Chapter summary: Draco bonds with Uncle Ted and together they discover something game changing.
Word count: About 3000.
Author's note: The original version of this one got away from me pretty fast, like a Firebolt fast but after a long talk with my beta I decided that as much as I enjoy creating chaos I also need to wrap this part without pulling out of woodwork more dilemmas. There will be a place for that in the next part which is far closer than away. And by closer I mean, about three to four chapters, well five at the most. We're at the last stretch of the summer. Harry's part I should deal within a chapter, two at the most. Then there's Hermione and after that the grand finale of Entropy.
Meanwhile I've been steadily chipping away on certain issues of the next part and I end up unearthing a lot of issues. The biggest of which is that I'm working on something that's months away from posting and not finishing Entropy.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
I know that's very early but I'm being extremely realistic about the collective work which my beta and I will have to put into next chapter. We might be ready for posting next chapter around Christmas, during the week between Christmas and New Year or more realistically shortly after.
That's why I'm taking this opportunity to wish You all Merry Christmas, peaceful and healthy and a much better year than the last two had been because we all deserve a break.
Merry Christmas
Dedicated to all of my readers who stuck with me for so long in spite of my shortcomings. Thank You, I hope that You will find this story enjoyable. I adore seeing your reactions because not only they're thought provoking but also can be so inspiring that I will go out of my way to write a nearly 100k words spin-off. Not that I'm seeking validation but I do enjoy dialogue.
Beta read by nexandvinny.
No traces left of all the busy scene,
But that remembrances says: The things have been.
Samuel Boyse
Secrets & Keepers – Entropy
Chapter twenty: Blood on the Street
Draco Malfoy, 17th August 1993, Tonks Residence, London
The work was initially divided between adults to hunt down the current location of all the witnesses (or at the very least most of them). That Mother and Aunt Andromeda had taken upon themselves while Uncle Ted headed for a reconnaissance.
Draco, citing the need to experience London from a different perspective, headed out with him. Not that he felt a deep, unyielding need to do so. But it was good enough excuse to feel out what sort of a man Uncle Ted had been away from his wife.
And as it turned out, he was quite resourceful, and what perplexed Draco was entirely at ease with leaving his wand behind.
"Not something I like to have while strolling through Muggle London," he explained. "I know that they're anti-thieving charms, and I have one on my holster, but even though you aren't planning to use it, the wand attracts attention."
"How so?" asked Draco sceptically.
"Most out of a kinfolk," said Uncle Ted as they stepped into a crowded street, "don't feel comfortable in places like this," he gestured from left to right. "It puts them on high alert, obliging them to be vigilant of potential threats and because quite a lot of them are uneducated in what really can be a threat here. That makes them stick out like one sore thumb in the crowd, and truly paranoid sorts aren't above scanning the area for the presence of another stick bearer."
"But how do you feel safer without it?" asked Draco pensively as he had been feeling out of his depth.
"I have five brothers and an unfair advantage in a fight, so all of our disputes in teenage years had to be handled as if I didn't have one," replied Uncle Ted. "By the strength of my fists alone and being quick on and with my feet. One doesn't need a hidden talent to bring their opponent to their knees. As I learned, a nice, strong kick into family jewels does that too. Then there's boxing. In my youth, it was a good way to burn excess energy as much as an excess of frustration with other people, especially those holding my status against me. And while I hadn't been at the ring for quite some time, I still have a mean right hook."
"Sounds painful," admitted Draco.
"It occasionally is, but then there's the unfair advantage that's my own knowledge and a benevolent wife that would fix stuff beyond my expertise or reach," Uncle Ted added with a chuckle.
They continued walking for some time until, at some point, Uncle Ted rounded the corner of one street into another and stopped dead in his tracks. The change in peace had been so abrupt that it had taken Draco a couple of steps before he realised that the older man wasn't by his side. So he whirled around and found him standing in the middle of the pavement, suspended in his state in the sea of moving Muggles, three of which shouldered past him before he snapped himself out of the sudden stupor.
"Excuse you!" he called with a huff after the last one of them before he stepped towards the buildings.
Draco headed to him and turned the same way he was turned, up the street. It didn't look much different from the one they just left. In fact, it appeared to be shorter than the last one, slightly narrower in the sidewalk department.
Two establishments on the street served food to customers that couldn't be of high quality if they served food on the sidewalk because who would have wanted to eat a meal of any value surrounded by all of this noise and chaos.
