[Dalemain] Constellations Unknown (B)

At the far southern end of Dalemain was the large gothic inspired apartment that once belonged to Victoria Abercrombie and her husband Rawdon. Though Rawdon still lived in Dalemain he’d moved from the grand apartment he shared with his wife to a smaller suite next to his father shortly after her death. The heavy navy bedding, embroidered with silver thread to mimic the night constellations remained as it had been during her life. The heirloom 19th century vanity where the witch had sat to dress herself and have her long dark hair drawn up neatly by her maid was untouched; boxes of hairpins, rouge, and lotions still sat out where she had left them. The book shelves that flanked the large stone fireplace were still full of the books Victoria and Rawdon had put there. Tomes on human sacrifice, horcrux magic, curse creation, magical anatomy, and advanced memory magic filled the shelves along with an array of antique magical instruments.

For months after her death the room had been untouched. It was Farren who had decided to go in and slowly start going through her mother’s things. Over the last year or so the young witch had been stealing away to the big, dark rooms her mother had inhabited slowly inspecting each of her possessions. Her clothes were beautiful and ethereal, hanging perfectly still in the neatly arranged closet. Most of the family heirloom jewels had been moved from her armoire to Farren’s or back to the family vault but a few unique pieces remained in her closet, shimmering like lonely stars in the dark. There were trinket boxes, some of which Farren had failed to open no matter what magic she tried. Magical instruments both familiar and foreign were scattered around the room still, many still softly whirring and spinning. Most of them appeared to be security devices, alerting anytime someone entered the room or most likely anytime a spirit entered the room.

Farren knew that in her lifetime Victoria had been haunted by the memories of the dozens of people she’d murdered on behalf of the Dark Lord. It wasn’t until she’d started unboxing her mother’s life that she realized just how tormented and obsessed her mother was. Not only did her mother keep diaries in painstaking detail about her victims and their homes it seemed that in many of the cases her mother kept a trinket from the person or the place she had killed them. For months Farren had been pouring over her mother’s diaries and these trinkets putting together a list of whom had been impacted and when. It was like building a biography for the woman she’d known so little about. As morbid as it may have been it was more than Farren had ever known about her mother in life.  The large portrait of Victoria that hung on the wall above the fire, in her wedding gown, had been surprisingly helpful. It seemed even in death and portraiture Victoria Abercrombie was extremely superstitious and was willing to help Farren piece together a full victims list if it meant her only child knew whom to look out for.

Unknown to anyone in the family Farren had been working on this for months. She’d put another lock on the door of the apartment so that her research could remain spread on the floor undisturbed by her father or the maids. Only Farren and her house elf were allowed in the room which was a well known fact amongst the house staff. When Beatryx Abercrombie had moved from her home in Germany the family estate this had put a bit of a damper on Farren’s research. The apartment Victoria inhabited was on the same hall as the suite given to Beatryx.

To avoid conflicts with Bea she had started only working in the room when she knew Bea would be gone. The youngest Abercrombie was a social girl so it wasn’t particularly hard to find time to sneak up to the apartment, unlock the door and spend a couple hours pouring over her mother’s writings and examining the trinkets within. This evening though was taking a turn for the unexpected. In the middle of one of the diaries things had taken a very strange turn. Amongst her mother’s typical writing about feeling stalked by ghosts and demons and her condemnation of other Death Eaters several pages had been torn out of the binding. The following pages were filled with splotchy ink scribbles as if her mother had taken to the page with her quill in a fit of rage, scribbling in dark circles. The last page in the journal had a drawing on it, something like a diagram of a constellation but it was not one that Farren knew off the top of her head. Underneath in her mother’s writing were the words ‘He made me do it. I had to punish her. It was her or her.’

