Chapter 10
The House of Maliay
KIARA
For the rest of the week's Potions lessons I continued to follow the Half-Blood Princess' instructions wherever they deviated from Libatius Borage's (but it wasn't until our fourth lesson the following Monday that Beadu was raving about my abilities, saying that she had rarely taught anyone so talented). Neither Chris nor Sian nor Chrissie was delighted about this. Although I had offered to share my book with the three of them, Chris declined, saying it would look suspicious of we shared a book, when he had one that was in pristine condition. Chrissie had more difficulty deciphering the handwriting than I did, and she could not keep asking me to read aloud or it might look suspicious. Sian, meanwhile, was resolutely ploughing on with what she called the 'official' instructions, but becoming increasingly bad-tempered as they yielded poor results than the Princess'.
On Saturday, I decided to write to my parents and tell how my first week back went.
Dear Daddy and Mum,
I can't believe it's the weekend already! This week flew by so fast. Not that much interesting has happened, to tell you the truth, apart from the fact that I got a detention from Triphorm for talking back to her. I don't know what happened, she asked me a question, I said "yes", she said "yes, ma'am", and I said, "there's no need to call me ma'am, Professor". I didn't mean to be cheeky to her, but she did try to jinx me and I just wasn't going to sit there and let her get me; I swear she was trying to get me for what happened during our Occlumency lessons last year.
But enough of the bad news, now on to the good. I made quite an impression on Professor Beadu. She's really impressed by my abilities. Honestly, I don't know where my sudden potion genius has come from, but Beadu is really happy with me. Sian's not. I think she's jealous that I've stolen her thunder, but don't tell her I said that.
I've got to go. Mum, I hope you are doing well with your pregnancy. Oh, and are you experiencing any strange cravings yet? I'm curious to know.
Love you both,
Kiara
I don't know why I didn't tell my parents the stuff about the Half-Blood Princess' book, but looking back it was for the best, because some things in that book shocked me when I used a certain spell in there, but we'll get to that.
I wondered vaguely who the Half-Blood Princess had been. Although the amount of homework we had been given prevented me from reading the whole copy of my Advanced Potion-Making, I had skimmed through it sufficiently to see that there was barely a page on which the Princess had not made additional notes, not all of them concerned with potion-making. Here and there were directions for what looked like spells the Princess had made up herself.
"Or himself," said Sian irritably, overhearing me pointing some of these out to Chrissie in the common room that Saturday evening; Chris, of course, was in a corner with Dena, who was laughing at something amusing he had just said, much to my annoyance. "It might have been a boy. I think the handwriting looks more like a boy's than a girl's."
"The Half-Blood Princess, she was called," I said. "How many boys have been Princesses?"
Sian seemed to have no answer to this. She merely scowled and twitched her essay on "The Principles of Re-Materialisation" away from Chrissie, who was trying to read it upside-down. I looked down at my watch and hurriedly put down the old copy of Advance Potion-Making back into my bag.
"It's five to eight, Sian. We'd better go, or we'll be late for your mother."
"Ooooh!" gasped Sian, putting her things away hastily. "Thanks for reminding me, Kiara. I'd forgotten about that."
"Tell me how it goes!" said Chrissie. "I want to know what Ma teaches you - and Chris, too, whenever he has a moment to spare."
I let out a forceful laugh, not choosing to look at the spot where Chris and Dena were sat together, as Sian and I turned to leave through the portrait hole.
Sian and I proceeded through deserted corridors, though we had to step hastily behind a statue when Professor Crystals appeared round a corner, muttering to himself as he shuffled a pack of dirty looking playing cards, reading them as he walked.
"Two of spades: conflict," he muttered, as he passed the place where Sian and I were both crouched, hidden. "Seven of spades: an ill omen. Ten of spades: violence. Knave of spades: a dark young woman, possibly troubled, one who dislikes the questioner - "
He stopped dead, right on the other side of mine and Sian's statue.
"Well, that can't be right," he said, annoyed, and Sian and I heard him reshuffling vigorously as he set off again, leaving nothing but a whiff of cooking sherry behind him. Sian and I waited until we were quite sure he had gone, then hurried off again until we reached the glass elevator on the second-floor corridor that took us to Crighton's office.
