I know I'm publishing the first couple chapters fairly quickly, but a review would be great. :) *hint, hint*
Once more, I own nothing from the Harry Potter series.
Chapter Three – A Mother Wolf
Years of Flooing to Auror and Order assignments keep both of them on their feet as Alexandra comes rushing through the connection.
"What news?" She manages to gasp out. Her voice is tight and her hand, grasping onto the back of Geoffrey's chair, is shaking. She hasn't yet noticed the chairs occupant, her attention is all for her husband.
"What news, Harry?" Potter seems reluctant and now her voice is firm and unrelenting. "Tell me what new." She demands, before Potter has even had the chance to form his answer. Geoffrey feels a twitch of pity for Potter.
"I would be the source, Mrs. Potter." She spins around to peer down at him in the chair.
"And you are?" She asks, voice lacking the concern and desperation it had held moments before. Geoffrey has always wondered from whom Dubhán had inherited his quick composure.
"Geoffrey Goddard. I'd shake your hand..." He leans forward in his chair, showing the binding. "But they are not at my mercy." She regards him for a moment. Geoffrey feels as if she is summing him up: his worth, his honesty, his age, his health- everything, in that one look. And apparently he doesn't pass. She turns from him in favor of Dumbledore, dismissing him with as little concern as possible. He doesn't hear her conversation with Dumbledore – he is far too preoccupied by one of his own. A distant, vague, memory that had not been listened to or thought about in many years, is spinning freely and uncontrollable in his mind.
"Did you hear me, or have they already given you too much truth serum?" His eyes snap to hers. Potter murmurs something in the background about not giving him any such thing, but Alexandra is not listening to him. Her attention is only for him. He'd rather it went back to where it had been before.
"My apologies, Madam; my mind was elsewhere." A glare, filled with contempt, presents itself on her features. Geoffrey is reminded of someone else, but he will not speak who he is reminded of aloud, let alone in his head.
"Where would that be?" Her cream colored skirt and white blouse no longer suite her; she is an Auror again, an investigator, a fighter, and her wrath has been turned to him.
"Distant memories." Her jaw clenches slightly.
"You'll have to be far more specific with me, Mr. Goddard." There is a cold edge to her voice and Geoffrey knows that path will not take him any further. He decides to veer sharply.
"On distant memories, brought on by similarities you share with your son." He is dancing upon a thin line of truth and lie; she does look remarkably like Dubhán, but mere appearance would not have provoked such a strong dream-state. She smellslike him. The comment extracts its desired pause and willingness to discard the topic. He has her interested.
"They said the Pensieve images look just like him, but Voldemort is a skilled wizard; he could easily create a look-alike boy. We have Devlin's body." She is seeking information from him in the form of a challenge. She thinks he will be more willing to betray Voldemort if she is calling him stupid. Of course Voldemort could create a look-alike. A Doppler. But he could also create a look-alike body. He says as much to her.
"If he is skilled enough to create a living boy, could he not create a dead one? A mere body?" Is not pointing out a foreign notion to her, but he is speaking it aloud. She inhales sharply. Geoffrey can see the limp body Voldemort sent them in her eyes, the tombstone they buried it under, her pain as she watches the casket float down into the ground, and her guilt as she realizes she may have given up on her son. There is hesitation too; hesitation to see truth in Geoffrey's claim and find herself in the same place of pain. Fear for Geoffrey to be wrong and her to have believed him.
"I have to see him," she says, leaning against the Headmaster's desk and looking him straight in the eye. She reaches toward the Pensieve. Whether she knows he's a werewolf, whether she understands what she is saying to him, Geoffrey does not know, all he knows is that she is the Alpha. She is not unendingly friendly. She is not uncertain. She knows she is powerful and she knows he knows she is powerful. He decides then and there that Potter is his new Master, because she is an Alpha and her mate is Potter. For a moment it all makes sense, then he remembers what is in the Pensieve. He cringes.
"No!" Dubhán would not want her to see what he had showed Potter, Weasley, and Dumbledore.
She turns sharply to him, her lips tight and eyes narrowed. She is waiting for him to continue, no matter how impatient she appears.
"I'd like to put a different one in for you." She manages, somehow, to glare without shifting a muscle. She is not someone who likes to be treated differently or have things hidden from her. But she is also careful and cautious and after her eyes linger in his, she changes her mind. She steps away from the Pensieve.
Geoffrey finds himself at wand point for the seventh, no eighth, time that day.
"I wonder, Dubhán, if you read these books to listen to the words or to allow yourself an…escape, with an excuse to be silent and oblivious to your surroundings." It is clear that they have entered into the middle of some fight. Alexandra waits for it to explain itself, while she stares in fascination at the small child, perhaps six or so. His hands are clenched at his sides and he is staring defiantly up at an older man, green eyes and jet-black hair that almost matches Harry's own except it is going grey. She doesn't know the man and takes a moment to remember his features. There is a heavy book in one of his own and he holds it up, gesturing with it. Alexandra agrees; it would turn most children running.
"Which is it, Dubhán?" There is a smoldering impatience to the man's voice. Alexandra frowns when Devlin growls lowly, jutting out his jaw in stubbornness. His eyes, she notices for the first time, shine the distinct color of a feral werewolf.
"You can't take her from me!" He says softly, powerfully, stone cold and emotionless. Alexandra is witnessing the transition between Devlin and Dubhán: the between stages of childhood and survival. She doesn't, of course, know this, but she will later. "She'll always be my mother."
The memory spins around her and Alexandra finds herself leaning on the desk, not for appearance, but for true support. She closes her eyes in an attempt to collect herself.
"Thank you," she says to Geoffrey, opening her eyes and smiling slightly at him. It is such a shadowed smile. It reminds him of Dubhán. "Do you know him well?" Beneath the truth of her thanks is a game she has no problem, or difficulty, playing. The same one Geoffrey had played on her and Potter. She will string this concerned, pleased, parent persona along for as a long as it works.
"I do. I am his Guard; I spend nearly all day, every day, with him."
Near a bed, quilted in greens and blues, a bookshelf, filled from top to bottom, a desk, laden with parchments, quills and ink, and a soft warm chair, a small figure is pacing. Seven steps to his right and seven to the left. His raven hair is disheveled, perhaps due to the fact that he woke up and discovered something missing. Someone missing.
This person is not at the Barracks (the sleeping quarters for Death Eaters), or in the room next to his own that he often occupies when Dubhán might otherwise be sleeping alone in the magical tent that serves as his home.
His green eyes swerve to the clock over his desk, wanting nothing more then to move the hands forward manually and for that to change the real time. Despite his frustration with it, his eyes linger on the time. It is the only thing on his mind.
'I will be in an important meeting from the evening until midnight; you are not to come to me between those times. Go to Geoffrey if you must see someone. I have arranged for him to remain at the Base all day.' Those had been his Grandfather's parting words to him after lunch. Rules he knew he could not break. Yet Geoffrey was not watching him or anywhere at the Base. He was gone.
This missing link might propel some children to think the rule had thus become null but, even if this should be so, Dubhán is not the kind of child to push his luck. He tries seating himself on his bed, but cannot stay still for long. He can feel a headache building.
A blue potion bottle regards him from across the room in an accusatory way. If he has a headache, he should take the potion. It's what he's supposed to do. But he doesn't. He scowls at it instead and tucks his hands under himself.
It is only an hour until his Grandfather comes back...