Unsure of what to make of all this Farren had sent her house elf to the library to get the most comprehensive book on constellations she could find. Perhaps if she found this diagram and what it was it would help her understand what exactly her mother had been saying. Sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace in her dressing gown, hair loose, Farren carefully copied the drawing into her own notes. Beside her was a plate of snacks, tea, and candies the elf had brought up previously. Across the room she had turned on her father’s old gramophone, a mediocre concerto of some kind was wafting through the room and out the door the elf had left cracked open. It didn’t occur to Farren that it was late enough for Bea to be returning from whatever thing she had had planned that night. Nor did she realize until she heard the click of high heels in the hall that the elf had left the door open.

She paused laying her quill down debating what she should do for a moment. Farren adored her young cousin but so far had not had much time to spend bonding with her. Having grown up on the continent Beatryx had been very removed from all things Abercrombie during the war. Beatryx had spent very little time with Victoria and only slightly more with Farren up until now. Perhaps it was time to change all that. “Beatryx…..” Farren called out into the hallway.


@Beatryx Abercrombie

uhhhh idk lets just go w/ it blame the sickness and the drugs?

  The biting January wind ruffled Beatryx's hair as she stepped outside of the tearoom and into the street. Fastening a cloak matching her dress around her shoulders, she slid her wand out briefly and murmured a charm to keep her exposed arms warm.  Never one to rest on her laurels even so soon after the holiday season, the young socialite had been busy packing her schedule with opportunities to rub shoulders with others. Growing up on the continent set her at an initial disadvantage to her peers in British society who had attended Hogwarts together, but arguably gave her a hint of intrigue that she was going to use to the fullest extent. Today, she had painted on a sweet if entirely false smile for some twenty-something deputy department head from the British Ministry over jasmine tea and scones. The girl was pureblood if utterly middle class, and flattered for the invitation whilst initially on guard for Beatryx asking any probing questions. The young Abercrombie had watched the girl visibly relax opposite her during their conversation, reassurance creeping in when Beatryx kept their conversation strictly friendly. False warmth had coloured her tone throughout, and the girl had echoed it with frankily foolish enthusiasm. Of course Beatryx wouldn't start utilising the girl on their first private engagement - first, a friendship had to be crafted from the bottom up. The key was to make useful people want to share information. Bea didn't need anything from her yet; for now, she would lay down a groundwork of poisonously insincere smiles and invitations to establishments entirely out of a public servant's budget. Naturally, Beatryx had picked up the bill herself today, and would continue to do so in the future.

  A self-satisfied smile graced her face before she turned smoothly and apparated, picturing Dalemain's extensive driveway with practiced ease. A moment of discomfort later, the familiar gravel appeared beneath her feet. It wasn't possible to apparate into Dalemain directly, but that was a mild inconvenience to trade in the name of security. Barely a second had passed before a house elf appeared beside the young witch, welcoming her back and offering to take her into the manor. Beatryx had always thought it rather interesting that the subservient creatures appeared impervious to wards that even powerful wizards could not surpass. Wordlessly she took the hand of the female elf, and a beat later they were in the main foyer of the grand house. It was starting to feel like home now, she supposed. As much as a place so expansive that its own inhabitants regularly lost track of each other could feel like home, anyway. Unfastening her cloak with fingers a touch stiff from the external weather, she slid it from her shoulders and handed it to the elf still beside her.

  "Tiffy, put this with my other cloaks and have a pot of Darjeeling waiting for me in my quarters." The elf nodded obediently and vanished. Beatryx could have had the creature take her to her quarters directly, but it seemed unnecessarily lazy to use them to get about within the house when time was not pressing. Instead she ascended the main staircase slowly, heels clicking against the polished marble. Her rooms were in the southernmost wing of Dalemain, an area where she remained relatively undisturbed. She had been told that her Uncle Rawdon had lived there before the end of the war with her Aunt Victoria. After Farren's mother had died, Rawdon had receded from the south wing and into himself almost entirely; Beatryx could count on one hand the number of times that she had crossed paths with him in her time here. Thus her arrival here had prompted a glimmer of life returning to this part of the house for the first time since the fateful final battle of the war. It was rare that anybody but the house elves ventured over to her suite, the spectre of the former mistress of the manor seeming to hang over it for those who still had memories of her. Beatryx was relatively lost in thought as she contemplated this; so much so that she jumped as Ren's disembodied voice called her name. Catching her breath for a moment to regain her composure, the witch creased her brow slightly as the tinkling notes of an unfamiliar piece of music echoed down the hall towards her.

