Here's chapter 2. I hope you enjoy it. Keep in mind, too, that this is still setting things up. The last chapter was the chapter to introduce the characters. This is to introduce and explain the problem that they're facing. You're going to learn a lot about the Dark Knight. So this is very important to the plot.
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Carys folded up the last box and looked around her bedroom. She'd been unpacking all day. Her parents had found an apartment quickly, in one of the buildings her father owned. And since all three inhabitants were training, and didn't get paid very much, not having to pay the full amount of rent was a very good thing.
She'd spent a week decorating, determined that the men weren't going to have a bachelor pad. There were suede couches in charcoal gray, black leather chairs and ottomans, a Muggle TV and computer, and a dining table in the living room dining room area. The kitchen was where she insisted that everything be done her way. She was the one who would be cooking, so she had to have everything just right. Copper pots and pans, an island, tile floors, marble counters, a china cabinet in one corner of the room. Plenty of cabinet space, and drawers under the counters. She got what she wanted, from the sage green and muted blue plates, to the crystal stemware, sturdy coffee mugs, fancy silverware, and solid drinking glasses. No one interfered with one plan she had in the kitchen.
She personally decorated the three bedrooms as well. No posters of Quidditch players or half naked models would reside in her apartment. She went with hunter green in Noah's room. Sage green walls, the darker curtains and sage sheets with a hunter comforter. Her only concession to maleness was in the Muggle X box she let him have in the corner with his television.
Sebastian was easy. The man was pickier about his living space than most girls. But that was Sebastian. He was every girls' best friend, and every guys' worst enemy. He understood fashion crises and cramps, and could beat the living hell out of any man. Which pretty much meant he always got the girl he went after. When he told her he wanted to decorate his room in jewel tones, she'd readily agreed, trusting his decorating abilities. He'd gone with light gold walls, sapphire bedding, and jewel toned pillows. Carys could have happily moved into the room herself.
Though she liked things a bit more feminine, Carys wasn't a ruffles and frills kind of girl. She painted her walls a light, buttercup yellow, used deep purple bedding, threw on maroon curtains, and sheer lace curtains. Once she finished, she was happy with her living quarters.
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Carys hated grocery shopping, but she did it because she wanted to have more to eat than potato chips and frozen pizzas. She hefted the bags into the kitchen and looked around. "Sebastian! Noah! Anyone home?" Hearing a sound of affirmation from the room they were using as a study, office, and library, she walked in, and found Sebastian.
He was sitting in the middle of a fortress of books. His reading glasses were shoved up onto his head, he seemed to be reading four books at the same time, and despite the fact that there were three desks and five chairs in the room, was sitting on the floor.
"What are you doing?"
Sebastian looked up, startled. "When did you get home?"
Carys laughed. "Two seconds ago when I yelled, `anyone home.' This ringing a bell?"
Sebastian nodded. "Now that you mention it." He looked around. "How did I get down here? I distinctly remember starting out sitting at my desk."
Carys shrugged. "Couldn't tell you. Now what are you doing?"
"Research. I'm trying to figure this out."
Carys perched precariously on the arm of a chair. "Make any progress?"
"Quite a bit. I've been going back over all the different murders, doing some research on all the known Death Eaters we never rounded up, going over their records."
Carys thought that the Auror office had probably done that, but didn't say anything. "And?"
"I've narrowed it down to a list of three."
"And?"
"I really think that we're dealing with a witch, not a wizard."
"Why?" Carys sighed. "Please tell me that this isn't another descendent of Slytherin, relation to Voldemort. His long lost sister's, son's brother-in-law or something. Those theories aren't based in fact, Sebastian."
Sebastian simply looked at her. "Carys, I know how to research. I've been doing it all my life. Come here and look at this."
Carys chuckled. "Can I knock over a wall of your fort?"
Sebastian seemed to just then realize that he'd stacked books up as high as his eyes all the way around him. "Sorry. Yeah, just let me help you move them." He stood, moved a couple piles of books away from himself. "There. Pull up a patch of carpet."
Carys lowered herself to the floor next to him, sitting Indian style as that was the only way there was room for her in the small city of thick, musty old books he'd built. "Okay. Show me your research." She watched his search for the book he wanted to show her. "Y'know, if all the girls could see you like this, you'd probably never have another girlfriend."
"Which is why you and Jordyn, my sisters, Celeste and my aunts are the only females that will ever see me up to my eyeballs in books." He found the book, plopped it on her lap. "There."
Carys gestured with her hands. "What am I looking at?"
"A family tree. You know how the good families, the really pureblooded ones are experts at sweeping things under the proverbial rug?"
Carys nodded. Her grandfather had been the king of that before her father had killed him in final battle against the Death Eaters. "Yeah. Why are you showing me Helga Hufflepuff's family tree?"
"She had one daughter. Katharine. Who married Bradon Knightley."
Carys' head snapped up. "The Dark Knight."
"That's what I think. I started doing some research. From then on, each generation produced one child, a daughter. They always sorted into Hufflepuff, and always had some sort of problems. Some of the stuff was little, like getting suspended, detention, short stints in Azkaban. All stuff that disappeared because they were direct descendents of one of the founders."
