Chapter 23: The Ritual and the Seed of Evil

Beatrice Brown's house stood discreetly among the buildings of Muggle London, an ordinary place where few would expect any connection to magic. Draco, Harry and Neville exchanged glances before Draco took a deep breath and knocked hard on the door.

It only took a few seconds for it to open, revealing Hannah Abbott, who looked at them with obvious surprise. A mixture of confusion and suspicion slowly appeared in her eyes as she tried to understand why such an unusual trio was on her doorstep. Her gaze lingered on Harry for a moment before shifting to Neville, giving him a questioning look. When her eyes finally landed on Draco, her expression hardened and she instinctively crossed her arms, blocking the entrance to her house.

Although she hadn't been a direct victim of his malice, she knew enough of his reputation to keep her distance. At Hogwarts, everyone could tell unpleasant stories of their encounters - or run-ins - with Draco Malfoy, and to see him at her door, in the middle of Muggle London, with no prior notice, could hardly bode well.

"Why are you here?" she asked, fixing her suspicious gaze on Draco.

Draco, who remained calm, was the first to answer.

"We're here about something that concerns your mother. It's important."

Hannah looked at him before frowning, as she had never frowned at anyone before.

"In what parallel universe do Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom show up at my door together to talk about my mother?" she asked incredulously, not letting up her defensive posture.

Draco kept his composure. He knew he needed Hannah on his side, at least enough to let him in. He was about to say something to convince her that they were only there to seek answers when a woman appeared behind Hannah.

Not just any woman.

Beatrice Brown.

Draco knew immediately by the way his stomach churned. He couldn't begin to describe the whirlwind of emotions he felt as he stood before her for the first time - the woman he had hated for months and who had caused him so much pain.

"In the kind of universe where something much bigger than you or any of us is at stake," the woman said.

Hannah turned to her, confused.

"Mum...?"

"Let them in, dear," she commanded. "Strange as it may seem, we have business to discuss."

Hannah squinted at her mother as she walked back towards the kitchen, but eventually sighed and, after a pause, gestured for them to come in.

The three of them followed Hannah down the hall. It was small but cosy, filled with Muggle trinkets and a homely atmosphere that contrasted sharply with the tension the boys carried with them. They sat down in the sitting room and Neville, who had been silent until then, dared to speak.

"I'm sorry for showing up like this," he began quietly, hoping to allay his friend's suspicions. "It's... complicated. I didn't even know until an hour ago."

Hannah crossed her arms.

"Well, Neville, don't you think you should have warned me before you came over?" she snapped reproachfully, then turned to the other two. "What do you want with my mum?"

Draco cleared his throat, knowing that what he was about to say was far more complex than it seemed - and that Hannah Abbott would not like it.

"We need to know if your mother has anything to do with the disappearance of Hermione and Pansy," he said bluntly. "We think she may be involved."

Straight to the jugular.

Hannah stiffened, her expression changing from surprise to utter disgust.

"My mother? Are you mad? Why would my mother have anything to do with something so horrible?" she shot back, clearly offended. Her tone was defensive and her icy gaze fixed on Draco as if he had just become her enemy number one with this accusation.

Draco understood. If someone had accused his family of such a thing, he'd probably have bared his claws too. In this house there were only the two of them - if you hit one, you hit both.

Beatrice, who had been listening to the conversation from the corridor, entered the room with a tray of tea and Muggle biscuits, which she placed on the coffee table.

"Hannah," she said in a tone that mixed authority and... remorse? "I'm going to give you the choice of staying or going to your room."

"Of course I'm staying," her daughter replied defiantly.

"You should know that you probably won't like what you hear."

"Why? What's going on, mom?"

The woman sank into the green cloth chair next to the sofa.

"I have tried to protect you by keeping you out of this, but now is not the time for pride or hiding the truth, dear. There are things you need to know... though this moment has come sooner than I expected."

The tension in the room was palpable. Harry and Neville exchanged glances, while Draco remained motionless, his gaze fixed on Beatrice. He had expected her to be cold and evasive, but the figure before him was someone far more worn down by the weight of her own secrets.

A part of him wanted to stand up and curse her with the most painful curse he could remember. He wanted to insult her, humiliate her as she had humiliated him... but he couldn't lose control, not when he was so close to the truth. So close, his intuition told him, to finding out where Hermione was. She was far more important than his ego, so he remained calm as he waited for the woman to explain.

Seconds passed before she began her story.

"As you may know, I am Muggle-born. I come from a very dysfunctional family: an alcoholic mother and an abusive father who was mostly absent. So when my Hogwarts letter arrived, it was like a ray of hope in the darkness. It was my chance to escape, to be more than "the poor brown girl", the child the neighbours pitied while whispering about how terrible my life at home must be. My parents didn't understand what the letter meant. For them, it was just another one of my quirks, something else they couldn't control or understand. But for me... it was a miracle. My salvation. An escape from everything wrong in my life." She paused briefly, her eyes shining with a mixture of nostalgia and bitterness, before continuing. "When I met John, Hannah's father, it felt like everything finally made sense. He was charming. Loving. Thoughtful. We quickly became a couple and it wasn't long before he introduced me to his family. I'd never met his father, but his mother was everything mine wasn't: kind, warm, welcoming, and she made me feel at home from the start. For the first time I felt part of something bigger than myself. I married John completely in love. I adored him and was convinced that he felt the same way about me."

