"ᴛᴇʀʀᴏʀ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴄʀᴜᴇʟ . . ." — ᴇᴍɪʟʏ ʙʀᴏɴᴛË, ᴡᴜᴛʜᴇʀɪɴɢ ʜᴇɪɢʜᴛꜱ
Chapter Six: Who's Afraid of The Bogeyman?
Government was an irritatingly boring profession and a waste of her numerous talents, thought Mafalda Prewett, halfway through correcting a mind-numbing report on illegal Horned Serpent scale shipments.
Hassan Shafiq, her one-time fellow Slytherin and long-time rival, had breezed past intern to mid-management, being team lead.
Which he doesn't deserve in the least, she thought hotly, her nose twitching from anger every now and then as she considered the fact that she had one more Outstanding than him.
It was a slow day, even for the current standards in the brand-new Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects, a small and quiet portion of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement headed by her uncle, Arthur Weasley (Hassan described the experience as 'character-builidng'), who was currently giving a report somewhere else in the complex about something boring, until Benjamin Goldstein, Head of the Pest Advisory Board, came storming in, the door banging against the wall behind him.
He looked a mess; for a second, very not his austere, calm self, and very like his harebrained son.
"Dementors," said Goldstein, panting for breath. "Dementors! On our shores! Not two hundred miles out from Hogwarts! Damn that Nott, and damn―"
"Mr. Goldstein," Hassan cut in, smooth as butter, but Goldstein only angrily brandished his quill at him. "Accusations are ill-advised."
"Sit down, you glorified intern, and be quiet for once! There are Dementors in fucking Scotland!"
"Have some tea," offered Clarice, one of the interns, though she was twenty-eight with no prospect of being anything but a pen-pusher.
"Dementors! Dementors! Are all of you insane? Sitting around drinking tea like we're all on the sinking fucking Titanic?"
Mafalda set her quill down.
"I think some people might need a refresher on Dementors, Mr. Goldstein. As the Head of the―"
"Yes, yes, thanks Prewett," said Goldstein hurriedly and irritatedly, "for those of you who slept through Defence Against the Dark Arts, a Dementor is an amortal non-being which feasts on the souls of all living beings."
It might have looked bad to an outsider, but, honestly, unless you were the overachieving type, Dementors weren't a subject of riveting interest. Your parents might have told you stories about them but they were more like fairytale creatures, really.
The chances that you were going to run into one were about the same as Earth being hit by an asteroid during your lifetime: slim to none. In fact, the only time you needed to worry about them was if you were imprisoned in Azkaban, and then you were already done for, anyway.
If you were an overachiever, you'd probably gone for the Patronus Charm sometime in your N.E.W.T. year, simply for the bragging rights. Maybe O.W.L. year, if you were McGonagall or Snape. Not that was a guarantee of anything; Mafalda had gotten a decent shield version going really strong once, but had never come anywhere close to the corporeal form, which would actually take on the monsters for you.
Her best bet was shoving as much willpower as she could into the charm to get even a silver wisp to distract the Dementors, and then immediately Apparating to a safe place before they started sucking the life out of her.
The type like Clarice, however, didn't stand a chance. Clarice had gone to one of the smaller schools, never passed her Apparation test, couldn't cast nonverbally or wandlessly, and occasionally struggled to light fires.
Furthermore, thought Mafalda, I'm willing to bet Voldemort has at least something to do with this. I hope Mum and Dad get out of Chelsea and go stay with the Weasleys. Even Muggles won't be safe. Something obviously has to be done, but Goldstein's less clever than I thought if he honestly thinks Fudge will actually do anything about it.
"Why don't you try the Auror Office?" suggested Hassan, which sounded like a reasonably sensible question if only you didn't consider the fact that it took near enough two weeks to get a slot with anyone sufficiently high-up enough for it to matter.
"Get me an appointment with Arthur Weasley."
"If you haven't noticed, Mr. Goldstein, this is the smallest and least consequential department in the M.L.E. I would suggest―"
"Get me Arthur Weasley, and an official summons of Thaddeus Nott to my office! Immediately! Bring me Prewett, too, she's the only one here with half a brain, it would appear."
"What was that?" asked Mafalda, as Benjamin Goldstein swept out of the small, cluttered office, the fluffy pink dice on the door (Uncle Arthur's, of course) falling to the floor.
