Note:
This chapter is going to be pretty dark. Consider yourself warned.
I wanted to quickly note that in chapter eight the location header included "a series of houses," when that didn't turn out to be true. That was because I was planning to write a longer chapter than I ended up writing—that location is actually going to be moved over to the beginning of this chapter. So, my apologies for any confusion, and I hope that clears it up.
I will use a more fragmented writing style (or at least I plan to) for the first part of this chapter. Alice is in a weird place right now, so I think that if my sentences are shorter and more detached, it might help to demonstrate that. Just wanted to warn you and let you know that this is, indeed, my writing... just different.
Also, I just wanted to say that throughout this process I have been using an actual calendar for reference as far as the full moon goes. In August of 1994 the full moon was on the 21st, so technically Remus probably wouldn't have attended the world cup on the 18th for safety reasons. But because his involvement in the events there is important to the story, I've decided to disregard that more than I usually would. I hope you'll forgive this little continuity error.
Leila Davis, your review made me shed a tear of gratitude—thank you so much for your kind feedback, and I hope the story continues to satisfy! Une-papillon-de-nuit, I continue to love your reviews deeply! Reannah, TEAslytherin, Cytotechchic, Ashes2Dust18, LegallyBlondeAngel and scaryfast203, thank you so much for following the story! Thank you scaryfast203, LegallyBlondeAngel and Cytotechchic for favoriting, too!
I wish I could see all of you, and give you (socially distanced) hugs! You make my day!
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling the Utmost Venerable.
Chapter Nine Totally Optional Cast (in order of appearance *sorry for the super long cast… literally everyone is in this chapter*)
Anya Taylor-Joy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alice
Cillian Murphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alexander Brandt
Charlotte Gainsbourg . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cecelia Puttock
Idris Elba . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Her Husband
Daniel Radcliffe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harry Potter
Julie Walters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Molly Weasley
James Phelps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fred Weasley
Oliver Phelps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Weasley
Rupert Grint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ron Weasley
Bonnie Wright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ginny Weasley
Mark Williams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arthur Weasley
David Thewlis / Domhnall Gleeson . . . . . . Remus Lupin
Emma Watson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hermione Granger
Jeff Rawle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Amos Diggory
Robert Pattinson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cedric Diggory
Jason Isaacs / Lee Pace / Harry Lloyd . . . Lucius Malfoy
Tom Felton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Draco Malfoy
IX | The Cup
Spring, Summer 1994
A Series of Houses / The Burrow
Winter turns to spring. Spring turns to summer.
Fynn.
Alice gets the sense that she moves into and out of more places than she is conscious of. She will wake up one morning in the backseat of a muggle car, and then wake up again in a different one, or in a strange house that she doesn't see ever again, after falling unconscious once more.
Remus. Remus. Remus.
But this is not a challenge, letting most of the places that harbor her pass by in a blur. She is content with vague sense of direction, of pressure in the atmosphere, of darkness and light and depth.
Eloise Wickham. That deceitful bitch. Dumbledore.
There is a feeling of going far north by car. On the first night, she thinks she stays in only one place, maybe in an old drafty house on an Edinburgh street corner—if it's the first night at all. She doesn't know. Sometimes she spends the night in a muggle car, or in a basement, and the faces she sees in passing, careening around her, are ever-changing.
Draco.
Sometimes, the faces move, the mouths trying to talk to her. But she doesn't care. She is empty and dead, and forgets things easily. Days pass like water through her fingers. There is a vague sensation of moving southward, a vague sensation of being in a city, of being in the wilderness, of being in the middle of the ocean.
Corbin. Horses. Peacocks. Lucius.
There is a period of some days when she is sure she is blind. But she realizes, even after she becomes conscious of her eyesight again, that she doesn't care.
Fynn.
But there are two places she does remember, as the months pass by, as the temperatures grow warmer, remote from the senses of her slowly deteriorating body.
The first time she resurfaces—if only slightly—from the mud of her subconscious, she is laying down on a couch in a large room, tall windows placed every so often between floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Green spring sunlight slants through the glass, illuminating the swirling dust motes in the slow, warm air.
She is incapable of movement, but if she had stood up from the divan and crossed the room to one of the windows, she would have looked out upon the row of professorial residences at Cambridge University. As it is, she remains laying on the divan in the midst of old-smelling pillows, vaguely hearing a male voice in an adjacent room, humming a muggle tune by The Beatles, and feeling as though she is bound to pass out if another instant is allowed to pass.
But she does not lose consciousness, and so remains lying there for another hour, listening and trying to place the names of the different songs as the man sings through an entire album's worth. Until, finally, when the sun slants at a new angle through the windowpanes, so that she is trapped beneath a beam of hot yellowness on her cheek, a door at the far end of the personal library and study opens, and the still-singing man enters, carrying a stack of books and a pot of tea.
"Oh—" he says, upon sighting the girl, awake. "Excuse me."
He's a smallish man with a rather thin build, but something in his jaw makes her wary of him. However, just as she thinks this, he sets down his books and teapot on the desk in the corner, and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose in such a way, that she is reminded of Harry. So, rather than recoil when he makes his way across the room and touches her forehead with the back of his hand to test her temperature, she lays still, and is rather comforted.
The man nods to himself and takes his hand away, sitting down in a chair next to the divan, folding his hands on his knees and looking at her curiously, worriedly, but most of all… kindly.
"I've introduced myself to you before, but I'm sure you don't remember," he poses gently, his voice carrying an Irish lilt. "My name is Alexander Brandt, but if you're so inclined, you can call me Alex, or… professor." He smiles lightly, his eyes suddenly a-glimmer with something unfamiliar to the girl. "I am a professor, in actuality, at the muggle university, here. But, you understand, it would be a much better thing to do my work at Hogwarts. I hear the Defense Against the Dark Arts professorial position usually opens up annually—would I be correct?"
The girl doesn't know the answer, so doesn't try to move her head, knowing such efforts would be futile anyway.
"Well. Maybe I'm wrong and you do remember hearing this before. I won't bore you, either way. Do you remember where you were last?"
This time, Alice is moved to try shaking her head in the negative, wanting to know her circumstances. But still she cannot move her head, and so settles for putting a certain amount of emotion into her eyes, which she hopes will translate her curiosity to Alexander, wordlessly.
Her tactic is successful. "I see," he says. "Well, you've been in a number of houses and flats in recent months, to distract anyone trying to trace you. Muggle cars has been the method of transportation—understandable, as you still have the trace on you, so apparation—and the Floo network, as well—would be rather moot."
The professor studies her for a moment, and then leans forward, almost conspiratorially, with a confession to make. "I understand poor company already, but I have to make an admission to you—would that be alright?" Again, Alice puts some amount of emotion in her eyes, inviting him to tell her whatever he wishes. Seeing the message, he settles forward, his elbows on his knees, eyes downcast and manner grave. "I have to tell you that I've really only agreed to foster you in the hopes that Dumbledore might invite me to fill the Dark Arts post in the coming year. It's open yet again… the last professor, Remus Lupin—surely, you've heard of him…" Alice puts a look of affirmation in her eyes, letting the man know that she indeed knows Lupin personally. "…well, some of the parents at Hogwarts got window his… condition… and he's excused himself from the post of his own volition. Who knows where he is, now. But. I know that Dumbledore is aware of my goals, and likely, he asked me to help him in this endeavor—this endeavor of rescuing you—because he knew I couldn't refuse, with those aspirations in mind."
He settles back in the chair, and Alice tries to pay attention to him, though her own thoughts are now fixated on the new knowledge that Remus had resigned from his post at Hogwarts, and she is now full of worry about where he might have gone; whether she will see him again. "Point being," says the muggle-University professor, "if you could do me a favor, and when next you see the Headmaster, put a good word in for me… I would be very grateful, and indebted to you."
