Ermalene Talon and the Hall of Ancestors - Book One by Pengi
Summary:


Ermalene Talon was desperate to learn her true heritage in the wizarding world. She only expected to find the names of her parents, but what she discovers at Hogwarts castle is more than she could have ever dreamed. Together with her best friend Andy, an old headmaster's portrait, and the friends she makes along the way, Ermalene must find her destiny -- the Third Prophecy of Trelawney.
Categories: Fanfiction > Movies > Harry Potter Characters: Harry Potter, Other
Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Humor, Romance
Warnings: Death, Sexual Content, Violence
Challenges:
Series: Ermalene Talon
Chapters: 30 Completed: Yes Word count: 53492 Read: 98548 Published: 07/31/15 Updated: 08/16/15

1. The Arrival of the Portrait by Pengi

2. Two Tickets to Answers by Pengi

3. Bewitched Aerodynamics by Pengi

4. Arrival at Shell Cottage by Pengi

5. The Third Prophecy of Trelawney by Pengi

6. Diagon Alley by Pengi

7. Practically a Bloody Gryffindor by Pengi

8. Confunded by Pengi

9. The True Heir to Slytherin by Pengi

10. A Dinner Guest by Pengi

11. Hagrid Says Too Much by Pengi

12. Chattering Cucumber Crumble by Pengi

13. The Patronus by Pengi

14. The Ministry of Magic by Pengi

15. The Message of the Magpie by Pengi

16. Welcome ter Hogwarts by Pengi

17. Brush With a Gorgon by Pengi

18. Breakfast With Neville Longbottom by Pengi

19. The Grand Tour of Hogwarts by Pengi

20. What Binds the Grey Lady by Pengi

21. The Trio Reunited by Pengi

22. Following the Bronze Line by Pengi

23. The Crossing of Paths by Pengi

24. Xenophilius Lovegood's Ghost by Pengi

25. Escape from the House of Gaunt by Pengi

26. Keywords and Loopholes by Pengi

27. Attack of the Basilisk by Pengi

28. Out of Danger, Into Trouble by Pengi

29. Nott the Truth by Pengi

30. The Prophecy Revealed by Pengi

The Arrival of the Portrait by Pengi
The Arrival of the Portrait

Minerva McGonagall crept through the halls, her hands wrapped tightly around a portrait frame, her tartan robe fluttering at her ankles. In her hustle, she stumbled over a roll in the rug and tripped forward, dropping the corner of the frame to the floor with a thump.

“While I do appreciate your efforts to fulfill my request to move my portrait, I do wish it would be a bit less bumpy,” came a voice, with a hint of a smile in the tone. The voice belonged to the portrait within the frame.

Minerva frowned, “I’d like to have seen you try running through this castle in the dead of night while carrying this frame without being seen,” she snapped. “Couldn’t have a modest frame. Oh-no! This ornate thing must weigh a hundred pounds!”

She hoisted the frame up once more with a grunt and continued on down the corridor, up another flight of stairs and down several more hallways.

Finally, she arrived to the hall she was searching for and quickly leaned the seemingly empty frame against the wall. Her old, knotted fingers withdrew her wand from her sleeve and she walked quickly, back and forth, seeming to pace. After five turns, the wall glowed, gold as fire sparks, as the frame of a door appeared in the wallpaper. She glanced both directions down the hallway to be sure none of the students had left their beds to sneak around the hallways. After confirming that she was quite alone by casting several revealing charms, she grasped the portrait and carried it hurriedly through the door, kicking it closed behind her. McGonagall put the portrait down again inside, this time leaning against a little table in the center of the room. The walls stretched on what seemed like forever, lined with rows and rows of old tapestries that hung from the ceiling, the carefully stitched family trees of every wizarding pure-blood line. Also there were large stacks of record books and bundles of scrolls scattered across the floor, picture albums and old copies of The Daily Prophet.

“What is this room?” McGonagall asked.

“The Hall of Ancestors,” the portrait answered.

“Why did you need to be hidden here?” she asked, confused, “Why not a hall of portraits or of hidden things? Why the Hall of Ancestors?”

“Blood holds a great many secrets, Minerva,” the portrait said darkly, “Secrets yet untold. Now - you are certain that no one else, other than Hagrid, knew where you were going to put my portrait?”

“Yes, Albus,” she replied, addressing the portrait for the first time by name. “Though I hardly see what use the information of this portrait’s location is to anyone other than myself anyway. Wouldn’t you rather stay in the headmaster’s office, comfortable on the wall, like the other portraits?”

A warm smile crossed Dumbledore’s painted lips. “I would rather a lot of things, Minerva, none of which I should get.” He paused, then, “Hagrid has been given the prophecy? He alone knows of it?”

McGonagall nodded. “I made certain of it.”

“Then I do believe we have done all we can until the day comes that all of this shall come to pass,” he said, settling himself more into a beautiful velvet chair he had been painted sitting upon. He lifted the book painted beside him on the nightstand. “How I do wish they’d at least had thought to paint more than one volume,” he said woefully, “I should have liked to have something to keep myself entertained with until then.”

“How long do you suppose that shall be?” Minerva asked, “Before the prophecy comes to pass?”

The headmaster stroked his long silver beard, pushed his half-moon spectacles up his nose and said thoughtfully, “I suppose it shall be quite a long time, Minerva.”

She took a deep breath. “What about Harry Potter, sir?”

“What about him?” Dumbledore asked.

“Shouldn’t we warn him?” she questioned, “So that he can be prepared so that when this all begins --”

Cutting her off by raising one hand, Dumbledore shook his head, “Do not trouble Harry Potter with the knowledge of any of this. Harry has given enough of his life over to the greater good, Minerva, and it is time for some well deserved rest in the Potter household. No, this battle must fall upon the shoulders of another. Anyway, the prophecy says it will be many years before we see rise to the dangers these prophecies speak of, and by the time they come to pass Harry Potter will be an old man. It is nothing of which Harry Potter must trouble himself.”

McGonagall nodded her understanding.

“And now, my dear Minerva, it is my duty to wish a good life to you, and may you reap all of the charming benefits of living to old age.” He smiled, a twinkle in his eye, “May your years be filled with happiness, warm tea, and a magnificent collection of tartan pajamas.”

She took a deep breath. It was just a portrait, she told herself, not Dumbledore himself. She had no reason to feel as though this were goodbye all over again. She turned to leave, her heart heavy.

He cleared his throat. “Minerva?”

She stopped and looked back, her hand on the door.

“Good night,” said Dumbledore, and he wiggled just the very tips of his fingers in salutation.

Tears blurred the edges of her eyes. “Good night, headmaster,” she said croakily, and she stepped into the hallway, pulling the door closed, and with a fading golden glow in the wallpaper, the Room of Requirement sealed itself once more.


Two Tickets to Answers by Pengi
Two Tickets to Answers


Ermalene Talon awoke with a start. She lay still, staring into the dark, wondering what exactly had awakened her. Then she heard it again - a tapping sound on her window. She rolled out of bed and pulled on her bathrobe, tying the waist tight, and pulled open the window just as a small rock flew by, nearly hitting her forehead. She ducked and watched the rock skim the carpet behind her before looking down at the yard below.

“Sorry,” came a heavy whisper. “I didn’t see you open the window.”

“Andy. What are you doing here?” Ermalene asked, leaning out to see the pale, bespectacled boy below. His bright orange hair seemed to hum in the moonlight.

“Can you come down?” he asked in response.

She glanced at the door, then back at him. “One sec.” She rushed over and clicked the lock, and hurried to the trunk at the foot of her bed, pushing the lid open and rooting around through layers of pointless stuff until she’d unearthed the things she’d hidden at the bottom. She pulled out her wand - 10 ˝”, cherry wood with a unicorn hair core, which she was very, very fond of - and crawled carefully out of the window. She inched along the roof to the drain and slowly lowered herself over the side until she was hanging by her hands at which point she dropped straight down to the grass below.

The light of her open bedroom window and the moon was all that lit the yard. She looked around quickly to see where Andy had scampered off to in the time it took her to get out there. He was standing at the edge of the property, ducked behind a little shed, beckoning to her eagerly. Ermalene rushed across the yard, her feet light as air, and joined him in the little corner he’d tucked himself into. He was sitting on top of a cord of wood by the time she got there, and she dusted away spiders with her wand tip, her back pressed against the fence that hid them from view on either side.

“This better be good,” she muttered.

Andy nodded, “Oh it’s good alright,” he said. Then he reached into the little leather messenger bag at his side and pulled out a couple slips of paper. “I’ve figured out a way around our dilemma,” he announced. “Muggle transportation.”

“What?” Ermalene reached out and snatched the papers, looking at them. They were airline tickets. To London. She looked up. “Andrew Fredrick Weasley,” she said, “Where did you get these?”

“Bought’em, of course,” he replied, leaning against the shed with a grin, “With actual muggle money, mind,” he added, “All proper and like.”

“How?” Ermalene stared at the typed letters on the tickets, her hands shaking.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I don’t want to hear you’ve sold a kidney or something.”

“Selling a -- what?” Andy shook his head in disbelief. “Oh Ermalene what am I going to do with you? Selling a kidney. Honestly. I worked for the money,” he said. He waved a hand to silence her before she could even ask the question on the tip of her tongue. “I’ve been working a couple days a week at the little ice cream stand down the road a bit. The muggles were getting onto my dad about me not working, so he suggested I do something just to get them to stop paying so much attention and everything.” Andy scoffed, “But it worked out to our advantage because now I’ve solved the problem. We don’t need to wait until you’ve learned to apparate to get to London, we can go now. Well. Not right-this-second now, but -- next week.” He pressed his finger to the date on the tickets in her hands.

Ermalene’s insides had turned to warm pudding-like mush. She felt a burning behind her eyes -- emotions as she stared at the tickets. “Thank you,” she said.

Andy shrugged, “Not a big deal. I’m as curious as you are. Not that I care if you’re a Mudblood or not --” he grinned as she scowled at the foul language.

“I just need to know, Andy, you know?” Ermalene asked.

He nodded. “I know.”

Ermalene leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Andy took a deep breath of the smell of the muggle soaps in her hair and freshly laundered pajama top and it made his insides tremble. “You’re such a good friend,” Ermalene whispered. “The very best.”

Andy smiled, a crooked sort of smile that hitched up only one side of his lips as though they’d been caught up on his incisor teeth. “It’s nothing really. I magicked most of the way through the job thing anyways,” he muttered.

Ermalene, back in her own space now, looked at the tickets in her hands and her mind spun through the possibilities that laid before her. She’d dreamed of going to Hogwarts all of her life, ever since she was a small child. How disappointed she’d been when, at the age of eleven, an owl had arrived at her window bearing an acceptance letter to wizarding school only to discover that she was not going to Hogwarts. She would attend an American wizarding school - Flamel Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry - a much smaller, less celebrated school founded by the famed alchemist, Nicholas Flamel, and his wife. Flamel Academy was nice, and certainly she had learned a lot already in her six years there, but it was still a disappointment not to be going to Hogwarts.

“Flamel Academy is a very good school,” her parents had told her when she’d cried upon the arrival of the acceptance letter. “Many brilliant wizards have attended Flamel Academy.”

For Ermalene it was less about the quality of lessons and more about the deepest desire to discover who she really was.

Ermalene’s parents were not truly her parents but her adoptive parents.

Matthew Nott, Ermalene’s adoptive father, was, after all, the grandson of Theodore Nott, a descendant of the man who authored the Pure-Blood Directory over a century before. While Matthew himself had never subscribed to his family’s beliefs of “magic is might”, he still lived beneath the stigma of the name. And Caterina, her mother, was no stranger to his struggle. Her maiden name, Malfoy, had been tarnished, too, during the wizarding war and though her brother had fared quite well in London, despite their father’s legacy as a bully and a coward, Caterina had dreamed of fleeing all of her life, and always planned to leave soon as she had come of age. When Caterina met Matthew, the pair had bonded over their shared distaste for family history and fell in love, devoting themselves to changing the emotions stirred by their family names. They began by proving their love for muggles by adopting one.

Or so they believed.

The couple had taken Ermalene in when she was very young and living at a muggle orphanage in London, and though they loved her very much, Ermalene had always wondered who her blood parents were. All she had to go by was her name - Talon - was not one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight pureblood family names of the wizarding world according to Cantankerous Nott. She’d spent years pouring over the Daily Prophet’s online databases, searching through old issues of the paper’s stories, desperate to see the name Talon in there, eager to find out something - anything - about the people whose blood ran through her veins. Not that it mattered. Perhaps she truly was muggle born and just got lucky to have landed in a wizarding family, but she wanted to know. There was a fire kindling in the depths of her that seemed impossible to put out with less than the answers she sought.

She couldn’t believe that she now held the ticket - literally - that would bring her closer to finding answers. “Magicked or not, you worked for these tickets,” Ermalene said, looking up at Andy after all of this thinking had deluged her mind. She felt her throat constrict with appreciation. “Thank you.”

Andy nodded, his cheeks almost as red as his hair, “Don’t mention it. Really Erma. You’re my mate.” He smiled. “And I imagine it’ll be a really good time going to London and seeing some of the old history with you. I reckon it’ll be a good holiday.”

At the word holiday, Ermalene realized there were flaws in the plan Andy was suggesting. “Where will we stay?” she asked, “How will we afford food and transportation once we’re there?”

“We’ll stay at my grandpa’s place,” Andy replied, “We’ll be of age there, don’t forget it’s only seventeen you need to be to be rid of the Trace, we could apparate legally wherever we need to go from Shell Cottage. And my grandma loves to cook, she’s really good.”

Ermalene, who had felt moments before like the idea was crumbling, now felt again that spark of hope. “You’re sure they wouldn’t mind us intruding on them?”

“They love company,” Andy said. “And they’ve got the greatest stories,” he added, bowling on before Ermalene could question further, “Grampa Bill knows Harry Potter personally. Harry Potter even stayed at Shell Cottage for a piece when he was trying to find the Horcruxes. It’s in all the history books.”

Ermalene grinned, her eyes filling with tears in the moonlight at the realization that this was absolutely, truly happening.

“Erma!” the voice echoed through the dark behind them from the house.

“Oh no,” Ermalene shoved the tickets back into Andy’s hands, “I gotta go. When do we leave?” she asked as she scrambled to her feet.

“One week,” Andy replied. “July 31. Your birthday.”

“Well,” Ermalene laughed, “Sort of my birthday.”

“Just because you chose it doesn’t make it less your birthday,” Andy said with a shrug, dusting off his pants as he stood up, too.

Ermalene laughed, “That’s precisely why it isn’t my birthday.”

“ERMA!”

“Gotta go. Thanks again!”

Before Andy could speak another word, Ermalene had dashed off from the bushes, running full-tilt back to the house. Andy sighed and leaned against the shed they’d been sitting behind, closing his eyes as he listened to the distant sound of Caterina Nott scolding Ermalene for sneaking out of the house in the dead of night. He heard their front door slam closed and slid the tickets into the leather messenger bag that he had slung around his torso.

As Andrew Weasley walked home, the bag thumping against his thigh with every step, he replayed the beauty of Ermalene’s smiling reaction to his gift, the words she’d said - calling him her best friend. Although the title was one that he did not at all take for granted, he wondered if there would ever be opportunity to be more than that to Ermalene, if she could ever see him as someone that she could love.

When he got to his room, he tossed the messenger bag into his desk chair and picked up a book that his Great Uncle Ron had given him for his seventeenth birthday - Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm a Witch. It was an old book, but Ron had insisted that it would stand the test of time. “This advice doesn’t ever go sour, mate. Used it to charm your Great Aunt,” he’d written on the dedication page, “Worked blood well as we’ve been together for -- well, a rather long time.” He moved his thumb through the pages and cracked it open on the chapter about performing a grand gesture and dog-eared it down, marking it as yet another of the supposedly fail-safe ways that had yet to work.


Bewitched Aerodynamics by Pengi
Bewitched Aerodynamics



Ermalene had to swallow back the urge to tell Matthew and Caterina about the plans she and Andy were making several times over the next week. Part of her wanted to tell them exactly what was happening, but this other, quieter part told her to keep the trip a secret, though she didn’t know why. Matthew and Caterina had never been particularly unreasonable in the years she had lived with them, never overbearing or overprotective, but for some reason she feared that they might say no to her going on the trip. So, she suppressed the urge to squeal and pump her fists at every moment that the thought crossed her mind.

Andy came over everyday and collected Erma, and the two of them would walk to the park, making plans while pouring over maps of Hogsmeade and a copy of “Hogwarts: A History, The Newly Updated & Revised Edition”. As each day passed, Ermalene felt the trip becoming more and more real until she could scarcely keep her skin on, she was so excited, and found herself mumbling the plans she and Andy had made around the foam from her toothpaste as she stared at her own eyes in the mirror on the eve of her birthday.

When she arrived at the dinner table that night, having already packed her suitcase and snuck it out onto the roof for an easy departure, she could barely sit still. She nibbled at the casserole that Caterina had prepared and barely touched her cup of sweet pumpkin juice.

Matthew looked over the muggle paper he was reading. “What’s the matter with you?” he questioned, eyeing Ermalene’s plate suspiciously. Ermalene was a healthy eater and rarely left a plate of food as untouched as this one currently appeared.

“Nothing’s the matter,” Ermalene replied. Which was true to an extent; nothing was wrong, exactly, she was just anxious. But in a good way. About good things.

Caterina poured herself more pumpkin juice. “Excited about your birthday?” she questioned.

“More than you could imagine,” Ermalene answered truthfully.

“What sort of cake did you want me to conjure for you tomorrow?” Caterina questioned, “I learned a spell for a marvelous strawberry creame…”

“That sounds nice,” Ermalene replied.

“Or there’s a bananas foster flavor that I haven’t tried yet,” continued Caterina.

Matthew ducked back behind the muggle paper.

“The strawberry would be fine,” Ermalene said.

Caterina smiled. “I cannot believe you’re to be seventeen,” she sighed, staring at Ermalene with doe-eyes. She looked at Matthew’s paper, then back to Ermalene. “It seems like only yesterday that we were at that muggle orphanage and selecting you to bring home.” She reached out and put her palm on Ermalene’s cheek. “We thought we were getting an ordinary child, only to discover how incredibly extraordinary you are.”

Ermalene felt her face grow hot. She felt bad not telling Caterina that she was leaving in just a few hours to go to London, to find out who had abandoned her and how she’d come to be in the Nott’s care to begin with. She hated how much her desire to know would hurt the people who had taken her in and loved her all this time. It wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful. She was terribly grateful, and forever in debt to the Nott couple, but she needed to know.

“Thank you,” she whispered as Caterina slid her fingers from the edge of Ermalene’s jaw. She looked down at her plate and took a couple more bites of the casserole… not because she was hungry any longer, but because she could think of no other way to show Caterina that she cared for her very deeply.

Caterina smiled.

Later that night, after they’d all gone to sleep, Ermalene lay in the twin bed in her room, staring at the ceiling, where she’d hung adhesive glow-in-the-dark stars in swirling patterns and even the constellations mixed in. She counted each of those greenish-tinged stars, waiting for the moment when she’d hear the little rocks hitting the window again, waiting for Andy to come and fetch her for their holiday in London.

She’d nearly fallen asleep when she heard the first pebble hit. She glanced warily at the crack beneath her door, just to be sure that no lights had turned on in the hall at the sound of the pebble, then she slid out of bed, stepping into her sneakers and tugging a sweatshirt over her arms, despite the blistering heat that filled even the night air. She opened her window and stuck one leg out onto the porch, crawling through, leaving the room behind. She felt guilty, even as she tossed the bag she’d packed and put out on the roof over the side and to the ground, where Andy Weasley stood, waiting. She lowered herself over the side and dropped to the ground.

“Happy Birthday,” Andy whispered huskily.

“Thank you,” Ermalene replied under her breath.

“Welcome to the Seventeen Club,” Andy said lowly as he winked. He reached quickly, scooping up the strap of Ermalene’s bag and hoisting it over his shoulder alongside his own rather stuffed bag. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

Ermalene and Andy both scurried away from the Nott house, ducking around it’s perimeter, keeping low beneath the lavender bushes that lined one side, out to the front walkway. Andy waved for her to follow him down the road. When they got several houses away, he said, in his normal voice, “Are you ready for the adventure of a lifetime?”

Ermalene laughed, “Hardly adventure, looking up old genealogy charts. But I am looking forward to it just the same. Ought to be right boring for you.”

“You never know,” Andy said with a smirk, “Even the most boring of things can explode into adventures. At least that’s what I’ve heard. I wouldn’t know because my boring things usually tend to stay boring.” Not that there was a chance in the world of the trip being boring so long as she was there, he thought, listening to the sound of her footsteps on the pavement as they walked, the beat of her shoes matching his heart rate.

“I very much doubt that a single thing in your life has ever been boring,” Ermalene accused him. She’d always been jealous of Andy Weasley for not only knowing who his ancestors were, but being born into such a marvelous wizarding family. The history that the Weasley name upheld was a shining glory - Andy’s relatives were nothing short of famous. Naming off Andy’s family tree was like shouting off a highlight reel of incredible wizards and witches from Ronald and Hermione Weasley - two of the Trio, to Fred and George - founders of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, to Ginny Potter - married to none other than Harry Potter himself, as well as a renown Quidditch star.

When they reached the end of the street, they found Andy’s brother, Nathan, waiting for them with his modified muggle car. He was leaning against the trunk, eating a candy wand and watching the stars. Nathan was obsessed with muggle pop culture and had recently discovered an old muggle TV show called Happy Days about how the muggles lived in the 1950s that he’d modeled his latest look after. A metamorphmangus, Nathan could change his features and always looked differently each time that Ermalene saw him. He was the only Weasley she’d ever heard of that didn’t have flaming red hair, like Andy’s. Tonight, Nate had changed his hair to a jet black pomade that hung over his forehead and seemed to shine under the streetlamp. He wore a leather jacket, with a plain white t-shirt over jeans, and a muggle cigarette hung over one ear, a prop to complete the costume.

“Thanks for waiting for us, Nate,” Andy said as they approached.

“Not a prob,” Nate answered as he climbed into the car.

“Nate’s going to drive us to the airport,” Andy explained, “Since we can’t apparate yet.”

Ermalene nodded. She glanced back over her shoulder at the still-dark Nott house behind them and wondered how long it would take Caterina and Matthew to notice that she’d left. Another twinge of guilt twittered in her stomach and she promised herself she would send them an owl as soon as she arrived in London to assure them she was okay and would return once she’d gotten the answers she needed. Then she climbed into Nate’s car and Andy followed and they’d barely gotten the door closed and Nate had pulled away from the curb - vertically, for this was a flying car, a design created by the famous Arthur Weasley who, in his later years after quitting his job at the Ministry of Magic, had become a brilliant, full-time hobbyist in the art of muggle vehicle modification.



-*-*-*-*-*-



Andy sat in a plastic chair, looking over the tarmac at the airport, watching the giant airplanes roll into their various loading gates. Ermalene was beside him, looking over Flamel Academy’s seventh year required book list. “Isn’t it funny,” Andy mused, “That the muggles have figured out how to bewitch something as big as all that to fly but still can’t get the hang of a broomstick or a modified car?” He glanced at Ermalene. “Oi, you aren’t seriously looking at school paperwork, are you?”

Ermalene murmured, “Yes, I’m looking at school paperwork.”

“It’s the summer, Ermalene,” groaned Andy.

“So?”

Andy sighed and turned back to the window. If ‘it’s summer’ wasn’t argument enough then anything else he had to say certainly wouldn’t win him the debate, either. “I fly, all the time, on brooms playing quidditch and all... but being hurtled through the air based on muggle enchantments scare the every-flavor-beans out of me.”

Ermalene looked out the window, too, lowering the books list.

“Too bad London’s too far to go by broom,” Andy said wistfully. “So much safer than a bewitched tin can.”

“The airplanes aren’t bewitched, they operate on wind currents.” Ermalene said, staring out, watching as one of the planes picked up speed as it moved down the runway, finally lifting off the ground, tucking it’s landing gear up into it’s belly. “The technology is scientifically more accurately compared to what nature’s implemented on your owl than to a bewitched broomstick.”

Andy grinned, looking at the reflection of her in the mirror, her long dark blonde hair messy and falling over her shoulder.

“The airplane wings work the same way that bird wings do in that they are designed to make the air above them move quicker than the air below, resulting in a pressure that actually lifts it into the air and by adjusting the angle of the wing can either gain or reduce the friction and --” Ermalene stopped mid-explanation. Andy’s eyebrows had pinched together in the center of his forehead. “Sorry,” she said. She was always getting carried away with explanations.

“S’alright,” Andy laughed, and he turned away from the window.

Ermalene licked her lips and turned, too.

They were quiet for a moment. “Can we discuss the difference between escalators and bewitched staircases next, then?” Andy said with a tremble of suppressed laughter to his voice.

“Shut up,” Ermalene laughed.

Arrival at Shell Cottage by Pengi
Arrival at Shell Cottage



Ermalene stared out the window in wonder as the plane sailed over the Atlantic Ocean. Andy snored in the seat beside her, unaware of her excitement as she watched the stretch of water below. It seemed to go on and on forever there below the clouds and Ermalene thought of how deep it went and the creatures that haunted the floors of it, way down in the trenches, and how insignificant everything was in perspective.

She turned to nudge Andy as the land came into view and little houses dotted the ground and colorful dots that represented cars and the people within them, headed to all of the places that people come and go. "Are we there?" Andy murmured through his disoriented sleepiness. When Ermalene pointed excitedly at the window, he groaned and said, "Every Flavor Beans, Erma," and turned for the barf bag in the seat back before him.

When they landed, Andy was still looking a little green around the gills as he pulled their luggage from the racks above their heads, but still he insisted on carrying both of the bags. She clutched the bottle of water the flight attendant had given her and followed Andy into the hustle-bustle of Heathrow. They walked past all of the muggles that rushed about, trying to make it to flights and departing trains, until they made it to a quiet alcove a few turns away from a tube stop and cloistered themselves in a corner behind an especially large ficus.

Andy glanced both ways to be sure they were alone. "Okay, are you ready to apparate, then?" he asked her, his voice nervous. He held out his hand to her. Because she had never apparated outside of practice before, they'd agreed that it was best if they were to use side-along apparition until she felt more comfortable about it.

"You have done this before, haven't you?" she asked.

"Loads of times," he said. "Nate uses side-along apparition all of the time around back home. And I've apparated side-along before now and then with Paisley and Jack after I got my license." Paisley and Jack were the other Weasley siblings.

Ermalene nodded, more afraid of being splinched than she'd been of that great iron bird landing in the middle of the ocean, and grasped Andy's hand, squeezing her eyes closed as tightly as she possibly could. "Okay, go on then."

Andy took a deep breath and paused and he'd been paused just long enough that Ermalene was about to open her eyes and ask him what the matter was when a great twisting, squeezing, swirling, dark sensation overtook her and she felt as though she were being pulled by her navel through a very tiny space and suddenly, with an effect of a lifting migraine, she found herself standing on soft ground. The air smelled of salty seawater and she opened her eyes to find that they were standing on a beach in the misty morning light, green-tinged tide rolling toward them with a foaming edge.

"Wow, you did it," Ermalene marveled.

"Didn't trust me to apparate you safely?" Andy asked, raising an eyebrow, "Doubt me, did you?" He shook his head, "Please Ermalene, as though I'd let a single piece of you get left behind." He turned then, before she could finish being amazed at his feat of apparition and waved his hand at a shabby, but comfortable looking cottage on the heights of a nearby hill, surrounded by waving grass and dunes. "This," he announced, "is Shell Cottage."

Ermalene stared in awe at the place, at the thatched roof and little shuttered windows. It was made of stone to stand the storms that surely rose up off the coast and a weather vane spun from the roof of a small shed to one side as if to emphasize this. Andy led her across the grass, up a stone walkway that wove through the sandy beach front toward the house. At the door hung a beautiful wind chime made of collected shells and beaded ribbon, and Ermalene studied it as Andy knocked and they waited.

The door swung open and an old man stood in the frame of it, staring down upon them. His thinning, shoulder-length red hair was streaked here and there with pale white, like the sand along the beach, and his green eyes were dimmed with age. Across his face were long, haunting scars, skin that had never quite healed closed completely caused long gauges, channels that crossed over the bridge of his nose to the line of his jaw. He might've been menacing, had he not cracked a smile upon seeing them, his eyes twinkling. "Fleur, my darling," he called over his shoulder, "We've got company!"

Bill Weasley, Andy's grandfather, quickly ushered the pair of them into the house as a stunning woman came across the room toward them. She looked no older than thirty, though she was truly twice that age. Her pale gold hair was woven into a long braid which hung over her shoulder and her blue eyes were just as piercing as they had been in the photographs in the text books Ermalene had read. There was no mistaking Fleur, one of the four champions of the last Triwizard Tournament ever to be held. It'll be the veela blood in her veins that makes her look so young, thought Ermalene.

"Vy 'ello," Fleur smiled graciously as she greeted them, "Andy," she said happily, drawing out the last syllable of his name, "'ow very nice eet eez to see you again, 'ow we 'ave missed you." She held out her arms and wrapped them around her grandson, hugging him tightly to her. "'Ow is our Louis?" she inquired.

"Dad's good," Andy replied, "And so's Nate and Paisley and Jack," he added. "I hope you don't mind us coming unannounced."

"Don't be silly, you are always welcome here," Bill said.

"Always," agreed Fleur, "And 'oo eez your charmante mademoiselle?"

Andy answered, "This is my friend, Ermalene Talon."

"The muggle the Notts adopted?" questioned Bill.

"Not a muggle after all," Andy replied, "I met Ermalene in classes at Flamel Academy when I transferred."

Fleur smiled, though it seemed to falter slightly at the news that she was of kin to the Nott family. Ermalene realize it was that family prejudice that had sent her parents overseas to begin with and understood, personally for the first time, exactly how strong the distaste for the name was in Britain. But Fleur's smile quickly returned, "'ow nice eet eez to meet you, Ermale'." The way she pronounced Ermalene's name was closer to Emily.

Ermalene smiled back, determined to overcome the name and prove herself worthy of their welcome. "Thanks. It's so great to meet you, too." She wondered if good manners would dictate that she should curtsy now or something as she felt awkward simply standing there before Bill and Fleur Weasley. Honestly, it felt a bit like standing before a celebrity or royalty.

"And 'ow do you like zat Amereecan school?" Fleur questioned, turning back to Andy, "Eet cannot be as good to study at as 'Ogwarts or Beauxbatons?"

Andy shrugged, "It's school," he replied.

"You should 'ave stayed with us until you finished ze learning instead of going to that uzzer school," Fleur lamented, "So that your scolarité was completed correctly..."

"Look at us, just keeping you in the doorway," Bill said hurriedly, as Fleur was about to question further about the studying habits that Andy clearly was uninterested in talking about. "Come in, come in, you must be tired after such a long journey all the way from America."

Bill ushered them into a cozy little sitting room and Fleur excused herself to get drinks and they all settled into overstuffed chairs that didn't match at all, but surrounded a warm fire that smelled sweet and chased the dreariness of the misty weather outside away.

Ermalene allowed herself the pleasure of looking about at the wizarding pictures on the walls of the cottage as Bill and Andy caught up, talking about the Quidditch team that Andy played for and the latest goings-on in the American branch of the Weasley family. There were so many photographs that the walls seemed to be throbbing with movement as various pictures waved and grinned from their frames, which were all shapes and sizes, an eclectically beautiful mess. Ermalene recognized many of the faces, though she'd only met a couple of those who smiled back at her. She spotted a baby photo of Andy among them and grinned at the tiny fiery-haired baby clutching a tiny toy dragon, making it zoom around the framed photograph with silent giggles that shook his entire body's pudge with delight.

"'ere you are, Ermale'," Fleur said, interrupting Ermalene's appraisal of the photographs by arriving at her side with a glass of ice cold butterbeer. She followed Ermalene's gaze to the picture of Andy. "Wasn't 'e just ze most adorable?" she cooed, her eyes getting dreamy, "I mees this day when he was so leetle as zat." She turned around and looked at Andy, "'ow quickly zey grow," she mused, "It seems only yesterday 'es papa was zat size and how look at 'im, ze whole next generation, already grown." Ermalene looked back at Andy, too, nodding along with Fleur. "But 'e is very 'andsome, I am sure you agree?" she grinned conspiratorially. Ermalene continued nodding in agreement. "'e looks like 'is grandfazzer did, when first I met him, in his face," she said, "But he's got 'is Great-grandmuzzer Molly's curly hairs." She laughed, and continued on, passing out glasses of butterbeer to the boys.

"So what brings the two of you abroad?" asked Bill, reclining in his seat, the talk of quidditch closing as Fleur settled herself onto the arm of Bill's chair.

