October 21, 1997
I paused in the doorway, shifting my grip on the papers in my hands as I stepped quietly to the side and out of sight of the bustling office.
The sight of my cousin Harrow in the Ministry was very unusual.
And disturbing.
I knew he was not in the Ministry to earn an honest living or practice anything related to public service. Harrow was not the type of person to earn his money beyond investment of personal, familial funds or… well, however the idle aristocratic rich earned their money. I preferred to earn mine.
Harrow smiled widely, carrying himself with the confidence of a man who now had a whole new world opened to him. Harrow was now the undisputed leader of his immediate family; he had access to the wealth and connections that had been cultivated through that influence and family connections through marriage over generations.
Now he essentially had reign to wander the Ministry and the confidence to do so.
Great.
I needed to find a closet to hide in.
No, he's on my territory, I need to be tolerant of him, but that doesn't mean I would not have a hundred different excuses to pry myself away from his company at my disposal.
Shifting the files in my hands and feigning a look of horror for passing secretaries and clerks who looked at me with disdain and pity by turns allowed me the chance to turn away from the bustling office. Muttering to myself about something I had forgotten to deliver to one of the smaller offices. Some people gave me curious looks, seeming concerned for my poor self as if I was beginning to wander into madness from stress. I believed talking to oneself could be a very reasonable habit in some cases, it could keep one focused on the task at hand if needed.
In two steps I was through a hall door and seemingly out of danger. It was easy to stop for a moment to lean against the wall and go through my papers, trying to mentally craft the longest route through the Ministry to run this list of errands.
"Well, Audrey," I suppressed every instinct to roll my eyes and imitate the yakking noise a cat made when it was coughing up a hairball. "Fancy seeing you here."
"Hello Jasmine, lovely day isn't it?"
"Ugh, don't say lovely if you're speaking American, it sounds terrible." She rolled her eyes, almost amused judging by the smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.
I did not like Jasmine, we would never be friends, but she was the only person who had the sheer gumption to speak to me on a regular basis in the wider department and it seemed almost... friendly? Kind? I was not entirely sure, but I needed to be very careful in how I handled her. How could I not be familiar with a tactic that I often used on others?
"I could say the same about the word aluminum."
"Aluminium." She laughed slightly and it seemed genuine. "You've been here long enough to learn that much."
I shrugged, "One of the first things on the colonial independence to-do list."
Oh, that was real laughter.
I was not sure what Jasmine's end goal here was, but... something told me she was kind of lonely. There was something she wanted to talk about and it was as if she was looking for an opening or a sign from me to do so.
"That and instating coffee as our national drink."
Jasmine looked at me, a spark in her eyes. "I think you all got that correct, but I never said that."
"No, you'll be socially ruined." I felt myself smile and watched the tension melt from Jasmine's shoulders, a tension that I had not noticed until it had melted from her body.
"I actually just got a coffee maker for the small kitchen down the hall." She paused and examined me slowly. "I think I'm the only one who uses it. I can show you if you like?"
"That's kind of you."
Jasmine motioned for me to follow her, her hair billowing out behind her as she led me down the corridor, past several small closets and to the small kitchen at the end of the hall farthest from the lift that I knew to contain a small kettle and sink. It was not a big room and generally not used for more than washing dishes and getting hot water. I was surprised Jasmine had found room for a coffee maker; the room was barely the size of a closet.
I complimented Jasmine on the very nice coffee press, shiny but also well used in a lovely aqua color to mark it as a personal machine.
Jasmine closed the door behind her, leaving us both in the tiny room together as she summoned two mugs from the cabinet and began the coffee press with another flick of her wand.
As she handed me a steaming mug of coffee, clinking her own against it in a mock toast before she spoke.
"I think you are the smartest person in this department."
"Thank you?" I raised an eyebrow, genuinely confused for a moment.
Jasmine sighed and flicked her wand at the door, the silencing charm flying through the air with a rush of cold air.
"That doesn't mean I think you understand everything going on here."
I understand enough to not get murdered or fired.
"What do you mean?"
Jasmine looked at me with a weary expression, wordlessly calling me out for being dumb.
It was refreshing to have a strange conversation with someone who was clearly intelligent in some manner.
"There has been a lot of talk lately about ensuring the... Well, that is to say..." It was odd to see Jasmine fishing for words, she never struck me as the type of person to fidget while doing so. It added far more sincerity to the matter she wished to discuss with me.
"Jasmine?"
She sighed. "I met another American the other day, a young woman escorted by her father at a dinner party I attended a couple of days ago. Her father was talking to a cousin of mine to, according to my father, arrange a marriage. They had not been here as long as you, I'm certain of that."
