Chapter 13: Tea With Filch

"Detention? Again!" Declan slapped the dining table with the palm of his hand causing the breakfast sausage on his plate to jump onto the table. Polly, was next to him, looking a bit exasperated. "For someone with no magical powers you sure have a knack for getting into trouble. So how long is it this time?"

Matt hung his head. It was true, he felt almost like he had spent more time in detention than out of it. There was nothing he hated more than telling his captain that, once again, he wouldn't be at practice. "Just an evening. Filch caught me out after hours."

"Oh, after hours, eh?" Declan waggled his brows. "Perhaps our little keeper was out with a girl?"

"It was nothing like that!" Matt lied, although, in a certain sense, it had been exactly like that. "I was just in the library and I lost track of time."

"Oh, in the library, eh. What was her name?"

"Jane Austin." Matt said irritably.

"Jane Austin, huh? I've never met her. Probably not a Hufflepuff, then. Ravenclaw?"

Polly whacked Declan in the back of the head with a roll of parchment, "She's a famous muggle author you idjit!"

He rubbed the back of his head, "Well how would I know that? I've hardly ever seen a muggle book."

"You've hardly ever seen a book, you mean."

"Hey! I read!"

"Quidditch Strategies doesn't count as reading."

"Of course it does, right Matt?"

Matt thought back on the book Declan had lent him that had taken him all of an evening to read and was almost half pictures. "Well, it does have words... and many of them are structured into sentences..."

"There. You see? Reading. So you've got detention with Filch, eh. He going to string you up by your thumbs?" Declan asked, hold his thumbs out for illustration.

"Or hang you out of the astronomy window by your toes?" Polly added gleefully.

"Maybe he'll get McGonagall to allow him to use the whip? It's a special case afterall." Declan continued.

"He just said something about coming to his office tomorrow evening. That he had a job for me," Matt said, a bit nervously.

"Oooo," Polly said, "It's the whip for sure."

Now Matt felt himself going a bit pale. "Quit it, guys. McGonagall would never allow that." Though, considering it was his third detention in almost as many months, perhaps she would make an exception for him. Filch was always muttering about how he longed to used thumbscrews and whips on the students like 'in the good old days.'

"Sure she wouldn't," Declan's tone was clearly meant to be unconvincing. "Well, if you need to take a few more days off from practice, we'll understand."

"We'll totally understand." Polly nodded in mock support.

"Wouldn't want to disturb the healing process."

"He wouldn't really use a whip? Would he?" Matt asked the question that had been percolating in his mind all day. Donnie as they were walking down the hall to Filch's office. Matt had asked Donnie to accompany him with the excuse that he wasn't sure of the way. Of course, he and every other student in Hogwarts knew exactly where the caretaker's office was and made certain to avoid that corridor at all costs. He just didn't think he had the courage to face that corridor alone, that he would probably turn and run all the way back to the common room. He was not the cowardly type, but this was Argus Filch, that humpbacked, shuffling, cruel visaged man, and for all the students loved to make fun of him, none were too keen to cross him. Surely, Donnie knew Matt was lying, but he went along with it as true mates do.

"Nah, that's all talk. I mean probably it is." He said, scratching the side of his head.

"Probably?!"

"Well, I mean, I've never had detention with Filch. Everyone I know who has just says it's really boring. Like excruciatingly boring. And he just sits about muttering all the horrible things he'd like to do to them. But as far as I know, he never does. Tip said he was so bored he wished Filch would have hung him from the Astronomy tower. Maybe he'll go easy on you because you're a... you know..."

"A squib like him."

"Yeah."

They approached the corridor wherein Filch lurked. Even though it was washed in the warm, golden evening sun, it still felt as though it were dark and foreboding, like the walk to the gallows. The wooden door with the small black iron cage over its window stood just the slightest bit cracked.

"Well, this is where I leave you. Good luck, mate." Donnie patted him on the shoulder, then turned on heel and walked away at a pace Matt guessed was as fast as he could go without breaking out into a run.

"Yeah, thanks mate," he said to the empty space where Donnie had been.

He took a deep breath to steel his resolve and knocked on the door. The sound of the rapping was so quiet "Mr. Filch?" he called in a hoarse voice, barely more than a whisper. He heard the heavy clank of something large and metal from inside and the trailing sound of heavy chains being dragged. He swallowed a lump that had suddenly made its home in his throat.

