Chapter 24) Elf Confessions
Selected Listening: The Twin- James Newton Howard
After the first task, the castle fell into a lighthearted bliss with the crisp December air washing in.
"That wasn't too bad," Anastasia repeated to herself in relief after Harry's survival. "That wasn't too bad."
She was certain she jinxed the bag, and was the reason Harry picked the Hungarian Horntail. How else could the youngest, most inexperienced student draw the worst possible option? But Draco had been right. Harry fumbled through the whole thing and escaped without a scratch.
Of course, there was still talk within the Gryffindor group to determine who could have put Harry and Anastasia's names in the Goblet. They were in the owlery when Harry mentioned Karakoff.
"He was in with Voldemort…good friends with Lucius Malfoy according to Sirius."
"Of course! Why didn't we see it earlier?" Ron gaped. "The headmaster who teaches dark magic would have to be a Death Eater."
Anastasia, who had been sitting by Crenshaw and stroking his feathers as he cooed happily, paused when she realized everyone was looking at her for more information.
"I don't know anything about Krakoff. Mr. Malfoy didn't mention him. All I know is that he doesn't believe my obscurus is gone, and I'm staying away from him and all those dark magic dingbats of his," she finished shortly.
"Maybe he did it on purpose then," Harry suggested. "He was hoping you'd get chosen and taken out by the first task so there wouldn't be a chance of you hurting his students."
Anastasia shook her head. "Karakoff didn't want me competing. He mentioned that the first day we met…he was afraid I had an unfair advantage."
"What? Does he think an obscurus gives you superpowers or something?" Ron asked, befuddled.
Hermione winced, "more like, he was afraid she'd have a panic attack and slay the entire dragon and half the crowd with it."
Anastasia recoiled inwardly. Hermione must have noted her expression and felt responsible because she piped up, "I explained to vi—to some of the Durmstrang students…that you really aren't a danger to anyone…that your obscurus really was vanquished."
Anastasia's eyes flashed back to her friend. She caught that slip up, but the boys didn't.
"Since when have you been talking to Durmstrang Dungbombs, Hermione?" Ron asked.
Hermione turned very red all at once.
"They do show up in the library…occasionally. They're not all terrible."
Anastasia smiled knowingly.
"Ah yes. I forgot the mark of someone's character depended on their afternoon library attendance," Ron mused. Hermione swatted him on the arm.
At breakfast on Monday, The Daily Prophet landed on the table. The second page headline read Malfoy and Dumbledore- Lovers in Limbo.
The article described their tumultuous date in the tea shop, ending in them leaving before they had the chance to eat.
"What?" Anastasia's eyes widened. "She wasn't even there!"
"This woman is awful," Hermione stated, but then veered off track. "Why did you leave the teashop early?"
Anastasia waved it off.
"One, it's an awful place. Never go. Two, Draco invited the Bulgarians and the Slytherins to spend the day gawking and laughing at us just so he could prove we were dating, and that I hadn't broken up with him after the potions class incident."
"Why would he need to go and do that for?" Ron asked, face all twisted up. "The two of you are always tangled up in some corner snogging."
She chose to ignore his second comment.
"Draco said something about needing to protect us because the Durmstrang students are into dark magic. Some lame excuse…he's insecure or something," she finished while rolling her eyes and took a large bite of French toast.
"That doesn't sound like an insecurity to me," Hermione remarked. "That sounds like there's something fishy that Durmstrang is trying to pull…and Draco's in on it."
"Anastasia!" Draco said, snuck up to her hesitantly. "Where did that article come from?" he hissed. "That Skeeter woman—how'd she photograph us?"
"I don't know!" she swung her legs over the bench and walked with him back to the entrance of the hall—neutral territory. They began fretting over the paper, eyes scanning over the article. "But something's off…why does the story stop with us leaving? If she was nearby, why didn't she follow us?"
Draco shook his head.
"She got what she needed. She wanted to portray us as a fighting mess, just like she made out Potter to be a tormented crybaby."
"Maybe, but—"
"But what?" he asked, looking at her from the corners of his eyes. She hit the paper with the back of her hand.
"Remember this summer when she wrote the other article? It stopped with the information about the stores, and the picture was from the restaurant. We didn't see her then either."
"Yeah, so?"
"So…why didn't she follow us to Florean's and get a picture of that? Or worse, us snogging? If she was using an invisibility cloak or something, why couldn't she have gone out the door?"
Draco froze.
"That is odd…maybe she's using dark magic."
"Dark Magic? Skeeter?" Anastasia heard the surprise in her voice, but once she thought a moment, she wouldn't put it past the woman who was capable of dealing so many low blows. "Is there a spell for that?" she asked in a hushed tone.
Draco shook his head.
