The Doll House

CHAPTER THREE: Stories and Preparations









Draco, as usual, was right on time. Since he couldn’t use magic on a muggle he came armed with a small can of air freshener for Nevin though he wasn’t certain what was worse, the disgusting scents that came from the man or those scents mixed with night blooming jasmine. None the less he endured the malodorous journey on the lift, clutching the bag draped over his shoulder while Nevin accused him this time of stealing his shoes.





He happily left the old lunatic in the lift, wondering if he spent his entire day riding up and down the floors, and made his way to Granger’s office. He didn’t bother knocking, she was expecting him, and opened her door to find her standing in front of a desk littered with small devices.





“Good morning, Granger,” he greeted as he tossed his bag into a chair and approached her desk. “What’s all this business?”





“I see that knocking is beyond your capabilities,” she said. “These are tools of the trade, a digital thermometer for temperature readings, dousing rods, a digital recorder, salt, barrier potions, sand and protective talismans.”





“Tools of the trade?” He quirked his brow disbelievingly and held up a vial of blue potion.





“Fine, these are my tools of the trade then,” she said as she waved her wand over the items and watched as they disappeared into the open satchel in her chair. “Other investigators go in groups, pairing off with lots of high tech equipment, I don’t need all that.” She said, closing the satchel and setting it on the floor beside another small bag containing her clothes. “Did you get everything arranged?”





“Yes, I have the keys to the property,” he held up a heavy key ring and shook it. “It seems that about thirty years ago the carriage house was remodeled in hopes that it would be a selling point, there is an apartment over the garage. I sent house-elves to get it ready for us.”





“Well then, I suppose we should get started,” she said, giddy excitement racing through her.





“I thought we might go to breakfast, you can fill me in on the house’s history and why you want to get inside so badly,” he said.





“You want to take me out? To a meal?” she asked, slightly amused.





“I’m not asking you on a date, Granger. It’s going to take the elves some time to get things up to standard, plus I’m starving,” he patted his stomach and flashed a rather boyish smile that made her want to respond with a smile of her own. She checked that impulse and slung her bag over her shoulder then tossed small duffel his way. “OOMPH…what the hell, Granger? Do I look like a bell hop to you?”





“It won’t kill you to carry my bag, it’s the gentlemanly thing to do,” she said as she withdrew a set of keys from her pocket. “I don’t have house elves to do all of my heavy lifting for me.” She led him into the hall and locked the door behind them then glanced down at her watch. “Okay, we need to hurry if we are gonna ride the lift, Nevin is cleaning the upstairs bathroom.”





“I thought you said that he used to be the janitor,” Draco frowned and followed her to the lift, praying that it would be empty when the car arrived.





“He was, his wife passed on and his mind isn’t what it used to be, he doesn’t realize that he no longer works here,” she said, smiling when the empty carriage arrived and they stepped inside.



“So you just let him clean the place? For free? That’s brutal, Granger,” he smirked.





“I don’t own this building; I just lease the office space. Me and the other tenants pay his rent and leave food and cash in his old locker downstairs for him, he isn’t hurting anyone so why make a big deal about it,” she shrugged as they rode the lift down.





“Maybe you could try putting some soap and deodorant in his locker, or a clean change of clothing. Just a suggestion,” he said as the bell rang and the doors slid open to the first floor.





“You are still a judgmental prick I see,” she said as they crossed the lobby and stepped out into the bright morning sunshine. The air was crisp with the first signs of fall on the breeze and she closed her eyes to breathe deeply before turning to head down the street.





“Not really, I just don’t understand why crazy people have to be filthy as well. Couldn’t they be crazy AND bathe?” He kept pace beside her as they walked along the busy London street. “Where are you taking me?”





“You said you were hungry and wanted breakfast, well there is a little café around the corner where we can catch some breakfast and talk,” she said. “Right there, see?” She looked both ways and then darted across the street towards a little café with a striped awning and bright red door.