Beatrice lowered her eyes as if the words to come were a burden she had carried for far too long.

"John and I dreamed of filling the house with children. We wanted five, six... as many as there were. For the first time in my life, money wasn't a problem and the idea of a big, happy family seemed like the perfect end to my life story. When I got pregnant, John was ecstatic and took good care of me. But... when he found out that our first baby would be a girl, I noticed something. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but I saw it. A shadow of disappointment. But he assured me it didn't matter, that we'd have a boy later."

She raised her head and looked directly at Hannah, her eyes full of suppressed tears.

"The labor was a nightmare. I had a terrible haemorrhage, so bad that the healers weren't sure I'd survive. I was in a coma for several days. When I woke up, the first thing I told John was that I never wanted to go through that again. I thought he'd understand, but..." She paused for a moment, her voice breaking. "He didn't. As soon as we got back from the hospital, he started pressuring me. He said I owed him a son, a boy, while Hannah cried in her cot and received no attention from him."

The eyes of those present instinctively turned to Hannah, who was now sobbing quietly. Beatrice held out her hand to her daughter, but didn't stop talking.

"Soon after Hannah was born and I refused to have any more children, John insisted on bringing us closer to the Malfoys." She gave Draco a sympathetic look. He just wanted her to keep talking. "He said I needed a distraction, a friend. That I'd change my mind once I held Narcissa's boy. At the time, I thought it strange that he wanted to bond with Lucius and his wife, since they'd never been anything close to friends during our years at Hogwarts. They had been... well, little more than acquaintances. But the fact that we had babies so close in time made Narcissa and I good friends..."

Draco felt sick to his stomach to hear someone like Beatrice speak of his mother and their friendship as if she had never cast a terrible and depraved curse on her son for no apparent reason.

"Draco, you were so beautiful..." She continued. "And you and Hannah had so much fun together."

The two exchanged uncomfortable glances across the room. It was hard to imagine that they had once shared moments together.

"John and Lucius also seemed to get on, and everything seemed fine when both families got together. But this didn't improve the situation in our marriage. In fact, it got worse every day. When Hannah was only three months old, we had a terrible row. John kept insisting that we should try again, but I was adamant. Something changed in him that night. He began to ignore me completely, making cruel remarks... but nothing hurt more than the fact that he avoided looking at our daughter. As if her very presence was a reminder of my 'failure'."

She turned to Hannah.

"I know you have always felt your father's rejection..." she said softly, the words weighing heavily on her. "And believe me, darling, it was never your fault. Your father... he was blinded by his own ambition, by something far greater than himself. But you..." Her voice broke again and tears finally rolled down her cheeks. "You were the best thing that ever happened to me. You always were."

"What ambitions are you talking about, mom? Why was my father so obsessed with having a son?"

Beatrice took a deep breath and tried to steady herself.

"I had noticed him getting up in the middle of the night for some time, but I was always too tired or depressed to care. However, one night, tired of not knowing the reason for his change in attitude towards me - because I refused to believe it was just because I didn't want any more children - I decided to follow him. That's when I discovered, to my surprise, that there was a false wall in the basement of the mansion. I saw him push one of the stones and a door opened, through which he disappeared. I still remember what I felt, the shiver down my spine, the confusion of not knowing who the hell I'd married... because I knew deep down that whatever was behind that wall was not good. But I went back to bed, and the next day I tried my best not to show my fear of him - a man I realised I had never really known. I waited for him to leave for work and then went down to the basement. I pressed the stone on the wall and entered a small corridor that led to two adjoining rooms. One was empty. The other..." Beatrice took a deep breath as she told the story, as if the revelation of these memories revived the fear that had haunted her at the time. "The other room was completely empty except for a desk, a chair and a filing cabinet. The light came barely through a small crack in the wall and the air felt heavy, almost suffocating. At first I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Just a place where someone might keep documents, maybe something work-related. But then I noticed a small glass jar on the desk. It was about the size of a potion vial."

Beatrice paused, as if trying to put into words something that still puzzled her.

"The vial... was strange. Even though it contained only a few silvery drops, it gave off a feeling that chilled me to the bone. It was as if I somehow knew I was looking at something dangerous. Something... corrupt."

Harry frowned.

"What do you think it contained?"

"A fragment of Voldemort's soul." Beatrice confirmed solemnly, nodding. "Although I didn't know what it was at the time, I learned later when I understood the extent of his plans. But by then the vial was empty. Only later did I discover that John had already used it - that he had made Draco drink the substance without his parents or me knowing."

Draco clenched his jaw.

"Voldemort? Who or what is Voldemort?"

Beatrice looked at him seriously, taking a moment to find the right words.