"Ermalene, actually," Andy replied, taking a sip of his drink.

Bill looked at Ermalene.

"I want to find out who my family is," she explained. "Like my blood family. I plan to go to the orphanage and search my records, find out where my roots lie... if I'm muggle born or not."

"A noble cause," Bill noted, "Just beware not to get too caught up in the importance of blood status; remember, we've already fought that battle." He smiled. "There's been many a man who sought answers about lineage and didn't get the ones they so desperately wanted... Lord Voldemort not the least infamous among them."

Fleur visibly shuddered at the name. "Bill," she scolded softly, "Please, eet ez He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named around ze children."

"Hardly children any longer, are they?" Bill pointed out, waving his glass at Andy and Ermalene.

"I don't care if I'm muggle-born, half-blood, pure blood, whatever, it's all the same," Ermalene said quickly, "It's not about blood status; I just want to know who my family is. That's all that matters - who, not what."

"Eezn't eet enough, having ze Notts to love you?" Fleur questioned, "'Ow will knowing ze name of ze people who left you zare 'elp you?"

Ermalene shrugged, "Not help me, really. I just want the knowledge."

"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure," quoted Bill.

"Exactly," Ermalene agreed quickly, "Just knowing is the treasure, the intelligence."

"Too bad the Hall of Ancestors is yet to be found, sounds as if you seek the knowledge it contains," Bill said with a smile to his voice, and he took a long gulp of the butterbeer.

"The Hall of Ancestors?" Andy and Ermalene both repeated in unison.

"Yeah," Bill explained, "It's this great room supposedly some place in Hogwarts castle, though I never have been in it myself, nor do I know of anyone who has. They say the Hall contains all of the wizarding family trees and genealogy books that follow family lines from eons ago." He smiled to himself thoughtfully, "George said once that even he and Fred couldn't find the thing, even with that map of theirs. They wanted to search it out once to see which of the girls at Hogwarts were related by blood, you see," he chuckled, "They were afraid of falling for some nearly related cousin of ours, a true danger among pureblood families." Bill shook his head, remembering the antics of his twin brothers.

Ermalene glanced at Andy. The eagerness in her eyes was obvious. This Hall of Ancestors was exactly what she needed to find the answers she craved.

"So... so how does anyone know it exists if they've never found it?" Andy asked.

Bill answered, "The same way we know that any legendary things exist. The stories have been handed down. I heard of it from old Professor Binns, a ghost that taught at Hogwarts for years. He said that he had had a hand in collecting the contents of the room, though he was so old he didn't pay any attention to any of the students who asked where it was. Mostly Ravenclaws and Slytherins that cared where the Hall was at," he added, "They're always the ones that seek knowledge and bloodlines, those two houses." He glanced at Ermalene, "I'm sure the sorting hat would have put you into Ravenclaw at once, were you to be sorted." He smirked.

"I've thought that a thousand times," Andy laughed.

"There's nothing wrong with being smart," Ermalene said in a dignified voice, "Nothing wrong with putting learning and knowledge first."

"Zat I must agree with," nodded Fleur, "Intelligence eez ze most valuable weapon with which you can fight."

"Bravery," Bill argued, "You can't think through a true battle of good and evil, you can only walk into it with your guts and your strength... until you are courageous enough to fight the fight, you can only analyze it."

"Having all of ze courage and cunning in ze world cannot 'elp you if you cannot think in what ways to use them."

Bill answered, "Touche."

"So how might one maybe try to find the Hall of Ancestors?" Andy asked, bringing the conversation back around to where it had begun.

Bill laughed, "It's been missing for centuries, as far as I know," he answered, "I wouldn't set store upon anyone finding it any time soon. Much better to trace the lineage the old muggle way... Pay a visit the orphanage the Notts adopted you from," he suggested, turning to Ermalene, "They'll have the records of the people who left you there, and you can trace them the old fashioned, muggle way. Besides, unless you were of pure blood wizarding descent there's probably little record in that Hall of your family."

Ermalene nodded, though the idea of a Hall of Ancestors still burned within her.


The Third Prophecy of Trelawney by Pengi
The Third Prophecy of Trelawney



Nearly forty years before, on a cold night in January, Sybil Trelawney, the divination teacher of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was moving through the dark halls, past the snoring portraits that lined the walls, the beads on her many shawls clicking with each step, her eyes protruding behind her spectacles. She toted along a bag full of empty sherry bottles and snuck along, down the moving staircases, wobbling slightly with each step she took, until she’d arrived in a hall lined with suits of armor, quite far from any of the dorm rooms and away from the glowing eyes of Argus Filch’s old cat, Mrs. Norris.

Carefully, trying not to make a sound, though she shushed herself loud enough to cover the noises she made, she removed the head from the coat of arms and very carefully began to plunge the empty bottles, one by one, into the space within the metal knight’s chest. “There we are,” she muttered, “In you go… Nothing to see here,” she added to the empty hall, chuckling to herself, “No reason anyone should ever be in here to find these.”

She’d nearly finished emptying her bag of the bottles when suddenly there was a tremulous feeling that overtook her, like ice water being poured upon her spine, she felt momentarily paralyzed. The last thing that Sybil Trelawney saw before blacking out was the ceiling of the hallway as she landed on the burgundy carpet and the armor falling toward her, sherry bottles falling from the neck of the hollow knight.

When Sybil awoke, what seemed like mere seconds later, she found herself surrounded by broken bottles and the pieces of the armor upon the floor. Dumbledore, in a long striped pajama and cap, leaned over her, peering over the half moon spectacles that rested low on his nose. “It seems you have fallen, Sybil,” he said.

Not wanting Dumbledore to guess her errand, Trelawney sat up quickly, though she still felt a wee off balance, and her mind felt strange as though there’d been something there that now was not. “Attacked is more like,” she said, “The armor fell from its plinth upon me!”

Dumbledore’s eyes were knowing, but he said, “I will have Mr. Filch look at all of the suits of armor at once to be certain none of the others are on the verge of falling upon passersby.” He held out his good hand - the one that was not blackened and withered from destroying the first Horcrux - and helped Sybil Trelawney to her feet.

She snuffed as though in hearty disdain and quickly magicked her bottles up from the floor. “Now if you will excuse me,” she said in her shivery, mistic’s voice, “It is late and the Inner Eye requires much rest if one is to be expected to perform correctly.”

“But Sybil, you’ve spilled all of your sherry from those bottles,” said Dumbledore, “Would you like some help in cleaning it up?” Dumbledore pointed his wand at the floor and said, “Tergeo.” But of course there was nothing to siphon up.

“These were already empty, headmaster,” Sybil said quickly as Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. “I’ve only just collected them from the… er… the house elves in the kitchen. They are for… my classroom… I use them as… candlestick holders.”

“I see,” said Dumbledore, “How very resourceful of you. And I especially appreciate your dedication to the cause that you are willing to travel all the way down to the kitchens at this hour of the night and risk not getting the rest that the Inner Eye requires.” He smiled in a friendly way.

“Yes… yes,” muttered Trelawney, unsure if Dumbledore were being facetious or sincere. “Well I can only hope that you remember my dedication and the events of this night when it comes time for reviewing your staff, Professor,” she said and she swept her long scarves up over her shoulder and hurried off down the hallway, back the way she’d come, “Good eve.” She wobbled as she walked, only just keeping her balance from all of the sherry in her veins.

“Yes…” Dumbledore murmured, “I certainly shall…. and a good night to you, as well, Sybil.” He watched as the light of her wand and the clinking of the bottles and beads and stumbling gait had ventured far away down the halls, and then he reached into his pajama pocket and removed a tiny vial, glowing with moon-beam-bright liquid that churned of its own volition. He studied it for a moment, then rushed down the hallway himself to his study. “Sugar wands,” he announced to the gargoyles, who jumped from the door, and he rode the enchanted staircase up, up, up into his headmaster’s office, high in one of the turrets of Hogwarts castle.

Fawkes looked up from his perch, his feathers droopy, only a few days away from a burning. He croaked out a tiny noise, a bit of smoke rising from his beak, as he turned, gripping his perch to watch Dumbledore pull open the heavy cupboard doors that guarded the pensieve. He pulled the gilded bowl from it’s shelf and carried it carefully to the desk, his hands trembling as he placed it down and held up the vial to stare at the swirling liquid inside once again. Then he tipped it into the pensieve.

The ghostly figure of Sybil Trelawney rose from the bowl in a plume of smoke. The phoenix cocked his head to one side as he watched along with Dumbledore as her form took shape above the bowl. Her voice was lower than the supposedly mystic one she donned in consciousness, raspier, sterner, spookier. Only twice before had Sybil Trelawney spoken in such a voice… and both times she’d spoken her only two true prophecies.

The House of Gaunt shall rise once more,” the ghostly Trelawney said, “The Heir of Slytherin then and not before; and Heir to the Diadem - not destroyed, still lost - will face the Gorgan at greatest cost.” Dumbledore stared up at the pale smokey face, listening aptly as she continued, “Both inherited their ancestor’s fears to face… One their destiny shall fight, the other one embrace: One Heir shall fall but there will be another - and at their hands will die the Other.” When the words were finished uttering, the ghostly figure sank back into the pensieve and dissipated, the smoke clearing in the silence that followed.

Dumbledore sank into his headmaster’s chair behind the desk, his palms curling around the arm rests, eyes intently focused on the bowl. “Very curious indeed,” he murmured, placing the fingertips of his withered hand against his lips as he contemplated. “But it has nothing to do with Harry Potter,” he murmured. Or did it? The House of Gaunt -- why that was Tom Riddle’s ancestors, but the line was dead, even before Voldemort, for it had died with Morfin, the last male in the long, corrupted pureblood line. How could it rise again when there was nothing left? He drummed the pads of his fingers against his mouth.

Another thing he had to figure out before the dark magic that threatened his life consumed him. He pulled his hand away from his mouth, staring at it, loathing the magic that had cursed it, the magic that would take him away too soon to save those whom he sought to protect… He dropped the hand down, turning his eyes away from it, unable to look at it any longer. Just another failure to protect those who needed him, just another time that he would not be there for someone… He tried not to think about how much was yet to do in the fight against Voldemort, how much he would be leaving for Harry Potter… and now, this… this new concern… this new uncertainty, this new threat...

Dumbledore got up and paced the length of the office, his mind weaving over horcruxes and the prophecies of Trelawney and the House of Gaunt. Finally, he turned on the spot, changing his garments from pajamas to his traveling cloak and he waved his wand to return the pensieve to the cupboard, the contents of it returning to the vial, which slipped into a drawer in his desk. “I shall have to get some answers,” he said as he collected the things he would need and departed in search of them.


Diagon Alley by Pengi
Diagon Alley



Andy and Ermalene found themselves apparated on a street corner in London, traffic so busy rushing by that they went without noticing the sudden snap-pop of their appearance. The feeling of the apparition wearing off, Ermalene looked about as she reoriented herself with their surroundings. A great rush of excitement ran through her when she read the steadily creaking sign overhead, a squeal of joyousness squeezed from within her. “Oh my stars,” she gasped, “Andy… Andy, look, it’s the Leaky Cauldron!”

“I know,” he laughed, “I’m the one who’s apparated us here, aren’t I?” he asked - or meant to ask, he didn’t get the words out all of the way before Ermalene had grabbed hold of his wrist and yanked him along behind her as she rushed through the doors of one of the oldest wizard establishments in London.

Inside, Ermalene could not contain her awe. All around, witches and wizards sat at tables with goblets of mead and bottles of butterbeer, dressed openly in their cloaks and hats, owls perched upon the backs of chairs, none of them concerned with the Statute of Secrecy. She stared, slack-jawed, as a couple of men leaned back in chairs, smoking from pipes, spitting out smoke rings as playing cards levitated before their eyes as they played some wizarding form of poker that featured miniature dragons which crawled about the table. An old wizard and a young witch played wizard chess in another corner, and a barmaid walked by, waving her wand as plates of food followed behind her. “Pardon me, coming through,” she sing-songed as she passed Ermalene and Andy in the doorway.

“Oh my stars, oh my stars,” murmured Ermalene, her heart pounding a tattoo against the inside of her ribcage. It was almost too much to take in.

Andy smiled apologetically at an old hag whose scowl and glare clearly depicted her dislike for Ermalene’s enthusiasm, and he quickly took hold of her shoulders and steered her away, “Come on, this way,” he said, guiding her to the brick wall that lined the back of the room. Glances came their way from the bar, the barman keeping an eye on them as they passed.

“Ohhhh, Diagon Alley,” squealed Ermalene, “Which bricks do you have to touch to make the passageway appear?” she asked eagerly, jumping foot to foot like a child.

Andy grinned, amused by her excitement, and, without verbally answering, pressed his wand to the bricks. One by one, they seemed to leap back and the wall receded, revealing the archway exactly as Ermalene had always imagined it would. She was about to marvel at the archway’s appearance, but before she could say a word about the seamless departure of the bricks, her eyes fell upon her first look at the bustling entity that was Diagon Alley and her breath was stolen away from her lungs.

Oh. My. Stars.

Everywhere she turned her eyes, there was something new and amazing to look at.

Andy held out his hand. “Let me show you around,” he offered.

She took his hand, their palms pressed together, and he laced his fingers through hers. Ermalene’s heart might’ve been beating fast with excitement, but so was Andy’s as he led her along the cobblestoned street, he thought that nothing in the world - not even a full vial of Felix Felicious - could feel as marvelous.

“There’s Eeylop’s Owl Emporium,” Andy pointed at a window filled with birds behind a feather-strewn sidewalk. Ermalene thought fleetingly of the fact that she’d yet to send an owl home to tell Matthew and Caterina she was okay. She’d do that later, when they returned to Shell Cottage, she promised herself.

“There’s Quality Quidditch Supplies. They’re the largest Quidditch retailer in the world… Last time we came, mum and I saw one of the beaters of the Chudley Cannons in there getting a new bat.” Ermalene marveled at the shop, the window fashioned with magical atmosphere, a broom swooping among clouds of it’s own accord to the delight of a gaggle of children watching and pointing from the street. “There’s Gringott’s, of course,” Andy waved at the looming white marble bank. “See that part there, up at the top? You can tell the difference in the marble from the repairs they’ve done since the dragon escaped up there. Grampa Bill told me all about the reconstruction process; he was a part of it, after You-Know-Who was defeated.”

“Wow,” Ermalene whispered as they approached the fork in the road that swept on either side of the great triangular building that housed the wizarding bank. It was larger even than she’d imagined and she wished fiercely that there was a vault in there to visit, just for the experience, but there was none in her name, and so she followed Andy as they came ‘round the corner.

“Here,” Andy announced, his voice dipping with grandeur, “Is the greatest part of Diagon Alley… at least, I think so.” he grinned and waved his arm to direct her gaze to the bright, colorful storefront which hardly needed an introduction at all, and yet he gave it one just the same, “Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. The most brilliant wizarding joke shop in all the world.” He grinned, proud of the shop, whose windows hummed, popped, and sparked with outrageous joke products and silly signs. “C’mon,” he said, “Let’s see if Uncle George is about.” And he quickly dragged Ermalene across the street, through the crowd gathered to watch the storefront window display, and they entered the shop.

The moment they were through the door, before Andy had even a moment to look about, a tall, slim man with violently red hair appeared and engulfed him into a tight grip ‘round the neck and a noogie to the head, “There you are, you nefarious bloke, I heard you were in town!”

“Freddy!” Andy cried, struggling to get away, “Hold off or I’ll jinx you.”

“Like to see you try at it,” Freddy laughed, but he also let Andy loose. He turned to Ermalene, “Well then, Andy,” he said with a grin, “I approve of your girlfriend here, she’s very lovely. How do you do, I’m Fred the Second, meaning of course I’m twice as good as any other Freds you know. It’s nice to meet you.”

Ermalene laughed nervously and shook the hand that Freddy held out, “Hello, I’m Ermalene… the uh, the first, as far as I know.”

Freddy grinned, “Of course yer the first, m’lady, you didn’t think anyone else has been with this bludger-headed nincompoop, did you?” he slapped his arm onto Andy’s back.

“She’s not WITH me,” Andy said, straightening his glasses, “She’s only here... with me. We’re friends.”

Freddy nodded, “Ahh, well. That does make more sense. Still nice to meet you, even if you aren’t on the path to becoming my in-law,” he grinned. “So what brings you two ‘round shop? Dad’ll be disappointed he didn’t get to see you. He just popped off home, Roxanne’s due home tonight and mum’s in a right fit about it, sent a patronus telling him to be home in time to clean up the laboratory. Left it a mess, says he’s working on some new nougats with Uncle Ron that turn your hair crazy colors, but the dyes are awful when they spill. Get on everything and you know Uncle Ron’s a real buzzer at spilling things. Dad came in entirely orange the other day, head to foot because of a spill. Said it was nice to see his hair the color it’d always been before it turned gray,” Freddy laughed.

Ermalene felt like Freddy had drank entirely too much coffee, it seemed as though he couldn’t stop speaking and she could scarcely follow the meaning to all of the words that poured from him. She was glad that Andy had seemed to follow it all, for the most part. “It’s okay, we can say hi to Uncle George another time, I’m sure this won’t be our only visit to the shop.” He smiled. “I’m just showing Ermalene around. She hasn’t been to Diagon Alley before. Ermalene’s my friend from America. I met her at Flamel Academy.”

“How do you like Flamel’s?” Freddy asked, “Terrible strict policy on joke products there is all I know.”

Ermalene went to answer, but Freddy bowled on.

“We had to get specially produced boxes just for Flamel student shipments. Enchanted boxes so when the faculty look in all they see are balled up pairs of socks and underpants to conceal the joke products. Though they’re starting to catch on a wee bit and every now and then they send back the shipments. We’ve even had a few boxes of actual underpants sent back to us from suspecting members of their teaching staff!”

Andy laughed. “I certainly hope you haven’t received any of my knickers mum has sent to me at the dorms.”

“If I had, they’d be flying from the flagpole out the front door, cousin,” Freddy replied with a twinkle in his eyes.

"And a good revenge I would have, too, when nobody came in the shop on account of the tighty whities up the pole!" Andy grinned.

Freddy laughed heartily, "Right you are. We don't want to be scaring the fine shoppers of Diagon Alley away!"

"Fred," called a middle aged witch from behind the sales counter beyond him, "Could you step back and help me a mo'?"

"Coming Love," he called. Turning back, he explained, "The Missus needs a hand. You enjoy the shop kids and remember the family discount means you can buy twice as much!" He winked and ducked away.

Andy laughed as he and Ermalene turned to begin perusing the store. "He's so chummy I always forget he's the same age as me dad," he said. "Right ball of energy he is, that one."

Ermalene smirked, amused by how much more British Andy sounded the longer they were in London, the more of his relatives he spoke to. She giggled.

"What's funny?" Andy asked.

Ermalene shook her head, "Nothing in particular. We are in a joke shop after all."


Practically a Bloody Gryffindor by Pengi
Practically a Bloody Gryffindor


When they left Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, Andy and Ermalene wandered through the shops of Diagon Alley and the streets branching off of it together. They visited Florish & Blott’s, and the ice cream parlor, and a vendor’s cart near the brick archway to the Leaky Cauldron. The vendor’s cart boasted an incredible assortment of tiny wizarding figures encased in little glass bell jars. Tiny dragons that seemed to breathe fire and little figures of famous Quidditch players and itty bitty Harry Potters with lightning bolt scars on their foreheads moved under the dome lids, looking around and waving their wands and broomsticks and tails up at the faces that peered down at them.

They walked down the streets of London after ducking back through the Leaky Cauldron. London was busy in the mid-afternoon, and they surrounded by muggles rushing home from work or else out for the evening on the town. As they followed a printed map Ermalene had brought from home to the orphanage where the Notts had found her so many years before, Andy let her navigate and simply followed her, pausing to point out things along the way. “There’s Big Ben,” he said, pointing to the clock tower.

“Did you know Big Ben is actually only the name of the bell inside, and not actually the clock tower itself?” Ermalene asked.

Andy laughed, “I hadn’t the faintest.”

“Most people don’t,” Ermalene supplied.

“C’mon then, Smarty,” he said and he led the way across the courtyard where a man stood drawing with chalk upon the sidewalk, creating pictures of indescribable detail that seemed to open up the very stones beneath their feet. “You can see the palace over this way…”

Ermalene hurried after him, “What do wizards care about the muggle royals?” she asked, hurrying after him.

“I just fancy the princess, of course,” Andy joked, grinning as she practically had to run to keep up with him. “Actually, it’s just interesting to see those muggle soldiers with their funny caps.”

“They’re called bearskins,” Ermalene huffed.

“Whatever they’re called,” Andy answered.

They came to the far end of the long park after quite a long run and Ermalene lowered herself against the fence they’d come to a stop at to catch her breath. Andy pressed his face to the iron rails that kept them from the palace. “Bloody cool, they are,” he appraised the British Guard that lined the castle walls within.

“D’ya know the Ministry of Magic appoints specially aurors each year to help protect the royal family?” he asked, glancing down at her.

Ermalene looked up, “Do they wear the bearskins, too?”

“How do you think they came up with something so ridiculous for a guard to wear?” he laughed, “The aurors had no idea how to dress like muggles, messed up and started a centuries-old tradition quite by accident.” He laughed, then, with a twinkle to his eye, asked, “Did I just know something that you didn’t know?”

Ermalene flushed. “I imagine you know a great deal of British Wizarding trivia that I don’t,” she said haughtily, “Seeing as you grew up here and all.”

Andy grinned. “That’s never stopped you before from knowing everything.”

“Are you done looking at the silly hats?” she asked, “Can we go find the orphanage now?”

He laughed, “Yeah, let’s go.”

Finally, after quite a bit more walking and a ride on the underground, they arrived to a narrow hedge-lined street. “Down here,” Ermalene said as they turned and walked down, past the long row of houses. She glanced up at the numbers by the letter holders attached to the doors until she came to the one she was looking for. Even compared to the rest of the street with it’s less-than-prime-conditions, the orphanage looked quite dingy with barred windows. She stood on the street in front of it, staring up at the numbers by the door.

“Is this it, then?” Andy asked, looking at the map, then back up at the numbers as well. “Lousy yard for children,” he noted, waving at a three-foot rectangle of a mostly-dead patch of grass.

Ermalene’s eyes traveled over the stoop, the green-painted door that ended in a weathered welcome mat and dark, shutter-covered windows. She felt as though air were being compressed in her lungs. She’d always thought she could not remember a moment of her time in the orphanage, but now that she was here, looking at the place, she felt flooded by memories she’d long forgotten.

Andy looked at her and his eyes pinched in concern, “Are you alright?” he asked.

Ermalene nodded numbly.

“You’re sure?”

She wasn’t sure. She looked around and saw a bench a few yards away and went over to it, settling herself down. Andy followed, the worry obvious in the lines of his face, the way the skin hung around his mouth and eyes. “Erma,” he said as he sat beside her, “It’s just an old house.”

“But look at it, Andy,” she said, “Who leaves their child in a place like that?”

Andy looked up at the house and squinted. “Maybe it wasn’t as shabby then,” he suggested. “Maybe it looked like a right nice place to live back then.”

Ermalene very much doubted it.

Andy squeezed her shoulder and Ermalene realized for the first time that he’d put his arm ‘round her at some point. “We can come another time,” he suggested. “We can go back to Shell Cottage for now. We don’t have to go in.”

Ermalene could feel tears pooling in the aqueducts of her eyes and she reached up one hand and swept at them. Andy looked around them, saw no muggles, and pulled his wand from his belt loop, swishing it through the air and producing a clean handkerchief, his initials sewn into the corner in bright green thread that matched his eyes exactly. AFW.

“Here,” he whispered. “Here, it’s okay. Take my hand, I’ll apparate us away.” He held out his palm for her free hand as she took the handkerchief.

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. She felt foolish, sitting on a street bench crying into her best friend’s handkerchief after having had such a lovely day seeing Diagon Alley and the walk through London to the orphanage. She looked up at the building and wondered at it, ashamed that something so run down could seem so menacing. “I feel so stupid,” she admitted.

“Stupid?” Andy said, “Stupid is the very last adjective in all of the world that I would ever use to describe you, Ermalene. Ever.”

“I am,” she said. “Stupid and cowardly.”

Andy shook his head, “You’re practically a bloody Gryffindor, aren’t you, though?” he said, “Look at you! You’re in London, Ermalene, all the way from a small town back in the States. You’ve come all this way. You’re not a coward.”

“But I’m afraid,” she replied.

“It isn’t brave if you aren’t scared,” Andy said.

Ermalene chuckled in spite of herself.

“Didn’t think I paid attention when you made me watch that terrible movie, did you now?” he asked, poking her side, “Right awful it was, but I remember that line.”

“That’s my favorite, don’t make fun,” she poked him back, still dabbing tears from her eyes with the handkerchief.

“It boggles me what a big deal muggles make of cinema,” he said, “Wizarding photographs have moved for centuries.”

“They tell stories,” Ermalene explained. “Like moving picture books more than they are photographs.”

“The ones with explosions are all right,” Andy said, “But the love ones are right boring.”

Ermalene laughed, “That’s only because you’ve never been in love before.”

Andy shrugged.

Ermalene took a deep breath, turning serious again, and looked up at the orphanage. “Okay,” she said finally, “Let’s go inside.”

“Okay.” Andy stood up and pulled her up beside him.

She held up the handkerchief before her. “Tergeo,” she said, siphoning it clean, and held it out to him, “There you are, nice and clean.”

Andy laughed, “You keep it,” he replied, “You never know when you might need me to be there for you for another good cry.” He smiled as she tucked the handkerchief into her pocket and followed as she led the way up the stairs into the tiny muggle orphanage.


Confunded by Pengi
Confunded


The first thing Ermalene noticed upon walking into the door was that the little orphanage was certainly no better maintained within than it had been without. The wood floors beneath their feet were pockmarked with scuffs and divots that came from decades of wear and tear. The stairs wound up into the next floor, and the sounds of unruly children echoed throughout the halls, yelling and fighting and running through the indoors. Andy pulled Ermalene back, in fact, only just in time, as two messy-haired boys rushed by, kicking a soccer ball back and forth between them as they passed. “Almost got run over,” he commented, staring after them as they rounded the corner into a small living room, where the telly was on, volume louder than his mum ever would’ve allowed.

Ermalene’s eyes were frightful. “Hello?” she called, “Any - um - adults in here?”

“Zoo keepers, more like,” Andy commented as the soccer boys ran by again and he again pulled Ermalene back only just in time.

“Hello?” Ermalene called louder.

Suddenly a woman, laden with two kids, one on each hip, plus one hanging off her leg, came ‘round the corner looking very bothered. “‘OW MANY TIMES DO I ‘AVE TO SAY NO RUNNING IN THE BLOODY HOUSE? TAKE THE FUTBOL OUT BACK, THE LOT OF YOU!” she hollered, nearly being run down by the soccer boys, too. They scrambled through the hallway and a moment later a door slammed and the volume level was considerably lower. “Bloody Mary,” she muttered, putting down one of the two year olds, who instantly clamped to her other leg. She looked at Ermalene and Andy as though she’d only just noticed them. “‘Ello, loves,” she said, using her newly freed hand to brush the fringe from her forehead, “Sorry about that, the lads need a wee more space to get out the energy and I’ve been left on me own today for caretaking ‘til six. If the racket ‘asn’t scared you off from adoptin’ them, I’m mor’n happy to give you literature on the process.”

Andy shook his head, “We’re not -- we’re just -- we’re only seventeen.” He waved his hand at Ermalene.

“Starting younger’n younger with the families these days,” the woman sighed, “Gotta be older to adopt though, loves. I reckon you’d do better’n wait awhile, do some growing up of your own.”

“It’s not like that at all,” Ermalene said. “I used to live here, when I was a kid, and I was curious if you retain records of prior… um… I guess you’d call them tenants?”

“Oh it’s records you want ‘aye? We keep those in the database,” she said, “I’ll need a photo ID and then I can print’m right out for you.” The woman shuffled, nodding for Andy and Erma to follow along, and led the way back the way she’d come, through a dining room and past a yellow accented kitchen into a small back office room with thick carpet on the floor and a desk piled high with about a million papers. The two children on her legs continued to cling on, their bums sliding across the floor with each step that the woman took. As she settled herself behind the desk, which was affixed with a plaque that announced her name was Marjorie Flynn, she settled the child she’d still been holding onto the carpet and opened the lid on a laptop computer, her fingers loudly striking keys.

The little girl she’d been holding rounded the desk and looked up at Andy as he sat down in one of two chairs that faced the desk. The little girl rested her chin on his knee, “You have fire hair,” she pointed.

“Yes,” Andy agreed, “Yes, I do.”

“It looks like a fox,” she announced.

Andy nodded. “Right you are.”

“Are you part fox?” the little girl asked.

Ermalene giggled under her hand, which she covered her mouth with, watching as Andy engaged in silly conversation with the little girl. “Not at all,” Andy replied, “Are you?”

“No,” the little girl answered.

“Just about into the database,” the woman said, her fingers flying over the keys still. “Barb, don’t ye be botherin’ the nice lad.”

“She’s not bothering me,” Andy said, “I have a younger sister. It’s okay.”

“Come see the telly with me,” Barb requested, grabbing hold of Andy’s hand. “Please.”

Andy looked at Ermalene, who nodded, and Andy got up and Barb pulled him by the hand out of the office and back toward the sitting room they’d seen before, rambling on about the programs she liked to watch on the telly.

“Okay,” Marjorie Flynn looked up over the screen of the computer, “Now… if you have an ID on you, we can pop in and review your records.”

Ermalene opened the little pouch at her hip, upon which she’d cast the undetectable extension charm, and dug ‘round for a moment ‘til she’d found her little wallet. Mrs. Flynn raised an eyebrow and craned her neck to see how big the tiny bag was, but Ermalene pulled her arm out before the orphanage director could get a good look at how deep she had reached. She unclipped the wallet and withdrew her American passport. “Here it is,” she said, handing the little blue book over to Mrs. Flynn, who opened it, keeping her eye on Ermalene’s little bag for a moment before finally turning back to the computer screen.

“Ermalene,” she mumbled, “What a unique name.”

“Um… thank you.”

Mrs. Flynn typed furiously for a few moments and swept her fingers over the little touch pad. After a few moments, she opened a desk drawer and withdrew a pair of reading glasses, which she unfolded and slipped onto her face. “Alright, yes, here we are…” She clicked twice and Ermalene held her breath.

She was about to know who her parents were. The thought sent goosebumps up her arms and she clutched the little bag, leaning forward in anticipation.

Mrs. Flynn’s eyes moved over the screen and she opened her mouth to speak and suddenly, before a word could escape her mouth, the light in her eyes dulled and she closed her mouth and sat back, staring at the screen as though she could not see it at all, but was actually focused on something quite far away.

“I am sorry, miss,” she said, “But there is no record.”

“What?” Ermalene asked, her voice peaking in surprise, “What do you mean there’s no record?”

“I am sorry, miss,” repeated Mrs. Flynn, her voice unnaturally smooth and unafflicted by her accent, “But there is no record.”

Ermalene stood up and quickly came around the desk, looking over Mrs. Flynn’s shoulders at the computer. The program window showed that the record had just finished deleting. “But… but you’ve just deleted it,” Ermalene said, her voice pitching, “What in the heavens did you do that for?”

Mrs. Flynn repeated, “I am sorry, miss, but --”

“Yeah, yeah, there’s no record, but only because you’ve just deleted it!” she shouted.

“I am sorry --”

“There’s got to be some way to undo --” Ermalene reached around the older woman, but the motion seemed to have snapped her out of whatever strangeness had overcome her, and she quickly started beating Ermalene off of her. “What in the bloody hell do you think you are doing?!” she shouted, “You haven’t got access! Private records!” she grabbed hold of the laptop and yanked it away, spinning the office chair away from Ermalene.

Suddenly Andy was in the door. “What’s going on?” He looked at the defensive position of the orphanage director, Ermalene’s crumpled-with-anger face and the frightened two kids on the floor, who’d scampered out from under the desk when Ermalene had come around. “...Erma? What the bloody hell are you doing?” he asked, echoing Mrs. Flynn’s question.

“She deleted it,” she said, “Just now -- deleted my record.”

Andy looked at the woman, and he could see it in her eyes. "Erma, she's been confunded."

“I did no such thing, the program clearly says that there is no records available!” Mrs. Flynn said angrily, “And I would very much appreciate if the both of you would skive off before I have to call the proper authorities!” She shoved Ermalene’s passport back into her hands.

Andy waved his hand, “C’mon Erma, let’s go."

“She deleted it, Andy!” she cried.