"Mr. Filch?" He carefully tugged the door open more.

The door flew open, revealing the pale eyes bulging from pouchy sacks of pasty flesh below which his cheeks hung from the bone, sunken in with blue and red veins crisscrossing like roads on a city map above jowls that quavered like gelatin in irritation at having been disturbed. Filch's fingers, with their bulging joints, gripped the door in a way that, to Matt, recalled the talons of a bird of prey. "Who is it?!" he demanded. Seeing no one at height with his eyes, he peered down at the terrified Matt. "Oh. It's you." He checked his watch - a cheap looking metal piece with a face of yellowing paper, a large crack split the glass cover almost in two, spidering off near the middle, and possesed an unusually large winding crown; it was held to Filch's knobby wrist by an ancient looking, well-worn leather strap - shook it, held it to his ear, and frowned. "Must've forgotten to wind it," he muttered.

Matt felt a whispery sensation about his ankles. Looking down he saw Mrs. Norris winding her way between his legs. She peered up at him and meowed.

Filch turned and shuffled back into the office. "Well, come on then," he said, without so much as glancing back, "I've got a special project for you."

As Matt walked in he was jolted to see a massive iron trap on the table with cruel, sharp teeth and long thick chains hanging off of it.

"You know what this is?" Filch asked.

"N-no," Matthew stuttered, trying hard to hide to hide the fear he was feeling as he imagined his body impaled in those jaws and hung from the ceiling by those thick chains.

"It's a werewolf trap. You can't tell on account of the filth, but the teeth are tipped in silver. That big oaf, Hagrid, hulked upon it in the Forbidden Forest the other day and Prof. Jones asked me to clean it up for some lecture. Don't see the point of that, really. Waste of a good trap. Should set it down by the kitchens, to catch food snatchers," he grumbled off to himself with a certain perverse glee twisting his lips as he spoke the last sentence. He sat down in a creaky wooden dining chair beside the table, picked up what seemed to be a toothbrush, ran it through a tin of some sort of gloppy, yellow, waxy substance, and began to scrub the teeth of the trap. Matt watched in wonder.

It was a few long minutes of watching before Matt got up the nerve to speak. Perhaps Filch had forgotten he was there and might be cross about the interruption, or perhaps this was all the special project was. If it was, he could very clearly see why Tip would have preferred to be hung upside-down from the Astronomy tower.

"Mr. Filch?"

"huh." Filch grunted.

"Mr. Filch, you said you had a project for me?"

"Over there." Filch pointed at a large cardboard box that sat upon a desk so cluttered it were as though a tornado had passed through, localized entirely upon that surface. "Files they salvaged from my office after the Battle. The Headmistress dropped it off yesterday. Sort through that box and put the files in order by date and then alphabetically by last name. Then put them in that filing cabinet over there." He jerked his head to indicate a large metal filing cabinet, then continued brushing.

Matt walked over to the box which was marked in giant lettering 'Filch's Office' and picked up the first file. It was dated September 10, 1972, with the name Fletcher, Orson written next to the date. The next was written in a different hand: April 16, 1966 Prewitt, Molly - three files later, a second, with the same date, but with the name Weasley, Arthur on it. He placed this one behind the Prewitt one. He put the stack down and grabbed another handful of files when a piece of paper slid out from between then and floated down to his feet. He picked it up. It was a black and white photograph of a man in military uniform with pointed cap; from the tattered edges of the paper it appeared quite old. He was a decent looking gentleman with light hair, a squared jaw and broad chin. He appeared young, how young Matt could not tell, not older than twenty. Despite the age something about him was strangely familiar. The man was standing stock still, smiling at the camera. It took a moment for Matt to realize the man wasn't standing still, it was the photograph that was still. He put the photograph aside and dug further into the box.

There was another picture, this time of a beautiful woman who was moving and posing. It was still in black and white but Matt wondered if the woman would have preferred it that way. She was wearing a black, formfitting dress with eight broad white stripes radiating from a white circle in the middle, as the stripes reached the sides of the dress they bent at ninety degree angles giving the impression of a spider. She had a fat, fluffy white stole wrapped around her shoulders and a black pillbox hat with black lace sitting upon her dark hair, bobbed to her ears. She was smiling, then making kissing and pouting faces for the camera, then winking, then blowing a kiss. A few folders down was another picture, of both the woman and the man, he now in a new tailored suit with tails. He took her in his arms and dipped her. She laughed joyously. He could almost hear her.

