Chapter Fifty Seven
Bank Note
0o0
A slice of moon was hanging overhead, heavy and white as milk, but between the mist radiating off of the maze and Draco's looming shadow, Astoria could hardly even see the patch of lawn directly in front of her. That sound—Fred's strangled scream—might just as easily have come from five feet away as five hundred. What was happening?
Astoria stomach leapt up into her throat as she reeled forward, a sensation not altogether different from the sickening lurch of missing a bottom step.
Draco had clearly been correct to guess that the area around the maze was dangerous, but by the same twist of fate, it seemed as though Astoria had also assumed wisely. Karkaroff and the twins had managed to sneak behind the stadium after all, just as she had guessed that they might.
"Where are you going?" shot Draco nervously, shaking off his confused daze and losing much of his tolerance in the process. "People are screaming bloody murder over there—don't run that way!"
Again, a perfectly reasonable bit of advice, if only Astoria had a mind to listen. Unfortunately, however, haste seemed to be her only ally. What she craved more than safety was the rush of purpose and plunging forward recklessly spoke to that desire immensely. Feeling her way around the corner of the bleachers with her fingers, Astoria soon gained the long, evacuated expanse behind the stands.
Her vision had the gelatinous and panic-induced quality of ooze as she ran, an effect made worse by her legs, which were still shaking involuntarily. But no matter how disjointed her motions were, there was no doubt in Astoria's mind that staying in motion was the only solution. Jaws of fear clamped down harder with every step she pounded, warning her of the dangerous dose of reality waiting on the other side of reaction. Just keep moving. Don't stop moving.
The memory of Cedric's lifeless body carried her onward, thumping through her veins like a stimulant and Moody's manic insinuations (the Dark Lord rises again!) did nothing to slow her pace.
A few yards away, shapes sprung up out of the darkness; fickle outlines wrought in shadow. The first figure was tall, the other flat. A single glance told Astoria that one person was writhing on the grass and pleading; the other appeared to be looming creepily, lending the scene an eerily murderous aspect.
Seized by the assumption that Karkaroff was holding George at wand-point, Astoria broke into a flat out charge.
"Don't even think about it!" a familiar voice grunted distractedly. "I'll curse your fingers off—I mean it!"
With a jolt of recognition, Astoria slowed to a trot, baffled to discover just how wrong her first impression had been. The situation was, quite literally, entirely backwards from the way that she had first understood it. Astoria had flipped all known positions in her panic, desperate to create order out of chaos: it was not George sprawled out on the ground but Karkaroff, who was being restrained by Fred. George himself was nowhere in sight.
Distracted and floundering stupidly, Astoria slammed into an upward slope of lawn at a bad angle. Waving her arms about like a windmill, she just barely managed to correct her balance before she bruised both of her kneecaps.
"Who's that?" barked Fred fearfully, squinting through the darkness toward Astoria.
"Me!" Astoria returned, surprised to find that her voice was still quite steady, even after a full out sprint away from her brush with death. "What's going on? Where's George?"
"This grimy bastard gave him the slip," sneered Fred with an expression of pure loathing, lashing out at Karkaroff's outstretched limbs with his foot. "He'd have done the same to me, only I was quicker. Here, take his wand."
Astoria's inner survivalist kicked in. She reached for the bit of wood that Fred was pressing into her hand—longer than her own, its handle engravings very foreign and somehow unwieldy against her clammy palm...
"Expelled!" roared Karkaroff, earning himself a mouthful of dirt as he gnashed yellowing teeth into the grass. "The both of you! I'll make sure of it!"
"Nope, don't think so!" Fred snarled back, his voice shaking with a hint of brutality that Astoria had never heard there before. "Not when I tell them you tried to use an unforgivable curse on me!"
Astoria's fluttering eyes snapped toward Fred in alarm. Karkaroff had tried to torture him?
"What the—?" sneered Draco warily, coming to a startled halt behind Astoria.
"OY!" bellowed Fred. He jerked his wand upward and swiveled it toward Draco, forgetting all about Karkaroff in a moment of recklessness.
This was all the vulnerability Karkaroff needed. He twisted dangerously onto his stomach. Thinking quickly, Astoria turned her borrowed wand downward just fast enough to prevent Karkaroff from wrestling Fred off his feet and onto the turf.
"Everybody stop!" Astoria panted shrilly, grappling with the task of processing so many manic doses of stimuli at once.
Draco and Fred were standing feet apart from one another, wands drawn at chest height. Astoria continued to level her aim at Karkaroff, but it did not take a bloodhound to sniff the ripe heat of potential disaster that was brewing.
The last thing she wanted was for someone to end up cursed. Especially since, by doing so, they would invariably also be providing Karkaroff with exactly the type of distraction he needed to make an escape. Holding a teacher at wand point was quite bad enough, wasn't it? Astoria didn't even want to think about what a catastrophe losing him would be.
"What are you doing?" demanded Draco dubiously, his pale eyes fixed uncomfortably on Karkaroff, perhaps conscious of the fact that lingering might force him to share in the guilt of assaulting a teacher. "That's the Durmstrang headmaster," he sneered. "Is Weasley trying for prison?"
"Nobody's doing anything," attempted Astoria, bluffing with a calmness that might have struck her as comical under different circumstances. "Everything's fine. Go find Crabbe and Goyle—"
"Are you mad?" Fred protested hotly, ignoring Astoria's play for privacy. He jabbed his wand at Malfoy's chin. "We can't let this git go now! He'll rat us out in a heartbeat! You cover him and I'll deal with Karkaroff!"