“C’mon.” He motioned for her to come and she reluctantly followed, glaring back at Mrs. Flynn as the two children rushed after her. “Thanks for your time, ma’m,” he said, nodding to her, and he pushed Ermalene along through the house, back to the front door.

"Don't be nice to her!" Ermalene shouted at Andy, "She's an old hag!"

"She's confunded, Erm," he replied, "She doesn't know what she's done."

Just before they went out, Barb grabbed hold of Andy’s pant leg. “Wait,” she begged, “Make the stoat again,” she pleaded.

Andy glanced back to make sure Mrs. Flynn hadn’t followed and slipped his wand back out of his belt loop. “Expecto patronum,” he whispered, and his wand burst forth a beautiful, shimmering ermine that pranced around the room, tail swishing as it swooped around Barb, who giggled hysterically.

“Again!”

“Sorry, kiddo,” Andy said as the stoat popped and disappeared. Ermalene was halfway down the steps already, hopping mad and making little squeals of anger as she trotted away, “But I gotta go.” He quickly rushed after Ermalene, pulling the door closed behind him as he ran down the steps behind her to the sidewalk.

Barb rushed to the window and stared out, pressing her fingers to the window and watching as Andy and Ermalene walked away. When they’d passed from sight, she climbed down from the chair she’d knelt on and rushed to the sitting room, where she found one of Mrs. Flynn’s knitting needles and waved it about, “Expecto patronum,” she whispered, but no silver stoat shone from the needle.


The True Heir to Slytherin by Pengi
The True Heir to Slytherin



“Please! Please, don’t hurt me.” The muggle man struggled against the mysterious shining ropes that bound him. He hung three feet from the ground, upside down, his face going pink from the blood that rushed to his head. “Please. I have a family - a wife and children.” His tears streamed over his forehead, into the line of his hair and dripped to the ground.

The woman moved swift around him, not much more than a blur. She moved close to him so that her eyes looked directly into his, so near there was no looking away from the dark, violet eyes. “You think that I care at all about little muggle children not having their daddy?” she hissed. “Trespasser. Should have thought about those precious ones before you stepped foot into my realm.” The woman swept away, and the man swung from the velocity of the movement.

“I didn’t know --” he wailed.

“Lies,” she whispered, her voice heavy and coming from somewhere behind him. “Everyone in the village knows about this forest. You don’t go into the forest if you plan to come out, that’s what they say.”

“We needed food,” the man cried.

“Then go to the market,” she hissed.

“I haven’t got the money for the market,” he explained. “Please. I didn’t mean to trespass. I won’t tell a soul of what’s happened here tonight. I give you my word.”

The eyes were suddenly there, staring into his once more. “I am very well aware that you shan’t be telling a soul,” she said, “The dead do not speak. At least not usually, that is.” She backed away and for the first time, he got a good look at her. She was tall with wide hips and a sneering, horrible face that would have been beautiful if only she didn’t hold it the way she did. Her hair hung in thick curls that rested upon her shoulders, moving slightly in the wind, he supposed. She held what looked like a stick, which she aimed at him, staring down at him, a bit of a nasty laugh caught on her lips. She leaned closer to him. “Avada kedavra,” she whispered, and green light shot forward, blasting the man to the chest and he cried out, the breath leaving him as he died.

She cackled and loosed the ropes she’d produced with her wand, watching his lifeless body fall to the dirt in a crumpled heap, his neck breaking as he landed. “Such a pity,” she muttered sarcastically, “That you won’t be able to feed your little brats… but you’ll do quite well for my pets.” She waved her wand as she walked away, and the body levitated behind her, his limbs hanging limply as she walked through the forest, stepping over fallen logs and raised roots, until she’d arrived in a tiny clearing where, over a little bridge, there was a ramshackled old cottage, nestled among mossy overgrowth and hanging vines.

She stomped through the door into the cottage, letting the man’s body drop to the floor and she hissed in Parseltongue - the language of snakes, “Dinner, my pets.” And from the ceiling and the corners of the floors came the slithering hoard. Dozens of them, snakes so many that as they clustered around the meat of the man, he was completely buried beneath their slithering, writhing bodies. “Yes,” she hissed, “Yes, enjoy your dinner. Trespassers shan’t be tolerated.” She watched in cruel fascination as the snakes devoured the man completely, leaving nothing but bone upon the floor when they were done.

Medusa Peverell Gaunt magicked the bones into the trees outside that lined the little clearing, adding them to the many other bones that hung among the branches, giving the circle of trees a menacing look.

Back inside the little house, she let her fingers slide over the length of one of the snakes that lay across the heavy wood table that filled most of the room, and sat at the head of it, leaning over a thick book that she’d left at the sound of the caterwauling charm she’d cast upon the mouth of the path that led to the village announcing the trespasser. She slid her fingers along the words, her claw-like nail slipping beneath the sentences until she found the place she had been. The snake slid itself onto her lap, coiling loops around her and her chair, resting it’s head upon her palm, which she held up for it. She rubbed the chin of the snake as it’s black tongue slid in and out of its mouth around it’s long, poisonous fangs.

“One day we shall have everything which belongs to us,” Medusa cooed, her eyes roving over the page before her, “Soon, my pet, we shall be hallowed as we deserve… Royalty of more than just this lousy forest, this boring little town. We will rule over the entire world, as we should.” She stared down at the book with disdain, her upper lip curling to reveal her own fang-like, sharp teeth. “We will do the House of Gaunt proud, unlike this blundering half-blood failure,” she said, glaring hatefully upon a portrait of Tom Riddle Jr. “Stupid fool,” she hissed at the page, “Allowing a child to defeat him” She waved her wand and an aged bottle of mead came to her. She poured it into a goblet on the table. “Claiming to be Slytherin’s Heir,” she rolled her eyes and looked at the snake as he coiled his way up the length of her arm as she reached for the goblet, “As though Slytherin’s true Heir would ever have anything other than the purest blood.” Taking a swallow from the goblet, she violently spat it back at the book. The portrait of Voldemort cackled evilly in it’s endless movement from the page as it curled and blistered from the damage of the burgundy mead. “We shall show them all soon enough, my pet,” she hissed, “Who the true Heir of Slytherin is.”

As she spoke, the caterwauling charm began it’s cries once more and she looked at the window, her face twisting with anger and she leaped to her feet, casting aside the snake and casting a disillusionment spell over herself as she strode from the cottage once again, speedily moving in the direction of the offender.


-*-*-*-*-*-



Until the cries began, they’d been having a perfectly fine trip, something Lysander hadn’t expected upon setting out with his grandfather, who he’d always thought of as an old lunatic. It was bad enough, putting up with the fanciful stories that his mother often concocted, but Xenophilius Lovegood was twice the loon that his daughter was, his stories growing more outlandish every passing year as he moved into his twilight years. But for once they’d been having a moment of actual, truthful conversation and it’d been, for a fleeting time, easy to see that Xeno had once been a perfectly sane man before the death of his beloved wife had driven him nearly mad with grief.

“Felicity is pregnant,” Lysander had confided his worries into his grandfather as they’d walked along a little road, past a village set on the side of a wide lake. “She sent me an owl yesterday. I haven’t told mum yet.”

He’d expected an angry response, but Xenophilius just paused and swallowed pumpkin rum from a flask in his purple jacket’s breast pocket, then offered it to his grandson. As Lysander took a swallow of the warm, burning liquid from the flask, Xeno said, “You know, Luna’s mother became pregnant young, too, and before we were married. I married her, of course, because it was the right thing to do, and never have I made a more brilliant decision in all of my life.” He took a deep breath, “It’s a hard life, being a young father, but it’s a wonderful one. I wouldn’t trade my Luna for all of the wrackspurts in Madagascar.”

Lysander wasn’t sure how many wrackspurts were in Madagascar, nor how much they were worth, but he figured that Xeno meant well by the comment and he asked, “Do you think mum will be very angry when she finds out?”

Xenophilius squinted toward the edge of the Great Northern Forest. “Perhaps,” he replied, “But she’s a wise witch, my boy, much wiser than most give her credit for. She believes in the fanciful, believes in magic, like she should. The things that make people think we are crazy are the very things that prove she’s wisest of them all - she keeps her mind open and fertile for new thoughts to enter in and take root, unlike many of the most so-called intelligent people in this world.” He paused, rubbing his chin for a moment and taking one last swig of the pumpkin rum before replacing it into the pocket. “If we catch a snorkack and bring it’s horn back to her, she will be too pleased to be angry anyway,” Xeno said with a wink and a nudge to his grandson’s side.

“So you think I should marry Felicity?” Lysander questioned as he followed Xenophilius into the forest.

“I think, my boy, that you need to open your mind and allow yourself to come to the knowledge yourself. Ask for the wisdom, and it will come to you.” Xeno smiled and stepped into the woods.

They walked for several yards into the forest before it happened. A sudden loud, vibration of a sound engulfed the air around them and the leaves seemed to shake and tremble with the volume of the din. “What on earth is that?” Lysander screamed over the sound of the wailing.

Xenophilius Lovegood waved his wand as he looked about the forest, staring up into the trees. “The Crumple-Horned Snorkack’s call!”

Lysander knew that the snorkack they were hunting did not truly exist, but he didn’t know what the sound he was hearing was, either. He stared around in a frenzy, his seventeen year old heart racing against his chest cavity as he pressed his back to his grandfather’s for added protection, both their wands held high.

Suddenly, there was a chill in the air and a low, hissing sound that seemed to surround them. Lysander’s wand trembled. “Show yourself!” Xeno shouted up into the trees, “Revelio Homino!” he swept the wand around, releasing the spell like a lasso over his head, and behind him, before Lysander, she appeared, her disillusionment charm broken, her eyes livid with anger, her mouth baring fangs like those of the snake ‘round her neck and before Lysander could say a word, she’d raised her wand.

Avada kedavra,” she hissed.

Hearing the Parseltongue, Xeno launched himself forward, away from Lysander, convinced the sound had been the movement of trees in the distance before them. Lysander had been leaning quite hard upon Xeno in his shock so that when Xenophilius bounded forward, Lysander fell back, the spell only narrowly missing him, and hitting Xeno full force in the back.

“Grampa!” shouted Lysander as Xenophilius fell.

He felt her wand press into his back and he raised his hands in surrender over his head, trembling, tears blinding his eyes as his grandfather lay still and dead just a few feet away.

“What is your blood status?” came a low, cold female’s voice.

“P - p - pure blood,” he stammered.

“What is your name?”

“Scamander,” he choked the name out, “Lysander Scamander. My f - father is Rolf Scamander, my mother is Luna Lovegood. Both pure blood w - wizarding f - families.”

Medusa stood, looming over him, staring down upon him with interest. She looked at Xenophilius’ blood staining the forest floor. Her snake slithered down the length of her body, moving past the boy on the ground at her feet. She’d seen both the names he’d mentioned listed in a book she’d once read on the history of the pureblood wizarding families, a book written by Cantankerous Nott. She slowly lowered her wand, and Lysander’s shaking hands lowered, too. She hesitated, then in a quick motion raised her wand again and cried, “Expelliarmus.” Lysander’s wand flew into her palm and she quickly snapped it in half and threw the pieces in opposite directions into the forest. “Get up,” she hissed.

“Pardon?” he stammered.

She’d been alone with the snakes for so long that she didn’t always realize when she was speaking in Parseltongue compared to English any longer. “Get up,” she repeated. The boy stood, fumbling over his too-large feet, keeping his hands up for her to see he meant no funny business, something she hadn’t asked for but that he had instinctively done. “Good…” she said, “Now come with me.”

She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with the boy, but until she had figured it out it would be nice to have somebody around besides the snakes.


A Dinner Guest by Pengi
A Dinner Guest


“Erma, slow down.”

Andy was trotting to keep up, even with his longer gait he was falling behind as she rushed down the street. He sprinted and finally overtook her, stepping in front of her to block her path and resting his palms on each of her shoulders. “Stop. Slow down,” he commanded.

“She deleted the record,” Ermalene said hotly, “Why in bloody hell would she do that?”

Andy took a deep breath, “She was confunded. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

“Confunded by whom?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there was some sort of magic in the computer program she was opening. I’ve heard of things like that - books and photographs with spells and curses on them so as to get the person that looks at it next.”

Ermalene’s face was pink with emotion, and kind of blotchy in places. “But why?”

Andy didn’t even have an inkling of an idea for the answer to that. He shrugged, palms up, and stared helplessly at Ermalene. “Could be any reason,” he replied, “Could be someone didn’t want her to access your record, maybe, but I don’t know why not.” He let his hands slip over her shoulders and down her arms and grabbed hold of her hands, squeezing them in a reassuring manner. “It’s going to be alright.”

“No it’s not,” she argued, “What if that was the only record of my parents in all the world? I might never know who they are now because of her deleting them like that.”

Andy sighed. “There’s got to be something. There has to be. We will figure out who they are, Erma, I swear it to you, okay? We’re gonna figure it out. I will figure it out. I won’t rest until you know. I’ll be on it every moment of the day, I won’t even sleep if you don’t want me to.”

“You’ll be awful tired if you don’t sleep.”

“Yeah but I won’t if that’s what you want.”

Ermalene laughed, “That’s not what I want.”

“Okay. So I’ll sleep but I’ll be on the job every other moment of the day.” He smiled.

“You’re so ridiculous,” Ermalene said with a quiet laugh.


-*-*-*-*-


When they’d apparated back to the ocean shore in front of Shell Cottage, Ermalene looked up at Andy. “I don’t really feel like talking about what happened,” she said. She imagined walking up that hill and in the door and Fleur asking in her French accent about how the trip to the orphanage had gone and the pitying looks she’d receive from both of the Weasleys. She couldn’t stand piteous looks. She’d gotten them all her life, as soon as anyone had discovered she was an orphan their first response was to look at her with sad eyes and apologize. She didn’t think she could handle that right then. She was already too perilously close to being upset without anyone’s pity, too.

“It’s okay,” Andy said, “You go upstairs and I’ll talk to them.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Andy took her hand and walked with her up the hill. He knew she was only holding his hand for comfort, because it was something certain in an uncertain time for her, but he couldn’t resist the urge to take full advantage of the opportunity.

Inside, Fleur was in the kitchen, waving her wand over several pans and pots that were bubbling and brewing on the stove. “Oh good you have made it ‘een time for dinner!” she said. She was wearing a ruffled apron. “We ‘ave company tonight. More company. Someone ‘oo I theenk Ermale vill be very excited to meet.” She smiled.

“I look forward to it,” Ermalene said, “I’m going to uh -” she waved at the stairway, “- go get ready.” Quickly, she trotted up the steps.

Fleur looked after her fleeting back with a look of concern, then turned to Andy, just as the backdoor opened and Bill came in carrying a sack over one shoulder. He stopped in the doorway abruptly when he saw Andy. “You’re back from the orphanage already?”

“Something ‘as gone wrong,” Fleur announced.

Bill asked, “What happened?”

Andy took a deep breath. “Well… well it seems the woman that works at the orphanage was under some sort of curse or charm or something,” he explained, “She opened the records and suddenly… I don’t know, by the time I got there, she seemed like she’d been confunded.”

“Confunded?” Bill’s eyebrows stitched together. “By who?”

“That’s it isn’t it?” Andy said with a shrug, “I don’t know.”

“‘ooever eet eez did not want for Ermale to deescover ‘er ‘eritage,” Fleur pointed out wisely. The lids on one of her pots trembled and she waved her wand at it and it floated past to the sink and began to drain itself of water.

Bill rubbed his chin. “Maybe the original parents had no intention of being found once they dropped her off,” he suggested.

“I wondered on that, too,” Andy nodded.

Suddenly the door opened behind Bill and a giant man stood in the frame. “Bin waitin’ but she’s quite hungry after ‘aving the baby and what can blame ‘er? And the little’un’s cryin’ already.” The dust-bin lid sized hands reached for the sack over Bill’s shoulder, “‘ave you found any raw meat then?”

Bill turned around, “Sorry, Hagrid,” he said, “I got caught up here.” He glanced at Andy. “Where’s she at now?”

“Upstairs,” Andy and Fleur said together.

“In ‘er pen,” Hagrid said at exactly the same moment.

All three looked at each other.

Bill said, “I meant Andy’s friend, but it’s good to know Willow is safe and sound as well.” Turning to Andy, Bill explained, “Our Thestral’s had a -- a --” he turned to Hagrid, “What do you call a baby Thestral?”

“A baby thestral, I ‘magine,” Hagrid replied.

“Makes sense,” Bill nodded.

“Rare, them,” Hagid said, “Rarer in captivity than in the wild. S’pose my herd back at Hogwarts is the largest one of’em in Britain,” he beamed proudly at this, “But still Willow’s only the second one that’s given birth in my care.”

“And a great nurse you’ve been, Hagrid,” Bill said.

Fleur jetted in, “The dinner is nearly ready, if ze two of you will clean we will be eating very soon.” She waved her wand and a masher began it’s work in the pan still on the stove.

“Just goin’ ter finish feedin’ the little tyke,” Hagrid said as Bill handed over the sack upon his back, “I’ll wash me hands before returnin’ Miss. Fleur,” he added, and ducked back out the door.

Bill nodded at the steps, “I’ll be right down,” he said, and he left the room, too.

Fleur looked at Andy with a smile and levitated some plates and silverware to the table. “So is Ermale okay?” she asked.

Andy sighed, glancing upwards at the ceiling, picturing her just on the otherside. “I suppose she will be,” he replied. “I tried to make her feel better, but I don’t know if I was much help.” He sat on a stool by where Fleur was working at and stared at the heavy wood grain counter top. “She was just so upset… Finding out who her family is has been all she’s talked about s’long as I’ve known her, since third year.”

Fleur stood, staring at Andy, a knowing smile on her lips, “I am sure zat you were very helpful,” she said. Turning away, she said, “Now go up ze stairs and get your ‘ands nice and clean for dinner. And bring Ermale down vith you, I am sure zat Hagrid would like very much to meet your friend.”

Andy nodded and slid off the stool and headed up stairs as Fleur turned and sent a pan of sugar rock cakes into the oven, humming an old song her mother-in-law used to play by Celestina Warbeck A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love.


-*-*-*-*-


Bill Weasley had gone upstairs to wash his hands, but before he did, he didn’t think there would be any hard delaying getting ready for dinner by a couple of moments to check in on their house guest. He knocked on the guest room door.

“Y - yes?” came a trembling voice within.

“It’s me, Bill,” he called.

“C - come in,” Ermalene replied. Inside, she was laying on the bed, her face pressed into one of the many throw pillows that Fleur had decorated with. As Bill opened the door, she sat up and straightened the pillows, though and ran her hands over the tears on her eyelashes. When Bill came in, he smiled just a little and left the door opened behind him as he leaned against a dresser. “Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” he said. “I heard about what happened at the orphanage. You must be feeling mighty discouraged, I’d say?”

She nodded.

Bill took a deep breath, “Well, by the sounds of it, there’s been some sort of spell placed on the records from what Andy was telling me.”

Ermalene nodded. “So I suppose I won’t ever know, then.”

Bill rubbed his chin, “Well, I don’t know about that. My figuring is that if there’s a spell on your record then there’s got to be a wizarding family involved. I’ve got a friend who works at the ministry in one of the records departments. I’ll get in touch with him and see if he can’t help us out in locating some more information about your heritage in wizarding records.”

“Really?” Ermalene’s eyes lit up. “You’ll help me?”

“Yes, of course,” Bill said. “I’m happy to help in anyway I can, of course.”

Ermalene jumped up and rushed over and gave Bill a hug, wrapping her arms ‘round his middle. “Thank you!”

Bill chuckled and patted her back, “Not at all a problem, like I said, I am happy to do it.”

< The door pushed open more and Andy edged his way in, “Hey,” he said awkwardly, seeing Ermalene hugging Bill.

“Andy, your grandfather’s just offered to help us find my records at the Ministry of Magic,” Ermalene gushed excitedly.

Andy grinned, “Brilliant!” he announced. “I have more good news for you, too,” he added, “There’s someone downstairs I think you’re going to be very excited to meet.”


Hagrid Says Too Much by Pengi
Hagrid Says Too Much



Ermalene stared across the table at the half-giant as he pulled out his chair and set himself down, picking up a napkin that looked like it was probably more usually used as a bed sheet in the Weasley house. She couldn’t believe that Hagrid was there, really there, in the flesh, and appearing not a day older than he’d seemed in the wizarding photographs she’d seen in her textbooks at Flamel Academy, all taken nearly half a century before.

“This roast looks good, Fleur,” Hagrid said, tucking the bedsheet into his shirt collar and daintily lifting the fork from the table with two of his thick fingers. Bill was cutting up the roast that she’d made and serving up slices onto the plates all ‘round the table. Hagrid grinned over at Andy, “And there yeh are, Andy, ain’t seen yeh since yeh family moved ter the States,” he said, “Missin’ the Weasley family at Hogwarts, we are. Care of Magical Creatures just ain’t the same without yeh.” His eyes landed on Ermalene, who had looked away only long enough to pour sauce over the roast Bill had just plopped onto her plate, and he asked, “And who’re you then?”

Andy spoke up as Ermalene set down the gravy boat. “This is my best friend, Ermalene Talon.”

“Ermalene Talon, ‘ey?” Hagrid’s eyes squinted thoughtfully, “I’ve heard of yeh, I’m sure of it,” he mused. “Where have I heard that name?” he asked himself.

“I doubt you’ve heard it anywhere, sir,” she replied, “At least not referring to me. I’m not famous. But you certainly are. I’m really honored to meet you.”

Under his thick beard, Hagrid pinkened in the face and said, “Gorsh, I dunnat know if I could be considered famous meself.” He was obviously quite pleased with the suggestion, though.

“Finest Care of Magical Creatures professor that Hogwarts ever saw, once you took the Blast-Ended Skrewts out of the rotation,” Bill said with a wink.

“Some people just don’t got the stomach for sommat as wild as the Skrewts,” Hagrid agreed.

Fleur served out great spoonfuls of baked apples and pears and poured them onto the platters next to the slices of roast and potatoes and they all started eating happily as Hagrid and Bill talked about the baby thestral, making plans for how to go on about training it and making plans for the next time Hagrid was to visit to check on the thestral’s progress.

Andy turned to Ermalene as he lifted the pitcher of pumpkin juice to refill her glass. He smiled when she looked at him and she gave him a teeny smile back. “You feeling better?” he asked her, and filled his own glass with the pitcher as he awaited her answer.

“Yeah,” Ermalene answered, “I’m okay. I feel kind of stupid for reacting so crazy before. I didn’t mean to practically assault that lady.” She paused. “You and that little girl seemed to be getting along pretty well.”

“Barb? Yeah, we got on alright,” Andy agreed. “I produced my patronus to entertain her. She was rather amused, ran ‘round the living room after it. She was a nice kid. Reminded me a bit of Paisley when she was that size.”

Ermalene smiled. She’d never had siblings, never really spent any time around children, either, and as a result she was rather awful at entertaining them and easily annoyed by them when she was forced to interact with them. She’d been quite glad when Andy had distracted the kids at the orphanage. It had been pretty cute, though, how the little girl had clung onto him, though.

“Thanks,” Ermalene said and she picked up her glass of pumpkin juice.

Andy laughed, “You’re welcome.”

Ermalene smiled, and noticed Fleur smirking at the two of them as she ripped a french roll into pieces. Something about the smirk made Ermalene flush and she turned away from Andy.

“My favorite, rock cakes,” Hagrid was saying as he dipped a half of a rock cake into a large container of coffee. “‘specially drizzled with toffee,” he said, smacking his lips together as he tossed the cookie into his mouth.

Ermalene, who had never had rock cakes, took hold of one from the platter before her and broke it in half. “It’s a bit like an oatmeal cookie?” she asked.

“Oatmeal raisin, p’raps,” Hagrid agreed, “Bit harder, more flavor.”

“Six times more likely to break your teeth,” Bill joked with a wink as Ermalene bit into the cookie. It was a bit like a shortbread with a lot of fruit and nuts inside, she thought, and yes, much harder than an oatmeal cookie. No wonder they were dipping them in coffee.

Hagrid had crumbs in his beard. “Mighty good ‘uns, Fleur, I’ll have to get yer recipe before I go.”

“Eet eez Molly’s,” Fleur said, breaking the gaze she’d held on Andy and Ermalene to look to Hagrid.

“Shoulda known, I reckon,” Hagrid said, still smacking his lips and happily taking another few cookies from the serving plate and refilling his coffee with the other hand.

“Hagrid,” said Andy suddenly, “Do you know anything about the Hall of Ancestors?”

Hagrid, caught midway between the serving plate and his own froze midair and poured over the brim of his coffee.

“Hagrid!” Bill said, jumping forward with a napkin.

“What? Oh sorry, sorry,” he said, noticing the coffee spilling all over. He used the bed sheet’s corner to wipe it up quickly, swiping the remainder with the edge of his sleeve. Once he’d cleaned up, he quickly dropped the cookies onto his dish.

Andy cleared his throat, “Do you?” he asked.

Hagrid cleared his throat, “The Hall of Ancestors? Why would I know anything abou’ that?” he questioned, focusing all too much on the cookies.

Ermalene and Andy shared a glance at one another.

“Because you know everything about the castle,” Andy said.

Bill raised an eyebrow.

Hagrid suddenly became very, very interested in his plate.

“Who’s your favorite for the World Cup this year, Hagrid?” Bill asked, changing the subject.

Andy frowned but took the hint and let the conversation turn to whether the Holyhead Harpies or the Montrose Magpies were more likely to go against Puddlemere United, which neither doubted would secure the first place in the Cup as they were ahead by more than half a season.


-*-*-*-*-*-



That night, after Andy and Ermalene had gone to bed and Fleur was upstairs washing and doing her hair, Hagrid and Bill were left alone in the sitting room, drinking some mead together. They’d talked of the old days, when Bill had attended Hogwarts and Hagrid was gamekeeper and how Bill’s brother, Charlie, was still in possession of Hagrid’s dragon, Norbert, in Romania. Bill took the last sip of the mead in his goblet as Hagrid filled his for the third time and he rubbed his chin, considering how to approach the topic he wanted to bring up.

“So Andy’s friend - what do you think of ‘er?” Bill asked suddenly.

“Right pretty, she is,” Hagrid said with a hiccup, “Andy seems ‘appy with ‘er, too, I reckon, the way he kept lookin’ at ‘er all through dinner.” Little drips clung to his whiskers.

“Indeed…” Bill nodded, “He’d be happier, of course, if she knew how much he liked her.”

“She don’ know? How can she not?” Hagrid asked, looking displeased.

“You know how young people are, Hagrid,” said Bill, “Never noticin’ what’s right in front of ‘em. But he sure is doing his very best to show her. You know he brought her here himself, earned his own muggle money, he told me, just to help her find out about her heritage?”

Hagrid put down his goblet, empty once again. “Find out abou’ her heritage?” he asked.

Bill nodded, “Yeah… She’s the one the Notts adopted before they moved overseas, you see. She doesn’t know who her real folks are. Desperate to find out, she is. The orphanage they adopted her from lost the records, so she’s got no way of knowing… I think that’s what made Andy bring up the legendary Hall of Ancestors earlier. Bit of wishful thinking, you might say. If only there was such a thing, then maybe he could help her and make her see just how much she means to him --”

“But there is a Hall of Ancestors,” Hagrid said, his voice clumsy with drunkenness. “Hidden, though, like the Room of Requirement was. Only a few know of it. I suspect only Dumbledore had found it before he told Professor McGonagall.”

Bill sat up a little straighter, grabbed hold the bottle of mead and poured another glass for Hagrid, who sipped it without protest.

“So Dumbledore knew where the room was?” Bill asked.

“Knew indeed,” Hagrid said, “Where his portrait’s at, too, ain’t it?”

Bill raised an eyebrow, “Oh?”

“But I’m sayin’ too much already,” Hagrid said, “I wasn’t supposed to tell nobody that ‘til the prophecy’s bein’ filled.”

“Prophecy?”

Hagrid looked uncomfortable, “Now I’m definitely sayin’ too much,” he muttered, “I wasn’t supposed to tell nobody a thing about that.” He sighed and put down the goblet.

“It’s okay, Hagrid, I’m not going to tell anybody,” Bill said, “You can trust me.”

Hagrid said, “Just that I’ve been hearin’ rumors that make me think it’s goin’ ter be startin’ soon and I’m a bit worried ‘bout it. I bin through two wizarding wars, I’m not sure I’m up ter livin’ through a third.” He shook his head.

“Another war?” Bill asked. “What rumors, Hagrid?”

“Well truth be told I’m not sure ‘ow much of it we can take for truth, they are comin’ from Luna Lovegood,” Hagrid said, his voice low, “But bin hearin’ that she says her son -- Lysander Schmander, the one’s been dead s’long as ol’ Xeno’s been hauntin’ the school -- Luna’s bin sayin’ Lysander’s patronus came to ‘er deliverin’ a message, askin’ fer help. Says he’s bin trapped in the Great North Woods for seventeen years by a Gorgon and her witch daughter is what the rumors say.”

Bill made a face, “A Gorgon? In the Great North Woods?” He shook his head, “Luna’s that friend of Ron’s that used to run the Quibbler, isn’t she?”

“Aye,” Hagrid nodded. “But ain’t jus’ Luna what’s bin talkin ‘bout the Great North Woods. ‘pparently there’s bin reports that them woods ain’t safe. Wizards and Muggles alike go into the woods an’ don’t come back out ter speak of. Closest thing is old Xeno and he don’t remember what killed him in there. Could be beast, could be sorcery. Ain’t a blessed soul alive that knows what’s in there killin’ all the livin’ things.”

Bill leaned back. “What’s this got to do with the Hall of Ancestors?”

Hagrid said, “Only Dumbledore knows fer sure.”

Chattering Cucumber Crumble by Pengi
Chattering Cucumber Crumble



Hagrid spent the night at Shell Cottage and the next morning, after a breakfast of sausages and strong coffee, he made his way into the courtyard with his pink umbrella and climbed onto the enchanted motorcycle he’d gotten years and years ago from Sirius Black. Tugging the goggles over his hairy head, Hagrid waved goodbye and shouted a promise to come back in a month’s time to check on the baby thestral, then pushed off the ground and into the clouds. He found himself distracted by thoughts of the prophecy left in his care nearly forty years prior, just after the Battle of Hogwarts had concluded…

It had been a dark night in October, before Halloween, that Professor McGonagall had crossed the grounds of the castle carrying a rather ornate box under her arm. She’d rapped with her knuckles on Hagrid’s cabin door and waited, shaking rain from her cloak. “Hagrid, I need to speak with you on extremely important matters,” she called through the door.

Hagrid had been in the middle of inspecting a funny egg he’d found in the forest that day, and hesitated, unsure if the egg was something he wanted the Headmistress to see. Finally, he’d tossed a blanket over the top and opened the door. “Well Professor McGonagall,” he’d announced, clapping his hands in what he hoped was a good impression of a nonchalant greeting, “Hello there.”

“Hello, Hagrid,” she’d greeted him, “And how are you this evening?”

“Right,” he said, “Just right.” He stepped between her and the cloth-covered egg, waving a hand to the table. “Like some tea, headmistress?” he offered.

“Tea would be splendid,” McGonagall replied, but before Hagrid could bustle to the fireplace she spun her wand and produced a tea kettle, two cups and saucers, and a tin of biscuits in the air before her. “I’m afraid I’m a bit picky about my tea,” she apologized, putting the ornate box on the table. “Do help yourself.” Hagrid obliged, taking a hold of one of the tea cups in his hands. It was like a thimble compared to him though and a whole cup was but a single sip and he returned the cup to the levitating saucer, nearly knocking it out of the air. McGonagall seemed not to notice. “As I said, I have very important matters to discuss with you,” she said, placing her own teacup back on the saucer gently.

Hagrid sat down opposite her, keeping a wary eye on the blanket. “What’s troublin’ yer, Minerva?” he asked.

“I have been speaking with Dumbledore’s portrait, Rubeus, and it seems that there was some unfinished business that Albus had been attending to at the time of his death that was overlooked in the rush of preparing Harry Potter for his fight against Lord Voldemort,” McGonagall explained, only the slightest pause to her voice before saying the name of the dark wizard. She’d been trying to get quite used to saying it, now that he was gone, but as someone who had lived through the thick of his reign of terror over the wizarding world, it was quite hard to speak it even in his death without feeling a chill upon one’s spine. But, as Dumbledore had said many a time, there was no fear in the name itself but only in the hatred which was carried in the heart of he whom it represented.

“What sort of business?” Hagrid asked.

McGonagall grasped the box and pushed it toward Hagrid. “In this box is a prophecy,” she said, “A very important prophecy that Albus became possessor of after the Hall of Prophecies had been destroyed by the organization known as the D.A.” Minerva ran her fingers over the top of the box, “He says it is extremely important that this prophecy be looked after by only the most loyal of Hogwarts faculty.”