Hassan leaned over the cubicle, crossing his strong, broad arms that she was sure he'd rolled his sleeves up to show off and fixed her with that cinnamon stare that usually sent the the majority of the female (and some of the male) population of their year into absolute rhapsody.
"Would you look at that, Prewett. You might be about to get a promotion after all. Mashallah."
Her response to the ensuing shit-eating grin as he wondered at his own wit, was a highly-trained reflex, even as she stood up from her cubicle, glad to be rid of the report for now. "Fuck off, Shafiq."
Nevertheless, she followed him out of their office. Uncle Arthur should be finishing off his meeting by now; Hassan had already pulled out one of those lavender origami-bird memos and was scribbling a note.
He could sell rings to anyone with those hands, she thought absentmindedly, and immediately rebuked herself.
Thaddeus Nott, on the other hand, would need to be ambushed in person and served an official summons. Thankfully, his office was in the M.L.E. complex too, just down their hallway on the second floor, in the nicer part of the building that didn't have broken lamps.
"I want you to keep an eye on Potter. He's an investment."
Hassan hadn't uttered the words 'Harry Potter' to her since graduation. And Mafalda was no Legilimens, but that was odd.
Very odd. He'd been convinced that Harry Potter was some kind of Dark Lord, some kind of key to Voldemort's disappearance.
But that doesn't matter now the Dark Lord himself is back now, does it? And of course he would know from dearest Dad, who cried Imperius and paid bribes. Everyone's got a price. Even me.
"Hi, Lupin. Could I have a go at the Boggart?"
If he was grievously injured, Harry reflected, he wouldn't have to go to Hogsmeade with Theodore over the weekend. Madam Pomfrey hadn't seen him in a while, either.
Remus Lupin continued shelving books for a few more seconds, then turned to Harry, a particularly vicious-looking tome on curses tucked under his arm.
"Harry?"
He cleared his throat. "You said we could have a go at the Boggart."
"I wouldn't want you to get in trouble," said Lupin diplomatically.
"I'm always in trouble. I just broke into Umbridge's office the other day. I destroyed half the third floor in first year. What's new? What's going to happen? Detention?"
Lupin ducked his head, and let out an odd sort of laugh. When he looked up, his expression was full of a mischief that Harry had not thought him capable of.
"You are so like James. Come on, then."
He wrestled a strap around the book of curses, trapped it between two other books, and strode out of the library, motioning at Harry to follow him and be quiet.
After narrowly avoiding Filch, Mrs. Norris, and even Peeves the poltergeist, they arrived in a dingy classroom on the second floor that looked as if it hadn't been used in the past ten or so years. Everything was covered in a film of dust, and Lupin waved his wand so that the windows opened to let some fresh air into the room.
A cabinet in the back of the classroom thumped ominously.
"That's the Boggart?" asked Harry.
Lupin, he noticed, looked a little apprehensive.
"We could approach it together," he offered. "It will confuse the Boggart; it won't know which of our fears to take on."
"I want to do it alone."
Voldemort will come for me alone.
He rolled his shoulders, straightened his back, and put one foot firmly in front of the other, gazing down the length of his wand, the first syllable of the spell on his tongue; ready, but not too tense. Quirrell hadn't been useful for much, but he had drilled good fighting posture into each and every one of them first year.
Lupin glanced at him, and seemed to approve.
"On your signal, Harry."
He breathed in, out, and nodded.
The cabinet doors burst out as if a flood of water was behind them, and out from it poured a terrible apparition; one Harry had not set eyes on for over a year.
Himself, fully transformed.
A sticky, oleaginous mass of black shadow and storm coated the walls, the ceiling, the space between the last desk and the back of the classroom. Out from it stared his own eyes, but glowing ominously.
The thing; the Obscurus filled the air with an aching desperation and emptiness, and beside him, Lupin reached for his wand.
"No!" said Harry. "I can do it!"
He glared down the wand at the thing with the intention to kill, and felt the tips of his ears and his fingers starting to burn cold and black and sharp. But he could force it to his will, to do his bidding.
"Riddikulus!" he roared, and he felt a massive amount of magic leave him, enough to destroy that thing, surely. But it only howled and screeched and reached for Harry, and he shut his eyes, letting every inch of his skin prickle with shadow, ready to consume it in one leap―
But not before Lupin flung himself between them with incredible speed, and the Obscurus condensed with a sudden pop into a white orb of light.
"Riddikulus," said Lupin softly, and the white orb became an inflatable beach ball, which rolled along the floor until he banished it into the cabinet again and shut the doors.
