"Think I'm going through denial, it's been a while but it's clear when it hits me. Think I might have gone insane, I rot my brain getting high on our history. Always knew I'd be the one you'd sink your teeth into, never thought I'd taste as good to anyone but you." - Pretty Venom (Interlude), All Time Low
My feet touch the ground. I see the achingly familiar Hogsmeade High Street; dark shop fronts, and the outline of black mountains beyond the village, and the curve in the road ahead that leads off toward Hogwarts, and light spilling from the windows of the Three Broomsticks, and with a lurch of my heart, I remember, with piercing accuracy, how we had landed here nearly a year ago, supporting a desperately weak Dumbledore; all this in a second, upon landing -- and, even as I relax my grip on Harry and Riley's arms, it happens.
The air is rent by a scream which sounds like Voldemort's when he realized the cup had been a stolen; it tears at every nerve in my body, and I know immediately that our appearance has caused it. Even as I look at the others beneath the Cloak, the door of the Three Broomsticks has burst open, and a dozen cloaked and hooded Death Eaters dash into the street, their wands aloft.
I seize Ron's wrist as he raises his wand. There are too many of them to Stun: even attempting it will give away our position. One of the Death Eaters waves his wand, and the scream stops, still echoing around the distant mountains.
"Accio Cloak!" roars one of the Death Eaters.
I seize its folds, but it makes no attempt to escape: the Summoning Charm has not worked on it.
"Not under your wrapper then, Potters?" yells the Death Eater who had tried the Charm, and then, to his fellows, "Spread out. They're here!"
Six of the Death Eaters run towards us: we back, as quickly as possible, down the nearest side street and the Death Eaters miss us by inches. We wait in the darkness, listening to the footsteps running up and down, beams of light flying along the street.
"Let's just leave!" Hermione whispers. "Disapparate now!"
"Great idea!" says Ron, but before Harry and I can reply, a Death Eater shouts, "We know you're here, Potters, and there's no getting away! We'll find you!"
"They were ready for us," Harry whispers. "They set up a spell to them we'd come. I reckon they've done something to keep us here, trap us --"
"What about Dementors!" calls another Death Eater. "Let 'em have free rein; they'd find them quick enough!"
"The Dark Lord wants the Potters dead by no hand but his --"
"-- an' the Dementors won't kill them! The Dark Lord wants the Potters' lives, not their souls. They'll be easier to kill if they've been kissed first!"
There are noises of agreement. Dread fills me: to repel Dementors we'll have to produce Patronus', which will give us away immediately.
"We're going to have to try to Dispaparate!" Riley hisses.
Even as he says it, I feel the unnatural cold begin to steal over the street. Light is sucked from the environment right up to the stars, which vanish. In the pitch blackness, I feel Hermione take hold of my arm and together, we turn on the spot.
The air through which we need to move seems to have become solid: we can't Disapparate, the Death Eaters have cast their charms well. The cold is biting deeper and deeper into my flesh. Myself, Harry, Ron, Riley, and Hermione retreat down the side street, groping our way along the wall, trying not to make a sound. Then, around the corner, gliding noiselessly comes Dementors, ten or more of them, visible because they are a denser darkness than their surroundings, with their black cloaks and their scabbed and rotting hands. Can they sense fear in their vicinity? I'm sure of it: they seem to be coming more quickly now, taking those dragging, rattling breaths I detest, tasing despair on the air, closing in --
I raise my wand: I can't, I won't, suffer the Dementor's Kiss, whatever happens afterwards. It's of the people surrounding me I think of as I whisper, "Expecto Patronum!"
The silver doe bursts from my wand and charges: the Dementors scattered, and there is a triumphant yell from somewhere in sight.
"It's them, down there, down there, I saw her Patronus, it was a doe!"
The Dementors have retreated, the stars are popping out again, and the footsteps of the Death Eaters are becoming louder; but before I can decide what to do, there is a grinding of bolts nearby, a door opens on the left-hand side of the narrow street, and a rough voice says, "Potters, in here, quick!"
