It turned out that the children's actions at the end of year production was one… prank… too many. Two teachers had seen Wednesday and Herido sneaking around on the bridge only hours before the show and decided that they had done something to the lighting, and therefore were responsible for Emily's accident. This of course was completely true – they had loosened one of the lighting units before the show. Heri could still only do so much with his magic after all. But he thought that the evidence against them was circumstantial at best and that the teachers were simply looking for an excuse to get rid of them. They had found it, and both Addams children were expelled 3 weeks before the end of term. He had the feeling that his parents couldn't decide whether they were pleased that they'd been expelled or cross that they had been so obviously caught.

Regardless, the whole saga had given the family an opportunity to start their summer vacation early.

This year Gomez had decided to buy a yacht and partake in an African cruise, but after a whole solid 10 minutes of hounding from the children, he'd agreed to buy a caravel that was small enough to be sailed with just the small crew they would acquire, complete with their own Jolly Roger. If the children wanted to be pirates, what harm could it do to humour them?

By the time Pugsley joined them in Egypt, they had gone through being hijacked twice and four international incidents. It was turning out to be one of their better vacations.

Egypt was predicted to have constant sun and temperatures over 45 degrees Celsius, but the day after the Addams family arrived, a strange storm came from seemingly nowhere, casting the whole country in chilly shadows under constantly grey skies.

They'd had to cheat a little to get the ship onto the Nile, but the whole family was excited about visiting this county. Each of them simply couldn't wait to go curse hunting and see if they could unleash any new plagues, never mind meeting some of the Pharaohs of old. They'd heard that the mummies could return to life, and even if they couldn't they could always hold a séance over them.

The quest didn't start off very well. They visited the tomb of Pennout and when they arrived and saw the cursed inscription 'he will be miserable and persecuted' they were all a little disappointed – that was hardly a deterrent!

They decided to take the next mummy they found to see what would happen. They had found a small humble crypt, but the fact that the body had been mummified must have meant something. As soon as they brought the mummy on board, they had all been haunted by the most wretched and awful dreams. Three of their crew had gone mad and jumped ship - literally. The Addams' knew it would make a wonderful addition to their rare objects collection back home.

They took turns handling cursed objects, but as most hadn't been properly maintained and were so old, they weren't powerful enough against the ingrained defensive magic of an Addams. A small statue of Osiris had managed to paralyse uncle Fester for almost 4 days, and they all thought cousin Itt was dead for weeks. It was only after they arrived back home that he'd woken up, unfortunately before his funeral.

They decided to move further south and ended up on an impromptu ghost tour of South Africa. They picked up a lovely young woman called Maria along a road on the Eastern Cape. It seemed death had robbed her of a substantial amount of sanity, but she was pleasant company for a few miles.

They stayed at several old jails, spending nights in the dark, damp cells where they came across a surprising number of distant relatives. They stayed at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, where the ghost of Lady Anne Barnard was a perfect hostess and even the executed convicts were cordial.

Their absolute favourite place was the Lord Milner Hotel. Ghosts came from all over town to throw the Addams Family a huge party. The party lasted for two days and left the children pretty confident that even if they were trapped in this world, death would be fun. It had taken the owners of the hotel – who were well used to paranormal occurrences – a week before they dared to return.

Once the fun and games were over, the family had a problem to deal with: Herido and Wednesday were expelled and their parents were finding it difficult to find another public school that would take them. Pugsley had already attended and been expelled from most schools in the area, and the others had been warned about the Addams children. They all had an excuse as to why they couldn't attend.

They were getting desperate, but both Morticia and Gomez agreed that even though they would never dare to deny children from the Addams family, a Wizarding school was simply out of the question: Wednesday was still far too young to be exposed to the magical theory taught there and they wouldn't want to risk that it might disrupt or mutate her core, leaving her with a weakened ability to harness True magic. And of course their children would not put up with being separated before they had to be.

This had led to a more creative solution. Gomez ended up buying a prestigious, old private school (and hadn't that been a week from hell! So many threats, deals and an obscene amount of money changing hands). Morticia had realised that this gave them an opportunity to help the community at large, as well as their children. She had immediately cut the staffing levels by a third and halved the money being spent on each child's education, leading to overcrowded classrooms and a drastic decline in the quality of materials, facilities and opportunities available.

