It was a somber morning the day that the news they’d finally been waiting for came. The Daily Prophet was delivered as it always was, and in big, bold letters on the front page, Voldemort’s return was announced to all of Britain.
The article had been written shrewdly. It was led by an interview with Minister Malfoy who explained to the public that Voldemort was not the same dark lord that they’d once all known. His lack of action these past decades was meant to be a sign of that. What was most illuminating about the article was that Lucius claimed Voldemort had come to him in a bid for peace. He wanted to help Britain become the country it was always meant to be, and his goals allegedly aligned with Lucius’.
It was all a load of rubbish of course. Anyone who’d lived through the first war was bound to see it as such, and even the widespread sympathy for Lucius in the wake of his son’s death wasn’t going to be enough to pull the wool over their eyes.
Still, there’d be those who welcomed Voldemort’s return with open arms. And they were the ones holding all of the power in the Ministry.
There was a later note about an increased Auror presence at major hubs across Britain to help keep the peace as the public became aware of this startling news and a promise that a leaflet designed to reassure the public that everything was fine would be coming later this evening.
Harry wished he could be at Hogwarts or Diagon Alley to see the reaction to all of this. It was painful being cooped up at Grimmauld Place without much interaction with the outside world.
Almost the entire rest of the paper was dedicated to discussing what Voldemort’s return meant; naturally, every opinion piece was complimentary of Voldemort and Lucius or tried to downplay any alarmism.
And very quietly tucked in the middle of a Ministerial News Report Update, there was a nonchalant mention that several inmates at Azkaban were having their sentences reviewed.
Harry tapped his finger on the dry ink. “All of Voldemort’s followers must be free by now.”
Sirius perked up. “Good. I remember the first few days after I got out of Azkaban. Everything felt like a horribly-confusing mess. All I could really do was focus on finding you and making sure that you were safe. My cousin and her husband and brother-in-law are bound to be disoriented. It’ll be easy to break into their home.”
“First, we need to make sure that they even show up there,” Daphne pointed out.
“Your father and I will handle that,” Anastasia said. “We can watch the manor from afar with omnioculars until we see any signs of life within. I’ve been there before; there’s a tall hill nearby that should be outside of the wards where we can watch from.”
And so Anastasia and Cyrus left, leaving Harry, Daphne, and Astoria to prepare for their theft.
It wasn’t until the sun was beginning to set that the two of them returned back to Grimmauld Place.
“They’re in there alright,” Cyrus said as he hung up his robes. “Smoke started rising from the chimney half an hour ago.”
“But did you see them inside?” Astoria asked.
“No,” Cyrus answered tentatively. “But if it’s not them, then who could it be?”
“One of Voldemort’s other followers, maybe,” Daphne mused. “Someone sent to get the place ready for them while they get treated for what they went through in Azkaban somewhere else.”
“If that’s the case, then there’s still a good shot that they would’ve moved in the Lestranges’ things,” Harry said. “We’ll go now, and you can check over the wards. Once it’s dark, we’ll break in.”
Everything they needed was already prepared. Harry, Astoria, and Daphne donned black cloaks and pulled the hoods up to obscure their faces. It wouldn’t do well if they were recognised tonight.
Anastasia apparated them directly to the hill she’d been at before since she was the one most familiar with the grounds. Then, she disappeared in a quiet pop.
The Lestrange estate stretched out across over nearly two-hundred acres of fertile land. An enormous wooded meadow covered much of the land while a small lake sat along the eastern side of the land. Sat right near the shoreline was an enormous manor house.
Pale bricks covered in thick patches of ivy made up the exterior of the manor house. Grand, tall windows were spaced out evenly to allow plenty of natural light to flood into the manor, but as it was the dead of night, the moon’s glow barely illuminated anything within the manor’s walls.
Harry was quite antsy as he tried to see any new signs of life from within the manor, but all he could see was a bit of smoke coming out of the chimney. There was bound to be an active fireplace somewhere, but none of the windows on the front side of the manor showed any sign of a fire within.
Daphne spent nearly two hours examining the wards that surrounded the manor, and what she found matched up with Dumbledore’s belief that the wards would be the same ones that the Ministry had erected after tearing down the original ones. No one would be alerted at their arrival, and it would be safe to apparate directly out of the manor once they had everything they needed.
