Just to make Mr. Darcy happy, here is another disclaimer:
Neither Mr. Darcy nor I are published authors, meaning we don't own the rights to anything, anywhere. From this statement, two conclusions can be drawn: 1) Nothing we write here is officially canonical, though we have fun fleshing out obscure characters from canon. 2) We receive no monetary compensation for this story, this is just something fun we do in our spare time when we have it.
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Lady Beatrice
~~~~~~~~~~ December 1992 ~~~~~~~~~~
A bubble slowly rose to the top of a lava puddle and burst, shifting the lights across the walls of a stone cavern. It was a very strange cave, even considering its questionable magical heritage. There was a circle of runes carved into the floor encircling a pedestal that looked like it had once been used for human sacrifice, which fit in perfectly with the setting. What made it so interesting was the neatly arranged stacks of Daily Prophets which filled up a good half of the remaining space in the chamber. The ones closest to the wall were old, yellowing with age, while the ones closest to the runic circle were new with black shiny ink that barely looked dry. None of them had ever been opened.
"...lly finished."
It was the first word the chamber had heard from the wizard in fifteen years. The speaker blinked and looked around at the reams and reams of paper which now filled the cave, totally confused. Then he collapsed, firmly outside the runic circle.
A bubble slowly rose to the top of a lava puddle and burst, shifting the lights across the walls of the stone cavern. Everything was still again waiting for the house elf to return with the morning newspaper to the silent cave.
~~~~~~~~~~ January 2nd 1993 ~~~~~~~~~~
"Catch me if you can!" An excited Jamie sped down the black diamond slope at full speed, barely keeping ahead of Mia, who was slowly but surely gaining on him. Twisting around a particularly sharp turn, he blasted up a flurry of snow from underneath his skis, hoping to slow down his sister, but Mia was, as ever, undeterred in her focus. She went through the blast without slowing and passed her brother on the last turn before the end of the slope. Sensing his imminent defeat, Jamie buckled himself down and tried to imagine that he was riding a broom, hoping that envisioning one of the few activities he could beat his sister at would somehow help him catch up.
Instead of helping him speed up, though, he lost his balance as he began sliding down the mountain in an ungainly pile. His broom-riding posture didn't seem to match very well with skiing. Finally coming to a stop near the bottom, he stood and found his sister looking at him with a mix of concern for his well-being and superiority at winning yet another competition between the two siblings.
Jamie crossed his arms and pouted at her, "Fine. I admit it. You're also a better skier than I am."
Mia correctly figured that if her brother was pouting, he couldn't be that badly hurt. "Well, dear brother, we already knew that. You just refused to accept it until now. I hope your disposition improves now that you have acknowledged the proper state of things. Just like with sprinting, horseback riding, surfing, and..."
Jamie stuck his tongue out, "Yeah, yeah… Rub it in… At least I can still fly better than you."
"Yes… I suppose everyone must be good at something." Mia mimed buffing her nails against the shoulder of her jacket in a gesture of exaggerated arrogance before breaking out into giggles and hugging her brother. "I'm glad you're okay. I was worried when you fell."
"Hey. Even if I'm not as good at skiing as you are, I'm much better at falling. After all, I've lost count of how many times I've fallen this week." Neither sibling had done any skiing before this trip and had very different methods of learning. Mia had studied books in preparation for the short family vacation in Soldeu and had gone to the class their parents had suggested, while Jamie had just decided to wing it, not having the patience for a stuffy class when there was an awesome snowy mountain just waiting for him.
Alas, Jamie's method had not worked out so well, as evidenced by his sore rump from all the falling, while his sister was skiing with a fair bit of grace for someone who had only been at it for a week. He sighed. Once she got into something, she always wanted to be the best.
Mia pulled Jamie back onto his skis, and they prepared to head back to meet with their parents, who were having fun on the bunny slopes. As they made their way through the forest on the main trail back to the mountain's lower reaches, Jamie suddenly stopped his sister, listening carefully. "Help me!" The cries were faint, but he could definitely hear them through the woods. "Can you hear that, Mia?"
Mia shot him a strange look. "Hear what?" Mia cupped her ears, listening for any sounds, "I'm not hearing anything..."
Jamie frowned, "You can't hear someone asking us for help?" He pointed off into the woods on his right. "I think it's coming from over there."
His sister shrugged. "I don't hear anything, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'd rather check it out than worry for the rest of the day that we ignored someone in trouble, and it won't hurt to check it out… especially if we don't tell Mum and Dad." Mia winked at her brother, "Have you got your wand? I know we can't legally use them until we pass each of the ECHIDNAS, but I think we could probably make a good case for self-defence if it comes to that."
