Back From The Grave

Prologue

The people who lived in Godric's Hollow were generally very happy, in the quaint, little village.

They strolled arm in arm with their partners in the crisp Spring months, wore light clothing in the sunny summers, crunched the leaves underfoot in the Autumns, and wrapped up warm in the winters.

There was one little lonely lane, however, that they avoided.

Only one family ever walked down it, and it was for that fact that the family were always the main subject for gossip in the sleepy little village. Another, of course, was the fact that the mother and father, with their three children, and sometimes one other little boy, of whom a teenager who had been dared to run down the road swore blind that his hair was a bright, vivacious purple. But that was nonsense, obviously. Anyone with eyes could see that his hair was a nice, normal, sandy brown.

The family kept to themselves, mostly. They politely declined any subtle hints for invitations to their house from their far off neighbours, - the other villagers were so curious to see their house, due to the fact that no one actually knew where it was.

Their children, too, were home schooled, and so it was that any budding gossips that had a few children of the same age to spare became thoroughly disappointed when the oldest boy of the family's children did not attend the little village school in the September.

The villagers avoided the lane, because of the horror tales that they had been fed since they were young children.

As the story said, a young man and woman had lived there, once, with their little boy. They seemed perfectly happy; as any young family should be, and the older people of whom resided in Godric's Hollow had always said that they were nice enough to talk to.

But, then, the story went that on Halloween, - the date was probably twisted, it just seemed far too convenient - a fire had broken out, and the mother and father had perished, leaving their little boy an orphan.

The facts from the older people were a little hazy, after that. None of them could seem to recall what had happened next. It was assumed, of course, that they little boy had been taken away to stay in the care of some of his other relatives, but nobody was certain. One old lady was certain that she had seen a literal giant of a man take the young boy away; but everyone on the village knew that her mind was slightly addled, anyway.

The house remained abandoned; crumbling and decaying, - but nobody seemed to notice, to really care at all about the decrepit state of the building. The normally house proud but warm people of the village did not utter even a single word about the state of the building.

After that, the story dived and diverted into fiction, as fact was long since abandoned after the older people's memories failed them. One of the favourites was that a huge snake had come, and eaten up the little old woman who lived in the small cottage nearest to the haunted house, because she had seen the man who had started the fire in the first place go and commit his deadly deed. The children often came home, worrying about the demon snake coming to gobble them up, but their parents assured them, as they were falling asleep at night, that there could never be such a thing as a giant, possessed snake, and the children fell asleep, reassured that their dreams would not be filled to the brim with troublesome ghouls, or demonic reptiles.

However, perhaps the most favourite tale, liked by adults and children alike, was the tale of how the mysterious family's father, that had come to live in the village a few years ago with his wife and children, was really the little boy who's parents had perished in the fire. The older people had indeed said that the couple bore a rather striking resemblance to the pair that had died, after all, but then, these memories could have just been a figment of their imaginations; the facts in all of their heads were slightly jammed and fuzzy.

The children adopted a more gruesome approach; the man was the little boy, but he was not here to live - oh no. He was here to seek revenge for his parents, and he was really part of a secret organisation, who tracked down murderers and villains alike, and kidnapped them. Then again, there could be some truth in the allegations about his profession; nobody saw him go to work, or return from it.

The people of the village very much doubted that the young family had enough money to simply live; it was very difficult raising a family without much money, after all. They had also presumed that the mother did not work; surely raising three children and home schooling them was a fulltime occupation. But yet, the rumours still remained strong and unyielding throughout the five years that the family had lived in the village.

And so it was, that young William, a boy of ten years old, was slowly edging his way towards the rotting gate of the haunted house, jumping at every creak, eyes widening comically at the single rustle of leaves.

'Go on Will! Just touch it!'

He turned his head anxiously, and saw four other boys in the distance, shouting for him to hurry.

Gulping loudly and edging towards the ominous gate, he took another step, slowly positioning his foot as if he were walking on a very live, very scary mine field.

