Okay everyone, here we go with chapter sixteen. I hope you all are sticking with this despite the fact that updates are coming quite a bit slower now that I'm in college. I know school is taking up a lot of my time. And I don't really get along with my roommate, so that just makes it worse. Add to that a part time job and an eighteen-hour course load, and I am one busy person. So, that means I don't have nearly as much time to sit down and write. Especially considering that I got a plot bunny in my head for another, non-HP fic last week that won't leave me alone. I've got about two chapters of that written. Anyway, this chapter, as promised, will cover the same time as the last one from another perspective. At the end, the two will join together, and everything will be revealed in the next chapter. After the next one, you will no longer have to wonder about the identity of the Dark Knight, because you will know. So, on that note, and I hope that it makes you anxious to read the next chapter, on with the story.
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Sebastian was in the kitchen, taking his turn at making dinner when Noah walked in, balancing a huge stack of books. He dumped them on the island, and sat down on a bar-stool. Sebastian looked up from the pasta tubes he was filling and glanced at the titles. "Still trying to figure out how to curse things into being the equivalent of a Muggle bullet-proof vest?"
Noah rubbed his chest. "Aunt Hermione and Carys have been working on it all day. They've just about got it figured out. They've gotten the spell to block curses right, but the problem now is getting them to last more than a couple minutes. They've been practicing on me."
Sebastian winced in sympathy. "That's rough. They've got some terrible hexes."
"And Carys used the Cruciatus. That is not a way I like a girl to make me scream, mate. It was wicked."
Sebastian managed not to laugh at his best friend. Noah was exaggerating a little, and they both knew it. Though Carys did have a wicked Cruciatus. "So what are you looking for?"
"Information on our Dark Queen. I've been trying to come up with anyone who could be more powerful than a person controlling Voldemort. Oh yeah, that's a witch under the age of forty. I'm not coming up with much."
"I don't imagine you are. Noah, do we have a photo of Desdemona? From, say, thirty years ago?"
Noah shrugged. "Couldn't tell you, mate. I can try to find one, maybe from her school days, or her wedding. That would be close. But she isn't exactly the type of witch people want pictures of sitting on their mantle."
Carys walked into the kitchen. "No, you're right, Noah, but there's one person I bet would have a photo of her from thirty years ago."
Noah was drawing a blank. "Who?"
Sebastian answered. "Her ex-husband."
"Yeah, but we don't want him to know what we think about all of this." He paused, thought for a minute. "What do we think about all of this?"
Sebastian put the pan of manicotti in the oven. "I think Lamia is Desdemona's daughter."
Noah was shocked at that. "No. There is no record anywhere of her having a daughter. And that would be big news. Besides, we think she's dead."
"What does us thinking she's dead have to do with the fact that Aunt Hermione and I think that her daughter may have been the one to kill her and take over power?" Carys asked, making Noah feel as if he were three years old.
"It should have something to do with it. I mean, wouldn't we have found records of a daughter somewhere by now?"
Carys nodded. "Yeah. You're right. If she'd had a daughter we would have found a record of it somewhere. All births are recorded and stored at the Ministry, and there're all the tests you have to pass to be a registered witch, and all that. At least," she continued, letting both the boys know that she was getting to her point, "if her daughter was born in England, and in a magical hospital. If she was born in a Muggle hospital, or in, say, the United States, we wouldn't have a record of the birth at the Ministry here."
"Or," Sebastian added, running water for the dishes to wash themselves in, "it could have been an unrecorded birth. There are instances of those every once in a while, especially when the parents are Death Eaters. They don't necessarily want their children to be in the system so they have them in their homes or wherever in order to keep them secret. Train them at home, and never send them to school. It's why there are so many Death Eaters our age that we had no idea about."
Carys nodded thoughtfully. "Makes sense. But, if that's the case, there's no way for us to even have a justified guess as to if she even looks a thing like Desdemona until we get a photo. Which means that we're going to have to do some breaking and entering. We don't want to alert the ex to what we're doing, because he'll run straight to the Dark Queen and tell her what we're up to, and her knowing is absolutely the last thing that we want at this point. We want to travel under the radar as much as possible right now." She looked at Sebastian. "We don't want anything bad to happen to any of us again."