I placed two tokens in the token slot and Sian and I stepped in. "Two for the Headmistress' office, please," said Sian clearly. The door slid shut and we were off like a rocket, zooming all over the school, until we reached the door of the Head's office. We stepped out once the doors had opened, and as the elevator took off again, I knocked on the door.
"Come in," said Crighton's voice.
"Good evening, ma'am," I said, as I walked into the office.
"Good evening, Ma," said Sian, running to embrace her mother, who stood up from behind her desk to give Sian a proper hug.
"Ah, good evening, girls," said Crighton, once she had let go of Sian and had turned to face me again, smiling. "Sit down, both of you. I hope you two have had an enjoyable first week back at school?"
"Yes, thanks, ma'am," I said, as Sian nodded her head eagerly.
"You must have been busy, Kiara, a detention under your belt already!"
"Er ..." I began awkwardly, but Crighton did not look too stern.
"I have arranged with Professor Triphorm that you will do your detention next Saturday instead."
"Right," was all I said, for I had more pressing matters on my mind than Triphorm's detention. I looked around surreptitiously for some indication of what Crighton was planning to do with Sian and I that evening. The circular office looked just as it always did: the delicate silver instruments stood on spindle-legged tables, puffing smoke and whirring; portraits of previous Headmasters and Headmistresses dozed in their frames; pictures that Crighton's children had sent her over the years were pinned on a wall near her desk; and Crighton's magnificent phoenix, Kenna, stood on her perch behind the door, watching Sian and I with bright interest. It did not even look as though Crighton had cleared a space for duelling practice. I looked at Sian, who looked just as confused about this as I did.
"So, Sian, Kiara," said Crighton, in a businesslike voice. "You have both been wondering, I am sure, what I have planned for you during these - for want of a better word - lessons?"
Sian and I spoke at the same time.
"Yes, Ma."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Well, I have decided that it is time, now that you both know what prompted Lady Zira to try and kill you, Kiara, fifteen years ago, for you to be given certain information."
There was a pause.
"You said at the end of last term, you were going to tell me everything," I said. It was hard to keep a note of accusation out of my voice. "Ma'am," I added.
"And so I did," said Crighton placidly. "I told you everything I know. From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and the three of us shall journey together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork. From hereon in, Sian, Kiara, I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher, who believed that the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron."
"But you think you're right?" I said.
"Naturally, I do, but as I have already proven to you, I make mistakes like the next person. In fact, being - forgive me - rather cleverer than most people, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger."
"Ma'am," I said tentatively, "does what you're going to tell us have anything to do with the prophecy? Will it help me ... survive?"
"It has a very great deal to do with the prophecy," said Crighton, as casually as if I had asked her about the next day's weather, "and I certainly hope that it well help you to survive."
Crighton got to her feet once more and walked around the desk, past Sian and I, and we both turned eagerly in our seats to watch Crighton bending over the cabinet beside the door. When Crighton straightened up, she was holding a familiar shallow stone basin etched with odd markings around its rim. She placed the Pensieve on the desk in front of Sian and I.
"You look worried, Kiara."
I had indeed been eyeing the Pensieve with some apprehension. My previous experiences before this point with the odd device that stored and revealed thought and memories, though highly instructive, had also been uncomfortable. The last time I had entered its contents, I had seen much more than I would have wished. But Crighton was smiling, which reassured my troubled mind slightly.
"This time, you enter the Pensieve with me ... and, even more ususually, with permission."
"Where are we going, ma'am?"
!For a trip down Boipelo Obama's memory lane," said Crighton, pulling from her pocket a crystal bottle containing a swirling silvery-white substance.
"Who was Boipelo Obama?"
"She was employed by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in South Africa," said Crighton. "She died some time ago, but not before I had tracked her down and persuaded her to confide these recollections to me. We are about to accompany her on a visit she made in the course of her duties. If you will stand, Kiara ..."
"Ma?" said Sian suddenly.
"Yes, Sian?"
"Do I have to see this, too?"
"Yes, my dear, you do."
"I was afraid of that," Sian muttered as she stood up, but Crighton ignored her, and so did I. I was staring at Crighton, who was having difficulty pulling out the stopper of the crystal bottle: her injured hand seemed stiff and painful.
"Shall - shall I, ma'am?"
