Note:
Greetings, weary traveler. Long have you searched the quagmire of this fandom for a story suited to your needs. I welcome you, now, into my humble abode, invite you to take off your soaked-through shoes and sit before my warm, crackling fire whilst I treat you to the following story...
Okay, who am I kidding with this waxing-philosophical stuff? Here's the point: this is the first chapter of my first story, which I plan to continue. I implore you to read onward if you're looking for something original and a little more on the sincere side of the fandom.
I am not a U.K. writer, so I will probably miss many colloquialisms. In the same vein, please forgive any typos—they will likely be minor. I will attempt throughout to use spells/charms/incantations/whatever-you-want-to-call-them as accurately as possible-but, let's be honest, sometimes it can be hard to pin down the right one.
Just so you know (though you might really not need me to tell you this), the casting choices I list for characters at the beginning of each chapter are solely the actors I use in my own head to help the writing process move more smoothly. For original characters I just pick from the general pool depending on what best suits my creative needs, and for canon characters I pretty much revert to the films. Sure, these faces might help me rationalize these characters in my head, but that does not mean you have to use them when you read! It's not my intention to annoy you by listing them, and if you have trouble because of it, please just ignore it (there have been cast lists for stories I've read that have totally wigged me out, so I get that). I just thought it would be fun to share this little part of my writing process with you! And it is my hope, of course, that some of the people listed might click for you as you read. But, really, there's no stress surrounding the "cast" lists.
Now... Let's get down to it!
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling the Utmost Venerable.
Chapter One Totally Optional Cast (in order of appearance)
Alicia Vikander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Maid
Rosamund Pike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vanessa Nott
Holliday Grainger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wet Nurse
Amanda Seyfried . . . . . . . . . . . . Assistant to the Midwife
Judi Dench . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Midwife
Maggie Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Minerva McGonagall
Richard Harris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Albus Dumbledore
Kathryn Hunter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arabella Figg
Fiona Shaw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Petunia Dursley
I | Before
March 1978
The House of the Family Nott
No-one notices the maid. They never do, and she, in turn, never gives them cause to. Over the nigh on ten years of her servitude to the Nott family, she has become skilled in the complex arts of Keeping Her Head Down and Not Speaking Unless Spoken To. Though she'd been raised to be a submissive, quiet lady, and had lived up to the harsh expectations of the nuns who had fostered her, along with those of the critical members of each social circle she'd found herself in following her release from the convent, a small, taut-strung part of her had never ceased in its longing for a greater purpose. And this is the night upon which her efforts will finally be rewarded.
She stands in the shadowed corner with hands clasped against her wash-worn apron, listening to the screams of her mistress, face idle. All the while, her heart jarring with each beat like the wheels of a train over rails, safe, secret beneath her night-darkened skin. The corners of her humble mouth remain straight, while behind them, a smile is tugging. She feels the power in the bowstrings of her teeth, preparing to release, but stealthy, silent, lying in wait, like a dragon with eyes a-glitter. A true-running power, boasting no link to the magic in her blood: a sudden leverage, a power to destroy, to create, to free.
Vanessa Nott throws her head back against the massive bed as though determined to fracture her skull against the mattress, and screams, more loudly than the maid believes is necessary. Once, a young scorned expecting mother had taken refuge within the convent, and, when her delivery day came, had given birth to a healthy baby without so much as a groan, despite the dangerous narrowness of her hips.
Posted in the opposite corner of the room, her hands clasped similarly, stands the wet nurse. As the lady of the house screams and curses she rolls her eyes and purses her lips in a barely-contained smile. But the maid intercepts her eyes, shakes her head almost imperceptibly, and the woman across from her dutifully bridles her amusement.
"Get Haden!" wails the woman sprawled with an arched back on the edge of the mattress, arms reaching out towards the bedposts, trying to make a sacrificial lamb of herself. The maid and the wet nurse share a glance. It's astounding how, even in the final throes of childbirth, their mistress goes to such lengths to make something dramatic and tragic of herself. Surely, an impulse which they, being simple women not bound to the requirements of the aristocracy, will never understand. And, thus, an impulse they allow themselves to laugh at—but only in the privacy of each other's company, or in the safety of their own secretive minds.
