All in the Family

Chapter 143: The House of Gaunt

They were once again plunged into utter darkness. The sounds of pots and furniture breaking had nothing on the rank smell of unclean rising to all of their noses. Peter squealed in genuine fright upon something slithering across his face as the others lit their wand in time to see the tail of a snake vanishing into a filthy armchair. James had landed dangerously close to a curdling fire, the smoke still in his face making him cough terribly.

The walls were a gray, dirty stone. There was a boiling pot on a grimy stove in the corner Sirius tipped over, the very air hanging in here made them all wish desperately to be anywhere else at once.

Alice summoned the book to her to get started on that.

"Gaunt eh?" Sirius asked in complete disgust for the house still, though something tickled the name in his memories he'd tried to repress. "Hey Reg, help me out, why do I know that?" Surely he could still talk to the kid without being hated further.

"Morfin Gaunt, tenth branch, line died out with him," he repeated on autopilot.

"Right, thanks," he grumbled, no clue why he'd asked, it helped nothing to make this feel better.

"What's Harry doing here?" James demanded, taking careful steps across the room to be back by Sirius, wand held at the ready for every disgusting pile he passed. "Can't be Dumbledore's lesson to bring him here, what's the point?"

"I suppose there's only one way to find out," Alice sighed as she reluctantly turned back to the book.

Remus came out of one of the rooms with such a look of disgust on his face nobody wanted to ask what he'd found in there. Lily came out of the other soaking wet by her own wand she stowed away, like she'd actively tried to rinse this place from her before they even left.

Everyone but the girls continued laughing enthusiastically about Harry's little cheat sheet of a potions book, until Alice leaned up and whispered in Frank's ear and he stopped abruptly with an annoyed frown. The others didn't pay it much mind, shifting around impatiently to find out what the point of being here was even if they gave the place more life than this dung hill likely ever had as they continued whispering about getting their hands on that in their own time to breeze through their OWLs.

Lily bit her lip hard to stop herself falling to the filthy floor for laughing at that. The idea had never occurred to her she would ever want to help the Marauders, but the idea of inventing that Wolfsbane potion herself was still heavily on her mind and she wished now more than ever she had her own copy on her to take notes in. The tempting idea to inform them they were currently muttering about wanting Severus's help even in proxy was just a bit of a bonus she'd privately enjoy.

Regulus' smile slipped a notch though when he heard of some of the oddly specific spells being addressed in the margins of this book. He'd told Lily the truth, he did not hang out with Snape nor really know what they got up to on a regular basis, mostly he just hung around in his room alone looking at the excellent view and doing his homework, reading, or exploring the castle alone, if not on an errand. Even if he did turn a rather blind eye and ear most times to not hear what they were laughing about too in ignorance, what little he had heard made him wish there was an attic at Hogwarts.

Some of those spells though, he'd swear he recognized them coming from Snape himself, who often spent his times writing in a potion book. He shared his ideas with Mulciber and Avery all the time, and they often taught others if they were satisfied with Snape's new ideas.

He watched Evans for a few moments and felt his suspicion all but confirmed when she kept watching the book as if it were personally hitting her in the face. He didn't want to risk missing a word of what Dumbledore said though, and if Evans wasn't telling them he wasn't going to do it for her, so kept his mouth shut.