"No matter, Kiara - "
Crighton pointed her wand at the bottle and the cork flew out.
"Ma'am - how did you injure your hand?" I asked again, looking at the blackened fingers with a mixture of revulsion and pity.
"Now is not the moment for that story, Kiara. Not yet. We have an appointment with Boipelo Obama."
Crighton tipped the silvery contents of the bottle into the Pensieve, where they swirled and shimmered, neither liquid nor gas.
"After you, girls," said Crighton, gesturing towards the bowl.
Sian and I bent forwards, took a deep breath each, and plunged our faces into the silvery substance. I felt my feet leave the office floor; I was falling, falling, through whirling darkness and then, quite suddenly, I was blinking in dazzling sunlight. Before my eyes had adjusted, Sian had landed on my left, and Crighton on my right.
We were standing in a rough country lane bordered by high trees beneath a summer sky as bright and blue as a forget-me-not. Some ten feet in front of us stood a short, plump woman wearing enormously thick glasses that reduced her eyes to molelike specks. She was walking quite quickly through the trees in front of us, reading a sign above her as she went. I knew this must be Obama; she was the only person in sight, and she was also wearing the strange assortment of clothes so often chosen by inexperienced wizards trying to look like Muggles: in this case, a one-piece bathing costume covered by a frock-coat and a pair of commando boots. Before I had any time to do more than register her bizarre appearance, however, Obama had walked straight on through the path cutting through the trees.
Crighton, Sian and I followed. As we passed the wooden sign that hung over our heads, I looked up at it and read, 'Port Harcourt, Nigeria'.
We walked a short way with nothing to see but the trees, the wide blue sky overhead and the clomping, one-piece bathing-suited figure ahead, then the path curved to the left and fell away, sloping steeply down the hillside, so that we had a sudden, unexpected view of a valley laid out in front of us. I could see a village, undoubtedly Port Harcourt, with houses dotted here and there, along with many layers of trees covering the landscape. Across the valley, sat a quite tall, handsome house surrounded by a wide expanse of velvety green lawn.
Obama had broken into a reluctant trot due to the steep downward slope. Crighton lengthened her stride and Sian and I hurried to keep up with her. I thought Port Harcourt must be our final destination and I wondered, as I had done on the night that Crighton and I had found Beadu, why we had to approach it from such a distance. I soon discovered that I was mistaken in thinking that we were going to the village, however. The rocky path curved to the right, and when we rounded the corner, it was to see the very edge of Obama's bathing-costume vanishing through a gap in the trees.
Crighton, Sian and I followed her on to a narrow dirt track bordered by higher, dead-looking trees than the previous path had been and was potholed, sloping downhill like the last one, and it seemed to be heading for a patch of dark trees a little below us. Sure enough, the track soon opened up at the cope, and Crighton, Sian and I came to a halt behind Obama, who had stopped and drawn her wand.
Despite the cloudless sky, the old trees ahead cast deep, dark, cool shadows and it was a few seconds before my eyes discerned the building half-hidden amongst the tangle of trunks. It seemed to me a very strange location to choose for a house, or else an odd decision to leave the trees growing nearby, blocking all light and the view of the valley below. I wondered whether it was inhabited; it's walls were mossy and the steel that made up the roof was rusting and strips were coming off so that the rafters were visible in places. Nettles grew all around it, their tips reaching the windows, which were tiny and thick with grime. Just as I had concluded that nobody could possibly live there, however, one of the windows was thrown open with a clatter and a thin trickle of steam or smoke issued from it, as though somebody was cooking.
Obama moved forwards quietly and, it seemed to me, rather cautiously. As the dark shadows of the trees slid over me, I stopped again, staring at the front door, to which somebody had nailed a dead snake.
There was a rustle and a crack and a woman in rags dropped from the nearest tree, landing on her feet right in front of Obama, who leapt backwards so fast that she tripped over her own feet.
"You're not welcome."
The woman standing before us had thick hair so matted with dirt it could have been any colour. Several of her teeth were missing. Her eyes were small and dark and stared in opposite directions. She might have looked comical, but she did not; the effect was frightening, and I could not blame Obama for backing away several more paces once she had got back to her feet before she spoke.
"Er - good morning. I'm from the Ministry of Magic - "
"You're not welcome."
"Er - I'm sorry - I don't understand you," said Obama nervously.