"Milady," soothes the midwife's assistant, trying to press a cool cloth against Vanessa's forehead, but she is promptly swatted away. "Milady, Master Nott is away at battle; he could not be home."
"Gods!" says the soon-to-be mother, chest heaving, a strangled sound between a roar and a moan breaking through her throat like glass. "I am not daft, foolish girl!"
"Apologies, Milady—"
But she is interrupted by yet another bellowing shout. This time, however, the sound of the mother is overlapped by the sound of a second being, a new life, springing forth into the arms of the midwife, face skyward, wailing hoarsely. Eyes wide open.
"A girl," announces the midwife, magically severing the umbilical cord and swathing the infant witch in soft cloth.
In the corner, hidden, the maid's eyes flicker. The new power in the room is palpable, if only to her. New power, fresh and greater than she had ever imagined, even after Albus Dumbledore's thorough warnings of his lofty expectations. Inside herself, the maid feels a great pride, but alongside it, a great fear for this newborn's life. Surely the Nott family would manipulate this power once they realized it, subjugating the girl to even more misery than she already would have experienced, just by being female in the cruel system the pureblood aristocracy had created in favor of patriarchal practices.
The aura of undiluted power radiates from the blanketed form, the timbre in the infant's cries screaming of volatility and prophecy. This is most certainly The Girl, destined for greatness, destined to set future events in motion. This is the maid's mission. Her purpose, as the long-bearded, grey-robed, bespectacled headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had explained, eight months previous, when he had requested that she take the open servant post at the Nott household. All the days boiled down to this night. None of her previous victories matter unless she succeeds now.
The new mother seems at a loss for what to do with herself now that the excuse for her screaming has left her body: she lays back limply, and appears to be barely breathing. No urge to see the child or question its nature possesses her. The midwife stands, holding the girl in her arms, and walks around the side of the bed while her young assistant warily props the Mistress Nott up against the headboard with cloud-like pillows.
"It's cold," says Vanessa, looking around, like a newborn, herself. The maid moves forward and casts an efficient charm over the bed, clearing it of the blood and other fluids produced over the course of the birthing process. The comforter tugs itself gently from beneath the legs of the Lady. The maid smiles inwardly, measuring the strength she gives herself by refraining from the use of force which she so desires to inflict. She would like to make this pureblood bitch scream through a mouthful of her own blood. But instead she makes the blankets hover over Vanessa's body, and settles them gently over her now-clean nightgown. This is the last night. After this, the maid will never have to look at the miserable Lady again.
Likely, soon enough, she will never have to look at anyone again. But, for now, she brushes that thought aside.
The midwife places the child in its mother's reluctant arms, a look of raw annoyance passing behind Lady Nott's eyes as she does so. "What shall her name be?" asks the old midwife, a fresh look in her wrinkled face after safely completing the challenging task of overseeing a birth. The maid wonders briefly how many first breaths have been taken in this woman's arms. The midwife's assistant picks at the cuticles of her thumbnails, gnawing on the inside of her cheek. It seems the naming of the offspring is her favorite part of the process. Even the wet nurse hidden in the opposite corner has her ears perked for the Lady's answer, ignoring the sudden wetness seeping through her shirt over her breasts, prompted by the newborn's cries.
But an answer does not come. "I will await Haden's return. We will decide on a name together upon his arrival."
"Milady," ventures the midwife's assistant, staring at the Mistress as though she has committed a heinous misdeed—which, perhaps, she has. "It would be a mentionable risk to leave a child nameless for so long."
"For so long?" comes the anticipated rebuttal, the Lady's eyes snapping. "Haden will return within the hour and the child will have been done no disservice by the wait. Take her, now. You." The mother lifts the child up and the midwife quickly takes her into her arms. The nurse with the circles of milk staining the chest of her frock is beckoned wordlessly and steps forward, arms outstretched to receive the swaddled newborn. "This is absurd," proclaims Vanessa Nott, no longer inclined to remain in bed, swinging her legs over the lip of the mattress and standing with tottering legs, a hand outstretched to glean what support it can from the wall. "I will not sleep in a bed which has held such filth. Call on one of the elves to fix the upstairs room: new sheets, a hot bath, and no dust on the vanity. Before I get there." Her watery eyes rake angrily over the other women and linger, burning, on her minutes-old daughter, before she turns and limps from the room into the cold of the corridor.
