Benedicte Ollivander

A/N: Sorry that this chapter is late. It's been a very busy weekend – busy entire week, in fact. There's not going to be a chapter next week, either. Instead, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

Linus shut the door behind him and hurried to the library. It wasn't an especially large library, but just big enough to wander. So he wandered, not seeing anything, until he stopped in front of a painting. It seemed to have what he was looking for. He turned and regarded it for a long time.

The painting's main shapes were a human skull, a scallop shell with a straw in it, and a battered violin with broken strings. The vast, wrinkled head of a sunflower tilted over the display, and a few pearls (from a broken necklace) were scattered on the table before them. On a childish impulse, Linus reached out one finger and gave the frame a push. The violin strings swayed, the soapy water in the shell sloshed about, and the pearls rolled to and fro aimlessly.

He heard Calliope's footfalls approaching. When he knew she was close, he said aloud, "Vanitas of Human Emotions and Pursuits. Ophelia Ollivander, painted sometime when Vanitas was a popular subject. People liked to be reminded of how futile their efforts were, and how short and bitter life was. Why on earth did Mum and Papa put this in the background of their children's portrait?"

Calliope shrugged. "I don't know. Papa was always fond of telling us, 'In the midst of life we are in death.' It's very true, isn't it?"

"In the midst of memory we are in oblivion," Linus stifled a yawn, scowling at himself. "Or insanity."

"Don't say that – listen, Linus, I remembered something. I was up at Hogwarts a couple days ago. When I was up there I met with Professor Burbage."

"Oh yes, I remember her!"

"She seemed busy, but called me back to ask me if I'd had a sister or cousin who'd graduated in 1972, named Benedicte. I told her yes, I had, and added that Benedicte had died in 1975. Professor Burbage seemed to not know anything about that – or, indeed, anything about her other than her name, House, and year of graduation." She stepped to the side to look at him, gauge his reaction.

"You're saying she had no idea?"

"Beyond what I mentioned, no."

"Ah. And she could have gotten those off of any document. She's been at the school since the early seventies, right? She would have known her, if this had happened… Another case, then, like mine, where there's cause to remember a person, but the memories are gone." He turned around, scanning the walls. "What time is it? He began to stride out of the library.

"Why? What are you planning?"

"I'm going to Hogwarts to visit Professor Burbage."

"Oh no, you aren't."

"Really? And why not?"

"Because you're a fugitive from justice? Have you forgotten that?"

Linus stopped, and groaned, "Actually, I had." He considered as he moved into the sitting area before the fireplace. "Maybe Dora could get me into the castle…"

"And violate her position as a guard of the school? Linus, you know better."

"There's got to be something I can do. Some way I can contact her to find out if Dora remembers – no, wait, no, it's if Professor Burbage remembers – wait. I wonder if Dora has memories… or think she does…"

"She wouldn't," Calliope said. "Andromeda Tonks and Mum only became friends after Benny disappeared."

"I'm sorry, wait," Mark piped up, "Her name is Andromeda?"

Linus jumped. "How long have you been here?"

"As long as Calliope's been," he answered.

"Don't scare me like that." Linus fell into one of the cosier chairs. "I'm so tired…"

Mark looked from the brother to the sister. "But wait – you would never have met either."

"Pardon?" Calliope asked, confused.

"You told me once that Benedicte had died when you were two, that you have no actual memory of her."

"But I remember her."

"Not the same thing. You remember being told about her, as I'm sure your parents gave you lots of stories –"

"Well, yes, that's exactly what I mean—"

"But do you have any memories of you interacting with her?"

Calliope settled into a couch opposite Mark, shaking her head. "No. I don't. I wanted to, though, when I was a little girl. I really wished I had something."

Mark turned to Linus. "Maybe that's a clue."

Linus had the bright look in his eye of a tired mind at work. "That could be a link – indeed it could – why didn't I see it myself?"

"Simple," Mark said, and when Linus gave him a look of thunder, added hastily, "I mean, you're really involved in all this. Emotional."

Linus subsided. "Yes…" he said to himself. "It's nothing unexpected, that I've lost a little perspective… oh, how I wish – ah, nevermind. Okay, let's catalog this. One of you get some parchment and write this down."

Calliope rushed to the writing desk nearest her and opened it, taking out a quill and parchment. Dipping the nib in an inkwell, she said, "Ready to go."

"Okay. Two columns, Yes and No. People who remember a Benedicte Ollivander are in Yes. People who don't, are No. In the first category, you and Mark. In the second, Scurry, Professor Burbage, and myself."

