Chapter 6
5 October, 1957 Watermead, Aylesbury
Dorcas placed a grapefruit half on the table and turned to the coffee pot to pour herself a cup. She ran through a mental inventory of appointments today for herself and for Cal. He was going to be in the lab downstairs until one and then he would be at St. Mungo's for two procedures until after dinner time. She had a day filled with client files and memory analysis for her psychiatry practice. She needed to finish reviewing one last memory for Theresa Allen. She had a pressing deadline with Theresa's solicitor.
She sat with her coffee and Cal passed her a letter.
"From our girl," he said, having just finished reading Ryann's letter. He disappeared behind the Muggle newspaper while she picked up the letter excitedly.
Scanning its contents, Dorcas was cheered by the tone. Ryann was settling in and making friends. Like her mother, she was sorted into Ravenclaw. And, like her mother, Potions was her subject.
"She loved flying lessons," Dorcas said aloud, surprised.
"Like her father," Cal folded down the newspaper and beamed.
"All done, Mama," was Wren's contribution to the morning conversation.
Dorcas finished reading and laid the letter down at her place setting. Hopping lightly to her feet, she smoothed her yellow checked button down and navy pedal pushers. Taking her plate and Wren's she planted a kiss on the crown of her youngest's head.
"What a good eater," Dorcas cooed. "Get your shoes on. We've got to get you to Mrs. Peake."
"I've finished too," said Cal, collecting his plate from the table as well as the ones in Dorcas's hands. He proffered a cheek for his reward.
Dorcas planted a light kiss there, but not light enough. Her lipstick left a smudge. She wiped it and with a playful smack on his rear sent him to the sink with the dishes.
"Check out the headline," Cal called over his shoulder, indicating the discarded newspaper with his handful of plates.
She picked it up and scanned while Cal did the washing up.
"Russia Wins Space Race," was proclaimed in bold across the top of the page.
She read the article with interest. She was impressed. Yes, she knew that she should be shocked like a good capitalist, but she could not help the awe that she felt. Awe and vindication. To all of the Muggle-hating idiots she had ever encountered here and in the States, here was proof. Muggles had their own kind of magic. There was no difference really in the two. Magic came in many forms.
There was a picture of Sputnik beside the article. She couldn't take her eyes off of the alien ball with antennae sticking out at all angles.
She opened the page and read on.
From a smaller article, buried in a corner under the continued feature story she saw a face that looked familiar to her. It was the face of a man she had known in her past. A face that was cold and dead on a London sidewalk.
Her eyes darted across the page, reading quickly. There was no name. The man had been killed two nights ago in a rougher part of the city. He was listed as a nameless tramp.
"Cal," she said, an anxious feeling rising in her.
"Yes?" Cal answered, returning to the dining room, dish towel thrown over his shoulder.
"Look at this," she pointed to the tiny item at the corner of the third page. "He looks familiar."
Cal took the paper from her and adjusted his horn rimmed glasses. "You know who it looks like to me?" He did not take his eyes off of the newsprint picture.
"Gemma's old boyfriend."
Cal nodded as Dorcas supplied the answer for him.
"Callum Sayre," he confirmed. "He was the same year as me. Slytherin. One of those superior pureblood idiots."
Dorcas nodded her agreement.
"I remember him prattling on endlessly, the year the Chamber was opened. 'Purebloods have nothing to fear from Slytherin's monster', and all that." Cal's voice faded out as they exchanged a glance. They rarely talked about that particular shared nightmare from their past.
Dorcas had to look away, pretend to straighten the placemats again on the dining room table. Her heart was beating fast. She could hear it in her ears. She studiously avoided those events in the past, revisiting them could not help in any way. The dead were still dead. The guilty still alive and free.
"Didn't he disappear a couple of years ago?" Cal tapped the picture, looking to Dorcas for confirmation.
Dorcas remembered a letter from Cherry mentioning this. She always kept Dorcas informed of the gossip from their Hogwarts cohorts.
"Ready, Mama," Wren had announced. Her shoes were on the wrong feet. Her stuffed rabbit in her hand.
Her daughter's voice pulled her from her musings. She bent to right the shoes on Wren's feet and then bustled her out the door.
"Be right back," she called out to Cal, who was still looking at the newspaper.
Hours later, Dorcas was in her office bent over the ceramic basin. She was plunging her face into the faint grayish white gossamer mist contained therein.
