asked Harry in his most solicitous tones.
"It is a valley, high up in the mountains, near where Switzerland and Italy meet," said Marcella.
"Does it have a name?" Harry asked.
"It's very old," said Marcella. "An ancient principality. We survive by avoiding attention. The family just call it Our Place."
"Everyone is magical?" Harry asked. "Either a witch or a wizard?"
"Of course!" said Marcella. "Everyone must contribute in a situation like ours. If we want to survive and be free, there is no provision for a murdering whore!"
Marcella's emotional entanglements, her hopeless situation in the cave, her identification of the woman who she was convinced was bent on stealing her husband, and who then had killed him, the loss of her backup from the hotel lobby, all combined to put her into hysterics. She cried, sobbed, threw herself onto the rock floor of the cave. Harry let her work it out in her own good time. When Pansy or Romilda moved or seemed to want to speak, Harry held up his hand. Gradually, the screaming gave way to sobbing, which descended into whimpering.
"Derek, Derek," Marcella moaned, over and over.
"Madam Marcella, why are you here?" asked Harry. "If your enemy is out of your life? No longer in the principality? An English witch, regardless of how she originally came to your place, not really one of the family, just a young widow adrift…She left and got out of your way of her own volition. Well, it's unlikely she'd be coming back to bother a powerful, secluded family such as your own. Your entire principality would be hostile to her, wouldn't it? She'd have no place there."
"She is an outsider who came to our place, lived among us, and now wants to leave? Never!" shouted Marcella. "She will talk, the neighbors will want the valley, they will bring the mercenaries. It has happened again and again. Read your history. No, there is a law. For our family to survive, the whore cannot be allowed to live."
Marcella sprang from her crouching position, a dagger in her right hand, and lunged for the still Mr. Traveler, a.k.a. Romilda. Harry grabbed for her wrist with his left hand, getting instead a handful of dagger blade directly on his palm.
Screams, shouts and tussling ensued. Pansy worked her way around behind Marcella and punched her once behind her left ear. It was a good punch, in that it was accurate. Pansy's first two knuckles contacted Marcella's mastoid and Marcella flopped on the cave floor, then didn't move again.
"Good one," said Harry. "Didn't even need magic."
Romilda looked like she was about to be sick.
"Let me see your hand, Harry," said Pansy. "I don't carry any dittany but I can charm the wound and stop the bleeding. You need to take that hand to St. Mungo's anyway. The blade could have been dipped in something."
"True," said Harry. "Give me a minute."
He turned to Romilda.
"There are some discrepancies. She told it her way, of course. Anything you want to dispute?"
"No," said Romilda. She sounded a little defiant. Some water formed a droplet on the ceiling and fell into a pool. Plunk!
"I didn't know about my husband's pastime, telling his son about our private life," Romilda went on. "If Derek carried tales as well, that explains a lot. Why didn't she bring it to me? I'd have found a way to get Lorenzo to stop. The old baron. Baron Lorenzo. His hero was Lorenzo di Medici. He was very proud to share the name."
Despite her overall bad experience at Our Place, Romilda smiled when she spoke of Baron Lorenzo.
"Will she keep coming after you?" Harry asked.
"Right now, tonight, I think she would say, 'Yes,'" said Romilda. "She could always get tired or discouraged or homesick tomorrow and go on back."
"Everyone's magical at their place?" Pansy asked.
"Yes, everyone," said Romilda.
"They must be really inbred," Pansy said, shaking her head. "Sounds like they're hostile to outsiders. Why don't they die out?"
"Lorenzo tried to tell me, when he was still lucid, how they kept track of who could marry whom and who couldn't," Romilda said. "The immediate neighbors won't interact with them at all, so they occasionally buy a spouse, generally a bride, from outside. The average person lives to one hundred or so, which means they have to keep the birthrate down. Trade brings attention. They work through cutouts of various kinds. That's the primary consideration in everything. Concealment from the outside world. Right after that is managing the food supply. But yes, they are really inbred."
