Gryffindor Investigations

Monday morning brought Harry and Ron to Euston, where Harry purchased two tickets for Shrewsbury, the nearest large city to the Cryne estate. The trip took about three hours; upon reaching the city, Harry rented a car, and the two of them were soon driving west towards the Welsh border.

Ron was at the wheel. “Does Catherine’s family know we’re coming?” he asked as he drove.

“Yeah,” Harry told him. “She told me she’d arrange it with her mother; they’re expecting us just after lunch.”

“Wish you hadn’t said that, mate,” Ron groaned. Breakfast aboard the train had been less than successful. “What the hell do they serve on those Muggle trains?”

“Nothing you’d want to put in your stomach—as you’re finding out,” Harry teased. “Watch it, now—the turnoff should be coming up any minute.”

“I see it. Another ten minutes and we should be there.”

And so it proved. Harry’s first impression upon seeing the Cryne mansion was that winter had come in August. The grounds looked scrupulously maintained, and the house itself, even to Harry’s untrained eye, had been designed with elegance in mind—but it was a cold elegance. This was not a house that invited guests; it viewed them as a temporary inconvenience at best.

“Amazing a place like this even exists anymore,” Ron noted as they climbed out of the car. “I thought places like this ended up getting turned into hotels after World War II.”

“Not all,” Harry pointed out. “Look at Malfoy Manor, after all.”

“You look at it, not me,” Ron said in disgust. “Though this shack makes that place look positively homey.”

“Yeah, I thought that too.” Having reached the front door, Harry pressed the bell. The doorbell was as pleasant as the house, a low tone followed by a much higher one, with the lower tone joining in almost immediately. The effect produced was such a dissonance that he took an involuntary step back, just as the door opened to reveal a young woman in a severely-tailored business suit.

Harry could see the resemblance to Catherine, but where Catherine’s face was open and honest, there was nothing but guile and craft in this woman’s—Clarice, he told himself. Her black hair was pulled back in a severe, businesslike bun. She wore very little makeup. Her eyes were as blue as Catherine’s, but cold and calculating. Clarice Cryne was a woman who weighed and measured everything—and everyone—she saw, Harry could tell—and he had the feeling that she wasn’t being particularly generous in her evaluation of the two of them.

“Well, well,” she said with a voice dripping with mockery, “the world-famous Harry Potter. Our poor home trembles at so august a personage. Come in, come in. Karlie!” she called as Harry and Ron stepped into the house.

An elderly house-elf answered the summons. Clarice looked at her with scorn and snapped, “Escort these……gentlemen……up to Mother. Tell her I’m off to Wolverhampton, and that I probably won’t be back for dinner.”

“Yes, Miss Clarice,” Karlie said, bowing. “Please come with Karlie, young gentlemen.”

Harry and Ron followed Karlie up the stairs to the bedrooms. Inside, the house matched its outside for lack of warmth. It was meticulously clean, and furnished with someone with both impeccable taste and the money to indulge it—but there was nothing friendly about the place. There were no family pictures, no mementos, nothing to show that this was really a home.

“Right in here, young gentlemen,” Karlie said. She struggled to push open a heavy door; Harry gave her an unobtrusive hand and stepped inside to get his first sight of Mrs. Lavinia Cryne, even as Karlie scuttled back down the stairs and out of sight.

The older woman was in her bed, a huge, canopied, four-postered affair practically smothered in cushions, blankets, and pillows. She was sitting up, a faintly malicious smile on her thin lips. Her gray hair was allowed to hang loose, but not untidily; nothing in the room was any more untidy than the rest of the house.

“So here at last,” she said, “is the great Harry Potter.” If Clarice’s voice dripped with mockery, Mrs. Cryne’s gushed with it. She glanced at Ron and added, “With his faithful sidekick, of course. I didn’t think they made those anymore; I’d thought they’d gone out of style with Dr. Watson, Captain Hastings, and all the other idiot friends of the hero.”

Ron flushed an angry scarlet. He started to say something, but Harry held up a hand to forestall him. “Mr. Weasley and I are equal partners in Gryffindor Investigations, Mrs. Cryne,” he said simply.