For a long time, there was silence.
Then, Harry realised that his face was wet and his glasses were all foggy, and a few seconds later, that he was crying, and that he probably looked ridiculous and Lupin probably thought he was ridiculous, and that, even though he knew next to nothing about James Potter, but he still thought, ashamedly, that Dad wouldn't cry and imagined Vernon would sneer that he would give him something to cry about in a minute.
A few more seconds later, he realised that he was waiting for someone to say something mildly insulting but mostly comforting, and then he realised that Ruby was usually the one to say something mildly insulting but mostly comforting, and that he really missed her and she probably wasn't coming back anytime soon.
What he hadn't expected was for Lupin to sit next to him and awkwardly put his hand on his shoulder.
"We've never been apart this long," said Harry. Despite it sounding childish, he couldn't hold it back. "It's just driving me crazy, not knowing if she's alive or ― or ―"
He couldn't bring himself to say dead.
"No," said Lupin. "Voldemort would not keep that a secret, believe me."
Lupin was right. He had to to trust her.
But still...
"Her continued disappearance means that the Trace has not been activated in a known, populated Muggle area. We could send Patronuses to look for her, but that would only put her in further danger, from both the Ministry and Voldemort... no, the best way is to let her find her way back to us."
It was silent again.
"Lupin?"
"Harry?"
"Thanks."
"It's nothing," said Lupin heavily. "I only regret the time I wasn't there."
It was a sort of warm and suffocating feeling, like a heavy wool blanket, Harry thought, for an adult to be looking out for you; not Dumbledore, someone with incredible oversight, but specifically, you.
The only thing was, he thought, was that you never knew when the blanket was about to slide off.
Their return to the library was very quiet. Lupin gave Harry an encouraging sort of nod, and Hermione was holding court in the back with Ron, Ginny, Anthony, most of their year's Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and Gryffindors, the Gryffindor Quidditch Team, and last of all, Cedric Diggory, who'd just arrived with one of the Ravenclaw prefects and a small girl with dirty-blonde hair ― little Lovegood, Harry remembered.
And Theodore's cousin, he thought ruefully. Why do bad things always come in multiples?
The group of people moved aside as Harry came up to them, as if they'd been expecting him.
"What's this?" he asked, as Ron passed him a newspaper. "The manifesto?"
"We all know about that by now," said the Ravenclaw prefect, tapping a section in one of the articles. "Just read it, Potter!"
He cleared his throat, and began to read, softly:
"Educational Decree, Number Twenty-One. Teachers are hereby banned from giving students any information that is not strictly related to the subjects they are paid to teach.
Educational Decree, Number Twenty-Two. The High Inquisitor will henceforth have supreme authority over all punishments, sanctions and removal of privileges pertaining to the students of Hogwarts, and the power to alter such punishments, sanctions and removals of privileges as may have been placed by other staff members." As he read, he began to feel sicker and sicker, and noticed Anthony staring squarely at the floor, his right sleeve loose again.
It was evident whom the High Inquisitor was, and whom she was coming after first of all: Lupin's library sessions, and Dumbledore's authority.
"I suppose she didn't think much of Dumbledore's line between discipline and cruelty," said Anthony. "Dad's been saying stuff the Ministry didn't like. The result..." He gestured at his right arm.
"And so she's chipping away at Dumbledore's control over the school," said Hermione fearfully.
"She won't!" snapped Ron. "Dumbledore could take all of them in a fair fight, and we all know it!"
"Arrangements will be made. Lies will be told. We must do what we must to protect the school. When Voldemort returns, this is the safest place for the children — there is no doubt about it. If they remain at home, they are in grave danger."
"So, whoever controls the school controls the future of Wizarding Britain."
"And it must not fall into the hands of those with ulterior motives. Neither the Ministry not the Death Eaters can be allowed to influence us. Cornelius Fudge will bend and splinter under pressure like a sapling tree. We must remain entirely sovereign."
"We shall isolate the school?"
"If it comes to that, it is our last option."
"We appear to be in agreement, then."
Why not now, Harry wondered? Why not rip Hogwarts away from the confines of Wizarding Britain?
But he knew why Dumbledore hesitated. To save the current students would be to sacrifice future ones. There would be no coming in or out of the castle.
At least the graduating students were adult wizards, with a better chance of surviving the war. Harry knew the years preceding him had been smaller than usual. War was a time when children died. The magical children who were still under eleven were in grave danger if Hogwarts was not open.
