James stepped of the fireplace, wand at the ready. The place had long been abandoned, by the look of it. Dust was thick on the floor, yeilding with a dry crunch underfoot. "Dad," said James. "Dad, why did we take the Network straight to the house? Why-?"
Harry shushed him, holding a finger to his lips. "We're looking for clues, first," he said, his robe stirring clouds of dust. James was surprised that he and his father were not suffocating. "I lived here until I was seventeen. Just because the damn place has been abandoned doesn't mean that there isn't something here to look at." He proceeded to a cupboard under the stairs. "This is where I slept day and night until I started getting acceptance letters from Hogwarts." He tapped the lock with his wand and stood aside, preparing to Curse anything that might greet them.
Rather than receiving the welcoming committee of a Dark witch or wizard, thirteen black rats charged out of the cupboard, scattering and finding new places to hide. Harry nodded. "Well, it wasn't much more friendly even when I was living in there." He moved forward and immediately his eyes fell on a volume that had been meant to guide him through his years at Hogwarts. Hogwarts, A History was somehow as brilliant as ever, even with the dust coating the cover and the mold beginning to corrupt the pages of the volume. "Something tells me that the answer's near. I don't know where." Harry tapped the book with his wand, muttering spells that sounded almost like song. Nothing happened. "There's something here, I know. Maybe not in the book..." He set it carefully aside and picked up the remains of a bottle of ink that had long since dried and broken.
James picked up the book and flipped through the pages, knowing there was something off about the book. He had known tomes like these, before, had felt them before he had ever set foot in Hogwarts, discovered their secrets under his father's supervision. Brow furrowed, he turned to the back of the old book, turning aside the endpaper and running his hand over the inside of the cover. Something caught his eye.
Raising his illuminated wand above the cover of the book, James squinted, barely able to discern thin, neat lines that contrasted with the rest of the inner cover. He tapped the thing, despite his lack of competence with Nonverbal magic, and immediately the cover gave way, turning to dust at the touch of his wand. He picked up a slip of parchment that had nothing to do with the book and unfolded it. "Dad," he said, barely able to read the curling letters. "Dad, look at this."
"What?" Harry turned to him and studied the note, looked down to the pile of dust on the floor, and back to the note. "How...?"
"Nonverbal magic, Dad. Simple curiosity." He looked up at his father, studying his eyes behind the circular lenses of the glasses that he knew had adorned his Father's face his entire life. "Can you make out any of this?"
Harry shook his head. "No. No, I don't..." Harry paused, recalling his third year. "But I know someone who does."
* * *
Harry thrust the parchment at Hermione Weasley, who eyed it suspiciously. "Found it at Number Four," he said, referring to his old former home. "It's got to do with the recent rabble-rousing."
"What is it?" she said, unfolding it carefully. "And where in the house did you find it?"
"Whenever I'd come home from Hogwarts for summer holiday, my Uncle Vernon would lock a lot of my stuff in the cupboard under the stairs. It's where he favored to hide my school books. It was in this." Harry placed the copy of Hogwarts, A History before her. "I don't know why it'd be in there, but it was."
"Well," said Hermione, scanning the page. "It's literally nothing I've ever seen before. There's a bit of garbled Latin in the Runes, themselves, but beyond that, I can't make heads or tails of it. Hang on." She took a small book from the pocket of her robes and opened it, studying it carefully. After several moments of close, careful contemplation, she shook her head and slammed the volume, sending motes of dust everywhere. "I can't make the damn thing out, Harry. It may be an area we need, but I just can't make anything out."
"What was the Latin part, then?" said James, tapping his wand in his palm, pacing back and forth. "I mean, maybe you can't make out all of it, but there're certain parts you can read, can't you?"
"Well, yes," she said, looking up at him. "But it doesn't give us a total understanding of this thing, does it?" she said, eyeing the parchment with particular loathing. "Here." She held it up. "'Though the Stone has failed, there are Others out there. Although He has failed once...we shall be restored to our former glory...though LeFay was failed at it, brilliant and devious though she was, Merlin theorized it correctly.'" Hermione looked at them. "It's all a bit dodgy, isn't it? Voldemort never left his plans lying around, and he was certainly not careless enough to leave them in the books of someone who, that particular moment in time, was a mere schoolboy." She looked at Harry with some of the flare he recognized as her spirit of adventure, cautious though she could be. "I could spend literally years trying to make heads or tails of this, but I don't think I'd be able to do anything more than crack the surface. You'd be better-served elsewhere." She looked at Harry and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Harry, I really am. I've done all I can."
"Thanks, Hermione," he said, stowing the note away in his robe and doing the same with his old school book. "I'll think of something. You know me. We all know I will."