It was night by the time she had reached the centre of the city. The chocolate-box buildings in pastel hues and terracotta-red roofs were illuminated in warm yellow lamps, the cobbled roads rattled with trams and hummed with the passing throngs of tourists.
The bag was beginning to ache on her shoulder, but she walked with purpose along the dark Vlatava river, still except for the white froth breaking over the weir, quickly returning to a still black which reflected Prague castle, high on its hill overlooking the city. She turned a corner and the shadowy statues of the Charles Bridge loomed above her. Moving away from the crowd, she found the stone steps Dennis had told her about, hidden to muggles, and she descended them to find herself staring up at the great underside of the bridge's arches, the noise of the city sinking away to the echoing drip of water.
There, at the base of the bridge, was a small rusted gate. She swallowed. She was exhausted. She had been travelling for hours and been unable to sleep. Her mind was leaping wildly from thought to thought. She didn't know what to expect on the other side.
She stepped forward, and pushed on the damp metal bars. The gate glowed gold, and swung open.
She walked into the darkness, down a narrow tunnel, the cobwebbed walls and domed ceiling lit by flaming torches, so low that even she, a short woman, felt as though she should duck her head. Suddenly the tunnel turned a sharp corner and opened up onto a vast cavern, hewn from the grey limestone the city was built upon. It was packed with stalls and bars and echoed with laughter and shouts from a crowd of witches and wizards, haggling over the trinkets and ingredients on the stalls, or gesticulating wildly in some friendly bar arguments, drinking beer from huge glass steins, dancing to a band with fiddles and accordions.
They paid Theia little notice, but as she walked through them she saw a pile of newspapers with a headline screaming something in a language she didn't recognise.
There she was, on the front cover. Harry dropping to his knees before her covered in blood. She stared at it for a few moments, watched the angry arch of her fist and the glint of the knife, the blood, horrifying even in black and white, Harry crumpling to the floor. She felt queasy, and the adrenaline was back - they hadn't thought news would travel quite this fast. What if she was recognised?
She pulled up her hood; at least a few others in the cavern also had their hoods up, so hopefully it didn't seem unusual. She moved away from the newspaper stall, pushing her way through the happy crowd, looking up at the wooden signs that hung from the ceiling. Bizarrely, she worried that she smelled - she had been stuck on the plane for hours after all - and she noticed, even in the dim light, that her nails still had dried blood under them.
She saw the sign, two black and white dragons entwined, and underneath in gold letters, 'Dva Draci'. She hurried towards it, and underneath was a large circular bar, surrounded by standing tables.
She stood at the bar, feeling distinctly out of place with the laughing crowd around her, until a barman with an ornate moustache ambled up to her. 'Ahoy,' he said. 'Co byste si prála?'
'Nemluvím česky,' replied Theia, desperately hoping she had the pronunciation correct. 'Do you speak English?'
'Yes,' the man said briskly.
'A friend sent me here,' she said. 'For safety. He said to ask for a port in a storm.'
He stared at her for a long time, and she stared back, for she could think of nothing else to do. Then he glanced down, and she realised that a newspaper was lying on the bar, and her angry face was right there, on the front page. 'For safety?' he asked, and it took her a moment to understand his accent. 'England is very safe now.'
'Not for me,' she said.
He stared at her for a little longer, his small black eyes running over her face, and then he called over his shoulder. 'Emil,' he said. Another man appeared - younger, thinner, with steely blue eyes and a scruffy blond beard over his pointed chin. The moustached man spoke in rapid Czech to him, and then Emil picked up the newpaper.
'Ano,' he said quietly, and then he looked at Theia. 'You are this girl?'
'I am,' she said. 'Please… I can explain it.'
'Are you tired?' he asked suddenly, in his thick accent.
'Exhausted.'
'Come with me.' He slapped the bar, and part of it swung up to create a space for her to walk through. She did so as he opened up a huge trapdoor, and gestured for her to go first, still holding the paper. She looked at him doubtfully, her hand gripping her wand in his pocket.
'Please,' he said, bowing his head slightly.
Feeling as though this was very stupid, she went down the steps, and found herself in a low, wood panelled circular room, as though she were on some kind of ship. From it were many doors, and in the middle a battered square table sat on a threadbare rug. The chairs had not been tucked in properly. Emil followed her down, closing the trapdoor behind him.
