Family Ties

Chapter 2 - Jack & Gary

As they traipsed up the stairs towards their dorm rooms, full and sleepy after the feast, Neville Longbottom joined them, carrying what looked like an octopus tentacle in a plant pot. It had lesions like boils all over it, and there was a faint smell of old horse manure. "What the hell is that, Neville?" asked Seamus in a revolted voice.

"Mimbulus mimbletonia. It's from Assyria! I'm just going to the library to get a book on looking after it, see you in the dorm room!"

Seamus turned to Dean, "Isn't that the password? Weird coincidence!"

"Yeah, I hope that thing isn't going to leave the dorm smelling like that all year, though."

They climbed through the portrait hole and headed up to their dorm, waving at Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil who were whispering by the fire. Dean was exhausted, but started to unpack, lifting out his treasured West Ham poster and tacking it to the wall above his bed before rummaging for his pyjamas.

"What are you going to say to Harry?" Dean asked.

"Dunno; I'm not gonna lie if he asks about my summer."

Dean thought it'd be best to get all this out in the open so it wouldn't fester too long, and wondered how to slip it into conversation. He was just tugging on his pyjama bottoms when the door opened and Neville came in, followed by Harry. Neville was placing his Mimbulus mimbletonia on his beside table like it was made of glass.

Dean smiled at Harry, who was looking a little unnerved. "Hey, Harry. Good Holiday?"

Harry looked subdued "Not bad," he almost whispered. "You?"

"Yeah, it was okay." He laughed nervously. "It was better than Seamus's anyway, he was just telling me."

Seamus told Harry about his mother's belief of the Daily Prophet's stories, and Harry got very agitated, banging about getting ready for bed. Dean watched Seamus staring at Harry's back; he tried several times to start a sentence.

"Look... what did happen that night when... you know, when... with Cedric Diggory and all?" Seamus asked.

Dean had been reaching for his slippers, but stopped, wondering if Harry would answer; he hadn't wanted to talk about it in June.

"What are you asking me for? Just read the Daily Prophet like your mother, why don't you? That'll tell you all you need to know."

Dean listened to them argue and felt a lump of foreboding settle in his stomach. This year was going to be different; it might well get very bad.

* ~ *

Dean awoke the next morning, trying to cling on to the details of the dream this time, but again all he could remember was the corridor that wound in alternating directions, and a shadowy figure moving ahead, always disappearing around the next corner just as he got to the one before.

His suspicions about this year being different were proven the next morning when Seamus almost fled the dorm room without even looking at Harry. Dean told Harry not to worry about it and headed after Seamus for some breakfast before his meeting with McGonagall.

After she distributed the timetables, she took him into her office and lectured him about working harder for five full minutes.

"... there's no reason why a student should not be able to pass a core subject such as History of Magic. The teachers are here to support you at all times. Now, fortunately, we have a system here of make-up essays set by the heads of houses. So, I decided to give you a more recent history to write about. I know you've got a little interest in journalism, so I'd like you to submit twenty-four inches of parchment on the Daily Prophet's coverage of the end of You-Know-Who's reign. You can pick a particular case or trial or whatever you feel drawn to. I'll give you a month, since your coursework is going to be a heavy load from the start. You have been warned. Off you go." She shooed him out the door, and Dean set off miserably for History of Magic.

After three quarters of an hour spent doodling a giant repeatedly hitting another giant over the head with a large club, Dean listened to Professor Binns's essay assignment. He struggled through Potions without attracting too much wrath from Snape. Although he picked on Harry, if possible, even more than usual; vanishing his potion, which was no worse than what he himself had produced, and definitely better than Neville's, which looked like porridge and clung like melted caramel to the spoon he was stirring it with.

After lunch, he and Seamus headed up to the North Tower for Divination. This term they were studying dream interpretation, which Dean was almost looking forward to. Maybe he could get to the bottom of that recurring dream about that dark, zigzagging corridor.

Leaving Seamus to sit with pretty Anna from their year, for whom Seamus had been nursing a soft spot for since the Yule ball, Dean sat down next to Neville.

As soon as Trelawney started the class, Neville promptly launched into a long-winded explanation of a dream involving his Grandmother's hat and a giant pair of scissors. While pretending to listen intently, Dean turned the pages of his textbook under the pretence of looking for the explanation for Neville's dream, though he was really looking for his own. The Dream Oracle told him it meant he was running headlong into danger. Dean decided to research dream interpretation in the library, away from Trelawney's book choices.

Dean went to the library that very night, partly to start work on his catch-up essay and partly to escape the gossips in the common room. Harry had finally broken his silence in front of the whole class, and worse, no-one seemed to believe him. Dean had never had any reason to doubt Harry before, and what he and Dumbledore claimed had happened made sense. The only thing that Dean couldn't figure out was why the Ministry and the Daily Prophet would try so hard to suppress the news. Could they really be in denial that much, to risk letting him get a foothold again?

Right now he didn't care, he just wanted to get started. Maybe if he got started properly he'd get it in before it was due and earn some extra brownie points. He asked Madam Pince where the Daily Prophet archives were, and settled down for a long search.

After working backwards from Voldemort's disappearance for an hour, he found a paper from 1980. A prominent arrest and conviction had been made in August of that year, Jack Webster. Apparently, he was a high level Death Eater with many crimes to his name. He had received a life sentence in Azkaban. The middle spreads were dedicated to his crimes and his victims. There was an entire page devoted to the witches and wizards he had tortured into insanity or had imperiurised to commit suicide or atrocities.

The inside was covered in pictures of the eight people he murdered. Alice Derring, nineteen, found in her new flat in Manchester; Alan Landon, twenty-seven, worked for the ministry in International Cooperation, found in the phone box: the visitors' entrance to the Ministry; Janine Bodley, just six years old, found in her parents garden--her father had been head of the Auror office at the time; Darren Rowley, fifty-one, discovered at the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron; Jason and Kimberly Wilbert, thirty-six and thirty-four, found at their Sussex flat; Dawn Sheldon, twenty, worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures; Gary Heaton, twenty-eight, found in Piccadilly circus, rumoured to work in the Department of Mysteries.

Dean felt a chill, looking at the photograph above this caption. The young black man winked and smiled at the camera, looking out straight into Dean's eyes. He looks... familiar... thought Dean. But how could he? I was only born when all this happened. Still, the curve of the jaw line, the shape of the nose, the untameable curly hair were all strikingly familiar.

He looked around the deserted library, glanced at his watch, and quickly packed up. It was nearly nine o'clock, and if he was caught out of the tower after nine he'd be in trouble. He asked Madam Pince to borrow the book of newspapers for the month of August 1980.

"Where could I find out more about the victims in this article?"

She looked at him piercingly. "Well, there would have been full articles about the crime itself when it happened."

Dean scanned the caption quickly. "February fifteenth, 1980."

Madam Pince took the newspaper and scanned the headline. "Oh, that's the last one he killed. They found him with his next victim, poor woman" She went to the archives and brought back another bound book of newspaper clippings. "Two is your limit, due back next Wednesday."

Dean trudged back to Gryffindor Tower, his mind as heavy as the books he was carrying.