The midwife looks hard at her assistant, whose eyes sweep the floor as she hesitates, but eventually the younger woman goes quietly into the hall, following the lady of the house. Words crowd the maid's insides as speechlessness descends upon the three remaining women, not even a cooing from the child disrupting the silence. Outside, the wind rattles the window panes, tendrils of freezing drafts making the heavy velvet curtains sway in the gloom.
"The two of you are fit to see to the child?" says the midwife, all traces of pride or relief erased from her hard biting eyes. "I will return within two hours; I'm afraid the mother requires my attention for the time being. She is in no state to be walking."
"Of course, Madam," says the wet nurse with a nod. The midwife surveys them shrewdly, and leaves the room with choppy footsteps.
Unbuttoning her frock, the wet nurse lifts the infant girl's mouth to suckle at her breast. Sounds of protest echo down the corridor as the midwife and her assistant intercept the mistress. The wet nurse sticks her tongue out immaturely at the empty doorway, and the maid with shining eyes offers a soft chuckle, summoning a chair from the wall and seating herself with legs crossed while the wet nurse sits down on the foot of the bed, humming an unfamiliar song.
In her lap, the maid's fingers twist around each other. "Anxious?" asks her companion.
"Ready to sleep," she says with a small, flickering smile.
"Of course," the wet nurse coos. "See yourself to your chambers. I can handle the little dear alone."
The maid nods her agreement. "Thank you. Don't keep yourself up too long," she says, rising from the chair and sending it back to its previous position against the wall with a gentle stirring motion of her wand. In the dim light, the fleur-de-lis pattern of the wallpaper has taken on a ghostly quality, made ghostly by the light from the wavering flame of a single candle on the nightstand, threatening to go out.
Her tight shoes make no sound against the floorboards on her way to the door, and the wet nurse soon resumes her humming, the sound covering the soft rustling of clothes as the maid stills in the doorway, takes her want from her apron pocket, and lifts it at arm level, aimed toward the young nurse and child sitting safely at the foot of the bed.
Nonverbal magic had never been taught to her thoroughly enough to become a strong suit, but it matters not. Caught unawares, the wet nurse cradling the newborn girl in her arms has no time to react to the words from her companion's lips, "petrificus totalus," before each line of her body stiffens, and she finds herself incapacitated on the mattress, her lullaby silenced, the child whining at the sudden change.
Pocketing her wand one more, the maid crosses to the supine pair and looks down unfeelingly into the paralyzed eyes of the wet nurse. She can only imagine the slew of curses that would be leaving her lips were they movable. "I cannot say I am sorry for this," says the maid. "I am taking the child. I know not where she will wind up. I can only tell you that I shall return soon, and you may hold me to my word and tell the others what has conspired, here, when your condition wears off. I am not trying to slight you."
She searches the other woman's eyes, but there is nothing behind them; not so much as a flicker of recognition or feeling. Rubbing her hands together to warm them, she works the small bundled body from petrified arms, clutching the gurgling child to her chest, her hand enveloping the soft head. So innocent, so easily crushed. One last look is cast down toward the wet nurse, before the maid pulls the frock over the paralyzed woman's breast, providing her with an ounce of decency, if nothing else, pivots, and leaves the room.
The rag-clothed house elves she passes on her controlled path through the labyrinth of cold hallways don't see the escape for what it is. Their footsteps cease and their necks bend as she passes. On a normal day she might grant them a nod, but tonight she sweeps by without a word or a glance, the child remaining remarkably quiet. After a series of memorized turns and descending staircases, she finds herself at the apparition point, a designated woven carpet in a particularly cold corner between two unlit fireplaces frequently used by the servants to access the Floo network. No elves linger here.
Closing her eyes in deepest concentration, holding the child in a vise grip against her body, the maid focuses her consciousness on a spot at the edge of the grounds, the furthest familiar place from the Nott house. Her mind strains, the muscles of her body clenching down to the soles of her feet, and then, without a sound, both the maid and the newborn in her arms are gone.