'So you tried to kill Harry Potter,' he said conversationally.
'Tried?' she asked. 'I-'
He raised an eyebrow. 'He survived. They rush out the evening press to talk about it. He was taken to the hospital and is expected to make a full recovery.'
The next part wasn't difficult at all. She was so exhausted, so hungry, so emotionally wrecked, that it took very little for her to drop the bag, slump into the nearest chair and sob violently. 'No,' she said, gasping. 'No, I… He should have…'
'You must have missed,' said Emil. He was looking strangely at her, and quite suddenly he left through one of the doors.
Worried that he could somehow still see her, Theia gripped her head in her hands and leaned on her knees, rocking slightly as she cried. Emil returned after less than a minute, carrying a tray. On it, was a huge glass stein of beer, and a large, round loaf of bread, filled with some kind of meaty stew.
Theia didn't need to be asked - she was so ravenously hungry that she began eating almost as soon as he put the tray down wiping her tears away between bites.
'Why did you come here?' Emil asked. 'We like Harry Potter here.'
'The whole fucking world likes Harry Potter,' she muttered, grabbing the stein.
'But why here?'
She drank deeply - she hated beer, but she suspected it contained veritaserum, or perhaps he was just hoping to get her drunk. Either way, she was prepared - she and Harry had discussed at length the ways to trick that unreliable potion. 'A friend told me about this place. Said it sheltered him.'
'One of the war refugees?' asked Emil. 'Many passed through our bar. We had an illegal portkey link. Again, surely not the place to come to if you hate Harry Potter.'
She looked suspiciously up at him. 'Are you sheltering me or just feeding me before you hand me over to whatever authorities there are in this country?'
'I don't know yet,' said Emil, and his beard quivered as he smiled slightly. 'Which friend?' he asked, slowly and firmly.
She looked back down at her stew. She could almost hear Harry's voice in her head. Trick the potion by telling the truth, find those loopholes, and if you must lie, make yourself believe it. 'Dennis Creevey.'
'Hmm,' said Emil, as he continued to watch her eat. 'Yes, I have read about him in the paper too.'
'They don't know what happened, they've got it all wrong,' she said, in the coldest voice she could manage.
'I expect they have,' said Emil calmly, and then he said nothing as she ate.
'How did he survive?' she asked, hoping to prompt him into more conversation. 'How the fuck-?'
'As I said, you must have missed,' he said, looking down at the newspaper. 'Stabbing is such a gamble - you didn't want to use a more certain method?'
She shrugged. 'He's survived that before, hasn't he?'
Emil chuckled. 'This is true.'
The stew was nearly all gone, she started to tear at the bread, chewing it furiously. 'He's not what everyone thinks,' she said. 'He's not what I thought he was. The war isn't over.'
'And you thought killing the Boy Who Lived would help?'
She felt the urge to tell the truth, but thought very hard about her story. 'I just had to do something.'
Emil studied her closely, his long fingers drumming the table. 'Sleep here tonight,' he said. 'I must speak to someone. Tomorrow… He may want to speak to you too. We shall see.'
The bar seemingly also served as an inn - he showed here into a little room with a simple wooden bed and dresser, a dusty mirror on one wall. 'The bathroom is two doors down,' he told her. 'But please do not wander elsewhere.'
She dumped her bag on the end of the bed, and seized the greying towel on top of the dresser. She was about to leave - she had her hand on the doorknob, when she paused and looked back at her zipped up bag. She reached up and plucked one strand of her mousy brown hair from her head, and carefully placed it in the zipper, pulling the toggle up slowly over it so that it wouldn't break. Satisfied it would stay, she picked up the towel again and left the room.
She could just about hear the noise of the cavern from the circular hall, occasional snatches of laughter and a low rumble of music sounding through the trapdoor. She tried one of the other doors, sure that she could get away with playing dumb if she was caught somewhere she wasn't supposed to be, but they were all other hostel-like bedrooms, except for the door through to a steel kitchen and the bathroom.