"It's understandable that you don't know, Draco. I had to do a lot of research to understand who Voldemort was, because he was killed when John was a child and was so unimportant that no one remembered him when I entered Hogwarts. In short, he was a student prodigy - brilliant and charismatic - who always knew how to manipulate people. But deep down he was a sociopath, someone incapable of feeling love or empathy. After graduating, he disappeared for years. He began to study and experiment with dark magic, obsessed with the idea of becoming immortal. As I said, Voldemort was killed long before he could establish himself as the danger he would have been to both the magical and Muggle worlds."

The four young people exchanged curious glances.

"What does that have to do with me then? And why would he make me drink a part of his soul?" Draco asked, frowning. The idea seemed completely absurd.

"Yes, why would he?" Harry asked, clearly confused. "If he was killed so long ago, what do John and Malfoy have to do with it?"

Beatrice sighed, her fingers intertwined on her lap as she tried to keep her composure.

"Because even though Voldemort died, his followers didn't. They weren't many, but they were loyal. And John's father - your grandfather," she said, turning to Hannah "was Voldemort's right-hand man. And when he was defeated, he made sure his son was groomed to carry out a twisted plan."

The silence in the room was almost palpable.

"How do you know that?"

"Because the vial wasn't the only thing I found. There were scrolls on the desk - many of them. At first I didn't want to touch them, afraid they might be cursed, but eventually I decided to take the risk. I opened them carefully, and what I read..." she trailed off, pressing her lips together and closing her eyes for a moment. "What I read took my breath away."

Neville, unable to contain himself, asked urgently:

"What did they say?"

Beatrice looked at them gravely.

"They were detailed instructions, probably written by John's father, for a ritual to bring Voldemort back to life. It described how fragments of Voldemort's soul had been placed in this vial and that they needed to be ingested by a male baby, as these parts of his soul would grow and mature with the child. That's when I understood why John was so insistent that I get pregnant again with a boy. And if it couldn't be his own son, he planned to use other people's sons." She paused. "The scrolls also mentioned that the contents of the vial had been enchanted so that when the boy impregnated the first girl, Voldemort's seed would be implanted in her womb and the child she bore would become Voldemort's reincarnation. But the instructions made it clear that for the bloodline to be pure and strong, "the vessel" - that is, the pregnant girl - had to be a pureblood."

Hannah, her face pale, asked in a low voice:

"What did you do after you discovered all this?"

Beatrice let out a shuddering sigh.

"I did the only thing I could. I took some of the most important scrolls and hid them. I knew I couldn't destroy them yet. I needed proof, something to stop him if things got worse. Then I closed the room and pretended I hadn't discovered anything, but I filed for divorce. It was one of the hardest decisions of my life, but he quickly signed the papers and then threw me out of the mansion with nothing but a suitcase in one hand and my daughter in the other. I realised then that he had never loved me, that he had only chosen me as his wife (despite being Muggle-born) because he thought I would be easy to manipulate, given the emotional abandonment of my parents. He also believed that I would never ask questions or oppose his wishes, which was essential to his plan."

"So... everything that's happened to me is because of your ex-husband?" asked Draco in a cold tone, barely able to contain his anger.

Beatrice nodded regretfully.

"When I discovered what John was planning, I wanted to take certain measures and began to devise a plan, staring with taking me away from your family so that you wouldn't know who I was... this curse I put on you..." she said finally, interlacing her fingers nervously. "It wasn't because of anything your father did. I never worked for the Ministry. By forcing you to impregnate a Muggle-born..." Draco noticed how hard it was for her to express herself. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just wanted to make sure your first partner couldn't conceive... to prevent Voldemort from being reborn."

Paralysed, Hannah could barely process what she had heard. Harry, however, was the first to react when he connected the dots.

"You got Hermione pregnant?!" he exclaimed.

Draco reached into his jacket, feeling for his wand at the boy's sudden aggressive tone.

"Calm down, Potter."

"And what does all this have to do with Parkinson's disappearance? And Greengrass's death?" Neville asked, still trying to piece it all together in his mind. His questions managed to distract Harry enough to avoid a physical confrontation.

"John has a magical object in his possession, a necklace that reacts when Voldemort's 'seed' fertilises an egg." Beatrice explained in a broken voice. "He must have assumed that if the necklace glowed, it meant that Draco's girlfriend was pregnant. That's why he kidnapped Daphne in the first place... and when he saw it wasn't her, he..." Beatrice fell silent, unable to continue.

Harry closed his eyes for a moment, overwhelmed by the information.

"If Hermione is the one who's pregnant," he said quietly, almost incredulously. "Then why would he kidnap Pansy?"

"Maybe... because Hermione isn't a pureblood." Said Beatrice, remembering Voldemort's followers' obsession with blood purity. "It's possible that... John is using Pansy's blood to transfer into her. Perhaps he believes that if Hermione receives enough of Pansy's blood, she could be considered 'pure-blood' and meet the requirements of the ritual."

Neville shook his head in disbelief. The rest did the same. It was such an absurd idea... but the grim look on Beatrice's face and the determination with which she spoke finally convinced them that it was very likely real.

And they had to do something about it before it was too late.

Reviews are appreciated! :)
Cristy.