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Format: Novel
Chapters: 24
Word Count: 103,366
Status: WIP
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Strong Language, Strong Violence, Scenes of a Mild Sexual Nature, Substance Use or Abuse, Sensitive Topic/Issue/Theme, Contains Spoilers
Genres: Drama, Horror/Dark, Romance
Characters: A. Longbottom, F. Longbottom, Moody, Bellatrix, Oliver, OC
Pairings: OC/OC, Other Pairing
First Published: 12/16/2010
Last Chapter: 03/25/2013
Last Updated: 03/25/2013
Summary:lovely new banner by stopjenny @ TDA
The Dark Lord fell in October. Now it's December and Healer Elena Wood thinks the world has put itself back together.
However when she witnesses the murder of the Minister of Magic, she realizes that a brutal war is still waging, only this time, behind closed doors. Discretion is vital, the public cannot know.
Disclaimer: Nothing that you recognize is mine, it's all property of JK Rowling. All Original Characters are mine though.
Hello! I hope that you enjoy this story- it's set just after the fall of Voldemort, a time that I think is often glazed over. I'm hoping to expand on it a bit in this story.
Just so that you know, this chapter starts out slow, but I promise things will pick up in the next chapter. I just need to set the stage first.
lovely chapter image by Alora @ TDA
A puff of steam preceded the explosion, but the blast followed so quickly that the attending Healer had no time to find cover. Plumes of sulphuric smoke issuing forth from a small stone invaded the once sterile hospital room, clouding the air with their acrid fumes.
“Merlin’s beard!” the Healer choked after air had somewhat cleared. This was beyond anything she had been expecting from this routine procedure. Explosions weren’t supposed to just happen, not anymore. Certainly they were not to be expected when removing a stone swallowed by a small child. Really, the procedure had been so easy that the Healer was surprised the little boy’s parents hadn’t done it themselves, except for this new complication.
A quick check told the Healer that her patient was unharmed. She then turned her attention, and her wand, to the stone, which was still intact even after the blast. Her assistant for the procedure—Junior Healer Brenton—came over and warily picked up the object in his hand.
“Looks like a makeshift marble for Gobstones, spelled to explode rather than spit out that gunk they normally do,” he commented dryly. “I’ve played with my fair share of them, quite dangerous really. He’s lucky it didn’t go off inside of him.”
When the Healer didn’t respond, Junior Healer Brenton set down the marble gently.
“Elena,” he said placing a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Is everything alright?”
The woman nodded reluctantly, still shocked by the explosion. It brought back memories from work at St. Mungo’s before He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was killed by Harry Potter. It reminded her of dark magic.
“That’ll be Healer Wood, to you,” she finally said, though the reprimand was quite half-hearted.
“Right, Elena,” Roger Brenton replied jauntily, oblivious to the other healer’s distress. “Might I suggest that you go freshen up a bit?” He indicated to her face with a careless wave of his hand. “I’ll take care of this mess.”
Elena sighed and stood up, wiping a finger along her cheek and wincing when it came away, black with soot. Against her better judgment, she left Roger in charge of the boy. He was known for being reckless, but it was time the Junior Healer started to be more independent anyway. Besides, he knew more about homemade Exploding Snap than she did and that knowledge probably stemmed from personal experience.
In the woman’s washroom, Elena took a moment to calm herself down. It was December and the world had been safe, even stable for months but she was still so shaken by small things like this. Elena had to wonder if things would ever change back to normal, so she could live without fear.
Elena caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror when she shook her head to clear it. A closer inspection revealed a light coating over her face and in her hair.
“I look like a bloody chimney sweep,” she decided dryly.
Luckily, even magical soot stood no chance against soap, water and a quick cleaning spell. In no time, and with minimal scrubbing, Elena was standing in front of the mirror again, looking at her own, clean reflection.
A boyfriend had once described her skin as the colour of a fresh cut potato and her lips the colour of uncooked beef. The boyfriend had been a chef, that was true, so comparing Elena’s features to food was not so strange. When, however, there was an abundance of red wine and when aforementioned boyfriend was cutting a pomegranate, it was simply inexcusable to describe her lips as the colour of raw meat, no matter how expensive the cut. In actuality, his descriptions, though unorthodox, weren’t that far off. Elena’s skin had a distinctly sallow undertone, something that was acquired after working out of the sun for years. Her lips could be explained by a rather unfortunate choice of lipstick colour that she had since changed.
After a few more moments of staring, Elena wound her dark hair up into a bun and straightened her robes. She knew she’d taken too long fixing her appearance but in fact, she’d really spent most of the time calming down. For all of her teenage and adult life, she’d lived in constant fear of attacks in the hospital. There had been a few attempted murders at St. Mungo’s, though thankfully no one had died. However, countless people had been brought in, dead or dying, as a result of Death Eater attacks. These attacks had dropped off in the past three months but Elena’s panic response wasn’t something that could just go away. She had to wonder if she’d ever feel truly safe again.
“Everything alright, Elena?” said Ruby Edwards, a Healer with steel grey curls, who had popped her head into the washroom. “Roger asked me to check up on you, said to tell you that everything’s under control.”
“I’m coming,” Elena declared, walking towards the door. “I just needed a moment,” she explained, as Ruby nodded her head sympathetically.
“Well, things are slow now,” the older woman assured Elena. “If you need more time, just take it.” She stopped walking to face Elena. “That goes for everything, Elena. If you need to take some time off, I’ll convince Quentin that you need it.”
Elena smiled tightly at this offer. She appreciated Ruby’s kindness, but taking time off wouldn’t help her. She just needed to keep working, to forget everything.
“Thanks, Ruby, but I’m alright,” she said, trying to sound as confident as possible.
“You are doing something for Christmas, aren’t you?”
“No,” Elena replied. “I’m working the night shift actually.” When Ruby’s face turned sympathetic, she quickly explained. “My parents are going to Vienna, so it’s not like I have any family to stay with.”
Ruby clucked sympathetically, “you poor dear.”
Though this coddling irked Elena, she tried to stay calm. “Yes well, I’m quite old enough to take care of myself.” And she was, though twenty-five was young for a healer, it was not unheard of. During the war, students with talents in Herbology and Potions had been recruited straight out of Hogwarts and given abbreviated training to help supply the growing need for healers. Elena had only been a Junior Healer for six months, instead of the usual year and a half, before becoming a full healer.
“Of course you are,” Ruby said quickly, backing off. “I’m sure you’re quite busy, I’ll let you get back to work.”
Elena nodded goodbye and walked back to the room to see Roger clearing up.
“Everything’s fine, Elena,” he said. “The boy’s all fixed up and I’ve disabled the marble.”
“Thanks,” she gave him a rare smile. “You’ve done well. And now,” Elena waved her wand and the bed the boy had been on made itself, “we wait.”
The end of the War had slowed traffic in the hospital considerably. While there once had been an extreme shortage of healers, now there were times like these were there were no patients. Ranks of top healers sat idle and many had started considering a change in profession.
She wearily sat down in one of the chairs in the room and closed her eyes.
“Wake me up if something happens, alright?” It was late, past midnight, and she hadn’t had a decent amount of sleep in days.
Elena didn’t even hear Roger’s response, for she drifted into dreams almost instantly.
----------------------------
It was nearly four in the morning when Elena stumbled into her flat, feeling drained and miserable. She’d gotten only half an hour of sleep before Roger had woken her to take care of a few more emergency cases—a witch who was bitten by a charmed insect, another child who had drank too much of Mummy’s potions and a pair of feuding relatives who here both suffering from the same hex.
That was pretty typical of a night shift at St. Mungo’s. Though the boy who had swallowed the Gobstone had been an anomaly. A rather boring night, all things considered.
Boring, Elena mused as she changed out of her healer’s robes and into her pyjamas. Her work was boring. She’d been swept up in the glamour of it all as a schoolgirl, eager to serve without being in the midst of the battle. But now that things were settling down, she wasn’t sure if she could stand the monotony of it all.
Yes, being a healer was satisfying, but it wasn’t exciting. People were just so reckless when it came to magic. Reckless and stupid. Sometimes Elena figured that patients deserved their fate. If a wizard was careless enough to drink a three year old potion, he should suffer a bit.
And some people were just so inept with magic. Honestly, a pair of overgrown ears did not warrant a trip to St. Mungo’s. Nor did a doxy bite or an overdose of a calming draught. Some things wore off over time.
As she prepared for bed, Elena went about, securing the flat, as was her usual ritual. The door was locked, both with magic and a key. The protection charms placed on the windows and the walls were still intact.
While Elena lived in a safe building, inhabited mainly by young, single witches and wizards, she figured she could never be too safe. Death Eater attacks were becoming less and less common, but they were not unheard of.
And she didn’t feel quite the same security as she had in her parent’s home, where she’d lived until the downfall of You-Know-Who. Thomas and Elizabeth Wood’s home had so many protections layered over it that it was virtually impossible to find and quite safe. So Elena had had no qualms about living with her parents during the War. But, once things had settled down and there wasn’t quite so much danger, she started to feel like she was imposing on her family and got her own place.
Exhausted, she finally fell into bed, where she could get a few more precious hours of sleep before waking again.
----------------------------
Tuesday morning started with the all-necessary grocery shopping expedition. Elena had awoken to find her fridge empty, except for a few sticks of celery, a shrivelled orange and a mouldy bit of cheese. Hardly an appealing breakfast.
Since she was low on cash and didn’t want to spend it on breakfast at a cafe, she decided to go shopping.
Her first purchase was tea and she continued down her hastily scribbled list, placing milk, eggs, bread and all manner of necessities into her basket. She even bought a bit of chocolate, as an indulgence. Of course, Muggle chocolate wasn’t nearly as good as Honeyduke’s but she would take what she could get.
After managing to pay the Muggle cashier with the correct change, something she had improved on since moving into her flat, Elena headed home to finally eat.
While the kettle boiled on the range, Elena fried an egg and put away the rest of the groceries. She was just settling down to with her cup of tea and the Daily Prophet when she heard the distinct sound of an owl rapping at the window.
Worried that it might be urgent summons for work, she shovelled the egg into her mouth, cursing as it burned her throat. The owl’s rapping became more insistent as Elena ran to the window. Once she’d finally wrested the glass open, the owl lighted on the sill, shifting impatiently from foot to foot as it waited for Elena to untie the message.
“I’m hurrying, you brute,” she muttered as her fingers fumbled at the knot. “Would you stop pecking me, please?”
The owl stopped pecking, but only once Elena had removed the letter. Without waiting for a reply, the owl flew off, hooting as it soared off into the morning.
Elena let herself curse the bird once more before settling down to read the message. It was scrawled onto a torn scrap of parchment in blue ink and was only a few lines long. Certainly not a summons from the hospital, she realized with relief.
Squinting her eyes to make out the messy note, she read:
Elena,
I’m going to be dropping Oliver off a bit early today. Sorry to bother you, but things are really picking up at the shop.
The note wasn’t signed, but she knew who it was from: Marianne.
Elena’s sister in law worked full time at Madame Malkin’s in Diagon Alley. Part of the reason that Elena worked night shifts was so that she could watch Marianne’s son Oliver during the day. While Ollie was a reasonably well behaved child, Elena hated watching him. Or rather hated the time it took. Sometimes she wanted to tell Marianne that sister in law didn’t mean free babysitter.
She couldn’t wait till next fall, when Ollie would finally be old enough to go to Muggle primary school. As a child Elena had hated her primary school days, the secrecy and the general pointlessness of it all. She had always figured, before she’d started taking care of Ollie, that she’d home school whatever children she ever had. But once she’d started watching her nephew, she’d discovered that she had no patience with children.
Elena reread the note, wondering just how early Marianne had meant. Normally, she dropped her son off at noon, but early could be anything from a few minutes to a few hours early. It was just like Marianne to be vague in her owl. At least she’d taken the time to warn Elena though. There had been more than a few days where Ollie and his mother had simply shown up early, oblivious to Elena’s other plans for the day.
She’d been furious the last time, which had probably led to the warning. Elena felt slightly guilty about the outburst, even though Marianne had simply showed up without warning. After all, it wasn’t Marianne’s fault that she was currently a single mother. Elena’s brother, an Auror, was off somewhere in Albania, according the Ministry. Oliver Sr. hadn’t been heard from since November. He’d only written a quick note about the downfall of You-Know-Who. So, Elena felt obligated to help out her sister in law, even if she didn’t like babysitting.
Elena busied herself around the flat, cleaning up the already tidy rooms. With Ollie’s arrival pending, she couldn’t very well go out and do something, nor was she in the mood to go back to sleep again.
After a while, she got out a stack of Christmas Cards and started signing them. While she could have done it magically, it would have only taken five minutes then. Now, it would take up at least an hour of her time.
Elena’s hand was cramping by the time her doorbell finally rang. Without setting her quill aside, she called out, “Come in, it’s unlocked.”
“Hellooo!” Marianne called, cracking the door before ushering her son. Then she caught sight of Elena at the table, surrounded by cards. “What are you doing?” she asked, a frown crossing her face.
Elena shrugged and stood up, “Writing Christmas cards. I had free time,” she explained.
“Why didn’t you just use magic?” Marianne asked, appalled.
A flick of Elena’s wand finished the task and when she was done, she turned back to her sister in law. “Like I said, I had free time and I wasn’t sure when you were dropping Ollie off.” While Marianne’s expression was still sceptical, Elena started to understand that the woman had no time, so something like hand writing cards seemed like a colossal waste of time.
Little Oliver walked towards Elena to give her a hug. “Hi Auntie ‘Lena,” he said, lisping because he had just his front teeth.
Elena grinned down at him, ruffling his dark hair. “Hi Ollie, I was thinking we should make some biscuits today, how does that sound?”
“Yum!” Ollie cried, making both Elena and Marianne laugh.
While Ollie ran over to the tiny kitchen, Elena looked at Marianne. “We’ll be fine,” she assured the other woman.
Marianne nodded her blonde head, though she was watching her son wistfully.
“I know, I only wish that I could spend more time with him. Ever since Oliver,” her voice cracked, “I don’t know if he’s alright and it’s just that it’s Christmas and Ollie keeps asking when his father will be home.”
Elena laid her hand on Marianne’s shoulder. “I’m sure he’s fine,” she said, though she honestly had no way to tell how her brother was doing.
Wiping her tears away, Marianne gave a watery smile. “Thanks Elena. I’m sure he is too, I just worry sometimes.”
“He should be home soon,” Elena told her. “The War is over, how much is left for him to do?”
“I hope you're right,” Marianne said, then called to her son, “come give Mummy a hug!”
Ollie ran over and wrapped his arms around his mother. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, then sped out of the door, apparently late for work.
Elena led her nephew to the kitchen and summoned two aprons from the closet.
“Let me help you,” she told Ollie, reaching to tie the apron around his back.
Then, Elena put the green and red apron over her jeans and jumper.
“Let me help you,” Ollie said, coming over. Elena bent her knees so he could reach and let him tie the knot.
“Good job!” she complimented him and set about getting the ingredients out for biscuits.
A small stool helped Ollie reach the counter and Elena helped him measure out the right amount of flour and sugar, pouring it into a bowl. When it came to crack eggs, she pulled out her wand, since she hated touching the raw, slimy insides.
“Now, stir it,” she handed Ollie a spoon and help the bowl while he stirred and mixed the batter.
“Auntie ‘Lena?” he asked. “Why aren’t you going to Vienna with me and Mummy and Nana and Granddad?”
Elena sighed. She’d hoped that this questions wouldn’t come up. Everyone was asking her it, Marianne, her mother, her father and now Ollie.
“I have work, darling,” she said, giving the same excuse she gave everyone else who asked and hoping that it would at least work on the child.
“Oh,” he said, frowning with concentration as he stirred harder. “What are you going to do for Christmas then?”
“Work,” Elena said. “Remember, I’m a Healer, Ollie. People need healing, even on Christmas.”
“Oh,” he repeated. “But don’t people normally get Christmas off? Mummy doesn’t have work and neither does Granddad. “
Sometimes children just didn’t understand. “I volunteered to work at Christmas, so that other people, people like your Mum and Granddad, could be with their family.”
Ollie nodded like he understood and said, “so like Daddy then.”
Elena felt her heart ache at that, but nodded. “Yes, sort of like your dad. I guess he’s working at Christmas too.”
The mention of her brother’s absence, and how much his son missed him, made her want to tear up, so she took a minute claiming that she was heating up the oven. When she returned, to distract Ollie from even more questions, she got out a cooking sheet and started to show the boy how to form circles of batter of roughly even size. Anything to distract him—and herself—from a world where people worked on Christmas and where fathers were away.
Feedback would be lovely! I appreciate any and all reviews and I'll respond to them all.
I hope you enjoy this story.
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for all the great reviews that you all have given me so far! I really appreciate it. This chapter should start the action in this story and the pace should pick up as well.
I hope you enjoy it.
gorgeous chater image by hayley jade @ TDA
Christmas Eve left Elena feeling buoyant. The spirit of the season had always affected her more than any other holiday. There was something beautiful about the snow blanketing the world and the evergreens that seemed to spring up throughout the city as if by magic.
Of course, things would have been better if she was getting ready for a party at her parents’ house, instead of ready for work, but she’d made her choice. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go to Vienna, but she wanted some alone time. And spending her holiday in a cramped hotel room with Marianne, Ollie and her parents was something she just couldn’t tolerate.
Under her robes, Elena had on a pair of jeans and a red sweater that was her attempt at holiday spirit.
Her attire was complete with the addition of a warm winter coat. Though coats and robes looked odd together, looking odd was better than being cold. And as it always was on Christmas, it was quite cold outside.
Elena stepped out of her flat, locking the door as she left. She looked both ways, a habit to make sure no Muggles were around, and turned into the air with a crack.
She apparated to the atrium at St. Mungo’s, realizing stupidly that she hadn’t even gone outside and hadn’t even needed her coat. Lack of sleep tended to muddle her mind. When she checked around the room to see who was there, she saw no one.
The normally-alive room was silent, the lights dimmed the silence echoing off stone walls. Even the Welcome Witch Therese who normally sat at a desk to admit patients and visitors was gone, though a steaming mug of tea indicated that she had only left for a moment.
Elena made her way to the staff rooms, where she left her coat in the coatroom and clocked in her hours. A quick note of the register showed that there were only nine other Healers in the building, two for each floor, leaving out the fifth floor with the tearoom. More were in reserve, of course, but right now there were only the ten healers (including herself) and the dozen or so nurses that were watching over the overnight patients.
She supposed that the load was going to be light tonight. After all, it was Christmas Eve (she had even put on tiny bells as earrings to prove it). People tended to be calm on Christmas in particular, unless they got drunk. With any luck, she’d make it through an uneventful Christmas night shift.
After stopping herself from yawning, Elena took the staff’s lift up to the fourth floor: Spell Damage. She exited the lift and walked down the hall. The lights flared to life as they sensed her coming, then dimmed down after she’d passed. The only place where there were lights before she’d arrived was the Closed Ward, where those with irreparable damage stayed.
Elena made it to her office and unlocked the door and deciding that since there were no patients, she might as well get a start on her paperwork. She had a lot piled up since the weeks leading up to Christmas had been busy. Mostly it was mindless stuff--filing claims, noting procedures, sending checkup owls to patients--tasks that a secretary could easily do. Unfortunately, only Senior Healers were allowed the luxury of such help, so Elena was stuck with her quill, alone in her tiny, cramped office.
The clock seemed to move slowly and the pile of papers progressed even slower. Was it possible that she’d only been here for an hour? It had seemed like hours more than that--almost a whole day. And there wasn’t a single patient.
It was strange working these almost silent shifts. Elena felt like an intruder on the peacefulness of St. Mungo’s. She hadn’t seen a single other human since she’d arrived, only adding to her sense of loneliness. Did she still have seven more hours left in the shift? That didn’t seem possible.
Elena let her mind wander from the paperwork again, thinking of the Owl she’d received from Vienna this morning. Enclosed was a picture Ollie, Marianne and her parents smiling and waving to the camera, the snow-covered city behind them. The note was short, only a quick wish of “Happy Christmas” and a wish that she was there.
Sitting alone in her office, Elena wished again that she was. Surely anything was better than this monotony. Really, what a way to spend Christmas. If only she had someone, anyone to talk to right now.
Elena felt her head nodding and didn’t stop herself as she tilted towards the desk, closing her eyes. Sugarplums, she thought, remembering the children’s rhyme, she would dream of sugarplums.
She might have slept for a few minutes or hours but she woke feeling like she hadn’t slept at all. “Healer Wood?” Therese the Welcome Witch called over the magical intercom.
“Yes?” Elena asked.
"One moment." Therese's voice carried a worried edge, an odd tone for a woman who was normally a cold professional.
Elena murmured a response as she swept her dark hair up into a bun. She’d put it up so many times that she figured she could do it in her sleep. That is, Elena mused, if she ever got any real sleep.
There was a crackled as Therese spoke again over the intercom. “I have a wizard here who has some sort of spell damage. I have no idea what, but it’s bad.”
“Alright,” Elena said, mentally cursing that she’d fallen asleep. She had to be awake and aware now.
“The man’s friend is going to be bringing him up,” Therese said in a bored voice. “Get ready, Elena. This looks like it’ll be messy.”
Elena refrained from a sarcastic remark. “I’ll be waiting,” she said, jumping up and pushing the paperwork aside.
Knowing that the man would be in bad condition, Elena raced down the hall, sprinting to the other end, where the lift was. There were several emergency rooms right next to them, which were thankfully always stocked, since Elena had no time to prepare such a room.
She reached the lift just as the grate opened and saw a tall wizard with brown hair levitating another, smaller man who was soaked in blood. “This way,” Elena directed him into the emergency room, wincing when the lights flared on into blinding brightness.
The tall man lowered his wand and caught the other man in his arms, carrying him in and placing him on the bed. Elena saw the blood and wished that there were at least two other healers with her right now. This looked bad. If the cause of the blood was magical, which it had to be, since a simple spell could have healed anything else, it would be hard to fix. Elena rolled up her sleeves and muttered a quick sanitation spell.
The wizard who had brought in the other man thankfully stayed at the edges of the room out of Elena’s way. He was surprisingly calm, making Elena wonder what his relation was to the bleeding man. Most relatives, even the male ones, would be showing a lot more stress at this point.
But she didn’t have time to analyze anyone but her patient. The man was losing more blood at every turn. Elena ripped open his shirt, trying to find the source of all the blood, but there didn’t seem to be any one source. It was oozing out of his every pore in his chest.
She muttered several incantations hopefully, but they did nothing. “Accio dittany!” she pointed her wand at a cupboard and let the glass jar fly into her hands. She opened it dripping the liquid onto his chest and when some of the blood stopped, she started pouring it in greater quantities over his chest, watching as it steamed and stemmed the bleeding.
Another quick wave of her wand cleaned up the blood and she let out a breath of relief. Now that the bleeding had been slowed to a trickle, she just had to find out the cause of it, because while the man was not going to die from blood loss, some powerful curse had caused his injuries.
“Is he going to be alright?” the tall wizard questioned hesitantly, a note of urgency in his voice.
Elena jumped, for she’d forgotten he was there. “Don’t know,” she said tersely. “I still have to find out what caused this. You don’t know, do you?”
“No,” the man said sharply. A beat passed, then he said slowly, “Do you mean that he might still die?”
Elena nodded. “Possibly, yes.” He had to put it so morbidly. It was as if the man expected the worst from the whole situation, like he had no hope.
To end the conversation, Elena murmured a few more incantations that were supposed to help reveal some of the spells that had been used on the man and then remove them.
She felt several spells worm deeper into the man, as she’d expected. The dark worms were all too familiar: this was dark magic, she realized with a tingle of dread. Elena bit her lip, wondering what she was going to do, when all the spells were concealed, but then, one spell worked its way free, a simple concealment spell. With a wave of her wand, she dissolved it and watched in surprise as the man’s features melted away. He grew hair, became taller as he lay on the bed and his facial features morphed. He grew more heavy set and the bed creaked with the added weight.
Elena felt her mouth open in shock as she recognized his face. This was a face she’d recognize anywhere. The sharp jaw, the full cheeks, the oversized nose. It was the Minister for Magic, Marcus Gordon. Her patient was the Minister!
Once she got over her shock, she rounded on the tall man. “What is this?” she asked, feeling her confusion and panic rise. “The Minister? Why was he concealed? What happened to him?”
The wizard held up his hands to stop her questions. “I can’t tell you any of that, Madam. I just need you to do your job and heal him.”
“Can’t you tell me anything?” Elena asked. Now the stakes were so much higher, if the minister was lying there on her bed, possibly dying. He was too important a man to die.
“No.”
Elena felt her fury rise at this. “I can’t do my job without information! I don’t know what sort of curse was used on him, but I know it was Dark. Anything would help. Sir,” she added as an afterthought.
The man’s lips twitched into a smile, “Sorry,” he apologized, obviously not understanding the gravity of the situation. The Minister might not have been bleeding, but he was far from healthy.
Elena threw up her hands. “Fine, but I’m going to have to call in some other healers. This sort of guess work isn’t exactly my expertise.” She reached for a button that would summon all other healers in case of a major emergency. For if the Minister’s injury wasn’t an emergency, she didn’t know what was.
“Stop!” the man grabbed her wrist before she could press the button. “You cannot tell anyone about this.”
“Get your hands off of me,” Elena raised her wand and the man dropped her wrist quickly. “This is the Minister for Magic, sir. I assume it is imperative he survives and his chances would increase greatly if there were about ten more healers in here!”
She reached for the button again but the man stepped in front of it, blocking her hands. “I’m sorry, but you need to help him on your own. No one else can know he is here.”
Elena massaged her temples, “Fine,” she assented, knowing the man wasn’t going to give anytime soon. If she wanted the Minister to have any chance at life, she would have to stop arguing. And so she turned back to the patient.
He was white from the blood loss and Elena summoned another potion to help him replenish the lost liquid. Again forgetting that there was anyone else in the room, she cast a few more spells, some to check for magic, some looking for any other injuries. Strangely, there seemed to be nothing else wrong, except for his unconsciousness. “Rennervate,” she muttered, trying to wake him up. Even if the obstinate man wouldn’t tell her anything, it was possible that the Minister could.
His eyelids twitched, and fluttered. “He’s waking up,” she told the man quietly, glad for this Christmas miracle.
“Hello Mr. Minister,” Elena said softly. “You’re at St. Mungo’s right now. My name is Healer Wood.” She was tempted to ask him if he remembered anything but figured that that wouldn’t please the man who had brought him in. She would ask later, once she was sure he was all right. “Can you speak?”
The man came up next to Elena and leaned over the minister. “Marcus,” he said urgently. “I need you to tell me where it is.”
Minister Gordon’s eyes fixated on the man, who he obviously knew. His lips tried to move to form words, but no sound came out. “
“Make him talk!” the man said urgently, not taking his eyes off the Minister.
Elena shook her head, “I can’t! He’s just waking up. Give him a minute’s peace. Please, sir, I think it would be best if you sat down over there and didn’t upset Mr. Gordon too much.”
“You don’t understand!” the man shouted suddenly, his hand closing on Elena’s shoulder. “He must talk to me. You must make him talk”
“I told you to keep your hands off of me!” Elena yelled back, her lack of sleep and nervousness over the situation making her lash off. “I can only do so much with no help or information. I’m not even a Senior Healer!” she wailed.
The man backed up, looking like he regretted his outburst. “Sorry,” he grunted, then the grunt turned into a choked gasp and he pointed over Elena’s shoulder.
She turned around only to find Minister Gordon bleeding again. Only this time it was more of a gush than a trickle. “Merlin,” Elena shouted. She’d only turned her back for a few seconds and the Minister looked even worse than when he’d come in.
The half empty bottle of dittany was on the bedside stand and Elena emptied it over the man’s chest. Only this time the essence did nothing to stem the bleeding. “No,” she breathed in despair. Without knowing what kind of spell was on the Minister, she had no idea what to do. It was every healer’s worst nightmare.
Finally she licked her lips and cast the most powerful revealing spell she knew. Again, Elena caught the scent of dark magic, though the specific spells were hidden too deeply for her to reach. One thread of the tangle of spells was obvious though, a simple silencing spell. Elena muttered the counter spell, fixing the only thing she could.
“Minister,” she said again. “Please try to remember what happened.” Thankfully, his eyes were open still, though they were starting to glaze over.
He moved his bloody lips again and this time sound came out, though it was so quiet she could hardly hear it and she had to lean in so that her ear was almost touching his mouth. “Simon,” he said. “Albania. Long—” he cut off and started coughing. “Simon has to know, has to protect Al—” The coughs stole the rest of the word and without any warning his eyes closed.
“Minister?” Elena called, “Sir. Minister. Marcus! I need you to wake up now! Keep talking to me. Rennervate!” The spell did nothing, and the man kept bleeding. “Please?” she whispered.
But there was no answer. Elena cast one quick spell, which told her the worst. His heart had stopped. The Minister for Magic was dead.
“Merlin,” she whispered, feeling tears well up in her eyes and she rested her face in her blood soaked hands. “God what have I done?” After a minute she looked up to see the other man sitting in a hair, head in his hands. “Sir,” she said at last, “Sir, I’m sorry but he’s dead.”
The man glanced up, nodding slowly and pressing his lips together. He looked like he’d been expecting these tidings.
“I -- what do I do?” Elena asked softly, deferring to him. “Should I call for someone to pick up his body or, or do you have other arrangements?”
Again the mention of other people thrust the man into action, though this time he was less vehement. “No. Don’t call. This is a delicate situation, if you haven’t already gathered that, Madam.”
“Healer Wood. Elena Wood,” Elena said, tired of being called by such a formal title. Though she didn’t feel like a healer at the moment, not after the Minister for Magic had died on her watch. “I know that, sir. I’m sorry but this is so unusual. What do you propose we do with the body?”
The man sighed and walked over to the body where, with his wand, he cast a spell that roughly severed all of the minister’s hair from his head. Another wave of a wand put the hair into a small bag conjured from air. Elena watched this with so much surprise that she wasn’t prepared for the inferno that suddenly engulfed the body.
There was so much heat from the fire that she had to jump away. “What are you doing?” she demanded as the body burned. It was the Minster for Magic! Surely he deserved a better funeral than this. “God, what is going on?” she demanded, feeling tears sting her eyes, part from exhaustion, part from the heat.
The man stepped back to watch his handy work. “I can’t tell you, Healer Wood.”
Elena stomped her foot like a child, tired of the cryptic man. If it wasn’t for his refusal to tell her about the Minister’s condition, the dead man might still be alive. “I'll tell everyone,” she threatened impulsively. “Obviously you want to keep his death a secret, but if you don’t start explaining it would be very easy for me to leak it out to the Prophet.”
“What do you want to know?” the man asked warily.
“First, your name,” Elena said, though that was perhaps the least important piece of information that she craved.
The man shrugged, “Simon.”
Elena’s eyes widened with recognition. “The Minister said your name before he—he died. He said ‘Simon’ then ‘Albania’ and ‘Long.’ He-his last words were ‘Simon has to protect Al.’”
The man’s face darkened. “Did he say anything else? Anything at all?”
“No.”
“I’m going to need to take you in with me for some questioning,” Simon said. “Tonight.”
“Who are you?” she demanded, not about to go off with some stranger. Slowly, she inched back towards the call button, hoping he wouldn't notice if she pressed it.
“I can’t tell you here,” the man said. “But if you come with me I can answer all the questions you want. You have to promise not to make a scene though.”
Elena shifted back again, her fingers brushing the button. She pressed it, and instantly a blaring alarum sounded in the room echoing throughout the buliding.
Simon's face contorted into a frown. "What have you done?" he asked in a dangerous voice, lifting his wand.
"Sir, put your wand down." Elena pressed the button once more, hoping that someone would arrive sooner.
"Why did you do it?" Simon yelled, his voice loud even over the shriek of the alarum.
Elena glared at him, staring at his glinting brown eyes. "It's my job." She had to keep him talking until the others arrived to subdue him.
"Can you make Polyjuice Potion?"
"What?" The question seemed so sudden and unexpected that Elena couldn't think to answer. "But it takes months to brew that!"
Simon stepped towards her, eyes shifting to the door. "Can you?" he dropped his voice, so that it was a harsh whisper.
"Yes," her voice shook as she pressed her back to the wall, trying to lean away from this man.
“Alright,” Simon said after a long pause. “Give me your hand.” His manner had suddenly turned brisk, as if he were making a business deal.
The suddenness of it all caught Elena off guard. “Wait!” she said. “What am I supposed to tell everyone here?” Perhaps if she kept talking, she could stall him long enough for someone to finally come and rescue her.
“They’ll know you’re going home early. You’ll feel ill or something like that,” Simon waved a hand through the air. “Now grab hold of my arm and hold on tight.”
"Are you mad?" He couldn't possibly think that she was actually going to come with him.
Simon shook his head. With a sudden burst of energy, he grabbed onto her wrist with his hand. "Do you want answers?" he asked softly, his voice barely reaching her ears.
"Yes." Elena couldn't help but answer honestly.
A detirmined look filled Simon's eyes, and Elena realized that he was about to act. Normally she would have been on full alert but the lateness of the night and the trauma of the situation had dulled her senses. Elena tried to jerk free of Simon's grasp, but could not escape before Simon spun in the air, disapparating, dragging Elena along with him.
