A/N: My apologies in posting this chapter so late! Normally I try and post as close to midnight EST as I can, but my husband and I were stricken with the nastiest stomach bug we've ever encountered. I'm merely grateful I can upload this the day I promised lol
"I won't stay long... only tonight. There's business, a great deal of business, that needs my attention."
"Albus, you categorically cannot leave things as they are—I have no power up at the castle! What are you expecting of me?"
Aberforth paced the short length of his kitchen, angrily glowering at his brother where he sat, unperturbed, at his rough-hewn table. The headmaster of Hogwarts—former headmaster?—was serenely sipping at a small glass of gillywater, and looking across the room at where Nettles and Hob were grooming one another before the fireplace.
"Of course, I'm expecting nothing of you, Aberforth. I am doing you the courtesy of explaining my whereabouts, as few will be privy to my location, and even fewer will be able to reach me," he added, lending significance to the final part of what he'd said with a small waggle of his white eyebrows.
"And what location is that? You've still yet to tell me," Aberforth grumbled, not able to stop himself from turning on his heel and traversing the short track from the cooker to the table again. He made sure to tread on the hem of his brother's damask robes as he did so. His boot left a pleasingly brown smudge on the iridescent fabric, and he felt a small trill of satisfaction at having done something, even something so small, to snub his ass of an older brother.
There was no interruption to Albus' serene smile as he glanced down at the mark on his robes.
"Pish," he chuckled, waving his wand over the blemish and spelling it away. "You are frustrated with me."
"You're not brilliant for stating the obvious!"
"I am quite used to you being frustrated with me, Abe. In fact, I can scarcely recall a time where you were not frustrated with me."
"You've scarcely given me a chance to be content with you, much less happy with you." Aberforth scathed. He stalked around the perimeter of his small flat until he came to Ariana's portrait. The pain of looking upon her lovely, young face was somehow less than the anguish of meeting gazes with their elder brother, and so he and Ariana watched one another, knowing that they were the only ones there for each other, just as it had been when their glory hound of a brother had chosen his friend and lover over his family.
"Must you always—?"
"Remember her? One of us has to remember her," he ground out, reaching up a hand to touch Ariana's small one. Both of them winced when his fingertips met the paint daubs.
"You do me a grave disservice, to think that I forget."
"I don't know whether you forget or whether you stuff her away somewhere that you won't remember. I also don't care. You have your students. You had your Order. You have your fame and your self-made fortune, and Ariana and I have each other. She will always have me."
"Brother, you have no one."
The voice had come from directly over his shoulder, and Aberforth turned to glower at the Hogwarts headmaster, who had snuck up on him to loom over his shoulder.
Always taller. Always smarter. Always more powerful. Better loved. Celebrated.
"I have my goats. And at least I don't have to lie to them for them to accept me."
His brother took a step back, and Aberforth didn't miss the way the elder wizard winced.
From behind him, he heard Ariana bleating quietly, which caused Hob to look up. Goats, by their nature, were always a bit cross-eyed. Hob was no different. But it certainly looked as though he were training at least one of his rectangular pupils on the blonde-haired girl.
Aberforth could not have known for certain, as it would have been at times where he was overseeing the pub, but he suspected that his sister often spoke to the goats. They always seemed calmer when she was in her frame, skipping down the lane and tossing flower petals around her in arcing movements.
Her portrait was always happy, even when in real life Ariana had been a font of perpetual misery and pain.
"Where are you going, you old windbag? And what do you need from me? Provisions? A man to watch the floo for you? I'm too busy for this, and I haven't the unlimited funds that you do."
"Nothing so substantial. Merely information, should you be lucky enough to hear it firsthand."
"Firsthand. Firsthand from whom? Whom should I be looking out for?"
Albus appeared genuinely troubled, and Aberforth felt his resolve softening. Though they were often at cross purposes, neither of them wished for a return of the Dark Lord and his band of murderous men. It was bad for Albus' new world order, and Aberforth saw it as a business liability, if nothing else.
"Do you remember some fifty years ago? You're familiar with Rubeus Hagrid, no doubt—"
"One of my best customers. He drinks ten times as much as anyone whenever he comes in."
Albus chuckled and indicated that Aberforth should join him at the table. He did, but only because he felt his knees beginning to protest the furious pace he'd set when making his repetitive circuit around his quarters.
Leave it to Albus to invite him to sit at his own damn table.
"You probably recall that he was expelled, and I'm certain you're aware of his recent arrest. I wonder if you remember anything else about that time? About the circumstances that led to his expulsion?"
Abe shrugged. He dearly wished he had fixed himself something to sip on while he'd been up. After a beat, he withdrew his wand to summon a terra cotta ewer to himself. Sensing his intent, his brother withdrew his tin of sherbert lemons from the inner pocket of his robes and removed one to transfigure into a glass, which he pushed across the table to the younger wizard.
