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For most Hogwarts students, this 23rd of December was the day to go home for Christmas holidays. Roy would rather have stayed at Hogwarts, but he felt obliged to look after his mother, and he indeed was obliged, as a Prefect, to accompany his schoolmates with the Hogwarts Express. If only his girlfriend had come with him! Arabella, however, would be picked up by her mother at the school gate at half past eight that morning to spend Christmas with her grandparents in Northern England, as she did every year.
"You are going to come with me to the gate," Arabella decided, "I'll introduce you to my mother and tell her that we are together."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" asked Roy doubtfully, for he knew that Arabella's mother was decidedly prudish. "I wonder how she'll take it."
"She will be shocked," Arabella replied calmly. "I don't think she was always like that, but since my father left us she's said to have become terribly embittered. In her view, all men are lechers, always after women to sleep with, then to abandon them with the babies they made them. She probably would love to put me in a witch's cloister to protect me from you libertines," she said, gave him a kiss and lifted her holiday suitcase with a Levitation Charm. Hand in hand, they left the entrance hall of the castle and walked down to the gate. They were in no hurry.
"Ever since she knew I am the only girl in our gang," Arabella continued, "she has been warning me not to take one of you as my boyfriend. Any reason would do: that Julian and Ares are from Death Eater families or that Orpheus is an artist – they're all no good in her eyes. But most of all she warned me about you. Stupidly, I told her years ago about your background, she says your father must have been an even worse swine than mine, of your mother she has an even lower opinion, and she thinks the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."
"Oh dear, and now you're coming along with me of all people. Aren't you scared?"
"Yes, I am" said Arabella, "but I won't show I am. If I'm going to shock her, I'll do it straight away and thoroughly. Just don't care about her prudishness! When you kiss me goodbye – and don't you dare not to! – it has to be so passionate that she doesn't even consider trying to drive a wedge between us."
"Won't be hard to me," Roy said, beaming at her. Then he sighed. "I only wish I had Julian's charm! You should have seen the way he twisted Ginny around his finger when we visited the Potters."
"That way you wouldn't get far with her. My father was also such a charmer, that's the kind of man she's through with. And by the way, I'm very glad," she said acidly, "that you don't have Julian's special talents. A boyfriend that all the Hogwarts girls drool over is something I need about as much as a shot in the head to be happy – one Patricia was enough!"
"But I hope you are aware that no one could be dangerous to you anymore, not even a Veela blood like Patricia, who in turn is adored by all the boys?"
Arabella smiled.
"I wouldn't introduce you to my mum if I had any doubts about it."
Even from a distance, old Mrs Wolfe – she was not yet forty, but compared to Ginny or Hermione she looked like an old woman – was visibly turning pale when she saw her daughter coming hand in hand with a boy.
"Hello, Mum," Arabella greeted her mother, who stood as if petrified, and gave her a little kiss on the cheek. "May I introduce Roy to you, Roy MacAllister? We've been together for six weeks."
Roy bowed politely, offering her his hand. "I am very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Wolfe." It was a polite phrase. No one is pleased to meet someone who stares at you as if you were a poisonous insect, and Roy indeed didn't have Julian's talent for making even the most hackneyed phrase sound cordial.
Arabella's mother ignored the hand and gave her daughter a withering glance.
"Dear, haven't I told you over and over again ..."
"Yes, you did," Arabella cut her off, "and I allowed myself to ignore it."
"You're still a child!" the mother groaned.
"Until the twenty-second of January, then I will be of age," the daughter replied, obviously prepared for any argument.
"I am still able to disinherit you!"
"Which is not really a strong threat when coming from a thirty-nine year old who is not dying very quickly anyway," Arabella shot back.
Roy looked at her admiringly. He already knew she had strong nerves, but this was simply cool. He cleared his throat, forcing Mrs Wolfe to look at him – though with a gaze so icy that even Hermione couldn't have managed better.
"Mrs. Wolfe," he said softly, "I don't think there's anything left for us to do but get used to each other.
"What for?" she asked contemptuously. "And for how long?"
This time Roy and Arabella chorused:
"Forever."
As every year just before Christmas, several hundred shivering couples were waiting for the Hogwarts Express at Platform nine and three-quarters under the odd railway station lights that don't allow you to see anything really bright but everything pin-sharp. Harry had his arm around Ginny's shoulder.
Hermione pretended not to notice them, chatting lively with the Wildfellows and pushing the entire group further and further away from the Potters, as if unintentionally and accidentally. Harry looked at Ron, who was obviously distressed by the situation, gave him a complicit wink, earned an uncertain but grateful smile from him and sank back into his thoughts.