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stunning image by fantome (hafsa) @ TDA
Chapter 3
For half of a moment, Elena felt safe, as the familiar nothingness of apparation surrounded her, held her still, and forced her body to be calm by halting her rapid breathing. All she could feel was Simon’s grip around her wrist.
Then they were spinning out of control, as if they had been travelling by portkey rather than by apparation. The twirls made her mind dizzy and disoriented and when her feet hit hard concrete, she and Simon tumbled to the ground. All Elena could do was lay there in the darkness of wherever they had landed with cold floor below her. For a moment, there was silence. With distracted interest, Elena noticed the cold. It bit through her robes and her clothing beneath them but she did nothing to stop her shivering, such a human response was welcome after the magical travel.
An orangey light flooded the room, bathing Elena in its warming glow. It wasn’t harsh, like magical light could be, but the soft shine of incandescent Muggle light. Footsteps echoed throughout the room, starting out slow, but growing rapid and heavy as they drew nearer. Elena heard the breath of the runner when the footsteps stopped. A dark shadow passed over her, as a cloud covers the sun and Simon's hand left her arm as he was dragged up.
The silence was punctured by a near hysterical voice, yelling things that Elena couldn’t understand. At last, she felt enough purpose and confusion to sit up. From that position, she could better try to comprehend the situation. Where had Simon taken her?
Simon and the runner stood over her and as the voices lowered their volume, their words became more clear.
“Where is he?” an accented female voice said angrily. “Simon, where is he?” she asked again, her voice was jarring, her accent harsh with pain.
“He’s dead,” Simon said darkly, taking a great, shuddering breath.
The woman cursed loudly, the word spitting from her mouth, hitting walls and bouncing back so that it was amplified a hundred fold, until its echoes were worming into Elena’s very mind.
The room stayed silent as the curse slowly died down, until the only sound was breathing. Elena held her wand clenched in her hand, waiting. If she could only calm down enough to apparate away safely!
“I take it you didn’t catch anyone,” Simon said very softly to the woman, more breath than speech, as if hoping Elena wouldn’t pick up the sound.
The woman scoffed, a self deprecating sound. “No. No, I, too, was too late,” she replied frantically, the last words became something of a sob that was hastily muffled.
Elena looked around, anywhere but at Simon and the woman, noticing the corrugated silver walls of the warehouse sized room. With one more deep breath, turned, as if to disapparate, only to have nothing happen. She tried again, and again, only to find herself still in the warehouse, her head spinning with effort. After a second of weakness, she pulled herself out of her daze and into up to a standing position, finally filled with enough strength to have questions.
“Simon?” she asked tentatively, turning around slowly to face him.
Simon had promised answers, if she came. True, he had taken her without her permission to this place that was was terrifying, secretive, and cold, but she had come and she deserved answers. Stupid, Elena admonished herself. She should have called for help earlier, should have run when she had the chance.
The woman looked at Elena, as if seeing her for the first time and her face morphed into a grimace.
“Why the hell did you bring her here? You know what that means Simon you bloody idiot!”
“Let me explain,” Simon began, only to be cut off as the woman raised her wand in protest.
“Stop!” Simon shouted, and grabbed the woman’s arm, forcing her wand towards the concrete floor. Still holding her arm, he put his other hand on her shoulder. “Wait, Corinne. I can explain.” He hesitated for a breath, to see if she would react, before continuing hastily. “She was his healer, so she knew too much. And I wasn’t about to kill her,” he added before Corinne could interrupt.
“Well you could have wiped her bloody memory!” Corinne snapped, jerking out of his grasp. “Now we’re stuck with her!”
“Yeah, well I figured that she already knew and it was a waste just to wipe her! We were going to need help anyways and she’s proven herself quite capable.”
“You could have run it by me!”
Simon rolled his eyes. “Sorry for not thinking clearly after Marcus had just died. And besides, it’s not like we’re going to put an ad in the bloody Prophet!”
Corinne didn’t reply but rather raised her wand again, pointing it at Elena. Elena reached for her own wand, but couldn’t get it out of her pocket before Corinne had shouted, “Stupefy!”
A jet of red light hissed across the room, shooting through the air until it released its power into Elena, sending her sprawling onto the floor once more.
As she fell into unconsciousness, she heard one more quick exchange between the two.
“What was that for?” demanded Simon, sounding angry.
“I needed to talk to you alone,” was Corinne’s explanation.
Elena awoke with a splitting headache, the kind associated with prolonged unconsciousness caused by stunners. If the headache persisted, it was a symptom of more serious spell damage. She had had her fair share of patients complaining of a throbbing pain in their skull after being stunned. For some, it was just the immediate effect, already diminishing when they were examined. For others, it was a sign that potions had to be taken, or else brain damage might occur.
Elena wasn’t sure what category her head ache fell into. All she knew was that it felt like she’d be hit by a rock. Then again, it could have been only a migraine.
After lying still for a few more moments in agony, she fumbled for her wand to help alleviate some of the pain. When the wand wasn’t within her pocket, she felt annoyance seep over her. Probably on her bedside table, she decided.
With a bit of effort, she rolled over and grabbed at where the table should have been. Only instead of hitting wood, her hand hit hard, cold metal. That was—odd. There weren’t any metal furnishings in her flat…at least none by her bed.
She opened her bleary eyes, squinting against the light as the pain increased. Even with her poor vision, she could tell that this was definitely not her bedroom, or any other room of her flat. It was too small for one, and silver. Her mind kicked itself into gear as she tried to remember how she had gotten here, but she found it sluggish with pain.
Elena had been working, that much she knew, but it all got a bit blurry after that. She’d had a patient, and he’d died. She couldn’t put a face onto the patient and she had no recollection of the events that had followed.
Cursing softly, she sat up in the bed, swinging her legs over the side as she began to take in her surroundings. It was a tiny room, more like a cell—windowless, with metal walls and a carpet-less floor. The ceiling was low and metallic as well. The whole effect was claustrophobic and wholly unsettling.
As she glanced around once more, Elena noticed a small table at the head of the bed and saw upon it a copper goblet. She picked it up and upon peering inside, realised that it was filled with some sort of ice blue potion.
A scrap of parchment lying on the table caught her eye and she set down the goblet to pick it up. Scrawled on it in hasty letters were two words: drink me.
Elena thought first of the old Muggle tale of Alice in Wonderland, then sipped at the potion. The liquid flowed down her body like fire, burning her legs and arms with its warmth. For a moment, she was terrified that she’d taken some sort of poison, but the warmth faded, leaving a new sense of clarity as it left.
A horrible, icy clarity. The previous night’s events filled in like flood waters breaking over a dam, memories piling up inside her skull. The pressure built as the memories fought for a place in her already crowded mind. Through the storm, she could make out some things- blurry at first, but clearing with every second. Her patient had a face, the face of the Minister for Magic. She saw his body, dead on the bed and she saw Simon. She remembered the warehouse, Corinne and the stunner.
That explained the headache, which, thankfully was receding even as memories poured in, but even the potion couldn’t fill in everything. There was still a long blank between the jet of red light and now. A blank that no amount of potion could ever fill.
Moving rapidly, Elena strode across the room to the door, pulling on the handle. She was only half surprised when it didn’t budge, probably locked. With any luck though, it was something that a simple ‘Alohamora’ could fix. Elena reached into her pocket for her wand and her hand came up empty. She searched the other pocket, with the same results.
If it was not in her pockets, nor on the table, she didn’t know where it could be in this tiny, sparse room. Simon wouldn’t have taken it, would he? But that was the only way. Elena was sure she’d had it before. And now she couldn’t open the door—perfect.
For a moment, she stood there, trying to think of what to do. Then with a sigh, she raised her hand and pounded on the door. After a minute of rapping, she paused waiting for someone to answer. When she heard no footsteps, Elena began knocking once more.
“Hello?” she called, in case they were waiting for a voice. “Please! Let me out!”
Again, she stopped to listen for a reply but none came. A wave of mixed emotions washed over Elena and she sank to the floor, her back pressed flat against the door. For a moment, she thought she might cry, but that passed.
Finally, after what might have been only minutes of waiting, she took stock of her situation. She was somewhere, though she had no idea where. She was in a cell, with metal walls. There were no windows. The only door was locked. She was without a wand. Elena was trapped, there was simply no other way to put it.
“Damn.”
She could have summed up the situation many ways, but none of the others would have been quite as succinct or accurate. She punctuated the word with a kick to the door, in case someone somehow hadn’t heard her.
No one replied, which of course, didn’t surprise Elena. After standing there for another moment, she went back to the bed and sank down onto the thin mattress, putting her head in her hands.
Why was she being so calm? Elena knew that she should be panicking: the whole situation was a one big disaster after another. And she wasn’t exactly known as a level head, war had always made her jumpy and insecure. Elena, from a young age, had a vivid imagination, which led to an excessive amount of paranoia, especially during the war. Now, she was perched on top of the bed, not crying or having any sort of breakdown.
That was possibly the most confounding thing of all.
With a strange detracted interest, Elena’s mind wandered to thoughts of her work. At St. Mungo’s her unexplained disappearance must be causing uproar. Simon said that he’d take care of it all, but he’d also promised that he’d explain the whole situation with the Minister, and considering he hadn’t, what was to say that he’d keep his other promise?
She tried to imagine Ruby, Roger and Quentin, in various states of worry and frenzy, but it didn’t work. Instead, all she could see were her parents and their faces when they’d been told about her brother Oliver's new assignment. They had looked defeated, beyond worry almost as if accepting that he was going to die. Marianne hadn’t been nearly as calm, but her worry had been tolerable and expected. Remembering her parent’s fear made shivers run up Elena’s spine. Could they take it if their other child, their only daughter, and their baby girl suddenly disappeared? Elena didn’t think so and, for the first time in months, was glad that they had gone to Vienna. Word of her disappearance would take much longer to reach them.
Elena was lost in thought when the door to her cell opened and a woman stepped inside, her wand drawn. Instinctively, Elena shirked back towards the wall, reaching for the wand that wasn’t in her pocket.
“You’re awake,” the woman said and Elena recognized her as Corinne. She hadn’t gotten a good look of Simon’s partner the night before, but now she could see that the woman was tall, with dark curly locks, cut to just below her chin. Now her accent was less pronounced than it had been before, but from Elena knew of foreigners, Corinne was French.
“Yes,” Elena said, using a lot of effort to stop her voice from shaking.
Corinne’s beaked nose curled in obvious disgust. “What’s your name?”
Elena shrugged. “I’m not about to answer your questions. You’re the one holding me here for no reason. I think that I deserve the answers.”
“Name,” Corinne said in a deadly tone.
“Elena,” the Healer spat out, sensing that she shouldn’t argue.
The other woman nodded slowly. “Listen closely, Elena, because I won’t be repeating this story to you. Honestly, I was against telling you but Simon...” She paused. “The Minister for Magic is dead. He was escorted from the Ministry to his home by Simon and me. He went inside his house. He stumbled out a minute later, bleeding. Simon took him to St. Mungo’s, where he died. End of story.”
That was obviously a much shortened version of the tale, but it was actually quite informative. Elena had discovered mainly that Simon and Corinne were some sort of guard to the Minister, probably Aurors.
“How are the public taking the news?” Elena asked quietly, wondering how tumultuous the world had become over night.
Corinne’s blue eyes flashed. “They do not know. Consider yourself privileged, Elena. You’re one of three people who know that Marcus Gordon is dead.”
Against her will, Elena felt her jaw drop. Three. That meant her, Simon and Corinne.
“Are you saying that you’ve told no one? Surely they’ll notice when he doesn’t show up at the Ministry today! Even if you say he’s ill, he has a family that will worry!” Her voice was hysterical by the end, as she tried to solve a problem she couldn’t even comprehend.
“Who says he’s not showing up at work today?” Corinne said cryptically.
“What?”
The tall woman shrugged her shoulders elegantly. “I’ll let Simon explain that to you. He should be back in an hour.”
Elena raised an eyebrow. Corinne was being intentionally evasive and that irked her to no end. It was already clear that the woman didn’t like her, but in all honesty, Elena wasn’t quite fond of Corinne either. She barely spoken to the woman, but she’d already been stunned and humiliated.
“Do you think you could give me my wand back?” Elena asked finally, remembering that her wand was gone when she had started considering all the curses that she would use on Corinne.
Corinne reached into her robes and pulled out a ten-inch maple wand. “This one?” she asked in a cruel, mocking voice.
“Yes,” Elena said, gritting her teeth to remain calm. “Look, I promise I won’t leave. I won’t apparate and I won’t attack you, or anything,” she said this in a rush. “Just please give me my wand.”
Corinne raised an eyebrow. “Not that I’m concerned about you attacking me, but why should I believe you?”
She twirled Elena’s wand absently between her fingers.
“Because I want answers,” Elena snapped. “Because even though Simon dragged me here I can't stand not knowing. I can’t just walk away from it all. I’d be wondering my whole life. And besides, with the Minister dead, Merlin knows what will happen next.”
Across the tiny room, Corinne nodded her head slowly, hearing the truth in Elena's words. Silently, she extended the wand to Elena, who jumped up off the bed to grab it.
“Alright. Take it,” Corinne said. “But just know that you cannot apparate from this building. And, if you try to fight me, I will win.”
Elena held up her hands in mock surrender. “I wasn’t planning on it. I’m not stupid.”
That elicited a laugh, albeit a harsh one, from Corinne, who was now looking at Elena with something that resembled approval.
“Come on,” she said at last. “I’m sure you’re hungry.”
Corinne didn’t offer any more explanations while Elena was eating. Instead, she watched Elena carefully as if waiting for her to slip up, as if this was some sort of unspoken test.
“Are you sure you can’t tell me anything?” Elena asked, after she’d finished eating.
Corinne narrowed her eyes. “I’ve already told you: I won’t answer any more of your questions.”
Elena sighed, realizing that she’d get nowhere with Corinne. The woman had adamantine resolve.
“Right,” she said and fell silent, choosing instead to examine her surroundings.
She was sitting at a small table in a miniscule kitchen. From what she’d seen, she was in the same metal warehouse where Simon had brought her. Elena figured that it was some sort of safe house, since the only food in the kitchen had been in cans and a thick coating of dust covered everything (at least it had, since Corinne had taken to banishing every speck of dirt in her impatience.)
At last, there was the familiar crack that signalled apparition. Both Elena and Corinne jumped up, the latter pulling out her wand.
“Who is it?” Corinne called, pushing Elena aside to peer out the door into the large open room.
“Who do you think?” said a deep voice that Elena didn’t recognize.
Corinne nodded and ushered the man in with her wand. As he made it into the light, Elena caught a glimpse of his face and blanched. It was the Minister for Magic, looking to be in perfect health.
“Merlin!” she shouted, jumping back and looking wildly between Marcus Gordon and Corinne in shock. He was dead. He shouldn’t be walking around.
“What’s going on?” Elena asked anyone stepping back from the Minister as he approached her. “You’re dead! I saw you dead!”
“Elena, calm down,” the Minister said, before turning to Corinne. “Did you even tell her?”
Corinne wrinkled her nose. “No. Why would I?” she said, her voice dripping with disgust and a tinge of amusement.
Marcus Gordon turned back to Elena and as he did so, his face melted and bubbled. He grew taller and hair sprouted out of his bald head. When he finally straightened up, he was Simon, tall and dark.
Elena bit her lip, sure that her eyes were as wide as saucers. “Simon?” she asked, incredulous.
He nodded tensely. “Polyjuice potion,” he said as way of explanation. And with that, he sat down heavily in one of the chairs. “It’s been a hell of a day,” he said, turning his head to address Corinne.
But Elena wasn’t satisfied by this change of subject. “You’re impersonating him?” she asked, just to make sure she’d understood.
“Yes,” Simon answered.
“But,” Elena stuttered. “But, you can’t mean that! I mean, you can’t hide this forever. Sooner or later someone is going to find out he’s dead. Even if they don’t, that would mean that you’d have to pretend to be the Minister for the rest of your life.”
“Oh?” Simon cocked an eyebrow. “All I need is to find a reliable source of Polyjuice Potion and I’m set for life.”
“You couldn’t just brew it?” Elena asked, confused at his words, though she knew that she should be appalled.
That elicited a laugh from Corinne, who Elena had almost forgotten about. “Simon can’t brew a potion to save his life. He can barely handle something simple, much less the Polyjuice.”
“Actually, I was hoping you could make it for me,” Simon said, cutting off Corinne quickly, a faint blush spreading up his neck.
Elena recoiled. “Is that why you kidnapped me then? So that I can be your own personal apothecary? So that I can brew that bloody potion and help perpetuate this lie? Because I won’t! I won’t be locked up in here forever!”
Simon laughed softly. “You have your wand back, Elena. If you wanted to leave, you could have. Corinne, for all she says, wouldn't have stopped you. You're free to go."
Elena could hardly speak at that. She was free to go. She imagined standing, walking out the door, returning to St. Mungo's and explaining everything. She would take some time off, go join her family in Vienna. She had worked too hard, for too long.
But her legs didn't move, because her mind knew one thing: if she left, she would never find out the truth. "And if I stayed?" she spoke the words with as much contempt as she could muster.
A small smile crossed Simon's face. "I didn’t say that you were only going to brew the potion, did I? Honestly, if I could make it, if Corinne could make it, I wouldn’t even ask you. You just happen to know. So calm down. Anyways,” Simon continued, “we could always just buy it, if it takes too much time away from everything else.”
At these words, Elena felt her brow furl. “Do you care to explain?” she asked bitterly, feeling exhausted, confused and angry.
“What Simon is trying to say is that you’re not really needed for the potion,” Corinne began.
“Yes. Elena, we need you to help us find out who killed the Minister.”
Edited Feb 26, 2011 with edits from my beta, kirstenalanna.
I hope you all are enjoying this story. If you would review and give me some feedback, to let me know that someone is reading this story, I would greatly appreciate it.
Also, thanks to kirstenalanna for her help beta-ing this chapter.
Disclaimer: Nothing you see below that you recognize is mine. Only the original characters are my creations.
Translation: Mon Dieu = My God
Chapter 4
lovey image by hayleyjade @ TDA
Elena had never particularly hated school, but she had been quite glad when it was over all the same. Even though she’d enjoyed learning and the sense of achievement that came with it, one could only be in school for so long. Elena had been happy to think that she’d never again have to go deal with the ridicule, the testing and the general pressure to perform well. Now, it felt like all of the most-hated aspects of school were back, threefold.
Corinne was the most merciless instructor Elena had ever had. Starting at dawn, she had put Elena through various magical tests that were more rigorous than even the final examinations to become a Healer had been, without so much as an explanation as to why she was doing so. Elena figured, after the third test, and much complaining, that it was some sort of field examination, to make sure she was talented enough to help the two Aurors.
Despite the difficulty of the tasks, Elena hadn’t done too poorly. She had excelled at the potions exam, though that had always been her particular strong point. However, she had barely passed the transfiguration test, a skill she’d used rarely since graduating from Hogwarts.
Some of the tasks were simple, merely requiring her to charm a teacup into dancing, but others had been much more challenging. Elena had cast a Patronus charm a handful of times before, but it had been particularly taxing this time. It had taken a lot of effort for her to think up a happy enough memory after being surrounded by such darkness. Only when she recalled her last afternoon with Ollie did she manage to make the silver raven shoot out of her wand. Corinne had paused then, for the first time since she’d roughly woken Elena up at six, regarding the circling bird with interest.
“You were in Ravenclaw?” she guessed, gesturing to the bird, which had settled on Elena’s shoulder.
Elena shook her head, vanishing the bird, glad for a break from the gruelling test.
“Actually no, Gryffindor.”
Corinne grinned, exposing teeth that were slightly misaligned. “So I can assume that you have some sort of bravery in you? You’re not going to cower on the floor at the first sight of blood?”
“I’m a Healer,” Elena said dryly, appraising the other woman with a touch of disdain. “You can be sure that I won’t be cowering.”
That elicited a small laugh from the other woman.
“Right.” She nodded definitively. “I think that about wraps up our work here. Come on, you deserve a break.”
Elena pushed a sweaty lock of hair behind her ear, thankful that the testing was over. She wondered if this was similar to the training that Aurors went through, and was glad that she hadn’t chosen that career path. Honestly, Elena was impressed that she had not completely failed at any one of the tests. She hadn’t thought herself capable of some of the magic Corinne had asked her to perform.
"So,” Elena ventured after a moment, feeling glad that she would no longer be under so much scrutiny. “Is there any particular reason that you tested me on all this? Or was it just to prove my inadequacy?”
The last was a bit of a jibe, but it was not so inaccurate. Corinne had looked almost as surprised as Elena had been when she’d passed the transfiguration section, successfully conjuring an entire bedroom out of thin air.
Corinne shrugged as she headed over to the small kitchen counter.
“If you’re going to help us, you need to be competent in the field. You can’t go out hunting for dark wizards and have to be babysat at the same time.”
That made sense to Elena, though despite the testing, she wasn’t sure if she could handle hunting for dark wizards. Healers weren’t interchangeable with Aurors after all. Elena might be able to perform some of the magic without pressure, but if she was tired and stressed, she didn’t know if she would be able to.
“Water?” Corinne offered brusquely, breaking through Elena’s thoughts.
“Erm, yes,” Elena agreed, surprised at the kindness of the act.
Corinne didn’t seem like the type of woman to voluntarily offer drinks to someone, but maybe that had just been Elena’s first impression. Corinne did seem a bit more easygoing now, possibly because she was slowly becoming more confident that Elena could be a viable member of their team.
Elena heard water trickling into a glass and then a frosted tumbler was set in front of her.
“Here,” Corinne said, going to sit down opposite Elena with a glass of her own.
“Thanks,” Elena said with a genuine smile. If she was going to be working with Corinne, she figured they might as well get along. Especially since the other woman seemed to be reaching out now.
Elena took a sip of water, relishing the icy liquid that slid down her parched throat. “So did I pass?” she asked Corinne. “All the tests, did I do alright?” she said again, when Corinne was silent.
The dark haired woman pushed her glass aside, “I’m not sure yet,” she said darkly. “The testing isn’t over yet.”
Elena felt her forehead wrinkle. “What else could you possibly test me on?” she wanted to know. “I honestly don’t think that there’s a goddamn thing you haven’t tried to make fail.” Elena’s eye grew wide in horror at what she’d just said aloud, but the words had sprung unbidden from her mouth, anger that she hadn’t meant to express flowing out.
Corinne sat up, squaring her shoulders, losing her relaxed attitude and becoming all business in a manner of seconds.
“Have you ever performed Dark Magic before?” she asked evenly, staring intensely at Elena, as if she could tell if she was lying simply by staring hard enough.
“No,” Elena shook her head, feeling outraged that Corinne would even think that she had. Where had that question, and Corinne’s change in mannerisms come from? She opened her mouth to ask Corinne why but was stopped by a dangerous, steely glint in Corinne’s eyes that warned her not to talk.
“Have you ever performed any of the Unforgiveable Curses before?” Corinne said in the same sort of monotone voice.
“No. But, what’s going on?” Elena asked, still not comprehending.
Corinne pursed her lips. “Have you ever sworn loyalty to the man known as Lord Voldemort, or the ideals that he represents?”
Elena stood up quickly. “Tell me what’s going on!” she shouted, then covered her mouth, horrified at her angry tone.
“Answer the question,” the other woman said, in a deathly calm voice, not wavering her gaze.
“No,” Elena protested again, though Corinne seemed to take it for an answer.
“If asked, will you follow orders from me or Simon, without question?”
Elena wanted to say yes. She knew that was the answer that Corinne would expect and she knew that she wanted to pass whatever test this was. Her mouth, however, wouldn’t form the words. “I—” she began. “I mean that…I would not. No.”
A tiny smile played on Corinne’s lips at that answer. “Why not?”
“I don’t trust you,” Elena said without hesitation, pushing her water glass aside. “How could I trust anyone who spiked my water with Veritaserum?”
She felt righteous anger pulsating through her veins at this realization. Corinne had tricked her into taking the truth serum. That in it of itself was a few years in Azkaban. If she had asked Elena to complete such a test, Elena would have obliged, if there had been a reason, but the trickery put a sour spin on it all.
Corinne nodded and reached for a tiny glass bottle inside of her robes. “This is the antidote, Elena,” she said. “I’ll give it to you if you answer one more question.”
“Fine,” Elena spat, seething. As if she had a choice in the matter!
“Would you ever tell anyone about the death of the Minister?”
That was a hard question to answer. Even under the influence of the truth potion, Elena didn’t know what to say. “I’m not sure,” she managed at last. “I wouldn’t go around telling just any wizard on the street, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
That answer seemed to appease Corinne, because she slid the greenish bottle across the table. Elena snatched up the vial, undoing the stopper and draining it in a gulp. “Bitch,” she muttered at Corinne, after a second.
Corinne shrugged at the epithet. “I’ve been called worse,” she said airily, standing up and draining the rest of her own water. “If that’s what you think, that’s alright by me. I’d rather be a bitch and alive, than an angel and dead.”
Elena didn’t have a comeback to that, so instead she asked, “Did I pass?” If she had to go through all that, at least she should receive some sort of compliment.
“Well enough,” Corinne said. “I’ve got to talk to Simon though, to work out a few things.”
“Just to clarify,” Elena said. “You’re not going to kick me out and erase my memory, is that correct?” Not that Corinne would tell her even if she was going to.
The foreign woman raised a hand. “Mon Dieu,” she said. “Don’t worry so much. You’re not going anywhere.”
Elena fell silent for a moment, staring at Corinne. The woman was a lot more deadly than she looked—that she was sure of— for Corinne hardly appeared to be the tough Auror that she was. With her curly bob, tall frame and full lips, she looked more like a Muggle model than a trained fighter.
“When is Simon coming back?” Elena asked, not eager to be alone with the French woman for much longer. If she had to spend much more time alone with her, she figured she might go mental.
Corinne sighed. “Stop being so impatient! Simon will be back by four-o’clock.”
Elena frowned, retreating to her tiny room without another word. It was going to be a long four hours.
Even though Elena had been with the Aurors for less than two days, it had felt more like two weeks. She knew that time couldn’t slow down but it certainly felt like it had. Each hour with Corinne was pure torture, partially because neither of them could stand being cooped up. Elena missed her freedom and she was sure that Corinne hated babysitting as much as Elena despised having to be minded.
Elena apparated as precisely as possible, landing on the welcome mat in front of the door to her flat. She muttered a spell to open the door and for the first time since the war had ended, she entered her flat with her wand raised, looking from side to side to make sure no one was waiting. If her experiences in the past days had taught her anything, they’d shown her that the world was not nearly as safe, or as secure as it was made out to be. She honestly wondered what might be waiting for her inside.
However, only dust lay waiting and that was harmless enough. It was barely disturbed as Elena walked purposefully through her flat to the fireplace. She knelt down on the bricks, but before starting a fire, she paused a minute to think.
Elena still hadn’t gotten over seeing Simon change from Marcus Gordon to himself. Nor had she acclimated to Corinne’s attitude. Her only comfort was that Corinne seemed to be just as mouthy with Simon, perhaps even more so. Yet despite Corinne’s sharp tongue, it was obvious to Elena why the pair had been designed to guard the Minister. They were efficient and worked better as a unit than as two separate people. They were constantly finishing each other’s sentences and had a way of communicating wordlessly.
Not that that really surprised Elena, if they hadn’t been some of the best Aurors, they wouldn’t have been charged with guarding the Minister. She knew that his death hadn’t been because of their lack of talent. From Simon’s elaboration of the story Corinne had told her, she knew that once the Minister entered his house, his own personal guards were responsible for his care. They had, however, been inexplicably missing during the attack, a fact that both Corinne and Simon couldn’t seem to stomach. The only reason that the guards hadn’t been hunted down and slaughtered yet was because, according to Corinne, she and Simon were too busy babysitting and making sure the country didn’t fall to ruin respectively.
That was one of the reasons Elena had been allowed to go home. She was to tell her family and her work that she would be unavailable for the next month, to collect her possessions, and to come back to the warehouse. Once Simon and Corinne were sure Elena wouldn’t be reported missing, they could all start investigating what had happened, starting with the guards and working their way from there.
The other reason Elena had been allowed out was because she’d signed a magically binding contract—a pact just below an unbreakable vow—promising not to tell anyone of what happened Christmas Eve during her visits. That had been on Corinne’s insistence, of course, but Elena had had no reason to refuse.
Elena shook her head to clear it and conjured a fire in the fireplace with a flick of her wand. She lifted her hand up to the mantle hesitantly, instinctively knowing that everything was about to change. Her hand lifted the little box of Floo powder up and she turned it over and over in her hands, cradling it to her body. It had never felt so heavy. She knew what she had to do, she just wasn’t sure that she could do it now that she was sitting here. Elena knew firsthand how hard it was to have a sibling leave, without any word for months. She wasn’t sure if her parents could take having both of their children away. The realization of what she was about to do left a sinking feeling in her stomach.
She had no choice in the matter, or so she told herself. In life there was always a choice, but Elena feared she made her choice without thinking the moment Marcus Gordon had been carried into her room at St. Mungo’s.
Now that she knew what was at stake, she knew that she couldn’t turn back now. So she opened the tiny box and took a pinch of the emerald green power, throwing it into the fire.
“Green Door Cottage, Vienna,” she said clearly, sticking her head into the flames.
For a second, Elena’s vision blurred and she felt disoriented as her head soared through the Floo network. Tears, not just from flooing, sprung to her eyes as air rushed by. The spinning stopped quickly and as her vision clears, she saw a plush rug, several chairs and a pair of slippers in her line of sight.
“Hello?” Elena called out tentatively.
There was a gasp from the chair and Elizabeth Wood knelt down in front of the fire, her matronly face coming into view.
“Elena?” she asked, looking alarmed. “Darling, what are you doing here?”
Elena bit her lip and said, “Hi Mum. I don’t have much time to talk. Could you get Dad and Marianne?”
“Are you pregnant?” Elizabeth raised her grey eyebrows in a questioning manner.
“Mum!” Elena cried, feeling a blush rise on her cheeks. “Of course not! Why would you even ask me that?”
Here she was trying to have a serious conversation with her parents and already her mum was wondering if she was knocked up.
Elizabeth shrugged. “Just a Mother hoping, I suppose,” she said. “But really, Elena, what is this about darling? Are you all right? I know we didn’t talk to you on Christmas but we knew you were working, so we just Owled instead."
Elena gritted her teeth. Of all the times for her mother to become so motherly, she had to pick now. “Mum,” she said softly. “Mum, please get Dad and Marianne now.”
“Alright,” the older woman agreed a resigned sigh and stood. “I’ll be back.”
However, instead of going anywhere, Mrs. Wood simply yelled, “Marianne! Thom! Come here!” Elena made out some muted responses and in a minute, her family minus little Ollie were gathered round the fire, their faces crowded together so that they could all see her.
“What’s wrong?” her father had asked and Marianne had echoed the sentiment.
“Listen,” Elena began, suddenly not sure how to break the news to them. “I need you all to do something for me. Please, please stay in Vienna. Or if you can’t stand it there, go somewhere else, but don’t go back to Britain.”
“Why?” Thomas Wood asked his daughter.
“It’s not safe,” she said quickly. “I mean it, it’s not safe, for everyone. Things at home are, well, they’re not as stable as they seem. I can’t say anymore,” she pressed on before they could interrupt with questions. “But please, for my sake, stay abroad.”
Marianne spoke up next. “Does this have to do with Oliver?” she said. “Have you heard anything from him?” Her voice trembled a little at the mention of her husband.
“No,” Elena said. “I’m sorry, Marianne,” she added softly, wishing that she did have news. It took Elena a moment to steel her resolve, but once she had, she knew she could say what she had to say. Elena made sure that she made eye contact with her parents.
“Do you understand me?” she asked seriously. “Can you promise me that you’ll stay here?”
Elizabeth looked at her husband. “Are you sure this is necessary, darling? You know that we have lives as well. Work and all. Will it really be that dangerous?”
Elena wished she could tell them everything at that moment. It would make things so much easier, to explain that with the Minister dead, things could fall apart at any minute. But she couldn’t so she merely nodded her head. “Yes. Promise me.” The final words were as fierce as she could make them.
“Alright,” Thom said at last with a nod. “We’ll stay.” Marianne looked at her father-in-law with astonishment, and turned back to Elena. She looked incredulous, as if she didn’t believe it all, as if she was questioning Elena’s sanity.
“Thank you,” Elena said, relief flooding her at her father's consent. “Listen, I have to go now. Just know that you won’t be able to talk to me for a while.”
At those words, there were cries of protest from all three.
“You can’t,” Elizabeth’s voice was the loudest. “Darling, I can’t have another child gone.”
Elena had known this bit was coming and it wasn’t any easier than she’d though it would be to whisper “goodbye,” and then to pull her head out of the fire. She knew that if she listened to their arguments, she would be too tempted to change her mind.
The fire wiped the tears from her cheeks, but when Elena finally sat up, back in her flat, her throat still burned.
“Get together, Elena,” she told herself softly. They would be all right. They’d be safe, they’d be out of the country. That was all that mattered.
Quickly, Elena went through her flat, gathering the few things she owned that she wanted to take with her. There were a few sets of robes that she needed and most of her Muggle clothing. She had a small collection of books, though most of them were literature, rather than anything that would be useful.
She had a necklace from her brother, a small crystal stone on a gold chain. That she fastened around her neck. She’d told herself that she’d bring no jewellery, but she’d forgotten about that particular gift and couldn’t make herself leave it behind.
