Harry Potter and the Second Prophecy

Chapter 3 - The Notorious Pritchards

Ron sat back in his overstuffed chair in the Gryffindor common room and exclaimed, "Whoa," shaking his head. Hermione, on the other hand, was obviously more intent upon deciphering the meaning behind the day's occurrences.

"The Acromantulas stopped?" she repeated, as if to herself.

"Enough about spiders already, eh?" pleaded Ron. The last thing Ron Weasley ever wanted to talk about was spiders.

"The poor girl must be going out of her mind! I didn't know I was magical until shortly before I became eleven. I knew there was something different about me, of course, but nothing about the magical world. And for her to receive this sort of introduction! By the time I'd boarded the train for Hogwarts, I knew more than -"

"Most people would ever care to know," finished Ron.

"Just because you need me to complete your assignments, Ron -"

"I don't need you to finish my assignments! It's just that my idea of a good time doesn't include memorizing Hogwarts: A History, does it?" The color was rising in Ron's cheeks. Hermione wasn't about to let it go, however.

"You grew up with your dishes washing themselves, gnomes in your garden, and house elves cleaning up after you! I knew nothing about any of this until I was ten!"

"I washed my own dishes, thank you very much, and I had to clear out the gnomes, and we don't own any house elves, Hermione!" retorted Ron with great finality, but Hermione still wasn't finished.

"You can't own house elves! They have rights just as other magical --"

Ron interrupted her with a comment in Harry's direction. "If she keeps on about this, Harry, I swear I'm going to spew." Hermione let out an enraged huff, and just as she was about to launch into another rant, Harry decided to step in.

"Enough, you two. May I remind you we were talking about Miss Pritchard, not about either of..." He stopped short when he noticed their horror-stricken faces. "What? What did I say?" he asked, bewildered.

"Did you say..." started Hermione.

"Pritchard?" finished Ron, with an odd sort of yelp generally reserved for arachnid encounters.

"Well, it seems neither of you have gone deaf in the last quarter hour, then, doesn't it?" mused Harry. "Now, will someone please tell me what it has become so painfully clear that, yet again, I'm in the dark over?"

"Harry," began Hermione, "the Pritchards are...well, if you were to cross the infamous nature of Vol - Voldemort - with the reputable but wretchedly evil Malfoy family...there you go."

"I don't understand," said Harry, bemused.

"Geez, Harry, don't you read anything?" asked Ron, who then colored upon noting Hermione's "what-a-hypocrite" glare. "Look, the Pritchards were one of the most notorious, and wicked, wizarding families of the 17^th century. They were also really rich...piles of Galleons and whatnot. They had the attitude of the Malfoys and the reputation of You-Know-Who. But everyone in the wizarding community knew what kind of people they were, and what sort of dark magic they practiced, so they decided to ship them out, overseas. There were boats heading to the Americas then, so in the middle of the night, a bunch of Aurors surrounded their mansion, stupefied all of them, every single one, and put them on two of the ships headed across the Atlantic. One of the ships never made it, and that was the ship Charles Pritchard's wife and kids on it. When he got to America, it was just him, his parents, and his last remaining brother..."

Hermione looked impressed. "How do you know all this, Ron?" she asked.

Ron colored once more. "It was a boogieman bedtime story my parents used to tell me - you know - if you're bad, the Pritchards will find you..."

"Sorry. Continue, then," she said simply.

"Well, this is where it gets sort of fuzzy for me. It was quite a spectacular bedtime story with I was growing up, of course, but I'm a little, uh, cloudy on the actual facts," he finished. He and Hermione stared at each other for a long moment, Ron daring Hermione to smirk and him, and Hermione trying her best not to smirk at Ron.

"Someone finish the story! Bloody hell!" exclaimed a frustrated Harry.

"Shall we consult our History of Magic textbook, then?" asked Hermione, and without waiting for an answer, pulled it from her book bag.

"Hermione, we don't even have History of Magic today!" grumbled Ron. "What are you carrying that for?"

