Updates to Revenir, Creatures in Cages, White Wolves, and Consecration are in the works 😊
Research for this chapter (as it's a common misconception that cats see in black & white): The vision of the average cat is similar to that of a color-blind human. They can see blues and greens, but shades in the red range can be confusing for them. The mention of 'greyness' later in the chapter will be for a reason obvious within that scene and not because of cat-vision.
Chapter Twenty-Four
"So you didn't see anything else?"
Draco rolled his eyes as he led Hermione and Thorfinn-the-cat in the direction of the abandoned cul de sac. "What part of 'I was a bit distracted with lugging a fully-grown human being out of there' was beyond your typically vast comprehension? I managed to get Dolohov's little minefield disarmed so I wouldn't trip and drop the old man into a shock-trap or something, but no. Other than that, I didn't really get a good look at anything."
"Sorry, sorry," she said shaking her head as she followed along, pressing the tips of her fingers against her temples. "This has just been an incredibly long couple of weeks, and it's like I simply cannot catch a break. I'm under quite a bit of stress, you understand? I mean, I was supposed to be relaxing for a few days and—as Thorfinn pointed out—I couldn't even do that properly." The currently-transfigured wizard meowed in agreement with his own assessment.
Draco glanced back over his shoulder at the cat, giving a head shake of his own. "Still can't believe he let you turn him into a cat."
"Malfoy, you of all people should remember that neither the caster, not the . . . castee, so to speak, has any control over what shape their animal transfiguration would take. Otherwise, why would you have ever chosen to take the form of a—"
Her question was cut off rather abruptly as Draco whirled around and shot out an arm, clamping a hand over her mouth. "Don't. Even. Say it."
The witch's brows shot up at the gesture and the Viking cat's ears flattened against his skull as a growl started rumbling out of him.
Turning his attention to the angry ball of golden fluff, Draco arched a brow and pulled back his hand. "Sorry, but let's leave it at 'turning into a cat would've been better.'"
"You know an interesting thing I've observed about animal transfiguration?" Hermione began, trying to keep on the subject while avoiding bringing up the Barty-Jr.-as-Professor-Moody-turned-the-Malfoy-heir-into-a-bloody-ferret incident.
Recognizing her attempt to get them back on track before a cat-vs-wizard scuffle could break out, Draco nodded. Turning on his heel, he started leading them along the road once more. "What's that?"
"Well, after observing Professor McGonagall taking on the form of a cat and the Marau—" She realized belatedly that not everyone was aware of the nickname for Harry's father and his cohorts. "And learning that Harry's dad took the form of a stag, Remus Lupin wasn't an animagus, but he was a werewolf . . . and their Patronuses all took those same forms as they did while transfigured. Ergo, the shape of one's Patronus can be predicted by their animal form and vice-versa."
"So what you're saying is if I could ever summon up a Patronus, it would be a bloody f . . . oh, damn, almost said it, myself." He chuckled, nodding. "You're a tricky one."
"I wasn't trying to be." The witch shrugged. "I hadn't really thought about it before, I just realized . . . . Oh, no."
At her stricken tone, Draco couldn't help stopping again to look back at her. "What?"
Wincing, she looked from him to the cat, and back. "That means if I were ever transfigured into an animal, I'd be an otter!"
Draco's eyebrows drew upward, but he stood strangely frozen, simply staring at her. He could swear the expression on her face was daring him to laugh. Thorfinn, even if he hadn't been a feline at the moment, clearly did not fear the wrath of his betrothed, because a sound that was half-hissing, half-hacking, and quite evidently all laughter, erupted from the cat.
Draco gracefully hid a smirk as Hermione turned her attention on Thorfinn. "Oh, shut up, you," she snapped, shouldering past Draco. From here, she could see the shop at the end of the cul de sac, so it didn't matter who of them led the way forward now.
They continued on in silence the rest of the way along the road.
The bustle of Hogsmeade died out the closer they drew to the shop. A few steps more and the only things to be heard were the echoes of their own footfalls against the cobblestone and the occasional rustle of wind through the trees that sparsely dotted the pavement. What the hell had happened over here, she wondered. For a building or two to be rundown or abandoned was not anything so out of the ordinary, but the entire cul de sac? Strange.