"But Professor Burbage has evidence of Benny's existence, as does the house. I'll make a third column, 'Physical Evidence.'"

"Mm. Good idea. But physical evidence means little. It could be faked, tampered with, or otherwise –"

"Suggestion, your Honor!" Mark interjected. "Dust Ms. Burbage's paper for fingerprints. See if any match up with fingerprints in the room. But who would ever want to fake all this stuff?"

"Obviously, someone who wants me to think that I had an older sister."

"And what earthly purpose would that serve?"

"I don't know – blackmail?" Linus flailed a bit, grasping at straws. "Try to make me think that she survived, escaped, is living off in – in Liverpool with two kids –"

"It's a lot more likely," Calliope overrode him, "That there's someone who wants to make you think you never had a sister, who wants to make everyone forget that. That I'm right, and you're wrong."

"No," Linus said automatically. "I'm the expert here—"

"Which is easier," Mark sat up, "To suppress memories, or to fabricate them?"

"Suppression, by far, but a memory of someone you never knew is very easy to fabricate."

"But not the chances to learn!" Calliope insisted. "I was sitting right there by the ingleside when Mum told me about Benedicte. I remember it was a sunny day, I was reading about ballet – I could probably find the book right around here."

"The physical evidence is all around you, Linus. And it all matches up with what Calliope says. She hasn't been here for two years, who was there to fake anything?"

Linus slumped over in his chair, his head in his hands, eyes wide open.

"Linus – are you all right?"

"Are you going to storm out of the room again?" Mark asked.

Linus said wearily, "I'm so tired. This doesn't make sense. Why? Why do you remember and I don't? How could I have – this isn't right! It's not right at all!" He stood up suddenly. "I'm going to take a nap, for all the good it'll do."

"Wait, no, Linus, hang on a minute." Mark followed him to the door frame, Calliope behind him. Linus turned around, leaning against it wearily. "We can't just drop the matter here," Mark protested. "And besides, you're developing a habit of walking out of the room when you're proven wrong."

"I just want to take a nap," was the reply, though his face indicated that a good Leg-Locker Curse in the speaker's direction would not be rejected.

"Well, I'd be happy to put my sleuthing skills to work on this case and let you rest, but I know nothing compared to you, and evil does not sleep!"

"Don't bandy about that term, 'evil,'" Calliope warned him.

"What do you want to know?" Linus asked.

Calliope asked, gently, "Who do you know of that would possibly attempt something like this?"

"The more important question is who could." Linus thought. "The person – if this person has cast a Memory Charm directly on the memory – the legacy, let's say – of a certain person, even to the extent of that person's family – no question, it has to be someone with Obliviator training, probably high in the ranks."

"Could you do this? I mean, just as a hypothesis?" Calliope asked.

Linus' brow furrowed and he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I don't know. I have no idea of the materials required, or the spells – well, a vague idea of the spells – I guess… yes. I think, with time and research, I could do something like this. Maybe."

"Ooh, wouldn't that be a twist!" Mark grinned to himself, "If at the end of all this, the villain was Linus himself, who'd erased his own memory, if we were in a story, that'd be awe…"

"Mark." Calliope gave him a look. "Now's not the time."

"Sorry, ma'am." Mark cleared his throat and re-addressed Linus. "Are there any Obliviators you know who are Death Eaters?"

Linus looked scandalized, and Calliope said, "They'd be in Azkaban now, if he knew about them."

Linus recovered his bearings and started, "How dare you! Obliviators have always been one of the most upright of the Ministry's divisions, the one which most closely has the well-being of Muggles at heart –"

"That's not necessarily so," Mark said evenly.

"Oh really?"

"I know you're doing this for the right reasons, and I'm sure lots of others join up wanting to help Muggles, to keep them from the truth, ooh, they can't handle the truth," he took a deep breath, "but I can imagine a lot of them joining up because they like the thrill of it, the control, they like to keep Muggles in their place." His voice was sharp.

"You're presuming a lot, Printzen."

"I'm just speaking from my experience. Have you never encountered that attitude? Tell me, have you ever?"

The silence was taut.

Linus swallowed, looked away from Mark. "Yes. I've run into it."

Mark eased back – he didn't realize he'd been leaning forward. "Okay, now."

"But I wouldn't name anyone in my department as a possible Death Eater. What made you leap to that conclusion anyway? There are more Dark wizards that just Death Eaters."

"But right now quite a few Dark wizards are jumping on the bandwagon," Calliope pointed out. "I read it in the Prophet yesterday."

"Ah, yes, that most fun bandwagon of all, crimes against humanity."