Carys was combing the records herself, flipping from one book to the next without even looking up. Sebastian knew that she was searching for a hole in the work that he'd done. He'd have done the same to her. "How is it that the Aurors missed this?"
Sebastian looked at her. "The same reason Lucius Malfoy got away with murder, literally, and many times, and they couldn't do a thing. Names matter, Carys, you know that. You and I live in the world of name recognition. A powerful family, like the Knightley family, has the name recognition. The Aurors probably don't think that this person could ever be a witch. There hasn't ever been a case of a really powerful dark witch. I know they've looked hard at the males in the family, but they've all married into it, and there isn't anything concrete that I can find on any of them. I think this is just a female thing."
"That's a possibility. There have always been rumors that Voldemort was just someone else's pawn."
"I wouldn't phrase it like that. Voldemort was a very powerful, extremely evil dark wizard."
"Yes, but what if he wasn't the top of the line?" Carys was on a tangent, and her brain had already sorted things out. "I mean, think about the Nazis. Once Hitler was gone, they went away for a while. They went to jail, they went into hiding, and it was years later that the Neo Nazis came about, and even then they were just an annoyance. They never really did anything. The Death Eaters haven't dropped from the public eye yet. Voldemort falls, and yet there are arrests being made every day. Knockturn Alley is darker and more sinister than it was before; Death Eaters are still recruiting and killing like there was never a loss of power."
Sebastian was following her. "Are you saying that Voldemort was just a front man for someone else?"
Carys shook her head. "More like the five star general, and now we have to get to the Prime Minister."
"I think I get what you're saying. That despite the fact that he controlled the Death Eaters, and they all answered to him and worshipped him, there was someone he answered to."
"That maybe no one else knew about." Sebastian nodded. "Voldemort falls, and someone has to take command, and fast, unless they want the Death Eaters to disband. There's no time to find a new general, so to speak, so she has to take over herself."
Carys continued. "She gets a taste of the ultimate power, having those followers, decides she likes it, takes a few pages out of the book she wrote for Voldemort, takes over the Death Eaters and starts a Voldemort-like climb to power."
"Makes sense, doesn't it?"
"In a weird, completely unlikely way." Carys wasn't completely convinced about Sebastian's theory, but it was the best one that they had, and she had to admit that the evidence was compelling. "Okay, let's run with this. Who's the latest in the line?"
Sebastian consulted the family tree. "Well, the only one we know about was born two years before Voldemort. Desdemona Knightley. She married her third cousin and they divorced about three years later."
Carys held up a hand. "How old was she then?"
Sebastian consulted his chart again. "She's Grampa James' age."
"Sebastian, she's past sixty!"
"So? That doesn't mean anything. Dumbledore was the most powerful wizard into his second century."
"That doesn't mean that everyone is that way. Look, it's still worth looking into, and it's definitely far enough off the grid that most people wouldn't look at her, and I know the Aurors haven't even so much as glanced at her, or her family. If they were Death Eaters, they were quiet about it."
"The ones that were the most powerful were the ones no one could prove were involved."
"I'll give you that." Carys nodded. "Okay. It's a starting point, and that's more than anyone else has managed to get. So let's give this a try and see where it leads us."
Sebastian grinned. "Good. Now, I think we should start with some old fashioned breaking and entering."
Carys groaned, didn't even bother protesting because she knew she'd lose, and picked up parchment and quill. "Okay. Let's make a list."
Sebastian started putting the books back on the shelves, keeping all the ones that he had used close together. He handed her three sheets of parchment. "I've already made lists. The first thing I think we need to do to start gathering information is to interview people."
"I don't want to go about this like Muggle police officers."
"Why not? We're training to be Aurors. That's like a police officer. This will be good training. We'll start tomorrow."
"Tomorrow's Saturday."
"Exactly. You, Noah and I all have Saturday and Sunday off of training. That means we can all go to the interviews."
"Do we at least get to sleep in?"
"If sleeping in is eight o'clock, then yes."
"Sebastian, I don't mind getting up, and you know I want to find this person as much as you do, but don't you think interviewing people about Desdemona Knightley and her family is just asking for trouble?"
Sebastian nodded. "That's the point. In order to prove anything, we have to lure them out into the open."
Carys was entertaining a thought she didn't like. "There's another option."
"What?"
"The Malfoy name still holds a lot of weight with the Death Eaters. Centuries of dark wizards, and only one good man? I can get an in."
Sebastian shook his head, put his glasses on the desk. "No. We'll do it this way. At least this way we're all in it together. That's the point. To help each other and keep each other safe. You going in is risky, iffy and an unnecessary risk."
Carys let out a deep breath. "I can tell you now I was hoping you'd say that."
Sebastian walked into the kitchen, spotted the groceries. "Where'd these come from?"
"I went to the store, and then forgot to put them away. Give me a hand and I'll start dinner. Noah will be home soon, and he'll be starving. We'll fill him in over fettuccine."
"I love you, Carys."
"I love you, too. Now put away those groceries and set the table."
"Can we have garlic bread?"
"Yes."
"Marry me?"
Carys laughed, tossed an orange at him. He placed it in the fruit basket. "In your dreams, Sebastian, my boy. Only in your dreams."
She had no idea how close to reality that statement actually was.
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