Abe topped it up with honey mead from the ewer and sipped on it as he considered his answer.
"You never did say what happened. Perhaps you forgot that I wasn't too keen on you for a while," Abeforth finally said, after he'd smacked his lips a few times. It was a surprisingly sweet batch of mead.
"You're not too keen on me now," Albus chuckled, though it was clear from his eyes—flat rather than sparkling—that he was saddened by that fact. "It was decades before you spoke to me after Aurelius—"
"If you mention him again, it'll be another decade before we speak again," he rasped, his wand rising to point into his brother's face. "If you think you need something from me, you'll leave my son out of it. You will never—never—mention his name in my presence again."
Albus sighed softly, treating Aberforth to a pitying look, before he nodded; apparently deciding that to condescend to his younger brother's sense of sentimentality was most politic, given the circumstances.
"Myrtle Warren had been killed. Her body found in the second-floor girl's facilities. There was talk at that time of the so-called Heir of Slytherin. Cryptic messages left upon the castle walls in blood, and talk of a beast. A creature conscripted to do the bidding of this supposed Heir. At that time, Rubeus was unfortunate enough to be caught with a juvenile acromantula in his possession. Let me be clear now," Albus faltered, looking somewhat flustered, "that I did not then, and do not now, believe that Hagrid could have possibly been this supposed Heir, but with the school on the verge of being shut down, the Governors were hopeful that in expelling Hagrid, that the attacks would stop."
Aberforth nodded. "Which they did."
Albus stared at him for a second, looking mistrustful.
"Well, of course they must have stopped. There would be no story if they'd closed the school down for good. One can only assume that that was the end of it."
"Quite," Albus answered, nodding slowly. He still had a calculating glint in his translucent eyes. "We heard nothing about the Heir after that. Not until earlier this year. The messages began appearing once more. And students... students have been found paralysed. Argus' cat—"
"Ladybird?"
"No, Mrs. Norris—"
"Ladybird Norris," Aberforth rolled his eyes. "Bet you never asked him what her first name was."
Albus cleared his throat, which amounted to an admission that he'd never once cared to ask, and likely he'd never wondered whether the malcontented feline had any other name.
"Argus didn't mention to me that Ladybird had taken ill..."
The elder Dumbledore glared across the table at him, obviously taking exception to the way in which his younger brother knew something about someone whom Albus clearly regarded as 'his.' "Speak to him often, do you?"
"Whenever he comes in for a pint," the barman answered, somewhat evasively. He shrugged and took a long draught from his glass, bringing the liquid to about the half-empty mark.
"Well, keep an ear out for talk of any such Heir. I have all of the faculty making inquiries; to the portraits, to the students, hell, I've even enlisted the ghosts to do their part. They were quite keen after the Heir incapacitated Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington..."
Aberforth snorted and curled his lip in disgust. Leave it to Albus to use Nick's real name, as though he had somehow known him in life. Albus had met Nearly-Headless Nick same as any other snot-nosed, Gryffindor first year: as a ghost who was showing off his favourite parlour trick of flopping his head on and off his neck like one of those ball-and-cup games played by muggle children.
"I will keep an ear out. Where can I contact you?" Aberforth asked again, for the third time that evening. The headmaster was being exceptionally cagey, even for Albus.
"You will not rest until I tell you, will you?"
"Likely not," Abe answered, even though he'd rest just fine if his brother walked out the door without another word, and he'd likely enjoy the best sleep of his long life if his brother never showed his face in Hogsmeade ever again.
"I have questions that need answered," Albus prevaricated, swirling the gillywater around in his glass and watching the gelatinous threads of gillyweed fibre as they moved in a lazy circle around the perimeter. "I shall be on the continent. In Austria. I hear the mountains are lovely this time of year."
Aberforth merely blinked at the barmy git that most in their society considered the most brilliant wizard alive.
"Be sure to bring a blanket to warm you. I hear the castles there are quite draughty," he deadpanned.
"I do not intend to be without my warmest robes while attending to business," Albus informed him in an arch tone. He turned his twice-broken nose up and stared down it to pin his brother with his most disappointed expression.
That would probably work well on a second-year girl. Not on Aberforth, however.
"Sure you will. After all, I can only guess that the International Confederation of Wizards would baulk at the idea of offering conjugal visits to the greatest threat the wizarding world had known until the next, greaterthreat that you also enabled to take power—"
"Tom Riddle was not my doing," Albus snarled, his face suddenly vicious.
"But you admit that Gellert was."
As quickly as it had come over him, the headmaster's anger dispelled once more, morphing before Aberforth's eyes into pain. "I... I have many regrets. As do we all," he answered, giving his younger brother a significant look.
Their mother. Ariana. Aurelius. Gellert.
Aberforth's hand closed into a fist on the table between them and his eyes closed as he took a shuddering breath.
The world turned on the whims and deeds of their family. Why such a thing should be possible was anyone's guess. And yet, the Dumbledore family had, through its sins, damned the world once, twice, three or more times over.