I thought Obama was being extremely dim; the stranger was making herself very clear in my opinion, particularly as she was brandishing a wand in one hand and a short and rather bloody knife in the other.
"You understand her, I'm sure, Kiara?" said Crighton quietly.
"Yes, of course," I said, slightly nonplussed. "Why can't Obama - ?"
But as my eyes found the dead snake on the door again, I suddenly understood.
"She's speaking Parshydamouth?"
"More specifically?"
I thought again.
"Parseltongue?"
"Very good," said Crighton, nodding and smiling.
The woman in rags was now advancing on Obama, knife in one hand, wand in the other.
"Now, look - " Obama began, but too late: there was a bang, and Obama was on the ground, clutching her nose, while a nasty yellowish goo squirted from between her fingers.
"Mashaka!" said a loud voice.
An elderly woman had come hurrying out of the cottage, banging the door behind her so that the dead snake swung pathetically. This woman was shorter than the first, and oddly proportioned; her shoulders were small and well-rounded and her arms overlong, which, with her bright brown eyes and short scrubby hair and wrinkled face, gave her the look of a powerful, aged monkey. She came to a halt beside the woman with the knife, who was now cackling with laughter at the sight of Obama on the ground.
"Ministry, is it?" said the older woman, looking down at Obama.
"Correct!" said Obama angrily, dabbing her face. "And you, I take it, are Ms Mackay?"
"'S right," said Mackay. "Got you in the face, did she?"
"Yes, she did!" snapped Obama.
"Should've made your presence known, shouldn't you?" said Mackay aggressively. "This is private property. Can't just walk in here and expect my daughter not to defend herself."
"Defend herself against what, woman?" said Obama, climbing back to her feet.
"Busybodies. Intruders. Muggles and filth."
Obama pointed her wand at her own nose, which was still issuing large amounts of what looked like yellow pus, and the flow stopped at once. Mackay spoke out of the corner of her mouth to Mashaka.
"Get in the house. Don't argue."
This time, ready for it, I recognised the Parseltongue; even while I could understand what was being said, I distinguished the weird hissing noise that was all Obama could hear. Mashaka seemed to be on the point of disagreeing, but when her mother cast her a threatening look she changed her mind, lumbering away to the cottage with an odd rolling gait and slamming the front door behind her, so that the snake swung sadly again.
"It's your daughter I'm here to see, Ms Mackay," said Obama, as she mopped the last of the pus off the front of her bathing costume. "That was Mashaka, wasn't it?"
"Yes, that was Mashaka," said the old woman indifferently. "Are you pure-blood?" she asked, suddenly aggressive.
"That's neither here nor there," said Obama coldly, and I felt my respect for Obama rise.
Apparently Mackay felt rather differently. She squinted into Obama's face and muttered, in what was clearly supposed to be an offensive tone, "Now I've come to think about it, I've seen noses like yours down in the village."
"I don't doubt it, if your daughter's been let loose on them," said Obama. "Perhaps we could continue this discussion inside?"
"Inside?"
"Yes, Ms Mackay. I've already told you. I'm here about Makasha. We sent an owl - "
"I've no use for owls," said Mackay. "I don't open letters."
"Then you can hardly complain that you get no warning of visitors," said Obama tartly. "I am here following a serious breach of wizarding law which occurred here in the early hours of this morning - "
"All right, all right, all right!" bellowed Mackay. "Come in the bleeding house, then, and much good it'll do you!"
The house seemed to contain three tiny rooms. Two doors led off the main room, which served as kitchen and living room combined. Mashaka was sitting on a mattress, the only piece of furniture in the room, beside the smoking fire, twisting a live rattlesnake between her thin fingers and crooning softly at it in Parseltongue:
"Hissy, hissy, little snakey,
Slither on the floor,
You be good to Mashaka,
Or she'll nail you to the door."
There was a scuffling noise in the corner beside the open window and I realised that there was somebody else in the room, a man whose ragged grey rags were the exact colour of the dirty stone wall behind him. He was standing beside a steaming pot over a small magical fire, and was fiddling around with the shelf of squalid-looking pots and pans above it. His hair was lank and he had an ugly, pale, rather heavy face. His eyes, like his sister's, stared in opposite directions. He looked a little cleverer than the two women, but I thought I had never seen a more defeated-looking person.
