Disclaimer: Anything you know is not mine etc.
Thank you to the very nice people who left me a review! I really do appreciate it...thank you so much: )
Part Sixteen
Ames Farm Part Two
"Sir...I was wondering what you know about...about Horcruxes..."
I followed her up the set of narrow steps, jumping over the second to last which was so rotten it had already fallen in like the rest of the house seemed to keep threatening to do, with all its creaks and groans.
We arrived on a landing with some more doors and dusty rooms going off it, but Laura made for the end, where another flight of stairs went up, disappearing into the roof.
"My room," she said by way of explanation.
At the top of the second tiny dark staircase, I cast the Lumos spell to light the way and looked around at where we were. The was a very small wooden door in front of us, with no threshold, but coming directly off the stairwell.A couple of curious hatches were to either side of us where the eaves of the house met at an odd angle.
Laura opened the tiny door, shoving it as it stuck and disappeared inside. I had to stoop to follow after her, this house had obviously not been built with anyone over six feet tall in mind.
O O O O O
We were at the very top of the house. From the small window I could see the sea and the cove. It was an odd panorama for France's Southern coast, given the distinct fact that it was April in 1943. I half expected to see Nazi ships and planes on the horizon, but the view was as peaceful and as uninterrupted as the picture postcards Mrs Cole would sometimes receive from her nieces in the country, before the war.
The sea was a dim, still blue, and white sands stretched beyond the farm and along the rocky cove. I had seen the sea before, but it had only been on the summer outings from the Orphanage where there always seemed to be some sort of divine intervention whereby it would always rain on the day we went. This, though, was quite different from those damp grey beaches.
Laura came up behind me and put her hands around my waist, standing on tiptoe to plant a kiss behind my ear.
"Like it?"
"It's beautiful," I answered, and meant it, because it really was.
"Better than this dump, then!" said Laura, laughing as she flung herself down onto an ancient white canopy bed in the centre of the room.
Laura's room looked the same as the rest of the house in the respect that it seemed to be trapped in a century ago without any changes made to it whatsoever. But unlike the rest of the house, here the fireplace had at least been raked and cleaned . A large walnut armoire stood against one wall, the door unlocked to reveal a mixture of robes and to my surprise, a few articles of Muggle-looking clothing. On the floor of the wardrobe, I was sure I could see what looked like a crumpled Beauxbatons uniform. In one corner, a solitaire board and a broken china doll in a pink dress had been abandoned under shelves and shelves of books.
Inspecting them, I saw again that there were even one or two of the better known Muggle titles and some peculiar stories of what seemed to be a Muggle Boarding school, though goodness knows how she had come by these. The rest were all wizarding books either of a practical nature or Wizard novels, mainly historical, and on the end of the shelf sat a wooden paint box with the name 'Sion J.Ames' written in pokerwork letters burned into the wood.
I noticed she'd stuck some pictures onto the mirror over the fireplace. She watched without saying anything as I unstuck the nearest one and took a closer look. It was curled at the corners and brown with age, and on the back, someone has scrawled the words 'Rebecca, 3rd October, 1926'. I turned it over, and saw what looked like an older Laura, holding a newborn baby and waving weakly at the photographer.
As if she'd read my mind, Laura said "My mother. Chris took that. My oldest brother, he had just become an Auror at the time. The baby is me."
"Your mother looks like you." I observed. "Who are the others of?"
Laura smiled. "That one," (she pointed to the picture to the left of the one I had just seen which showed three dark haired, pale young men, grinning and waving. The youngest looked in his early twenties, holding up a new-looking china doll that wore a pink dress, and laughing as he made it wave its painted hand at the camera as well.
"That one is of my brothers.Chris…Christoph, that is, is about thirty-three, which would make Sion twenty-nine and Reuben twenty-two. That's the last holiday before-" she fell silent and rubbed her face with the back of her hand.
"Before the owl came, anyway, and by that I don't mean the letter from school. I took the photo myself. I was ten."
O O O O O
We left the small room and the steep stairs and the dusty old house soon after at Laura's suggestion we spend the rest of the day on the beach in the cove. She had rifled through the armoire and changed her clothes to some of the vaguely Muggle looking garb I had noticed in there earlier, a short, square- necked dress in a pale pink floral print and a light straw hat which she held in one hand and wouldn't put on, despite claims she needed it to 'keep off the sun'.
She'd been a bit melancholy since her brothers were mentioned, but it seemed to pass as we navigated the sandy rock path that led down to the cove.