It was all together a much more rounded and realistic education and she imagined that once the sheltered little ones had developed a little character, they would be immensely grateful.

The school year ended up being as humdrum as ever, but the children had been more than happy to help run their new school into the ground.

Of course, during the first month or two, their classmates had to be put in their place, that was, they had become acquainted with the Addams children and after a sprinkling of broken bones and late on-set bed-wetting, they all gave them a rather wide berth.

The school did have some very interesting clubs, such as gymnastics and fencing. Morticia had been worried that her children were taking such an interest in extracurricular activities, but was relieved that it only took three weeks before both were asked to leave the clubs. The teachers were insistent that the reason they couldn't attend was that they were simply too advanced for the other students and had absolutely nothing to do with the endless list of injured.

Heri continued to grow a bit of a vindictive streak. More and more he was beginning to view the other children as play things for him and Wednesday. They were so fragile and ignorant of the world around them. He was even starting to play with the teachers. One science teacher had tried to give him detention for not completing the assigned project. In the past Heri would have been happy to simply suffer his punishment with no comment, however this time he decided to give the man a dressing down, highlighting to him that his lessons were infantile and he should be ashamed that this is what his life's work had amounted to, if not disgusted. By the time he was done, the teacher was scowling only in an effort to hold back the tears. The next day Herido had turned up to the detention, to the surprise of his teacher and sat silently reading for the whole hour. The teacher never saw him slip a vial of potion into his drink, nor did he notice the sinister smile on Herido's face as he watched him drink. The potion was an old recipe of Grandmamma's and would cause a person's most crippling doubts and insecurities to intensify. How a person dealt with these was up to them, but it turned out that Mr Harris did not have the confidence and fortitude to withstand the torture of his own mind, and had been hospitalised a week later. Unfortunately for the children, it turned out that Mr Harris had actually been quite a good teacher, and his replacement didn't last the school term. Nor did the science lab.

Heri could admit when he was wrong and he had been wrong about Mr Harris. He was definitely the best of a woefully bad, incompetent bunch. He spent a considerable amount of the school year working on convincing Grandmamma to fix the former teacher's mind and hatching a scheme that would see him return to the school. It wasn't that he felt at all bad about what had happened, he simply wanted to leave Wednesday a teacher that at least had the potential to help with her intellectual development. A nice side effect from the whole affair was that Mr Harris would never be completely well and had a subconscious fear of the Addams children – something that Wednesday could have fun with next year.

All of this lead to Gomez having to take his son aside and caution him about the way he treated the muggles. Gomez was overjoyed that Heri had taken to playing with them so, but the child had to learn to be subtler and not to throw around his power. Both muggle and wizard were fair game to an Addams, but it didn't do to be so obvious. It was inelegant, never mind the fact that Gomez had had to obliviate half the school this year, something that had never happened before, in order to prevent a serious breach of the Statue of Secrecy. He was glad that Wednesday seemed to be so much cleverer in her ways now that she too had begun to practise her magic. Either way, Herido had learned his lesson, and although odd things continued to happen around him, he went back to just being a strange, weird, creepy, unnerving outcast.

As soon as school was done with for the year, Heri had taken Wednesday and Pugsley on a trip to a Theme Park. He'd heard the children at school taking about how terrifying they were and thought it would be a nice treat. It had been too long since he'd been able to scare Wednesday and he felt bad that she would be left alone this upcoming school year.

The three children had decided to visit a Theme Park in England called Alton Towers, as they had heard of the hauntings and curses contained within the grounds, a tree in chains and a wonderful graveyard with ghosts that liked to cause accidents! The Towers themselves also hadn't disappointed. Herido felt his breath catch in his throat the first time he looked up at the beautifully gothic building. This felt like a home from home. They decided right away that they would be staying the night, hopefully in one of the mansions less commercial, less airy, less… open to the public rooms.

First though, they did the rounds within the park. All the children reluctantly admitted that some of the rides had given them a pleasant tingle and adrenaline spike. Heri could definitely see the attraction, but he felt it had more to do with that fact that he was riding machines at over a 100km/h with two evil creatures that could release the harnesses at any second, something that all three siblings had threatened to do. Heri thought that if they were all to be completely honest they would admit it was actually a wicked thrill. At the very least, when Wednesday had given him that smile before the drop on Oblivion his blood had run cold for just a second. His heart hadn't beat that fast since Pugsley had left him in the middle of Werewolf territory on a full moon when he was eight.

