Chapter 65 – One Last Trick
Katherine Avery sat silently in the car, watching the streetlights flash past on the quiet road. After a little while, she stole a glance to her left at the man in the driver's seat and plucked up the courage to ask the question that had been playing on her mind since he'd picked her up.
"Are you going to tell Mum?"
Jorge waited until they'd pulled to a stop at a red light before he turned to look at her. There was no judgement in his dark eyes – there never was. It was why she'd called him tonight instead of her mother.
Jorge Velazquez was the most unshockable person she'd ever met. Not many wizards were willing to extend the hand of friendship to the family of a convicted Death Eater, but Jorge was one of them.
She and her mother had moved to America when she was six years old, fleeing the fallout from her father's arrest following the second and final fall of Voldemort. Jorge had been the first person they'd met, appearing on their doorstep with a homemade lasagne and a bottle of wine to greet his new neighbours, and had been a welcome friend ever since.
Katy had spent countless hours at his house as a child, while her mother was out at work. Jorge worked from home as a writer for an obscure magical theory journal and years of travel and research had made his house a treasure trove for an inquisitive little girl, with a seemingly never ending supply of books, magical artefacts and rare artworks. Even when she'd grown older and no longer had need of a babysitter, he was always a useful source of information for essays.
"I can come in with you while you tell your mother, if you like," Jorge said now, interrupting her thoughts. "Explain what happened?"
"She's going to kill me," said Katy, leaning her head back against the headrest and pushing long blonde hair away from her face.
"She's not going to be thrilled," said Jorge, giving her a sympathetic smile. "But I don't think she'd go so far as to murder her only daughter for sneaking out to a party."
Katy threw him a look that said he didn't really know her mother and sank down into her seat as the light turned green. The party had been a mistake, she realised that now, but Danny had specifically asked her to go and she hadn't been able to turn him down.
As it turned out, that was exactly what he had been counting on. Katy looked down at the knuckles of her right hand, which were still a little red, and made a mental note to say thank you to Aunt Nicola for her tips on avoiding unwanted advances next time she saw her.
"I think I broke his nose. Am I going to get in trouble?"
Jorge made a noise somewhere between a laugh and snort of disgust.
"I very much doubt he's going to tell anyone he got punched in the face by a girl," said Jorge as they turned into their street. "And if he does, you tell them the reason why. Honestly, I'm just glad you're ok and, when she calms down, your mother will be too."
"When being the key word," murmured Katy sourly. She looked out of the window at the familiar whitewashed walls of her house and sighed. This was going to be worse than the tattoo argument, she was sure of it.
On the morning of her eighteenth birthday, she'd skipped school and gone to a tattoo parlour. She looked down at her inner wrist now, where the small star and moon design – the closest interpretation of her parents' names she could think of – stood out against her pale skin.
She'd never seen her mother so angry. For Cassandra Avery, tattoos were an unwelcome reminder of the brand that had controlled her husband's life and Katy had been grounded, unfairly in her opinion, for a full month.
A warm hand closed over hers and squeezed reassuringly, and she met Jorge's sympathetic gaze. "Let's get this over with then."
He looked slightly worried, and Katy wondered if he was thinking of the tattoo debacle as well. His own arms were a canvas of intricate designs and her mother had, not entirely incorrectly, blamed him for inspiring her daughter.
Katy knew something was wrong from the moment she pushed open the door.
There were voices coming from the kitchen at the end of the hall, but her mother rarely had visitors, especially not this late. She dropped her keys on the side table and walked the short six steps to the kitchen door, pushing it open with a boldness borne up by fear.
"….if you do see them – or anyone acting suspiciously – you need to tell us immediately," a man in dark robes was saying to her mother.
Katy didn't recognise his face, but the uniform was unmistakable and if a representative of the British Ministry of Magic was standing in her kitchen at eleven in the evening, it could only mean one thing.
"What's happened?" She had meant the question to sound calm and grown up, but it came out as a squeak.
Her mother's head turned sharply to look at her; Katy had told her she'd be studying in her room, so the dress and heels, not to mention the presence of Jorge, were clearly raising some questions. The fact that her mother didn't immediately voice these questions did not ease the knot of fear coiling in her stomach.
"I'm Auror Molloy. Are you Katherine?" asked the Ministry official. Katy nodded, her gaze still locked with her mother's. "And you are?" asked Molloy. This was presumably directed at Jorge, for he answered softly:
"Jorge Velazquez. I'm a friend of the family. Is something wrong?"
Molloy consulted a notebook, flipping back a few pages, then asked: "You live next door?"
