Chapter One: Who Are You?
Grimmauld Place, December 1st, 2000.
Alice Fenwick severely underestimated Harry Potter when he briefed her on the state of the house.
In that place there was an overwhelming amount of cursed items, doxies, boggarts, spiders, mice and junk that was beyond anything she handled before in a townhouse. And back home she had redone a fair share of those.
Two years before - when the great war was finally over and Lord Voldemort was defeated for good - her parents moved back to the UK to open up a branch of their family's magical home restoration business.
It was a rather tricky situation. On one hand Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick longed to be back to their home country, and on the other, their children did not know what to expect. Yes, they were British, but America was the only home they remembered. Despite their children's resistance, the couple saw a huge business opportunity in helping families all over the country rebuild their homes. It would be both profitable and useful to their contrymen and women who had lost everything to Lord Voldemort and his followers.
At first Alice decided to stay behind, feeling hesitant to leave and feel so uprooted.
Truth to be told, she had faced too many changes at once, and another big one felt like too much, too soon.
So she ran the business in Washington D.C by herself with a great deal of success, renovating houses all over the United States and earning herself a fair amount of money, but when her parents needed her help with the massive workload back in London, it was time to pick up the pieces and brave her new reality.
Number 12, Grimmauld Place was her first job back in this old country she had never truly known. And what was her surprise when Harry Potter himself had walked into their shop - hand in hand with his fiancé, who had to be one of the most beautiful women Alice had ever seen - and contracted their work.
He told her briefly about that his Godfather had given him this house that was filled with difficult memories and was abandoned to rot for the past couple of years. But the young couple had figured enough was enough, and the couple wanted to redo it entirely and lease it to St. Mungus to use as a branch of the Janus Thickey award, which Alice thought to be a very sweet and noble gesture.
Harry paid for the whole thing upfront (along with a generous bonus), and told her to do with it as she saw fit.
At first, Alice gave them a three-month deadline that was to be confirmed after a through assessment. And what an assessment it was proving to be!
When every room she ventured into seemed to do its best to curse, haunt or flat ou try to kill her, maim her or poison her in some inventive way, she would have to update her plans. Harry, for his credit, didn't seem to care or to even want anything to do with the place, except if it meant giving it away. The young man seemed to show more concern for her safety than the house's - a sentiment that few of her clients managed to express over the years.
That evening, after two whole weeks went by she felt the assessment of the house was nearly done.
While finishing up with the two bedrooms on the topmost floor that seemed to have belonged to teenagers at some point, she wondered for the first time who this house had belonged to.
The first room was one void of personal touches, and felt very plain to her - or as plain as this type of rich family could possibly be. However, from the few personal effects she was able to find, it seemed that the owner was arrogant and proud of his heritage; his letters contained the word "mudblood" a lot, and some of the books lying around touched heavily on the subject of dark magic - both implicitly and explicitly.
With that one done, she decided that her favorite just had to be the second bedroom. It was a funny one - more lively and relaxed in contrast to the entire gloomy atmosphere of the house. The walls were permanently assaulted with No-Maj pictures of scantily-clad girls, motorcycles, and sometimes even scantily clad girls on motorcycles. She felt this room belonged to a kind-hearted young man with an amazing sense of humor (probably to the despair of this dark and traditional family).
Smiling softly to herself, Alice noted down on her checklist that there were permanent sticking charms to be dealt with, and then conjured a few curse-blocking boxes (that she had been using a lot in this house). Each box was labeled with neat tags that read: clothes, books, mail & personal papers, linen, furniture, cursed items, magical artifacts.
With a flick of her wand, clothes and linen begun folding themselves and getting inside the appropriate boxes. The young woman checked the mattress for hidden belongings (you never know, with old houses), and found a few letters stored inside.
She laughed to herself as she read one letter from a person called James, in which he recounted his friend's prank on someone at Hogwarts, when the boy - who she assumed owned this room in the past - had turned someone into a human-canary combination right at lunch time.
'Canary cream is overrated, mate. The novelty worn off pretty quickly, and now its just too obvious! Now you figuring out the spell combination was a stroke of Genius (with capital G!). If I did not laugh every time I remember the whole thing, I would be jealous of you!'
She chuckled at the childish handwriting and placed the letter inside the appropriate box, before moving on to levitating the mattress wordlessly. Though, this time, when she vanished it something that wasn't there before fell to ground with a soft 'thud'.
Upon closer inspection it seemed to be some type of book or notebook.
Without touching it, Alice levitated it, noticing it was a leather-bound black journal. She flicked her wand softly and the pages flipped open, completely white. On the first page, though, she was extremely surprised to read her name in a neat cursive.