The girl is too exhausted to try to relay any emotion to him through her eyes, and so remains dormant and impartial, barely registering his request through her fears regarding Remus.
"Well," says Alexander Brandt. "Right. Thank you, in advance. I haven't given you your potion yet, have I?"
He's been sustaining her using potions and spells, as she is too weak to chew food, and barely ever awake. At his words, the girl becomes vaguely aware of this, through some strange sequence of recent out-of-body memories, but soon she drifts off again—so that when the man returns to the library with his potions, her eyes are closed, and her mind far away, yet again.
Over the next days, she feels herself conscious more than she has been in a while, and comes to loathe the feeling. She suffers from severe survivor's guilt after leaving Fynn behind, and detests the angry, violent thoughts she has against Eloise Wickham, for tricking her away from the Manor illegally. A tangible depression settles over her, and she starts having dreams (or, not quite dreams, but consistent visions occupying her mind in a dual reality, regardless of whether she is awake or asleep) of the two Malfoy sons, cold and alone in their separate rooms, neglected… or worse… by their father.
And then come the visions of Lucius , himself, most of which become so overwhelming to her inner senses, so quickly, that her conscious mind snaps to darkness in order to survive, leaving her soul whirling out in the dark space of her inner universe.
Alexander has a habit of bursting out into poetry recitations, or rambling on to himself about scientific postulations, or string theory, or Stephen Hawking. But she takes no interest in his strange musings, in the books and papers he pores over at his desk, in the songs he belts from elsewhere in the house, or those he plays over the gramophone in the library itself, while the spring rain shivers down from the clouds and taps cruelly at the windows.
Soon, comes another muggle car.
More days.
She has a terrible inkling, that she'd been rushed out of the professor's residence in a hurry. That something bad has been done to him, because of her.
But just as soon she is sure she'd dreamed him up entirely, in the first place.
Another island of awareness comes to her in a small London apartment. A witch named Cecelia Puttock lives there, along with her husband, or her lover, or someone of that nature, with profoundly dark skin and profoundly bright eyes. He plays the cello for an important muggle orchestra all day long, and only eats, sleeps talks to Cecelia, or plays the cello when he does come home for a period of hours every night.
Cecelia is very quiet, going around her apartment almost like a mouse, not encouraging Alice to speak, and seeming to prefer it when the girl is asleep—which causes Alice much relief, as she'd felt in Alexander Brandt's house that to be asleep was a crime. The only time there is any real noise in the house is when the man returns home and plays the cello, practicing for hours on end, sometimes playing more soft pieces in the room that Alice is confined to, and smiling to her as his fingers work up and down the fingerboard of the sighing instrument.
Living in the London apartment is a more faded experience than living in Cambridge had been, but still comes with a number of distinct moments—the most important of all being this:
The keyhole of her bedroom is unnaturally wide, and one night, when she is lying awake at an unusual hour of night, and the rest of the building is quiet, she happens to look through it into the connected bedroom. Her eyes widen slightly, making out two shadowy forms, two bodies, and for a moment she fears that someone has broken into the house, before she realizes that the two bodies are those of Cecelia and her lover.
She watches, unable to take her eyes away, almost not in control of her eyes, out of her body, as they slowly remove each other's clothes, laying down upon the bed. Soon, the two bodies begin to move, the man on top of Cecelia, her host, looking into her eyes as he moves. With a stir of discomfort and fear, the girl realizes they're having sex, and watches, stunned, wondering at how the woman doesn't cry out, or scream, or sob. Surely, he must be hurting her…
But then comes a whisper, from the woman to the man, something carried indefinitely through the shadowed dark: "I love you," she tells him, as he moves in and out of her body—and a sound, not of pain, but of bliss, sneaks from between the woman's lips, before she uses her mouth to gently kiss the cellist.
Something about this is frightening and unfamiliar to the girl, but she can't help but continue watching, still thinking about what had passed between the two adults in the adjacent room, even long after the movement has ended, and both of them are laying asleep in the bed, still in sight through the keyhole.
For hours, Alice is awake on her own bed, staring at them, or at the ceiling. And though she finds herself afraid, confused, and slightly guilty after watching the foreign interaction in the other bedroom… something quiet and still inside of her is comforted, and she longs suddenly for the simplicity of Remus.
All at once, remembering the movements of the adults' bodies through the keyhole, and remembering the woman's breathless words to the cellist, Alice realizes she is in love with Remus.
Her wand, which has remained in the back pocket of the muggle pants given to her at some point along the way, suddenly itches to be handled. She wants—needs—to cast her Patronus, wants—needs—to see that small blue-lit wolf take shape before her eyes, wants—needs—for her sudden emotion to be explained and legitimized by a tangible magic.
But though she has no strength with which to reach for her wand, and definitely no strength with which to work magic, another type of magic entirely lingers inside her mind, stirring and tingling in its very center, even when she sleeps.
Cambridge and London are only two vague moments, which she understands are islands of consciousness in a sea of unawareness that plagues weeks and months between.
Days pass in and out of existence easy as drips of water falling from the tips of the spring leaves—which she sees outside of some window, somewhere, sometime.
She knows no one and no where—and she doesn't know herself, either.
Fynn. Draco. Remus.
One days in mid-summer, she wakes, for the first time in months, to see faces she recognizes. Or, at least, one face she recognizes by name, and another which she seems to vaguely remember from somewhere, though she knows she's never seen it before.
The faces are those of Harry Potter and Molly Weasley.
The latter asks her how she is, and tries to question her, before suddenly breaking into tears and fleeing the room. Harry takes over and tells her she is in the Weasleys' house, that this is the end of the line, that she's safe, now, that she's "out," and there won't be any more shifting around to suffer from. He then proceeds to catch her up on all the things that had happened at the end of his third year, involving Buckbeak the Hippogriff, the Dementors, and Sirius Black.
But he can only avoid the real subject for so long, and eventually he asks why she didn't tell him what was happening over the winter holidays at Hogwarts. She wants to speak to him very badly. She works to open her lips slightly, and puts it firmly in her mind to tell him that she doesn't know the answer to his question—that she is sorry, that she didn't want him to fear for her as she feared for herself.
But when she tries to speak, only a thin, high stream of air hisses through her throat, shapeless, meaningless. She feels a series of tears roll down her cheeks, before she fades into a wickedly conscious sleep, Harry sitting beside the bed, waiting for something. She doesn't know for what, but regardless, she doubts it will ever arrive.
Fred, George, Ginny, Ron, Harry, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley come to visit her daily in the guest room, at the very top of the Burrow, and there is never a time at which there isn't someone in the room with her, watching her, trying to help her talk, trying to make her eat.
The familiarity of their faces jolts her out of her subconscious on a new level. She feels everything, remembers everything. Her surroundings are sharper and clearer to her than her surroundings have been in many, many weeks.
She knows that this has marked the end of her ability to recede into blissful unconsciousness; that she will have to suffer in her body, have to suffer the cruelty of being awake and aware, indefinitely, from this point onward.
Each available member of the redhead clan, along with Harry the black-haired outlier, comes into the guest room at least once every day, and tries to coax her into coming out, in their own way. It is quickly understood that she is incapable of walking, or even of standing up, or even of talking. So, for the time being, they make their peace (though not completely) with allowing her to remain laying on the bed as long as she needs, helping her to turn every so often, sustaining her as the others had, using potions and various spells.
Being awake is like trying to go to sleep. She feels all the little skittering creatures and all the dirt and all the moving tree branches and air outside the too-thin, too-bright window—feels them as sharply as though they are under her own skin.
