December 27, 1997
There had been a sort of silence in our lives for the past few weeks. Percy and I had our routines and a remaining covert understanding of things we could not say to one another for safety, but the implicit understanding of every risk trilled through our bones in a horrendous echo of mundane terror.
This was a boring apocalypse.
It was paperwork and trials, silly simpering behaviors and –
'Protego!' My shield went up so quickly Dennis Creevey's disarming spell bounced off and hit his brother instead, Colin's wand flew up and into Tavish's garden, landing upwards like it was a makeshift headstone marker on the trail west.
"Keep a better hold on your wand, Colin! Dennis, get creative!"
There were noises of agreement from the boys before Colin scampered off to pick up his wand.
Todd Shaw was laughing quietly from where he was laying in the grass as he poked a bug with the tip of his barrowed wand to change the colors on a few weeds. I had managed to talk Thalia into letting the boy come sit a few lessons while she handled some werewolf politics for a few days, I had put Todd in a room with Benjamin and they seemed to have bonded over an old Gobstones set. The truth of boys was the ability to bond over terrible smells and questionable decisions related to those odors.
Girls were strange too, but until I found myself as an actual parent, I figured I was allowed preferences about my future offspring.
I leaned away from the spell Dennis had cast, it was yellow and not one I was familiar with, but shimmered past me with a golden hue that reminded me of a baby unicorn as it flew past my nose.
'Dolens Incrementum!'
Dennis tumbled back into the dirt and cursed as the frost on the ground quickly began to seep through his clothing before he could get back on his feet.
"Now," I turned back to the class, who was having a chuckle at Dennis while his brother helped him to his feet with his own good-natured ribbing. "What did we learn?"
"Don't ask the teacher for a demonstration!" Benjamin Whitehall said quickly, sitting up straight and folding his hands in his lap as if I was going to ask him to come up for a round next.
"Please ask me for more demonstrations," I clarified with a grin. "It's good exercise. Anything else?"
"Shield charms are not always needed!" Niamh O'Connell shouted, before wrapping her cloak tighter around herself from the next chill gust of wind.
"Good! Someone add to that."
"Stay ahead of your opponent, plan your next move!" Joy Horner answered with lively bounce to her despite the cold.
"Excellent! I want more detail."
"When you conjured a shield and threw it at Colin after you blocked his spell," Eleanor Carter said quickly from the blanket she was sharing with Gavin Briar and Rahni Gupta, her notebook open to reveal odd doodles among notes on spells and wand movements. I was sure one of the figures in her notebook was me and the Creevey boys as my opponents.
"And summoned the rock to do the same thing to Dennis after you broke it in half! That was amazing!" Saira Rashhed exclaimed with a broad, toothy smile.
"Keep your wand at the ready!"
"You need better opponents," a new voice said from behind the class.
I turned to find Lucinda stepping out into the cold, her long cloak billowing around her ankles, looking every bit the lady of the manor.
"Nah!" Benjamin Whitehall spoke up, a very confident boy who may have been a smidge too impressed with me. "She beat the Creevey brothers at once!"
"Yes," Lucinda raised a dismissive eyebrow. "Two rapscallions with limited magical education. I'm very impressed."
The kids giggled at the archaic terminology.
"Ms. Ainsley?" Todd Shaw turned himself over in the grass, seemingly not caring that he was damp and potentially cold. We offered the kids a blanket, but Todd had refused, choosing to go without because he claimed to like the cold. "Are you going to teach a lesson?"
Lucinda smiled politely, "If Audrey don't mind, I'd like to take the fourth years and below for a practical lesson in one of the parlors. It's not exciting, but some basic charm work and general defensive magic out of the cold should keep you busy."
There were some low groans from the younger students. The thought of one of the warm parlors made me momentarily jealous, but I needed more space than the house could provide for practice with the older students and we would have to suffer the weather as consequence.
"Come on," Lucinda adjusted her glasses and the younger students sighed and clambered to their feet to follow her like a group of ducklings.
Which meant I now had Colin, Winifred Whitehall and Joy Horner as my students for the rest of the time. The students who were not old enough for Hogwarts were having a reading lesson with Percy somewhere else in the house.
It was a system that was flexible enough for us to do what was needed. The Waldropes' were coming tomorrow evening to do a couple of lessons, but this was a way to keep all of the children busy in some form and not about causing trouble. Winifred would be teaching mathematics to the younger children and helping Eleanor and Gavin with some basic Charm work when things were quiet.
"Okay than," I smiled at my group of three. "Joy, Winifred take the field. Nothing lethal. Your goal is to disarm or knock down your opponent by whatever means you deem appropriate. I'll act as referee; Colin duels the winner. Any questions?"