There were also a couple of shops. One bookshop, a couple of boutiques, one of which was selling handbags while the other appeared to be selling shoes. A couple of signs directed customers to a wedding saloon, a confectionery and two or three to dentists (whatever that might be).
The street was filled with life and constant movement of passing Muggles, on foot as much as in their noisy and smelly cars. Then Draco saw how Uncle Ted had turned his head towards the side street located a bit off the middle of the street and gasped. But it had taken a moment to see what the older man saw. One of the closest buildings on the side street appeared to be taking twice, maybe even three lengths of the buildings where they stood. It had a gated entrance above which hung a sign.
St Mary's Primary School
Draco found himself choking on his saliva. The showdown between Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew had taken place in the morning hours of 2nd November 1981, which fell on a Monday and while he wasn't sure how Muggle schools worked, they could hardly differ much from similar to Hogwarts setting of Monday to Friday and starting in hours between eight and nine.
Twelve dead and twice as much injured. Mostly families with children.
Suddenly for the briefest of moments, he could see it as it had to have been that day. Two men were standing far apart, suspended in motion amongst the mass of moving people. Laughing children holding on the hands of their parents heading towards the school. People whose faces blurred in action as they passed by what in a matter of seconds would become a tragedy.
And then the sudden blast that was big enough to blow a hole in the ground in the depth of a grown man and about three times as much in diameter, reaching into the street throwing two of the passing of the cars of their course. Big enough to completely make one roll onto its roof while the other kept going into a group of people on the opposite side just to suddenly stop inches shy from hitting a group of women and children.
Bodies flying amongst the debris of broken metal, glass and stone. Metal pole going straight through man's stomach. A pot with a big and heavy looking plant flying at a little girl, much smaller than those that were heading towards the school and colliding with her head.
People screaming. Children crying. Blood, so much blood mixed with falling dust.
Nothing but a hole where Pettigrew stood and Black, flat on his back but already scrambling into sitting position with his empty right hand thrown in the direction of the epicentre of the explosion before he was collapsing again.
Draco didn't scream. But neither he fought the darkness that enveloped him.
When his senses had returned, he was no longer standing rather than sitting on the ground, with his back propped against the side of the building while a firm hand was holding him upright just as something was making a minuscule kind of breeze.
He opened his eyes slowly and found himself staring into Uncle Ted's face. The older man was kneeling by his side and had a concerned look on his face.
"What happened, Draco?" he asked gently.
Draco opened his mouth, but no sound made out. And how he could describe what happened if he didn't know more than what he saw.
"I saw them," he mumbled through suddenly chattering teeth. "I saw what happened."
His statement, in turn, made Uncle Ted look even more concerned just as someone entered the edge of his vision.
He was still disoriented by what happened that he paid no mind to the quick exchange that followed. He only caught words like 'nephew', 'hypoglycaemic' before he found himself being hoisted upright and manoeuvred into a nearby chair. He also managed to note with a small degree of relief that the chair in which he was put had armrests, so if he were going to collapse again, he wouldn't just slide down from it on the ground.
Shortly after, he was handed a glass of apple juice, and a small feminine hand helped him guide it to his lips. He sipped on it slowly and found his senses returning even though he still felt as if he had been thrown into a pile of snow.
Absentmindedly he thanked the woman for helping him and briefly tuned out the conversation between her and Uncle Ted as he closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths.
This strange vision was something he had never experienced before, and it mortified him. Sure there were a couple of instances in his past when he experienced flashes of past events, but they were events in which he participated and somehow managed to forget about them.
But in November of 1981, he was a mere toddler whose most daring adventure was running across the room without falling over on his feet and making himself spin on his toy broomstick to the point of puking.
This was something else. Something unsettling, and he admitted as much to Uncle Ted once he wrapped his shaking hands over a big mug of hot tea before he slowly proceeded to describe what he saw.
Uncle Ted listened to him intently, absentmindedly stirring his tea until he sloshed a bit on his hand and the table.
"I heard of it," said Uncle Ted slowly, wiping the tea from the table and his hand with a paper serviette. "Never experienced it myself, though."
"What it is?" asked Draco urgently. "Some sort of seer insight?" he barely managed to force the words into a complete sentence without chattering his teeth too much.
