A Messy Start Open Closed

Piérre’s gaze didn’t waver, looking at Duna with his signature enchantingly inquisitive stare. True, he wasn’t scary or enthralling in and of himself, but he did have an uncanny knack for people, especially those who wanted to believe him. Duna seemed to be one of those sorts, and Piérre knew that he had her hook, line, and sinker.

It almost made him feel guilty. He didn’t like deceiving people. He liked to see tall tales and rumors and watch them grow wings. Creating a beautiful masterpiece and watching others ogle, admire, or distain it. What he didn’t like, and this was rare, was when people had no imagination or if they believed everything that they heard without question.

Piérre was willing to make an exception for Duna, though. She looked as if she had never been in the wizarding world. Her suitcase was bright pink, her clothes were those of a normal muggle, and it was evident that she had not ever seen any magic performed purposefully. Piérre dared to go so far as to assume that Duna hadn’t even cast a spell with her wand or take care of it, for he could see it nowhere on her immediate person.

Unwilling to let his facade fall, however, Piérre continued.

”It’s okay if you don’t want to join, I get it. Lots of people don’t have the bravery, courage, or the ability to think fast. It’s nothing against your character, you’re cool, you really are, and your art is awesome too. I guess I just needed someone to vent to.” He shrugged, averting his gaze towards the window again. ”Need someone to serve as a second if I do end up biting the dust.” He laughed as he knocked on the train bench’s wood paneling. ”Let’s not jinx it, though, shall we?”

Duna took a deep breath. Getting over the initial shock, she decided she needed to know more about what he was talking about before she did anything. She had so many questions.

She thought back over everything Pierre had said. He was a part of a secret organization that few people knew about. He was on a mission to take down another secret organization that wanted to weed out kids who didn’t make the cut. Didn’t make the cut for what? For Hogwarts, or to be a part of their organization?

Duna narrows her eyes at her paper, trying to focus. Her face shifted from fear and confusion to determination and confusion. She wanted to figure this out so she could help the best she could.

The other organization where suspected to be supporters of this person named Voldemort, whoever that was.

Duna decided to ask some questions first before telling him a definite yes or no. It could be cool to be a part of a bad guy fighting organization. She could be a hero! Duna’s smile halfway returned as she began to scribble on her paper.

’Questions first. Voldemort? Don’t make the cut? Pureblood and muggleborn?’ Duna wrote quickly. Trying to fit her main questions in first. She flipped the notepad around, showing the page to Pierre while looking at him expectantly.

Duna seemed to pause for a moment before her pencil was on paper again, scribbling quickly. Her brow was creased in a sense of asking a wordless question, and after a few minutes, she finally turned the paper, allowing Piérre to read her questions.

’Questions first. Voldemort? Don’t make the cut? Pureblood and muggleborn?’

Piérre had to prevent himself from choking right there. He had been right, he had been completely correct in all his suspicions. Duna knew nothing of the wizarding world, nothing of wizarding classes, and nothing of the infamous Lord Voldemort.

This was going to be fun.

”Fair enough. You deserve to know all the facts.” Piérre nodded approvingly, smiling like he was proud of Duna’s curiosity. ”First things first, Voldemort, or actually better known as ‘The Dark Lord Voldemort’, was a powerful wizard who lived waaaaay before we were born. He was the most powerful wizard to have ever lived, and also the most ambitious and evil Slytherin. He gave all of them quite a poor name, after all, some Slytherins try to be good. Of course, the ones chasing me weren’t, but that neither here nor there.” Piérre waved his hand impatiently, summoning all of his moxie to sell his story.

”Voldemort, aka Tom Riddle, was once a student at Hogwarts. Following his graduation, he turned evil, killing countless wizards with the unforgivable curse ‘Avada Kadavra’. He was destroyed by a boy named Harry Potter, known also as ‘The Boy who Lived’, and for a long time, the wizarding world thought they were safe. Soon after, when Potter came of age, he too attended Hogwarts as a Gryffindor. Even today, he is still the poster child of the house.”

Piérre pauses for a moment, allowing the information to settle in Duna’s ears before he continued.

”Potter’s years were relatively normal, but the world refused to stay complacent. Voldemort was still trying to return from the grave, and hunt down the boy who had destroyed him. By the time Potter’s final year, his seventh, rolled around, the whole wizarding world had been thrown into chaos.” Piérre wished he could cast a little spell, just enough to create a sensory illusion, a puff of smoke or mist, a burst of light or a flicker of darkness, anything to make his story more interesting. Instead, he only twiddled his wand between his fingers, dropping his voice to make the story more ominous.