Jamie struggled to keep a straight face on as he regarded his sister. She could be dreadfully bookish and boring when trying to learn something, but she wasn't too much of a stickler for rules and had developed quite a sense of adventure over the years. Spending all your free time with your little brother and his friends would do that to a girl. Fortunately for the pair, their parents had bought them simple wand holsters so the siblings wouldn't have to leave their wands at home. They weren't very high quality, but the muggle-repelling charm let them keep their wands in public, and the cushioning charm saved them from any regular roughhousing. They could have kept it in their pockets, Jamie supposed, but pockets just didn't work very well with foot-long sticks. Reaching over, he cheekily pulled a bit of his wand out of the holster, letting Mia know he was ready for adventure whenever she was.
Mia nodded in approval, and they took off their skis and hid them behind a nearby tree before setting out into the forest. After a solid fifteen minutes of walking, Jamie could hear the voice getting louder. "Help me!" His sister tapped him on the shoulder from behind, where she had been following him. "Is that Parseltongue I'm hearing? I can't quite make it out yet, though." Jamie smacked himself in the forehead. "Of course! It all sounds the same to me, so I couldn't tell. Let's get a little closer and see what the problem is."
Soon, the siblings could see a break in the trees up ahead, and as they stepped into it, they were assaulted with both pitiful parseltongue protests and a rather putrid odor of decay. Looking around, they saw a large pile of snow where it had likely fallen from the side of the mountain, and peeking out of it was a small reptilian head with what looked like the beak of an eagle. When the children came into sight, its eyes widened slightly, and it yelled at the pair. "Stay away, humans! Mommy! Help!" It tried to thrash its way out of its snowy prison, but it was too deeply embedded in the snow, and it only succeeded in knocking a bit more snow onto its head.
Mia backed away slowly with her brother. "Jamie, I think you should deal with this. Your parseltongue is much better than mine, and animals always seem to like you more"
Jamie took a deep breath before coughing on the putrid odor, "I'll give it a try, Mia. I'd hate to leave this poor creature here to die." Jamie took a few steps towards the reptile, but as soon as he did, the little thing opened its mouth and let loose a dark cloud of gas that had Jamie choking as soon as it reached him. Coughing violently, he spoke up, "I guess that's where the smell came from." Switching to parseltongue, Jamie spoke to the panicking little head, "Hey, little one. I'm not here to hurt you. My sister and I heard you calling for help, and we came to do what we could."
Hearing its own language, the creature stopped thrashing and locked eyes with the boy. "Go away, fetilleria. I'll be fine, and my mommy will be along shortly." Jamie could sense from its tone that it was not as confident as it pretended to be.
He took another couple of steps forward and spoke in the most non-threatening tone he could muster, "I'm sure your mommy will be along soon, but if you let us help, you can go meet her even sooner. I promise we will be able to help."
It calmed slightly more as it listened to Jamie. "If you say you can help me, then get to it! I want to see my mommy. But one false move, and I'll blast you with my breath, and then you'll be sorry!"
Having already dealt with the breath at a distance, Jamie knew the threat was empty, but he went along to make the baby more comfortable. "Of course, we wouldn't want that either. Let us just help you out of there." After the reptile nodded cautiously, Jamie turned back to his sister, "Did you get all of that, Mia?"
"Well enough. Let's get digging. The smell is really quite bad." The two siblings opted against illegally using their wands and started digging with their hands. Slowly but surely, they opened a hole around the head, revealing the beginning of a long neck that ran deeper into the snow. After a few minutes of digging, with constant whining from the captured beast, they managed to dig all the way down to its scaly back.
Jamie and Mia stood nearby, "Alright… Can you get out now? I think we've moved enough snow." The creature started trying to move again. After quite a bit of struggling, it slowly began rising out of the snow. Jamie and Mia were quite impressed with the creature that emerged. Its head ran back to a large body with four legs, each with two very threatening-looking claws. The breath may not have threatened Jamie and Mia much, but those claws looked like they could shred them to bits in an instant.
"I'm free!" The rather large lizard pranced around a bit, enjoying the fact that it could move again before darting off into the deeper sections of the forest, presumably heading back to its home.
"Rather ungrateful, isn't it?" Jamie commented as he watched it disappear. "Oh well, let's head back. We've done our good deed for the day." Jamie turned to walk away but saw his sister thinking deeply. "What's up, Mia?"
"Jamie… I think that was a baby dragon! I read a few books on the local magical species of
Andorra before we came here, and one of the ones I read about is called the Vibria. It's one of the few flightless dragon species in the world, and instead of breathing fire, its breath causes death and decay in whatever it touches. I guess this one was too young for its breath to have that full effect on short exposure, or we'd both be pretty sick. I don't know how I didn't recognize it from the eagle beak, but I guess its head looked so small peeking out of the snow that I didn't think it could possibly be something like that."