He had wholly forgotten his task now. He began digging through the files furiously for more photographs. He found a fourth near the bottom of the box. It was the same man as before, now in color, but he was older by at least twenty years. His face was more deeply lined, his hairline receding. Next to him stood a different woman, probably ten years younger than him, wearing a purple sweater over a tweedy purple skirt of the same shade, her face was a bit odd, not quite symmetrical, and framed by a mess of brown curls. Both were holding kittens, her a litter of five strange looking kittens, some were large and some small, some with flat faces and some without they were orange and black and white and tabby all wriggling in her arms while a pretty white cat and an orange kneezil watched from their place at her feet. The man held only one kitten in his arms. It was not wriggling but snoozing peacefully. At his feet a bony old tabby twisted about his legs, lovingly gazing at the man.

As Matt pulled the photograph closer he noticed something on the man's wrist, just below the sandy kitten's head. It was a metal watch with a crack down the middle of its face.

"She only gave birth to one that year. I thought she was too old, but she surprised me." Matt jumped at the voice from just behind his shoulder. He turned to see Filch looking wistfully at the picture. "I thought this was lost in the battle." He took the photograph from Matt who, in his shock, easily relinquished it. "That was what? almost twenty years ago. Named her after the woman who dragged me out of the fire when my plane was shot down over Dover. That's where I got this." He indicated his limp.

"You were in the war?" Matt said in disbelief. He had never thought of Filch as anything other than the cantankerous old caretaker of Hogwarts that he was, as though he had sprung fully formed from a puddle of mop water, not as a young man who had once lived and breathed the air outside of the castle.

"Yeah, first the one, then the other. I was sixteen when the Battle of Britain happened, too young to serve, but I lied about my age. Ma and pa didn't want me to get involved in Muggle wars as I was their only child, but I was a squib, it was my fight too. I had a friend forge an ID for me. It was a bad job, sure, but I looked older than I was and my eyes were good, thought they would probably be too desperate for pilots to care. My pa found me at the draft office. He took one look at my forged ID and said that he didn't want me to get involved, that it would break my ma's heart to hear, but that if I was bound and determined to get myself killed he would prefer that I not get carted off to jail in the attempt, so he conjured me up a proper ID and saw me off."

He pointed to the woman in purple holding the five kittens.

"That's Arabella Figg beside me. I don't suppose you'd know her, we were in the Order together at the start of the First Wizarding War."

"Wait, you mean the Order of the Phoenix? You were part of the Order?" Matt was completely at sixes and sevens.

"Yeah. When I got out of the Air Force... Well things happened. Voldemort... he killed someone... very dear to me... To me and Arabella." Filch's already watery eyes began to overflow. He sniffed loudly, running a sleeve under his nose. He turned quickly from the desk, hunched shoulders shaking. "I'm going to make some tea. Would you like a cup?"

Matt almost couldn't believe his ears. Was Filch actually offering him tea? He didn't even know how to answer even as he watched the man place two dingy old teacups on a stained tea towel that covered a makeshift counter where an old tea kettle sat on a glowing red hot plate of sorts. He bustled about, doling out spoonfuls of brown and tan powder from opaque jars that had once been transparent when they were newer. The old hunchback poured the water with quavering hands so a little of it splashed onto the towel. He placed one of the cups on the table and sat opposite, holding the other in both hands.

"Have a seat," Filch said. Matt hesitated. "Well, it's not poisoned if that's what your thinking. Hmmm poisoned tea... now there's an idea." Filch smirked.

"Yes sir," Matt said and sat down stiffly. He took the cup in hand, not wanting to be rude. It was old and stained with dark rings. A sweet smell, of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg filled his nose.

Filch held the cup to his lips, not drinking, but inhaling the steam. "Treasure of the East Indies she used to call it. I suppose you're wondering why I'm telling you all this."