"Are you kidding?" Astoria scoffed, taken aback by this fresh level of madness. Did Fred really expect to her to hold Draco at wand-point?
"Really," agreed Draco sneeringly, so certain that Astoria would do nothing of the sort that he allowed himself to sound arrogant. "Do you honestly think you're going to take me hostage, Weasley?"
"No one is holding anyone hostage!" Astoria snapped.
Hearing this, Karkaroff let out an ironic bark of laughter and rolled over.
"Draco's fine, Fred!" Astoria pleaded, responding to every laughing twitch of Karkaroff's shoulders with a heightened level of alarm. "The teachers are busy dealing with Harry. Malfoy's not going to snitch—tell him, Draco!"
Draco scoffed and said nothing. Instead, he tilted his head back and shot Fred a look of such threateningly smug satisfaction that even Astoria experienced a pang of unease.
"You," croaked Karkaroff, his head lolling to the side. "You're Lucius's boy, aren't you?"
Draco's eyes flicked back onto Karkaroff uncertainly, clearly wanting nothing to do with the man as long as wands were drawn and Karkaroff wasn't holding one.
"Go back and tell them, son," Karkaroff leered. His heavily-accented, secondhand English crackled with surprising intensity. "You tell them what Dumbledore's brats are doing—I promise to personally ensure you'll be rewarded."
Draco blinked awkwardly, his gaze frozen on Karkaroff's cruel, desperate face.
"Shut up!" Fred yelled, finally taking his wand off Malfoy in order to stick it back into Karkaroff's chest. "You won't be doing favors for anyone after I tell the Ministry that you tried to crucio me—we're turning you over to Ragnuk, just like you deserve! Now, where is George?"
"What about you, girl?" Karkaroff coughed unctuously, playing his final poker-hand with oily persuasiveness. "Mixed up with cutthroats and thieves, that's no place for a girl in white..."
He broke off to let out a watery sounding rattle and Astoria found herself glancing fearfully at Fred, wondering if he had actually done Karkaroff some level of real, physical violence in the area of his ribs.
"You've got everything to lose," Karkaroff wheezed, his expression taking on a steely, hateful glimmer, "and with goblins, one never knows what to expect. If you take me to Ragnuk now, I might just tell him how you've been cheating on your own bets—and then whose side will he take?"
Astoria stiffened, her grip on Karkaroff's wand tightening and un-tightening. What was he talking about? Astoria had only cheated once—by instructing Harry's house-elf friend to bring him Gillyweed—but how could anyone else possibly know about that?
"Button up, will you?" shot Fred irritably. "You're the only cheater here as far as I'm concerned! Trying to run off and stick us with your tab..."
"How readily they all forget about house-elves," leered Karkaroff, who suddenly had eyes only for Astoria.
"Fred," Astoria cautioned sharply, the whip-crack of her voice preventing him from lashing out at Karkaroff's fingers with his foot again.
"Self involvement," mused Karkaroff threateningly, "that's what it boils down to. We pass elves every day, on our way from place to place, forgetting they are creatures with ears of their own..."
"Astoria, what's he talking about?" demanded Fred, his anger finally faltering, giving way to the hypnotic power of Karkaroff's glittering leer.
Astoria didn't answer. A cold tide of grief was swelling up inside of her, quieting the thrumming of her pulse. She had never told Fred and George about the Gillyweed. Now they were all going to pay for it. Possibly with their lives.
She had meant to tell them, of course, always meant to. At first it had simply been a matter of waiting, afraid that by revealing her scheme too early, the twins might have to share in her punishment if it was discovered by Ragnuk. Later, when the Task was over, it had seemed almost pointless to bring up yet another danger they had narrowly missed. A needless blight on a day that had been otherwise filled with lucky tidings.
Very slowly, afraid of saying anything specific on the off-chance that Karkaroff was bluffing—albeit with the deadly accuracy of Athena's bow-string—Astoria leveled Fred a sorrowful and very telling look.
"You've got to be kidding me!" Fred burst, paling considerably. "Bloody hell, Astoria! You never thought to mention—!"
Karkaroff let out another gurgling laugh and propped himself up onto his shaking elbows. "My wand," he panted, grimacing through his pain. "Give me my wand."
"How bad was it?" Fred demanded breathlessly, paying Karkaroff no mind. "The cheating. What did you do?"
Astoria shot a half glance at Karkaroff, hesitating, afraid of offering up information that he might not already know. How had he found out? She had been so careful...
"Astoria!" snapped Fred, panic lending his voice the quality of a mournful wail.
"I don't know—pretty bad!" Astoria admitted angrily, conscious of how dry her mouth had become. "Listen, we can deal with Ragnuk alone. We don't need Karkaroff. Let's just say that he got away. It's safer than keeping him here, isn't it? What are we going to do if one of the teachers finds us?"
Fred gave the grass a furious kick. Draco, meanwhile, had gone disconcertingly still, following the progress of their conversation with fiercely guarded curiosity. Whenever Astoria's dalliance with the goblins had managed to work its way in a conversation, Astoria had been very swift about shutting talk down. As it was, this was the first real glimpse into her foolish undertaking that Draco had ever managed to steal and he did not seem to be inclined to ruin his chances of unfettered eavesdropping by interrupting.
"We can't just let him go!" Fred countered wrathfully. "He owes us money too!"
"Forget the gold!" Astoria snarled, disconcerted by the idea that Fred would be so quick to overlook the real danger at hand. "That's nothing compared to what Ragnuk will do if he finds out we cheated! There are more important things—I'm sorry!"