"I trust that you now know where you may find me?"
Aberforth nodded. "I will keep an ear out."
"That is all I ask," Albus nodded, pushing himself up from his seat with his hands flat on the table. "I depart on the morrow. Tonight I will hole up with Bathilda. She has graciously offered me use of her guest room—"
"You will be careful."
His older brother's eyes regained their twinkle. For that, Aberforth could have happily gouged them out of the daft man's old head.
"Have you ever known me to me careless?"
Abe didn't have to say anything to that. In the moments where discretion was called for, Albus had the capacity of being an absolute nitwit. In matters of lesser urgency, he took his time and planned scrupulously.
Plenty of people thought that Albus Dumbledore's 'doddering old fool' schtick was only an act. Plenty more thought it to be the genuine article. The truth was somewhere in the middle. Sometimes, Aberforth truly wondered whether madness ran in their family: Ariana was not the only one capable of precipitating extreme destruction. Hers had been limited to their family home. Albus, on the other hand, had always been dangerously ambitious in the scope of his chaos.
"When can I expect you back?"
"I should return by this summer—hopefully with a mind towards preparing for the new year—if everything proceeds as I expect—"
"Which is how?"
"—and if not, I will reappear as soon as my presence is necessitated by circumstance—"
"Which is when?"
"—but not a moment before. Good evening, Aberforth."
The white-bearded sorcerer was too quick for his younger brother to catch. As soon as he'd finished speaking of his plans, he winked to Aberforth and disappeared in an explosion of red and gold. In the space of mere seconds, Fawkes had immolated into view, offered his plumed tail to his master, and winked the old man out of the flat, presumably to Bathilda Bagshot's quaint cottage in Godric's Hollow.
The room felt colder for his absence, which Aberforth resented. Worse, from over his shoulder he heard the distinct sounds of sniffling. When he turned about in his seat to glance at the portrait on the wall, he was treated to the devastating image of their younger sister attempting to stifle her tears by biting down on her little hands.
"Don't cry, Anna. Don't waste another tear on him," Abe commanded, though his voice wavered with his grief. He stood up and shuffled over to her. His instinct was to conjure a handkerchief and offer it up to her, but then he would have been pressing it ineffectually against the painted tears as they rolled down her youthful cheeks, and that would only have saddened them both. More so than they were already.
Ariana didn't speak. She never spoke. Just as she'd never spoken in life, after the age of six. She pointed at where Albus had departed from and mouthed mindless jibberjabber at him.
Aberforth understood, however.
"He shouldn't have left like that. Flaming show off. He could never resist the temptation for a bit of flash. You know how he is," he soothed.
Even in her portrait, Ariana had never overcome her apprehension surrounding loud noises and bright flashes of magic. It was that same phobia that had caused her death.
"He wouldn't answer any of my bloody questions," Aberforth ranted, pacing once more before his sister's concerned visage. He threw his hands up. "Merlin knows what's going on at that damned school of his, and he comes and spins me a yarn concerning some bedeviled Heir of Slytherin! Faugh!"
A soft 'snick' sounded, but it wasn't loud enough to divert Aberforth from his fury. It had been left to build for too long to be waylaid by such a petty distraction.
"Something is going on at that school, Anna. It's only a matter of time until another one turns up dead. How many is that on his watch, hm? Ought we count you, and Myrtle alone? Or add to that the number of all who perished by Grindelwald's hand? Not to mention the Dark Lord's? And at the centre of it all is that foolish jackanapes, pulling all the strings as though he's any good at it or has any business doing it! Who asked him to poke his crooked nose in? Not I! Nor anyone else on this island!"
Of course, Aberforth knew very well that Dumbledore had turned down several high-profile appointments when 'the people' had requested he stand for them, but he was too far gone to be charitable or to admit that, though he may hate it, Albus Dumbledore's judgement was generally better than the average wizard's.
A curious mewing sound interrupted his tirade, and he glanced up to Ariana, whose clear eyes were now free of tears. She gestured with an open palm to the side of her frame and Aberforth frowned but touched the gilt wood where she indicated he should.
The portrait swung freely into the room, revealing a stone corridor that receded endlessly into the darkness.
"The devil's this?" He sputtered, opening and closing the portrait again and again as though he expected that the hallway would disappear if he merely closed the portal.
It didn't. It remained stubbornly there, connecting his sitting room to Merlin knew where.
"What is this, Anna?"
Ariana chirped. He drew the portrait back into place and looked up at her in question.
Behind her, she pointed into the horizon of her own painting, where a large cloud floated off of the canvas to the left, revealing the silhouette of a very familiar castle.
"Hogwarts doesn't connect here! We're on the second story, how is that even bloody possible!? That hallway looks subterranean..."
Ariana smiled sweetly at him and swayed back and forth, picking up a basket woven from birch bark as she did and walking a little further back into her frame. Along the path she found what appeared to be a bush full of red currants, which she began picking and adding to the bottom of her basket.