Hagrid stared at the box, too.

Minerva pushed it toward him.
Hagrid paused, the meaning of the moment sinking in. “Blimey, yer can’t be meanin’ me?” he asked in surprise.

“Yes,” she sniffed, “Dumbledore specifically requested that I give the box to you for - er, safekeeping.” McGonagall’s eyes had landed upon the blanket-covered egg, which was now trembling slightly.

Hagrid followed her stare to the egg, then looked up sheepishly. “I’ll guard it with me life, professor,” he said boldly. He opened the lid of the box and peeked inside. A clear glass ball with purple smoke swirling inside of it sat nestled in a bed of red satin. “What’s the prophecy about?”

“That,” McGonagall said, “I cannot tell you. I don’t even know. But he said it is extremely important that we hold onto it until it’s due time.”

“How’re yeh ter know when the due time’s at?” Hagrid questioned.

McGonagall had shaken her head, “He didn’t say, Rubeus,” she replied. “He won’t tell me. Simply put, he says you’ll know when it’s time.” She took a sip of her tea and upon replacing the cup to saucer once again, she ran her fingers along the length of her wand thoughtfully. “The only thing he said was that he very recently had given you book - something about recipes for salads made with magical produce - and he said if you made his favorite chattering cucumber recipe that it might be very helpful to helping you understand.” McGonagall waited for Hagrid to respond, perhaps hoping he’d explain how the gossipy little squash dish could possibly help.

The egg made a funny creaky sound beneath the blanket.

Hagrid swallowed. “Er,” he mumbled, “Er I reckon the, uh, the book’s ‘round here somewhere,” he said. He eyed the blanket nervously. When McGonagall followed his gaze to it, he stood up abruptly, nearly tipping over the table, and Fang leaped off his bedding by the fireplace and rushed to the door, tail wagging, as though he knew his master was in need of a distraction, “Now if yeh’ll excuse me,” Hagrid said, “Looks as though Fang’s got ter git outside… Bin holdin’ it since afternoon.” Hagrid flapped his arms.

McGonagall waved her wand, magicking away the tea set and biscuits and she headed for the door. She glanced back at the open box on the table, the glow of the prophecy casting an eerie tone to the interior of the hut. Hagrid pushed open the door over her head and Fang bolted out before her, disappearing into the dark pumpkin patch. McGonagall looked up at Hagrid as she stepped onto the stoop and pulled her hood up onto her head once more, “This is very serious business, Rubeus,” she reminded him, “Very serious indeed. Whatever this is is enough to have kept Dumbledore from his final rest.”

Hagrid glanced back at the prophecy, then back to McGonagall. “I understand, headmistress,” he growled.

“I certainly hope so,” she said. She started walking across the grounds, headed back to the castle via the long sloping pathway.

Hagrid looked over at Fang in the garden, doing his business on the corner of the wheelbarrow.

“And Hagrid?” called Professor McGonagall.

He looked up at her.

“Don’t tell Potter about this.”

“Yes’m,” he called back.

She walked on until she’d disappeared in the dark. Fang rushed back into the hut, shaking the water off his fur, and Hagrid closed the door again, clicking it shut. He turned ‘round and lifted the blanket from the egg only to find two broke-open halves and no creature from within.

“Blimey,” he muttered, looking around, unsure what sort of creature was on the loose.

(It had turned out to be a funny sort of tropical version of a gryffin - half parrot, half cheetah - which he’d named Bungler and kept in the hut for a couple months before Professor McGonagall had discovered it and had it sent off to the wizard zoologist department at the ministry, where Rolf Scamander had examined it… and of course it had been Bungler that had been the topic that Luna Lovegood had been researching for the Quibbler when she’d met Rolf, who’d become her husband.)

Now, that morning after attending to Bill Weasley’s thestrals, as he lowered the motorbike through the atmosphere to the grounds, another memory came to Hagrid, one that answered his question about where he’d heard that name before... It’d been years after McGonagall had come to him with the prophecy, he’d grown a particularly talkative batch of chattering cucumbers, and the head chef house elf, Winky, was complaining, unsure what to do with the basket of’em she had already, and he’d reached for a book to get her a recipe…

Hadn’t he seen a name scribbled in the margins in a tight, loopy writing?

Hadn’t Winky commented on it, pointing a long finger at the name, asking if it was the name of a victim of the last batch of chattering cucumbers?

Hadn’t he thought it was a funny name - especially that first one?

Hagrid landed in mud and the bike tipped over as he rushed off it and ran up the cobblestones to his doorway, slamming through it, stepping carefully over a line of little spiders running across the wood floor, ducking beneath a thick clump of hippogriff feathers hanging from the ceiling and knocked a toy model of a centaur to one side as he grabbed hold of Aardvarkian Asparagus to Zuzagamber Berries: Baking, Cooking, and Otherwise Preparing Wizard Produce from the shelf. Quickly, he opened the index, found the recipe for chattering cucumber crumble and turned to see the answer scrawled along the margin in Dumbledore’s too familiar handwriting.

I should very much like to chat with Miss Ermalene Talon. - APWBD.

“Gallopin’ gargoyles.”

The Patronus by Pengi
The Patronus



Crucio.”

“Aarrgh!” Lysander doubled over until his face pressed to the floor and he clutched at his torso with wildly splayed fingers, tears streaming from his eyes. His mind felt tangled in knots, nerve endings exploding against one another in a tangled weave of furiously zinging sensation. Red sparks struck his back, shaking his spine and sending the messages into his receptors. Then, the sparks stopped, the curse lifted, and he collapsed onto the floor in a liquidy heap, his innards buzzing still in the aftermath. He whimpered and clutched his knees to his chest.

“Who did you send your patronus to?” demanded Medusa, staring down her long nose at him. Her dark hair writhed with snakes that had nested in the matted knots of her curls over the years. They slithered in and out amongst the stands, hissing and waving their tongues as their eyes focused on Lysander.

He trembled, “I didn’t send a --”

Crucio!!” she shouted, and the sparks shot from her wand again, coursing through his body.

He wept openly, unable to contain himself anymore.

“Mother.” The basement door opened and a girl’s voice echoed down the stairwell, followed by gentle footsteps. The girl stopped just a few from the bottom, staring upon the scene of Lysander on the floor and her mother’s cruciatus curse striking him. “The caterwauling charms are going off in the wood.”

Medusa lowered her wand, releasing the spell, and Lysander fell to the floor again.

“Well then go and kill whoever trespasses,” snapped Medusa gruffly, “Can’t you see I’m busy here with your father, Astarte?”

The girl hesitated.

Lysander struggled to roll onto his back and he looked up the steps at Astarte, his eyes pleading with her.

“Don’t you look upon our daughter,” Medusa snarled, and with a flick of her wand she sent him rolling onto his stomach several feet away and stepped between them. She turned back to Astarte, who had shrunk back just a little. The snakes in her hair hissed loudly, coiling angrily as Medusa herself hissed in snakespek, angry, and all but flew up the stairs. “One day, girl, you will be the one to go out into the woods and ---” her voice faded as she stormed out of the house, shouting curses as she went.

Astarte stood on the stairs for a moment, quivering in the ringing silence that followed her mother’s disappearance.

“Astarte,” croaked Lysander from the floor below.

She inched down the stairs, her eyes tipping back up them in anticipation of the return of her mother, and then she ran across the basement floor to his side. His long blonde hair was dirty, matted from the years spent in the cellar. She knelt beside him, running her fingers over the welts on his skin where the cruciatus curse had struck him.

“She is cruel,” Astarte said.

Lysander gripped her hand. “I didn’t send a patronus,” he pleaded.

Astarte felt her throat tighten. “I did,” she whispered.

“You --? But -- why?”

“I thought they might come to rescue you,” she said thickly. “And me.”

Lysander clutched her hand.

“I hate it here,” she said. “You used to tell me that we would go, that we would go to London and escape her.”

Lysander stared up at her. “One day, we will.”

A tear fell from Astarte’s eyes. “I can’t stand it here. I’m almost seventeen. Soon I’ll be of age and I can leave without her putting the Trace on me. I can take you with me.”

“Yes, soon,” he agreed.

Through the open basement door they heard the sound of Medusa’s voice carry on the air - “Avada Kedavra!!!!” -- and Astarte leaned in, closing her eyes, imagining the muggles whose lives were probably just extinguished.

“Where did you send the patronus?” Lysander questioned.

Astarte whispered, “To the Lovegoods,” she replied. “Your mother, you said, right? So my grandmother?”

Lysander nodded.

He paused.

“Could you send another?” he asked.

“Another? To someone besides your family?”

Lysander stared seriously into her face, “I… my mother… she’s kind of known for her - um - unique beliefs… Could you send it to the Auror’s Offices in London? Specifically to Harry Potter? He was the chief, the last I knew… greatest wizard...”

“Potter,” she repeated.

Lysander nodded, “Yes… yes, to Harry Potter. Tell him… tell him I’m alive and a Gorgon imprisons us. Tell him to save me.” Upstairs, the door banged open and Astarte looked ‘round, terrified. Lysander hissed, “Go. Get away from me before she comes down here.”

Astarte leaped up and ran up the stairs two at a time, mentally repeating the name Potter, Potter, Potter.

Her mother had brought home the bodies of three muggles, whose blank stares made the skin of Astarte’s nape crawl with discomfort. The snakes in Medusa’s hair slithered from her, flicking their tails as they wrapped themselves around their dinner.


-*-*-*-*-*-



Astarte waited until her mother had gone to bed. The snakes filled the floors and it was a delicate procedure, stepping among their coiling bodies all around the house. She moved carefully, palms pressing into the wall and the oven and the radio to steady herself. She made it to the door and pulled her cloak from a stout peg, tugging the fabric over her shoulders and covering her head. She rushed into the woods, glancing back to be sure no lights came on behind her. She cast spells to silence the caterwauling charms as she ran, not wanting to awaken her mother, and soon found the old road that led into the village. Running along it, she came to the lake, a great many miles away from the cottage in the woods. She came to a stop at the end of a long pier, surrounded by the water, lit by the moon, and she stared up at the stars overhead and took long, shaking breaths until she’d gathered herself from her escape.

She thought of the possibility of a message getting to it’s destination.

Imagined getting away, her and her father, safe at last from the hatred of her mother.

Expecto Patronum!” she called out and from her wand burst forth a brilliantly glowing Magpie that shot through the air, it’s wings carrying it in loops around her. “Go to - to Potter, an Auror at the Ministry in London,” she said, “Tell him… tell him Lysander Scamander has sent you and he is alive but needs help, he’s imprisoned by a Gorgon. Go on… tell him.” She waved her wand, shooing the ghostly bird away and he twisted in the air, sweeping off across the water, glowing blue in his reflection, and disappeared into the night sky.

Astarte shivered, her eyes following the tiny glow dot until the magpie was gone completely, and then she turned and walked back through the woods.


The Ministry of Magic by Pengi
The Ministry of Magic



The night before, while Bill and Hagrid were downstairs drinking their mead, Ermalene and Andy sat on the bed in the spare bedroom, a wizard chess set between them. Both took their wizard chess quite seriously, and the games were always quite time consuming when they played. Ermalene was calculating her move, staring down at the board, tapping her fingertips against her jaw as she considered her options. Andy was laying across the mattress, staring out the window at the water that stretched away from the cottage, glowing under the light of the moon.

The door creaked open and Bill stepped in. His eyes were a little bleary from the mead. “Just saying goodnight,” he informed them. “I’ll be going to London tomorrow to get some of the things Hagrid says I’ll need for the thestral… If you wanted, we could pop into the ministry and see my friend there about your records, Ermalene.”

She looked up eagerly, “Yes!”

Andy used his elbows to prop himself up and grinned at his grandfather.

Bill smiled, “Okay then. Be ready to leave after breakfast, then. Goodnight.”

When the door had closed again, Ermalene looked at Andy. “I’m afraid to be too excited,” she confessed, “After what happened last time.”

“Don’t worry, nobody’s goin’ to be able to access ministry records to set confundus spells like they could’ve that crummy old orphanage,” Andy said.

Ermalene nodded.

“Besides… Grampa’s friend… you’re going to be pretty excited to meet him.” Andy smirked.

Ermalene, who’d been about to reach for her chess piece, looked up. “Who is it?”

“Harry Potter.”


-*-*-*-*-*-



After Hagrid left in the morning, Bill, Andy and Ermalene said goodbye to Fleur and apparated to London. “Normally,” Bill said when they’d reoriented themselves to the busy streets, “We would’ve come by thestral. Fleur would prefer not to apparate if she can help it.” He led them through the Leaky Cauldron and down the cobblestoned streets of Diagon Alley to Eeylop’s.

Inside, the low ceilings were full of owls, asleep, their talons clutching the wooden beams as they ruffled their feathers or hooted quietly now and then as they dreamed. Ermalene stared up at all of them, clustered about in little groups. A couple cats lay on thick pillows in the sunlight streaming through the windows and along one wall was a whole bunch of aquariums and swimming ponds with singing frogs hopping among lilly pads. There were rats in cages and pygmy puffs in a big clear bowl, looking like some sort of strange colorful potion. As Bill spoke to the shop clerk about the thestral colt and the things Hagrid had recommended he get, Ermalene peered warily through glass at an array of snakes along one wall.

Andy stared at them, too, looking a bit more uncomfortable than even she did. “How anybody can like a snake -- or spiders, for that matter -- is beyond me,” he said.

“I think snakes get a bad rap,” Ermalene replied with a shrug. “They’re rather majestic in a way.”

“Majestic?” Andy looked at her like she had seventeen heads.

Ermalene answered, “Sure. I mean, they’re quite dangerous, aren’t they? Powerful. But they’re also one of the most seemingly harmless --”

“Harmless?” Andy spluttered, interrupting her.

“Sure,” she said, “I mean, look at it. Doesn’t even have any legs, does it.”

“It doesn’t need legs, it’s got fangs.” Andy mimicked the fangs with his fingers on his mouth.

Ermalene laughed, “But I mean, if you didn’t know a snake was dangerous, if you’d never heard of one before and you came across it and you saw this rubbery looking thing that hasn’t even got any legs, you wouldn’t exactly feel the instinct to go running from it.”

“I would,” Andy replied, staring at the snake. “Look at it’s eyes. Creepy.” He shuddered. Ermalene laughed and as he turned away, she lingered, staring at the snake a moment longer before turning with him to look at the owls. “See, these are way less creepy,” Andy was saying as she caught up to him, “And they’re dead useful.”

“I keep forgetting to owl my mother,” Ermalene frowned. “She must be worried sick.”

“Funny they haven’t gone to talk to my dad,” Andy said, “Being that you’re missing and all. I’d told him they might but they haven’t yet.”

“You’ve talked to your dad?”

Andy nodded, “Yeah. Bill had him on the floo last night.”

“Ah, the floo.” Ermalene nodded. “We haven’t got a fireplace back home.”

“We haven’t really got one either,” Andy said, “Dad bewitched one of the closets to work with the network. Pretty useful, unless you floo in uninvited because you can’t get out unless dad’s got the door open. Keeps unexpected visitors away. Rather useful, actually. Plus it looks dead funny coming down the hall to see Dad leaning into the closet with his arse all up in the air like an ostrich.” Andy’s eyes twinkled with humor.

Ermalene laughed, picturing it.

“Alright you two,” Bill said, stepping back to them, “Ready for the Ministry?”

“What about all the gobs of things you just bought?” Andy looked at Bill’s empty hands.

“Being delivered by apparators later this afternoon,” Bill replied.

“Ohhh.” Andy nodded, then hooked his arm ‘round Ermalene’s and said, “Alright, we’re ready, I believe.”

One moment they were on the feather-strewn walk outside of Eeylop’s and the next -- snap -- in a busy London street that smelled of freshly cooked chips. Bill steadied Ermalene, who’d nearly toppled off the curb. “There we go,” he said, and he turned, leading the way to an old phone box a few feet away from where they’d come out. Ermalene, Andy, and Bill all crowded into the little box, which somehow fit them all, though any normal box certainly wouldn’t have. Ermalene smirked to herself thinking of the muggle TV show Doctor Who and how his phone box was also bigger on the inside. When she was young and her parents had watched the show on Sundays she’d never understood why the people were alarmed by the larger interior of the TARDIS. After all, their family pop-tent was a mansion inside.

Bill grabbed the telephone from the cradle, dialed a number, and a moment later the floor of the phone box shook and they lowered slowly underground, the city streets disappearing above their heads and finally closing off like they’d gone into an elevator. A few moments later, it opened into the wide hall of the Ministry of Magic.

Ermalene looked ‘round for the statue she’d always heard stories about - a witch, wizard, house-elf, and a goblin standing together, protecting a muggle. Andy looked up at the statue, too, then read the engraving on the plinth, “Eluceat omnibus lux…” He pulled a face, “They couldn’t even put it in English?”

“‘Let the light shine out from all’,” Ermalene said, translating, “It’s Latin, which is much more academic and official-like.” She stared up at it, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Andy said, “It’s big.”

“It represents all of the magical races becoming one together to protect the muggles,” Ermalene said, frustrated by his lack of appropriately measured awe. “It represents everything that wizardkind has fought for in the last century.”

“I get it,” Andy said, laughing, “It’s bloody brilliant. But it’s also bloody big!”

“Are you two coming along or what?” Bill’s voice echoed across the bustling hall and they looked up to realize he’d walked on past the statue ahead of them, and they scrambled to catch up to him. Bill led the way through the corridors of the Ministry until they reached a gold elevator. People nodded to him here and there, gave him a ‘howdoyoudo’ as they passed, or else glanced at Ermalene and Andy as though trying to figure out what they were doing with him. They piled into the gold elevator, and it carried them down another three floors, buzzing with paper birds that fluttered over their heads and swept in and out.

“Level three. Magical Law Enforcements - Offices of the Aurors - Head Auror’s Office,” announced a cool female voice overhead.

“Here we are,” Bill said, and he led the way out into the hallway.

Suddenly, as though being on the same level as him, Ermalene realized she was about to meet Harry Potter. She felt a lump rise in her throat as they walked down the hallway and Bill came to a stop in front of a door. Ermalene swept a hand through her hair and took a deep breath. Andy smirked at her out of the corner of his eyes. Bill knocked on the door.

“Comin’ - ouch! - Comin’.”

Ermalene had goosebumps.

The door of the office swung open and there stood a most disheveled-looking middle aged wizard with salt-and-pepper colored unruly hair that parted perfectly at the forehead to reveal a faded pink lightening bolt shaped scar. Behind him, there were little flying paper memos zooming about the office and a distinct smell of ashes.

“Bill!” Harry Potter practically shouted, “Oi mate! It’s been s’long!”


The Message of the Magpie by Pengi
The Message of the Magpie



They were in Harry Potter’s office. Ermalene couldn’t believe it. She’d felt as though she were dreaming when, after breaking apart from a bone crushing hug with his brother-in-law, Harry had quickly ushered them into the office, warning them to duck from the memos (“they won’t stop pecking at your head if you disrupt them, they’re all labeled urgent”) and apologized for the smell of ash (“the phoenix has just burned, you see”). He waved them into a few plush chairs and cast an extendable spell on one of them so that Ermalene and Andy fit quite well side by side upon it, then settled himself behind his desk. A couple memos started bumping into his temple the moment he’d returned to his desk. He waved at them with one hand irritably.

“So, Bill, to what do I owe your visit? ..and I do hope you’re planning to come ‘round the house later or Ginny will be peaked I saw you without making sure you came ‘round.”

Bill smiled, “Of course. How is Ginny?”

“Been well,” Harry nodded, “Reminds me more and more of your mum everyday,” he laughed, “Nearly strangled me when I said that, though. I meant it as a compliment, but she’s sensitive about it. She’s become the most fabulous cook and she’s been knitting jumpers for all the kids for their Hogwarts Christmas packages. Says it’s not Christmas without a jumper.”

“It’s bloody not!” Bill laughed.

Harry laughed, “I still have my one with the big snitch sewn on it she first gave me.”

“I’ve a ruddy collection of ‘em.”

“So does Ginny. Takes up a whole closet, the lot of them. Even with Hermione’s extension charms on the closet back.”

Ermalene couldn’t take her eyes off of Harry as he talked, she was so in awe of how normal he was, sitting here behind a desk at the Ministry with paper memos bumping him and talking about Christmas sweaters.

Finally, after they’d caught up a bit more, Bill said, “So to business. Harry, I was wondering if you might have access to familial records? Andy’s friend here, Ermalene, has been looking for some information on who her birth parents might have been. She was adopted by the Notts before they moved off to the States,” he explained, “But the orphanage seems to have misplaced the records.”

“Deleted them,” Ermalene corrected.

Harry turned to Ermalene. “Deleted them?”

Blushing because Harry Potter had just spoken directly to her, Ermalene replied in a smallish voice, “Yes. The woman there deleted them.”

“She was confunded,” Andy explained. “When she pulled up the record, something happened that confunded her and she deleted them.”

Harry’s eyebrows stitched together. “Really. That’s odd. Do you know your full name?”

“Ermalene Talon,” she answered. “I found out when I started at Flamel Academy. Before that, I always thought my parents were truly my parents and that my name was Nott. When my letter to Flamel Academy arrived, it was addressed to Ermalene Talon.”

All three looked at Ermalene with surprised expressions. “They never told you themselves?” Bill asked. He looked at Harry with a concerned look on his face.

“No?” Ermalene was confused, “Is that bad?”

Harry shook his head, “Not particularly,” he replied, “Odd that the Flamel Academy would’ve outed it, though. Means you aren’t legally named Nott in the Ministry records.”

“Really? But - but they adopted me,” she said. Quickly she added, “They thought I was a muggle when I was adopted. Does that make a difference?”

Harry shook his head again, “Shouldn’t.” He was pulling a comically long drawer out of his desk. It extended across the room over six feet from the desk with rows and rows and rows of folders lined up inside, all sorts of colors, with bunches of papers sticking out all over. Finally, he pulled one out and laid it open on the desk. It appeared to be a list of family names registered within the past century. He ran his finger down the list, but there was no Talon. He made a face. “Odd.” He looked up at her, “When is your birthday, Ermalene?”

Now she really turned pink. “I... um… don’t know exactly,” she said, “I’ve just always… celebrated it on… on July 31.”

Harry smiled, “That’s my birthday, too.”

“I know,” she whispered.

Harry rubbed his chin as he stared down at the list, still conspicuously missing the name Talon. “Hmm,” he mused. “I wonder if --”

Before he could finish that sentence, though, the door behind them suddenly burst open and a bright shimmering magpie flew into the room, chased by several aurors looking quite winded from running. The patronus zipped around the room several times overhead, knocking the urgent memos about, singeing a few of them, before coming to rest on the desk in front of Harry.

“Harry Potter, Head Auror. Lysander Scamander has sent me… he is alive, and in need of help… He has been imprisoned by a Gorgon in the Great North Woods,” the Magpie’s voice was low, like a heavy whisper, and pleading, as though it was desperate to be heard. The words seemed to echo or hang in the air in front of Harry.

Harry blinked in surprise as the magpie turned to smoke and disappeared. He looked up at the other two aurors that had followed the patronus in and then at Bill, his eyebrows popped so high they nearly touched the lightning bolt scar.

“Lysander Scamander,” he said. “That’s Luna’s missing boy.” Harry leaped to his feet. “This is impossible. That boy’s been missing seventeen years.”

“Incredible,” Bill murmured.

Harry looked at the aurors. “Get all the information you can on that patronus. Verify it came from the Great North Woods. Have research find out more about any and all registered Gorgons. Pull the Scamander file from missing wizards. Meet me in the conference room in five minutes. We need to figure this out and get in action immediately. Nobody say a word to Luna ‘til we know for sure. She’s been through enough with that case to have it dug up for no reason again.” He turned to Bill as the Aurors rushed into the hallway. “You understand. I’ll have to look into the name Talon a bit later, but don’t worry, I definitely will be able to help you.” He turned to Ermalene, “I understand that knowing the truth about your family is the most important thing in the entire world. I really do. It meant a world of difference to me personally as a kid, and I swear to you that I will find answers for you. But if this information we’ve just received is true, then I have the very rare opportunity to return a son long declared dead to his heartbroken mother.”

Ermalene nodded, “I understand.”

Harry smiled. “Thank you. I swear I will find you answers. I’ve got to go. Bill, I trust you can show yourself out?” And with that, Harry Potter ran from the office, leaving behind the three visitors and the buzzing memos.

Bill stood up, “Well then, we should be leaving so that they can get to work on that case. Harry’s a man of his word, Ermalene. You’ll have your answers as soon as he can get to them.” He turned to the desk and used his wand to extinguish one of the memos that had fallen onto the desk and begun to smoke as though it were about to catch fire from the contact with the heat of the patronus. “That was a very strong patronus,” he commented, “Whoever sent it must’ve had a very happy thought to send it off with.”

They set off back through the Ministry, past the statue and back out to the streets of London via the phone box elevator. Once they were there, Bill took hold of their hands and apparated back to the beach by Shell Cottage. They walked up the stone walkway together. “I’d say today was rather productive,” Bill commented.

Ermalene replied, “I can’t believe Harry Potter is going to help me find my parents. In a million years if you’d ever told me such a thing when I was younger, I never would have believed you.”

As they approached the door of the cottage, it banged open and Hagrid came bursting out, ducked low beneath the doorway. Fleur followed behind him in a bit of a panic. “Oh Bill, I am glad zat you are ‘ome…. ‘Agrid ‘az been speaking nonsense since he arrived,” she exclaimed.

Hagrid said, “I’m not speakin’ nonsense,” Hagrid growled, “I need to bring ‘malene back to ‘ogwarts to see Dumbledore!”

“Dumbledore?” Bill said, “Dumbledore’s been dead for forty-two years, Hagrid.”

“I know that! I’m not a ruddy idiot!”

“Then how --”

“Dumbledore’s portrait!” Hagrid said, “That’s where I heard yeh name before. It was in a note that Dumbledore left fer me just before he died.” He looked at Bill, “It’s about the prophecy. It’s comin’ true and Ermalene here has to see Dumbledore.”

“Prophecy?” Ermalene, Andy, and Fleur all said at once. “What prophecy?” Andy finished.

“The one Dumbledore left to me,” Hagrid said, “But I’m sayin’ too much. I just got to get yeh to see Dumbledore.”


Welcome ter Hogwarts by Pengi
Welcome ter Hogwarts



“Zis is absurd,” Fleur’s accented voice fell funnily over the word absurd. She had her arms crossed. They were standing in the dunes surrounding Shell Cottage, where Hagrid had left his motorcycle. Bill was helping Hagrid to attach a sidecar as Andy tightened the strap of a helmet beneath Ermalene’s chin. “Zat motorcycle is dangerous. Do you not remember crashing it the night we all became ‘arry Potter?” she demanded.

“It ain’t unsafe, Fleur,” Hagrid announced, “I drive it all over the place, have bin since Sirius left it with me, haven’t I? That crash was because I hit that ruddy purple button to get away from old You-Know-Who.”

Fleur did not look at all comforted.

Satisfied with the attachment of the sidecar, Bill walked over to his wife and rubbed her shoulders comfortingly. “It’s okay, dear, the motorcycle’s just as safe as the thestrals are.”

“So take ze thestral then,” she said.

“She’s still too tired from having the colt,” Bill explained. Then, in a whisper, “She would never be able to carry Hagrid, even if she hadn’t just had a baby.”

Fleur scowled.

They’d agreed, mostly, that is, that Andy and Ermalene should go alone with Hagrid to Hogwarts to see the portrait of Dumbledore as he was insisting. So they’d gone out and conjured the sidecar and now they were preparing to leave. Ermalene had butterflies in her stomach.

“Thank you so much for your hospitality,” she told Bill and Fleur - mostly Fleur, though, because of how sullen she appeared.

Fleur’s scowl wavered and she pouted as she pulled Ermalene into a hug. “Promise me you vill both be very careful? This prophecy business, it is troublant.”

“I promise,” Ermalene said.

Merci,” Fleur said as they broke apart the hug. She turned to Andy. “Come back to see us before you go to America,” she pleaded, “I wish to know how this all turns out.”

“We will,” Andy said, and he gave her a hug. “Thank you, gram.”

“You are mos’ very velcome. You always can come here, Andy,” she added and she kissed his cheek.

“Thanks gramps,” Andy said as he turned to Bill.

Bill gave Andy a hug, too, “Anytime, my boy,” he added. “Anytime.”

Hagrid cleared his throat as he climbed aboard the motorbike and attached his own, very large helmet upon his head. Andy and Bill broke apart and Andy helped Ermalene climb into the sidecar before following in himself and they buckled up carefully. Hagrid started the bike and it roared to life, shaking them in the sidecar as he revved it.

“Drive carefully!” Fleur shouted desperately as Hagrid rose off the ground.

“Aye, I will,” he shouted back over the din.

The motorcycle climbed up, up, up, up and Ermalene clutched the rim of the sidecar, feeling rather nervous and excited at the same time. She watched as the world below them got smaller and smaller, Fleur and Bill became less and less distinguishable among the marshy grasses and rocks, and soon the cottage itself looked like not much more than a rock far below. Hagrid steered them in a graceful loop, soaring over the ocean and then back over the land and into the clouds. “Next stop, Hogwarts castle!” he yelled like train conductor.

Andy, whose seat was directly behind Ermalene’s, had his hands on her shoulders, as though holding her in. She put her hands over his as the motorcycle zoomed through the air, past birds that looked at them curiously. Ever north, they flew steadily for hours and hours, it felt, and Ermalene’s legs slowly fell asleep and she got bored with nothing to see but the clouds that surrounded them.

“Got to get out of the muggle area before we can see anythin’,” Hagrid yelled. “Won’t be long now before we’ll duck down so you can see sommat what’s below us.”

It was a bit longer and Ermalene’s legs were most definitely asleep when finally Hagrid descended a bit and broke through the layer of cloud and Ermalene gasped at the jewel-toned earth below, shining in the sun. Trees stretched all around them, broken only by a lonely, winding railway that seemed to go on forever northward almost directly below them.

“There’s the Hogwart’s Express rails,” Andy said, pointing to them, grinning. He’d spent his first few years in school at Hogwarts and had ridden the Express back and forth from King’s Cross before his father had moved the family to the States and he’d transferred to Flamel Academy. He could almost taste the provisions that the witch with the sweets trolley had sold - there seemed no place in the world had fresher chocolate frogs as the trolley had.

They followed the railway for an incredible amount of time before Ermalene let out a shriek of excitement as before them, through mist, atop a large mountain, there came a faint mass, growing ever more recognizable as they approached. First, the astronomy tower, then Gryffindor and Ravenclaw towers, and the other turrets and spires of the castle separated themselves from the general mist of the distance. As they neared, the details came more and more into relief, and soon Ermalene could see the chimneys of Hogsmeade village and the moon glow reflecting off the lake.

Andy grinned, remembering the terms he’d spent there and the friends he’d left behind when he moved to America. He knew none of them would be there now - only Hagrid and a couple of the teachers lived on the school grounds year round - but it still made him feel very good to be back, even if only for a visit. When he’d heard that the family was moving overseas, he’d been quite upset and hated the idea of going to Flamel Academy, until he’d met Ermalene there.

Hagrid lowered the motorcycle onto the lawn in front of the castle and came to a stop in front of his little hut on the edge of the grounds. “Welcome to Hogwarts,” Hagrid called as he cut the engine of the motorcycle. They disembarked the bike and Ermalene stared up that the castle that she’d always dreamed of seeing, without ever thinking she really would. “It’s so much bigger than I ever believed it would be,” she murmured.

Andy laughed, “I told you Flamel is easily a quarter the size.”

“I thought you were exaggerating,” she explained.

Hagrid pushed the bike into a little shed beside his cottage, muttering about the headmistress disapproving of it. When he returned from the shed, he looked at the two teens staring up at the school and said, “Well then, we’ve come all this way. Yeh must be hungry I’d ‘magine. C’mon inside, I reckon I’ve got sommat ter eat. We’ll go up to the castle in the morning.” Hagrid waved the way into the hut and it was with great reluctance that Ermalene turned her back on the glowing orange windows that dotted the castle and followed him inside the dark hut.

Inside, Hagrid lit several candles and the little room became much more inviting so that Ermalene felt less disappointed that they weren’t going up to explore the castle until the next day. The hut was cozy, to say the least, with roots and baskets and bushels of unicorn hair hanging from the ceiling. There was a little fireplace, which Hagrid aimed a pink umbrella at to light, and before long there was a comfortable dinner on the table with big glasses of pumpkin juice and cups of tea.