The Weasley family owns a spotted cow named Polly, who is brought home from the fields whenever she wanders too far. The passing of the cow, led by the lanky figures of George and Fred, from one side of the window frame to the other, is often the highlight of the girl's morning. Over time, Alice becomes more aware of the state of things inside the bizarre but warm country house.
Percy, one of the older siblings, is at an internship at the Ministry of Magic for the summer, and Bill and Charlie, the oldest brothers, are both away abroad at their own jobs. It is just Fred and George, Ron, Ginny, and Harry in the house along with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Harry has been staying with them for the summer, and all of the siblings are looking forward to taking him to the Quidditch World Cup in a month or so.
Fred and George ask her pointedly, at one point, whether she likes Quidditch, and she is so overcome with fear at the prospect of flying broomsticks and large crowds that she feels something inside of her stomach roil, and she would be ill if her stomach weren't a void.
She doesn't eat—cannot. Even swallowing water is a miserable task. But that, at least, she can make herself do. It's easier than eating, and it purges her stomach of its need of solid contents—even if only for a brief period of time.
Her renewed ability to consume water, along with something inside of herself that grows steadily warmer as she realizes the hope contained within the Weasleys' and Harry's never-ebbing support for her, enables her at last, to speak, after a week and a half has passed under the care of their friendship, and the country air. The first sounds are meager, and like small chirpings, almost bird-like. But slowly, the sounds evolve—with more water, fresh air, and encouragement from Harry—into intelligible words.
A sudden jolt of adrenaline courses through her when the first true sounds come to her, and all at once, she is encompassed by the sense that she must say what she needs to, as soon as possible—that this renewed ability to use her voice might suddenly be stolen away from her again, at any second.
After making a series of inquiries, her words stitched together slowly and cautiously, most syllables connected by long, thin threads that require her listeners to pay close attention, she learns the answers to the three questions which have been welling up within her for the past months.
One: Eloise Wickham, the maid who helped her escape, is now in Azkaban.
Two: There is no word from Draco and Fynn. No one has come in or out of the Malfoy Manor in months.
Three: Remus did, indeed, retire from his post at Hogwarts. No one knows where he is. No one has been able to contact him.
These three answers, in combination, form, for her, the unholy trifecta of grief, and darken her soul like never before, banishing her to a remote castle on the edge of her own mind's continent, where cold winds blow, and the sun never shines.
One: She'd wished Hell on Eloise for taking her away from Fynn, and now it has found her.
Two: She'd hoped in vain that Fynn and Draco would be saved, but now there is no word of their state. They could be anywhere, being subjected to anything, and it is her fault without question. She should have been stronger. She should have suspected Eloise sooner.
Three: Remus deserves a beautiful world, and she doesn't know why he thinks differently. She hates the world for hating him when he already hates himself enough. She wishes she didn't add to that hatred, too, but she knows she does so, anyway, inadvertently. She should have told him what she knew about him while she could. But now she might never have another chance.
The blackness is cold and silent and kind, because it requires nothing of her.
She fills her dark inner castle like air, itself.
She recedes into it.
She is blind again.
She has no words for anyone, and no reactions for the faces whose colors are slowly leached away, leaving the world around her in greyscale, all words coming to her as though from underwater.
But still, she knows that if she were to open her mouth, she would be all too capable of speaking. So she makes sure that her lips remained sealed and her thoughts locked tightly in a small, dark box. Anything might surface, otherwise. Better to be still. Better to be quiet. Better to hide in the cold, in the numbness—not to hurt anyone else, and not to be hurt any more than she already has been.
Nothingness. Nothingness is bliss.
Molly Weasley elects to sit with Alice through the nights, when she is asleep, easing herself down into the silent rocking chair in the corner of the room, watching over the girl like a sentinel, though exhausted, herself. Tonight, the woman sits as she has for many nights before, the chair still beneath her body, the cold white light of the full moon outside, filling the room, and casting sharp shadows on the floor.
Usually, Molly is calm with a sleeping house around her, her family content after a long Summer day, resting up for the next one, which mother nature is hard at work preparing, outdoors. But these past nights have taken a toll on the woman, and tonight, in particular, is the worst, yet. Her hair has lost its spunk, and her motherly form has become worryingly diminished, and less healthy, along with an unintentional loss of weight. And this physical state only hints mildly at the truth of her harried soul, within.
The girl—who now lays, in a frightfully sound sleep, on her back on the bed, the cold moonlight turning her face cruel and thin—has, since learning of the lack of news from Fynn and Draco, and the imprisonment of the maid who had helped her escape, receded so far into herself that she seems like a corpse.
Ironically, it is at night—when her subconscious is most unguarded, and nightmares possess her diminished body—that she seems most alive.
The girl's distress has rubbed off on Molly, in a way that hasn't seemed to rub off on her husband, though an unusual air of disturbance lingers around him, too—lingers around everyone in the house.
The woman had known Lucius Malfoy in her own Hogwarts days, and though he'd been insufferable and cruelly superior, she'd never suspected him of being capable of inflicting this level of physical evil on another person. Molly knows that she should never have expected anything different, especially after the role Lucius had played in the first Wizarding War. But there is something in her as a mother, and as a being, in herself, which always compels her to see the best in others… until it is too late.
What's worse, she thinks, is that now, she has started to doubt Dumbledore himself, who had, in his own way, allowed it to happen. She wants to trust him, too, but now that such events have passed, she has a hard time doing so, and feels a great moral struggle, and conflict of long-existing—but now challenged—beliefs inside of her.
For now, though, Molly Weasley distracts herself from her own inner turmoil, by monitoring the sleeping girl, watching her like a bird from across the room, carefully counting the rises and falls of her chest beneath the thin layer of sheets.
Tonight, there are no nightmares, no whimpers, no writhing. But Molly is on edge, doubting that Alice will make it through the night with her sleep undisturbed. That would be a record, and the woman is tired of optimism, when it comes to such things.
Mrs. Weasley believes that the storm has finally arrived when the girl turns over slightly just after midnight, her body moving of its own volition, as though possessed by something not of her own self—but not violently. She simply turns from her back onto her side, and her lips murmur something softly.
Molly tenses, remembering the nights passed, in which the girl's nightmare-possessed tantrums had ranged in intensity form a series of aggravated cries, to a fit of terrifying thrashing, in which she'd scratched her face badly, and almost taken her own eye out—before Harry had finally sprinted in from the other room, and forced her to wake up.
But no such terrors arrive.
Molly watches quietly, holding her breath as Alice goes to sleep again. Just minutes later, she stirs once more, and speaks, still softly, but with more definition in the sound. Molly leans closer from across the room, and after pricking her ears, she makes out what the girl is saying. She hears—or at least thinks that she hears—"Remus…"
The full moon suddenly takes on new character outside the window, in the dark cloud-streaked sky. Molly tenses, thinking that she hears something calling, something howling, outside in the nearby woods… and a chill trickles down her spine, though she knows it's impossible.
It's doubtless that Molly is hearing things, that Alice hadn't said Remus Lupin's name at all. Perhaps, something about the full moon is working curses on the woman's subconscious, or something about her lack of sleep. Perhaps, this is only a manifestation of her recent worries—she's being haunted by memories of the Order of the Phoenix. That wouldn't be out of the ordinary at this time of night, when anxieties tend to resurface from years in the past.
But after another few minutes, Alice speaks again, and the name comes from her lips even more clearly than before—indeed, the girl is asking for Remus Lupin, unwittingly, in her sleep. There's something ghostly but pure in Alice's dreaming voice, and Molly is suddenly sure that something in the girl's subconscious is deliberately reaching out to her—Molly—in hopes that she might answer a buried plea that Alice, while awake, would never make aloud.
