June 29, 2012
Author Note: I have become impatient with myself over not posting. I'm not overly concerned with a polished chapter, and I have not even attempted to have this Beta-read. I'd like to just get it posted and move on with the story. I may have a different tone in this chapter. It is what it is.
Previous Chapter:
Antonin shoved the elderly Dumbledore brother aside and fisted the cloak at Snape's neck. "You sick fucker. She'll be lucky if she can still stand on her own two legs after one night here. She'll be shagged six ways to Sunday before the sun rises."
Snape wandlessly placed an innocuous hand-numbing hex on Antonin that forced him to let go of his robe. "Seeing that your boyfriend Rowle isn't here, I won't stop you from having the first go with her. If she gets cold feet, the Snatchers are waiting with open arms. I think I hear Scabior and Fenrir's coarse tongues wagging at the bar this very moment. I'm not above scenting them on her trail."
Chapter 7
The old barman escorted the girl away amidst his grumbling about "that irascible man thinks he can order me around" and "reinforce wards" not to mention the odd mumbling about "have to Extirpo the goat's eggs."
Hannah glanced back to see Antonin glowering before he swilled his vodka and slammed the door shut. She could smell the cigar burning once again.
She had to hurry down corridor to catch up to the old man, and she discovered that she was a bit clumsy descending the steps to the ground level. The vodka was having more effect on her than she had realized. As it was, she finally reached the solid floor of the bar and clung to the corner of the stairwell while her head swam in a mist of confusion.
"Abbott!" the growling command shot out.
Hannah turned to look at the barkeep's disgruntled countenance, a frown etched deeply into that wizened face. She ignored the hatefulness that emanated from him, even though he wore it as though he were an old man who'd accidentally attacked himself with Merlin's Beard Removal & Cool Comfort Cologne because he'd been startled when he mistook his hoary wife for He Who Must Not Be Named.
The very thought prompted a rush of memories of a wizarding clinic filled with such elderly lechers whose wandering hands had caressed her white-skirted bum while she'd been spelling their bedside tables clean. These were such odd memories. She knew that there couldn't have been so many old men in her own family, so the Obliviate was still in place. She also knew that she'd never attended Flitwick's Homemaking for the Young Wizard or Witch symposiums, so she hadn't learned the hospital cleaning wandwork at Hogwarts.
The only solution she could think of was that this was a memory that was resurfacing related to some training she'd received during the year away from the wizardry school. For all she knew, she might have been a junior medi-witch at St. Mungo's during her absence.
Hannah was forced out of her reverie by her unwilling guardian's gruff voice.
"Down the stairs, to the left. Carry up ten cases of Firewhiskey. And unless you want to go Boom, you'll not be levitating with your wand. It's a volatile substance that has a very unfavorable reaction to timid magic."
Hannah loped over to the soot-blackened doorframe that led to a cellar below the main bar. She froze in the darkened entrance and looked down a shadowy set of stairs that led into an earthen cavern. She caught the scents of tilled soil, rotted tree roots long dead, earthworms after rain and some fermentation of the non-alcoholic kind, the smell of decay.
She pulled out her wand and muttered, "Lumos."
"No." A subtle movement by the elderly Dumbledore brother cancelled the light of her wandtip. "Let your eyes adjust by themselves. Otherwise you won't be able to carry to the Firewhiskey without blowing us all up."
Over the raucous laughter of the Death Eaters in the bar on the other side of the wall, she groused to herself, "Good riddance it would be."
Stowing her wand securely, she ventured onto the wooden steps. She creaked and squeaked into the gloom below. The air took on a damp chill that her few sips of vodka did nothing to ameliorate now.
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Antonin found no satisfaction with the moss-and-damp-earth aroma of his cigar. He snuffed it out and ambled to the washroom.
There was nothing fancy to the Hog's Head Inn, and the water closet was no exception. This wash room was composed of a commode, a sink stained in mysterious scarlet-brown blotches which had not responded to standard rust-removal charms, and a stodgy shower stall. The mirror was so grimy that he saw only a shadow of himself in the reflection.
He stripped off his robe, leaving it to drape over the sink. With a wave of his wand, water burst from the showerhead, and another flick set the water temperature to just-below scorching, or as hot as he could take it, which was, in fact, quite hot. Then he stepped under the torrent.
His silent tears mingled with the deluge scalding his face. The only bit of emotion that Azkaban had not taken away from him was the pain of losing his beloved Aliz. Even that dolor had been brightened by the solitary hope of enacting vengeance on the one responsible for her death. He had kept his sanity barely in check by feeding the Dementors his obsession with finding his wife's killer.
The new knowledge that it was Dumbledore who was responsible for the death Aliz, and the realization that his vengeance had been thwarted because Severus Snape had already killed the fearsome wizard, resulted in his last hope swirling down the drain in sooty rivulets. He felt renewed anger, caused by today's discovery that his wife had sacrificed herself for the Dark Lord. The sacrifice was never recognized, and there had been no posthumous acknowledgement of her valor.
He had not made her see reason. They had long quarreled over her insistence in continuing as a Dark Guard, a last line of defense to protect their master. She could have excused herself. Many a dark wizard had secured a wife and children in his ancestral castle or villa. Yet Aliz would not hear of it.
Not bothering with lathering his unkempt hair or even scrubbing grime off his body, he stepped out of the shower. The flow of water ceased abruptly. Dripping on the worn grain of the wood floor, he seized upon the girl as his last alternative. She was a few good years younger than Aliz had been.
They'd met as schoolmates at Durmstrang. The Abbott girl must be close to the age they had been when he'd banged Aliz the first time. Knowing that Snape had no love lost over her made this easy.
His determination to have the girl easily coupled with his jealousy at the thought of any man in the bar below taking her first. With impatience he dried under a breeze produced by his wand and he slipped his filthy robe back on.
Note: Extirpo is an original spell (original here meaning that I named the concept) used for cleaning extremely foul and harmful messes, which results in the vanishing of all traces of a substance. The goat's eggs refer to the feces produced by his goat. Now why were there goat feces inside the living quarters that Aberforth had a need to ward? Hmmm. I'll let you figure that one out. It might help to remember that Aberforth was once prosecuted for illegal charms on goats, or something like that.