Of course, apparating out directly might cause enough noise to alert whoever was inside that they had unexpected guests, so sneaking out of the manor once they were done was their initial plan. But if they got caught, then they’d have to leave quickly.
“I’m ready to go,” Daphne said as she stood up off the ground. They’d given her a break after she’d meticulously examined the wards for them; they couldn’t risk going in with any of them feeling tired or unfocused.
From the hill they arrived on, it was a quick walk down into the wooded meadow that stretched out alongside the main dirt road that led directly up to the estate. They moved through the tall grass silently as the chirps of countless insects filled the night air. Old trees untouched for decades or even centuries provided a thick canopy overhead, giving them plenty of shadows to move through as they grew closer to the manor.
While Daphne had been examining the wards, Harry and Astoria had tried to figure out how to get in by using Anastasia’s omnioculars to scour the front of the manor. Luckily, knowing what wards there were made it child’s play. All it took was vanishing the glass from a window—something quite similar to what Harry had done at a zoo when Dudley was being a prat years ago—and then they could climb right in. Conjuring a replacement would be simple, and if anyone noticed the difference, it could easily be explained away as something done back when the property was managed by the Ministry.
As they reached the edge of the wooded meadow, the grand manor house sat before them. The dirt road ran along the front of the house directly where Harry, Astoria, and Daphne needed to cross over to an old stable.
Harry scanned the windows above for any sign of life once again. “Do you two see anything in there?” He asked quietly, not daring to raise his voice while they were so close to the building.
“First floor, far-left window,” Astoria pointed out. “I think I saw a shadow.”
Harry followed the invisible line from her finger and saw the window. It was dark inside, and it took several moments before he saw anything. Then, there was a flutter of movement. He didn’t know if it was of someone inside, a curtain billowing slightly, or something else.
He took out the omnioculars and quickly zoomed in on the window, holding his breath to keep his vision as steady as possible.
Harry leapt in surprise as a pale-white hand suddenly appeared on the other side of the glass. Long nails dragged down the window until the hand pulled away again, leaving nothing more for him to see.
“Someone’s definitely in there,” Harry murmured to the others. “Could be Death Eaters staying up to watch over them or one of the Lestranges is up.”
“I hope not,” Daphne said. “They were awful people. Just reading about the things they did to families they targeted… it makes me sick.”
“Hopefully they won’t be much of a threat since they’re just out of Azkaban,” Harry replied.
“Or they’ll be even crazier,” Astoria argued. “Even Sirius said that it took a while before he learned to regulate his emotions again. Being around Dementors for so many years is bound to make them mercurial.”
“Then we’ll just have to be careful,” Harry said. “We’ll use the Sleeping Charm on them if we find them. It’ll look natural enough and give us plenty of time to search for their vault key.”
With the plan in place, they waited a few more minutes to see if that figure would reappear at the window. When there was no sign of anyone coming back, Harry gave the signal, and the three of them darted across the dirt road until they reached the side of the manor.
The windows on the ground floor ran almost from floor to ceiling. They were done up in four distinct panes of glass, making it easy for Harry to tap the tip of his wand to one of them and vanishing it away. Instantly, Harry felt a breeze of warm air come out of the manor and wash across them.
“Betting their keeping the place warm to try to get rid of the chill Azkaban left them,” Harry commented as he crouched slightly and slipped through the opening into a small dining room.
Astoria ducked in behind him, followed quickly by Daphne. The walls were strangely devoid of portraits—Harry wondered if those had been put away in storage by the Ministry. Instead, there were paintings of vivid landscapes. He supposed it just made it easier for them to sneak through without having to worry about a portrait waking up and being able to tell the Lestranges that they’d broken in.
There were two doors out of the room on either end. Harry carefully crept over to one and pressed his ear to it. He couldn’t hear a thing from the other side. Not a footstep, not a click of a clock, not a crackling fireplace. Honestly, it was so silent that Harry wondered if there was a Privacy Charm placed around the room.
“I can’t hear a thing out there,” Astoria told the others.
“Neither can I,” Harry replied. “Think they could all be upstairs?”
“Could be,” Daphne answered noncommittally. “Or they could be on the other side of the manor.”