I felt myself freeze. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Explain to me, how a country that has banned travel to Britain was able to allow that to happen."
"Dual citizen maybe, half Canadian or just left from Canada or Mexico, countries that we have not been banned from traveling too."
"See, here's my issue. I'm not too interested in how she got here, she's here now and she's... naive. I can't bring myself to call her stupid, but she's never had a thought in her life and all she does is smile and say polite platitudes." There was a blistering, quiet fury in Jasmine's eyes. "My cousin is the kind of man who wants those nice little pureblood children at any cost and the only reason I am not in that girl's position is because I told him if he put his hands on me again-" She stopped suddenly, the realization of saying too much in her widening eyes and tightened mouth.
"You don't have to say anymore." I tried to ignore the cold dread swimming in my guts.
"I need... I need an ally in this circle. It's no secret that Harrow Avery gets your great-aunt's house when she dies. You need more information than Madam Ainsley can provide with her courtesy invitations."
"We've gotten a few invitations to tea." Those afternoons were awful! All high-pitched twittering and discussions of fortunes and eligible bachelors by older women who suddenly had every reason in the world to say horrible things without having to cover it in a saccharine sweetness. The daughters were no better, the ones I knew from work were civil to me, but they closed ranks and often left me speaking with elderly aunts who found my accent very charming.
"There are bigger social events coming, our families want to cement alliances through marriage. My cousin's wedding to this little American will be the one to begin an eventful social season. A marriage market." She shuddered.
I tilted my head slightly, "I take it you don't agree with this?"
"If I marry, it's on my terms. We don't live in the bloody Dark Ages!"
I finished my coffee, the realization almost amusing. Jasmine was telling me this so she didn't have to pretend at every event we were at together. She wanted a drinking buddy at parties she did not want to be at. This was hilarious! Frankly, I needed her help as much as she needed mine.
"Lucinda has a lovely wine collection, I'm happy to bring some along."
"I received a French Chardonnay for Christmas last year," her perfectly colored lips widened in a smug smile. "I think this is a lovely start."
We clicked our mugs together in a mutual acknowledgement of our newfound social alliance. We did not need trust, we both needed the comfort of knowing that other people thought this whole world was truly insane, and in the grand scheme of things, that was enough.
Oo0Oo0
October 31, 1997
It took considerable effort to get my grandfather Callum to stay in one painting, even if he wanted to be helpful, as he was so used to having free reign over the house it irritated him to be confined to a small portrait that I could sneak out of Thornell. I tried to find an interesting portrait for him, one with a lot of books or knick-knacks to amuse him for the hour walk to the Ainsley family graveyard, but all he did was periodically stare at me when I checked on him and tapped his foot in sheer boredom while he swatted things off the table like a cat.
"I made sure you had things to read. What more do you want?"
Callum glared at me.
I really wished he was able to speak, but my grandfather had died before his portrait had been completed and this version of him, while similar in personality, had not heard my grandfather's voice as the Dragonpox had settled in his throat. Hence the portrait had learned his facial expressions and rather sarcastic nonverbal communication, but was unable to vocalize anything of interest. I got the impression he would have been a lovely conversationalist, there was an inherent vivacity in his eyes that reminded me of Alex.
Cutting a path through the sloping hills under a moonless sky was daunting and horrific for the way the shadows reached and tried to grab my ankles. The knowledge that I was on Ainsley family land and Thornell was just beyond the high hill behind me that hid the graveyard was of little comfort to my frayed nerves. The glow from the top of my wand barely lit the path in front of me and I regretted not grabbing the toad oil lamp Tavish kept for evening greenhouse checks.
I turned the corner on the path, following a faded wooden signpost that pointed towards a wizarding hamlet called… something in Scottish I could neither spell or pronounce but understood it to be nowhere close enough to Thornell to bother with. The faded sign beneath it pointed down a smaller path through overgrowth and a mostly dead tree.
Ainsley Kirk
I knew kirk was an old word for church, wizards generally did not advertise their family graveyards and cemeteries due to the threat of grave robbery for the creation of Inferi and other dark magic involving corpses.
Was this thing I was attempting offensive to the dead?
Oh… oh, there were lines of ethics and morality and I was stomping all over them!
Once this door was opened, I could never close it again. The stain on my soul would never be erased.
My chest tightened as I arrived at the iron gates at the end of the path. I could see the faint outline of old stones, a decline down into a small woodland and headstones in various states of age and decay through the bars, beckoning to me and creating strange shadows that overlapped with one another and twisted fiendishly in the darkness.
'Alohomora!'
The lock clicked and I pushed the gate open, ignoring the sinking feeling in my gut and the half formed prayer on the tip of my tongue.
