xXxEDITING PROCESS: 7/15/09xXx
Chapter 3 : Little Secrets
Harry spent the early morning of August 5th inside his bedroom, hunting through his school trunk and the spaces hidden underneath his floorboards in hopes of attaining his spare ink bottle for some History of Magic homework. He finally found it in the pocket of his fifth year robe.
The green-eyed teenager got up off his hands and knees, looking out his bedroom window. Something look wrong. Several unfamiliar cars were lined up Mrs. Figg's driveway. She never had any visitors. Ever.
Downstairs, the rest of the Dursleys looked as confused as he did. All except Aunt Petunia who had called Harry downstairs and was staring at him in the hallway with a discontent frown. She said as he stepped into the family room, "Yesterday evening, Mrs. Figg suffered a heart attack. Her cousin had been invited over to the house and found her dead this morning in her room." Harry barely thought he had heard her. Outside the nearest window to him, a sparrow chirped merrily on a springy branch.
Dead. . .
"Dead?"
His uncle shot him an extremely annoyed look, not very stricken by the death of his neighbor. "Yes. Dead. Not bloody living--"
"I KNOW WHAT DEAD MEANS!" Harry snapped at him dangerously, blinking against his deep-seated rage and shock.
Aunt Petunia ignored their scramble. "We have been asked to attend the funeral, personally from Mrs. Figg's cousin. It has already started..." Her voice faded as Harry stepped back out from the hallway to the upstairs staircase. Inside his room, Harry slammed his door behind him (giving Hedwig a screech of alarm and irritation) and clutched the edges of his windowsill, breathing in tight gasps. Mrs. Figg, despite the unpleasant babysit stays at her home, had not deserved death--for whatever reason.
Harry bowed his head, trying to slow his breathing; he jumped when someone rapped on his door. His aunt twisted it open, avoiding his eyes and holding a gloomy suit on a hanger.
"Are you coming downstairs?" Harry shrugged. She added, "You were asked for especially. This is what you will be wearing."
After a quiet moment, he took it to dress slowly and deliberately.
-
The interior of Mrs. Figg's house had changed. It looked normal. And it didn't smell like cabbages or cats. In fact, there weren't any cats to be sighted lurking underneath couches or beds. And the couches and beds smelled faintly of lemon fabric cleaner. Somewhere in the back of Harry's mind--he believed this all to be some horrible practical joke. Or the work of Deatheaters. The latter seemed more plausible.
A woman in her late forties appeared in front of him almost the instant Harry had entered. She was dressed in a heavy navy-colored dress and wiping her bloodshot eyes with a crinkled napkin. "Are you Harry Potter?" She croaked.
When he nodded, the strange woman suddenly wrapped her arms around him and squeezed to the point of lung crushing. Harry, admittedly, had no idea what to do in this situation. A complete stranger who knew his full name was hugging him as if they were related.
She sniffed, pulling away at the terrified glance he gave her, "Oh dear, I am very sorry for startling you...you knew Ella Bell better then I did..."
"Ella Bella?"
"My childhood nickname for Arabella Figg. Pardon me, I haven't introduced myself. I am Rachel Figg, her cousin. She talked of you often...that is how I knew your name and what you looked like."
'Spoke of me often?'
Harry forced a convincing smile. "I am sorry to hear about your loss. She was nice to me when she use to babysit me." Mrs. Figg's cousin took one look at that smile and began sobbing so violently that she had to convince herself from the front den. He did feel bad for her. . .he knew what it was like to lose someone who was precious in his life and loved very much but had not seem often. . .
Sirius's ecstatic expression when Harry agreed to stay with him. . .
He closed his eyes, shaking away the memory. This wasn't place or time for it.
Because he had stopped paying attention to his surroundings, this allowed someone else to bump into him. Quite literally, a much shorter boy with reddish brown hair sticking out haphazardly underneath his baseball cap slammed into Harry's chest. Flushing, the boy stammered out an apology and made to run for it. Harry grabbed him by the arm. "Hang on! Aren't you Mark Evans?"
Mark turned back to him, taken back, "Y-yeah...how did you know...?"
"You fought my cousin Dudley in a boxing match before." The boy winced.
"Ah. Yes. The fat one."
"How did you know Mrs. Figg?" Harry said.
Mark shoved his hands into his jean pockets, talking to the floor, "I delivered her newspapers and my parents sent me to her house when they went to company balls." Harry nodded.
"Mrs. Figg use to babysit me too. Hard to get around the living room without stepping on cat tails."
The grin on Mark's face looked like it was being held back. "It's a shame she died and all. But I suppose everyone dies one day." The younger boy looked back down at the floor, "I've got to go..." He left without another word, leaving Harry to wonder why everyone was in a big hurry to get away from his presence. . .
When he entered the kitchen, Rachel gently ordered him from near the counter, her arms carrying a hefty salad bag, "Harry, will be a sweetie and get the old recipe books from down the cellar? There should be several with lettering on them." He nodded soundlessly.
In the center of the cellar, a lone hanging lightbulb swayed. Harry did find the recipe books on the top shelf of a bookshelf shoved against the wall. He scaled up groaning shelves with careful footing to pull down one with gold lettering. In his reach, he knocked down the shelf below, and littered on the very top was what looked like a small purple, leather bound journal. The fall of the books caused a wave of dust to rise. Harry covered his nose with a free hand as he crouched down to examine the damage.
None of the books seemed harmed. But the journal looked very peculiar (wide metallic edges, trimmed in silverish sparkle) but no lock.
