Harry Potter And The Slytherin’s Prince - Chapter 32 12 Grimmauld Place

Somewhere in a hidden place,

“Go take a rest.” A old man said with a growling voice, his face looked as if it was roughly carved from wood. His face was covered in scars and a chunk of his nose was missing. He had dark grey, grizzled hair. He also had a wooden leg. His eyes however were the most shocking part of his face, one was small and dark while the other was a vivid, electric blue magical eye that moved around independently from his normal eye.

“Mad-eye, its Christmas, I wanna go home.” A girl with bubblegum-pink hair said lazily.

“You will go home, after you finish your basic training.” Moody said limping.

She mumbled something underneath her breath, when suddenly a owl came flying by.

“Didn’t you open your gifts this morning?” Moody asked.

“I thought I did.” She said taking the present the owl had bought her.

She quickly opened the present to find a new Nimbus 2000. Her eye lit up as she picked up the broom and started playing around with it.

Moody came over and said, “Who can send you such a expensive gift?”

“Mad-eye, there you go being suspicious about everything again.” She said, “It must have been one of my lovers back in Hogwarts.”

“Tonks, do you really think a old lover would send you the most expensive broom around?” Mad-eye said, “Besides, the broom could have been Hexed or worse cursed. As an Auror, you should be more aware of this situations.”

“Auror in training! and what’s that in your hand?” Tonks asked looking at Moody who was holding a letter in his hand.

“It came with your broom, be more observant” Moody said grumpily and passed her the letter, for her to read it.

Dear Nymphadora Tonks,

You are probably wondering who I am and why I sent you a Christmas gift. Well let’s start with who I am first. My name is Draco Malfoy. You may or may not have heard of me but all in all, I am your cousin. I know how our family relation’s has been since, my aunt, your mother married a muggle, but unlike my parents, I don’t believe in this pure-blood crap at all. So I am sending this Christmas gift as a way to reconcile our relations.

I may not be able to convince my parents to think like me but I still believe that we are family and besides we are the younger generation who will have to live to see the future. So even if my parents don’t agree, I still want to make peace between our family or at least between you and me.

I found that you graduated just the year before I joined, which is kinda sad considering the fact that I could have this conversation with you face to face rather than with a letter. I heard that you are training to be an Auror, so I wish you luck. Even though I think Aurors are weird and creepy, but hey it’s still something, isn’t it? I heard that there are some people in the department like, someone called, Mad-eye Moody. Never met him before but everyone says he’s a little creepy so watch out for him.

If you agree with my views then you can reach out to me through letters, whenever you have time. I basically stay in Hogwarts so that’s the safest place where you can send me a letter. Also if you don’t want to then just forget about this letter and you can still keep the broom, its yours. Merry Christmas!

Your Cousin,

Draco Malfoy.

“Hahaha..” Tonks was already rolling on the ground halfway through the warning towards Moody. Moody’s grumpy face was more grumpier.

“Hmph! So what are you going to do?” He asked

“I am going to do what?” Tonks asked but after gaining a glare from Moody she said, “I don’t know, he seems like a fun kid. He’s weird I guess, the first part of the later made him seem like a boring person but the latter made him interesting and he seems sincere, so I guess there’s nothing wrong with having a conversation, besides I got this really cool broom.”

“The Malfoy’s are more clever than you think.” Moody snorted, “Considering how they manage to wiggle out their way after ‘he’ disappeared.”

“But isn’t he still young? From reading the content of the letter you can tell that he is a first year in Hogwarts so how bad can he be.”

“I am more suspicious of that little devil.” Mad-eye said, “From all the news I have heard of him, he’s even more cleverer than his father and with his intelligence, I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be the next dark lord.”

“Okay, Mad-eye let’s not go too far in the future.” Tonks said, “And he doesn’t seem to have the pure-blood prejudice all of these dark wizards have.”

“You should also know that Voldemort, isn’t the only dark lord.” Moody said, “Every people have different ambitions.”

“Okay.” Tonks said rolling her eyes, “I am going to send a letter to mother.”

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Similar to many other families, the Tonks family were celebrating Christmas. Andromeda Tonks like her daughter received a letter from Draco talking about reconciling, where he explained them about his beliefs and thinking. Andromeda was happy that there was another family member who isn’t completely void of love and isn’t mindlessly a pure-blood supremacist, so she happily wrote a letter back to him, agreeing with his thoughts.

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Christmas passed and there were a few days left before the school starts again. After his father agreed, the process was much smoother and faster than Draco imagined it to be. After a quick talk with the current Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, it was discovered that the Black family inheritance was passed onto Sirius Black, despite being in Azkaban. Since there were no other direct descendants other than him, Sirius was the rightful owner of the Black family and it couldn’t be changed unless he agreed to it. The right could only be legally transferred to Draco after Sirius’s death and if he’s already officially changed to a Black from Malfoy. Originally the process would be more complicated, since after Sirius death the property would transfer to Bellatrix and after Bellatrix death the right would transfer to Narcissa. But with a little bit of bribing and family connections, the matter was resolved removing Bellatrix from the family inheritance line and with Narcissa giving her inheritance right to Draco. With Bellatrix confessing all her crimes openly at the Council, no one believed that she will ever be released from Azkaban so removing her from getting the inheritance wasn’t too difficult.