"One would call it as such," admitted Uncle Ted pensively. "But that person most probably would have been wrong," he paused briefly. "My saba and bobe," he paused again. "Grandparents from Abba's side," he clarified, "came to England once World War One had ended. Runaways they both had been, according to their own stories, from the area where current borders of Germany, Czech Republic and Poland meet. But Abba had been doing some digging in their past and had found that a lot of things hadn't been adding about that location."
"Like?" mumbled Draco.
"Like no family records of people of their surnames in the area. Ill matching descriptions of buildings and locations made no sense with the geographical placing of their home village. So after a couple of attempts, Abba got smarter and started looking for real names and landscapes. And he had found them, miles away from that village. It was a place which in their language was called Oshpitizin original name, which is even more tongue-twisting. With a little help from the locals, he managed to piece the story about a pair of teenagers that disappeared after some very public and supposedly bizarre fight between the towns richest merchants."
Draco frowned.
"That town has another name, Draco," Uncle Ted continued softly. "One that amongst my people brings in the luckier one's revulsion and anger and the less lucky long-buried grief and despair. The name is Auschwitz, and along with territories of neighbour villages had been a place of mass genocide of my people."
"Why?" the question slipped out before he could stop himself.
"For many reasons," sighed Uncle Ted. "The simplest of them being that bunch of sick fucks looking for a scapegoat. In many ways, Jewish culture, Muggle culture, parallel to the pureblood one. The difference is that we never really had one place to settle as a nation for millennia. Having a place you can call home, where you can grow roots, helps in relaxing the strains of tradition to be more inclusive of others around you."
Draco slowly quirked his left eyebrow at him.
"Well, not always," said Uncle Ted and huffed. "The nation lives as long as its culture and traditions live on, and if you want it to continue to live on, you do your best to preserve it. As much as sometimes pureblood culture rubs me the wrong way, I understand it better than other people of my status. But I also know what happens if the need to preserve the culture and traditions starts straying towards secluding oneself from others."
"And why preserving one's culture and tradition is wrong?" asked Draco. "And how it relates to…."
"I'm getting there," said Uncle Ted simply. "I didn't say that it is wrong, just that one needs to be a careful observer of the world and try to adapt to the changes while still maintaining their identity," he paused again. "My people weren't the only ones that lost their lives there, so did Poles, Gypsies – another nomadic nation. Germans too, albeit not in that high number. The unfortunate ones, mentally ill, those attracted to their own sex. The lucky ones died quickly. The unluckier suffered at the hands of the supremely sick son of a bitch called Joseph Mengele. Stuff that he did to people is nightmare-inducing."
The pause that followed was longer, and Draco waited through Uncle Ted taking a couple of sips of his tea.
"Saba and Bobe," started Uncle Ted after putting his mug down, "Abba never managed to figure out for certain if they descended from magical families. Saba died before I was born, but Bobe…" he swallowed. "It took Abba many years to get her to confess the truth about her roots, but when she finally had, she asked him to take her back to her hometown," he paused and swallowed again. "After the war, the concentration camp, like many others of the sort, had become a museum to keep reminding generations upon generations about the horrors of World War II, so hopefully no III World War would ever happen," he finished and sighed. "Bobe begged Abba to take her there, and she…" he swallowed thickly.
"She saw something," whispered Draco.
"Her sister succumbing to lethal gas. Her brother being gunned down," said Uncle Ted softly.
"So it was a place of many despairs that prompted the vision," said Draco quietly.
"Not just despair alone, my boy," sighed Uncle Ted. "Despair doesn't cause visions in level-headed people. But blood and that had been spilt many, many times over in that place.." he said and hummed. "You're a Black, Draco. In blood if not in name and this place a relative of yours, a quite close relative had bled and not just blood but what you described to me as magic."
"Magic?" mumbled Draco, taken aback by the statement but not enough to keep the M-word as barely audible to Muggle ears.
"Yes," said Uncle Ted as he raised his hand and extended it to Draco in a similar gesture to the one he saw Black do in the vision. "I'm not sure that he was even aware of what he was doing," he paused and lowered his hand to place it back on the table. "But in moments of great need and despair when one needs to cast a lot of spells at the same time channelling it through the wand is more of a nuisance than actual help. I've seen photographic evidence, Draco. The explosion cut deep into the ground, into the gas mainline and should have been followed by another explosion of a greater magnitude…."
"But it didn't," whispered Draco.