Despite his better judgment (that bad history with finding strange, abandoned journals) Harry opened to the first elegantly written entry:
Wicked~I can't believe Daddy got me a diary! I always wanted one of my very own--and it's BETTER then Janice's! Older sisters can be SUCH a pain sometimes! I thanked Daddy a million times--I'm just so happy as you can see! He hardly ever gets me presents except for the holidays. Janice always gets treats and toys. She bats her eyes and Mum and Daddy melt like puddles. I'm not much of a writer but at least mine is legible--unlike Janice's. Hers is all chicken scratch. When I tell her that, she hits me in the stomach. You should see the bruise I got last week for calling her neck pimply. Ever since we moved her, this boy Bobby Lee has been talking to me. Mum says it's because I am becoming a woman (at twelve?) and I have to be careful around "characters like him" now. I think she meant all boys. Oh, I hope he asks me to sit with him at lunch! Oh so I hope!
Ella Bella, April 3rd
Git, hissed Harry's good judgment--to read a dead woman's diary on her funeral was a disgrace to her memory.
I didn't mean to do it. I didn't mean it. Mum and Daddy must hate me. I didn't mean to kill Janice. I knew she had a weak heart and I only meant to scare her--when she felt down the stairs I knew I was murdering her. Janice doesn't look right anymore. Mum cries a lot after we buried her and Daddy doesn't talk to anyone much. But I know what he is thinking when he looks at me. "Why did you kill our baby girl Arabella? Why did you kill your big sister?" Bobby Lee won't talk to me anymore since the police talked to me. He probably thinks I'll kill him too. I've been hiding in the basement since morning--perhaps maybe I can die here and tell Janice that I am so sorry
Ella Bella, November 2nd
Harry slapped the journal shut. No more.
Poor Mrs. Figg thinking that she had killed her own sister. By the sounds of it it must have been an accident but she took it hard on herself. Harry grunted as he scaled back up the bookshelf to put back the journal and grab the rest of the recipe books. In the middle of letting them drop onto the cement floor and taking a big step down, his face burst into pain from his scar, and Harry felt the world too burst--into darkness--
--his emerald green eyes shot opened. He found himself sitting up from the dusty cement floor of the cellar. In one of the corners, a thin looking girl in a flowery dress was curled up asleep. Her face looked tear-stained and she clutched the small purple journal to her chest.
He watched as a young Arabella Figg dug herself tighter into a ball, just as a shadow rushed past him to her. A man with long dark hair, supposedly her Father, Harry guessed, knelt down to shake her awake. "Arabella! Get up! What on Earth on you doing down here!?"
"Waiting to die." She replied sleepily. Arabella started crying, "I was waiting to die so I could apologize to Janice!"
"Honey, it wasn't your fault." His dark eyes softened. "I know it wasn't. It was a terrible accident. Your sister loved you very much."
"Really Daddy?"
A woman with blonde hair rushed down the cellar stairs, "Jack, the police said--!" She stopped talking when she saw them and scooped up Arabella, weeping hysterically, "MY BABY! Where have you been? Are you alright? I've missed you! We thought something bad had happened to you!!"
"I'm sorry Mum." The small girl nuzzled her mother's hair. "I'm sorry, I won't ever hide again." Her father smoothed Arabella's hand as they all trooped upstairs; Arabella's mother going on about hot chocolate and running a warm bath for her daughter--
--"Harry! Wake up!"
Something heavy was crushing his ribs and lungs, keeping the air from coming in through his throat. Rachel's gray eyes hovered over him. "Don't move. We'll help you, Harry." She turned away to speak to someone else and there was immense relief on his chest as the collapsed book shelf was removed from his person. Still not moving on the floor, Harry's back began to ache from the mountain of fallen books pressing into his spine.
Rachel managed to get them from out from under him and tucked a folded up blanket under his head, "Harry, can you hear me at all? Can you speak to me to tell me you are alright?" He sucked in a deep breath.
"What...happened...?"
She said, her voice wavering, "I was fixing the salad when I heard the crash. It came from the cellar and I ran down here...and...and you were crushed underneath all the books and the shelves. They said you must have climbed on them and they broke... I shouldn't have let you... we could have had another death in this house...!"
An older gentlemen touched her shoulder when Mrs. Figg's cousin began trembling.
"It was an accident, Rachel. I sent Don to call an ambulance."
Harry tried to get up. "No, no, I don't need an ambulance. I'm okay." Alarmed, the gentlemen tried pushing Harry down by his shoulders. "Son, you could be serious hurt and not know it. Try to relax." Rachel started trembling harder at this possibility. This made Harry struggle harder to prove he was fine. Luckily, the man 'Don' was a practiced paramedic himself and found Harry to be uninjured except for a nasty bump on his backside and head. After a couple moments, Harry was beginning to get queasy but said nothing as he attempted to comfort Rachel.
"Don't be stupid." He said, touching her other shoulder not held by the gentlemen. "It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have predict this."
Mrs. Figg's cousin sniffled, croaking, "It's just...you were lying there... like she had been... I found her all pale on the floor and I thought maybe she had tripped over and hit her head... then they said she was dead. I never got to know her better. I was a terrible cousin." She insisted.
"She'd forgive you, and call you silly for getting worked up." Harry said. Rachel smiled despite her tears.
-
Harry said goodbye to Mrs. Figg's relatives by evening as the Dursleys insisted they had enough of the gloomy atmosphere.
