Rebel Rebel

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE 3:10 TO NOTTINGHAM

I.

I CAME TO in a moving carriage. The train I was on was accelerating at a rapid speed, and I was pretty sure I was not alone – there were two Aurors present. I could see, through them, a radio, and I heard a familiar voice filter back to me. "Uncle Mark's here, Scottie. Look, it's Uncle Mark. When was the last time you saw him?"

"Hi kid, I'm back again. You know me," Mark said. "Hey. When we get better we'll go to a football game again. One nil to the Arsenal, and all that, huh? I hear we're doing quite good this season. Sorry, it's been a while-"

"Since the Boy Who Lived has survived his assassination attempt, he would like to make it clear that he is perfectly safe and unharmed in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," announced one of the speakers on the radio, and I realised what Voldemort was doing. "At his press release, he thanked the Ministry for their hard work in apprehending the target, Tommy Hurst, a muggleborn fifth year student. Questions will be raised going forward about whether Hogwarts has been too lenient on bringing muggleborns to the school without background checks on their family, but it is important to not overlook the role that Hurst's sister, Allie, played in bringing him in, putting Ministry loyalty above family as an excellent example of everything that the Ministry is looking for in a true Auror. As promised, it was the first of two announcements by Harry Potter today, we go live now to the Ministry of Magic…"

I watched helpless, unable to do anything. The guards were too busy to notice I was awake, neither of them was Allie, I noticed, and neither of them were likely Order of the Phoenix members. The radio presenter was full of talk, and eventually, Harry was allowed to speak. "It is on this momentous day that a new era in our history be formed," he said. "He Who Must Not Be Named is well and truly gone. I was naïve in announcing his return, but at the time, I was under the influence of the traitor Peter Pettigrew. It was he, not He Who Must Not Be Named, who took Cedric Diggory from us, and it was he, who must be found at all costs. Not The Dark Lord. The Dark Lord is dead. Having come to my senses, I have called a press conference, after months of consideration, and believe that the time is right to make a full statement known: I pledge my full support behind Cornelius Fudge and the Ministry of Magic."

Whispers from the Aurors of surprise, as the not!Harry continued. "By pledging my full support behind Cornelius Fudge, having survived the attempt on my life unscathed and unarmed, I will be working with the Minister to introduce sweeping new reforms that will make our schools safer. That will make our people safer. We have allowed someone who we thought we could trust to infiltrate our schools. To use our trust against us. We cannot let that happen again. That is why, in co-ordinance with the Ministry, on behalf of Minister Fudge, I propose a new Muggle Protection Act-"

"Turn that off," said one of the Aurors. "We don't want the boss catching us listening to it on work duty."

"Yessir," said the other, and switched it off. "Hey, look. The traitor's awake."

They turned around to face me. "Like what you hear, kid? This is all because of you," said the lead Auror. "You should be proud of what you've done to your race."

"We're not a race," I said. "Muggleborns. You know. There are more of us than there are of you. You should be worried."

"No I shouldn't," said the Auror. "What are you going to do? Punch me? I can throw you about with a flick of my wrist."

"Not the only thing you can throw about with the flick of your wrist," I said, admittedly not the best retort, and the Auror lashed out at me and threw me across the room. He laughed as I drew blood.

"Scum," he said. "The lot of you."

"I'm going to tear your whole system down," I vowed. "You, the Ministry, all of it. It's going."

"What can you expect to do?" The Auror said. "You're just one muggleborn. You have no wand. No friends. No plan."

"Yet I'm the one locked in a cage," I said. "And I'm not scared of you."

And that was when the train doors blew out, creating a loud explosion. They took the cage doors with them on the left side, leaving me with a complete, easy get-out. A man on a broomstick was waiting for me, and to my relief, it was Aberforth Dumbledore. "Come with me if you want to live," he said, and I wondered, just maybe, if he'd seen the Terminator films. I knew it was the 90s, they would be even more popular than they were now because they hadn't had the bad movies yet (maybe I could warn Hollywood to try something different about them?) so they were still very much the in-franchise. "My brother sends his regards. He couldn't make it in person."

I had no choice, but leapt onto the broom, and Aberforth soared skyward in the cloud, leaving another makeshift smoke bomb to disorientate the Aurors. "I haven't had this much fun in years," he called back to me. "To be honest, I could have rescued you earlier, but I was hoping you'd say something clever."

"Why did you save me?"

"My brother thinks you may have a point. Come, let us touch down first. It's getting windy up here."

"Thank you for rescuing me."

"You're welcome."

II.

We sat down in a muggle pub somewhere in Manchester, and it was a Saturday, so there was football on the television and Manchester United were playing Arsenal. I watched on the screen, curious to see how we were doing. It had been a while since I'd paid attention to an Arsenal game. The game had just started. "The Auror's right you know. You have no wand. No allies. No plan. Taking down the system is a bit of a stretch for a fifteen year old boy."