Laura tracked along in front of me, free of the burden of school books and long robes, and with the agility borne of someone who knew these paths well. I took off my jacket, and followed her in my shirt sleeves. It was getting hot.
The sand was hot too, and I could scarcely believe it was only April. Laura could swim, and I watched her transfigure her frock into a pink bathing dress and swim the length of the cove and back before coming back to join me on the sand, saying she was too tired to do any more.
We spent the day there, together, in that cove, and I was content to watch her, all laughter and high spirits with no frowning Aster Ames to steal her sunshine. I realised she likely had a horrible life at home with the old man, and for the first time in my life, I felt a flash of understanding and empathy for another human being. She deserved so much more, not least for loving me.
Evening found us entwined in each others arms, she leaning back against me, between my knees and leaning back to kiss me in between the pair of us watching the sun go down slowly over the water. The sea that night looked as if it were on fire, and I thought, of all the things in the world, this was romance.
Funny, then, from what I was thinking, that she chose that moment to say to me,
"Tom?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
"Whatever for?" I questioned, drawing myself out of my sudden introspective mood.
"For putting up with me….for liking me, I suppose. For not thinking badly of me for this place….she gestured vaguely back at the farm hidden up on the cliff top…I mean, at least, I hope you don't…" I felt her tense a little under my arms as she said the words.
I shook my head and smiled, though she couldn't see me. "Why would I think badly of you?" I asked.
"You might." she answered darkly, still looking across the sea at the fiery setting sun.
"When you saw London with me?" I asked her "That was a lot worse, surely."
I felt a slight tremor in her ribs as she laughed - a little bitterly - but nonetheless, with good humour.
"Maybe. But maybe not." she said. "Doesn't seem to have done you any harm…you'll be Head Boy, and I bet your mother would have been proud of you. Father tends to notice the bad stuff about me." she muttered. " But nothing good. And though I loved my brothers, you know here -" she paused, as if debating what way to phrase her next remark, "They were all he cared about. He didn't want to even hear about a daughter. He wouldn't so much as name me, after Mother died. Eventually, my brothers just chose a name each. Christoph said that the first Laura was his pet rat when he was fourteen I never did find out if he was just putting me on..." Laura rolled her eyes with comic despair.
"It's lucky your father did have you," I said quietly, "With your blood."
"Do you really believe all that stuff about blood?" she asked. "I'm not sure I do…..after all, what does it mean, really? I mean, are you really just a mix of what your parents were, a bloodline, a heritage, or are you really your own person? What would it be like if you grew up away from all that? What would you be like then? What would you have been like if you never found out your mother was magic?"
I considered her question for a moment. All the events at the Orphanage flashed in front of my eyes and I realised that I would have known anyway. I told her so.
"I think it finds you." I said. "It's destiny. Like your bloodline, and mine….."
She giggled
"Great things?" she asked, smiling.
I nodded, only half jokingly
"Great things. Possibly terrible things... But great, always. Of course."
"Because it's destiny?" she asked me, grinning.
I stood up, and pulled her into my arms to make our way back up the cliff top to the tall house.
"Destiny." I agreed.
O O O O O
I think destiny is partly what you make it.
And I didn't feel guilty that night when I was in bed with her, when she was lying underneath me with eyes screwed shut and mewling in a distracted kind of pleasure as I pushed her into the mattress hard, in the bed she'd slept in ever since she was a child. I liked it when she pulled my hair just as I was finishing, but she knew what I really enjoyed was to bite her shoulder and see it bruise the next day, like ownership, like a mark. It felt good and wrong at the same time, to be doing this here in her bed surrounded by the relics of her childhood. Maybe I ought to have felt bad about it, even refused, but we both knew, as I pulled her dress over her head and she began to push my shirt off of my shoulders, that there was no chance of that happening at all.
O O O O O
Later, when she was dozy and flushed and tired, she pulled the ancient not-quite-white broderie anglaise sheet over the two of us and lay back to sleep. The door was warded and bolted, even though there was no chance of Aster Ames return. This was, of course, my suggestion.
She still had her arms around me, and I did try to force other thoughts out of my mind too, in order to sleep, but one continued to nag, buzzing in the back of my brain like it was trying to bore into my consciousness.
What was that part of the Bible I heard at Church, about temptation and the Devil?
I didn't believe in all that stuff, of course, but I kept thinking about what exactly lay behind the peeling green paint that concealed Aster Ames sacred study, a room so private not even his daughter or his wife were permitted inside?