He reached his hand out, slowly reaching towards the moss covered gate, almost waiting for some demon to come and grab his arm and kidnap him.

Closing his eyes briefly, William took a deep breath, and grimaced slightly, almost disbelieving about what he was about to do, in denial, he screwed up his courage, and forced himself to propel his shaking arm towards the mossy gate.

And then, he jumped back in shock, ignoring the pleas of his awaiting friends that it was beginning to rain. William did not seem to notice the heavy droplets of rain cascading down his back.

For a signpost, a signpost had just materialized from the ground; springing up like some absurd flower, frightening William so badly that he could not even run from the scene, he was so frozen, so very petrified on the spot.

He did not even have time to read what the sign said, as he suddenly caught something in the very corner of his eye.

A faint blue light blue shimmered, and then he saw a figure, wearing some sort of costume that William's little sister would probably dress up in, it was a tall man with messy black hair, with black, round, wire-rimmed glasses, with a petite woman with dark red hair lying by his side. They were slumped over on the ground, silent and unmoving, until the man twitched his head slightly and groaned, and the woman opened her eyes to reveal bright green eyes.

William widened his eyes, and it was suddenly apparent that he was seeing some sort of ghostly apparition in the haunted house.

William did the only thing that he could think of doing, frozen to the spot, dripping wet in the rain and impending gloom and darkness of the sleepy village.

He turned and ran, not noticing the very strange fact that he almost seemed to be lifting off of the ground in his wild hurry.

Dennis hurried through the Department of Mysteries, already anxious about the fact that he was late home.

It was his son's first birthday, his wife would skin him alive if he did not make this date. Or worse.

And so it was that he hurried through the department, once again cursing both his job and head of department for making him stay so late. Why did he have to choose this kind of job, anyway? It was certainly not natural for him to keep all of his secrets locked up within himself - but then, he supposed, he did have his wife to spill everything to, as did every Unspeakable have a single person under an oath that they could discuss everything to do with their job.

Honestly, though, the career path of an Auror was a much better approach.

At least they went home on time, Dennis grumbled under his breath, as he hurried through a door that had a very faint, cross shape burned into it.

The wrong door.

Groaning as he turned around to see the entrance room spinning and disfiguring itself, Dennis resigned himself to have a little look around the room that he was now trapped in, undoubtedly for the next five minutes or so, pushing his wife's torturing methods to the back of his mind for a little while.

He turned around, but froze as soon as he had.

He was not meant to be in here.

So not meant to be in here.

Dennis was standing, facing an old an decrepit archway, in a room that was very dark and gloomy, and seemed to give off an auror of depressing gloom.

He muttered under his breath, anxiously fumbling for his wand in an inside pocket of his robes. He pulled it out, swiftly as he could, and muttered the "point me" spell, enabling himself to navigate his way out of the maze that people tended to call the Department of Mysteries. How ironic.

Turning around, his cloak whipping behind him in his haste, Dennis followed the secretive co-ordinates that only the people in his department know, and he was just about to close the door firmly shut, before he could have sworn he saw a bluish haze emit from around the ominous arch, before it vanished in a blink of the eye.

Turning around suspiciously, Dennis stared at the previously glowing arch for a full two minutes, before deciding, finally, that it must have just been a trick of the mind and eye, and shut the door hurriedly in his bid to get to his home before his wife had the time to build up enough steam for a full on rant.

He completely missed the dark haired man that toppled out of the arch, now glowing an even brighter, vivacious blue, groaning and muttering a few choice swear words.

Eva and Daniel hurried out from behind the tapestry, giggling and whispering to themselves as they surreptitiously looked around the corridor to check that nobody was coming.

'Look, there's no one here,' Daniel grinned at Eva, and started to try and gather her up into another embrace and kiss her once more behind the tapestry.

'Daniel! I've got to … go …' Eva said, smiling, before pushing away an exasperated Daniel.

'Really.' She said firmly, gathering him into a warm hug that he warmly accepted.