Fred raised both his hands above his head, actively tousling his own hair as he struggled to think.
"Right," Fred muttered, more to himself than to Astoria. "Right. You—" he pointed to Karkaroff, "—stand up! Astoria's right, we look too conspicuous."
By way of response, Karkaroff sucked in a raggedy breath and hocked a glob of something frightfully discolored in the direction of Fred's feet.
"Nngh!" growled Fred murderously, dancing out of reach.
Astoria edged closer to Karkaroff's convulsing body carefully, preparing herself to relinquish his wand.
"I don't think so!" Fred threw out his arm, determined to stop her. "So he can curse us all to smithereens and bolt? The grimy wanker can rough it over hill and dale the muggle way as far as I'm concerned!"
Draco let out a soft snort, eyeing Fred appraisingly.
"We don't have time for this!" Astoria hissed back, beginning to seriously consider tackling Fred just to give Karkaroff his opening. Fred would certainly forgive her for it later when they were both still alive...
"I need more information," Fred muttered, scrambling for a tangible grip on facts. "Can't we just lie to the goblins? We've done it before..."
"We can't talk our way out of this," Astoria snarled, finally losing her composure. "I found out about the Second Task two days before it happened and fixed the whole thing, alright? I put Gillyweed directly into Harry Potter's hands because the idiot hadn't so much as cracked a bloody book!"
A flicker of discomposure rumpled Draco's silent face; he did not want to hear that Astoria has assisted Harry, this much was plain. But there was a difference between favoring Harry and treating him like a show-horse and the fact that she had also just called Harry an idiot out-loud—another first—seem to throw Draco off guard just enough to remain silent.
Astoria's confession was obviously worse than anything Fred had ever dreamed of, however, because he took an emphatic step backwards, plainly overcome.
"How?" he howled. "How did you even manage that!"
"It wasn't even hard!" Astoria yelled, surprised by her own defensive fury. "I found out by accident—you were better off not knowing! What was I supposed to do? Harry was in the library trying to transfigure his robes into muggle aqua-wear!"
"Bah!" Fred burst dismissively.
"If I hadn't done something, we would have lost a fortune!" Astoria argued urgently. "Harry probably would have been disqualified for incompetence!"
"So you were keeping tabs on him?" Fred countered, switching gears.
"Of course I was keeping tabs on him!" Astoria snarled back. "Weren't you?"
"Well, I mean, yeah," Fred blinked ponderously. "George and I were really nervous about the Second Task, actually. Ron reckoned Harry didn't know what he was doing. We were afraid to tell you..."
Astoria pulled a face, waiting for Fred to recognize his own hypocrisy.
"That still doesn't change anything!" Fred bellowed, puffing himself up again. "You should have told me—we could have been more careful! We might not be in this mess now!"
"God, can you hear yourself, Weasley?" jeered Draco scathingly. "You sound like her mother."
"Who else knew?" demanded Fred, sucking in a weird breath. To Astoria's surprise, he seemed to be turning slightly red. "Did Malfoy know?"
"No!" Astoria scoffed, wondering what she had ever done to make Fred think she was stupid. "No one knew!"
"Except Karkaroff!" Fred pointed out.
"That's because I used a house-elf!" Astoria insisted. "Karkaroff must have had a spy in the kitchens or something!"
"A house-elf?" Fred's scowl deflated somewhat. "At the school? You didn't give the gillyweed to Harry in person? "
"No," breathed Astoria, painfully relived to see that Fred's anger was fading. "Harry didn't even know it came from me! I used that elf who's always following him around. You know the one, you told me about him—Nobby, or something?"
"Oh, right," Fred squinted. "'The one who made the Christmas decorations in the shape of Harry's face—Bobby?"
"Dobby?" suggested Draco suddenly, all sneering disbelief, his eyes narrowing into incredulous slits.
"I don't know!" Astoria burst, unable to understand the focus on elf-names. "I—yeah, I think it was, actually..."
"My wand," Karkaroff groaned, air whistling horribly in the back of his throat. "Give it to me—"
"Alright, alright!" Fred swore, making up his mind. "Throw it to him, Astoria. We need to get rid of him before he tells Ragnuk."
"Tells Ragnuk what?" wondered a cold, unamused voice.
Astoria's blood turned to ice-water. Several glittering eyes had appeared along the tree range, moving closer with a disconcerting, scuttling speed. A branch cracked and shivered, allowing George Weasley to tumble through, followed closely by Ragnuk, his treasurer and two or three other pincer-faced goblin henchmen.
Fred stiffened and Draco actively recoiled, glancing at Astoria in alarm.
"That you're late, for starters," Fred called back stoutly, doing an admirable job of resisting the urge to cower.
"I'm not late," returned Ragnuk, smiling broadly. "There's been a death on your quidditch pitch, I was held up. But more importantly, we never specified a time."
Astoria ignored Ragnuk's broken record on specifics and stipulations, working very hard to catch Karkaroff's eye instead.
Stay quiet, Astoria urged Karkaroff as non-verbally as she could, motioning with his wand until she felt that her message was clear: don't say anything and I'll give this back to you...
Karkaroff stared straight through her, too busy rocking back and forth in agony to give any indication that he had understood. Astoria repeated herself, praying that Ragnuk would not notice.
"What do we have here?" leered Ragnuk, inclining his sharp head around Fred. "Igor! You're lucky the children found you first—I would have hog-tied you."