"But," Linus reinforced his point, "even the Death Eaters take out their aggression on Muggle-borns or blood traitors – or Muggles, for fun. This isn't anything like their style; it's unlike any other crime I've heard of them doing –"

"Granted, they aren't short on imagination," Calliope said darkly.

"Granted – but why would they attack the memory of a teenage girl who died twenty years ago?"

"Blood traitor? Papa's the filthy foreigner who married an Ollivander."

"True. But if that were so, they could target us –"

"The Death Eaters did kill Benedicte, you know."

Linus looked at her, surprised. "No, I didn't know."

"Maybe we'd better sit back down."

When they were settled into the chairs again, she explained, "Benny was in Edinburgh on Thursday, October 30th, 1976. The next day would be her twentieth birthday."

"Okay." Linus turned to face her and watched her with eyes narrowed. She eyed him. "Do you want to tell if I'm lying?"

"Just to be sure…"

"Very well." She turned to face him fully and said the rest to him, their silver eyes locked.

Calliope went on. "On that day, she was out with her friends from school, Debra Martindale and Huo Quinn. They stepped into a shop to buy her a present, and persuaded her to wait outside for them. She agreed. While they were inside, witnesses on the street – some Muggle, some wizard, it was an intermingled street – saw a figure in black Apparate directly behind her, grab her from behind, and Disapparate immediately with her. When Quinn and Debra stepped out of the shop, she was gone and an investigation was beginning."

For a second she broke eye contact. "They never forgave themselves.

"Benny wasn't the only person to disappear that day. Twenty-eight people – the Hallowe'en Twenty-Eight – including in two cases whole families, either never returned from work, or were not seen by their neighbors for twenty-four hours, or in other ways vanished. It was a shocking event, Mrs. Tonks told me, and the media covered it almost nonstop. The other twenty-seven people, however, did reappear, on November third. After a long tussle in the courts and with the Daily Prophet – the twenty-seven refused to testify for anything – a spokesman for the Order of the Phoenix made a public statement."

"The Order of the Phoenix?" Linus asked.

"Yes. This was one of its first – of very few – public declarations. The man said that the Order itself was trying to circumvent a Death Eater plot. Mum, Papa, and the Tonkses believed them, but a lot of other people didn't. Of course, the Death Eaters never had a spokesman to confirm this. But the disappearance of Benedicte Ollivander – along with that of the Order member who was supposed to have been escorting her, Benjy Fenwick – just prevented everyone from taking the Order's word for it. About a month after Benny's initial disappearance, a search finally turned up something of her and Fenwick. They found a hand."

"Just a hand?" Mark's eyes were wide.

"Just a hand, with a wand in its grasp. They brought in Uncle Servaas to identify it, and he identified it as the wand that he'd given to Benedicte on her tenth birthday – cypress wood, unicorn hair. At that same time, in that same place, they found remains of what looked like the victim of an Exploding Curse – identified as Benjy Fenwick. After that, Benedicte was presumed dead, but Mum never gave up hope. She wrote to Fenwick's family, hoping for sympathy, but – well, that's a long story. Six years later, after Harry Potter defeated You-Know…" she stopped. "Voldemort," she said, correcting herself.

Linus winced. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I'm getting used to saying Voldemort," she replied.

"Well, stop it! Just tell the story."

Calliope gave him a little glare. "Anyway, the Lestranges were captured. Mark, the Lestranges were… in fact, are, among the most notorious murderers and sadists of the Death Eaters. They were captured along with Bartemius Crouch, junior. Our cousin.

"Barty Crouch senior, head of Magical Law Enforcement, was full of shame and rage that his son had been captured with Death Eaters, and he scheduled the trial to be as immediate as possible. Of course the court wanted a full list of their crimes, but they were given so little time, and the list was so long… by the time they had been finally rendered ready to confess, which took a very long time, there was only time for them to name the people they had killed, or tortured, or enslaved. Bellatrix Lestrange was marvelously resistant to the Obliviators' work – so I heard –"

"Yeah, I've heard that too."

"—But Rodolphus Lestrange, her husband, named Benedicte Ollivander as one of his murdered victims. As I said, before there was time to extract any details, it was time for the trial, headed by Mr. Crouch senior. It was rushed, speedy, full of bitterness from Bartemius Sr. for his son."

"They let this guy say trial for his own son?" Mark asked.

"Yes."

"Don't your courts recognize biased jurors at all?"