"What's happened?" repeated Katy, as Jorge gave him a curt nod. She curled her hands into fists in an effort to stop them shaking and felt her nails cutting little crescents into the soft flesh of her palms.
Molloy paused to write something in his notepad, then tucked it into a pocket and looked up at her. There was no emotion in his ash coloured eyes, but that didn't mean much. She hadn't met an Auror yet who had any sympathy to spare for the family of a convicted Death Eater.
"There has been a fire," said Molloy, and although his words were calm, Katy felt the bile rise in the back of her throat. "We're still establishing the cause, but it looks like-"
"Which wing?" she managed to ask, cutting across his words. "Dad's in East. Where was the fire?"
Judging by the look of displeasure on his face, Molloy was clearly not used to being interrupted, but it was her mother who answered.
"It's gone, Katy."
Katy heard the words, but couldn't make any sense of them. Gone? What had gone? The fire?
She looked to her mother and for the first time took in her expression.
Katy got the impression that many people thought her mother was weak. To an outsider, it must have seemed like Robert Avery's quiet wife had fled after his trial, ashamed and cowardly, but Katy knew the truth.
Underneath her demure exterior, Cassandra Avery was made of steel. She'd spent years caring for her husband, waiting up for hours while he carried out the Dark Lord's orders, patching up his physical injuries as best she could and holding him until he was strong enough to bear the emotional ones.
After his imprisonment, she'd moved continents, away from all her friends and family, in order to give her daughter the chance of a childhood free from accusing glares and snide comments. She'd got a job, looked after Katy and built a new life, and she'd made it look easy.
Except Katy knew it hadn't been and as much as her mother tried to hide it, Katy had realised over the years that Azkaban had taken more than her father from her; part of Cassandra Avery was there with him.
Now she looked at her mother and saw cracks in the usually implacable armour; her green eyes had a curiously empty expression, there were faint tear tracks on her pale cheeks and her hands were trembling.
It's gone, Katy.
Katy looked back at the Molloy's tight expression and finally understood her mother's words. 'It' wasn't the fire. 'It' was Azkaban.
"Dad...?" The word was half choked and was all she could manage of the question she wanted to ask: that maybe, in spite of the mounting evidence to the contrary, there was a chance that her father had been able to get out.
The tears that welled up in her mother's eyes were all the answer she needed, and she felt her knees give way as Molloy began talking again. She couldn't hear a word: her ears were humming and the world was spinning and then there were strong arms supporting her, guiding her to a chair and a low voice talking softly in her ear.
"It's ok, I'm here. It'll be alright, I promise."
But the voice was wrong, because nothing could ever be alright again.
She thought of her desk upstairs, with the latest letter to her father lying on it, waiting to be finished. His last one had arrived just two days ago and now she would never get another. A correspondence that had started at the age of seven was over – she'd never enjoy another of his stories, never discover another secret of his past, never read another 'I love you more than anything else in the world, Katy.'
A steaming mug of hot chocolate appeared in front of her and gentle hands wrapped her fingers around it. Dazedly she took a sip and the thick, sweet liquid went some way to bringing her back to the world. Molloy had gone, though Katy hadn't seen him leave.
Her mother was stroking her hair and she leant into the caress, wondering how long this blessed feeling of numbness was going to last.
"Do you think it hurt?" she asked, in a voice that sounded distant and unfamiliar. She'd accidentally picked up a hot poker when she was small and had cried for an hour, even after her mother had applied Sinclair's Patented Burn Cream.
"From what I've heard, Fiendfyre makes quick work of anything in its path," said her mother softly. "It wouldn't have been for long."
"It was Fiendfyre?" asked Katy, raising her head to gaze up at her mother, who nodded gravely. "Then it was deliberate."
"Yes – Molloy was careful not to say so, but it must have been the guards."
"Was that who he was saying to watch out for?" Katy asked, fear beginning to curl in thin tendrils around her heart. "Are they coming after us?"
"No – the fire spread too quickly. No one would have got out. You're safe, honey."
"Then who is 'them'?" asked Katy, raising a hand to stop her mother's caresses. "When we came in, he was telling you to watch out for anyone suspicious."
"It's nothing," said her mother smoothly, and Katy might have believed her, if it wasn't for the fact that she couldn't meet her gaze. Katy looked at Jorge, who'd taken the third seat at the table and was looking fixedly into his black coffee.
"What's going on?" she asked deliberately, unable to stop the sudden rush of hope welling up inside her. If Molloy hadn't been referring to the guards, there was only one other thing he could have meant, and Molloy had said they. "They think it was Katherine, don't they? They think she started the fire and got Dad out?"