“So tell us about this prophecy,” Andy said as they sat back once the sandwiches and rock cakes had been eaten (Ermalene had found Hagrid’s much harder to bite into than Fleur’s had been).

Hagrid rubbed his long beard, “I uh… I don’ know ‘ow much I can tell yer,” he said slowly. “I wasn’t serposed to be knowin’ much abou’ it meself. The prophecy was only serposed to be in my care and --” he paused. He took a deep breath, “‘pparently Professor Trelawney had sommat to say abou’ a bit o’ trouble comin’ ter the wizardin’ world --” Hagrid stopped.

“Trouble?” Ermalene asked, raising an eyebrow.

Hagrid hesitated. “Well -- er -- I ought not to say more’n that, I suppose. Yer name wasn’t in the prophecy ‘zactly, but in a book that Dumbledore gave ter me before he died. Only I’m connectin’ the two on account of Minerva said Dumbledore told ‘er I’d find me help in understandin’ when the prophecy was comin’ ter happen by lookin’ in this here book…” he got up and took down a book from the shelf - Aardvarkian Asparagus to Zuzagamber Berries: Baking, Cooking, and Otherwise Preparing Wizard Produce - and flipped it open to a page about making Chattering Cucumber Crumble and handed the book to Ermalene.

A spidery script scrawled across the margin requested audience with her with the signature APWBD.

She looked up at Hagrid.

“Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore,” he said, sliding his fingertip along the letters. Hagrid turned and looked out the little window in his kitchen, beyond the pumpkin patch, to the edge of the lake where a ghostly white tomb stood sentinel over the grounds, as though watching over the castle. “The greatest wizard that ever lived.” He paused. “Still great,” he said, swiping a tear from his eye, “Even in death.”

“So I’ll be - be seeing his portrait then?” Ermalene asked.

Hagrid nodded.

“And you said the portrait’s in the Hall of Ancestors?”

Again, Hagrid nodded.

“But my grandfather said that the Hall of Ancestors has yet to be found,” Andy said. “You know where it is?”

Hagrid’s face straightened from the weepy look of reminiscence that he’d had on before to one more of concern at the mention of the knowledge of the actual location of the Hall. He cleared his throat, “Well, ter be honest with yer… The, er, the actual knowledge of the location of the Hall is… er… not sommat I know… exactly.”

Andy looked at Ermalene.

Ermalene looked at Hagrid. “How exactly do you suppose we’re going to see Dumbledore’s portrait if we don’t even know where it’s at?”

Hagrid shrugged, “Goin’ ter hafter find it, I reckon, aren’t we?”

Ermalene thought that Hagrid was making the task of finding the mysteriously missing Hall sound a lot easier than it truly would be - especially given the enormous castle looming over them.


Brush With a Gorgon by Pengi
Brush With a Gorgon



Harry Potter reoriented himself to his surroundings after apparating to find himself on the end of a long pier in the early morning mist. He held his wand aloft. “Lumos,” he whispered as with faint popping sounds, two back-up aurors appeared around him on the pier. One, Jade, a young rookie, freshly graduated from Hogwarts, nearly toppled off the edge, and Harry quickly reached out and caught the wizard by his cloak and tugged him back up. They stood, poised, waiting, looking about cautiously.

They’d spent the night up in the conference room at the Ministry, searching scores of records for some mention of a gorgon but there hadn’t been one registered in centuries. Nor, for that matter, had there been any magical persons registered in the area of the Great North Woods in some time. Decades. So, with that in mind, Harry had suggested that they just go look for themselves. “Despite what my very good friend, Hermione might say, sometimes books cannot give you the answers your eyes can,” he’d declared just before saying they should all apparate to the woods and find out who or what was being mistaken for a gorgon and if, in fact, Lysander Scamander was imprisoned there.

They moved slowly down the length of the pier, their eyes ripping along the perimeter of the clearing they were moving into. Across the lake were little sleepy houses of a small village, a few gold bulbs illuminating windows, but mostly still dark. Harry took a deep breath as he led the way off the pier and onto the earth, half expecting something sinister and dark to occur at the touch of their footsteps. But nothing seemed to be coming.

“Follow me,” he urged the other wizards as he moved quickly along the edge of the lake to a path that led off into the woods. He hesitated for a moment before following it, the other aurors close behind.

A few yards in and he felt a cool chill settling around him and he slowed down, recognizing the feeling. He held out his arms to halt his guard and he paused as they came to a stop behind him. “There’s a charm of some sort blocking the road ahead,” he said. He took a step forward to see if he could detect what sort of spell it might be, and the moment his foot touched the road, a loud screeching sound vibrated through the air. “Finite incantatem!” He roared as he waved his wand at the road ahead. A slight, shivering force moved ahead of them through the trees, making the leaves hiss and shake, silencing the screeching. “Caterwauling charm.” Slowly, they moved forward. “Stay close together,” Harry whispered, “Keep your eyes open.”

It was several steps into the dark before Goodings, one of the aurors covering Harry from the back whispered, “There’s somethin’ over this way, Harry.”

Harry turned.

Moving through the dark trees they could just make out an even darker figure - a black, blurry mass that steadily came closer, ducking from tree to tree along the way. The figure moved with purpose, though not in a way that suggested whoever (or whatever) it was had seen the aurors just yet, so Harry quickly motioned for everyone to be silent and to follow him into the brush off the side of the pathway. They quickly and quietly moved into the cover of the trees and ducked behind a recently fallen one, laying on their stomachs on the ground, waiting for the figure to step into the moonlight that flooded the road.

The figure lingered behind a particularly large tree on the other side of the path. “Homenum revelio,” hissed a sleek, low woman’s voice. Harry recognized the words, though none of the others in his team did. They were in Parseltongue, a language which made the skin on Harry’s back feel as though it were climbing his spine. He closed his eyes, his throat constricted as the spell swept over them, making his heart beat wildly. Then, very quietly, in English, the voice called out, “I know that you are there.”

Harry clutched an exposed root, trying to decide how best for them to continue.

“I don’t wan’ ter die,” whispered Jade.

“You won’t,” Harry whispered. “Stay here. Both of you.” He got up slowly, climbing over the bushes that they’d hidden behind.

“What’s he doin’ then?” Jade whispered to Goodings, “Tryin’ to get himself exploded?”

Goodings shrugged, “Be quiet.”

Harry stood at the edge of the woods. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Show yourself.”

Avada --”

Expelliarmus!” Harry shouted, quicker than the offender. A wand flew out of the darkness beyond, right into his hand, and he dropped it to the ground, stepping on it with one foot to hold it in place without actually breaking it… yet. He stared down at it, then looked back up into the woods. “I am the chief of aurors, appointed by the Ministry of Magic. Show yourself.”

The figure seemed to hesitate. Perhaps hesitate wasn’t the word, given that they’d just attempted the use of an unforgivable curse on an auror. Then she stepped out into the trail. A sinking dread filled the pit of his stomach unlike any that he’d felt in decades. Her height and narrow waist, long jawbone, and dark, nearly violet eyes were strangely familiar to him -- especially the eyes. Making eye contact with the woman made chills run through him. But it was impossible…

“Identify yourself,” he commanded, although his voice was far shakier than he’d have liked it to be. He sounded like he had when he was a kid hiding the Philosopher’s Stone in his pocket or facing Tom Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets.

She seemed to slither as she moved toward her, though she was using her feet, it was something in the way her hips and shoulders moved toward him. “I know who you are,” she hissed. “The Boy Who Lived.” Her Parseltongue was sharp and taunting. “Thought you defeated the Heir of Slytherin, did you boy?” she had a terrifying stare.

“Who are you?” Harry asked again. He was careful to keep a foot steadily on the won wand on the ground.

“Medusa,” she hissed, long and low. "Medusa Peverell Gaunt."

"Gaunt?"

Harry realized noticed now that she was so much closer to him and the sun was coming up over the trees, illuminating her, that her hair, though normal in some parts, was also full of snakes. It was as though they had made a nest in her hair and they writhed and slithered through the plaits of her hair like moving curls. He felt sick in the stomach and stumbled back a little bit as she leaned even closer, her yellowed, broken, fang-like teeth showing as she neared. She suddenly pitched toward him intimidatingly, making Harry fall backwards onto the ground.

The moment his foot left the wand, she hissed, “Accio wand.” Before Harry could react, she had pressed the tip of the mahogany wand into Harry’s throat. “The true Heir of Slytherin wouldn’t die so easily, boy,” she said thickly.

He knew one thing: he had to stall until he had an opportunity to get the wand back.

“Easy?” he scoffed, “You think what went on between me and Voldemort was easy?”

“Compared to what you could go through with me --” she paused, a wicked smile crossed her face and she said, “Well, I suppose dying would be easier.” Her eyes twinkled with evil as she opened her mouth to utter the curse but before she could utter the words Goodings fell from the tree over her head and landed on top of her, knocking her to the ground in shock beneath him.

“Bloody hell!” Jade shouted in surprise.

The killing curse she shouted only just missed Harry as he jumped up from the ground, ducking to the side. Goodings struggled to keep her down. “She’s got snakes in her hair!” shrieked Goodings as she wildly bucked beneath him, waving her wand fitfully, shooting green sparks every which way.

“Kill him,” hissed Medusa in Parseltongue to the snakes. “Kill him!”

“What’s she saying?” he demanded.

“Watch out for the snakes!” Harry shouted, “They’re poisonous! She’s commanding them to kill.”

“Oi!” Jade’s voice echoed from the trees, “Who the bloody ‘ell keeps poisonous snakes in their hair?”

Harry ducked below a wildly aimed jet of green light from a killing curse flying from her wand, and struck the struggling witch with a binding charm. “Petrificus Totalus!” The witch stilled beneath Goodings, the snakes snapping at the air around her. Harry moved closer and swept his wand at her, producing cords that bound the witch quickly and then he removed the body-bind curse.

She hissed angrily up at him, struggling against the cords.

Harry aimed his wand at Medusa the way she had, right at the throat. “Where is Lysander Scamander?” he demanded.

“I don’t know anyone by that name,” she hissed nastily.

“Lies,” Harry snarled. “We received the Patronus -- we know he’s here somewhere. Now tell me where he is or ---”

“Harry!” Goodings voice suddenly carried from the woods behind them, wailing. “HARRY!”

The panic in his voice was so uncharacteristic to Goodings that Harry knew something terrible had happened. He turned from Medusa and looked over the brush. Goodings was kneeling on the other side of the large fallen log they’d hidden behind, clutching at Jade’s still body.

“No,” Harry whispered.

The gorgon forgotten, Harry jumped over the log and arrived at Jade’s side, too. “No. No, no, no. I promised him -- I promised him he wouldn’t die… no.” Guilt flooded his veins like ice cold water flowing through him. He aimed his wand at the boy’s heart. “Innerverate!” he shouted. “Innerverate!” His desperation was evident in the shaking of his voice. “No, no, no.”

Avada --”

“HARRY!”

Goodings’ scream came just in time. Harry spun, aiming his wand -- “PROTEGO!” he bellowed. The shield charm shot out of the wand with a blast like a cannon, so strong that it blasted Medusa back over ten feet across the path and into the brush on the other side. Before the gorgon could recover, he quickly grabbed hold of Goodings’ wrist, and Jade’s cloak and disapparated out of the Great North Woods.

Instantly, they found themselves hidden behind a hedge of rhododendrons outside of a house in a suburban neighborhood. Goodings looked out and saw a little girl ride past on a pink tricycle. He looked at Harry. “Where are we?” he asked, confused. The sound of a game show on the telly echoed out the window. “This isn’t the Ministry,” he added.

Harry was clutching Jade still, his breath coming out in great gasps. “I didn’t… have time to think…” he panted, “We ended up at the first safe place I could think of.”

Goodings glanced around.

“It’s Privet Drive,” Harry stated. “My cousin’s house. We - we grew up here.” He looked at Jade and covered his eyes, his finger tips touching the end of his scar. “I don’t know why I came here. I never felt safe here. But Dumbledore used to say -- before Voldemort --” he stopped. Goodings was looking at him with wide, troubled eyes. Harry never spoke of the War. He shook his head, clearing the thoughts out. “Nevermind,” he said. “Let’s go.”

With a pop, the two aurors disappeared.

A head poked out of the window - a squashy-looking man about sixty years old. He squinted around the yard, a bushy mustache waggling on his upperlip. He looked down into the bushes, then up into the sky. “Harry?” he asked hopefully.

“Dudley, love, what are you doing?” called a voice from behind him in the house - his wife.

“Nothin’” he replied. “I thought I heard somethin’... but I s’pose I didn’t.” He frowned in disappointment, then ducked back into the house, pulling the window closed behind him.


Breakfast With Neville Longbottom by Pengi
Breakfast With Neville Longbottom



The castle was still dark when Hagrid, Ermalene and Andy got up and began their trek across the grounds. “Ain’t nuthin’ like the breakfast the House Elves make in the great hall,” Hagrid was saying to them, “Kegs o' coffee and warm toast and marmalade…” He led the way along the winding path to the big wooden doors of the entrance. “Ain’t many others here for the summer, mind, but it’s gettin’ ter be closer ter the end of the holidays so some the teachers might be back by now I reckon.”

Ermalene could’ve cared less what the food would taste like - though she’d heard many times over from Andy that the feasts at Hogwarts were the most delicious meals he’d ever taken in, “loads” better than Flamel Academy. Ermalene was excited to be stepping into such hallowed grounds, where the history had steeped and brewed over centuries, where somewhere in the many turrets and corridors that made up the castle, was an answer to all of the questions that burned within her. Somewhere, there was a headmaster’s portrait of the greatest wizard of all time, and it wanted to speak with her.

Andy grinned as they stepped into the castle and took a deep breath, “Ahhh -- Hogwarts!” he said, eyes gleaming, “I didn’t realize how much I missed it ‘til we got in the doors.” He looked up at a grand staircase that wrapped away to the second floor, grinning. “I slid down those banisters so many times in the terms I spent here….” Then his eyes fell on the great glass vials containing the gemstones that tallied the points for each of the four houses - Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. “Ah,” he groaned, “Slytherin won the House Cup last year, ey?” He frowned.

Hagrid nodded. “Won it twice in a row now… It’s the ruddy Quidditch team what keeps messing up Gryffindor. They’re in need of a new seeker. A good seeker’s been hard ter come by. Too many people want ter try out fer the position now because of Harry Potter, I expect.” He waved for them to follow him into the Great Hall.

The tapestries ‘round the room were green and silver, still up from the last day of term. Andy nudged Ermalene as they followed Hagrid, and pointed to an old man in the corner. “That’s Argus Filch,” he whispered. “Older than the castle, he is. He was old forty years ago. He’s over a hundred now. We used to put in bets in the common room whether old Filch would drop dead before the next Hogsmeade weekend or not.”

Ermalene said, “That’s terrible.”

“He’s an old goat, Erma,” Andy said, “Always gettin’ the kids in trouble for playin’ with joke products. He’s twice the Evil Caretaker that old woman Juniper Fudge is at Flamel!”

Hagrid had led them to the Gryffindor table. An older man was sitting on the long bench already, reading thick herbology book over a steaming cup of tea that had strange roots sticking out of it and a jelly doughnut on a plate beside his elbow. “Neville,” called Hagrid, walking up to the man, “How’re you?”

Neville Longbottom looked up from the herbology book at Hagrid, “Hello Hagrid.” He spotted the two teens in tow. “Andrew Weasley!” he put the book down and stood up, dusting doughnut crumbs from his robes as he did so, “How are the States?”

“Good, good,” Andy said, smiling, “There’s no herbology teacher as good as you at Flamel, though.” Ermalene thought that Andy didn’t think there was anything as good as Hogwarts at Flamel at all. Not that she would disagree, and she’d only been inside Hogwarts for ten minutes at best.

Neville blushed. “Well, I don’t know about that. You have Cassandra Lyons there, don’t you? She’s quite good, I’ve met her at conventions. We’ve swapped some native plants before so that students could have a better rounded education.”

“I thought I recognized your mimbletonia,” grinned Andy.

“And who is this?” Neville asked, looking at Ermalene.

“Ermalene Talon,” she introduced herself, holding out a hand for a shake to Neville, who took it. “I’m a friend of Andy’s from Flamel,” she added.

“Very good,” Neville said, “Just visiting Hagrid and Hogwarts today, then?”

“Gettin’ breakfast at the mo’,” Hagrid answered, “But then we’re off ter search the castle for the Hall of Ancestors.”

Neville laughed, “But that’s a myth.”

Hagrid shook his great, wooly head, “The Hall of Ancestors is as real as the giant squid is!”

“The squid’s real?” Ermalene said.

Andy looked around at her, “Of course the squid’s real.”

She blinked in surprise, “I always thought he was more of a - a story they told about Hogwarts. Like the Lochness Monster.”

“Real, too,” Hagrid said. Then, to Neville, added, “Professor Dumbledore’s portrait is in the Hall of Ancestors an’ before he died he asked me ter bring Ermalene here ter see ‘im.”

“Dumbledore?” Neville looked surprised. He looked at Ermalene and then back to Hagrid, “But - he died - how old is? - I - I mean -- well, why?"

Hagrid shrugged, “Yer guess’s good as mine is, prob’ly better, I ‘magine.”

Suddenly three plates popped up in front of where they stood on the table - two normal sized ones and one very large plate with a very large cup. “‘bout time,” Hagrid said and hefted himself down on the bench in front of the large place setting.

“Oh boy - waffles!” Andy exclaimed and leaped onto the bench, followed by Ermalene. He grabbed at his fork and knife and quickly cut into the thick pieces of buttery waffles, covered with berry marmalade.

“Is there any maple syrup?” Ermalene asked, looking ‘round. She’d no sooner asked than a vial of thick syrup appeared before her. “Wow,” she said, and looked under the table.

“It’s the house elves,” Andy explained. “I think they apparate it up from the kitchens.”

“They’re brilliant,” she said, digging into the most delicious waffles she’d ever tasted in her life. “And good cooks, too.”

“The best,” Andy agreed.

“So yer not knowin’ nothin’ ‘bout where ter find the Hall then, Neville?” Hagrid asked.

“No sir,” Neville replied, “I always thought it was just a story.” He shrugged. “Maybe one of the castle ghosts would know?” He looked around. A nearly transparent man was floating overhead, reading a ghostly letter in his hands. “Oi! Nick!” The figure looked up at Neville’s shout and came over.

“I should think that now you are a grown man and a teacher no less that your manners might have improved,” scolded the figure with a sigh, “But then again I guess some things never change. What can I do for you Longbottom?”

“Hagrid’s got a question ‘bout the Hall of Ancestors, you know where it’s at?” Neville asked.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, of course, Nick,” Hagrid said, nodding his head and spilling a bit of coffee on his shirt front.

Ermalene and Andy watched the ghost hovering over the table. “That’s Nearly Headless --” Andy started to explain, but Ermalene cut him off.

“I know,” she whispered.

“The Hall of Ancestors, ey?” Nick asked, rubbing his chin, “No I’m ‘fraid I don’t know where it is these days. It used to be accessible through the Room of Requirement, but as we know that room was destroyed during the Battle of Hogwarts. Possible there is no way into the Hall now that the Room of Requirement has gone..."

“Know anybody who might know, Nick?” Andy asked, “Maybe Professor Binns?”

“Binns has long since moved on,” Nick replied. He glanced around. “Hmm. Perhaps Xenophilius. He seems to know all the funny sort of things like myths and what not.”

“Old Lovegood ain’t goin’ ter know ‘bout the Hall o’ Ancestors,” Hagrid said, shaking his head, “He weren’t a ghost last time it was used, was he? Minerva McGonagall knew where it was. If only she was here.” He frowned.

Nick mused, “Yes… well… the only other option would be the Bloody Baron.” He visibly shivered. “You’ll have to ask him yourselves if you plan to.” With that, Nick darted away before any of them could inquire any further, carrying his letter out of the Great Hall through the ceiling.

The four of them turned their attention across the hall to the Slytherin table where there hovered a morose-looking ghost, adorned with chains and blood-stained clothes.

Looking back to Hagrid, Neville began to collect his things, balancing his doughnut and tea on top of his Herbology book. “Well then, Hagrid, I wish you good luck in finding the Hall of Ancestors, I’ve got a whole load of Third Year essays to scroll through… Nice meetin’ you, Ermalene… Andy, tell your mum and dad hello and your Uncles, too.” He nodded goodbye and quickly rushed out of the Hall.

Hagrid turned back to his breakfast.

“Why’s everyone so afraid of the Bloody Baron?” Ermalene questioned, looking over at Andy and Hagrid between glances at the ghost.

Look at him, Erma,” Andy replied, waving his hands, “He’s covered in centuries-old blood!”

“He murdered Helena Ravenclaw, he did,” Hagrid said.

“But he’s dead,” Ermalene said, exasperated. “He can’t kill anybody else now. Ghosts can’t kill living people. Can’t even touch them! Their hands go right through!”

Hagrid shivered, “Maybe not but he could haunt yer for a spell, couldn’t he? No thank you! That’s ‘nuff to scare the dress robes off anybody! The Baron’s a right old grudge keeper, he is. Been at Hogwarts hauntin’ the place since he died in the 1000s! O’er a thousand years whatever it is that’s keepin’ him from restin’ ain’t been resolved. Bound not ter be changin’ anytime soon, I’d reckon,” he added. “If he’s willin’ ter go through sommat as terrible as hauntin’ ‘round these parts fer anythin’ as long as ‘e ‘as been then you can get to imagin’n that he ain’t goin’ ter give up on hauntin’ yer if you get on ‘is bad side. Tha’s why ever’body’s afraid of ‘im.”

Andy was watching the Baron through all this exchange as he finished off his waffles.

“But if he knows where the Hall of Ancestors is --” Ermalene started.

Suddenly, Andy stood up and without waiting for either Ermalene or Hagrid to follow, he started off across the hall.

“What’s he doin’?” Hagrid asked.

Ermalene blinked in surprise as Andy passed the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables. “Oh Lordy, he’s fulfilling his promise to find the Hall. Good God.” She leaped up and ran after him. “Andrew Fredrick Weasley!” she called out, but he didn’t stop or even slow. Hagrid wiped his mouth quickly on his sleeve and followed after them.

Before they could catch up, though, Andy had reached the Baron. “Excuse me, Mr. Baron,” he said in a clear, ringing voice, “Could I have a word with you a moment about the Hall of Ancestors?”

The Bloody Baron gave Andy a lazy once-over with his nearly transparent eyes and turned on the spot and glided off through the wall, disappearing from sight as Ermalene and Hagrid caught up to him. Andy sighed in frustration.

“Well that’s that,” Hagrid said. He leaned down, his great big hands on his knees, breathing heavily as he recuperated from running across the hall after Andy. “On ter Plan B, then?” he suggested.

“What exactly is Plan B?” Ermalene asked.


The Grand Tour of Hogwarts by Pengi
The Grand Tour of Hogwarts



They’d been walking through the hallways of Hogwarts for over three hours, opening doors and peering inside in hopes of stumbling upon the mysterious Hall of Ancestors. They hadn’t discovered anything more exciting than Neville Longbottom asleep in his office, the jelly doughnut smooshed beneath his nose as he snored loudly.

“‘nother bloody broom closet,” Hagrid called from ahead of them.

Ermalene sighed and pushed open another classroom door and pulled it closed behind her, moving onto the next.

Andy frowned, shutting the door he’d opened. “This hardly seems effective,” he commented.

“At least I’m getting the grand tour of Hogwarts,” Ermalene said, only mildly sarcastically.

“There’s that.”

“Boys’ toilet…” Hagrid called, “Girls’ toilet…”

Andy laughed, “Maybe the Hall of Ancestors is hidden behind a mirror in a toilet like the Chamber of Secrets was. Maybe one of us ought to try ‘n speak Parseltongue to the sink basins as we go along, ‘ey?” He grinned.

“Don’ know any Parseltongue meself,” Hagrid replied, “But if we don’ find nothin’ today we could always come back through with Harry’s help. Sure he’d be willin’ ter give snake-speak a try…”

Andy looked at Ermalene and whispered, “I was only kidding.”

Ermalene smiled and wiggled her tongue like a snake at him, making a silly hissing sound.

Hagrid’s thumping footfalls echoed through the castle as they continued on their way up one of the changing staircases to the next floor and he led them down another corridor, lined with pictures. Ermalene was paying more attention to all the moving paintings than to checking behind the door ways. By this point, Hagrid was quite a ways ahead of her and Andy and was opening every door and not finding anything interesting anyway. The paintings, however, were very interesting indeed. The subjects were practically falling over themselves in attempts to keep up with Andy and Ermalene, whispering to each other, fighting their way through each other’s frames, gawking as the teens walked along.

“What’s going on with the paintings?” Ermalene whispered to Andy.

“I dunno,” he replied, watching them, too. “They’ve been actin’ funny for a bit now, I was watching them about an hour ago, doin’ the same thing.” He shrugged.

“Strange,” Ermalene said.

“Very,” Andy agreed.

“Hagrid,” Ermalene called out, getting his attention. He turned and in the process knocked over a large coat of armor onto the floor with a clatter. The helmet fell off and the back and breast plate split apart and there was a great crash of shattering glass and several old sherry bottles lay in broken pieces on the ground.

“What in the name ‘er Casper is all this?” Hagrid shouted in surprise.

Ermalene made a face, “Empty liquor bottles.”

Hagrid sniffed the air. “Those’ve been there a long while, I reckon. Prob’ly belonged to Sybil Trelawney.” He shook his head, “Old divination teacher, back in the day,” he added, “Before the centaurs took over the post officially. She had a fondness o’ sherry.”

Ermalene aimed her wand and said, “Reparo!” and the glass collected itself back into several bottles. The three of them worked together to put the armor back together and carried the bottles off to a rubbish in one of the classrooms just around a bend in the hallway. The bottles clunked into the bottom of the bin and as Hagrid replaced the lid on the bin, Andy nudged Ermalene and Hagrid with his elbows.

“Look,” he whispered.

In the corner of the room was a ghostly woman. She hovered serenely, staring at them, having just come through the back wall, her jaw dropped as she stared at them.

“Why that’s the Grey Lady, Helena Ravenclaw,” Hagrid explained. “She’s the one the Bloody Baron killed. Hallo, Miss Ravenclaw, ma’m,” he said loudly, as though she were hard of hearing.

“I am dead, not deaf, thank you,” she said in a snobby sounding voice.

Hagrid’s eyebrows shot up his forehead in surprise. He’d clearly not expected a reply from her. “Sorry,” he muttered, looking red in the face behind his wooly beard.

She rolled her eyes at him, and didn’t leave, but instead turned back to looking at Ermalene with an unwavering stare. “What is it that you are looking for?” she asked, her voice more gentle than it had been when she’d spoken to Hagrid.

Ermalene swallowed nervously, “The Hall of Ancestors,” she replied. “I’m trying to find out about my blood relatives. I was adopted and I don’t know who --”

“You are Ermalene Talon,” the Grey Lady interrupted, her voice strong and knowing.

Andy’s eyes widened. “How’d you know her name?”

The Grey Lady didn’t even look at him, she just stared at Ermalene. “You say you seek the Hall of Ancestors?”

“Yes m’am,” Ermalene answered. “Do you know the way?”

“Yes,” the Grey Lady answered.

“Could you show me?” she asked, her voice pleading.

Helena Ravenclaw stared at Ermalene, her jaw set. “You’ll only have more questions,” she said.

“But aren’t questions the only way to gain knowledge?” Ermalene asked, taking a step toward the Lady, imploringly. “Isn’t your house all about knowledge?”

“It has become to be so, but once it was about wisdom,” she replied.

“What’s the difference?” Andy questioned.

The Grey Lady glanced at him. “Spoken like someone who possesses neither.”

“Hey,” Andy said, affronted.

“The difference between knowledge and wisdom is that one can be infinitely knowledgeable without a clue about how to use the information which has been gained by them. Wisdom is the ability to know what best to do with the information,” Helena said. “It is far too often that one is smart beyond measure of any test, yet entirely unwise.”

Hagrid stepped up. “Couldn’t yer show us where the Hall o’ Ancestors is?” he asked point blank.

The Grey Lady looked at him with dark eyes and shook her head, “No,” she said. “I do not believe I can. It is best not to. It isn’t a wise decision.”

“But the girl wants ter know who her family is and s’long as there’s sommat we could do ‘bou’ helpin’ ‘er, we ought’er try, ought’n’t we?” Hagrid asked.

“Please?” Ermalene added.

The Grey Lady frowned, staring down at the floor in front of Ermalene. She waited, seeming to chew on her lower lip, as though thinking intently. Finally, she looked up. “The things contained in the Hall of Ancestors have been kept silent for a great many centuries,” she said. “I - I’m afraid of what shall happen if they come to the light of day.”

“What sort of things?” Ermalene asked. “What’s in there?”

“Secrets long buried,” Helena Ravenclaw replied. “Dark things.”

“But Dumbledore always said that the best way ter deal with the dark things is ter expose them to a lit’l light,” Hagrid said.

The Grey Lady closed her eyes. “Fine,” she said thickly. “But I shall bring along only the girl.” She opened her eyes and stared into Ermalene’s. “You come alone.”


What Binds the Grey Lady by Pengi
What Binds the Grey Lady



“Are you sure you’re okay?” Andy asked, holding Ermalene’s hands. His palms were damp with nervousness. She nodded. “You’re sure?” She nodded again. He took a deep breath.

“Andy,” she assured him, “I’m okay. This is what I wanted. Go with Hagrid down to the hut and I’ll come out straight away when this is over.”

“Okay.” He reluctantly let go of her hand.

Hagrid said, “If yer needin’ anything at all, you come and get me an’ Andy.”

“I will, Hagrid, I promise,” Ermalene replied.

The two of them hesitated in the doorway - especially Hagrid, who eyed the Grey Lady suspiciously - and finally they left, heading down to wait in Hagrid’s cabin.

Ermalene looked up at the ghostly woman, “Okay, it’s just you and me now. Lead the way, m’am.”

“Call me Helena.”

“Okay… Helena then.”

The ghost swept into the hallway, Ermalene following along behind her through the corridors, past rows and rows of armor. The paintings on the walls continued their mysterious chases from frame to frame, even more feverishly now that the Grey Lady led the way than they had before, Ermalene couldn’t help noticing. They whispered and hissed in one another’s ears as they scurried along after them.

“So… do you… like… being a ghost here at Hogwarts?” Ermalene asked.

The Grey Lady replied, “Being a ghost is not something one likes, Ermalene.”

“Oh. Right. I’m sorry. But I meant only -- maybe Hogwarts is preferable over… I don’t know… some other place to haunt?”

“It is no better nor worse than any other place,” Helena stated.

Ermalene followed along behind her, feeling foolish for having asked at all. She’d only wanted to make a conversation. She chewed her lower lip.

“It isn’t terrible,” Helena’s voice came suddenly.

Ermalene looked up at her.

“I suppose there might be more terrible places to haunt than Ravenclaw tower,” she explained. “For example, there’s a ghost that haunts a girl’s toilet downstairs. I wouldn’t like to be her.”

“Moaning Myrtle?” Ermalene asked.

“Yes,” Helena replied. “What a terrible way to spend eternity. In a U-bend.”

Ermalene laughed, “I can’t imagine.”

“Nor can I,” the Lady said. She smiled ever so slightly before the smile faded and she went stone-faced once more.

Ermalene walked along in silence a moment or two, watching Helena’s long hair flowing out behind her ghostly form. Then, “So what keeps you here? Being a ghost, I mean?”

Helena stopped moving for a moment. If ghosts could take deep breaths, she would have in preparation of her reply, “My mother’s diadem.”

Ermalene made a face, “But… the diadem was destroyed.”

“The diadem remains.” The voice of the Grey Lady shook.

“What do you mean ‘the diadem remains’?” Ermalene asked, taking a step toward her, “It can’t. Harry Potter destroyed it forty years ago. It was the sixth Horcrux. He threw it into the Room of Requirement with a fiendfyre.”

The Grey Lady closed her eyes, summoning all of her strength. The secret had been kept for so long, the whole story so tightly held for centuries and centuries that she wasn’t sure she could bare the release of it. “No.” she murmured.

“No?” Ermalene repeated.

“No,” Helena whispered. She shuddered at the admittance and closed her eyes. She felt as though she were being unraveled.

Ermalene’s voice was panicked, “But if the diadem wasn’t destroyed, then… then Voldemort’s horcrux…” She felt a clammy cold seep through her skin. “Is Voldemort still alive?” she asked.

The Grey Lady shook her head, “No. The horcrux was destroyed.”

“But you said the diadem wasn’t destroyed,” Ermalene was confused.

Helena’s eyes rolled up so that she stared up at the ceiling. “Harry Potter destroyed the horcrux, yes, but not the diadem.”