"Now's not the time, Mark," Calliope said firmly. "Anyway, Mr. Crouch ordered the four of them to Azkaban, to be deported at once, with no further interrogations. Mum met him when he was leaving the courtroom, and very nearly begged him to delay their passage to Azkaban, in front of everyone. She implored him to interrogate the Lestranges, so she could learn what happened to Benedicte and have a body to bury."

"I remember that," Linus said suddenly. "I wasn't there, but I remember children at school telling me my mother had humiliated herself in front of Bartemius Crouch, the Bartemius Crouch."

"What did you do?" Mark asked.

"Got my revenge."

"Good for you."

"You're a schoolteacher," Calliope turned to look at him reproachfully.

"Yes, but I'm also a champion of chivalry." To Linus, "So you remember all that! That's good. Go on, Miss Ollivander."

"Well – that's really it," she said, looking between them. "Bartemius Crouch refused Mum – his own cousin – in front of everyone. I wasn't there, but I heard it on the radio. Mrs. Tonks went with her, and told me later how it was… Aunt Dahlia was fainting on his arm, and everyone there had applauded the verdict. You have no idea how bitterly the Lestranges were hated, so everyone was looking at Mum with this scorn, like, 'You don't want the Lestranges in Azkaban?' Mrs. Tonks took her outside, and away from the crowd, and Mum – she was defeated.

"In those days, she met a lot with Andromeda Tonks – you could say that these tragedies were what brought them together. Mum was sick of the media coverage of Benny's disappearance, the constant lack of answers, and Mrs. Tonks – of course – Bellatrix Lestrange's sister – not a lot of sympathy. And – that's pretty much it. That's what happened to Benedicte."

"Death Eaters. Okay. But Rodolphus Lestrange never trained as an Obliviator, he was never one of us."

Calliope asked, "But, is there any one you know of who trained as an Obliviator, but never joined?"

"Oh, there's a few of those. There was Gilderoy Lockhart…"

"He was an Obliviator?"

"Trained as one, never officially indoctrinated! We don't like to talk about it – proof of his skill, he cast a Memory Charm on a defunct wand and it backfired, now he's in St. Mungo's."

"Oh. Ouch. He'd never do this, anyway… unless he was a lot more malicious than we all thought…"

"Wait, who is this guy? What should I know about him?"

"He was a gentleman adventurer whose whole bibliography turned out to be a pack of lies," Linus quipped.

"Oh. Is that all?" Mark sat back. "There aren't any other would-be Obliviators who are, um, teaching, or writing maybe? … Linus, you're getting a strange look on your face."

Linus, before answering, took off his glasses and wiped the lenses on the hem of his vest. "There is one. A teacher. He was training right out of Hogwarts, supposedly he was a very skilled Leglimens and Occlumens from the start – but right after the Dark Lord's fall he dropped out and went straight to Hogwarts. He was convicted of being a Death Eater – actually, I think he confessed to being one and was cleared by the Wizengamot."

"Who?" Calliope asked.

"Severus Snape."

"Professor Snape?"

"Yes."

"But – he's in the Order now! Dora told me so."

"Really?"

"You know, wait, I was just thinking," Mark interrupted them, "There's no reason for the perp to be a Death Eater, just because they were the cause of Benny's original demise. Of course a person could pursue evil –"

"Say Dark Magic. It's more accurate."

"Okay sir, Dark Magic on their own time, without answering to a higher authority."

"You were the one who wanted to know of any Death Eater Obliviators," Calliope pointed out.

"Well, that's because I'm kind of short sighted. I assumed that if we're the protagonists, they're the antagonists." Mark shrugged.

"Wait, guys, I'm remembering something." Linus adjusted his spectacles. "Severus Snape. Child of Eileen Prince, right?"

"Um – sure, why not?"

"That's it, I know I'm right – Eileen Prince, younger sister of Cormac Prince, the duelist who went to Azkaban for use of an illegal curse against Mum in a duel."

"Yeah…"

Linus sat up a bit. "And it was Eileen Prince who had to pay for his trial, Eileen Prince who'd been dependent on him all these years. She married – somebody, I don't know who –"

"Someone named Snape?" Mark offered innocently.

"A real nobody, and produced Severus Snape, who still lives in poverty and ignominy, because of what his uncle did to Philomel Ollivander."

Linus let that conclusion suspend itself dramatically, his hands extended. Calliope wasn't impressed. "So this is his revenge?"

Mark agreed. "What, he thinks that if Philomel is erased from history, one child at a time, that he can waltz into the banks and collect his money?"

"Well – maybe. He's the first person with the training, the questionable alignment, and something of a motivation. Why else would anyone want to do this to a person – not only kill her in the springtime of her life, but erase her reputation too? Who could hate Benedicte Ollivander so much? What could she have done?"