"As we know from our own experience, without new blood, the magical families start producing oddities. Anomalies. Squibs, for instance," said Harry.
Romilda looked like she was alarmed about something.
"What?" Harry asked.
"Can we not go into that?" Romilda pleaded.
Pansy read Romilda in an instant.
"Oh, no, Romilda, you don't, they can't! That is evil, the purest kind of evil," she wailed.
"They do," said Romilda, and she began to cry.
"You know, for a fact?" asked Pansy, her voice barely audible.
Romilda nodded. Harry still hadn't caught on. He looked at Pansy, seeking an answer.
"The legend? The banquet? It's still going on, and they obsess about privacy and the food supply," Pansy muttered.
Marcella stirred. The others had been talking and hadn't noticed her blinking, then opening her eyes.
"You can't be allowed to live abroad, you foreign murdering whore," said Marcella. "You will face your fate sooner or later."
She turned to Harry.
"You seem to be in charge," she said. "Are you going to kill me? State your name. If you have any honor I have a right to know."
"No, I'm not going to kill you," Harry said. He stepped in front of the rock wall and laid his bleeding hand flat against the stone.
"My name is Harry James Potter, Lord Potter and Lord Black, Heir of Ignotus Peverell, Heir of Salazar Slytherin, Order of Merlin."
The rock parted and the sides pulled apart. Marcella looked into the darkness.
"Are you taking me in there to kill me?" she asked.
"I told you I'm not going to kill you," said Harry, then, to Pansy and Romilda: "You two stay out here."
"What is this place?" demanded Marcella. "There is so much magic here. And it is Dark. Very Dark. Are you responsible for this magic? Are you some kind of abomination?"
"I am an Heir," Harry said. "All of this around you is something I inherited. The one who made it left it to me."
He took Marcella's wrist and put her arm behind her back. For seventy, plus or minus, she was nimble, and deceptively strong. Harry got a grip on her thumb, a kind of submission hold, and directed her inside. There was the lake, looking just as it had when Harry had been there on the last night of Albus Dumbledore's life. Harry went to the water's edge and raised his wand.
"LUMOS!" he called out. His holly wand lit up the cavern. Harry could see the sunken boat begin to rise. A light shone on a column placed on a rock that broke the surface some distance across the water.
Harry put his wand to his throat.
"Regulus Arcturus Black!" sounded out, bounced off the back of the cave, and returned. The enchanted boat beached itself on the rock for boarding and Harry put Marcella in, motioning for her to sit. He stepped in and kicked off with his trailing foot. The boat directed itself to the rocky isle.
"Regulus Arcturus Black!" Harry called out again. The echo dislodged some loose rocks overhead. They struck the surface of the lake a little distance away, the ripples spreading, just visible in the minimal light.
Marcella sat quietly. She might have been resigned to her fate, execution or torture or something she couldn't imagine. Harry doubted it. The Bergs were survivors. They hadn't become evil all at once. They interacted with an environment. They found a way to stay alive high in the mountains, distrusted and reviled by the people down below, people who had no idea what it took to fight nature and their fellow humans all the time.
The Bergs cultivated isolation, fetishized it, kept their ancient language alive to speak among themselves, all to stay off others' agendas for conquest. Their survival strategy led them down some curious paths. They developed unique perspectives and took positions on things the outside world could never accept. Eventually their adaptations made them unassimilable. They knew they would never be able to explain their ways, even to other magicals. Better to stay hidden, to stay at Our Place, strictly observing the iron laws that ensured the survival of the Berg family.
The boat creaked when it touched the rock. All was as Harry remembered. The column, the basin, the shell for drinking. Harry stepped onto the rock and pulled Marcella ashore. He was alert, vibrating, any slip would mean death, then he'd be no good to anyone. Harry looked in the basin. It was full of liquid. Was it the same potion? Was Voldemort's magic still working, trying to protect Salazar Slytherin's locket? Faces, dead faces, were floating up just beneath the surface of the lake.
