Chapter 7: Attic

We were sitting in the living room when it happened. I was just lounging on the couch reading a book about herbology when I suddenly felt the book in my hands being affected by magic. The twins had entered their pranking stage, so I was reasonably wary.

I did the only thing that came to mind.

I turned to the twins, who had been hyper all day for some reason and threw the book in Fred's face. Well, I thought it was Fred, could have been George for all I knew.

It was quite funny watching the book turn into a giant hairy spider after it landed on him. The spider then proceeded to crawl on Fred who was at the moment shrieking like a little girl.

Which of course made George shriek as well (I'm almost 100% sure they have some kind of link), this, in turn, made Charlie laugh and after that Ginny started crying as well.

I did not want to be here when Mount Molly exploded so I skedaddled up to my room.

On my way up I heard Percy talking to Scabbers.

The illegal rat animagus, I'd completely forgotten the little turd. He was just so damn forgettable.

My mood suddenly turning somber I threw myself on my beanbag and thought of what to do to the rat.

Expose him?

No, too many questions asked.

I'd have to deal with him myself, but I wasn't nearly strong enough, I couldn't even use magic yet for Christ's sake. I had decided I'd wait to try making actual magic happen until I was able to create a constant stream of it at the minimum.

Did I actually have to ever interact with Scabbers?

Probably not it's not like he'd ever done anything to the Weasleys in the book.

But I wasn't quite sure if I was even in a book, at this point, it's just as likely I'm in a fanfiction...

If I see Harry acting weirdly at Hogwarts I'd definitely flee the country, fanfic authors liked to bash Ron way too much for my liking. And they were quite a few fics where Harry was some eldritch abomination. All I had to say to that was, no thank you.

Wormtail had something I wanted though. You-Know-Who's wand.

I was a collector at heart, a collector of interesting things.

The wand that was used to bring magical Britain to its knees definitely fit that criterion.

But collecting it would be useless if I couldn't take it with me when I died, hmmm.

I'm a wizard, if there is no way, I shall make a way.

-/-

My birthday passed without much fanfare, my parents were much to enamoured with their only daughter and with their eldest starting his education.

The cake was good, Charlie gave me all of the books he didn't want anymore, fourteen all in all. I asked dad for a bookshelf, he took one out of the attic, a few reparoes and it was as good as new.

My room was slowly being filled and was getting a personality. I enjoyed that fact.

I had explored everything in it though, it was time to start on the rest of the house.

I left my room and looked at the corridor, it was small, I slowly caressed the walls the door. Nope. Nothing.

The door didn't have any magic and the walls were the same as the ones in my room. I had decided to go from top to bottom with my exploration.

I looked at the ceiling, I knew the hatch was simply hiding because of its shy personality, you had to be assertive with it.

"Hatch open!"

The ladder crashed onto the floor and I warily looked at the rickety and old thing, it honestly seemed as if it would crash if a dust mote landed on it.

It would have to do.

I started climbing, reaching the top and pulling myself into the attic.

The first thing that hit me was how small it was, I was a child and even I felt cramped here.

I looked around, quite a lot of things here, a bed frame, closet, chest, some boxes with indistinguishable writing on them, the family ghoul. Nothing that jumped in the eye in any way.

Wait.

The family ghoul was staring at me with its beady eyes, mouth slobbering.

Ignoring the sinfully ugly but harmless thing I turned to the closet, I would leave the boxes and chest for last.

"Creepy fucking thing," I muttered to myself while running my hands all over the closet.

Nope not magical at all. The Bedframe wasn't magical either.

I went over to the chest.

Magically locked, I'd have to wait for Bill to come back and ask him if he knew the unlocking spell yet. I didn't really want to nick one of my parent's wands and try it myself. My magic had the ranking G, pretty sure there was nothing to be done with that.

I walked over to the boxes, I could feel the thing's eyes boring into my back, this ghoul was creeping me out, thank god it was chained to the wall. Maybe I'd use it to test some malicious magic in the future.

I paused.

That was actually a fairly good idea I would need a partner to learn legilimency after all. Who didn't want to be a mind reader.

It was easier to ignore the ghoul now that I knew he would eventually be useful to me.

I opened the first box. Clothing, pieces of wood and a few blank journals with writing supplies. I took the journals and the writing stuff and threw them down the hatch after checking nobody was there.

They would be useful and if I couldn't think of anything to write, well I had always wanted to learn how to draw now was as good a time as any.

The second box contained more trash and a single photo album, I only needed one photo, magic-wise they were all the same.

As I looked through the photo album I noticed how painfully young my parents looked like, in some of the photos. Well, whatever as sad as it was I didn't really care much about my parents in this life.

I didn't think any would compare to my original parents.

A photo of my grandparents on my father's side they looked to be 17 and madly in love, they kept sneaking glances at each other.

I looked at the back.

SEPTIMUS WEASLEY & CEDRELLA BLACK

I blinked in surprise, I hadn't known my grandmother had been a Black, maybe I could use this fact to gain access to the Black properties. Food for thought.

The only other photo of interest I found was the one of the original order of the phoenix.

Yes, I would take these two, they were interesting...

The third box simply contained even more useless stuff expect for a pocket watch and an old wizarding chess set. On the wizarding chess set, the name SEPTIMUS WEASLEY was engraved.

The pocket watch was an old bronze piece, in itself not really something valuable, but I felt some quite potent magic on it.

Back in my room, I looked at my haul.

A few blank journals with a few pencils quills and ink pots, an old and tattered photo of my grandparents, a reminder that I was a Black, in a way. An old pocket watch with powerful magic in it and a wizarding chess set.

A photo of the order. I don't know why but something about that thing made me look at it. I couldn't discern anything special no matter how hard I did.

I yawned.