3rd August 1981 – Stranglehold Manor.
“Get your sister and hide. Quickly, and whatever you do, do not come out until I tell you it's safe.” My mother's shaky voice was urgent, her piercing emerald eyes filled with panic and fear as she gripped me tightly, almost painfully, by the shoulders and stared into my soul.
Her long midnight black hair, usually neatly tied into a bun instead hung haphazardly across her face. She was in her nightgown, crimson in the colour of our house, and barefoot. I, similarly, was in my pyjamas, as one tends to be when woken in the middle of the night.
But despite her eyes betraying her emotions, her face told a different story. It was scrunched up into a look of pure determination. I, as Victor Thorneheart, should have been confused and scared, terrified even, but I wasn’t.
Because I wasn’t Victor Thorneheart, or at least not entirely. In fact, I hadn’t quite figured out who I was yet. Was I Victor, the son of a witch and wizard from a magical family born into this world of wonders roughly three and a half years ago, or was I Jack Kane, a nobody orphan, failed academic and disillusioned soldier from a world without magic?
I had memories of the latter or at least some of them. They came to me in bits and pieces in my dreams, rarely in order and far from complete, yet their influence was already clear. Quite how I felt about the matter was still to be decided, but in that moment, I was simply glad not only for the clarity of mind far beyond what a three-year-old could possess but also for just how eerily calm I felt.
‘Panic is the enemy of effective action.’ Words that I, no, Jack, or perhaps we, had heard came unbidden to me now.
“I will,” I told her in the annoyingly high-pitched voice that I found myself hating. More than that, though, I returned her determined look with one of my own. I wondered how convincing it looked on a three-year-old face, but she seemed to get my intent and smiled thinly.
“I love you Victor, so, so much, never forget that. Take care of your sister whatever happens. Tell her I love her as well.” She said as her arms wrapped tightly around me. I felt her heart beating quickly in her chest, much like my own. Calm though I may have felt, I, and indeed Jack, was only human after all.
With that, she released me, and looked longingly down the landing hallway to where my sister Emelia was likely still sleeping before turning and dashing down the stairs.
As I watched my mother rush to an uncertain fate, I heard the raised voices of my grandparents, Isaac and Penelope, as they shouted something outside.
There was a moment of silence when mother reached the bottom of the stairs and the shouting stopped. I held my breath in my chest as I paused at the top of the stairs, trapped between one heartbeat and the next.
I noticed the wand that had entered my mother’s hand, a beautiful piece of rowan wood gripped hard under white knuckles. I heard the humming that the entire house seemed to be emitting in a low and ominous frequency. I felt the breeze through the door on my left that led into my room and the window I had left open for the warm summer night. I trembled slightly at the adrenaline coursing through my tiny form, a sensation both familiar and yet entirely new to this body.
And then it was over, the calm fading before the storm. An incomprehensible feminine shout followed by a loud and sickening crack of thunder shattered the silence, as a green flash lit up the window across from me that looked out over the front of the manor. Mother disappeared from sight as she rushed ahead, her footsteps echoing up the stairs. A cry of anguish and rage followed shortly after in a tone I vaguely recognised as my grandfather, just before the window lit up once more with flash after coloured flash.
So too was I moving, faster than conscious thought could catch up I was rushing towards my sister’s room. Pushing through her door, I saw our house elf, Lotti, doing his best to stop her from crying out by playing with the mobile over her crib. But he was fighting a losing battle. Little Emelia didn’t like the elf one bit, I believed it was his ears that scared her, that or the wrinkles. Either way, I saw her tiny face beginning to scrunch into a cry.
“Master Victor.” He said when he noticed me, his eyes cast to the ground in his typical manner. His voice was squeaky and irritating, but I didn’t hold it against him considering he couldn’t just change his voice.