We obey without hesitation; the five of us hurtle through the open doorway.
"Upstairs, keep the Cloak on, keep quiet!" mutters a tall figure, passing us on his way into the street and slamming the door behind him.
I have no idea where we are, but I can see, by the stuttering light of a single candle, the grubby, sawdust-strewn bar of the Hog's Head. We run behind the counter and the through a second doorway, which leads to a rickety wooden staircase, which we climb as fast as we can. The stairs open on to a sitting room with a threadbare carpet and a small fireplace, above which hangs a single large oil painting of a girl with blond hair who gazes out at the room with a kind of vacant sweetness.
Shouts reach us from the street below. Still wearing the Cloak, we creep towards the grimy window and look down. Our saviour, whom I now recognize as the owner of the inn, is the only person not wearing a hood.
"So what?" he is bellowing into one of the hooded faces. "So what? You send Dementors down my street; I'll send a Patronus back at 'em! I'm not having 'em near me, I've told you that, I'm not having it!"
"That wasn't your Patronus!" says a Death Eater. "That was a doe, it was Potter's --"!
"Doe!" roars the barman, and he pulls out a wand. "Doe! You idiot -- expecto patronum!"
Something vast and horned erupts from the wand: head down it charges towards the High Street and out of sight.
"That's now what I saw --" says the Death Eater, though with less certainty.
"Curfew's been broken, you heard the noise," one of his companions tells the barman. "Someone was out in the street against regulations --"
"If I want to put my cat out, I will, and be damned your curfew!"
"You set off the Caterwauling Charm?"
"What if I did? Going to cart me off to Azkaban? Kill me for sticking my nose out my own front door? Do it, then, if you want to! But I hope for your sakes you haven't pressed your little Dark Marks and summoned him. He's not going to like being called here for me and my old cat, is he, now?"
"Don't you worry about us," says one of the Death Eaters, "worry about yourself, breaking curfew!"
"And where will you lot traffic potions and poisons when my pub's closed down? What'll happen to your little sidelines then?"
"Are you threatening --?"
"I keep my mouth shut, it's why you come here, isn't it?"
"I still say I saw a doe Patronus!" shouts the first Death Eater.
"Doe?" roars the barman. "It's a goat, idiot!"
"All right, we made a mistake," says the second Death Eater. "Break curfew again, and we won't be so lenient!"
The Death Eaters stride back towards the High Street. Hermione moans with relief, weaves out from under the Cloak and sits down on a wobble-legged chair. I draw the curtains tight shut, then pull the Cloak off the rest of us. We can hear the barman below, rebolting the door, then climbing up the stairs.
My attention is caught by something on the mantlepiece: a small, rectangular mirror propped on top of it, right beneath the portrait of the girl.
The barman enters the room.
"You bloody fools," he says gruffly, looking from one to the other of us. "What were you thinking coming here?"
"Thank you," I say breathlessly, "we can't thank you enough. You saved our lives."
The barman grunts. Harry approaches him, looking up into his face. Riley and I exchange a confused glance; what the hell is he doing?
"It's your eye I've been seeing in the mirror."
There's silence in the room as Harry, and the barman look at each other.
"You sent Dobby."
The barman nods and looks around for the elf.
"Thought he'd be with you. Where've you left him?"
"He's dead," says Harry. "Bellatrix Lestrange killed him."
The barman's face is impassive. After a few moments, he says, "I'm sorry to hear it. I liked that elf." He turns away, lighting lamps with prods of his hand, not looking at any of us.
"You're Aberforth," I say to the man's back.
He neither confirms nor denies this, but bends to light the fire.
"How did you get this?" I ask, walking across to Sirius' mirror, one of three magically connected mirrors.
"Bought it from Dung 'bout a year ago," says Aberforth. "Albus told me what it was. Been trying to keep an eye out for you, and your fool of a father."
Ron gasps.