  "Farren?" She answered after a moment, quickening her pace towards the source of her cousin's call before stopping abruptly before the only door cracked open on the hallway. Bea had assumed that Ren had been waiting in her suite, but the only door ajar on the hallway was one that Beatryx had thought permanently closed. The late Victoria Abercrombie's door was open, and Beatryx felt a prickling sensation at the back of her neck when she realised that her aunt had been on her mind just moments ago. What was Farren doing in there? She laid a hand gently on the door, feeling as though she was trespassing upon forbidden ground. Her uncle would likely erupt if he thought this place was being disturbed by an uninvited guest, and she had never been one to break rules. Well, rules set by family members anyway. As the door swung open, she swallowed as its hinges whined in protest. The doors of Dalemain in frequent use were kept magically oiled; Victoria's absent quarters had been left in the state she had last used them in. There was no need to maintain a door that wasn't expected to be used again. Until now.

  "Are we allowed to be in here?" The witch asked, uncertainty in her voice. Beatryx took a moment to assess the sight before her whilst she waited for an answer. Farren had a tray before her with refreshments - clearly, this had been a planned excursion. Further, her cousin was surrounded by an assortment of papers, lit by candlelight that cast odd shadows over the dusty furniture in the disused room. Dust particles danced in the flickering light. The air felt stale. She turned on the spot, casting her gaze over the assortment of humming instruments and well-used books. Durmstrang had a more liberal syllabus than Hogwarts, and the majority of the magics listed on the tomes lining the shelves were familiar to Beatryx. Still, she felt the that earlier prickling sensation as she made note of just how well used some of the darker texts appeared. Magics that had been so dark that even Durmstrang would teach the mere existence of and nothing more at NEWT level were present. Bea's father had warned her not to make mention of just how deeply entrenched in the Dark Lord's work that Victoria had been, but to see just how extreme some of the most well-thumbed texts here were... Well, there was no doubt that Farren's mother had been an extremely accomplished witch. The toll that such magics took on the body and mind... Bea considered herself enamoured with the dark arts, but never to the point of attempting even half of the material lining the walls here. Horcruxes. Merlin, there had to be fewer than a dozen wizards alive in the country with truly extensive knowledge of how to create one.

  She turned her attention back to her cousin. Rawdon almost certainly did not want it publicly known that Victoria had been so deeply corrupted by the toxic power of the Dark Lord. If somebody at the ministry were ever to discover even a fraction of the illegal information here, Beatryx had no doubt that much stronger attempts would be made to dig into the family history. If they were smart, these books would be removed and hidden away somewhere much more secure. No doubt her uncle would treat such a suggestion as blasphemy. That made it even more strange that Farren was here, given the plausible deniability granted by having never set foot in here had been lost as soon as Farren - and now Beatryx - had done so. "What..." She trailed off momentarily, unsure of how to proceed without sounding accusatory. "What are you doing in here?"

Farren turned, looking over her shoulder at her younger cousin as the girl appeared in the doorway. Everyone in the house knew what this room was so it was unsurprising that the girl seemed hesitant to enter. She waited though, silently watching the girl as she stood hesitant in the entrance, taking in the scene before her. Though her mother’s affiliations were well known in the family it was probably rather different being invited into the inner most lair.