I rushed over and picked up my sister from her cot, a task more difficult than it had any right to be considering she was barely 20 months old. Nevertheless, even with my meagre height and strength, I managed it, though it was closer to a fireman’s carry than a proper baby hold. I did my best to cover her ears and prayed to any gods that might be listening that she be quiet.
“Can you hide us?” I asked Lotti, raising my voice to be heard over the growing cacophony outside. My tone was calm and authoritative, more out of instinct than any particular memory.
The slight elf furrowed its brow as it thought for a moment. Not for the first time I found myself comparing Lotti with another house elf from my memory, Dobby, one I had yet to meet but could recall anyway. Lotti was sturdier than Dobby, taller, with rounder ears and with a longer face, at least compared to his depiction in the movies. Lotti was, in fact, a little taller than I was at the moment at roughly 4 foot. His robes were red in the colour of the house and in fine condition, but for obvious reasons didn’t have any clothes besides.
I liked Lotti, even respected him. He did his job, and he did it well, without witness or reward beyond whatever strange fulfilment his kind got from servitude and the pleasant working conditions we provided him. He didn’t bother me except when necessary and he was always polite and respectful. He was even self-aware of how much his voice could grate on my nerves. Perhaps the same could be said for all house elves, but I got the feeling Lotti went to extra lengths to be competent, and I truly appreciated that, though rare were the opportunities to voice my appreciation.
“Lotti can try master Victor.” He answered as he met my eyes for the first time I could remember. “Follow Lotti.”
With that, he rushed out of the door, and I made haste to follow him. “Hurry master Victor, hurry.” Lotti urged.
To my surprise, he led us down the stairs, closer to whatever battle was happening outside. I hesitated with my sister before taking a step down, and Lotti stopped to look up at me, already halfway to the ground floor.
Our eyes met once more, and as I looked into those unnaturally large pupils, I found myself trusting the elf, more perhaps than I trusted myself in that moment. Not wasting any more time, I gave a slight nod to the house elf and began the hasty descent.
The sounds of violence grew louder, the uttering of spells and cries of anger or pain mostly drowned out by the thunder and snap of the spells themselves. Judging by the way the sound travelled, I figured mother had left the door open. Each spark and beam of light, from red to white to green, illuminated the vast dining room that the stairs descended to through the large, stained windows, casting the room in constantly shifting shadows.
It was no surprise then that the inevitable wailing of my sister began. I couldn’t blame her; it wasn’t like she was in control of her body at that point. Even I, who had been mostly conscious at that age, had still been powerless against my body’s urges.
There was only really one solution and though it twisted my stomach to think about it, it was the lesser of two evils. “Lotti, you have my permission to make her be quiet,” I said, trying to keep my voice down yet simultaneously be heard over the cacophony.
Lotti nodded, the frown coming over his face making it clear he didn’t like it either. He snapped his fingers together, and with a spark of glittering white light, her cries suddenly stopped. I still felt her lungs inhaling and exhaling repeatedly over my shoulder as she continued the motions, but no sound came out. Using magic on my baby sister, even though it wasn’t I who cast it, felt like some sort of betrayal, but it was necessary, and I doubted I’d regret it later.
With that problem averted, Lotti continued to lead us on, through the dining room, past the kitchen and into my grandfathers’ study, opening the usually locked door with a click of his fingers. I had only been in a few times before and most of them had been before I could walk, so I couldn’t help but look around in curiosity.
It was a room far bigger than its purpose demanded. The oak floorboards were mostly covered by a large crimson Persian rug. Central to the room was the almost comically large mahogany desk, behind which was the large leather chair that grandfather usually occupied. There were two, smaller, chairs before the desk for any guests also. The desk itself was full of knickknacks, a quill and pot of ink, a seeing crystal, several loose pieces of paper with varying degrees of almost illegible scribbles on them and an assortment of stones, teeth and whatever other memorabilia my ancestors had placed enough value on to get turned into desk ornaments.
