CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE HOGS HEAD
Winter was coming and the wind rattled against the pub windows. Lyra drank her butterbeer with Pan curled around her neck for warmth. She started coming here ever since Fred and George found a way to sneak her out of the castle. She went there to be alone and among her own kind. The scum of the streets and shady characters that no one remembers, despite all their daring adventures.
"So… my mum and dad might have been wizards?" She said, disgusted at herself for calling them 'mum and dad'.
"I'm not so sure that bloke's Lord Asriel. I don't know but he didn't look too much like him. He's thinner for one thing, and he had black hair. Who do you suppose he could be?"
"Dunno, it's wizarding world so we probably ent never heard of him."
"But… wow… Mrs. Coulter was a witch…"
"And she was horrid enough to kill em later, just another reason to hate her."
After that they sat in silence. Listening to the sounds of the pub and gulping down butterbeers. Suddenly, without any warning, the bells on the doors chimed and three students came in.
It was Potter and Friends.
"Ugh! The bloke's everywhere now!"
"Can't he just leave us alone?"
She watched as the other students crowded in, and Harry began to speak. She listened to him, and almost gained respect for him. He was planning on a defense against the dark arts club. It seemed interesting enough. She would need a new way to defend herself when she eventually would have to leave here, and she could for once be safe…
She scrawled her name on the sign up sheet. They looked at her in shock, and left without a word.
Marisa walked through the darkening streets of Hogsmeade. It all seemed so familiar, yet she did not remember seeing any of this in her life. Her golden monkey daemon looked around warily. She was dressed in a black cloak, her appearance having lost much of its stunningness, and her eyes were tired.
She saw an old, nearly abandoned pub and decided to go in for warmth. It was snowing outside and she was sure she would catch pneumonia if she stayed out any longer.
She was not exactly sure where she was, or how she got there, but she was too tired and relieved to really care. As she entered the shop she nearly had a heart attack. There, sitting at the counter, was Lyra.
She was also wearing a black cloak. She looked so much older than when she had last seen her. She decided that Lyra wouldn't speak to her if she revealed herself, so her daemon crept under her cloak as she put the hood further down over her face.
"Mead please," she said, forgetting that she didn't have any money.
"Hey, girl…" she said in a creaking voice sounding nothing like her own, "What are you doing in a place like this?"
"What's it mean to you," she said, skeptical as usual, "This place is for people who don't want to be talked to."
She sat there in silence, simply happy they were both alive and well. She had been falling down the abyss, but, in a strange event, she thought of something… of another place, and she appeared there without warning. She was ashamed of what she had done. She had killed what her entire organization was fighting for, and was wanted by no one.
Her first job was to remember where she was, and what she was doing. She had been bordering on delirium in that abyss, with Asriel dead in her arms.
She felt purposeless, with Asirel gone. Their constant battling seemed to be the only meaning in her life, and she had both one and lost. She had killed him. Now what? She walked out of the pub in a daze, and into the night.
Harry was very confused. And very afraid. This Brooks girl was so… unexpected. She would slink in the shadows and appear when he least expected it. She was like a cat that would strike at any moment. She had signed up for the Defense Organization or whatever they were going to call it, and he was even more puzzled.
Did she hate him, or not? He really didn't want an enemy, not when everyone was against him. They refused to listen to the truth of the matter. Come to think of it, she was the only person who never expressed whether she believed him or not. She didn't seem to make sense at all.
Why was she a first year if she was so much older than that? Why did she have that strange vengeance against him, and why was he so afraid of her. No one since Voldemort had scared him as much.
He didn't like the unknown, and he didn't like her. She was too mysterious, and too wise. She seemed to know so many things he didn't, and held him on a string. He felt he would have to figure her out before he could figure out Voldemort.
There was still one question he had never bothered to answer, or even think of in the very back of his mind:
Why do you care so much about this Brooks girl? What did she ever do to you?
She made him feel weak, and stupid. She seemed to be standing in this way. He suspected she wasn't really a witch. Maybe she wasn't really a person.
He was too afraid, and too proud to tell Ron or Hermione about it, though it kept him up at night.
Well, he supposed it was better to stay up thinking than to slip into dreaming…