"Not exactly to become invisible…but you can attach yourself to another's shadow. If there is an exact invisibility spell it's not in my books."
"Your books? How many dark magic books do you have?" she questioned. He immediately became defensive.
"And how many healing alchemy books do you have?" he countered, arms crossed.
"Excuse me? I don't have any," she said as they began the long walk down the hill to Care of Magical Creatures.
"I know how my mum does things, and I know she's been teaching you a bit here and there, so don't even pretend. It's as banned as dark magic."
"Is not…" Anastasia trailed off.
"Is too, Anastasia. You'll have to admit one day that the only way to get anything done is by learning the magic that everyone else is afraid to learn."
Anastasia growled under her breath. Their little spat lasted all the way down the hill until they reached hearing distance of their classmates.
After almost being forced into an unwanted hibernation, the meter-long, blast-ended skrewts broke out of their crates and rampaged across the fields. The Gryffindors drew their wands to help, but as Anastasia reached for her own, Draco grabbed her by the hood and pulled her away.
"Hey!" she yelled as he dragged her along to where the other students were taking shelter in Hagrid's cabin.
"Do you want to have to explain mutual third degree burns to our classmates?" he whispered angrily.
Anastasia scoffed and entered the cabin with the others. Draco shut the door behind him and locked all 5 of Hagrid's deadbolts.
As they peered through the windows, watching Hagrid and their other classmates finish taming the beasts, Rita Skeeter strutted up in her bottle green suit. She engaged the gamekeeper in conversation that looked polite enough, but Anastasia knew better.
To the protests of the Slytherins, Anastasia unlocked all the locks and ran out of the cabin.
"What's your problem?" Anastasia stormed up to her as the woman walked away from the outdoor classroom. Rita's lips pursed in amusement when she saw the girl.
"My problem? Dear, I think you should be worried about your own problems. Snubbing Malfoy after he took you on a date to the most romantic tea shop in Hogsmeade?"
"How did you even find us there?" she demanded. Hagrid's door slammed again in the distance.
"I'm in town for the tournament. Just because you're unobservant, doesn't mean I have to go and introduce myself to you every time I see you in town."
Anastasia almost drew her wand again.
"How'd you take that picture!" Draco demanded, walking up behind Anastasia. Rita stopped and turned, smiling slyly.
"I'm sorry?"
"The picture. It was taken from the angle of the second level, but the only people on the second level were students! You weren't there!" he raged.
Rita continued smiling mockingly.
"Nice to see you again, Malfoy. Tell your father I said hello, and that I'll be expecting my usual bonus for the article." She winked, turned, and departed, apparating just outside the Hogwarts border.
Anastasia's face turned bright red.
"Wait until I'll tell my father! That little gossiping, two-timing bit—"
"Anatasia, stop!" Draco said, hugging her from behind so she couldn't go after the woman. She pulled gently, but eventually gave in and let him turn her to face him.
"She's not worth it," Draco reassured. "The article was ridiculous…it sounds like she's been in father's pocketbook for a while now…"
She turned back to the path and glared at the empty space where Rita once stood, arms folded.
"Not really a surprise at this point. Actually, it explains a lot…the articles started last year after the obscurus announcement. There was a reason she was waiting on me in the Leaky Cauldron, and then there was that article about my encounter with Sirius Black…how in Merlin is she doing all this?"
Just as frustrated as before, Anastasia went to lunch with the Gryffindors.
"She must have a way of not being seen without an invisibility cloak," Hermione pointed out.
"Maybe she got close enough to one of the Durmstrang students to steal their hair and is using polyjuice potion," Ron proposed.
"It's not off the table…" Anastasia drifted off, "but she must have a lot of it to keep up with the amount of articles she writes."
That afternoon, Anastasia and Hermione suffered through their Arithmancy test together. With all the happenings of the tournament, Anastasia hadn't spent as long studying, and found herself thinking hard to remember formulas in the three-hour class span, when Hermione was dismissed an hour early from her test, after fully completing the form and checking all her answers.
When Anastasia finally submitted her exam and ventured out into the corridors, she couldn't find Hermione anywhere. Not in Minerva's classroom for office hours, not in the Muggleborn Student Society meeting, not at Hagrid's. It wasn't until she met up with Harry and Ron, had dinner, and went back up to the common room, that Hermione came running to meet them at the door.
"Come on, quick! All of you! It's the most amazing thing!" She grabbed Harry and Anastasia by the arms, and if she had a third arm, she would have dragged Ron too.
"What is it?" Harry asked.
"Don't. There's no time to explain!" she yelled cheerily and began running down the stairs. They followed her all the way to the door of the kitchens—the painting of the giant bowl of fruit. Hermione tickled the pear as if she'd been doing it all her life and the door swung open.