“Of course.” Mrs. Cryne’s face made it perfectly clear that she did not believe a word of that. “I must say, you’re a bit of a disappointment, Mr. Potter. I thought you’d be ten feet tall, with glowing eyes and magical energy crackling from your fingertips. Instead you seem rather ordinary—unimpressive, in fact.”

Harry shrugged. “Ron and I have been through enough, both together and separately, to know who we are, Mrs. Cryne,” he said, with a slight edge to his voice. “We don’t need to remind ourselves—or anyone else—of it. It’s rather comforting, really. You should try it sometime.”

A slight upturning of the lips, somewhere between a smile and a sneer, told Harry his shot had connected. “Very well, Mr. Potter. So, little Catherine has asked you to look into our family problem?”

“Murder is never a ‘family’ problem, Mrs. Cryne.”

“Very true. Although it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it turned out that Cedric put the stuff in his own glass just to make our lives difficult. He was very good at that.” She might have been describing a particularly unruly child.

“Is there any reason to think that Mr. Cryne might have killed himself?” Ron asked. “Was he depressed or upset at all?”

“How would I know, Mr. Weasley?” Mrs. Cryne said with perfectly feigned innocence. “Cedric and I hadn’t slept in the same room in over ten years. We saw as little of each other as possible. If it weren’t for both his and my views on marriage—now out of date, sadly, but then, standards fall, it’s the way of the world—we would have seen even less.”

She began to cough, a harsh, racking cough that seemed to shake her to her very core. Harry stepped to a side table containing a pitcher and a glass and poured some water. He held it out to the woman, who took it somewhat grudgingly.

“Thank you, Mr. Potter,” she said, though there was nothing even remotely grateful in her voice. She took a sip and held it back to him. Harry took it and replaced it on the table.

“Now,” she said, “how can I help you two prove that I or one of my other children committed murder?”

Harry was taken aback by the question; Ron looked equally surprised. “Neither of us suggested that, Mrs. Cryne,” he said carefully.

“Mr. Potter, you are naïve and somewhat silly, but you are not stupid. Wolfsbane does not crawl of its own accord and insert itself into a person’s glass. If Michael did not kill his father, as my daughter Catherine has convinced you he did not, then it must have been either her, me, or one of my other children. Unless you’re seriously going to tell me that our house-elf did it.” She smiled again, just as malicious as her first had been. “I almost hope you will try to tell me that. That would be most amusing, and an old lady like myself must take her amusements where she can find them.”

“You’re not old!” Ron blurted out.

Her glance flicked toward him, and she inclined her head slightly. “Thank you, Mr. Weasley,” she said. “I see that life in Gryffindor Tower taught you manners, if nothing else.”

“Were you a Slytherin, then?” Harry asked, a little more harshly than he’d intended.

He regretted it instantly; the look Mrs. Cryne gave him told him that she’d picked up on his annoyance. Harry felt as if he’d lost some sort of contest.

“Yes, my husband and I both. It was how we met,” she said. “However, when the time came to educate our own children, we preferred to homeschool our children. The Muggle-lovers had pretty much taken over Hogwarts, and we no longer considered it a fit place for pureblood children.”

“I can think of several purebloods—in Slytherin House—who would disagree.”

“And look what has happened to them, Mr. Potter. Most of them are either dead or in Azkaban. True, young Draco Malfoy has made something of himself………”

“All of this is beside the point,” Harry interrupted her. “Is there anything you can tell us about your husband’s death?”

“Not very much. I have been ill, Mr. Potter, for many months. I have good days and I have bad days; that was a bad day. I came back upstairs to rest right after breakfast, and therefore was absent when my husband drank himself to death.”

“That’s not what the phrase usually means,” Ron noted.

“Really?" she said, as though talking to a very small child. "I had no idea.”

“What about your other children? Clarice and Joshua? We’d like to talk to them, if we may.”

“You, Mr. Potter, may question any member of my household, even Karlie, so long,” she held up a finger, “as the household routine is not disturbed. The first time my tea is late, you will leave my house permanently.”

“We’ll do our best, Mrs. Cryne.”

“I’m sure you will. Not that I think that you’ll get very much out of Clarice or Joshua. Clarice left for Wolverhampton right after breakfast, and Joshua distances himself from the rest of us as much as he can. If you’re going to prove that Michael is innocent of his father’s murder, Mr. Potter, I’m afraid you and Mr. Weasley here have an uphill climb.”