Ragnuk's treasurer and friends cackled nastily.
"I haven't met this one," continued Ragnuk, oil-dark eyes flickering onto Draco keenly. "New payroll?"
"He was just going," ventured Astoria, unwilling to tear her gaze away from Karkaroff. What had Fred done to him? He was the sheet-white shade of someone with a newly broken bone and was sweating profusely...
"Is that so?" quirked Ragnuk flatly, savoring Draco's fear. "Does 'just going' have a name?"
Karkaroff began to seize, eyes watering, trembling with a pain so terrible that he seemed to be fading away from himself. Had Fred shattered his ribs?
"Draco Malfoy," spat Draco at last, giving up his name very unwillingly.
No, Astoria realized, Karkaroff wasn't holding his ribs. He was holding his arm...
Belated understanding came crashing down over Astoria's head like a fat water ballon ripping free from a spigot. Fred hadn't hurt Karkaroff at all. Karkaroff was suffering physically for the same reason that he had placed irrational bets in order to score fast pocket money—his left arm was burning with the magical summons of a reactivated Dark Mark.
With a faint ringing sound in her ears, Astoria finally turned to face Ragnuk. Already, he did not look the way she remembered him; his body altered somehow in the several seconds that had elapsed since realization had hit her. For the first time ever, she could almost see Ragnuk for what he truly was: a short, feeble stand-in for the thing that that really terrified her. Who did Ragnuk think he was? In comparison to the Dark Lord's return, their situation with the goblins seemed downright laughable...
"Draco helped us stop Karkaroff," Astoria lied, "but as it turns out, we're going to have to let Karkaroff go."
Astoria could tell that Fred was shooting her a panicky glance, but dread seemed to have purged her of all her better senses along with her fear.
"Let Karkaroff go?" repeated Ragnuk, his tone positively rumbling with dangerous amusement. "This citizen has placed a bet in the amount of eight hundred galleons. He will be allowed to leave when he settles his debt and not a minute sooner. That is the goblin code."
"Except he didn't bet against you," Astoria pointed out firmly. "You sent him to us, so that would make him specifically our problem, wouldn't it?"
Almost at once, Astoria felt the dynamic of the atmosphere shift toward one of warning. Ragnuk's goblins hushed, stiffening tensely, waiting for their leader to give the order for violence. George moved closer to Fred, his muscles taut and his wand drawn.
"Let me remind you of your own terms," growled Ragnuk, no longer faking passivity. "You came to me for permission to do business within your castle walls during the Tournament—permission I most graciously granted, provided that you agreed to share your business with me by matching your total in the form of one bet on each task."
"Sure," spat Astoria roughly, "but see, I won my bets, Ragnuk. All three of them, too, so I'm having a hard time understanding what you're getting at."
Ragnuk's treasurer let out a canine growl.
"You have won twice," returned Ragnuk coldly, leveling her with a glare that was sharp enough to cut diamonds. "Our current wager stipulated that if Harry Potter placed in first—"
"Which he did!" interrupted Fred, catching on to what Astoria was getting at. "Harry won the bloody tournament. We don't owe you a thing!"
"Harry Potter has tied in first place with your second champion, Cedric Diggory. There is a difference."
"No there isn't!" Fred snapped, nerves transforming into rage. "It's you're own fault that you never stipulated—"
"Enough!" cracked Ragnuk, and for the first time in Astoria's memory, he seemed to lose his self-possession. "Our arrangement was clear!"
"Sure was," Fred sneered, heedless of the look of terror on George's face. "Harry only had to come in first, which he did. It doesn't matter if Diggory came in with him. Besides—Diggory's dead!"
Astoria flinched, oddly affected by hearing this fact voiced out-loud so hatefully.
"That leaves only Harry standing!" protested Fred feverishly. "By any logic—"
"I said enough!" roared Ragnuk, looking very disconcerted, cornered even.
His eyes darted anxiously toward his brethren of goblins, plainly afraid of dishonoring himself or his word by losing face, but equally unwilling to pay the hefty sum he had been counting on inheriting from Astoria and the twins. What was it Marcus Flint had said at Cassandra's party? 'Without you, Ragnuk's not expecting to turn a profit.'
"You don't want anything to do with Karkaroff, at least," Astoria cautioned, conscious of the fact that they had gained the upper hand and that Karkaroff still had the power to make them relinquish it. "We were planning to release him for you as a sign of good faith."
Karkaroff groaned, the pain in his arm intensifying.
"I see no reason to view your willingness to dismiss a man in my debt as a sign of good faith!" hissed Ragnuk viciously, his tongue caressing each syllable with the deep baritone of a war-drum.
"You would if you knew who he's been working for!" Astoria insisted breathlessly, knowing what Karkaroff needed to do but far less that sure he would have the guts to actually take them there.
"I'm not afraid of any wizard, girl!" growled Ragnuk.
"Show him," Astoria snapped tensely, willing Karkaroff to have the presence of mind to know what she meant. "Show him!"
With a savage growl, Karkaroff flopped over onto his back, yanked up the sleeve of his robe and let his pale forearm fall back onto the grass.
An evil-looking brand burned darkly in the half-light, ink-black and twisted. Singed into the sickly pallor of Karkaroff's flesh, there could be no mistaking the Dark Mark, alive with Voldemort's call and inflamed by his servant's refusal to meet it.
Ragnuk jolted, looking as though he had seen a ghost. Astoria had an idea why: as she understood it, the Dark Marks of the free Death Eaters had faded in the years since Voldemort's fall—purportedly closer to scars than tattoos in resemblance. This much could not be said for Karkaroff's mark, however; his was the glistening shade of fresh squid ink.