Theresa's memory floated in the misty, watery smoke. This was the last memory that Dorcas had to visit. It was the scene of the crime. She looked over her notes. She knew what to expect. And she felt confident that she knew what she was looking for, the pattern that she had spotted in the previous five memories.
Dorcas felt herself drift slowly into the scene from above. She was standing in the corner of what once was a cozy sitting room. Furniture had been toppled, pictures smashed in their frames. Theresa's nose was bloodied and the sleeve of her house dress was torn. Her husband, Jim was rounding on her, yelling at her.
"You won't leave," Jim was saying. "You'll never leave."
He stepped closer. Theresa backed away sobbing and trembling.
It happened quickly, Theresa crouched, anticipating a blow that was about to land.
The ceiling caved in over their heads at the same time. Heavy timbers and debris fell on Jim's head, toppling him, burying him.
Staring in horror, across the dust and rubble, Dorcas and Theresa could make out the small form of a boy. William, Theresa and Jim's six year old son, stood in the doorway, a witness to his father's horrible death.
Dorcas knew, because she had gone over this episode multiple times in her meetings with Theresa. Theresa believed that she cast a nonverbal spell without the use of her wand, which had lain at Dorcas's feet in the corner throughout the memory.
Dorcas was alert. She was looking for the same sign, the same scent on the air as she had smelled in the previous memories. She looked for the telltale glitch. The one that hinted at the fallacy of the scene she had just witnessed.
The scent came, cigarette smoke and an overwhelming cloud of cologne. Dorcas knew the glitch would come next, something that would be just a little out of place, a little out of step. And she saw it when William entered the room and called for his mother: a skip in his step, like a film that had not been set on the reel securely. It was minute, nearly imperceptible. But Dorcas had seen the same type of incongruous motion, smelled the same smell in five previous memories.
She knew that this was an altered memory. And she believed she knew who killed Jim Allen.
:::
Dorcas carefully packed up the Pensieve, memory fluid, and Theresa's memory phials into her Chanel bag. She'd placed Undetectable Extension Charms on most of her handbags. It was better than carrying a diaper bag everywhere when her girls were babies. It also came in handy for work. Less bulky than a briefcase or a satchel.
She added a Cushioning Charm to this bag because it held such delicate items.
Grabbing the gray cardigan from the back of her desk chair, she dashed into the hallway and down to the basement laboratory.
Cal was carefully ladling an iridescent green liquid evenly into three beakers.
"I've got to run to Theresa's solicitor's office in Diagon Alley." She was pulling on the cardigan.
Thelonious Monk wafted from the Hi-Fi on a shelf behind Cal. She wondered for a moment if he'd heard her over the jazz refrain.
"Ok," he looked up. "I'm at the hospital this evening."
Dorcas was brought up short, one arm halfway through a sleeve.
"Wren," she sighed, thinking quickly.
"Let me call Cherry or Anneliese, see if they can watch her." Dorcas flew back up the stairs, feeling like a bad mother for forgetting momentarily that she had a child that needed looking after.
Hanging up the phone a moment later, Dorcas heard the doorbell ring.
She crossed the sitting room and into the foyer to answer. Mrs. Peake greeted her with a smile, releasing Wren's hand. Dorcas's daughter sped past her and shot out into the backyard to play in the sandbox.
Dorcas opened her mouth to ask if she could impose on Mrs. Peake for an hour or two more as Anneliese had not answered the phone.
"Have a good afternoon, dear. I'm off to Bridge Club."
That put an end to that idea.
She waited for Mrs. Peake's form to retreat from the sidewalk again before taking her wand from her back pocket. She muttered Expecto Patronum and a little shimmering bird shot from the end of her wand and disappeared out of the open kitchen window.
Cherry was on her front step moments later.
"You called. I came."
"Thank you, Cherry. You're a lifesaver!"
Dorcas ran into her office grabbing the carefully packed bag and flinging a coat over her arm. "I'll be back in about two hours."
Cherry waved her off, fiddling with the coffee maker.
Dorcas wondered what sort of state she would come home to find her kitchen in after Cherry Weasley had been alone in it for two hours.
:::
5 October, 1957 Diagon Alley, London
Dorcas stepped through the wall in the back courtyard of the Leaky Cauldron. Diagon Alley was bustling around midday.