"It just occurred to me," Calliope said thoughtfully, "that we have no proof that Benedicte is the only victim of this – Mass-Obliviation. There could be more victims, similar situations, but how would any of us know?"

All three shuddered a little.

"There's still the question of why you remember, and I don't," Linus yawned and didn't bother disguising it. "Mark. When you took the photo from my flat, was it in its normal state?"

"Yes, it was fine."

"Good. So we have a timeline." Calliope nodded.

"The game's afoot!" Mark declared in his best British voice.

"I knew you were going to say that."

"No, the game's not really afoot," Linus said dully. "That's still a very vague timeline to work with. What do we know of what happened in the past week? Very little. And we still have only five people that we've polled to see if they remember – one of whom doesn't really count." He looked pointedly at Mark. "And I'm still exhausted. I'm fading out here. I think I really had better take a nap."

"Okay."

"Go on, then. Sorry we kept you awake."

When Linus closed the library door behind him, he could hear Mark and Calliope resume the conversation softly. Wearily he climbed the staircase towards his room. Blasted good idea those Muggles had, for escalators – or was it elevators? He had always confused them in school.

This wasn't nearly a sizable enough population. He had to interrogate teachers, Dora, those people Calliope had named – Debra Martindale and Huo Quinn – maybe Papa, if he could be reached. Would the spell be able to cross the island of England, the English Channel, and a good segment of France before petering out? A spell to make a place Unplottable worked all over the world: one shouldn't be able to locate Hogwarts School on a map or plot it out by virtue of being in Mongolia. But, Linus reasoned, that's because work in Unplottability drives magic right down to the foundation of the building, as opposed to spreading it over a vast area.

"But I can't let this just rest! What can I do?" He entered his own room, papered in blue and grey, with a large and well-used desk by the window. Everything was precise and familiar, exactly where it was supposed to be. This, at least, was the world he knew. He shook his head.

"It's all wrong. Everything's wrong."

"I'm sorry."

"What for?" Calliope turned to look at Mark.

"I mean, this must be hard for you to talk about. Such an awful thing to happen…"

"It is – I've never talked about that time in-depth with anyone before, except Dora. And to be telling you – you're from a completely different life of mine, both American and Muggle. It's – the last thing I could have ever imagined."

"That's me, a living conundrum," Mark said airily. In his head: 'Then why did you remain friends with me?' Out loud: "Do you want to change the subject?"

"Please." Calliope sighed. "I'm just spent and I don't want to think about it anymore. What do you want to do?"

Mark shrugged. Looking around, he remembered hearing about a music room somewhere in the house. His mind, wandering, concocted a fanciful vision of himself in a silk cravat and tails, on some snazzy piano, and Calliope in a red silk dress, and a spirited duet of 'Slow Boat to China,' followed by…

"Mark?"

"What?" He snapped back to reality.

"What are you thinking about? You're smiling."

"Oh – um, nothing, I, just, um, remembered the music room."

"Yes?"

"Well, I wondered if you have a piano… not that I play, but, it's a thought."

"I play a little, but Linus is the real pianist of the family."

"Oh." ('Slow Boat to China' suddenly became a lot more like 'Phantom of the Opera.') "Well, in that case – any books you'd recommend from the library?"

"You just can't be sated, can you?"

"Well, can you blame me? I want to know everything! About ghosts, the Bermuda triangle, I read a suggestion the other day that Mike Fink of the Mississippi was a wizard, and an ani-Animagus?"

"Animagus, yes."

"I want do know about those things, too, and Shakespeare."

They spent the rest of the day in the library, talking and reading in silence. Linus spent most of the rest of the day in his room, and he forgot to raise new magical defenses around Hollywyck. 'I'll do them tomorrow,' he thought, as he pored over his books, 'after I make a few investigations…'

It was night at Hollywyck.

Mark had changed into his U Penn shirt and sweatpants, and turned off all the lamps in his room except the one by his bedside. He'd collapsed onto the bed and sighed, "This is so insane…" and then jumped back up, marched to the bedroom mirror, and demanded of it, "Are you sentient?"

No answer came, so he leaned back against the dresser and looked at himself humorlessly. "All the adventure I want, eh?" He began to pace around the room. "I am so out of my league here. Dammit, Andy was right – I'm only a dead weight. I'm a wanted criminal! How do I explain that to Mom and Dad?"

