H. A. M.
1866 - 1935 - 1984
Those were the inscriptions on the bottom of the ornate, still-unopened trunk that led them to a small village in Transylvania.
Later that night, after returning back to Magdalena's home, Sirius had turned the trunk over on all sides, and eventually found the inscription, denoting what he assumed to be the initials of its owner. As he brushed his fingers over them, the pieces of the puzzle were finally coming together. The M and strike through the second initial was fresher, if one could say so, compared with the over a hundred-year-old H.A, which must have meant that H.A. likely married someone whose surname started with M, taking their name instead and losing their own.
Magdalena, having enquired among her group of foreign wizards, managed to find an H.A. whose year of death was 1984, however no one seemed to know her exact date of birth. As for her status as a married woman, no one was sure. The date in the middle however, must have corresponded to the date of marriage, as that was an important marker back then, especially for witches.
"There's rumours, but no one knows. She may have gotten married, but she was a recluse, apparently. And with Mina dead…" Magdalena had shrugged.
"So this Hedda Ablai- wouldn't she be Mina Ablai's sister then? Or mother, even."
"Your guess is as good as mine... You saw how she lived, how she taught not her closest kin to open this." she replied with indignation, motioning towards the trunk. "There's something else - apparently, Hedda Ablai had apparently taught at Durmstrang at some point, which, of course…" Lena's words may have faltered, but Sirius knew indeed what she was referring to. H.A, if it was indeed this person, having had connections with Durmstrang, and thus the Dark Arts, only added more credence to his theory.
"Someone also gave me the name of the village she was last known to be in, Tosci. It's a small mountainous village in Transylvania, it seems."
"If the husband's still alive… he's the key to this, one way or another. Surely, he has to be." Sirius pondered, scratching at his beard. "Or at least… Perhaps there's something on her tombstone. Since this has the year of her death on it, I imagine its ownership was passed onto Mina Ablai for some reason. Hopefully, they haven't burnt the house down there as well."
It took him a surprisingly short amount of time to convince her of his plan, and thus began their journey. As was the case in Albania, at a certain point in their trip he had no need for Polyjuice potion, as long as he did not use his own name, the only precaution he took. No one cared he looked like Sirius Black, and they were simply two foreigners adventuring deeper and deeper into the forests, into the Carpathian mountains, into sprawling villages where even the closest neighbours were miles and miles apart.
Once again, Sirius found himself enjoying the liberty he found in Albania, and had quickly gotten accustomed to walking in broad daylight, to nodding with a grin at children playing in the dusty roads, to watching Muggles work in the fields with sweat on their foreheads, stopping only briefly to stare at the two foreigners before returning back to their toilings.
The further they got, the less and less they could use their combined knowledge of other languages, with either Muggles or wizards alike, having to retort at times to signing to a villager or another in a ridiculous fashion.
However, once they arrived in Tosci, the village mentioned to be last place Hedda Ablai, the probable owner of the trunk, was known to have resided in, they were no longer asking for a place, but for a person. A person who may be alive or dead, whose name they knew nothing about, apart from the fact that his family name started with an M, who may as well have moved from there, if he ever even resided in the village.
So they started by asking about Hedda Ablai, going from house to house, leaving each and every one of them with their stomachs fuller than ever, and their heads an earful of words that they could not understand, but which seemed to exude benevolence.
Finally, their salvation came on their third day in Tosci, from an old witch with wrinkles from her forehead to her fingertips, that was so old she seemed ready to crumble like old bread in front of them, so frail that she could have been swept by the smallest gust, and so small that bears could have mistaken her for a newborn cub. With slow movements, the old witch inspected both of them up and down with her dark eyes, before opening the small wooden gate between her and them.
She spoke Romanian, Hungarian, and a bit of German, and with the French both him and Magdalena knew, enough to recognise romance-sounding words, they managed to piece together four facts.
One, Hedda Ablai was indeed a witch who had lived and died in Tosci, and was related to one Mina Ablai.
Two, her house was still standing, and the witch managed to pinpoint, with her trembling finger, the location.
Three, she was married to a Muggle whose last name was Manole.
And finally, Manole was dead.