The old barman sighed then, knowing he'd get nothing else out of her.
If Ariana was familiar with the passageway and thought it a good idea, he figured that he may as well follow it. Clearly his sister had some idea in her head for how he ought to proceed, and it involved trekking up to the castle. He only hoped that the way it took him wouldn't be damp or involve stooping down in places. His bones couldn't take such abuses at his age.
"I suppose you think it's all well and good for me to rant about the castle when I won't go and poke my own nose in. Is that it?"
With a joyful expression, Ariana held up a handful of berries (some had burst and the red juice of them was now running down her wrist and staining the sleeve of her blouse), and she excitedly ate as many as her mouth could hold.
"I see. Yes, very nice." Aberforth nodded, drawing in a deep sigh that spoke of immeasurable weariness. "Keep an eye on my friends here, won't you?"
The bleat she issued in response was reassuring. She'd understood him well enough.
Then again, she'd never been dim or dull-witted.
Opening the passage once more, he carefully stepped within and drew the portrait closed behind him. It smelled of damp earth, and he quickly set about conjuring floating orbs of light to precede him on this questionable descent into what he could only assume would be the depths of Hogwarts castle.
He was gratified to learn that the passage remained wide and easily walkable throughout. There were no loose paving stones to trip over, nor any portions that were caved in or too low and narrow to traverse while standing up-right.
Having timed his exit, he estimated that it took him no more than ten minutes to reach the end of the tunnel. That was remarkable given that it took at least three times as long for him to reach the gates of the castle when walking outside. That could only mean that there was something very funny going on with space. The tunnel could not have existed on their current plane of existence, or else the portal behind Ariana Dumbledore's portrait and the portal that exited into the castle proper were actually displacing him to a separate location entirely, where the tunnel existed for the express purpose of facilitating faster travel between two remote locations.
Ariana seemed to know it well, but somehow Aberforth doubted if their esteemed eldest brother was aware of this method of ingress into his impregnable fortress of a school. Likely he ought to warn him...
He resolved not to.
One never knew when it would be necessary to check on things personally, or to have a way in—or out—in an emergency. That might have helped Albus, certainly, but it was equally likely that he, in his infinite wisdom, would demand that the entrances be shuttered. Then they'd really be in for trouble if the worst should happen.
A few revealing spells refused to work for him at the end of the passage, but eventually, after growing frustrated, he rested his palm against the wall that the tunnel dead-ended into. He leant his not inconsiderable weight against it and was surprised when he tumbled head-first through the stone into a cramped chamber that couldn't have been larger than two feet by two feet.
His nose met with the smells of wet wood and astringent cleaning solutions, and he felt the hard handle of an old, un-magical besom poking him in the ribs. He'd fallen on no less than four brooms, an old mop, and at least one of his feet was lodged in a bucket that was still quite full of some potion or other. Likely degreaser, from the smell of it.
The door to the broom closet opened with an impatient shove of his palm against the wood and he stepped out, kicking the bucket back in amongst the other cleaning supplies and vanishing the spilt potion from the floor and from his sodden boot with a jerky stab of his wand.
When Aberforth glanced around, he found that he was on the ground floor, in a corridor that was rarely used except by staff, when coming or going from the Great Hall. If he were to take the door set into the archway at the far end of the corridor he would have emerged behind the head table. Another hallway to his right would lead down to the kitchens and laundry—a separate passageway from the one leading to the painting of the laughing pear—and the opposite door would guide him to the Entrance Hall and stairs to the dungeons or upper levels.
He paused for a moment, suddenly realising that he may well not be welcome on school grounds without his brother present, but then dismissed his concerns as inconsequential.
Albus had explained that Minerva was acting in his stead. If that were the case, she would not turn him away, even if their dealings in the past had never been strictly speaking 'friendly.' She knew him to be the headmaster's brother, and he had been reliable enough through the years in turning over the rowdier members of her house that would traipse through the doors of The Hog's Head looking for stiffer drinks than were allowed to them by Rosmerta at The Three Broomsticks.
He breathed in deeply, his eyes closing against his better wishes as he took in the bliss that was the castle's natural musk.
Especially in spring, Hogwarts had a certain smell. Outside, the world was waking up and beginning to bud, and inside, the damp air smelled not of decay or mildew but of the fragrance of freshly tilled earth and early flowers. It was a hopeful smell, which seemed inappropriate given the strange events that had the castle and its inhabitants in a vice grip of anxiety and indecision.
The halls were strangely empty, which was odd for the time of day. It was mid-afternoon, so he supposed that it was possible that most of the students were in class... and yet he would have expected at least some of them to be about, if they were to have free periods. Of course, the weather outside was pleasant, so it could have been that they were down by the lake studying, or out on the pitch...