To the left was a large fireplace someone twice my size could stand in that was curiously covered behind a locked metal gate, the sight of it tickled something in my mind that I had come to recognise as a memory of Jack’s I had yet to learn. It was not forthcoming with an answer, so I turned my attention to the paintings of my ancestors that lined the walls.
I still couldn’t quite get over the fact they were animated, and indeed I found all of them silently staring at me now in varying degrees of concern. Greatest of all was the portrait of Ivan Thorneheart that stood on the wall directly behind the desk. The harsh features of the family’s founder were creased into a deep frown of concern, his emerald eyes boring into my own as Lotti led me around the desk until we were standing in front of him.
The house elf looked at me expectantly. I wasn’t quite sure what he wanted me to do, or how I was supposed to hide in a painting, so I decided it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
“We need to hide,” I told Ivan, feeling strange talking to a painting despite the fact that I’d had three years to get used to the wizarding world.
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The long-dead wizard nods, his coal black hair and neatly trimmed beard bobbing with him. “Of course, my kin. One moment.” He spoke in perfect English, but with a painfully obvious Russian accent.
Then, he stepped back from his central position in the painting and into the foreground, a snowy scene of Stranglehold manor, our home, in winter. He appeared to run through the light snowfall, his crimson robes fluttering behind him as he left a trail of footsteps in the otherwise undisturbed snow, until he eventually reached the intimidating gate in the otherwise unbroken wall surrounding the manor, opened them and then disappeared inside.
A moment later, I heard a distinct click, and one side of the life-size painting lifted off the wall and swung slightly towards us. Cautiously reaching out a hand, I pulled on the edge of the painting, swinging it further until I could see the passage that lay behind it.
I knew for a fact there was another room behind the seemingly solid wall on which the painting hung, yet as I reached out my free hand to the passage it met no resistance and soon my arms were deep enough it should have been poking out into the kitchens.
As ever when I discovered something new and baffling in the wizarding world, I just put it down to magic and shrugged. I felt a tug at my mind as questions arose of their own accord. How does it work? Where does it lead? It was undeniably fascinating, but at that moment I had more pressing things on my mind and so shoved them down until such a time I could act on them.
The passage stood at several feet into the air, so it took more effort than I would have liked to admit pushing Emelia in, who was still silently crying, and then clamber up myself. When I finally managed it, and with a huff of exertion, I turned to look at the nervously waiting Lotti and held out my hand.
“Hurry up.” I urged, only to find myself whispering.
It took me a second to realise it was because the sounds of fighting had ceased. That was either a very good sign, or a very bad one, and based on how worried mother had looked I was leaning towards the latter.
Lotti seemed to realise this as well, and quickly took my hand and scrambled up into the passage, shutting the painting with a click of his fingers. We were suddenly shrouded in darkness, though it wasn’t complete. The painting slash door still let through some light, enough to see the fear on Lotti’s face that was likely a mirror of my own.
Fear was an interesting thing. I, or at least Jack if we were indeed separate, had never managed to escape fear. My memories of Jack were far from complete but the snippets I had from his later life in the military told me as much, and it only became more prominent, not less. Discipline could control it, and a calm head could negate its worst effects, but It could not be entirely snuffed out.
I was not ashamed to admit I was afraid. Afraid for my own life certainly, but that was a lesser, baser fear that was easier to push down and ignore. No, I was afraid, in fact terrified, for my grandparents, my mother and my sister, and, far more so than I had anticipated, for Lotti. My father was not home, which was a small mercy, but it brought little comfort.
These were my family, the only people in this world, and the last, that I could truthly say I loved, who had looked after me and loved me without expecting anything in return. The part of me that had been Jack Kane had jumped onto a second chance for a proper family and never let go with an almost childlike desperation, and the rest of me loved them like any child loves their parents and siblings, an instinctive and uniquely powerful bond.
The sensation was only made worse because, in the darkness whilst I had the chance to think, I figured out just what was happening. The realization sent my stomach churning, and I fought the urge to throw up, the slight shaking in my hands growing into full blown trembling.