Harry touched the tip of his little finger to the surface of the liquid in the basin. He raised his finger to his nose and sniffed. There was a scent, of something. The liquid wasn't water. He touched his fingertip to his tongue. Dangerous, but he had to be sure. Harry gagged immediately. He flashed on his last trip to the cave, saw Dumbledore's face again, the kindly headmaster gone and replaced by the face of a soul in Hell. What commitment, to drink the potion from the basin to get to the horror at the bottom. It was never pleasant when Harry awoke in the middle of the night, because in the dreams he was always reliving the terrors of his youth. The dream of the cave and the rocky isle and Dumbledore's face was the worst.
Harry reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out the cube that contained the shrunken, petrified Dieter Berg. Dropping the cube into the potion-filled basin, Harry turned to Marcella.
"Madam Marcella, the figure inside the cube may be of help, if you work together to get back to your mountain. If you are successful, please go back and never leave. The world outside is closed to you. Do you understand? Never set foot in Britain again. If you return to Your Place, I won't come hunting for you or your family, as long as you stay there," Harry said.
An infieri stepped onto the rock.
"Were you Regulus Arcturus Black when you lived?" Harry asked, keeping his wand ready to blast the infieri back into the lake if necessary.
The thing nodded once.
"Would you like to rejoin your brother, Sirius? I believe I know a way," Harry said.
The infieri nodded again.
"Get in," Harry said, waving toward the enchanted boat. The two of them were conveyed back to the entrance. Harry looked back at the little island, keeping his eyes on Marcella as they moved across the surface of the lake. She began by reaching into the basin, removing her hand to find it empty, reaching in again, with the same result, reaching…
"I thought I told you to stay outside," said Harry. Of course the witches had come inside. Who knew when they'd be back? It was unrealistic to expect witches to miss something like the boat, the lake, the infieri. Mr. Traveler was missing and Romilda stood next to Pansy, so one of the witches had reversed Harry's transfiguration.
"This is the late Regulus Black, who would be Lord Black now if he hadn't been the subject of some very unfortunate magic. Regulus, these are Pansy and Romilda."
The rock opening had closed but Harry's wounded hand was still weeping so another touch and the rock parted as before. Harry walked straight to the mouth of the cave and motioned for Regulus.
"Kreacher!" he called. A moment passed. Harry stared at the breakers hitting the rocks, wondering why watching waves never got old.
Kreacher popped into existence.
"Let's sit," said Harry. He sat on a flat spot on a boulder at the mouth of the cave, waving Kreacher toward a similar outcrop across the opening from Harry.
"The thing you see is an infieri, do you know what those are?" Harry asked.
"Yes, master, you told Kreacher once that Master Regulus became an infieri," Kreacher said.
"Yes indeed, very good, Kreacher," said Harry. "This is the cave where you last saw Master Regulus. This infieri says that he was your master when he lived. Can you look him over carefully? Can you tell, by sight or with elf magic, if that is true?"
"Kreacher will look," croaked the old elf. Harry watched as Kreacher inspected the infieri, looking for some clue that would tell him definitively, one way or the other, if this was Regulus, the Black Heir he was meant to serve.
Slowly, slowly, the infieri raised his hand. His dead eyes stared at Kreacher. They were dead, but just the same, it was apparent the eyes were seeing. Hand held out, the infieri looked down, then back at Kreacher.
"Master Regulus' ring!" Kreacher shouted. "He wears Master Regulus' signet ring."
Harry looked and saw that the infieri's hand did have a ring, a junior version of Lord Black's signet, which Harry was wearing on his left hand. Harry swept his hand through the air to get rid of some of the blood, then held his hand out so Regulus could see the Black crest on his ring.
"Right," said Harry. "Here is what I want you to do. Please take Master Regulus home to #12. Make him comfortable somewhere. The basement, I think, he'll feel secure there. I will be getting in touch with someone about doing things properly for Master Regulus."
Harry had no idea if it was possible to do things properly for a reanimated corpse, but he had one idea that he was sure would work, as long as small minds and bureaucracy didn't get in his way.
"Understand?" Harry asked. Kreacher nodded, took Regulus' infieri in hand and disapparated.