He was silent then for a minute. "I was supposed to call them when I got back home. What if they call Andy or Bridget? What will they – they'll be so worried…"

Mark took another turn around the room. "I've got to go home – back to my normal life. Man, the school year's begun by now, I'll be out of luck – " He opened the window. The moon was a bright gibbous in the sky.

"But – I don't want to leave." He looked out over the forest, probably full of magical plants and creatures and graves whose stories he'd never know. He sank deeper into silent thought. A few minutes later, a blush crept up his neck and face.

With surprising violence he closed the window. "And forget that," he said to the now-still air, "You won't have a chance there. You're lucky to be her friend." He fell back onto his bed, staring upwards. The blush eventually faded, to be replaced by a softly settling melancholy. He propped himself up: "Well, tomorrow is another day," and turned out the light.

Calliope went to sleep quite quickly.

Directly across the hall from her, Linus was hunched over on his bed, as close to his bedside lamp as he could get, with several books stocked up around him. He didn't get to sleep properly until the wee hours, when he just piled his books by his bedside and took one last look at the cloak hanging over his chair. Then he turned off the light and forced himself to rest, as exhausted as a stepping-stone.

His last conscious thought, which he would remember in the morning, was that perhaps his nightmares and insomnia were traceable to having had such a prevalent force in his early life suppressed to his memory. He muttered something about how that made sense, and then, an hour later, muttered that he needed a sleeping potion.

Calliope woke up later that night, and a fit of wakefulness provoked her to attempt the Patronus spell for about forty-five straight minutes. Each time, she produced a large, semitransparent fog – but at least, it appeared to be a fog with intentions, a tenacity of purpose seldom seen in the typical fog.

Once she had sufficiently fatigued herself, she fell back onto her bed to try and sleep again, but her mind was still swarming with too many thoughts. With a sigh of "Lumos," she turned on a lamp on the wall and reached for her denim satchel, sitting on the floor by her bed. Calliope took out her journal, where she'd stored some photographs, and looked at them contemplatively. Benny at Hollywyck – her parents' wedding – she and Mark, reading books silently in a café – herself with Uncle Servaas outside the wand shop. She studied it, huddled against the wall, as close to the light as she could get.

"Poor Uncle Servaas," she whispered, as the manikin in the photograph smiled and nodded gravely at the camera. It had been a bright, crisp February seventh, a very nice day for a birthday. Calliope brightened after a moment. "At least my wand's not in the sewers. That's a good thing."

But she leaned back on the bed and counted on her fingers, "There's one, two, five Ollivanders by blood alive in England today, assuming the best about Uncle Servaas. One of us has been captured, and one's memory has been erased, within a few weeks of each other – by the same person?" She paused. "Hm. That didn't occur to me before. Uncle was captured, and Benny was erased – what if his capture allowed that?" She turned off the lamp and settled back onto the bed. "I'll have to share that thought with Linus and Mark… tomorrow. Yes."

At last, she fell back asleep.

It had been a very, very exhausting day at work.

Turpentine came home rather late and tired, and had grumbled at his bathroom mirror that his job shouldn't be this hard. "I'm a god-cursed Death Eater," he told his reflection. "You think the others would be more considerate, and not leave such a Muggle-addled mess for me to clean up. God, I hate them. Depraved lunatics…"

Servaas hardly looked up when he walked in. "You're quite late today," he said, in his weak, polite voice. "Nothing wrong at the office, I hope?"

"Nothing's wrong outside of the catastrophes happening everywhere… I just, sometimes can't believe the people I work with. Not my team, understand, they're a splendid bunch of workers, but the Death Eaters. They're a really infuriating group."

"You know, I think I've noticed. Why do you even keep with them at all?"

Turpentine snorted. "'Cause they'd kill me otherwise? But enough of that. Let's see that map of yours. Was that trigger ever set off to… day…"

He stopped and gaped as Servaas, very calmly, held up the map of England, the non-laminated one. "As you said, I marked the spot where a trigger was set off, every time."

Turpentine stared in horror. Most of the map was unmarked, except for one spot in Scotland, closer to the eastern shore than most places, which had been dotted, X'd, circled, circled again, had arrows pointing to it, and, in large script by the top was written, "THEY'RE ON TO YOU."

A kind of gagging noise came from Turpentine's throat. "Im-impossible!"

"And see this? Talley marks," Servaas pointed. "Forty times today."

"It's impossible!" Turpentine insisted.

At that exact moment, (Calliope was conjecturing that "Uncle was captured, and Benny was erased –" and) on the laminated map, the location in East Scotland gave another sharp, white glow.