The white face of a barn owl peered down at me from the broken stained glass window of the old church building in the center of the graveyard. It had been an active gathering place once for local wizards to avoid muggles in times of religious turmoil and upheaval, a practice still continued in America, but those practices had tapered off as the nonmagical found other things to occupy themselves and now this old, hollowed building was a reminder and local landmark, a place that would be used for local services and funerals.
I had come this far. Cowardice was not an option. I would contribute something to this war effort, even if the results would not be seen until the end of it. My job was to gather information for whatever prosecuting body was standing at the end of this war and if that meant doing weird magic rituals in a graveyard then, frankly, I did not have much of a choice.
The rumors I was hearing about the Department of Mysteries over the last couple of weeks has left me cold, a bone chilling numbness that seemed to settle in my teeth. The secretaries that Susanna had assigned there were telling her things, hushed whispers from some of the more moral researchers. Rumors of Rookwood's encouragement in new forms of magical eugenics that no one was truly clear about, that even whispers of rumor offered only vagueness and an apparent kind of insanity I could not attribute to Rookwood- at least not by himself. Rookwood would suggest, but he would have someone else leading the project directly, he did not seem the type to dirty his hands when he already had everything he needed. It made him easier to digest when he circled and schmoozed other purebloods who had illusions of clean hands and a serving class.
I took a deep breath as I moved towards the Ainsley family plot near the back of the graveyard, ignoring the stones and the bone chilling feeling of being watched as I moved the lamp from stone to stone, checking the names as my grandfather stopped rattling around in his portrait, an intuitive silence falling over him.
Lorna Dierdre MacMillian Ainsley
My grandmother. I wondered why there was no portrait of her in the house? Maybe she had died too quickly and there had not been time to create one?
Next to her was the grave I was looking for.
Callum Wallace Ainsley
I was going to be sick.
The ritual flowed through my mind, the memorization of it had been quick as I needed the night of a new moon where only the stars glimmered down to weakly guide the way of people who could read them.
I was really not cut out for strange adventures.
There was a small piece of parchment in my hands, runes and old magicks upon it written in my shaking hand as I copied it from the Graves Family Grimoire. A book I had not earned from my family for what they viewed as a lack of magical aptitude- I was still unsure why Alex had given it to me. Perhaps as a final way of breaking ties with the burden of expectation the Graves family placed upon its children. I wondered if my possession of this item was also a form of sacrilege and betrayal to old ideals. A final act of rebellion to give an unworthy successor a collection of family secrets without promises of secrecy to my elders and betters.
No. I am here now. I am not a powerful wix in the manner that my family viewed as important, but this was something I could do. I was here for a cause greater than the Graves family and their scorn of me for not being the war witch they wanted. Expected. None of them would steep to the levels I had to attempt victory through questionable, dangerous methods. War for them, was a chance to remind the world of their inherent power through great deeds and heroic actions, it was not a game of politics and sabotage, a game of chess for those who were trapped and desperate, gnashing at every opportunity for survival in a dangerous game.
I placed the parchment on the grave of my grandfather, placing the portrait that contained him against the headstone and resting on the parchment just in case the wind rose up in the new few moments.
Callum was looking at me with a nervous, but determined expression. It was such a shame he died so young, I felt like we would have had a lot in common.
I was prepared to die for this opportunity at success.
Somewhere in the heavens a new moon was being born, so tonight the sky was cloudless and black, covered only in glimmering pale stars that meant nothing to me, stars that told stories of myth and ancient magic of Hecate and the gods of the old world.
Next came the candle, placed in the circle on the parchment before me, I moved Callum off of the parchment before lighting the candle with a flick of my wand. The candle burned down to nothing instantaneously, swallowing the paper and introducing a green and purple smoke to the graveyard, the smell of strong sage filling my senses.
"By the purifying fire, I call thee old protector. Treat with me this night…"
I could feel something behind me, something that sent a chill up my spine.
In the years that followed, I would always acknowledge that turning around to see this creature with my own eyes would be one of the most frightening moments of my life.
The Grim peered at me from the corner of the ruins of the old church with the caved in roof. It's eyes glowing yellow in the dark velvet of the night. These graveyard guardians were different from the ones in America, ours had red eyes and were bigger the one peering at me now with a nervous, territorial stare, it's eyes stared through me, holding me paralyzed and still as ice cold hands took hold of my soul to squeeze it tightly until greater forces compelled them to rip my soul asunder.
There were many legends of Grim and all stories had some element of truth to them. Americans believed our Graveyard Grims were guardians of the family in a way, to hear the howl of the dog in the graveyard meant a death in the family, even some families would see the dog at their own home as an emissary of misfortune. Those Grim hounds who wandered free in the world, unbound to a family, were seen in a variety of ways depending on those who encountered them.