"The silver doe!" he says excitedly. "Was that you too?"
"What are you talking about?" says Aberforth.
"Someone sent a doe Patronus to us?"
Aberforth scowls. "Bloody Doe...with brains like that, you could be a Death Eater, son. Haven't I just proved my Patronus is a goat?"
"Oh," says Ron. "Yeah...well, I'm hungry!" he adds defensively, as his stomach gives an enormous rumble.
"I got food," says Aberofrth, and he slopes out of the room, reappearing moments later with a large loaf of bread, some cheese and a pewter jug of mead, which he sets upon a small table in front of the fire. Ravenous, we eat and drink, and for a while there is silence but for the crackle of the fire, the clink of goblets and the sound of chewing.
"Right then," says Aberforth, when we've eaten our fill. "We need to think of the best way to get you out of here. Can't be done by night, you heard what happens if anyone moves outdoors during darkness: Caterwauling Charm's set off, they'll be on to you like Bowtruckle's on Doxy eggs. I don't reckon I'll be able to pass off a doe as a goat a second time. Wait for daybreak, when curfew lifts, then you put your Cloak back on and set out on foot. Get right out of Hogsmeade, up into the mountains, and you'll be able to Disapparate there. Might see Hagrid. He's been hiding in a cave up there with Grawp ever since they tried to arrest him."
"We're not leaving," Harry says. "We need to get into Hogwarts."
"Don't be stupid, boy," says Aberforth.
"We've got it," Harry says.
"What you've got to do," says Aberforth, leaning forward, "is get as far from here as you can."
"You don't understand," I say. "We don't have much time. We've got to get into the castle. Dumbledore -- I mean, your brother -- wanted us --"
The firelight makes the grimy lenses of Aberforth's glasses momentarily opaque, a bright, flat white.
"My brother Albus wanted a lot of things," says Aberforth, "and people had a habit of getting hurt while he was carrying out his grand plans. You get away from this school, Potters, and out of the country if you can. Forget my brother and his clever schemes. He's gone where none of this can hurt him, and you don't owe him anything."
"You don't understand," I repeat.
"Oh, don't I?" says Aberforth quietly. "You don't think I understood my own brother? Think you knew Abus better than I did?"
"She didn't mean that," Harry says quickly: my brain feels sluggish with exhaustion from the food and wine. "It's...he left us a job."
"Did he, now?" says Aberforth. "Nice job, I hope? Pleasant? Easy? Sort of thing you'd expect some unqualified kids to be able to do without over-stretching themselves?"
Ron and Riley give rather grim laughs. Harry is looking strained.
"It's not easy," I say firmly. "But we've got o --"
"'Got to'? Why 'got to'? He's dead, isn't he?" says Aberforth roughly. "Let it go before you follow him! Save yourselves!"
"We can't."
"Why not?"
I feel overwhelmed; we can't explain, so we take the offensive instead. "But you're fighting too, you're in the Order --"
"I was," says Aberforth. "The Order of the Phoenix is finished. You-Know-Who's won, it's over, and anyone who's pretending different's kidding themselves. It'll never be safe for you here, Potters, he wants you too badly. So go abroad, go into hiding, save yourselves. Best take this lot with you." He jerks a thumb at Ron, Hermione, and Riley. "They'll be in danger long as they live now everyone knows they've been working with you."
"We can't leave," says Harry. "We've got a job --"
"Give it to someone else!"
"We can't. It's got to be us, Dumbledore explained it all --"
"Oh, did he, now? And did he tell you everything, was he honest now?"
I want with all my heart to say 'yes', but the lie tastes too bitter to speak. Aberforth seems to know what we're thinking.
"I knew my brother, Potters. He learned secrecy at our mother's knee Secrets and lies, that's how we grew up, and Albus....he was a natural."
The old man's eyes travel to the painting of the girl over the mantlepiece. It is, now that I look properly, the only picture in the room.