From her bedside table, she took several photos, one of Marianne, Ollie and Oliver, all smiling and looking quite happy. There was another of her, with some of her school friends, ones she hadn’t spoken to in a while but that she still remembered fondly. Lastly, Elena took a photo of her parents, standing outside of their home.
She packed all of her possessions into a small purse sized bag that she’d gotten as a present from her mother last Christmas. It was charmed to hold much more than it appeared to, which was helpful considering how much she had to pack.
With one final look around the flat, she walked out the door.
Quentin Yarborough sat behind his desk, hands tapping idly on the wood as he surveyed Elena. “Let me make sure that we’re clear, Wood,” he said in a reedy voice. “You want a month off from work?”
Elena nodded. “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
Quentin ruffled through some papers. “Well, from what I can see, you haven’t taken any personal days in a couple years. While I wouldn’t recommend it, I can’t deny this request.”
“Thank you sir,” Elena said softly, glad that he wasn’t giving her any trouble. She’d known that he might not go along with it, but hadn’t wanted to quit. Thankfully, it hadn’t come to that.
The man stood up. “If I can ask a question, Elena. Is there something wrong? Your family perhaps? A month is a long time. “
Elena shook her head. “Just some personal things that I need to take care of.”
“Alright,” Quentin said, albeit reluctantly. “Then that seems to be all that we need to talk about. I will see you in a month,” he stood. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting I need to get to.”
“Sir,” Elena said, politely, standing as well and following Quentin out of his office. “I really do appreciate this.”
Quentin nodded gruffly, his short stature forcing him to look up at Elena. “You’re a good healer, Wood. St. Mungo’s would hate to see you go.”
Elena managed a half smile. She wanted to reassure him that she wasn't quitting, but she wasn’t sure she could promise it. She had no idea if the truth would be revealed in a month or if it would be, and the world would have fallen into such confusion that it would no longer matter.
Quentin took the smile as an affirmation and gave a hasty goodbye. Elena was left standing alone, feeling rather out of place in the familiar halls. Healers pushed past her, in green robes, some in white, other wizards and witches wearing black. All seemed purposeful and hurried, moving rapidly to their myriad destinations.
Elena felt like the rock in the middle of the river. Water pushed around her as if she wasn’t there. Though she had only been away from her work for a few days, she already felt out of the loop, alienated by the secrets she had been entrusted with.
She started feeling like she drowning in the sea of people. She had no more business at St. Mungo’s and no reason to stay, but Elena was reluctant to return to Corinne’s incessant testing and Simon’s cryptic mannerisms, for she knew that that was about to become her reality.
But before she could drown in her thoughts, a familiar voice saved her from the flood. “Elena!” Ruby Edwards grabbed her arm, pulling her to the side of the corridor. “It’s so nice to see you! How are you doing? I haven’t seen you.”
Elena shrugged, “Alright,” she said, not able to conjure up enough energy to sound enthusiastic. “Look, I’m taking your advice, Ruby.”
The older woman looked blankly at Elena. “What advice, dear?”
“I’m taking some time off,” Elena explained.
A smile lit up Ruby’s kindly face. “That’s wonderful!” she cried. “Are you going on a holiday?”
“Er, no,” Elena said quickly. “Just some time off, that’s all. I hope you can all manage without me,” she added as way of a joke though it fell flat to her own ears.
Ruby nodded. “Well, I hope you take time to relax. Merlin knows you need some time without work. We all do.” She shook her head in quite a motherly manner, practically clucking.
Elena knew she wasn’t going to get much rest, but still thanked Ruby. In truth, she appreciated the woman’s continuous kindness. Ruby resembled a less harried and world-weary version of her own mother. Thinking of the painful conversation with her family this morning, Elena was tempted to give Ruby a hug, but restrained herself. “Well,” she abruptly said. “I’ll see you in a month, Ruby. Tell everyone where I’ve gone.”
“You’re not saying goodbye?” Ruby looked rather shocked. “Is there really such a hurry to get gone?”
“I’m not quitting,” Elena said, again trying to make light of the situation. “I’m just taking a little vacation. Besides, the only other person who will really care is Roger.” She thought that the Junior Healer might get a bit lost without any guidance, but knew that he would manage somehow.
“I suppose you’re right,” the healer said. Her eyes flitted to the large clock at the end of the hallway and she gasped. “I really must be going. Sorry, Elena, but I have to check on a patient. Best of luck dear!”
“Thanks Ruby,” Elena said with a genuine smile as the older woman ran off down the hall with surprising agility.
Bolstered by the positive interaction, Elena headed to the lift and made her way down to the atrium. Her Healer’s robes let her pass quickly through the throngs of people to the designated apparation spot.
She took a moment to survey the scene below her: the injured, the families, the healers. They were all individuals, but with so many in one spot, they became a conglomerate mass, a faceless throng. Elena saw no one she knew, recognized no one. Again, a sense of loneliness flooded over her. She’d just cut ties to all her previous obligations in life. And for what? If she hadn’t seen Marcus Gordon die with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed it. Even now, she had some doubts about the story that Corinne and later Simon had related.
But there was no turning back now. Elena thrust her worries aside as best she could and fixing an image of the warehouse clearly in her head, turned into the void of apparation.
However, only dust lay waiting and that was harmless enough. It was barely disturbed as Elena walked purposefully through her flat to the fireplace. She knelt down on the bricks, but before starting a fire, she paused a minute to think.
Elena still hadn’t gotten over seeing Simon change from Marcus Gordon to himself. Nor had she acclimated to Corinne’s attitude. Her only comfort was that Corinne seemed to be just as mouthy with Simon, perhaps even more so. Yet despite Corinne’s sharp tongue, it was obvious to Elena why the pair had been designed to guard the Minister. They were efficient and worked better as a unit than as two separate people. They were constantly finishing each other’s sentences and had a way of communicating wordlessly.
Not that that really surprised Elena, if they hadn’t been some of the best Aurors, they wouldn’t have been charged with guarding the Minister. She knew that his death hadn’t been because of their lack of talent. From Simon’s elaboration of the story Corinne had told her, she knew that once the Minister entered his house, his own personal guards were responsible for his care. They had, however, been inexplicably missing during the attack, a fact that both Corinne and Simon couldn’t seem to stomach. The only reason that the guards hadn’t been hunted down and slaughtered yet was because, according to Corinne, she and Simon were too busy babysitting and making sure the country didn’t fall to ruin respectively.
That was one of the reasons Elena had been allowed to go home. She was to tell her family and her work that she would be unavailable for the next month, to collect her possessions, and to come back to the warehouse. Once Simon and Corinne were sure Elena wouldn’t be reported missing, they could all start investigating what had happened, starting with the guards and working their way from there.
The other reason Elena had been allowed out was because she’d signed a magically binding contract—a pact just below an unbreakable vow—promising not to tell anyone of what happened Christmas Eve during her visits. That had been on Corinne’s insistence, of course, but Elena had had no reason to refuse.
Elena shook her head to clear it and conjured a fire in the fireplace with a flick of her wand. She lifted her hand up to the mantle hesitantly, instinctively knowing that everything was about to change. Her hand lifted the little box of Floo powder up and she turned it over and over in her hands, cradling it to her body. It had never felt so heavy. She knew what she had to do, she just wasn’t sure that she could do it now that she was sitting here. Elena knew firsthand how hard it was to have a sibling leave, without any word for months. She wasn’t sure if her parents could take having both of their children away. The realization of what she was about to do left a sinking feeling in her stomach.
She had no choice in the matter, or so she told herself. In life there was always a choice, but Elena feared she made her choice without thinking the moment Marcus Gordon had been carried into her room at St. Mungo’s.
Now that she knew what was at stake, she knew that she couldn’t turn back now. So she opened the tiny box and took a pinch of the emerald green power, throwing it into the fire.
“Green Door Cottage, Vienna,” she said clearly, sticking her head into the flames.
For a second, Elena’s vision blurred and she felt disoriented as her head soared through the Floo network. Tears, not just from flooing, sprung to her eyes as air rushed by. The spinning stopped quickly and as her vision clears, she saw a plush rug, several chairs and a pair of slippers in her line of sight.
“Hello?” Elena called out tentatively.
There was a gasp from the chair and Elizabeth Wood knelt down in front of the fire, her matronly face coming into view.
“Elena?” she asked, looking alarmed. “Darling, what are you doing here?”
Elena bit her lip and said, “Hi Mum. I don’t have much time to talk. Could you get Dad and Marianne?”
“Are you pregnant?” Elizabeth raised her grey eyebrows in a questioning manner.
“Mum!” Elena cried, feeling a blush rise on her cheeks. “Of course not! Why would you even ask me that?”
Here she was trying to have a serious conversation with her parents and already her mum was wondering if she was knocked up.
Elizabeth shrugged. “Just a Mother hoping, I suppose,” she said. “But really, Elena, what is this about darling? Are you all right? I know we didn’t talk to you on Christmas but we knew you were working, so we just Owled instead."
Elena gritted her teeth. Of all the times for her mother to become so motherly, she had to pick now. “Mum,” she said softly. “Mum, please get Dad and Marianne now.”
“Alright,” the older woman agreed a resigned sigh and stood. “I’ll be back.”
However, instead of going anywhere, Mrs. Wood simply yelled, “Marianne! Thom! Come here!” Elena made out some muted responses and in a minute, her family minus little Ollie were gathered round the fire, their faces crowded together so that they could all see her.
“What’s wrong?” her father had asked and Marianne had echoed the sentiment.
“Listen,” Elena began, suddenly not sure how to break the news to them. “I need you all to do something for me. Please, please stay in Vienna. Or if you can’t stand it there, go somewhere else, but don’t go back to Britain.”
“Why?” Thomas Wood asked his daughter.
“It’s not safe,” she said quickly. “I mean it, it’s not safe, for everyone. Things at home are, well, they’re not as stable as they seem. I can’t say anymore,” she pressed on before they could interrupt with questions. “But please, for my sake, stay abroad.”
Marianne spoke up next. “Does this have to do with Oliver?” she said. “Have you heard anything from him?” Her voice trembled a little at the mention of her husband.
“No,” Elena said. “I’m sorry, Marianne,” she added softly, wishing that she did have news. It took Elena a moment to steel her resolve, but once she had, she knew she could say what she had to say. Elena made sure that she made eye contact with her parents.
“Do you understand me?” she asked seriously. “Can you promise me that you’ll stay here?”
Elizabeth looked at her husband. “Are you sure this is necessary, darling? You know that we have lives as well. Work and all. Will it really be that dangerous?”
Elena wished she could tell them everything at that moment. It would make things so much easier, to explain that with the Minister dead, things could fall apart at any minute. But she couldn’t so she merely nodded her head. “Yes. Promise me.” The final words were as fierce as she could make them.
“Alright,” Thom said at last with a nod. “We’ll stay.” Marianne looked at her father-in-law with astonishment, and turned back to Elena. She looked incredulous, as if she didn’t believe it all, as if she was questioning Elena’s sanity.
“Thank you,” Elena said, relief flooding her at her father's consent. “Listen, I have to go now. Just know that you won’t be able to talk to me for a while.”
At those words, there were cries of protest from all three.
“You can’t,” Elizabeth’s voice was the loudest. “Darling, I can’t have another child gone.”
Elena had known this bit was coming and it wasn’t any easier than she’d though it would be to whisper “goodbye,” and then to pull her head out of the fire. She knew that if she listened to their arguments, she would be too tempted to change her mind.
The fire wiped the tears from her cheeks, but when Elena finally sat up, back in her flat, her throat still burned.
“Get together, Elena,” she told herself softly. They would be all right. They’d be safe, they’d be out of the country. That was all that mattered.
Quickly, Elena went through her flat, gathering the few things she owned that she wanted to take with her. There were a few sets of robes that she needed and most of her Muggle clothing. She had a small collection of books, though most of them were literature, rather than anything that would be useful.
She had a necklace from her brother, a small crystal stone on a gold chain. That she fastened around her neck. She’d told herself that she’d bring no jewellery, but she’d forgotten about that particular gift and couldn’t make herself leave it behind.
From her bedside table, she took several photos, one of Marianne, Ollie and Oliver, all smiling and looking quite happy. There was another of her, with some of her school friends, ones she hadn’t spoken to in a while but that she still remembered fondly. Lastly, Elena took a photo of her parents, standing outside of their home.
She packed all of her possessions into a small purse sized bag that she’d gotten as a present from her mother last Christmas. It was charmed to hold much more than it appeared to, which was helpful considering how much she had to pack.
With one final look around the flat, she walked out the door.
Quentin Yarborough sat behind his desk, hands tapping idly on the wood as he surveyed Elena. “Let me make sure that we’re clear, Wood,” he said in a reedy voice. “You want a month off from work?”
Elena nodded. “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
Quentin ruffled through some papers. “Well, from what I can see, you haven’t taken any personal days in a couple years. While I wouldn’t recommend it, I can’t deny this request.”
“Thank you sir,” Elena said softly, glad that he wasn’t giving her any trouble. She’d known that he might not go along with it, but hadn’t wanted to quit. Thankfully, it hadn’t come to that.
The man stood up. “If I can ask a question, Elena. Is there something wrong? Your family perhaps? A month is a long time. “
Elena shook her head. “Just some personal things that I need to take care of.”
“Alright,” Quentin said, albeit reluctantly. “Then that seems to be all that we need to talk about. I will see you in a month,” he stood. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting I need to get to.”
“Sir,” Elena said, politely, standing as well and following Quentin out of his office. “I really do appreciate this.”
Quentin nodded gruffly, his short stature forcing him to look up at Elena. “You’re a good healer, Wood. St. Mungo’s would hate to see you go.”
Elena managed a half smile. She wanted to reassure him that she wasn't quitting, but she wasn’t sure she could promise it. She had no idea if the truth would be revealed in a month or if it would be, and the world would have fallen into such confusion that it would no longer matter.
Quentin took the smile as an affirmation and gave a hasty goodbye. Elena was left standing alone, feeling rather out of place in the familiar halls. Healers pushed past her, in green robes, some in white, other wizards and witches wearing black. All seemed purposeful and hurried, moving rapidly to their myriad destinations.
Elena felt like the rock in the middle of the river. Water pushed around her as if she wasn’t there. Though she had only been away from her work for a few days, she already felt out of the loop, alienated by the secrets she had been entrusted with.
She started feeling like she drowning in the sea of people. She had no more business at St. Mungo’s and no reason to stay, but Elena was reluctant to return to Corinne’s incessant testing and Simon’s cryptic mannerisms, for she knew that that was about to become her reality.
But before she could drown in her thoughts, a familiar voice saved her from the flood. “Elena!” Ruby Edwards grabbed her arm, pulling her to the side of the corridor. “It’s so nice to see you! How are you doing? I haven’t seen you.”
Elena shrugged, “Alright,” she said, not able to conjure up enough energy to sound enthusiastic. “Look, I’m taking your advice, Ruby.”
The older woman looked blankly at Elena. “What advice, dear?”
“I’m taking some time off,” Elena explained.
A smile lit up Ruby’s kindly face. “That’s wonderful!” she cried. “Are you going on a holiday?”
“Er, no,” Elena said quickly. “Just some time off, that’s all. I hope you can all manage without me,” she added as way of a joke though it fell flat to her own ears.
Ruby nodded. “Well, I hope you take time to relax. Merlin knows you need some time without work. We all do.” She shook her head in quite a motherly manner, practically clucking.
Elena knew she wasn’t going to get much rest, but still thanked Ruby. In truth, she appreciated the woman’s continuous kindness. Ruby resembled a less harried and world-weary version of her own mother. Thinking of the painful conversation with her family this morning, Elena was tempted to give Ruby a hug, but restrained herself. “Well,” she abruptly said. “I’ll see you in a month, Ruby. Tell everyone where I’ve gone.”
“You’re not saying goodbye?” Ruby looked rather shocked. “Is there really such a hurry to get gone?”
“I’m not quitting,” Elena said, again trying to make light of the situation. “I’m just taking a little vacation. Besides, the only other person who will really care is Roger.” She thought that the Junior Healer might get a bit lost without any guidance, but knew that he would manage somehow.
“I suppose you’re right,” the healer said. Her eyes flitted to the large clock at the end of the hallway and she gasped. “I really must be going. Sorry, Elena, but I have to check on a patient. Best of luck dear!”
“Thanks Ruby,” Elena said with a genuine smile as the older woman ran off down the hall with surprising agility.
Bolstered by the positive interaction, Elena headed to the lift and made her way down to the atrium. Her Healer’s robes let her pass quickly through the throngs of people to the designated apparation spot.
She took a moment to survey the scene below her: the injured, the families, the healers. They were all individuals, but with so many in one spot, they became a conglomerate mass, a faceless throng. Elena saw no one she knew, recognized no one. Again, a sense of loneliness flooded over her. She’d just cut ties to all her previous obligations in life. And for what? If she hadn’t seen Marcus Gordon die with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed it. Even now, she had some doubts about the story that Corinne and later Simon had related.
But there was no turning back now. Elena thrust her worries aside as best she could and fixing an image of the warehouse clearly in her head, turned into the void of apparation.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my original characters.
image by blackhorse @ TDA
Chapter 5
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to send Corinne?” Elena whispered to Simon, glancing up at him to gauge his response. She didn’t want to offend the man, though she was curious as to his answer.
Simon’s face contracted into an expression of confusion.
“You’re going to have to talk louder,” he told Elena.
Elena felt a blush creep up her neck, settling on her cheeks. “I was just wondering,” she began in a raised voice, then lowered it to an undertone. “Well, can Corinne handle...?” Elena’s voice trailed off as she realized how idiotic the question sounded. Who was she to question Corinne’s capabilities?
He raised an eyebrow, not quite mocking her, but still laughing. “I think your view on Corinne is a bit one sided,” he said. “She can be quite restrained if the situation arises.”
Elena shrugged, trying to hide her embarrassment. Simon was right, of course. If Corinne’s temper was really so explosive, she would never have made it through Auror training and she certainly would never have been the Minister’s guard.
She was about to explain her reasoning when a sharp secession of beeps rang throughout the warehouse, the sound bouncing off of the metallic walls and amplifying the volume. While Elena barely resisted the urge to cover her ears, Simon seemed unbothered and glanced at his watch.
“That would be the time,” he said after the alarm’s strident sound had faded. He leaned down to pick up a rusty bucket that had previously been resting on the floor at their feet. “Grab hold,” he directed Elena, offering it to her like it was a delicate jewel.
She did, gingerly holding the handle, afraid it might crumble under her grasp.
“Corinne!” Simon shouted, turning his head towards the small living quarters. “It’s time!”
A minute later, Corinne came running from the direction of her room, a bag slung over her shoulder.
“Sorry,” she apologized as she grabbed hold of the bucket, stepping between Simon and Elena.
Neither Elena nor Simon had time to reply, for at that moment, the Portkey flared to life. Dazzling blue light emulated from the bucket, flooding the dim room with blinding brilliancy. As the intensity of the magical light grew, the Portkey began to rise, lifting Elena up from behind her navel and spinning her towards her destination.
Though the travel only lasted for a split second, it gave Elena enough time to remember how much she hated Portkeys. In fact, Elena was not fond of any sort of magical travel. In general, such travel made her dizzy and disoriented. Portkeys were the worst though, because they required landing. Elena, without fail, could not remain standing.
This time was no exception, for when the bucket deposited its passengers, Elena crumpled to the ground, her hands colliding with rough stone and barely stopping her head from meeting the same fate. It took a moment for the world to stop spinning and the nausea to fade. Once things had become slightly steadier, Elena looked up to see an offered hand. She took it, letting Simon pull her to her feet.
“Come on,” he said, ushering her up the steps to where Corinne was impatiently waiting in front of an ornate oak door.
As soon as they were all up the steps, Corinne lifted a knocker once, letting it fall onto the wood. It made a sonorous, gong-like tone that echoed both in and outside of the house, too loud to be natural. Almost simultaneously, the sky thundered ominously, the sound and boiling clouds foreshadowing a storm to come.
A moment later, the door was opened to reveal slightly round woman with shoulder length blonde hair and lively brown eyes. An expectant smile crossed her face as she took in the trio outside her door.
“Simon! Corinne!” she exclaimed with pleasure. “It’s wonderful to see you. Come in!”
A moment later, the woman’s eyes fell on Elena. “Who’s this?” she asked with a note of surprise. “A new recruit?”
“Elena,” Simon said with a curt nod, his tone uncharacteristically abrupt.
The blonde woman turned to address Elena.
“I’m Alice Longbottom,” she introduced herself. “But of course, you already knew that,” she added with a laugh. “These two wouldn’t neglect that.”
Her statement surprised Elena on two levels. First, that the woman would assume that she already knew her. Simon and Corinne certainly hadn’t told her just who they were going to visit only why. Secondly, Elena was confused about this woman. She knew that Alice Longbottom was an Auror, but this woman did not resemble a fighter. She was more motherly and soft than harsh and deadly. Her demeanour already seemed to be welcoming rather than untrusting.
“Come in,” Alice repeated, ushering the group inside. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” she laughed again, glancing back at Simon and Corinne. “And this really is a pleasure, since we’re practically under house arrest.”
Even with such a statement, Alice’s cheer was infectious, and Elena felt herself wanting to smile with this woman, who she had just met moments ago. For the first time in days, she felt a sort of lightness as some unseen weight lifted from her heart. It felt like so long since she’d seen someone be happy.
Simon waited until the door was shut before speaking.
“We need to talk to you and Frank,” he said quietly, though his tone was cutting and sinister, quickly bringing Elena back to the gravity of the present situation.
Alice frowned, the smile leaving her features for the first time.
“What happened?” she asked, then her face paled several shades. “Is it about Dad?”
Corinne gave a curt nod.
“Oh Merlin,” Alice whispered, her arms crossing as if to hold herself still. “Is he in danger?”
Neither Simon nor Corinne answered.
“Just get Frank,” Simon said.
Alice nodded, pressing her lips together and turned to run out of the room.
No one spoke until Alice reappeared, pulling her tall and dark haired husband behind her.
“Let’s go to the sitting room,” Alice said finally after a weighted silence that seemed to settle into the house itself.
They all moved to the large airy space in single file. Frank led with purposeful strides, his wife hovering behind. Elena was the last to pass through the door and to see the room. Though the house had a very gothic outward appearance, the inside was quite modern. High ceilings, light coloured walls and wooden floors made it quite a cheery room. The bright landscapes and photographs on the walls only made the home seem more spacious and welcoming. While the decor fit Alice’s personality, it now seemed too cheery.
Elena perched herself on a tan leather divan, trying not to stare at the room. Everything about it was tasteful, but still showed signs of considerable wealth. Simon and Corinne had told her that they were going tell the Minister’s daughter of his death, but they had failed to mention just who she was. Or how wealthy she was.
They had all been seated for several moments before Simon began to talk.
“We have some news,” he said at last.
The whole room seemed to suck in a gasp of air, in anticipation of the news. Elena leaned forward, awaiting the inevitable words. It seemed like ages and yet, Simon hadn’t spoken again. Maybe he had decided not to say anything. After meeting Alice, Elena wasn’t sure that anyone could purposely cause so much harm to the lively witch.
“Alice, your father is dead,” Simon’s voice finally spoke, though it was strangled and it choked on the words, as if they were too unpleasant to come from his mouth.
At that, the blonde woman covered her mouth in horror.
“What?” she whispered, stunned, before turning to bury her face in Frank’s chest.
“I’m sorry,” Corinne said softly and Elena was shocked to see that her eyes seemed to be glistening with tears.
“What happened?” Frank Longbottom asked, looking very tired as he held his sobbing wife.
Simon sighed, not in boredom, but rather exhaustion.
“It was three days ago. Corinne and I had just taken him home. He’d gone inside, and we were about to leave when he came staggering out, bleeding.” Alice made a distressed sound and Simon quickly summarized. “We took him to St. Mungo’s but nothing could be done to save him.”
Alice sat up, eyes blotchy. “Why am I only hearing now?” she asked with a sniffle. “He is—was the Minister, after all. Even here, I should have heard.”
Corinne took over from Simon who seemed unable to say any more. In fact, he looked more distressed than Elena had ever seen him—and he had witnessed Marcus Gordon’s death!
“No one else knows. Just me, Simon, Elena, you and Frank.”
Alice wiped at her eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said at last. “Why would no one else know? He has work…” her voice faded off, as if it had failed her.
Frank, however, wasn’t as confused, he nodded his head slowly, as if beginning to understand. “You hid it,” he said slowly.
But Corinne, even in her newly sensitive state couldn’t be bothered to wait for Frank to guess. “We have a contingency plan,” she said quickly. “To keep things stable until we can find the killer.”
If it was possible, Alice paled even more. “You don’t know who did it?” she asked in a trembling voice.
The other Aurors were saved from having to answer when a disharmonious alarm sounded. Frank, Alice, Corinne and Simon jumped to their feet, pulling out their wands and Elena followed, a beat behind them.
“Neville,” Alice said and turned to turn out of the room.
Simon moved to follow her, but Corinne was in front of him, stopping him. They seemed to have one of their silent conversations for a moment, allowing Elena to catch up with them. They ceased communicating, however, when Elena reached them and Simon roughly pushed Elena after Alice, hissing, “follow her and as soon as you can, apparate her back home.”
Elena didn’t respond but ran out of the room, trailing up the stairs after Alice. The blonde woman was faster than she looked and she was taking the stairs two at a time. From below, Elena heard a rapid pounding—knocking at the door.
Alice reached the top of the stairs entered a room several doors down. Elena slipped inside just as Alice was about to shut the door.
“Colluportus!” The blonde sealed the door, not even pausing to see if the charm stuck, instead running over to a corner where, in a cradle, a baby boy lay.
She scooped up the baby, holding him in her arms, tears running down her cheeks. Alice sank to her knees, crouching on the floor, her back to Elena.
Elena tugged at the door, was satisfied it wouldn’t open easily, then glanced at the baby and the woman. Alice was cradling her baby as if to shield him from some harm. Sobs were shaking her entire body. It was a picture of utter despair. With a twinge, Elena noticed that it looked as if Alice was mourning.
“Alice?” Elena asked as gently as she could.
The woman looked up, almost surprised that Elena was in the room.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, wiping her tears away again. “I overreacted, didn’t I?” Though it was obvious she was trying to put on a brave face, her voice still trembled.
Elena shook her head quickly. “No. Not at all.” The woman was surprisingly calm for just having heard of her father’s death.
Alice tried to smile at her child, though it was more of a grimace and rocked the baby gently in her arms.
Elena waited for her to give more of a response, but there was none.
“Give me your hand,” Elena said, trying to emulate Corinne’s easy authority.
However before Alice could comply, an explosion issued from below, knocking Elena to the floor. Dust filtered down from the ceiling, obscuring Elena’s vision. After a moment, once the shock of it all had faded, Elena crawled towards Alice, grabbing her arm. She stood, yanking the other woman up and tried to turn into the void of apparition. Only nothing happened. Elena focused her mind, trying to apparate again. Only this time it felt like a strip of elastic was holding her back.
Elena realized dizzily that you couldn’t apparate inside of the house. She coughed twice, the movement shaking Alice out of her stupor.
“You can’t apparate from here,” Alice confirmed, clutching the baby to her chest to protect him from the dust.
Elena cursed silently. “Then we need to go somewhere where we can.”
“Follow me,” Alice said, shifting the baby so that she could hold her wand in one hand. With the explosion, her Auror training seemed to have taken over and her hysteria had vanished.
She opened the door with a wave of her wand and turned right, running down the hall. There was a shout from below and heavy footsteps that were pounding up the stairs, getting closer. Alice stopped abruptly, turning to an empty wall. She muttered a quick incantation and the knob of a door grew from the plaster. She yanked open the door, pulling Elena inside and shutting it behind them.
There was little light, and the room was quite dusty. In the murky twilight, Elena saw Alice hold a finger to her lips. The footsteps slowed as they neared, until they were only a soft padding on the carpet covered floor. Elena held her breath, resisting the urge to close her eyes.
Beside her, she could feel Alice shaking. As the person grew nearer and Elena wished more than anything that she could apparate away from this whole mess. Little Neville gurgled and his mother quickly cast a speechless Silencing Charm on him.
Something touched the wall that was protecting them and Elena shrank away, drawing her wand in readiness. Before she could think farther, the door was flung open, revealing the sinister mask of a Death Eater. Elena wished that they’d kept running. At least, then, they would have had a chance to escape, but now they were trapped, easy targets. For the Death Eater it would be like killing an animal.
“Expelliarmus!” Elena cried instinctively but the man blocked the spell easily. Alice had Neville clutched tightly in her arms, angled so that he was behind both his mother and Elena.
The Death Eater raised his wand again. “Avada,” he began. “Kedavra.”
Elena threw herself to the side, waiting for the bolt of light to hit her, only it didn’t. Instead, the Death Eater had aimed his wand down the hall to another assailant.
In the next seconds, the man in front of them toppled forward, struck by some sort of stunner. Elena, without really thinking, grabbed Alice and yanked her out of the closet and down the hall again. She didn’t even stop to see who had saved them, merely kept running.
Alice took the lead after a moment and pulled Elena down another branch of the hallway. Another door was hastily opened and the pair stumbled down a flight of stairs. Elena could hear her heart pounding and her rapid breathing and the clattering of feet on wood. However with the din around her, she had no way of telling if they were still being followed. She didn’t wait to see if they were.
The stairs emptied out onto the grassy lawn, which was now hazy with acrid smoke. After choking on the clouded air, Elena seized Alice’s arm and focused all of her energy on picturing the warehouse. For a moment, she thought that she might splinch, for her mind was wandering hopelessly, but when she opened her eyes and collapsed onto the concrete floor of the warehouse, she seemed to be in one piece.
They had made it.
A moment later, after her breathing had slowed, she turned to see Alice also gasping for air.
“We have to go back,” the blonde said after a moment. “I can’t leave them there.”
Elena shook her head quickly. “No!” she cried. “You need to stay here, where it’s safe.”
Alice, it seemed, was too exhausted to argue. She nodded slowly and then proceeded to check Neville for any injuries. Once satisfied that he was unharmed she turned to face Elena.
“Is there any where I can lie down?”
In response to the request, Elena took two mattresses from the bedrooms and laid in the open part of the warehouse. Once Alice had fallen asleep, Elena closed her eyes as well drifting off into an unsettled sleep of her own.
It was hours later when Simon, Corinne and Frank apparated into the warehouse, bloody and exhausted, though seemingly unharmed. Elena thought about getting up to talk with them, but her head was pounding and she was quite comfortable lying on the mattress, so she didn’t bother.
Frank woke his wife gently, who promptly collapsed into his arms and the two of them, plus Neville left for St. Mungo’s as Frank was convinced that Alice needed something for the shock of it all.
Simon and Corinne wandered to the kitchen, but Elena could hear angry voices as they started to disagree.
“You should not have gone,” Corinne said sharply.
Simon replied in an aggressive tone, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Her,” Corinne snapped. “I saw you. All you had eyes for was her. You get distracted and then you get killed!”
“I’m not dead,” Simon said snappily.
Corinne scoffed, “close enough. Honestly Simon, it’s unacceptable.”
Elena wondered sleepily who they were talking about. It couldn’t be her. Simon didn’t like her. And he certainly didn’t like her enough to be distracted during a fight.
“Nothing’s happening,” Simon said belligerently.
“Right,” Corinne replied waspishly.
There was a crash and it sounded as if Simon had thrown something.
“Don’t you trust me, Dupont?” he shouted. “I’ve only worked with you for the past...”
“Shut up!” Corinne hissed. “Don’t try to be so self righteous, it’s not becoming Burke.”
Elena sat up and slowly walked to the kitchen. Though she didn’t want to be involved in their argument, whatever it was about, she figured that with all the shouting she couldn’t pretend to be sleeping anymore.
She stepped into the room just as Simon cursed loudly and another glass shattered across the room.
Corinne jabbed her wand furiously towards Simon.
“Control yourself!” she ordered.
“I-” Elena began, surveying the scene.
Both the Aurors turned to look at her. Without another word to either of them, Simon stormed from the room, pushing past Elena roughly. Elena stumbled backwards, and caught herself on the doorframe. Corinne slid past her more gracefully, joining Simon so that they all now stood in the open warehouse.
After an awkward silence, Corinne cleared her throat.
“Don’t mind him, Elena,” she said, her French accent seeming stronger.
“What happened?” Elena asked, this time not asking about the argument but rather what had happened at the Longbottom house.
Corinne didn’t seem to understand, for she simply waved a hand as if to ward off the question.
“Just forget about it.”
Simon muttered something that Elena couldn’t hear. However, from the look on Corinne’s face, it wasn’t good. With one more pointed glare at Simon, the French woman stormed off, spouting out a litany of curses. Elena took one look at Simon’s stormy expression and left to busy herself putting the mattresses back into their respective rooms.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the original characters.
Stunningly perfect image by nouvelle @ TDA
Aurors walk with conviction, Elena noted as Simon nodded in greeting at the sixth wizard they had passed since stepping off the lift at the Ministry of Magic. She was starting to be able to predict who Simon would greet next, simply by watching how they strode down the Ministry halls—as if they could face any foe.
As they approached the Auror department of the Ministry, more and more walked with the same noticeable assurance and Elena became increasingly nervous. Simon had assured her that there would be no problems with her coming along, but Elena wasn’t comforted.
“Almost there,” Simon muttered after another moment and took a sharp turn left, opening a door with a flick of his wand and shutting it manually behind them.
