Chapter 24: Hog's Heads Famous Butterbeer
Clara found her sister in one of the smaller hallways upstairs, her hands already chapped from spending too long with a wet rag against her skin. If Annabelle even made a peep, Clara knew that her father would come barreling around the corner, hauling away her punishment with a look of horror. But Annabelle never did. Even when Clara could tell that she was tired, even when her skin started to show a peeked, grayish fatigue, her younger sister always worked on in silence. Clara coils never truly understand it, never fully grasped why she bore these chores and small punishments (usually for being unbearable rude) with such silent devotion.
The glow from the hallway light cast her reflection into dim contrast, her face a ghostly apparition in the window's that lined the wall opposite the closed doors. Clara hadn't had much time to search the rest of their new house yet but from the purple glow of heating lamps she saw creeping from a door just down the hall, she could only assume that this was where her mother kept the rarer plants in her collection. The sharp scent of fresh peppermint hung thickly down the hallway.
"Aphrodite?" It felt odd speaking in the quiet of the house, the fields around their home dark with only the distant specks of light from the city beyond. Very distantly, she heard her parents speaking as they finished putting away dinner. In Hogwarts, there had always been some sort of noise - a roommate snoring, an owl flying in late at night. She had grown used to the constant chatter. Being home felt… lonely.
Her sister's tired eyes flicked up to meet hers, the rag dropping into the bucket at her feet with a splash. "The Dumbledores?"
"You said that Aphrodite had warned you." Clara's eyes ticked over the remaining windows in the long hallway before sighing and bending to start where her sister had stopped. Annabelle didn't make a move to help, watching the slow, methodical way that her older sister cleaned around each window pane. She had always done things like that - pick up where people had stopped, start tasks that weren't her own. It was one of the reasons why Annabelle hated her. Also one of the reasons why she would step into traffic for her. Tawny eyes flicked to meet hers. "You've said that the Gods only concern themselves when they're affected. So, he's either going to fall in love-"
Annabelle snorted out a laugh, her eyes slipping to the darkness just beyond their windows. "No. No, not at all." Her mouth thinned, smile slipping as she remembered the muscle deep clench that her heart had made when she had emptied the charred remains of the roses left in Aphrodite's offering bowl. She had never felt pain that constant - that deep - like a fatal wound that had somehow healed over, broken bones still split beneath the scar tissue. "Aphrodite likes to keep her customer… and I think that Albus Dumbledore was one of the few that's been paying for a while."
Peppermint cut through with the equally as sharp scent of sea salt working its way under her nails, the scent like a shot of pure adrenaline to Clara's system. She didn't answer her sister and didn't speak a word as she worked farther down the hallway. There were many types of love, Clara knew and most of their endings were filled with pain. Clara's mind inadvertently slipped, sliding down into the familiar glow of amber hair lit by torchlight and the tall, sturdy frame of someone who spent all their time either thinking about mischief or doing it.
Her heart ached and down the hall a small chocolate sizzled, pink flames gobbling it up in mere seconds, the scent of seawater and roses filling Annabelle's small room.
Willa Deschamp didn't pray to the old gods. She found them tedious and unbearably uninteresting. Plus her chores always took up a bit too much time for her to properly keep track of the power dynamics at play - a fact that she had learned years ago when a pact with Athena had ended with a flock of screeching owls descending on her pomegranate tree. She still wasn't entirely sure what petty squabbles had caused that particular outburst from the two goddesses but she didn't particularly want a repeat. So all offerings, prayers, and pleas for help had come to a decisive end, a concise move that had left her previous patron rather impressed if the sudden sprouting of an olive tree was any indication.
More importantly, she had found that the gods rarely helped in things that amused them. They were old, petty beings, too entertained by the fumblings of mortals to intervene when life became a bit too rough. The things that Willa Deschamp wanted weren't things that the gods would readily give. Cutting ties was easier - better - than continuously begging to beings that would never truly listen.