"My son, Malvolio," said Mackay grudgingly, as Obama looked enquiringly towards him.
"Good morning," said Obama.
He did not answer, but with a frightened glance at his mother he turned his back on the room and continued shifting the pots on the shelf behind him.
"Well, Ms Mackay," said Obama, "to get straight to the point, we have reason to believe that your daughter Mashaka performed magic in front of a Muggle late last night."
There was a deafening clang. Malvolio had dropped one of the pots.
"Pick it up!" Mackay bellowed at him. "That's it, grub on the floor like some filthy Muggle, what's your wand for, you useless sack of muck?"
"Ms Mackay, please!" said Obama in a shocked voice, as Malvolio, who had already picked up the pot, flushed blotchily scarlet, lost his grip on the pot again, drew his wand shakily from his pocket, pointed it at the pot and muttered a hasty, inaudible spell that caused the pot to shoot across the floor away from him, hit the opposite wall and crack in two.
Mashaka let out a mad cackle of laughter. Mackay screamed, "Mend it, you pointless lump, mend it!"
Malvolio scrambled across the room, but before he had time to raise his wand, Obama had lifted her own wand and said firmly, "Reparo." The pot mended itself instantly. Mackay looked for a moment as though she was going to shout at Obama, but seemed to think better of it: instead she jeered at her son, "Lucky the nice woman from the Ministry is here, isn't it? Perhaps she will take you off my hands, perhaps she does not mind dirty Squibs ..."
Without looking at anybody or thanking Obama, Malvolio picked up the pot and returned it, hands trembling, to its shelf. He then stood quite still, his back against the wall between the filthy window and the magical fire, as though he wished for nothing more than to sink into the stone and vanish.
"Ms Mackay," Obama began again, "as I've said: the reason for my visit - "
"I heard you the first time!" snapped Mackay. "And so what? Mashaka gave a Muggle a bit of what was coming to her - what about it, then?"
"Mashaka has broken wizarding law," said Obama sternly.
"Mashaka has broken wizarding law," Mackay imitated Obama's voice, making it pompous and singsong. Mashaka cackled again. "She taught a filthy Muggle a lesson, and that's illegal now, is it?"
"Yes," said Obama. "I'm afraid it is."
She unrolled the scroll that was clenched in her hand.
"What's that, then, her sentence?" said Mackay, her voice rising angrily.
"It is a summons to the Ministry for a hearing - "
"Summons! Summons! Who do you think you are, summoning my daughter anywhere?"
"I'm a member of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad, who was sent here by my Head of Department to do what needs to be done following the law," said Obama.
"And you think we're scum, do you?" screamed Mackay, advancing on Obama now, with a dirty yellow-nailed finger pointing at her chest. "Sum who will come running when the Ministry tells them to? Do you know who you are talking to, you filthy little Sackbrain, do you?"
"I was under the impression that I was speaking to Ms Mackay," said Obama, looking wary, but standing her ground.
"That's right!" roared Mackay. For a moment, I thought Mackay was making an obscene hand gesture, but then I realised that she was showing Obama the ugly, red-stoned ring she was wearing on her middle finger, waving it before Obama's eyes. "See this? See this? Know what it is? Know where it comes from? Centuries it's been in our family, that's how far back we go, and pure-blood all the way! Know how much I've been offered for this, with the Passmore coat of arms engraved on the stone?"
"I've really no idea," said Obama, blinking as the ring sailed within an inch of her nose, "and it's quite beside the point, Ms Mackay. Your daughter has committed - "
With a howl of rage, Mackay ran towards her son. For a split second, I thought he was going to throttle him as her hand flew towards his throat; next moment, she was dragging him towards Obama by a silver chain around his neck.
"See this?" she bellowed at Obama, shaking a heavy silver locket at her, while Malvolio spluttered and gasped for breath.
"I see it, I see it!" said Obama hastily.
"Snake-Eyes!" yelled Mackay. "Selena Snake-Eyes! We're her last living descendants, what do you say to that?"
"Ms Mackay, your son!" said Obama in alarm, but Mackay had already released Malvolio; he staggered away from her, back to his corner, massaging his neck and gulping for air.