There was a chill in the air, not uncommon for early October. Dorcas slipped one arm into her coat, jostling her bag and wand from one hand to the other as she pulled the other arm in and flipped up her collar against the wind.
She was not really dressed for a chilly, misty fall day, she thought as she looked down at her canvas flats and the legs of her casual trousers that terminated three-quarters of the way down her calf.
She held open her handbag and pointed her wand at it. "Accio business card," she muttered into her Chanel.
A crisp card sailed from the depths of her bag into her wand hand. She closed the bag and nestled the strap into the crook of her arm.
She looked at the card. She flipped it from one side to the other.
On one side in neat professional script, the card read:
Gideon Prewett
Solicitor
There was a Muggle London address (not far from where she grew up on the East End) and a telephone number.
Flipping the card over, it was blank at first. Then information began to appear. The same name, different title. Wizengamot Defense Counselor followed by a Diagon Alley address.
The card made Dorcas smile. She had an affinity for those, like her, who lived with one foot in the Muggle world and one foot in the Wizarding world. For her, this was just the way she was raised. For Cal, it was a conscious choice, a thumbing of the nose to those who were vocal against magical and non-magical fraternization. She wondered about this Prewett and his views on the matter.
She knew Gideon Prewett only through correspondence. She had never been to his offices, Muggle or Magical. He had reached out to her about Theresa Allen's case after following some of her work in America.
He'd been hired to help Theresa regain custody of her son, William. The boy had been removed from his mother's care following his father's death. Theresa had not spent any time in prison for the murder. Prewett had gotten her sentence reduced by arguing Involuntary Manslaughter.
The Wizengamot had ruled the death accidental, but had removed the boy amid safety concerns. Theresa had caused her husband's death through accidental magic. She did not use a wand. The issue of whether her volatile emotional state might present a danger to the boy seemed to have been decided against her.
It was unusual for an adult witch or wizard to perform magic without the aid of a wand. Without a wand, spells and enchantments could become unfocused and uncontrollable. The average magical person could not perform such magic. There was a taboo surrounding those who were capable of such things.
That's where Dorcas had come in. She was asked to evaluate Theresa's emotional state and to investigate its link to her magical capabilities. Dorcas inquired about other instances of uncontrollable, wandless magic. Theresa could not think of another time in which she had performed magic in this way in her adult life.
That's when Dorcas had asked her about the memories leading up to her husband's death. A death that, as Dorcas had discovered in the Pensieve, Theresa was not responsible for.
She crossed the street to a row of shops with offices on the second floor. She climbed the stairs around the side of the building and entered a narrow, dark hallway.
The office she sought was at the end of the hallway and had the solicitor's name painted on the frosted glass of the door. She knocked once and heard the office's occupant cross the room.
Prewett opened the door and stepped aside for her with a greeting. She'd been expected because she'd sent a note.
Shaking the hand of the man that she had exchanged many professional communications with, Dorcas noted that he was younger than she would have thought. He was tall and broad shouldered like her husband. He had strawberry blond hair that was a little long and untidy. He swept it out of his eyes and tucked it behind an ear.
He took Dorcas's coat.
Gesturing to a seat across the desk from his own, he shifted a stack of files there and dusted off the cushion for her.
Dorcas sat, getting right to the point. "Thanks for seeing me on short notice."
"Not a problem. We both want to help Theresa," Gideon shrugged, taking his seat and patiently waited for her to pull the contents of her bag out and arrange them on his desk between them.
As she set up the Pensive, the jar of gray mist, and Theresa's memories, she also handed Gideon a waiver that Theresa signed giving him permission to view and discuss the memories that she'd shared with Dorcas.
"Shall we?" Dorcas stood and paused over the basin of swirling fog and memory.
With a nod, Gideon stood and they tumbled in tandem into the first of the six memories.
:::
Some time had passed, Dorcas was not sure how much, when she and Gideon emerged from the Pensieve.
"There was a glitch in every one. And that smell." Gideon sat back in his chair and looked out the window, lost in thought momentarily.
Dorcas, using her wand, siphoned the last memory off of the swirling mist, placing it carefully back into its labeled phial.
"I have a suspicion about what that could mean," Dorcas hedged, packing the items back into her handbag and reinforcing the Cushioning Charm. "I am seeing Theresa tomorrow to review the memories. I think she's a candidate for the Ex-Nebulae Elixir."