“Is it decent?” He asked, following close behind her.





“Snob,” she snorted, opening the door and entering the small restaurant with a smile for the elderly man behind the counter. “Hello, Sherman!”





“Ahhh, Ms. Granger! Always a pleasure to see you…and this time you bring a gentleman friend, very good!” The elderly man gave Draco a friendly, knowing smile as he followed Hermione to a booth in the back corner.





“Not this one, he thinks I’m beneath him,” Hermione snorted as she slid into the red vinyl booth.





“Oh, surely not! Ms. Granger is a beautiful woman! How could you think such a thing?” Sherman said as he handed them brightly colored menus.





“She seems to think I am still a school boy and shouldn’t make assumptions about things she knows nothing about,” Draco said, snapping open his menu.





“Leopards aren’t known for changing their spots,” she said, staring at the menu for a moment. “I’ll have eggs over easy, fried potatoes and bacon with whole wheat toast and orange juice please.”





“Ill have the same,” Draco copied, snapping his menu closed and handing it back to Sherman.





“Eating what the peasants eat? No gouda omlette or imported fruit cocktail?” She taunted.





“You know, you are rather rude, Granger. You know nothing about me or who I’ve become in the last decade but are so quick to judge and assume,” he said.





“Fine, tell me about you, Malfoy,” she sat back and smiled, her hands folded on the table in front of her. She stared straight at him, looking away for only a moment to acknowledge Sherman when he brought their juice.





“Alright, I went to University in the States, studied business and finance, I now run several of the family businesses and have controlling interest in a few others, I am single, living in London and my favorite meal happens to be Chicken McNuggets from the McDonalds around the corner from my flat, I have a collection of toys from the happy meals,” he said, noting the surprised expression on her face at the mention of his fast food preference.





“I wouldn’t have thought you would even know what a McDonalds was, I’m impressed,” she said.





“Your turn,” he said, imitating her relaxed pose.





“It’s all public knowledge, like everything else about my life, went to Oxford, was dumped a week before my wedding, dropped out of public life, started my own business and my favorite food are those little White Castle cheeseburgers they have in the states,” she said with a casual shrug of her shoulders. “I don’t get to indulge in those often.”





“Why did Weasley dump you?” He asked.





“And you call me rude!” She wasn’t really surprised; everyone asked the same thing if they got the chance which was why she had opted not to live a public life in the wizarding world.





“You can’t fault me for being curious, I had figured you would be surrounded by a dozen little ginger knee biters by now,” he said.





“Everyone did, including me,” she said, “But Ron wasn’t ready, we got caught up in the furor of it all, of everyone else’s expectations and never really thought about what we truly wanted. I don’t hold it against him, it was for the best.”





“So now instead of chasing rug-rats you chase ghosts,” he observed.





“It’s a bit more in depth than that,” she chuckled. “Are you really ready for this? Doll House is legend among researchers; it’s not a simple haunting.”





“You mentioned that in your office, you were so excited about the chance to get inside. Why is that?” He asked, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it over the back of the bench.





“I can’t believe that you purchased such an expensive property without seeing it,” she said shaking her head. “Or at least researching it.”





“I knew that I was going to have to do renovations on such an old house, possibly tear it down and start over. I bought it for the location, for its isolation,” he said.





“Well, that’s exactly why Maxwell Doll loved it so much,” she said as she reached into the satchel. She withdrew a thick file folder and laid it on the table between them. “Maxwell Doll was a wizard, Muggleborn. He attended Durmstrang where he was at the top of the class, played beater on their Quidditch team and to this day has the highest N.E.W.T scores in the school’s history. He was a brilliant wizard but he was also psychotic.”





Hermione flipped open the file and slid a photograph across the table of a man with dark hair and a thick mustache. Draco looked at the photograph, immediately recoiling at the frightening glint in the man’s eyes.





“That is Maxwell Doll,” she said. “The property you purchased was his family’s estate, by the time he finished his schooling he was the only one left, the sole heir to a fortune. He never married and lived alone without servants.”





