The Heart of the Raven

Chapter 4: Nevermore

Complete silence greeted this astounding pronouncement. Harry stared at Tonks, not quite believing what she had said. How could she possibly have found the Heart of the Raven?

"What in the world are you on about?" Harry asked her.

Tonks grinned around at everyone's stunned faces for a moment before dropping her magazine on the table.

"What's that?" Ron asked, craning his neck to get a better look.

"The answer to our problems." Tonks grinned mysteriously. She seemed to be quite enjoying herself.

"Yeah right." Harry rolled his eyes, reaching between Hermione and Luna to tilt the magazine in his direction to get a better look. "Tell-Tale Magazine," Harry read out loud. It was obviously a Muggle magazine because the picture on the front was stationary, rather than moving like a wizarding photograph. "What's this rubbish all about, Tonks?" Surely she wasn't trying to tell them that she'd found the Heart of the Raven in a Muggle magazine!

Tonks gave him a glare before beginning to explain herself. "I pick up these magazines from time to time to catch up on the latest Muggle music," she said. "They do have some lovely bands, those Muggles." She smiled reminiscently for a moment before going on. "And I've been a fan of this Canadian group Nevermore for ages. So when I saw them on the cover of this magazine I simply had to pick it up."

She gestured to the picture on the front of the magazine, which featured a five-piece group consisting of three girls and two boys who looked to be a few years older than Harry and his friends. Harry could only assume that they were Nevermore.

The first member of the band was a very short blonde girl with blue eyes and a rather perky demeanour: a complete opposite to the edgy clothing she was wearing. The blonde girl wore a blue mesh top paired with a black miniskirt and leggings. A chain belt and ballet flats completed the look. Next to the blonde girl stood a rather sullen looking blonde boy, with dark grey eyes and a rather surly expression. Clad in distressed jeans and a black leather jacket, he looked to be the type of person you didn't want to mess with despite his rather average height.

The girl in the middle of the group was a very pretty brunette, with dark eyes and tanned skin. She wore a short black corset dress, fishnet tights and black leather boots with high heels. She didn't seem overly tall, but she had a very commanding presence about her. Harry suspected that this girl might be the lead singer.

The next person in the group was a tall boy with long blue hair that hung into his equally blue eyes. He looked a little pale next to some of the others, making his appearance a bit intimidating. He wore a shirt, tie and dress pants but a pair of worn-in Converse trainers made his look more individual. The last member of the band was a tall thin girl with flowing purple hair set in loose waves. She wore a studded black shirt over a red tank top, paired with dark wash jeans and a spiked belt with chains. The five members of the band all looked grown-up and sophisticated despite their young years.

Harry's eyes flitted over the headlines for the various features of the magazine, taking particular interest in the one that read Nevermore! Learn the secrets of their lead singer.

"The secrets of their lead singer," Harry read out loud. "Secrets involving a tiara?" He noticed that one of the girls on the front of the magazine was wearing what looked like a tiara, but it was a full body shot so it was hard to tell.

"You won't believe your eyes," Tonks promised. "Prepare to be amazed!"

Tonks took the magazine back from Harry for a moment and flipped it open midway. "Have a gander at that," she instructed the others, sliding the magazine back towards them again. Everyone gathered around Harry as he read aloud from an article entitled Raven's Lucky Charm:

"Nevermore's lead singer has recently been seen at shows sporting a silver tiara," Harry read from the article. "When questioned about it, the young rock star known only to her fans by the alias "The Raven" shrugged and said, 'I like to think of this tiara as my lucky charm.' When questioned further, Raven revealed that the tiara had been in her family for many years. 'My grandfather found it in some run-down old mansion in Britain,' Raven elaborates. 'There used to be a family joke that it was cursed because no one who touched it lived for very long afterwards. My grandfather had some kind of stroke after picking it up, and you know how people like to tell stories. Mostly they were just trying to scare us kids. But my great-grandmother and I have never had any problems with it. She bequeathed the tiara to me upon her death and I've been wearing it off and on ever since. But every time I put it on something good seemed to happen. I've begun to think of this tiara as my own personal good luck charm. I was wearing it the day our latest single made it to number one on the Canadian charts, and the day we were nominated for that Juno award for best new artist last year.'"

