The Value of Me
By Rey
Chapter 4: The End of a Chapter
12.
12th December 1987
"We have to do something, Albus. Twelve attacks in twelve days! These people having handing out Fiendfyre as if they were Christmas toys!"
Minerva McGonagall – Deputy Headmistress, Professor of Transfiguration Class, Head of Gryffindor House, and Albus Dumbledore's protégé – slams the door behind her, as she stalks into the Headmaster's office in high dudgeon.
Albus Dumbledore can only let out a sigh to that. He has been anticipating this for days already. He has been trying his best to appeal for aid from the Ministry of Magic for the whole twelve days that she has just mentioned, but they never believe that the Death Eaters are active once more and targetting Muggleborn or Muggle-raised pre-school children.
But then again, the victims have nearly all been Muggles. No wonder they have been turning a blind eye on these alarming activities.
Worse…. Well, Albus has a worse thing to say to Minerva. He found this out days ago, true, right on the first day of the attacks in fact; but he has been involved in trying to contain the Fiendfyre from spreading across the whole unfortunate Muggle neighbourhoods at the given day to tell her anything.
Besides, he has been dreading her no-doubt oncoming castigations.
But today, the Fiendfyre got loosed on a specific Muggle neighbourhood, one that Minerva unfortunately knows very well, and can easily find out for herself, soon enough.
He dreads that chance even more.
So, "Minerva, could you please sit down for a moment?"
She gives him a fiery, penetrating stare that, he has to admit, daunts him a little. He doesn't like to get witches angry. Bellatrix Lestrange, case in point… and now Minerva.
But she seats herself down across from him, at least. So he begins, after a deep, fortifying breath, with his Occlumency shields at a maximum and his most solemn expression on.
"I went to see Harry Potter today."
Minerva looks torn between annoyed, eager and confused.
"I have a good news and a bad news for us all."
The confusion deepens. The eagerness lessens. The annoyance flares up high. And now, sharp attention joins the maelstrom of emotions. "What happened?" she demands, her Scottish accent pronounced.
Albus sighs. He misses her defference. But, he supposes, this is better than outright fury… which may still explode in a moment.
"The bad news is," he swallows and forces himself to keep looking into her eyes, "I talked to his relatives… and they said he has run away two years ago."
He flinches back – he cannot help it! – as Minerva shoots up to her feet, letting the heavy chair she has just been seated in topple backwards.
"ALBUS!" she thunders.
The addressed man palms his best wand in the holster hidden beneath his wide robe-sleeve. "He is still alive, Minerva," he tries to assure her. It's a pity that no Confundus would stick to a Minerva on a war path. (He tried it, a long time ago.)
"I cannot find him. We can count it as good, I suppose," he continues. "He is healthy, that much I know. And if we cannot find him, he has a good chance of being undetected until he is eleven years old."
Minerva's nostrils flare. Albus slides the Elder Wand free from its holster and surreptitiously points it at her.
He lets the subsequent outraged protests she spills forth pass his ears, as he tries to grasp the idea he has just had; something that could help him deal with these rogue elements of the Wizarding World, that might also help him in tracking Harry Potter down, that would appease Minerva at the same time. He needs the best soldier and tracker possible for this, preferably both in one person. The Colonies had a few such people during the Muggles' Second World War, if his memory doesn't fail him. If only….
"ALBUS!"
…Ah, yes, Minerva.
13.
19th December 1987
Albus Dumbledore surveys his magically charged surroundings, stunned and exhausted. In his stubborn grasp, the Elder Wand thrums violently, hot as a bar of iron ready for tempering and icy as a chunk of permafrost.
The summoning ritual is borderline dark, yes, as nearly all rituals are. But there was never a word that it could fail.
But now, he is left with a crater in the middle of Stonehenge, a broken leeline that he is not sure will return to normal again even in the next century or ten, a weirdly behaving Deathstick, and four dead members of his Order of Phoenix.
Elphias Doache, Sturgis Podmore, Emeline Vans, Hestia Jones: North, East, South and West on the ritual corners, respectively, and dead on their feet, still as statues, with their wands outstretched and stunned looks etched permanently on their faces.
Grief and guilt try to bubble up, threaten to crush him, demand his attention. But he must be strong, he must stay strong.
It is all for the greater good.
Now, he must search for whatever he has summoned and make the deaths of these good people worth their sacrifice. Maybe he is too old for conducting rituals like this. Maybe his Occlumency shields were inadequate for this taxing event, as he can feel their tatters jabbing into his numb mind, creating a biggger headache. Maybe it was wrong, to focus on both a soldier for his Order and a tracker for Harry Potter; but it has all been the past, as of now, and he doubts a turn of the Time Turner would fix this… unexpected outcome.
Besides, if his future self interfered, wouldn't he have told him, by now?
And still, despite his conviction, shaky though it is, bitterness lingers in his mouth.
No cleaning and tracking weapon acquired. No result. Four people who believed in him, dead for nothing.
14.