Gideon nodded, shuffling papers, looking for a form.
"Can you petition the Wizengamot for a hearing?" Dorcas shrugged into her coat and took up her bag as she spoke.
Gideon nodded, he was already writing, anticipating her request.
"I'll let myself out." Dorcas opened the office door. She turned back to Gideon Prewett, who was concentrating on drafting the request. "Send me word when the date is set. In the meantime, I will be working with Theresa to see what I can recover."
:::
Dorcas exited the building into the dim sunlight and a chilly wind. She fastened the buttons on her light blue overcoat and hurried across the street toward the Leaky Cauldron where she could exit out into the Muggle world again.
She passed through the wall and into the courtyard once more. Pushing open the pub's door she came up short when she heard a booming voice from her past.
Rubeus Hagrid was sitting with his back to the door that Dorcas had opened, singing loudly with two scruffy-looking wizards. All three seemed to be deep into their cups already.
Dorcas retreated quickly into the alley way, letting the door close behind her. She placed a steadying hand against the stone exterior of the building and tried to catch her breath. She was deciding if she could walk unnoticed across the pub and out onto the pavement of Charing Cross without notice. She cracked the door to judge the distance.
"Who are you hiding from, Birdie?"
Dorcas jumped and cursed, closing her eyes and placing her hand to her chest. Her heart was beating rapidly.
Tom laughed at her reaction, reaching around her and cracking the door the way she had done.
"Tom," Dorcas said, fixing him with a stunned stare. "You scared me."
"Clearly," Tom agreed.
"Are you hiding from Hagrid?" There was surprise and amusement in his voice. "What? Don't tell me the two of you had a secret fling and it ended badly and now you can't face him in public," he invented, still laughing. "Yikes," he added, shaking the mental image from his mind.
"Don't be stupid, Tom," Dorcas said, dismissing his theory.
He looked at her, sobering. "Why avoid Hagrid? What did he do?"
Dorcas looked around Tom and back up the alleyway. She could leave Diagon Alley another way. She didn't have to pass through the pub.
"He didn't do anything." Dorcas said, exasperated. "It's what I did."
Tom seemed to comprehend. She knew he would. "That was a long time ago, Birdie."
"I can't face him, Tom," Dorcas said, meeting his eyes finally. "I can't go in there."
Tom smiled. "You're a witch, right?"
"Huh?" Dorcas was confused.
Tom shook his head as if he were indulging a little child. He grabbed her elbow and Disapparated.
:::
5 October, 1957 Galbraith Street, Poplar, London
Tom and Dorcas emerged into a small but tidy sitting room. She felt Tom release her arm.
She surveyed the unknown space. There was a worn leather armchair and a small table laden with books and a reading lamp. A fireplace and two more chairs beside it. The space was neat and organized, but spartan, a reflection of the man who inhabited it. Behind her was a small kitchen with a table and two chairs. A closed door beyond that. Dorcas imagined a similarly neat and orderly bedroom behind it.
She turned to Tom. He was removing his coat and hat, placing them on a rack beside the door. Taking his wand from an inside pocket of the jacket he wore, he pointed it at the fireplace.
"Incendio."
"Please, make yourself at home," he said to Dorcas as he reached for her coat.
She slipped off the coat and handed it to him, taking a seat at the small table in the corner of his kitchen. The space was so spotless that it gave the appearance of having no occupant at all.
Tom walked past the table and Dorcas to a cupboard and removed two glasses and something amber colored in a bottle.
He took the seat opposite Dorcas and poured two tumblers of the liquid.
"It's not even one in the afternoon, Tom," she chided, but secretly she would welcome the drink to soothe her nerves.
"It's after noon," Tom shrugged with unapologetic logic. He handed her a glass and took up his own, touching it to his lips. He smiled and then tipped the glass, drinking.
She took a sip too. It fortified her.
"What was that back there?" Tom asked. He continued to sip and to stare at her.
"I didn't know what to say…" Dorcas began. But she couldn't fit all of the regret that she felt at seeing Rubeus into words. "What could I possibly ever say to…"
"He doesn't blame you," Tom filled the silence that trailed in the wake of Dorcas's words. "Hagrid never holds a grudge against anyone for anything." He shrugged.
It was a simple statement, that last, but accurate. Rubeus Hagrid was a singularly unique individual in many ways. The fact of which made Dorcas even more sorry for the role that she had played in his dismissal from school.