"Then there are the victims," continued Uncle Ted. "For such a busy place in the morning and a lot of flying debris, it's curious that only twelve people had died. It's a busy place. It had been one back in the eighties too. There are two banks around the corner, schools this way," he gestured towards the school at the side street, "and then another around the corner. There used to be a medical practice too and one of considerable size. Why, as big as it had been, the explosion had been contained to a number of victims that should have been much higher."
"Or that other car," mumbled Draco, thinking about the car that stopped right before it would hit a group of children. "It just stopped," he paused. "You think that he did it?"
"The man I used to know would have," replied Uncle Ted. "He was an Auror, Draco. One that made an oath to serve and protect, and the man I used to know had never made oaths or promises lightly."
"But if he was able to contain it somehow, how come he didn't stop Pettigrew altogether?" asked Draco sceptically.
"That's what I'm trying to figure out," said Uncle Ted and sighed heavily. "Morning hours of 2nd November 1981 were unusually sunny for that time of the year," he added after a moment. "And the sun…" he paused, looking around.
As did Draco. He was by no means an Astronomy genius, but he had known enough that the November morning sun would have been a different journey through the sky from that of August, and it would have been…
… raising behind Pettigrew's back and shinning into Black's eyes. Providing a disadvantage of not seeing a minuscule movement before Pettigrew blew the street up. Not if the deaths of his friends had rattled Black to his very core, and he had been blinded by his own rage, despair and grief.
A tactical mistake and one for which Black and twelve other people paid dearly. He with his freedom and they with their lives.
"And the victims?" asked Draco softly.
"Those that had been in Pettigrew's closest vicinity," replied Uncle Ted. "The force of the explosion had thrown them away from the epicentre. The majority had died due to internal trauma of some sort. A couple had been hit by debris in the most unfortunate ways. But all of them had been close to the epicentre.
"And none of the people who came to the scene had thought about examining it properly?" asked Draco sceptically.
"Do you know who had been a Junior member of DMAC back then?" asked Uncle Ted in return.
"Did by DMAC you mean the department of accidents and catastrophes?" replied Draco with a frown, and when he saw Uncle Ted nodding, he added, "I have no idea."
"Cornelius Fudge," said Uncle Ted and grimaced. "Had been one for a while, and most, unfortunately, he was the one that was filling in for the department's head. And there hadn't been a site that he didn't manage to fudge in one way or another by completely screwing with the protocol. The reports claim that his squad arrived after the Aurors, but I know that Aurors had been spread thin back then, and their reaction times had been appalling. So they would be arriving as the last to the scene and in much smaller numbers than required."
"And if you were to raise that issue…" started Draco with a grimace.
"I'm not planning to," replied Uncle Ted simply. "But because it's Fudge, it gives us an advantage. They would have missed something. I'm sure of that. I'm just trying to figure out what it would have been, and you should definitely eat the pie while I do that."
The pie had been delivered to their table along with the tea but feeling queasy after his vision, Draco ignored it for the sake of warming his hands on now lukewarm mug. So after a few moments of an internal debate, he slowly dug into it.
It was an apple pie, a quite good one, rich in apple filling and sweet without being too sweet. He didn't gorge on it but steadily had eaten his way through it until nothing but crumbs had remained.
As soon as he was done and washed it down with the rest of his tea Uncle Ted stood up and headed inside the establishment to return a couple of minutes later, gesturing at Draco to stand up and follow him.
He led him to what would have been the epicentre of the explosion, stopped there and cautiously looked around the spot and the signs of surrounding shops until his eyes had settled on a particular one. He headed inside the establishment with Draco at his heels.
By the looks of it, it had to be a bindery of some sort. It was awfully tiny and very narrow. It was operated by a young woman that replied to Uncle Ted's question about working here over ten years ago with a shake of her head.
"But my grandma had been," she added after a moment. "She stopped working early on thought when I was just a kid myself. Didn't open the shop back after that huge explosion of the gas main upfront. My dad had done it about a year later. If you have questions for her, I will show you in."
Which she had. She led them up through a narrow staircase to a room that couldn't be facing the street by any logical chance and knocked on the door.
"Come in," came after a very long while, spoken in a frail voice that was barely audible.
"I hope that she will be able to help you," said the girl before she turned around. "I'm sorry, but I need to handle the shop. There should be a client coming in for a pickup."
"Don't worry," replied Uncle Ted as he turned the doorknob.
He stepped inside, with Draco at his heels.