He was distracted from these thoughts when he bumped—quite literally—into Hogwarts' caretaker. Neither man had been paying close attention, and both ended up sprawled out on the floor, their voices harmonising in a litany of nasty curse words and scathing reprimands. They only quieted when they each saw whom they'd smashed into.
"You picked a mighty fine day to come up here," Argus groused. Aberforth had stood first and offered the old squib his hand, leveraging him to his feet. "Your brother's not here anymore. Left last night. Kicked out—"
"I heard," Aberforth informed him with a touch of impatience. "Where do you think he went first?"
Argus was slow to smile, but he did after a second's thought. His grim mouth stretched into a display of truly awful teeth. "Wanted to drown his sorrows, eh? Can't say I blame him."
"Would that it were only that," Aberforth angrily replied. He jerked his head over to a suit of armour that stood at the foot of the great staircase and they both waddled over to it to take shelter behind it. "He said there was some troubling business at the school, so—"
"So you thought you'd come and check on us yourself. You may be a Dumbledore, but that don't mean that you can do anything to help," Argus mumbled.
Scoffing now, the barman crossed his arms over his chest. "Who said anything about helping? This wasn't even my idea. If anything, I would almost say that the castle wanted me here. For what I can only guess—"
"You don't know about this Heir business, do you?" The caretaker had rounded on him, glaring up from his stooped stature to peer, balefully, into Aberforth's wizened features. "It didn't seem like your brother knew much'a anything, but leave it to him to hold his cards close to the chest."
"He doesn't know anything. Neither do I," Abe answered. "But I know that I've not seen you in a few months and Albus tells me that Ladybird was attacked. I was sorry to hear it."
Argus' face crumpled as his beloved pet was mentioned. He glanced down at his heel, as though he expected to see the mangey feline sat there, as she always was, one step behind him.
"She's in a bad way, Abe..."
"Albus didn't explain."
Argus turned from him and began to pace, making a short, shuffling circuit around the tiny space beneath the stairs where they had gathered. "Paralysed. And she was the first... months ago. And she's up in the infirmary now... how can she still be alive, I asked, when she's not eaten anything?"
His eyes were pinging with frightening intent around them, as though he were looking for Mrs. Norris' invisible assailant in the surrounding stone.
"And we brought her her favourite kippers, just to see if she'd take anything... blasted Matron told us that she can't eat it. Can't even be spelled into her... said she's subsisting off'a nothing. Nothing at all! For months! But she says she's still alive!" He ranted, his hands flying through the air with his mounting agitation. "I scarcely believe her. Lady... her chest ain't moving..." he choked, caught in a hideous sob, "an' none of the others' chests is moving..."
"But they're not decaying, are they? For the humans—there's still a magical signature?"
Filch waved his hand through the air as though this were inconsequential. "So she says! Balderdash! I just don't know... I don't know why she won't tell me that it's too late," he whinged, coming to a stop and wringing his hands.
"Argus?"
They both glanced up at the interruption. The clicking of boots could be heard against the flagstones and both the barman and the Hogwarts' caretaker stiffened with the arrival of one of Hogwarts' staff.
Around the suit of armour whipped first a dark-wood wand, the tip of it crooked into a swirling curly-Q. It was followed by a pale hand, long and lean of finger, which belonged to Hogwarts' resident Potions Master and Head of Slytherin house.
"Snape! 'Bout scared the pants off'a us," Argus breathed, looking relieved. "Have you—?"
"You will be the first to know, Argus," Snape answered, drawing up to them and stashing his wand back within his robes. He appeared ill at ease, but that wasn't out of the ordinary for the dour young man. To Aberforth, Snape had always looked like a runty, underfed kid, with an unhealthy pallor and yellow skin and teeth that spoke to either alcohol or tobacco addiction (and possibly both at once).
"It's been months," Argus complained. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other and wrang his hands out in front of him, looking every inch the concerned husband waiting bedside for news on his ailing wife. "Whassa matter? Why's it taking so bloody long—?"
"I've barely had time to lay my head somewhere soft, Argus! Don't you hound me too."
"We're only asking—"
"Between these inquiries the headmaster is asking I make into my own students, the Polyjuice reversal I had to oversee a few months back, and developing the restorative draught for your cat and everyone else who's been paralysed, I've been getting less than four hours of sleep a night. That's twenty-hour days! All of it work, so you can bloody well stop asking, because as soon as I have the formulation ready to administer, I shall send you a Patronus announcing my success in this dreadful venture."
Aberforth took a step back and frowned as he watched the two bickering before him. It was times like these that he felt a bit of regret that he didn't have some obnoxious habit (like his brother's damned sugar addiction) to see him through. No, as a barman, he'd perfected the art of merely glaring at whomever was bothering him and waiting for the offending party to find their way back to their cups.
Of course, neither Argus nor Snape were drinking currently, which rather left him in the lurch as far as options went.