Matt nodded. Of course he was wondering what had brought on this most awkward situation between him and a man he would, up until this point, preferred not to be in the same wing of the castle, let alone the same room. But at the same time, his curiosity was begging of him to ask those questions which were even know on the tip of his tongue. Argus Filch, the war hero. The smiling man who dipped a young woman forever in a photo. Now a bitter old man who threatened children and loved no one but his cat.

"Go on, drink up."

Matt took a sip. The tea was pleasantly spicy and warmed his insides.

"You're a smart lad. You'll've figured enough of it out. But I don't want you getting the wrong idea about her. I don't want you thinking she was anything less than she was."

"The woman in the photos you mean?"

Filch placed his teacup on the table, took out a flask and emptied some of the contents into it. "Her name was Aranea Figg. A more lovely and vivacious woman I have never known. We were in the same year in primary school. She would sit in front of me in class on account of our names. Skinny girl, not much to look at. She used to have long black hair braided on both sides and then joined in the middle to make a thick braid and I would stare at that braid and think how much it looked like a paintbrush and how much I wanted to dip it into my inkwell. Then on the last day of the school year when we were ten I finally did. She didn't even notice until one of her friends pointed out the long black line of ink across the back of her uniform. Didn't take a genius to figure out what happened. First time I'd ever been hit by a girl. Course we were thick as thieves after that, till her parents found out about me a week later, what I was... what I wasn't. Her father especially wasn't too keen to have his daughter hanging around squibs. Arabella was still too little for him to know about her, not that that made a difference." He let out a huff of air and sipped his tea.

"Well, she went off to Hogwarts so we'd only see each other in passing on holidays. Then five years later I went off to war. Came back four years after a decorated pilot. To the muggles I was a war hero. Nine Nazi planes shot out of the air." He mimed gunning imaginary planes down.

"My father was proud, stuck my picture in the window with pride, but to the rest of the wizards I had somehow shrunk even further in their lofty esteem," he spat the words out. "In town, kids would run up to me and ask me all kinds of questions and the kinds of things kids do, wanting to help carry my groceries, on account of my leg; but in my own neighborhood parents would hold their children a little closer, wouldn't even let them near the house where my picture hung in the window. Afraid I might influence them to think being a squib was anything but shameful. I think you know what I mean."

Matt knew exactly what he meant. It was the same reason his parents had told him he couldn't compete in the Gymnastics World Championships: there were laws - even over half a century later there were still laws - statutes that said a squib was not allowed to fly too close to the sun at the risk that by doing so they might somehow expose the wizarding world. You could play, participate, even become a local hero - but if the eyes of the world ever came upon you, then so would the eyes of the Wizengamot.

"Anyhow, my mates from my unit, they finally convinced me to go out to the Dance Hall. I wasn't too keen on account that I couldn't dance with my leg the way it was, but they said it didn't matter, I just needed to get out a bit and maybe meet a girl to cheer me up. So I went and I watched them dancing with all the pretty girls and then, it was like everything in that Dance Hall stopped, the music, the couples, everything just froze when she sauntered in. She never walked anywhere. She always strolled or sauntered was what she said - walking was far too dull. She looked like she had just walked off the movie screen, like some Hollywood starlet. And all the men immediately left their dates to beg a spot on her dance card. She wasn't havin' any of it though. Merely passed off her coat and hat to them as though they were the footmen. Imagine my surprise when she strolled right up to me and said, "Argus? Argus Filch? Well it's been ages!" She had the most beautiful smile when she said that, her lips were spread so wide with ruby red lipstick like she was really surprised and glad to see me."

Matt shifted uncomfortably to hear about an old man's love life, particularly this old man's. But Filch's eyes had glazed over, incapable of noticing what was in front of him, he was back at that dance hall sixty years ago.

"I says, "Pardon me, miss, but I'm not sure we've met." And she says, "Now don't be silly, Argus, I'd know you anywhere. It's me, Aranea Figg. From school." I asks, "What are you doing here?" and she tells me she couldn't stand those stuffy wizards and their pure-blood mania so when her father wasn't watching she liked to sneak out and go out on the town. And then she asks me to dance and I tell her I can't because of my leg, but she insists and so we muddle through and I can't believe my luck to have the most beautiful girl in the hall on my arm while all the other men are staring like they are fit to murder me. We talked until morning, just sitting out in front of the Dance Hall. Seemed that although her father was still as much about pure-blood as ever, when she found out her little sister was a squib she softened on the idea a lot. Turned out she was really sad when she had come back from Hogwarts only to find I had run off and joined the Royal Air Force. She had wanted to talk to me about Arabella, maybe see if I could help her along. I lived in the same neighborhood, but I had barely even seen Arabella, turned out, her father kept her basically a prisoner because he was so ashamed of her for not getting her letter - she was only eleven, it wasn't her fault."