"Mr Dumbledore?" says Hermione rather timidly. "Is that your sister? Ariana?"
"Yes," says Aberforth tersely. "Been reading Rita Skeeter, have you, missy?"
Even by the rosy light of the fire, it's clear Hermione has turned red.
"Elphias Doge mentioned her to us," I say, trying to spare Hermione.
"That old berk," mutters Aberforth, taking another swig of mead. "Thought the sun shone out of my brother's every orifice, he did. Well, so did plenty of people, you five included, by the looks of it."
I keep quiet. I don't want to express the doubts and uncertainties about Dumbledore that have been riddling me for months now. We made our choice at Shell Cottage; we decided to continue along the winding, dangerous path indicated for us by Dumbledore, to accept that we haven't been told everything, but to trust. I have no desire to doubt again; I don't want to hear anything which will deflect us from our purpose. I meet Aberforth's gaze, which is so strikingly like his brother's: the bright blue eyes give the same impression that they're x-raying the object of their scrutiny, and I think that Aberforth knows precisely what I'm thinking, and despises me for it.
"Professor Dumbledore cared about Harry and Haylee, very much," says Hermione in a low voice.
"Did he, now?" says Aberforth. "Funny thing, how many of the people my brother cared about very much, ended up in a worse state than if he'd left 'em well alone."
"If Dumbledore had left us alone we'd still be living in a cupboard," I mutter, beginning to grow irritated by Aberforth's insistent nihilism and patronizing manner. Riley elbows me harshly in the ribs.
"What do you mean?" Hermione asks, interjecting over the top of me.
"Never you mind," says Aberforth.
"But that's a really serious thing to say!" says Hermione. "Are you -- are you talking about your sister?
Aberforth glares at her: his lips move as if he's chewing the words he's holding back. And suddenly he bursts into speech.
"When my sister was six years old, she was attacked, set upon by three Muggle boys. They'd seen her doing magic, spying on her through the garden hedge: she was a kid, she couldn't control it, no witch or wizard can at that age. What they saw scared them, I expect. They forced their way through the hedge, and when she couldn't show them the trick, they got a bit carried away trying to stop the little freak doing it."
I have to hold back a noise of comprehension as I remember the final vision the locket showed me of Dumbledore and Grindelwald. Who is there to teach the Muggles not to fear something infinitely more powerful than they? Which would you prefer, a thousand dead Muggles, or a thousand little girls like Ariana?
"It destroyed her, what they did: she was never right again. She wouldn't use magic, but she couldn't get rid of it: it turned inward and drove her mad, it exploded out of her when she couldn't control it, and at times she was strange and dangerous. But mostly she was sweet, and scared, and harmless.
"And my father went after the bastards that did it," says Aberforth, "and attacked them. And they locked him up in Azkaban for it. He never said why he'd done it because if the Ministry had known what Ariana had become, she'd have been locked up in St. Mungos for good. They'd have seen her as a serious threat to the International Statute of Secrecy, unbalanced like she was, with magic exploding out of her at moments when she couldn't keep it in any longer.
"We had to keep her safe and quiet. We moved house, put it about she was ill, and my mother looked after her and tried to keep her calm and happy.
"I was her favourite," he says, and as he says it, a grubby schoolboy seems to look out through his wrinkles and tangled beard. "Not Albus, he was always up in his bedroom when he was home, reading his books and counting his prizes, keeping up with his correspondence with 'the most notable magical names of the day'," Aberforth sneers, "he didn't want to be bothered with her. She liked me best. I could get her to eat when she wouldn't do it for my mother, I could get her to calm down where she was in one of her rages, and when she was quiet, she used to help me feed the goats.
"Then, when she was fourteen...see, I wasn't there," says Aberforth. "If I'd been there, I could have calmed her down. She had one of her rages, and my mother wasn't as young as she was, and...it was an accident. Ariana couldn't control it. But my mother was killed."