The girls shook their heads and stood to take the field. They looked at each other, talked a little smack and did the courtesy bow of a practice duel, a slight incline to the head before stepping back into the duelling position.
Colin and I watched the duel in silence for a few moments, several hair growth charms, one hex to grow fingernails that missed its mark and hit a nearby tree. The girls were testing each other, learning how the other thought. It was a customary thing in practice duels and allowed the students to find their own rhythm in the battle.
"Do you think Harry's gone into hiding?"
"Hm? Potter? If he did, I wouldn't blame him."
"He wouldn't." Colin said this with alarming conviction for such a small young man. "Harry's fighting somewhere. I know he is."
"Even if he is, your job right now is stay here where it's safe."
Colin looked up at me with a resolute expression. "Nowhere is safe. We know that's why you're teaching us all this."
"There are more reasons than that for us to teach you how to fight. It gets you out of the house. It makes you exercise; makes you use your brain." I paused. "Colin, I'm as fed up with the hiding and waiting as you are, this whole thing is going to end with a lot of noise, but if anything happens it won't be us in the thick of it. That much I can promise you."
"Harry will do something. He always does. He's not hiding like a coward."
"I never said that."
"Hogwarts..." Colin had not seemed to hear me. "I think he'll go to Hogwarts."
There was something in Colin, a resolute reckless sort of courage and drive that I was not sure I entirely understood, but at that moment, it was in his eyes. Something about how this young man saw the world reminded me of Alex, a need to be in the thick of things for the sake of history or changing an unjust world.
"You're too smart and talented to go fight battles that are not yours to fight."
"I'm Muggle-born. This is more my fight than yours."
Ouch.
I was going to ignore the barb.
"I knew a boy like you once." I started slowly as the girl's began exchanging more aggressive spells. "He was talented, driven, just and all sorts of wonderful things, but every good thing about him was what pushed him away from his family and into something that eventually brought out every bad thing inside of him. Pride, arrogance, conceit and a hate that I don't even think he ever saw in himself before. He ended up where he did out of the best intentions, but his whole life was just him running into other people's problems to avoid his own. You deserve a better life than that boy. You deserve to be in a position to grow past it all, staying here will give you that opportunity."
"Who was the boy? What happened to him?"
"That boy was... he's my brother." I stopped, the words still tasting like ash in my mouth. "He loved deeply, and it took him far out of my reach. He's out there somewhere. Lost in ways I'm not sure either of us would understand, but you deserve better than to live by your own blind righteousness."
Colin was playing with his galleon, turning it between his fingers as he contemplated the duel to avoid looking at me.
"Please think about it. Once you turn seventeen, there's not much else we can say to you. Don't put us in a position where we need to identify you in the morgue."
Colin nodded quietly as I called Winifred the winner.
Oo0Oo0
It was the moments I could take alone that I found comforting. Nestled somewhere near the house in a small woodland, that was far too close to the house if times were normal, but offered more security for the location in troubling times. I needed to get away from Thornell for a moment. I needed to practice, think and try again to find those sparks of joy that were so inherent in other people and try to make mine something powerful and potent.
I took a deep breath. Focusing on the fuzzy images that dwelled at the back of my mind. These were private things. Silly things. Stuff that made me some semblance of happy.
I needed pure joy. I needed something that could make me feel a powerful emotion. I tolerated broom flight. I was scared of horseback riding after I watched an Abraxon throw my... Alex from thirty feet in the air when I was quite young. My father made Alex go, despite his lack of interest, to show me there was nothing to be frightened of – the day ended in a trip to the hospital to treat Alex's concussion.
The thought made me chortle. My family had a history of our vacations going horribly wrong.
My father fell into giant hogweed plant on a hike in the Catskulls one year, he missed a step on the trail, sliding down face first into the aforementioned plant. I was very little and cried for a week when I saw my father because I did not recognize his swollen, blotchy, blistering proportions. Apparently, my father was very allergic to it, hence his rather slow recovery.
My wand remained mistless and dull.
Ugh!
Perhaps there was something deeper. Things I did not want to think about on a regular basis.
I remembered the sweet, flowery scent of my mom's perfume when she held me. A scent that still lingered in long closed chests in Thornell that always made me stop for a moment when I came across it in the house.
Wrapping myself in the memory of my mother introduced calm to my frazzled mind. I had to let myself focus on the memory of my mom, feel the freezing wind that was now part of the unseen landscape of Thornell over the frosted grass and through the dead trees of winter. What a beautiful place. The end of the year always had a sort of greater beauty to it then Spring, it reminded us that there was peace and beauty at the end of life and in the turns of time.