'Harry Potter's coming to my Defence lesson!' Eva said, the sudden realisation gripping her, making her go rigid in her boyfriend's arms.

'Really?' Daniel said in shock, his arms dropping from his still girlfriend.

'Yes!' Eva checked her watch quickly, - but not before twisting it around her wrist to the right way again - 'It's starting in five minutes!'

She stumbled out of her boyfriends arms, shooting him a sorrowful look as she began walking briskly back through the tapestry of Arnold the Annoying.

'I'll tell you all about it!' She stepped forwards, as did Daniel, and she kissed him quickly on the cheek.

Eva went to hug him once again, but Daniel forced her away from himself and further into the little secret passageway.

'Go!' He said, urgently, as Eva grinned back at him, 'You'd better tell me about it, though.'

Rolling her eyes exasperatedly, she flounced of hurriedly through the little passage way, not looking behind her once more in her hurry.

Daniel grinned, and turned the other way, striding down the corridor with a knowing grin plastered on his face and fixing his blue and silver tie straight as he made his way down to Ancient Runes.

Neither of them noticed the glowing blue light that they had left, just moments before in their wake, nor the two people that followed it, falling to the solid stone ground of the hall with a very audible thump.

The woman tilted her pink head slightly to look, bleary eyed around her, whilst the man beside her in tattered clothing simply just groaned.

Minerva walked briskly through the grounds of the castle that she herself had taught at for so many years. Grass whipped at her long, dark red robes, and birds chirruped loudly in the trees that were dotted around the beautiful, - if very, very cold - crisp and sunny Scottish landscape.

She paused, however, looking across the water at the other side of the great dark depths that was the Black Lake.

What would it have been like, she wondered forlornly, if Albus had survived? Her eyes travelled across the brilliant waters and their cool depths, stopping for a few seconds in amusement at the giant squid, which was happily swimming about aimlessly, before finally moving over the waters a little more and resting on the marble, seemingly glowing tomb on the opposite bank of the lake.

It was a glimmering speck, really, from where she was standing, but she could still see that day so very clearly in her minds eye; the Mermaids, Hagrid carrying him, - déjà vu from the final battle, there - the sobbing people, the solid face of one Harry Potter, of whom was there that night …

He was up in the castle, Minerva had just thought. Probably teaching alongside with her Defence Against The Dark Arts professor.

Minerva had begged Harry to stay and teach, but she knew, indeed, in her heart and gut and the pit of her stomach, that he would never, never be contented with just sitting around. Though, that clearly was a misconception about teaching. A very large one.

She snorted, out loud.

It was not very womanly; but she was alone out here anyway.

Deciding that it was about time for an early lunch, Minerva began the trek back up to the grand castle, not noticing the faint blue light that glowed for across the black lake glimmer, and then fade away.

The white speck of glistening marble shifted slightly, and, from across the lake from where Minerva was looking in the complete opposite direction, it was impossible to see a man with a white beard emerge from the marble tomb.

'Now you leave me alone!' Maggie shouted, waving her fist at the youths laughing and sprinting away from her little run down council house.

They were constantly hanging around the little alley beside her home, drinking, and it would not, perhaps, bother her so much, if it was not for the fact that they were so very loud, and threw their empty cans and bottles, and little stubs of cigarettes and who knew what else over her garden wall.

Grumbling and entering her cosy little home once more, she paused for a moment, on her bid to go and make some hot cocoa for herself, to warm herself up from the bitter cold that had somehow decided to thrash London, to think about her George.

It was a shame, she thought, that he had passed away. She was not sure, at the time, whether she would even be able to get along without him, but with regular visits from her children and grandchildren, she had somehow managed it. It was a shame, though, how her youngest grandchild, Megan, was always away at that boarding school up in Scotland. Maggie would have like to have seen of her more.

It had been much easier to cope with destructive youth when George had been around; he had never withered like many did at their age, he had remained just as muscular as the day that they had met. George had chased away all of the youths; and he had made her feel safer.