Matt remembered how his mother had locked herself in her room the day the Hogwarts letters were supposed to have arrived. He had brought some crisps up sometime around lunch, thinking she was probably hungry - to his ten year old mind that had seemed the perfect cure for whatever was ailing her. It always seemed to work for him. But before he could knock, he heard her sobbing on the other side of the door and his father comforting her saying that it would be okay, that Matt could have a perfectly fine future, that lots of squibs went on to successful careers these days. But such talk did nothing to abate her weeping. He might have been diagnosed with an incurable disease for how she spoke of how would she be able to live without him when he left to join the muggle world. He had left the crisps at the door and spent the afternoon hanging upside-down on the playground parallel bars trying to forget.

"Well, she and I fell in love and not six months later I asked her to marry me. Her parents forbid it but mine could not have been happier. Her parents thought that by withholding their money and their blessing they could stop us. I didn't know how we were going to afford a wedding on my factory salary, it wasn't as though my parents had anything to contribute. I suggested we elope to Gretna Green but Aranea wanted us to have a proper wedding because we had nothing to be ashamed of. She was marrying the man she loved and she could not have been prouder for everyone to see. We talked about taking in Arabella and I was more than ready to make a family with her and her little sister. And then she went and bought me a tabby kitten as a Valentine's gift. That's her in the picture, Mrs. Norris's mother. Told me her name was Nelly. I said "That's a strange name for a cat." and she said, "Well what would you call it?" I said, "Dunno. Cat?" And so Nelly it was. Now Mrs. Norris is all I have left of the two of them." At this Filch's voice raised to a high pitch. His head fell to his arms and he began weeping in earnest, his rounded shoulders shaking violently.

"Mr. Filch. Mr. Filch." Matt attempted in hopes to shake the man out of his self-pity. "What happened to Aranea?"

Filch collected himself, blowing his nose with a tattered handkerchief, "She went to London to work at Borgin & Burkes to earn some extra money for the wedding. I thought she should work at Gringotts, they were more respectable, but she said Borgin & Burkes got more interesting artifacts and she was just mad for those. She used to write me all the time of the ancient magical artifacts that had come into the shop. It wasn't many months gone by when she wrote me that an old school friend of hers, Tom, had come to work there as well. He was in the same house as her but three years younger. She said he had been very popular in school and he was particularly interested in old artifacts related to the Hogwarts headmasters. She had told Tom about a locket she had sold to a woman a few months ago that she thought might have belonged to Salazar Slytherin and he had become very excited to hear about it. But she wasn't able to tell him who the woman was - that was supposed to be confidential on the request of the buyer. That was the last I ever heard from her. They found her dead a few days later, apparently the victim of a cursed necklace."

He blew his nose again. "We wasn't allowed into the funeral. Neither Arabella or me. We just had to stand outside the cemetery gates and watch. And that was where Dumbledore found us. He told us it wasn't an accident. That she had been killed by Tom Riddle, that Riddle was amassing his own personal army determined to bring back blood purity. He asked us if we would like to help stop him. We both said we would, but how could we, we were squibs? He said there were things squibs could do that no other wizard could. We became spies for the order, Arabella and I. We were quite useful. Dumbledore was right, Riddle thought so little of squibs he only bothered with protection spells to detect magic and repel muggles, didn't even think of squibs. I could still get around the Avery's estate blindfolded I think. Arabella worked as a servant for the Lestranges, she actually managed to convince her father to request the position for her and they took her in for a pretty sum after he enumerated the merits of having a servant who could go about the muggle world in ways a House Elf could not. We managed to avoid capture for almost twenty years. We became good friends, had a shared love of cats. Dumbledore sent me all across Europe to gather information. Sometimes it was on Riddle, sometimes he just wanted me to purchase a particular book or object that had fallen into muggle hands (he hated to steal things and couldn't leave his job as Transfiguration master long enough to go). I guess I got a bit cocky."