"You never know when you're going to need it, do you?" she retorted. Ron knew better than to challenge her on the point. As it was, they needed it now, so why bother arguing?

Hermione opened her book and began flipping through its pages. "If I remember correctly," she said, "it was somewhere around Chapter 127..." Ron and Harry looked at each other.

"Chapter 127? How many chapters are there?" asked Ron, stunned.

"244," came Hermione's reply.

Harry gave Ron a sideways glance and said under his breath, "Looks like I have a bit of reading to catch up on." They chuckled, and then turned back to Hermione as she arrived at chapter 127.

"This is the one!" she said.

"All right, now it's my turn to ask - how could you possibly have remembered what chapter to look for? You really have memorized the whole book, haven't you?" asked Harry dubiously.

Hermione felt her face flush. "Do you want to hear it or not?"

Ron bowed his head magnanimously and pronounced their decision. "Continue."

She perched her book on her lap and settled in to her overstuffed chair.

"Chapter 127," she quoted, "The Pritchard Prophecy."

Dumbfounded, Harry asked, "Prophecy? What prophecy?"

She smirked. "Shall I continue?" Harry and Ron both nodded, and she began to read.

"Upon arriving in America, Charles Pritchard waited for the landing of his wife and children's ship. He waited weeks to no avail; the ship had sunk during a particularly nasty storm, no doubt due to an amount of mischief his children would have caused. When at last he realized they were not to arrive, his heart was hardened evermore against the wizarding community, and he decided at that time, as one having no descendents, he would build himself his own private army from the ground up.

"He chose a beautiful young pureblooded girl from amongst the wizarding populace in Massachusetts; her name was Charity Danforth, and she was, by all accounts, magnificent. She, however, had no desire to unite herself with him, and refused him at every turn. In his rage, he began to spread word amongst the Puritan Muggle community that a group of witches and wizards had settled in Salem alongside them, mocking them, their magical inabilities, and their beliefs. He made it clear that they had hidden themselves, and, for the sake of the community, would need to be rooted out, convicted of witchcraft, and done away with. The Protestant church encouraged the witch hunt and began to arrest, at his command, various witches and wizards from both Salem and the surrounding areas. Pritchard began to accuse not only those who were pureblood, mixed blood, and muggleborn, but also those Muggles who had in some way offended him.

"When he realized that the traditional Puritan method of witch disposal was burning at the stake, and that this would be insufficient to bring about the destruction of the wizarding community surrounding him, Pritchard suggested other means by which the Muggles could 'confirm' that an accused was indeed guilty of witchcraft, namely what became known as the 'water test.' An accused witch or wizard would be placed in open water, fully dressed in period garb, and told that if they were able to float, their affinity for witchcraft would be thereby proven. However, were they to sink and in so doing drown, they would be remembered henceforth as innocent of the 'crime' of witchcraft.

"Any student of witchcraft and wizardry might, at this point in the narrative, suggest the use of gillyweed to enable the accused to breathe underwater, however we must point out that Charles Pritchard owned the only supply of gillyweed in the Americas at this time, it being a magical plant native solely to Europe. Needless to say, Pritchard would not allow others near his store, and, upon accusing a witch or wizard of possessing their individual powers, would insist that anything, however distantly, resembling a wand was to be confiscated prior to that individual's trial. This prevented them from casting any spells that might assist them in surviving the water test.

"He also suggested what became known as 'pressing,' whereby the accused would be placed flat on his or her back and have a board laid across his or her chest. One by one, large and heavy stones were placed on the board, and the life was consequently 'pressed' from the individual until they confessed their crime. As Pritchard was the only individual present with a wand in hand, he made sure the accused did not open their mouths to speak during the pressing using a simple incantation, further discussed in Chapter 192.

"Pritchard grew more powerful, and with his power came a hunger for further dominance. He summarily had his parents and brother executed for the crime of witchcraft, and, as Ms. Danforth continued to refuse him, even, history dictates, when placed under the Imperious curse, Pritchard ensured that her family would also suffer death at the hands of the self-righteous Puritan Muggle Tribunal.