"So!" said Mackay triumphantly, as though she had just proved a complicated point beyond all possible dispute. "Don't you go talking to us as if we are dirt on your shoes! Generations of pure-bloods, wizards all - more than you can say, I don't doubt!"
And she spat on the floor at Obama's feet. Mashaka cackled again. Malvolio, huddled beside the window, his head bowed and his face hidden by his lank hair, said nothing.
"Ms Mackay," said Obama doggedly, "I am afraid that neither your ancestors nor mine have anything to do with the matter at hand. I am here because of Mashaka, Mashaka and the Muggle she accosted late last night. Our information," she glanced down at her scroll of parchment, "is that Mashaka performed a jinx or hex on the said Muggle, causing her to erupt in highly painful hives."
Mashaka giggled.
"Be quiet, girl," snarled Mackay in Parseltongue, and Mashaka fell silent again.
"And so what if she did, then?" Mackay said defiantly to Obama. "I expect that you have wiped the Muggle's filthy face clean for her, and her memory to boot - "
"That's hardly the point, is it, Ms Mackay?" said Obama. "This was an unprovoked attack on a defenceless - "
"You know, I had you marked down as a Muggle-lover the moment I saw you," sneered Mackay, and she spat on the floor again.
"This discussion is getting us nowhere," said Obama firmly. "It is clear from your daughter's attitude that she feels no remorse for her actions." She glanced down at her scroll of parchment again. "Mashaka will attend her hearing on the fourteenth of September to answer the charges of using magic in front of a Muggle and causing harm and distress to the same Mugg- "
Obama broke off. The jingling, clopping sounds of horses and loud, laughing voices were heard drifting in through the open window. Apparently the path to the village passed very close to the copse where the house stood. Mackay froze, listening, her eyes wide. Mashaka hissed and turned her face towards the sounds, her expression hungry. Malvolio raised his head. His face, I saw, was starkly white.
"My God, what an eyesore!" rang out a young man's voice, as clearly audible through the open window as if he had stood in the same room beside us. "Couldn't your father have that hovel cleared away, Dizra?"
"It's not ours," said a young woman's voice. "Everything on the other side of the valley belongs to us, but that meagre shack belongs to an old tramp called Mackay and her children. The daughter's quite mad, you should hear some of the stories they tell in the village - "
The man laughed. The jingling, clopping noises were growing louder and louder. Mashaka made to get up off the mattress.
"Keep your seat," said her mother warningly, in Parseltongue.
"Dizra," said the young man's voice again, now so close they were clearly right beside the house, "I might be wrong - but has somebody nailed a snake to that door?"
"Good Lord, you're right!" said the young woman's voice. "That'll be the daughter, I told you she's not right in the head. Don't look at it, Chisomo, darling."
The jingling and clopping sounds were now growing fainter again.
" 'Darling' " whispered Mashaka in Parseltongue, looking at her brother. " 'Darling', she called him. So she wouldn't have you anyway."
Malvolio was so white I felt sure he was going to faint.
"What's that?" said Mackay sharply, also in Parseltongue, looking from her daughter to her son. "What did you say, Mashaka?"
"He likes looking at that Muggle," said Mashaka, a vicious expression on her face as she stared at her brother, who now looked terrified. "Always in the garden when she passes, peering through the hedge at her, isn't he? And last night - "
Malvolio shook his head jerkily, imploringly, but Mashaka went on ruthlessly, "Hanging out of the window waiting for her to ride home, wasn't he?"
"Hanging out of a window to look at a Muggle?" said Mackay quietly.
All three of the Mackays seemed to have forgotten Obama, who was looking both relieved and irritated at this renewed outbreak of incomprehensible hissing and rasping.
"Is it true?" said Mackay in a deadly voice, advancing a step or two towards the terrified boy. "My son - pure-blooded descendant of Selena Snake-Eyes - hankering after a filthy, dirt-veined Muggle?"
Malvolio shook his head frantically, pressing himself into the wall, apparently unable to speak.
"But I got her, Mother!" cackled Mashaka. "I got her as she went by, and she didn't look so pretty with hives all over her, did she, Malvolio?"
"You disgusting little Squib, you filthy little blood traitor!" roared Mackay, losing control, and her hands closed around her son's throat.