Elena glanced about, noting that they were inside what looked to be a small study. Bookshelves lined the walls, and there were several cabinets for filing papers in one corner. A large desk filled much of the room and several plush chairs were nestled in the remaining space. The lighting was warm and soft, giving the room a vintage sort of feel.
“This is your office?” Elena asked incredulously, surprised how refined the room was. For a Ministry office, it was opulent.
Simon shrugged.
“Yes, though I hardly use it. I prefer to work in the field,” he said with a laugh.
Elena nodded vaguely and ambled over to sit in one of the plush chairs. It was incredibly comfortable and she felt an urge to pull up her legs and read a good book. However, when she saw Simon pulling out a quill and some ink from the desk, she jumped to her feet, feeling more eager now that she was away from the other Aurors’ questioning gazes.
“What can I do?” she offered, staring up at Simon expectantly.
He ran a hand through his hair, thinking.
“Just a minute,” he told her as he pulled out a scrap of paper from his pocket. “402A-78,” Simon read aloud. “Can you remember that?”
“402A-78,” Elena repeated back to him. “What’s it for though?” she asked, furrowing her brow in confusion.
“Form number,” Simon said, moving to the file cabinets and rifling through several drawers before pulling out several sheets of blank parchment. “Here we go,” he mused, setting them down onto the desk.
Elena moved behind him to watch as he tapped the parchment several times with his wand, muttering incantations.
“What was the number again?” he asked.
Quickly, Elena spouted out the code, causing Simon to glance up at her with a bemused expression.
“You’re going to have to say that slower,” he said with a half grin.
“Sorry,” Elena apologized, feeling a blush spread across her cheeks. “Four-zero-two-A-seven-eight,” she recited slowly, making sure to enunciate each number.
That time, as she said each number, Simon repeated it, tapping the paper again. Slowly, the numbers appeared in black ink, running across the top of the forms. One more quick spell created a cascade of words that flowed from Simon’s wand, scurrying to place themselves in the correct order.
Once the process was finished, there was a three page form lying on the desk, though the information had yet to be filled in.
“Bloody amazing, magic is,” Simon said with a shake of his head.
Though she agreed with him, Elena thought it was odd that he had decided to express this point of view. Simon had the look of a pureblood, but that sort of phrase was normally only heard from the mouths of muggleborns, or academics.
“Right,” Simon continued, picking up the quill. “So ‘Request to Requisition Additional Personnel and Equipment,’” he read. “What are we requesting? Personnel, that’s you, Elena. And some supplies as well.” He dipped the quill into the ink and it flew of its own accord across the parchment, filling in the information as he said it.
“Reason for requesting?” Simon read again for Elena’s benefit. He cracked a smile. “So that we can investigate the death of the Minister for Magic, who we have yet to inform you is actually dead.” The quill continued to scribble obediently along.
“Are you really going to write that?” Elena asked, as Simon seemed to be unaware that the quill was still scribing.
Simon glanced down at the parchment.
“Damn!” he muttered and erased the ink with a wordless spell. “This stupid quill.” He glared down at the offending feather. “It always takes me so literally. Never understands that I like to have a go at the bureaucracy sometimes.”
Elena smirked at that. “Good thing I caught it then. Because the bureaucracy might have had some problems with what you just said.”
“More than a few, I’d wager,” Simon countered, before continuing to read off of the form. “Requested Personnel? One—primarily healer,” he winked at Elena at the last bit. “Duration of request? Undetermined.” Simon rattled on about what supplies would be needed and for how long, finally, twenty minutes later, coming to a finished and putting the quill away. “That’s about it then,” he told Elena. “Come on,” he indicated a moment later, after having cleaned up the work place. “Now all that’s left to do is to expedite the process a little.” Again he gave a sly smile. As he had explained back in the warehouse, all he had to do was provide the proper forms signed by the ‘Minister’ and their request would be validated in the hour.
Simon clipped the ‘Minister’s Order’ to the front of the other papers and sent the whole packet flying with a swish of his wand.
“Come on,” Simon repeated, walking out of his office. “Let’s get a bite to eat.”
Elena nodded mutely, feeling the scrutiny of the other Aurors once more as she stepped into the corridor. While Simon’s kindness was making her feel less out of place, she couldn’t help but to be self conscious. Some of the looks she was getting made her feel a bit like she was being interrogated and she wondered with a shudder if any of the passersby were practiced in Legilimancy.
Simon and Elena headed to the lift, crowding inside with several others. The gilded grate slid shut in front of them and they rattled downwards, towards the ground floor and the Ministry Employee canteen.
Smells of roast chicken and some sort of soup were starting to waft into Elena’s nose when someone flagged them down.
“Burke!” a deep male voice called.
Simon looked up at the mention of his name and waved to a balding blonde who had stepped off to the side.
“Hello Darryl.”
“Can I have a quick word?” Darryl asked Simon.
“’Course,” Simon nodded.
Darryl paused, watching Elena, as if waiting for her to leave.
“In my office, Simon,” Darryl elaborated. “It’s about something I’d rather not discuss in public.”
“Oh,” Elena said awkwardly. “Go ahead then. I’ll just go get a bit of food and wait for you.”
“Sorry,” Simon apologized quickly. “It’ll only be a minute.”
“Really, its fine,” Elena assured him, though she wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do.
Simon walked off with Darryl in the opposite direction and Elena headed to the canteen. She stood in the queue for what felt like hours, finally taking a plate of the chicken and some pumpkin juice over to the least crowded table she could find. However, it was lunch hour at the Ministry, so the least crowded table was still occupied by four other witches and wizards.
Elena had no idea what protocol dictated in this situation. She wondered if she should introduce herself, but the other occupants of the table didn’t so much as give her a second glance, so she decided it was all right to remain silent.
Lamenting Simon’s absence, Elena began to eat her lunch, chewing the chicken slowly, as it was a bit rubbery. The pumpkin juice was too sweet for her liking, but she had to drink it in order to swallow the dry chicken. This had to be the worst meal that she’d eaten in ages. Even the rudimentary cooking that Corinne prepared was better than this.
There was quite a bit of chatter in the room that Elena busied herself listening to. Behind her, two witches were arguing over which potion was a better household cleaner. Several ancient wizards were discussing some obscure law. A group of younger workers was having an animated discussion about the latest Quidditch match, wondering if they would finally hold a World Cup in England, now that You-Know-Who was dead.
Finally, there was no use denying that her food was gone, so Elena moved to put her dishes into a bin that would vanish them, presumably to the kitchens to be washed. Simon was still missing, probably having a ‘quick’ word with Darryl. Just to be sure she hadn’t missed him in the throngs, Elena glanced around the room a bit, but didn’t manage to spot him.
“Are you lost, dear?” a middle aged witch with wispy, mouse-coloured hair asked kindly, putting a hand on Elena’s shoulder.
“Oh no,” Elena said hastily. “I’m just trying to spot my friend.”
The woman nodded, but didn’t leave, instead regarding Elena with an interested expression.
“You don’t happen to be the daughter of Elizabeth Wood?” she asked.
“I am, actually,” Elena said, wishing that she could avoid this friend of her mother. The last thing she needed right now was to have this witch reporting Elena’s activities to her mother.
The witch’s face lit up. “Then you must remember me, dear. I’m Gladys Twiddling. I was part of Elizabeth’s literary society a few years back.”
“Right.” Elena actually had no recollection of a Gladys Twiddling in the literary society, but she certainly had the personality to have been in it.
“You look just like your mother!” Gladys gushed. “You have the same hair, the same eyes, even the same nose!”
Elena wasn’t quite sure what the polite response was to such statements.
“Right,” she said again, starting to feel rather awkward, standing in the middle of the cafeteria talking to some stranger.
Gladys seemed impervious to Elena’s indifferent answers and continued her questioning. “And how is dear Elizabeth? I haven’t seen her in quite a while. I do hope she’s not ill!”
“No, no, she’s fine,” Elena assured Gladys quickly. “She’s just taking a short holiday, that’ all.”
“That is lovely,” was the saccharine reply.
“Well,” Elena began, trying to worm her way out of the situation.
“And how are you,” Gladys cut her off. “Aren’t you a healer? What brings you to our Ministry of Magic?”
“Well,” Elena said once more, but she was saved from having to answer by a hand on her shoulder.
Simon had come up behind her and now was watching Gladys with undisguised boredom.
“Who is this?” he addressed Elena, ignoring the middle aged witch.
“A friend of my mother’s,” Elena said softly.
“Sorry for the wait,” Simon whispered, equally quiet. “Darryl is a bit long winded.”
Gladys chose that moment to interrupt, her hands crossing over her chest.
“It’s quite rude not to introduce me properly,” she said in a prim voice. “Just who is this man Elena?”
Simon didn’t even bother to address her. “Come on, Elena,” he directed, pulling her by the arm away from the indignant woman. “We can pick up the supplies now.”
“Well I never!” Gladys fumed. “Really, Elena, let me tell you dear, never associate with the rude. It tends to rub off.”
Elena valiantly resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
“I’m afraid Simon’s right,” she said. “I do need to be going. Goodbye Madam Twiddling.”
“Goodbye,” sniffed Gladys Twiddling.
Simon dragged Elena halfway to the lift before speaking once more.
“I suppose I should apologize for that,” he said grudgingly.
Elena laughed. “Hardly. I should be thanking you. ”
“Then we’ll call it even,” Simon declared with a large grin. Elena nodded agreement, feeling, for the first time, some of the stress lift off of her. Simon seemed so much more relaxed away from the warehouse and Corinne. As they walked through the busy Atrium, Elena noticed however, that Simon still hadn’t lost any of his confidence, probably, she mused, he never would.
“Where are we going, exactly?” Elena asked moments later, as Simon turned away from main lift, choosing to walk down the corridor a few more paces.
Simon paused at a small door, holding up a hand to indicate that Elena should be patient. He rummaged through his pockets, this time producing a tiny key and inserting it into the lock. The door opened with a hiss, as if pressure was equalizing between hall and room. The air that blew out was cold and dank.
Elena followed Simon inside, exclaiming in surprise when she saw they were in a warehouse like building, very much resembling the one she, Simon and Corinne stayed in. It was cavernous with the same concrete and metal walls that created an eerie echo. However this was lined with rows and rows of shelves and packing crates and chests. It resembled an odd cross between a library and a Gringotts vault.
“Is this place inside the Ministry?” Elena asked suspiciously. There simply couldn’t be this much unused space in the crowded Ministry, could there?
“Yes,” Simon replied curtly, the easy banter from before falling away.
He glanced down a list and strode purposefully across the room, gesturing for Elena to follow. “What we want is on the top shelves,” he said. “A bit like Hogwarts’s Restricted Section,” Simon added with a bit of a grin.
Elena had to jog a little to keep up with Simon’s rapid walking. “Are you saying that we went to all that trouble to requisition books?”
Simon gave a small laugh. “I forget you’re not used to this, Elena,” he said. “Sometimes you seem to be adjusting perfectly, and then you ask questions when I least expect it.”
A mixture of emotions flooded Elena. She was proud that he thought she was adjusting, but she wished that she could avoid the awkward questions Simon was talking about. “Sorry,” she apologized quickly.
“Don’t apologize,” Simon told her, and having finally reached the shelf he was searching for, conjured up a step ladder and began to climb.
Elena nodded, then as Simon started to hand down tomes, she quickly transfigured a sheet of paper from her pocket into a cardboard box to set the books in.
“Darke Magick for the Light Wizarde?” Elena read the title off one of the books with a bemused laugh.
“Oh they get better,” Simon promised, handing down a leather covered book titled 317 Ways to Defeat Powerful Wizards.
Tracking for the Tracked had several locks holding its cover shut. Elena paused when Simon handed her down a copy of Moste Potente Potions. “I’ve read this,” she commented, opening the cover and leafing through the yellowed pages.
Simon paused his searching to glance down at her. “What for?” he asked. “I’ve had to get it before and I couldn’t make sense of a word of it.”
Elena set the book down gently. “It was required reading for Healers, a few years back. They wanted us to be able to recognize some of the more dangerous potions. It was quite descriptive,” she said, savouring the last word as she remembered the graphic descriptions of the injuries caused by some toxic brews.
With a shrug, Simon turned back to the shelves and slid his ladder over to pick out a few more volumes. One was so heavy Elena nearly dropped it. Another was light and felt almost hollow. Elena paused to examine its cover. The golden etched title had faded, but she could make out the words ‘Magick.’ Curious to see why it was so light, she opened the cover. Wisps of pale mist swirled out, surrounding Elena’s hands, leaving behind a burning sensation. As the shock of the burning faded, she tried to shut the book, but her fingers were frozen, unable to move. With horror, Elena saw the mist wrap round her arms, the same burning and then freezing occurring. “Simon,” she said in a wobbly voice.
“Have you read that one as well?” he asked, not pausing from his search to look at Elena.
“I- no. Simon, help,” Elena chocked out, as the mist continued up her arms to her shoulders and chest, constricting her flow of air.
Simon turned around then, and seeing Elena immobilized, he jumped from the ladder with shocking speed and pulled the book from her arms, snapping it shut. There was shriek from the tome that made the hairs on the back of Elena’s neck stand up.
“What happened?” Simon demanded harshly, grabbing Elena by the shoulders. “Why did you open it?”
She tried to speak, but still felt as if someone was wrapping hands round her ribcage, keeping her from breathing. Frantically, she shook her head and realizing that she couldn’t move, Simon pulled out his wand, and muttered several counter curses.
Almost instantly, Elena felt the pressure lift from her body and she gasped for air. She tried to step back from Simon, but only managed to collapse into his arms as her legs buckled under her weight.
Simon calmly hoisted her up by the arms, carrying her to sit on a rung of the ladder. “What happened?” he repeated.
Tears of shock flooded Elena’s eyes and she blinked quickly to banish them. “I opened it and some sort of mist just froze me.”
“Are you alright?” Simon asked, looking down at her, a worried frown on his face.
“Fine now.” Elena nodded her head slowly, feeling exhaustion seep into her bones suddenly.
“I think that’s all the books we really need,” Simon said softly, offering Elena a hand. “Can you get up and walk?”
Elena took his hand and nodded, once she didn’t fall over. “Is that really all we need?”
“Just one more stop,” Simon promised. “This time, there won’t be any danger. All we need is supplies.”
An hour later, the pair left the ministry via Floo, carrying with them an arsenal large enough to take out half of the Ministry with one carefully executed spell. Surprisingly, Elena realized that even though they were mostly carrying books, the incantations for spells or curses that were nearly as horrific as the Unforgiveable Curses and just as powerful.
The rest of the supplies was either bits of tracking equipment or galleons so that Simon could purchase food and the like. Needless to say, they got several odd looks when leaving the Ministry and several French curses from Corinne, when she was given a tome to read through.
“I hate reading in English,” she complained when anyone was around to listen.
“I hate reading,” Simon countered finally. “So for the sake of Merlin, Cor, shut up.”
Corinne replied with several French curses, but buried her nose back into the copy of Tracking for the Tracked. She was silent until a few minutes later.
“This is the most useless book,” Corinne declared, laying it down on the table in disgust. “They try to describe how to cast a Protean Tracking Charm and they’re doing it all wrong.”
“Write your own book then,” Simon said dryly, looking up from Moste Potente Potions. “And at least you can read about something you know.”
Corinne rolled her eyes. “I’ll take your bloody potions book then,” she said, snatching it from Simon’s hands. “But you have to read this mess,” she gestured to Tracking for the Tracked.
Simon agreed grudgingly and started the new book.
Elena, who was experiencing no lasting effects from the book’s curse, watched their continued exchanges of banter with amusement. She, for once, thought that she might get used to this sort of life.
beta: kirstenalanna
Disclaimer- none of this is mine, except for the OCs.
lovely image by amoretti @ TDA
Chapter 7
Elena battled against the howling wind that was trying to force her backwards as she strode down the darkened street. Its relentless push made her wish that she’d never left the comfort of indoors for this frigid January night. But, as Corinne had said when Elena voiced a complaint, murderers didn’t care about the cold.
Armed with a newfound knowledge of curses, Elena, accompanied by Corinne, had gone out to search for the Minister’s personal guards. They hadn’t been heard from since the night of his murder when they had failed to show up at his home.
The guards, two men and a woman, had once been employed by the Ministry as Aurors, but they had left turning to the more lucrative business of guarding dignitaries. During the War, such guards had been in high demand, as people increasingly feared for their safety.
“Why didn’t they live in a Wizarding neighbourhood?” Elena asked Corinne as the wind tore through her woollen jacket, biting her skin beneath.
“Because,” the French woman replied, “they were smart enough to stay inconspicuous. If they had lived so openly, they would have been easy targets.”
It made sense, but Elena still wished that they could have apparated to the dwellings, rather than walking. It would have been quicker and much warmer.
Corinne and Elena walked in silence for several more minutes, their feet crunching on the frozen snow that covered the sidewalk. Clouds formed in front of Elena as her breath met the cold air and occasionally the moisture froze on her scarf, covering it with a dusting of ice. With each inhale, the air burned Elena’s lungs.
As the silence grew more oppressive and unbearable, Elena wished that Simon had been able to come. However, he, as the Minister, had to attend a dinner party, leaving Elena alone with Corinne. Corinne seemed content to walk in silence, not giving any indication to Elena that she wished to talk. Elena figured that Corinne had to be thinking, or plotting. She doubted that, when on duty, Corinne thought of anything other than her work.
Corinne was always so focused about everything. Elena watched her measured steps. Like others of her profession, Corinne walked with confidence and precision. She looked as if she had somewhere to be, though she was not in a hurry. It was vitality, Elena decided with jealousy, wishing that she had the same easy assurance as Corinne did. But Elena was anything but sure as she glanced at the surroundings.
Around her, the world was frozen in its wintery state. Trees with icy branches lined the street, standing like skeletons. Snow hid the grass from view, covering every surface visible to Elena. It wasn’t a very beautiful sight, the snow didn’t blanket the world, enhancing its beauty. Instead, it merely contributed to the depressing scene, like the whole world had been drained of colour and life.
The storefronts around them were dark, the windows barred and locked. As they turned the corner, however, light from several street lamps flooded the snowy streets and a block or so down, a large building was lit by numerous spotlights.
“Here we are,” Corinne said with a grin, stepping aside into a shadowy alcove. She quickly unfastened her coat, pulled out her wand and, with a few flicks, transfigured her clothes into a short, tight black dress. Shivering, Corinne buttoned up the coat once more and turned to Elena. “Your turn,” she declared.
Reluctantly, Elena removed her coat, allowing Corinne to change her attire as well. Once she was finished, Elena was wearing a strapless top, a thin pencil skirt and ridiculously unpractical heels. Even with her coat buttoned once more, shivers wracked her body.
“Can we hurry?” Elena begged, as Corinne paused to fuss with a strap on her shoe.
Corinne finished adjusting the strap and the pair set off at a jog down the street towards the building. It was about four stories tall, with thin windows and a small black door set into the front. From inside, Elena could hear the throbbing sound of a bass beating out a rhythm.
As they neared, the sound of the bass only intensified to an unsettling pounding.
“They live here?” Elena wondered aloud. “I don’t see how anyone could sleep with this kind of noise.”
Corinne didn’t reply, merely opened the black door, ushering Elena inside. Instantly, the music rose to a dull roar and the smell of sweat and metal filled the air.
A burly man, dressed in black, stood with his arms crossed in front of a door at the end of a hallway. Noticing that Corinne had slipped off her coat, Elena did the same, noting with relief that it was actually warm inside the building. She glanced at Corinne again waiting for her to take the lead.
With utter confidence, Corinne strode down the hallway- her gait both elegant and powerful. She stopped short as the man glanced down at her. Elena, feeling like a little puppy trailing behind the more sophisticated Corinne came to a halt, several feet behind.
“Bonjour,” Corinne crooned, her voice filled with the perfect amount of accent.
The man nodded briskly, stepping aside to let the two women through, obviously, he wasn’t too picky as to who the patrons of this bar were.
The room opened up as Elena made it out of the dark hallway. Multicoloured lights flashed from the ceiling casting a jarring glow over the whole room. The music blasted so loud from every corner of the room, that Elena wanted to cover her ears. Along the walls, there were several long bars. And of course, there were people. Throngs were crowded onto the dance floor, while others mingled along the sides.
“Where do we start?” Elena whispered to Corinne, only to turn to see that Corinne had started moving quickly through the crowd, towards the centre of the dance floor. “Wait!” Elena said frantically, shuffling after Corinne, desperately trying not to lose her.
Corinne spun around at the sound of Elena’s voice, stopping in the middle of the dancers.
“What?” she hissed angrily.
“What are we doing?” Elena demanded.
“Asking questions,” Corinne said, before sweeping away once more, joining the throng with ease.
For a moment, Elena could keep track of Corinne, but after a moment, she realized that it was hopeless to try. So instead of moving towards the centre, she started to head to the outskirts of the room, figuring she could find someone there to question.
Before she could reach the bar, however, Elena felt a tap on her shoulder. Turning, she saw a tall man, with dark curly hair smiling down in a confident manner..
“Dance with me?” he asked in an utterly charming American accent.
Elena nodded feeling a bit taken aback. Though she was supposed to be working, Corinne was dancing and calling it questioning, so Elena didn’t see why she couldn’t dance either.
“Alright,” she said a bit breathlessly.
The man put an arm around her waist and directed her back towards the group of dancers. Elena jumped in surprise at his touch and looked up at him almost instinctively. The man, sensing Elena’s surprise, moved his hand to her shoulder. “Sorry,” he apologized quickly.
Elena shrugged it off; he had no reason to apologize really. Elena was the one who was feeling a bit jumpy. She tried to shake herself of the feeling and listened to the music. Almost unconsciously, Elena felt herself swaying along with the rhythm of the music and watched as the man began to sway as well.
It was all very automatic for Elena. With so many bodies around her, jostling and jumping, or swaying from side to side, it felt natural to move. The volume of the music only added to the power of it all. Elena could hear nothing but the beat and the lyrics and they propelled her forward, urging her to dance. It was almost like a Muggle sort of Magic, Elena thought giddily, something she’d never experienced before.
The music lulled and the man glanced down at Elena, a smile playing on his lips. He was really quite handsome, Elena decided, though he wasn’t quite as tall as Simon.
“Sorry, I didn’t ask before but, what’s your name?” His accent was even stronger, now that Elena could hear him more clearly.
“Elena,” she replied with a smile. “And yours?”
“Jacob,” he said. The music grew louder once more and he paused before saying. “Listen, Elena, do you want to go get a drink or something? Or would you rather dance some more?” he added, when Elena paused.
“That’s fine,” Elena said. “A drink is fine.” She figured that she could ask him a few questions then, without being completely obvious. They had to push past the crowd to reach one of the bars, Jacob guiding Elena towards the edges with hand on her back. But after a minute, Elena found herself sitting on one of the stools with Jacob next to her. He raised up a hand, flagging down a bartender, who was sitting on a chair several lengths of counter down.
A young woman came up to them after a minute, regarding the two with little interest. “What you want?” she asked in a clipped tone as she fiddled with the collar of her shirt nervously. Elena paused, trying to think up something to order and motioned for Jacob to speak first.
Jacob ordered his “regular”—some drink that Elena had never heard of. Realizing that firewhiskey wouldn’t be served at this bar, Elena ordered the same thing. The woman gave her a strange, searching look, but left quickly without another word, returning a moment later with two identical glasses before scurrying off again.
“So,” Jacob said as he took a sip from his drink. “You live in London.”
Elena nodded with a laugh. “And you don’t?”
He shrugged, “actually, I do.”
“But you’re American?” Elena had to check, to make sure she wasn’t misidentifying his accent.
“Born and bred,” was Jacob’s reply.
Elena looked down at the drink, and carefully tasted it. It wasn’t as awful as she had thought it might be, though it tasted a little like firewhiskey mixed with mulled mead.
“Do you come here often?” Elena wanted to know. If he did, there was a chance he might know the guards she was looking for.
“Sure,” Jacob shrugged. “Often enough.”
Elena reached into her pocket for several Muggle photographs. “Have you ever seen any of these people?” she asked, gesturing to the men and the woman.
Jacob frowned and peered closely at them. “No,” he said. “Why are you asking?” His face paled a little as he eyed Elena more closely. “You’re not a cop, are you?”
“Of course not,” Elena said quickly, pulling the pictures back. “Do I look like one?”
Slowly, Jacob shook his head. “No. But then, why were you asking?”
“Friends,” Elena invented. “They’ve gone missing and I’m trying to find them. I know they came here a lot though.”
Jacob blushed a little. “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “I hope I didn’t offend you.”
“Not at all,” Elena promised, this time taking a bigger gulp of her drink. She wasn’t exactly enjoying talking to Jacob, but she was reluctant to leave, even though he had no information to give to her.
“Well,” Jacob said after a moment of silence. “If you’re not a cop, what do you do?”
“I’m a doctor,” Elena said, naming the Muggle equivalent of her profession.
Jacob raised an eyebrow. “You’re young for a doctor,” he commented.
Elena shrugged, wishing she knew what age was normal for Muggle doctors. “I’m still in training,” she hedged at last, figuring that was a safe thing to say. “But saying that I’m a doctor sounds much more sophisticated.” She was surprised to hear herself giggle, the most unsophisticated sound possible.
To her relief, Jacob seemed to buy this excuse and nodded thoughtfully. “Well, doctor-to-be Elena,” he said. “What do you think about dancing again?”
“I’m going to have to finish my drink first,” Elena said, glancing down to see that her glass was more than half full. Thought it wasn’t awful, she wasn’t sure if she could finish it.
“Leave it,” Jacob suggested, pulling her to her feet. “I like this song.”
“Just a minute!’ Elena said, angry that he was pushing her.
Jacob frowned darkly down at Elena. “Please,” he implored.
Elena tried to give him a fierce look. “Look, if you want to dance, go ahead without, but I’m going to stay here for a moment longer.” Honestly, she didn’t care too much about finishing the drink, but she didn’t like Jacob’s attitude and didn’t want to award him for his behaviour.
With a nod, Jacob agreed to wait, impatiently tapping his foot as Elena sipped at her drink. She took several sips, nodding her head along to the music. Jacob had been right; it was a nice song.
“Are you done yet?” he snapped. “Look I don’t want to wait all night.”
“I said you could go!” Elena said, leaning away from his anger. “And I meant it!”
With a snarl, Jacob extended his hand down and hauled Elena upwards by the arm. She spilled her drink onto the bar’s counter, trying to yank her arm away, but Jacob’s grasp at her elbow was too strong.
“Let me go!” Elena demanded, considering reaching for her wand to fight him off. But she wasn’t sure if it was quite worth the trouble.
“Just one dance,” Jacob whispered in her ear. “Alright? Just one dance and you can go?”
Elena’s stomach knotted but she nodded in agreement. Once she got into the crowd of people, she would have a better chance of getting away, and hopefully, Jacob would let go of her then. As Jacob yanked her through the throngs of people, Elena made sure to look for Corinne as she pulled, almost violently, towards the centre of the floor.
Corinne had to be somewhere, probably doing something productive. That thought made Elena feel a twinge of guilt. Here she was, being forced to dance with someone who was probably dangerous and definitely knew nothing, while Corinne had probably already found out everything they needed to know and hadn’t gotten herself into any trouble. Stupid, Elena chastised herself.
Unfortunately for Elena, the next song had a slower pace, giving Jacob an excuse to wrap his arms around Elena’s waist, holding her still. “I’ll tell you what,” he whispered in her ear, just loud enough to be heard over the music. “You just hand me your wallet now and I’ll let you go. How does that sound?”
Elena’s heart sped up and she bit her lip, and let her hand wander down towards the pocket that held her wand. “What?” she said breathily, pretending not to have heard him.
“You heard me,” Jacob replied, a bit louder.
With a whimper that wasn’t entirely fake, Elena nodded and started to reach for her back pocket, where the small wallet with Muggle money was. Honestly, she wasn’t too bothered to be losing the money—it wasn’t hers. However, she didn’t like how tightly Jacob was holding her, or the smell of alcohol on his breath.
She pulled the cloth wallet out of her pocket and handed it to Jacob quickly, hoping he would let her go to stow it away. Instead, he kept a firm hold on her waist, drawing her even closer to him as he tucked it into his jacket. “Good,” he crooned, wrapping his other arm around her once more. “Now, how about we finish this dance?”
By now, Elena was really beginning to panic. It was awful enough that he had just robbed her but now, she wasn’t sure what Jacob wanted. “Let me go,” she said in as dangerous a voice as she could manage.
Jacob only shook his head. “Let’s finish the dance,” he said with a sinister smile.
Elena trembled and reached her hand down for her wand, ready to stun him but he only caught her wrist in a painfully strong grip. “Trying to get your phone?” he asked with a knowing smirk. “I don’t think so.”
“Alright,” Elena whimpered at last. “I’ll dance with you.”
“Good.”
For a minute, she let him hold her, then, unexpectedly, she jerked away from his grasp. With the element of surprise in her favour, Elena managed to yank his arms off of her waist and took several quick steps backward before bumping into another person. Elena turned around quickly to apologize, only to come face to face with a livid looking Corinne.
“Where are you going?” Jacob said sweetly to Elena, coming up and putting a hand on her shoulder. “We weren’t finished dancing yet.”
Elena shrugged his hand off, glaring at him.
Before she could say anything else to him, Corinne interrupted. “I’m sorry, but I need to borrow Elena,” she said quickly, pulling Elena away from Jacob.
“Wait!” Jacob said angrily. “Who are you? We were dancing! You can’t just take her away.”
“Oh?” Corinne said, raising an eyebrow. “Can’t I?”
Jacob frowned. “Well just give me a minute then, alright?”
Corinne rolled her eyes, but nodded, seemingly oblivious to Elena’s frantic desire to escape the man.
Jacob, meanwhile had pulled out a scrap of paper and a pen and was scribbling something down. After he was done, he handed the paper to Elena. “If you’re ever interested, call me,” he said quickly. “Alright?”
Elena wanted to say no, and slap his face but instead she gave a non committal shrug, knowing that a negative reaction might infuriate him more.
Once satisfied that Jacob wouldn’t raise a fuss, Corinne latched onto Elena’s arm and pulled her to the inner back corner of the bar. “What were you thinking?” she demanded.
“I was trying to gather information,” Elena began, though this wasn’t completely true.
“And did he have any?”
Elena shook her head. “He’d never seen them before.” She paused. “And then he dragged me out to dance, demanded my wallet and wouldn’t let me go,” Elena added in a rush, trying to stave off hysterics.
“But you’re fine,” Corinne said in voice that was without reassurance.
“Yes,” Elena said reluctantly. “But I was scared that...”
The word ‘scared’ drew a scoff from Corinne. “I’m sorry that this happened,” she said dryly. “But if you’d really been in danger, you could have just used your wand to fend him off.”
Elena felt the burn of tears in her eyes that she hastily wiped away. “Go to hell,” she whispered fiercely.
“So,” Corinne snapped on, ignoring Elena’s comment, “unlike you, I seem to have found something.”
“What?” Elena demanded impatiently, angry that Corinne was being so inconsiderate.
In response, Corinne motioned for Elena to follow her to the bar. Once there, the same woman, who now looked more bored than nervous came over. “What did you want to know again?” she asked.
“These people,” Corinne produced her own set of photos. “Did they live here?” Almost immediately, she was less antagonistic, as if she had forgotten all about her contempt for Elena.
The bartender shrugged. “They lived upstairs, if that’s what you’re asking. And what the hell did they do anyways? I’m not involved, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“They didn’t do anything,” Corinne said, exchanging her annoyed tones for a more soothing voice. “We just want to talk to them about something important. Is there anything you can tell us about them?”
“Well,” the woman chewed her lip. “The woman, Natalya, she was the one I saw the most. She came here sometimes on the weekends, but only really late at night. Sometimes, when things were quiet, we’d talk a little.”
“About what?” Corinne pressed.
“Oh, you know, dating, sometimes music. I used to tell her stories about customers,” the woman laughed a little. “But she hasn’t been down her for maybe a month. Actually, I only think I’ve seen her once since November. Is she alright?”
Corinne seemed to be able to process the information much quicker than Elena could. “She’s fine,” she assured the woman. “Is there any way you can let us up though. We need to talk to Natalya, if that’s alright with you.”
“Yeah, alright,” the bartender said. “Come through this way,” she gestured to the end of the bar. There were swinging doors behind it, and Corinne and Elena followed her through.
The doors led to a storeroom of sorts, with crates of alcohol and some food as well. On the far side, a set of stairs rose upwards.
“There,” the woman pointed. “If you take those stairs, you’ll get to the floor with all the flats. Natalya lived in Number Five.”
“Thank you,” Elena said with a forced smile and after the woman had left, she walked after Corinne, who had already started to climb the stairs.
Disclaimer: Only the OCs are mine.
Also, I'm sorry for the wait between chapters. I haven't abandoned this story though, far from it! Thanks to kirstenalanna, who betaed this chapter!
stunning image by Lady Malfoy @ TDA
The stairwell was old and had a musty smell to it that erased the scent of sweat that had filled the bar. Elena crinkled her nose as she climbed the stairs, preferring the latter odour to the former. There was something ominous about it, as if no one had lived upstairs for years, though obviously this was not true.
Corinne opened a small door at the top of the stairs, stepping out into a thin, dimly lit corridor. As Elena stepped out to join her, she noticed that the paint covering the walls was a faded, peeling gray. The carpet below her feet was the same monotonous gray, splattered with brownish stains.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Elena asked in a whisper, though the question sounded loud now that the music had faded.