His nervous crisis in November, which he had only hinted at to Roy, was thankfully over. For weeks he had been thinking through every detail of his plan and meticulously making his preparations by day, only to wake up night after night drenched in sweat from nightmares in which he had tortured Hermione, killed her, mistakenly given her the Anti-Imperius and humiliated her in every imaginable way. On nights like this it was good to be able to hold on to Ginny.
Actually, it was Ginny who, over literally dozens of conversations, gradually managed to hammer into his conscious and even subconscious mind that his guilty conscience was misplaced in this case; that he was the one who had to save Hermione because he was the only who could; that it wasn't his fault that he had to use methods such as Stunning Charms, kidnapping and Legilimency; and that, therefore, he had no more reason to be ashamed than a Muggle surgeon who, technically speaking, also had to hurt his patients in order to help them. Perhaps Hermione would never forgive him, but if he watched her soul being strangled by a Dark wizard, he would never be able to forgive himself.
There had been no more DA hours that December when the plan entered its critical phase. The plan would run as agreed, he wouldn't need the Incorruptibles, they had learned everything they might need if he was ...
They won't need it, I won't allow them to need it! Everything will go like clockwork, no one will ever know that there has been a kidnapping at all, and certainly no one will suspect that the Incorruptibles knew about it.
He peered over at Hermione, who had by now managed to get two carriage-lengths between them.
The countdown is running, eighteen days to go until 10th January ...
"Hello Harry," a voice brought him back to earth. It belonged to Draco Malfoy, who had just arrived on the platform with his wife Astoria. Both couples greeted each other in a friendly, though not effusive, manner.
"Well, Draco," Harry asked, "how's it going?"
"I can't complain," the latter replied, "except for the fact that I would like to throw up in the ministry three times a day."
"That bad?"
"Since you left, the Minister has lost all inhibitions, you were probably something like her conscience, now she's letting loose. Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing there anymore, after all I don't need to work, I might as well retire to our Manor. – Speaking of the Manor, let's talk about something more pleasant: Scorpius asked me to invite Albus to stay with us for the rest of the holidays after Christmas. I would very much like to do that, but I wanted to ask you first, maybe you have other plans ..."
"If Albus agrees, we have no problem with that," Ginny answered for both of them, "quite the opposite ..." She interrupted herself, for the Hogwarts Express was just entering, covering all waiting peolpe in a cloud of vapour and drowning out any further words.
No sooner had the deafening screech of the brakes faded than the doors were flung open. Albus, Scorpius and Bernie were the first to jump out of a door halfway between the Potters and the Weasleys onto the platform. After having a quick look around and realising that they had to go in different directions, Albus and Scorpius said goodbye to Bernie and walked towards their parents, chirpy and each with his arm around the other's shoulder.
"My goodness," said Draco, "they look just like we did then. It feels like being on a time journey."
"Yes, but on a time journey to a curious parallel world where we would have been friends," Harry added.
"We could have been," Draco replied, "but you didn't want to."
"I would have wanted if you hadn't been such an arrogant bastard then."
Draco laughed. "I think I educated my son better than my father educated me. Well, mostly education is my wife's job."
Harry laughed too. "Oh, that's why he's so pleasant?"
The two boys had meanwhile joined them and first allowed their mothers to hug them before the fathers greeted them with a quick pat on the back.
"May I take a picture of the two of you?" asked Astoria, who had already taken out her camera. The two happy boys so visibly enjoying their friendship was bound to melt any mother's heart.
"Oh yes, I'll make one in a minute too," Ginny said, but first turned to her eldest who had just joined them. She gave James a particularly loving hug, as she wanted him to feel that she was no longer angry with him.
After all the photos had been taken in all possible line-ups, Draco asked Albus: "We would be delighted if you would spend the time after Christmas until the end of the holidays as a guest of the Malfoy family at the Manor. Would you like to?"
"Of course I would!" shouted Albus enthusiastically without hesitation when it occurred to him that perhaps he should ask his parents first. "Uh, may I?"
"Of course you may," Harry and Ginny laughed.
"So, it's a deal," Draco said while Albus and Scorpius high-fived.
While the two women were still having a little chat, Harry noticed that Roy, who had just finished his patrol and was the last to leave the train, was walking past Hermione's group and came closer. Harry looked around. Roy seemed to be the only student no one was waiting for, no one was waving to and no one was hurrying towards. They had agreed not to reveal publicly how well they knew each other. So Roy called out a curt "Merry Christmas" to the Potters as he passed the Potters and Malfoys, then strode on, alone towards the barrier.
Harry watched him leaving. In fact, he knew nothing about Roy MacAllister. Although they somehow liked each other, Roy had remained a mystery to him. However, when Harry watched him marching alone towards the exit, straight through all the happy families, without a glance to the left or right, part of the mystery unravelled.
Roy was swallowed by the barrier.