Actually . . . the awareness of how odd that was set her a bit more on edge than she'd already been. She could feel an uncomfortable crawling sensation in the pit of her stomach. God, no wonder Antonin Dolohov liked this place. The entire atmosphere was just as unsettling as the man, himself.
She hadn't even realized this area existed. The warm, sunlit, languid sort of busyness of the rest of Hogsmeade seemed miles away rather than yards, right now.
"Why is this place so . . . desolate?" she asked, her voice spilling out in a whisper that still felt too loud for the stunted quiet the of the air around them.
Draco's voice was low to match hers. "I've no idea." Earlier, he'd been so focused on the shop, so focused on keeping an eye out for Dolohov's traps, that he'd not really paid much mind to the surrounding area, save for the fact that it was abandoned, and thus no witnesses to his own trespassing on the broken down property. No one to wonder what he was up to . . . .
No one to notice if something horrific had befallen him, which it very nearly had.
Merlin's fucking beard. His own, incredibly sudden, cognizance of how very desolate this section of the village was made the skin along his shoulder itch and tingle uncomfortably.
"There you are!"
The pair spun toward the voice behind them, wands drawn, mouths open in shouts of surprise that—gratefully—never actually came. Thorfinn, however, was shocked in his own right by a completely different matter. He'd discovered that he had possession of the complete set of senses a normal cat would whilst transfigured into one.
He'd sensed something slipping along at their backs. When he looked toward the sensation, there she was, strangely shadowy, but then as she caught up to them, she exploded into full color . . . well, full greyness, anyway.
Huh. This was probably why cats were constantly staring off, as though they always had something far more interesting to pay attention to than the living humans in front them. Now he understood perfectly well that often times they probably did.
Hermione's shoulders sloped in relief as she dropped her wand to her side. "Helena! You frightened me!" She wondered briefly if her heart should simply forever stay hammering against her rib cage, since it seemed to do that so often as of late.
She considered—equally briefly—whether that might edge her into a heart attack all the faster, or if not needing to wind up and unwind again and again would simply save her a bit of time and a few early grey hairs.
Her sister winced. "My apologies."
Draco lowered his arm, as well. With his free hand, he pointed toward the specter as he looked at Hermione. "This is really her? The Grey Lady?"
"I am standing here, Sir. You can address me directly."
His brows pinching together and upward at the ghost's chastising tone, he turned his head to meet her gaze. "Um . . . ." Draco was truly at a loss for what to say to her directly. He'd been told Granger's reunion had freed the Grey Lady of her tie to the castle, but he hadn't expected to actually see her in broad daylight. "Sorry."
"Ohhh." Helena tipped her head to one side as she looked him over. "I believe I understand. You are not the 'you' I met that day. You are another you—the real you, now."
Draco made a strange little twitchy movement with his head while he blinked hard a few times, like he was trying to keep her in focus. At first, he thought he should perhaps avoid speaking to Ravenclaws, altogether—if the thankfully very few conversations he'd had with Luna Lovegood had taught him anything—but then he recalled what she meant with her garbled statement.
"Right, okay. I got it, you mean I wasn't me when you met me, because that was when Rowle was me . . . I mean when he was polyjuiced to look like me. Lord, it's contagious. Anyway." He forced a polite grin; he'd always heard the Grey Lady's temper was fierce, and in light of the fierce temper of the living, breathing witch beside him, he thought perhaps not sparking the ire of her ghostly sibling would be wise. "Lady Ravenclaw, pleasure to meet you."
Pursing her lips in thought, she tipped her head again. She'd just heard a quite similar voice address her in the same manner. Of course they were both Malfoys and the older of the two had mentioned his son being involved in all this, but once upon a time, they'd been a rather large family, so she did not fault herself for not automatically making the connection. Though now that she was aware, she thought she did notice a resemblance in the features, despite that the one before her was not nearly as tall as his father and had enough of his mother in his face that he was not a spitting image. They had the same grey eyes, and though their voices were not entirely alike, they spoke with the precise same cadence.