"It's an old system," I said, knowing it was more than just Harry Potter, I wasn't concerned about keeping canon straight anymore, I wasn't just mad, I was pissed at the Ministry, I was angry at the whole goddamn world after witnessing their justice system firsthand. "I mean, half of the purebloods are inbreds at this point and every other family is a supremacist or an ex-terrorist. The muggleborns are unfairly shut out before we even get to the rich-poor divide. Something needs to change before Voldemort only makes things worse."

"I have an idea," said Aberforth. "How familiar are you with the muggle legend of Robin Hood?"

"Plenty," I said.

"Well obviously we can't use guns," said Aberforth. "We can't get you a new wand, either, no wand store will sell to you or anyone who already has a wand without Ministry approval. As for guns being a no-go, that's obvious, they're loud, ugly and heavy. Plus, they don't work well around magic. All the bullets go flying in different directions. The last time someone tried it, they shot themselves before they shot anybody else…"

"So you're thinking we go old school?"

"A bow and arrow," Aberforth said. "Light, nimble. Efficient. Doesn't need technology to work, ergo, can't be screwed over by magic."

"It sounds insane," I said.

"Insane to just about work. The wizards don't even expect you to use anything else that isn't a wand."

"I'm not trained in anything."

"I can help you. I used to be proficient in them. There was a time when I was worried, I might get expelled from Hogwarts, so I used alternative means… just in case. Thankfully I never had to use them," said Aberforth. "So, I can act as your trainer."

"Aren't the Ministry looking for me?"

"Yes," said Aberforth. "But they'll only look in the magical areas," said Aberforth. "Small, narrow-sighted. The only way you'll get caught in the muggle area is if you announce your face to the press. They'll have trackers, eyes watching them. Sorry to cut any plans you had at being a pop singer short."

"Don't worry," I said, with a humorous tone. "I was leaning more towards punk rock anyway. Underground stuff."

Dennis Bergkamp scored in the background for Arsenal, opening the scoring. The pub, full of Manchester United fans, was deadly silent. "Where are we going, then?" I asked.

"Well," said Aberforth after a pause. "I was thinking of leaning fully into the legend. We can't use my pub anymore. They'll be after me, too."

"The legend?"

"Robin Hood started in Sherwood Forest," Aberforth said. "What do you think about moving there?"

"You do realise we're in Manchester, right?"

"I'm aware, it was the best I could do on such short notice," he said. "But Nottingham isn't far."

"When do we start?"

"We just did. Come on," Aberforth said, handing me a one-way train ticket under the name John Smith, as if he couldn't have gotten any blander. "We travel the muggle way from now on, and we travel alone. Congratulations. You just got promoted to first class."

I left the pub, following Aberforth, but something in the background on the television caught my eye, flashing from the football ground when it was showing the crowd reaction to Bergkamp scoring. It was a picture of my face. My young, innocent face – and not that of Tommy Hurst's face, but that of Scott Walker's. He was with his Uncle Mark, watching the game. But that shouldn't have been possible, should it? I wasn't born in 1995. Yet the face, unrecognisably was my own – and I caught it for a split second, but it felt like looking into my own reflection. Full of innocence and happiness, jubilation at Arsenal's success over one of the biggest teams of the 1990s. Unaware of the horrors that had affected his alternate-dimension counterpart.

III.

When I opened my eyes in Nottingham Station, I realised that I was a Scott Walker posing as Tommy Hurst posing as John Smith. The whole idea seemed absurd. Three separate identities was almost unheard of, but as I looked up and around the train, the more I had an unnerving feeling that I was being watched. Like someone had their eye on me from the beginning. I looked and I saw a man who couldn't be more out of place if he tried, out of touch of the modern community. He had an eyepatch and a cigar, he looked like if someone had tried to base everything, they knew about modern day life from reading a Charles Dickens book. He looked like he could have been an extra in David Copperfield, even passing as a double for Uriah Heep. It was bad enough so that he was getting looks from the people around me, the normal travellers, who were making their own way. I had been able to change so I was wearing a cheap, charity-shop bought second hand bomber jacket and baggy jeans with a red hoodie underneath, combined with gloves that had holes in them – it was winter after all. Uriah – I decided to call him Uriah for now, for lack of a better name, noticed me leaving the train and decided to follow suit. I reached into my pocket, feeling that something was there, and found some kind of radio earpiece set. Not knowing whether or not they were a thing – I put one in my head. "Ah," said a voice on the other end of the line. "So, you're finally awake. I'm already there."

"Is there any way you couldn't have taken me with you?"

"The Ministry can trace underage side-along apparition," said Aberforth on the other end. "It qualifies as magic. And they'll be aware that you got off the train somewhere around Manchester, so they know what to look for already."

"That explains it."

"Explains what?"

"They're watching the stations," I said. "I got a tail. Three o'clock."

Then I ducked into a small shop in the station, realising that someone was walking down steps ahead of me. "And there's more of them. Aurors, I think. They know I'm here."

"Bollocks," Aberforth said. "Where are you?"

"At the North End of the Station."

"In the WHSmith?"

"Yeah."

"Good. There are service stairs out the back of that. Take that and then get on the bus. Try and avoid being followed if you can."