She has landed too near. Her feet ache with each stride across the stone courtyard, panicked lungs expanding with each hammering beat of her heart. The child wails freely, now, the sound muffled slightly by the fabric between the maid's collarbones, and she eases her grip around the tiny body, afraid to fall, afraid to move too slowly. Across the green space and into the dense, untamed forest she flees, heels sinking into the rain-sodden ground, knees wobbling, stray twigs whipping her cheeks, the air so cold she expects her eyes to freeze over at any moment. Strands of her hair slip free of their pins, the mass of dark curls streaming in the wake of her darting form, kicked-up dirt splattering over her dress. Though wailing, the infant girl remains safe, tight against the maid's body, her elbows tucked warmly to the child's sides, the new innocent porcelain face pressed to the young woman's perspiring skin, the rhythm of her savior's heartbeat thumping through her fragile skull.
More time passes than the maid had anticipated before she spots the tree: drooping limbs, the rotting skeletons of blackened leaves which had lingered all through the winter beneath the snow and now lay pressed like ancient, eerie fossils into the mud. The only signs of the current season are the timid green buds that have sprung up betwixt the roots around the small grove. But the maid has not come here this night to admire the small blessings of nature. With the soil-covered toe of her painstakingly polished shoe, she probes around in the damp soil, until she has unearthed a pocket watch: perfectly circular, its face glinting from some unknown source of light.
Lowering the girl from her chest, she's met with a short stabbing cry, and the wind stirs a little in the rickety branches overhead. The maid looks down at the small unknowing face. Moisture beads at the corner of her eye, and trails down the crease between her cheek and her nose, dripping onto the child's forehead. Her knees bend, easing to the ground as she retrieves her wand.
"Are you ready?" she asks the newborn in a whisper when, really, she knows she is asking herself.
The maid bends her neck to place her lips gently on the infant's forehead, eliciting a brief joyful gurgle. And then, before she can delay herself any longer, she frees the small arm from the cocoon of blanket, and presses the small hand to the chilled face of the watch. "Epoximize," she whispers through her tears, letting go.
Thus the tiny hand is bound to the portkey, and in a sudden flash, the girl, the watch, and the maid's purpose, have disappeared. All that is left as evidence of the night's events are the sobs of the young woman, swallowed by the secret-keeping forest, as she kneels amidst the grey, knuckled roots of the great whispering trees, her eyes shining towards a place far away.
Dawn lies waiting just below the horizon when the bundled child lands, a thin ribbon of rosy light. Two robed figures have stood side by side amidst the rusty, groaning playground equipment since midnight. Any onlooker would have said that, when the child arrived from seemingly nowhere, accompanied by a short, clipped beam of light, it seemed they had been two statues, and were suddenly turned to flesh.
It is the witch, clothed in emerald green robes, who reacts the quickest, leaning down, almost lunging, to take the child up in her arms. She utters a gasp at the feeling of the tiny, swaddled body: power sizzling in the air around her like a halo.
"Albus, you were right," she exclaims under her breath.
The wizard, bespectacled and wearing dull tattered grey, asserts himself at her side, waving his wand over the child and annulling the adhesive formed between her delicate hand and the glowing pocket watch. The watch promptly disappears, and the two adults are left looking down in puzzlement and wonder at the infant. "I believe I was," answers Dumbledore.
The witch heaves a rattling breath. "Do you think she will go back to that terrible house?" she says quietly, all the normal roughness in her voice gone without a trace, leaving only breath and concern.
Her counterpart gives a solemn nod in answer. "I have the utmost faith that she will."
"And they won't trace the portkey?"
"The pocket watch will be reburied and the magic erased. This place will not be found."
"Poor, poor girl," says the witch, her mouth drawn in a stiff line, pulling the child close to her neck.
"She was well aware of the risks, Professor McGonagall. She will not submit to whatever methods they inflict upon her, and even if she were to reveal the location of the watch, they cannot know where the girl has ended up. It's a safely closed loop on both ends."
"But, Headmaster... Do you expect that they will…"
A silence envelops them, giving the witch the answer she'd already known to be true. She sniffles once, and Albus Dumbledore places a warm hand on her back. Looking down at the child, whose cheeks have pinkened in the dewy air, they both become distracted, so that when a muggle car with a loud engine passes by down the street, they're shaken back into reality.