'Alice Fenwick,
Take care of this for me, Please'
Alice did not know what to make of this. Had an owl been here? Did Harry or Ginny send this?
She tested it for hidden messages and spells, without touching it. It was magical, but there were no curses, hexes or hidden secrets in it, thankfully.
After feeling confident this was safe, she held it in her hands, inspecting it closely. When nothing seemed clearer, she sighed.
Maybe a letter to Harry and Ginny will explain it...
At last, the final floor was done. To wrap it up, Alice closed the house, charmed some protective spells back in to the place and tapped the postbox out front, in order for it to deliver every letter she placed inside to where it was needed. It was a neat trick she had learned and perfected throughout the years of work. It made communicating with the owners a lot easier and faster than owling back and forth.
Before picking up her things to leave, she wrote Harry a letter and placed it inside the mailbox along with the journal.
'London, December 3rd, 2000.
Dear Harry and Ginny,
Don't be alarmed if this shows up somewhere weird. To speed up our communication I spelled the postbox so my letters can appear where needed. Usually it shows up in the recipient's own postbox, but my folks tell me that wizards in Britain are more used to owl post. My best guess is that this could be a bit unpredictable here. We will see!
If you prefer other types of communication, please let me know. While owls can be reliable, they are not too fast, are they?!
Now onto the main reason I write you: I have finished assessing the house, and... Well, you were right!
In the past I've dealt with vampires, ghouls, kappas, grindylows, garden gnomes, doxies, cursed items and countless boggarts (besides the regular house plagues, of course)… But never with most of them at once in the same house.
As you may know, there are a number of items stuck to the walls with permanent charms - namely: the elf head plaques, family portraits, the enchanted family tree in the library and some clippings of muggle magazines (which I found to be extremely amusing!).
There are spells and potions to remove them, but I regret to inform you that it will most likely result in their destruction. If you would like me to salvage any of them, I've found that cutting the wall around it and then scraping it "to the bone" per se, is a good alternative - but it increases the workload, because we would have to rebuild the part where it was before.
As per your request, I will get rid of everything unsalvageable and/or dark - no questions asked. I am myself pleased to see them gone! However I will save up things of a personal nature so you may decide what to do with them at your own convenience. I know what you told me, but in my experience, clients always end up regretting it after these memories are gone.
In regards to the screaming woman's portrait, I fear that we have been acquainted by now, but I am sorry to inform you that she is not pleased with me 'desecrating her ancestor's home', or something along those lines...
As for the final deadline for this place: it will take six months for restoration and repurposing.
After the clean up is done we should be able to discuss the new designs needed for the home. I understand you'll want the healer in charge of the ward to look it over as well, so I will let you both know when the safest time is for that visit to happen.
While I was finishing up tonight I found the notebook enclosed, upstairs. It seems to be addressed to me but I had no idea what to do with it, so I am forwarding it back!
Feel free to stop by and check on the place anytime!
Talk to you both soon.
Alice Fenwick'
Grimmauld Place, December 1st, 1980.
'I never thought I'd be back here,' Sirius Black thought to himself as he stood in front of his childhood home.
Upon aparating there, he went into safety mode first: checking the wards, adding shield spells, making sure there was no one hiding inside... But by the time he realized that indeed, he was alone there, he found that he didn't quite know what to do with himself.
When he left nearly seven years before it was meant to be permanent. Back then, if he ever found himself thinking about his mother's eventual death, he pictured himself living alone in his flat, stumbling over her obituary at the Prophet by accident long after the war was over. In his grim fantasies maybe James would be there to nod solemnly in support, like he always did in the big moments... And then, of course, his grand and noble imaginary self would be taken over by many emotions: morbid curiosity about how it had happened; disinterest; relief; and even the unthinkable: a bit of a traitorous sadness, that he would never admit out loud to feeling.
Despite hating the woman enough to fantasize about her death at times, having a parent die was still a strange experience. He did feel a glint of this traitorous sadness when his father died two years before. It was far from grief, and his mourning was short: there was a lingering resentment in the air for a couple of days.
Now Walburga was dead too and he felt nothing.
He could not understand why in the world she had left him this house, and his confusion was just the thing that kept him on the outside, looking in from the gate.
Truth to be told... Sirius couldn't bring himself to enter alone.
He knew his mother was insane, but hadn't she made a point to remove him from the will?
Regulus told him she had blasted him off that damned tapestry, but why would she leave him this horrible place? Surely, he couldn't be the only Black left... could he?