"If anything, he should be angry with me. But he isn't." Tom emptied his glass and poured another. "He doesn't know anything about your involvement."
"I've tried to tell him; to write on numerous occasions. But I can't even figure out how to start." She looked miserably into her glass. She was glad for Tom. Who else could she talk to about the skeletons in her closet if not him?
"Don't."
There was a ring of commanding authority in his voice.
In the next minute, a passive expression returned to his face. "What good would that do either of you?"
Dorcas nodded and gulped, emptying her glass. Tom refilled it.
He was right, of course. She must leave the past in the past and move on with her life. Nothing good would come of dwelling.
"Change of subject," Tom announced. "I've been following your career, Birdie. I'm so proud of you."
This made her smile faintly. She was also proud of all that she had accomplished.
"You and Cal make quite a team," he conceded. Dorcas detected a note of bitterness in his voice. It confused her.
She nodded and smiled, thinking fondly of Cal. She swirled the golden liquor around in her glass. "You know, you should think about finding a partner too, Tom."
He laughed at her.
"I'm serious," Dorcas insisted. "You're a catch, Tom. Any girl would be lucky."
He shook his head, looking at the table top.
"There will only ever be one woman for me."
Dorcas looked up from her drink now, staring at Tom. She could feel all that he was communicating without speaking it.
Tom met her eyes. She had not noticed before in her preoccupation at the Leaky Cauldron, but something in Tom's face was different, altered. The depths of his brown eyes were somehow hollowed. Eyes that Dorcas had known for so long, had stared into so many countless times, seemed less familiar. They were not the deep brown that she remembered. They were lighter now, almost the same color of the inch of bourbon remaining in her glass.
"The one that got away," he said softly.
Dorcas shook her head. "You're remembering what you want to remember. I didn't break your heart. It was the other way around."
Tom nodded, breaking her stare, conceding her point.
The reminiscing had triggered something in Dorcas's mind about another individual from their past.
"Hey, do you remember Callum Sayre?"
Something deadly flashed in Tom's eyes for the briefest of moments. It was so quick that Dorcas had convinced herself that she'd imagined it.
"Yes," Tom said, sipping again. "My year. My house."
Dorcas nodded. "Dated my cousin."
"Yeah," Tom said. "What about him?" There was something careful about the question.
"I saw him in the newspaper this morning. He's dead."
Tom furrowed his brow. He stared at Dorcas. "Dead? How?"
Dorcas shrugged. "There was a piece in the Muggle paper this morning. A photo of a dead body." She shuddered at the memory. She hated when newspapers printed shocking photos.
"It didn't mention his name. He was referred to as a tramp." Dorcas looked at Tom and shrugged.
"Didn't he disappear?"
"Yeah, I thought so. Whatever he was running from must have caught up with him."
"Guess so," Tom said, finishing his second glass.
:::
5 October, 1957 Watermead, Aylesbury
Docas arrived home a little later than expected. She had not anticipated the detour to Tom's flat.
Cherry greeted her at the door in what Dorcas took as clown make up initially. She took a step back in surprise.
"That's a look," Dorcas said, dropping her coat and handbag on the sofa in the sitting room.
"What?" Cherry cocked her head, confused and looked into the mirror in the hall. "Oh."
She took out her wand and cleared the comical makeup from her face.
"How was she?" Dorcas asked, scanning the room for signs of Wren.
"Angelic," Cherry said, following Dorcas. "She did my make up."
"That explains it," Dorcas laughed. She opened the door to the back yard.
Wren was giggling on a swing, being pushed by Dorcas's cousin, Jonas Rackharrow.
"Jonas!" she said in surprise. Crossing the lawn, she kissed her cousin's cheek. Dorcas and her cousin bore a strong resemblance. When together in their younger days, they were often mistaken for brother and sister.
Cherry told her on one of their first outings after she and Cal had returned to the UK that she and Jonas had struck up a romance. Dorcas was thrilled for them. Cherry was bright and bubbly and carefree, Jonas was serious, but good natured. And Cherry deserved to be happy, Dorcas thought.
Cherry sat down on a bench along the garden path. Dorcas came to join her.
"Your coffee maker's broken. And your toaster," Cherry warned.
Dorcas smiled. "Stay for dinner?"
A/N: Reviews are welcome and appreciated.