He took a swig of his tea, no longer steaming.

"One day, in 1969, I was caught snooping around the Lestrange mansion. Arabella had let me in the back door like always. They took me to Riddle. He didn't look like Riddle anymore though. His face was strange and distorted. They wanted to know what I was doing there. I told them I was a thief tried to offer them my services. A pathetic sneakin' squib they called me. They took turns torturing me for what felt like ages. It was sport for them. I thought I would go mad. You don't know what it's like. At first you can still think clearly, but as time goes on that all gets stripped away and your mind goes white and you look for just one thing you can hold onto, one thing to keep you from losing your senses entirely. Dumbledore was gone, Arabella was gone, even Aranea was stripped away like an old billboard and all I could see was that little kitten, her mother gone and buried, who was going to take care of her when I was gone? What would she think when her daddy didn't come home? That thought kept me going. I had to get back to her. Might seem silly now, a kitten."

Matt shook his head.

"But that kept me sane, kept me to my story. They grew tired of me after a while. A thieving squib wasn't worth killing and they couldn't risk being found out at such an early stage. So they covered me in spirits, tossed me out onto the street, and called the police about a drunken vagrant. Took a year for me to recover from what they had done to me physically. Mentally..." He tapped his head, " well, I'll never forget it. That kind of pain gets in you. Stays in you. Infects your nerves, you bones down to the marrow. I still feel it on cold, rainy nights. But I got what Dumbledore wanted, their plans to use the Squibs Rights Marches to incite Pure-Blood Rioting for the purpose of recruitment. He instructed the leaders of the marches not to fight back. But, you know, you can't control everyone. That was under Eugenia Jenkins's term as Minister. She was a commander in the Order and we squibs thought we might have a friend in her. In the end, though, she chose not to risk her political neck."

Matt had never heard of Eugenia Jenkins before, though he wondered if she might be related to Slytherin Captain Reginald Jenkins. It sounded as though they shared a similar ethic.

"Dumbledore became headmaster at Hogwarts and immediately retired the previous caretaker. From what I heard it wasn't on the best terms between either of them. My time with the Order was done. Riddle knew my face. His torture had broken my body beyond magical repair. I thought that was it for me. I couldn't even go back to the factory. But Dumbledore said he still had a use for me. He suspected Riddle was recruiting students. He needed a caretaker that answered only to him to keep an eye out for any behavior, any breaking of the rules, that might indicate a student was ripe for Voldemort's plucking, in hopes he might be able to intervene. Plus it would give me the chance to find any secret tunnels Riddle might use to get onto the grounds. That Dumbledore was always thinking five steps ahead, he knew the war was coming and he wanted Hogwarts, and the students, safe when it did." Filch stared into space wistfully for a moment. Mrs. Norris leapt onto his lap, "Hello, my pretty," he murmured to her, giving her neck a scratched. She purred happily and curled up onto his lap as he absently pet her.

"Course I had never been a caretaker before and the students weren't particularly interested in being disciplined, particularly when they found out I was a squib. Bad enough to try to discipline children when their broken bones and cuts can be healed in an instant, but it's all the worse when they can stop you by putting up a wall. The first month was just about the worst I'd ever had. Seemed they were intent to make the squib quit. And the Gryffindors were the worst of it, at least the Slytherins had the brains to think a caretaker without a lick of magic might be more useful than the alternative, but Gryffindors live for the moment without thinkin' the consequences. Couldn't set foot outside my office without somethin' exploding. But I wasn't ready to quit. I'd never quit anything just cause it was hard, wasn't about to start. You see that file for Arthur Weasley, that was my predecessor who caught him goin' on a romantic stroll. Know what he gave him?"

Matt shook his head.

