Chapter 44) Compassion and Cruelty
Selected Listening: Another Year Ends- Patrick Doyle
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, the crowds of frightened students flooded the halls, some weeping, some staring blankly. Anastasia spotted the twins, ginger heads bobbing above the crowd. A blonde blur walked straight for them, stopped at one, and whispered in his ear before shouldering him away.
Fred's face filled with dread as he made eye contact with Anastasia coming down the stairs.
She walked towards him hesitantly.
"Where were you?!" he demanded. "I've been looking for you since the task started. I had no idea where you'd gone. Have you been snogging bloody Malfoy all this time? Is that it?"
"What—no, Fred—I—" Anastasia didn't know where to begin, how to explain any part of the last five hours.
"Cedric Diggory is dead. I thought you went with Hermione until we got to the stands, but you completely vanished."
"Fred, I know, but—but Moody was a death eater in disguise!"
"What?" he asked. They had stopped moving while students rushed around them, trying to make it back to their common rooms after the chaos. They were pushed to the side where they clung to the alcove they found. Anastasia caught her breath and explained.
"He was an escaped criminal—Barty Crouch's son—and he had the real Moody in his trunk, and I was outside earlier, and he cornered me and threw me in the trunk with the real Moody, and then I was trapped, so I had to—" Anastasia froze. She already knew she had sealed her fate. She squeezed her eyes squeezed shut.
"You had to what?" Fred asked.
She pulled up her sleeve and cast the counter spell to reveal the message. It was there on her arm in dried blood.
"Bloody hell…" Fred drifted off, his eyes darting every which way except for her as all the little pieces came together and the seriousness of her situation fell upon him. She could already tell, though they had discussed it before, it was too much. Fred could never be her knight in shining armor. He could never be fast enough to come to her aid. Fred couldn't beat Draco, no matter how hard he tried.
"We're done…" he said "we're done…"
Anastasia could only nod and whisper a quiet apology.
That evening, Anastasia sat curled up in the armchair by the empty fireplace in the den of the headmaster's suite. She stared into the pile of cooled embers, now a lonely gray since the end of the cold season. She sipped warm cinnamon tea with honey and adjusted the embroidered throw blanket around her. Leftover cake sat beside her on a porcelain saucer, nibbled on, but not eaten.
When she tried to return to the common room, her peers battered her with questions, but she could answer no one over all the racket they made. Minerva had swept in and ushered her away, suggesting she lie low in the headmaster's suite until things settled down. She brought Anastasia there and made her tea, stayed long enough to hear what she had gotten herself into, and wrapped her in a tight embrace before going off to continue her responsibilities. Minerva and Snape had trapped Barty Crouch Jr. in the defense against the dark arts classroom, and they were trading off guard duties until the minister could arrive.
When Albus finally returned from debriefing with Harry and Sirius, he sank down into his chair, holding his hand over his eyes. They sat like that for quite a while. Anastasia summoned his favorite teacup for him across the suite, poured hot water over his lemon teabag, added honey, and stirred. He peeked at her from under his wrinkled fingers.
"How are you doing, my dear?" he asked solemnly. "And thank-you." He took the cup from her in both hands.
"Cedric's dead?" was all she could say. She had been staring at the empty fireplace, waiting for tears to come, waiting to feel something appropriate for the situation, but all she felt was empty and gray.
Albus nodded grimly, "Yes, it's true."
Anastasia didn't know Cedric outside of playing against Hufflepuff in quidditch, but he was a good student, and all of Hufflepuff sang his praises, and he helped Harry, and Cho loved him. And now the best of their school was gone.
"I didn't do anything right this year," she confessed. Except maybe capture Rita Skeeter. Though, she suspected she shouldn't tell Albus that she and her classmate had trapped a grown woman in a glass jar with holes for air.
"Not a thing?" he asked gently.
She shook her head. "I messed up the Triwizard tournament. I destroyed two relationships with people I care about. And when I tried to confront a death eater, I ended up locked in a trunk!"
Albus held his tea, took a sip, and thought deeply.
"On the subject of the tournament, maybe you didn't notice that of the three dragons, the Hungarian Horntail, although most temperamental, was the least agile, making it more difficult for it to catch Harry when he was flying."
"What?" she asked. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Or that when Fleur Delacour returned to the surface, we found her poorly executed bubble-head charm only lasted another five minutes, meaning that if she had tried to dive deeper after escaping the vine, she surely would have drowned before reaching her sister."
Anastasia froze.