“But the horcrux was the diadem.”

“It was a diadem,” agreed Helena, “But it was not mine.” Her voice was harsh again and her eyes flashed in anger. She closed her eyes, and when she reopened them, they were kinder. She stared at Ermalene and her lips pressed together tightly. “I’m sorry,” she said. The words were obviously hard for her to say. “I didn’t mean to shout… at you.”

Ermalene said, “It’s okay. I bet this is hard to talk about.”

The Grey Lady nodded.

“So what happened to the real diadem, then, if the one that Voldemort had wasn’t yours?” asked Ermalene.

Helena replied, “I hid it in Albania.”

“That’s the one Voldemort had, though,” Ermalene said.

“He had the replica.”

“The replica?” Ermalene asked.

The Grey Lady hovered silently, a long, expectant silence hung between them as she held onto the secret for one last moment. Finally, she said, “I thought that I was in love with him at first.”

“Pardon me?” Ermalene took a step closer, confused, “In love with who? Voldemort?”

“No!” The Grey Lady shouted, her eyes flashing brightly, “The Baron, the bloody Bloody Baron!” she shouted. Her voice trembled so that Ermalene guessed if ghosts could produce tears she would’ve shed them. She paused, looked at Ermalene, and lowered her voice as she explained, “My mother, Rowena Ravenclaw, did not approve of him. He was a member of nobility, but he was still not good enough for me because he was of the house of Slytherin. Whatever my mother and her friends, Helga and Godric, claimed, they were prejudiced against Slytherin’s house as much as he was prejudiced against theirs! ‘You cannot be with that barbaric man!’ she warned me. If only I’d listened! But I was foolish. We saw each other in secret for a time… sneaking out passageways throughout the school, meeting in empty classrooms or locked prefects bathrooms. She had nary an inkling of our secret affairs.” She paused, “But my mother was right about him. He was barbaric, he - he was forceful and terrible and --” She cut herself off and her hands clasped before her, a sneer upon her beautiful, pale face.

Ermalene’s voice was tiny, “He killed you,” she suggested, “In the end, he killed you.”

“Yes,” The Grey Lady’s hand flattened upon her torso for a moment. “But before he killed me… before I left Hogwarts… he --” she stopped, unable to utter the words to describe what the Bloody Baron had done, and she whispered, “Peeves is the only one who knows. He was just a boy -- he saw -- I’m sure he didn’t fully understand -- but it’s why Peeves fears the Baron more than any other ghost in the castle, why he is a man and yet still acts a boy… his secret, the one that binds him to Hogwarts is very nearly the same as mine. The Bloody Baron is brutal, stronger than me… and I - I couldn’t stop him. I would rather have died.” Helena shook her head. “But I became pregnant as the result,” she whispered, so softly that her voice was almost lost beneath the sound of Ermalene’s breathing.

Ermalene’s heart rate picked up speed as she realized what the Lady was saying. “Pregnant?” she whispered. “He - he raped you?”

The Lady’s palm, she now noticed, was cradling her abdomen, as though in memory of the curve of a baby bump. “Yes. And I was afraid - I was afraid to tell my mother, afraid to tell the Baron about the child, afraid of what might come of the baby if anyone were to discover how and who… or worse, that I should be forced to marry that beastly man to make the child legitimate,” She hung her head. Then, “It is a terrible thing,” she said, “As a woman, to need advice and wisdom of another, and be unable to seek it from one’s own mother because of terrible fights and an inability to admit that - that I was wrong.”

Ermalene’s heart ached for the pain in Helena Ravenclaw’s voice. She couldn’t imagine the horror that Helena had suffered. “So what did you do?” she asked.

“I sought the wisdom of my mother and so the wisdom is what I took,” she explained, “The diadem has powers… it bestows wisdom upon the wearer. I needed that wisdom, needed it to figure out what to do. So in the night, I snuck into my mother’s quarters and I stole the diadem from her bedside. The moment I put it on, I knew I had to run, to get as far away from Hogwarts as possible. I had to give the child a chance… So I went to Albania,” continued Helena. “I had a little cottage in the shadows of the Prokletije mountains and there I had the child… Bardyllis. He was my one light, my one white star. He was the proof that good things come, even from the hardest times. He gave me hope again that something could be pure and good and I vowed to give the diadem to him, to pass my wisdom on to him, to always be for him the white star that he was to me.”

The passion in the Grey Lady’s voice rose and Ermalene felt herself admiring the woman before her in a new and unexpected way. This lady had so fiercely loved her child that the love was just as fiery as it had been nearly a thousand years ago. She wondered what that was like, to be loved so strongly for never had she felt that sort of love before.

Helena stared up at the ceiling, “And then came the day when my mother’s spirit was failing. She was dying and her final wish was to see me one last time, to make amends with me. Knowing that the Baron had once loved me, unaware of the - the terrible crime he had committed against me and the hatred now between us - my mother sent him to find me, thinking that of all of the people in all the world he would be the only one that I would listen to, that I would return with. Choosing to send the Baron over any other was meant to be an olive branch, a promise of peace between us. I understand that now, but at the time I did not. I saw it as a threat because I was silly and naive and did not remember that she knew nothing of the secrets I’d kept. I don’t know how the Baron found me, but he came to the cottage. I kept Bardyllis hidden from sight with the nurse in a back room of the cottage, protected by magic charms of concealment. The Baron begged of me to return to Hogwarts with him. I told him to give me time in which to think about returning and reluctantly he agreed to return in one month’s time.

“I thought that my mother was truly seeking after the diadem and nothing more. I knew that should she receive the diadem back that she would know of Bardyllis and everything that had conspired… so, I had a second diadem forged by the goblins that lived in the mountains. Exactly like the true diadem in every way. They used the true diadem as a model and then, when they were finished, I had them… disguise… the true diadem so that it would not look like itself, so that I could hide it cleverly without it being detected. On the day when the Baron was to return, I hid the replica in the place I’d hidden the original, and I placed the true diadem with Bardyllis, in the folds of the blankets that kept my son warm so that all of my treasure was bundled together, kept hidden beneath the charms just as before.

“When the Baron returned, I told him that I would surrender the diadem but not return to Hogwarts myself and he was enraged for he had waited a month for me to return with him and, I later learned that Rowena was fading fast at home and the pressure to return to Hogwarts with me was very strong. And so he grabbed hold of me, to force me to go with him, and I remembered only the feeling of the last time that man had touched me and I screamed and made fuss so as to attract the attentions of anyone who might rescue me -- and the Baron was so enraged with me, and so desperately wanted for me to stop screaming, that he lost sense of mind and he sought any way possible to silence me and so he drew his knife… and I screamed no more.”

Ermalene’s hands were covering her mouth in shock, tears filled her eyes. “Oh no,” she whispered.

Helena continued, “Realizing what he had done, the Baron tried to repair my body. He carried me quickly into the cottage, becoming covered in my blood as it seeped from my body, he sought essence of dittany or any potion that I may have stored that could start my heart once more. The protective enchantments I had set to keep Bardyllis safe had expired with my life and the Baron saw for the first time why I had run and what he had done. He stared into the eyes of his son and he felt so much remorse and grief that he ran into the mountains and took his own life as well with the same knife with which he’d taken mine...

“Our spirits returned to Hogwarts and here we have remained since.”

Ermalene lowered her hands slowly. “What became of Bardyllis?”

“His nurse raised him,” Helena replied, “And he grew into a strong man at her knee and eventually he, too, had a son… who had a son… who had a son… and so forth through the generations, passing down the name that I had given him.”

Her mouth felt dry as bone and she whispered, “And the diadem that Tom Riddle turned into a horcrux…”

“Was the replica,” Helena supplied. “When that charming boy came to me seeking the diadem, he thought that I gave away my secret. But I gave him the only thing that I’d ever intended to give any who sought to steal the replica from the heirs of Ravenclaw.”

Ermalene asked, “Then where is the true diadem of Ravenclaw?”

Helena replied, “It has traveled these many years with the family, down through generations, from Bardyllis to every descendant of his family.”

“But if the diadem has been passed down, then how is it lost?” Ermalene questioned.

Helena said, “Because the goblins of Albania melted it down and used the stones and the silver to create a new object, one that could not be recognized for what it is to protect it.”

“What is it now?” Ermalene asked.

Helena Ravenclaw did not reply, but stared at Ermalene, withholding the knowledge purposefully.

Ermalene said, “But maybe if you reveal it to somebody, you’d be able to finally rest.”

“Maybe,” the Grey Lady replied. She looked at the wall, at the paintings watching them, listening with rapt attention to her tale. Her cheeks became slightly more opaque than they normally were, realizing that they had an audience, that her tale was certainly about to be spread all over the castle. She turned back to Ermalene. “The Hall of Ancestors is here,” she said suddenly. She waved her palm at the wall.

“Where?” Ermalene saw no doorway.

“Walk five times past this place, requesting the Hall and it shall appear,” the Grey Lady replied, spinning her finger to indicate the motion of walking.

Ermalene stared up at the wall with it’s dark maroon paper. It was an inconspicuous bit of wall, though it did stand out in the hallway full of paintings as the only blank space along the corridor. The nearest painting, one of a man with a long scroll hanging over a desk with a lantern by his knee, was staring at her with interest, like all the others, adjusting his spectacles. “Only a pureblood can open the Hall,” he said from his frame. Below it was a small brass plate that read Cantankerous Nott Records the Sacred Twenty-Eight.

Ermalene glanced at him, then back at the Grey Lady.

“Go on,” Helena encouraged her.

So Ermalene paced. Forward and backward… backward and forward… thinking about the Hall and the answers that she so desperately sought to find there… about the meaning of family and how badly she wished she had a mother who had loved her as strongly as Helena had loved Bardyllis… forward and backward… backward and forward…

There was a great hissing sound and when she opened her eyes, sparks had lit up on the wall in the shape of the doorway, great golden ropes, shining in the dimly lit corridor. They snaked about, adding details to the door including the knob, which popped from the wall, glowing brightly.

Ermalene stepped up to it, her hand shaking, afraid that it might burn, and touched it quickly. It was quite cool under her tap, so she took hold of it firmly and turned, opening the door. She looked back at the Grey Lady, “Will you come with me?” she asked.

Helena shook her head, “I cannot,” she replied.

“Why?”

“I just can’t,” she answered heavily. “Go.”

Ermalene turned back to the doorway and stepped inside the brightly lit room. Her eyes adjusting to the light, she glanced around, and before she’d even comprehended all that she was seeing, a voice broke the silence…

“Ermalene Talon? Is that you?”


The Trio Reunited by Pengi
The Trio Reunited


Harry had shut himself in his office, despite Hermione’s suggestion that he go home for the day after the brush with the gorgon. She was worried, pacing outside his office. Finally, Ron came rushing down the hall, much to Hermione’s relief.

“Oi, what’s gone on?” Ron gasped as he came to a trotting halt.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” Hermione said, hugging him, “I’m afraid you’re the only one he’s going to really talk to, Ronald. He won’t go home, and he says I’m interrupting him if I try to ask him about the details and -- oh Ron, he’s got to be upset.” She paused, pulling back from the hug and wrinkled her nose. “You didn’t change.”

Ron was still in his magenta Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes robes. “Well no,” he said, “Only you said it was urgent, so I thought --”

“It is urgent,” Hermione said.

“So what’s happened?” Ron asked.

Hermione frowned, “I don’t quite know the full story, but it seems there was a Patronus sent to Harry that claimed to have been sent to him from Lysander Scamander saying he was alive and being held in the Great North Woods by a gorgon.”

Ron’s eyes were wide. “Lysander Scamander? Luna’s missing boy?”

Hermione nodded solemnly, “Yes,” she replied.

“Blimey, a gorgon, ‘ey?” Ron asked. “But it’s impossible, isn’t it? Seventeen years? Lysander, alive?”

Hermione sighed, “I know. I was skeptical too. His rookie, Jade, came to me this afternoon asking for any information I could pull on the Great North Woods and Gorgons registered there but there weren’t any. There haven’t been any gorgons registered with the Ministry in ages.”

“I thought they were myth,” Ron shrugged.

“So did I,” Hermione admitted. “And I told Harry it was a foolish errand going up there to look into it, but you know Harry. He couldn’t handle the idea that Lysander might be there and he hadn’t looked, so against the Ministry’s recommendation, he got a couple younger aurors to go with him on a scout of the area. One of them, Jade, he was just out of Hogwarts, Ron…” she shook her head. “Now we have an auror killed and the matter of who this unregistered gorgon is and why there’s no record of magical families in the North Woods and Harry’s distraught and honestly Ronald I just don’t have enough time to do all of the paperwork that this is causing the offices, not to mention to try to comfort Harry and you’re so much better at that than I am anyway when he’s upset. So I’ll go and get my paperwork done and you just go in and --- Why are you shaking your head?”

“Bloody hell, Hermione, I’m not going in there alone,” Ron answered, pointing at the door of Harry’s office, “I don’t know what to say to him ‘bout all this!”

“Of course you do,” Hermione argued, “You’re his best mate.” And before he could argue any further, she turned to the door, opened it, pushed Ron in and unceremoniously announced, “Good luck,” before tugging the door shut behind him.

Ron stumbled into the room, nearly toppling over onto Harry’s desk.

“‘Bout time she actually pushed you in here,” Harry commented. He was surrounded by papers and open books and parchments with scribbled notes scrawled across them. His hair was a mess, his fingers having been running through it every now and then in frustration. “And I haven’t gone mad so you can relax. I’m fine.”

Ron stared at his friend a moment, “Are you sure? Because Hermione really thinks you might’ve gone nutters over this.” Ron didn’t say it, but his friend sure looked like he might’ve gone just a teensy bit crazy.

“Yeah,” Harry answered, distractedly. Then, “Ron -- you ever heard much about gorgons?”

“Only in stories,” Ron answered.

“Do the snakes usually just live in the hair, like a great big nest, or is the hair actually made of snakes?” Harry asked. He still hadn’t looked up from the books he had on the desk.

Ron paused. “Well, I s’pose a proper gorgon would actually have snakes instead of hair,” he answered, “But I don’t know, maybe there are different sorts.” He inched closer to the desk, “Hang on then… So did you actually see a gorgon?”

Harry leaned back, looking up at Ron for the first time, “Apparently not a proper one,” he answered.

“Blimey!” Ron replied. “What was that like, then?”

“Intense…” Harry answered. “We had a fight. She killed Jade.” His voice dipped emotionally. He frowned. “She was just shooting spells everywhere. Had me pinned at one point, then Goodings… and that’s when Jade…” he shook his head. “She was very strong.”

“What’d she look like?”

“Dark hair… thick, thick hair. Snakes were just crawling all over her head, slithering around through her hair.” Harry shuddered at the memory of it, “And she was cruel looking. Dark beady eyes and these thin, scowling lips.” He paused. “But her looks wasn’t the part of her that was most terrifying.”

“What part was?” Ron asked, eyes wide at the thought of such a monster.

“Her name,” Harry said. Ron looked confused. Harry explained, “She mentioned Voldemort. Ridiculed me in Parseltongue for believing that Voldemort was Slytherin’s Heir.”

“Well he was, wasn’t he?” Ron said, “Wasn’t his squib mother descended from Slytherin? What was her name?”

“Merope,” Harry replied. He could still see her in the memories of that old Ministry worker as clear as though he’d dipped his face into the Pensieve only yesterday rather than nearly forty years before. “But… but she wasn’t the only one in that family, Ron. Merope had an older brother, Morfin. He was terrible, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have found a wife and had a child.” He paused. “He went missing between when the cottage by the Riddles was blown up and when he got out of Azkaban. Could’ve been then.”

Ron’s face paled a tad, “What are you saying?”

“Well, what if Morfin went to the Great North Woods for real and had a wife and a kid,” Harry said, “Any children that Morfin had would’ve cancelled out the title of heir to Merope’s child…” he rubbed his chin, “Having Slythern’s blood in her veins would explain the Parseltongue.”

Ron’s eyes were wide. “So what now?” he asked anxiously.

“I don’t know,” Harry replied.

“Do you really think Lysander could still be there? After seventeen years? Alive?” Ron asked.

Harry hesitated, “Well… if he is alive, we need to act quickly because there’s no telling how long she’ll keep him alive. Especially now we’ve been there. I need to come up with a plan, and quickly, to go back there and check to be sure he’s not there...” He frowned and turned back to the files scattered across his desk.

Ron nodded. “Okay, then, let’s go. Of course I’ll need to go change first, I can’t wear magenta robes to something like that -- We’ll leave Hermione here, of course, she’s busy with paperwork, she won’t even need to know --” Ron started for the door.

“Hang on,” Harry said. “You’re not going up there. I’m not bringing anyone else up there to be killed by her like Jade was!”

“You’re not going alone!” Ron argued, “This is the bloody Deathly Hallows all over again,” he muttered.

“Exactly,” Harry said, “We don’t really know what we’re up against here. We don’t have any record how she’s done in school, don’t have an idea what sorts of curses she knows or anything. There’s never been a student at Hogwarts coming from that far north,” Harry explained, “Been over a century since any wizarding family’s been even reported there. But she’s obviously learned some powerful, Dark spells. We may not have the upper --”

“Of course you’d have the upper wand!” Ron exclaimed. “You’re Harry Potter! You defeated the most powerful dark wizard ever!”

“I knew how Voldemort thought,” Harry argued. “And I didn’t defeat him alone. I had friends --”

“Exactly,” Ron injected.

“-- and I had Dumbledore,” Harry finished.

“Dumbledore!” Ron’s face lit up. “Why don’t you go talk to Dumbledore’s portrait! He’ll know what to do.”

Harry frowned, “I thought of that, but unfortunately I can’t.”

“Why the hell not?” Ron asked.

“Because his portrait’s been missing since McGonagall was headmistress at the school,” Harry explained.

“Missing?”

“Yes,” Harry nodded, “Professor McGonagall said one night Dumbledore told her to move his portrait to some secret place in the school and forbade her to tell anyone where it was at. She never told anybody, Ron, not even on her dying day. As far as I know, she was the only person who ever knew where the portrait was.”

Ron frowned, “Why would he do that?”

Harry shrugged, “Why did Dumbledore do any of the things he did? Dumbledore was secretive if he was nothing else.” He shook his head, “Dumbledore won’t be any help this time. I just got to go up there and hope for the best, I suppose.”

Ron frowned, “Not alone, you aren’t.”

Harry frowned back.

Ron stared him down until Harry finally sighed and looked away. Ron had won. Harry wouldn’t fight anymore about him coming along, which, Ron thought, he ruddy shouldn’t seeing as Ron was technically a trained auror, too, just that he’d left to work in the joke shop because it was more fun than being an auror had turned out to be in the end is all.

He cleared his throat, “Did you tell Luna?”

Harry shook his head.

There was an urgent sounding knock on the door. They both turned as Hermione came in. “Harry!” she said, “It just hit me... I can’t believe we didn’t think of this sooner…”

“What is it, Hermione?” Harry asked.

Ron frantically mouthed that Harry ought not to tell her about their plans to go to the Great North Woods without her from behind Hermione’s back.

“Xenophilius is a ghost at Hogwarts.”

“Yes, and?”

“We could go talk to him ---”

Harry held up his palm. “I’ve talked to Xenophilius before, Hermione, he can’t remember anything about dying.”

“But ghosts’ memories sometimes get better and clearer the longer they’ve been a ghost,” Hermione explained. “When death is fresh they’re less themselves because of the shock of being outside of the body, you see, so they might not know or remember quite as much. It’s been seventeen years now, Harry, he might remember more about it now.”

Harry gave Ron a look over her shoulder.

Hermione turned to see Ron signing frantically not to involve her and he quickly turned the action into running his hands through his hair.

Hermione turned back to Harry. “You’re not leaving me behind whatever it is you and Ronald have planned,” she said sternly.

Harry looked at Ron with a shrug, “Sorry, mate. She’s always been the brains of our operations, after all.”

Ron sighed. “Alright then.”


Following the Bronze Line by Pengi
Following the Bronze Line



“Ermalene Talon… is that you?”

Her eyes adjusted to the brightness of the room compared to the dim corridor she’d stepped from. The walls were covered with tapestries - family trees, she knew, from the emerald and silver one on the wall at the Nott’s. Stacks of books and heaps of parchment scrolls filled boxes on top of boxes, spilling with copies of The Daily Prophet and various other publications lined the walls. But not a single other person was there. She looked around, trying to locate the source of the voice that had called her name.

“Hello?” she called out, “Where are you?”

“Down here,” came the voice, and she noticed it was quite muffled.

At her feet was a picture frame, face down, like it had been leaning against the desk in front of her and been knocked forward. She knelt and took hold of the corner of it, pulling it up to stand. And there, in the frame, she saw him. Albus Dumbledore, looking quite serene from his chair, a book open on his lap. He adjusted his glasses as she leaned the portrait against the desk once more and scooted on her knees to be seated before it. She stared into his eyes. “Hi,” she said quietly.

“Hello,” he greeted her. His half-moon glasses finally set upon his nose the way he liked them to be, he studied her a moment. “Only forty years!” he exclaimed, “That was a great deal quicker than I thought it would be when I had Minerva put me in here…” he rubbed his hand over his thick grey beard. He stared at Ermalene, a smile crossing his face, “My, my… You look so much like your grandmother.”

Ermalene’s heart raced. “So you - you know who my family is… who my parents are, then?”

“Oh yes, indeed,” Albus said with a nod.

It was finally going to happen, she thought. She was finally going to know the full story of how it was that she came to be alone in the world and she was going to learn what her place was in the wizarding world. She was tingling with excitement.

“We have a lot to talk about,” Albus said.

Ermalene could barely breathe, “We do,” she said.

Albus studied her a long moment, his eyes squinting just a tiny bit, then he pointed to the left side of his frame. “Over there… on the wall… the third one in, the blue and bronze one. I think you’ll find it most interesting.”

Ermalene swallowed back the anxiety that was crawling through her and pushed herself up to her feet. She approached the tapestry with sweaty palms. It was of Ravenclaw, a great big raven embroidered in the center of the crest at the top, followed by Rowena Ravenclaw’s name. She knew how tapestries like these worked - they were forever updating and changing with tiny portraits and dates depicting the family lines for untellable amounts of time. These were so complex that it seemed they told all of eternity for high above the crest there were millions more names that wove between the four tapestries that took up the wall - Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. She put her finger on Rowena Ravenclaw’s name and followed the bronze line to Helena Ravenclaw and the connection to the Slytherin tapestry. “Ignotus Black,” she read, and drew her finger-tip down, “Bardyillis Talon.” She stared at the name. “Talon,” she whispered, her eyes widening. She glanced back at the portrait behind her, “Talon!” she cried, “Ravenclaw… Talon! Oh my God!”

“After all, what is a talon, but a raven’s claw, hmm?” Albus urged her, “Read on, girl. Read on.”

She brought her finger down from Bardyillis, reading aloud as her finger moved down, down, down the tapestry, “Tacitus Talon… Harwin Talon… the first, second, third, fourth, fifth… Sarino Talon...Jericho, Jerk, Olufemi, Gerhardt… the first ,second, third… Jericho… Ratcliffe, Fenric, Astor Talon… Genoveva Hardwin, Peregrine Hardwin… Kael… Saxon… Gillespie…” Her heart raced as she passed each name. There were so many stories, so many faces. She wondered what each of their lives had been like, but was too excited to linger at any name for long, her stomach flipping with excitement. “Rauf Hardwin...Ferguson, Geronimo, Kaliko, Philo, Jakayla Detlaf… Quigley Detlaf, Tecumseh, Geoffery… Marzena --” she paused, seeing the last name and her palms filled with sweat, “Oh my God. Marzena Lovegood. Fabrizio Lovegood, Bramwell, Xenophilius Lovegood… Luna Scamander.. Lysander Scamander.” She’d heard that name somewhere before, she thought. And then, before she’d figured out the answer, she stopped, seeing it at last, her breath caught in her throat.

Her picture smiled back at her.

“Ermalene Talon,” she whispered, letting her fingers trace the bronze thread that spelled it out. She bit her lips. “My father’s descended directly from Helena Ravenclaw,” she said.

“Yes,” Dumbledore answered.

“That means I’m directly descended from Helena Ravenclaw.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore was nodding excitedly.

Ermalene stared at her name and followed the thread from her name to the name of her mother. Felicity Cooper. The dates below her mother’s portrait indicated that her mother had died when she was a baby. She touched the tiny embroidered portrait, staring into the woman’s eyes, then turned to the portrait of Lysander Scamander, whose dates indicated he was still alive. Albus was right, she did look a lot like him… and even more like her grandmother, Luna Scamander. She ran her fingers over their portraits.

Then she noticed there was a second thread on her father’s portrait frame… and she followed it down to a second branch. Medusa Peverell Gaunt had given him a second daughter -- Astarte Merope Gaunt. She stared at the names. “I have a half sister,” she said.

“Yes, you do,” Albus replied.

Ermalene stared at her sister’s portrait. They looked so much alike except that instead of the pale blonde hair that she’d evidently inherited from her grandmother, Astarte had black curls and thick dark eyebrows like her mother, Medusa.

Ermalene looked back at her father’s picture and she realized suddenly where she’d heard the name before. It was the name of the man who’d sent the patronus to Harry Potter when she, Andy, and Bill had gone to the auror’s office at the Ministry. She remembered Harry Potter telling the other two aurors not to tell Luna about the patronus --- that he’d had a chance to bring a long-dead son home to his heart broken mother --- he’d been talking about her father, about her grandmother. She turned to the portrait of Albus Dumbledore, “Where is he?” she cried, “Is the tapestry accurate? Is he alive?” she begged.

“The tapestry is accurate,” Dumbledore replied, “But I cannot tell you where he is. I only know the things the tapestries tell,” he explained. “I’ve been in this Hall for nearly forty years.”

Ermalene rushed back to him. “Lysander Scamander -- I mean… my father -- sent a patronus to Harry Potter at the auror’s office yesterday. I was there. I heard the patronus’ message. It was a magpie. It said that he was being held captive in the Great North Woods by a gorgon!” She glanced back at the tapestry. “Medusa,” she whispered. “Medusa’s the name of a gorgon, in Greek mythology. But this Medusa is his wife, according to this tapestry.”

“The tapestry doesn’t know relationships, only that there is a child between two bloodlines,” Dumbledore replied. “The tapestry would know no difference between spouse and captor.”

Ermalene was kneeling before the portrait again, her palms on her thighs. “I need to find him.”

Her voice was full of certainty. There wasn’t a question, there was no hesitation, only the blatant, obvious fact that she had to find her father. She’d been put into an orphanage, not because she was unloved or unwanted as she’d assumed all these years, but because her father had gone missing, kidnapped in the North Woods, and her mother had died.

This didn’t answer why somebody didn’t want her to find the records of the adoption at the orphanage, though, but she’d figure that bit out when she got to it. For now, she’d gone from being an adopted child to being a child with a very real chance of possibly being reunited with her father. She needed to know everything there was to know about the Great North Woods and Gorgons and how one goes about defeating one. “Is there a library?” she demanded, then “Of course there is, this is a school. Where is it? I need to make a plan and --”

“I know that you are eager, Miss. Talon, but there is still many things for us to speak of that we have not quite yet gotten to,” Dumbledore’s portrait said, “Not the least of which is a prophecy that --”

“But if I wait,” Ermalene cut across his words, “The gorgon could kill my father. You understand, don’t you? We can continue the talk once we’ve rescued him.” She stood up suddenly. Dumbledore stammered, trying to talk to her, but Ermalene was quick. “I’ll come back,” she promised, “Once we’ve got my dad, I’ll come back. But I can’t just let him die and Harry Potter was ready to act at once - I’ve got to help - I can’t just stay here --”

Ermalene rushed out of the Hall of Ancestors, leaving Albus Dumbledore staring after her with one finger raised in a cautionary sort of way, but she’d already left. And what was worse, the gust of air moving through the Hall from the slamming of the door caught the portrait - just right - and with a shudder ---

“Not again,” Dumbledore groaned.

--- the portrait tipped forward and landed face-down on the floor of the Hall.


The Crossing of Paths by Pengi
The Crossing of Paths



Pop! Pop! Pop!

Harry, Ron, and Hermione apparated into the lane leading from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts, just outside of the enchanted barriers that kept intruders from apparating into the grounds of the school itself.

Lumos!” All three of them uttered the spell nearly in unison, lighting the tips of their wands. They walked quickly toward the big wrought iron gates, guarded by giant stone beasts, and Harry swept his wand through the air, “Expecto patronum!” he announced and the stag burst from his wand. “Go and tell Hagrid that we’re here, ask him to let us in the gates,” Harry instructed it, and the stage cantered through the gates and off across the lawns toward the soft glow of Hagrids hut, which spat smoke from the squat little chimney.

“Feels funny being back,” Ron commented, “The three of us, out in the dark, goin’ to visit old Hagrid, huh?” He looked around at Harry and Hermione.

Harry nodded, “Speaking of which, when we’re finished here, I need to pop home real quick and get the invisibility cloak. That’ll be mighty useful I imagine.”

“If I had an invisibility cloak I’d carry it around with me day and night,” Ron whispered.

“I used to,” Harry admitted, “But Ginny thought it would be safer at home with some protective spells cast ‘round it so that nobody comes searching for it.”

Hermione nodded, “That’s what’s best. Honestly, Ronald, carrying a Hallow along with you every place you went. You’d end up robbed or worse --- ”

Expelled?” Ron interrupted, finishing her sentence with a smirk. Harry chuckled.

“I was going to say dead, but since the matter is funny to you --”

“Look,” Harry said, pointing through the gates, stopping their argument in it’s track (they were so good at arguing it was a wonder they had anytime to be in love). “There’s Hagrid coming.”

Sure enough, across the grounds there bobbled a lantern, higher than any normal sized person could’ve toted it. Hagrid was running across the grounds toward them. He was panting as he reached the gates moments later. “Blimey, Harry, yeh’r here late,” he said. “Jus’ let me find the righ’ key here on me rings…” and he pulled out a loop of keys so thickly populated that it must’ve had a thousand keys upon it if it had one.

Ron’s eyes widened. “Hagrid, you’ve a key for every door in the world.”

“E’ery door in Hogwarts,” Hagrid corrected.

“That’s a lot of doors,” Hermione said.

“s’what I’m sayin’,” Ron agreed.

Hagrid spent several moments picking through them, examining the keys as he dug one by one, holding them up to the moonlight. “What brings you lot ter Hgowarts anyway?” he asked.

“We need to talk to Xenophilius,” Harry explained.

Hagrid looked up, “Xenophilius,” he said, “What’re yeh talkin’ ter him fer?”

While Hagrid searched the remaining keys, Harry quickly filled him in on the appearance of the magpie the day before and the message she’d carried and what that could possibly mean in the case of Lysander Scamander and the brush with the gorgon that he and his men had earlier that day. Finally, just as Harry was concluding his story, Hagrid stuck the right key in the lock of the gate and the old thing creaked forward slowly.

“Can’t be a gorgon,” Hagrid said nervously, “Yeh looked in ter her eyes yeh say? A true gorgon would turn yeh ter stone with a look in the eyes.”

Ron clicked his fingers, “That’s it. That’s the bit of the story I forgot.”

“She’s not a proper gorgon,” Harry said, “Or maybe the myths got it wrong, I don’t know. You know how muggle mythology compares to the real world.”

Hagrid led the way across the grounds toward the castle. “I can’t stay with yeh, I’ve got ter get back ter me cabin, I’ve got comp’ny.”

“That’s okay, Hagrid,” Hermione said. She smiled, “Is it a lady friend?”

Hagrid blushed, “No it's not. It’s Andrew Weasley, actually. Got him ‘n his friend Ermalene here. She’s takin’ care a bit o’ business up in the castle an’ goin’ ter be comin’ down ter get us at the cabin after she’s done.” Hagrid’s hands moved nervously, flapping at his sides. “Welp better git back down there. Stop by after yer talk with Xeno’s done, I’ll have some rock cakes ready like the old times.” He looked hopeful.

“I’m afraid we don’t really have time, Hagrid,” Harry said, “I’m sorry. We’ll visit soon, I promise.”

Hagrid looked disappointed. “I understand,” he said anyway. “Well good luck ter yeh and stay safe ‘round that gorgon there ain’ no tellin’ what kind of danger them creatures pose, proper or not.”

“We will Hagrid,” Hermione promised.

“Say ‘ello to Andy for me,” Ron said, “Tell him to come ‘round the shop again. George and I were let down to find out he’d been ‘round when we weren’t there.”

“Aye, I will,” Hagrid nodded.

“Thanks again Hagrid,” Harry said, “Goodnight!”