Several of the instruments lining the shelves and tables of the room began to whirl faster. One began to screech loudly and shake. Calmly Farren lifted her hand and with a wave silenced the instrument hardly looking away from her cousin as she did. She hadn’t quite expected the girl to seem so alarmed by all of this but her cousin’s rigid sense of order seemed to be steering her towards thinking it was wrong to invade the sanctity of a dead woman’s private space.

“I’m allowed to be anywhere I please,” the elder witch said cooly. She looked down at her lap, placing her quill in the page of her notebook where she’d drawn the mystery constellation and carefully closed it. Setting it to the side she stood up, unfolding her long legs from under her airy layers of sheer silk skirting which illuminated in a ghostly way against the dancing candle light of the dim room.

A third voice cut through the silence from further inside the room yet, “Who is there Farren?”  Above the fireplace the barely visible portrait of Victoria stirred and stood in the frame trying to see who was beyond her daughter.

“It’s just cousin Beatryx. I told you she was occupying the suites at the end of the hall now,” Farren responded matter of factly to the portrait. “I thought she should know that I come here often, perhaps she can help me.”

Clad in a classically beautiful white dress, her long white veil pulled back from her face the portrait of young Victoria stared from her daughter to the young girl in the doorway. The portrait was startlingly similar to the witch standing before it, if it wasn’t for her dark eyes Victoria and Farren could have easily been sisters at this age. “I don’t like this….you can’t trust them, Nyx is too soft,” Victoria hissed from her frame to her child.

“Beatryx is trustworthy and she’s not like her father. She is like us,” Farren said calmly, “Besides if you aren’t going to tell me what this non-sense is about I have to figure it out somehow and Beatryx is a smart girl.”

A disconcerted hissing came from the portrait and she shook her head, “You can’t solve that one. It’s destroyed for a reason. For your own good. I won’t help you and she can’t either. Do what you want with the child but I’m not helping you with this one,” the young Victoria grew testy and with a disproving shake of her head disappeared from the frame entirely. Other portraits on the walls responded in kind, the elderly witches and wizards had obviously been eaves dropping as many of them seemed to shift slightly at Victoria’s exit. There was a whimper from a large dalmatian portrait on one wall and the handsome dog jumped up and bolted out of frame as well.

Farren rolled her eyes, even in art her mother’s dog was overly sensitive to her tantrums.  Turning towards the door she ushered her cousin into the room. “I am the mistress of this house now and I won’t be told where I can and can’t be by a dead woman. Even one as scary in life as my mother.”  She reached for the oil lamp on the table nearest her and moved towards Bea slowly. Face to face with her younger cousin Farren stood before the young witch. The lamp in her hand was held up illuminating both of their faces in the dull, warm light. “Come inside, properly,” she said her cool eyes sweeping over the younger witch before she turned and walked back the area in front of the fire place where she’d set up her little work station.

Setting the oil lamp back on the table Farren took a seat on the settee leaving room for her cousin beside her. From here the full scale of the project underway was visible. There were stacks of boxes to one side of the floor, tins, paper boxes, jewelry boxes, all varying in size but most small enough to pocket. A stack of identical navy leather diaries were stacked next to them. Each was bound on with a heavy silver lock with no key hole. In the center of the floor was a long parchment roll, unfurled to reveal what appeared to be a timeline with dozens of names, dates, and locations filled in. Scraps of parchment with notes scrawled on them littered the floor along with Farren’s own notebook and her ink tray. In the middle of the mess were two wands. Farren’s wand was easy to recognize, the light almost white wood was smooth and thin. The other wand was dark, the wood smooth but curved at the base where the wood was obviously knotted. Both wands had similar silver filigree handles of wild flowers and vines twisting up them leading one to assume they were somehow related.