“So? A lot of people live alone and without servants, why does that make him so important?” Draco asked, turning the photo face down.





“Not really important so much as infamous,” she said. “He was a serial killer and a pedophile.” She slid several old black and white, grainy photos towards him. “He began like any other serial killer in history, abusing and killing small animals from a young age, he kept to himself and according to all of his teachers and fellow students he was ‘a perfectly nice young man’. In 1888 killed his first victim, a fourteen year old prostitute in White Chapel named Polly. The wizarding world suspected that he might be behind the Ripper murders but could never confirm any other than, Polly. For nearly a decade he kidnapped, violated and murdered over seventy five children between the ages of eight and fifteen.”





“Nasty bugger, how did he get by with it for so long?” Draco asked as he looked over the reports Hermione had given him.





“It was 1888; people weren’t kept track of as closely as they are now. Muggle police methods weren’t as advanced and he was very adept at covering his tracks with magic, plus he had a multi acre, private estate where he could pretty much do whatever he wanted with no one the wiser,” she shrugged.





“So how did it end?” He asked, beginning to think about tearing the house down and starting over. He certainly didn’t want to live in a house where children were raped and murdered.





“In 1898 he made the mistake of taking a little girl from Diagon Alley. She was eleven and shopping for school with her parents when she wandered into Knockturn Alley. He didn’t realize that her father was a high ranking Ministry official who had a locating charm on his child. Within an hour his estate was crawling with aurors,” she said. “They found the little girl in the cellar, naked; she had been tortured but was still alive. Soon after they found him in a secret room, he had hanged himself.”





“Well…fuck, Granger,” Draco raked his fingers through his hair in frustration.





“Oh, I’m not finished,” she said. “When he was found he was surrounded by the remains of a very powerful spell that bound his soul to the house. They also found a mass grave at the edge of the property with the remains of his victims. Most were eventually identified and all of them were laid to rest in proper graves.”



“Alright, so the house has a fucked up history, what’s the deal with it now? Why did that old lady insist on an exorcism?” he asked, moving the file aside as Sherman arrived with their breakfast. He noticed that Hermione waited for the man to leave before continuing with the story, obviously he wasn’t a wizard.





“I told you that Doll was found after performing a ritual,” she said, liberally salting her breakfast. “Well, he bound himself to the house, as well as his victims. No one has been beyond the foyer and front parlor since that night. Every muggle investigator that has gone in has become incredibly ill the moment they tried to breach the center of the house. Every potential buyer that has stepped foot in that house has been struck by such a debilitating sense of unease that they have walked away from the house….no, they have run away from the house as quickly as possible.”





“So why do you want to go in? What makes you so special?” he asked.





“I am a witch. The wizarding world hasn’t given a damn about this case since it was closed. They like to block out the worst parts of their history and this story has been hidden for a century. I figure that the people who were affected so strongly were muggles, with a warding potion to counteract any negative warding on the house we should be able to move around with ease,” she said, smiling brightly before wrapping her lips around a fork full of eggs.





“Alright…so we get in, we look around, how do we get rid of … whatever?” he asked. He was fascinated by watching her eat. She ate like a quidditch player, not something he was used to seeing in a woman.





“Well, I’ll need to figure out what spell he used,” she said around her juice glass as she rifled through the file for a photo of the crime scene that showed the remnants of the ritual. “I have theories, but I need to get a look around, see if I can find a spell book. The house hasn’t been touched; everything is as it was when Doll died.”





“How did it end up in the hands of a muggle estate agent?”





“It was auctioned off shortly after the incident, purchased by a wizard who then sold it to muggles,” she said. “Gods I can’t wait! I’m so excited!”





“You always were a peculiar witch,” Draco muttered.











AN: There you have it, first 3 chapters and an update coming every couple of days. As always the story is already complete! I will reply to reviews on my blog =) http://rhonda-adaydreamerslife.blogspot.com/