With a twitchy hand motion, Ragnuk urged his widest goblin forward to stand in front of him. Taking this for a clear sign of consent to dismiss the man, Astoria subtly dropped Karkaroff's wand onto the turf.
Snarling like a feral dog, Karkaroff snatched it from the grass with an unexpected swiftness, tearing out a fistful of vegetation with his fingernails. He was up and bolting for the property line before anyone had even had time to consider his potential to turn and attack.
A slapping sound echoed off the tree trunks when he hit the edge of the forest; sharply reminiscent of a belly-flop into still water. With a flash of light, Karkaroff was gone.
Ragnuk's gnashing teeth pierced the awkward, hostile silence that descended. Fred and George both appeared thunderstruck, but Draco's eyes were turned toward the place that Karkaroff had just Disapparated, shining with far too much understanding and not nearly enough worry.
"So, when can you pay us?" demanded Fred, who did not seem to know what he had just witnessed and was therefore the quickest to regain his equilibrium. "I'm sure we'll understand if it takes you a day or two—we're not unreasonable."
"Oh, but you are," Ragnuk jeered nastily, his face twisting and souring. "It is you who owes me, and not the other way around!"
Astoria blinked, stunned to discover that she had not done so since Karkaroff had lifted his sleeve. Hostility and horror were fighting each-other for supremacy of her senses, resulting in the strangest numbing of mouth and limb.
Dimly, Astoria knew that she ought to be terrified, but it was as though she had drifted out through the top of her head, no longer participating but spectating. The madness of her own life continued to pan out without her like an amusing but particularly convoluted stage-act. Astoria blinked again feeling terrifyingly removed.
The Dark Lord had been dead for fourteen years. What was the universe playing at by trying to convince her otherwise?
But deep down—deeper even than the numbness—Astoria could feel herself reacting to what her heart refused to believe. She had seen the Dark Mark with her own eyes, had heard the words come out of Moody's mouth...
Her mind did not have the faculty to fight off the enormity of what had just taken place, but it did not seem to be altogether willing to absorb it either. Desperate to fight back, to control something, Astoria could feel herself rallying against Ragnuk in the wildest way possible.
"We're not paying you," murmured Astoria decisively, her voice positively quivering with unhinged emotion, "so you can take your pint-size entourage and fuck off back to your pub!"
This pronouncement was met with absolute stillness. Fred let out a shivery sound close to laughter, too stunned to keep the cackle from escaping. Draco pulled his head away from the woods with an almost painful looking snap.
"Excuse me?" Ragnuk rumbled, his voice just barely audible over the sound of his minions' knuckle cracking.
"Look at you!" Astoria sneered, charged with such an unfettered energy that she was almost seeing double. "You're three bloody feet tall—I could punt you back to Hogsmeade myself!"
Ragnuk's treasurer dropped into a crouch. Pouncing position, Astoria realized dully.
"Bloody hell!" Fred swore, stepping forward with his wand raised.
"You lost the bet, fair and square!" Astoria went on, seeing little choice other than to embrace her sudden wave of psychosis.
"How about I remove you instead?" jeered Ragnuk resentfully, somehow managing to stoop to Astoria's level without yelling. "In the permanent sense, I mean..."
"You're not going to kill a bunch of school kids!" Astoria shot back; a wand-less child with an apparent death wish.
"Astoria!" breathed George tersely, clenching his wand so tightly that his knuckles were turning white.
"Oh, what?" Astoria sneered. "He's not going to hurt us, George! He can't because he knows what the ministry would do to him if he did! Fact of the matter is, we're all wizards and he isn't. Alistair Yaxley would hang him from a meat hook for murdering underage pure-bloods!"
This was probably what most normal people would consider suicidal behavior, but what struck Astoria most about what she was saying was not the recklessness of her words, but the incredible truth behind them. Ragnuk's oppressive climate of fear had prevented her from seeing the matter so plainly all year: Ragnuk could talk a mean talk, but he couldn't actually walk a mean walk. There was no way for him to touch Astoria without expecting dire consequences in return.
How had she not seen it before?
"Alistair Yaxley is my cousin, you know," Astoria went on savagely, consumed by a single-minded desire to punish Ragnuk for the suffering he had caused. "I suppose you skimped on your research because of our age?"
"Yaxley's a goblin liaison?" asked Fred quietly, determined to keep up.
"He's the head of the office," Astoria confirmed coldly. At any other point in her life, Astoria might have been worried about Fred and George potentially tracing Alistair's name back to the Lestranges, but there no longer seemed to be any point in bothering. Voldemort's return nearly ensured that they would find out soon enough on their own.
"He's blackly vindictive, hates goblins and usually starts drinking around noon," Astoria went on fitfully. "Know something, Ragnuk? If I were you, I probably wouldn't mess with me and I'm clearly a terrible judge!"
"You think I have no other means of restitution?" Ragnuk hissed. "One anonymous tip to the Department of Games and Sports and you can kiss your pretty little school goodbye forever!"
"The Department of Games and Sports!" Astoria exclaimed merrily, wiping victorious tears of mirth from her eyes. "You mean Bagman? That lousy git is so crooked he even owes us gold!"
Ragnuk's glower flickered uncomfortably. The fact that Astoria and the twins had bargained for Bagman's freedom from Hodrod had clearly never reached his ears.