I don't think I made the decision consciously. But whatever decided for me, I felt my feet make contact with the cold wooden floorboards as Laura slept on. I felt about for my boots and put my shirt and jersey back on, retrieving my wand from where it had lain next to me on the bed, to replace it in its usual safe keeping place, up my left sleeve for quick access. And then I headed for the stairs.
Laura was still sound asleep when I left the room, so exhausted that she hadn't even noticed I had gone. I disarmed the wards I had set up earlier and glanced back over to the bed with my hand on the door handle before I left just to make sure.For a second I thought she was watching me, standing there about to betray her trust, but when I looked back, her eyes were closed. I closed mine, too, took a breath, and silenced the door hinges and then the stairs.
Whatever her father was hiding in his study, if the books from earlier were anything to go by, could be both very interesting and of substantial use to me in my personal researches.
I navigated the unfamiliar staircases warily, being careful to remember the missing stair on the larger of the two. It wouldn't do to have Laura wake in the morning and find me with a broken leg, uncovering both my treachery and my folly in having neglected the all-important details of successful subterfuge.
But I arrived at the door of Ames' study, both legs intact and wand drawn, wondering exactly how the Frenchman had sealed the door.
I raised my wand and spoke the words of the revealing spell. Seconds later, the air in front of the study door shimmered and a green glow appeared in front of it. It was as I thought. The door was indeed locked and warded.
The odd thing about it was that the wards were obviously weak and suddenly, a thought occurred to me. I reached out, slowly, and placed my hand on the door handle, whispering tentatively:
"Alohomora".
The door clicked, and the lock gave. I had been right. Aster Ames had clearly believed that nobody would ever come here, or even if they did, that they would never be able to pass through the front gates.
Because the study door had only been warded against Laura.
O O O O O
I stepped forward into the room behind the door with the peeling green paint, and looked around in wonder at what I saw. Books, rare, out of print,and in all shapes, sizes and colours lined the walls around a large desk topped with leather the colour of blood. The desk was covered in various papers and documents, and at one end of the room stood a battered couch and two armchairs upholstered in the same murky, fluid red; a drinks cabinet next to them, where Ames entertained Slughorn, no doubt.
I almost jumped as I caught sight of a black cat standing up and arching its back upon the sideboard, which was half covered in more books and papers. I stared into its eyes, one blue, one yellow for a few seconds before I realised it was not a real cat. At least, not any longer. Its' eyes were glossy, yet lifeless, a faint covering of dust collecting along the curve of its prominent spine. I turned away from the ugly creature's glassy, accusing stare, and walked towards the shelves.
I did not know, until years later, that at that moment, I was standing in the middle of one of the oldest and most expensive collections of spell books in Europe. My only thought was of the torn-out chapter of the old book at Hogwarts.
Was it possible that Ames had a copy? I scanned the shelves quickly, looking for the now-familiar green binding, but all Ames seemed to have were just very complex and incredibly old, including several titles written by Rowena Ravenclaw herself. Many of the books were in his own language, French, indeed, most of then were, though he clearly also read in English, German and Dutch, if the other titles were anything to go by. There were four enormous volumes by Nicolas Flamel the renowned alchemist, alongside "Muggles and Myths", "The Dark Arts Disarmed", and "Magic and Memory", by one Albus Dumbledore. I sneered at these last, and raised my wand.
"Manifesto..." I whispered.
The locating spell. It led me to a green glow hovering like a will-o-wisp over a small, low shelf right at the end of the row. It held only three books. Two were thin, and had fallen over onto their sides. But one was a squat, green volume, with dark writing on the spine……
"Magick Most Evile"
My hands felt cool and clammy as I bent down and picked it up. The banned subject at Hogwarts... if what I thought was true, then I held in my hands the last piece of the jigsaw.
Hastily, I stumbled over to the desk, slamming the book down on it and searching for the missing seventh chapter.
There it was, intact, in front of me. I seized my wand again, quickly muttering a spell to translate the ancient words on the page, and quickly began to read
The noise that interrupted me just seconds later was so quiet I almost didn't look up. A sharp intake of breath from the doorway, a flash of white nightgown thrown hastily on...Laura was standing there, eyes wide and full of tears,just staring and staring.
"Tom-" The words formed on her dry lips like a dreadful effort.
"Tom...what are you doing? You promised------"
To be continued...
Not great news for Tom, then... please review, I love to know how I'm doing...
I don't know if the 'Manifesto' spell is actually canon or I read it in a fanfic, but kudos to whoever made it up. It wasn't me...
Quote obviously by Tom to Sluggy in HBP...by JK Rowling.