"I met your parents earlier today."
Hermione and Draco exchanged a glance, even the Viking cat rumbled out a sound of surprise at that. "What?" they asked in the same breath.
"Lucius and Narcissa, yes? They were having tea with Minerva. They were discussing how to best support you. I would have stayed . . . ." Her grey cheeks darkened a very little bit. "In fact, I was very nearly distracted into doing just that, until I heard my little sister might be putting herself in danger to find the Muggles who raised her."
Draco turned his head ever so slightly, murmuring in Hermione's ear, "Is she blushing?"
Hermione watched her sister's face for a moment before nodding. "I believe she is." When Helena—clearly able to hear the conversation and embarrassed to have her emotions read so easily—scowled, the younger daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw tried to guess at what had her distracted during a meeting between Minerva McGonagall and the elder Malfoys that could cause her to blush.
"Oh," she said abruptly, brown eyes widening. Not that Helena was entirely wrong on thinking the wizard in question had a certain blush-worthiness about him, but she hardly thought either of the males present would appreciate a verbal acknowledgment of Lucius Malfoy's aesthetic qualities. "I think I understand what the distraction was."
Immediately the ghost's face pulled into an expression much like her sister's several moments earlier, daring someone to laugh or poke fun.
Completely lost, Draco asked, "Well, what?"
"You'd rather not know." Leaving it at that, Hermione turned, continuing to the shop.
Helena glanced about as she floated along behind them, content that particular discussion was closed. "Is your barbarian boy still in hiding?"
Hermione cleared her throat awkwardly yet remained silent, while Draco spoke around a hushed laugh, "Oh, you'll see in a minute."
Having checked all the windows—not that she expected a random passerby to suddenly pop up outside the building for the sole purpose of catching a glimpse of At-Large Death Eater Thorfinn Rowle, she simply couldn't help being cautious—the first thing Hermione did, once they were all inside with the door closed behind them, was to dispel the transfigurations on Thorfinn and Salazar. The serpent stretched himself only to relax and settle back down against his mother's collar bones.
Thorfinn also gave a stretch, long and almost angry, somehow. The movement made him seem taller, made him appear to take up even more space in the rundown shop's meagerly-sized ground floor.
Slumping a little as he dropped his arms back to his sides, he sighed. "I can't wait for this day to be over."
"Sorry," Hermione said, wincing as she retrieved his wand from where she'd kept it tucked inside her boot." I'm really trying not to have you in that form any more than necessary."
Her 'barbarian boy' smirked, nodding as she handed over his weapon. "Well, when this is all over, let me turn you into an otter for a few hours and we'll be even."
Her brows pinching upward, Helena leaned toward Draco. "An otter?"
Draco glanced at the ghost's face before he gave into a grin. He wanted to indulge this conversation, but he wasn't sure it was a topic that could be broached without bringing his own unfortunate animal form into it. "I's a long story," he finally said, the bridge of his nose crinkling as he shook his head.
Thorfinn looked at Helena, suddenly strangely aware that between seeing her first through Draco's eyes and then through the blasted cat's, this was his first time actually seeing her since she'd been alive and well. They hadn't known back then—as children, he and Sabina had never been told—that the reason for Helena's continued absence, the reason she'd not been there to attend her own mother's funeral, was that she'd lost her life.
Whether that was because their parents deemed them too young to deal with her loss on top of Rowena's imminent demise, or because there was no way to explain the loss without explaining the complex, and frankly stupid and selfish, reason behind it. How did one explain to a child that a man killed the woman he claimed to love because she did not love him in return? There was no way . . . especially not when trying to teach them that loving someone meant wanting them to be happy.
"Helena," the Viking prince said with a nod and the same smug grin he'd always shown her when he was a child—not good enough for her sister, indeed!, he'd think. "It's good to see you with my own eyes, again."
