The Lightning Letters

THE LIGHTNING LETTERS 2.

The following month, Iris made her way to the Hogarth Museum, a tall, grey stone building that housed the majority of artefacts from the Dark Age.

It had taken her three weeks to gain a permit from the Council in order to see the original Lightning Letters. The Council was very sensitive as to who had access to their precious artefacts; especially when they were as important and prestigious as the Lightning Letters. After a great deal of toing and froing, Iris's application had (grudgingly) been accepted.

Truthfully, Iris wasn't overly fond of the Museum. The archives were run by goblins, and they took their job very seriously. Iris knew that before the Dark Age, they had run Britain's largest wizarding bank. Now they protected their artefacts as much as they had done their treasure. Iris had had to, of course, use the archives to a great extent whilst researching her first three books and, although she was now quite a familiar face, the goblins were still suspicious of her. There was many a time she was reading a text when a calculating, bearded face would come leaning out from behind a bookshelf, just to make sure she wasn't doing anything wrong. It made Iris very nervous indeed.

She had just handed her accepted application to the goblin-in-charge (who had rewarded her with a suspicious look) when she felt a hand on her arm, and a voice said, "excuse me... is it Miss Henderson?"

Iris looked round and into the face of a man she was quite sure she had never seen before in her life. He looked a few years older than she, with bright blue eyes, dark brown hair and a smattering of freckles.

"Yes..." she answered confusedly.

The man smiled at her. "Don't look quite so worried!" he laughed. "You don't know me, so you definitely haven't forgotten my name or anything like that. I'm Royal Deayton. I work in the Ancient Artefacts Department of the Museum here. I recognised you from your book sleeve photograph- so I just had to come over and tell you how much I enjoyed all three."

"Oh! Well- thank-you!" Iris was still young enough to flush when praised.

"So what are you working on now?" Royal continued.

"Well, I'm here to research the Lightning Letters for my next book."

"Really! How fascinating. Are you trying to solve the mystery? I've always had a soft spot for those letters. They seem to be the first thing that finally made people realise that the famous figures from the Dark Age were real, living individuals, not simply just names."

"Exactly!" said Iris. At last, someone who understood! "I quite agree."

"I already knew that from the way you wrote," Royal smiled. "Well, if you'll excuse me. I must get back to work. I hope to see you soon, Miss Henderson."

"Good-bye. And thank-you."

With a cheerful wave, Royal was gone. Iris focused her attention back to the rather disgruntled-looking goblin, offering him a wavering smile. Needless to say, it was not returned.

***

"YES!!! POTTER BE PRAISED!!"

Iris jumped ten feet in the air and nearly scattered the very fragile Lightning Letters everywhere when this loud proclamation was literally screamed from somewhere in the dark recesses of the archives. Iris clutched her chest. Who was this person to be shouting when some people were trying to work?? The man deserved a dressing-down!

Iris got up from her rather uncomfortable desk and stalked through the stacks, following a distinct if disjointed mumble:

"Third one from the left, yes... that's it... now these two- yes! It all fits!!"

Iris rounded a corner to come face-to-face with Royal Deayton, who was sitting on the floor surrounded by an absolute sea of old photographs, each one waving cheerfully up at them. When Iris saw Deayton's joyful, lit-up face, she just couldn't stay angry at him any longer.

"Miss Henderson!" he cried, grinning like a fool. "I'm terribly sorry if I disturbed you! It's just- that I do believe that I've found an early picture of Ron and Hermione Weasley!"

"Really?" answered Iris, immediately interested. There were many pictures of Hermione and Ron in later life, surrounded by their numerous children and looking old and grey. Iris knew of only two pictures that survived of them at an earlier age, and both of these were badly damaged.

"Yes! I was re-reading the letter Ron sent to Hermione during their first year in the Order- you know the one- when they talked about the previous summer at the Burrow, and how they looked so happy in the photographs, with Charles recovering from the Lighthouse Raid and Bill looking after him. Well, you may not know of it, but Daniel Lawrence, a top-notch researcher in my department found a photograph of Bill Weasley several months ago, when he was still working for Gringotts Bank in the 1990s."

"Yes, I do believe that I heard something about it," answered Iris.

