Thank you again to all those who have reviewed; I understand that this is not exactly a piece of writing for everyone and truly do appreciate the kind words of those of you who are interested in reading it. I actually more or less wrote the next chapter first, which is why this one took so long to piece together; so with any luck chapter 6 won't be far behind.
As with the previous chapters, this is dark and potentially triggering. It's quite unnerving to play with the brokenness of so many different characters like this, but the result is a heart-felt depiction of the glass shards left behind by suicide. The cries unheard and the tears shed alone.
Try not to cut yourself.
Chapter 5; The Faces Behind the Facades
I wonder if this is how so many of them who fought in the last war felt, as they began each meeting with fewer faces each time. Fewer familiar faces at the table and far fewer smiles. Grimmer faces and lines of mourning etched deeply on so many faces. Silences where once there was laughter and unshed tears where once there would have been joy. And of course, the unmistakable sense of grief, loss and an underlining tension and guilt that hangs so heavy in the air that I can almost taste it.
I'm good at reading other people, in a way that very few people seem to even care about, let alone understand. You can tell so much about what someone else is thinking, feeling and even about to do just by watching them closely, but near enough everyone else is all too obsessed with themselves. It's always come naturally to me though, even as a young child I was able to pick up all those subtle hints and emotions that adults never seemed to say. It wasn't really even until I got to Hogwarts that I realised it was strange and unnerving to others.
Maybe it is the fact that I'm a Metamorphmagus that has allowed me this additional insight into those around me. What with the pink hair and animal faces, most people think that it's all just fun and games and I'm not going to disillusion them. What they don't realise is that it's not enough to just change your appearance, you have to be able to actually become a completely different person. The only way to do that is to change your very mannerisms and so I watch, I study and I inspect other people. I read them, find the tells, the clues and the bodily tics that make them unique and distinctive, even from a distance. All the facades that are worn, I learned that they are really just masks, and like masks they can be seen through.
Mad-Eye, for example, with that bright blue eye that can see right through you even as he rolls it to the back of his head, carries an unmistakable aura of power and threat around him in everything he does. You can't look at him without seeing the Auror and the warrior there, lying not so far beneath the surface, menace lurking in his every movement. Yet much of that is a front. It goes without saying that he has the power and he has the ability, but underneath that scarred and hardened vista is a heart of gold. It might take a fair bit of mining to get to it, but it's there. I first noticed it around the Weasley twins and then around Harry Potter… so very many people showed a different side around Harry.
Only now, sat across the table from me, his shoulders are hunched, brow furrowed and everything around him is just tight, I suppose. Wound up to near breaking point. Mad-Eye isn't somebody you want to get on the wrong side of under any circumstances, but I'd never bother tip-toeing around him. Now though… there's something coiled up tightly within him, lurking under the surface and it makes me more than a little wary to say the least. For once, I can't read him and that worries me in and of itself. I can't tell if it's anger that is being kept so brutally under the surface, if it's grief or even fear. I couldn't tell you for certain, I just know it's there. It's there and it's breaking off him with an intensity that even a muggle could notice.
The floo fires and Arthur Weasley virtually topples out of it, his face grey and strained, his lips tightly pursed together as he seats himself stiffly at the table. I know for a fact that he is all but a stripling in comparison to the others at this table tonight, but I almost expect to hear his bones creak and groan, he looks so much older than his years. It's strange. Arthur's arrival makes for five of us at the table. Many I would have expected to be here are absent. Five for a meeting of the Order? I know we are waiting for Albus, making it six, but even then this will be the smallest Order meeting I have ever attended. I'll freely admit that I'm fairly new to this game, but that total seems rather miserable, particularly when one of them is Mundungus and he's clearly not here of his own free will.
Nobody moves, nobody speaks; nobody makes any effort to break the silence that gathers and builds around those present. Mad-Eye grunted at me as I came in. Mundungus grimaced. But Minerva didn't even look up from the table to greet me, just like she makes no effort to meet Arthur's pale gaze. That said, Arthur seems to be making a concerted effort to look at anyone but Minerva which is interesting. Or at least it would be interesting, but in this room of silent tension, it seems almost sacrilegious to feel an emotion as trivial as curiosity. Not that such things have ever really stopped me.