Harry stopped reading and looked up at the others. "Could this actually be what we've been looking for?" He had to admit the parallels were uncanny.

"Take a look at the picture on the next page," Tonks instructed him. "It'll blow your mind."

Harry turned the page to find a black and white shot of the girl called Raven. The girl had long dark hair that hung into her eyes making her face hard to distinguish but Harry could make out one brilliant brown eye lined in black framed with thick lashes, a carefully proportioned nose and a pair of ruby-red lips. But sure enough, the tiara perched at a jaunty angle on her head did indeed bear a striking resemblance to the design schematic of the Heart of the Raven from Hermione's scroll.

"This is unbelievable," Hermione whispered nervously. "That poor Muggle has no idea..." she trailed off looking distressed. She glanced at Raven's picture nervously.

"The tiara has to be the Horcrux," Harry stated. "Being cursed and all. How else could they explain what happened to this girl's grandfather? It's too much of a coincidence, him dying after touching the tiara."

"Remember how Dumbledore was fatally injured by the Gaunts' ring?" Ron recalled, referring to their late Professor's blackened hand. "Something similar must've happened to this Raven girl's grandfather!" he realised.

"But why not to her?" Remus wondered as he glanced at the picture again. "She doesn't look like he's been the victim of any magical misdoings."

"You're right, Remus," Tonks agreed. "If she was under the Imperius Curse for example, her eyes would be clouded over and vacant. But they aren't," Tonks pointed out. "If anything, her eyes are very alert. She seems to be acting of her own accord at the moment, as extraordinary as that may sound. This girl must either be very strong or very lucky." She gazed admiringly at the photo of the young singer.

"Just because nothing's happened yet doesn't mean nothing will," Ron said gravely. "If she's a Muggle she'd have no idea how to tap into the tiara's power. As long as she's just wearing it, it can't really do anything to harm her. But her grandfather must've been messing around with it and he got too close to its secret..."

"...And then he died for it," Luna breathed, her protuberant eyes wide.

"Well now we know where the Heart of the Raven is," Harry realised triumphantly. "But how will we get it from her?"

Tonks took the magazine back and flipped quickly through it again, looking for something.

"The band is playing downtown next week," she announced as she set the magazine down again and pointed to the list of tour dates printed at the end of the article. "I know the venue well; it's called Club Black Cat. I've seen groups perform there before and they have excellent acoustics for this type of music. A few of us could go to the show and swipe the tiara from Raven." She paused for a moment, pondering something. "This girl is obviously quite attached to this tiara though. It seems cruel to take it away from her like that." Tonks paused again to consider this obstacle.

"What else could we do?" Luna wondered out loud.

"We could make a duplicate," Hermione suggested. "Find something in a costume shop and transfigure it to look like the picture from the scroll. We've got the perfect reference to work from so we could make it look exactly the same! Then when we go to the show, we could just switch them. She'd probably never even know the difference!"

"Good idea, Hermione." Harry gave his friend an approving nod. "It will keep this girl from getting suspicious when her tiara disappears."

"The last thing we need is an angry young rock star coming after us," Tonks added with a grin. "I've heard they can be vicious."

"I know a place that sells costume supplies," Luna chimed in. "It's in Diagon Alley. I could go tomorrow and find something for us to use."

As everyone began to discuss plans, Harry noticed that Neville had been silent for quite awhile. Harry turned to him and asked him what he was thinking.

"Does anyone else think it's a bit ironic that the Heart of the Raven is with a girl who happens to be named Raven?" he asked with a laugh.