Thus prompted, the woman jumps at being given a task, at being even the vaguest sign of what must be done. And she decides at once that she will contact Remus by owl. She knows how slim the odds are, but something about this strange happening tells her that the man will listen to the words she writes, if Errol does, indeed, succeed in finding him. Errol, Molly knows, is an old owl—sometimes confused, sometimes silly, nearly blind—but he is a good one, nonetheless, with a strong internal compass, and the most loyalty of any bird she's ever known. If any owl can find Remus, wherever he's been hiding himself away, it is Errol.
Quietly, Molly Weasley stands from the rocking chair, opening the little parchment drawer of the writing desk by the window. And, by the full light of the beacon-like moon, she sets herself to quilling a letter to a very old friend.
A week later, Remus Lupin apparates into the field behind the Burrow with a muted crack that disturbs the blustery late morning, if but for a moment.
The field is dominated entirely by Queen Anne's Lace flowers, which toss and whisper in the light wind, and the wizard crouches slightly to pluck a few, until he has a small bouquet in hand, threatening to quickly become limp under the sun. Remus stands up again and, surveying the picturesque, cloudy sky, tucks his hair behind his ears, and settles one hand in the pocket of his tweed jacket, carrying his small suitcase and the flowers in the other.
He'd been hiding away in the small garret room of a Wizarding pub in Amsterdam, when the Weasleys' trusty owl Errol had found him, just two days after his latest transformation. He'd been reluctant to read the letter, recognizing Molly Weasley's penmanship on the envelope, and fearing that to read it would be to commit himself ahead of time to whatever it was she might ask of him. But upon reading the message within, he'd known that it was necessary for him to reach the Burrow as soon as possible. And there was a part of him that had smiled quietly at the thought of seeing Alice again, at last.
Now, as he walks through the field toward the odd house, his gladness at the prospect of seeing his young companion again makes his heart happy—for even he is not too daft to notice when he has been alone for rather too long. But, along with it, springs a new feeling—one of uncertainty.
Of course, she will not be the same as she had been at Arabella Figg's house on Privet Drive, or in Hogwarts that summer before Harry's third year. Surely, she will be different now, even, than she had been over the winter holidays. And it wouldn't be beyond reason for her to find extreme fault with Remus, after his failure to protect her from Lucius Malfoy; his failure to stand up to Dumbledore…
But the ex-professor is soon jolted out of his thoughts by a faint buzzing sound overhead, which intensifies until—suddenly—Harry Potter himself touches down in the field just in front of him, dismounting from his Firebolt broomstick and grinning broadly at the sight of Lupin.
"Professor!" greets the boy with a lilt of joy in his voice. Joy which had been long absent over the past school year—and is sometimes only reclaimable through flying.
"Harry," Remus says, smiling warmly, his exhaustion still showing in his eyes. But he opens his arms wide and receives the slightly sweaty Boy Who Lived in a tight embrace.
From above comes a faint shout of alarm, and then a loud zipping noise, and both of them look up to see Ron, on his own broomstick, just barely avoiding the top of the house, swerving at the last moment. "Harry!" comes a faint cry as Ron loses control of the broom and it nearly spirals into the woods.
"I'd better go get him, Professor," Harry admits, smiling and already preparing to mount his Firebolt.
"Of course. None of us would be served very well by a Ronald sandwich, now would we?" says Remus with a smile, patting his ex-pupil on the back and taking a cautious step back before waving him off in encouragement. With a loud whoosh, the boy takes off from the ground and speeds off in the direction of the woods, causing the older wizard to laugh aloud and shake his head, seeing so much of Sirius Black in his Godson.
Promptly, however, his nostalgic smile is dampened. Molly Weasley, noticing his approach from across the field, has appeared in the back-doorway, and he sees her in his peripheral vision, looking over and offering a meager wave—which she returns—before looking down at the ground, watching his tattered leather shoes brush through the flowers as he walks the rest of the way to the house.
"We're very glad you came," says Molly once he's arrived at the doorstep, looking up at him from her squat height, and almost taking him into an embrace before deciding against it, not wanting to risk the tears that might result—and especially not in front of Arthur and Ginny, who are sitting at the kitchen table behind her, the youngest of her children humoring her father with a game of Wizard's chess.
"Remus!" calls Arthur happily, upon noticing the man in the doorway, looking up from the chessboard. "Pardon the state of the game, old chap. I've lost the master of the family to Harry Potter and Quidditch practice."
"Dad!" Ginny protests, cocking her head to one side and looking serious for a moment, before resolving her expression and smiling slightly. "Hello, Professor Lupin," she says in greeting, trying to hide the slight wariness behind her eyes at the sight of the man and quite nearly succeeding.
"Arthur, Ginny, it's marvelous to see you both," says Remus, stepping into the kitchen as Molly makes way for his entrance. "I would love to stay and watch, and perhaps I will in a bit, but…" He turns slightly to Mrs. Weasley, who nods hastily at him, understanding, and, noticing the bouquet of flowers in his hand, summons a vase from a nearby cupboard.
"Aguamenti," says Molly, filling the vase with the resulting stream of water from her wand, before handing it to Remus, who settles the bundle of stems into it, thanking the woman when she takes his suitcase from him.
"Oh, yes, well, Alice has been hoping to see you, much more than we have," says Arthur, letting his words hang in the air a moment before he cocks an eyebrow, sensing something awry. Ginny looks at her father pointedly and he flounders awkwardly for a moment before amending, "Well, you see, erm, I meant, she's been looking forward to seeing you the most."
"I understand, Arthur," says Remus kindly, the tired corners of his eyes crinkling slightly as he approaches the foot of the stairs. "I'll be down again, directly. And, Ginny, I have no doubt that, by moving your queen to E5, you could challenge Ronald for his title as the 'Master Chess Player of the Family.'" He winks at the girl conspiratorially, and Ginny smiles at him before examining the board and triumphantly making the suggested move.
"She's at the very top," Molly calls quietly to the visitor, and Remus nods down to her before turning again, and smirking privately at the sound of Arthur's protestations as Ginny Weasley wins the game.
On his way up the stairs, carrying the vase of flowers against his sternum he has to stop on each landing to regain his strength—harder and harder to get back with every transformation. However, on one of the landings, the rhythm is broken by a sudden sound from a nearby doorway, and a shower of sparks as the door opens and a fiery object buzzes out onto the landing, remaining in the air for a moment before fizzing out and falling to the floor between his shoes.
Remus has hardly overcome his surprise, when two tall, lanky boys appear in the doorway, identical faces taken over by identical expressions of shock as they look at the wizard on the landing, with their latest failed experiment on the floor before him.
"Professor!" Fred and George stammer in unison.
"We're so sorry," says George.
"We didn't know it was—" continues Fred.
"—you," they both finish.
Remus smirks, gingerly picking up the object—rather like a muggle firecracker, but heavier, and giving off dangerous royal-blue smoke—and examining it histrionically. "Pray tell," he says, "who did you think it was?"
Identical grins of mischief appear on the twins' faces. "We shouldn't say, professor," says George.
"Well," Remus declares jokingly, handing the object to Fred gingerly, "you two are safe for now, but I'll have to have a word; with you later."
He looks between them slowly, and sets eyes pointedly on each of them as they calls them by their correct names. "Fred… George… Technically, I am your professor no longer. So—" he smiles his small smile "—you may rest easy: these summertime shenanigans won't reach the Headmaster's ears… probably."
"I'm George," argues Fred, furrowing his eyebrows jovially and pointing at George. "He's Fred."
Remus, not fooled, just smirks gently, uttering an appeasing "Mmm," before bidding them goodbye-for-now and continuing on his way up the stairs to the uppermost room in the house.