"Hello, Monsieur Dumbledore." Willa Deschamp always reminded Alicio of a donut - frosty sweetness on the outside with a hearty firmness just beneath the surface. Watching her smile out at the younger Dumbledore brother as he made his way awkwardly across the small bridge and to their open door, he felt slightly bad.
People always perceived Willa to be softer than she actually was - less sharp than what life had carved her into. Most people deserved that razor's edge but Alicio found himself questioning whether this particular man did. There was a smallness to Aberforth that tilted him a bit inward, his face oddly blank but his eyes so sad that the blue seemed to turn like an unhappy sea.
Alicio straightened his tie and picked up his briefcase. "Don't be too hard on him, mon coeur," he whispered into her ear, giving her a light kiss on the cheek before stepping out the door and into the dirt of the gravel just outside.
"Mm," Willa murmured non-committally, her eyes still tracking the man slowly advancing on them. The light caught her eyes in short slips, making them burst like sun-dappled emeralds before sinking back to dark canopies of dense forests. "Have a good day, Alicio."
The big man sighed, his eyes catching Aberforth's briefly in silent encouragement before he apparated to the ministry kicking up a light layer of dust in his wake. Aberforth stopped uncertainly in front of the open door, Willa's willowy frame taking up a decent portion of the entrance, her eyes running over him in a way that felt unnervingly predatory. A slim smile curled her lips, her robes swaying around her form lovingly as she leaned a single shoulder against the frame.
Clara and Annabelle rarely thought of their mother as anything but elegant, unbearably beautiful and unerringly kind. It was this aspect that Clara had taken from her the most. She cherished it, clinging onto that one shared trait with a ferocity that could only come from a child finding something that they admired and wanted to emulate. Annabelle saw that same kindness as well, viewing it as more of a necessary annoyance than anything more serious. She liked her father's brutish behavior better - his grunting and grumbling at demanding tasks, the curses he bellowed whenever something didn't go his way.
However the two viewed their mother, it couldn't be denied that both of them thought of their mother as one, blinding thing: kind.
Aberforth didn't see that as he stared at the woman leaning against the cottage doorframe, geese or ducks or some other loud, peevish muggle bird squawking just behind him. He had been assessed many times in his life but none had felt so cold as Willa's gaze on him, her lips still curled in that strange, sharp smile. Because while Willa Deschamp was kind she was also a mother. Even worse: a mother who actually loved her children. And Aberforth had put himself directly in charge of the wellbeing of one of her children.
"You had a son, Mister Dumbledore?" The question was a knife slipping between Aberforth's ribs, a pair of dark eyes slipping across his mind's eye before he could completely shut it away.
"Please. Aberforth is better." The older wizard winced at the long silence that slipped in after his request. He coughed. "I… Yes. I had a son named Credence."
Willa's eyes drifted over him, her smile slipping away at the pained expression on his face. There might have been a thread of sympathy there in those emerald eyes if there wasn't so much fear and hard-pressed determination overshadowing it. Willa felt like she was just barely holding on to her daughters - each slipping through her fingers like water trying to be contained in the palm of her hand. Obscurals weren't a widely known fact of the wizarding world. Like a vague shadow, it crept at the corners of their world, barely there but something that drew fear from even the most unbelieving witches.
But Willa knew that the chances of survival were very, very low.
It was this fear that dipped her words in pure ice, each syllable hard and cold. "You don't have to talk about him, Mister Dumbledore." Aberforth's face went blank. He was all - too familiar with a parent's desperation. "But I need you to think very hard about what you're about to do. You offered help and I appreciate that but if there is even a moment of hesitation - a smudge of disinterest on your part then you need to laugh. My family isn't poor but we are very desperate-" Her voice cracked on that last word, some of the bone-deep desperation and fatigue slipping in for a moment before she tightened the strings again. "At this moment, I would give anything so that Clara…" Her words wavered once more, her mouth clamping shut for a moment before she continued on a softer breath. "You need to be sure, Aberforth. You need to be sure that you're committed to this."
