The Insult

Arundel stayed with her sister the next day, they went sightseeing the way muggles do, with dark glasses on their faces, dressed in ridiculous muggle clothing. They walked along the Nile, and they visited the museums where the muggles had a number of magical artefacts lying dormant that they had no understanding of. They ate suggered sweets by a fountain, whilst watching camels being driven past, and listened to the call to Mecca without really understanding what it was. It was nice to just be with family. Amber doted on her but Arun knew the whole time she was with her sister Amber was constantly fretting about the time wasted from her purpose. At lunchtime Arun realised their shopping trip was more than just a waste of time, especially when Amber stopped by an ancient pillar and ran her hands across the stonework then compared it to a symbol in the notebook in her pocket. "You should go," she told her an hour or two later. "It's not that I don't want you here but-" the words were left unspoken. Their jobs conflicted. "I'll send correspondence to Hogwarts and if the Americans turn up I'll come to you. You're right you know."

"About what?" Arun asked.

"It is one of the safest places in Britain."

Arun nodded and smiled at her sister. "Will you be ok?"

"I have friends," she said. "As do you."

Arun disapperated soon after, but she wasn't ready to go back to Hogwarts and face Snape and teaching and the Artifacts. She had a flat in Berlin, more like a safe house, a room in a muggle squat above an awful bar called the Red where Neo Nazi's came to dance with machetes down their trousers, just in case they wanted to start trouble. The people who lived above were a mix of addicts and whores. Too addled to remember a girl who came and went without regularity and who made things float. Who occasionally protected them if one of the skinheads below wanted to assert his dominance in the most depraved and easily accessible way he could. They thought they hallucinated, she thought they were a useful kind of warning system. She kept some clothes and some books here. And her wand too, not that she ever used it any more. Not since it had utterly turned on her in her third year at Hogwarts. Perhaps for the best; she was more powerful now than she had ever thought it possible to be. Wands were crutches and made a person weak.

The charms she had used to lock her door were still intact when she picked her way through the filthy emancipated bodies of the junkies she resided with, her room was a grey matrice on the floor, and a bedside table salvaged from a skip. Clothes were hung on a bit of stolen scaffolding pipe and her books were in a trunk. If her sister saw this place she would vomit. The single window looked out over the smoking area of the bar below and she sat in the window seat and looked down.

Fenrir Greyback looked back up.

"Shit."

He raised a hand and waggled his fingers at her, a grin spread across his pointed teeth. She changed her clothes into something a bit more inconspicuous, a purple and black jumper, ripped jeans and a leather coat, and she met the werewolf in the smoking area. He passed her a cigarette and looked quite pleased with himself.

"Why are you here?"

"Heard you're working at Hogwarts?"

"Who told you that?" Arun asked with a frown.

"So it's true then?" Fenrir growled.

"Who told you?" Arun rounded on him, poking her finger into his chest.

"Oh," Fenrir's grin widened even more as he looked down at her, "How I would like to bite that off your slender little hand," and he nashed at her.

"The Daily Profit announced it?" she asked, angry that her name was in print.

"Get out of my head you little slut," his smile dropped.

"Why are you here, Fenrir," she asked again. "Are you going to tell me or will I have to force you?"

He began to growl, and turned his head away from her, busying himself with his cigarette. "There's talk. There are promises being made. You'd do well to step aside when it happens."

Arun's frown grew, "You're warning me as a friend?" she asked.

"You are, ain'tcha? My pal. My-" he leaned in. "Protector?" and he started to laugh, a long low disgusting laugh. "Hogwarts is a buffet, but I know you don't approve."

"Look at me Fenrir," Arun pressed but he physically turned away.

"I came from Koblenz to hang around under your junky flat and listen to three-chord punk. Knew it would only be a matter of time before you crawled back to this rathole. What's the matter? Teaching too much like real work?" he chuckled. "I'd be a good teacher. I'd teach those fucking wizards to respect Werewolves. I'd teach em to fear us, I'd teach them to be us." he growled and rolled his shoulders. "I ain't going to tell you what's coming, but part of me suspects you know already."

Arun reached out to pull him round so she could lock eyes with him, but he was too strong for her to force him and at her touch he ran from the crowded muggle smoking area. She pushed her hands through her hair and groaned. Her name was in print. Her name was in print and Fenrir had a copy. Her name was in print and somebody plotting to attack Hogwarts. Her name was in print and the Americans would have seen it.