By the time they made it back to the Towers, it was dark, but they were still greeted in the entrance hall by two ghosts; a Lady in a dark dress who claimed to be a governess and welcomed them, and a rather rotund man who seemed furious at something, but contained his ire after he felt the warning swell of dark magic that Pugsley send out.

As a small group of guests made their way into the hall from a side room, the larger man disappeared with a huff, but the lady stayed and agreed to show them to a room.

As they were about to leave, Wednesday noticed a young blonde girl watching them with poorly disguised fear. She diverted their path and the siblings went to greet the girl as the governess promised to wait in the next room for them.

The blonde paled a little as they approached and reached a hand back to the man behind her, who hadn't stopped talking to his colleague since they'd arrived.

"Father…" She began, but was hurriedly hushed.

"Not now, Da…" He had turned to her and now noticed, to his displeasure, the three odd looking children with straight faces in front of him. He sighed to himself. "I suppose this is what you get for agreeing to do business in muggle grounds!" He rubbed his face and was about to usher his daughter away, when he noticed that something was… off… about these children. The oldest had broken out into what at first glance seemed to be a friendly smile, the boy that looked to be about the same age as his daughter had the smallest smirk pulling at his lips and the young girl's face had remained solid as stone, but her eyes were promising pain. He glanced down to find that their black clothes were impeccable, as was their hair. Had they not just come in from a day out in the park?

He almost stepped back as the eldest boy took a step towards him with a raised hand.

"Muggles, Lord Greengrass? Not at all. I am Pugsley Addams and this is my fascinating brother, Herido and my darling sister, Wednesday." Heri's smirk grew as he watched the man pale dramatically.

The mind of the Greengrass Lord was working a mile a minute. He had NOT expected to run into an Addams here of all places. And to make matters worse, he'd just insulted them! But they just had to be from those Addams'. From the way they held themselves to that sensation they gave him all screamed at him that these were from a powerful family. Add to that their American accent and knowledge of English Nobility and he suddenly felt as though he had just been found in the Addams' home without invitation and… 'stop!' he thought. Yes, the Addams family was powerful and the rumours about them… but these were just children, it's the adults he needed to be wary of and this could actually turn into a wonderful opportunity.

He quickly cleared his throat and shook Pugsley's hand.

"How do you do Mister Addams? This is my business associate, Mr Plume and my daughter, Daphne."

"How do you do?" Daphne's answer came reflexively and it was good to know that all her Pure Blood training and etiquette didn't fail her. She had been unnerved to see three children talking to those ghosts and she hadn't missed her own father's shock when they'd revealed their name. Although she was a little confused about that, because she didn't know of any Addams'.

"Are you staying here with your parents?" The elder Greengrass asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

"Unfortunately not, sir." Pugsley replied. "We are just here for a treat to start summer."

"I see. Well, I do hope you enjoy your visit. Say," His eyes flickered to his daughter and back again. "I don't suppose you'd like to spend an hour or so with my Daphne? Maybe show her around? She gets so dreadfully bored when I drag her to business meetings, you see?" Wednesday's eyes narrowed just a little.

"Then maybe you should leave her at home, but we'd be happy to get to know your daughter better, Lord Greengrass." The way Wednesday spoke made him reconsider this plan, but he was committed now.

"That would be wonderful. Daphne, a brief word before you go?" He led his daughter a little further away and whispered quickly. "Daphne, if you can get on friendly terms with these children it could be a real coup for our family." He could see the questions starting to bubble up from his daughter and held up a hand. "I will explain later, you just need to know that their family is very well respected and their parents are very powerful and if you could introduce our families it could only bring prosperity." He gave her shoulder a small squeeze and led her back, making his apologies for leaving with his colleague and promising to be back for Daphne in about an hour.

It wasn't an hour. It was closer to twelve.

After she'd received her mission, Daphne slid into her Heiress persona with well-practised ease. She greeted the three dark siblings once again as they began to make their way down a long corridor.