And to maintain relations with the Ministry, Dumbledore had to play nice. Otherwise, things like this would continue to happen.
"I don't mean to be crass, Goldstein, I'm not an expert in these things," said Cedric, the sunlight glinting off his prefect's badge, "but couldn't you have another one made?"
Anthony looked very upset, his hair all on end and clumpy like a wet cat.
"Flamel made it," he said softly. "It was a good-bye present. It's got one of Fawkes's feathers in, and bits of the old basilisk's fang, and he made it all into bronze. And myoelectric prosthetics won't work anywhere with magic. It's alright. I'll have to learn to use my left arm."
"We'll just break in and get it again," said Ron.
"She's been much more careful about the door," said the Ravenclaw prefect. "The only way to get in there is to get detention, and no one's crazy enough to want that. And even if you are that crazy, she's got a string of keys hanging around her neck, so nobody's getting in her desk drawers."
"And she's teaching Defence." Hermione slumped forward and put her head in her hands, peeking out between her fingers with a weary expression. "We'll never be able to protect ourselves when he comes for us."
"Mother Goddess," said Parvati dramatically from somewhere in the back, "who said we need the old bat? Gin, tell them all what you just told me and Lav."
Ginny's head whipped up with a sort of deer-in-headlights expression.
"I-I uh was thinking, w-what about Remus? Lupin, I mean. He's really good at curses and hexes and stuff. I'm sure he could teach us."
"It's not a bad idea," said Ron, "But what about Educational Degree Number Whatever?"
"Well it doesn't have to be here," Ginny pointed out, "in the library. Once, Fred and George were teasing me and I got really upset and went up to the seventh floor to get away from them, where the troll tapestry is, and there was this door I'd never noticed before. Anyway, I went in, and it was just like my room at home. And I went up there again, thinking about how I'd lost the broom polish Dad gave me, and there was the door again and a room behind it piled up with loads of things, some useful, some junk, and right there I saw the broom polish, sticking out from one of the piles. I'm almost certain if I went up there and thought about a Defence classroom there'd be one, too."
It was the longest Harry had ever heard Ginny speak. By the time she'd finished, she looked slightly embarrassed but mostly defiant, shoulders thrown back as if to say "I'm not scared."
Lovegood was staring at Ginny as if in a trance.
A room that turns into whatever we need? It sounds too good to be true.
"All right," said Cedric, and everyone turned to him, as if he had become the de facto leader of their group, which Harry grudgingly supposed he was well qualified for; being Hufflepuff's Quidditch Captain and a prefect. "Let's have a look, then, before anyone gets too excited."
A veritable herd of people started to shuffle off after Cedric; Harry not included.
It had been Ginny's idea, he thought ruefully. It was funny how everyone had instantly forgotten.
"Er, Ginny?" he asked as she got up.
Ginny turned towards him, looking hesitant. Harry was suddenly reminded that the last time they'd had a conversation, there had been an adder involved.
"Good idea ― about Lupin and the room."
She looked a little red in the face, but flashed him a quick, bright smile ― Harry wasn't sure he'd ever seen her smile before.
"Thanks, Harry!" she said cheerfully. "Are you going to the Great Hall?"
He hesitated.
"Actually ― er ― yeah, let's go."
She might not be so bad, Harry thought, with no snakes around.
Ruby had kept excellent count of what Tee had stolen from the Riddle House:
The diary, a pair of jackal-headed silver cufflinks, a pocketknife with someone's initials, and a blue-grey pilot's cap.
At least it probably legally belonged to him, she supposed. She was a little fuzzy on how inheritance should legally proceed when the descendant had been missing in a pocket dimension for quite some time.
Ruby was the one who'd taken the signet ring out of the house; a plain, heavy gold ring with the family crest engraved on the bezel. She'd found it in the last room, the one Tee was frightened of going in.
The one the Riddles were murdered in.
She wasn't one for lingering around murder scenes, but she thought someone ought to take a look. They'd come all this way, after all.
All three dead in the drawing room.
Nothing had lived in this room, for years and years. There weren't even any cobwebs. It had just been... quiet.
She had taken a tentative step forward, placed her trembling hand on the nearest chair, touching the soft dust.
"Do we know you, dear?"
An older woman's voice. Ruby had thought it might be the Grey Lady of the house, but she was not scared of ghosts. Her wand was in her hand, the dragon heartstring singing with fury, her fire-marble in her pocket, and she was a witch.