“So, which door should we take?” Astoria asked.
There wasn’t much information to go on from either of them. Harry tried to see if there were any keyholes, but there were none. No way of knowing which doorway was best.
So, Harry simply went to the first one he tried to check. Daphne ended up left of the door frame while Astoria stood at his back. Silently, he counted down, forming the words with his mouth, and then threw the door open.
Daphne was the first one with her wand sweeping the large corridor they exited out to. Light-wood panelling surrounded with more grand vistas and images of exorbitant balls and group photographs. None of them featured moving figures. Marble statues stood tall along the edges of the corridors, creating a long procession for them to walk down.
As Harry stepped out behind his lover, he suddenly heard a loud cracking sound coming from above. Daphne snapped her head back to look at the ceiling above, her wand ready to curse anyone they came across. Astoria followed out with her wand swishing back and forth, but when she saw no one, she relaxed.
“They have to be upstairs,” Astoria said, hearing the floor creak overhead. “But there can’t be many people around.”
“No, there aren’t,” Harry agreed quickly. He’d learnt quite quickly how to listen for specific people walking down the staircase above his cupboard when he was young. This didn’t sound like anything more than someone pattering about upstairs. If it was one of the Lestranges, then it could be that they were simply restless after being freed from Azkaban. “Keep your wands at the ready.”
Together, the three of them crept down the corridor towards the front entrance of the manor. Other than the creaks coming from above, the manor was unnaturally silent. It was unnerving as to how quiet everything seemed. Harry expected the occasional sound like the manor settling, wind, or a crackling fireplace to distract him, but nothing reached his ears besides his partners’ quiet footsteps.
The entry hall was nothing more than Harry hadn’t already seen before. The grand reception with marble floors was met by two sets of curling stairs that led to the upper level along with several branching corridors that led to other areas of the ground floor. The creaking above disappeared here, and they were left with nothing but the quiet sounds of their own steps echoing out.
“They don’t have a house-elf,” Daphne whispered.
She was right. They would’ve arrived here the second that they’d stepped into the entry hall. That boded well for them; one less problem to contend with as they secured the vault key.
“Stay close,” Harry told his lovers as he began up the nearest set of stairs. He manoeuvred with a careful gait, trying to keep any of the stairs from making a single sound as he crept upwards.
A large balcony stretched across overhead, and as Harry reached it, a tremendous bang sounded from his left. He spun around instantly with his wand tracked on the closed door, but nothing burst through. Still, lying on his side, he kept his aim trained there until both Daphne and Astoria were up there with him.
“It has to be one of the Lestranges,” Daphne said. “They keep acting out with all of this noise. Didn’t you say that you saw long fingernails on the window?”
“I did,” Harry replied grimly.
“Then it has to be Bellatrix Lestrange.”
That was the one person that Harry didn’t want to fight. Over the many weeks that he’d been back at Grimmauld Place, Sirius had truly tried to connect with Harry on a deeper level than they’d been able to achieve before. Letters and calls through the floo network simply weren’t secure enough to let their emotions flow freely. But once he learned about Sirius’ cousin, he instantly decided that he wanted nothing to do with her.
Bellatrix was a wild witch. She worshipped Voldemort like a god and tried to enact any sick violence she could upon his enemies. Death after death followed in her wake, and even Neville’s parents hadn’t been spared from her ire.
The fact that Neville had never told Harry about what his parents suffered was simultaneously frustrating and completely understandable. Bellatrix had allegedly led her husband and brother-in-law to kill Neville’s parents back during the war, but they’d wanted to make them suffer first.
Both of Neville’s parents lived in St Mungo’s according to Cyrus. It was a sad shame that they had to suffer with their minds almost completely devoid of any knowledge of their lives before the attack. They couldn’t even recognise Neville.
That story alone was enough to make Harry wish that he could snuff their lives out forever, but he knew that he had to keep focused on the objective.
“Be extra quiet,” Astoria whispered to them. “They’re off to the left. Why don’t we circle around from the right? The manor should loop around.”
It should. If it didn’t, then the worst that they’d suffer was a bit of lost time.