"And finally," Albus removed a broken, thorny branch from his pocket, which he lay on the arm of her chair. She picked it up and examined it. It was the one she had touched earlier.
"Who did it trip?" she asked.
"It didn't trip anyone," he clarified. "There was a confundus charm I placed on the entire maze. No one was supposed to reach the end until a champion noticed how confused they were and cast the counter-spell. But in the corridor where you touched this branch, the last leg of the maze, the spell had been completely nullified."
"But if Harry and Cedric hadn't reached the cup, Cedric would be alive," she argued. "And Voldemort never would have been resurrected."
Albus nodded as if he predicted her thoughts would lead her there.
"The saboteur curse was not cast to prevent a dark wizard resurrection. Only to affect the tournament's outcome."
It didn't make Anastasia feel any better.
"My dear, for every action you thought to be a betrayal, you instead assisted the champion affected," he emphasized. "I can't be certain, but I believe there was a sort of intentional power you projected on an otherwise subconscious magical contract."
"Does it even matter now?" she asked hopelessly.
"Take heart, my child. You are immensely compassionate. And it is that compassion that changed the course of the tournament this year, even if the result lay outside of your control."
Anastasia didn't answer, steeping in her own bitterness. Albus tried again.
"One thing that may not be apparent to you right now, that I found much later in life, is that just because you are suffering because of your choices, does not mean you are doing the wrong thing. Oftentimes it means we are wading through the great nuance and complexity of the world with the respect it demands. We should not expect that the results of our actions will always lead to a rousing success. We should only expect that our actions lead us closer to a version of our world with more justice and less strife."
Anastasia sunk miserably into her chair.
"But now the world has less justice and more strife than ever before."
"Indeed," Albus admitted. "But we have evidence that since the time Harry arrived at school, forces have been at work to bring Voldemort back to life…none of which were under your control."
Anastasia stared blankly ahead, having had her internal fight removed.
"Last year, you said I was fated to almost stop Voldemort."
"As many of us are," Albus concluded. "The prophecy may haunt you by providing a slew of almost memories to replay in your mind, but forgive me for saying, they are near misses at best. Compared to us adults who have been attempting to prevent this for years to no avail...Voldemort would have returned one way or another," he concluded.
Anastasia sat in silence while she watched her father analyze whatever new information he gained that day. His pupils roamed as if he were solving an expansive alchemic equation on a blackboard. They paused when he saw her watching, and he snapped out of it with a new question.
"Do you know why Barty Crouch Jr tried to kill you?" Albus asked.
"Because he didn't want me to mess up his plans?" Anastasia returned.
Albus shook his head and took a sip of his tea before continuing.
"After he discovered the lifeline, he realized he could use it to reach a personal motive of his. You see, he wasn't very interested in murdering you at all."
"What do you mean?" Moody had nearly succeeded in murdering her four times that year. Even if one counted the first as an attempt to scare her and tease out the life line, it was certainly targeted.
"He was interested in killing Draco Malfoy and making it look like an accident." Albus said simply. Anastasia stared.
"Why, why would he do that?" she asked. "Why would he care about Draco at all? His father is a death eater too."
Albus nodded thoughtfully.
"Can you imagine why a death eater would want to kill the son of a fellow death eater?"
Anastasia's mind fluttered back to the beginning of the year. Lucius had always been controlling…anything he could do to keep the family line pure and the Malfoy reputation untarnished, even if it meant keeping Draco from medical treatment. It came off as cold…but under all that he was trying to do what was best for his son…in his own horrid way.
"It would have crushed Lucius…," she concluded, "…and ruined his marriage once he learned Narcissa cast the lifeline that killed Draco. Earlier, Crouch kept asking Harry if Voldemort had forgiven those who hadn't come looking for him…" she thought through everything aloud.
"Ah, so you realize Lucius was one of those who preferred to hide and pretend he would never have to pay for his previous loyalties," Albus suggested.
Anastasia remembered Lucius's reaction to Dolohov's words at Easter dinner. It was almost, dodgy…despite Mr. Malfoy's desire for his peers to recognize his leadership of the pureblood aristocracy, he didn't truly want to believe that Voldemort would rise again.
"It's something to remember," Albus observed, "that death eaters are not a team. They do not care for one another the way members of the Order once cared for each other. They are only interested in advancing their own causes…with Lucius grieving and Pettigrew being the pathetic being he is…Voldemort would have had no choice for a right-hand man other than Mr. Crouch."
"That's horrible," Anastasia said in a voice of disbelief. "He would have killed us to ruin Lucius Malfoy?"
Albus nodded slightly.
