Melanie Rosen: Year 3 (A Harry Potter Fanfic)

Chapter 18 All About Andre

Chapter 18
All About Andre

      The very day, I returned to Hogwarts, I did not hesitate to tell my friends what I found.
     
      “So he was your mum and aunt’s cousin?” Ron asked.
     
      I nodded. “Yes, according to the photo. There is also something else familiar about him, but I can’t think of what.”
     
      “Do you have a last name I can go by?” Hermione asked.
     
      “Well, my aunt’s maiden name is Riddle,” I said. “I guess we can try that and hope for the best.”
     
      The three of them remained silent. Ron and Hermione both shot Harry an awkward glance.
     
      “What?” I asked, apprehensively, eyeing all three of them.
     
      Ron shrugged and looked at Harry. “I guess you should probably tell her.”
     
      I drew in a sharp breath, getting a feeling I would not like what he has to say.
     
      Harry appeared hesitant but said, “It’s just that last year I found out Voldermort’s…”
     
      “Bloody hell, Harry,” Ron interrupted, “You have got to stop saying his name.”
     
      “Anyway,” Harry went on, ignoring him. “I found out the name he went by before he became Lord Vol…” as Ron shot him a hard glare, he corrected, “well, You-Know-Who. It was Tom Riddle.”
     
      “Riddle,” I repeated in a daze.
     
      “Wow,” Ron said, his eyes widening at me, “so you could very well be related to… well, Him.”
     
      “No,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Its not possible.”
     
      “We still don’t know anything for sure yet,” Hermione said, calmly. “It may not be here, but Riddle is a pretty common name in the muggle world.”
     
      “Right, it is,” I said, suddenly feeling better. “Also, my Grandpa Charles is muggle-born so he can’t…”
     
      As my voice trails Harry offers an apologetic shrug and says, “Voldemort’s father was a muggle.”
     
      “Harry!” Ron strained.
     
      I gaped at Harry in shock. “What? Are you kidding me? He gained followers by convincing them to fight to keep the wizarding world pure-blooded and now you’re telling me that Voldemort himself is not even pureblood?”
     
      “Bloody hell, now she’s doing it too,” Ron grumbled.
     
      “He just needed a cult of people to fight for him. I guess its so he could become more powerful and well known,” Harry explained softly.
     
      “So my family could very well be related to Voldemort,” I groaned. “Wonderful. I guess the reason Aunt Becky wanted to keep Andre a secret is that he must have turned evil.”
     
      “You still don’t know for certain,” Hermione stated. “I think we should go to the library tonight and see what we can find out. That way we can put this matter to rest.”
     
      “Yeah,” Harry agreed. “I also want to find out if he was in some way connected to Sirius Black.”
     
      “Well, if they were both death eaters they might have been best friends,” Ron suggested with a shrug.
     
      “My dad thought Black was his best friend also,” Harry gritted, darkly.
     
      As we all stood up, I looked at Hermione curiously, “It’s getting kind of late. Aren’t you worried about getting in trouble?”
     
      Before she could answer, Ron grinned and looked at Harry. “I think its time you showed Melanie here your invisibility cloak.”
     
      My eyes widened as I looked at Harry. “You have an invisibility cloak? I’ve heard of that but I didn’t know one actually existed.”
     
      After we left the common room, the four of us huddled together under Harry’s cloak, tiptoeing quietly. It felt so weird to walk past the few lingering professors without being seen.
     
      As we entered the dark library, we removed the cloak and lit our wands for lighting.
     
      “So how are we going to do this?” I asked Hermione.
     
      “Well, at Hogwarts there are school records of every student that ever attended,” Hermione explained. “Since they are private they are kept here in the Restricted Section so that not just anyone can read through them.”
     
      As we walked into this forbidden section, Harry pointed out, “There must have been thousands of students with records here. How are we going to pick Andre’s out?”
     
      Hermione held up her wand and replied, “Since I have his full name, or so we hope, I can simply summon them using magic.”
     
      This sounded way to simple. I almost didn’t believe it would work until she actually did it. At the flick of her wand, a brown folder came souring into Hermione’s hands, with the name Andre Riddle.
     
      “You really are brilliant you know,” Ron said to her.
     
      “No kidding,” I added as Hermione flushed.
     
      The four of us sat on the floor and browsed through the papers in the open folder. We found the Andre Riddle attended Hogwarts at the same time as my aunt and uncle. He was sorted into Gryffindor and was on the Quidditch team as their Keeper. On his seventh year, he received an award for being one of their top players. He generally performed slightly above average in most of his subjects, except for Defense Against the Dark Arts, in which he was top of the class.
     
      “This Andre fellow kind of seems like a model student,” Ron commented. “Star Quidditch player, and excelled in Defense Against the Dark Arts? Heck, he kind of sounds like you, Harry.”
     
      “Well, I don’t know about model student,” Hermione said, noting, “He does have a pretty spotty detention record.”
     
      Ron grinned and winked at his best friend. “Sounds exactly like you, Harry.”
     
      I glanced at those papers and muttered, “Well, I guess I’m not really one to judge on how much he’s been in detention. Is there anything about his life after Hogwarts?”
     