"Finally, at Danforth's trial, she was placed again under Imperious by Pritchard and made to confess to her crime. Due to her regular use of magic, it seems that the curse worked to if not great effect, enough effect to bring about a full confession. Pritchard volunteered to take Danforth in, seeing as she had no remaining family, and was hailed by the Puritans as a saint for his understanding and generosity toward one so wicked. He took her to him and married her without her consent; he also opted to consummate the marriage without consent, and ten months to the day, a male and female set of fraternal twins were born to the couple. Danforth, afraid of what her children would be forced to learn from their father, attempted on numerous occasions to place the children with other, distant families, attempted to go into hiding with her children, and attempted, history records, even to transfigure the children into animals and release them into the surrounding woods, all to no avail.

"Pritchard's anger soon reached a boiling point, and when a Danforth refused, for the last time, to tell Pritchard with which family she had placed their children, he cursed her with a curse that would impact their posterity; he promised her that no matter what her efforts might include, a son and daughter would be born to their son and daughter, and to their grandson and granddaughter, and so on down the line so that their bloodline would neither die out nor be infected by a less than pure bloodline. He effectively damned his own children to marrying one another, and their children, and their children's children, etc. Danforth, hoping to counter the curse, cast a spell that, though she could not entirely undo what had been done by her husband, would eventually end his tyrannical reign and that of his children. She sealed with her own blood the counter-curse: that one day, there would be a child born with no sibling to continue the marriage cycle. It is not clear whether she intended a twin to expire before its time, or whether a child would be born without a twin, but this in inconsequential, really. In order to seal the counter-curse, Danforth gave all her blood by opening a space between her ribs, and died minutes later."

At this point, Harry felt a need to interrupt. "She killed herself? I didn't realize this story was going to end with such gore."

"End? Not yet! We're almost there, but not yet!" Hermione stated. "Do you want me to finish?" Harry shrugged, and Hermione continued.

"The line did indeed continue until 1988, when Robert and Regina Pritchard gave birth not to twins, but to a single daughter - the last of the Pritchard line. (Please note: out of respect for said daughter, her name has not been and will not be issued in this textbook.) Shortly after the girl's third birthday, her parents left her with a neighbor to visit friends in another American state, and were killed in an automobile collision by an intoxicated Muggle. The girl became a ward of the state, and has been so ever since.

"It is said that The Boy Who Lived..."

"Wait, I'm in this book?" asked Harry.

"You're in every book, Harry," replied Hermione.

"What do you mean, every?" he spluttered.

"Do you ever do your homework?" she chided. "You may be part of current wizarding history, but you are history, you know. Now, may I finish?"

"There's more?" queried Ron.

"Just one more paragraph. Here: 'It is said that The Boy Who Lived would find the girl to be either his nemsis, or his equally, thanks to the following: Shortly before the girl's birth, a prophecy was demanded of the Oracle at Delphi by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. He had become familiar with an unknown prophecy from an unknown Seer, and was apparently worried that he might be defeated, so he pressed the Oracle for a prophecy that might direct him in his attainment of further power. The prophecy, well-known in the wizarding world, is recorded as follows and has been assumed to point at the remaining female of the Pritchard line:

A rise to power may be preceded

By a fall from grace

But a chance you may have to overcome

If you search His race.

She will as a cancer spread your power

Ever far and wide.

If you take Her to yourself as your own

You will change the tide.

A word of caution must be spoken now:

Should She reject you

You have more to fear than a loss of strength;

I must tell you true:

Your Enemy may then offer death and

Though you try to win

There shall be no Offspring and you will see

The end ushered in.

"Poor Camilia," sighed Hermione.

"Poor Camilia?" raved Ron. "If that prophecy is true, poor us! She could be, what did they call her? 'A cancer that spreads You-Know-Who's power?' Bugger!"

"If that prophecy is true, Ron, and it really does point to her, Harry won't be the only one You-Know...uh...Vo -- Voldemort is looking for. And based on what Harry told us a few minutes ago, I'd guess he already knows she's here."