The caretaker had begun to shuffle around the tiny alcove with a frightening intensity, and he'd speared his fingers through his dirty hair—which was, if possible, even greasier and lanker than Snape's infamous mop of swamp-gook.
"There's nothing I can do to expedite things. Take heart that she's well enough, Argus, even if that doesn't mean that she's up patrolling the halls with you. I know it must be distressing to see her laying there—"
"—she looks dead! Someone left her for dead and I want to know who!"
"We all want to know who." Snape, oddly enough, actually seemed to be trying to soothe the old caretaker, even if he seemed singularly bad at it.
Aberforth clicked his tongue along his molars.
It wasn't as though he could claim to be any better. His normal response when someone came to him in distress was to ask if they were buying another drink. If the answer was yes, he was speedy with the bottle. If the answer was no? Well, they had until they finished their last drink before they were no longer welcome to loiter in his establishment. He didn't appreciate woebegone drunks littering his floorspace. They discouraged other potential drunks from hitting their stride and showering their gold upon his coffers.
"Additionally," Snape continued, "I haven't that much control over when the potion is finished. I've done all that can be done to produce the base in a timely fashion, but until Sprout's mandrakes mature, the final ingredient cannot be added."
"Merlin knows when that will be!" Argus cried, his face set in a terrible grimace.
Finally having had enough, Snape made a dramatic show of rolling his black eyes and scoffing loudly. "June, Argus. No sooner than June. And it is when now?"
Argus moaned but didn't answer.
It was only May ninth. No one had to say so, because they all knew it.
"And what are you doing here at the castle, Dumbledore?" Snape asked, turning to glower at Aberforth with obvious suspicion. "Your brother has vacated the castle grounds. If you are looking for him—"
"He found me himself. And then he absented himself from Hogsmeade."
"And I suppose that we—his devoted staff—are not to know the esteemed headmaster's location?"
Growling now, Aberforth met Snape scowl for scowl. "Don't get snippy with me, kid. My brother does as he pleases. If you imagine I have any control over him, then you're deluded."
"I am not so stupid as to imagine that anyone could claim to control him, but I do have to wonder whether you are content to put up with this kind of behaviour or if you might consider evening the score?"
Abe cocked his head, keeping his expression bland. "By selling him out, you mean."
"It's not selling if no one is paying you," Snape's mouth twisted into a sort of ironic grimace. "I thought you might like to help with what you know: one clueless oaf left in the dust to another."
"I know where he's gone," Aberforth admitted, "but I can't imagine what he's up to. And no—you don't want to know."
Snape and Argus stared at him, and, like the wafting smoke of burning incense, Abe was able to smell what they thought as their imaginations drifted.
'What could be so bad that I'd not want to know? Who does he think he's dealing with? I can guarantee that I've heard worse—"
Snape. Nosy blighter. A worse gossip Aberforth Dumbledore had never met—or at least the kid would have been had he not been sworn to secrecy by his begrudging profession in spycraft. Now he just sat on all that he knew, like a greedy dragon on his horde, except Snape's stollen treasure was the secrets he'd learnt.
'It's not enough that Dumbledore won't hold those nasty children accountable for the messes, for being out of bounds... We'd have caught the Heir by now if it weren't for him stepping in to play the saviour when we know—we know!—just a quarter hour, no more, in the dungeons and the little birdies would sing a very pretty song..."
Aberforth had to stop himself from wincing and he did his best to dispel the scent of Argus' thoughts. He was a bloody-minded fool, though a thoroughly sentimental one. On several occasions Aberforth had been treated to impassioned orations on the finer points of manacle use, and how thumb-screws were more ingenious than they were sadistic.
Something... something had gone strange with the squib at some point. He could be a fine chap, all things considered, but he was a bit wrong too, wasn't he?
"No, you would thank me for not telling you, if you knew." Frankly, Aberforth wished he didn't know.
His brother and Gellert Grindelwald had never broken things off. And why should they have? When Gellert was so conveniently contained within his castle in Austria and Albus—in a loose sense—ruled British wizarding society. What had he to fear from his lover of many years when the old warlock was locked away in a tower like some blushing medieval maiden?
Business, indeed.
"Where are the students," he broke out, hoping to change the subject. Snape's eyes narrowed at him and he knew that he'd not fooled the cagey bastard, but Argus seemed content to talk about other things.
"Meant to be in their dormitories, aren't they?" He sneered, his hand clawing beside him and coming up in an abortive motion. It looked as though he'd been about to stroke something, but then, having realised that that thing wasn't there, he'd allowed his hand to drop. "Of course that won't stop the little brats. Usually I'm sleeping the first part of the day—make up for taking the late curfew rounds, you know?—but now I've had to spend my morning ferrying the lower forms from class to class. Not even the seventh years are allowed free rein, unless issued a library pass."
"And Miss Granger was paralysed coming out of the library, suggesting that not even the written word could cloak her in its impenetrable stuffiness," Snape quipped, looking a bit too happy about the fact that his student had been attacked.