"He whipped him!" Now, there was no way Dumbledore'd actually let me whip a student and I wasn't inclined to start either (though those Weasley twins tested my resolve) but there was no need for the students to know that. I had a sergeant in the Air Force who used to come up with all kinds of creative threats for us, so I just patterned myself after him. I suppose I buried myself in the role a bit; but I'll be damned if it didn't put a stop to most of the trouble. At least until that Potter boy and his friend Black. Two boys from rich, well connected, pure-blood families - I knew they'd go wrong before the end of their first supper. It was like tryin' to stop the wind. They were bullies - heartless, cruel, no regard for the rules. You kids think rules are just suggestions to be flouted when they're inconvenient, but those who flout the rules that's the first step, you know, the first step down the path. People who think they are above the law. I have no tolerance for rule breakers. If it weren't for that Lily Evans girl, I don't think Potter would have turned out half so well, I think Riddle would have loved to have him and Black. His kid weren't much better." Filch was drawling a bit and Matt was quite sure detention had long since ended, but he was curious now.

"Loved to break the rules, him and his friends. Not normal rule-breaking like those blasted twins, the dark, dangerous stuff. The stuff death eaters would do. Miracle they never killed anybody."

"But they did things for good!" Matt protested. Despite everything, Harry Potter and his friends were heroes to him. Their actions over their six years at Hogwarts had saved the Wizarding world.

"For good." Filch snorted. "Let me tell you, there isn't a single wizard who went bad who didn't think he was doing good. Grindelwald thought he was doing good. Hitler thought he was doing good! Every one of those nine pilots I shot out of the sky thought he was on the side of right. Sure, in the end Potter chose the better way, but any man can be deceived into thinking he's on the side of right just because he doesn't want to believe he's supporting something wrong, you mark me." Filch took another swig of tea. "You mark me."

Matt nodded. "So you worked as a spy for Dumbledore in the school?"

"Darn straight. Was of perticular importance that year with that Ministry official, Umbrage her name was. You know her?"

Matt did not.

"No, wouldn't suppose you would. Just imagine a giant toad in a pink sweater and you've got her. I've never had a job so easy as I did convincing her I was on her side. Dumbledore knew it was only a matter of time before she tried to have him sacked and none of us knew fer how long and someone had to watch over the students. She liked me so well she never gave a thought to what I was doing or when. That year I swear it was like Potter intentionally was trying to get kicked out. Everywhere I went he was causing some problem, he and his friends. And then the Weasley twins were trying to get themselves expelled so I was forever cleaning up their messes - nightmare that was. Bad enough during a regular year with the mess of those snackboxes of theirs puking pustules or whatever they called 'em - you ever tried to mop up a swamp? I might've liked 'em better if I didn't have to clean up after them all the time. But that swamp... I really might have whipped 'em for that. Happy to pack her bags and see her off I was. Had 'em packed for a week. Had to fight to keep from smilin', pretend to be distraught, just in case. Wasn't a year later that came to pass and Dumbledore was gone and the Carrows, well they didn't even think of sacking me. Time came, I got the students out, came back, and that was one more battle I fought in. It's where I got this." He pulled back his sleeve revealing a nasty scar. At that moment he noticed the time on his cracked watch, it was well beyond curfew. "Well you must be tired of the stories of an old man by now."

"Oh no, not at all" Matt objected, and it was true. He wanted to hear more, wanted to ask more questions, wanted to hear exactly how Filch had spied for Dumbledore, if he still worked for the Order, more stories about the years right before the Second Wizarding War.

"Well you'd best be off to bed. I suppose the one thing I wanted you to know is Dumbledore, well he would've been glad to have you here. Always believed squibs were important to the Wizarding world, else we wouldn't have 'em. Maybe that don't mean that much to ya, maybe it do."

"No, it does," Matt interrupted.

"Well, if you ever want to come by and have a cuppa, door's always open." His face shifted into a warning scowl, though with no menace behind it, "But don't go tryin' to be friendly-like in the corridors or thinkin' I'll go easy on ya. I gotta reputation to maintain and I don't want 'em thinking I'll give you special treatment just cause yer a squib like me. Cause if ya do, heaven help ya, I'll give you a month of detention with Hagrid. Now go. And don't let me catch you out after hours again. Tonight's a freebie."

As Matt left the room he glanced back at the lonely old man finishing his cup of tea, cat asleep on his lap, mumbling softly to an old photograph on the table. He resolved he would visit again, maybe before the holidays.

It was as he was passing the window that faced the lake that he saw the strange creature once again splashing and playing in the moonlit pool. "Well, tonight's a freebie," he said to hims. He tugged his robes together to brace against the cold wind and headed to the front entrance.