On the final landing, he undergoes a brief inner struggle as he tries to decide whether or not to knock before he enters the room. The door is already standing ajar, and he knows the girl is likely sleeping, and he doesn't want to wake her. So, he decides against knocking and steps in carefully, the door quietly creaking as he crosses over the threshold.
But Alice is awake, and has been all morning long. Upon his entrance into the room, her head moves against her pillow, and she looks over at him, something in her eyes both brightening and cowering at the sight of him after so many months.
"Sorry," says Remus after a moment, still standing in the doorway, startled by how thin and drained she has become; and how small and weak she looks laying on the bed, made a waif by the sunlight. "I didn't know if I should knock."
"I saw you coming," says Alice, her voice tired and slightly hoarse, but lined with a contentment that sets him at ease. She moves her eyes meaningfully toward the window, which looks out over the field in the back of the Burrow. "Harry and Ron have been practicing out there, trying to… they don't want me to feel alone. I noticed you when Harry touched down."
Alice trails off slightly, slowly, watching the corners of his mouth move upward slightly. She wants to come out, wants to simply say to him: You wouldn't believe how glad I am to see you. But something in the idea of the words rings false. Some tiny part of her, amidst the ocean of other churning emotions, hates that he has come here, for some unexplainable reason.
Remus approaches the rocking chair, which has been pulled up to her bedside, setting the vase of Queen Anne's Lace down on her bedside table before taking a seat.
"I'm sensing a motif," she says, noting the flowers, remembering the other bouquets in their past. Weakly, she smiles. But it's still a smile. The first one she's tried to coax onto her face in months upon months—and reasonably successful, considering.
It's a wonderful thought, despite its slight morbidity: she hopes that when she dies—for she is sure that day will come soon—he will bring her flowers and set them in her hands before she is lowered into the ground.
Remus senses something wrong, as though the girl's thoughts have somehow echoed in his own subconscious, and suddenly tries to cover up the sensation of badness, his voice rambling on ahead of his mind before he's paused to form a line of conversation. "You're looking glum," he hears himself say to her. "Are you feeling sick? I hope not—I've found the most delicious chocolate from the Netherlands. Would you like to try some?"
A heartbeat later, he realizes he's been babbling. Of course she's glum. Of course she's feeling sick. And suddenly he realizes that offering her chocolate is, in a way, disgusting—like some compensation he doesn't deserve to give her, that she would (or at least should) detest accepting, though he knows she would never deny the offer.
As he'd feared, in the next moment, Alice nods her head "yes" with difficulty in answer to his proposition. Without another option, he hands her the bar of chocolate from his tweed pocket. She reaches out a feeble hand to accept it, and holds it in front of her face for a moment, inhaling the aroma through the paper packaging. But then, something in her face falls, and she admits, "I can't eat it," giving it back to him.
As he puts it back in his pocket, he really looks at her for the first time, observing the light on her face, and just how sunken she looks. He shudders inwardly to think what horrors are contained within her small, fading body, after more months of trauma at the hands of Lucius, since he'd last seen her at Hogwarts—not to mention the more recent period of upheaval and isolation she'd suffered through alone.
He shifts in the rocking chair, making the legs creak slightly, in order to avoid expressing physical revulsion at the idea of just how ill she must feel, inside.
Alice senses his feelings, though, and her face falls in stages. Something about him there, looking at her, makes her feel terrible all of a sudden. She'd wanted, for so long, to have Remus by her side. But now, she has realized all at once that she detests herself, and wishes she were different—a feeling that makes his presence unbearable.
"Why are you here?" she says, her voice deep and packed with tears.
"For you," Remus says at length, sensing the change, his eyes darkening sadly.
"You shouldn't…" starts the girl, shaking her head at herself. "Just… you should go."
He looks at her for a moment, before making a decision. Normally, he might have left the moment he requested he do so. But something about the situation requires that he stay. "I will not 'just go,'" he says, reaching for her hand and taking it gently in his, trying and failing to ignore the coldness of her skin.
She inhales sharply, her skin rejecting the sensation of physical touch. "Don't." She shudders as she exhales, and tries to amend her actions. "I'm sorry," she says, her eyes overcome by a faraway look. And though he's taken his hand away, sensing her distress, she suddenly reaches for it again, taking hold of his wrist with surprising firmness given the weakness of her fingers. "Please," she says desperately, looking into his eyes with her agonized, washed-out ones, her entire body shifting suddenly and straining towards him—as though she's being subjected to a Cruciatus curse from within.
"You're hurting me," Alice says, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. "Why are you hurting me?"
She knows this is unfair, and hates herself for saying it, but she hadn't been able to help it. She knows just what is causing her pain—the sudden understanding that Remus Lupin does not love her. And the even more poignant understanding that she loves him more than ever, despite the face.
Remus, overcome by the pain emanating sharply from him and cutting into his own heart, wants to cry. He feels his magic curling dangerously towards murderous thoughts against Lucius Malfoy, seeing the girl's frayed nerves playing out so painfully. "Alice," he says, his voice rough but warm. "I want to care for you."
But this is too much, and his heart skips a beat as Alice's face crumbles. "Don't—" she pleads again, suddenly taking her hand away, as though his skin had emitted an electric shock. Tears fall rapidly from her eyes, and she turns her head away from him, hiding against the pillow as her weak form is wracked with sobs.
He has no idea what to do.
She tells him she's sorry, though he doesn't know why. She apologizes for her behavior and tells him he has to go downstairs, though "nothing" is "his fault," et cetera.
"I'm sorry," he says after a moment, almost startled to his feet, and turns away, embarrassed for his intrusion, and feeling more villainous than he ever has felt before, abashed and ashamed for expecting anything different after he'd abandoned her, after he'd allowed Dumbledore to have his way with the situation, when there was so much at stake.
Remus glances at her once more before taking his leave of the room and going out onto the landing, where he pauses for a long time, the chair still rocking, abandoned, in the room behind him.
Despite the difficult start, it is Remus's presence in the Burrow that finally motivates Alice to stand up, and work her way back into life beyond the confines of the house's uppermost room. She makes the decision the next day, when Mrs. Weasley brings in the morning sustenance potions, and she confesses her sudden understanding that now is the time to start again. Whatever that means.
It takes her a great deal of time. She has to try harder than she's tried at anything else in her life—even at controlling her magic in the very beginning—to stand up from the bed, and to walk. She has lost much weight… too much… and she grows dizzy easily, after having not been up or walking about for months on end. She feels, sometimes, like she is on the verge of death, and knows that the only reason she is alive at all is because she's been kept alive by various spells and potions over the course of her depression. Otherwise, she surely would have wasted away. And though there have been moments when she's whished that her body would get on with it, and that she would meet her end, Remus's arrival has suddenly banished such thoughts.
Over the course of a few hours, walking around the perimeter of the room, intermittently leading on Harry, Fred or George, depending, she works up enough strength and determination to take on the challenge of the stairs.
Even more than the encouragement Remus's presence, in itself, has added to her situation, his reintroduction into her reality has also made her remember the responsibility she has to Fynn and Draco, as long as she is alive. The responsibility which she'd tried to suppress in the past months, when getting back to them had seemed so hopeless. But now, it has returned to her heart and mind with full force.
And she intends to live. At least until she gets the chance to amend what she did wrong—to rescue them form that terrible Manor, where they are still kept captive.
So, with Fred on her one side, and George on the other, she succeeds in walking down all six flights of stairs, into the kitchen, and out into the stunning daylight of the swaying, flowery field.
And thus, her life—or the parts of it which are salvageable—resumes.
The beginning is slow, as all beginnings are.
Her feelings for Remus have been perpetuated by his actual presence, and they hit her like a train, in a sense, making it difficult for her to feel confident that he can't see directly through her façade. As a result, for a number of days at the outset, she avoids him, not wanting to risk such shame.