The three of them waved to Hagrid, who started off across the grounds with his lantern, back toward his cabin, as they climbed the stairs up to the great entrance hall.

Ron groaned as they entered the hall and saw the emerald and silver decorations. “Course the Slytherins won again.” He frowned as they came to a stop, looking around them.

“So where do we look for Xenophilius?” Harry asked. He and Ron both looked at Hermione.

“Don’t look at me,” Hermione said.

Harry looked up at the ceiling, “The one time Peeves isn’t hanging around playing practicals on us,” he commented. “Well, I s’pose we just wander ‘til we find one of the ghosts or someone who can tell us where to find him. I know Luna as Ravenclaw, but what house was Xenophilius?”

“Seemed like a Hufflepuff to me,” Ron commented.

“Certainly not Gryffindor,” Hermione added, thinking of the time they’d spent with Xeno when they’d accidentally blown up his house and he’d called for Death Eaters to come and collect Harry because he was afraid of what they’d do to Luna if he didn’t.

“So Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, then,” Harry concluded, “He certainly wasn’t Slytherin. C’mon, we’ll go ‘round the common rooms and see if we can’t find him there.” He led the way through the great hall and down a corridor to where the Hufflepuff common room was, near the kitchens. Several busy-looking house elves wandered the halls down this way, and Ron stared around at them as they walked past, carrying freshly laundered sheets and pillowcases.

They rounded the final corner before getting to the door to the common room when the Fat Friar came around the bend, gliding through Hermione, who shrieked in surprise, making several house elves drop their wares. “Sorry,” she gasped, rubbing the cold from her arm, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Friar!” Harry called, stopping the ghost before he could glide through the far wall of the corridor. He came to a stop and turned to look at Harry expectantly, “We were hoping to run into someone! Do you know where Xenophilius is?”

The Fat Friar thought for a moment, “Last I saw of him he was haunting around the herbology greenhouse, trying to talk Professor Longbottom into teaching the students about how dirigible plums enhance the mind to accept the extraordinary and gurdyroots ability to ward off the gulping plimpies.” The Friar uncharacteristically rolled his eyes. Clearly, Xenophilius hadn’t given up his unusual beliefs, even as a ghost.

“Thanks,” Harry said, and the trio turned back around and headed up to the great hall once more. They were on the way to the doors to head out to the greenhouses to find Neville when Ermalene Talon came racing down the grand staircase and quite literally ran right into Ron, who only just caught her as she bounced off his chest.

“Bloody hell,” he exclaimed, “Hasn’t your mum ever told you not to run indoors?”

“Sorry,” Ermalene gasped, “I’m sorry, I’m just --” her eyes found the flaming red hair atop his head and she realized at once who he was and she looked at Harry and Hermione standing a couple steps away. “Oh my stars!” she cried, “It’s all three of you!” Her eyes were about as wide as saucers.

Hermione said, “You must be Ermalene, Andrew’s friend that Hagrid was telling us about?”

Ermalene nodded. “Yes,” she barely was able to squeak out. Hermione Granger knew her name. She could’ve fainted on the spot. She’d dreamed for years about what it would be like to meet Harry Potter and his friends and within a 24-hour period she’d not only met Harry, but met the other two parts of the Trio as well. She could barely believe it and couldn’t help but stare.

Harry mistook her look of awe for one of expectation.

“I’m sorry, Ermalene,” Harry said, “I know you’re waiting to find out about your family, but I haven’t had a moment yet to look into it, I’ve been on this Lysander Scamander case all day, and we’re actually here to find out more about it from one of the school ghosts ---”

“It’s okay!” Ermalene said quickly, “I know who my family is! I’ve just been talking to Albus Dumbledore --”

“To Dumbledore!?” Hermione’s eyes flashed.

“You said he was missing!” Ron turned to Harry.

“He was,” Harry said, “Where did you find Dumbledore?” he asked her.

“The Hall of Ancestors,” Ermalene answered, “I was to talk to Dumbledore - he told Hagrid - and Hagrid brought me here and --”

Harry was looking very confused, “Wait, Hagrid knew where Dumbledore was all this time?” He felt offended Hagrid had never told him where to find Dumbledore’s portrait, despite all the times he really could’ve used the help of Dumbledore’s wisdom down at the office.

“Well he knew in a way, but not really. The Grey Lady - Helena - she had to show me exactly where the Hall was at,” Ermalene explained, “Well I guess I could technically call her Gran.” Her face flushed, “And I want to help you find my father.”

“Hang on,” Ron said, “Your father?”

“Lysander Scamander,” Ermalene nodded, “According to the tapestry in the Hall of Ancestors, I’m his daughter. And I want to help you find him.”

Harry let the information flood him for a moment, steeping his brain in it all, trying to absorb everything she’d just told him. It was a lot to find out all at once.

Hermione looked around between Harry and Ron. “Well we can’t let a child go to the Great North Woods,” she said hotly.

Harry looked at Ermalene, “Hermione’s right,” he said. “I’m sorry Ermalene, but I’ve already lost one young person to this cause, I’m not losing another. But if you want to help, you could help us find Xenophilius so that we can try and figure out how best to go help Lysander.”

Ermalene nodded, though she wasn’t pleased with the choice. She hoped they couldn’t see in her eyes that she’d already planned to rebel against this command. She knew she could get Andy to go along with her to the Great North Woods if she’d just ask right. They’d apparate there themselves, with or without the aurors, and they’d find Lysander Scamander.

“The greenhouses are this way,” Hermione, who regularly made trips to Hogwarts on Ministry business, led the way through the dark. “Hopefully, Neville won’t mind a bit of company at this hour.”


Xenophilius Lovegood's Ghost by Pengi
Xenophilius Lovegood’s Ghost



Harry led the way across the grounds with Hermione, Ron, and Ermalene following along to the greenhouses. The windows of the castle were all dark, save for the headmaster's office, and Harry hoped that Professor Vector, the current Hogwarts headmistress, wouldn't notice the pinpricks of their wandlight moving across the grounds. The greenhouses were directly below the office window, though. They were dark and still, as were the windows of herbology teacher's chamber just off of them, except for the tiniest glow from what Harry hoped was Neville Longbottom's bedside lamp. He knocked on the chamber door and the four of them waited in silence.

"Who's there?" Neville's voice was quavering from the other side of the door just a couple of moments later.

"It's us," said Hermione.

Anyone else on the other side of the door and “it’s us” might not have been enough, but being that it was Neville there, he recognized her voice immediately and pulled the door open with excitement. "Harry! Ron! Hermione!" Quickly, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around each of them in turn. Then he saw Ermalene and said, "Forgive me, I forget your name.”

“It’s Ermalene,” she reminded him.

“Yes, yes I remember now. And how did your talk with the Baron go?"

"Awful," she replied, "But the Grey Lady helped us."

Neville looked surprised and ready to ask more questions so Harry cut him off before he coudl, "Speaking of talking with the Hogwarts ghosts, Neville, we were wondering if Xenophilius were about? The Fat Friar said he haunts around here and we really need to talk with him, it's incredibly urgent or we wouldn't have woken you."

Neville shook his head, “Oh you didn’t wake me up, I’m up late at night a lot. What d’you need to talk to old Xenophilius for?” he asked, confused.

"It's about Luna's boy," Ron answered.

"Lysander?" Neville's eyes widened, "Yeah of course, come in. Xenophilius is usually around some place in the greenhouses, messing with the plants and making up mad things they cure or ward off. I got a bit of a nettleberry bush and he’s been on about how nettleberry fruit tea will help keep away something called a pippermingle. I don’t even know what that is, but nettleberry fruit is rather poisonous actually. I’ve got a store of bezoars in the emergency kit now. I had to tell all the first years not to try to eat any of the plants whatever Xeno says to them but they don’t always listen... C'mon in this way, I'll show you in." He ushered them through, glancing up at Vector's window as he pulled the door closed behind them.

The herbology teacher's chambers were humble but comfortable and Harry could see Neville hadn't changed too much since Professor Sprout's days, despite having taught at Hogwarts for some time himself. There were many potted plants hanging around the chambers and adorning every flat surface. He had charts and notes tacked to the walls everywhere, too, and stealing a glance at a couple of the scribbles upon one of them, Ron had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing for they were all reminders for things Neville might forget - like turning off the stove or when his students would be sitting exams. Rememberalls were always hazy red for Neville Longbottom, even now, all grown up.

"So what's got the Scamader case pulled back up?" Neville asked with interest as he led the way to the interior greenhouse doors. "Been seventeen years since Lysander went missing."

"New evidence," Harry said vaguely.

"Did you find a body then?" Neville's voice was grave.

"He's alive," blurted out Ermalene while Harry, Ron, and Hermione had been sharing a look, deciding what sort of information to tell Neville. "I saw his name on the Ravenclaw tapestry in the Hall of Ancestors!"

"You found it then?" Neville's eyes widened, “The Hall?”

"Yes! The Grey Lady showed me where to find it."

"She did?" Neville sounded surprised, "She won't even talk to me at all."

"Well it turns out I'm her several-generations-great granddaughter," Ermalene said, "And as a matter of fact, Lysander Scamander is my father!"

Neville looked around at the Trio standing behind her as though seeking confirmation, "Don't look at us, we weren't there," Ron said.

"The fact that our new evidence happens to coincide with Ermalene’s discovery is… pure coincidence. We knew he was alive because I received a patronus," Harry explained, "Saying he was in the Great North Woods.”

"The Great North Woods!" exclaimed a voice from behind Neville, deep in the greenhouse, "I used to go there to hunt for the Crumple Horned Snorkack!"

They all turned to see the apparition of Xenophilius emerge from the dark, a reminiscent look on his face. "Why, I haven't been in years. The weather must be terrible about now there, though, with all of the whipplenots doing their rain dances," he grinned merrily at them. "The wood is full of them, you know."

"Xeno, you haven't changed a bit!" Ron announced.

Hermione jabbed him with her elbow. "Ronald.”

Ron glared, “What? I did nothing wrong to deserve that!”

She made the hush motion with her fingers as Xeno came closer, looking over the group that had come into the greenhouse at the unusual hour. He smiled at each of them, but his expression changed when he saw Ermalene. His eyes widened. “Luna?” he whispered.

“No sir,” she said, “My name is Ermalene.”

Xenophilius stared at her, looking as dazed as a ghost could. “You look exactly like her,” he commented.

Harry had to admit that now that the resemblance had been pointed out, he was unsure how any of them had failed to see it before. She looked exactly as Luna had in their sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts. It was uncanny. The only thing she was missing was the crazy radish earrings that Luna was so fond of wearing.

He took advantage of Xenophilius’ pause. “I know we’ve talked to you about it before, Mr. Lovegood, but do you happen to have remembered anything more about the day you died since we last spoke? Who did it, if Lysander was with you or what happened to him?”

Xenophilius glanced at Harry for a fleeting moment, then turned back to Ermalene. He reached out a ghostly hand and brought his intangible palm to her face, like he were cupping her cheek. An unbelievable cold shot through Ermalene’s body and she shivered, but didn’t pull away even as the chill made her teeth chatter. She stared up at him. He seemed to be searching her face for something, staring directly into her eyes.

Suddenly, he looked up, dropping his palm and gaze from Ermalene and said, “We were hunting snorkack and we heard one in the trees. The snorkack had come up behind me and --” he shrugged. “That’s it. That’s all I remember. The next, I was here.” He looked back at Ermalene sadly. “I haven’t gotten to see my Luna…”

“She hasn’t come?” Harry asked, astonished. He looked at Neville, who shook his head.

“She’s been afraid to, hasn’t she?” Neville replied, “This is the first time he’s remembered her since he’s been here. He’s talked a lot of gibberish about wrackspurts and whipplenots but this is the first time he’s mentioned her name.”

Xenophilius returned to staring raptly at Ermalene.

Tears were filling Hermione’s eyes. Ron reached into his pocket and produced a handkerchief, which he handed to her and she dabbed her eyes with it as he put his arm around her.

“Mr. Lovegood,” Harry said, clearing his throat, “We’re trying to find Lysander. Are you sure that’s everything you remember? Anything - any little detail at all - will help us.”

Xenophilius shook his head, “That is all that I remember. We were walking along, talking about --” he paused, “Felicity Cooper was pregnant.” His eyes showed recollection of memory and realization dawned as his eyes swept the height of Ermalene. “Has it really been so long since I’ve died that you’ve been born and grown so large?” he questioned.

“Yes,” Ermalene answered.

Xenophilius frowned, “I hadn’t any idea it’d been so long. Time is so different when you have all of it.” He looked at one of the plants to his side. “I don’t remember any details,” he said, “Only that we were walking, talking, the woods were silent around us, and then quite suddenly the snorkack was wailing.”

“The caterwauling charm,” Harry mumbled. “You must’ve set off the same charm as I did. It must be like an alarm system.” He rubbed his chin as he turned to Hermione and Ron. “She must have gone to where he was and snuck up behind them, killed Xeno and taken Lysander hostage. It must not be far from her house.”

Ron and Hermione nodded. “How do you s’pose we get close to the house if there’s a caterwauling charm surrounding it?”

“Finite Incantantum will turn the charm off,” Harry said, “That’s how I silenced it the first time. We need to set it off and…” He paused, the wheels of his mind grinding hard. “I have a plan.”


Escape from the House of Gaunt by Pengi
Escape from the House of Gaunt

Medusa came up from the basement in a right state. She’d cruciatused Lysander over and over and over, ‘til the house had filled with his cries, and her blood had boiled. She’d stopped just short of driving him insane, as she’d read in books was possible to do. It’d been done before; in the first wizarding war, a witch named Bellatrix LeStrange had used the cruciatus on a couple named Longbottom until they went irrevocably insane. They’d died years and years later at St. Mungo’s, a wizard hospital in London. Medusa didn’t want him to go insane… no, that would be too easy - and she wouldn’t be able to discover how much of her story Harry Potter already knew until she’d gotten Lysander Scamander to tell her the truth about the patronus he’d sent. She looked around the little cottage for Astarte, but she wasn’t there.

Cloak billowing around her legs as she walked, Medusa moved briskly outside to the clearing the house sat in and looked around. “Astarte!” she cried out in her clear, ringing voice.

“I’m here,” Astarte replied. She was sitting on a sort of bench made from a fallen tree just at the edge of the woods, absentmindedly braiding her hair and reading one of the spellbooks. She had been unable to take anymore of the screams and cries that echoed upstairs from the basement, exciting all the snakes, and had taken to the garden, as far away from the house as she could get. Now, she looked up as her mother approached her from across the yard.

Medusa slid her wand up her sleeve for safe keeping and put her palms on her hips, clearly frustrated. “That infuriating little man won’t give in and tell me the truth,” she snarled, “I should kill him.”

“Don’t!” Astarte said, sitting up, knocking her book to the ground. Medusa turned to her, eyes a blaze. “I mean --,” she said, collecting herself, “If the Ministry of Magic is willing to send Harry Potter then he must be really worth something. But he’s worth nothing as a corpse.”

Medusa sighed and rubbed her hands over her hair, “I know… I know…” She paced.

Astarte fidgeted.

When her mother had come back from investigating the caterwauling charm the day before, she’d had her dress torn and the snakes in her hair had hissed wildly as she stormed into the cottage. Astarte had heard the worst of the cruciatus being delivered then, the screams of hatred and pain echoing up the stairs and down the hallway. Medusa had emerged from the basement, breathless, sweaty and a downright mess and set herself into the chair at the table, demanding Astarte to get her a goblet of mead.

“What happened?” Astarte had asked tremulously, pouring the mead for her mother.

“That idiot man somehow managed to send another patronus,” Medusa had explained, “This time to Harry Potter himself. Boy who lived - chosen one -” she spat scornfully as Astarte put the goblet down before her. She’d gulped the mead in one long sip and then reached up and stroked one of the many snakes in her unruly hair before grabbing her wand from the table and returning to her tortures below.

Since then, Astarte had been waiting, praying for the caterwauling charm to go off again, for Harry Potter and all the aurors of the Ministry to come storming through the woods, surround the cottage, and take her away to London or anywhere else that her mother wasn’t at. She imagined sharing a home with her father somewhere, happy and free.

Medusa was so angry she was hissing now, talking to her snakes again, a habit that scared Astarte. She didn’t understand Parseltongue, despite her mother’s repeated attempts to teach her the strange language. She shuddered.

Suddenly, the caterwauling charm was sounding, echoing through the woods, the sound rustling the leaves. Medusa turned and drew her wand from her dress sleeve. “He’s here,” she hissed, “He’s come back.” She looked at Astarte, “Go inside. Be ready. Fight to kill should he make it to this clearing.” Medusa swept into the trees, pulling her cloak up and flipping it over her shoulder as she went, muttering about showing that Harry Potter what the True Heir of Slytherin should be like.

Astarte waited until her mother’s words had been filtered by the trees and she leaped to her feet and ran for the cottage. Her hands and shook as she took the stairs to the basement two at a time. “Harry Potter is here,” shrieked Astarte, “Somewhere in the woods. He’s come to help us.” She got to her father’s side.

Lysander looked up at her, his body trembling.

“You’ve got to get up, we’ve got to go find him,” Astarte said. She reached for the ropes binding Lysander where he was.

“I’m too weak,” Lysander murmured.

“You aren’t. Get up. You’ll be okay. We’ve got to do this, though.” She pulled him to his feet and he groaned with the effort. “C’mon,” she pleaded, “We just need to get to him and I promise it’ll get better. Hurry up, we can’t let her catch us.”

Together, they struggled up the stairs, Lysander gripping onto Astarte’s shoulders as tight as he could. She wrapped one arm ‘round his waist and led the way out of the basement and through the house. She hurried him past the clearing and into the cover of the trees.

Here she took a pause and looked around. She was terrified. If her mother found them now, they were as good as dead. Sure she could make up some story about Lysander having tried to escape and her running to catch him but she'd certainly use the Avada Kedavra on him then. Astarte listened but only the caterwauling charm's shrieks reached her ears. They stumbled through the woods, Lysander clinging to Astarte for dear life. Then, with a feeling like the breath being stolen from the depths of the lungs, the caterwauling charm ceased and silence so thick it was nearly tangible filled the woods.

Astarte froze, afraid of the noise moving through the brush might make, and tried to still the great gasps that heaved from her chest.

"I KNOW YOU ARE HERE, POTTER!!!" Medusa bellowed. “Come out, come out, wherever you are…”

A rush of magic billowed through the trees, shaking them from stem to root and Astarte felt as though she were suddenly on the outside of a dome looking in -- a protective shield charm had been put over the cottage like a half bubble. She and Lysander were barely two feet away from the place it divided the woods. She trembled. There was absolutely no going back now.

"Come on," she whispered, gripping Lysander by the shoulders once more. "We're too close."

Lysander staggered along with her, his every step three times as loud as hers. She was terrified Medusa would hear, but she hadn't come yet so she must not have heard, she told herself. She must be busy with the aurors.

They broke through the line of trees and onto a woodland path and Lysander dropped to the dusty pathway to catch his breath, his palms down in the gravel. Astarte looked around.

Pop! Pop!

She turned, careening, wand held aloft. Behind her had appeared two teenagers, no older than she was - a boy and a girl. They both had their wands drawn as well, and the three of them faced one another as Lysander panted, hidden and protected in the shadow of Astarte.

"Expelliarmus."

Astarte felt her wand fly from her hand and into the hands of the gangly, red haired boy. He handed it to the girl, whose pale blonde hair reflected the sunlight like it was made of pure cornsilk. Her features, though... her features gave pause to Astarte. She squinted at the girl. It was like looking in a mirror and seeing oneself with different hair.

"Who are you?" Astarte asked.

"You first," the boy demanded hotly, "As you are the unarmed one."

"I'm Astarte Gaunt," she answered.

The girl lowered both wands, but the boy left his up until the girl touched his arm, and he slowly lowered his defenses. The girl looked at the wand in her hand, then at Astarte. She held out the wand to return it to it’s owner. “I’m Ermalene Talon,” she said, “And this is Andrew Weasley.”

Astarte stepped to one side to reveal her father.

“This,” she added, “is Lysander Scamander.”
Keywords and Loopholes by Pengi
Keywords and Loopholes



“Open up, Hagrid!” Harry shouted, knocking on the door of Hagrid’s hut.

There was a thumping-banging sound from inside and a moment later the door opened wide. Hagrid came out, arms wide. “Harry!” he shouted, enveloping Harry right into his chest, and squeezed him tight. “‘ow’ve yeh been then?”

“Been alright,” Harry replied, his voice pitched from the pressure being put on his rib cage. “Better if I could breathe, though,” he added.

“Sorry, sorry,” Hagrid said, putting Harry down gently. “Whatter yah doin’ here? and at this hour?” Then his eyes moved through the crowd of faces behind Harry in the dark and he realized there was quite a crowd. “Ron! And ‘ermione, too!” he cried out. “And Ermalene, yeh’re back from the Hall o’Ancestors?”

“Ermalene’s back?” Andy’s voice carried from inside the hut. “Oi! How’d it go Erma?!”

“Wonderfully!” she called over the shoulders of everyone in front of her.

Ron glanced back across the grounds, to the glowing headmistresses’ window. “P’raps we should go inside before we all catch up?” he suggested.

“Oh righ’ right’,” Hargrid said, stepping back, “C’mon in ev’rybody.” He waved his arm for them to go ahead into the cabin.

Andy was sitting at Hagrid’s giant table, looking like a little kid with his legs unable to touch the floor on a chair big enough to sit both him and Ermalene - which she proved a moment later by climbing up next to him while the adults all hugged and greeted each other. Andy took her hand, “How’d the Hall of Ancestors go?”

“Did you find your family?” Andy asked, eyes wide.

But before Ermalene could tell him what happened, Harry said, “We need to get going. I just wanted to make sure Ermalene got into your care and would be safe, Hagrid.”

“O’course she’s safe --” Hagrid started, but Ermalene’s trill broke across him.

“What do you mean by that!”

Harry had already turned to the door, followed by Ron and Hermione. “I mean that you’re going to stay here with Hagrid,” Harry said.

Andy looked confused, “Where else would she be going?”

“To save my father!” Ermalene shouted, standing up from the chair, “Which is where they’re going!”

“Yes but, Ermalene, it isn’t safe,” Hermione pleaded, “We’ll bring him right back here as soon as we’ve saved him, we promise!”

Ermalene shook her head, “I didn’t come all the way to London just to look at a tapestry and not do anything about what it says. I want to help find my father.”

Harry took a deep breath, “Look, you’re too young for going into situations like this. You’re only seventeen.”

Ron looked up sheepishly, “Uhh.. mate… we were only seventeen… when we… you know… took on the Dark Lord and all his Death Eaters.”

“That was completely different!” squeaked Hermione.

“How?” Ron asked.

“Because we - we were - you were - I - because --” Hermione spluttered, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Yes?”

“Because Harry was the Chosen One,” Hermione said finally, pointing at Harry.

Harry looked at Ron, “Are you saying you want us to bring along your Great Nephew and his girlfriend?”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Andy said at exactly the same time that Ermalene said, “I’m not his girlfriend.”

The Trio ignored this outburst.

Ron shook his head, “No I’m just saying that the age card probably isn’t the one you want to be playing to convince them is all. If they’ve read a single book they’ll refute it in a second flat, mate.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, “Those were different times and it was insane that we were put into that situation. Why are we even talking about this still?”

“Because I’m coming,” Ermalene injected. “I don’t care what you say.”

Harry rubbed his forehead. “You’re staying here.”

“I’m not!”

“It’s safest if yeh do, though, Ermalene,” Hagrid said, “C’mere and we’ll have some rock cakes an’ tea.”

“I’m going. To help. Find. My father.” Ermalene said through gritted teeth.

“You’re not coming!” Hermione shrieked, “I forbid it!”

Harry held up his palms, “Oi. Stop it. All of you. This fighting is ridiculous. Ermalene, you’re too young.”

“She’s of age,” Andy said, standing up, “We both are.”

“Not in your country,” Hermione said.

“But we aren’t in our country,” Andy replied.

Hermione looked at Harry for back up.

“We’re not discussing this anymore,” Harry said. “You are absolutely not allowed to come with us to the Great North Woods. I mean it.” He turned to the door, “Okay, Ron, Hermione, let’s go.”

Ermalene crossed her arms angrily as the Trio waved to Hagrid and walked out the door into the dark grounds. Hagrid said goodbye, then turned to Andy and Ermalene. “Well now,” he said, “Let me brew us some tea and we’ll talk ‘bout what happened in the Hall of Ancestors. I’m dyin’ ter hear what Dumbledore said.” He left the room.

Andy looked at Ermalene. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“What?”

“Let’s go wherever it is they just went.”

Ermalene said, “But Harry just said we are absolutely not allowed to go with them.”

With them,” Andy said. “That’s the keyword.”

“The loophole,” Ermalene grinned.

“C’mon,” he said, “Before Hagrid comes back with that tea kettle.”

The two of them grabbed their wands and rushed for the door of the cabin, disappearing into the night before Hagrid could come back from the kitchen. When he did, he looked around in confusion before realizing exactly what had happened.

-*-*-*-*-*-


As they hurried across the grounds, out of the range of the protective enchantments, Harry turned to Ron and Hermione, running backwards as he said, “So the plan. Right. The caterwauling charm sets off and she obviously responds to it really quickly. So we apparate onto the path, set the thing off, then disapparate again off to some place else within the charm’s circumference but far off enough she won’t find us too quickly. Then we… I don’t know, we find Lysander, I suppose.”

Ron was panting - having gotten along in the middle in his years of working at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes while eating Hermione’s home cooking. “That’s a … bloody … thought out … plan,” he muttered sarcastically.

Harry shrugged, “Better than ‘go hunt some Horcruxes’ was, really.” He turned to Hermione. “So, Hermione, gorgons. Anything we ought to know about them before rushing into this?”

“Well, honestly, I don’t know because this one isn’t a proper gorgon, you said, right? In classic muggle mythology the gorgon had the power to turn their enemies to stone just by looking at them, though, mind you, that is a muggle source,” she answered with a shrug. They got to the edge of the enchantments and came to a stop. “Obviously this woman doesn’t have that sort of power or else you’d be stone, Harry, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Harry said.

Ron looked around. “Are we going in to kill it, then, or just to get Lysander and get the bloody hell out of there?”

“Whatever it takes,” Harry answered.

“If we don’t kill it then we’ll have to bring it to Azkaban, won’t we?” Hermione pointed out, “Otherwise she’s just going to keep coming back. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a gorgon coming after me.”

“Me, either,” Harry agreed.

“Okay then,” Ron said, “That’s settled.”

Harry took a deep breath. “Are we ready?” he asked.

“Just like old times, ‘ey?” Ron asked, looking around at the other two as they joined hands to disapparate together. “Half expect to open my eyes in the Forest of Dean.”

“Well, you’ll be in a forest,” Hermione replied.

“Remember,” Harry said, “In, set the alarm off, then to another spot.” He looked at Hermione. “You better do the actual apparating. You’re the best at group apparition.”

Hernione blushed, but then she turned on the spot and the three of them went hurtling to the Great North Woods together, hand in hand.

-*-*-*-*-*-


They ran along, following the light of the Trio’s wand light glowing through the darkness ahead of them, keeping at a safe distance. Through the gates of Hogwarts and out into the woods along the path to Hogsmeade. When they’d passed through the enchantments that protected the grounds of Hogwarts, the three of them disapparated.

Andy grabbed hold of Ermalene’s elbow, “Okay so before we go disapparating after them, fill me in on what’s going on a little bit?”

“I found my name on the Ravenclaw family tree,” she explained. “I’m… I’m descended from Rowena Ravenclaw. That’s why the Grey Lady was so kind to me. She’s Helena Ravenclaw, my great-great-great-several-times-over-great grandmother.”

Andy’s eyebrows had shot up.

“My father’s name is Lysander Scamander,” Ermalene continued, but before she could finish, Andy cut in --

“Isn’t that the bloke from the Patronus at Harry’s auror office?” Andy questioned.

Ermalene nodded furiously, “Yes,” she said, “And that’s why we need to go to the Great North Woods and find him and get him away from the Gorgon, Medusa.”

“Wait, so there really is a gorgon?” Andy asked, behind his spectacles, his eyes went even wider than they had been before.

“Yes,” Ermalene said again.

“And you want to go to the woods and try and fight it off ourselves?”

“Well Harry Potter’s there, isn’t he? It’s not really by ourselves. The three that killed the greatest dark wizard of all time are on our side, already there. We’re just… helping a bit. Because it’s my father.” Ermalene replied.

Andy nodded, “Okay then. Grab my arm.”

Ermalene smiled and grabbed on. “Thank you,” she said.

“I told you I’d not rest ‘til we found your family,” Andy answered, “And if that means saving him from a blood thirsty gorgon -- then, well --” With that, he turned on the spot.

When Ermalene opened her eyes it was to the hazy view of the stars through the treetops and a figure in the road before them. Before she’d even fully gotten her wits about her, she withdrew her wand and moved into a defensive stance. She felt Andy do the same. The woods were silent aside from the panting of the person they faced. She blinked slowly, trying to regulate her eyes to the extreme dark - even more dark than the woods outside of Hogwarts had been. They were truly deep in the forest now.

Expelliarmus,” she heard Andy’s voice and the figure’s wand flew into his hands. He handed it to Ermalene, keeping his defensive stance.

“Who are you?” came a tremulous girl’s voice.

Ermalene could just make out the mass of black curls that covered the girl’s head like a tangled mane and smudges of dirt on her face, as though she’d been running through the trees with the branches hitting her. She squinted at the pale face, and her heart jolted, the breath rushing out of her lungs in surprise.

Andy’s voice was rough, “You first, as you’re the unarmed one!” She looked over at him. He was squinting at the girl, too, the same as she was, the same look of surprise on his face, despite the gruffness of his voice.

“I’m Astarte Gaunt,” the girl said and she moved aside. Ermalene’s eyes went wide as moonlight fell upon the man laying on the ground behind her.

“I’m Ermalene Talon, and this is Andy Weasley,” she said quickly, touching Andy’s shoulder to get him to look behind the girl at the man whose face she recognized from the tapestry.

“This is Lysander Scamander.”

Ermalene nodded, “I know… he’s my father.”

Astarte Gaunt stared at her, “Your father?”

“Yes,” Ermalene lowered her hand from Andy moved forward toward Lysander, who stared up at her in awe from the ground.

“But he’s my father,” Astarte said, confused.

“He’s both our father,” Ermalene said, and she knelt down, looking into Lysander’s eyes. “Are you hurt?”

Tears filled his eyes, “So Felicity -- she -- she had you,” he whispered. “I always wondered.”

Astarte was about to ask who Felicity was, who this girl was that appeared literally out of no where and lay claims to her father, when suddenly there was a crashing through the woods that interrupted her, and in a burst of speed, someone broke into the road directly in front of them.


Attack of the Basilisk by Pengi
Attack of the Basilisk

Ermalene and Astarte instinctively blocked Lysander and Andy, who was several feet closer to the intruder, turned and aimed his wand at them. The moonlight crept slowly up the figure, from her bare feet up her long gown to her dirty and anguished face. Her hair wound tightly with snakes, chest heaving as she breathed heavily, Medusa approached them, withdrawing her wand from her sleeve.

Andy’s face flickered astonishment for but a moment and then hardened and Ermalene moved into a defensive stance once more. Astarte stood, wide eyed, staring at her mother, her heart hammering. This was it. The moment of truth. She could save herself by rejoining her mother or she could come out as someone standing against her mother and try to fight with the others.

“Astarte,” Medusa hissed quietly.

Andy backed up, his wand still held before him, standing in front of the two girls protectively.

“Move, you fool,” Medusa commanded him.

Andy’s voice shook only slightly, “No.”

“LOOK OUT!” Ermalene screamed. But it was too late.

Sectumsempra!” shouted Medusa and the whiplike spell shot from her wand, a long lick of red sparks that caught Andy in his shoulder as he ducked out of the way.

Protego!” he cried, as she struck again. This time, the shower of sparks hit the shield charm. Blood was pouring from his arm, staining his shirt. He had his eyes wrenched shut, but refused to lower his wand arm, keeping the shield charm up, but it was thinning as he was becoming weaker. “I can’t… I can’t hold it… my arm…”

“Andy, oh my God,” Ermalene ran forward, “Protego!” She cried, her shield joining his, and only just in time as Medusa shot the killing curse at it. Green sparks exploded against the white of their combined shield charms. Andy fell to the ground, clutching his shoulder. Ermalene, who was not much good at the shield charm - not as good as Andy was, by any means - cried, “Stupefy!” and Medusa easily avoided the jet of light that flew by her.

“You stupid girl,” Medusa shrieked. She glowered at Ermalene. “Avada --”

Expelliarmus!” Astarte surprised even herself by shouting it, and when Medusa’s wand flipped into her hand, mother and daughter both looked absolutely shocked.