Part of me wants to break the ice in some ridiculously inappropriate manner; a set of long floppy ears or overgrown tusks for example. Something holds me back though. Maybe it's simply that I can't imagine it would help. It certainly won't bring young Harry back to us and I think that's the only thing that could change the atmosphere here right now. Glancing sideways at Minerva, I can see the new strain lines that show on her face, the dark bags lingering beneath her eyes and the all too sharp lines of her face. She doesn't meet my eyes but I suspect that I already know what I'd see in her gaze all too well; grief, heart-ache, sorrow and despair. Guilt. Shame. So many emotions all contained in those dark green eyes, all held constrained by that façade of granite.
This hasn't been easy on anybody, but Minerva has perhaps taken the worst beating of them all. It doesn't matter how many times her colleagues and friends tell her that it isn't her fault, she knows that she will always bear that responsibility in her heart. And why not? Why shouldn't she? She's run appalling interference on this one and the buck stops with her. I don't blame her exactly, don't get me wrong. We haven't always seen eye to eye, but I have a great deal of respect for the woman, both professionally and magically. You'd be a fool not to. It doesn't take a Metamorphmagus to tell that her magical reserves are immense, her control absolute and her knowledge formidable.
It's a pity the same can't be said of her common sense. Which is odd, as I would never have thought her lacking in that area. It has to be said though, for a woman who has spent the better part of forty years teaching a gaggle of adolescents, she really dropped the Quaffle this time. You'd have thought she'd have seen the signs. You'd have thought she'd have read between the lines. Merlin, I knew the boy was unhappy in the brief moments I met him, and I barely knew the kid. Hardly exchanged ten words with him in all. I don't need to say a word though. There is nothing I could possibly say that this woman doesn't already know. There are no accusations that she hasn't already levelled at herself three-fold.
The whoosh of the floo again, and I turn away from my close inspection to see Dumbledore step into the room, closely followed by Severus. It's the first time I've seen Dumbledore since the incident, and even I can't stop my eyes widening in horrified shock. Albus Dumbledore, the leader of all that is great and good, the only man in the world You-Know-Who is afraid of, the man we all rely on, looks like a fragile old man. He sits heavily in one of the chairs nearest the fireplace, and simply rests his head in his hands for a long moment. Nobody moves, even Severus stands silently beside him. Nobody knows what to say. When he looks up, I'm horrified to see the tear marks running in rivets down the old man's face and the haunted look of grief in those glittering blue eyes. It's in that moment that the truth hits me. I mean, it truly hits me.
Albus Dumbledore doesn't know what to do now. After all these years of planning for You-Know-Who's return, all these years grooming the Potter boy to keep on doing the impossible, all these years of being the one with the plan… Albus Dumbledore has no idea what happens next. The thought hits me like a lightning strike. Can it even be possible? Surely I must be mistaken. But the silence stretches on overly long and still Dumbledore says nothing. He just sits there, worn and slumped in the chair, looking at us with what I can only describe as defeat in his eyes.
"So, what's the plan, Albus?" Moody breaks the silence gruffly, his voice seeming obnoxiously loud in this circle of quietly grieving people. "What comes next?"
Still Albus looks at us. The silence stretches further than I would have thought possible, and yet still it stretches. Nobody so much as shuffles or clears their throat. You could hear a pin drop, if only I had one on hand.
"The boy's funeral is tomorrow." When that dreadful silence is finally broken though, it isn't Dumbledore's gentle and calming voice we hear. No. It is Severus who speaks, his low drawl sounding almost mocking under the circumstances. Minerva's head shoots up, but whatever she finds in her colleagues gaze is enough for her, and she doesn't interrupt. "The muggle family have been invited. I don't imagine they will attend however. But for the rest of us, that is the plan. Such as it is, at any rate. Get through the funeral. Deal with the public and the student. Face another day."
"And after that, Severus?" Mad-Eye growls, his eye spinning furiously. "What happens now, Albus?"