"To gain power, Anastasia, and the pride of shaming a death eater who was once held in high esteem."
Anastasia continued her own mental calculations.
"Do you think he'll go back to them? Lucius?" she asked.
"He has." Albus confirmed, "Harry mentioned he appeared in the graveyard."
Whatever was still left in Anastasia that believed in the goodness of all people had fully been extinguished. Lucius Malfoy was truly a coward and a monster.
"There's one more thing Crouch would have gained by murdering you today…"
"What?" she asked curiously.
"Placing the headmaster of Hogwarts on bereavement while he tended to his daughter's funeral," Albus stressed.
"Oh…" Anastasia said dumbly and remembered the green light at the end of Crouch's wand.
"You seem to be forgetting you also almost perished this afternoon…" Albus said, his voice growing hoarse. "How are you feeling?"
"Trying not to think about it," she said. Crouch's threats echoed back to her. She imagined her frigid body draped over the eagle at the end of the staircase.
They sat in the stillness a moment longer before Albus spoke again.
"Remember last year when I said there are those who will try and use you against me?" he asked critically. She nodded.
"Possibly the worst way they could use you against me is by taking you away from me. I've fought two wars against dark wizards, and I'm entering my last. Without you, my dear…I'm not sure who or what I'm fighting for."
"Grandad—" she hated it when he even hinted at the topic of his own death. The thought of a future without him helping her make sense of everything was too much to bear.
"This world will be cruel whether I'm in it or not…but I want you to have a happy future…no matter where it leads you.
"Promise me you won't put yourself in unnecessary danger. It is in your nature to do what is brave and just…like confronting a death eater or jumping in front of a friend who is about to be tortured or murdered. Trust that in this situation, the bravest thing you can do is to keep yourself safe from harm. If they can't control you…then they can't control me," he admitted.
"I promise," she answered petulantly. The thought of having to stand by to save herself made her sick. "It could have been three Hogwarts students dead in one day, four with Harry," Anastasia meditated. She knotted her fingers in her hair to hold up her head. Albus turned to her with a still, somber gaze.
"I'm sorry to heighten your sense of reality, but if we can trust what Harry said…there will be more who perish before Voldemort meets his true end."
Anastasia tore off her blanket and jumped out of her chair.
"But we can't let that happen. No one else can die," she said in a panic. Her voice cracked. Albus placed a gentle hand on her arm.
"And I will do everything in my power to ensure that does not happen within the bounds of Hogwarts. What happens outside though…that is up to the Ministry…if they choose to believe any of this."
Anastasia soured as she regained her seat and continued staring into the hearth. The authorities were useless. Adults in general, were nearly useless. Even if they tried to be helpful, it usually turned out ineffective.
"Grandad," she broached.
"Yes, dear?"
"Is there a reason you haven't been looking for a way to break the lifeline?" she asked, despondent, not making eye contact.
"What brings this on?" Albus asked pensively, but his pain broke through his stare. He took another sip of tea and looked at it in a dissatisfied way. He waved his wand, and it turned into a glass of strong whiskey.
"It seems like a real problem," she voiced, staring down at her hands on her lap. "Now especially that Voldemort is back. Moody said that you have the power to do anything, and that if you wanted to dissipate the lifeline, you would have already done it…and I believe him," she said determinedly, pulled herself up, and faced him for his response.
Albus looked away.
"What he told you was a falsehood. I can do a great many things, but I am not capable of healing alchemy or undoing its effects. Therefore, breaking the lifeline is out of my range."
Anastasia stared at her father, not entirely convinced.
"I realize in the past two years you've found the lifeline has many drawbacks. Maybe it's difficult to see how many strengths the lifeline gives you," Albus continued, taking her wrist and turning it upwards so he could see the markings on the inside of her forearm. "Unconditional love, something you clearly share with Draco no matter the situation, being the most powerful. Along with Narcissa's willingness to protect you like her own."
Anastasia looked down at her arm. She couldn't be sure it was love. Not unless the lifeline was destroyed. The latter, she agreed with.
"I've decided it's worth facing a little bit of danger if I can uncover what's real," she admitted.
"Some amount of truth will always evade us in this life…" he said thoughtfully. He whistled and Fawkes flew from the study to his shoulder. "The only way to reach complete truth would be to access a certain omniscience beyond human understanding. Yet, to fault you for trying at your age would be immensely hypocritical of me…"
Fawkes leaned down over Anastasia's arm and cried over the wound. The message faded, but the remainder gleamed a faint red.
Albus frowned. "Cursed."