Sian, Obama and I yelled "No!" at the same time; Obama raised her wand and cried, "Relashio!" Mackay was thrown backwards, away from her son; she tripped over a corner of the mattress and fell flat on her back. With a roar of rage, Mashaka leapt up off the mattress and ran at Obama, brandishing her bloody knife and flying hexes indiscriminately from her wand.
Obama ran for her life. Crighton indicated that we ought to follow and Sian and I obeyed, Malvolio's screams echoing in my ears.
Obama hurtled up the path and erupted on to the main path, her arms over her head, where she collided with the glossy chestnut horse ridden by a very beautiful, golden-haired young woman. Both she and the handsome lad riding beside her on a black horse roared with laughter at the sight of Obama, who bounced off the horse's flank and set off again, covered from head to foot in dust, her frock coat flying, running pell-mell up the lane.
"I think that will do, girls," said Crighton. She stood in between Sian and I, grabbed us both by the elbow and tugged. Next moment, the three of us were soaring weightlessly through darkness, until we landed squarely on our feet, back in Crighton's now twilit office.
"What happened to the boy in the cottage, Ma?" said Sian at once, as Crighton lit extra lamps with a flick of her wand. "Malvolio, or whatever his name was."
"Oh, he survived," said Crighton, reseating herself behind her desk and indicating that Sian and I should sit down too. "Obama Apparated back to the Ministry and returned with reinforcements within fifteen minutes. Mashaka and her mother attempted to fight, but both were overpowered, removed from the shack and subsequently convicted by the South African Wizengamot. Mashaka, who already had a record of Muggle attacks, was sentenced to three years in Azkaban. Marmarin, who had injured several Ministry employees in addition to Obama, received six months."
"Marmarin?" Sian repeated wonderingly.
"That's right," said Crighton, smiling in approval. "I am glad to see you are keeping up, Sian. Tell me, do you know who she was?"
"Zira's grandmother, Ma."
"Very good, yes," said Crighton, as I gasped aloud in amazement, finally catching on. "Marmarin, her daughter Mashaka and her son Malvolio were the last of the Mackays, a very ancient wizarding family noted for a vein of instability and violence that flourished through the generations due to their habit of marrying their own cousins. Lack of sense combined with a great liking for grandeur meant that the family gold was squandered several generations before Marmarin was born. She, as you both saw, was left in squalor and poverty, with a very nasty temper, a fantastic amount of arrogance and pride, and a couple of family heirlooms that she treasured just as much as her daughter, and rather more than her son."
"So Malvolio," I said, leaning forwards in my chair and staring at Crighton, "so Malvolio was ... ma'am, does that mean that he was ... Zira's father?"
"It does," said Crighton. "And it so happens that we also caught a glimpse of Zira's mother. I wonder whether you noticed?"
"The Muggle Mashaka attacked. The woman on the horse?"
"Very good indeed," said Crighton, beaming. "Yes, that was Dizra Maliay Senior, the beautiful Muggle who used to go riding past the Mackay cottage and for whom Malvolio Mackay cherished a secret, burning passion."
"And they ended up married?" I said in disbelief, for I could not imagine two people less likely to fall in love.
"I don't think they got married, Kiara," said Sian, a disturbed look on her face. "I think they just ... ran away together."
Crighton nodded her head. "I agree with Sian, Kiara, for you are forgetting that Zira's last name is Maliay. I also think you are forgetting that Malvolio was a wizard. I do not believe that his magical powers appeared to their best advantage when he was being terrorised by his mother. Once Marmarin and Mashaka were safely in Azkaban, once he was alone and free for the first time in his life, then, I am sure, he was able to give full rein to his abilities and to plot his escape from the despicable life he had led for eighteen years.
"Can you think of any measure Malvolio could have taken to make Dizra Maliay forget her Muggle companion, and fall in love with him instead?"
"The Imperius Curse?" I suggested. "Or a love potion?"
"Very good. Personally, I am inclined to think that he used a love potion. I am sure it would have seemed more romantic to him and I do not think it would have been very difficult, some hot day, when Maliay was riding alone, to persuade her to take a drink of water. In any case, within a few months of the scene we have just witnessed the village of Port Harcourt enjoyed a tremendous scandal. You can imagine the gossip it caused when the squire's daughter ran off with the tramp's son Malvolio.