There were Death Eaters outside.
Those insipid and malicious followers of he-who-shall-not-be-named, terrifying by reputation alone, though far easier to stomach from behind the pages of a book than attacking one’s home and family.
In truth, I hadn’t actually recalled the infamous dark lord's name yet, the memories Jack had of J.K Rowling's works had not yet been shown to me in their entirety, yet from what I could gather this was around the height of the first wizarding war. My parents were clearly participants, and thankfully on the right side, but right now I was mentally cursing them for being so reckless when they had children they were putting at risk, more for my sister’s sake than my own.
I braced myself for the possibility that my mother and grandparents were already dead. From what I had gathered, each was a competent witch or wizard in their own right, but competent witches and wizards were a dime a dozen and had they been outstanding in any sense I felt I would have recalled their names from the books, spotty memory or not.
I was, however, cruelly torn from imagining that particularly terrifying scenario by perhaps an even worse one.
A piercing, howling scream of pure agony cut through the thick silence that had fallen in the moments since the fighting had finished. Immediately cringing away from the sound, I followed my first instinct and covered the ears of little Emelia who, though muted, would still have heard and possibly recognised the cries of her mother.
My next urge was, of course, to help. To run out and save the day in whatever way I could, but I stopped myself before I could so much as reach for the door. What could I possibly do against the Death Eaters that had defeated three fully trained wizards and witches, with not the slightest practical knowledge of magic or so much as a wand? The answer was nothing.
I knew I would only succeed in both getting myself killed, and possably tortured, and abandoning my defenceless sister. As another heart-rending cry rang out, I realised the former didn’t seem like much of an obstacle, but no matter how much I wanted to at that moment I knew I couldn’t leave Emelia. I had the chance to escape, to save her life, and that was not worth squandering for anything.
Belatedly, I picked up Emelia, still eerily silent, and turned away from the door. The passage was just tall enough for me to stand in and I began walking away from the screams towards wherever fate and this cramped tunnel lay. It took me a moment, then, to notice Lotti was not following.
Turning back around I found him frozen still, staring at the door with his massive eyes, his ears drooping down the side of his head in a gesture I recognised as either fear or sadness.
“Lotti,” I whispered urgently; my voice still steady despite the trembling I felt.
His head slowly turned until I could see his face but did not meet my eyes. “Lotti is sorry, master Victor. Lotti must help mistress Marissa.”
“You’ll die,” I told him, though I imagined he already knew as much.
“Lotti must try, master Victor.” Came the reply, the house elf’s voice full of rare conviction.
I found that I couldn’t argue with that, not when he had a chance, even a slight one, of saving mother. It was a selfish instinct that told me not to try and dissuade him any further, one that nevertheless brought an intense feeling of guilt welling up in my stomach.
Turning away from me, he clicked his fingers and the door opened.
“Thank you, Lotti,” I said to him before I left, my voice thick with more emotion than I had anticipated, and I saw him freeze once more. “You are an excellent elf, and a great friend to this family.”
He turned and nodded slightly, before jumping down into the room and snapping his fingers one final time, shutting the door, and leaving me alone with my sister, with nought but the screams of our mother echoing through the tunnel.
The sound was like fingernails on a chalkboard, tearing at my soul as I fought the urge to cover my own ears. I couldn’t imagine why it was happening, but I suppose some people didn’t need a reason to cause misery and pain, and that made it all the worse. Picturing my mother writhing in pain for the sick amusement of some dark witch or wizard made me shake with rage, my teeth biting into the sides of my cheeks as I tried to get myself under control.
As much as I wanted to stay, to witness the elf’s sacrifice as I felt he deserved, I didn’t waste time in hurrying along the passage as I reminded myself of my priorities.