"Do we have to talk about this now, Moody?" Minerva asks brokenly, her voice cracking harshly on the words. "For Merlin's sake, we still need to bury the boy…"
"When else are we going to talk about it?" Moody snaps harshly, but his tone doesn't fool me for a second. "The last I heard from Albus at least, the Potter boy was our main chance against the Dark Lord, the poor sod. No wonder he decided to top himself."
"That's enough, Alastor," Dumbledore's voice, the voice of my childhood, sounds unbelievably weary and… old. For the first time in the many years I have heard him, Dumbledore sounds every year of his age. The power and the intensity that I have come to expect have slipped away, to be replaced by wavering, trembling syllables of an old man. Even as I watch, I expect him to stand, to take charge, to be… Dumbledore. But he doesn't even look up as he speaks. "You are right, but now is not the time."
"Then when will be?" Moody's voice rises in intensity, even as Dumbledore's declines. "Are we to hold a meeting once the last clay has settled? Is that the right time? A week after the burial, Albus? Will that be the right time? A month? How many more will be dead at the Dark Lord's hands? Are we to wait until it is one of us that is being manhandled into the earth, good only as food for the worms and the beetles? Does it have to be one of our own? Or will it then be too late? When is a 'good time', Albus. Answer me that."
"Harry was one of us," Arthur says quietly but firmly, his hands laid flat and steady on the table as he gazes unblinkingly at Moody. Strangely, it is the old Auror who looks away first, and Arthur's blue eyes move across the room, catching each of our gazes in turn. "He was certainly one of mine. He was more than a pawn or a prophet or a weapon. He was a boy. And we broke him. Every single one of us. So do you know what I am going to do?"
Once more, that gaze catches each of us in turn and I am taken aback by the potent aura of authority that I see there. Of all of us present, Arthur is the timid one, the gentle one. By no means would I call him spineless; you have to have a level of courage that most don't possess just to be in this little group of vigilante warriors, and Arthur has been in it from the very beginning. It's just… I've seen him over the years. School functions and the like and then at these very meetings, and nothing about him stood out to me as leadership material. And remember, I am very, very good at reading people. It's part of my stock in trade.
Arthur is a man who looks down and follows. It's what makes him such a good match with Molly. He's happy to take the back seat and let someone else drive. But now, something has changed. He doesn't look away, doesn't baulk from this confrontation, is not standing down but is instead holding his head and demanding our attention. If I had ever imagined anyone other than Dumbledore taking charge of this little meeting, it might have been Moody or even Minerva… but never Arthur. Yet, here he stands when Albus will not even rise from his chair. When nobody responds to his question, the red haired man stands and walks toward the floo, but before he reaches it he stops, turns and waits.
"I am going to go home to my family, to the children who need me and my wife. We will prepare for Harry's funeral together. I will not let either Ginny or Ron face this alone. I never should have let them." His gaze once more rakes across us, his voice cold as he continues. "And when my boy is buried and cold earth settled around him as an eternal blanket, I will stand strong. I will teach my children, every one of them, regardless of their age or inexperience. I will teach them all the tricks I know that might just help them survive this war. I will teach their friends and their acquaintances. It is long past time we stopped waiting for someone to fix this mess for us."
The floo powder sparkles in the fireplace and he steps forward, so he is standing less than a hairs breadth from the grate.
"It is long past time we stopped relying on a single boy, a child, to be our hero and vanquish the demons we ourselves helped to raise. It is time we fought. It is time we won."
With that, he is gone in a shower of sparks and flash of flame.
"The man has got a point," Moody growls, as he stands. Nobody moves to stop him. I doubt anyone but Albus would dare. I hear the crack as he apparates from the room.
And then there were five.
And in that silence, Albus finally raises his head and I catch a glimpse at his eyes. What I see there causes me to flinch back, for in that moment, all of his walls drop and I see his grief, his anguish, his pain and his guilt.
In that second, overcome by sorrow and anger and bone-aching weariness, I see the true face of Albus Dumbledore, as all of the veils drop at once, all of the masks slip at the same time and all of the facades crumble.
In that moment I see his fear and that chills me to my very bones.