An End and a Beginning
The following Tuesday, Roy was so mild in his happiness that he didn't even feel the desire to annoy his Muggle Studies teacher – only once, when she raved about helicopters, he interjected a sarcastic "Try playing Quidditch with them", an unusually gentle mockery by his standards. Apart from that, he and Arabella did not take too much notice of Richardson's lessons. They were cooing quietly and discreetly with each other, and if Richardson noticed it at all, she let them. Anything suited her better than Roy taking part in the lessons.
"Do you know that I love you very much?" he whispered in Arabella's ear.
She grinned and whispered back: "You didn't leave me a chance to ignore it, my bear."
He held her hand under the desk and looked, not without pride, at the small emerald-jewelled gold ring he had given her yesterday for her seventeenth birthday. He had almost spent all his savings from four years of holiday jobs for it, but he didn't care – for Arabella it just had to be gold!
Their friends, with whom they usually celebrated their birthdays, had only smiled in understanding when Arabella told them that this time, she wanted to spend the evening alone with Roy. Roy had asked the house elves to conjure a dinner for them both in the Room of Requirement, and the helpful elves had done a great job: The Room of Requirement was all bathed in romantic light and the food would have been worthy of a first-class gourmet temple. The two of them stayed there all night.
The world could be so lovely that even Richardson was bearable. After all, Roy thought, she only means well in her own way.
His happiness came to a sudden end.
When there was a knock at the door and McGonagall appeared in the doorway of the classroom, asking him gently and with an earnest expression, "Mister MacAllister, would you please come out for a moment?", he knew what had happened.
"Come with me, please," he whispered to his girlfriend. Under the worried glances of their classmates, they left the classroom. McGonagall waited until they had closed the door behind them. Roy held on to Arabella's hand.
"I received a letter today from a certain Father Matthew via our Muggle Mail Contact Point. Roy, I am very sorry to inform you that your mother passed away the night before last."
Roy did not answer at first, he just stared into the Headmistress' face. It wasn't really a shock; actually, he had foreseen it and asked Father Matthew to look after his mother every now and then so that she would have someone to talk to as long as she was still alive. Nevertheless, there was something incredibly definitive about McGonagall's message.
"Thank you," he finally said. "I suppose I should go to London now?"
McGonagall nodded. "The Father asks you to come to his cloister, he has arranged for the transfer of the body there, assuming your consent, and offers you to have your mother buried in the cloister cemetery." She handed the letter to Roy.
"How long will you give me off?"
"Take as much time as you need."
"May Arabella come with me?"
McGonagall hesitated for a moment, but then said to Arabella: "You are a good student, Miss Wolfe, I think you can cope with a few days of missed classes. So yes."
"I'm making sure that our friends take notes for us and bring us the teaching materials," Arabella replied.
"If there's anything else I can do for you, Roy ..." Roy shook his head. "If there is, I'm available at any time. You can find me in my office."
When she shook hands with both of them, she murmured to Arabella: "Take good care of him, I'm counting on you." Then she headed off towards her office. The school bell signalled the end of the lesson.
Their classmates came out of the classroom. They had already guessed what had happened. When Roy confirmed it, Julian hugged him.
"I'm so terribly sorry for you, I don't even know what to say."
"I don't know, too," Roy replied in a low voice, "it's just good that you're here."
Now the other Slytherin and Ravenclaw sixth-years offered their condolences, even Richardson did. Patricia was the last. There were tears in her eyes, but she also seemed a little hesitant and insecure. Only when Arabella nodded to her almost imperceptibly did she dare to hug Roy tightly.
"Thank you," he said tonelessly, and then aloud to the others still standing around him: "Get to your classes. I'll be back in a few days."
Arabella briefly took Julian aside and asked him to record the lessons and not to forget the Patronus teaching for James and Victoire.
When the others had left and she was standing alone with Roy in the school corridor, she just said: "Let's go."
Silently they walked towards the Slytherin rooms. Just before reaching the common room, Roy stopped, looking gloomily at the floor:
"She was my only relative, at least the only one I know of. I've got no family left, no blood relatives at all."
Arabella put her arms around his neck, stroked his hair and said dryly:
"That's something we can change."
It took him a moment to realise what she was talking about, then he hugged her even tighter and whispered:
"But only with you. No other woman may and will become the mother of my children."