Corinne nodded silently, stepping down the hallway until she reached Number 5. Without any hesitation, she reached up and rapped on the door loudly, the sound breaking through the new silence.
As Elena had expected, there was no answer. Not the first time, nor the second time that Corinne knocked. Finally, after calling Natalya’s name, Corinne drew her wand and opened the door with ease.
With trepidation, the two women entered the flat, wands held aloft. Elena was a step behind Corinne, automatically deferring to her experience. For all her apparent bravery, inside Elena was anxious as to what they might find.
“Natalya?” Corinne called out once more into the dark flat. “Are you home?”
There was no reply, so Corinne cast a quick spell and a ball of light flew from her wand, hovering at the ceiling and casting bright light down on the room. Though she had been able to make out basic forms before, Elena could now see that a layer of dust coated the furniture. Apparently, no one had used this room in weeks.
After quickly scanning the room, Corinne moved to the next, repeating the same procedure of calling out, then lighting up the room and scanning for any signs of life. Besides a few unwashed dishes, they found nothing out of the ordinary.
After they’d finished searching the small kitchen, Elena turned to Corinne. “What next?” she asked.
Corinne replied by casting a litany of spells designed to reveal humans or dark magic in the dwelling. Bursts of light and heat emoted from her wand, creating a show of colours and brightness. However, once the spells had dwindled, Corinne gave a little shake of her head.
“Like I expected,” she said. “There is nothing. I would guess Natalya has not been here for a month.”
“And the others?” Elena asked, wondering about the two other men who, along with Natalya, had been guards.
A sigh issued from Corinne’s lips. “Elena,” she said a bit harshly. “We can’t focus on the whole picture at once. We’ll get lost. We need to examine little sections first, and then we can start to put things together. If we try to find everyone who is missing on the same day, we will get nothing done.”
Elena nodded, understanding what Corinne meant. “Alright,” she agreed. “But what do we look for now? Obviously Natalya isn’t here.”
Corinne twirled a strand of hair round her finger, thinking. “If you think you can handle it, I think we should split up. Someone needs to stay here and search the flat. And the neighbours need to be questioned as well.”
“I’ll stay,” Elena volunteered hastily. “There’s no use in having me question anyone. I don’t even know what to ask.”
“Alright,” Corinne agreed with a nod. “I will be back in half an hour. If I am not, do not go looking for me. Apparate back to the warehouse and tell Simon.”
“But what if you’re in danger?” Elena asked, wondering how much of chance there was that Corinne would not return in time.
The French woman gave a sly smile. “I think that I can take care of myself,” she said.
“Right,” Elena agreed, not doubting that Corinne was capable.
Once Corinne had gone back out into the hallway to try to speak with other renters, Elena found herself alone in the flat. It had taken on an eerie feel, with thick clouds of dust and dim lights. Elena half expected someone to jump out of the corner and scare her.
She made herself banish that feeling however, and moved to the small living room to begin her search. It had to be meticulous, she knew. Corinne would have seen anything in plain sight. Now it was Elena’s job to look under the furniture and inside the cabinets to make sure that no note or artefact was missed. Thankfully, the flat wasn’t large, so the task wasn’t quite impossible.
The paisley sofa was Elena’s first target. It was old, with dark wooden legs and an ugly mustard print. Obviously, Elena could tell, Natalya didn’t make much money as a guard. Or she had no taste in décor. That was beside the point, though, and Elena was glad that the sofa wasn’t too expensive when she quickly severed a small bit of fabric, to test it for any poisons later on.
Her initial search revealed nothing in the sofa. Only dust was hidden beneath it. No doxies infested the cushions. There were no blood stains on it, no signs of any sort of struggle. And once finished examining it, Elena wished that she would never again have to look at mustard paisley print again.
Satisfied that the sofa held no dark secrets, Elena moved onto a bookshelf, painstakingly taking each book off the shelf, opening it, and then setting it back in place. She made sure to look for secret compartments cut into the shelves and even examined the titles of the books for some sort of clue, but everything seemed to be mundane enough. Natalya didn’t even own any wizarding books, just flimsy Muggle romance novels and some Italian cookbooks.
The whole process exhausted Elena, who was wondering when the half hour would be up. She hoped that Corinne didn’t expect her to have examined the entire flat by then. With a sigh, Elena figured that since there was no hope of even finishing the living room, she might as well take a break.
A small red plush chair sat in the corner and Elena sank down into it, realizing how late it must be and wishing she could fall asleep. However, the chair was not nearly as comfortable as it looked. The cushion was lumpy and angular, almost as if she were sitting on books, only there had been nothing on the chair.
With a gasp, Elena sat up, and knelt in front of the chair, prodding at the cushions, trying to tell if anything was hidden within them. In the centre, she could feel the corners of a book or a box, something square at least. Elena reached for her wand and with a quick slashing motion, cut through the ruddy velvet. She repeated the motion again, in the opposite direction, then setting her wand aside, reached inside the stuffing and removed a plain wooden box, no larger than one of the paperbacks on the bookshelf.
Very cautiously, Elena unlatched the box, hoping that there would be no sinister spells within. When there was no mist, or any sign of dark magic, she opened the lid all the way. What lay inside the box both surprised and worried her. Nestled in cotton lining lay a dozen or so tiny glass vials. All were filled with clear liquid and they were labelled with five number codes, printed onto tiny strips of paper.
Elena didn’t touch the vials, though she wondered what they could hold. Very few potions, with the notable exception of Veritaserum, were clear and most would not be useful in such small quantities. Gently, Elena shut the box, setting it aside to show Corinne, whenever she returned.
Elena stood and turned to the door, her eyes falling on the mustard sofa that lay between the entrance and the chair. With a gasp, she ran over and prodded the cushions in much the same way. Like the chair, each seemed to hold the same sized box.
Again, Elena slashed at the upholstery, revealing an identical box. However, inside of this box lay vials of a golden potion that bubbled even as it lay still on the floor. Felix Felicius, Elena realized in awe. The luck potion was very distinctive and again it was something that would only be useful in the smallest of amounts.
If she was correct and the other potion was Veritaserum, these two boxes held a fortune worth of potions. These substances were nearly impossible to brew and carefully regulated. In order to obtain this much, one would either have to brew it, or to spend hundreds of galleons per vial.
With growing excitement, Elena opened up the third cushion. Its box again contained the tiny glass jars. However, these were not filled with any sort of potion. Instead, they swirled with the unmistakable mist of memories.
Elena laid the treasured finds on the table. These three boxes made the entire visit, and her encounter with Jacob, completely worthwhile. Once they were able to test the clear potion and if they managed to find a pensieve to view the memories in, they would have a much clearer picture of just who the elusive Natalya was. Obviously, she was less mundane than her apartment. No normal witch would keep such valuable potions hidden within furniture.
Her discovery made Elena want to explore the other rooms and try to find more, however the small hourglass clock that Corinne had set before leaving was nearly out of sand. Elena figured that once Corinne returned, she could ask for more time to search.
Upon a second glance, Elena saw that there was even less time left than she had thought. There were perhaps two more minutes left. Anxiously, Elena glanced around. She had assumed that Corinne would return without a hitch, but what if she didn’t? Elena wasn’t sure she could make herself just leave, especially in lieu of what she had just found.
What if something had happened to Corinne? Yes, the Auror was capable, but if Corinne had met a dark wizard on her own, Elena wasn’t sure that she would be able to win such a fight.
If Corinne didn’t return, Elena wondered what she would do. It didn’t make sense to just pack up and leave without taking a quick look. Should she even take the potions and memories with her? And once it became time to go, Elena wasn’t even sure if she would be able to apparate from the building. Perhaps Natalya had spelled it to be impenetrable.
The sand in the hourglass was down to a handful of grains. Elena watched with a sinking stomach as the last grains fell into the bottom. The silence was so absolute that she thought that she could hear the tiny shuffling sound of the sand tumbling down the slope.
Elena bit her lip and flipped the glass over, starting the timer once more. Steeling her resolve, she held her wand at the ready and opened the door to the hallway. She glanced down its length, but nothing seemed to indicate that anyone even lived here. Certainly, there was no sight of Corinne.
“Corinne?” Elena called softly down the hall. “Corinne, if you don’t answer, I’m going to wait a little bit, alright?”
There was no reply, only a faint echoing vibration that came from the music in the bar below. With a shrug, Elena retreated back into the flat, shutting the door behind her.
She dragged her feet, walking back towards the table where she’d left the boxes. Despite what she’d whispered into the hall, she figured that it would be best to return to the warehouse. It had to be well past midnight now and Elena felt quite exhausted, she didn’t have the mental strength to push through sleepiness and continue the search.
Just to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, Elena poked her head into the kitchen, scanning the counters and the small table one more time. But when she saw nothing, she turned back to the living room to retrieve the vials of potion.
As she passed the paisley sofa, Elena’s foot caught on a wrinkle in the rug and she went sprawling on the floor. Her knee connected with the lamp stand, sending the whole apparatus crashing to the floor and she cursed as a throbbing pain raced down the length of her arm.
The fall had knocked her breath away, so for a moment, Elena lay on the rug, waiting to regain breath. As she moved to stand up again, her eyes caught on a scrap of paper, its corner peering out from beneath the carpet. Intrigued, Elena reached for it, seeing with astonishment that it was some sort of folded note.
Sitting up to lean against the sofa, she unfolded the crisp paper and read:
Natalya,
I know that you’ve been avoiding my owls. They keep coming back with the messages still attached, so I know you haven’t been reading them. But please, you need to listen to me. You think that you can take on anyone or anything, but I know that you’re not perfect.
Listen, I’m asking—begging you to meet with me. Just for lunch, if you’d like. I can’t tell you it all in a letter, but it’s about your work. I’m afraid that you’ll be targeted because of him. Even if You-Know-Who is gone, like they say he is, it doesn’t mean the world is safe.
Natalya, if you trust me, say you’ll meet with me. It won’t take long and I know that you won’t regret it. And remember, discretion is vital. No one can know.
Elena read the note three times, trying to make sense of it all. There was no signature, or even an initial at the end of the letter. There was no way to even tell the gender of whoever had penned the warning. However, even if it raised more questions than answers, the note was as valuable as the discovery of the potions. Someone out there had been worried about Natalya and her safety. It was all too possible that she had been the target of some renegade Death Eater, or sympathizer.
Though reluctant to leave without Corinne, Elena decided that it was more important to take her discoveries back to the warehouse. Like Corinne had said, she could take care of herself.
So, clutching a stack of boxes and the folded letter, Elena turned on the spot, allowing herself to be subjected to the familiar crush of apparition.
The temperature change was significant in the warehouse. While Natalya’s flat had been bordering on frigid, the air inside of the warehouse was almost too toasty.
Elena felt sweat slicking her hands as she set down her discoveries on the kitchen table. “Hello?” she called out, loud enough to be heard throughout the building. “Simon? Corinne? Are you there?”
Unfamiliar, heavy footsteps sounded and the Minister of Magic stepped into the room. Almost against her will, Elena jumped, still not used to seeing Simon under the influence of Polyjuice.
“Elena,” he said. “Isn’t Corinne with you?”
Hearing Simon’s words coming from a different body was disconcerting, but Elena shook the feeling away. “She said she’d come back later,” Elena said. “She made me promise to come back after half an hour.”
Simon nodded. “And did you find anything?”
Elena quickly related to him her search of Natalya’s flat, showing him the boxes of potions as well as the cryptic letter.
“So,” she finished. “I feel like I know even less than I did before, but I guess you could call that a start.”
“Indeed,” Simon agreed. “I can’t say that you didn’t do a good job. Any Auror would be proud to make such a discovery.”
A blush rose on Elena’s cheeks at that compliment. Though she certainly felt nothing like an Auror, it was good to know that, at least in some respects, her attempts were not a complete failure. “Should I worry about Corinne?” Elena asked, knowing that Simon of all people would know when it was time to be afraid.
He shook his head. “No. If she said to leave without her, then she was expecting to take more time. Corinne knows that you aren’t used to late hours and such. She probably didn’t want you to wait until all hours for her to get back.”
“Doesn’t she get tired?” Elena had to ask, stifling a yawn.
Simon found this statement extremely amusing. “Not at all,” he said with a shake of the Minister’s head. “She’ll stay up all night, if that’s what it takes.”
Elena had to admire that determination. “If it’s alright,” she said with a yawn. “I’d like to get some sleep. Unlike Corinne, I need it.” Absently, she stretched her arms over her head, yawning once more.
Simon didn’t respond at first. He seemed to be staring intently at Elena’s arms. When disguised with Polyjuice potion, Simon’s expressions were much more transparent. His brow was furrowed in worry, and anger seemed to dance in his eyes.
A hand came up and caught Elena’s left arm, gently twisting her arm so that he could examine a dark bruise the blossomed across her forearm. “What’s this?” Simon asked darkly.
Elena eyed in surprise, not remembering how she might have gotten such a thing. Certainly not from tripping back at the flat, that had happened to recently to show. She thought back through the events of the night, her mind finally remember Jacob’s painful grip at the bar.
“At the bar,” she began. “There was some guy.”
“He hurt you?” Simon said angrily.
As she was about to respond, Simon’s features began to melt, slowly transforming from those of Marcus Gordon to those of Simon Burke. Elena waited to reply until he was back to his taller, more intimidating self. “No,” she said in a soft voice. “Corinne made sure of that. Though,” Elena added. “I would have been fine without her.”
Simon’s face was stormy for a second, before regaining its usual calm. He withdrew his wand from his pocket and tapped the bruise twice. A bubbly, tingling sort of sensation ran across Elena’s arm as the bruise faded from view.
“Goodnight,” she said at last and Simon let go of her arm, watching her as she headed to her room.
Hello again! I hope you enjoy this chapter.
beta: kirstenalanna.
disclaimer: i own nothing.
image by enchantress @ TDA
Chapter 9
The next morning, Elena hoped she might earn a reprieve after the successful and late night; however, she was awoken all too early the next day by Corinne, who looked like she’d gotten less sleep than Elena had.
“Come on,” she snapped. “We’ve got to get to work.”
Elena moaned at the prospect of more work. “Another hour?” she begged, pulling the covers over her head. She wondered sleepily that if it had been Simon, who had shown so much concern last night, waking her up, if she would have gotten more sleep.
“No,” Corinne declared harshly. “There’s a bit of a situation going on right now and if I have to be there, so should you. Mon Dieu,” she complained and Elena caught the word ‘Simon’ before Corinne’s mumbling degenerated into French ramblings beyond 'My God.'
With reluctance, Elena dressed herself and made her way to the tiny kitchen, hoping that there could at least be some tea made. She was a bit annoyed to find herself so tired. During the War, she had functioned on far less sleep than this, but once the war was over, and the demand for Healers dropped, she had spent less time on the job. Apparently her tolerence for exhaustion had diminished in those few months.
Still wondering about the tea, Elena entered the kitchen. To her surprise, she saw that Simon and Corinne weren’t the only ones seated around the table. Frank and Alice Longbottom sat in two chairs as well.
“Oh, good morning!” Alice said with a sunny smile. “Sorry to wake you up!”
Elena shook her head. “That’s alright,” she said quickly, taking a seat in the vacant chair between Frank and Corinne.
“So, now that Elena’s here,” Simon continued, “we can start dividing up.”
A puzzled expression crossed Elena’s face. “Sorry?” she asked. “Where are we going?”
Corinne waved a hand impatiently at Elena, but Alice stepped in. “Frank and I offered to help with the investigation,” she said quickly. “We only just decided last night, while you were out with Corinne. Simon told us what you found and I’m sure we can make progress now.” Her face was now set into a grim line as she spoke of her father’s murder.
“Where’s Neville?” Elena asked, remembering the chubby baby.
“We left him at Frank’s mother’s,” Alice said, her face lightening a little at the mention of her son.
Tired of the small talk, Corinne interrupted. “So, Elena, last night I found a bit more about this Natalya and her fellow guards. It seems like one of them may have moved to another flat. We’ll try to find him and Natalya as well. And those potions do need to be tested, which can be done at the Ministry.”
“I’ll take Alice and go try to find the other guard,” Simon said quickly, before anyone else could speak.
Corinne shook her head fiercely. “I don’t think so,” she said, her accent clipping the words off harshly. “I was stuck with Elena last night; I’ll take Frank and Alice with me, to search for Natalya.”
Simon stared at her, eyes flashing angrily. “No,” he said. “I think that Alice,” he paused, “won’t want to see Natalya. There’s a chance you’ll find her and that could be dangerous.”
“I’m perfectly capable!” Alice interjected.
But Frank put an arm on her shoulder, “Al,” he said. “Think of Neville, there’s a reason you haven’t been doing any field work lately.”
She shrugged his hand off. “Stop it. Both of you. Stop treating me like I’m so delicate. You know full well that I can take care of myself. And besides,” she added in a rush. “I’m sorry, but you told me that Elena’s quite inexperienced. Why should she go with Corinne if I’m not allowed?”
Elena was surprised at Alice’s outburst though it made sense. Obviously, she was capable, even if her husband didn’t want her to be in danger.
“Alice is right,” Corinne said, to the surprise of everyone at the table. “She is more qualified than Elena. She can go with me.”
Simon raised an eyebrow, “so you’re leaving me with Elena, who is, as you say, not qualified. You know that wherever we go, there’s a chance we’ll be in danger.”
“I know,” Corinne snapped. “I just think you’re being unreasonable. I will take Alice and you can have Frank, if you’re worried that Elena will be a burden.”
Elena was tired of being talked about as a hindrance. She knew she had none of the skill of the other Aurors, but she still felt capable enough. “Can’t we all go together?” she suggested, tired of the arguing.
That caused both Simon and Corinne to scoff. “We need to split up,” Alice told her gently. “That is the best way to get the most done.”
That was like a slap to Elena, now the Aurors were ‘we’ and she was some left out extra. “Fine,” she said harshly.
“Are you sure you want to go with Corinne?” Simon asked Alice so softly that it sounded private.
She shrugged. “I don’t really care,” she said finally, shaking her blonde head.
“So if she doesn’t care, Alice is with me,” Corinne said with a harsh definitive tone to her voice.
Elena had to wonder why Corinne was so eager to have Alice with her. It seemed strange, since Corinne certainly hadn’t seemed very friendly with Alice when they’d gone to tell them the news of the Minister’s death. Then again, Elena never really understood Corinne; yes, she’d think she understood the woman, but then Corinne would do something that would completely throw Elena for a loop.
“When do we leave?” Alice said to Corinne, desperately trying to sound bright despite the obvious tension in the air.
The French woman stood. “In a moment,” she promised. “I just need to have a word with Simon.”
Simon shook his head quickly, indicating that he didn’t want to speak, but Corinne was insistent and dragged him to the other room, leaving Elena alone with the Longbottoms.
Frank, ever the quiet man, was happy to sit in silence, glancing around the surroundings in curiosity. Alice watched the door where Simon and Corinne had left, a puzzled expression her face. When she saw Elena watching her, she shook her head, as if to clear her thoughts and began speaking to Frank in a low tone.
Elena stood, giving them some privacy and went to the stove, where she quickly set the pot boiling. Once the water was ready, she prepared a pot of tea, taking several chipped mugs down from the cabinets. “Would you like some?” she offered to the couple.
They both declined, so Elena went to ask Simon and Corinne, wondering what was so important that they’d been talking for so long. She poked her head through the door and saw the two several meters away, talking in hushed tones. Corinne seemed to be scolding Simon for something.
“Tea?” Elena said loudly, interrupting them.
Simon jumped and turned around, looking at Elena nervously. “Oh, yes please,” he said.
Corinne declined with a sharp shake of her head and gave Elena a deadly stare.
Quickly, Elena backed into the kitchen and poured two steaming cups of tea, sitting back down at the table. She was glad that she’d decided to put on Muggle clothing when she’d dressed. All the others were wearing trousers and shirts instead of robes and so she figured that they would be doing most of their searching in Muggle districts of London.
The café was crowded with the artsy type, Elena noted as she sipped her second cup of tea. Simon and Frank were also drinking, looking around the cozey room alertly. “Have you seen him yet?” she asked Simon in an undertone, taking a bite of biscuit to cover her question.
He shook his head quickly, not even glancing in Elena’s direction. She bit her lip, annoyed by his frigid response. He’d been treating her this way since they’d left the warehouse. She wasn’t sure what she’d done to anger Simon as she had barely spoken to him either, after giving him his first cup of tea. It seemed like whenever possible, he would look straight ahead, not even turning to Elena when she spoke to him.
With a roll of her eyes, Elena returned to the paper that she was pretending to read. It was some sort of alternative Muggle piece, filled with unmoving photographs of artwork and strange poems. She had read one of them, but it had seemed like a random string of words. For ten minutes, she’d been doing the crossword puzzle. Elena’d learned how to solve them from her father, who’d always had a slight obsession with them. Unfortunately, it was filled with strange references to Muggle culture that she really had no knowledge of, so she’d even had to give that up.
It was quite boring business, this tracking. Elena had assumed that there would be results like when she’d gone searching for Natalya, however they’d been in the café for at least an hour and nothing had happened. Of course, it would be much easier to track the man by magic, but he would probably be charmed, according to Simon, to notice when someone placed such a spell on him, so they would have to find and follow him the old fashioned way.
She had come to the end of her mug of tea and swirled the dregs around several times absentmindedly. With a smile to herself, Elena glanced down to see if they’d formed any discernable pattern; she’d taken a year of Divination, but had never really subscribed to that particular branch of magic. It wasn’t surprising that there was just a random, jumbled swirl of wet tealeaves in the bottom of the cup. She’d expected nothing more.
With a barely concealed yawn, Elena poured herself another mug of tea from the pot resting on a tea cosy in the centre of the table and helped herself to another biscuit, this time ginger. She turned back to her paper, wondering how much longer they’d have to wait before this man showed up.
Almost as soon as she’d wondered the thought, she felt Simon stiffen next to her. Looking up Elena saw the door to the café close, blowing in a gust of frigid air. A young man, probably no older than twenty six, walked in, pulling off a woollen cap. Instantly, Elena could see the similarities. This was certainly their target: Ethan MacDonald.
Trying to relax, Elena sank back down into her plush chair and took a sip of tea, burning her mouth on the hot liquid. “Damn,” she cursed as the liquid scalded her throat like liquid fire.
Simon stepped on her foot on the table, and a sharp pain issued from her booted foot. “Ow!” she hissed and resisted the childish urge to kick him back.
Ethan made his way to the counter and ordered something. As he waited for the drink to be prepared, he leaned against the counter, leafing through several papers in the process. A hip young woman handed him a paper cup and whispered something in his ear with a flirty smile. Ethan laughed and gave her a peck on the cheek over the counter.
He made his way back to the door, navigating the maze of tables and chairs. Simon stood causally, picking up his coat and fastening it over his jumper. He leaned down and whispered to Elena and Frank, “talk to the woman,” before leaving. They’d already decided that Simon would be the one to follow Ethan at first. If he needed backup, he would alert Frank and Elena. Elena wondered why they’d all come, if Simon was the only one to follow him, but Frank had explained that it would be too recognizable to have the whole group of them trailing Ethan.
Elena watched Simon exit the café and turn right, follow Ethan before turning to Frank. “Do you want to talk to her?”
He laughed at that, a warm sound and shook his head. “Now?” he questioned. “You really are green, Elena. I can’t go up to her right away, do you realize how suspicious that would look? I’ve got to give it half an hour at least. Obviously,” he lowered his voice to continue. “She’s close with Ethan. If we act too suspicious, she might tell him that people were asking after him.”
Elena nodded, of course he was right. “Right,” she felt a blush of shame rising on her cheeks. It made perfect sense, only she hadn’t thought of it herself.
“Who did you train with?” Frank asked curiously, no doubt, Elena thought, wondering who had trained her so inadequately.
She bit her lip and shook her head. It was better to be honest than to create an elaborate web of lies. “Look, Frank,” she said. “I’m not really an Auror. Not even, close. I’m a healer.”
Frank raised his eyebrows, a shocked expression for him. “Does Simon know?” he asked, looking worried and Elena was sure he was reaching for his wand, in case she was some sort of imposter.
Elena laughed at the absurdity of the question. “Of course Simon knows,” she said almost bitterly. “Who do you think brought the Minister to St. Mungo’s?”
There was silence for a moment as Frank’s eyes grew wide. “You were the one who treated Marcus?” his voice was incredulous.
Elena nodded slowly. “Yes sir. Healer Elena Wood at your service.” She realized that she might be a bit too deprecating for the situation. “I did everything,” she said in a more earnest tone. “Simon can vouch for that. But some kinds of hurt simply can’t be healed. I’m truly sorry that I could do nothing to help him.”
Frank held up a hand to stop her rambling. “What’s done is done,” he said. “I believe that Simon wouldn’t have let you know about all this if he didn’t trust your judgment and skills. There’s no need to try to prove it to me.” He paused for a moment, savouring the words. “But, maybe it wouldn’t be best to tell Alice this? Don’t lie to her if she asks directly, but I think Marcus’s death is still too raw for her to hear that you were there when he died.”
Glad that this was his only reaction, Elena agreed earnestly. “Of course. And I am sorry for leading you on. They—Simon and Corinne—thought it would be best not to advertise that I wasn’t an Auror.”
Frank didn’t say anything, but suddenly was staring at Elena very intently. A crease furrowed his brow and his eyes seemed to be cataloguing her face. “Did you say your surname was Wood?” he asked.
Elena nodded, unsure as to why he was asking. “Yeah.”
“Oliver Wood,” Frank said. “You’re his sister.”
Elena’s mouth dropped open for a moment in shock, then she composed herself. “Yes,” she said breathlessly. “Did you—do you know him?”
The Auror took a sip of his tea. “I knew him,” he said slowly. “He was in training at the same time I was. Albania, right?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Elena said, feeling like she’d struck gold. “Do you know if he’s alright? What is he doing there? Have you spoken to him lately?” If she could learn anything about her brother this whole ordeal would be worth it. She could tell Marianne and her parents and they would forgive her for all this secrecy and lies.
“I can’t tell you everything,” Frank said with a shake of his head, “because I don’t know it all. I don’t know how much you know. However, your brother did go to Albania last October to try to find You-Know-Who. Some officials thought that he might be hiding there but of course, he’s dead now. They kept Oliver there though, I don’t know why, but they seemed to think it was important. I haven’t been to the office in the Ministry for a few weeks but I know that there was a message from him at Christmas, saying he was safe.”
Elena breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank Merlin. We hadn’t heard from him since November at least. God it’s wonderful to know that he’s all right. Or,” she amended, “that he was alright then.”
“I’m glad to give you that comfort,” Frank said. “I know how hard it is to have family in danger, much less to not know if they’re alright. I’m thankful that I know where Alice is when she’s off on this mission or that one. Of course I still worry, what husband wouldn’t, especially with Neville, but at least I’m not in the dark.”
Frank seemed to understand exactly what Elena felt. “Thank you,” she said, glad for this assurance, however little.
There was a comfortable pause before Frank added one more thing. “You know,” he said, “if you wanted to know more about your brother, I’d talk to Simon. I think that he might know a lot more than I do.”
A cold sensation trickled into Elena’s stomach at that. “Oh?” Simon couldn’t possibly know. Otherwise, he would have told her. Maybe he hadn’t made the connection; that had to be it.
“Ask him later,” Frank said, draining the last of his tea. Once it was gone, he looked up at Elena. “I’m going to go speak to that girl now.” He grimaced. “If you hear from Simon, don’t wait for me. Go after him, alright?”
“Yeah. Good luck,” Elena added, thinking with a giggle of solemn Frank trying to flirt with the hip waitress .
“Same to you, Elena.” There was such gravity to his words that Elena did a double take but he was already gone and she couldn’t see if he’d been truly serious or just playing.
Giddy with the news of her brother, Elena leaned back in her chair, watching the people through the café’s large glass windows. Her tea was cold now, but she didn’t care as she dunked her biscuit into it and took a bite. Her brother was alright, that was all that mattered.
She was so engrossed in her thoughts that she barely registered that the man who had just passed the window, coming from the right, was Ethan MacDonald.
With a jolt, Elena realized that Simon was nowhere round him. She reached down to pick up her leather purse and coat, heading quickly to the door. Before she left, she saw Frank, chatting up the woman behind the counter and tried to catch is eye, however he had his back to Elena. She didn’t waste time trying to call out to him, and simply left, stepping out into the cold, knowing that he would realize where she’d gone.
Once in the frigid air, she latched her eyes onto Ethan, who was half a block a head of her and started walking. She had to forget about her brother and about Simon’s odd behaviour. She had a guard to track.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
beta- kirstenalanna
Chapter 10
lovely image by LadyMalfoy at TDA
Ethan MacDonald moved lithely through the crowded streets, weaving in and between the throngs that filled the city at noon. He was purposeful in his stride, yet never seemed to suspect that anyone might be following him. As she trailed him, always less than half a block behind, Elena wished that she was taller, so she might be able to see him better. She was afraid that she might miss his turn into one of the offices that were located in the tall buildings lining the streets. She patted her coat pocket, where her wand was concealed, feeling reassured that she could defend herself in case of any trouble.
Every minute or so, she turned to scan the crowd, trying to see if Simon was still trailing MacDonald. However, she never saw him and started to think that MacDonald had given Simon the slip. That made Elena a bit uncomfortable. Without Simon to direct her, she wasn’t quite sure what she could do if MacDonald did leave the streets. It wasn’t like she could go and question him, nor could she trail him forever. At some point, Elena would have to meet back up with Simon and Frank. Yet, this was a chance to finally prove her competence, so Elena squared her shoulders and started the elaborate, subtle dance through the crowd to tail Ethan and tried to forget her worries.
Though the air was cold, the sun was bright and Elena was glad for its warmth. She drew her coat tighter around her figure. For the purposes of appearing clandestine, cold weather was certainly a boon. The layers of clothing needed to stay warm made Elena resemble the majority of women around her. She became invisible in the sea of faces.
Ethan MacDonald kept walking straight ahead at a rapid pace. Once, Elena thought she would lose him when he ran across a street before the stoplight turned green. She bounced impatiently until she could cross and was relieved to see him, only a block ahead, stopping to purchase a newspaper from a stand.
She walked slower, hoping he would quickly buy the paper and keep walking; instead, MacDonald seemed to be talking intently to the man at the newsstand. So, when she reached the collections of magazines and papers, Elena paused, pretending to browse through the various titles of unfamiliar Muggle fashion magazines and newspapers.
The owner of the stand was a rotund, balding man, who sat on a folding chair under the cover of a small awning.
“Ethan,” the man was saying, “I can’t wait forever. Make your decision already: either you’re in or you’re not.”
Ethan shook his head, “I’ve told you,” he said in a whiney voice. “I need another week at least. If my current deal comes through, I won’t need the work.”
The fat man shrugged, “have it your way then. But don't cry if I find another bloke before next week.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Ethan said and he seemed to inflate with masculine pride; his shoulders squared and he puffed out his chest.
Elena selected a random magazine from the stand and fished some coins from her pocket, standing in line behind Ethan to pay for the publication.
“We can’t talk now,” the owner said to Ethan, nodding back at Elena. “I’ve got customers to serve. You’ll know where I’ll be if you want to reconsider though.”
Ethan agreed brusquely, turning to walk down the street. Hastily, Elena paid for the magazine, shoving it into her bag without even looking at it and hurried after Ethan MacDonald, trying not to lose him once more.
She had only taken a few steps when a hand fell onto her shoulder and she jumped, whirling to see who had touched her. Simon, looking confused, stood behind Elena and dropped his hand from her shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped, pushing her forward to walk when Elena froze in surprise.
Elena kept her eye focused on her target and spoke softly to Simon, not sure why he sounded so angry.
“I’m following him. Like we discussed.”
“Yes, well,” Simon shook his head. “That was my job.”
“I’m helping,” Elena said, hoping he wouldn’t order her back to the café.
In response, she felt Simon laugh silently and he dropped his hand from her back, his fingers brushing hers as his hands went to his sides.
“Alright,” he said at last. “Did you catch what he bought back at the paper stand?”
Elena felt a surge of relief and grinned, glad that Simon was accepting her presence. “Didn’t buy anything,” she said, trying to keep her voice low. “He talked to the owner though, something about a job offer.”
Simon whistled through his teeth in admiration. “That could be a jewel.”
Glad at the praise Elena nodded, “MacDonald said he would wait to tell the man. Maybe we could question the owner?”
“Yeah,” Simon nodded absently, then tensed, looking ahead to where Ethan Macdonald had turned suddenly into a narrow alley. “Let’s follow him,” Simon told her and a moment later they also stepped into the alley way. Elena reached for her wand, unsure of what to expect, ready to cast a spell if the need arose.
A quick glance around the alley turned up no one. Ethan, it seemed, had vanished in those few seconds. “Maybe he came here to apparate,” Elena reasoned. “No one could see him.”
Simon nodded once, though his face was tense and his eyes were scanning the surroundings. “Possible.”
The light in the bricked alley was murky and Elena walked down a few more paces to try to see if she saw any signs of where the man had disappeared to. There was something eerie about the alley; it seemed like it belonged in another era, one with oil street lamps and horse drawn buggies.
“This is an old part of town,” Simon commented, somehow thinking the same Elena was.