"But the villager's shock was nothing compared to Marmarin's. She returned from Azkaban, expecting to find her son dutifully awaiting her return with a hot meal ready on her mattress. Instead, she found a clear inch of dust and his note of farewell, explaining what he had done.
"From all that I have been able to discover, she never mentioned his name or existence from that time forth. The shock of his desertion may have contributed to her early death - or perhaps she had never learned how to cook properly. Azkaban had greatly weakened Marmarin, and she did not live to see Mashaka return to the shack."
"And Malvolio? He ... he died, didn't he? Wasn't Zira brought up in an orphanage?"
"Yes, indeed," said Crighton. "We must do a certain amount of guesswork here, although I do not think it is difficult to deduce what happened. You see, within a few months of their ... elopement, shall we say - Dizra Maliay appeared at the manor house in Port Harcourt without Malvolio. The rumour flew around the neighbourhood that she was talking of being 'hoodwinked' and 'taken in'. What she meant, I am sure, is that she had been under an enchantment that had now lifted, though I daresay she did not use those precise words for fear of being thought insane. When they heard what she was saying, however, the villagers guessed that Malvolio had lied to Dizra Maliay, pretending that he was going to marry her and take care of any children they would have had together."
"But they did have a baby together."
"Yes, but not until a year after they eloped. As soon as Dizra Maliay had the baby, she left her with Malvolio and ran off."
"What went wrong?" I asked. "Why did the love potion stop working?"
"Again, this is guesswork," said Crighton, "but I believe that Malvolio, who was deeply in love with Dizra Maliay, could not bear to continue enslaving her by magical means. I believe that he made the choice to stop giving her the potion. Perhaps, besotted as he was, he had convinced himself that she would by now have fallen in love with him in return. Perhaps he thought she would stay for the baby's sake. If so, he was wrong on both counts. As I said, she left after the baby was born, once she was strong enough to move, and never discovered what became of her daughter."
The sky outside was inky black and the lamps in Crighton's office seemed to glow more brightly than before.
"I think that will do for tonight, girls," said Crighton after a moment or two.
"Yes, ma'am," I said.
I got to my feet, and as Sian was starting to rise, Crighton said, "Sian, I would like you to stay behind, please." Sian blinked in surprise, then sat down again."
"Ma'am ... is it important to know all this about Zira's past?"
"Very important, I think," said Crighton.
"And it's ... it's got something to do with the prophecy?"
"It has everything to do with the prophecy."
"Right," I said, a little confused, but reassured all the same.
I turned to go, but another question occurred to me, and I turned back again.
"Ma'am, are Sian and I allowed to tell Chris and Chrissie everything you've told us?"
Crighton considered me for a moment, then said, "Yes, I think Chris and Chrissie have proved themselves trustworthy. But Kiara, I am going to ask you and Sian to ask them not to repeat any of this to anybody else. It would not be a good idea if word got around of how much I know, or suspect, about Lady Zira's secrets."
"Of course not, Ma, we'll make sure it's just Chris and Chrissie who know," Sian said. "Won't we, Kiara?"
"Yes, of course we will," I said. "Goodnight, ma'am."
I turned away again, and I was almost at the door when I saw it. Sitting on one of the little spindle-legged tables that supported so many frail-looking silver instruments was an ugly silver ring, set with a large, cracked blood-red stone.
"Ma'am," I said, staring at it. "That ring - "
"Yes?" said Crighton.
"You were wearing it when we visited Professor Beadu that night."
"So I was," Crighton agreed.
"But isn't it ... ma'am, isn't it the same ring Marmarin Mackay showed Obama?"
Crighton bowed her head.
"The very same."
"But how come - ? Have you always had it?"
"No, I acquired it very recently," said Crighton. "A few days before I came to fetch you from your grandmothers', in fact."
"That would be around the time you injured your hand, then, ma'am?"
"Around that time, yes, Kiara."
I hesitated. Crighton was smiling.
"Ma'am, how exactly - ?"
"Too late, Kiara! You shall hear the story another time. Goodnight."
"Goodnight, ma'am."
As I left the office, I turned to see Sian embracing her mother; they were holding each other so tightly it seemed that neither wanted to let the other go.
AN: I'm sorry to use the surname Obama. She is not linked to any of the Obamas. It just happened that way. More still to come.