Servaas picked up the pen. "Another one!" and started to mark the forty-first tally mark, but Turpentine gripped Servaas' hair and yanked his head back, hissing "Leglimens!"

Turpentine glared into Servaas' eyes furiously, their bodies immobile. After a time he broke eye contact. "You aren't lying," he breathed. He picked up the unlaminated map again. "How in holy hell is this possible?

Then he stared forward again, remembering how, just a second ago in Servaas' memories, he had caught a sneaking edge of familiarity, of pride, of triumph. He rounded on Servaas again. "You! Do you know where this place is?"

"Well, I'm not an idiot. It's obviously eastern Scotland."

"You know more than that. Tell me!"

"No." Servaas was very calm.

"Leglimens!" This time Servaas resisted, forcing his eyelids shut, twisting away from the Death Eater's eyes.

"Leglimens." This time, a clearly articulated growl. Memories swam between the two men's vision – a house in Scotland, old but built on the foundations of houses far older, magic reaching far into the soil, accessible by broomstick if you know the way, you can get in the front gate if –

"NO!" Servaas grabbed Turpentine by his shirt collar and pulled himself up, breaking their eye contact. He kept one hand on the crumpling blue material and pulled the other back to strike Turpentine in the face.

Turpentine's concentration was still unfocused. He attempted to point his wand somewhere and Servaas tried to wrestle it out of his grip one-handed. When Turpentine seemed to be starting to recover, Servaas abandoned that effort and instead grabbed the Death Eater's collar again, and tried to swing him to the floor.

"Why the sudden rebellion, old man?" Turpentine coughed, regaining his bearings, and pointing his wand at Servaas. The spell hit the older man in the knees and sent him crumbling to the floor. Even so, Servaas screwed his eyelids shut and snarled, "I'll never, never let you go there. My life may be over, but Hollywyck is my home."

"I'll just fly over."

"Never work. Weyland Ollivander knew what he was doing. Want to Imperius me to tell you?" Servaas smiled grimly.

"You will! Tell me, what are the guards around the house?" Again, he was standing over Servaas, now crouched, looking into the grey eyes.

Servaas had nothing to hide. "Hedges."

"What?"

"Hedges. Rowan. Oak. Hawthorne. Cedar."

"Cedar doesn't grow in England."

"Fair, I admit, that one's a fence. Also holly, mountain ash, and myrtle, but the holly is the worst."

"Just hedges? Bushes? You must be lying." Pause. "There's more than that."

"True."

"Tell me!"

"No."

"Legilimens!"

There was a very long silence. Finally, with a gasp, Turpentine broke away.

"That house…" Turpentine was staring into the darkness, apparently very impressed, "Protected by trees and bone…"

"Weyland Ollivander," Servaas said quietly, closing his eyes against his menace, "knew what he was doing."

"… and blood." The Death Eater's eyes gleamed. "If blood will get me into that house… then blood I will have."

He paused, his wand out, looking at Servaas' face. "You know something else. Why aren't you protesting any more?"

"I have no more strength left," was the reply.

For some reason this simple declaration annoyed Turpentine even more. He turned aside and marched upstairs, returning with a stiff leather sack like a small wineskin. He grabbed Servaas' wrist and dragged it towards him.

He said nothing, but there was a flash of silver light, and then the bota bag began to fill up…

Turpentine had not said anything for a long time. But when the bota bag was full, he muttered a quick charm to clot a wound, grabbed both the maps of England on his way upstairs, and extinguished the light.

Servaas lay on the floor, his cheek cold against the stone. He waited until the sound of his warden's footsteps died away, and then clasped, with his uninjured hand, the wooden leg of his chair. He held his cut wrist to it. He said clearly, and slowly, "Ferrous Coagulus."

Over the course of a few minutes, slowly, he sat up. He gently felt the wound on his wrist, still throbbing with pain. He then sighed with a bit of victory, and said, for his own comfort, "Maybe you have my blood. But you still will not have been invited. No. Intruder, liar, ill-wisher, you'll be known…"

In the darkness, a smile spread across the weakened man's face.

It was the night of the last performance of Peter Pan, summer 1971, of the Cranbrook Theater Company. Four people – two in their late teens, one in his early teens, and one very small boy – were being escorted backstage by the black-clad stagehand Benny.

Barty Crouch, a weedy-looking thirteen year old, looked around him with the most apprehension. Cranbrook was his hometown, but he had never been in the "Muggle" part of town for so long before. But ever since Benedicte and her family had come to visit at the start of the summer, things were… different. Aunt Philomel was great and all, but Benedicte was spending all her time as a technician on an absurd Muggle play. She said it was for a school assignment. Barty didn't like it, and his dad didn't either. Barty had put off seeing the show as long as he could – and ended up accompanying Linus to his second showing, along with Benny's friends.