20th December 1987
Night has fallen down long ago, but the little boy perched on one of the beams of his home's rafters – his home! What an idea! – is still as jittery as in the afternoon. Maybe he should not have drunk that much hot chocolate with extra marshmallows… but the day was chilly and the marshmallows were too awesome to leave out!
He grits his teeth and moves away from the living-room via the interlocked beams all round him. The sight of his bedroom loft above the room, quite within reach and still as inviting as ever, seems to mock him now that he still cannot bring himself to even close his eyes and stop moving for a moment.
The beams above the kitchen is his next haunt, and the large, sturdy wooden table on the middle of it attracts his attention, as per usual. After all, much of his life and most of his nice first-times have occurred there or thereabouts. He ate his first proper meal – a proper family meal at that – there, and since then has been helping his guardians in cooking and baking on his own volition at or round the same place. Ma'am brings out the hand-made dolls and props into play on the broad, rugged surface whenever she is in the mood and not feeling so tired. Ma'am's father teaches him messy works like simple engineering, whittling and basic footwear repairs there, too, to the constant aggravation of the womenfolk in the family. – ("This table is for cooking and eating, not playing with oil and wood-chips and dirty things!") – that they have privately agreed is worth the fun. Ma'am's mother, meanwhile, always decorates the self-same disputed area simply but nicely whenever they hold deliberate schooling sessions for him there, which makes the interesting lessons even more entertaining.
His hands itch for the rune grafters and a piece of soapstone to work on, remembering that.
But oh, no. No, no, no. He nearly burnt down the kitchen last month, when he snuck a self-taught lesson on runes during the afternoon when everybody else happened to be out. He has never been trusted with free access to the rune-making toolkit ever since, neither has he been left alone wherever he goes during the day, for the same duration.
He shudders.
Tomorrow is a full month after that incident, and the trio of adults have agreed that they will at least not shadow him anymore after that.
`Shall I risk it?` Is this late-night foray worth the sheer discomfort of dragging one – or all – of the adults wherever he goes for yet another month?
He shudders again.
`No, no, no.`
But at the same time, his lips quirk in a reluctant but fond smile. Trust the Romanov family to give him the worst punishment ever. Being unfed for long stretches of time is still less horrifying and torturous than that one, especially when coupled with the lack of easy access to his beloved rune grafters.
His rune grafters, yes, although they are technically the family's. It's unofficial-like, but they are his, by now, with how much and how fondly he has been using them inside or outside schooling sessions. And how marvellous it still feels even now! Having things that are his.
But maybe, just to soothe his itchy sticky-fingerness…. There is a small jar of candied honey amidst the medicinal potions in the left-hand overhead cupboard above the kitchen sink.
He leaps nimbly down onto his adored table, then across to the long wooden counter beneath the target of his latest impromptu mission. He is very, very grateful now that a lot of trial-and-errors have gone into this skill of his, perfected when neither of the adults are about. He could have been banned from exercising his froggy might – like he's been banned from playing with the runes – if they knew! After all, many, many bumps and scrapes and crashes have been had during the first stages of the learning, given his poor eyesight, also lack of safe environment to monkey about in before he met the family. If he crashed onto the floor or against the wall now for lack of distance and muscle-power judgement, the grown-ups would wake up and….
He shudders, just thinking about what they would make him not do as punishment. No baking and eating snacks? No learning to fence with wooden sticks like Ma'am's parents has been teaching him these couple of weeks or so? No sleeping in his beloved loft?…
He huffs softly and peers out of the row of small windows set on the wall beneath the overhead cupboards. (To "maximise" – "provide all that is possible in something," he remembers – the light coming into the kitchen and other areas of the little house.) Leaping about makes him want to go out and play with the climbing frame Ma'am's father has been building just beyond the couple of storage sheds that they have, and trying to conceal from little Nosha while he's at it. But it's snowing hard outside, and he's garbed in pyjamas now, and trying to take his winter gear from Ma'am's bedroom would be a suicide mission of the highest calibre.
Is something moving, though, outside? Not snow? Not trees either?
He is growing uneasy. Both the candied honey and the half-finished climbing frame are quickly forgotten.
So many movements outside, now. But the snow has been plopping onto the whitened ground right from the black sky, almost in a straight line, which means there's no wind to stir the snowflakes, so the trees shouldn't be moving, which means….
He barely has time to yelp, when a pair of arms seize him from behind and yank him away from the wall counter. It's fortunate that he remembers Ma'am's scent and body and his unknown assailant matches her, or he would raise such cacophony to wake up the family, as they have instructed many times for some reason.
But Ma'am's parents are indeed awake, somehow, without him having to raise any fuss, and standing by a trapdoor that he never knew before, which makes for a yawning dark hole on the living-room.
And there they go, down leaping into the darkness one by one, for whatever reason.
And a huge "BOOM!" deafens him, just after Ma'am's father has managed to close the trapdoor, the last one to leap down.
He can feel the intense heat raging right above, in the house proper, that comes after the sound.
But now there's a hard thump on the gritty floor of the underground room, then another, then another.
The little boy is dropped unceremoniously onto the same floor, as his holder drops down in like manner.
Unmoving. Not breathing.
Nikolai Feliks screams.