Harry wasn't sure quite what to make of this pronouncement but he forced himself to laugh along with Neville rather than concentrate on how very uncomfortable he suddenly felt. He was thinking of his dream again, and how clear everything had seemed afterwards. Rowena Ravenclaw had instilled a sense of purpose in him. But now they were drifting in to the murky realm of random chance again and Harry didn't like it one bit. He hated not being completely in charge of what was going on. The more time they spent planning and researching, the stranger their mission had become.

I'll bet even Dumbledore himself couldn't have predicted something like this, Harry thought to himself. One of Voldemort's Horcruxes in the hands of an unsuspecting Muggle singer...

And luckily, he thought with a smirk, it was certainly the last place Voldemort would ever think of to look once he realised his Horcrux was missing. He tried to imagine what Voldemort would do if he ever clued in, but he had trouble getting a mental image to form, aside from a few vague visions of the Dark Lord and his cronies swarming through Club Black Cat, blasting the Muggle fans out of their way before finally turning on the girl with the tiara. He pushed this unsettling vision out of his mind, shuddering.

Now that they knew their target Tonks managed to get her hands on a few other magazines that featured articles on Nevermore. Within a short period of time, Harry and the others learned that the band enjoyed being mysterious. They'd made mystery and enchantment their trademark and the fans loved them for it. Despite being relatively unknown in the mainstream music scene, Nevermore had an impressive underground following in many different countries. Any limited information the band revealed about themselves just added more to their mystique. For instance, the band members' proper names were not widely known because all of them had nicknames: characters that they'd invented as part of their elaborate stage show. There was Mr. Moonlight, Lady Lex, Magical Millie, Bookish Bastian and of course Raven herself. They had also just released their second album Murder Mysteries, the follow up to their previous release Beauty Dies Tragically. They clearly had a flair for the dramatic.

"This is going to be an interesting concert," Harry remarked to Ron. "I wonder how many tickets Tonks will be able to get?"

"She'd better get one for each of us," Ron said. "I need to get out of this house before I go completely mental. All this reading is killing me. I don't know how Hermione does it." He shook his head, but he was smiling in an admiring way. Harry felt a bit ill.

"That Hermione's really something, isn't she Harry?" Ron remarked.

"Sure." Harry rolled his eyes. "She's something all right." A real pain in the neck, he thought to himself. "Not my type though," he added hurriedly, once again confronted with the fact that all of his friends had gone completely mad.

Luna meanwhile was able to successfully get her hands on a simple tiara that they could pass off as the Heart of the Raven. After a quick bit of transfiguration, Hermione managed to turn it into a perfect replica.

"Nice work," Harry said to her. "If that doesn't convince this Raven girl, nothing will."

"I sure hope so," Hermione said nervously. She gazed at the tiara admiringly. "It is quite pretty, isn't it?" she added. She picked the tiara up and carefully placed it atop her own brown curls. She tilted her head, observing her reflection in a nearby mirror. "It doesn't look right on me," she complained, trying to pull it off. "Agh! It's stuck in my hair!" she let out a squeal.

Harry watched as Ron valiantly ran over and helped disentangle the fake tiara from Hermione's long flowing locks. She gave him a grateful look. "Thanks, Ron!" she gasped. Ron blushed bright red but managed to smile at her. "You're welcome," he murmured, embarrassed but flattered.

"Mental," Harry muttered to himself, slipping quickly out of the room. He immediately noticed Luna sitting on the bottom step of the staircase just outside. She was balancing a large book on her knees and humming quietly to herself.

"Hello Harry," she said vaguely, looking up at him with her prominent eyes.

"Hi Luna. What are you reading?" Harry asked her.

"I'm just going through my scrapbook," Luna told him. "Would you like to see it?" she asked him expectantly.

"Sure," Harry agreed, moving over to sit next to her. Luna smiled at him and offered him half of the book.

"I've been working on it for quite awhile," Luna said proudly. "I've collected all sorts of pictures."

