"Tell her. If anything happens to me".
If they weren't direct friends of Dorcas, they were friends of friends of friends who loved the person before them enough to uphold what became a long line of people who needed to pass on the information to a woman named Petal until the line of people became so long that people carrying it did not know or had not been told how important the name was. That calling this woman by this name was crucial information and not a misunderstanding or incidental information. There were a strange number of very skilled, highly trained, over competent wizards and witches who took on the responsibility to find this woman and yet only one had. It was only by coincidence that the man now sitting at her kitchen table had taken it upon himself not out of love for the people around him but as a point of curiosity. Why could they not find this one person? This one person didn't have magic of her own. Or did she? Did she? Why had no one ever considered the possibility? Had they? Yet it was a coincidence, the most common magic, one not under the direct control of wizards, and as unwieldy and unpredictable in the hands of muggles, that he had found her.
Alastor knew that Philippa had the portkey now because Dorcas had told him. He was the second person after Lupin who had been told directly to go find Philippa, in case. Dorcas at this time was avoiding Alastor because he needed her to go into hiding for her safety. That was when it started. No, it actually started sooner than that but she was avoiding him because she didn't want to listen to whatever new argument he had come up with in the space of time that she made herself scarce but this was urgent and important. She told him that she didn't want to discuss anything else but what to do if something were to happen to her. You know what Philippa looks like, she knows you. That she had told Lupin also. Find her and tell her.
Lupin had been told because Dorcas knew then that he had the skill and that he knew all of England's dark and light places. If Lupin couldn't find her, Alastor would but they couldn't. So Lupin told Peter who he knew also loved Philippa and could be trusted and could fit into small places. Alastor told Edgar and both tried until, well. Edgar had told his sister, Amelia who had also been at the party and knew what she looked like, though hadn't stayed long enough to speak with her. After the death of her brother, she became obsessed with trying to find this woman she barely knew and she also told Emmeline who already knew because, of course she did. Emmeline told Kingsley because she didn't have anyone else to tell and Kingsley told Lydia who had been worried since she had stopped receiving letters from Philippa and had her own recent letters forwarded back to her. So she told Prisha who told Daniel. Lydia also told a ward sister at St. Mungo's and that sister told two other people one of whom was actually a sister of the ward sister. And it was through one of these people that he first heard Philippa's name. And then he too, eventually was asked by both Alastor and Kingsley directly which was strange. He found very many people were looking for this woman and he wanted to know why they couldn't find her. He was very busy collecting memories and trying to find a way to win a war that he believed might be unwinnable but something told him to find out why, that this would reveal something to him or not, and he always listened to this voice. It was this same voice that led him to sit through a radio program about a garden of talking flowers years ago that he found delightful. He had stood and listened to the whole program having caught it near the end and then heard it again and this program was a comfort during a particularly exhausting time in his life and this voice told him to find the name of the program and he had forgotten it.
One of these wizards had called the woman before him Dorcas's sister. But Dorcas hadn't any sisters. No brothers. Really, no family to speak of which is what made her good at her job or that's what the rumor was. She had nothing or very little to lose. The woman in front of her being one of them. He had to follow her from work several times. He knew this is where she stayed, he knew that he would have to approach her carefully and as was his way, he spoke to the old channels and also by coincidence and a stroke of luck her old nickname since in another stroke of luck, no one had told him directly to call her Petal. That would have been easy. He didn't like easy. He didn't trust easy. Once a long time ago he thought something could be so simple and it broke what remained of his family and that dovetailed into breaking a lot of other people's homes because of what he thought he understood. Now? There had been a radio playing when he first saw her. She had smiled and hummed along with the tune walking past him from the hospital. She hadn't heard the show in such a long time, neither had he.
Philippa would have pretended to be someone else which in fact happened once. He had called her name and she had pretended she was someone else. Dorcas' instructions were simple. If Philippa didn't recognize the person, they were not to be trusted. If they wore these symbols they were not to be trusted. If they spoke this and on and on and on and since their last meeting to now she had forgotten many of the details and was comfortable now to live, to wander, to be. The threat it appears had passed, until he showed up. She hoped the rest of her life wouldn't be this and them forever. But one cannot not know. Or maybe she could ask this man? How he could not know this information, that they weren't sisters, but know what to call her did not cross her mind. She was aware near the end that Dorcas must be powerful. She witnessed someone half bow to her once on their way out and thought this not only excessive but funny until she learned the details. She always wanted to know the details. Not this time. What she did not know was that this man was also powerful. He was even more skilled than his friend and that was the only reason he was there.
"When did you come back here?" He asked.
This man asked a lot of agitating questions. Hadn't he said he just wanted to ask one question? He sounded like a social worker and this irritated her enough to dull some of her fear and its familiarity compelled her to answer. The social workers at the hospital were worn down but they asked questions to understand so they could help. Maybe he was something of a social worker?
"Months," This is not the answer the man expected, Philippa could tell.
"I thought you said you lived in Ireland."
"No, thats where I was moved, relocated. I might have been there for only a matter of days before I came back into the country." She avoided using the proper terminology. She was tired.
Those days had been very long which accounted for the lapse in her judgement of time. but everyone she was supposed to meet, everyone she encountered did their job. She was fed then moved and then told she could sleep here and move there and take this with you and talk to this person. Days? It had been more than two weeks. Her mind consolidated the time out of necessity. The man asked for more tea and while she had not seen this man take a sip, the cup was empty before she reflexively moved to get more. Instead she stayed seated.
"I know who you are."
"You do?"
"I don't know exactly, but I know what you might be capable of doing and that you don't need me to get a cup of tea, to have my back turned or anything like that, so even though you don't need to tell me I'd like to know why you're here and to tell you to leave." Everything Philippa said came out in one long sentence.