When Sirius asked for how long, after the witch finally understood, she waved her hand over her her shoulder several times, to signify 'a long, long time ago', before crossing herself. They saluted her with the little Romanian they learnt, and Sirius watched Lena bend down to briefly kiss the elderly witch's knuckles, who returned the gesture by gently putting her wrinkled palm on her forehead.
"What was that for?" he asked as they continued walking away from the witch's house.
"I wonder…" came Lena's answer, as she looked back. "Something compelled me."
"Something compelled you?" he asked derisively.
"It must have. Tell me now, what are we going to do? Our lead is dead. Hedda Ablai is dead. Mina is dead."
"Hedda Manole-" he corrected her, before continuing "and this mister Manole may be dead… but the house is still standing. I say we pay it a visit, pay our respects…"
"And then…" Lena furrowed her brows, before she finally understood what he was hinting at. "Ah."
Yes, my caged bird longing for freedom, we'll desecrate a dead couple's house for answers. We'll break into its sanctity and rummage through it like the worst type of bandits, we'll rattle their bones if we have to, all of this so I can open this fucking trunk. Sirius thought to himself, before changing the subject.
"Did you catch on how her voice changed when we asked her about the Muggle? And how no one you asked in England knew her by her married name. Even she, who knew it, still addressed her by her maiden name." Sirius commented, a wave of indignation peppering his words as he remembered how no one addressed Andromeda's husband by name either - to the extent that even though he cherished his cousin greatly, even he forgot his name, and thus, her married name.
He couldn't help but find the story more and more intriguing - he had pictured this H.A - or H.M, even!- to be engaged to some extent into Dark Arts. However, to find that the reason no one seemed to know much about her husband was that he was a Muggle…
"I suppose you may be onto something there… I do know for a fact, however, that Mina Ablai was married to a wizard, and she still kept her maiden name, as she gained reputation under it."
"Perhaps Hedda had a change of heart after her stint at Durmstrang, and wanted to be known no longer as the person she was then. I know I would change my name-... perhaps I should have, even." he mused, and he could have indeed, during the war, before his imprisonment. So many people around him were getting married that James and Lily's wedding was not a unique one under the war conditions. The Longbottoms, and many others had gotten married during those war days as well, officially proclaiming to each other, to the world, to anyone who would listen, that they would be with one another in life and death.
"What about you, Lena? All these weeks, I never asked for your last name."
"My maiden name, or my married name?" she asked, and Sirius couldn't help but be surprised.
It made sense, he figured, with how she spoke about Fabian Bones, that she ended up marrying him, even though their 'life and death' proclamation must have lasted… months, if that. However, he did not intend to push the knife in the wound, and asked her for her maiden name.
"Rossetti." she answered after a long pause. "Legally, I am still a Bones, although I could change back. However, I don't enjoy the memories brought by my father's name, neither those brought by Fabian's, so I mostly try to navigate without either."
"So Magdalena it is, then."
"If it pleases you."
The house which belonged to Hedda Manole was a ruin of a peasant-style old house, with wooden posts taken from the fence to board the windows and the door. It looked nothing like a wizarding house, which made them wonder if she had moved into a Muggle house.
"That is certainly plausible. Back then, women moved into their husband's or husband's family house, as they'd leave their parents'."
Sirius stepped forward, and took out the trunk from his bag, using an Engorgement charm to make the trunk grow back to its regular size. He expected something to happen, however the trunk stood still, facing the barricaded door.
He raised his wand, and no sooner had he opened his lips, that Lena raised a hand to stop him. She pressed a hand against the rotting wood, and murmured what sounded to him like a short sermon, out of which he could hear only snippets.
"Forgive us for our-... -entering this sacred place-...-most profane-...-beyond the grave-...-forgive us thrice and we'll repay you tenfold."
After she finished, she stepped behind him slowly, and he flicked his wand, the wooden posts un-nailing themselves from the house's entrances, before gently floating to one corner, on top of each other. The sun was starting to fall beneath the mountains' peaks, and he figured they could use the wood as kindle, if night would befall before their time.
With another spell, he opened the door, and braced himself for any smells that would come out of a house that had been in disuse for 'a long, long time'. He motioned for Lena to stay behind as he inspected first, and murmured a quick 'Lumos' as he entered the house.