The room in which they found themselves was tiny. It fit a narrow bed, a tall bookcase and a huge table atop strewn various books and pieces of leathery material.
He almost didn't see the woman seated in the padded chair at the table. That's how small and frail-looking she had been.
"Mrs Carpenter," said Uncle Ted gently. "I have a question for you about a commission you had done over ten years ago."
The old woman looked him up and down, frowning and narrowing her eyes before she said tightly, "No, you do not."
"I do," said Uncle Ted slowly.
The woman gawped at him before she narrowed her eyes at him and said softly, "You don't even know that you do that, do you. It bleeds of you like a terror bleeds from the cornered prey just before an unavoidable attack of a predator. But it's different," she paused, "warmer, gentler somehow. And it isn't fear. You aren't afraid to be here. You're looking but not for an old commission. My family always prided themselves on not having unpicked commissions. I can't help but wonder what you're really looking for."
"An information," admitted Uncle Ted softly. "About what happened that day when the gas main exploded."
The woman snorted with evident disdain on her face before she said, "That's what people have been saying that happened that day."
"But you don't believe in it," said Draco softly, surprising himself by taking part in the discussion.
"I would have," muttered the woman and sighed heavily. "I would have if I didn't see what I saw and hadn't experienced what I did. And it was the most bizarre experience of my life."
"Would you mind telling us about it?" prompted her Uncle Ted.
"There's no harm in that," said the woman after a longer moment of hesitation. "You're far more inclined to believe me than my family or neighbours. You're like him, aren't you?"
"I can't clarify that without you telling me who," said Uncle Ted gently. "Or what you saw," he added.
"You know damn well what I saw, lad," said the woman and grimaced. "I was upfront at the shop. My father used to open before eight, but by then, I learned that we had more traffic from lunch hours to the evening. And while I wouldn't open until ten, I used to come down in the morning to check on commissions, take stock and to drink my morning coffee in peace," she paused. "It was a relatively warm morning, and I always took advantage of airing out the place if the weather allowed. So I just opened the window and stepped to look through it," she paused again. "My poor husband was a good man and good father, but he was a forgetful one at times and had a habit of rushing back home to pick up stuff he managed to forget."
"And you looked out to check if he wasn't coming back," said Uncle Ted.
The woman nodded slowly before she continued, "Then there was the commotion," she paused briefly, "not the kind of which one gets used to. It sounded different. Not angry but hysterical. So I looked down. There were two men, although only one of them I could see well. That one was on the short side and had this plain looks that you can find in many people wandering the street. There was really nothing remarkable about his looks. But the other…" she paused again. "They were the only ones standing amongst the moving people, and when the first one screamed in an accusatory tone… I wasn't looking his way but at the other one. He stood out, you know," she said and sighed. "He was a right beanpole and had this wild, menacing look about him, but when the other one screamed at him," she paused again. "It was a blink, and you would have missed it, and it seemed so out of place… He was surprised, but it could have been the light, he wasn't standing that close, and when he tried to advance…" she finished and shuddered visibly.
Uncle Ted waited patiently, and so did Draco.
"I don't know why I looked away," she said after a long moment of silence. "Maybe it was something in his expression that urged me to look away from him, or maybe I saw a movement from the corner of my eye or something. I looked at the other one just as I saw something dropping to the ground, and then…" she paused. "It had to be quick, but it weirdly never felt like it, and I had a lot of time to turn it over and over again in my head as the years passed."
Uncle Ted didn't interrupt her, and neither did Draco.
"The explosion," the woman started and halted immediately. "It didn't come from within. It didn't feel like coming from within. My brother was in the army, and he was in the bomb squad. The air felt different, you know. It started higher…" she paused.
"Like from that man?" asked Uncle Ted gently.
The woman nodded eagerly, and after taking a shaky breath, she added slowly, "But that wasn't the weirdest. I was looking, and I remember thinking that this was it. That was when something about that man had changed. He was shrinking within himself, and I was looking, and just as the change had finished, I stepped away from the window. I couldn't have made more than a step, but suddenly the walls of the shop were gone and I…" she hesitated. "I swear on everything that's holly. I was in a field somewhere. In just my slippers and sweater, as I stood in my shop moments before."
"I believe you," said Uncle Ted quickly. "Would you mind giving me your hand to hold, Mrs Carpenter?"
The old woman looked at Uncle Ted sceptically, but after a longer moment, she extended her left hand towards him, and he stepped towards her, grasping her hand in both of his. Draco wasn't certain how long he held it, but the woman's eyes remained fixed on their joined hands.