“You’re aware what my mother did during the war I know,” Farren began after giving her cousin a moment to take in the scene. “You are probably aware to some extent how it tortured her even. Well….unknown to myself she kept painstaking details of all those….events. From the beginning her work is documented in detail in her personal diaries. I started coming in here a year after her death to just tidy up, it seemed ridiculous to leave the space intact like she was going to be coming back. I started with just her clothes and jewels, that was easy enough to clean out and have prepared for storage or moved to the vault. Then in her jewelry chest I found a drawer of boxes, dozens and dozens of boxes. The first ones had nothing special in them, a rock, a skeleton key, a silver spoon, then I found a necklace with the Bones family crest in one, a medal of high military honor bestowed by the muggle Queen, then I found some teeth…..”

The witch paused watching her cousin’s face carefully for a sign she should stop. “It was then I realized these were trophies. I collected all of them from the chest and started documenting what was in each box. Then a couple months later I found her diaries and it became easier to understand what belonged to whom and when she had collected it.” Farren stopped her lips pursed tightly as she waited for Bea’s response. Maybe the witch wouldn’t understand why she was bothering with this. Bea grew up in a peaceful home with a doting enough mother and father. There was never any doubt about what her own parents may or may not be guilty of and who may or may not have a death wish for them. The answer was no one. Nyx Abercrombie had been moved to Europe to protect the family and he’d carried out his duty marrying a boring German woman and raising boringly innocent kids.

“So far I’ve traced twenty seven cases. There are at least a dozen boxes I can’t open though and they all seem to be related to this diary entry I found from what appears to be 1997. Something bad happened in 1997 and she won’t tell me what and she won’t help me figure it out.”

  Beatryx blanched at the unexpected third voice, and was further disconcerted to realise that it was the voice of Victoria herself. Well, not truly her - it was a portrait of the woman in her prime, her face twisted in disapproval. Uncomfortable, she allowed Farren to handle the woman's protests, though she felt a flicker of irritation at the accusation that her father was soft. It was true that his beliefs weren't as fervent as Bea's, but he had stood with the side of the family that backed the Dark Lord and maintained that stance through Beatryx's life. It would have bee easy once set up on the continent and fueled by Kirschbaum money to distance himself from the family quietly if he had wanted. But he hadn't; Nyx had instilled a loyalty to the Abercrombie way in Beatrx with a ferocity that any simpering Gryffindor would be taken aback by. Still, it wasn't worth engaging in a debate as to how much she could be trusted with a portrait that could only echo the person it depicted. Whilst magical portraits could offer insight as to the person in them, there were limits to how much of their subject that could truly be recreated. Here, Victoria was immortalised beautifully. Her likeness to her daughter was truly something.

  Her curiosity was piqued by the exchange between Farren and Victoria as the tension between them heightened. It seemed that Ren was searching for the answers to something that Victoria was purposely withholding. A power struggle of sorts looked to be taking place, before Victoria gave in and flounced out of her frame. There was a palpable reaction in the other portraits that Bea hadn't realised were listening - in a family home as old as Dalemain, every wall truly did have eyes and ears. A further question was poised on her lips when Farren began to speak again, and so Bea obediently entered the room properly, clicking the door closed softly behind her. Sensing that the conversation was to take a more serious turn, Beatryx straightened her spine as Farren continued, explaining the task she had been completing.

  So Victoria had collected trophies... Good grief. Beatryx liked to think that if she was ever required to kill a person that she'd leave them behind in the ground once she was done. What use was a trophy for anything but self-congratulation or flagellation? Obviously, Victoria hadn't indulged in the former. The latter had tortured her, but never enough to waver her dedication from her master. It was almost admirable the extent to which she had placed her loyalty to his cause above all else. Almost, because she had allowed that same loyalty to eat her from the inside out. Bea hadn't had a chance to bear witness to her aunt's descent, but from what she did know, the Victoria that died had been a mere shadow of the woman in the portrait over the fireplace. It was hard to find a way to rationalise pity for the woman's act of keeping trinkets from those she had so obviously slaughtered; what purpose could they possibly serve but to inform those that she had left behind of the true extent of her sins?