A flicker from the furthest chair. The man from the painting; Tom Riddle sat there in his shirtsleeves, staring at her with his terrible eyes, haunted and tired.
As if looking straight through her, as if she were the ghost, he stood suddenly, the chair skidding out from behind him, his eyes wild and furious.
"Your mother was an evil woman!" he had shouted, and Ruby stumbled back, frightened, confused. "Whatever end she met, God rest her sorry soul, I had no part in it!"
And then he was gone, bleeding, blurring black and red like a watercolour painting gone wrong, all gone, not real, and the signet ring that had been on his finger rolling around on the chair, as if it had been meant for her, all along.
I'm different, she had thought, trembling. I'm not supposed to hear these things. See these things. I thought being brought back from the other side would change Tee, but it didn't. It changed me.
She'd even told Tee some kind of terrible excuse and slipped down to the graveyard to bury it, right where it said Tom Riddle, 1905-1943, but it had come back into her pocket the moment she'd stood up.
"You're not a wizard!" she'd shouted at the gravestone. "How? Why? What have I got to do with any of this? Give it to Tee, he's your bloody son!"
The only thing she'd managed to discover about the ring was that it very cleverly concealed a tiny compass inside; useful, she supposed, for a pilot. The ring was just a ring.
She'd taken to wearing it on Mum's necklace, too, so that it clinked against the false Time-Turner every time she walked. Sometimes it made the meridians turn: tock tick tock tick tock tick but nothing ever came of it.
Ruby thought of giving it to Tee, more than once, but like a magpie in his nest, he seemed content with his trinkets, and besides, Tom would have told her to give it to her.
But why he would say such things about her mother? He was long-dead before Lily Evans was born.
Unless Tee, she would think, unless it's that Merope Gaunt he was talking about. But why would he be screaming that at me? She's Tee's mother. Not mine.
But then, when are ghosts ever rational beings? Death tends to bring out the worst in a person's personality. I bet he really wasn't so bad after all.
Or maybe he wanted to give me the compass, thought Ruby. Maybe he thought we'd get lost and wanted to give us a hand.
Either way, she had had a long time to puzzle this out on public transportation, and now they were in London with November coming on fast, safe enough and not far from Tee's imaginary cave, too.
Who lived in London? The Blacks, the Greengrasses, some others who had been drilled into her head by Mafalda and then promptly forgotten.
She remembered Mafalda lived in Chelsea, or at least her parents did, and her heart gave a wild sort of leap at the thought of something familiar and then she thought of how to explain Tee and Lockhart's dead body and all the immeasurable questions and felt incredibly crushed. And in the first place, she had no idea where Mafalda's parents lived, and lingering around the Ministry of Magic was to be avoided.
Ruby had been avoiding anywhere she and Harry had spent time during the Missing Year. She wanted to remember it as a (relatively) nice time, post-Dursley and pre-Voldemort, and avoid any situations where she would likely break down and start crying. And so, Tee had been in charge of directions.
During the entire year, they hadn't been any further east than the Tower of London, because Harry decided they should do all the tourist-y things while they were there and the Tower was apparently included because the leaflet said you could see Anne Boleyn walking around with her head under her arm and Harry thought that sounded too un-Dursleyish to pass up.
Tee, for his part, seemed extremely twitchy. She supposed having some vague idea of how London looked in the 1940s as your only verifiable cultural reference, and then running into a massive Citibank opposite an equally massive Asda with air conditioning (did they have air conditioning in the 1940s?) would do that to you.
At any rate, the area was sufficiently Muggle to scare off most purebloods and far enough from Diagon Alley, so Ruby considered it perfectly serviceable.
He had stopped to stare up at a utilitarian office building, squinting up at the sunlight, his mouth slightly open.
"Here..." he was saying, "right here, it's meant to be."
Almost as if in a trance, she reached for his arm as if to steady herself, and started, as if she was seeing what he saw: a crumbling brick building, stained with ash, and a metal gate, into which were twisted the words, Wool's Orphanage.
Maybe, thought Ruby, he's not so mad after all.
It's not fair that only wizards and witches get to be ghosts. Muggles deserve a chance to get spooky too.
This is the hill I will die on.
Apologies that this was posted late! I somehow managed to pour boiling hot water on myself earlier... thankfully only my dignity and a small patch of skin near my ankle is wounded.