Silently, they passed through a threshold to their right and entered into a long, straight corridor. There were no torches or any other sources of light to illuminate the nearly pitch-black corridor other than a large window at the end of it. The moonlight streaming in wasn’t enough to do more than show off a couple of old armchairs and a corner that led to another corridor.
They had to creep along slowly, feeling along the textured wallpaper to guide them. Harry encountered quite a few closed doors and listened carefully before passing by each one in case someone happened to be coming out of the room at that moment, but no one ever did.
A sharp cackle brought him to a halt. Glass shattered and rang out against the wooden floor somewhere else in the manor. There was a faint rumble as a door slammed open, smacking hard off of a wall.
“Come back by the fire you bloody witch!” A man’s voice boomed deeply.
“You’ll have to catch me first!” The woman—Bellatrix, Harry presumed—cackled again and took off running.
The footsteps were coming up behind them, so Harry did the first thing he could think of and quickly opened up the closest door. It was an old study with wooden panelling along the walls, a massive window behind a wooden desk. Most importantly, the room was empty.
“Get in,” Harry hissed quietly at Astoria and Daphne.
They ducked inside with him, and Harry slowly closed the door behind him. There was a narrow keyhole peeking out into the corridor, which was suddenly illuminated just a few seconds later.
“Get back here!” The same man from before shouted.
A dark shadow raced past the keyhole, followed by the man. The tip of his wand glowed with bright light as he chased after her deeper into the corridor. It was only once the light faded that Harry relaxed a touch.
“The Dementors must’ve really done a number on them,” Daphne murmured.
Astoria was walking around the study, poking through the desk’s drawers. “The longer we stay here with them like this, the more likely it is that they’ll just burst in on us and ruin everything. I bet that whatever stuff they got back from the Ministry is in their bedroom. Maybe in an attached sitting room if they have one.”
“We can’t rush into things either,” Daphne argued gently. “If we go now while they’re all worked up and happen to get caught, things will get bad instantly.”
“Every minute we spend in this manor is a risk,” Harry replied, agreeing more so with Astoria. “We’ll be careful, but we can’t wait forever. We need to get the horcrux from Gringotts before the morning when more Death Eaters or anyone else could show up here.”
His words seemed to settle things. Harry listened a bit longer and could hear distant thuds and shouting, but no one seemed to come close to their hiding place. Eventually, he cracked open the door and slipped out.
“I wish our lord would’ve left you in Azkaban!” The man shouted distantly.
The woman started singing a tune at the top of her lungs. Her voice was all scratchy and kept breaking every few seconds, but she kept at it, hitting every awful note she could. It was grating on the ears, but she seemed keen on continuing it until her voice abruptly fell silent.
As Harry poked his head around the far corner of the corridor, he finally saw the flickering light of a fire. A set of double doors at the far end of this new corridor were thrown wide open, leading into a cavernous bedroom that looked far less grand than the rest of the manor. There were shredded scraps of parchment, broken glass, and torn clothes all over the floor. A small sofa had been overturned and had a jagged gash running through it, revealing the wooden frame underneath the upholstery. The man, Harry recognised as Rodolphus, was leaned back against it, nursing a cut along the top of his head that was bleeding freely. Right in front of him lay Bellatrix Lestrange bound up and gagged. She was thrashing about, rolling around in the debris, and fighting with all of her wild might to break free.
“You should’ve listened to our lord when he told you to drink your potions,” Rodolphus chastised Bellatrix angrily. “And yes, you’ll say that it wasn’t him who told you to drink your potions. But Snape speaks with our lord’s voice in matters like this.” Rodolphus lifted up a vial full of ruby-red liquid. “This makes you better! Rabastan took it, and now he’s having his first proper night of sleep in decades. I’d be having the same thing too if you would’ve just taken your bloody potions. Now, I have to stay up all night watching over you until Snape brings you more.”
All night? That was certainly going to make things difficult.
He glanced back and saw concerned looks on Astoria and Daphne’s faces. This was going to be tricky. If their Gringotts key was in that room, then they needed to get Rodolphus and Bellatrix out of there.
Bellatrix’s thrashing was starting to get ridiculous. She looked like a child throwing a temper tantrum as she rolled around on the floor. Rodolphus looked tired of it all and just stared off into the fire.