"Shit."

She made her way back to the little room. She was compromised. For all her talk of fighting, not running, she had to come up with a contingency plan. Collapsing onto her old mattress with her legs drawn up under her, she let out a long grown. One of the junkies moved past her door and looked in, "Hey man, bad trip?" he asked. His name was Sid, he was from Manchester.

"The worst," she muttered and he slunk in and sat next to her. "The Americans are after me, and I'm a professor at a university, and I'm dating a guy who makes me feel sick. A werewolf just gave me a warning, or a threat, not sure which, and I couldn't tell if he was flirting with me, I need to run but I don't know where to. If I run I'll be running for the rest of my life."

"Woah," he started to laugh and he scratched at the red welts on his itching skin, she observed him with pity and the realisation that they were not so different. "Bad trip man, what did you take?"

"A Grants Artifact," She told him, knowing that he didn't have a clue what she was talking about.

"Is that some kind of mushroom? I've got a guy-"

"Thanks, Sid but I'm not interested." She wondered, for a fleeting moment how muggles survived without a job. "What do you do when you run out of money and gear?"

Sid smiled his teeth a row of sad yellow and black stumps. "I beg, borrow and steal." Even his laugh was desperate. She clocked him looking around her sparse room. Nothing much to steal in here, sorry Sid.

Arundel puffed out her cheeks, talking to junkies was pretty one-sided. She decided a different line of questioning, "Question for you, Sid, when you're with a woman how does she make you feel?"

"Not half as good as the gear does," he grumbled. "I'd kill to feel anything these days, but it's all-" he let his hand rise and then decline down, accompanied by a whistle. He sniffed and scratched his welts again. "See ya," he said suddenly as if he'd just remembered something important, and he slunk off.

Arun swiped her door closed set wards to wake her upon any forced entry and fell asleep. When she woke up it was dark, and she could hear the screech and crash of the music playing in the bar below. Blue and purple light filled her room and the scent of smoke from the outdoor smoking area below leaked in through the window. She had no idea what time it was back in England, or what time it was here but she was hungry. So she got up, picked up her backpack and left the squat, intent to find her favourite muggle twenty four hour coffee shop. She ordered a black coffee and sat in the window studying the reflection of the lights above her table in the dark liquid. Severus' words echoed around her skull, 'you're safe with me' how dearly she wanted to believe him. How dearly she wanted to be one of those women, like Narcissa, who was constantly looking to somebody else to save them and finding it. But in truth, what could Severus do that she could not? What could he do to keep her safe other than preventing her from doing anything at all? She sniffed and brought the coffee to her lips. Outside two muggle fire engines and a number of police cars whizzed past. She watched them with sleep filled eyes, wondering what they were rushing to. The coffee shop waitress looked out of the window with wide eyes. When the shop phone rang she answered it, and Arundel listened, glad that she had learned the language.

"Yes- down the road- seriously?- yes- yes- gas! How many- No!" the woman's hand travelled to her mouth. "All of them?" She dropped the phone and ran out the door. Arundel followed her outside coffee cup still in her hand and looked in the direction of her safe house.

"What's going on?" She asked.

"The bar, the Red, it's-" she let out a whimper. "There was a gas explosion."

Arundel felt cold. Had Sid got out? was it gas or was it something else? She backed into the coffee shop, sat down and continued to drink her coffee. When the waitress came in she looked at Arundel like she was insane, "There's police all over the place, maybe I should close up, if there's one gas explosion there could be others, right?"

Arundel shrugged. "maybe," she said. Her hand travelled to her bag, it only had the items she'd taken to her sisters inside, her wand was in the Red, so now she was wandless. That was strange, though she didn't use it any more and it had abandoned her a long time ago, it was still odd to think that she was a Witch without a wand.

Arun kept her eyes on the road, half expecting to see American dark wizards looking for her, she'd seen their uniform before- pointy black hats and metal facemasks with crows beak noses. It'd be comical if she hadn't watched them use the killing curse on a muggle family who had stumbled across them by accident. It would be strange to see them in Muggle Berlin but not impossible.

"I know people who go to the Red. It's a Friday night-" the waitress let the implication hang, Arundel was a soundboard for her anxiety, nothing more, but the fact that she wasn't joining in was marking her out.