"A punctual reminder," says the wizard, the twinkle returned to his eyes. "We'd best be off, before people start getting up and going about their business."
"Before people are woken up enough to trust their eyes, so to speak." McGonagall brushes tears away with her shoulder. "Are you handling the map, or am I?"
"Do you trust me to hold the child?" chuckles Dumbledore, his voice lilting mischievously.
A laugh warms the witch's face, her features settling back into their normal formations, the vise grip of guilt easing on her chest. "I definitely don't, now."
"Here. You've always had the knack for map reading. Let me take her." In response to the reluctance on her face, he raises a bushy eyebrow over his half-moon spectacles. "Or you could consent to apparating instead. It would be much easier on the legs and less of a risk."
"I would beg to differ," she says crisply, thoroughly back to her usual brisk self, now. "After so many years, I trust your abilities, but there is still significant risk in apparating with a newborn in tow."
He smiles at her characteristic reaction. "Professor, surely our accomplice at the Nott estate was forced to apparate with the child at least once tonight. And we would not be traced."
"Well. I am not our accomplice and you will kindly cooperate and do as I request," says Minerva, words catching in her throat. "Unless you wish for my heart to dislodge from its designated spot. I'll handle the map."
With the greatest caution, she hands over the girl, who mumbles slightly before coming to rest comfortably in the wizard's arms. McGonagall fumbles in her robes for a moment before withdrawing a folded map, staring at it briefly with furrowed eyebrows, and looking up confidently in the direction of the suburban muggle road.
"That way?" questions Dumbledore.
"Onward," she asserts.
The queer company of three drifts without sound through the sleeping neighborhood streets, the girl dozing soundly the entire time, without the influence of charms. The older wizard, impressed, sings a disjointed tune as he walks, and looks down at the infant in admiration, her locked-up power palpable all around them. Only once or twice does the witch pause and raise an eyebrow at the map, before walking onwards. On the horizon the ribbon of rosy light has widened, but the sun has not yet risen, and the streets remain empty of work-going muggles.
A cool, comforting spring breeze hums through the flowered hedges, blowing Dumbledore's beard into the child's face on countless occasions, but she continues resting, unfazed.
"I reckon we should name her, don't you?" says McGonagall distractedly at length, staring down at the map's legend. They've stopped at a corner, confused as to which way to go next.
Her counterpart ceases in his singing, and looks up toward the white-washed sky in search of inspiration. "Alice," he suggests after a minute, the atmosphere having been gracious to him. "For nobility, strength, hope, and anonymity in the world in which she must reside until the proper time has arrived for her to truly enter upon her own."
Minerva's tongue makes a tsk against her teeth and she rolls her eyes at the jumble of lines on the parchment in front of her. "My stars, Albus, how you know your way around names."
Alice offers up a soft coo, as though to express her approval of her carrier's idea, and he smiles behind his beard. "Do you mean to say I oughtn't to?"
The witch lifts her eyes from the map long enough to throw him a meaningful glare. "Don't tempt me, Albus. My wand is within close reach."
"Let me see," muses the threatened. "What would it be this time? A teacup? A gramophone, so you can force that horrendous new rock music through me as further punishment? I could forgive you for that one, if you'd take mercy on me and play jazz. A tree? That would be on the kinder side. I've always imagined I'd make a rather pleasant sleigh bell…"
McGonagall shuffles her feet slightly to the left, as though to turn down that road, but then comes to a stop and signs disapprovingly at herself once more, peering closer at the muggle map.
Albus looks over at her and frowns gently. "That time, from the candlestick, still hurts, Minerva."
A light scoff and a tied-down smile. "We won't speak of that. I didn't intentionally misplace you."
"Of course. I know you'd never intend for me to be forced into a candelabra and paraded around the corridors of the castle for all to see. How long did I burn? I can't quite remember. Slightly less than halfway?"
McGonagall's lips tighten to keep another smile at bay. "The horrified look on that poor Tuttle boy's face when he realized he'd been burning his headmaster- You're too talkative this morning, Albus. I'm trying to concentrate."
