Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling does. She's really rich. I'm not.
Chapter One
Vacation Vexations
Margie was growing anxious. Not only had her boss not come into the office for four days, but he had left no instructions for her during his absence; making paper clip chains and applying plastic fingernails were suitable for downtime, but it was hard work finding enough tasks to fill nine hours without risking too much mental exertion. As the five o'clock hour ticked slowly closer Thursday afternoon, Margie remained at her desk, impatiently prodding her wristwatch to ensure its effectiveness and tapping her pumps against the chair leg. A bell rang over the loud speaker to permit the men down in the warehouse to leave. Margie jumped from her chair, grabbing her purse, and shutting her boss's office door in one flowing movement. Oblivious to her, the nameplate had fallen from its holder, landing face up on the ugly shag carpet: VERNON DURSELY, GNRL MNGR.
"You have reached the Dursley residence. We…uh…we've left the country --- Bahamas, you know. Er…we should be back…oh…well…we'll be back whenever we ruddy well please! Don't come 'round the house either…my nephew's tending to it…there?...Oh, and if you're from the home and garden association, we withdraw our nomination…blasted lil'…fine, goodbye."
The answering machine beeped.
"Hey, Dudley! This is Polkis --- thought you could come 'round for tea around four. Where've you been, mate? Beginning to think ---."
BEEP.
Hermione Granger stabbed at the delete button on the Dursley's answering machine with much agitation. Five messages in a half hour period seemed utterly ridiculous, especially considering four of them had been from local supermarkets that had experienced a waning profit margin in the last four days and wanted to check in on their AWOL prized customers.
"Just disconnect it," Harry muttered, gently pulling a thick book from Hermione's lap and replacing it with an equally hefty volume.
"People will get suspicious. At least this way, they think the Dursleys are in the Bahamas. We don't want anyone sniffing around."
Hermione returned to reading. Harry, however, was stiff from sitting for long hours and abandoned his project, standing to stretch. Yawning viciously, he padded toward the Dursely's kitchen. Ron, who had been sandwiched between two towering stacks of papers in the corner of the living room, catapulted from his seat to follow Harry away from the work. Hermione twitched restlessly on the couch but determinedly immersed herself in reading.
Tinted pink with the color of an early August dusk, the Dursley's kitchen was less immaculate than it had ever been; dirty dishes were overflowing from the sink and layers of grease and food particles coated the stovetop and microwave.
"Hello, Aunt Petunia," Harry sighed wearily, rinsing out a browning coffee cup.
Petunia Dursley nodded mutely then returned to nibbling from a plate of carrot sticks in front of her. Carefully keeping her elbows from resting on the grimy tabletop and her feet from brushing against the smudged floor, Petunia appeared to be a nervous wreck. Her eyes darted fretfully from stain to stain, and her hands trembled a little as she raised another carrot stick to her mouth.
Ron pulled out two chairs, throwing himself into one and lazily summoning a bagel with his wand, "Accio cream cheese."
Nothing happened.
"Accio cream cheese."
"Hermione finished it this morning," Harry told him apologetically.
Ron cursed through his mouthful of dry bagel.
"Did you finish going through the records?"
Harry removed the whistling teapot from the stove and poured himself a steaming cup.
Ron rolled his eyes, "Twice! No one with the initials R.A.B. who fits Hermione's profile ---."
Harry's shoulders slumped.
"--- just too bad I won't be at school for History of Magic. Binns would pass over if he knew how many famous witches and wizards I can name now."
"Well, we can't give up. We'll move on to lesser known witches and wizards," Harry declared.
"Yeah, I'll start with Ogden!"
Ron reached clumsily for a bottle of firewhiskey in the center of the table and tipped a spoonful in his tea.
"You're going to become addicted."
Groaning, Ron turned to shoot a scathing look at Hermione as she entered, massaging her temples.
"The pages have gone all blurry," she murmured.
Harry snorted, "You've been reading for fourteen hours straight. Have you even been to the loo?"
Hermione blushed, "I couldn't even if I needed to. Your cousin's still hiding out in there. Seems someone hasn't had the decency to transfigure the horse hooves."
Ron took a bold swig of tea-whiskey. Petunia made a protesting gurgle, but no one paid her any mind.
"I'll get to it after we figure out who R.A.B. is," Ron grumbled.