Shaking her head, and willing herself not to linger on such depressing and oppressive thoughts, Maggie bustled her way into her small, but stuffed with food for her children and grandchildren for the coming Sunday for the weekly Sunday Roast, and reached high into an old and weathered, but much loved little wooden cabinet that George had carved himself, and brought out the small glass jar with various childish drawings etched all over it, bearing the names of all of Maggie's offspring, and their children, too.

Smiling fondly, Maggie heated up her kettle, and began getting the milk out of the small fridge just by her knee's, her bones creaking wearily as she leant over to retrieve it.

Maggie Harper carried on with her evening, and just when she had sat down to watch a bit of television before retiring to her bed for the night, hot mug of cocoa in her left hand and a small plate of savoury biscuits in her right, a faint blue light echoed around the room through the window that looked into the dismal little alley beside her house, but Maggie just simply presumed that the blue light was derived from the television set, of which had just turned on, that very moment.

Maggie had no idea that a man with grisly hair and plenty of scars, along with a fake leg had just landed in that very alley that she had looked into for so many years of her life.

Alex was on a mission.

He was going to find out where the Ravenclaw common room was, and he was going to prove Luke completely wrong.

His Ravenclaw friend from childhood had dared Alex to find the Ravenclaw common room, and there was no way that Alex was going to back down on this one.

Shuffling along the corridor, Alex looked around hurriedly, and stopped for a moment. He was a Gryffindor, after all. He could, and he would do this. He would never live it down if he did not; Luke would lord it over him for all of eternity.

And so, with no small amount of determination, Alex strode purposefully down the deserted seventh floor corridor, in the complete opposite direction of the Ravenclaw common room, though he did not know it.

He, Alex, did not notice the slight flash of pale blue light as he rounded to corner off of the corridor.

Nor did he notice the two bodies land on the floor, one with a bright red head of hair, the other with a sandy blonde colour of hair.

Fleur looked on in exasperation as Louis came traipsing into the hallway, treading in sand and mud alike.

'Louis!' She said hands folded over her breast as she looked down at her silver haired son. Louis looked up in apparent shame; it was clear that he knew what he had done, what his offence was.

'I'm sorry, Maman.' Fleur insisted on her children's use of her own native tongue; she refused for them to be embarrassed when they went to her own family's functions in France. Fleur had always dreamed for he children to call her "Maman", when she was younger, and just because she now lived in England and her children were half English, half French, was certainly not going to change that.

''ow many times, 'ave I told you, Louis? Use ze door mat!'

'I'm really, really sorry, Maman!' Louis said in earnest, looked down to his mother as she prised, grimacing, the soaking and disgustingly dirty shoes off of his feet, and then shaking them onto the indoor mat beside them. 'Because I was just down at the sea, with Vic and Dom, and then, I kicked my shoe off by accident, all the way into the garden -'

Ah. That would explain the rancid socks, then. Why were they down at the sea? Bill. Fleur would have to talk to him about letting the children run amok, on a windy, sopping wet and cold beach in this sort of weather. The children would all come down with colds, and she was not going to be the one getting up in the middle of the night to tend to them.

'Louis, 'ow did your shoe get to ze garden? Eet is far too far.'

But, Louis apparently found this small detail unimportant, as his mother peeled off one dry, one wet sock off of his cold feet, he shrugged, and carried on with his tale excitedly.

'And then, Maman, listen to this! And then, I went to go and find my shoe, and it was behind a grave, Maman. Why do we have a grave of Dibby -'

Fleur stopped tending to her son's feet, and her head shot so fast upright that she almost banged, and collided with her son's chin.

'Dobby.' She breathed, ignoring Louis' excited shouts of; "That was it, Maman! Dobby! Why is it there? Who put it there? Is it haunted? Maman, why ..."

She had, to her shame, scarcely thought about the little grave of the equally little elf, with the disproportionally big heart, that resided in her very own garden. That rested, she both presumed and remembered, with everything, all of the memories, to do with the war.

'Who is Dobby, Maman?' Louis said, with a bright, childlike curiosity.