Her mother's expression was stony and her tone icy as she replied: "The Ministry of Magic is desperate to shift the blame for their own negligence – they'll say anything to absolve themselves of responsibility. Katherine has been under around the clock surveillance since she stepped foot into that prison – there is simply no way she could have done this. I'm sorry, honey, but it's just impossible."
"Impossible is just another way to say 'I don't know'," said Katy. It was a stupid thing to say – a line from an old fairy story - but desperation made her reach for something, anything, that would mean that this wasn't happening. All the same, she didn't expect her mother to go still and look at her with a combination of confusion and unease.
"Who told you that?"
"It's what the imp says," she explained weakly, blanching slightly at the sharpness in her mother's tone. "In those old European fairy stories."
"Oh," said her mother, with what Katy couldn't help feeling was a distinct note of relief. Cassandra Avery looked down into her steaming mug of tea and a faint, unexpected, smile of nostalgia crept across her tired features.
"Dad used to read them to me," pressed Katy, watching her mother closely. She hadn't mentioned the imp tales since her father's imprisonment. They'd once been her bedtime story of choice, but it was always her father that read them to her, and it hadn't seemed right to ask her mother, so the stories had vanished with him. "There was royal court who lived in harmony and then one day the imp turned up and started causing havoc."
"I remember," Cassandra murmured, taking a sip of chamomile tea.
"But?" Katy knew there was a 'but'; she see it in the way her mother avoided her gaze and hear it in the words she'd left unsaid. Cassandra looked up over the top of her mug with a thoughtful expression.
"But they weren't fairy stories."
"What were they then?"
"I suppose you could call them the misadventures of our youth," said Cassandra, setting the mug down and reaching out to push a lock of golden hair away from Katy's bewildered face. "Your father was the jester - always playing the fool, and I was the queen because, among other things, that made you a princess. I imagine you can guess who the imp was."
Katy could and the realisation sent adrenaline racing through her veins hotter and faster than fiendfyre. Imps were notoriously tricky creatures and the one in her father's stories had always had an answer for everything and taken a wicked delight in never telling anyone what it was.
Katy's eyes slowly slid away from her mother's face and were drawn inexorably towards Jorge, who was still sitting quietly at the table. His tanned fingers were curled around his cup of coffee, but he hadn't taken so much as a sip and she could see the tensed muscles in his arms.
If you couldn't take a risk when you were out of options, when could you? Katherine Avery took a leaf out of the imp's book and threw caution to the wind:
"Where's my dad?"
Jorge's dark eyes locked with hers and her heart skipped a beat. He knew.
"Katy..." There was pity in her mother's voice but Katy cut across her, her eyes never leaving Jorge's face.
"They're on his tattoos."
"Who are?" asked her mother, sounding utterly perplexed. In the circumstances, Katy couldn't blame her. Cassandra Avery hated tattoos, but Katy, who had never seen the Dark Mark flare on her father's skin, had no such objections and she'd spent hours examining Jorge's inkings.
"The imp and the jester and the queen," said Katy, searching Jorge's face for any sign of confusion at her words and finding none. "The troll and the courtesan. The bat and the knight. All of them."
She heard her mother's sharp intake of breath, and then: "Where?"
In answer, Jorge raised his left arm from the table, twisting his wrist inwards so that the tangle of brambles sprawling across his outer forearm were clearly visible.
Katy dropped her gaze to seek out creatures hiding amongst the thorns and felt a shiver run down her spine as she found them. Just below the face of Jorge's watch sat the imp, perched on a thick stem with a grin on its face and marionette paddles in its hands. The strings fell down in a cascade and the ever luckless troll bellowed a few branches below, hopelessly ensnared in the pale threads.
Her eyes moved along the rose stems and found the other characters: playing cards snagged on thorns depicted the Queen of Hearts and a Joker; a courtesan lounged on the petals of a rose; brambles encircled a chess set's black knight and, always the hardest to find amongst the leaves, a bat darted unharmed through the barbs, wings spread wide.
"Katy, I want you to go to Samantha's."
Katy tore gaze away from the inked designs to stare at her mother and was shocked to see that Cassandra Avery had her wand out and was pointing it directly at Jorge's heart.
"Mum?"
"Go," said her mother again, her green eyes fixed on Jorge with a look of fury that Katy had never seen before.
"I'm not going to hurt her," said Jorge, breaking his silence at last. "I would never hurt her, Cass, you know that."