"He isn't going to turn me over—what if I told on him?" Astoria went on, connecting each dot with lurid ease. "A fifteen year old girl lending a grown man money to cover his gambling debts is a hard thing to explain. Half of the country would probably just assume he's a pedophile!"
"Is he?" spluttered Draco irresistibly.
Astoria tossed her head back and laughed harder still.
"I will not allow a pack of children to make a fool out of me!" Ragnuk growled, panic mingling with his rage.
"Oh, you're warning us, are you?" Astoria taunted, consumed by the madness that had seized her the moment Karkaroff had exposed his arm. "You've got no moves left to play, Ragnuk! Why not just make it easy and settle?"
"You have a family," Ragnuk leered sinisterly. "Surely you would prefer that they remain...uninvolved?"
Astoria's laughter reached fever pitch, so manic in tone that even Fred was beginning to look a little concerned for her.
"Go ahead and visit my aunt!" Astoria wailed, sucking in great gulps of air as she stomped her feet. "Do it—I'm begging you!"
"Does she work for the goblin office too?" asked Fred bemusedly.
Astoria attempted to answer but her fit of hysteria seemed to have robbed her of breath.
"Of course not, Weasley," jeered Draco who, despite being completely un-involved in their current predicament, still knew ministry politics like the back of his hand. "She's a complete psychopath..."
A gunshot-like bang boomed in the distance. Positive that it had come from the direction of the maze, Astoria's foolish laughter died in her lungs, trapped like stale air.
Oh, God. What was happening now?
Professor McGonagall's voice, rendered ten times louder by a sonorous charm, filled Astoria's ears like the embrace of a long-lost relative.
"ALL STUDENTS ARE TO REPORT TO THEIR HOUSES AT ONCE."
Astoria glanced back toward Ragnuk, unsurprised to find that he had begun edging his way toward the forest, wary of meeting with any of Dumbledore's staff.
"ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY!"
The goblins were almost obscured by the trees now, muttering ferociously...
"You have one week, Ragnuk!" shouted Fred, emboldened by Astoria's confidence. "Don't make us hunt you down over break!"
"ROLL CALL WILL BE TAKEN IN HALF AN HOUR!"
Astoria followed the bright torch of Fred's hair as he hustled along the edge of the stadium. Already, the entire confrontation felt dream-like...had she really just threatened to punt a goblin under-lord?
The glow of the stadium's fairy lights hit her like a slap in the face when they finally reemerged; a circus-bright cacophony that left her feeling very drained and shaky. The delirious high that she had experienced in front of Ragnuk was fading and her sudden reintroduction to light and sound did nothing to help settle her roiling stomach. Astoria struggled forward robotically. She could tell that Draco was trying to catch her eye, eager to get the final word in, but the mob was so infected with fear that she soon lost sight of him.
Cringing away from any situation that might force her to speak, Astoria made no effort to keep track of anyone. Training her eyes on the grass and willing herself not to throw up, she followed the surge of bodies out through the gates and onto the path.
The moonlight was clearer on the hill; the air fresher. Lightning bugs danced peacefully in the bushes, creating a startling contrast to the blood-surge of violence that she had just escaped.
This is the real world, Astoria tried to remind herself, sucking in mouthfuls of sweet air. No Voldemort. No hostages. Somewhere, trapped in the maddening crowd, Theodore was probably even looking for her...
But no amount of denial could restore what she had just lost. A cold blanket of grief had been tossed over her soul, shrouding everything with its melancholy weight. It was a sickness in her stomach—a dull ache in her chest.
The Entrance Hall was somehow worse, slammed from wall to wall like a holding cell. Sobs echoed off the rafters, reverberating like the distant shriek of sirens. Ducking rudely under arms and cringing against the accidental slap of unwanted limbs, Astoria forced her way through to the marble staircase.
She had lost Fred and George in the mess of faces but that was just as well. Something told Astoria she was not ready to face them yet, either. Surely they would want to relive their conversation with Ragnuk—or worse, what if they asked about the Mark on Karkaroff's arm? Did she have it in her to explain?
Feeling no desire to participate in the collective muttering and mourning in the common room, Astoria made a quiet beeline for the dormitory bathroom the moment she reached the tower. Shutting the door behind her as calmly as she could, Astoria allowed her knees to crumple. The tiled floor beneath her dress was cold and a little stinging at first, but the more she got used to the chill, the more centering she found it.
Astoria blinked in the direction of the flickering flames in the wall sconces on either side of the mirrors, waiting for her tears to fall, but the did not come. An odd thing, really, since Astoria knew that she needed to cry—could sense the shivering ache in every part her body from her joints to her face— and yet her chin remained stubbornly steady.
Perhaps she might be sick instead? A hollow tightness in her belly seemed to suggest that this was possible, but no swifter pangs arrived to compel her to her feet. The flames in the sconces began shiver the longer she looked at them, gradually losing focus against the white backdrop. Without blinking, Astoria allowed the room to fade into a palate of ivory and gold, her eyes tried but very dry.
Twenty minutes later, when no fits of sobbing or waves of nausea had presented themselves and she could hear Professor McGonagall talking below, Astoria stood up, patted down her hair and opened the door.
0o0
The next morning dawned in a blaze of saccharine-yellow sweetness. Brilliantly sunny, candy-colored radiance flooded the grounds, provoking the birds in the garden into song and painting the inside of her four poster a warm crimson.