”The year was 1998. Voldemort terrorized all of London. His mission: To purify the magical race by destroying all Muggleborns and convince the pureblood families to join him. Muggleborn is a term the magical realm uses to describes wizards and witches who are born from non-magical humans, or Muggles. Purebloods are wizards or witches born from magical families, meaning that their mom and dad were also magical. Voldemort only wanted pure magic, and he wanted to exterminate all those who didn’t meet his expectations.”

Piérre watched the mixture of terror and awe in Duna’s eyes grow before he resolved the scary moment.

”Before he was destroyed the first time, he had split his soul into artifacts, called horcruxes. Harry Potter and his friends, Ron Weasley, who was a pureblood, and Hermione Granger, who happened to be a Muggleborn, destroyed each of them one by one, before Harry Potter destroyed Voldemort once and for all.” Piérre smiled reassuringly. ”That dark wizard is no more, but,” he said, eyes darkening once more, ”There are some Death Eaters, his followers, who seek to continue his work even though their leader is gone. They want to keep killing Muggleborns and Halfbloods. That is the organization I suspect those bullies belong to, the ones who are probing the houses for kids who ‘don’t make the cut’.”

Piérre paused as he observed the expressions becoming more and more evident on Duna’s face. ”I never intended to alarm, Duna. I only share the hard facts. Are you alright?”

Duna listened carefully, gathering information and trying to piece it together in her head. It was like trying to complete a puzzle with half the pieces missing. So Voldemort, or Tom Riddle, was bad, Duna had assumed so. Death eaters were his supporters, they also sounded pretty bad. Harry Potter was a good guy who Voldemort tried to kill, but Harry killed him... or was he already dead before that. Something about soul splitting? Was that even possible. Again, Duna’s mind was overwhelmed by thoughts and questions.

Duna’s face remained neutral as she became lost in the mess of her thoughts.

“Those guys want to do what Voldemort did.” Duna began signing absentmindedly to herself. Her version of talking aloud. “And he wanted to make the world pure. Get rid of muggles, people without magic, and muggleborns.” The name was pretty self explanatory once you know what a muggle is.

Suddenly it clicked in Duna’s head, she was a muggle born. Duna looked up, terror in her eyes. She began pointing to herself, not signing anything specific, but trying to get across to Pierre that she had been born to two muggle parents. She was impure.

She pointed to the exit of the train car where the previous three boys had disappeared. Those boys were looking for people like her. We’re they death eaters? What’s she in danger? What about other people like her. She had to protect them, or help at least. Duna didn’t know what use he would have.

“I never intended to alarm Duna. I only share the hard facts. Are you alright?”

Duna suddenly became aware of her frantic pointing. She took a breath, calming herself down. She gave Pierre a small smile, she was okay... sort of. She wrote slowing and carefully on her notepad, trying to not let her hands shake.

‘I want to help, but I don’t think I’d be of much use. I’m mute and muggleborn.’ Duna hesitated before writing the last word. Almost as if not writing it would make it not true.

She turned the pad towards Pierre. Her expression had turn from frantic fear, to a sad smile.

‘I want to help, but I don’t think I’d be of much use. I’m mute and muggleborn.’

Duna was smiling sadly at Piérre.

Ah. So that was why she had been so quiet and hadn’t been immediately fed up with Piérre’s nonsense. The pieces clicked together in Piérre’s quickly formulating mind. That must have also been why she was willing to listen to his stories, no matter how crazy they seemed. Without a second to lose in his stride, Piérre continued.

”Well, then all the better to not reveal secrets!” Piérre laughed. ”I have a really big mouth myself, so it helps to have a monitor.”

It was quiet for a while, the Hogwarts Express rattling on down the tracks to the great school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Piérre was so excited. For the first time, his magic would be contained and appreciated. Maybe he could learn how to make it more powerful than it already was with his brother.

A bad feeling began to well in him. For all intensive purposes, he was lying to innocent Duna. Since she was a Muggleborn, he had probably scared her pretty badly as well. Talking about Lord Voldemort or Death Eaters was not a light subject, even within the Ministry or other Purebloods. It was nearly the equivalent of talking about World War II or the Vietnam War with a veteran who had served, sacrificed, and been mentally or physically damaged because of it. It just wasn’t respectable for Piérre to speak so casually about it, especially if it was a lie.

But perhaps Duna was enjoying hearing about it as much as he enjoyed telling it. If she was, Piérre decided he would play along a little longer before coming clean.

So he sat there, looking quietly at Duna and occasionally glancing at his feet, waiting for a response or confirmation.