Like her room, the bathroom was simple and slightly grotty, but the water was warm. There must have been more of Harry's blood on her than she realised, perhaps in her hair, for she watched it swirl around the plughole, vivid red against the ceramic. Nobody had noticed on the plane, apparently, or perhaps they had been too afraid or polite to mention it. Or maybe it hadn't shown up while she was polyjuiced? She had no idea, she just watched it swirl, and thought vaguely about just how much of it there had been, how quickly it had gushed out of him.
She brushed her teeth, too, she hadn't realised how much she had wanted to, and wondered who Emil was going to talk to. Perhaps it was the man Dennis had told her about. Ludovit.
He had seemed awed when he spoke the name, the same sort of expression people usually got when they were around Harry. 'How can I meet him?' she'd asked.
'Oh no,' he replied. 'He will decide if he is to meet you.'
She returned to her room, her damp hair in straggles over one shoulder, and leaned over her bag, staring closely at the zip. The hair she had left was gone. While she had been in the bathroom, someone had looked through the bag.
She unzipped it, and, yes, she thought someone had definitely rifled through it. They'd done a fairly good job of returning everything to its rightful place, she wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't been specifically looking, but there was something slightly off about it all. She pulled out an old t-shirt and leggings to sleep in, and rifled through her make-up bag.
The compact mirror was still there - it clearly hadn't raised an suspicions. She wanted to open it and try it now, assure Harry that she had arrived safe and sound, but she felt a prickle of paranoia at the back of her neck. She looked over at the dusty mirror on the wall, and thought instantly of old police shows her mother used to watch, with people watching suspects through clever one way mirrors.
She went over to it, and pulled the chipped wooden frame off the wall slightly. It was just dark paneled wood behind, but she still felt afraid. She was holding a magical mirror herself, after all, the fact that it wasn't like Muggle technology meant nothing. They could still be watching her.
Or listening.
She checked every spare inch of the room she could think of, looking for that red blob of a bugging charm she herself had used in a potions shop all those years ago in Diagon Alley. Every inch of the wall, the underside of the bed, under the mattress, in all the drawers and behind the dresser, the back of the mirror - but nothing.
It's just the first stage, she told herself. Supposedly hundreds of muggleborns and squibs and political enemies had come through this bar. They couldn't have spied on them all, and it was natural they would want to keep an eye on her, she hadn't exactly come in normal circumstances. She would probably have gone through her bag too.
She got into the creaky, uncomfortable bed, and pulled the scratchy blankets over her head. She assumed, the way her mind was racing, that she would be awake all night. But within minutes her eyelids were drooping, her limbs sinking with heaviness, finally realising just how tired she was.
A squat, rosy-cheeked witch in a grubby apron woke her the next morning, saying something in Czech and planting a tray firmly on her lap. A glass of orange juice and a mug of coffee, with a basket of bread rolls and a plate of hams, salami and cheese.
'Mysleli si, že to budete chtít,' said the witch brusquely, adding a newspaper to the tray. To her great surprise, it was a copy of the Daily Prophet, from which her face glared up at her from the front page, beside a photo of Ginny clutching James, screaming as she kneeled by Harry.
'Thank you- er, I mean, děkuji-' babbled Theia, but the witch was already bustling out. Theia heard the door lock behind her.
She took a sip of the coffee and began to tear up her bread as she read the newspaper.
HUNT ON FOR HATEFUL HIGGLESWORTH
The would-be assassinator of the Chosen One is still on the run and is thought to have fled abroad, according to senior sources from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
Ministry officials last night confirmed Harry Potter's discharge from St Mungo's, claiming that he is safely at home with his family and expects to be back at work within the week. However, his long time mentee and recent attacker, Theia Higglesworth is yet to be traced, with accusations of crucial failings from the Ministry in securing the atrium where the qualification ceremony took place running wild.
'Nobody should have been able to apparate in or out of that room,' stated John Dawlish, Senior Auror and concerned colleague of Mr Potter. 'It astounds me that nobody considered this basic security protocol, one that is usually the first on the list to establish for any major event.'
She rolled her eyes as she nibbled on a triangle of hard cheese. 'Fucking thanks, Dawlish,' she muttered under her breath.