"No other man the father of mine," she whispered back.
Her body felt so good ...
"My God, how impious!" he finally said. "My mother has just died, and we are thinking about making babies!"
"That's not impious, my little bear. That's simply life, rebelling against death." They were silent for a while, then she whispered: "With the death of your mother, something has come to an end. You will set a new beginning."
She gently released herself from his arms, smiling. "But not right now."
The old monastery building, which with its arches and cross vaults reminded her from within a little of Hogwarts, and the Benedictine monks in their black habit seemed far less strange to Arabella than she had feared they would. Basically, she thought, she and Roy in their black Hogwarts robes actually fitted in quite well here. The world of the Church and the wizarding world obviously had some things in common: the earnest style, the rootedness in age-old traditions, the self-confident contempt of a Muggle world that felt the freer the faster the fashions were changing; the more enlightened the more they understood about the manipulation of humans, for they confused it with understanding humans themselves. The less they respected their own past, the more they believed they had a future.
To Arabella, the pure-blooded witch, it had always been hard to understand why a wizard like Roy had felt attracted to Christianity of all religions, and even in its most uncompromising form, and why he had been able to choose a priest, of all people, as a fathers' substitute. He had tried to explain it to her, but she had believed that he simply had no choice. But now, walking at his side through the corridors of the ancient abbey, she understood how well this suited him – and not only him. She herself, Roy and these monks – they all were living Middle Ages, embodiments not of backwardness but of perpetuity.
One day, she thought, when all those Grangers and Wildfellows and their megalomaniac plans will be nothing but an eerie rumour from a distant past, Hogwarts will still be standing, the Sorting Hat will still be doing his job, and these monks will still be living by their thousand-year-old rules. Hermione has no chance. She has read incredibly many books, and yet she literally knows nothing at all!
She thought it with satisfaction.
Father Matthew led them into a side room of the abbey chapel where the body of Pamela MacAllister was laid out. On her chest was the eternal bouquet of flowers Roy had given her for Christmas.
"Thank you, Father."
Roy looked at his dead mother's face for a long time, then kissed her.
"Did you still have an opportunity to speak with her?" he asked the priest.
"Yes, I had," said Matthew, "she blamed herself heavily for not having been a good mother to you."
Roy took a breath. Control yourself; you are a Slytherin.
"I told her she didn't have to blame herself. I hope you did so, too?"
"I told her that she had done everything within her power. I told her that you know, and that our Lord also knows."
Control yourself; you are a Slytherin!
"Did you administer the sacraments to her?"
"Of course. – I know that I can say it to you without you taking it as a superficial comfort saying: Without prejudging God's decision, I am convinced that she is better off where she's now than she was here."
Control yourself; you are a Slytherin!
"When is the funeral?"
"As soon as I have said the requiem – and then, whenever you wish. Do you want to invite relatives?"
"We don't have any relatives."
"The last thing she said to me, and thus probably the last thing she said at all, was that she was glad you found the right girl and that she would still like to meet your bride ..."
Control yourself; you are a Slytherin!
"Arrie, please take her hand!"
Arabella took the cold right hand of the dead, bent down to her and whispered: "Thank you. Thank you for him."
"Please close the coffin, Father." Roy gazed straight ahead while he spoke, as if in a trance. "Say the requiem mass, then we bury her as close to Father Patrick as possible. And thank you for offering the cloister graveyard, I know well it's not usual. Oh yes, and I would be grateful to your brethren if they attended the funeral. Afterwards, Arabella and I will return to London to stay at my mother's flat. We'll come back tomorrow, I suppose there is paperwork to be done?"
"Indeed there is," Matthew said. "And I suggest you spend the night right here with us."
"Father," Roy said, still gazing into an imaginary distance, "I want to have Arabella with me tonight, and I don't want to burden your conscience. You see, we are an unmarried couple ..."
"Don't worry about my conscience, Roy," the priest cut him in, "I don't feel that you are going to indulge in sin today. Of course, we have a room for both of you."
During the requiem mass and during the funeral, which was in fact attended by all the monks, Roy still held on to Arabella's hand and his mantra, "Control yourself; you are a Slytherin!"
When he at last was alone with her, he no longer controlled himself.