  "Twenty-seven." The witch breathed, surprised by the figure. Twenty-seven murders that Farren had been able to attribute to her mother so far. It was a surprise in all honesty that the evidently prolific extent of Victoria's murders hadn't given cause for the public to come bearing down on Dalemain, baying for blood. Her method of remembering her crimes may not have been all that logical, but there was no denying that Victoria Abercrombie had been formidably skilled at carrying out the tasks Lord Voldemort gave her without being charged with and executed for them. Gaius Purcell had evaded being put to death due to what she assumed to be the weak nature of the new ministry, and the fact that he had not technically ordered murder. Victoria had carried out murder repeatedly and consistently. For a moment of morbid indulgence, Bea wondered how she had killed them.

  "1997?" She questioned. Her dark train of thought from before was disrupted by the apparent mystery before her. She crossed what was left of the space between her and Farren's timeline in quick, purposeful steps, bending to examine the parchment with a furrowed brow. "What do you have right now of the timeline for that year? Is it all missing, or only part?" The witch pored over Farren's elegant script intently, piecing together what she could of what Farren had managed to put together. This obviously wouldn't be as simple as asking what had happened in 1997 - it was frankly the culmination of Lord Voldemort's move on consolidating power over society. People had disappeared every day; those who hadn't returned after the war had evidently been too unlucky to make it out alive. She doubted anybody was aware of the true extent of the figures that could be attributed to murders carried out by the Dark Lord and his followers in that time. In fact, 1997 was almost unremarkable in comparison to previous events on Ren's timeline before her - what would stand out about a death during that time?

  She straightened up again, facing her cousin with a quizzical expression. "Your mother left so much behind..." She gestured to the diaries before them, scattered around Ren's improvisatory work station. "Enough to tie the deaths of twenty seven people to her hand. Farren... For her to find that palatable, but not whatever happened in 1997 - it must have been something she found truly awful." The question was, what on earth could that be? The deceased witch had been desensitised to the atrocities she was asked to commit, if not to the way that their deaths rested on her conscience afterwards. By the time in question, Beatryx couldn't imagine what could have rattled her enough to have destroyed the evidence in her own private sanctuary. Whatever it was - whoever it was, it had left such an imprint on her identity that even Victoria's portrait didn't want the misdeed to be discovered.

  There was clearly a fork in the path forward - accept that Victoria's dying wish was that nobody would ever discover the missing truth of 1997, or pursue the mystery to its conclusion. The first was the easier, and certainly the more instinctive one. But Beatryx glanced over her cousin, wondering what it would have been like to be raised by a woman entirely subsumed by a cause that eventually extinguished her life. If it was her own mother... Beatryx would want to know. That settled it. If it came down to loyalty, well - Victoria was Abercrombie by marriage. Farren was Abercrombie by blood. And to Beatryx, blood would always prevail.

  "Tell me more about what methods you've tried to open the boxes so far."

Farren nodded slowly as Bea mouthed the staggering number and took in the collection before her. “From what I gather, she took them as proof. The Dark Lord….he was merciless if he felt his followers had not carried out their assignment properly,” she said softly as she allowed her cousin to process what was unfolding before her. “It would seem what started as an insurance policy for her own safety grew into something more as the mental struggle of it all snowballed overtime. At least that is what I can glean from her writings though I can’t make sense of it myself.” She watched thoughtfully as her cousin surveyed the cases, the wheels in her mind turning, the young dark witch was likely intrigued by all of this more than she would admit.


“There are thorough records for January through March. April records do not detail anything….work related. It’s personal only. There are only two events recorded in May and June combined along with a handful of personal notes. Then there are bizarre undated entries I have yet to untangle. They all lead up to this one which seems to fall in summer 1997 and perhaps relate to these unopened boxes.”