"It's awful," Arun said, and in playing along made herself invisible. "I'm going to look," but she had no intention of it, her heart was pounding in her chest, she was so sure this was to be her final battle. She walked out towards the Red but took a right before she reached it, as she walked she saw nobody that set off alarm bells. Loads of muggles sure, but none of them paid her any attention. With relief, she found a private corner and apperated from there to Hogsmeade, so much for her weekend away to clear her head.

Everywhere was closed, so she forced into the shrieking shack and slept huddled in a corner with a strong charm around her to confuse anybody that came too close to her. In the morning she went to the Three Broomsticks, had a bath and tried to get more sleep.

Lunch was a bland meal of ham and cheese, she sent a message to her sister to say about Fenrir's visit and the Red burning down, and then she made a list. A list of those who would help her, and those who would destroy her with their help, and those who sought to destroy her. When she was done only her sister and Snape were in the column of people she could trust and her sickening feeling only grew. She tapped her quill on the parchment to vanish her list then she took a separate piece of paper and wrote to Moody.

We need to talk, it is worth your time.

By midnight she was halfway through her lesson planning, but Moody had not turned up. By the morning she had spent twice as long planning for her lessons as it would take to teach them and still Moody hadn't arrived. The Owl she sent returned by the next lunchtime but it didn't have a return message. This put her in a foul mood, so she sat in her rented room drinking butterbeer on her own and reading the whole of the Daily Proffit. There was no mention of Berlin, no mention of the explosion or reports of American dark wizards and that made her angry too because she was sure the explosion hadn't been an accident.

It was only Sunday, she still had Monday off but she felt like she had been away for weeks. Thursday night she had been with her sister, Friday was a mix of Berlin and the shrieking shack. Saturday had been lesson planning in the Three Broomsticks and Sunday she had just sat around all day. Her hair was a mess, her skin looked like it was sliding off her face. She was cold, despite having sat by her fire all day waiting for Moody. Her mouth felt like a hairy carpet and quite frankly she was dreading teaching again.

A knock sounded at her door. She jumped out of her skin and realised that in her reaction had created a protective shield around herself.

"Ere, Arun, you in there?"

Hagrid. A different kind of panic took hold, the kind that didn't want anybody to see how utterly disgusting she was. She floundered around the room "Just a moment!" domestic spells were not her forte, she had to say the words to get her clothes to fold and the books to stack. She ran to pull on her clothes and ran her hand through her hair to try and detangle it then wrenched the door open. "Hi!"

Hagrid gave her a wide smile, and didn't even look beyond her, "Alright Arun? Told you were up ere, thought you might want to have a drink," he pushed past her into the room and sat down on her sofa.

"Who told you I was here?"

"Madam Rosmerta, she was saying she doesn't understand why you're staying ere when you have a perfectly good bed at the…" Hagrid stopped talking, realising that he might be saying something he will regret. Arun didn't mind, but she made a mental note to stay at the hogshead in the future, Madam Rosmerta talked too much.

"Too much like school," Arun shrugged.

"Well, I thought you might like somebody to talk to. We're a strange bunch us teachers. We don't always extend a welcoming hand you know, but that don't mean we don't want you with us."

It was nice of Hagrid to say it but the fear and stress of the past few days made her weary, she couldn't help wonder if he had a different motive than pure friendship. "Sure," she said. "I've been cooped up in here lesson planning all day, my eyes feel like they are going to drop out of my head. I had to Accio all my notes and marking from the castle last night."

Hagrid chuckled, "I don't envy you Arun, McGonagall's been teaching the same lessons for so many years her notes are turning brown, so I guess it gets easier."

Arun chuckled, "Is it just you here?"

"Aye, most ave lessons on Monday morning, those who don't might come in a bit later for a pint but it won't be all of us."

Arun followed him downstairs, ordered a dumpling and beef stew and a butterbeer, Hagrid had a firewhisky but he'd eaten at the castle. There wasn't a huge number of people in this afternoon. The weather was pretty poor and it had turned unreasonably cold so those who were in huddled together with a depressing urgency. Rosmerta shot Arun dark look as she cleaned tankards behind the bar and when Arun turned to make eye contact with her she felt a wash of apprehension and disgust, the fleeting memory of death eaters torturing her friend on the floor by the fire, she turned away without Rosmerta ever knowing Arun had looked inside her head. Hagrid was talking about something, some animal he'd found that changed into a little monster when it got wet. He'd taken it as a pet, but it'd attacked him. He had a long gash up his arm that he seemed quite proud of. Arun half listened to him, nodding when she needed to, asking him questions about the creature to make it seem she was interested but her eyes were darting around, studying the people in the pub, working out who they were, if they were a threat.