An old-timey hob, covered in newspapers and dust. A table, chairs at the back of the room. What looked like perhaps a rug, back in its glory days, laid in the middle of the room. What he saw on the right of the main room, however, raised chills down his spine, and for the first time in many years, he felt terror not brought on by the Dementors.
If it weren't for the weeks spent trying to recover himself, he feared he would have killed, or at least Stupefied, the person sitting on the bed, with his papery, jaundiced eyes and skin, with his missing teeth, and dirty clothes. He managed to stop himself, however, just in time, and watched what looked like an elderly, emaciated man turn his head towards him with a toothless smile. He stood apart, wand ready to defend himself if necessary,
"Who are you?" Sirius asked, watching the man scratch at his head. "Do you speak English? English? Inglez?" the man shook his head, his skin moving to the motions of his skull like a crumpled parchment mask. In the light of his wand, it looked almost like a demonic mask.
"Sirius, is everything alright?"
"It is Lena, just don't come in yet." he replied, before turning his attention back to the man. "French?" he asked in French, and he watched as the elderly man raised his head slowly in excitement, his grin now revealing his gums as he nodded as eagerly as he could. "Have you heard of Hedda Ablai?"
The man nodded, and pointed towards the rug, with a look of misery on his face. His wand still pointed at the man as he slowly bent down, pulling the disgusting, rug, heavy with dust and held together with dirt, towards himself, only to reveal a slab of marble onto the floor, with her name, date of birth, marriage, and death.
Below the dates was an inscription he could not read, both from the lack of sunlight and his inability to figure what language that was. That was her house, indeed. Or at least, a shrine to her grave now. Was the person in front of him the caretaker, then?
"Have you heard of Manole?"
"He is I, my son." the old man finally croaked, in a voice unused in years and years. The voice reminded him of himself, when he had first escaped Azkaban, and he suddenly realised the man must probably be parching.
Sirius nodded, and excused himself for a moment. He slowly left the house, and realised that there must have been something left of his dread on his face, as Lena's reaction was one of concern.
"There's a man inside." he explained. "I think that's the Muggle. He says he's Manole."
"That's… Sirius, you saw the rust on those nails."
"He doesn't seem to have a wand, he looks old as dirt… you think the wizards locked him in? All these years? Since 1984?" Sirius spoke quickly, answering his own questions as he did so. "Those filthy bastards, the lot of them. And he survived, ten years… Lena, fetch me some water, will you? Something to eat, too, do we have anything…?"
She took a thermos from her own bag, and Sirius took it, using his other hand to carry the trunk inside. Once back inside, he watched Manole put on one of his old, ratty suits. When the old man took notice of Sirius, he got up slowly, using a cane to walk himself towards the table, and pulled something from the wall, dusting it off until it revealed a picture.
Sirius took it, and examined the picture. The picture was a Muggle one, in a sepia tone, and the old man, even in the lack of light, knew exactly where to point. He first put his shaking, wrinkled finger on the head of a woman of an imposing height, with striking, sharp features, softened lightly by her thick, short curls. If it weren't for him knowing who she was already, he'd have thought he was looking at a picture of a great-aunt of his own.
"My wife." he said, before pointing to himself. The man next to her was plump-faced, bore a thin, waxed moustache, and he wore a bowler hat, his fringe dancing around his hat. They looked nothing alike, yet even in the unmoving picture, Sirius could see the loving way he looked at her.
"That's them, is it?"
Sirius turned around, and showed the picture to Magdalena, who handed the thermos to old Manole.
"Here, gramps. Drink, drink."
"Say, Manole... have you seen this trunk? Is it Hedda's?" he pointed towards the trunk, almost shivering in expectation to finally open it.
Manole narrowed his eyes, before a flash of recognition washed across his face. His eyes, yellow, red, and puffy, started to well with tears, and he nodded, slowly falling on his knees in front of it. He held its handle with reverence, and caressed it as if a piece of Hedda, perhaps her soul itself, had been left in there, only to return ten years later with him again. Sirius could see that Magdalena was turning emotional at the scene, and felt a pang of shame as his first thought was that Manole would be so attached to the trunk he would refuse to open it for them, and that the old man wanted it all for himself, and what the easiest and fastest method to - magically or otherwise- coerce him to open the trunk for them if that were indeed his thoughts.