Contrary to what Astoria had been expecting, sleep had claimed her from almost the very moment her head had hit her pillow and it had not abandoned her until mid-morning. Despite having been unconscious for nearly ten hours, however, the effects of the night before had taken their toll: she appeared pale and drawn in the mirror above Lavender's bureau. Avoiding her own reflection in the glass, Astoria dressed purposefully, eager to regain some semblance of normality. It was a new day, one that Astoria was lucky to even be seeing, so she set about the task of going about business as usual with extra urgency, privately hoping that by doing so, she might reclaim some of her old vigor.
She had risen during the slow period between breakfast and lunch. Only a very a small crowd of students remained at the four long house tables, but today they were making enough noise to compensate for their dwindling numbers. Spotting Draco at the end of the Slytherin table with his nose buried deep in a huddle of members from his quidditch team, Astoria chose a seat close to the doors. If it was normality she was seeking, Malfoy was to be avoided at all costs, particularly now that he had met Ragnuk...
"You're up!"
Swallowing her first bite of toast, Astoria swiveled about, delighted to find that in her haste to avoid Draco, she had completely overlooked Theodore.
"Theo!" Astoria exclaimed warmly, dropping her bread.
Instead of sharing her excitement, however, Theodore cut straight to the point. He thrust a newspaper onto her plate.
"Have a look at this!" he insisted, flipping the Prophet over to expose a headline. Astoria stared at the newsprint, knowing what those passages must surely contain and wanting nothing to do with them.
"After my coffee," she muttered evasively.
"No, you don't understand," pressed Theodore. "This is a mess!"
"I was there, wasn't I?" Astoria ventured archly, the pleasure she had first felt at the sight of him fading considerably. "Must we rehash tragedy over our eggs?"
"Mhmm," returned Theodore quickly, completely overlooking Astoria's lack of enthusiasm. "The paper doesn't even mention Cedric! Now, what do you make of that?"
Astoria blinked, taken aback. But while it did seem more than a little out of character for Rita Skeeter to drop the ball on a scoop so juicy, Astoria did not know how much she cared to speculate.
"I'm serious!" Theodore pressed, flipping the paper open now. "They ran two stories about the tournament—one of them proclaiming Harry as the winner and the other giving a detailed description of the maze. What are they playing at by interviewing gardeners and forgetting to mention a student fatality?"
"I don't know," sighed Astoria warily, feeling as though she had already spent a lifetime living through the Third Task. "Maybe the Diggorys didn't want the story run?"
"That's not the kind of thing you can keep out of the paper," scoffed Theodore, dismissing her theory.
"I'm sure it'll be in the evening edition, then!" Astoria shot back. "I'm not the editor, Theo!"
"Look!" insisted Theodore. He shook open the Arts section to reveal a photograph of several weather-worn wizards wearing coveralls and brandished it at her excitedly: "Gardeners!"
"I wonder which one works for the Zabinis," Astoria mused, keen to change the subject. "Apparently Blaise's mother almost sacked him for neglecting his duties..."
"Astoria!" reprimanded Theodore, surprised by her general unwillingness to delve into conspiracy. "Potter's been telling all of his mates that he saw You Know Who—that he dueled him! Snape was pulled into a meeting this morning because Karkaroff hasn't been seen since he was judging. Now a teenager's death is going unreported and you want to talk about Blaise Zabini's domestic help?"
"I don't know what you want me to say!" Astoria returned resentfully.
Five delicious, drama free minutes—that was all the time she needed to finish her meal without the subject of Voldemort turning her food turn into ash.
The paper in Theo's hands sagged as he took in her expression. Astoria shifted in her chair guiltily, feeling faintly ashamed of herself.
"Going over the morning paper are you?" drawled a smug, very arrogant voice.
"See," Astoria breathed mournfully, dropping her toast again, "now look what you've done..."
Draco had gotten up and wandered his way down the table with Crabbe and Goyle, all three of them looking more pleased and menacing than Astoria had ever seen them. A smirk quivered on Draco's lips, hinting at the great personal satisfaction of keeping a secret that was dangerous enough to be gutted for.
Only the memory of Draco's nudging shoulder—quite literally the last thing standing between herself and Moody's tongue—was enough to stop her from being uncivil.
"Theodore is," said Astoria begrudgingly. "I'm eating."
"Trying to piece it together, are we?" Draco drawled, glancing at the paper in Theo's hands, practically oozing maddening superiority. "You won't find any help in there."
"I reckon I've got the make of it, actually," returned Theodore stiffly, not wanting to be talked down to by Draco.
"Oh yeah?" Draco chuckled softly, snagging the second half of Astoria's toast without asking. "Have you heard from your father yet?"
"No, why should I?" grumbled Theodore a little irritably. "The man never writes to me, Malfoy—you know that. I'll be home in a week."
"Bet he writes to you first," Malfoy smirked, eyes glittering tellingly.
Theodore's expression locked-up. If the combination of newspaper silence and Harry's own story had been enough to make him suspect the impossible, Draco's air of knowing confirmation was enough to make him freeze in his seat.
Astoria stared at the reflective surface her now empty plate, insides writhing. So far, she had grieved the probable return of the Dark Lord no further than how she thought it might affect herself; the future of her mother and uncles in Azkaban playing a particularly hard angle upon her soul. The fact that Theodore, whose Death Easter father remained at large, might see his own life plunge into chaos had not yet fully occurred to her and the reminder was heartbreaking.
"I—" Theodore hesitated, turning toward Astoria for advisement. "What do you think?"
"I'm not," shot Astoria reflexively, perhaps a little sharper than she had intended.
"You're not what?" returned Theodore, actively frowning. "You don't think Potter was telling the truth?"