The whole unexpected news caused a pause to his inheritance plan of the Black family. Even though Sirius was in Azkaban, no one knows when he will die. So after trying everything they could they decided to officially change his surname to Black first, since anything they do will require him to be a Black first. (Nearly forgot to write ‘a’)

The official changing of his family name wasn’t a difficult process, with Narcissa originally being a Black and the only heir who isn’t in Azkaban, taking on the name wasn’t difficult but Narcissa kept insisting on taking the permission of her aunt first before doing so. Draco agreed with her since Draco planned to move out to 12 Grimmauld Place, taking her permission was a priority.

12 Grimmauld Place was the ancestral home of the Black family, located in the Borough of Islington, London, in a Muggle neighborhood. The location was protected by a Fidelius Charm making the house invisible to the neighborhood residents, the local Muggles have long since accepted the mistake in numbering which landed number 13 next to number 11.

The Malfoy family drove to the neighborhood in a car, since Narcissa was pregnant apparition wasn’t a correct choice as it may harm the baby. Car was one of the weird hobbies that wizards had. It was said that many wizards and witches envied muggle cars, so they started buying it for their own use. Even wizards with prejudice against muggles owned cars. Especially the rich wizarding family owned cars like Rolls Royce. Lucius had bought 3 different Rolls Royce from a wizard car-seller that sold enchanted cars after buying it from muggles. The cars were obviously different from a normal wizarding car with enhancement such as Extension Charm causing the car to have a huge space within the car. Draco suggested his father about some extension he could add to his car which resulted in, Lucius personally enchanting it with a flying charm, a invisible charm and a self driving charm.

Lucius was very proud of his work and talked about it every chance he could get. Although a car is defined as a Muggle artifact, and is therefore illegal to enchant under British wizarding law, nevertheless there are a few enchanted cars in Britain. With the Malfoy’s family legally owning three of them. Of course the council wasn’t made aware of the other enhancement than the extension charm. After driving for nearly an hour they finally reached the place.

“It’s really far away, from our house.” Draco said looking around the place.

“Even though my car isn’t as fast as the knight bus it’s still faster than a lot of other cars and besides if it was night time we could fly here more quickly.” Lucius said, “But apparating here would still be much faster.”

Draco rolled his eyes seeing Lucius brag about his car to them. Lucius was the type that like to brag a lot but since he couldn’t talk about the enhancement to his friends due to it being a secret, he would keep bragging it to Draco and Narcissa, whenever he had the chance.

“So where is it?” Draco asked

“The place is hidden and from what I remember the place was under Fidelius Charm, but after my aunt’s death the place is known to all the people who previously knew about it.” Narcissa explained

“But wouldn’t that be disadvantageous?” Draco asked. He knew that later when Order of the Pheonix moved in here, Dumbledore enchanted the place with Fidelius Charm with him being a secret keeper but it still doesn’t explain how the other people like his mother or Bellatrix forgot about the place even before the charm was placed considering they had been here before.

“The charm is inactive right now.” Narcissa said, “Before dying, my uncle put every security measure known to wizardkind on this place when he lived here, so even right now only a few people know about this place. This is why getting aunt Walburga permission is necessary, since after she accepts you, you can be the next secret keeper of the 12 Grimmauld Place after Sirius, making the place completely hidden again.”

“Wait! so Sirius can still know about this place even after I become the secret keeper.” Draco asked confused

“Yes, since Sirius is the current owner of this place it also makes him a Secret-keeper so unless we can get him to give you the right to the property, he will keep being a secret-keeper, no matter what happens.” Narcissa said, “I know it’s confusing due to all the charms and enhancement done to this place but you can be sure that this place is very safe.”

“You both go in there and have a chat, I’ll stay here.” Lucius said.

Narcissa took Draco’s hand and walked between the two houses. Suddenly, the neighboring houses, number eleven and number thirteen, were shoved out of the way as a worn set of front steps appeared between them. Draco and Narcissa climbed up the stairs which lead to a battered front door. On the door was a silver knocker in the shape of a twisted serpent, with no keyholes, handles, or anything else that would indicate it to be a door, Narcissa took out her wand and waved it around causing the door to flung open. As soon as the door opened a loud, clanging bell rang through the house.

The front door opened to a long hallway, lit with gas lamps and a large overhead chandelier.The place at one time might have been a grand entryway, complete with ornate portraits on the walls, but right now it was gloomy and cobwebby, with the wallpaper peeling off and the carpet worn thin. Among the midst of painting was a life size painting of a old woman in a black cap.

“WHO IS IT?” The portrait screamed.

(The whole thing is kind of confusing about the 12 Grimmauld Place, so I added my own twist to it.)