"I was a little surprised to see you talking to the ghosts here. From what I've heard they can be quite violent." She tried to make light conversation to cover how uneasy this had made her when she'd first seen it. A voice ahead of them made her look up.

"Maybe that great oaf, but rest assured that you'll find me most accommodating." Daphne looked at the dark haired ghost and tried a charming smile.

The governess showed the children around for a while, telling some of the more gruesome stories she knew about the house and by the time they reached a bedroom, Daphne was shivering a little. She hadn't even thought about how long they'd been walking and sat chatting and getting to know the Addams children. It was only after they'd finished an unusual meal that she realised it must be getting late.

"Wait, what time is it?" She asked suddenly. After hearing it was gone eleven she felt awful. Why hadn't her dad come for her? Was she supposed to go back downstairs? Was she in trouble? Was her dad alright? "I, I should be going then. Father will be looking for me."

As she got up to leave, Wednesday's icy voice made her blood run cold.

"He can't find you here. No one can."

Heri threw his sister a smile and answered Daphne's stuttering questions.

"This is one of those places that cannot be found unless you already know where it is. And we don't know the way back until the governess returns." Heri sounded like he was enjoying telling her this information immensely. Daphne felt as though the rug had been pulled out from under her. It had been a pleasant enough, if not a little odd, evening, but now it was starting to feel like a nightmare.

"No. But, how can this place be so, this room is pristine, and where did the food… What if she doesn't come back?" She shook her head and took a breath. "My father is going to be so worried."

"That's what house elves are for!" Pugsley declared happily as he tossed and caught a banana and then sat down to peel it. Daphne spun her attention to Wednesday as she heard her answer the next question.

"And she'll come back when we told her to." That sinister smile on the little girl's lips was more unsettling than anything else.

"I wouldn't worry about your father." She finally turned to Herido, whose own small smile wasn't making her feel any better. "He is a little distracted at the moment. Lost in the mansion, I imagine. But its ok, the governess and late Earl are keeping him company."

Daphne fell into a seat. What was happening? Why was this happening? Was she really trapped here? Was her father in trouble?

"We don't appreciate being called muggles." She looked at Herido again to see his face break into a malicious smirk. Was he saying that this was all some punishment because her father had offended them? That was ridiculous. Besides, they were just children! And she had been with them since they met, they couldn't have arranged something like this!

"Let's play a game to pass the time. She's not coming back until morning." Pugsley suggested, as though nothing had changed in the last few minutes and Daphne wasn't filled with dread about her dad being hunted by violent ghosts and spending a night in this creepy place.

In the end nothing too awful happened that night. She ended up with a few minor cuts and scrapes from the lively games, and was completely weirded out by the dead silence in the room as the siblings slept. It was the waiting and suspense that really got to her. Constantly waiting for something to happen; only nothing did. How could nothing(!) be so scary? She was a bundle of nerves in the morning and it took every bit of her upbringing to stop her crying out when she was led back to her father. He looked like he'd been fighting trolls all night and simply nodded to Pugsley when the child wished them a good day.

Herido shook his head as he watched them leave.

"She was an odd one." He said. His siblings agreed.

"We didn't even do anything to her." Wednesday almost sounded put out about this.

"She must have an anxiety disorder." Pugsley suggested, and they all nodded in agreement.

It was only a few days after the trip to England that Heri noticed something change in his Horcrux. He'd felt it. At first there was just a sharp feeling, like a scratch behind his scar, but then it had exploded into a thousand hot needles gently prickling his mind like a low dose of electricity. It had been wonderful. In that moment, the essence of the Horcrux had been gleeful – maniacally so, and the dark joy and powerful conviction had seeped out into Heri. He was walking on air for days after it had worn off. Something had changed. For the first time, he knew that Voldemort was active and actually doing something. He just wished he knew what!

That's all for this part of the story! I hope you enjoyed reading 'Harry's' decent into darkness heehee. Part 2 is now up!

This chapter was quite heavy on the muggle bashing, but that was mostly just because up until this point Heri has had more exposure to them. I hope by the end it was obvious that they didn't like to be looked down on by wizard or muggle. They aren't muggle champions by any stretch of the imagination, but they also don't discriminate.

Thank you all for reading and for all the wonderful reviews!

xx