Her intentions in being up and about become quickly known, but her goal of immediately reaching Fynn and Draco is just as quickly shot down. And for good reason she understands: she can barely walk on her own, still cannot eat, not to mention how difficult a mission to—in essence—kidnap two pureblood minors from one Lucius Malfoy, one of the most powerful wizard in the Ministry, would be, on its own, without her additional debilitated state.
Mr. Weasley falls to asking her, almost habitually, about muggle objects, in hopes that talking about such things might distract her. And though at first, Alice finds his questionings burdensome, she soon discovers that the distraction is beneficial.
Especially when the nightmares arrive.
The worst of them make her wake up screaming in the middle of the night, thinking she's somewhere else, and thrashing about so violently that it takes a brave soul—sometimes Harry, but more often, now, Remus—to get close enough to take hold of her wrists, and remind her where she is. Harry has been having troubling dreams in the nights, too, though he seems to have learned to keep them under control, and private enough, on his own. When the two of them find themselves alone in a room or apart from the others in the field, Harry tells her about the flashing pain in his scar that has started to plague his nights, and the disturbing dreams that have begun to gain clarity by the night.
Sometimes, both of them are so afraid to go to sleep, that she'll creep out of the guest room, and Harry will creep out of Ron's room, and they'll meet halfway at the landing outside of Percy's unoccupied room, whispering to each other over candlelight, finding refuge in sleeplessness, though they always regret not resting the day after, and the nightmares are always worse the next time they do end up sleeping.
The dreams are—when she doesn't shout upon waking from them—a relatively private affair, and with time, she comes to manage them as Harry has learned to, waking up with a quiet whimper or a jolt and a gasp that doesn't wake anyone else, rather than an earsplitting scream of terror. So, when she brings up the contents of a nightmare over the breakfast table one morning, everyone listens closely, knowing what she has to say to be of great import.
"There was this symbol," she says, choosing her words carefully, and keeping her eyes peeled open, knowing that if she blinks, she'll be thrust into the past, and lose her control and concentration. "That I remember from somewhere, though I don't know where." (This is a lie. She'd seen it in her dream, just as it had been on the underside of Lucius Malfoy's forearm, when his sleeve had been pushed up in her struggle.) "A skull. With a snake coming out of its mouth. The snake, its body is in a knot, I think."
Remus pales in his seat across the table from her, knowing that for her to see this symbol would mean that she'd seen it on Lucius's forearm. Quickly, he puts the pieces together—the precise pieces she'd wanted to hide—and sets his utensils down on his plate, his appetite gone. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley also grow quiet suddenly, but the Weasley children and Harry perk up slightly, waiting for an explanation.
"I'm sorry," says Alice after a long moment, not having meant to disrupt breakfast in such a way.
But Remus is the one to interject, shaking his head. "It's quite alright," he says, gathering himself, and looking to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley for permission before going on. "Alice, you've just described the Dark Mark. It was a kind of symbol… a branding method… that He Who Must Not Be Named used among his closest, most loyal followers. As I understand it, during the war, the mark could also be used to summon this 'inner circle,' of those most allegiant at the Dark Lord's whim."
Alice feels her stomach roil. She glances across the table toward Harry, who looks at her out of the corner of his eye, a dose of fear and concern in the straight line of his mouth.
"These biscuits are perfection, Molly," says Arthur at length. And, in choppy stages, they all—with the notable exception of Alice, who sits with an empty plate before her—fall back to eating.
At mealtimes, she sits at the table, but never partakes in the food.
It looks delicious, and she hates that she might offend Mrs. Weasley by not eating it, but she knows that the moment she smells the aroma of the food in a way that entails consuming it, she begins to feel ill, as though she might be sick any second. So she remains quiet from the beginning of the meal to the end, when it is cleared, her hands clasped in her lap under the table, the empty plate (which Mrs. Weasley unfailingly places before her, in hopes that she'll decide to eat of her own will) sitting judgmentally in front of her.
This morning, Harry has been eyeing the empty plate consistently throughout breakfast.
Alice tries to ignore him, slightly unnerved by his attention, which is usually directed at his own full plate during mealtimes. But she can't help feeling anxious when his eyes glide pointedly to her plate for the umpteenth time. And her stomach seems to flip over when Harry reaches across the table and sets a savory scone on her plate—the movement largely unnoticed, as a boisterous conversation has sucked in everyone else at the table.
"You should try to eat something," Harry says to her, under the babble of the others.
Alice leans forward slightly, feeling dizzy, hoping self-defense will be easy in this instance as she protests, "Harry, I'll be sick."
Harry, though, shrugs his shoulders, saying nonchalantly, "I refuse to eat until you do," and Alice stares back at him in sharp shock, because it's the most audacious yet wise thing he possibly could have said.
She can see in his eyes that he knows just what he's doing to her. He knows what it feels like to be malnourished, to be deprived of food and then to have altogether too much food suddenly appear. He'd experienced that during the first welcome feast at Hogwarts, after years of near-starvation at the hands of the Dursleys. But Harry doesn't know what it means to be repulsed by a meal. Throughout his first eleven years, a heaping plate of food had been a good dream—not a nightmare, as it has become for Alice.
Knowing herself, she shakes her head at him. "Harry, thank you, but this is silly. I can't—"
"Alice," Harry says, raising his voice and his eyebrows, giving the girl a physical start in her chair. He grits his teeth, motions to the scone on her plate, and demands, "Just a bite," his eyes unyielding.
Though silly, her first instinct is to cry. She can feel the tears pricking threateningly at the corners of her vision, startled by her friend's sudden change in demeanor, but knowing he's right, and feeling guilty for having incited such drama over breakfast. Everyone else at the table has fallen silent now, and only the faint "moo" of the cow, Polly, can be heard in the distance. Alice looks down at her plate to collect herself, before resuming her staring match with Harry.
Molly looks like she's preparing to object, but Harry shoots her a look that quickly deters her. Alice continues to look back at the boy blankly. "I refuse to eat until you do," he repeats, pushing his plate forward, away from his body. He knows she can't refuse if he decides to starve himself along with her, but she remains still, hoping he might be insincere.
Alice looks towards Remus for assurance, hoping that he might side with her—but she knows she should have known better, because barely an instant later, Remus himself pushes his plate forward, siding with Harry, and promptly, everyone else at the table follows suit.
Needless to say, her resolve doesn't last long.
With much difficulty, she cuts into a small piece of the scone with the tines of her fork, and lifts the tiny sliver into her mouth. It takes her a full minute to chew and swallow it, and for a moment she almost smiles with pride—it feels as though she's just consumed a whole meal. But when she looks back down at her plate and sees the tiny bite she'd just taken in actuality, her stomach drops.
"At least it was something," Ginny asserts from beside Alice, cutting through the silence as she comes to the older girl's defense.
Ginny, too, is the first to pull her own plate back towards her and continue with her own meal, causing the others to slowly do the same. After all, it is the first solid food Alice has eaten in months. And she's lucky for not throwing it up.
In the mornings, Alice and Remus make a habit of waking together, earlier than the others, and taking quiet walks in the woods by the stream, only realizing in the later morning when they come back to the house for breakfast (which Alice can now, finally, eat) along with the rest of the boisterous occupants of the house, that they'd done it all in complete silence. Speaking, it seems, is unnecessary. Both enjoy the quiet, and noise needn't be forced on one another.
As the 18th of August—the day of the Quidditch World Cup—approaches, the mood around the house becomes electric.
"We need another birthday!" Fred exclaims on the fifteenth, rubbing his belly miserably. Ginny's birthday had been on the eleventh, and the Weasley family is notorious on its own for running out of birthday cake at record speed—not to mention adding three guests to help them along.