"Okay," I said, glancing across to the back of the WHSmith where I saw, indeed, at the back, a set of service stairs. Waiting until the solitary employee was distracted by a customer, I made my move quickly across the WHSmith store, as Aurors entered behind, and pushed the door open seconds before the employee noticed. Leaping down the stairs two at a time, I turned the corner and found an Auror waiting there.

"Stop right there!" the Auror exclaimed, but the force of the momentum was behind me and I leapt at him, using the ground as a launchpad and crashed down the steps sending us both to the floor in a clumsy heap. I staggered away from him and noticed that I'd drawn blood from him when he'd fallen, he'd hit his head somewhere. Recoiling in horror, I ran away as two more Aurors raced down the stairs – one stopped to take care of his fallen friend but the other followed suit, and as I climbed onto the bus, he followed, just forcing himself in much to the bemused passengers. Thankfully there was a door at the other end of the bus, so I wrestled through the crowd of surprised passengers and forced myself off, just as the doors slammed shut, leaving the Auror stranded on the bus as it pulled away.

"Bus is going to be a no go, but I lost my tail," I said, ducking into a coffee shop and heading out the back exit before the employee could stop me. I took a few more detours just to make sure and doubled back on myself, relieved to learn that I'd lost the Aurors for now. It was an exhilarating moment – my first movie style chase scene – but it was all over too quickly, and I may have done some serious damage to the Auror chasing me. That was a lot of blood, and I wiped some of it off my hands. We'd gone down awkwardly, he'd hit his head, and now I was in serious trouble.

"Where are you now?"

"Just crossed Glenister Road and am making my way up through Simm Lane," I said.

"Okay, okay, slow down kid, I got you," Aberforth said. "You're not that far. Take a left at the end and get on the 108. That'll get you to the edge of the forest. It should avoid the station."

"On it," I said, and moved quickly again, heading towards the bus stop. I found myself to be shaking when I nervously handed over some change, and I was still shaking by the time I reached the edge of Sherwood Forest, wondering, over and over again: Is that Auror going to be okay? Did I just cross a line? The Auror may have been chasing me, but that Auror could have had a family. He could have had a life of his own. Hell, I could have just taken one of the good guys out of the game. The thought stayed on my mind as I eventually made it to the woods.

For most of the journey, I followed the public paths into the woods, eventually stumbling across an area that was shielded to non-magical people, I could tell because of the wards – tourists were walking right past an area that they should be swarming over. An abandoned small hut in the middle of the woods? That had tourist trap written all over it. I followed out of curiosity, and found a trap door at the bottom beneath a solitary carpet. At the bottom of a trap door, I found myself inside what looked like a fortress. It was almost certainly bigger on the inside than on the outside, and I was standing in the centre with rooms stretching up to one side and a balcony above me. I turned, looked up at the alleyway, and saw Aberforth Dumbledore waiting for me with a bow and arrow. He fired a shot at me that went wide, startling me, but I could tell that it was the kind of warning shot that people make to let you know that they could have hit you if they tried.

"This used to be an old wartime bunker," said Aberforth, looking at me from above. "To be honest, that's why I chose Nottingham, and the mythology helped sell you on it. We used to shelter muggleborns here. There are about ten rooms in this place. Off the record. Not even the Ministry knows about this and any survivors are sworn to secrecy with an unbreakable vow never to disclose the location of this place. It's the Fortress in the Forest."

"Catchy."

"We had dozens of these safe houses around the country but this is the closest one that's not right under the Ministry's nose," Aberforth said. "But enough of that. From now on, you answer to me. You do anything I tell you to. You don't leave unless I tell you to. You don't speak unless I tell you to. You don't stop working until I tell you to. It's going to be a while before you're good enough to go after Voldemort again. By the time this is done, you're going to hate me as much as him. But it's going to shape you, mould you from boy to man. Going in solo without training was a big mistake. You might as well put a target on your back, and now you don't even have a wand. I hate using muggle methods, they're arcane, obsolete even in the muggle world, but it is what it is."

"It is what it is," I echoed by way of an apology. "When do we start?"

"We just did."

TO BE CONTINUED…

Not sure if I'm going too left-field with this chapter (it has payoff, and don't worry, Tommy isn't going to become Robin Hood overnight, remember, this isn't a fix-it and actions will have consequences), but if someone attacked another student and then kidnapped another trying to get to the school, the consequences would be pretty extreme and expulsion/Azkaban would almost be a certainty with the Ministry there no matter the age of the character. I was massively influenced by Arthurian legend for Have You Ever Seen the Rain? so wanted to lean more into the Robin Hood legend for Rebel Rebel, and the whole theme about tearing down the system will play a major part in the second half of this fic (treat the previous chapter as a midseason finale if you will) but it won't be without its consequences (I may have watched Knives Out, Parasite, Hustlers and Ready or Not too many times). And Tommy lost his wand, and obviously guns don't work in the magical world – so he had to have something to use, right? Why not go old-school.

Apologies for the wait on this chapter too, work has been chaotic lately, I hope it doesn't disappoint.