"What it was?" asked the woman as soon as Uncle Ted removed his hands from hers. "This and back then."
"Your family hadn't been here long, had they?" asked Uncle Ted. "Your father lived from the shop, and I hazard a guess so did your grandfather, but you don't know anything about his ancestors or siblings."
"How did you know?" whispered the woman. "He always said that he was an orphan, but whenever Christmas came around, he had this forlorn look about him and always insisted on leaving at the side table clean cutlery, plates and all. My Nana, she came from a country where there was a Christmas custom to leave one spot for a traveller, but he insisted on adding another five sets."
Draco frowned slightly.
"He was hoping for them to change their minds," said Uncle Ted slowly.
"About what?" asked the woman swiftly.
"Him," replied Uncle Ted with a sigh. "The world he lived in, his choices, their choices," he added and sighed again. "That you can feel it is a testament to that. Most likely, you're the only one or one of a few that could feel that in your family. That you had done what you did."
"I did it?" the woman whispered. "I… I moved myself from one place to another?" she asked, surprised. "But how? Why?"
"It's rare but not unheard of," said Uncle Ted. "Most often, it's brought on by great distress or the sense of impending peril. Other than that, it has no rhyme or reason to it. You most certainly wouldn't have enough for daily use. Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking right now. But a reserve to tap into when you were in peril…."
"You're frustratingly vague," said the woman and huffed. "Just like the people that my dear Bob saw after the explosion. They were asking weird questions, he said, about the explosion. They came like a swarm of flies through the neighbourhood, and after they had, no one remembered about the men as if it was some sort of witchcraft," she added and huffed again. "Unless all of it was witchcraft. It was, wasn't it?" she asked sceptically.
"That I can't neither confirm nor deny," replied Uncle Ted smoothly.
"So it was witchcraft," said the woman slowly. "Are there a lot of people like that?"
"Enough," said Uncle Ted with a shrug.
"Of old lady's questions, or are you referring to the number?" the woman asked pointedly. "Enough to exist next to us without knowing that they do? Or enough to wipe us all from the country."
"If there were enough to wipe people like you from the country, it would have been done already," replied Uncle Ted. "And couple centuries ago on that. Not that many people had been interested in that, aside from a couple of maniacs here and there. They usually had been contained and neutralised quickly."
"What happened that day had nothing to do with containment and neutralisation, lad," retorted the old lady. "It had the air of a giant snafu like my grandson would have said. He served with Americans and brought home that term."
"What's snafu?" asked Draco curiously.
"Situation normal, all fucked up," replied Uncle Ted. "My brother served too," he added. "And they do happen occasionally. People screw up, regardless of the abilities they've been born with."
"Like turning into other things?" asked the woman.
"What sort of things?" asked Uncle Ted.
"So you don't know," she said and hummed.
"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking," replied Uncle Ted.
"First, answer me, whatever or not you're like these flies of old times and planning to do the same sort of witchcraft on me as they did on my neighbours," said the woman.
"I have no interest in doing that," said Uncle Ted simply. "As you said, it was a snafu and one of mythical proportion. And we're just learning the whole scope of it. Why would I hinder the investigation by removing from it the witness that I've been looking for."
"So your people screwed up," she said and hummed. "Fingers had been pointed around, and they were aimed at the wrong person. The other one, am I right? He bore a striking semblance to that escaped convict the radio and TV had been going on about. Is he as dangerous as they claim him to be?"
"Not to you or your family," replied Uncle Ted. "He's a smart and capable man, though, enough to escape from a place no one ever tried to escape before and had succeeded."
"But he had, and that's why he's being hunted," she said slowly. "He didn't do it, though, that day, it wasn't him. I swear on my right hand, and mind you, I still need it even though I'm retired, that it wasn't him."
"I suspected as much," agreed Uncle Ted. "But what about the other. You said that he changed. What did he change into?"
"I was unsure at the time," replied the woman and sighed. "But that day, I used to turn it over and over in my head. I saw it when my thoughts had strayed away. I saw it in my dreams. Some things changed, sounds mostly. Sometimes I could hear them, and sometimes I didn't. But if there was one thing that stayed the same, it was that detail," she paused and took a deep breath. "It was a rat, lad. Just an ordinary-looking rat."
TBC
Next: Harry and his entourage head to Hogwarts.