"Isn't Percy's the twenty-second?" says Alice, narrowing her eyes at the clock on the wall, which marks the approaching goings-on in the household.
"But that's a whole seven days away!" exclaims Ron, coming down the stairs and into the kitchen, sitting down disappointedly at the table across from his twin brothers.
"Alice," say Fred and George in unison, crossing their fingers. "When's yours?"
"You're out of luck," says the girl with a small smirk, enjoying the twins' way of speaking. "The seventeenth of March."
But rather than the expected groans of disappointment and protestation, she is met with a beat of silence, and then an explosion of excitement across the three brothers' faces.
"You're—" begins Fred.
"—Joking!" he and George finish together.
Ron stands up from his chair, impassioned, grinning at her. "Saint Patty's Baby…" he says dreamily. "Alice, you're a savior."
"Dad!" George and Fred shout as Arthur comes down the stairs, dressed for a day at the Ministry, followed shortly by Remus. "It's not too late to get another ticket to The Cup?"
"I don't see why not," Arthur says, his eyebrows stitched together. "Why?"
"Alice's birthday is March seventeenth—" says Ron. "She's got the luck of the Irish! We have to bring her, Dad! For the good of the team!"
"I don't know—" Alice interjects, finally putting the pieces together—the Weasleys are rooting for the Irish team—and wishing she'd kept her mouth shut.
"Please, Alice!" begs Ron, turning to her and getting down on his knees. "You have to! Please?"
"This is tremendous news!" bellows Mr. Weasley, his eyes brightening. "Of course it's not too late! And in that case, I can probably get a second for you, too, Remus."
"Well…" says Remus, his hands in his pockets, deterred by the idea of a large crowd, and the proximity of the full moon—just three days after the night of the game. But the look in Alice's eyes makes him change his mind. "I think I'd love to accompany you all," he manages.
"Alice?" Fred and George say in unison, looking at her pointedly, their eyes eager and hopeful.
She looks around at all of them, before finally breaking the tension with a sigh. "I suppose I'll go," she says.
She can't help but smile when the twins jump up from their chairs in Joy, and Ron's mouth crashes into the back of her hand in a clumsy, exuberant kiss of gratitude.
"Good sports, you two," says Mr. Weasley to her and Remus on his way out the front door.
At the next private moment, Alice is sure to thank Remus for agreeing to go along, for her sake. "Of course," he says. "I wouldn't dream of abandoning a fellow introvert, so," his eyes shining down at her. And she smiles at him, before forcing herself to look away.
The two extra tickets are easily obtained, and in the early morning on the day of the World Cup, when Alice and Remus are on their way back to the Burrow after their daily stroll, Hermione arrives to join them all for the festivities.
The entire Weasley clan (with the exception of Mrs. Weasley who has elected to remain home) and Harry, is up and out of bed faster than Alice has ever seen them manage before. And after a speedy breakfast, with bags packed and slung over their shoulders, Fred and George, Harry, Ron, Mr. Weasley, Hermione, Ginny, and Remus and herself have begun a short trek into the golden-lit woods. Birds chirp in the early-morning light, the moss on the giant trees lit up by the yellow sunlight, white butterflies fluttering among the upper branches overhead.
Before too long, they come to a tree, under which a short man in a tweed Irish cap and clutching a walking stick, and his son—Fred, George and Alice's age—have been waiting to meet them. They introduce themselves as Amos and Cedric Diggory, and quickly induct themselves into the group as they continue on through the woods, towards some destination which Mr. Weasley refuses to disclose.
Alice is swept into Fred and George's talk with Cedric—they know each other from school, being in the same year, although Cedric is in the Hufflepuff house. Fred and George quickly commence to introduce him and Alice to each other, but she has to excuse herself, noticing that Harry has become caught up with Amos, who has clearly put a finger on his identity as Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived.
Harry looks at her gratefully when he hurries back to 'rescue' him, in a sense, and after briefly introducing herself to Amos, Arthur calls back to the other man, who hurries ahead to join Arthur and Remus in the front of the group.
As they continue to walk through the woods, as though on a tight schedule, Alice asks Harry if he's alright—he's seemed trouble since he'd woken up. "I had this dream…" he starts, at length. But there's no time to talk further, before the woods promptly thins, and they climb up a little hillock, where an old and tattered leather boot is waiting.
"Gather round and hold on," Mr. Weasley instructs, over the various calls of "What is it?" from the younger witches and wizards.
"A portkey!" says Hermione to the others.
"No time to explain," booms Arthur jovially, "Gather round, quick," as the others promptly obey his instructions, laying down on the dewy grass the better to get a good hold on the boot.
Almost the moment after everyone does so, the boot begins to vibrate with an extreme power, and suddenly they are lifted entirely off the ground, spinning violently, and are gone from the hillock with a snap of bright light that startles a number of birds from the nearby woods.
It's a bumpy landing, on a similar hill elsewhere, for all but Mr. Weasley, Amos, Cedric and Remus, who come down quite easily from the sky, making their way to the ground with an elegance reserved for dancers in a ballet. Quickly, the youngsters pick themselves, up, brushing the grass off their clothes.
"Alright?" asks Remus, giving Alice a hand up from the ground, noting the way she keeps her elbow pinned to her side.
"I had a bit of a roll," she explains, flushed from the experience and recovering her footing as her dizziness slowly evaporates. "I'm fine, thanks." She thinks she feels an electric shock of sorts from his hand, and wishes he wouldn't touch her, though she also wishes to be embraced by him, and never let go… Promptly, though, he makes the choice for her, and lets go of her arm, still standing painfully close, but in the very least, the strange—surely one-sided—electric pulse is gone.
Together, all eleven of them work their way over the hill, a rush of cool breeze blowing their hair back as they reach the top, and a hum of excitement rising at the sight of the festival grounds.
Hundreds of tents are pitched in preparation for the event, and the top of the Quidditch pitch stands visible just over the next, taller hill. Shouts of celebration rise from the tents and grow deafening as they descend into the joyful fray of it all—people on broomsticks flying through the air overhead, flags flying everywhere, and all sorts of people winding through the grassy field between myriad tents.
The Weasleys' own tiny canvas tent opens into an unbelievably cavernous interior, oriental colors adorning the walls, tapestries and rugs, and they all quickly spread out to fill the space, Ron already making a beeline to the kitchen area. Alice is still sensitive to crowds, and had never imagined that so many people could fill one field—even one so large. But she is happy, and feeds off the others' enthusiasm, not allowing herself to get drained too quickly. Harry is clearly taking the same approach—it seems he's trying to forget about the dream he'd had, and succeeding admirably.
So, Alice chips away at her own troubles, dancing and singing with Ginny and Hermione, and subjecting herself to the role of guinea pig for some of Fred and George's latest tricks.
She has lost herself in the most glorious fashion by the time night rolls around, and they start on their way towards the Quidditch pitch, bedecked in their Ireland gear, Fred and George both taking one of her arms, hoisting her fists upward, proclaiming far and wide her birth day, and singing a chant of their own devising for luck. Though tiring, the long climb up the stands barely gets to her, for all of the peculiar and exciting sights along the way. They witness a number of squabbles between fans of Bulgaria and Ireland on their way up the many flights of stairs, and interesting foreigners wearing tall, conciliar hats with sashes hanging from the tips and carrying thin blue snakes around their shoulders, captivate their attention.
"Blimey, dad, how far up are we?" calls Ron over the roar of the people all around them, after they've been climbing for nearly half an hour. Alice, too, wonders the same—looking over the edge of the stairs now and down towards the field below the Quidditch pitch is, by now, an experience that makes her heart jump up into her throat—this is the highest she has ever been above the ground.