Without warning, the walls around them shifted and warped. A groaning issued from the bricks as they shuffled to cover the entrance to the alley. Simon sprinted back to the street, but before he reached the entry, the entrance was completely bricked up.
“Damn it,” he hissed. His fist clenched and he made to punch the wall, but stopped at the last instant.
Elena ran up to him as mist began to flood the alley from the opposite end. The air grew colder, if that was even possible and tendrils of ice wound their way up the bricks frosting it over. Breathing heavily, Elena become infinitely more aware of her surroundings: her clouded breath, her racing heart and Simon’s strong presence beside her. Something rustled in the other end of the alley and Elena drew her wand stepping closer to Simon. Suddenly, a wave of grief washed over Elena, so severe that she felt as if she were about to break in two. Flickers of her most horrible memories, nightmares and worries started to play behind her eyelids. Clutching to Simon, Elena watched in horror as two wispy, hooded figures floated towards them.
She wanted to ask him what they were, but she knew: Dementors. These dark creatures didn’t belong in London, yet here they were, advancing towards Elena and Simon emoting icy despair.
Simon seemed nearly as paralyzed as Elena for a moment, however he gained enough strength to push her up against the wall, behind him, so that she was shielded slightly from creatures. He stood in front of her protectively, but seemed to be fighting the depression from the Dementors only slightly better than Elena.
Elena knew she should act, she could produce a patronus, but all she could feel was that pressing darkness. All her hours of practice at school meant nothing now; she had never been called to act in the presence of the real creature. Her legs grew weak and the only thing holding her up was the steady wall behind her.
Elena’s vision began to tunnel as she fought the effects of the advancing Dementors.
“Do something,” she whispered, hoping Simon might hear her and react.
She wasn’t sure if it was her words or something else that caused him to move, but in the next moment, Simon had abandoned his stupor and shouted, “Expecto Patronum!” A silvery animal flew from his wand and swirled around the darkness, fighting it back. Elena’s vision cleared as the icy cold receded and she stood on shaky legs, relieved.
Her relief was short lived, however, for no sooner had the last traces of the Dementors faded than another pair of hooded figures advanced. These figures did not float, rather ran, their booted feet pounding on the brick. Their wands were drawn and already sparking at the tip.
Simon tensed and shoved Elena, causing her to fall to the ground just as a bolt of red light tore through the air. Simon fired several spells at the hooded figures.
“Who’s that with you, Burke?” one voice taunted. “A friend of yours? A girlfriend, perhaps?”
Simon swore and kept sending curses towards the assailants, not responding to their taunts. Elena sat up only to have another bolt of light shot towards her. She rolled out of the way and stood, aiming her wand at their attackers.
“Stupefy!” she shouted, directing the spell towards the smaller man, who dodged it lithely.
“She’s not as pretty as the last one,” the same man said with a chuckle. “Though she’s not a hag either.”
“Ignore him,” Simon hissed in between incantations. He sounded livid, like he could murder the men, just for what they were saying.
The smaller man, who hadn’t been speaking the whole time, made a slashing movement with his wand and purple flames hit Simon, lashing at his chest and sending him sprawling to the ground.
Elena gasped in horror as Simon didn’t get up and raised her wand to fight off the men. She knew she would never win, but at least she could hold them off until Simon awoke because he couldn’t, simply couldn’t be dead.
The taller man, who had been taunting Simon laughed—a booming, smearing sound. He gestured to the smaller attacker, who made the same slashing movement. Elena cast a shield charm, but the spell seemed to slide through it, and a wave of brute force knocked Elena to the ground beside Simon. She felt no burning or pain from the spelling, only a crushing weight that enveloped her chest, constricting her breathing and paralyzing her.
Still laughing in glee, the two men left the alley with two loud cracks. Elena felt the spell squeeze her ribs once more, before the pressure eased and she was able to gasp for breath. Spots appeared in front of her eyes as she took in the needed air and was finally able to sit up and crawl over to Simon.
He lay, eyes closed on the bricks. He was breathing, but only barely. Elena felt his pulse—also weak—and drew her wand. Quickly, she cast several basic healing charms, to steady him and to prevent the onset of shock.
Once sure that he was at least stable, she cast several more revealing charms. As she expected, the dark acrid stench of black magic clouded the air. The spell the attacker had placed upon Simon was no simple curse, but something twisted and malevolent.
If she had been at St. Mungo’s, Elena would have given him a few potions brewed to counter the dark arts and then sent him to a group of healers that specialized in obscure curses. However, she was not in the sanitary environment of the hospital, nor did she have access to its supply people and potions. Elena debated bringing him in, but decided against it. It would raise too many questions if she, who was supposed to be on holiday, brought in an injured Auror.
Finally, Elena decided that the best way to proceed would be to ask Simon. She might be able to wake him and see if he had any knowledge of the curse and how to treat it.
“Enerverate,” she hissed and Simon stirred, his eyes blinking. Elena stared down at his face and realized, that he looked so much less harsh asleep. His lashes brushed at his cheeks and she watched, enthralled, as he opened his eyes.
“Simon,” she said in a hushed voice. “Simon can you hear me.”
He opened his mouth. “Elena,” he croaked out, his voice as rough as glass.
“I’m right here,” Elena said, her hands trembling. “Listen, Simon, I need you to tell me what the spell was that that man used on you. The one with the purple flames.” She knew her voice was quavering, though she tried to sound confident.
He moved to sit up, eyes turning panicked. “Are they still here?” he said. “Run!”
Elena pushed him down as gently as she could. “Don’t move,” she ordered. “They’re gone. Just tell me what the spell was.”
Simon relaxed slightly into the ground. “The name won’t tell you anything about how to cure it. It’s Dolohov’s own creation.”
The name made Elena choke, “Dolohov? He’s a Death Eater. He’s in Azkaban.” She knew that they were dealing with dark magic, but not Death Eaters, members of You-Know-Who’s innermost circle. That was something else entirely.
“He taught some of his friends,” Simon said weakly. “Listen, the curse deflects healing. It’s not impossible to cure, and once its defences are broken, a simple spell will do the trick but in the field the only thing to do is to attack it with healing spells.”
Elena bit her lip. “What kind of spells?”
“Anything,” Simon said, his face going white. “Just keep casting them. And don’t waste your strength trying something complicated. It’s not worth it.”
The air in the alley was growing colder again, as the afternoon began to turn to evening. Elena’s coat was shredded and she was shivering. “I’m going to apparate you back to the warehouse,” she told Simon. “I’ll try to heal you there. If you can just sit for a moment…” However, it seemed that Simon had passed out once more, from pain or from the effects of the curse, Elena didn’t know. Her plans to transport him vanished as she realized that he was likely too unstable to move safely.
With a worried glance around, she began casting the most basic of healing spells upon Simon. Layering them and watching as swatches of golden light covered his body and sunk into his skin. She had to start repeating spells after her minute, for she’d run out of the least taxing ones.
Another minute in, her voice cracked and Elena had to pause for a moment, making sure she wouldn’t accidently miscast the spell and cause more damage to Simon. Nothing seemed to have an effect on him, to her dismay. He lay so still that several times, Elena felt his pulse, worried that he had slipped away without her noticing.
She considered calling Corinne or even Frank for help, but knew that it would be of no use in the end. The others were probably making more progress than she had with Simon and calling them would interrupt something surely. Besides, even if they came, they couldn’t do anything but keep up the barrage of spells until Simon awoke.
After a time, Simon’s colouring started to come back. Elena paused her healing and brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes.
“Simon,” she said hoarsely. “Are you awake?”
He didn’t respond to her voice and Elena felt a wave of exhaustion. All this healing was draining and it didn’t even seem to be making a large difference. Normally using this many spells on one person at once would have been deadly, however this case, if Simon was correct, was different. Elena wished again that she could consult some experts on curses or that she at least had some potions to give him.
“Episky,” Elena said and a sob escaped her mouth. She bit back another. “Enerverate,” she choked out, feeling tears slide down her cheeks, unbidden.
“Stop it,” she ordered herself. “Get yourself together Elena.”
This encouragement failed though and Elena dissolved into sobs. She had done something wrong; she knew it. Simon had to have been wrong about how to treat the curse. A potion might help, but not this continuous assault of healing spells. Or maybe there was no cure. He would just lie here until the curse won and stole his life away. And it would be all her fault: she was the one who had wanted him to come into the alley. If she had been stronger, she might have been able to fight off the other men. If she had never met him, he would have been better off. Perhaps a stronger healer could have saved the Minister and put a stop to this endless, endless mess.
“Oh Simon,” Elena said, despair flooding her mind. “I’m sorry.” She reached her hand down and blindly stroked his hair again. “This is all my fault.”
“No,” a voice said, sounding as rusty as Elena’s own.
Sure she was hallucinating from exhaustion, Elena shook her head twice. “Yes, yes it is.”
“Elena,” the voice, Simon’s voice, said again. “Why are you crying?”
In shock, she glanced down to where he was lying on the ground, a trail of dried blood ran from his temple into his hair but his eyes were most certainly open and his mouth was moving.
“Oh Merlin,” she said. “You’re not dead.”
“No,” he said. “It seems that St. Mungo’s knew what it was doing when they hired you.”
A small smile crept onto Elena’s lips and she wiped away some of her tears. “How do you feel?” she said at last, some of her healer training taking over.
Simon gave a bit of a shrug. “Bad,” he said. “But I’ve felt worse. I think I can sit up, though.”
Elena, deciding that he knew best, helped him sit, so that he was leaning against one of the alley walls. She sat on her heels rocking back and forth a little. “Are you dizzy?” she questioned, watching Simon intensely still sure he would collapse at any moment.
“No,” he gave a weak smile. “Though I don’t think that I’ll be able to apparate any time soon.”
“Oh,” Elena said with a bit of a laugh. “Right. God, we’re going to have to get out of here sometime, aren’t we? I’ve no idea how. I’ll splinch for sure right now.” She felt so drained, emotionally and physically that there was no way she could transport one, much less two people by means of magical travel.
Simon shrugged, “I can send a Patronus message to Corinne, though she may not be able to come right away.”
Elena nodded and scooted over so that her back was against the same wall that Simon’s was. “I’m so tired,” she said with a yawn.
She turned just in time to see a silvery glint as Simon’s Patronus shot through the air, off to find Corinne. “Now we wait,” he told her, sounding every bit as exhausted. “You can sleep if you like.”
That sounded quite appealing to Elena but she doubted that she would be able to rest. She was grateful for the offer though.
“Remember,” she said, yawning again. “You’re not healed yet. Try to go see someone at St. Mungo’s tomorrow. Or if you can’t at least take a restorative potion. You’re far from better.”
Simon laughed warmly in acquiescence. “Alright, Healer Wood. If you say so.”
“I mean it,” Elena closing her eyes as she leaned against the wall. It was still warm from absorbing sunshine. She wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.
“Are you alright?” Simon asked. “Did any of their spells hit you?”
“No, I’m fine,” Elena assured him, though her words slurred.
Simon turned to face her, shaking his head. “You’re exhausted,” he told her at last. His wand emerged from his pocket and he muttered a spell to send her to sleep.
“I’m really alright,” she protested, though the words were more like a hiss of breath. As hard as Elena fought to keep her eyes open, the temptation close them was too strong and a dark curtain fell over the world. Just before she lost consciousness, she felt the ghostly touch of fingers on her face, moving a strand of hair away from her face.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Thanks to kirstenalanna for being my beta.
image by .asperity @ TDA
Chapter 11
Elena’s encounter with the Death Eaters in the alley had led to her being confined to the warehouse for several days. Though she had not been hit with the full force of Dolohov’s spell, she’d wasted all of her energy trying to save Simon and was consequently exhausted.
Not that Elena wanted to rest. When Corinne had delivered the news that Elena was not to leave her bed for three days, there had been a shouting match that left Corinne muttering that she should have sent Simon to tell Elena instead. Regardless of whom the bearer of the news was, Elena managed to be allowed out of her room, free to roam the expansive building… just not free to leave.
Now that she was feeling better, she was particularly annoyed that Simon could go when he was the one who really needed the rest. Less than a day after the incident, he had trudged off to the Ministry in his usual disguise of the Minister. Elena had wondered then if he had gone to see a Healer who had the proper potions to treat his condition and decided that he must have while she had been asleep.
With Corinne analyzing evidence with Alice and Frank in their better-equipped home, and Simon away as well it gave Elena some time to think about the whole situation.
Today, she figured, she would hear back about the contents of the potion vials she’d found in the guard Natalya’s room. The letter Elena had found was still being analyzed but she didn’t think much would be gained from it. Ethan MacDonald had yielded no information yet, though Elena knew that he had not been followed again, for fear of another ambush. Apparently, Corinne was working on gathering a team of Aurors to follow, arrest and question him.
Since there was very little for Elena to do regarding the case of the Minister, she had time to think of other things. Elena thought of her brother and how Frank had mentioned that he was safe a little before Christmas. The knowledge filled Elena with relief, though she was curious as to why Simon hadn’t mentioned it to her before.
And then, Elena thought of Simon. She had never felt such an acute worry in her life as when she had seen him fall to the ground slashed by the purple light. She wasn’t sure if the worry came from the stress of the battle or from something else, but it made her nervous. Even though Elena was growing attached to Simon and even to Corinne, she knew that their shaky partnership wouldn’t last. As soon as the mystery of Marcus Gordon’s killer was solved, they would go back to their ordinary work and Elena would be a healer once more.
With a sigh, Elena closed her eyes, leaning back in the plush chair. Despite claiming to not be tired, Elena was exhausted and a nap seemed just the thing she needed right now.
Her thoughts kept drifting and twisting, sometimes weaving, and often tangling. Elena was on the brink of sleep when a crack shook her awake.
In an instant, she was on her feet, her wand held tightly in her hand. There was a loud string of curses in the kitchen and Elena crept over to peer through the door. To her immense surprise, and relief, she saw only Simon, half the Minister, half himself, crouched over in pain.
“Are you alright?” she asked tentatively, confused as to why he was back at the warehouse already.
Simon nodded, standing up fully himself. “I received a message from Corinne telling me to meet her back here as soon as possible. I was just excusing myself when I realized that the potion was wearing off. When I went drink more, I realized that the flask was back on the desk, where I’d left it. So, I suppose I made a rather rushed exit. I don’t think anyone saw me change though.”
Elena gave a yawn, then quickly covered it, embarrassed.
“Were you asleep?” Simon asked, looking worried.
Elena bit her lip, leaning against the doorframe. “Almost,” she admitted. “But I’m alright now, don’t worry.”
Simon had a strange, intense expression in his eyes that made Elena want to shy away, instead she took a step through the door.
“So Corinne’s coming soon,” Elena verified, ignoring Simon’s eyes, which were following her every move.
“Right.”
“Tea?” Elena moved to put a kettle on the range.
Simon shook his head. “No, thank you.”
With a little shrug, Elena set about making tea and then, mug in hand, sat down at the table to stare up at Simon. For a while, she stirred the tea, round and round, finally taking a sip and nearly scalding her mouth with the hot liquid.
There was a protracted silence before Simon sat down across from Elena.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sensing the odd tension in the air. His gaze had softened, and Elena found that she was now the one watching him intently.
She knew there was no avoiding the issue any longer. “Do you know my brother?” Elena asked bluntly, a hint of animosity coming into her tone without bidding.
Simon’s eyes flickered down for a moment, before he looked up and answered steadily. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Elena demanded of him. “When did you know? Frank said that you did, but you could have mentioned that sooner. My whole family is constantly worried sick about him! His wife wonders when she’ll get the Owl about his death! Simon, how could you?” To her horror, Elena felt tears welling up in her eyes.
Simon looked utterly bewildered. “Elena,” he said at last. “I didn’t want to upset you. And there was hardly time for idle chat.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Upset me? I think I’m more upset now because you didn’t say anything!”
“Listen to me,” Simon began, his voice rising.
“Are you going to explain?” Elena demanded. “Don’t bother speaking if you aren’t.”
Simon rolled his eyes quickly and stood up. “Tell me when Corinne arrives,” he said coldly and strode from the room.
Elena felt a tear drop into her tea and stirred it once more before taking a sip. It had apparently not yet cooled and the liquid burned her mouth, causing tears to well up in her eyes.
“Damn,” she whispered to herself.
Corinne arrived almost an hour later, and Elena was glad for her presence. She apparated with the tell-tale cracking noise and stepped into the kitchen.
“Simon?” Corinne called, and then saw Elena.
Elena looked up from her now cold tea, feeling desolate. “He’s around,” she said meekly.
Corinne stared at Elena questioningly. “What happened?” she asked. Elena had to guess that it was more out of social convention than genuine curiosity.
“Nothing,” Elena said quickly; she didn’t want Corinne to know she had argued with Simon. “Do you have any information?”
Seeming to decide that it wasn’t worth pressing, Corinne accepted the change of subject. “Yes. I’ll go get him before we start though.”
Minutes later, the trio was seated around the table, Corinne spreading out several sheets of parchment. “You were right,” she said to Elena. “The potions were Felix Felicius and Veritaserum.”
Elena nodded, not surprised. Very few potions were potent in small quantities. “Did you find who brewed them?” she asked, knowing that registered apothecaries magically labelled their work.
“No,” was the rueful answer. “It seems that they were privately made.”
Simon grabbed a report and stared at it. “That’s about ten different kinds of illegal,” he said after a moment. “Those quantities, from an unregistered brewer. The punishment for that is more than a fine.”
“Azakaban?” Elena whispered, feeling a twinge of dread wash over her.
Still looking pointedly away from her, Simon shrugged. “It all depends on the motives and the intent of the potion, but yes, Azkaban.”
Corinne waved a hand. “Illegally brewed potions are honestly the least of our worries right now. Someone with enough guts to murder the Minister wouldn’t be sloppy.”
She had a point, Elena knew and yet, very few people knew that apothecaries labeled their work. It only showed how careful the murderers had been.
“What next?” It felt like that several leads had dead-ended. Natalya’s flat had turned up the potions, and the letter, neither of which had lead to anything.
In response, a sheet of parchment was shoved in Elena’s face. With curiosity, she lifted it up and saw a profile of a man, complete with a mug shot and a detailed report. “Charlie Redmond?” she asked. “Who’s that?”
Simon tapped a finger on Redmond’s face. “Add a few years, and place him in front of a paper stand.”
The man suddenly looked familiar. Though he hadn’t aged well, he was still the vender who had offered Ethan MacDonald a job. “He’s a wizard?” Elena asked in shock.
“Oh yes. He was arrested for selling fake charms a decade back. Though with no real evidence, they had to let him go. From this report, it seems that ‘shady’ is his middle name.”
Elena stared at the man’s leering face again. “Do you think he’ll still be at his paper stand?”
“Worth a try,” Corinne said, stacking her papers up again. “Even if he already met with MacDonald, we can probably get a few words out of him.” Her face had taken on a feral sort of excitement that made Elena want to run the other way. She stood up suddenly. “Who’s coming with me?”
Simon sank in his chair. “Really?” he asked her. “Right now?”
Corinne nodded. “Yes. And since you seem so thrilled to go, I’ll send you and Elena. I still have a few other contacts I can check with.”
Elena didn’t particularly want to spend any more time alone with Simon at the moment, but she kept silent. Apparently, Simon felt the same, for a moment later he banged a fist down on the table, rattling the cups.
“No!” he declared. “Go your bloody self, Corinne. Don’t pretend you don’t want to.”
The French woman raised an eyebrow at him, her face mocking. She didn’t choose to speak for a long moment and seemed to be collecting her thoughts.
“Sorry?” she asked in a clipping tone.
“You heard me,” Simon snapped. “Go yourself.”
“Can I have word?” Corinne’s voice was icy. “Outside?”
Simon shook his head, his eyes blazing with frightening fury. “Say whatever it is you have to say here.”
Elena, sensing that whatever was about to transpire was not going to be pleasant, stood up and backed into a corner, leaving Corinne to circle Simon, her eyes seeming to spit anger.
“I don’t know what is wrong with you, Simon,” she said. “But be well aware that it is beyond inappropriate. If this mission was being overseen by the Office, they would have your arse for this.”
Simon stood as well and seemed to tower over Corinne. “Luckily for me, then, this mission isn’t.” His voice had a sneering quality to it that made Elena sick. This wasn’t Simon, not the one who had laughed, or almost died. This was some other man.
“That doesn’t mean that you can act like some petty child!” Corinne practically shouted at him. “We are not vigilantes. We are Aurors! And we have to follow certain standards of conduct!”
Abruptly, Simon stopped shouting and spoke with a deadly calm. “This isn’t just about now, is it?” Despite his voice, his face was reddening by the second and Elena saw his hands trembling.
“No.” Corinne looked almost rueful. “It’s not. You’ve been slipping Simon; I’ve seen it before. I know that you were about to let it slip to Alastor today. And you cannot tell anyone. We’ve agreed on this. You, me, Frank, Alice, Elena. That’s it. And that’s it until this is solved!”
“Would it really hurt?” he asked, “if we told him? It would help, you know, to get a little bit of backup. Then we wouldn’t have to be working all hours. Me, spending seven, eight hours a day pretending to be Marcus. Then coming back and spending all night searching. You wouldn’t have to make all those excuses in the office. And Elena wouldn’t have to go into combat situations she has no business being in.”
An almost gentle expression crossed Corinne’s face and she smoothed her hair back. “It can be time Simon,” she said softly. “You can just say that Marcus got sick, fell ill. If it’s honestly that bad. I know I could use more help searching.”
“Not just that,” Simon shook his head. “Though it would help, having about five more helpers would make this less of an impossible task.”
“You mean, then Elena wouldn’t have to help,” Corinne pointed out.
Simon shrugged. “Yes. She’s not a fighter.”
Elena felt like he’d slapped her. It was as though he’d forgotten she was in the room. But he’d sounded so sincere. He didn’t want her. Elena felt tears well up again at the rejection, but stifled them the best she could. There was no need for Simon to see her crying. That would only further his beliefs of her incompetency.
Corinne looked disgusted. “Have you lost your mind? Elena’s doing as good as any new Auror would. She’s still alive, Simon. Besides, you know why we can’t tell. If it gets out to the Office, the whole Ministry knows, and then the public. Chaos. Panic. The world would fall apart.”
“Did I say tell the office? Just tell Alastor. He can replace Elena.”
“I know what this is about.” Corinne took a menacing step towards Simon. “I know exactly what this is about. And let me tell you, Simon, that is a hazard of the job. People die. You know that. People have already died, and while I’d like the next victim to be our murderer, I doubt that’s who it’ll be. Accept that Simon, try to be as careful as you can, and then move on.” Corinne paused to get her breath, and cleared her throat. When she spoke again, her French accent was less pronounced. “And don’t you ever talk about telling someone again.”
Simon looked like she’d slapped him. He stepped closer to her, so that they were merely feet away. “You can be so callous!” he exploded. “‘People die, Simon,’” he mocked. “She was more than a person. I’d like to think that you would understand that. I’ve seen your file. I know that you’ve got some skeletons hiding in your closet. I know about Christian,” he began in a taunting voice.
Corinne gazed at Simon with what appeared to be undisguised hatred. She raised a trembling hand, as if to hit him. Several times, she looked like she was about to scream. Finally, she took both hands and shoved Simon hard, back into the table. “Go to Hell,” Corinne spat and whirled around.
She seemed to see Elena in the corner and with two vicious steps reached her. "Come Elena,” Corinne snapped and seized Elena’s arm. She dragged her two steps before launching a furious glance at Simon.
“Do not bother to come grovelling,” she said and with a twist, apparated.
Once the nausea from the spinning ended, Elena looked up. They had landed in some sort of garden, though the ground was frozen. Surprisingly, there was no snow on the ground, though Elena knew that all of London was covered. Corinne was sitting on a stone bench that leaned up against a large tree and she looked desolate.
“I,” Elena began. “Where are we?”
“Does it matter?” Corinne asked in a voice that sounded close to tears.
Elena couldn’t see the other woman’s face, but she was still bewildered. Corinne, about to cry? That seemed a most unlikely occurrence. If Corinne had left to hide her tears, why had she dragged Elena along?
“What did Simon say?” Elena wondered, not understanding what had set off this strange burst of emotion.
Corinne didn’t answer for a moment, then sat up, wiping her eyes. “That doesn’t matter either,” she said tightly. “People die. It’s part of the job.”
The statement seemed so forced, like Corinne had said it, half hoping that if she did it would be true. Elena felt a wave of pity. Corinne had always seemed so infallible. Tough and severe, without a crack in her shell. Elena had never considered that she might be harbouring a loss.
“Who’s Christian?” Elena asked gently.
“Christian,” Corinne said the name with a decidedly French accent and a wistful tone. “He,” she paused and shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t know what I was thinking. Listen, don’t worry about Simon. He’s being an arse and hopefully that little talk back there set him right again. He really didn’t mean half the things he said.”
Elena had been trying not to think about his wish to get rid of her. She nodded though, glad to see that Corinne was back to her usual self. For a moment, she looked around again trying to discern where they were, but she couldn’t tell. The sky was blanketed by thick clouds and the air was cold. The ground was frozen, there was little grass but it looked as if in the summer, this was a garden of sorts. Probably very pretty. But it was cold now, and mirrored the bleakness in Elena’s world.
She shivered, wrapping her thin sweater tighter around her arms. Elena hadn’t dressed planning to go outside.
Finally, Corinne stood up. “Come on,” she said, taking a hold of Elena’s elbow. “We need to go question our vender: Charlie Redmond.” Without further explanation, she apparated again, landing the two women in an alley in London.
This time, Elena recognized her location almost instantly. This was where she and Simon had fought with the Death Eaters. It still bore signs of the struggle as well. Rubble still lined the sides of the alley and glass lay in ragged shards near a broken window. There was a scar on one of the brick walls, a singed mark cast by a wayward spell.
“Why here?” Elena asked, not wanting to remember the horror that had occurred only days before.
Corinne didn’t bother to explain and simply walked out into the street with renewed purpose. She didn’t wait for Elena, who had to run to keep up, narrowly avoiding hitting several pedestrians as she pushed past them to reach Corinne.
The French woman didn’t stop walking until she’d reached the vender’s stall. Without pretence, she marched up to the owner, Redmond, and drew her wand slightly.
Elena, not sure what she should do, chose to pretend to browse his selection of magazines, scanning the Muggle titles as she kept her other eye on Corinne.
“I’m going to give you a name,” Corinne spoke in a low tone. “You are going to tell me everything you know about him.”
Redmond blubbered for a moment, then stilled when Corinne whispered, “Ethan MacDonald.”
“What do you want to know about Ethan?” Redmond demanded, his gaze turning wary. “Who are you anyways?” Elena noticed that he didn’t bother trying to deny that he knew Ethan.
“That doesn’t matter,” Corinne answered smoothly. “Just tell me where Ethan is.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” the large man blustered. “Go away don’t you? You’re scaring off the business.” He gestured towards Elena, who had stopped pretending to browse.
With an evil grin that she didn’t know she possessed, Elena moved closer to Corinne and Redmond. “I’m with her,” she said in a sweet voice.
Redmond paled visibly. “I don’t know why you think you have the right to know.”
“Just a few words,” Corinne urged. “It will be painless. Unlike the alternative.”
“Which is what?” Now the man was using pretended arrogance, however anyone could see the terror that was growing in his beady eyes.
Corinne gave a smile much more saccharine than Elena’s own. “Let me spell it out for you. If you don’t talk, I’ll haul you out of this cart, straight to the Ministry. I’ll pour a whole vial of Veritaserum down your pudgy throat, and then we’ll see what you tell me.”
It was obvious Redmond hadn’t realized that Corinne was from the Ministry, possibly that she was even magical. He shook his head. “I don’t know what a Ministry bitch is doing in this part of London, but you can be sure that I won’t tell you a thing. Veritaserum or not!”
“You obviously have no experience with the potion,” Corinne said airily. “It can be quite persuasive. And if it doesn’t’ work, there’s always other means of coercion.”
Elena stepped forward and stared the man in the eye. When she spoke her voice was surprising brutal.
“Tell us where he is, or I will hex you so quickly that…”
Corinne stopped her with a hand. “Let me handle the threats,” she said, sounding almost amused by Elena’s attempt. “I’ll ask you one more time.” Corinne’s voice was still sweet, though the edge was creeping back in. “Where is Ethan?”
With shaking hands, the man reached into his pocket and drew out a pen. On a sheet of paper, he wrote out an address and passed the paper to Corinne. “There. That’s where he’ll be.”
“Who was his employer?” Corinne asked, but the man had reached into his pocket and had withdrawn a tiny vial.
He uncorked it quickly and drank the contents before anyone could stop him. Elena pulled out her wand, but realized that with the Muggles around, there was nothing she could do to save him. Besides, from how fast his face turned blue, he had taken a very quick acting poison that was nearly incurable. Unless she could magically produce a bezoar, he was going to die in the next twenty seconds.
The man now choked for breath, and his eyes bulged as he clutched his throat. For a moment, he made a noise that sounded like a fish, gasping for air then he slumped in the chair and fell still. Corinne put the paper in her pocket and stepped away in disgust from the dead man.
“That’s it then.”
Disclamer: I don't own HP.
Thanks to the ever-patient kirstenalanna for being my beta.
wonderful image by .asperity @ TDA
Chapter 12
The next afternoon, Elena found herself at the Longbottom house again. This time, however, she was alone as she ascended the steps and knocked quickly on the door.
Alice answered, though she did not appear to be cheery. Instead, her normally happy face was drawn and pinched. Dark circles lined her eyes and her hair was limp. “Come in, Elena,” she said wearily.
Elena entered the house, speaking as soon as the door was closed. “Corinne has found where Ethan MacDonald was sent. She wants to raid the house.” The words felt dry in Elena’s mouth. She was only saying what she had been sent to say, nothing more.
Alice ushered Elena into the sitting room, where Neville was lying in a bassinette. She didn’t sit, however, so Elena felt forced to stand as well. “She wants to know if you and Frank would be willing to help.”
“Elena,” Alice began, sounding insubstantial. “I want to know who killed my father, I really do. But can’t you manage it with the three of you? I’m tired enough as it is keeping what remains of my family whole. I’d like it if Neville had parents when he was older.”
“I agree,” Elena said, forgetting her own strict instructions. “You shouldn’t have to solve this. He was your father, after all. It’s just that they don’t feel safe just the two of them.”
A look of comprehension filled the other woman’s eyes. “You wouldn’t go,” she said. “Why not?”
Elena made a face at that. It was Simon’s fault, really. He was the one insisting that she stay behind. That Frank and Alice come instead. “Not enough experience,” she mumbled. “Last time, well, you know, Simon almost died because he had to protect both himself and me. He would have been fine with another Auror at his back. But I was just a liability.”
“Another Auror?” Alice said, her eyes light with confusion. “But you are an Auror.”
“No,” Elena said darkly. “I’m not.” She hadn’t meant to reveal to Alice her inexperience, but it had slipped out. Now she wasn’t sure how she could avoid telling the whole story. That she was the healer who had witnessed Marcus Gordon’s death. The one who couldn’t stop him from dying.
Luckily, it seemed that Alice was too tired to really care about this confusion. “Alright,” she said at last. “I honestly don’t give a damn if you’re not. You’ve done a fine job so far, as good as any Auror, so there’s no reason you should stop now. That whole incident with Simon--it could have happened to anyone. I’m just glad that you were there to save him.” She folded her hands neatly, as if settling the matter.
“But, will you help with the raid?” Elena wondered. “Even if I go, it could be a trap. We would need all the help we could get.”
Neville began to cry loudly and Alice hurried over to him and picked him up. She ignored Elena, rocking her son and cooing to him until his sobs turned to sniffles. Finally, she just gazed at him in adoration, like he was the most precious thing she’d ever seen.
After a long moment, Alice looked up. “Yes,” she said at last. “I’ll go. Frank too. I want my son to grow up in a safe world, not one plagued by random killings and danger.”
Elena felt a little moved by the emotion in Alice’s voice. “Then thank you,” she said at last. “I’m sure your help will not go unappreciated.”
Still holding her son, the mother nodded definitively. “When do we leave?”
It was night when the group of five arrived at the house. It was on the outskirts of London, in a rather suburban area. The houses around were all single story, and though modern, looked ill-cared for. Number ten, the house that Redmond has directed them to, looked as average as the others. The garden was covered with untouched snow. Icicles dripped from the roof. No lights were on in this house, nor in its neighbours, but the street lamps that lined the narrow streets cast a dull glow on the whole scene.
“Not a wizarding family on the block,” Frank said. “All Muggles here.”
“Nobody’s here,” Corinne corrected.
No one in the group was bundled up for the cold. If things came to a fight, it would be impractical to be wearing bulky coats and mittens.
In a whisper, Elena saw Alice draw her wand and cast several spells, to reveal any humans in the area. Nothing. The street, as Corinne had said, was deserted.
“Shall we go inside, then?” Simon asked.
Elena shivered, only partly because of the cold. “It feels like a trap,” she said. “Redmond’s employers likely know he’s dead and have had plenty of warning to set the place up for an ambush.”
“But no one is here,” Alice countered. “I’m a damn good spellcaster and the spell doesn’t lie.”
“People don’t have to be waiting for it to be dangerous,” Simon said in a quiet voice.
Corinne shook her head. “None of you have been on a proper mission in a while, have you?” Her voice was a bit scornful. “We have planned out what we’re going to do. I suggest that you all stop loitering in the street, where anyone can see and go inside. Like Alice said, the whole street is deserted. And we can check for traps as we go along.”
