Three Hallows, Two Weasleys and One Broken Girl

Chapter 50: Stony Silence

Still alive!

———

The day after they found the wand, flushed with their success, the duo threw themselves into researching the lore of the resurrection stone.
What they found, both wasn't promising, and was uncomfortably close to their own tale.
It was only Fate's assurance that Death would not play such tricks on her than comforted them when they woke from nightmares of a ghostly Delphi they could see but never touch.

Aside from Beadle's own tale, there was almost no records of such a stone in any aspect of history. The only other stone to make legendary tales in the time since being Nicholas Flamel's philosopher's stone.
It seemed doubtful that everyone who recognised the stone for what it was kept quiet, but it was a quieter tale than the others.
Antiochs' wand attracted the power hungry, the molders of history.
Outside of its membership as part of a set, anyone pursuing the stone for its abilities were doing so for deeply personal reasons. Ones they wouldn't wish recorded in tomes.

Since Cadmus ended his own life, alone, it seemed their best shot was to find his grave, gruesome as the thought was.
And to find his grave, the most logical place to go was his ancestral home.
Time to visit Crook Hall.

———

Durham was pretty.
Too many churches though.

Weirdly there were loads of muggles their age wandering about. Fred wondered if there was a party going on but it didn't seem like the place for such a thing, unless the muggles had a secret school here. The town did remind him a bit of Hogsmede, but at the youngest these muggles could only be sixth years and some definitely were not school age.
It was weird, but his mind was more focused elsewhere so he didn't bother trying to investigate.

Crook hall fit in well with the aesthetic of the area, old stone overrun with climbing greenery. Since the Peverell family had died out it had been taken over by muggles. Muggles who charged entry in a way that made Fred worried they'd found magic artefacts and were getting people to pay to see them.
After paying themselves, it turned out this wasn't the case.
The muggles just came to look at the house and gardens.
It was very weird.
Didn't they have more entertaining things to do? Like Feetball?

It only took them a brief wander around the ground floor to find a stairway with a muggle repelling ward. Walking up they found a room with a large fireplace, and deathly hallows carvings all over the place.
Unfortunately, that was all they found. Treasure hunters must have picked the place clean.

Cadmus Peverell wouldn't be buried in the house though, would he? He'd be in the grounds.
Or not.
Perhaps the nearest graveyard?
No.
Must be in at least a mile radius of the house.
No can do.
The graveyard at Durham cathedral then, makes sense for a wealthy man.
No sign.
The nearest all wizard burial site?
Nothing.
Where were the other brothers buried?
No one knows.
Any sites in the area known to have ghosts they could ask?
Dead ends. Literally.
What are the other Peverell properties? Maybe he didn't live at the main house?
Lost to time.
...What have other seekers of the Hallows found?
...Who even are other seekers of the Hallows?
...Wasn't Xenophilous Lovegood wearing the symbol of them at Bill's wedding?
Bollocks.

———

It was the second of December when Fred and George Weasley climbed the hill up to the Lovegood's house. Exactly seven months since the battle of Hogwarts.
They knew Luna was back at school for her sixth year, much as the golden trio had been forced to return for their NEWTS. It would be a relief not to face her again, Fred still remembered her accusing glare in the ruins of the Great Hall.

Climbing the hill brought crippling nostalgia for that perfect summer before their final year, a summer of brilliant invention, shirking convention, maternal intervention, and the greatest romantic supervention.
It was a summer so perfect no rose tinted glasses could make it prettier.
Fred missed that time with an ache that made his lungs burn.

He remembers the look on Delphi's face when they'd said; cocky and innocent, 'let's make it worse'.
Though he wouldn't take back what they'd had for a moment, he thinks he can now fully appreciate her reluctance and fear going into this.
The thought that she'd seen him die long before that first night on the astrology tower, the thought that she already knew what this pain would be, and did it anyway, fills him with awe. A part of him is angry about her taking his place, even if in his mind he knows he can't truly blame her. It'll be something they have to talk out if- when they get her back.

The Lovegood garden that had been filled with so many miraculous creatures and plants was dead, blackened and bare. And unbearably silent.
The only exclusion to this was the bush Luna had been sitting in upon their first visit. The..Judaega tree? That gave people nearby glimpses of the future.
He wasn't sure how much to read into the fact it was still alive.
He wasn't sure whether to give into temptation and climb into the hollow beneath its branches.

He pulled his gaze away and followed George to the front door.
When his twin knocked, the door swung open.
The living room was still upsidedown, the kitchen still a mishmash of eras, if disconcertingly neat.
The man within though.

He'd been a shell of a human being for all the time they'd really known him.
Much like Delphi hated Molly as they never could, Fred and George hated Xenophilous. For forcing her to raise her sister, to mother both her sibling and father and step up as she never should have had to.

Both Xenophilius and Luna had worn orange to Delphi's 'funeral'. Her favourite colour apparently.
He was wearing the exact same outfit now, though considerably more worn if clean enough. His hair was greasy, his features aged and the skin around his eyes dark enough to be bruised.
Xenophilius was slouched across the one sofa, surrounded by an eclectic collection of alcoholic beverages in various stages of use.
He was clutching a picture frame.
It wasn't Delphi but Pandora in the frame, wearing a soft smile.

Fred resolved to invite Luna to stay with them at the shop for Christmas. She didn't deserve to deal with this.

"Mr Lovegood." George addressed the broken man.
"Hmmm..." was the best coherency Xenophilius managed.
"Depellere ebrietatem." Incanted Fred with no sympathy when the man whimpered at the sudden sobriety.
"Mr Lovegood, we need what information you have on the deathly hallows."
He was quiet for so long, Fred thought he'd fallen asleep.
Then the man began to laugh.
The sharpness of it raised the hairs on his legs let alone his neck. A part of him wanted to run but he'd looked Fate in the eyes, and clutched his dead lover in his arms and he would get any answers this man could fish from his cracked mind.

"The last person to ask me that, was Harry Potter." He mumbled. "I sold him out for my Delphi y'know, my stars, but they still didn't give 'er back ta me. Shoulda known that'd 'appen. My stars."
He stumbled from the couch and almost fell against the wall, clutching the painting of his wife like a teddy bear as he stroked shaking fingers along shelf of books.
"She 'ated em. Wouldna want you two teh go near em. Jus' like 'er mother. Too wise by far."

"Do you know anything about the resurrection stone, anything at all?" Pressed Fred.
It was the wrong thing to say.
"DON'T YOU DARE!" He seemed one poor word away from quite literally tearing his hair from his scalp. "THEY'RE TOGETHER NOW, DON'T YOU DARE DRAG HER BACK!"
"She wanted us to!" Yelled George.
"Did yeh ask?" He yelled back. "SHE DESERVES HER REST!"
"She deserved many things." Fred cut in, calm as he could manage, "including a father."
Xenophilius flinched but his eyes remained steely. "Did you ask her if it would be something she wanted?"
"When you know someone well enough, when you love them enough, you don't need to ask to know." George asserted, unwilling as Fred was to disclose anything they didn't have to.
"Well," Xenophilius have a cruel smile, "It doesn't matter what you think she would have wanted, the trail of the resurrection stone went cold before it began, you'll never find it. You'll never take her from her mother."

Fred wanted to hit him.
He settled for banishing all the alcohol with a vicious wand flick and storming out the house.