"Well, I know it was a long shot, but I decided that in my spare time I'd look through the files of photographs to see if the photo mentioned in the letter still existed. Now that I knew what Bill looked like, and that Charles would be hurt, I could begin to search. It's taken me two months, but it's been worth it. Look!"

Royal shoved the photograph into Iris's hand. She looked down. It showed a family scene, one that she had seen a hundred times in other photographs. The archive had thousand upon thousands of photographs from the Dark Age. The problem was, nobody knew who the people in them were, and if they had even survived the war.

There were four people in the scene, three with shiningly bright red hair. One boy, who looked about Iris's age, was sat on a chair in the middle of the picture, leg obviously hurt and propped up on a stool. Another, slightly older man with long red hair drawn up into a ponytail was talking to him, not looking into the camera. Then, in the foreground sat two slightly younger people: a beaming boy with the same bright hair as the other two, and a rather pretty girl with curly brown hair. They were holding hands and smiling into the camera.

"Is- is that them?" Iris asked in wonderment, touching the picture tentatively with a finger.

"Yes," said Royal softly. "They would have just been 18."

Just then, the stance the boy and girl changed. They were looking out to the side of the photograph, obviously at somebody else. Then the boy (Ron?) was beckoning to the unseen person, and the girl looked like she was sighing exasperatedly.

Both Iris and Royal gasped at what happened next.

Another boy bashfully entered into the scene. He looked shy, he was grinning good-naturedly, head down and not looking at the camera. He was very different to the other pictures Iris had seen of him, when he had looked older, more battle-worn, more calculating, more dangerous. But Iris knew that face.

It was Harry Potter.

She, Iris Henderson, was holding in her hand the just-discovered and oldest known photograph of Harry Potter. EVER.

"Well," said Royal rather shakily. "I wasn't expecting that."

***

"You must wonder why I was so excited when I found the photograph," said Royal sheepishly a few hours later. After both staring at the photograph for ages, Royal had rushed off to show it to the Head Commissioner of the Museum, and Iris had, rather reluctantly, gone back to her own work. They had agreed to meet up for tea to discuss what had happened, and so here they were.

"Not at all," said Iris almost truthfully. "The photograph contained three of the most famous figures of the Dark Age. It had been left forgotten for hundreds of years. Anyone would have been slightly overwhelmed."

"It's just- well, about four years ago, I had a blood tracing spell put on me. Just a bit of fun, you know- and the mediwitch discovered, quite by accident, that I was somehow related to Hermione and Ronald."

"Really!" gasped Iris. "How interesting!"

Royal's face shone. "I know," he said. "Just think- all my life I've read about these people, I've spent the last ten years or so devoting my life to finding out more about them, and I was related to two of them, real Dark Age heroes, the best friends of Harry Potter all this time, and I never knew it!"

"Do you know how exactly you are related to them?" Iris asked.

"No," Royal replied. "At least, not yet. I have been researching my family tree, but it was so long ago, and the records are so patchy. During the Restoration the magical community had more important things to worry about than keeping completely accurate records. But I'm making slow progress. How about you? You are trying to discover the writer of the Lightning Letters, aren't you? So you don't believe it was Hermione?"

"Certainly not! I don't know how that theory came to be so popular."

"I agree," said Royal. "I suppose the romantic in me would like to think that Ron and Hermione were very happily married. And after researching them both, the evidence does seem to point that way. They had six children together, you know- they both seemed so content, and had such a long life together. I just can't believe that she was involved in a passionate affair with Harry all that time and then just went and married Ron."

"Neither do I," said Iris. "And I don't think it was Virginia, either."

"And so what's your theory?"

"It's someone who was secretive, meticulous and careful. You know that the letters never refer to anyone specifically, so the identity of the author is always kept a mystery. The letters themselves contain almost no evidence of where they were sent from, what the author was doing. Both were probably fearful of the relationship coming to light. But I think, from the desperateness in them, this fear was very real, perhaps life-threatening."

"Very good," said Royal, obviously rather impressed. "But just how do you propose to discover who she is?"

"Two ways," Iris replied, smiling. "By looking beneath the words... and their parchment."

***