Dinner was a rich and hearty beef stew, with sweet rolls on the side, with rich and creamy eggnog to drink. The kids all ate by themselves, because Theodore and Florence had some unexpected guests.
"It's too bad that your parents couldn't have dinner with us," Victoria said.
"It's alright," Lynette responded. "They don't usually spend a lot of time with us anyway when we're home, they always have some kind of meeting or party to go to."
"Their meetings are kind of weird anyway," Quincy added. "We rarely see the people that they're having meetings with, and when we do, they're always wearing dark cloaks and we never see their faces."
Victoria frowned, her eyebrows furrowing together. "That's weird, and kind of suspicious."
"Yeah, we know." Lynette looked around, lowering her voice. "You remember how Quincy and I both had something to do before we met the two of you at the carriage?"
Blaise and Victoria both nodded their heads.
"Well, we learned that Professor Quirrel had been one of the people that they had been having their meetings with, so we decided to go and do some snooping around."
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"We didn't want either of you to get into trouble in case we got caught by Filch or something."
"Have you two forgotten who my brothers are? I learned Sneaking Around 101 when I was five. Anyways, did you find anything?"
"No, but we almost got caught. Quirrel came in, and we hid under his desk. He was the only other one in the room, and he started talking, but it gets even weirder. Something responded to him."
"What?"
"The voice didn't even sound fully human."
"Are you sure about what you heard?"
"We both heard it clear as day." Lynette looked at her brother, and Quincy nodded in response. "Quirrel is up to something, and it wouldn't surprise me if our parents were involved."
"Would it surprise you if they were involved in anything illegal?"
"Honestly?" Quincy took a sip of his eggnog before responding. "No, it wouldn't. There have been rumors going around, about my mother especially. Some people think that she was a double agent during the war, acting on the side of you-know-who and the Death Eaters. We've found a couple of things in her study too, dark things, but she always told us that she never intended on using them, that she was just studying them."
"It sounds to me like she's doing a lot more than just studying them."
"Our mother wouldn't do anything like that!" Lynette retorted hotly.
"Then how do you explain the dark objects?" Blaise asked her.
"It's just as she said, she's studying them, there's no harm in studying them if you're not thinking about using them."
"Lynette, dark objects can be very powerful, even with no one controlling them, it's almost like some of them have minds of their own, if the object is strong enough, then it can make your mother want to do things with it."
"What were the objects in the study?" Victoria asked. "Hermione's already read through the first three years of our DADA textbooks, she might know something that we don't."
"One of them is a ring," Lynette responded. "The ring itself is pitch black, but it's got a ruby in the middle that's a dark, dark red, almost like the color of blood."
"Well, that doesn't sound suspicious at all." Blaise remarked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"I'll write to Hermione right now."
"Write a letter about what?" Florence entered the room at that moment. "You only just saw your friends, surely there's no reason to be writing them so soon."
"Oh...well, I promised Hermione that I would write her to let her know that I had gotten here okay. Excuse me, please." Victoria stood up from the table, making her way around Florence, who was blocking the entryway. She scurried up to the bedroom that she was staying in, sighing softly as she closed the door behind her, leaning back against it. Florence was definitely hiding something for sure, and Victoria was determined to find out what it was.
A few days had passed, and Victoria was starting to worry that Hermione hadn't been able to find anything. Then finally, the letter arrived.
Victoria frowned a bit when it was handed to her by Quincy. "Did you happen to open this?"
Quincy shook his head. "No, Mum sorted through the mail. I think that she was going to throw your letter away."
"What makes you say that?"
"She had it in the pile with the junk mail. Only reason that I came across it was that sometimes she'll throw away magazines that I like to look through, I came across it by accident. I wonder what it says..."
"Let's see...she found some information on the ring, it's called the Ring of Bloodlust. Anyone who wears it gets an insatiable need to spill blood. It's a very powerful dark object, and anyone who is remotely near it is drawn to it."
"Bloody hell..." Quincy whispered. "And Mum just has that laying around."
"Has she ever worn it?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Alright, we need to find a way to get to it and destroy it."
"How do you plan on doing that?"
"I don't know, but something tells me that your mother has plans for the ring, and I don't want to know what those plans are. But we need to find that ring and destroy it."
"And how do you plan on doing that?"
"Your dad is going to be at work, but the next time that your mom is gone, we're going to sneak in there and steal it. I'll do some research to try and figure out how we can get the ring without it affecting us, but be prepared to act fast. And don't tell Lynette or Blaise that we're doing this, this stays between us, they don't need to be getting into trouble in case we get caught. We're going to have to be cunning and crafty about this."
"Well, we're Slytherins for a reason."
"Damn right." Victoria had never wanted to be a Slytherin because it associated her with her parents, but now she realized that the qualities that made her a Slytherin might be just what they needed to make this plan successful.