“What have you done?” Medusa whispered.

“I’ve - I’ve stopped you,” Astarte answered, “From doing the wrong thing. From killing people who don’t deserve to die!” She stood up straight, “It wasn’t Lysander sending those patronus to the Ministry. It was me. I did it. I’m the one who defied you!” She felt a surge of power in her veins like she’d never known. Confidence, she realized, was a magic all of it’s own. “You’re a cruel, ugly old hag and I hate you! I hate what you’ve done to me and to my father all these years.”

“I’ve treated you like royalty!” shrieked Medusa, “Like the royalty we ARE!”

“We aren’t royalty! We live in a shack in the woods far away from everyone else. You are no queen, you are nothing, mother, except an evil sorceress and now --” Astarte took her mother’s wand and snapped it clean in two, “-- you can’t do anything to stop me escaping.”

The silence that followed was thick, the only sound that broke it was Andy’s whimpering as he clutched his bloody shoulder. Ermalene had ripped part of her skirt off and tied it tightly around him like a tourniquet.

“Nothing?” Medusa hissed. Though none of them understood the word. It was in Parseltongue. And Medusa seemed to grow as they watched and a strange wind came around her as she reared back and her features seemed to melt together and her body contorted and with a soft thump the first ring of thick coils dropped to the ground so hard it seemed to shake, like a miniature earthquake, and then the next coil and the next and her hair melted away and suddenly before them in the road stood not a witch but a basilisk.

Ermalene looked away, “Don’t look in her eyes!” she cried, “You’ll be petrified!” But even as she said it, she felt Andy go stiff in her lap. “No!” she screamed, “Andy!”

Astarte choked back a sob as she stumbled backward. Lysander was getting to his feet, and he grabbed for Andy’s wand from where it had fallen on the ground when he fell.

The basilisk hissed and uncoiled and recoiled and wove in the air before them, glaring down at them. She seemed to be laughing, enjoying the little situation she had created, playing with her food before striking. There was nothing any of them could do. They couldn’t even look at her.

Incendio!” the spell shot from the woods to their left and struck Medusa in one of her eyes.

She hissed and reared, her eye burned out, anger and pain mixing into a terrible screech. She turned, looking at the forest with her other eye, baring her thick, venomous fangs. She snapped, breaking several trees for she was so large that they broke like toothpicks in her mouth.

Incendio!” shouted another voice from a couple feet away, missing her second eye but hitting her skin and burning her feircely. Medusa reared once more and her snake body writhed in pain.

Harry and Ron ran out of the woods. “Can’t believe I missed that,” Ron was muttering as he emerged.

“I told you kids not to come with us,” Harry snapped, voice livid.

“We didn’t come with you, we came after you,” Ermalene said. Harry knelt beside her to examine Andy, “He’s been petrified,” she explained. “But she hit him with the sectumsempra,” she added.

“Being petrified will stop the bleeding the sectumsempra caused,” Harry said, “When we get back to Hogwarts, we’ll have Neville prepare some mandrake juice and --”

Suddenly Medusa struck, her fangs only just missing Harry, Andy and Ermalene. Harry waved his wand and a gash appeared across Medusa’s snake belly and she hissed and rebounded. Ermalene screamed and covered Andy with her body. Harry yelled, “Ron, we need to get these kids out of here, we’ll come back for Hermione.”

“Right mate.” Ron ran ahead and grabbed hold of Astarte and Lysander without even thinking about it and disapparated away.

Harry took Ermalene and Andy and just as Medusa was about to strike again, they disappeared and were back on the ground in the woods outside of Hogwarts.

“Blimey.” Ron’s eyes were wide. “Where in bloody hell did she get a basilisk?”

“She is the basilisk,” Astarte explained.

Harry looked at Astarte with wide eyes.

“She's an animangus?" Ron squeaked. Then, "Wait. Who the ruddy hell’re you?”

“Astarte Gaunt.”

“Gaunt.” Harry’s voice was serious. “You’re descended from Morfin Gaunt?"

Astarte shrugged, “I - I don’t know.”

“We need to go get Hermione!” Ron said. "We've left her there with a half blind basilisk."

“Yes, right. Start to Hagrid's, you three. We’ll catch up in a mo’.” Harry said. He looked at Lysander, “And I know someone who’s going to be mighty pleased to see you.” Then he and Ron disapparated back to the Great North Woods.

Astarte looked around at the motley crew that was before her - Ermalene, Andy petrified, her father shaking and weakened still from the intense rounds of the cruciatus curse he’d suffered. Somewhere, her mother was in basilisk form, half blind and shrieking through the forest. She could almost imagine the sound of her wails echoing, as though they were close enough to hear. Her heart pounded. She felt both guilty and… free… at the same time.
Out of Danger, Into Trouble by Pengi
Out of Danger, Into Trouble

Ermalene used a charm to hover Andy’s petrified form along in front of them as Lysander hung an arm over each of his daughter’s shoulders. He was too tired to ask too many questions, and Ermalene was too worried about Andy to offer up many answers anyway, so the three of them moved slowly across the grounds of Hogwarts to Hagrid’s cabin in relative, amicable silence. All Ermalene wanted in the world was to hear that Professor Longbottom had a whole vat of mandrake juice at the ready, that Andy would be okay, and that she was welcome to have a nice hot bath in one of Hogwart’s many luxurious prefect’s bathrooms she’d read about in Hogwarts: A History. Her muscles were sore.

But it wasn’t to be for there seemed to be a great commotion happening at Hagrids, which became evident as they came up over the hill by the pumpkin patch from the main gates. At the door stood a stern looking witch with beady eyes and dark green pajama robes, the light spilling from the wide open door of Hagrid’s hut across the grass. Neville was standing a few feet away, too, looking very much as though he wished he’d just gone to bed instead of answering Harry’s knocks on his greenhouse door before.

“Thar yeh are!” Hagrid shouted, coming out of the door and spotting them trudging across the yards. “What in the ruddy ‘ell were yeh thinkin’, runnin’ off in ter danger like that? But -- blimey!” He’d gotten a good look at them, at Andy floating and Lysander barely able to stand up between them. “What’s happened? Lysander? That you??”

The stern witch with the green pajama robes turned to face them. At the same time, another person emerged from the cabin behind Hagrid - it was Louis Weasley, Andy’s father. “My boy!” Louis cried, running across the grass, his voice thick with emotion, “What’s been done to my boy!?”

“He’s petrified,” Lysander said weakly.

“Petrified!” Louis wailed, clutching Andy to his chest, “How did this happen?”

“There was a basilisk,” Ermalene explained. “Well, really, she was a gorgon - a sort of gorgon, anyway. She - she looked him in the eyes.”

Neville squealed, “I think I’ve got some mandrake juice in the freezers -- hang on!” He dashed off into the dark.

“He’s got blood all over him!” Louis sounded panicked.

“She performed the sectumsempra,” Astarte said. “She’s an animangus.”

“An animangus and a gorgon?” The witch in the green robes repeated in disbelief.

“Yer shouldnt’a gone with’em!” cried Hagrid, “Yeh were supposed ter stay with me!”

“But we found my father!” Ermalene shouted, “We saved him. Astarte, Andy and I. Harry and Ron and Hermione were looking back at the cabin, they never would’ve found him there because Astarte had already got him out of the cabin. We happened upon her on the road and then the gorgon came --”

“Young lady,” the witch snapped, “There have not been gorgons about in England in over a thousand --”

“But headmistress,” injected Hagrid, “They have bin! Why -- here comes Harry Potter, he’ll tell yeh all about it, I ‘magine.”

Harry was indeed running across the grounds, several yards ahead of Ron and Hermione, who were following along at a brisk walk. Harry was breathless as he approached, “I thought she might’ve come here --” he panted, clutching his knees as he bent double.

“Come here? Who?” Hagrid asked.

“The gorgon, Medusa!”

“But there -- then there is --?” Headmistress Vector looked as green as her pajama robes.

Ermalene resisted the urge to scream a haughty I-told-you-so.

“She disapparated when we went back with Hermione to finish her off,” he explained between gasping breaths, “We - we tried to - to do her off, and she - she disapparated before we - we could. We were afraid -- the castle --”

Ron and Hermione came up behind him. “Oh good you lot are safe!” Ron exclaimed. “We were worried.”

“I can’t believe this. Not only an unregistered gorgon to deal with, but an unregistered animangus as well! And with such a dangerous form!” Hermione was shaking her head, voice trembling, “I’m going to be positively swamped with paperwork at the Ministry on Monday.”

“She’s - she’s gone?” Astarte asked, “Nobody knows where to? There’s no way to trace her?” Her eyes were wide with fear.

“None,” Harry replied. “The Trace only works on underage, unfortunately. Would make my job a lot easier if we could trace anybody, of course.” He was still doubled over. “Oi. I’m not a young wizard any longer,” he commented to Ron.

Ron shook his head, “None of us are, mate.”

“Well some of you are quite young indeed!” snapped Headmistress Vector, looking at Ermalene and Astarte.

Neville came back then, looking thoroughly disappointed, “I’m sorry, Louis, I don’t seem to have any mandrake juice already made, but I just repotted our eldest while I was up at the green house and he should be ready for juicing within the week.” He frowned, “I’m so sorry.”

Louis hadn’t moved from clutching Andy all this time. He looked up tearfully, “He’ll be okay, though, won’t he?”

“I was once petrified,” Hermione spoke up, “When Lord Voldemort opened the Chamber of Secrets in our second year.”

Louis looked worried still, but seemed to calm down at his Aunt’s words.

“See, it’ll be okay,” Ron said bracingly. “Hermione’s brilliant, didn’t do a lick of damage to her when she was petrified.”

“Ahem!!” Headmistress Vector cleared her throat, calling attention to herself. They all looked at her. “Given the time, I’m going to demand that the children are sent to bed immediately - you’re both welcome to the dormitories in the castle for beds, and we’ll get Mr. Weasley here up to the hospital wing. Lucky, Miss Sanator is back for the semester early and is just upstairs. She’ll be able to help us get Andrew into a bed and help Professor Longbottom in procuring the mandrake juice when the plant is ready for juicing. In the meantime, Mrs. Weasley, Mr’s Weasley, Mr. Potter and --” she looked at Lysander as though she were seeing a ghost, “Mr. - Mr. Scamander, I’ll - I’ll need all of you to my office at once to go over exactly what’s happened tonight.”

“Yes, Professor,” Lysander said weakly.

She turned to Astarte and Ermalene, “The two of you can follow Hagrid to the dormitory for this evening. Hagrid -- could you show these ladies to the Ravenclaw tower, please?”

“Yes o’course headmistress,” Hagrid replied. He turned to the two girls, “C’mon yeh two, let’s get ter the tower. No funny business.”

Ermalene looked at Lysander and hesitated, not wanting to leave the presence of her father, having just found him, but the weariness of her body was eager for the soft bed and blankets that surely would await them in the tower, and she followed Hagrid off towards the castle.

-*-*-*-*-*-

Once Hagrid had shown them to the tower, the girls took turns going just down the hall to take hot showers before returning up to the dormitory. Astarte went second, and when she returned, her hair still wet, Ermalene got up from the cushy bed she’d laid claim to by one of the windows and drew her wand, “Here, let me dry that for you… Arida cappilum.”

Astarte’s hair instantly dried, and not too frizzy, either. “Thanks,” she said appreciatively, “I’ll have to remember that one.”

“It’s come in handy,” Ermalene replied, smiling. “Read it in Teen Witch, in an article called Spells Every Witch Needs to Know to Stay Spellbinding For the Wizards in Her Life.”

Astarte smiled back, and the two of them climbed into beds. The beds were very soft, very big, much bigger than the one Astarte was used to back in the cabin. In fact, despite the years of her mother telling her that they were of royal blood, this night - the first night away from her supposed Queen Mother - was the first time that Astarte felt like she was getting the royal treatment. The beds had sumptuous blue down comforters over them and bronze sheets with woven curtains that hung from the four posters. Each of the girls kept their curtains opened, though, as they laid down, putting their heads on thick pillows like nothing Astarte had ever dreamed of.

Silence fell over the dormitory as they each stared up at the ceiling of their beds.

“Are we really sisters, then?” Astarte asked into the dark. “You said Lysander is your father.”

“Yes,” Ermalene replied. “I’ve seen the family tree. That’s how I knew about Lysander. About you. That’s why we were there to save you. Well, that and your patronus. That was brilliant by the way. It’s a magpie, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Astarte said.

“Mine is a raven,” Ermalene said.

“Cool,” Astarte replied.

Ermalene bit her lip, hesitating, then plucked up the courage and said, “What is Lysander like?”

Astarte answered, “He’a a very good man. Very smart. We used to have long talks while mother was out patrolling the woods. Mother kept him locked in our basement, but he never stopped having hope. And we always talked about how one day we’d get out of there, get to London, have a normal life. He told me that I’d one day go to Hogwarts.” She smiled sadly. “Well, at least he was sort of right about that part of it anyway.”

“If you didn’t go to Hogwarts, where did you go to wizarding school?” Ermalene asked.

Astarte shook her head, though Ermalene couldn’t see her in the dark room. “I didn’t. I learned from books and my mother at home. It’s the same way she was taught and her father before her and his father before that, too.”

“Why?” Ermalene asked.

“My mother always said it was because we were royal blood, related to Salazar Slytherin directly, see. The heirs of Slytherin. She called herself a queen and me and princess, saying I would one day be queen, next time line for the royal title.” Astarte sighed, “I don’t even know if we’re related to Salazar Slytherin at all.”

Ermalene said, “Well, we could check the tapestries in the Hall of Ancestors. It’ll tell you everything. And if nothing else, you are related to Rowena Ravenclaw.”

“Who?”

“One of the other founders of Hogwarts. There was Slytherin and Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff and Gryffindor,” she explained, “They’re the ones who started the school. When I went to the Hall of Ancestors today myself I saw the tapestry of Ravenclaw and it’s a direct line from Ravenclaw herself to Lysander and therefore to us. Both of us.”

Astarte said, “Wow.”

Ermalene nodded.

“We should go to the Hall together,” Astarte said, “Before we leave Hogwarts.”

“I can show you where it is,” Ermalene agreed.

They were quiet again for quite some time.

“Thank you,” Astarte suddenly said.

Ermalene was half asleep. “For what?” she yawned.

“Being kind to me,” Astarte replied.

“No problem,” Ermalene said sleepily, “It’s what… family… is for… after all.” Her eyes had drooped shut.

Astarte laid awake, long after Ermalene had fallen asleep and begun snoring.
Nott the Truth by Pengi
Nott the Truth

Ermalene awoke early the next morning after a very well rounded rest to find Hermione Granger shaking her awake. “Good morning,” Hermione said in a very motherish tone. She smiled at Ermalene, “Time to get up and come down to breakfast. We’ve got a lot to talk with you on.” She turned and did the same to Astarte as Ermalene sat up slowly, blinking awake, trying to remind herself exactly what had gone on the night before. “I’ll expect you both downstairs in twenty minutes or I’ll be back to check on you,” Hermione said, and disappeared from the dormitory.

Ermalene looked over at Astarte, who was sitting up, stretching and yawning.

It was funny how uncannily alike the two girls looked, Ermalene marvelled, staring over at her new found sister and smiling awkwardly. Seventeen years she’d gone on thinking she was alone in the world and seventeen years Astarte had gone on thinking very nearly the same thing up there in the Great North Woods. Now, here they were, both of them awkward, unsure how to get on with this newly discovered relationship they shared.

“You’re lucky,” Astarte commented, breaking the silence between them. “Your hair is naturally straight and stays looking mostly good when you sleep.” She waved her hands at her shaggy mane of curls. “Mine looks atrocious.”

“I always wanted darker hair growing up,” Ermalene shared, “Everyone in my adoptive family had dark hair and it made me stand out, being all pale and blonde and everything.”

“I would’ve liked to have stood out from my mum,” Astarte said. “I’d explain it but, well, you met her. I reckon you’d want to stand out from her, too. I didn’t want her to really be my mother once I realized how evil she was. I didn’t want to have the potential to go evil, too.”

Ermalene said, “Just because she’s done evil doesn’t mean you will. Evil isn’t inherited, it’s practiced.” These were words that the Notts had frequently told Ermalene over the years growing up and she felt a twinge of guilt in her gut when she said them because, she realized quite suddenly, she never had sent that owl telling them where she’d gone.

Astarte and Ermalene got up then and got dressed in fresh pairs of clothes that Hermione had left folded at the foot of their beds. They went downstairs, nearly getting lost as the stairs moved about and took a wrong turn at one point down a corridor only to be rerouted by a confused looking Xenophilius, who had drifted along by them muttering to himself.

Downstairs, the girls found Professor Longbottom, Louis Weasley, Ron, Hermione, Harry, Hagrid, and Headmistress Vector all seated at the Gryffindor table.

“Where is our father?” Astarte asked briskly as the girls sat down at the table as well.
“Asleep,” Headmistress Vector answered, “As he should be. He’s been through a great deal and I kept him awake rather late into the night so that we all could get a better picture of what exactly has gone on. He’s taken to bed under a sleeping potion administered by Miss Sanator until he’s been able to fully regain his strength.”

Ermalene took a piece of french toast from the serving platter and poured maple syrup over it. “How is Andy?” she asked.

“We got him up to the hospital wing,” replied Neville, “Miss Sanator and I are going to be monitoring the mandrake I potted last night; he was very close to being ready to start making the juice. It’ll be next week before he’s awake again.” He sighed, “Andy will remain petrified until the mandrake juice is ready and then Miss Sanator can administer the spells and potions needed to heal from the dark magic contained in the sectumsempra spell.”

Louis looked positively sick at the words.

Ermalene hung her head. She missed Andy’s smiling face and laughter already. She couldn’t imagine going a week without hearing and seeing him. She’d been absolutely terrified when the sectumsempra had struck him, imagining a lifetime without those cheerful eyes of his. There wasn’t really a word for what she was feeling about Andy, she just knew it was quite strong and rather disagreed with the idea of him not being there.

“Now, we have some very important things to go over,” declared Headmistress Vector. “First of all, Miss. Talon, I sent an owl to your parents in the United States, but they have failed to contact me back. Can you think of any reason why this might be?”

Ermalene shook her head.

The headmistress frowned severely. She looked at Harry, “Honestly, Potter, I regret to say that I believe you may have been right.”

“Right?” Ermalene asked, “Right about what?”

Harry cleared his throat, “Well, when we left the ministry, I had one of the new interns there start looking for information about your file at the orphanage and your parentage. He didn’t discover anything about Lysander, but he did find something about -- well, about your mother, Felicity Cooper.”

Ermalene’s eyes widened.

“She was a young witch when she had you, dating Lysander all throughout their time here at Hogwarts,” he started. “In fact, she was still a student at the school when she was pregnant. She had you at the beginning of summer term. Lysander went missing during Christmas break that year, right after she had told him about the pregnancy, we found out last night. When Felicity didn’t return after the holidays, nobody thought much of it. Thought she was off mourning her sweetheart, but really she’d begun showing and her mother didn’t think it proper for her to return to school in her condition, so she missed half of her sixth year.”

“She was in Hufflepuff,” Vector cut in, “I remember them both quite well, sneaking off between Ravenclaw tower and the Hufflepuff common room down by the kitchens. Always could be found somewhere behind a suit of armor or a statue or some abandoned classroom…” She shook her head. “Peeves loved to find them and tease. He’d fly down the hallways shouting that they were kissing and embarrass them right out of their little hiding places. I hardly ever had to intervene.” She paused, “Although it seems the witch that pushes the sweets trolley on the Hogwarts Express should have.” She turned red in the face at the thought of it.

Ermalene couldn’t help but laugh at the thought that she’d been conceived on board the Hogwarts Express.

Harry took a deep breath, and the graveness of his face stopped Ermalene from laughing. “Anyways, after she’d had you, she left school completely. Didn’t attend her seventh year at all. And just after Christmas, it appears she was - was -” Harry looked at Hermione and Ron, as though seeking support or strength to finish the sentence.

“She was murdered,” Ron said.

Hermione elbowed him, “Really, Ronald! Have some tact!”

“Murdered?” Ermalene asked quietly. “I knew she’d died - the tapestry said -- but murdered?”

Harry nodded. “The job was in the Daily Prophet and muggle papers alike. Felicity Cooper appeared to have been murdered by a muggle, because of how it’d been done, in her sleep at her home, her daughter simply had vanished without a single explanation. It was generally assumed you’d been stolen by the muggle who killed Felicity Cooper.”

Ermalene covered her mouth. “That’s why everyone thought I was muggle born, I bet. My mother always said they’d tried to adopt a muggle but --”

Harry held up his hand, “I - I’m afraid I think it might go much more, er, deeper than that, Ermalene.”

“What?”

“There was never any record of you at that orphanage. Or any orphanage for that matter. Ever. My intern was able to hack into the system from the ministry and pull up the file that you witnessed that muggle woman delete and it was an empty file, nothing but the spell that stupefied her.” Harry was getting red in the face, “It seems that -- well, that perhaps the Notts may have been the ones who -- who kidnapped you.”

A ringing silence filled the room.

“But you said whoever stole me killed Felicity Cooper.”

Harry nodded.

“My - you think - you think my parents, the Notts, I mean --?” Ermalene couldn’t fathom it, couldn’t wrap her mind around it. “But… they’re good people.”

“Perhaps not as good as you believe,” Harry said. “Haven’t you ever wondered why they never have returned to England in all these years? Not even to see family?”

Ermalene had often wondered it. She nodded.

“Because they’ve been wanted here by the aurors,” Harry said, “By every auror office in Europe, they’re wanted.” He cleared his throat, “They were accused of setting a Dark Mark when they were at University, and several nasty pranks on muggles that resulted in injuries or violations of the statute of secrecy and various other laws. They evaded arrest by moving to the United States where the ministry and the aurors officers have no jurisdiction. I’m not going to lie, when you first came to my office and I realized who you were I was a bit hopeful that they’d come along with you and would turn up at some point so that I could -- well, so that I could arrest them.”

Ermalene felt as though she’d been slapped across the face.

“It seems,” Harry said, “That perhaps they - they might’ve found out where you’d gone and, in fear of the past being dug up, they… they might’ve gone into hiding.” He looked at her apologetically. “I’ve sent aurors to the house in the States to be sure, but… we can’t seem to reach them, so…”

“So they’ve abandoned me,” Ermalene said.

Harry’s face was pained at the words, but he had nothing to say to fix them, either.

“However,” Hermione injected, trying to make it better, “Lysander said he would very much love it if you and Astarte both moved into a house with him so that the three of you might get to know one another better. Once he’s feeling well again, of course,” she added.

“What about school?” Ermalene asked, “Going all the way to Flamel Academy is a long commute and --”

“You and Astarte would attend seventh year here, at Hogwarts,” cut in Headmistress Vector. “We’ve already discussed it, dear.”

Astarte and Ermalene shared wide-eyed looks of astonishment. Finish off school at Hogwarts? It was a dream come true to Ermalene and even for Astarte, who had done nothing but dream of attending a real school all of her life.

“What about Andy, though?” Ermalene suddenly asked.

“What about him?” Vector questioned.

“Well, Andy and I are best friends,” Ermalene explained, “And the kids at school are… well, they’re rather cruel to Andy sometimes, and to me. We sort of protect one another. And it would be an awful school year for him without me. And personally, I can’t even picture what school would be like without Andy!”

Louis cleared his throat, “Well, my mum and dad have expressed interest in allowing Andrew to stay with them so that he could finish his seventh year at Hogwarts,” he said. “My mum never was much a fan of him transferring to Flamel Academy.”

Ermalene blinked back her excitement, “So -- so all three of us? Here? Hogwarts next year? Really?”

“An’ yer can be visitin’ the gamekeeper’s cabin any time yeh want some rock cakes!” Hagrid announced, “Be happy ter have some tea with yeh.” He leaned closer to Ron, “Maybe with sommat a bit stronger fer me, if yer know what I mean.” Hagrid smiled.

“It sounds positively brilliant!” said Ermalene and the widest smile ever crossed her face as she turned to Astarte, “We can be real sisters,” she said, “We’ll share a home and probably a house here at the school. I can show you all the beauty trick I’ve learned in Teen Witch.”

“We’ll be best friends,” Astarte agreed happily.

Ermalene ate the rest of her breakfast with glee, her entire world having changed quite literally overnight.
The Prophecy Revealed by Pengi
The Prophecy Revealed

Headmistress Vector gave them permission to stay at Hogwarts until Lysander was better rested and it resulted in the girls wandering the halls to become more familiar with the place so that they wouldn’t look entirely stupid come September 1st when they would return for the start of term. Vector said that she would have to give Astarte a test to be sure she was ready to begin seventh year before she made up her timetable come September, but not to worry about that. However, Astarte was quite worried, so Ermalene spent sometime tutoring her on things like the history of the wizarding world (“So that was the Harry Potter that was helping us?” Astarte was shocked) and transfiguration (“Don’t worry if your tea cup still has a tail, you’ll get the hang of it with some practice and at least it’s not furry anymore!” Ermalene said).

They visited Hagrid’s hut frequently and laid in the grass under a tree by the lake where they found, carved into the wood, a little heart with “Won Won & Lavender” that someone had attempted to scratch out rather violently, but apparently the spell which set the heart there had been stronger than that which had attempted to etch it out. They wondered what had happened to break up the couple that had once been so well involved they’d graffitied upon the poor tree. They met the House Elves down in the kitchens, too, and made friend with the head elf, Gronk, who had fur coming out of his big bat-like ears and wore teeny tiny glasses and little pants tied at the waist. He happily gave them cakes and butterbeers whenever they visited him and told them about the school and gave them little secrets on how to navigate it easier and more efficiently.

On the last day they were to spend at the castle before going with Lysander to move into a house he had purchased just a little way from his mother’s in Ottery St. Catchpole, Ermalene asked Astarte if she wanted to see the Hall of Ancestors. “I promised Dumbledore I’d go back anyway,” Ermalene remembered.

So they moved through the halls of Hogwarts, back to the corridor the Grey Lady had brought Ermalene down to the portrait of Cantankerous Nott who frowned and repeated that only a pure-blood could open the door to the Hall of Ancestors. Ermalene walked past the spot, turning ‘round and ‘round as she thought of the Hall and soon the golden outline of the door and the little golden handle had popped up, much to Astarte’s astonishment. She stared, wide eyed and gaping mouthed at it as Ermalene opened the door and revealed the long hall full of the history of the pure bloodlines.

“Hello? Is somebody there?” called a voice.

“Oh goodness, you’ve fallen over again,” Ermalene said as she saw Dumbledore’s portrait face-down on the floor once more. She pushed it up against the desk as Astarte took in the entire room. “Sorry it took me so long to come back,” Ermalene said.

“I understand that you were distracted by things of another nature,” Dumbledore replied. He spotted Astarte standing behind Ermalene, now staring at the portrait with greatest interest for she’d heard about Dumbledore during their tutoring sessions on the history of Hogwarts. “And I see that your mission to rescue your father and sister from the gorgon of the Great North Woods was successful.”

“Yes,” Ermalene beamed happily.

Dumbledore nodded, peering through his spectacles. “And is the gorgon dead?”

“No,” Ermalene shook her head, “Harry Potter helped us, being head auror, of course, and --”

“Harry Potter was involved?” Dumbledore looked quite displeased.

“Well he’s the head of the auror department at the Ministry of Magic,” explained Ermalene. “Of course he was involved.”

Dumbledore frowned, “Then the prophecy hasn’t come to pass yet…” he murmured to himself, looking quite deep in thought now. “But I wonder…” He rubbed his chin.

Ermalene asked, “Prophecy?”

Dumbledore looked up, “Yes,” he mused slowly. His eyes traveled with Astarte as she moved toward the tapestries on the wall and she spotted Ermalene and Lysander and herself on the wall and began following a silver line that led from her mother, Medusa. “There was a prophecy,” Dumbledore said, “That spoke of you and your… destiny.” He paused, watching Astarte closely.

Astarte’s finger moved from herself to Medusa Peverell Gaunt to Agenor Peverell Gaunt to Salazar Marvolo Gaunt to Morfin Peverell Gaunt. She paused here, for this, she remembered, was the name that Harry Potter asked her if she was a descendant of. She spotted Tom Marvolo Riddle II, Morfin’s nephew just to the right of the line she was following, and saw his nasty, snake-like face staring back at her from the tapestry. She shuddered and continued up the line to Marvolo Peverell Gaunt and those who had come before him, all the way back to Salazar Ignotus Slytherin.

“So my mum was right,” she whispered. “I - I am descended from Salazar Slytherin.”

“Quite right you are,” Dumbledore said. “A mixture of Slytherin and Ravenclaw blood resides in both your veins.”

Ermelene turned to Dumbledore, “Mine too? But how? My mum was in Hufflepuff. Headmistress Vector said so.”

Dumbledore said, “Her personal qualities were more fit to belong in the house of Hufflepuff, but her bloodline was of Salazar Slytherin as well as Helga Hufflepuff’s. See there on the tapestry, she came from a line generated from Marvolo Gaunt’s father’s twin brother.”

Ermalene went to investigate this truth and found herself at the end of another long timeline, this time of Slytherins.

Dumbledore said, “But these dual bloodlines are quite interesting… quite interesting indeed.” He mused a moment.

Ermalene turned back to the portrait. “What was the prophecy?” she asked.

Dumbledore hesitated. “Well Hagrid, of course, has the orb in his cabin. You’ll of course want to collect it and preserve it, but I remember the prophecy well.” He paused and cleared his throat and recited, “The House of Gaunt shall rise once more. The Heir of Slytherin then and not before; and Heir to the Diadem - not destroyed, still lost - will face the Gorgan at greatest cost. Both inherited their ancestor’s fears to face… One their destiny shall fight, the other one embrace: One Heir shall fall but there will be another - and at their hands will die the Other.”

Astarte and Ermalene eyed one another, then turned back to Dumbledore. “But… what does that mean?” Ermalene asked.

“Well of course the House of Gaunt rising again spoke of the fact that Morfin had not died without leaving behind a family that neither Lord Voldemort, nor anyone else in the wizarding world, never knew of. When and how is yet to be learned. The Heir of Slytherin would fall to the descendant that is most directly linked by blood to the paternal line… which…” he paused, “Could honestly be either of you. Because you are both equally connected to the pureblood line of Slytherin. There is no record which of the Gaunt twins were born first, and therefore no record of which of the two lines the title of Heir would have passed down.” Dumbledore paused. “As for Heir to the Diadem, that will be a descendant of Ravenclaw’s direct line, and again could be either of you because you are both directly descended of Ravenclaw through Lysander Scamander. It seems that the diadem that Helena stole from her mother was never destroyed by Harry Potter during the Battle of Hogwarts -- which raises for me some concern about Lord Voldemort --”

“It was a replica,” Ermalene injected quickly. Dumbledore looked astonished. “The Grey Lady told me. She’d made a replica to fool the Bloody Baron and that was what Lord Voldemort used to create his horcrux. The real diadem has been disguised but she wouldn’t tell me anything more, she said only someone who was worthy of possessing it would ever discover it.”

Dumbledore rubbed his beard. “I see,” he murmured. “Well. It seems that both Heirs will face the Gorgon, Medusa. From there, the prophecy does indeed become quite hazy, but perhaps it will become more clear over time what is meant. Perhaps one of the centaurs would be willing to make more sense of it, I do not know.”

Neither girl moved for a moment, both deep in their thoughts, and then Astarte’s stomach growled quite loudly and they realized it was probably dinner time and their father would be waiting, and Andy, who had been administered the mandrake juice the night before, would joining them all in the Great Hall that evening. It would be the first time they’d seen him since he’d been petrified. Ermalene stood up, “Thank you Dumbledore for all of your help. We’ve got to get down to dinner.”

“Wait,” Dumbledore said, “Please. One last thing before you go and partake of the delicious foods that the house elves have prepared for you.”

“Yes?” Astarte asked.

Dumbledore smiled, “Please bring my portrait back to it’s place in the Headmaster’s Office. It’s quite boring here as I’m rather tired of studying the pattern of the carpet.”

Ermalene laughed, “Sure.” She motioned for Astarte to take hold of the other side of the portrait and together they hoisted it up and carried it out into the corridor with them, closing the door of the Hall of Ancestors behind them.

The wind from the closed door ruffled the piles of papers and made the tapestries flutter slightly. One sheet of newspaper flew through the air, curling and turning like a magic carpet down the length of the long hall until it landed in the darkest corner. There was a portrait there, old and so dust covered it’d been forgotten in the darkness. A portrait that mused to himself, and then shuffled off from the frame to report everything that he had just overheard.
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