Theories on why Higglesworth attacked the nation's hero are still 'to be established', reports Gawain Robards, Head of the Auror department, but are likely to be 'involving a great personal trauma to Higglesworth and her misguided belief that Potter was to blame', as well as 'potential extremist ideologies and radicalisation'.
On Mr Potter's response to the event, Mr Robards stated that he had spoken with the family and said that they were 'shaken and shocked' but had 'thankfully had a lucky escape'.
'Mr Potter is naturally keen to take the lead on locating Theia Higglesworth and bringing her to justice,' he continued. 'I am proud that he has accepted my suggestion to act as the senior investigating officer on this case, in what is sure to be a personal and difficult experience for him, but ultimately satisfying when he succeeds, which I have every confidence he will do.'
Mr Potter did not respond to calls for comment as he returned home with his wife and son late last night.
She sighed heavily, and looked back at the photo. Ginny was a good actress, but she wasn't sure the look of terror was entirely fake. She had been right though, the fact that she was clutching their baby as well… No doubt the nation was weeping.
She turned the paper over, having no desire to look at the photograph anymore, and picked at the rest of her breakfast.
She wanted to go and shower again, or at least brush her teeth, but though she thought that she could probably open the door with a simple alohamora the fact that the witch had locked it meant that they wanted her to stay in there.
So, she changed into fresh clothes from her bag, moved the tray to sit on top of the dresser, and paced the room uneasily. Could she risk speaking into the compact mirror? She so desperately wanted to check that they really were all right.
But no, it seemed stupid. She didn't have anything to report yet, it wasn't worth risking everything just to settle her nerves. Naturally she would be being watched closely right now. Her breathing was starting to become rapid, the nerves creeping into panic. She sat on the bed, and tried to calm herself, her knee bouncing rapidly. She closed her eyes, and took a long, slow breath. They were fine. She knew they were fine. That was why she had gone to St Mungo's. Even the Daily Prophet, who surely would have been delighted to report that he was on his deathbed and his wife and child were traumatised for life, had gone out of its way to mention that they were back home.
There was a quiet knock at the door, and she heard the lock shift. Emil stepped through, smiling mildly at her. 'Good morning,' he said. 'Did you sleep well?'
She nodded. He strode across the room to lean against the dresser opposite her, glancing down at the paper. 'Thank you for that,' she said abruptly. 'I didn't think you could get it here.'
'We can get anything we want here,' he said smoothly. 'What did you think of it? Are they right?'
She hesitated, her lips parting slightly as she took a breath. 'I… I suppose so,' she said cautiously. 'They don't know the full story, obviously.'
'Of course,' he said graciously. 'But you know, neither do I. You may be disappointed with the great Harry Potter, but this,' he said, tapping the image of Ginny screaming over her husband, 'this is quite brutal, no?'
Theia looked down at her feet. 'I didn't know they would be there.'
'But you didn't stop when you knew they were,' said Emil. 'You must have seen them.' Theia said nothing, just let Emil read what he wanted in her silence, and at last he put the paper down and continued. 'I don't know what your friend told you about our network. It is not a terror cell, or a group that hides fugitives.'
'Yes it is,' she said. 'You hid many fugitives during the war, you told me so yourself.'
His beard twitched as he smiled. 'Ah yes, but they were honourable fugitives. Escaping an evil tyrant.' He tilted his head. 'Say what you want of Harry Potter, I'm not sure you can describe him as a tyrant.'
'No,' admitted Theia. 'But I don't want any tyrants in the future, and he was preventing that.' She paused again, looking away in deep thought. 'Sometimes a great shock… A moment of symbolism… I thought… or rather, I hoped… Harry's death might start something.'
Emil nodded slowly. 'You have put us in a difficult position, Miss Higglesworth.'
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'But you have hid me for this long.'
'Yes,' he said. 'And I have spoken to others in the network. We are agreed that - for now - we can take you to a place of safety. Others will want to talk to you, but we are agreed that you will not receive a fair trial in England.'
'Thank you.'
He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small bottle. 'Use this,' he said. 'Even here Harry Potter is a beloved man, and you will need to be hidden. Then you must gather your things, and we will go at once. People may have recognised you last night.'
She took the small bottle, expecting it to be polyjuice potion, but blinked down in surprise as she looked at the image of the laughing woman on the front. It was blonde hair dye.