Smirking, he allows a friendly moment of silence to descend, but, too soon for her liking, he is compelled to speak once more. "Would you reach into my pocket?" he asks with a dreamy look. "I've a sudden craving for a Toffee Eclair."
"My stars," she exclaims, heaving a sigh and flinging the map through the air, glaring at him in exaggerated aggravation. Eventually, she obliges.
"Take one for yourself, if you'd like." She treats him to a hard look but does take one, placing it in her mouth and returning to her figuring a bit less sternly than before.
Soon, the chocolate having offered a sudden surge of understanding, she takes the lead down the street straight ahead. As they near the end of their journey, taking a sharp turn onto Privet Drive, a slight air of sadness takes over the trio. Even the child's sleep seems to waver and then deepen again, her forehead taut in the consternation of her early dreams. The houses begin to look identical to one another.
"Which number?" asks McGonagall, fatigue and hesitance seeping into her voice.
"Across from number four, I believe. With the cat and cabbage smell," answers Dumbledore.
A moment of hesitance hinders the witch from speaking further, but once it has passed, she slows her walking pace. "Are you certain this is the right person to be tasked with something of such gravity? I don't doubt her goodness or her knowledge, but being… the way she is… she could not possibly offer the girl the required instruction."
Understanding his companion's concerns, the wizard nods. "Your worries are more than valid, Professor, but Arabella is the most eligible person to be trusted with this task. The operation will work out fine. When the time comes for Alice to need instruction, I will send someone to perform as her private teacher. I have faith that our plans will line up."
The witch shakes her head to herself. "In the name of Merlin, I pray you're right."
Arabella Figg's home is easily identifiable. With its hedges, slightly less trimmed than those in surrounding yards, shutters, in near disrepair, and, of course, the distinctive odors of feline and cabbage, it is not long before the witch and wizard have invited themselves up the walkway and the emerald-robed witch is tapping gingerly on the front door.
From inside can be heard various sounds of things being put in order, the sole occupant of the house seeming to embark on a brief slalom around the living space before her footsteps can be heard approaching the front door. It whines inward, revealing a woman with youth hanging onto her face by a thread, careworn and attempting not to look it. Beyond her narrow frame lies the evidence of her exhaustion, barely improved by her brief fixing-up moments before: a kettle warbling on a stove, pillows strewn carelessly around the sitting room, two of her cats pawing boredly at each other at the base of the unswept staircase.
For a beat, she looks between the two visitors on her doorstep blankly, but then, as her gaze lands on the child in Dumbledore's arms, the recognition of the situation returns to her. "Oh, yes," she says, her voice low and pained. Her arm stretches uncomfortably toward her sitting room. "Do come inside for a spell."
"We hate to be rude," interjects McGonagall, before Dumbledore can accept the offer, "but I'm afraid we have a meeting over tea scheduled in two minutes with Minister Jenkins."
"And it would be regrettable," admits Dumbledore, "for you to be found with the two of us sitting on your couch at such an hour. Or at any hour, for that matter. It pains me to say it, but we are not, in fact, in peacetime."
Arabella nods in the Headmaster's direction, the early dawn catching her face in such a way that the deep purple circles beneath her eyes stand out odiously. Her lips are chapped and shrunken on her pale, gaunt face, and her shoulders slump around her diminished body. The witch on the doorstep looks at Arabella with a wary smile, more unsure now than ever of Dumbledore's decision to trust this non-magic woman with the child who may turn out to be the most important witch or wizard of the next century. But she can do nothing as Dumbledore hands over the girl, who rustles in her blanket, waking in the rod-like arms of her new guardian.
"Well, that's that," says the wizard promptly. "Her name is Alice. If you need any assistance, you know how and where to reach me." At this, he gives her one of his signature winks, and she nods her understanding, though his incredible warmth still fails to reach her completely. Dumbledore does a quick inspection of all the surrounding windows and doors on the street, and, deeming them unwatched, offers his arm to the witch at his side. "We must be off. Professor?"
The addressed looks at Ms. Figg, kindness leaking into her eyes, and nods to her. "Take care of the girl, Bella. We're counting on you."
Arabella Figg nods and the corners of her weary mouth tug upward in a grateful smile. "Of course," she says, in that gentle, low voice of hers. "It will be my honor."