I feel a horrible mixture of pity and repulsion: I don't want to hear anymore, but Aberforth keeps talking, and I wonder how long it's been since he's spoken about this; whether, in fact, he's ever spoken about it.
"So that put paid to Albus' trip around the world with little Doge. The pair of 'em came home for my mother's funeral, and then Doge went off on his own, and Albus settled down as head of the family. Ha!"
Aberforth spits into the fire.
"I'd have looked after her, I told him so, I didn't care about school, I'd have stayed home and done it. He told me I had to finish my education and he'd take over from my mother. Bit of a comedown for Mr Brilliant, there's no prizes for looking after your half-mad sister, stopping her blowing up the house every other day. But he did all right for a few weeks...' till he came."
And now a positively dangerous look creeps over Aberforth's face.
"Grindelwald," I say quietly, and he nods.
"And at last, my brother had an equal to talk to, someone just as bright and talented as he was. And looking after Ariana took a back seat then, while they were hatching all their plans for a new wizarding order, and looking for Hallows, and whatever else it was they were so interested in. Grand plans for the benefit of all wizardkind, and if one young girl got neglected, what did that matter, when Albus was working for the greater good?" Aberforth slams his cup onto the table and growls, "Filthy, fucking sodomites -"
"Hey!" I snap, and as soon as I've opened my mouth, I regret it, but I can't stand by and let him continue to speak like this. "That's a disgusting thing to say about your own brother. You can hate him all you like, but who he loved has nothing to do any of it."
"'Loved', you say?" Aberforth laughs, shaking his head roughly. "I wouldn't have had an issue with love, Potter, but it wasn't love that Grindelwald had for my brother -- you don't hurt the people you love."
My face is burning. "Still," I say quietly, ignoring everyone's desperate looks for me to shut up, "you shouldn't say stuff like that. It's revolting."
Aberforth spares a half-scowl in my direction before continuing.
"But after a few weeks of it, I'd had enough, I had. It was nearly time for me to go back to Hogwarts so I told 'em, both of 'em, face to face, like I am to you, now," and Aberforth looks down at Harry and I and it takes little imagination to see him as a teenager, wiry and angry, confronting his elder brother. "I told you, you'd better give it up, now. You can't move her, she's in no fit state, you can't take her with you, wherever it is you're planning to go, when you're making your clever speeches, trying to whip yourselves up a following. He didn't like that," says Aberforth, and the firelight briefly occludes his eyes on the lenses of his glasses: they shine white and blind again. "Grindelwald didn't like that at all. He got angry. He told me what a stupid little boy I was, trying to stand in the way of him and my brilliant brother...didn't I understand, my poor sister wouldn't have to be hidden once they'd changed the world, and led the wizards out of hiding, and taught the Muggles their place?
"And there was an argument...and I pulled out my wand, and he pulled out his, and I had the Cruciatus Curse used on me by my brother's best friend -- his lover -- and Albus was trying to stop him, and then all three of us were duelling, and the flashing lights and the bangs set her off, she couldn't stand it --"
The colour is draining from Aberforth's face as if he's suffering a mortal wound.
"-- and I think she wanted to help, but she didn't really know what she was doing, and I don't know which of us did it, it could have been any of us -- and she was dead."
His voice breaks on the last word, and he drops down into the nearest chair. Hermione's face is wet with tears, and Ron and Riley look as pale as Aberforth. I feel nothing but revulsion: I wish I hadn't heard it, I wish I could wash my mind clean.
"I'm so...I'm so sorry," Hermione whispers.
"Gone," croaks Aberforth. "Gone forever."
He wipes his nose on his cuff and clears his throat.
"'Course, Grindelwald scarpered. He had a bit of a track record already, back in his own country, and he didn't want Ariana set to his account too. And Albus was free, wasn't he? Free of the burden of his sister, free to become the greatest wizard of the --"
"He was never free," Harry says.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Never," I add. "The night your brother died, he drank a potion which drove him mad. He started screaming, pleading with someone who wasn't there. 'Don't hurt them, please...hurt me instead.'"