"No, I do, I'm just not thinking about it," Astoria clarified stubbornly. "About any of it, really."
Malfoy let out a snuffling sound of derision, obviously surprised by her attitude.
"Astoria, what are you talking about?" demanded Theodore. "If Potter really did fight You-Know-Who—"
"Then the Dark Lord is back?" Astoria supplied shrilly. "So I've heard. I'm making the active decision not to care. Pass the toast."
"Sort of taking denial to whole new level, isn't it?" sneered Draco, his annoyance just palpable enough to be noticeable.
"I'm not denying anything," Astoria returned waspishly, scraping a pat of butter across her roll with enough violence to constitute a micro-aggression. "I'm just not looking to talk about it and neither is the newspaper, so maybe you shouldn't either."
Draco narrowed his eyes at her. Astoria went on savagely scraping butter while Draco bore a hole into the side of her face, sensing how awkward she was being but somehow unable to stop herself.
"It's nice not obsessing," Astoria continued stubbornly, compelled to fill the silence she had created, dropping her knife with a clatter. "You two ought to give it a try sometime."
Theodore let out a soft, stoney-faced snort. "What's that? 'Belladonna Lestrange's Secrets to Life and Not Caring'?"
"Maybe!" Astoria agreed loftily, seizing the jam jar. "But you know what? For a woman with four dead husbands, she sure does have a lot of pep in her step!"
Theodore shook his head distractedly. Astoria clawed at the sticky jam lid, beyond frustrated with its refusal to turn. Why was everything a struggle?
"Astoria!" cried Luc, cutting in just in time to keep prevent her from jamming her butter-knife under the lid in an unwise bid for leverage.
Astoria dropped her knife again and grit her teeth, willing herself not to lash out.
"Merlin my head aches," moaned Luc, pouring out a measure of juice. Astoria studied his face but no trace of a hangover seemed to cling there; no grim recognition of the horror that had transpired since the last time she had seen him. "Maudlin's looking for you, you know."
"Why?" grunted Astoria gruffly. Could no one manage to solve a problem on their own?
"Dunno," Luc shrugged, "but he seemed awfully crushed this morning."
"Crushed by what?" Astoria grumbled, banging the jar against the table to loosen it now, "the size of his bloody trust fund?"
"Hah!" Luc cried appreciatively through a mouthful of oats.
"I'm going for a walk," Astoria decided, slamming the disobliging jam down at last. Swinging her feet over the bench, she nearly ate a mouthful of robes as she ran headlong into Maudlin.
"Ria!" he beamed brilliantly, seizing her by both shoulders. "There you are! Thank God!"
"Feeling better, are you?" Astoria observed, taking a large step back in case he felt compelled to hug her again.
"What—oh, yes," agreed Maudlin distractedly. Snagging a roll, he swiftly unscrewed the lid of Astoria's offending jam with a single, obnoxiously effortless twirl. "I've had a letter from father this morning—he wants to know all about what happened last night only I can't remember anything and apparently your paper isn't very forthcoming. Also, you never told me that you and George are coming to visit early this year!"
"I'd have told you if you hadn't passed out before sunset," Astoria lied, wondering how her father had managed to convey this message to Aston so quickly.
"Well, it's brilliant either way," Maudlin demurred, taking the seat that Astoria had just vacated. "Emilie's signed on for an internship in Paris so it should be just you and Alec. Can you imagine a month, just the three of us? We ought to go to the beach house in Monaco—I haven't been there since Christmas last year."
"I'm supposed to be spending time with my father," Astoria cautioned, not wanting to fall prey to an entire season at Maudlin's beck and call—especially if Emilie was to be out of town, leaving Maudlin behind to behave as irrationally as he pleased.
"Oh, he'll be busy with work," Maudlin scoffed, fanning this excuse aside with a wave of his hand. "You're much better off with me—and my father will love it."
Draco let out a single, humorless grunt and tossed his napkin onto Maudlin's plate with an insolent flick.
"Oh!" cried Maudlin, somehow struck by the mess that Malfoy had just made in front of him. "Draco, where will you be in July? You should think of coming, too. There will be scads of parties to go to if the weather holds!"
"I don't know," drawled Draco, his smug smirk flickering back to life. "I thought I was going to be in Italy for July, but with the way things are looking, who knows what will happen? Father might not want to leave the country for so long..."
His eyes darted toward Astoria and it occurred to her—with a pang of belated embarrassment—that this was probably because she had been staring at him.
"Not that it really matters," Draco added, backpedalling with impressive vagueness. "I can't see why my Father would say no—he and Aston must know each other."
0o0
The overall takeaway while rereading and editing this chapter? 'For God's sake, Astoria, GIVE THE MAN HIS WAND ALREADY!'
Ahhh, redundancy... I promise to bring back the non-violent variety of drama in the next post.
In any case, so... close... to summer. Only the first teeny chunk of the next chapter will be at Hogwarts, I swear. Let's get cracking toward fifth year already.
Notes on Scheduling:
Well guys, my finals are pretty much over which means that things might be getting back to a once-weekly posting status again really soon (toot your party horns if you've got 'em)! My initial guess is that the summer before fifth year will end up spread out over about four chapters (I can give a better idea about what to expect next post). I personally tend to love the chapters away from school (it's a bit liberating to step outside the cannon-timeline) but I can respect that some of you prefer the familiar Hogwarts outline. At the end of the day—assuming I'll be able to update weekly—it shouldn't take much more than a month or so to get to book five.
As always, reviews give me the grins. :)