Professor McGonagall takes one more look—which she believes, at the time, will be her last—around Privet Drive, the rooftops just now being touched by the sunrise. She places her hand in the crook of Albus Dumbledore's elbow and, with a snap, they are gone, leaving the newly responsible woman to stare across the street in a trance.
Ms. Figg doesn't resurface until one of her cats, Mr. Tibbles, rubs his soft coat along the side of her leg and mewls in complaint of the cold she's let in. She mutters indistinctly to him and secures the girl to her chest, maneuvering the door closed with her elbow and bending her creaking knees to reach the lock.
Sleeplessness has taken its toll on Arabella Figg, and what with members of the secret Order of the Phoenix apparating in and out of her house regularly and without call-ahead over the past year, it has been impossible to avoid. The framed photographs on her walls have gathered dust, the floors are long in want of vacuuming, and even the cats seem to have become more restless since the beginning of the war. It has only been a year, yet it seems she has been trapped in a cycle of terror, short-lived relief, and more terror, for her whole life.
But, perhaps, this child is precisely what she needs. Perhaps she will be rescued from her previous life by this new arrival.
Fashioning a makeshift crib from sturdy pillows, the woman places Alice on the couch, Snowy the cat settling himself on the arm and staring beady-eyed and fidgety-tailed, at the strange being which has stolen his designated napping spot. Arabella busies herself in the kitchen, retrieving the special milk, which had been sent to her a week before, from its packages in the freezer and thawing a serving over the stove.
The child seems to speak to herself, staring at the unadorned ceiling. Stirring the milk, tapping on the frozen parts with a wooden spoon and studying the intricate fractals, Arabella shakes her head. Never before has she heard of an infant with open eyes, so soon after birth. The newfound responsibility tingles through her magicless blood and she shudders at the thought of failing Dumbledore, failing the future of the Wizarding World, failing the child—Alice—herself.
Once the substance is warm, she pours it from the pot into a plastic nursing bottle and, securing the cap, turns off the stove and shuffles her feet over the carpeted floor. With caution she seats herself on the couch beside the child and lifts her into her lap, placing a not-too-stiff pillow at the side of her thigh to support the girl's neck. Looking into those newborn eyes, curious and full of something which refuses to be named, Ms. Figg feels something rising up within her that had been lost since a time buried long ago in memory. She feels a stirring of hope.
A smile upon her face for the first time in months, Arabella situates the nipple of the bottle between the child's lips, watching as she quickly latches on to the plastic. For a long time, over three hundred ticks of the grandfather clock in the upstairs hall, they consider each other with deep interest. Eventually, Alice's eyelids become droopy, and she nods off against the woman's chest.
"That's better," whispers Arabella. "Now, you wouldn't mind a little morning news on low volume, would you?" She turns to look at Snowy, who stares with intensity at the small pink creature in his owner's lap. "You'll just have to get used to her," Arabella says to him, with a smile so wide it makes her neglected, chapped lips crack and bleed; but she pays them no mind.
She stands, carefully, so as not to disturb the sleeping Alice, and goes to the television—a decade old, with antennae pointing upwards like those of an insect, and speakers that have never quite worked correctly—turning it on.
It doesn't take long for her to see that something is awry, but it takes long enough that, by the time the static has sped up and a hissing sound has begun to emanate from the speakers, it is too late for anything to be done. Snowy's ears flatten against his head and he jumps with a bumping sound onto the floor, hurrying into the kitchen for refuge. Ms. Figg retrieves the child (the unknowing catalyst) from the couch, covers her vulnerable head, and cowers down just in time behind the sofa against the far wall.
The explosion is heard all up and down Privet Drive.
And in the master bedroom of Number Four across the street, Petunia Dursley pulls her flamingo-pink sleep mask from her eyes, sitting up in bed with a start.
Spells used in this chapter:
1. "Petrificus Totalus," a spell which causes temporary paralysis.
2. "Epoximize," a binding (as in: adhesive) spell.
I hope to see you back for the next chapter! My fingers are fidgeting to start typing more, already...
Thank you for not plagiarizing my writing!
On_Errand_Bad
6,231 words
Monday, 12 October 2020