Farren pursed her lips as she glanced down at her work on the floor. There was nothing else to say as her younger cousin worked through the sheer sickness of the situation. It wasn’t like her to lash out and hush the younger witch so she let her go on once more about the staggering scope of her mother’s crimes. She had to remember that Beatryx had not grown up exposed to a mother who murdered on a regular basis and a father who dismantled corpses as a hobby. This should be shocking, she was just jaded.


Glad to hear Beatryx was ready to move on from the volume to the problem Farren rose from the settee. “Well. Most of the boxes and cases were charmed shut with a spell she created. A locking spell that is tied to the caster’s wand and unique hand motion. Getting ahold of her wand was easy enough of course. The hand motion was more difficult but after studying her journals and several dozen photographs of her dueling I managed that too. However that was not used on these twelve boxes,” Farren started explaining very matter of factly. The fact that her mother had created spells was nothing noteworthy to her nor a witch of Bea’s accomplishments. Nor would it be that impressive that Farren had been able to master her mother’s work with a little study.

Crouching on the floor Farren picked up a small silver trinket box and the two wands from the floor. She sat the silver box on the side table next to Beatryx so she could observe directly from her seat. Carefully Farren hooked a small silver hook on the handle of her ashen wand around the thin belted waist of her dressing gown, the wand hanging from her hip. Raising the dark bone wand in her hand she aimed her mothers wand at the box, “Ingressum
Privatus!” she bellowed as the wand swished through the air elaborately. A stream of purple light poured from the tip of the wand and hit the box clanking it against the table.

Farren stepped to the table and demonstrated for Bea that the lid was still sealed shut, “See, it’s not her personal locking spell. I’ve tried of course all the generic locking and opening spells we learned in school.”  Shaking her head she sat the box back down and took a step back.

Drawing her mothers wand again she pointed it at the box pausing as if in thought. Her dark brows furrowed , hastily she reached down to her waist and unclipped her own wand taking it in her left hand. She squared her shoulders flexing her hands adjusting the wands in her hands. With her mother’s wand in her dominant hand, her own in her weaker hand she began firing a string of advanced spells at the box. Raising her mother’s wand to the box first she’d call out a spell, her own wand drawn back and down, then she’d switch her left hand moving forward quickly to repeat the same spell, “Patentibus! Patentibus! Deficere Maximus! Deficere Maximus!
Dare Ostium! Dare Ostium!”

The box rattled and shook on the table as it was hit with spell after spell from both wands. After about ten spells Farren lowered both the wands and reached for the box. “Nothing,” she concluded to Beatryx defeat heavy in her tone. Looking over at the younger witch she stared at her for a moment her expression blank. “I wonder…” she whispered. Her eyes moved from Beatryx to the box.

“There’s one thing….I haven’t tried…it seems foolish and it may destroy it but…” an almost devious spark lit her eyes quickly as she stepped towards Beatryx in a long sweeping glide. The left hand that held her own ashen wand in it extended to hold Beatryx out of the way. Pushing the younger witch back on the sofa, her arm acting as a guard rail, her body between her cousin and the box Farren raised her right hand brandishing her mother’s wand. With a confidence she was even surprised by she flourished the wand at the box, “AVADA KEDAVRA!”

A blinding green light shot from the end of her mothers wand and hit the box. The small table shot over knocking the box across the floor. Skidding across the floor smoke rose from the silver box and it clanked as it fell apart at the hinges. Farren gasped, half laughing in shock at the stupid luck of the situation. Quickly she looked over her shoulder at Beatryx before darting across the floor, quickly falling to her knees to scoop up the box and pull it’s contents from inside.

“It worked! It worked!” she gasped breathlessly as she fumbled with the burning hot metal box. As soon as she picked it up she fished her long fingers inside, the velvet inside as scorched. It burned but she didn’t care. Something hot and metal struck her fingers and from inside she pulled a small metal key. Raising it in her hand she stared at it. There was nothing remarkable about this item. It looked like a house key, a modern one at that. Turning it over in her hand looking for markings she saw none but it didn’t really matter.