"I can see that," Harry remarked as he stared at a picture of himself, Ron, Hermione and Hagrid back in first year. "This is really great, Luna."

"Thank you Harry," Luna said gratefully. "Hermione seemed to think it was a bit frivolous."

"Sounds like something Hermione would say," Harry sighed.

"I was thinking of starting a page for Nevermore," Luna told him. "I got Tonks to give me that magazine cover." She pulled it out from between the pages to show him.

"That would be nice," Harry agreed.

"I do hope I'll get to see the show," Luna said, gazing avidly at the picture of the band. "I've never been to a concert."

"I've never been to one either," Harry admitted. "It should be interesting."

"Lady Lex is so pretty," Luna went on.

"Which one is she again?" Harry asked.

"The blonde girl," Luna told him, pointing.

"Her hair's a bit like yours!" Harry suddenly noticed. It made sense that Luna would be drawn to the girl that she felt the most in common with.

Harry left Luna to her scrap-booking, drifting off upstairs. That night he had another one of his dreams about the raven. But this time it was different: he was not only following the raven this time. There was also a beautiful voice in the air that seemed to float all around him in a haunting otherworldly fashion. It almost reminded Harry of phoenix song, but in a more human way. The voice had enchanted him the same way a dancing veela could draw a man's attention, but Harry could not tell where the voice was coming from. He was in some sort of broken down temple with columns all around,

engraved in runes. The sky was dark and twinkling overhead. Harry stared up at the stars, momentarily forgetting about the voice. The stars had always fascinated him.

Harry paused, forgetting the voice momentarily in favour of lying down under the stars for a while. He let his imagination go, allowing the stray thoughts he usually tried to bury float to the surface. It was those times when he was alone that he would think about how grateful he was to have such good friends: Ron, Hermione, Luna and Neville, plus Tonks and Remus as well. But even knowing that, there was still so much he'd lost. Everyone Harry had ever looked up to was gone: his parents, Dumbledore, Sirius, Cedric...

That's why I need to destroy Voldemort, Harry reminded himself. Their sacrifice needs to not have been in vain. And I'll get Snape too, if I can.

Snape: now there was a subject he liked thinking about even less. Sometimes when Harry let his mind be vulnerable, some snatch of Snape's worst memories from that fateful time during their Legilimency lesson would settle uncomfortably into his consciousness. It was strange because they'd never done that before, not even right after it had initially happened. It was almost as if Snape was trying to tell him something...

A faint crunching noise brought Harry back to life. He sat up and jerked his head around just in time to see a cloaked figure disappearing between some tall marble columns.

"Wait!" Harry called out to the departing stranger. "Who are you? Please come back!"

A thumping noise from the hallway roused Harry from his slumber. He angrily wondered why people kept interrupting his dreams.

"Oh rubbish," a familiar female voice murmured. "Ouch."

Harry grudgingly got out of bed and slipped out into the hallway where he predictably found Tonks tangled up in her own limbs on the floor. She was still as clumsy as ever.

"Wotcher, Harry." Tonks winced. "Did I wake you?" she asked apologetically.

"Kind of," Harry told her.

"Sorry," Tonks apologised dejectedly. "I'm just getting back from the ticket depot. I could only get three passes for the show."

"Only three?" Harry repeated, feeling deflated.

"I'm afraid so," Tonks said regretfully. "Nevermore is awfully popular. I had no idea. I could kick myself for not getting there earlier."

"I think you've done enough damage to yourself tonight, my dear," came Remus' voice as he approached from down the hall. He offered Tonks his hand and gently pulled her to her feet. She flashed him a grateful smile.

"Since I could only get the three tickets, I want both of you to come with me," Tonks said to Harry and Remus.

"Alright then," Harry agreed, hoping the others wouldn't be too disappointed. He bit Tonks and Remus goodnight before he went back to his room and tried hard to return to his dream, but nothing came. He would have to learn the secret of the raven some other night.