"Expecto Patronum!"
What emerged from my wand was a silvery mist.
It's like I'm close to something. A breakthrough in this spell to create something more powerful than I had used in the Ministry Atrium all those months ago. It was not strong than, not resilient, not imbued with the fighting spirit so inherent in the rest of my family.
I had struggled for months to find the right memory to create a powerful corporeal patronus, or even a misty shield that could provide me safety. Percy had managed to forge a patronus that looked like something. We could tell it had a shape in any case. I was so proud of him for the accomplishment. I expected no less, he was a far more talented wix than I was. Such was the pattern in my life to be surrounded by greatness and offer apropos of nothing to support the association.
Percy's clear road to success had left within me a warm pride and a quiet sort of jealousy that he had the kind of comfortable, safe life where he could have those memories to cast this difficult charm. My own memories were wrapped and warped in the actions of other people who had their own agendas, their own hurt and had hurt me in turn as it all came to light in the time after my mother died. Perhaps my life would have been simpler if I was dumber and more easily placated by my immediate world instead of having the infuriating ability to understand people and the politics that turned the world on its axis. If I had the ability to be a silly, senseless girl, perhaps I could have had the luxury of being a happy one.
I needed to find a powerful memory that was strong enough to protect me and sustain a patronus- I found the answer to the first, but now had to contend with the second. The world was too dangerous to pretend that I would not have to fight back a dementor again. What if they came here? I would not be useless ornament if that happened. I needed to fight, I needed to be better. I needed to be stronger. I needed to be so much more than a docile political prisoner.
In a moment of sheer frustration at my own weakness, powered by a quiet rage and regret that I could feel burning through my belly as the worst of my thoughts overcame me. Feelings of not being enough. That I was a disgrace to the Graves family reputation of excellence and magical power. Everything that I had done in life was would forever be overshadowed within my own family because I was so disappointing. I was a political agitator in a family of warriors- who took pride in risking their lives and dying in defense of their nation and people and I just wanted to live.
"Expecto Patronum!"
It was like the world slowed down for a moment, a faint outline of something seemed to appear in my imagination. Perhaps it was truly in my vision? A flutter, a beat of something that seemed to move upwards with intent before disappearing entirely from view – or maybe I had lost the image in my mind's eye?
"Expecto Patronum!"
There was a mist again, thin and wispy as the silver light shimmered in the dark of the shadows of the copse of trees cast around me. As if my soul knew what it wanted to become to protect me, it wanted to be out in the world. It disappeared as quickly as it appeared, wrapped up in shadows and silvery mist. Telling me to keep trying and I was close to something, that perhaps it was not time yet.
Perhaps I should quit for now? Make my way home and try again after my lesson with the students? I should go collect them from their study hall in that office Lucinda converted for them. I thought the room seemed far cozier now in a subtle sort of way, soft carpet and extra chairs, a few foldable tables that could be picked up and put away to hide the suspicious appearance of the room to outsiders.
Every time I came to teach, I grew more impressed with Lucinda's unstated ease and genius at navigating and converting her home to accommodate all the strays she picked up.
But how could we manage to save their lives if all of this became revealed?
The Averys' were circling the house like vultures. They knew what they wanted and had now secured the means of snatching the house from Lucinda's control with their own connections. That frightened me. If everything was done, Harrow could instil himself as lord of the manor with only the minimal courtesies to an elderly relation, but the Averys' would want Lucinda out quickly so she could not find a way to retaliate.
I was sure Lucinda had a plan for all of this when it inevitably came to pass, but I did not believe either of us wanted to enact such schemes. I was half sure she would blow up the house and free Barry the Elf – the shock would kill him but it would be a better end than forced service to the Avery family.
Percy and I had talked a little bit about me going into hiding, but a political prisoner could not disappear without a good reason. I would be looked for – especially if Jack and Elihu were still determined to provoke the British Ministry to get them to mess up to badly to be ignored by the international community anymore.
I did not feel it was time for me to hide. I was too valuable to kill. Too much of a punching bag for Yaxley and a valuable tool to keep two of the most dangerous, intelligent men of MACUSA from doing anything rash. If I went into hiding, the balance of power would shift to something new and frightening that I would not be able to control anymore. If I kept working, I could keep MACUSA tense, but leashed and controlled. If I hid myself away, MACUSA would move in a matter of weeks.
I could not think about that any further, I had minimal control over that. What I could control right now was everything I could reach as the world around me shrunk down to Thornell, this little copse of trees and the silvery, formless mist that erupted from my wand once more.
Oo0Oo0
Author's Note: I like that the Graves family has fairly shit vacations.