They climbed through the porthole, portrait slamming shut behind them to find an adorable little elf in mismatched clothing and big luminous eyes staring up at them.
"Mr. Harry Potter has come to see Dobby!" the little elf sang and bounded into Harry's open arms.
Anastasia, Hermione, and Ron all grinned as the elf clung to him. Harry was finally able to pry him off and set him upright on the floor.
"Dobby is happy to see Mr. Harry Potter. Professor Dumbledore gave Dobby and Winky jobs. And Dobby gets paid!" The other elves in the kitchen scurried away when they heard him talking about his newfound income. He was about to say more, but Dobby looked past Harry at the other Gryffindor students and froze. Anastasia recognized this one by his eyes, the same eyes she saw peeking around the corner from before when she and Albus were having dinner one night.
Harry gestured at the small group.
"Dobby, these are my friends: Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, and Anastasia Dumbledore."
But Dobby didn't seem to be listening. He was staring rather intently at Anastasia's throat.
"Where did Miss Anastasia Dumbledore get that necklace?" Dobby pointed, eyes fixated. Her fingers drifted up to her canary diamond pendant, and she clutched it. "Dobby has seen it before."
"Um…my godmother gave it to me…Narcissa, she…actually, it belonged to my mum. She was just passing it on."
Dobby growled ferociously.
"Dobby was punished for stealing that necklace! Dobby didn't steal! Narcissa Malfoy lied!"
"Oh…" Anastasia sunk to her knees to speak with him on his level, "I'm so sorry. I didn't know. She really punished you even though she knew she gave it to me?" she asked politely, wincingly.
"Of course, she did!" Dobby yelled. "That selfish UGH would do anything to cover up her precious experiments, and you're the biggest of them all!"
The color drained from Anastasia's face and her heart sunk into her stomach. The little elf had started ramming his head against a cabinet for speaking ill of his former family.
"Dobby," Harry said, but Dobby continued, "Dobby! DOBBY!"
Finally, the little elf stopped and looked between the students.
Anastasia kept a smile on her face as she uttered out her question, like speaking to a child.
"Could you please tell me what you mean by experiment? I mean, I know the circumstances of my birth were a bit experimental—"
"Dobby shouldn't say any more…Dobby is a good elf…not a vengeful elf…"
"You don't owe them anything, Dobby. I know they were probably unkind to you," she offered.
"Unkind? Unkind?! Not giving Dobby a birthday present is unkind. Not allowing Dobby to have dessert is unkind. Kicking Dobby every day is—"
"Yes!" Harry interrupted. "We get the idea Dobby, but you don't owe them any good behavior, so tell Anastasia what you mean. It could be really important!"
"Alright, Dobby will tell…but Miss Anastasia Dumbledore musn't be angry with Dobby. I'm only telling the truth as I heard it from the house elf before Dobby…"
Anastasia nodded slowly as the little elf lowered his voice and his eyes darkened.
"Narcissa Malfoy is a very advanced healer…and she is capable of things that only she can do and many witches need. Narcissa Malfoy cracked the wizarding genetic code…she wanted to have a girl heir instead of a boy heir…but she couldn't use the magic on herself…even her magic wasn't strong enough to beat the Malfoy wards…
"So, instead she found two people who couldn't have children. Professor Dumbledore is a forever bachelor and from a very powerful bloodline…so she knew he would make a good candidate…then all she needed a witch. Holly Sinclair, heir of Hufflepuff, desperately wanted a child, but just as she and her husband were considering it…he was killed in a death eater raid..."
Anastasia felt her limbs go numb as he spoke. He hadn't said much more than she'd known before, but now all the dots connected in a horrific constellation.
"Dobby…" Anastasia said in a hoarse tone. "Do you know which Death Eater killed Francis Sinclair?"
The elf rammed his head against the cabinet again.
"Dobby, Dobby stop, answer her question!" Harry pulled him away from the cabinet.
"Does he really need to?" Ron asked. "It's pretty obvious—"
Dobby fought against Harry and broke away staring frightenedly at Anastasia.
"It's public record that Lucius Malfoy killed Francis Sinclair…he was tried and claimed he did it while under an imperious curse cast by You-Know-Who!"
Dobby, surprised at his own courage, loosened his fists. He looked both ways, still afraid of eavesdroppers, and lowered his voice. The Gryffindors leaned in to hear him.
"What isn't public knowledge is that you-know-who didn't perform the imperious curse that forced him to kill Francis Sinclair…it was Narcissa Malfoy."
Anastasia's mind went blank. Hermione's arm came around her shoulders protectively. The boys stared at each other, dumbfounded.
The brave elf regained his normal composure.
"Now she has a goddaughter who is the heir of two Hogwarts founders…and who is forever bound to her son, Draco Malfoy."