Noah grasped the whole concept. He understood what they both meant and what they had said. What he didn't get was just how they were going to get the information they needed without alerting someone they wanted to keep in the dark about the whole thing. "So, how do we go about this exactly?"
Sebastian grinned. "I'm thinking that we're going to behave like Muggles." At both Noah and Carys' raised eyebrows and surprised looks, he elaborated. "Look, Philip Knightley's house is pretty much only protected from magical thieves. There aren't any wards up that will protect him from someone unscrewing a window and walking into his living room. No witch or wizard in several centuries has ever done it that way. Or at least, done it that way and gotten caught."
Carys nodded. "That's a good idea, actually. We should go in tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow night, obviously, because we want to at least have a little bit of dark to help out with the whole thing."
Noah sighed. "What about all those undetectable spells Aunt Hermione came up with?"
"The first one was twenty years ago. They've figured out ways to detect them. And the couple she has that she hasn't revealed to the public yet are ones that we want to keep for when we really need to sneak into somewhere that's super important. This, while important, is something that we could live without. This won't affect the way we go about things, merely what we know about her. It's the advantage of having knowledge she doesn't know that we have. Nothing huge, but in this case, any advantage that we can get is extremely important."
Hermione made her way into the kitchen in time to catch the last bit of the conversation. She laid a hand on her son's shoulder and fixed the other two with her patented `mother' stare. "I really don't think that this is a good idea, kids. Some witches and wizards have Muggle security systems on their homes. Others are in somewhat Muggle neighborhoods. It just isn't the smartest thing that you could do. I think there are other avenues that could be pursued in order to get the information that we need in order to find out precisely who she is." She lifted a hand to stroke Sebastian's head. "And even if she does look like Desdemona Knightley, it doesn't mean anything. Some people you would never guess are related, and some you would swear were sisters and they're nothing more than strangers."
All three hated to admit that Hermione had a point, but they knew that she did. Carys was the first to nod. "All right. We'll try to find out by research first, but if that doesn't work, I still say we break in."
Hermione smiled and moved through the kitchen to answer the ringing doorbell. "If and when that happens, I'll get you the night goggles."
She answered the door and found a woman, obviously sick. But even sick, she stood straight and exuded evil authority. Hermione briefly thought of drawing her wand, but didn't sense any danger from the woman. So instead, she closed the door a little to block her entrance.
"Can I help you?"
Desdemona laughed, and the sound was bitter and evil. "I wish. No, Potter, you can't help me. And you wouldn't want to if you could. However, I can help you. I'm Desdemona Knightley."
Hermione was shocked down to her very center. She drew her wand and pointed it at the other woman. "Harry! Draco! Ginny! Luna! Ron!"
Seconds later, Harry and Draco ran down the stairs. Sebastian, Carys and Noah had already come in from the kitchen. All four of them had wands pointed at the woman standing in the door. It only took a split second before they recognized her. Harry was the first to speak.
"If you're here to kill us, you're sadly disillusioned. Sebastian, go contact the Ministry."
Desdemona held up a hand. "If you do that, you will never regret anything more. I swear that to you."
Sebastian paused. "What do you want?"
"What I want is of no consequence. Lamia has drained all my power, and in six hours at the most, I will be dead. I can feel it working on me even now." She laughed again. "My own daughter has killed me. Only she didn't have the mercy to use a Killing Curse. She's used a draining spell to take my power and will laugh while I suffer and die. That is why I am here."
"You came here to die?" Ginny asked, stepping in front on her daughter just in case Desdemona was lying.
"No, though that is what will happen. I have come here to help you, though that very word makes me wish for death to come more swiftly. My daughter robbed me of my throne, then stripped me of my power and killed me. That eradicates any family loyalty I had left. What I can tell you will help you defeat her. That, I promise."
Harry and Draco exchanged glances. Draco nodded. "In that case, come on in."
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