I couldn’t say how long it took, only that the sound of my mother’s cries of agony grew fainter and fainter until they could no longer be heard at all, which was far from relieving. Sometime later, when the door behind me was no longer visible, Emelia’s cries became audible, and I stopped as I considered what that meant. I hoped it was just because the spell had run its course, but the more pessimistic part of me worried it was because Lotti was no more. Closing my eyes and taking a breath, I continued onwards.
Eventually, we came to another door, the slight light it let out let me know it was similarly a painting. Pushing it open, I flinched away from the sudden light that pierced my dilated pupils.
After a moment of furious blinking, my eyes adjusted to the view before me. Rows and rows of books in rings of wooden shelves, occasionally broken up by a lively painting of one of my ancestors, that drew my eyes up and up as they filled the walls of the tower all the way to its top. At the bottom, a short drop from where I was, along with a fireplace and some old leather chairs to read on there were several display cabinets, each one showing a different aspen wand, with a couple of exceptions, that I knew had been wielded by past Thornehearts. I knew instantly where I was, even though I had never been here before. This was the family library, held in its own tower separate from the manor.
I had tried in the past to find it, it was supposedly just a short walk from the house, yet I had always gotten turned around in the forest and ended up right back where I started. It was, of course, a magical forest, filled with ancient family defensive charms and enchantments that were supposed to protect and hide Stranglehold from any unwanted visitors.
Evidently, they had not been strong enough to stop the Death Eaters.
I sat down on one of the many chairs that littered the bottom floor of the library after climbing down from the tunnel. Tuning out my crying sister, I stared into the wooden floorboards and did the only thing I could.
I waited.
My eyes never left the floorboards as I considered my every possible move, and thought of anything I could have done differently to save Lotti or my mother. I came up with a few scenarios in which that was the case, but all required a degree of hindsight. The truth was I was undeniably useless at the moment. Unless you were Harry Potter, babies and toddlers couldn’t defeat magic-wielding maniacs, no matter how much extra-worldly knowledge one might possess.
The conclusion did little to soothe the storm of grief and self-loathing I felt welling up within. Survivors guilt, I knew it well, but knowing it didn’t make it any less devastating.
I was torn from my wallowing by a sudden and unexpected voice from above.
“Victor Thorneheart.” Came the recently familiar Russian accent.
My head and eyes shot upwards to reveal Ivan Thorneheart, but this was no painting. Floating several feet from the ground was a pale blue and slightly see-through apparition in the form of my long-dead ancestor. A ghost.
For a moment, the sheer astonishment at seeing such a thing distracted me from the feelings, but they quickly came crashing back when I wondered if mother would become a ghost as well.
“Yes?” I asked in a tired and defeated tone as I met the ghosts’ eyes.
“Your father has returned with some allies and the intruders have fled. He wishes to know your whereabouts.” The ghost paused for a moment with a thoughtful and empathetic look on his face. “I can see from your face that you believe your mother to be dead. This is not so. The cruciatus curse has taken its toll, but she yet lives and will recover in time. Please, my kin, remain here, I will bring your father to you as quickly as I can.”
With that, he flew off, straight through one of the stone walls as though it wasn’t there.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I had been holding, relieved beyond words. It didn’t escape my notice what went unsaid, however. Lotti, grandfather and grandmother were dead.
They had been a constant presence, as much as my parents, seemingly always around, and now they were gone. It was true that, relative to how much I could remember, I wasn’t really a child and had known them for only a fraction of my remembered lifespan but telling myself that didn’t make the feelings go away or stop the shaking in my hands. Maybe it was my young body or perhaps just the comfort of being alone and free of judgement that I allowed myself to lose my composure. Closing my eyes, I could no longer stop the tears from forming.
There was no longer any rage at those who had done this, though I was sure that would return later, all I felt was painful, overpowering sadness.
I sat there in tears waiting for my father to arrive, mourning what I had lost, relieved things hadn’t gone quite as bad as they could have. But below it all, in an undercurrent of emotion I knew wouldn’t go away anytime soon, I couldn’t shake the fact that I felt like a coward.