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This chapter's a little short, but next one will be longer; it'll include Severus' trial.

Chapter 17 "The Book"

Kingsley, Frank and Andria appeared in front of a brick apartment building. It was dark and quiet. There was no one around. Kingsley motioned his friends to follow him, and they climbed up the stairs to the fifth floor. They stopped in front of apartment number 35 and Kingsley knocked quietly on the door. When there was no reply, he used alohomora to unlock the door, and kept his eyes peeled as they entered the dark room. Frank flicked his wand and the lights came on.

It was a small apartment. The small hallway led to a sitting room that opened into a modest kitchen that doubled as a dining area. There were two closed doors which Kingsley guessed were the bedroom and the bathroom. He pointed at them, and Frank pushed one open, holding his wand in front of him, and Kingsley checked the other one, while Andria looked over the kitchen and living room.

"It's clear," Frank said. "No one's here."

"All right. Then let's see if we can find that book. I'll look in the bedroom," Kingsley gestured to the room behind the door that he had opened. He entered the dark room and flicked his wand so that it brightened. It was a mess. Clothes were thrown all over the room, bottles of cologne littered the top of the dresser, and there were food wrappers and bits of food scattered around.

Kingsley wrinkled his nose as he stepped over a piece of moldy cake on his way to the closet. He threw the double doors open. Most of the hangers were empty, as the clothes that were supposed to be hanging on them were on the floor outside. There were a few pairs of shoes thrown on the floor of the closet. Two boxes were stacked on the shelf above the clothes rack, and Kingsley levitated them down with his wand. They landed on the bed, and he opened the top one.

It contained papers and photographs. Some of them were of James and Lily, but most of them were of Potter and Black, sometimes accompanied with two other boys: a pudgy boy, and a sickly-looking pale boy. He dug through the rest of the papers, but there was nothing of interest there.

In the second box, there were more, and one of them caught Kingsley's eye as he shuffled through them. It was a wrinkled yellow page that looked like it was ripped from a book. It had a detailed description about an old mind-controlling curse. Could this be what Potter had put on Lily? He stuffed the page carefully in his pocket before rifling through the rest of the box's contents.

Then he went through the rest of the room, going through the drawers, looking under the bed and even between the mattresses, but he found nothing else. He replaced everything to how it was, and went to see how the others were doing. They were in the kitchen, bent over a book that was open on the kitchen table. Andria looked up when Kingsley entered and motioned him over excitedly. "I think we've found it!"

"Yeah, it full of dark magic. But we'll have to read through it to find out what potion he gave to Lily." Frank said, flipping through a few more pages.

"All right, let's bring this back to the Evans' house. We could look through it there. I think I found the instructions for the mind control curse, too." Kingsley said.

"It might take a while to find counters for the magic, Kingsley." Frank warned. He knew Kingsley was always eager to help, but sometimes he didn't think of the reality of the situation. "You know that, right? It might be difficult, or there might not even be counters."

"Yeah, but we're going to try." Kingsley said. He knew that there was some dark magic you couldn't reverse, but he hoped that that was not the case here. He wanted to help Lily, because he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to help Severus.

"Let's go, we'll start working on this right away." Kingsley picked up the old book and motioned for them to follow him out. "And I'll put some charms on the apartment, so if Potter comes back here, we'll know it."

When they were all out, Kingsley closed the door and waved his wand over it in a X motion. The door glowed blue for a second, then returned to its normal grey color.

The trio turned on the spot when they were outside, apparating back to the Evans'.

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