"Well, put it this way," comes a voice from below. A freezing cold suddenly descends over Alice's entire body, and she finds herself paralyzed around her heart, which beats faster and faster. Lucius Malfoy, the silver serpents' head at the top of his cane clasped firmly in his black-gloved hand, appears just below them, Draco at his side, their white hair made ghostly by the bright lights coming from the pitch. "If it rains… you'll be the first to know."
And then Draco, in his terribly good imitation of his father: "Father and I are in the Minister's box. On personal invitation of Cornelius Fudge himself—"
But Alice has stopped listening, her ears drowned in a traumatized static that buzzes in her head and perpetuates her paralysis. Remus takes action, wrapping one arm around her side and ushering her quickly up the stairs to the next landing, shielded by the Weasley family, effectively avoiding being spotted by the two Malfoys. "Don't look," he instructs her, moving quickly upward while Arthur begins to fend off the two white-haired aristocrats.
"Hold onto me," Alice hears herself plead, somehow finding her voice. But still, once they've reached the next level after making their dizzy way up the steep stairs, she nearly collapses, trembling as her hands grasp onto the tweed fabric of the wizard's jacket. Her mind is moving too quickly to allow her to burst into tears, but rather, her face grows heated, and she looks back towards the stairwell, both lurching into Remus and straining away from him.
Something in her mind and in her instinct hates the show of fear she's just demonstrated—feels terrible that she didn't somehow punish or harm Lucius, that she didn't save Draco on the spot. Instead, she'd cowered and run away. Her mind races to put her thoughts in order, but before she has a chance to argue with herself further, Remus is leaning down the better to look directly into her eyes, and gripping her shoulders tightly, shaking her gently.
"Alice. Alice. Are you here with me? Be here with me," he's saying.
"I'm here. I'm here," she forces herself to respond, nodding her head up and down, though her eyes are still as big as saucers.
"Don't let him take you away again," Remus says firmly, his eyes warm but insistent.
"Draco…" she says, shaking her head back and forth, her heart thrumming faster. "Draco." He'd been right there. Right there. Just an arm's length away. She can feel Remus's hands against her shoulders, can feel her lungs emptying of breath.
"We'll find Draco later," Remus says. "For now—"
But the Weasleys have come up the stairs, all of them with bad words to say of both Malfoys, hissing them under their breath or saying them louder, in hopes that Lucius might overhear them. Harry hurries to Alice and takes her arm, looking at her reassuringly, and she takes the pointed look Remus gives her as encouragement. Slowly, she gets her breath back, and stands up straighter, determined to scrape herself up and make it through the match without spoiling the fun for the others, if it's the second-to-last thing she does. The last, of course, being to find Draco at the next possible moment.
The match itself turns out to be so exciting and intense, that she nearly forgets about the altercation in the stairwell—though in the back of her mind, throughout, lingers the new priority of locating Draco by any means necessary.
She's surprised, regardless, how much she gets into watching the match, and she is so full of adrenaline by the end, that she doesn't even recoil one bit when Fred, in a knee-jerk reaction to Ireland's sudden win, plants a smacking kiss on her cheek, something about her having the luck of the Irish loudly in her ear, and almost sending himself over the edge of the balcony as he jumps up and down in extreme excitement.
Back in the tent, they all join in singing and dancing, the sound from all the collective tents around them so intense that Hermione is driven to ask aloud, about how they manage to keep the sound from carrying to the surrounding muggle residences—but she is ignored by all. Food is shared in heartily, and Fred and George sneak a flask of whisky between them, Ginny and Ron stealing Alice into a spinning dance that leaves her dizzy. She almost spirals into Harry when she finally lets go, and has to take a moment of fresh air by the opening of the tent, resting her palms against her knees as she gets her balance back.
Standing there, she sees the flaps of the tent doors rustle in the breeze—a breeze that carries something that jolts her out of her euphoria quite suddenly. She is the first to sense something wrong. Remus is a close second, standing up from a chair in the sitting area, and appearing at Alice's side almost at the very moment she identifies something as awry. Then comes Mr. Weasley, and it is he who raises his voice above the celebratory singing.
"Wait, wait, stop!" he interrupts, holding up his hands. They all grow quiet hearing the sounds outside, something discordant and not-quite-right about it, all of a sudden. "It's not the Irish. We have to get going."
Almost within the instant, the joyful sounds surrounding them turn to cries of terror, and they hurry out of the tent, hit promptly by a blast of heat—many surrounding tents have been set aflame, and are blazing against the deep, whale-like blue of the night sky.
"Death Eaters!" someone cries, intensifying the chaos of fleeing bodies, bumping into each other.
Mr. Weasley tries to raise his voice above it all, issuing orders to stay together and get back to the Portkey, but Hermione is promptly swept away in the crowd, and their group, too, dissolves into the burning confusion.
With her terror—for Alice is sure that Lucius numbers among the group of dark-cloaked, hissing and chanting Death Eaters that approach—also comes a sudden pang of survival instinct, like an injection straight into her heart.
Draco. Draco. Draco.
Her entire mind, body and soul chants out the name like an alarm. And without further consideration, she separates herself from the group, and runs off in the direction perpendicular to the path the Death Eaters are cutting through the tents, consumed by the angry, blowing flames. In the fray, she is pushed by the pulsing crowd into one of them, and her arm catches suddenly on fire. She hits the ground and rolls, unable to scream for the adrenaline racing through her, barely avoiding a volley of running feet. Quickly she stands, the flames extinguished, but the burn remaining, and severe from what she can tell. Curses and spells dart every which way overhead, and she turns around and around for a moment, recalibrating her inner compass as she crouches down.
She continues running, paying no heed to her injuries, her hand gripping her wand tightly, her head turning every which way as she screams Draco's name at the top of her lungs, straining to be heard over the deafening sounds of horror and the stampede of fleeing feet on every side, her throat shredded by the volume and the thick smoke from the fires.
But before Alice can find Draco, Remus finds Alice. She catches sight of him out of the corner of her eye just as he notices her, from across a sea of moving heads, and suddenly turns and runs from him, knowing he will try to keep her from her mission. "No!" she screams, as he continues to pursue her, catching up with cruel ease, just inches from grabbing her. "I have to find Draco!"
"Stop it, Alice!" Remus shouts, even louder than her own, smaller lungs could manage—but she doesn't wither at the sound, standing her ground, backing up as he walks forward with the aim to overtake her. "He's not here! He's probably already gotten out! You have to listen to me!"
He looks at her in such a way that suddenly makes her stop in her tracks, the orange shadows of the flames playing across his face, his scars black and angry cutting across his features. His eyes warm desperately as he extends his arm towards her, his fingertips just centimeters away from hers.
"Take my hand, Alice!" he shouts over the fray. "Please!"
And though she feels the ashes covering her face, though her entire body strains to run for Draco, though her mind would sooner have her collapse and die than obey Remus's request, though tears are making tracks through the dirt covering her cheeks, she chooses to reach out and takes his hand—without reservation.
Spells used in this chapter:
1. "Aguamenti," a charm which conjures a jet of pure water from the tip of the wand.
2. The Cruciatus Curse – Referenced, one of the three unforgivable curses, the "torture" curse.
The end of this chapter likely seemed quite abrupt, it certainly felt that way to me, but at this point I needed to keep it from becoming too long, and the final line also symbolizes that by now, Alice is head over heels for Remus, and knows there is no going back—even if she is not ready to tell him so yet.
I've been burning up to write this chapter ever since I published chapter eight, but I really just didn't have time! I wanted to publish it on Halloween night (which was also a full moon, which I thought was very cool), but I just couldn't. Now I am much freer than I have been in past weeks, so I look forward to writing at least once a week! I'm so sorry for making you wait.
Thank you for not plagiarizing my writing!
On_Errand_Bad
13,568 words
Monday, 2 November 2020