Fleur paused for a moment, and looked into her son's eyes. He was only five. He was much, much too young to comprehend war, and all that it entailed. But, Fleur could not leave him hanging. Merlin knew, he would get nightmares from knowing that there was a grave in his garden. He would probably get enough, considering his probable coming cold ... Fleur paused, and then began.

'A long time ago, Louis, your Oncle 'Arry and Ron, and your Tante 'Ermione came to our 'ouse, weeth some of zeir friends. Copains, oui?'

'But, where was I?' Louis asked, in confusion. It was such a childlike thing, for Louis to assume that everything had only started existing after his birth. Fleur gave him a watery smile weakly, and then continued.

'You were not even born yet, Louis.'

'Really?' Louis said, in amazement.

'Oui.' Fleur replied, looking on in amusement at her son's expression of absolute wonder.

'And zey came, mais zey were ...' Fleur stopped, thinking of the best, most child friendly way to say it, ''urt. Quite badly.'

'But you fixed them up all right, didn't you, Maman!' Louis said, bouncing from his place on the counter of which Fleur had placed him, whilst she absent mindedly told the story and put the kettle on for boil with a tap of her wand. She looked out of the window to see Victoire and Dominique admiring the wild flowers that grew just outside of the garden gate.

'Oui, Louis, oui. But, zen, one of zeir friends was so badly 'urt, that 'e ... went to where Polly went to.'

Polly, their former pet rabbit, had died a few months before, and Fleur and Bill had to explain, painstakingly, where she had gone. "Death" was now referred to as "Where Polly Went", in Shell Cottage.

'Oh.' Louis breathed, looking down. After a minute of comfortable, but subdued silence, he looked up, back to his mother, and Fleur saw that he had prepared himself, steeled himself, was ready for what was to come next in the story. Fleur frowned, and wondered why she was doing this, before continuing on.

'Now, Oncle 'Arry was veery sad about zis, as the friend of 'is 'o 'ad died 'ad been 'is friend for many years.'

Fleur paused, to gather her thoughts, and then continued.

'So, Oncle 'Arry started to dig a grave in ze garden, weeth no magic, and 'e did eet because 'uzzerwise, 'is friend would not 'ave 'ad a veery good ... resting place, and 'Arry thought zat eet was a tres belle place to be buried.'

The kettle went off with a whir and Fleur tipped the hot, boiling water into five separate mugs, along with tea, coffee, and hot chocolate.

'So, Uncle Harry's friend ... was Dobby?' Louis completed, looking back, rather meekly at his mother.

At his mother's nod, Louis smiled, and hopped down off of the counter.

'Now,' Fleur said, patting her son fondly and tenderly on the head, 'go and tell your seester's zat zeir 'ot chocolate eez ready.'

With a cheeky grin, Louis took off, running after his sister's at breakneck speed, only pausing a few seconds to shove on his Wellington boot's before hurtling outside.

'Don't forget ze mat!' Fleur shouted after him, although she was fairly certain that h did not, or did not care of bother to hear her calling.

With one weary last smile at the little grave of Dobby, Fleur turned her back on the garden, and the view behind her out of the window, and took a sip of her black coffee.

As she half listened to her children having an argument, once again, over the apparent "blue light" that they had seen in the garden, she watched a snowy white owl soar in the air outside the opposite window from the one of which she was facing, not even noticing, or caring, just how abnormal it was for that sort of owl, and at that sort of time, in that sort of place, was to be there.

It just seemed right.

- Erm, yeah. Fourth story on the go. GCSE's coming up. Woo! This may take a while to be next updated, but, bear in mind that I am doing my GCSE's at the moment, along with three other stories too. I just had to let this one out, though. I couldn't hold it in! The plot bunnies took me hostage, honest, I swear. Anyway, on the brighter side, two of my other stories are very nearly completed, only a couple left to go on both of them.. *sob*. They're like my babies!
Anyway.. much love to review and reviewers, as well as subscribers, and most definitely readers. You're amazingly brilliant!

- SpellMugwump97