Ron, Hermione, and Riley are staring at us. We've never gone into detail about what happened on the island on the lake: the events that took place after we returned to Hogwarts had eclipsed it so thoroughly.
"He thought he was back there with you and Grindelwald, I know he did," Harry says, as I remember Dumbledore whimpering, pleading. "He thought he was watching Grindelwald hurting you and Ariana...it was torture to him, if you'd seen him, you wouldn't be saying he was free."
Aberforth seems lost in contemplation of his own knotted and veined hands. After a long pause, he says, "How can you be sure, Potters, that my brother wasn't more interested in the greater good than in you? How can you be so sure you aren't dispensable, just like my little sister?"
A shard of ice seems to pierce my heart.
"I don't believe it. Dumbledore loved Harry and Haylee," Hermione says.
"Why didn't he tell them to hide, then?" Aberforth shoots back. "Why didn't he say to them, take care of yourselves, here's how to survive?"
"Because," Harry says before any of us can answer, "sometimes you've got to think about more than your own safety! Sometimes you've got to think about the greater good! This is war!"
"You're seventeen!"
"We're of age, and we're going to keep fighting even if you've given up!"
"Who says I've given up?"
"Oh, please," I say exasperatedly. "'The Order of the Phoenix is finished'. 'You-Know-Who's won, it's over, and anyone who's pretending different's kidding themselves!"
"I don't say I like it, but it's the truth!"
"No, it isn't," I say. "Your brother knew how to finish You-Know-Who, and he's passed it on to us. We're going to keep going until we win -- or we die. Don't think we don't know how this might end. We've known it for years."
I wait for Aberforth to jeer or to argue, but he does not. He merely scowls.
"I don't give two shits what went on between you and your brother," I continue heatedly. "Harry and I trusted the man we knew. Now, we need to get into Hogwarts. If you really don't want to help us, then we'll wait 'till daybreak and figure it out on our own -- God knows we're good at that. But if you can help us -- well, now would be a great time to mention it."
Aberforth remains fixed in his chair, gazing at Harry and me with the eyes that are so extraordinarily like his brother's. At least, he clears his throat, gets to his feet, walks around the little table and approaches the portrait of Ariana.
"You know what to do," he says.
She smiles, turns and walks away, not as people in portraits usually do, out of the sides of their frames, but along what seems to be a long tunnel painted behind her. We watch her slight figure retreating until the darkness swallows her.
"Er -- what --?" Riley begins.
"There's only one way in, now," says Aberforth. "You must know they've got all the old passageways covered at both ends, Dementors all around the boundary walls, regular patrols inside the school from what my sources tell me. The place has never been so heavily guarded. How you expect to do anything once you get inside it, with Snape in charge and the Carrpws as his Deputies...well, that's your lookout, isn't it? You say you're prepared to die."
"But what...?" Hermione says, frowning at Ariana's picture.
A tiny white dot has reappeared at the end of the painted tunnel, and now Ariana is walking back towards us, growing bigger and bigger as she comes. But there is somebody else with her now, someone taller than she is, who is limping along looking excited. His hair is longer than I've ever seen it: he appears to have suffered several gashes to the face, and his clothes are ripped and torn. Larger and larger the two figures grow, until only their heads and shoulders fill the portrait. Then the whole thing swings forward on the wall like a door, and the entrance to a real tunnel is revealed. And out of it, his hair overgrown, his face cut, his robes ripped, clambers the real Neville Longbottom, who roars with delight, peeps down from the mantlepiece and yells, "I knew you'd come! I knew it, Harry! Haylee!"
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A/N: things are about to get hectic and I'm scared omg.
also, just a quick side note! for anyone who reads/used to read my george weasley story Take Cover, I'm in the process of doing a re-write now that I'm just about finished up with Haylee's story!! I miss andromeda blackwood! I'll let you all know when that's posted, and it would mean the world to me if you could all give it a read :)