"Oh?" There was acid dripping from the word. "No one outside of our old house ever heard those stories. How long have you been spying on us?"
"Mum, it's Jorge," said Katy quietly. "He wouldn't-"
"I told you to leave, Katherine," said Cassandra sharply, in a voice that brooked no argument.
"But he knows!" pressed Katy. If Jorge had planned on hurting them, he'd had years in which to do it. Right now, she was far more concerned with finding out what had happened to her father than the possibility that Jorge was an enemy. "Where is he?"
Jorge's dark eyes slid from Cassandra's wand to Katy and he considered her for a long moment.
"You may not like the answer."
"Is he alive?" asked Katy. Despite her mother's reaction, she just couldn't convince herself that Jorge was harbouring malicious intentions. Truth be told, he seemed more nervous than threatening. That in itself should have set off alarm bells, but desperation had driven all other thoughts from her mind.
"Yes."
The softly spoken word made the tears well up in her eyes again.
"Where is he?" she asked urgently, leaning across the table towards him, searching his dark eyes for the answer she craved.
"Where the Ministry will never find him."
Was that a reassurance or a threat? Cassandra seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because she asked acidicly:
"You claim to know Robert and yet you've never thought to mention this fact in thirteen years? What's changed?"
Jorge pulled a small card from his shirt pocket and held it between two fingers, flipping it so they could see the British Ministry of Magic insignia embossed in gold across its front.
"When I was showing Auror Molloy to the door, he gave me his card. Told me to contact him if I should see anyone suspicious hanging around."
"So?"
"So Katherine was right," said Jorge simply. "There is one place they'll never look."
Katy stared at Jorge in bewilderment, finding herself, not for the first time that evening, unable to make sense of what was being said. When had she said that? She looked to her mother to see if she was just as confused, but Cassandra Avery wasn't looking at her. Her wand was still out and pointed at Jorge, but the hand that held it trembled and the knuckles had turned white. Her face had a frozen, stunned expression and as Katy watched, she saw silent tears spill from leaf green eyes.
"Cass?" Jorge's voice was low, and almost pleading.
"This is a trick," said Cassandra faintly, staring at him as though he was the only person that existed in the world.
"Yes," said Jorge softly. "One last trick, to pay for all."
"But you can't… This is impossible." In all of her eighteen years, Katy had never seen her mother look as lost as she did at that moment.
"Not impossible," said Jorge slowly, the faintest trace of a smile on his lips. "Just monumentally difficult to accomplish."
Katy was about to ask for someone to explain what was going on when her mother's armour finally fell away. Her wand dropped to the table with a clatter and she sank into her chair, shaking with sobs. Jorge was out of his seat in an instant, kneeling on the floor before her and cradling her trembling hands in his.
"How?" Katy thought the word had probably been intended as a demand but it sounded like a plea.
"Remember how Gus could never understand why Katherine was wasting her time working in the Hall of Prophecy? Well turns out she didn't choose it for the career opportunities," said Jorge, his dark eyes gazing up into her mother's light one. "She chose it for the walk to work. She chose it because when she was sixteen she made a joke about wanting to revisit the past and one of her friends looked up from her copy of Witch Weekly and said: 'It's not impossible – my brother works in the Department of Mysteries and he gave me a tour. There're these devices called Time Turners…'"
He broke off as Cassandra sobbed harder and pulled her into his arms in one smooth motion. "I never wanted to lie, Cass, I swear, but I made a promise and you don't break your word to a woman who just massacred over two hundred people to save your skin. Especially not when she's offering you the one thing you want most in the world and never thought you could have."
He looked up then, over Cassandra's shoulder, and met Katy's stunned stare.
For the second time that night, her world started spinning and at the center of it was Jorge's face. Jorge, who had been at every birthday, never missed a school concert, helped with homework assignments and who had listened to her occasional rants about her mother with a faint smile. Jorge, who had become such a fundamental part of her life that tonight, when she'd needed help, it was his number that she'd dialed into her phone.
Her vision blurred into a kaleidoscope of colours, but this time it wasn't grief that made her blink back the tears pricking at her eyes.
She had never met Katherine Riddle and the only letter she'd ever written to her had been returned unopened. The Ministry was prepared to allow Robert Avery access to the outside world, but Katherine was deemed far too much of a risk. It wasn't until now that she fully understood why, and yet, in the end, all the precautions and security measures had made no difference. No one had ever been able to stop the imp doing something that she wanted to do, and for once, the stories held up to the hype.
She managed a small smile through her tears and the relief spread over Jorge's face like a sunrise.
"I've missed you, Dad."
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