Dumbledore was dead. Such was the news that brought an end to this new way of life. She couldn't believe that the wizened old headmaster who'd defeated Grindelwald, considered the second worst dark wizard of all time - second only to the Dark Lord - was gone. The man who'd made her head girl several years prior.
The news had started when she'd been in bed with a floo call from her mother, who demanded that Audrey come straight over via the floo network, with no need to get dressed or anything. Startled, she'd complied, arriving in her childhood home still pajama-clad and barefoot to see her parents fully dressed and her siblings and their partners with her parents' faces positively alive with triumph. Now this had to be bad: she'd never seen their faces so blazing with life. "Dumbledore is dead", Corban announced, his voice quivering with glee. This prompted various exclamations like "blimey", but Audrey felt her jaw drop. Even her occlumency training couldn't hide that reaction, not that it would matter because she could very easily just say it was shocking news and she was delighted to hear it. Titus and Alana's faces - who'd gotten married back in March - were as alive with savage triumph as the two elder Yaxleys', and Benjamin's and Julia's weren't far off, and so Audrey had to make sure to seem enthralled by the news, "how?", she asked, "who managed to kill him?" And so her father explained how Draco Malfoy - why she remembered how that ponce had gone bragging when the chamber of secrets had been opened about how mudbloods would die - had fixed a vanishing cabinet within Hogwarts that had allowed him and some other death eaters passage into Hogwarts from Borgin and Burke's. How they'd fought their way through the opposition comprised of a mixture of members of the Order of the Phoenix and Hogwarts students, and had cornered Dumbledore on the astronomy tower. About how the Malfoy boy had been unable to bring himself to kill Dumbledore - so when Snape had arrived, he'd done it instead. "Well seems like the old man was backstabbed by the very man he gave a second chance to. Look where his trusting got him." Audrey said. Of course, this was met by jeering and catcalling. A cruel thing to say, but fairly accurate, and would ensure that none of them would grow suspicious that she wasn't as delighted as they were to hear the news.
Whilst her family got drunk in their celebrations of the passing of the one man whom the Dark Lord had feared, something in Audrey's brain was telling her this seemed wrong. How had Dumbledore been unable to deal with a few death eaters? Had Snape truly hoodwinked the headmaster till the very last moment before backstabbing him? But even so, Dumbledore had surely been powerful enough to react to any trick in a split second, far too skilled for anyone bar the Dark Lord to stand a chance against? All the evidence was there that Dumbledore had misplaced his trust, yet it didn't add up. Fortunately for her, her family were far too jubilant and drunk to see the signs on Audrey's face of the war waging in her head. After a while, she excused herself and headed back to her apartment: the world might be falling apart, but she still had work to get to.