Just as Willa and ALicio had been so sure about that wand so many years ago. Just as they had been so sure when they had tried to control their daughter's powers. Willa had done so many things in these long, desperate years of hers. For Annabelle. For Clara. For Alicio. It never got easier. Not the restless nights. Not the feeling of utter failure that had come to be a harsh friend at her side. Because she ahd failed. So many times she had failed her daughters. But she could never - would never regret those wild leaps of faith. Even when the doctors shook their heads. Even when they told her that there was nothing to be done, She would continue to leap.
And that was why Aberforth needed to be sure. Because this was a leap - both of them knew it.
Aberforth's striking blue eyes met hers in one unwavering instance, his jaw working before he stepped forward and slipped past her into the house.
Willa sighed out a breath she hadn't known she was holding.
Clara Deschamp stared at Aberforth, both of them caught in a strangely competitive contest for supremacy. All around them the English countryside rolled on, her mother's gardens situated snuggly just behind them. Willa had adamantly told them to go out in the field for their first lesson with the thinly veiled threat that she was in fact, always watching. The place where they stood now looked strangely cut off from the rest of the farm, blanketed in a heating bubble where the horses could graze at fresh green grass. It was a small pen but it allowed enough room for them and the horses off in the distance. Annabelle still hadn't left her room, hacking coughs drifting from beneath her door when Clara had crept past.
"Do you want me to get my wand out?" Clara asked warily, bone-deep exhaustion already starting to wear down at her. She didn't want to look at her wand, much less hold it. Deep fear like no other pounded at her temple/
"No," Aberforth said, his face still strangely blank. He stared at her for a moment longer, his shoulders tense as if he was a doll waiting for instruction. Finally, his limbs came to life, tugging his wand from the rumpled folds of his dusty jacket. He waved it vaguely and two rickety chairs with frayed wicker upholstery plopped unceremoniously into the grass. "Would you like some butterbeer? I brought some just in case…"
Clara eyed the odd setup with growing wariness as Aberforth fumbled around, a few large jugs appearing beside a rather large picnic basket that had clearly seen better days. This was… strange, would be a nice way up putting it. Her mind momentarily drifted to her lessons with Professor Snape.
"I…" Her eyes followed Aberforth as he knelt down, tilting the jug until a stream of amber liquid came pouring out. He didn't so much as glance up, staring very hard at what he was doing. "I'm sorry, Mister Dumbledore-"
"Aberforth."
"Ab-Aberforth," Clara stumbled, feeling vaguely uncomfortable with the informality. "What - what exactly are you doing?"
"Oh." He glanced around, pausing as he cracked open the basket, his eyes darting from the basket to the jug to the filled cups and then back again. "Well… we didn't eat breakfast?"
"Breakfast?" Clara repeated vaguely.
"Breakfast," he parroted back and his salt and pepper brows tipped down as if the word reminded him of his purpose. He pulled out a few croissants that actually looked mouthwateringly good, the brown crust flaking away, glistening with slight butter.
Clara tried to make sense of the whole ordeal, staring cautiously at the amber liquid frothing over the edge of the cups he had set out. Finally, the question burst from her. "I'm sorry - butterbeer? For breakfast?"
He blinked, stilling, those strange, piercing eyes darting to the cups. His brows tipped together in obvious worry. "I didn't… Hog's Head is known for its butterbeer."
Clara searched for something to say, ending up with a lame: "Really."
After settling everything on chipped, slightly dusty plates, Aberforth gestured for Clara to sit down in the chair opposite him, waiting until her butt was in the seat before placing the cold butterbeer in one hand and the croissant in the other.
The young french witch was at an absolute loss for words. She had expected a few things from her meeting with Aberforth Dumbledore - one of them being the current awkwardness. That was no surprise. What she hadn't expected was a picnic.
"How do you like the croissant?" Aberforth eyed her anxiously, his body oddly alert as he watched her chomp through the top layer of crust and into the buttery center. Clara almost closed her eyes at the familiar rich taste of a fresh croissant. She had forgotten the last time that she had had one.