He thought anxiously about all this while Benny gathered Wendy, Hook, and the one and only Peter Pan from their respective dressing rooms. "Guys," she said, "These are my friends, Quinn, and Debra, this is my cousin Barty, and the last is my little brother, Linus."

"Hello!"

"Hey there."

"Nice to meet you."

"Great show!"

"Wait… are you the one who declared that he does believe in fairies?" Peter's actress bent down to peer quizzically at Linus.

"Yes I am! I do believe in fairies!" Linus chirped.

"We tried to restrain him, we really did," Quinn said in an aside to Benny.

"Arrgh, and that belief in fairies sure did me a world o' pain, young scallywag," Hook's actor grimaced.

The group broke up into three conversations: "Hook" and "Wendy" entertained, and were entertained by, Linus; Debra and "Peter" discussed the life of an actor; Benny and Quinn discussed quietly the essays they would write for their Muggle Studies class. The only one who did not talk was Bartemius Crouch. He stood by himself to the side and watched the others with a mouth turned firmly downwards.

After a time Benny turned to him with a smile and said, "Barty, why so quiet? Didn't you like the show?"

"No," Barty said so loud that the other conversations stopped.

"… What?" Benny asked.

"I hated it. I thought it was stupid, idiotic, it was horrible!" He turned and stormed out the door to outside. When his cousin yelled "Bartemius!" after him, he slammed it.

She stood there, frozen and gaping. Wendy's actress said, softly, "Don't worry about it, Benedicte. Every show is bound to rub someone the wrong way…"

Benedicte turned around. "I'm so embarrassed – oh my god, I'm sorry everyone."

Soon afterwards, she left Quinn and Debra and Linus inside to go and find Barty. He was still standing in the back lot, furiously glaring at the space on the wall between the dumpster and a plywood porticus. He heard the door open and Benny calling inside, "Of course I'll come to strike the set tomorrow." The door closed.

"I'm not going to apologize," he said rigidly. "I won't lie to them."

"You don't have to apologize for not liking the show. But you will apologize for humiliating me in front of my friends, when I was trying to do something nice for you, and for humiliating yourself by acting like a two year old. Even Linus wouldn't have burst out like that."

Barty bit back a retort that yes, Linus would, if sufficiently provoked, and said, "I'm sorry for humiliating you."

"You're going to go in there and apologize for your outburst."

"I said I'm sorry!"

"Bartemius Garravatious Crouch IV –"

Instinctively the boy gave a growl of frustration; he hated that name…

"Those actors worked night and day for that show, and you will respect that."

"Respect what they did? That demented story about kidnapping and that horrible fake fairy and that murderer? I won't! I'm disgusted by it! And you! Participating in it!"

"My participation in this is none of your business," Benedicte said coolly.

"But you're from a pure-blood family, and you use all your power to make those Muggles fly around like Billywigs?"

Benedicte's eyes flashed. "Muggle technology can provide flight on-stage."

"Not like that they can't, with that grinning tranny hovering and spinning the way she did, that wasn't technology!"

"Bartemius. You will respect their commitment. If you did not like the show, you will not spoil their evening with your diatribe. Please go inside and apologize."

Bartemius still stood there, mouth pressed shut, uncertain.

"I don't know which means more to you, the fact that you insulted friends of mine who are hardworking, sincere, and kind, or that you did so in a manner which is completely unworthy of you, embarrassing both of us even further." She went on, more gently, "If the show upset you, you and I can talk about it later. All that I ask is that you respect all the love and commitment that went into it."

After a pause, Barty nodded. "I can do that," he said, brushing his forelock out of his eyes. "I can apologize. I'm Hufflepuff, after all."

When he stepped backstage again, Benedicte behind him, Wendy and Peter's actresses had changed into more comfortable clothes, and Hook's actor was still in-costume, listening to Linus, and looking very harassed. He almost handed the boy over to his sister, saying "Your brother has a stupendous imagination."

"Doesn't he, though?" she answered with a smile.

Bashfully, Bartemius Crouch apologized to the actors. After the two groups said goodbye, Bartemius walked home under the stars with Debra and Quinn, and Benny carrying a very tired Linus. The Hufflepuff reflected that it was probably a very rewarding feeling, to be so committed to a task that one loved, for so long – a whole summer!

But he still did not let go of the inherent wrongness of that pretentious, demented little play, that Peter Pan.