A Gracey's Chance Chapter 2

[eiahmon]

Title - A Gracey's Chance Chapter 2
Rating - PG
Summary - Twelve years after Voldermort's defeat, Harry receives a letter from an old friend, with a most unusual request.
Disclaimer - I only wish I owned Harry Potter. If I owned Haunted Mansion, the story would have been told in a much better way.
A.N - I don't do accents, so just pretend that Marcy has a Cajun accent.

2.

Their international portkey deposited the Poters, along with their luggage, at the portkey station in the magical district of New Orleans. They each carried a single suitcase and bag, though Hermione's bag was much bulkier than her husband's, since she couldn't go anywhere without a bit of "light reading". Harry had had to talk her out of taking half the library with her, and in the end, he had only been able to convince her by reminding her that if she brought too many books from home, then she wouldn't have room for all the books that she was bound to buy in the shops.

"As I live and breathe, if it isn't Harry Potter." said a feminine voice with a heavy Cajun accent, and Harry couldn't help the smile that spread across his face. He sat his bags down on the ground and turned to face the owner of the voice.

“It’s been a long time, Marcy.” he said warmly, wrapping the old woman in a hug. She stepped back a bit to look him over, smiled at him, and then promptly thwacked him over the head with her walking stick.

“That’s for never writing to me, you little hellion!” He sheepishly rubbed the sore spot on his head while behind him, Hermione burst into laughter. At the sound, Marcy looked past him to see where it was coming from. “Who’s your pretty young lady, Harry?”

Harry smiled again as Hermione came up to stand next to him, and he put his arm around her proudly. “Marcy, I would like you to meet my wife, Hermione. Dear, this is Marcy Freeman, who helped me out big before Voldermort became worm food, and a crazier old woman you’d be hard pressed to found around here.”

Marcy shook her stick at him threateningly, but the smile in her eyes belied her amusement. She looked behind and around them for a second, before she faced them again. “No little ‘uns?”

Harry only barely managed to contain a wince. “Afraid not, Marcy, the doctors told me that I’m sterile.” He shrugged. “We tried everything, but there’s nothing to be done for it.”

Marcy eyed him for a moment, and he had to stop himself from squirming. “Well maybe what I’m going to tell you about could help you with that.”

“I though you needed me because of my -” Harry cast a quick glance around. “- special abilities.” While Necromancy was illegal in the United States just like it was in Britain, the laws were laxly enforced, if at all, in the Old South. That didn’t mean however, that it was a good idea for one to run around in public blabbing about it.

“Oh, I do, I do. Come with me, and I will tell you all about it.”

Hermione shrunk their luggage and put it in her pocket, and the two followed the old woman out of the magical district and through the barrier into the French Quarter. After checking into the Hotel Maison De Ville and stowing their luggage, they proceeded to the nearby Antoine’s restaurant, where, under a privacy spell cast by Harry. Marcy explained the reasons for the letter.

In 1879, a wealthy young landowner named Edward Gracey had fallen deeply in love with the seventeen year old daughter of two freed slaves named Elizabeth Henshaw. Despite the repeated warnings of Ramsley, the head of household who was something of a father figure to Gracey, the young man proposed to Elizabeth the night of a Mardi Gras celebration at his estate.

“You must understand something,” Marcy explained “This was fourteen years after the end of the War of Northern Aggression, and blacks were the lowest of the low. Edward Gracey stood to lose everything his father and grandfather had worked so hard to create by marrying Elizabeth. He could have very well ended up with a mob at his door and ended up hanging from a tree in front of his house.”

“Like Malfoy marrying a muggle while Voldermort was still around.” Harry muttered to himself. Marcy looked at him for a moment before she continued her story.

Elizabeth wrote a letter for Gracey and left it under the door to his bedroom, and when he found it and read it, he was horrified to discover that it was a suicide note. He ran down to his home’s conservatory, but he was too late. Elizabeth lay dead on a couch, a goblet that had held poisoned wine in her hand. Devastated, Gracey gathered her into his arms and cried like a child and later had her buried in his family’s cemetery. Barely a week later, stricken by grief, Gracey hung himself from the cupola in the attic of his mansion. Faithful servants buried him in the cemetery, but instead of being buried next to his beloved Elizabeth like he wished, he was placed some distance from her, by the graves of his parents.

“And no sooner had the last spade full of earth been tamped down,” Marcy said quietly “than the curse began.”

“Curse?” Hermione asked curiously “What kind of curse?”

No one knew exactly how the curse came to pass, but immediately those that remained in the house to care for it while they waited for a distant relative of Gracey to arrive and take possession of it noted that a shadow seemed to be cast over it. Some dismissed it as the gloom caused by a double suicide and the bad weather, but some felt differently. Those that could left quickly. Those that didn’t were forever trapped. Soon locals began to notice that the sounds and signs of activity in the grand old mansion began to disappear, and soon they were gone altogether. No one was seen tending to the grounds, no one was seen moving about through the windows. It was if everyone inside had vanished...