In his mind the most likely scenario was that she forgot to make changes after he ran away. Either that, or she believed a blood traitor Black was better than having her precious Ancient and Most Noble home pass on to another family name. Andromeda was now married to a muggle - in Walburga's eyes that was out of the question! Both Bellatrix and Narcissa would have been more obvious choices than him... But, of course, then the house would no longer be the "House of Black", but rather a branch of the Lestrange or Malfoy estate.
Sirius shook his head in contempt and decided to get over himself and just walk in already.
Burning the place to the ground and dance in the ashes was not entirely outside the realm of possibilities...
With an exasperated look, he wished to conjure up within himself some of that Gryffindor courage. His hand was almost at the doorknob when the postbox in the wall suddenly glowed, shinning an ethereal green light on the darkness around.
He retreated, as if shocked by the doorknob and approached the unknown thing carefully.
With a frown he realized that the iron engravings of the name "Black" had lit up in a silvery green light, signaling the arrival of mail. He had never used this before - his family was more partial to owl post, like everybody else...
Curiosity beating common sense, he opened it without even checking for curses, and found a thick envelope containing a dark leather-bound journal with a letter inside. He read it two times, but it did nothing to ease his confusion.
Alice Fenwick… Why was that name familiar?
He could feel the answer somewhere in his mind, but couldn't quite put a finger on it.
Wasting no time in thinking it through, he drew his wand and muttered 'Geminium', and was left with two of the same journal. Then, he waved it over the book in elaborate patterns, making the pages shine in a soft blue light - both journals felt warm to the touch, but quickly went back to normal.
He thought this was a bit of a long shot, but this Alice - whoever she was - had provoked his curiosity enough to attempt it.
If by some miracle this worked at least this could be an interesting and better way to communicate with the Order.
Sirius wrote a response on the first page of the book, and placed it back inside the mailbox. The "Black" engravings shone softly, and when he opened the box again he found that the journal was gone. Curiously, he opened his own copy to find his handwriting on the first page.
Wicked!
Without so much as a look back, he apparated back to his apartment to tell James about his findings.
Any thoughts of his parents or childhood home long forgotten...
Grimmauld Place, December 4th, 2000.
That next Monday Alice apparated straight into the basement of Grimmauld Place.
Throwing her backpack carelessly on the floor she unpacked all of the necessary equipment: doxycide, more labeled anti-curse boxes, cleaning rags, potions and some food for the day.
Her plan was simple: start from bottom to top. Today she would clean up the basement and the kitchen. If she worked hard enough, the only thing she would have to do on the following day would be to get rid of the carpets.
When she was all set, she ran up to the postbox to see if Harry or Ginny had gotten around to replying. She was surprised to find the same notebook from two days ago inside, with writing on the first page. Strangely, the letter was not from either of them.
'Grimmauld Place, December first, 1980'
Alice noted that '1980' had been circled and underlined about three times.
'Greetings, Alice Fenwick.
If your descriptions of this house were not so accurate, I would believe you might be in the wrong.
But the fact that this letter is from the distant year of 2000 is a clear sign of insanity - mine or yours? I fell like we should place a bet (I do feel my sanity sliding away lately, so... fair assumption!).
But what alarms me the most is the following:
How were you able to find this house and enter it, with all of the wards in place. Even though I own it as of now, it was extremely hard to disarm some of the spells and curses my father placed to repel muggles, bystanders and… well, me. I have checked all of the wards, and it seems no one has been here in over six months - when my dear mother passed away.
Which brings us to the obvious question... Who are you?
This is shaping up to be a wild story, but you have piqued my interest. I am also very bored, so make it interesting!
Sincerely,
Sirius Black'
Wait... What?!
Hurriedly, she checked the postbox once again to make sure her letter wasn't there.
"Well," She whispered to herself, "I guess I will need to owl them a fresh assessment, then..."
Alice noted in surprise that this handwriting matched the one on the journal's first page - refined and well practiced, if not a little bit careless.
She summoned her self-inking quill with a flick of her wand, and worked on a reply.
'December 4th, 2000 (No, the date is not wrong!)
Dear Sirius,
Unfortunately, there's nothing interesting to be said about me.
I am simply the magical home contractor employed by the owners of Number 12 to tear this place down and rebuild it for a better purpose.
Judging by your bedroom, though, I am willing to bet you fully support this decision.
And while we're on the subject of bets: I regret to inform that I am not insane, but would wholeheartedly put my money on you, sir!
If you do think it's 1980, maybe it's time you went outside and read a newspaper. Trust me... There is A LOT to catch up on!
Sincerely,
Alice
P.S: I love the décor in your room. It is my personal favorite in this madhouse, and I assume it says a lot about who you are as a person, Padfoot.
Alice smirked to herself at her friendly-yet-witty reply, and was about to close the book, when she noticed, abruptly, words forming right below what she had written.