That settled it. Elena could sense that the other three had bristled at Corinne’s accusation that they had not been on a mission recently. They seemed more eager to prove that they were still capable. So, in single file, the four Aurors, and Elena proceeded across the snow-covered garden. Frank didn’t bother to knock on the door, simply opened it. If there had been people inside, secrecy would have been paramount. Unlike Muggle police, who always declared their presence, Aurors needed to be stealthy. When suspects could vanish instantly, giving them a warning was disastrous.
Elena was in the exact middle of the line, yet she could still feel the gush of warm air that issued from the open door. The scent, something putrid and sticky gushed out into the cold of the winter, forming clouds in the air. Elena gagged, doubling over automatically, her head reeling at the stench.
Around her, she heard various other exclamations and curses. “That’s a body,” Simon said darkly. Elena wanted to vomit.
She’d seen corpses before, all Healers had to in training. In some tragic cases, the death of the Minister being most obvious, she’d watched patients die. But she had never had to deal with the smell of death. The bodies in training had been magically preserved, as perfect as they’d been when still alive. Any dead patients had been taken away quickly and again preserved, never left to rot.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Alice said softly, from the back of the line. Elena felt less shame, knowing that an Auror, who had dealt with death so much, couldn’t stand the stench either.
After another minute, Corinne shook herself and strode into the house. “It’s not use standing outside,” she reasoned. “We’re more vulnerable in the open.”
A second later, Frank followed, wand raised. Alice pushed past Elena a moment later, her shirt pulled up to cover her mouth and nose.
Elena was still doubled over on the steps, taking shallow breaths through her mouth, wishing she could run away from that awful heat and that smell. She wasn’t sure if she could stand it if the smell intensified. She still thought she might vomit.
A hand clamped down on her shoulder and Simon helped her upright. “Are you alright?” he asked gently.
She shook her head and made a show of plugging her nose. However, when she spoke, her voice was anything but light hearted. “I don’t think I can go inside,” she whispered to him.
He looked down at Elena, his eyes impossible to read. “You need to,” he said at last, “if only for a few moments.”
Elena bit her lip but took a step towards the door, trying not to inhale.
“You also need to breathe,” Simon reminded her when she swayed and he caught her with a hand around her waist.
Blushing, Elena pulled away and strode as confidently as she could into the sauna-esque house. She didn’t want him to think she was weak. He had said he wanted her to be replaced by another Auror after all.
As she had feared, the smell did worsen, but the thought of Simon watching her made Elena keep walking, towards the glowing light of several wands.
“That was a little too easy,” Elena heard Corinne say with disgust.
Elena was sure that Simon would have pushed past her if the hallway they were in had not been so narrow, so she hastened her pace until the corridor opened up into a larger room. “What is it?” she asked, though quickly regretted it, since talking required breathing and here, death soaked the steaming air.
Someone cast a light to the ceiling, and on the floor, Elena could suddenly see the source of the stench. A body, bloated and bloody, lying on the tile floor. Mercifully, there were no flies to have further desecrated the corpse; however, the scene was bad enough without them.
“Any idea who it is?” Simon asked, appearing un-phased by the body.
Corinne gave a brisk nod. “Natalya the Minister’s private guard.” The one whose flat they’d searched, finding the illegal potions.
“How can you tell?”
“Her face isn’t that distorted, plus she had some Muggle ID on her,” Corinne said, holding up a soggy wallet.
Elena took a step forward and saw that it was indeed Natalya, or at least a woman who resembled the guard. “How did she die?” Elena asked, glancing up at Frank and Alice who had not spoken yet.
“Can’t tell,” Frank said, resting a hand on Alice’s shoulder. “I don’t really think that matters though. What matters is that she didn’t kill Marcus.”
“That’s not true,” Simon said. “She easily could have done it, then been killed to keep from talking.”
Alice gave a little shiver. “I knew her, a little,” she said in a plaintive voice. “My father’s guards would never kill him. They were entirely loyal. I’m sure she must have been captured when he died.”
“I’m not so sure,” countered Corinne, “I might have said that the Minister couldn’t be assassinated, yet he was. I wouldn’t trust the loyalty of any non-Auror guards explicitly.”
Now that she had confirmed the woman’s identity, Elena was trying to stay as far as possible from the corpse. She pressed against a wall in the kitchen and sweat rolled down her face and back. It seemed that the scent of the air was worming its way into her skin, taking residence there. She desperately wanted to leave this room, for it was all she could do not to gag.
“Do you think you could examine the body?” Frank turned his focus to Elena now, eyes curious. He knew that she was a Healer, rather than an Auror.
Elena shook her head, trying for the same nonchalance that the others had. “I don’t know what good it will do. She’s dead. And one of you could search her for clues much better than I could. After so much time, I don’t even know if I could tell you how she died.”
Simon moved closer to Elena and urged her towards a door that led out of the room. “We’ll search out back,” he said. “Corinne, you can examine the rest of the house with Alice, while Frank takes a look at the body.”
The surge of relief and gratitude that filled Elena was instant. She wouldn’t have to stay inside! As fast as she could, without running, she walked to the outside door and opened it, relishing the icy blast of untainted air.
Without waiting to see if anyone objected to Simon’s plan, she walked onto a small stone patio that was slicked over with ice and snow.
Simon followed her out a moment later and shut the door. “Feel better now?” he asked her gently.
Elena nodded gratefully. “Thank you,” she said with a half-smile. Already, the smell was fading and Elena felt as if she could properly breathe again. For a moment, the only sound was the wind blowing cold air through the garden’s bushes, then Elena spoke again. “I hope,” she began, feeling nervous. “That you don’t think any less of me because of this. I mean, I’ve seen bodies before. Normally I’m not bothered, it’s just the smell. I know that you’d rather have me be replaced by someone else, I just hope that this won’t make you really do it.”
There was another long pause as Simon seemed to digest this speech. “I don’t think less of you,” he said at last. “It was awful. And I don’t want to replace you because you’re so bad at this. It’s just that if you got hurt I would feel responsible, since I was the one who dragged you into this whole mess. Your family doesn’t need another child…” he trailed off.
Elena felt like she glowed with elation. Simon didn’t want her gone! He just cared enough to not want her dead. Sure that she was grinning stupidly, she spoke again. “I’m quite glad to hear that.” After a moment, Simon’s lasts words registered and she felt her heart sink. “Another child,” she said slowly. “Frank said you knew my brother. You said you knew him. What did you mean by that? My family doesn’t need another child what? Hurt? Is Oliver alright?”
Even in the minimal light, Elena could see Simon blanch. “Perhaps it’s not the best time to talk,” he said. “The others will wonder if we don’t start searching soon.”
That answer wasn’t good enough for Elena. “You’ve evaded before,” she said dangerously. “Don’t try it again Simon. Tell me how he is. I know you know.”
“Elena,” Simon said, stepping so that he could place a hand on her shoulder in a comforting manner. “What I know is by no means certain, nothing in war ever is. There’ve been tales of men presumed dead showing up fifty years later, safe and sound. I couldn’t really give you a definitive answer.”
Anger replaced any happiness Elena had felt. “Don’t play that game!” she snapped. “The Ministry has done this with my family whenever news has been scarce. I’d bet that you can at least hazard a guess one way or the other. And you’re damn stupid if you think that you’ll get out of this without giving me an answer!” The last sentence was added on as Simon had begun to speak.
The man set his shoulders but kept his hand on her shoulder. “Do you want the truth? Then I’ll tell you the best I’ve got, even if you won’t like it.”
Elena crumpled to her knees before he could finish. “I knew it,” she mumbled through tears that were starting to fall onto the snow. “You would have told me if he was alright.”
Simon’s face lost all of its anger and he knelt in the snow beside her, looking horror struck at how he’d acted. “Do you really want what little news I have?” he asked.
She nodded, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Yes. You know better than anyone.”
He sighed and said, in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “Like I said, news in war in rarely definite. And in the case of your brother, it is based on just a bit more than a rumour; however, I have reason to believe that your brother was killed in action in Albania.”
At those words, Elena began to sob in earnest. “That’s not true!” she said. “You’re lying.”
Simon put his arms around her gently. “I’m so sorry,” he told her. “I didn’t want to tell you because I knew how upsetting it would be. I wouldn’t have said anything until I was absolutely sure about it.”
Elena kept crying, ignoring Simon’s words. She couldn’t even process anything. Oliver was dead. He was gone. Her worst fears were true.
After a moment, Simon’s words filtered through to her again. “I wish I hadn’t told you now,” he was saying, half to himself. His fingers were now stroking her hair, though Elena didn’t feel soothed at all by the gesture. “Corinne will kill me for being tactless. And, Elena, please, I know this is sad, but could you wait just an hour for us to search. Just one hour? Then you can go back and cry all you want.”
Elena shoved him away. “Wait an hour to cry? How exactly am I supposed to do that?” she almost screamed. “I suppose that you could do it. Since you don’t seem to care about anyone. But Simon, he’s my brother! And he’s dead!” her voice failed on the last words and she started crying once more.
“Damn,” Simon said and put his hand on her arm.
“Get off!” Elena yelled, and pushed him away, curling up on the ground, not caring about the snow that was seeping through her clothing. In a second, however, she’d rolled to her feet, her wand, which she’d suddenly remembered, in her hands. “Don’t you dare touch me!” she shouted. “Or I swear I will hex you!”
Simon pulled out his own wand warily, but didn’t look threatened, only sad. “I’m going inside for a moment,” he said. “Please don’t go anywhere.”
Elena nodded, and hiccupped. She kept her wand up until Simon entered the house, then lowered it once the door shut loudly. Only a second later, however, the wave of warm, awful air from inside blew her way. Elena saw Natalya, lying on the floor and wondered if that was how her brother had looked. This time, she couldn’t help but vomit.
After a few moments of utter misery, she straighten up and shakily vanished the mess with her wand. She then simply sank onto a fresh patch of snow and wished she could forget everything. She wished she’d never met Simon or Corinne or the Minister. But it was a futile wish because Elena knew that she couldn’t change the past.
Elena heard the door open again and made sure to hold her breath. She heard Simon’s heavy footsteps near her, plus a lighter set. She felt a pair of warm hands help her to her feet and saw Alice’s small, pale face. “I’m so sorry,” she said to Elena.
Simon stood behind Alice and as soon as Elena was standing, put his arm around her waist to help hold her standing. “Ready?” he asked, glancing at Alice.
Alice nodded in approval. Elena gave a tiny nod and Simon spun around, apparating back to the warehouse.
Out of the cold, Elena felt slightly less despair. She was able to stumble to her room and curl up under the blankets, where she could be alone.
Simon came in a moment later and holding a cup of some steaming potion. He handed it to her, and made sure she drank all of it. When she’d finished the last drop of the sweet liquid, she felt immeasurably tired.
“Sorry,” Simon murmured as Elena felt the world spinning. He touched her hair and just before the world darkened, Elena heard the door shut.
image by me (laelia @ TDA)
Chapter 13
The darkness was clearing, but Elena did not feel any happier. The world felt soft around the edges still, blurred and fuzzy, but at least she could hear. The voices sounded distant and warped but after a few minutes, Elena’s mind cleared enough so she could make out words.
“What do you think you’re doing?” an angry voice said.
“She is in pain,” a second, male, voice said, sounding agonized.
“Mon dieu," Corinne hissed, My God. "She is not an invalid.”
There was the sound of something crashing and Simon said, “He died, Corinne. She is allowed to be upset.”
Elena tried to open her eyes, to try to see why the others were talking but she felt so tired. She knew that something had happened, but everything still felt so muddled, like she was waking up from a dream that she couldn’t quite remember. She noticed, with detached curiosity, a sweet taste that lingered in her mouth.
Corinne scoffed loudly. “Upset maybe, but potions, Simon? Putting her sleep is not going to help anyone. If you have to watch her the whole day, that’s a whole day for the murderer to get away.”
“She was miserable.” Simon sighed. “You didn’t see her after I told her. I thought she wasn’t going to be able to move. It was like she just died.”
“I know what this is about.” Corinne’s voice grew weary. “I didn’t see, that is correct, but it is a hazard of the job. I’ve said this before Simon. And God knows that we both have lost people before. But listen, when—mon dieu—when Christian...well, I didn’t act like this. I did not ‘die.’”
“And are you going to sit there while she cries? Do you think either of us is any good at this at all?”
“Fine. Just...fine. I don’t know exactly why this is your decision to make, but I won’t argue this with you anymore,” Corinne sounded resigned and the door slammed a few seconds later.
A hand brushed at Elena’s hair and then, after a moment, Elena felt someone put a goblet of potion to her lips. It echoed the flavour in her mouth: horribly sweet. Even in her confused state she knew that the sticky, thick liquid could only be Sleep Syrup. It was flavoured that way to be more appealing to children and anyone else who didn’t like taking normal potions.
With strength she didn’t know she had, Elena spat the Syrup out. A thought flew into her head, unbidden, but certainly true: Simon was trying to make her sleep.
“No,” she said, in a hoarse voice, her eyes opening with horrible effort.
Simon looked down at her, his face showing anguish and pity. “I’m sorry,” he said heavily, as if he was too exhausted for speech. “I didn’t mean to. I suppose I should have known better. Corinne was going on about that. But I didn’t know if you...”
Elena couldn’t remember why Simon felt the need to apologize. “No Sleep Syrup,” she said weakly, hoping that she had the strength to resist him if he tried to force her to drink it. “I’m not ill.”
The door opened again, and another voice sounded. Elena saw Corinne’s sharp face come into view a moment later. “Of course you’re not,” Corinne said, pushing Simon away. “I don’t see why you need to stay sleeping the whole time anyways. It prevents us from working because we have to make sure you don’t wake up all alone. I told Simon what I think about this and…”
Simon stepped in front of her, cutting off the tirade. “Elena,” he began. “Are you alright? You do remember what happened.”
The brief drowsiness caused by the Sleep Syrup was slipping away and Elena decided to try to sit up in bed. Her limbs felt weak, but she managed to sit in a vaguely upright position. “No,” she said.
Simon looked horror struck. “I can’t tell you again,” he protested, turning to Corinne.
She scoffed. “You were the one wanted to avoid a mess by letting her sleep. Now if Elena doesn’t remember, I’m certainly not telling her.”
“Elena,” Simon began, looking anywhere but at her face. “Elena, are you sure you can’t recall anything about…what I told you earlier? Do you remember where you last were?”
It took Elena a minute to think back, but when she did, she could only see a rough outline, no details. With Alice and Frank,” she began. “There was a body, too. We found a body.”
Simon nodded, half encouragingly. “Right, that’s right.”
“We went outside,” Elena continued, the events slowly returning. Finally, all at once, any residual Sleep Syrup seemed to evaporate from her and the night before appeared in crystal detail. “Oliver,” she breathed, feeling tears well up in her eyes. The conversation she had while dreaming, between Simon and Corinne made horrible, awful sense.
For a moment, she simply sat shell-shocked. Her brother was dead. That was what Simon had told her. He had been killed somewhere out in Albania. She thought of her parents, briefly, then of little Ollie and Marianne. That couldn’t be true. Oliver was just away, on a mission. He had been gone for a long time, after all, what was to say that he wasn’t coming back in a month? How could she know for sure if he was dead? But Simon had seemed so sure.
Elena slung her feet over the edge of the bed, and stood in one quick motion. “I’ve got to tell them,” she whispered to herself.
Before she could even take a step, Simon blocked her way, putting both hands on her shoulders and helping Elena sit back down. “Not so quickly,” he warned. “Just, calm down.”
Elena shook her head frantically, now a sudden panicked urge filling her. “But I’ve got to tell Marianne. And Ollie. And my parents. They need to know. They need to know he’s gone. Marianne deserves to know. They all do. They all need to know!”
Simon stepped back from Elena, looking bewildered at her reaction. “Are you alright?” he sounded shaky for the first time, less sure of himself.
“Hysteria,” Corinne drawled from the end of the bed, where she had sat down. “It’s a side effect, Simon. You should know that. She could go on like this for another hour at least.” For some reason, Elena noted, Corinne seemed unfazed by this revelation. But then again, Elena didn’t think she was reacting correctly either. Instead of true grief, she felt frenzied and skittish. Her brain was going through a hundred strange, unrelated thoughts a minute. For a second, a bit of her healer training emerged from the jumble to agree with Corinne. Hysteria was a side effect, no doubt one she was experiencing.
“Lacewing,” Elena said, concentrating as hard as she could on one train of thought.
There was a creak as Corinne got up off the bed, and walked out of the room.
Elena’s mind kept spinning until Corinne returned, holding a small box of the type that typically held potion ingredients. She slid open the lid to reveal the powdery white lacewings.
It would have been better if they were stewed, but Elena didn’t have the strength to give any sort of instructions. Stewing lacewing was tedious and a precise art. It needed a silver cauldron, preferably a tarnished one. The ratio of lacewings to water had to be exact as well.
Instead, Elena reached into the box, took a pinch of the substance and ate it. Instantly the jittery energy that filled her calmed. She collapsed onto the bed, sobbing in horror.
Oliver was dead. Her brother, who had always been so brave and so much stronger than her. Oliver, who should have been the one here, with Simon and Corinne. He always knew what to do. It was inconceivable that he could have been killed. Oliver had been so talented, so careful. He had known his family was waiting for him at home. He would never have been reckless. If Oliver, who had always been protecting others, had died, how could Elena be sure anyone else she knew would be safe?
Someone sat down next to her on the bed. Elena didn’t move, her face still buried in the pillows. She didn’t care who it was. It didn’t matter. It would not be Oliver and he was the only one whose presence could comfort her.
“Elena,” Simon said gently.
She looked up, feeling a sudden surge of anger. “How dare you!” she screamed. “How could you keep it from me?”
Simon’s face fell. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
Elena shook her head violently. “Sorry for what? For telling me?”
A bitter laugh ripped through the room. “I’m sure,” Corinne said with a smirk.
Simon whirled. “Enough.” His voice was savage. “Leave.” He sounded ready to murder.
Elena shivered, shrinking away from Simon, burying herself farther into the bed. Simon seemed so dangerous.
Corinne turned and left with deliberate slowness.
Elena could feel Simon shaking next to her, rage turning his face angular. All of her anger had evaporated, as if absorbed by Simon. She crumpled, letting her whole body go limp and let tears flow out of her eyes.
The next morning, Elena awoke, her throat scraped raw. She felt beyond exhausted, unable to even move. Her brother was dead, her breath told her. Oliver was gone, repeated her heartbeat.
Her stomach ached, mirroring her throat, and she realized that it had been too long since she had eaten. Standing shakily, she made her way to the small kitchen, wondering if she had the strength to stay composed if someone was inside.
Simon sat at the table, hunched over a cup of tea. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. When he heard Elena, he turned, straightening up. A flash of a strange emotion passed over his face, and then a mask of pleasantries settled over his face. “Good morning,” he said slowly.
Elena gave a small smile at his attempt to seem normal. She moved, as if through water and sat at the table, across from Simon. “I’ll make you breakfast,” Simon jumped to his feet.
With little interest, Elena watched as Simon fried eggs and bacon in a pan, using minimal magic. He set the steaming plate in front of Elena.
Still not speaking, she ate quickly. Grief should have kept her from wanting food, but Elena was still ravenous. The bacon had no taste but salt—like tears. The eggs were hot—like blood. But she would not think like that. It was only food.
“How are you?” Simon questioned, staring intently towards Elena, who avoided his stare as best she could. “I mean,” he paused. “That’s no sort of question to ask, but...”
Elena didn’t quite know how to answer. The grief was like actual pain. “Alright,” Elena lied finally, not making eye contact. She hoped that Simon would understand that she was in no mood to talk.
Instead, however, he reached across the distance between them and grabbed her wrist, preventing her from taking another bite of bacon. “Elena,” he began softly. “You can’t be alright.”
She looked upwards, wondering if she was daring enough to try to yank her wrist away. “What?” Her voice came out more exasperated than she had intended it to. All the exhaustion of the previous days flowed into the one word.
“What do you want?" Simon seemed to be speaking at random, though his voice seemed calm. “Do you need time? Should I leave?”
Elena looked at him for a moment, trying to gauge what he wanted. She supposed he was looking for some sort of response, but she had no idea what to tell him. “I don’t want to think,” she said at last.
Simon stared at her sharply, looking as if he was about to reprimand her, but at the last minute, he seemed to change his mind. “Come along,” he said, standing up and pulling her along with him. “I have an idea.”
Elena didn’t bother to protest and let Simon pull her by the wrist to the cavernous room of the warehouse. “Do you have your wand?” he asked, when they stopped in the centre.
She nodded, pulling it from her pocket.
“I’m going to teach you how to fight,” Simon said. “I should have done it earlier. I would have done it anyways, but now is as good a time as any.”
Elena wasn’t sure she agreed with his last observation, but she had no complaint. “Alright.”
Simon looked at her, worry in his gaze. “Don’t be worried,” he said. “I won’t just start firing spells at you.”
“I’m not worried.” Elena wasn’t. She knew that Simon would never harm her. Or she would have thought that, had he not kept her brother’s death from her.
“How much do you know already?” Simon asked.
Elena made a face. “Can we just begin?” She had no desire to think about the past.
“Protego?” Simon seemed unwilling to give up.
“Try me.” For some reason, Elena felt a grin spread on her face. She raised her wand and took several steps back from Simon.
Quicker than she could think, Elena watched as Simon whipped out his wand and cast a stream of yellow light towards her.
Only because she had taken a few steps back, and because she had her wand already in front of her was she able to cast the shield spell, deflecting the light out into the rest of the warehouse.
Simon raised an eyebrow. “Quick,” he said, almost smiling.
Elena shrugged. She should have felt proud, but all she could feel was the dull ache of sadness between her ribs. The past night had stolen her other emotions away.
A flicker of movement caught Elena’s attention just before she heard the tell-tale crack of apparation. Simon spun out of sight. A twin sound made her spin around. Without thinking, she screamed: “Protego.” Elena was not even sure if there was a spell until it collided with her shield, knocking her a step backward.
She expected Simon to praise her again, but instead, she saw another flash of light come towards her out of the murky corner of the warehouse. Elena blocked the spell again, her heart pounding in her chest. She wasn’t sure if she could take much more surprise, but wasn’t about to let Simon hit her with whatever spells he was firing.
As Elena turned around slowly, in the centre of the warehouse, scanning for danger, she heard the sound of Simon disapparating. She wasn’t sure where the sound had came from, but an instant later, the crack was right behind her. Simon’s hands settled on her shoulders. Elena jumped, trying to bite back a scream. Instead, she whimpered, and felt her legs buckle.
Simon caught her before she could fall far, and settled them both on the ground. Elena felt sweat drip down her forehead. Her heartbeat echoed through the room, pulsing irregularly. “Oh God,” she breathed.
Elena glanced up at Simon’s face. “You scared me,” she hissed, but felt too shocked to be accusing.
To her immense surprise, Simon laughed.
“It’s not funny,” Elena snapped, sliding farther away from him. She wondered if she was going mad, maybe imagining things. These past few days certainly seemed unreal.
Simon shook his head. “No it’s not,” he agreed.
“Then what—” Elena was puzzled.
“You weren’t sad, just then,” Simon said. After a pause, he leaned in closer to Elena, so she could hear him whisper. “You know, I know what it’s like to lose someone. And I know how hard it can be to forget. But it is important to forget, if only for a few moments.”
Elena considered this. He was right. The fright had momentarily banished any grief she had been feeling. Now that she was calmer, the ache was back, but the relief had been wonderful. “Oh,” she said slowly, nodding.
“That being said, are you ready for more?” Simon stood and offered a hand down to Elena.
She took it, letting him pull her upright. She did want to learn more, if only to forget about her brother for a few seconds.
“Well,” Simon said, taking her standing as a reply. “I think we should try the Shield Charm again.”
Their training progressed well enough until Simon suggested that Elena try to cast a Patronus. She spoke the incantation, but was unable to produce a single happy memory. All she could think of was her brother, teaching her the charm years ago, practicing with her carefully. Before, it would have been a pleasant thought, but now, it too was tainted.
“I’m done,” Elena said, slumping as she lowered her wand.
Simon, seeing the tears in her eyes, did not protest and the training was concluded for the day.
Elena woke the next morning, exhausted and sore from the fighting practice. At breakfast, she again saw Simon who suggested continuing the last day’s training. “I don’t think I can,” Elena told him, massaging her shoulder. “I’m too tired.”
Simon seemed untroubled by her answer. “Alright,” he replied. “I have another idea. This one doesn’t require any physical activity, promise.”
He led Elena to one of the smaller workrooms in the warehouse. It was particularly sparse, with only a small table with a shallow bowl. Elena had never been in this particular room before, but she instantly recognized the bowl. “A Pensieve,” she exclaimed in awe, having never seen the device except once in her Healer training.
“Correct,” Simon said, and, from a small drawer in the table, drew out a tiny bottle. He drew his wand and tapped the glass once.
Elena sprang back, away from Simon. “I want my memories!” she said, hysteria rising into her tone as she thought of all the reasons he might have brought her to this place. “Taking them away won’t help anything! And I’m better today, anyways!”
Simon looked bewildered, then shook his head quickly. “No. No, no. I just want us to look through some we found in Natalya’s flat.”
“Oh,” Elena said, her voice suddenly quiet. She remembered the tiny bottles that she had found hidden under the floorboards. There would have been a dozen at least. She had all but forgotten about them, but now, she wondered why they had never been examined before. After all, the memories they found could be gold, in terms of making headway in the investigation. “That’s alright then,” she added in a timid voice.
It was obvious to Elena that Simon was confused. He looked as if he had no idea how to respond to her sudden outburst, then the seclusion that followed. Obviously, when he experienced grief, it was much different than when Elena did.
“So, we’ll start with this one,” Simon carefully uncorked one of the bottles, holding it above the Pensieve, poise to pour it in. “That is,” he added, “if you’re ready.”
Elena decided that she was curious and that she probably didn’t have anything else to do, so she nodded once. “Go ahead.”
Simon tipped his hand and the liquid flowed out of the bottle, the wispy silver fluid swirling into the Pensieve. Elena reached the other side of the bowl and, as she had seen others do, leaned into the magic.
Instantly, she was transported into a room that she recognized. It was Natalya’s flat, where the memories had been discovered. Natalya, the guard who they had recently found dead, was sitting on the shabby sofa in front of a crackling fire, reading a magazine.
Elena saw Simon appear beside her a moment later. "Stay quiet," he warned. "We don't want to miss anythings she says." With that, he gestured that they should move closer to Natalya. Before Elena could take a step, however, there was a flash of light as someone Flooed into the fireplace. Natalya jumped up, grabbing her wand and looked fierce. “Who is it?” she called out steadily.
The figure straightened and Elena saw that the man was dressed in a long cloak, with the golden mask of a Death Eater on his face. Natalya’s fear was evident at the sight. Elena could only guess that a professional guard had protected her fireplace from the Floo Network and had not been expecting this kind of assault.
Natalya slashed her wand downwards, obviously willing to attack first, however, the Death Eater was ready and cast a silent shield charm. The strength of the charm forced Natalya to the floor, knocking her wand out of her hand. She rolled, trying to reach it, but before she could move much farther, the Death Eater murmured, “Confundus.”
The cloaked figure was obviously male and he towered over Natalya as he spoke in a commanding voice. “Tonight, you will arrive at your post, guarding the Minister. His guard of Aurors will hand him over to you, as normal, but as soon as a door is between the Aurors and the Minister, you will sit down. You will not attack anyone who comes to attack the Minister. If the Aurors try to enter the house, you will disapperate. You will tell no one of this plan.”
Natalya crumpled to the floor as the Death Eater released her and stepped back into the fireplace, disappearing in a whirlwind of flames.
Natalya lay still for several long moments, before crawling along until her head was level with the underside of the sofa. It was a pitiful sight to see such a strong witch barely able to move. Elena wanted to run and help her, to heal her, but she was only a memory.
With much effort, Natalya managed to lift up one floorboard and uncover the hiding place Elena had found. She reached in and pulled out an empty vial. With her wand, she siphoned a memory from her temple, muttering. Elena could only make out a few words, but it sounded as if Natalya was willing herself to keep the memory, so that it would be clear that she had not willingly harmed her employer. Even if she could not help but obey, she might be able to let others know.
As the last of the memory left Natalya’s mind, the memory faded and Elena found herself back in the workroom, covered in sweat. Her mind was racing, trying to understand all that had occurred in the perhaps ten minutes of the memory. She sank to the floor, leaning against one of the cold walls, replying the scene in her mind and finding new complications and consequences each time.
If the Death Eater had Confounded Natalya, did that mean that her partner had been confronted similarly? If she had only been ordered to stay out of the way, who had killed the Minister? Was it the male Death Eater in the memory, or another? How had they managed to enter the fire in Natalya’s flat in the first place, as a guard, she would have taken precautions against it.
“Are you alright?” Elena heard Simon say, and she jumped, having forgotten that he too had left the memory.
She glanced up at him, her eyes trying to convey all that she was feeling without words. She would have said something but was unable to formulate words because of the questions plaguing her brain.
“I,” Simon began, and knelt down beside her. “I’m sorry.” He put a hand on her shoulder and, after a second, helped her stand. “I didn’t even think what could be in the memory,” Simon sighed. “I never meant to upset you.”
Elena realized that she was shaking and leaned against Simon, who, after a second, wrapped his arms around her. They stayed there for a moment, Elena fighting back tears, and Simon stroking her hair.
In that instant, Elena never wanted to move. Simon, though he wasn’t speaking, seemed to understand her perfectly.
With a sniff, Elena, broke away and to her surprise, found herself shaking her head. “I’m not upset,” she said, hoping that saying it made it true. She tried to convince herself that though the memories experienced in the Pensieve were vivid, they had not felt entirely real to her. “I was just thinking, about what all this meant.”
Simon looked surprised, even nervous and stepped back. “I thought that you were upset about...well...” He paused awkwardly, then pressed forward, speaking words that seemed stinted. “Yes, of course there are more questions now, but at least we know Natalya is not our murderer.”
“It would have been better if she was,” Elena mused. Now that the moment was broken, she wished that she could return to it, but she was not brave enough, so instead, she kept the conversation going. “That way the killer would be dead and our work would be done.” As soon as she uttered the words, Elena recoiled, appalled that she had been glad of the death of another human. After all, even if Natalya had been a murderer, she would have had a family, people who cared about her. She had been talking without thinking. “I—I didn’t mean that,” Elena whispered, shrinking back against the wall, as if to hide from her own words.
With a sigh, Simon turned away. “You had a point,” he said, though he didn’t sound very convinced himself. “It would have been easier, but it would have been so anticlimactic. All this work, only to find out that our first guess was correct.” He gave a wry laugh. “As frustrating as it all is, the guessing makes this a more appealing game.”
Elena wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this, so she took out her wand and siphoned the memory out of the bowl, into the vial that it had come from. She put it carefully back into the drawer below the basin and, with a moment’s hesitation, withdrew a second vial. “Shall we?” she asked, turning so that Simon could see what she held.
He looked surprised but agreed. “I suppose, if you’re willing.”
“I wouldn’t be offering if I wasn’t,” Elena said dryly, and quickly tipped the vial into the Pensieve, watching the mesmerizing swirl of thought with a clinical interest. It was so much easier to live in another person’s memories.
Note: Many, many apologies to all readers! I am so sorry that this chapter took so long to be published. I had a version wirtten months ago, but I was simply not happy with it. Finally, I managed to change it into something sort of decent, which is what you see here. I do have the next chapter completely written as well, so there will be a much shorter gap between the postings of chapters. I will however, be alternating chapters of Vital with chapters of my new story, Failure.
Thank you if you're still reading, and again, I appreciate your patience.
Also, a special thanks to apocalypse, who was very helpful in both encouraging me to complete this chapter and helping me when I had problems with a few plot points!!
------ Though I do mention it in the text, when Corinne says Mon Dieu, she is saying "My God" in French-----
Oliver was dead. Her brother, who had always been so brave and so much stronger than her. Oliver, who should have been the one here, with Simon and Corinne. He always knew what to do. It was inconceivable that he could have been killed. Oliver had been so talented, so careful. He had known his family was waiting for him at home. He would never have been reckless. If Oliver, who had always been protecting others, had died, how could Elena be sure anyone else she knew would be safe?
Someone sat down next to her on the bed. Elena didn’t move, her face still buried in the pillows. She didn’t care who it was. It didn’t matter. It would not be Oliver and he was the only one whose presence could comfort her.
“Elena,” Simon said gently.
She looked up, feeling a sudden surge of anger. “How dare you!” she screamed. “How could you keep it from me?”
Simon’s face fell. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
Elena shook her head violently. “Sorry for what? For telling me?”
A bitter laugh ripped through the room. “I’m sure,” Corinne said with a smirk.
Simon whirled. “Enough.” His voice was savage. “Leave.” He sounded ready to murder.
Elena shivered, shrinking away from Simon, burying herself farther into the bed. Simon seemed so dangerous.
Corinne turned and left with deliberate slowness.
Elena could feel Simon shaking next to her, rage turning his face angular. All of her anger had evaporated, as if absorbed by Simon. She crumpled, letting her whole body go limp and let tears flow out of her eyes.
The next morning, Elena awoke, her throat scraped raw. She felt beyond exhausted, unable to even move. Her brother was dead, her breath told her. Oliver was gone, repeated her heartbeat.