... or died.

A month after Edward Gracey’s funeral, the cousin that had taken possession of the house was found on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, wild eyed and gibbering in terror about ghosts and Edward Gracey. No one could get any sense from him, and eventually he was confined to an asylum, where he died years later. After he was found, some of the braver men in town ventured to the mansion to see what the problem was. They found the gates closed and locked, and when they climbed over them and forced the front doors open, they found a house empty of any living occupants. Yet the table was set for dinner, the floors were clean, the beds were made up, and everything looked as though it had been recently dusted. But there was no one there.

Yet there were signs that there was something about. Footsteps echoed in empty halls, a heartbeat reverberated throughout the attic, ballroom, and conservatory. Sometimes a man’s voice could be heard, crying softly, and it was always accompanied by a heartbreaking feel of unbearable anguish. When one of the men saw a lit candelabrum being carried through an otherwise empty hallway with no body there to hold it up, he screamed in terror and fled the house. His fellows fled not long afterward, and soon all of New Orleans and the surrounding towns knew of the curse of Gracey Hall. After the men had fled, the doors and gates had slammed and locked behind them, and no one had been able to open them since.

Until she came.

One hundred and twenty four years after Edward Gracey took his own life, Sara Evers, her husband Jim, and their two children Michael and Megan came to the house. Sara insisted that she had received a call from the house’s residents, asking her to appraise the house for sale. Her husband and children accompanied her, and they were met by Edward Gracey’s supposed grandson, who welcomed them in.

The truth came out over the course of the night. Edward Gracey’s “grandson” was Edward Gracey himself, and he had invited Sara because he had somehow seen her picture and found her to be the exact likeness of his long lost Elizabeth. Convinced that she was Elizabeth reincarnated, he hoped that she would remember her past life while in the house. Eventually he revealed himself and admitted that he was a ghost, and she ran away from him, insisting that she was not Elizabeth. Unbeknownst to either of them, Ramsley, who was also trapped by the curse, had imprisoned her children and thrown her husband out of the house. He then used the children as ransom, telling Sara to act the part, marry Edward, and then kill herself so they could be together, thus ending his despair and breaking the curse. For the sake of her children, she agreed.

But just as she took the poisoned cup to her lips during the ceremony, her husband and children arrived and revealed the truth. Ramsley had murdered Elizabeth by slipping poison into a glass of wine that he gave her, thus preventing his master from making what he thought to be a terrible mistake. He then wrote and planted the suicide note. He did not foresee Edward’s suicide, or the curse it would cause. When Edward confronted him, Ramsley admitted what he had done, and then invoked the powers of hell. Instead of destroying everyone and everything like he had hoped, it went after him alone, and the murderer was dragged down into hell. He tried to take Jim Evers with him, but he was saved by Edward.

With Ramsley gone, Elizabeth’s spirit, imprisoned since her death, was freed, and she reunited with her love. The trapped souls, including Edward and Elizabeth, ascended to Heaven, but not before Edward gave Jim and Sara the deed to the house to do as they wished with it.

Hermione was dabbing at her eyes by the of the story, and Harry produced a handkerchief for her before he asked a question.

“Now, what does that have to do with me?”

Marcy smiled at him. “Edward was a suicide if you remember. Now what happens to suicides?”

Hermione looked at her in horror. “They go to hell.”

Marcy nodded. “Because he took his own life, he was rejected at the Pearly Gates, but instead of going to Hell, he soul was sent back to earth, back to his old home. Enraged at being separated from his beloved again, he went on a violent rampage, attacking anyone that came near. Eventually, a few brave types were able to imprison him in the ballroom, where he remains to this day. He is no longer violent, instead he is lost in despair, alone and miserable. No other souls can get in to him, and he cannot leave. Those that get close enough have heard him sobbing out his pain, and some have even seen him through the windows, lying on the floor, shaking and crying..”

“And you want me to help him.” Harry said evenly.

“The poor man needs help, Harry.” Hermione said softly “Isn’t there something that you can do for him?”

“How do we know that he won’t become violent again?”

Marcy chuckled. “I think the fight is all out of him. I think that right now, some kind of relief from his pain would be welcome.”

“Please Harry.” Hermione said as she dabbed at her eyes with his handkerchief again.

He sighed. “Alright, we can try, but if he tried to harm one of us, I’ll destroy him on the spot.”

“I doubt that will happen.” Marcy said, her eyes twinkling madly “You never know, he just might be the answer to your child problem.”

Harry looked at her sharply, but she only smiled smugly at him.

“I’ll go rent us a car.” he said as he dissolved the privacy spell and got up from his chair and walked out of the restaurant, muttering about ghosts and crazy old Cajun women as he went.

Chapter 1 -- Chapter 3

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