The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part Two

Inside The Riddle House

"Alohamora." 

The lock clicked.

Regulus carefully slipped through the door, then closed it, and turned back to it.

"Colloportus. Lumos."

The wand tip lit up and Regulus brought the wand downward to lessen the glow so it wasn't quite the shining beacon it had been when it had first ignited. He looked about himself. He was standing in a large kitchen. There was no food out on the counters or anything, but it was clear from looking around that the kitchen had been in the middle of being used when Tom Riddle had come calling - simply by the placement of the pots and pans that were scattered over muggle gas stoves and the pile of dishes set on a small brass handcart. Everything was prepared for an evening meal service. Everything that is, except for the meal, that is. 

The Riddle's staff members had had no way of knowing that whatever they'd been working hard to prepare would not be what was on the menu at the table that evening.

Someone must have come through and cleared the food itself away. Probably the groundskeeper. 

Regulus moved from the kitchen into the dining room. This, according to the article he had read, was where it happened. The Riddles were found dead sitting about the table here in this very room.

Everything was perfectly normal looking, and may have just been set for dinner that very evening for how normal it all looked... except that there were thick cobwebs and layers of dust built up over time. Some crafty spider had strung it's webs over the centerpieces and out to the place settings and between the glasses... The engineering little thing was no where to be seen.

The table was neatly set, the candelabra still fixed with unburned candles, a full proper setting at each place. He recited each piece looking it over, in his mind hearing himself and Sirius speaking in chorus as Walburga directed Kreacher at setting a proper table: "Bread plate, dessert fork and spoon, water goblet, sherry glass, wine glass, champagne glass, napkin, fish fork, entree fork, salad fork, place plate, salad knife, entree knife, fish knife, soup spoon, and the oyster fork."

He picked up one of the oyster forks, turning it in his fingers slowly, then putting it back down.

"I hate those tiny forks," Sirius said once. 

They'd been sitting in the clubhouse, and Sirius had started a game in which they had to tell each other the truth about something - something they might not normally say because they could get in trouble for it. 

"The oyster forks?" Regulus had asked.

"Yes, they're stupid," Sirius answered. "They're stupid tiny forks and I hate them. Have we ever once used one?"

"They're for when we have oysters."

"Okay, but why do we put it out every time we eat, we don't have oysters every time we eat, do we? And she makes Kreacher polish them every time, too, even though we never touch them."

"That's what good house elves do and Kreacher's a good house elf," Regulus answered.

"Tomorrow morning... I'm going to use my oyster fork to eat my beans."

Regulus gasped. 

He laughed now - for it was such a Sirius thing to do - but at the time it really had been a perfectly scandalous thing to say, much less do, and he'd thought at the time that Sirius would forget all about it. But Sirius never forgot about following through on things like that. 

Regulus put the oyster fork back down in the setting. He put it down a little bit crooked - just because Sirius would've liked that it wasn't perfect anymore - and his eyes moved over the table, imagining the Riddles sitting about in the chairs. He imagined Tom Senior looking nearly exactly like his son.