Order Only: The Letter

[alt_hermione]

We reconstructed the letter, we think. Draco and Mr Snape and a little help from Sirius. Anything in brackets was something we decided from context, but there are places we just couldn't make out what it said.

Father,

I don't know if [you'll] ever come back, but if you do, I [will] be gone. I [made] a mistake and tried to make Tom (?) love me. But he'll never love [me] the way I love him. I [ ] him about the baby and he [laughed]. LAUGHED. I thought if I [shifted the] (Mr Snape thinks it's lifted) spell, he would remember something of the way [we fell] (? (Sirius thinks it's felt.). But it wasn't [right?]. He doesn't love me.

But you never loved me, either.

You've always wanted the [Grant] line to continue. It will, but it won't be pure. If it's a boy, I'm naming him [Tom Marvolo], to honour our ancestors, but all I'll tell him is about a [muggle] father who had [grateful], and [king], and [winsome]. And he's going to know love.

Don't try to find me. Not that you will.

Mercre (still not sure about that?)

We're still working on it but that's at least enough to figure out what the letter was about. I've never heard of anyone named Mercre, though. Maybe it was Mercure? But that doesn't make any better sense.

Comments

[alt_sally_anne]

My mum's first boyfriend had the last name Grant. But he was a muggle.

Are you sure it was Grant?

[alt_draco]

No, that's why it's still in brackets.

Five letters, starts with G, looks like G_ant, though the "a" might be an "o."

[alt_sally_anne]

Grant
Glant
Giant
Gnant
Guant
Goant
Ghant

Gaint
Gaunt

hmm

I really doubt it's Grant. I mean the more I think about it the more I'm sure I've run into wizards with that last name, too. Oh, you know what, there's a Grant on one of the trophies. It's not even all that old.

[alt_hermione]

WAIT.

[alt_hermione]

It's GAUNT.

I knew I'd seen it somewhere. There's a book in Sirius's father's study called Root and Branch: A Genealogical History of the Founders' Families and it mentions the Gaunts. 'A family that always claimed, but never sufficiently proved, its provenance as a branch of the Slytherin line. However, they are documented to have links to the Peverell family as early as the 1200s.'

Phineas Nigellus might know something about them, but he's sleeping. And he's ever so cross when someone wakes him up.

[alt_bill]

Yes, definitely Gaunt. Good one, Hermione.

I'll see what I can find in Records, although most everything related to the LP have been pulled.