"'S good," she mumbled out, spraying flakes this way and that. She had stuffed the whole thing in her mouth before she could even think, her stomach giving a gurgle of happiness. When was the last time that she had eaten a full meal? She reached forward for another, happily taking a sip of the famous butterbeer. The sweet taste of caramelized sugar and brown butter popped across her tongue, oddly soothing on the gulp of fuzzing liquid. "Mm. That's good too!"
A blush of pure joy colored the older wizard's cheeks, his chest puffing a bit as he settled back in his chair with a small, smug smile. "I'm not good at many things but I am good at cooking. One of my specialties."
There was no more talk after that, just the sound of each of them crunching through the croissants and gulping down most of the butterbeer. By the time only crumbs were left, Clara was happily full, her lap littered with crumbs. Distantly, one of the brown and white ponies that her mother kept gave a high whinny, throwing its head back.
"This farm is very charming," Aberforth murmured, his eyes drifting to where the heat bubble her mother had created ended and the world once again was white with snow. "A lot of powerful magic…"
Hearing it, made a pang of guilt spike through Clara. Yes. Her parents were very powerful. Powerful and influential. Even Annabelle was powerful in her own right - awe-inspiring in her abilities. How sad that Clara was such a blight in comparison.
Her fingers picked absently at a few crumbs that had stuck to her sweater. "Yes. All of my family is."
All except me. A lump formed in her throat, the winter sun far to blinding. She coughed, turning away from the old man so that he wouldn't see the shamed tears burning at her eyes. She was embarrassed - so embarrassed at her own failures.
"You know…" Aberforth started and Clara glanced back to see him staring across the fields, his expression distant. "When my brother finally - Well, he was always so far ahead of me. I was strange and shy and I didn't have very many aspirations of my own. For a while, it was actually nice to live in his shadow. No one quite wanted to bother with little old me. But when he really made it big - ah, that was the worst. Suddenly everyone wanted to know everything. Such a great family with more than one child - there must be another genius in the mix." His lips twisted into a sad smile. "That was my sister. Ariana. She was smarter than the lot of us. Even mighty Albus Dumbledore."
He was silent for so long that Clara thought that that was end. Even that jagged conclusion cut into her, his pain jarringly bare in the winter sun.
"But she died," he hurried out, soft and quick. He cleared his throat harshly, blinking quickly. "They wanted to know about me. And I was strange, silent and awkward. I didn't like people. I didn't like my own brother. He wasn't interested in my life - sometimes I think that he wanted me to be greater. That he…"
In his pause, Clara heard the answer reflected back inside of her. Like calling to like. That he wanted someone who didn't embarrass him so much. That he was so far ahead that he wouldn't be able to see Aberforth even if he did end up looking back. How very sad the youngest Dumbledore looked in that moment, bundled up in a dusty jacket with winter only a few feet away from their sunny pastor.
His words drifted to her, quiet on the breath of a breeze. "I know what it feels like to have family that are so great that the world takes notice."
The wind blew a long sigh across the rolling fields, running her fingers through the leafy hair of trees. The horses pranced in the distance, showing off their flanks in a bid for someone to come along and play with them.
His chair creaked, drawing Clara's eyes to him once more as he rose stiffly to his feet. "I think that's it for today, Miss Deschamp. I'll be back at 9 tomorrow."
Clara watched in mute contemplation as he gathered up the plates and cups before getting up to help him. She thought hard about his words. About the little nagging voice in the back of her head that were growing louder and louder.
"Oh, I almost forgot," Aberforth chirped, reaching deep into the basket and shuffling a few things around. He drew out a large package and a few small envelopes, plopping them onto the grass just at Clara's feet. "These are for you."
The silver-haired girl stared warily down at the pile of mail, shock freezing her face between caution and shock. "Who…"
It seems you made some good friends while you were at Hogwarts," Aberforth observed, hefting the basket up and drawing his wand. His eyes twinkled, catching the sun as he gave her a small smile. "I wouldn't keep them waiting for a reply."
And with that, Aberforth was gone, the chairs and blanket going right along with him. Clara blinked at the spot he had just been and then down at the pile of envelopes.
Please review - I didn't get very many last chapter so I wasn't sure how many of you are still around lol.