      Hermione shook her head. “That wouldn’t be in here. It does say he graduated with the intention of being an Auror.”
     
      “What’s an Auror?” I asked, unfamiliar with the term.
     
      “It’s a specialized elite officer trained to fight crimes related to the Dark Arts,” Hermione answered. “I can see if there are any newspaper articles about him to see if he actually became an Auror.”
     
      “I guess he could have trained for it to learn how to fight Aurors when he became a Death Eater,” I mumbled.
     
      “Well, we don’t know for certain but I suppose its possible,” Hermione said standing up.
     
      As I arose, too, Harry asked, “Say Hermione, do you think you could use that summoning spell to pull out Sirius Black’s records?”
     
      Hermione sighed, pulling out her wand. “I suppose, Harry, but I still don’t think it’s a good idea for you to obsess over him.”
     
      Once Harry had Black’s records, he and Ron stayed put to browse through them. I followed Hermione out of the Restricted Section to go through old articles from the Daily Prophet and other places. We sat at one of the tables with them spread out in front of us. This was where I expected to find his name listed with Death Eaters. I mentally prepared myself for the revelation.
     
      After we finally stumbled on some information I found that I couldn’t be more wrong.
     
      “Melanie,” Hermione gasped, looking down at the articles, awed. “He was a hero.”
     
      Indeed he was. According to every one of these articles, Andre Riddle was a man who continuously fought bravely against Voldemort and his supporters. He was a member of this group, Order of the Phoenix, which was an organization that focused specifically on fighting Voldemort. 
     
      “This makes absolutely no sense,” I finally said, as I continued to flip through the papers. “If he was such a great guy, why is my aunt so determined to keep him a secret from me?”
     
      Hermione shrugged. “I couldn’t imagine why.” She handed me another paper. “He’s a picture of him and his wife. Her name was Darlene.”
     
      “Was?” I repeated, looking at the picture.
     
      Darlene had a gentle expression on her pale rounded face. She had thick brown wavy hair, similar to mine.
     
      Hermione nodded, her eyes still pinned on the articles. “All these show the date of birth and the date of death for both Andre and Darlene Riddle.”
     
      “Do any of these articles say how they died?” I asked her.
     
      Hermione rummaged around through the newspapers until she found something that caught her eye. “According to this, Andre was murdered by You-Know-Who himself in an one-on-one duel.”
     
      I gazed at the article, titled ‘The Loss of a Great Hero,’ reading the words for myself. According to this, Andre sought out Voldemort and challenged him to the duel, but why? It sounded like a suicide mission.
     
      “How’s it going,” Harry asked as he and Ron approached our table.
     
      I showed them what we found and explained as much as I knew about Andre.
     
      “So he was a hero?” Ron asked, as he and Harry both appeared just as startled by the information as I was.
     
      I offered a shrug. “There isn’t anything here that says otherwise.”
     
      “But then why is he this big secret?” Harry asked me.
     
      I sighed. “Maybe my mum didn’t want me to know about him because he was murdered. She might think it’s too much for me to take so she made my aunt and uncle promise not to tell me about him.”
     
      “That seems a bit extreme,” Harry commented, “even for your mum.”
     
      “You know how over-protective she is,” I muttered and then looked to Hermione asking, “Do it say how Darlene died?”
     
      “According to this one, it was a suicide,” Hermione explained quietly. “She did it just after Andre was killed. It says she through herself off a cliff.”
     
      “That’s definitely something I can see my mum not wanting me to know,” I commented, feeling unsettled. “I wonder if it was Darlene’s voice I heard that day on the train.”
     
      Harry frowned and pointed out, “You would have had to been there. Remember, the dementors make you relive your worst memory.”
     
      I glanced at one of the articles noticing the year Andre and Darlene died, 1981. That would have made me just a year old.
     
      “Maybe I was there and I just don’t remember,” I pointed out. “Perhaps I was the reason Andre went up against Vol… sorry, You-Know-Who, in the first place. He could somehow kidnapped me and Andre was the one who went to rescue me. Do you think that’s possible? If he was really as brave as these articles say, he probably would have gone up against You-Know-Who for a family member, especially if he and Aunt Becky were close.”
     
      “I guess it makes as sense,” Harry agreed.
     
      “That means his death would have been my fault,” I added more weakly.
     
      Hermione put her hand on my arm and consoled, “You can’t blame yourself for that. You were only a baby.”
     
      Harry then added, “But maybe your aunt knew you might think of it that way and that’s why she didn’t tell you.”
     
      “I supposed that makes as much sense as anything,” I muttered in a sigh. “Well, I guess we found everything we’re going to find on this. I’m just to tell my aunt over the summer what I know and hopefully she’ll tell me the rest. We should probably go back now.”
     
      We all quietly put everything back and then went back under the invisibility cloak and headed back to the common room. I continued to ponder over all the new information I had learned about my deceased Cousin Andre. It seemed as though I found everything I needed to know about his life, his relationships, and his death. However, something told me there was still one giant piece to this mysterious puzzle I was missing.