"...and that's why I said to Dumbledore that e'd better not use em in the dungeons."

"Hum?" Arun's attention snapped back to him. "Dungeons?"

"That's right. Dumbledore says that they give some kind of early warning, but I don't know why he'd want em down there in the first place."

Arun thought about it for a moment, but she drew a blank too, "I don't know. What's Dumbledore said about the Dungeons? What's he going to do about...whatever's down there?"

Hagrid chuckled and leaned in closer, "I reckon he aint got a clue what's down there. Those hauntings don't happen all the time you know, always been a bit creepy in the vaults mind, used to get a strange smell like decaying meat every month or so, and then there would be the scuttling in the pipes and the ghostly feelings, the water dripping and the groaning, the feeling somebody was breathing down u'r neck...but not like it's been recently."

"So what changed? Did somebody bring something new into the castle?"

"I don't think so," Hagrid pouted. "Though it were a busy summer, the ministry asked Dumbledore to…" Hagrid's eyes widened and he sat back and ran a hand over his beard. "Anyway, reason I brought my Hogglepop down there was...what?"

"Hogglepop? Did you make that up?" she glossed over his slip up for fear of losing him altogether.

"Nah," Hagrid chuckled. "Them's called Hogglepops, only native to Scotland mind, a bit like the Haggis."

"Haggis is a type of muggle food,"

And a type of wizard animal-" Hagrid shook his head, "Not much of one though, just a tiny hairy looking cow, not enough to eat even."

"Do you think I could show my students it?" she asked sweetly, "I'm sure they would love to see the effect water has on one."

"I dunno that they would," Hagrid sighed. You want to avoid getting your students in danger, the owls from parents can be horrible.

"Is that a thing, do parents really write? Mine never did, even when I failed my OWLs."

Hagrid was stunned for a moment, "You…"

"Failed. Yes."

"But…."

"No wand."

He sat stunned for a bit then he leaned forward, "You was banned?"

"No, my wand hated me. I was learning non-verbal wandless magic in my third year but as I got better at controlling my powers my wand grew less and less compliant. I hid that it didn't work by carving a piece of wood with no core to look like I was still doing what everybody else was doing, but you know you have to turn your wands in for inspection before exams to stop cheating spells and mine was found to be a fake. I was called up in front of the Wizengamot and they said that I had to sit with my wand even if it hated me. It backfired, I failed," she shrugged. "Then I left. I was so humiliated I didn't even stay for the ones I could do without it."

"Merlins Beard Arun, you ask any teacher who was around then and they'll say you were one of the best students they've ever had. I didn't know…"

"It was curse breaking, tomb raiding and business as usual after school, I got my jobs through reputation and being very overconfident in my abilities. Not long after the war broke out."

At the mention of the war, Hagrid looked a bit awkward.

"You have questions about me? It's ok Hagrid, everybody does."

"I just-" Hagrid stopped saying what he wanted to say, but Arun could see the thought behind the unspoken question in his head. 'The Dark Lord didn't take kindly to indifference and neutrality, so either you lie and you were one of his followers, or you have something or someone protecting you.'

He settled with, "It can't have been easy?"

"People seem to forget I sold weapons to the Minister of Magic too. Both my protectors are removed from post and those who worked for them largely mistrust and hate me. The Aura's never saw value in my work, Dumbledore finds my morals abhorrent. Even you're nervous."

Hagrid scratched his beard again and picked up his drink, he seemed a bit more on a sure footing with the liquor nursed in his hand. "You can't blame folk for being curious. They want to know what Dumbledore sees in ya now."

"I'd like to know that as well," Arun told him and picked up her own drink. "But unfortunately for me, he's a skilled occulmans."

Hagrid stayed for two more drinks, and most of their conversation centred around teaching. By the time he left she had the next three weeks planned, and Hagrid was happy to secure her the creatures she needed. She in return agreed to help him look after the ones he already had on school grounds, and together they planned to enlist a number of the more keen students to help too. They said their good night and she went back to her room, and for the first time in days, she slept soundly.