"About that," Hermione stopped stirring her coffee, tapping the spoon on the edge of the cup with dramatic relish, "I think I better take another trip to Grimmauld Place. The more I think about it, the more I think there should be a collection of wizarding genealogies. Many of the prominent families collect them out of hobby. Besides, the volume on Dark relics is still in the library, and it could be useful in trying to identify the unknown Horcruxes."
"Feel free," Harry sighed, who had to offer his blessing should anyone wish to travel to Grimmauld Place.
"Any leads?" Ron asked, eyeing the firewhiskey bottle now that his tea had been drained.
"One," Hermione grinned, "but I don't want to jinx it. I promise if I need help, I'll ask," she continued, cutting off Harry.
"That's right," Harry said pointedly, "We all need to know about every piece of evidence that is run by us. We can't afford to make careless mistakes because one of us is uninformed."
He, of course, was painfully recalling his actions at the Ministry last summer.
Hermione playfully messed with his hair, "I promise."
She led herself out onto the patio, pacing from the begonia bush to the geraniums, hugging her coffee cup. Ron's eyes traced her movements, a slight wrinkle across his brow. Harry steeled himself to glance at his aunt, who was still nibbling on the same carrot stick and shuddering at the touch of a dirty surface. For the first time in a month, Harry noticed just how messy the kitchen really was.
The dark back of his eyelids dissipated as bright spots of light flooded his vision. Harry's retinas burned as the objects in his bedroom came into focus. There had been a squealing voice….
"Harry! Haaarrrry!"
There it was again.
Hermione jammed Harry's glasses on his face and plopped excitedly on the edge of his bed without any overture.
"S'wat time is hib?" Harry mumbled through the paste on his teeth and tongue.
"Three in the morning, but that's not important," Hermione rushed, "I've just gotten back from Grimmauld Place --- ."
"Just now?" Harry croaked.
"It's been right under our nose the whole time! I can't believe how stupid we've been. I mean, I should have guessed as soon as I read that note --- ."
"Point," Harry made a reeling gesture with his hands.
" --- R.A.B. Black. Regulus Black."
The two words clicked in Harry's mind, as if his brain had been snapped back onto its track, "Of course…he was a death eater. But…I thought he was afraid of Voldemort. People who are afraid of Voldemort don't generally go nabbing pieces of his soul."
"Maybe that's just what Sirius thought. Thinking his brother was a coward would have appealed to him. No one may know the truth about what happened between Voldemort and Regulus. In fact, the Blacks may only have been assuming he was dead all these years."
Harry shook his head, "The note said he would be dead by the time it was received. He knew he was going to die…."
Hermione stifled a yawn, "I—I—gosh, I don't know."
"You need to get some sleep. Has Ron crashed on the couch?"
"Sucking on his thumb with his buttocks wedged between the cushions," Hermione confirmed.
"I guess take the cot then."
Harry turned face down into his pillows, said to "turn out the light" with a slur, and allowed Hermione privacy to get ready for bed. A few minutes later, the inside of his eyes darkened , and he heard the creak of the cot.
"Hey, Hermione," he whispered, turning on his side.
"Yeah?" her voice carried from the far corner of the room.
"Good work."
And today on 'Quilting Across the Isle'…
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…score seventy-four to eighty-five…
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…shelves will make a nifty storage compartment for this new space!
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Just mix our premium oxidizing powder with a cup of water and watch…
THUD.
"Ron!"
Hermione sprang from her armchair to check for Vernon Dursley's pulse.
"You're lucky you know," she spat.
She tried to pry the remote control from his limp hand but to no avail, "Oh my…it's Velcro-ed to his palm…."
"Ruddy getting on my nerves…"Ron grumbled, snarling at the unconscious man before transfiguring the television set into a cardboard box.
Mid-August found Harry, Hermione, and Ron with no more Horcrux leads and a number of suspicious neighbors snooping around in the vegetable patch and back stoop, carrying baked goods as an excuse to peek in the mailbox or peer through the kitchen windows. Bill and Fleur's wedding, now mentioned frequently with excited anticipation, was on August 29th. Fleur had really wanted a September wedding, but there was the slight possibility that Hogwarts might reopen for the fall term and Ginny would have to return.