He must have caught Aberforth's disapproving look for the young professor then coloured up to his ears and sneered down at the tips of his boots.
"You're not the one who's been spared reading her essays for the rest of term," he spat, defensively. "You'd breathe easier too."
"Unless you know something you're not saying, Snape, I have a hard time believing that you're breathing easier with this Heir on the loose."
"It's not the Heir I'm so afraid of," Snape shook his head, sending vines of his hair flying in all directions around his thin shoulders. "He—or perhaps she—has aligned himself with something far more dangerous than a singular wizard acting alone. I know of no poison or toxin that would produce this sort of paralysis, and particularly not in ghosts. That no one has died yet is practically a miracle, and while the headmaster was still here he could not fathom that it was not my own students who have been running amok."
"You're so certain it's not?" Aberforth glanced around them and saw, in the distance, a head of nicely coiffed blond hair, bobbing through the far corridor and rapidly approaching the grand staircases. He sincerely hoped that he could wrap up his little fact-finding mission before whatever grand ponce it belonged to descended upon them.
"I may not be talented at off-the-cuff Legilimancy, Dumbledore. Not like some people, but I have my ways of learning the truth. I did not baulk from the task, though Albus clearly thought I was not being entirely truthful when I told him I'd interviewed my entire house. They're all as curious as we are. Some of them hopeful, which in your brothers' eyes damns them, but none of them knows a thing about what happened to the Slytherin family after Salazar departed from the castle." Snape threw his hands up in a sort of rhetorical shrug. "Who can blame them for feeling a bit of pride in their house? When no one else would ever encourage such a thing?"
Aberforth raised a bushy grey brow in his direction. "You think it's fine that they feel proud of some maniac going around and attacking the other students?"
"'Fine' was not the word I used," Snape argued, drawing himself up to his full height (which was still several inches short of the barman's own). "I can't blame them for feeling slightly excited—curious, perhaps is the better word—about a potential heir to our founder. That that heir seemingly has been sorted into a different house than Slytherin is, of course—"
"Don't say disappointing."
Snape's lips snapped shut and it looked as though he was settling in for a sulk. Aberforth resolved to ignore him.
Which was just as well, for a jovial voice spoke over whatever Snape would have finished with anyway.
"Severus! Mr. Filch! What luck, gentlemen; I'm just pleased as a horklump that I've found you at last!"
An incredibly handsome toff of a man rounded the suit of armour that protected them from easy view and stood between the three men conversing beneath the staircase and freedom.
Aberforth didn't need Legilimancy to perceive that both Snape and Filch wanted to groan, and, if given the chance, probably would have done so in unison.
"Professor Lockhart," Snape greeted, using a voice so oily that Aberforth felt vaguely unclean. "It was my understanding that there is a Defense class meant to be taking place at this hour. Has our redoubtable headmistress changed the schedules without informing parts of the staff? Or, are we to understand that there's another good reason that our Defense professor is roaming the corridors?"
"I allowed them to pack it in early," Lockhart answered, looking supremely affable as he straightened the lapel of his couture, mauve teaching robes. "I'm just so terribly impressed with that class—the sixth years? Gryffindors and Slytherins, you old dog, you should be proud! They asked just amazing questions of me, after reading Gilderoy the Giant Killer. Why, they asked things not even my fan club has thought to ask me, not in all the years I've given interviews! I really think they earned the afternoon off."
"And did you impress upon them the importance of returning to their common rooms," Snape asked, his voice still silky smooth, "or did you merely release them upon the unsuspecting corridors, where they could wreak the most havoc—?"
"Oh, don't be like that, man," Lockhart dismissed with a laugh. "Harmless, the lot of them. You needn't have any fears, Professor Snape: it is my expert opinion that not a one of them in that class is capable of dark magic! I've looked evil in the eye, Severus." Lockhart brought up one finger to his face and tugged down on his right eyelid, exposing the veins surrounding his iris. He released it just as quickly and stood up straight again. "And I see no evil within their noble hearts," he announced, puffing his chest out proudly and grinning at the three of them.
"And who is our new friend?" Lockhart asked, looking Aberforth up and down and trying to hide a grimace. The scent of the professor's thoughts wended their way through the airspace between them before the old barman could take a proper whiff of them.
'A bit dirty, isn't he? But then he is spending time with Snape and Filch. Still, I don't know if I remember him from the staff meetings...'
"Er... I'm not sure we met," Lockhart erred on the side of caution, as if Aberforth had been at any other staff meetings, it would have proven readily apparent that Lockhart hadn't been paying attention. The visual memories that had come along with the spoken thoughts were enough to bear that out. He'd been far too preoccupied with his own reflection on the side of the polished silver tea pot in the staff room than any new personnel.
Of course, Aberforth could remember Gilderoy Lockhart just fine. A few years younger than Snape, and just about one of the biggest idiots he'd ever had to toss out of his establishment while the man had still been a teenager.