Startled by the booming voice she'd heard before coming out of the smaller wizard's mouth, the specter turned her full attention on the hulking blond man. It was more than obvious who this was, but looking him over . . . it was difficult to equate the specimen standing beside her sister with the bratty noble child from the north who'd sooner swing a sword or hurl a spell at something than try to figure it out. Rather not a good look on someone who was intended to marry a Ravenclaw.
She floated closer, trying to get a better look at him. The hair was the same color as the fur of the massive cat that had been trotting around behind them out in the street, eyes the same bright and clear shade of blue. And Merlin, was he tall . . . and broad.
"Barbarian boy," Helena said with a curt nod. "You have certainly grown up well."
"Can we get on with this, please?" Hermione asked in a light tone, trying not to laugh as her sister was blushing all over again from her examination of the-very-much-grown Thorfinn's appearance.
"Right." Draco nodded and turned toward the basement door. The original track of foot prints through the layer of dust that had led there—which, for a short time, had been accompanied by his own prints—had been blurred out of his existence by the act of him half-dragging Aberforth Dumbledore along the very same path. "This way."
Thorfinn started after the other wizard, leaving the sisters to trail behind. He had an inkling Helena wanted a private moment with Sabina, anyway.
Waiting until the males were a little ahead of them—Draco starting down the staircase and Thorfinn just crossing the threshold—Helena tipped her chin, whispering in her sister's ear as they moved to follow. "He certainly matured nicely."
Hermione couldn't help a wistful smile as she nodded. "Yes."
Uttering a choked gasp, Helena pressed. "Oh, Lord. I know you said you are not sure about maintaining your betrothal, but . . . have you two already—?"
"Already what, Helena?"
Waiting for her sister to turn her head and meet her gaze, the elder Ravenclaw daughter arched a brow, her lips curving in a half-grin. "Consummated your relationship?"
Oh, Hermione could absolutely feel the color flaring in her own cheeks now, her smile broadening of its own volition. "Several times, actually."
Helena unexpectedly let out a pleading sound. "You have to tell me all about it!"
Her heart was so warmed by the simple moment of sisterly bonding that Hermione felt her eyes water for a second, there. Blinking a few times, she sniffled and nodded. "Definitely, just . . . when we're done here."
After an hour of searching the dank basement—bloody Dolohov had not left so much as a candle down here, leaving them to check around the room by the illumination of their wands now that it was later in the day and there was far less light coming in from the high and narrow windows—Hermione called out to the others. She was crouched in corner, a small trunk, nearly lost to the shadows of the room due to the dark wood from which it was made open before her.
"I know what Dolohov was doing."
The other three gathered around, looking inside the trunk. There was a small cauldron stored away, the remnants of a sickly, split pea soup coloured concoction dried around its edge, and a handful of wiry grey hairs discarded carelessly beside it—as though a side effect of quick clean up.
"Wait . . . so the Aberforth Dumbledore we just met—"
"No. He is the real deal," she said as she closed the trunk. "From the moment Draco found him until we left him with Mr. Henry at the bar of the pub, that was more than an hour. Too much time to pass without a Polyjuice potion wearing off. The only thing he drank was a clear bottle of Fire Whiskey, which we all saw. There wasn't time for him to sneak a sip from a flask or a vial unseen."
Draco shrugged, loathing how complicated this was becoming. "She's right."
"So . . . he, what? Let Aberforth see him to lure him away from The Hogshead?"
She nodded in agreement with Thorfinn's question. "I think so. If Aberforth hid my parents away somewhere, Dolohov could've forced the information from him and then memory-charmed him, taken on his appearance and gone to find them. Conversely, he might simply have an idea where they are, and Dolohov figured as Dumbledore's brother, he'd be able to convince them he's someone they can trust, like they trusted Albus."
"Not just someone they would trust, Sabina." Helena frowned, her eyes strangely watery. "If I am understanding the situation correctly, someone who could be seen in public traveling with a pair of Muggles without raising any alarms. Without fear of being spotted and reported to your Ministry."
"And the Grangers would have no reason to be fearful of him, or question his motives." Hermione felt her throat close as the possibilities suddenly became unending, dropping onto her shoulders as though they had physical weight. "They could be anywhere."