Ron had already informed his family that he would be traveling with Harry in order to fulfill Dumbledore's last wishes, whether Hogwarts reopened or not. There had been weeping at the train station that day as Ron placed his trunk beside Harry's; Mrs. Weasley had bawled for ten minutes into Ron's shoulder, then settled for gulping down sobs as Ron and Harry disappeared into the Knight Bus to take them to Privet Drive.
Hermione had turned up a week after Ron and Harry arrived at the Dursley's. She had meant to accompany them from the station, but her parents expressed resistance to her hasty decision to leave school before her final year and join two boys…"wherever they should need to go." For three days, she cried over her stacks of maps and genealogies, remembering the way she had slammed the front door behind her as she fled from her parent's house against their will. The Grangers had not received communication from their daughter for two months.
Spending all of his time with his friends proved good for Harry; he was able to do much less thinking and sulking and more definitive action. Lying awake at night was not nearly as painful as the summer Sirius died. Ron's snores drifted from the cot and the smell of Hermione's herbal tea seemed to soak the entire house. He was beaten, he was tired, he was exhausted, he was in peril, but the snores and tea were all he needed to be blissfully happy.
"Ravenclaw was batty, wasn't she?" Ron slapped a thick roll of parchment on the end table beside Harry's chair, scooping up a quill and ink well, "I think I'll add that to our official records."
Hermione eyed him warily, slowly reaching for the beautiful leather bound book she kept important records stored in and safely tucking it between the sofa cushions.
"Why was she batty?" Harry asked dully, his eyes not moving from the defense book he had been hunched over for the past three hours.
"For starters, she wanted to be buried at the bottom of the lake ---."
Harry looked up from his reading, intrigued.
"---don't get too excited. She also requested that all of her possessions be destroyed upon her death."
Hermione bit her bottom lip, "You would think that Dumbledore would have been aware of that."
"Surely…" Harry trailed off, his mind wrapping around an idea, "surely some of her possessions would have been separated from her during her lifetime."
"Yeah, well, they weren't kept in Hogwarts," Ron muttered, "And if they weren't at Hogwarts for at least some time, we're probably never going to be able to find them."
"Wait a second," Hermione said, disgruntled, "Didn't the man that spoke at Dumbledore's funeral say that he is the only headmaster to have ever been buried on the grounds?"
"Ravenclaw wasn't a headmaster," Harry reminded Hermione.
"Awfully shady technicality," Hermione mused.
"Oh, she's not buried there anymore," Ron said.
"Someone moved her?" Harry whispered.
"Ministry of Magic in 1703."
Ron rummaged through the scraps of paper on the end table, retrieving the thick roll of parchment and unraveling the bottommost piece. There was a very ornate sketch of a woman with dark features, her face frozen as if petrified, her skin thick and rubbery from a preservative, and clearly dead.
"It was published that year. Morbid bunch they were," Ron commented.
Hermione, who had traveled from the couch to gape at the sketch, swatted at Ron irritably, as if to shrug off his cheek, "It is a common wizarding art."
"Look at this," Harry murmured, running a cautious finger along the arm of the woman, halting at her right hand. Instead of five thin fingers, as was portrayed on her left side, there were three golden talons protruding fiercely from under her robe sleeves.
Hermione gasped, "That's why!"
"Why what?" Harry asked.
"That's why Rowena Ravenclaw didn't cast spells with her right hand. There's a portrait on the third floor that shows a profile of Ravenclaw, holding her left arm at arm's length, clutching her wand in her left hand. It's the only portrait of her in the school. You wouldn't be able to tell that her right hand had been severed, so I always wondered why she was using her left hand."
Ron stood, aghast, "Let me get this straight. One day, you actually thought 'Hmm…I ought to double check Rowena's wand usage…left hand…odd.'"
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"This is it," Harry said triumphantly, tapping the parchment, "Voldemort's using her golden talons as a Horcrux. He'd eat this right up. He'd do a jig. Heck, he'd probably throw a barbecue. I mean, this was a piece of Ravenclaw, a Hogwart's founder."
"Too bad the last record we have of the talons is over three hundred years old," Ron carelessly tossed the parchment aside.
AN: I know that's a lot of information in the first chapter, but I anticipate a very dense seventh edition. Look for updates on the weekends! And please please review!