Of course, back then he'd been using his wiles to try and attract much older witches—and some veela—who worked the village, and often spent their off hours at a corner table in the darkest corner of the pub.
Aberforth recalled it well because he'd found it singularly amusing that the wet-behind-the-ears child was making a go of it by bragging about exploits he simply couldn't have been a party to, such as Auror raids and dangerous creature exterminations.
Most of the stories he'd told Aberforth had recognised from the pages of the Prophet.
Still, he didn't need to explain his presence to the little upstart. Instead, he stared him down and grunted, relying on the impression that he wasn't much for talk. It always got him out of awkward or unnecessary chitchat when he was slinging drinks.
Gilderoy's bright smile—which he'd been holding for a full minute of absolute silence from the man he'd been attempting to talk to—began to dim, and eventually became little more than a wince.
"Not one for a bit of jaw-jaw, are we? No, no—wagging chins, and all that. Far safer to keep one's peace, eh Severus?" the imbecile laughed, elbowing Snape who looked ready to hold the blond wizard's head under the surface of a boiling potion for as long as it took to drown the nuisance.
"Wise words indeed, Professor Lockhart. Why, I think it would make a compelling topic for your next little story—"
"They're autobiographical novels—"
"—which you simply must get started writing, sooner rather than later. What will you do when your students have read your entire oeuvre? Horrifying to imagine that there may yet come a day when the Defense curriculum will run dry of aphorisms ripped from the pages of the genius adventurer Gilderoy Lockhart."
"I've plenty more, my friend," Gilderoy beamed at Snape and tapped a perfectly manicured fingertip to his temple. "I'm never short of sense. There is a crying need for what I've got to say: clear as day from my book sales. What sort of man would I be to deny the public what they so dearly desire of me. I only aim to please—"
"It would please me greatly if you would make haste in finding the subject of your next adventure in the written word, Gilderoy. I await your next publication with bated... breath." Snape's teeth were borne in a parody of a smile, his tongue pressed up against the back of them as he hissed out the 'th' sound in breath.
Without even having to scent the younger wizard's thoughts, Aberforth could tell that the potions master was very close to cursing his colleague right between the eyes.
Finally, it seemed as though Lockhart was catching wise to the undercurrent of anger that he'd previously either ignored or was ignorant of. He swallowed and grinned like a nervous idiot, tapping his fingers together.
"I'll have my publisher reach out to you personally, Severus. I'll arrange a pre-production copy for you, free of charge... signed too. But, er... I'm afraid I have editing to see to, and—"
"And a lead on the Heir, didn't you say? It's been months now. We won't deter you from chasing that next sensational bestseller, will we gentlemen?" Snape posed, glancing at the two men beside him. Neither answered. "Best to make haste, Gilderoy. Lest the Heir strike again."
"Er... right. I did get a queer feeling while I was on the fifth floor, by the demiguise tapestry. If you'll excuse me, I think I'll go poke my nose around and see what's what..."
He didn't properly say goodbye, but Aberforth was reasonably certain they all breathed a collective sigh of relief that the ponce had departed as soon as he rounded the staircase.
"Well. I see you have your best men on the problem," Aberforth said at length, watching the space where Lockhart had disappeared with an unimpressed look.
Snape and Filch both glowered at him in unison.
"When is your damn brother coming back?" The potions master hissed, his eyes registering urgency. "If you're through with your little inspection of the castle, you'll notice that we're in the midst of a bit of a crisis. Hardly the time for Dumbledore to swan off for a romp to wherever he's gone."
Abe resolutely refused to acknowledge how close Snape was to the truth with his statement.
"He said the Board of Governors drove him off. Lucius Malfoy. He's one of your friends, isn't he, Snape? Perhaps you ought to ask him when he'll allow your dear leader to return. I did my best to keep him around, but he had other ideas."
"If you can't keep him in line—!"
"Exactly!" Abe snorted, growing tired of being seen as an accomplice to his sibling's schemes. "No one has ever been able to control Albus, least of all his 'kid brother.' If I were you, I'd find your own way out of this mess, 'cause—and mark me when I say so—the cavalry ain't coming. Albus is out of the country. Whoever this Heir is—whether he's one'a yours, Snape, or some kid or member of staff—you and yours have to hunt him down yourselves. The best I can do for you is to tell you that I can probably get a message to Albus should the worst happen. Otherwise, he'll be far enough away that I doubt a Patronus would reach him. The location is unplottable to owls. I have my ways of talking to him, but unless it's of the utmost urgency, he'll ignore anything I try and send him."
Filch sniffed loudly, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his brown robe. "We're alone, eh?"
Aberforth stared at the two grim men before him, feeling in his heart a stab of pity and fear on their, and the students', behalf. Things at Hogwarts were not well.
"We're born alone," he began slowly, recalling the words of some famous muggle he'd once heard, "we live alone, and we die alone."
The three fell into a commiserative silence.