"A dragon! How cool!" The siblings started heading back the way they came as they talked, "But… I didn't know dragons spoke Parseltongue."
"Me either… Though I suppose there aren't many Parseltongues out there, and I bet most of them never encounter dragons. Still, it's very strange." Mia thought out loud.
"Well… That can be a mystery for when we get back home. For now, I'm hungry after all the work moving the snow. Let's head back and get something to eat with Mum and Dad."
Mia sighed, "You boys and your food." Jamie just snickered and picked up the pace.
~~~~~~~~~~ January 4th 1993 ~~~~~~~~~~
It was a rather plain muggle house as far as Bob Ogden was concerned. Australia was funny that way. It had completely mixed muggle and magic communities without the endless obliviations that seemed to be necessary in England. But he knew he was in the right place. After all, there were wards around this house and the one next door, and this house had, as Dumbledore had mentioned, a rather intimidating feline sleeping up one of the trees in the front yard. At least, he supposed it was sleeping: it was hard to tell with large cats. To be safe, he sent a light stunner up to the cat as soon as he was through the basic anti-muggle wards surrounding the house. It was a good idea to be vigilant at all times.
He walked up to the door and tapped lightly with the knocker. When the door opened, his boots nearly blew off in what would have been his first bout of accidental magic since he was seven. "Professor Bagshot? Is that you? But… I read your obituary over twelve years ago, the morning after He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named died! You...you're...dead!"
Bathilda smiled fondly at her shocked former pupil. "It was good to is seeing you too, Bob. Many years have pass since we last enjoying a cup of tea. Get your stuff inside, and be waking up poor Bedlam. It seems young Albus has choose you to helping me with our little project."
Still stunned to see his old history teacher alive, Bob mutely followed her back in, silently releasing his spell on the cat. Bedlam, he sternly reminded himself. It appeared he had quite a bit to catch up on.
~~~~~~~~~~ January 9th 1993 ~~~~~~~~~~
Regulus Black fidgeted in his seat on the transatlantic flight to Britain. To the casual observer, he looked like any other sulky teenage boy with a rebellious fashion sense. He was anxious to be back in his homeland and honestly quite tired of being squished between the two rather large individuals on either side, which helped him with his appropriate moody attitude, little did he know it.
International travel was so much more convenient when one was travelling with an impossibly powerful dark lord who could rend temporary undetectable holes in the wards that prevented international apparition and unapproved portkeys. Regulus had left England with one such dark lord on what was supposed to be a few days of work inscribing and charging the powerful wards he had designed for his master. Instead, he woke to Kreacher's keening cries of joy, repeatedly telling him, "Kreacher is so happy to see master! Kreacher feared he had killed the last true Black!" Apparently, fifteen years of enforced secrecy could result in a lot of pent-up anxiety in house elves.
Fifteen years! It still shook him to the core that he had been gone for so long. That shock was, of course, mixed with pride that his wards had been more powerful than he had ever expected; he had moved barely three inches in fifteen years. He would surely be able to submit a dissertation on it for a mastery in runes if he ever re-established himself in his rightful place as a son of the House of Black.
For several weeks, Regulus had been reading Daily Prophets and catching up on all that had happened after he left. He was shocked to find that the Dark Lord had apparently been defeated, but he was also cautious. Yesterday, he had been enamored with the ideals of pureblood supremacy, but today was fifteen years later, and Voldemort hadn't done anything to rescue him in the five years between when Regulus had been trapped and when he had died. It was humiliating to have submitted himself to a wizard who apparently thought nothing of his life in return.
He needed answers, answers he could trust more than those found in the Daily Prophet or from Kreacher, loyal though the house elf was. His brother may have been in Azkaban for all these years, but he had been on the front lines of the war at its very end, and Regulus needed that information if he was ever going to get his life back together. While no love had been lost between him and his older brother, that was precisely why he knew Sirius would have never betrayed his best friend to Lord Voldemort and then gone on a killing spree after another of the tight-knit Marauders. Now, he had to hope his brother was still sane enough to give him the answers he craved.
An unpleasant smell wafted his way from one of his neighbours, he couldn't tell which, and Regulus grumbled silently at the indignity of it all. The return of a son of the House of Black should be met with fanfare and celebration! He sunk into his seat and anxiously awaited the end of this torturous experience.
A/N: Thanks for putting up with our irregular upload schedule. I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Next chapter we deal with big, angry snakes and old, angry aurors.