“I have an idea,” Astoria suddenly whispered to them. “Look at all that glass on the floor. I bet it’s potion vials that Bellatrix smashed. She’s bleeding from rolling around in them, so there’s gotta be plenty of big, sharp pieces. We could use one to cut through the ropes tying her up and set her loose. A simple Levitation Charm should do the trick.”
“Brilliant,” Daphne smiled at her sister.
“You should do it,” Astoria told Daphne. “You’ve got the finest control out of all of us.”
Harry swapped places with Daphne so that she could steady her arm against the corner they were hiding behind. She took a moment eyeing the distant mess until she found a piece of glass that looked big enough. Then, all it took was a simple swish and flick to subtly lift it just barely off of the ground.
When Rodolphus wasn’t looking, Daphne carefully manoeuvred the glass down towards the ropes tied around Bellatrix’s legs. Daphne quickly went to work sawing the glass through the knot as fast as she dared. It was quite tricky with how much Bellatrix kept throwing herself around, but that also helped to make it so that Bellatrix didn’t notice what was being done.
Cutting the rope took much longer than Harry expected. He honestly thought that Bellatrix would’ve tired herself out first, but the witch seemed to have boundless energy. Eventually, Daphne managed to get through enough of the rope that Bellatrix ripped herself free with a powerful kick, and once the ropes around her legs split, the rest of them started falling away from her.
With a maniacal laugh, Bellatrix leapt to her feet and kicked Rodolphus upside the head before he had a chance to draw his wand. Then, she pounced on him and started strangling him with both hands. He choked but managed to draw his wand and hit Bellatrix with a spell that sent her flying off of him. She flew out of sight deeper into the room for a moment before she reappeared a second later, bolting out of the room. She bounced from wall to wall as she ran away, and Rodolphus was cursing her name as he chased after her.
“You’re going to kill yourself like this!” He shouted at Bellatrix.
They couldn’t wait for a better opportunity than this. Harry, Daphne, and Astoria darted forward down the hall and hurriedly entered the bedroom. It was an even bigger mess inside than Harry expected. A massive four-posted bed looked like someone had taken a knife to the bedding. The pillows were nonexistent, and the bed was covered with feathers. A pair of trunks sat near the base of the bed, both opened with a pile of junk heaped inside. On the other side of the room, Harry could hear water running from inside of the ensuite bathroom.
The three of them split apart and began scouring the room. Harry dove straight to those chests and started rifling through them, knowing that it was already in such a poor state that no one would notice if he made it even messier. Ragged robes, loose piles of knuts and sickles, and soiled undergarments sat within the first chest, but the second one had exactly what they were looking for.
Harry pulled out the large bronze key and held it aloft for the others to see. It was their signal to escape.
Just as they went to leave, footsteps sounded out in the corridor.
Cursing, Harry knew that their escape was likely cut off. Both Astoria and Daphne darted to his side, raising their wands as they readied to defend themselves. Harry considered apparating out right then, but Rodolphus seemed lucid enough to recognise the sound, and then they’d lose everything that they’d been working towards. They’d have to stun him and use a memory charm instead.
The footsteps drew closer, and Harry held his breath, a stunning spell at the forefront of his mind, just waiting to be cast.
But instead of Rodolphus, Severus Snape appeared in the doorway. He stilled upon seeing them and then raised a questioning eyebrow.
“If you were hoping to make your escape, you only have a few moments to do so,” Snape said in that silky-smooth tone of his.
Harry let out a big sigh of relief. “Where are they?”
“In the front foyer,” Snape told him. “I arrived in time to subdue Bellatrix and force her potions down her throat. Rodolphus is waiting for her to recover and then bringing her back up here.”
“We’ll need to apparate out then,” Daphne muttered. “There’s no way we can sneak past them. We’ll have to fix up the window later.”
“Any chance you can give them something to help sleep?” Harry asked Snape. “Ideally for a few hours at least.”
“What do you think I gave Bellatrix?” Snape rolled his eyes. “Rodolphus was begging for the same thing.”
Good, then that was one less problem left to cross. Now, all they had to do was steal the horcrux from Gringotts and bring the key back here before anyone noticed.
Daphne and Astoria linked arms with Harry, and the three of them disapparated away.