The man smiled, "I'm not here to hurt you." He replied.
"That's not what I said." Philippa did not smile.
"I'm here to tell you about your friend"
"And you have. Yes, i think its time for you to go now."
.He bowed his head gently. Philippa noticed his teacup was full again but didn't notice when he had filled it again.
"I will leave but i would like to know the timeline also. I'm afraid I have not been completely honest with you. You see, many people have tried to find you and tell you and none of them, including me initially, could even find you to let you know. If you have been here all along, I'm trying to understand how this could be." He certainly did work for a social service. The even tone in his voice, his patience. She understood how some of her patients felt during such a soft-tempered interrogation. She wanted to roll her eyes.
Philippa considered all of the people trying to find her and couldn't because of some reason or another. All of the potential reasons she could imagine, she wanted their source to go away, to vanish as if by. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time because of the thought.
She took a steady deep inhalation and answered, "I went to Ireland via portkey. I moved around and I came back into the country using the same portkey and moved and moved and moved and lived with someone shortly and that person helped me find a flat, this one where I have been almost two months. There it is." She unloaded this information on the same exhalation out and she felt lighter.
Had she said portkey? How? He would investigate later. He could tell she was getting tired. News moved very quickly during a war not all of it was accurate but the fact that Dorcas had been killed was accurate. It was known that Lord Voldemort was looking for Dorcas and had killed her. That was also accurate. Once the news had been discovered, confirmed the Order of the Phoenix was informed, what was left of it, and that news spread through the allied channels and in days maybe a week at the most, someone was looking for Philippa and no one had stopped. There might be someone looking for her right now and she had been in England for months and this flat for weeks at least.
"Thank you, Ms. Groves." The man said instead.
Then she felt it. It felt like a small knock on the door of her mind. She was suddenly in a smaller house on the inside side of the door and she knew the man was standing on the other side and that she could open the door or not. She did not. It was better than last time. At least he knocked, she thought.
He had never encountered anything like this. He didn't know muggles could do this at all. He only tried to make his job faster but instead of wandering around in her mind he had encountered a door made out of lead. He had to knock and from his side he saw a little sliding gate with her eyes peering through and she scrutinized him looking him up and down and her eyes registered a type of displeasure or disgust. When the little door was slid shut he found himself back in the kitchen again. Again, he thought, she is not a confirmed muggle. And yet could a muggle also be an occlumens? This was occlumency (wasn't it?) but he had never experienced it this way. And again, he didn't think it on the top layer of his mind but deep down in the wells of knowing himself a little jet that moved the currents of who he was. You can't even tell if she's a witch or a muggle. You recognize a part and not the whole. You need more information. Said differently, he appreciated that this would not be easy. Reading her thoughts would have been easy. He understood something else that day about people and, though small, he would add it to the small ball of hate he nurtured for himself that he watered occasionally in the hopes of growing a garden of sorts. Instead, and someday soon he knew, it would melt into sludge that would coat every corner of his life until he couldn't live with himself or the war ate them all whole. Sludgey corners and all.
"It's time for you to go now."
Did she understand what had happened, he wondered?
"Good day Mr.-" she said as she got up from the table. She did not know his name. He had in fact told her while she was walking in but she did not remember it nervous yet reassured as she was.
"Albus. Dumbledore." The man said getting up from the table. Outstretching a hand that she did not take.
Not these ridiculous names again, thought Philippa. She wouldn't let herself be bothered by what had just not happened. She needed to get him out of the house and he knew that. He dropped his hand and took no offense to this knowing what he had tried and failed to do and also feeling no shame in having tried.
"Ms. Meadowes, she was very talented. A very good witch. Dorcas was an excellent witch."
They were at the door now. Philippa had not been prepared to hear Dorcas' name in past tense. That is what hit her. That's what drew the tears to her eyes and set them sparkling in her face. And the witch part, she did not care one way or another.
"She, she valued friendship and goodness. She. Thank you." Philippa opened the door.
"Thank you for everything you've told me today, Ms. Groves. Would you like me to visit again?"
"That won't be necessary Mr.- Sorry, what was it?"
"No need to apologize. Albus." He said as he surveyed the door frame slightly distracted. He turned on the other side and smiled a thinned, wan smile. He tipped a hat on his head that Philippa hadn't notced him carrying. He lighted down the steps looking both ways as he crossed the street with his long legs, like a determined spider. He did look back over his shoulder a glance at the building and not at her, the smile was gone replaced by the look of concern and intensity he had while studying the door. She watched him walk in the direction of the hospital until he was part of the crowd and she stood there closing the door gently behind her.
"No one could find you." She had been protected all along and felt some frustration which would come later in feeling that she had wasted all that time afraid for nothing.
It seemed unfair that someone could bring that much sadness into a room, into a house and then leave without looking over their shoulder at her. She understood she told him not to come back but he could have asked, en route, out of the door, "are you okay with all of that?" Even if he hadn't waited for the answer. Maybe he wasn't a social worker after all.
Philippa opened a small door in the kitchen and shut the door behind her she pushed on a wall and it opened up silent to another small hall which she crawled into. She went down this hall and opened up to the space between the flats. This space had originally been used as a space to get to the outside windows easier for cleaning. It had been repurposed during a war to keep the neighbors of the flat in communication and access to each others homes to hide in if there were raids. The landlady, Robin would have told her this if Philippa had asked. Philippa went up a steep flight of steps and knocked on a door even smaller than the one she'd gone through. She opened the door to a furnished space. She went through the flat and down a flight of carpeted steps where she ran into her landlady, the person she wanted to speak with. This was not an emergency but she really needed someone to talk to.