Every old wizarding family graveyard has a Grim, a black dog buried alive at the cornerstone of a church or mausoleum, condemned to guard the corpses of the family from those who would rob a graveyard for nefarious purposes and keeping boggarts out of sacred places. It was a tradition brought by English settlers, often Grim in this circumstance were said to be scared of people, but some Grim would leave their burial grounds when the building binding their souls had fallen to ruins to roam the countryside. To the superstitious of Magical America, to see a Grim three times meant one's death was on the horizon. In the western part of the United States, the White Hound was viewed in a similar light. It was one point of difference in our Grim traditions and spoke to the vastness of American magical tradition.
There were other unique death hounds who did not fit the traditional story of death, like the Snarly Yow in Maryland, a displaced animal spirit who menaced a lonely road in Maryland.
What stood before me was no Snarly Yow.
The Grim growled at me, its eyes glowing yellow in the dark velvet of the night, it's shaggy dark coat had something unnaturally shimmering around it. An unsettling cold air moved around it as the creature suddenly faded from sight in the dark night for a moment. It appeared suddenly a foot away from me, fur standing on end as I fought back a horrified scream..
I was not sure the words would work on a Scottish Grim, but the words had been memorized and I had to try. To see a Grim three times meant I would die, but as a member of the Ainsley family through my mother, there was a chance the Grim would serve my wishes twice and take my life on the third encounter as payment.
"I'm not afraid of you, nor am I going to hurt you." I knelt down, taking a deep breath as everything I remembered about Grims swam through my memory, my mind feeling as thick as soup as I looked at the spectral dog before me. It had eyes that were almost… human.
My mouth was dry as I spoke, the eyes of this spectral dog were mesmerizing, like low embers on a dying fire as it tilted its head. He was a strangely beautiful dog. Beautiful in the way some creatures and people were if they knew they were in the last days of their lives, a sort of peaceful serenity to their countenance that made one cling harder to them, even if they did not know how close the end was.
I could see its teeth, a blinding, momentary flash of light in the dark level with my nose.
"Please. I need your help. Take my life if you must, but I must do this with your permission."
There was something in its eyes that seemed skeptical, but too intrigued to try and kill me. Perhaps the fact that I had not dropped dead was interesting to it?
"I come with this portrait of my grandfather, bonds of blood and permission of the deceased. Now I ask for your permission, your blessing, to take this sanctified earth from his grave."
The Grim began to pace back and forth, the earth never moving beneath its feet, like a wolf sizing up its prey. I watched it, it was thinking. This was thinking creature, not one that existed for senseless carnage.
He quickly moved to the grave to look at Callum, who met the Grim's gaze with a tenacious determination that reminded me of Alex. The hound seemed satisfied and sat down next to the grave.
Waiting for me.
I took a deep breath, my body cold as I moved to stand in front of the grave. "I come now with the permission of the dead and an offering of the blood of those who bound thee to this place."
The ghostly dog tilted its head, almost making me believe it was a true dog for a moment despite the deathly aura surrounding it.
"I pay thee in blood, a price for defilement of sanctified ground."
I fumbled pulling the knife from my pocket, the freshly sharpened edge glimmered in the inky blackness of the night as I poked the sharp tip into the fleshy part of my hand, wincing as it tore my flesh.
Drops of blood fell to the earth below that covered Callum's grave.
"Three drops for the Grim, in exchange for my life this night."
I breathed harshly at the sting.
"Three drops for the earth, her rebirth and renewal."
My eyes were wet with pained tears.
"The final three to pay the price of power, to scar the flesh with reminder."
Normal wounds would not burn like this!
The Grim turned away, disappearing into moonless night, leaving nothing behind. Not a footprint, a hair, or even a faint scent of wet dog.
Leaves rattled, twisting off of trees and blowing down into the graveyard in a pathetic kind of violence as I reached down to Callum's portrait. The man inside was wearing the same befuddled and shocked expression that I could feel reflected on my own face.
I quickly dug into the earth over Callum's grave attaining the final ingredient for my mission to the Department of Mysteries.
The deed was done.
On this moonless Halloween night, I had consorted with a spirit of death and kept my life.
Oo0Oo0
Author's Note: Three out of four grades received, I passed Accounting y'all! Two weeks ago, I also moved out of the university. Rented a room and had a professional job waiting for me after exams! Just... A lot of stuff going on. Now I can figure out how to people again. :)
Ghost Dog/ Grim lore is wild! I like to think that in the context of this story, personal beliefs in their power play a large role in how quickly one will die. Americans need to see one three times before it takes their lives (because we're dumb). The British think that once is enough.