Her stomach ached, mirroring her throat, and she realized that it had been too long since she had eaten. Standing shakily, she made her way to the small kitchen, wondering if she had the strength to stay composed if someone was inside.
Simon sat at the table, hunched over a cup of tea. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. When he heard Elena, he turned, straightening up. A flash of a strange emotion passed over his face, and then a mask of pleasantries settled over his face. “Good morning,” he said slowly.
Elena gave a small smile at his attempt to seem normal. She moved, as if through water and sat at the table, across from Simon. “I’ll make you breakfast,” Simon jumped to his feet.
With little interest, Elena watched as Simon fried eggs and bacon in a pan, using minimal magic. He set the steaming plate in front of Elena.
Still not speaking, she ate quickly. Grief should have kept her from wanting food, but Elena was still ravenous. The bacon had no taste but salt—like tears. The eggs were hot—like blood. But she would not think like that. It was only food.
“How are you?” Simon questioned, staring intently towards Elena, who avoided his stare as best she could. “I mean,” he paused. “That’s no sort of question to ask, but...”
Elena didn’t quite know how to answer. The grief was like actual pain. “Alright,” Elena lied finally, not making eye contact. She hoped that Simon would understand that she was in no mood to talk.
Instead, however, he reached across the distance between them and grabbed her wrist, preventing her from taking another bite of bacon. “Elena,” he began softly. “You can’t be alright.”
She looked upwards, wondering if she was daring enough to try to yank her wrist away. “What?” Her voice came out more exasperated than she had intended it to. All the exhaustion of the previous days flowed into the one word.
“What do you want?" Simon seemed to be speaking at random, though his voice seemed calm. “Do you need time? Should I leave?”
Elena looked at him for a moment, trying to gauge what he wanted. She supposed he was looking for some sort of response, but she had no idea what to tell him. “I don’t want to think,” she said at last.
Simon stared at her sharply, looking as if he was about to reprimand her, but at the last minute, he seemed to change his mind. “Come along,” he said, standing up and pulling her along with him. “I have an idea.”
Elena didn’t bother to protest and let Simon pull her by the wrist to the cavernous room of the warehouse. “Do you have your wand?” he asked, when they stopped in the centre.
She nodded, pulling it from her pocket.
“I’m going to teach you how to fight,” Simon said. “I should have done it earlier. I would have done it anyways, but now is as good a time as any.”
Elena wasn’t sure she agreed with his last observation, but she had no complaint. “Alright.”
Simon looked at her, worry in his gaze. “Don’t be worried,” he said. “I won’t just start firing spells at you.”
“I’m not worried.” Elena wasn’t. She knew that Simon would never harm her. Or she would have thought that, had he not kept her brother’s death from her.
“How much do you know already?” Simon asked.
Elena made a face. “Can we just begin?” She had no desire to think about the past.
“Protego?” Simon seemed unwilling to give up.
“Try me.” For some reason, Elena felt a grin spread on her face. She raised her wand and took several steps back from Simon.
Quicker than she could think, Elena watched as Simon whipped out his wand and cast a stream of yellow light towards her.
Only because she had taken a few steps back, and because she had her wand already in front of her was she able to cast the shield spell, deflecting the light out into the rest of the warehouse.
Simon raised an eyebrow. “Quick,” he said, almost smiling.
Elena shrugged. She should have felt proud, but all she could feel was the dull ache of sadness between her ribs. The past night had stolen her other emotions away.
A flicker of movement caught Elena’s attention just before she heard the tell-tale crack of apparation. Simon spun out of sight. A twin sound made her spin around. Without thinking, she screamed: “Protego.” Elena was not even sure if there was a spell until it collided with her shield, knocking her a step backward.
She expected Simon to praise her again, but instead, she saw another flash of light come towards her out of the murky corner of the warehouse. Elena blocked the spell again, her heart pounding in her chest. She wasn’t sure if she could take much more surprise, but wasn’t about to let Simon hit her with whatever spells he was firing.
As Elena turned around slowly, in the centre of the warehouse, scanning for danger, she heard the sound of Simon disapparating. She wasn’t sure where the sound had came from, but an instant later, the crack was right behind her. Simon’s hands settled on her shoulders. Elena jumped, trying to bite back a scream. Instead, she whimpered, and felt her legs buckle.
Simon caught her before she could fall far, and settled them both on the ground. Elena felt sweat drip down her forehead. Her heartbeat echoed through the room, pulsing irregularly. “Oh God,” she breathed.
Elena glanced up at Simon’s face. “You scared me,” she hissed, but felt too shocked to be accusing.
To her immense surprise, Simon laughed.
“It’s not funny,” Elena snapped, sliding farther away from him. She wondered if she was going mad, maybe imagining things. These past few days certainly seemed unreal.
Simon shook his head. “No it’s not,” he agreed.
“Then what—” Elena was puzzled.
“You weren’t sad, just then,” Simon said. After a pause, he leaned in closer to Elena, so she could hear him whisper. “You know, I know what it’s like to lose someone. And I know how hard it can be to forget. But it is important to forget, if only for a few moments.”
Elena considered this. He was right. The fright had momentarily banished any grief she had been feeling. Now that she was calmer, the ache was back, but the relief had been wonderful. “Oh,” she said slowly, nodding.
“That being said, are you ready for more?” Simon stood and offered a hand down to Elena.
She took it, letting him pull her upright. She did want to learn more, if only to forget about her brother for a few seconds.
“Well,” Simon said, taking her standing as a reply. “I think we should try the Shield Charm again.”
Their training progressed well enough until Simon suggested that Elena try to cast a Patronus. She spoke the incantation, but was unable to produce a single happy memory. All she could think of was her brother, teaching her the charm years ago, practicing with her carefully. Before, it would have been a pleasant thought, but now, it too was tainted.
“I’m done,” Elena said, slumping as she lowered her wand.
Simon, seeing the tears in her eyes, did not protest and the training was concluded for the day.
Elena woke the next morning, exhausted and sore from the fighting practice. At breakfast, she again saw Simon who suggested continuing the last day’s training. “I don’t think I can,” Elena told him, massaging her shoulder. “I’m too tired.”
Simon seemed untroubled by her answer. “Alright,” he replied. “I have another idea. This one doesn’t require any physical activity, promise.”
He led Elena to one of the smaller workrooms in the warehouse. It was particularly sparse, with only a small table with a shallow bowl. Elena had never been in this particular room before, but she instantly recognized the bowl. “A Pensieve,” she exclaimed in awe, having never seen the device except once in her Healer training.
“Correct,” Simon said, and, from a small drawer in the table, drew out a tiny bottle. He drew his wand and tapped the glass once.
Elena sprang back, away from Simon. “I want my memories!” she said, hysteria rising into her tone as she thought of all the reasons he might have brought her to this place. “Taking them away won’t help anything! And I’m better today, anyways!”
Simon looked bewildered, then shook his head quickly. “No. No, no. I just want us to look through some we found in Natalya’s flat.”
“Oh,” Elena said, her voice suddenly quiet. She remembered the tiny bottles that she had found hidden under the floorboards. There would have been a dozen at least. She had all but forgotten about them, but now, she wondered why they had never been examined before. After all, the memories they found could be gold, in terms of making headway in the investigation. “That’s alright then,” she added in a timid voice.
It was obvious to Elena that Simon was confused. He looked as if he had no idea how to respond to her sudden outburst, then the seclusion that followed. Obviously, when he experienced grief, it was much different than when Elena did.
“So, we’ll start with this one,” Simon carefully uncorked one of the bottles, holding it above the Pensieve, poise to pour it in. “That is,” he added, “if you’re ready.”
Elena decided that she was curious and that she probably didn’t have anything else to do, so she nodded once. “Go ahead.”
Simon tipped his hand and the liquid flowed out of the bottle, the wispy silver fluid swirling into the Pensieve. Elena reached the other side of the bowl and, as she had seen others do, leaned into the magic.
Instantly, she was transported into a room that she recognized. It was Natalya’s flat, where the memories had been discovered. Natalya, the guard who they had recently found dead, was sitting on the shabby sofa in front of a crackling fire, reading a magazine.
Elena saw Simon appear beside her a moment later. "Stay quiet," he warned. "We don't want to miss anythings she says." With that, he gestured that they should move closer to Natalya. Before Elena could take a step, however, there was a flash of light as someone Flooed into the fireplace. Natalya jumped up, grabbing her wand and looked fierce. “Who is it?” she called out steadily.
The figure straightened and Elena saw that the man was dressed in a long cloak, with the golden mask of a Death Eater on his face. Natalya’s fear was evident at the sight. Elena could only guess that a professional guard had protected her fireplace from the Floo Network and had not been expecting this kind of assault.
Natalya slashed her wand downwards, obviously willing to attack first, however, the Death Eater was ready and cast a silent shield charm. The strength of the charm forced Natalya to the floor, knocking her wand out of her hand. She rolled, trying to reach it, but before she could move much farther, the Death Eater murmured, “Confundus.”
The cloaked figure was obviously male and he towered over Natalya as he spoke in a commanding voice. “Tonight, you will arrive at your post, guarding the Minister. His guard of Aurors will hand him over to you, as normal, but as soon as a door is between the Aurors and the Minister, you will sit down. You will not attack anyone who comes to attack the Minister. If the Aurors try to enter the house, you will disapperate. You will tell no one of this plan.”
Natalya crumpled to the floor as the Death Eater released her and stepped back into the fireplace, disappearing in a whirlwind of flames.
Natalya lay still for several long moments, before crawling along until her head was level with the underside of the sofa. It was a pitiful sight to see such a strong witch barely able to move. Elena wanted to run and help her, to heal her, but she was only a memory.
With much effort, Natalya managed to lift up one floorboard and uncover the hiding place Elena had found. She reached in and pulled out an empty vial. With her wand, she siphoned a memory from her temple, muttering. Elena could only make out a few words, but it sounded as if Natalya was willing herself to keep the memory, so that it would be clear that she had not willingly harmed her employer. Even if she could not help but obey, she might be able to let others know.
As the last of the memory left Natalya’s mind, the memory faded and Elena found herself back in the workroom, covered in sweat. Her mind was racing, trying to understand all that had occurred in the perhaps ten minutes of the memory. She sank to the floor, leaning against one of the cold walls, replying the scene in her mind and finding new complications and consequences each time.
If the Death Eater had Confounded Natalya, did that mean that her partner had been confronted similarly? If she had only been ordered to stay out of the way, who had killed the Minister? Was it the male Death Eater in the memory, or another? How had they managed to enter the fire in Natalya’s flat in the first place, as a guard, she would have taken precautions against it.
“Are you alright?” Elena heard Simon say, and she jumped, having forgotten that he too had left the memory.
She glanced up at him, her eyes trying to convey all that she was feeling without words. She would have said something but was unable to formulate words because of the questions plaguing her brain.
“I,” Simon began, and knelt down beside her. “I’m sorry.” He put a hand on her shoulder and, after a second, helped her stand. “I didn’t even think what could be in the memory,” Simon sighed. “I never meant to upset you.”
Elena realized that she was shaking and leaned against Simon, who, after a second, wrapped his arms around her. They stayed there for a moment, Elena fighting back tears, and Simon stroking her hair.
In that instant, Elena never wanted to move. Simon, though he wasn’t speaking, seemed to understand her perfectly.
With a sniff, Elena, broke away and to her surprise, found herself shaking her head. “I’m not upset,” she said, hoping that saying it made it true. She tried to convince herself that though the memories experienced in the Pensieve were vivid, they had not felt entirely real to her. “I was just thinking, about what all this meant.”
Simon looked surprised, even nervous and stepped back. “I thought that you were upset about...well...” He paused awkwardly, then pressed forward, speaking words that seemed stinted. “Yes, of course there are more questions now, but at least we know Natalya is not our murderer.”
“It would have been better if she was,” Elena mused. Now that the moment was broken, she wished that she could return to it, but she was not brave enough, so instead, she kept the conversation going. “That way the killer would be dead and our work would be done.” As soon as she uttered the words, Elena recoiled, appalled that she had been glad of the death of another human. After all, even if Natalya had been a murderer, she would have had a family, people who cared about her. She had been talking without thinking. “I—I didn’t mean that,” Elena whispered, shrinking back against the wall, as if to hide from her own words.
With a sigh, Simon turned away. “You had a point,” he said, though he didn’t sound very convinced himself. “It would have been easier, but it would have been so anticlimactic. All this work, only to find out that our first guess was correct.” He gave a wry laugh. “As frustrating as it all is, the guessing makes this a more appealing game.”
Elena wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this, so she took out her wand and siphoned the memory out of the bowl, into the vial that it had come from. She put it carefully back into the drawer below the basin and, with a moment’s hesitation, withdrew a second vial. “Shall we?” she asked, turning so that Simon could see what she held.
He looked surprised but agreed. “I suppose, if you’re willing.”
“I wouldn’t be offering if I wasn’t,” Elena said dryly, and quickly tipped the vial into the Pensieve, watching the mesmerizing swirl of thought with a clinical interest. It was so much easier to live in another person’s memories.
Note: Many, many apologies to all readers! I am so sorry that this chapter took so long to be published. I had a version wirtten months ago, but I was simply not happy with it. Finally, I managed to change it into something sort of decent, which is what you see here. I do have the next chapter completely written as well, so there will be a much shorter gap between the postings of chapters. I will however, be alternating chapters of Vital with chapters of my new story, Failure.
Thank you if you're still reading, and again, I appreciate your patience.
Also, a special thanks to apocalypse, who was very helpful in both encouraging me to complete this chapter and helping me when I had problems with a few plot points!!
------ Though I do mention it in the text, when Corinne says Mon Dieu, she is saying "My God" in French-----
image by lucky.clover @ TDA
Chapter 14
Elena spent the next day viewing the memories with Simon. It was both an escape and a reminder of her brother’s death. She would see a child, so much like her nephew Ollie, or a book that Oliver had given her, or a shop that she had once visited with him and Marianne. At every glimpse of something familiar, Elena felt as if she was going to break down, but somehow, she kept going. She knew that it would do her no good to cry endlessly; it would make her feel no better.
It appeared that the first memory she and Simon had seen was the last in the sequence. Natalya had not saved any more of her memories after being confounded by the Death Eater, likely a result of the spell itself. The other bottles were records of Natalya’s life from months before and read like diaries. She had, apparently, been fearing for the Minister’s life ever since You-Know-Who’s downfall. Though she was only Minister Gordon’s private guard, Natalya had been very dedicated to the man and his safety, almost to the point of paranoia.
While some silvery bottles held whispered confessions or fears, others seemed to be more mundane, as if Natalya had treated her Pensieve as a notebook, where she might jot down reminders. Some of these fragments were unextraordinary but one particular memory, one of the first, was especially obscure.
Natalya was sitting at a desk, hunched over. Her long blonde hair was braided severely back and she wore very plain, utilitarian Muggle clothing. Except for her slouched posture, she appeared a soldier. Even her movements were crisp and efficient.
The desk was in a large, darkly lit room and was surrounded by maps, pinned sloppily to the walls. The maps were of London, around the Minister’s house, mostly, but some featured scripted, foreign names.
Contrasting Natalya’s sleek appearance, the room was a disaster. Crumpled parchment littered the floor around the desk, interspersed with broken quills. Ink stained the carpet and a broken bottle had dripped a puddle onto another stack of documents. Natalya at her desk was scribbling intently on another sheet of parchment. She filled the paper, paused, read it over, then quickly tore it in two, throwing the halves to join the other refuse on the floor.
With a sigh, the guard took out another paper and wrote, in all caps “ALBANIA.” She underlined the word a few times, then leaned back to stare at her work. Almost pointedly, she set the paper down on the desk, smoothing it out, as if she was showing it to someone behind her. After a moment, she flicked her wand and the parchment, along with the rest on the floor, burned quickly, leaving behind only ashy residue.
“That was it?” Elena said in confusion, as she found herself leaving the memory. There hadn’t been a point to it at all, just that one word. Albania. Where her brother had been working, she realized, feeling her grief reemerging.
Simon shook his head, appearing just as confused. “Albania,” he repeated. “I don’t quite understand why…”
Elena forced a sleepy yawn. “She’s so cryptic, isn’t she?” she mused, trying to mask sadness with exhaustion. “The Veritaserum, the Polyjuice, the memories, the Felix Felicius. It seems that Natalya was sure that someone was going to attack the Minister. I just don’t see why she didn’t warn anyone.” Though the yawn was faked, her tiredness was hardly feigned. Her struggle to keep from tears took much of Elena’s energy.
There was a pause, as Simon siphoned the memory back into the glass phial. “Frank,” he said at last. “He knew more about what they were looking for in Albania than I did.”
“Looking for?” repeated Elena in confusion. She had already set aside the specifics of the memory and had been trying to analyze the general pattern of Natalya’s life. “I thought that it was just normal spying—reconnaissance. Just typical observation of a foreign country during the war.”
“Yes, and no,” said Simon heavily. “It started out like that, I’m sure. And I don’t really know all the details. But last summer, I heard more and more about Albania around the office. You-Know-Who had been there, they said. Something valuable was there. It could have been an object, maybe even a person, I was never told anything but rumors, but all of a sudden, the Office was putting triple the Aurors on one insignificant little country, and at that point, things were getting bad at home, so there was hardly anyone to spare.”
“I figured,” Simon continued, taking a seat in one of the chairs. “After the night with the Potters, that it had been a faulty lead. He had obviously not been hiding out of the country. Most of the Aurors came back, after that, but your brother and a few others stayed.”
Elena bit her lip, feeling tears well up in her eyes. When one trickled down her cheek, she wiped it away fiercely. “What would Frank know that you don’t?” she asked, confused and trying desperately not to break down again.
“Alice was Marcus’ daughter,” Simon reminded her. He seemed to be ignoring her tears, talking as if she weren’t about to break down. “Frank was second in command of the foreign branch of the office, for a while. If anyone knows, he would.”
“Shall we talk to him, then?” Elena stood up, making for the door. She felt like she couldn’t understand the point of Natalya’s memories without first understanding all the hints and clues scattered throughout. And she had to understand. She needed to do something in order to distract her mind.
Simon assented and followed her out into the main room of the warehouse. Elena was just heading to get a coat when there was a sharp crack as Corinne apparated a few feet ahead. Elena jumped back into Simon, adrenaline coursing through her veins at the harsh sound, only to have Corinne’s appearance cause her to start again.
The woman wore clothes spattered with blood. Her short hair was disheveled and she was breathing heavily. Her wand was raised, as if ready to fend off an attack and her eyes were wildly scanning the room. They finally lighted on Elena and Simon, and Elena could see that they were filled with frightening clarity.
“What happened?” Simon asked, recovering from his shock first and pushing past Elena towards Corinne. “Are you hurt?”
Elena processed this a second later and ran up to Simon, just as Corinne shook her head. “No. I am fine. They have Ethan,” she spat. “And they’re about to bloody arrest him.”
“Who?” Simon asked, glancing around, as if to check for any potential enemies.
“Us. The Ministry. There was a fight.”
Simon cursed loudly. “Where?” His voice was intent and emphatic.
“If you stop talking we might be able to stop it.” Corinne impatiently pushed Simon back a step, grabbing both his arm and Elena’s. Without another word, she spun around, apparating once more.
Elena took the several dizzying seconds to process what had just happened. She was about to be dropped into the middle of a possibly deadly fight. And her wand was still in her pocket.
She couldn’t create a plan of action; she didn’t have enough time, but Elena felt slightly more prepared when the trio appeared again on a dirt road. As soon as she could think straight, Elena fished her wand from her coat and surveyed the situation. The sky was overcast and ominously filled with yellowish storm clouds. The air was misty and damp. In front of her, the road was lined with tiny shops and provincial houses, though they were well spaced out. They were situated in a valley, with the road leading up into green hills on either end. And the immediate area appeared deserted of any life.
Shouts sounded from a little to the left. Corinne muttered, “damn” and began to run in that direction. Seconds later, Simon was on her heels and Elena followed only two paces behind, racing towards an unknown battle, with barely a trace of fear. Though Corinne had said that their suspect, Ethan MacDonald, had been caught by the Ministry, it seemed that there was still a conflict occurring.
Flashes of light flew ahead of them, mostly red, but with some twinges of green thrown in as well. They lit up the sky, casting bursts of color onto the gray backdrop.
Corinne was flying towards the fray, parting the foggy air. As she reached the conflict, she without hesitation, joined one side of battle, jumping into line with practiced speed. Moments later, Simon took a place next to her. Their wands cut into the air, summoning power from the air and hurling it across the gap.
Elena followed more cautiously, skirting along the side of street. Despite her hesitation, she soon found herself in a group of ten or so Aurors. Not eager to fight, she stayed in the back of the group, where she could take in the situation before deciding what to do next. Simon and Corinne were fighting, and would not be giving her instructions, she knew.
On the opposing side, there were at least three Death Eaters, wearing those horrifying, glinting masks and several unmasked wizards as well. The Killing Curses, it appeared, were coming only from a smaller masked wizard, who appeared to be their de facto leader. He fought with deadly confidence, jumping lithely away from any spells thrown his way, and sending three back in response.
“Don’t just stand there,” a grizzled wizard barked at Elena, and at that, she hesitantly cast the first of many hexes, directed at their opponents. The man had not instantly declared her an imposter, or some such, so she had to do whatever should could to prove her worth.
She didn’t quite understand the strategy of all grouping together, but she figured that it must be more effective when the groups were so evenly matched. By the lack of bodies, it appeared that no one had yet fallen, but Elena could see that both sides were tiring. She had only just entered the battle, but already, a stalemate seemed the only foreseeable end.
Elena sent bolt after bolt of light hurtling across the gap in the road. The force of the spells made her arm ache, but she continued the barrage, however unsuccessful it was. Most bounced off the near constant shield charms and others fell short, tearing up the road between the two groups. None managed to hit its target.
The spell casting became almost automatic, after several minutes. Elena was not going for finesse. Her only strategy was to fire as many hexes as she could, blindly hoping that one would hit. There was a sort of rhythm to the battle. The choice, the spell, the failure. It had only been minutes, but her voice was already hoarse from yelling over the spells of the others.
Finally, the pattern ended when a call came from the center of the group of Aurors. “Disperse!” a man yelled, and the group scattered, surging forward towards the Death Eaters, spells flying all the way.
Elena barely paused, before sprinting after the others. While they were casting curses as they ran, she didn’t dare to raise her wand, for fear that she would aim and hit her ally. Thoughts of her brief training with Simon flashed through her mind, but none of his lessons seemed helpful in this instance.
After a moment, Elena paused and sent a stunner at one of the unmasked enemies and, caught off guard, he fell to the ground. It appeared that the stampede had shocked their opponents, for several more fell to carefully aimed curses. Yet, as the Death Eaters regrouped, the fight turned even more deadly, as more bolts of green light were fired.
Scenes flashed before Elena’s eyes in inconclusive fragments; she saw only the middle of the action, not the start or end. Beside her, Elena saw an older witch in a pointed hat be thrown some ten feet up, before crashing to the ground in a bloody heap. She looked like a puppet, her limbs slaves to gravity as they cracked and bent. Elena felt ill, and wanted to help the woman, but couldn’t for fear of being hurt herself.
One older wizard tripped, falling to his knees, barely managing to deflect a slash of purple. He lithely rolled to his feet and was dueling with his attacker before Elena could figure out what had happened.
Elena was drastically out of her depth. Simon might have tried to instruct her on the basics of fighting—enough to keep her alive—but this was different. This was the kind of fight where everyone died. And she was so inexperienced that she barely qualified as a fighter at all. While it had been all very well to cast spells from the safety of the group, she knew she would stand no chance alone, in one on one combat. She was not a killer.
From her right, Elena saw a balding man wearing Auror’s robes raise his wand and scream, “Avada Kedavra!” His spell found its mark in the Death Eater to the right of the leader. The man crumpled to the ground and the leader screamed in rage. Elena recoiled, horrified that any Ministry worker would use such an unforgivable curse in battle, no matter how desperate. From the gasps she heard around her, many of the Aurors were feeling much the same. A silence seemed to fall over the street, like the silence before a storm. It was not a matter of whether there would be a counterattack, but rather when. The fighting slowed, as if all were anticipating some great force to intercede.
Time sped up again; the retaliation arrived before expected. Elena felt the blast before she heard it. It shook the building above her head, and stones began to crash heavily to the ground around her as deadly projectiles. A spray of glass followed, as one of the windows shattered. The shriek of metal bending covered up the screams of witches and wizards, as they were pelted with metallic shrapnel.
Without thinking, Elena dove for cover in a tiny back alley between two storefronts. She crouched against a waste bin, burying her face into her hands, until the sound of falling bricks and explosions had ceased, leaving a choking silence.
When she finally looked up, tentatively peering between her fingers, she saw that some of the building had collapsed in front of the entrance to the alley, hiding her from view. She was reasonably sure she could exit if she desired, but had no impulse to do so and reenter into whatever battle still raged.
Her skin was speckled with tiny cuts from the glass and dust filled her lungs and burned in her eyes. Her heart was pounding, and the hand holding her wand was shaking. Elena inched forward, so she could peer through to the street, then recoiled in horror. She saw no Aurors left standing. There were only Death Eaters, and unidentifiable bodies. She could not tell who the dead were, nor could she see the sign of any Ministry wizards. In the commotion, they had all fallen, or retreated, leaving her trapped, most likely left for dead.
As one Death Eater shuffled towards the building, Elena crawled farther back, tucking herself behind the waste bin, where she was mostly out of sight.
The reality and terror of the situation washed over her and all she could do was squeeze her eyes shut and wait for the wave of fear to pass. There were bodies, yes, but she saw bodies all the time. She was a Healer. She knew death. It wasn’t as if she knew any one of the Aurors lying stunned, dead, on the cobblestones. Simon and Corinne were surely safe. Elena hadn’t seen them in the few minutes preceding the explosion. They had probably gone to find Ethan MacDonald, leaving the battle behind. They weren’t lying dead on the street. Elena was absolutely sure.
Slowly, as she repeated this mantra, her heart rate subsided and Elena began to view the situation clearly again. Assuming Simon and Corinne were unharmed—which they were, which they had to be—she had several options for herself: she could apparate or she could try to find the others. The first solution was the safest, yet Elena wasn’t sure that she could make it back to the warehouse, traumatized as she was, without splinching. The second option seemed equally dangerous, and difficult. What if the Aurors had returned to London? Elena was no match for the remaining Death Eaters. So she had to wait, until she regained strength or until the others reappeared.
With this new clarity, Elena examined her surroundings. She mostly saw brick and glass and dust, a gray powder that choked the air. Amidst the black and white palette that colored the alley, a flash of red caught Elena’s eye; on the floor, next to the bin, was a magazine. She would have ignored it had she not seen a serious Minister for Magic on the front cover.
“Minister Gordon Takes a Holiday,” the title read. Beneath it were the words “Well deserved break or illicit affair?”
Despite the shock of the situation, Elena could barely keep from laughing hysterically. This article, recent as it was, appeared to be suggesting that Marcus Gordon’s “holiday” was actually an excuse for some forbidden romance. The falsity of the situation was entirely comical. If only the author of this salacious article knew the truth. The Minister had been dead for over a month and this supposed “holiday” was only Simon’s way of ending his Polyjuice-facilitated charade.
If there were such a scandal over this paltry news, what would occur when the Wizarding World discovered of the Minister’s murder? Solved or not, Elena was only now beginning to truly understand the impact of the event. It would play to the terrors of all who had lived through the war, a cruel warning that the world was still dangerous. Panic was certain. Hysteria, likely. Without a proper strategy to release the information, the carefully constructed image of safety would shatter.
“Elena!” The voice that filtered through the debris into the alley was unmistakably Simon’s.
Elena stopped breathing, the magazine dropping from her hand. She could barely dare to hope. Simon called her name again and she nearly collapsed with relief. She had been right, against the odds: Simon was alive. More than that, he had come looking for her, was calling her name. The danger had passed, and Simon was safe. She was very nearly giddy.
She crawled around the waste bin, and made her way to the front of the alley, first cautiously peering through the bricks, trying to see him.
“Elena?” Simon stepped into view, looking worried and battered but living. “Elena! Where are you?”
She felt a second surge of relief at the sight of him and she found herself grinning wildly. As soon as she could disguise her smile, Elena pushed through the rubble and ran forward. She didn’t even say anything, just wrapped her arms tightly around Simon, embracing him and reassuring herself that he was unharmed.
After a moment, she looked up and without thinking leaned in to kiss him. She didn’t know why, exactly, she did it; it was just that he was safe, and so was she, and that made everything seem like it was going to be all right. Seconds later, he was kissing her back and holding her just as tightly.
This so surprised Elena that she paused, breathless, delighted and a bit embarrassed. She turned her head upwards, to stare into Simon’s eyes, which were glinting with what Elena supposed was happiness. The rest of his face however, remained serious.
Confused, Elena tried to pull back, wondering suddenly if Corinne had been searching with Simon and seen the whole display, or some other horribly embarrassing thing. “I,” she began awkwardly, lowering her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” Simon whispered and when Elena looked in his eyes, she saw that any gladness had been replaced by regret. With a sigh, Simon stepped back, so Elena could see several Aurors behind him, looking ready for another battle.
“What?” Elena couldn’t seem to comprehend all that she was seeing. These wizards had their wands pointed at her.
Simon took another step away, gritting his teeth as if it pained him to do so. “They’re going to come back,” he said quickly. “I couldn’t leave you here.”
“Burke!” one of the Aurors barked. “Stop talking to your girlfriend and get over here.”
“Simon,” Elena began, mind racing wildly. “What’s going on?” She stepped towards him, reaching out, just as Simon walked quickly backwards to avoid her touch, shame keeping him from meeting her gaze.
One of the Aurors, a stocky, balding man, quickly stepped between Simon and Elena, wand still trained on her. “Madame,” he said sharply. “Drop you wand.”
Elena balked. “Simon?” She felt such a confused mess of emotions that she didn’t feel like she could make the decision for herself.
From over the man’s shoulder, she saw Simon give a little nod, though he still didn’t look at her directly. Elena nodded back and slowly set her wand on the road, straightening up carefully with her hands raised.
The other Auror scuttled forward to retrieve the wand, just as the first man flicked his own wand, causing ropes to wrap themselves around Elena’s wrists and ankles. She stumbled, barely managing to stand upright, and the cords dug into her skin. A few feet back, Simon stood motionless, face contorted in rage.
“Please?” Elena asked, staring straight at him. Why had he kissed her, if he had known these men were waiting? A tiny voice in her head interjected, you kissed him. This sudden realization, this rapid switch from joy to pain left Elena close to tears. Had she misinterpreted Simon’s reaction? Had he been the one to push her away in revulsion?
“Damn it!” Simon exploded, shoving the first Auror out of the way. “Damn it, Dawlish, I thought you said it wasn’t going to be this way. You just wanted questions!”
Dawlish, the reedy man, smirked with superiority. “After we talked, I got the orders straight from the Office. They want no chances to be taken in this case.”
“She’s not a prisoner!” Simon continued, towering over the Auror. He seemed huge next to the tiny man, his continence almost brutish.
“Burke,” the second Auror reprimanded once again. “We have orders to arrest anyone who interferes. Now step away. Disobeying looks an awful lot like treason.”
Snarling, Simon stepped back, though he looked like he wanted to kill the other man.
Dawlish pulled a piece of old parchment from his robes and held it out. “Here we go,” he said, lifting up Elena’s bound hands so that she was touching the paper. The second Auror joined them, counting down. “Three, two, one.”
“No!” Simon lunged forward, grabbing at the parchment, but Dawlish flicked his wand, sending Simon sprawling onto the dusty street.
Elena screamed, trying to wrench free to reach Simon, but was held roughly in place by Dawlish. From the corner of her eye, she saw the paper begin to burn with blue fire as the Portkey activated. She tried to yell to Simon one last time, to implore him to help her but the world was already melting into a blur.
Thanks to everyone who is still reading! You're the best. And I know this is quite a cliffhanger of an ending, but I promise the next chapter will be out soon!
chapter image featuring Corinne made by me (laelia @ TDA)
Chapter 15
Before the surge of blue light had completely vanished from the room, the questions pelted down onto Elena, forcing her to the floor. The stream was only interrupted by two harsh cracks as the Aurors that had taken her disapparated. While they had vanished, the insistent voices did not. Elena raised her hands, still bound with the cord, up, as if trying to protect herself from the discordant noises that assaulted her ears. All the sound was making her brain sluggish; squeezing her eyes shut, she could barely put together the events of the past minutes. Even as she tried to make sense of it all, the questions continued.
“Who are you?”
“What’s your name?”
“Why were you fighting with Ministry Aurors?”
“Where do you live?”
“How did you know that there was battle occurring?”
“How are you acquainted with Simon Burke?”
“Who are you?”
The voices coalesced, condensing into a single brutish whip. “What is your name? Tell me.”
There was a crash, as if something had been broken in the room. Perhaps an inkwell. “Tell me who you are!” the voice screamed. Elena opened her eyes to see a bulbous face looming over her. His skin was sickly yellow with purplish veins scaring his cheeks’ his eyes were beady, dull black. The man curled back his lips, exposing teeth that matched his skin. “Tell me who you are RIGHT NOW!” A tempest of rancid, warm air engulfed Elena’s face. “Tell me NOW! Tell me the fuck now!”
Something broke inside of Elena’s chest and tears began to stream down her cheeks, capturing the scent of that foul breath. In her mind, she saw Simon, kissing her, and the other Aurors dragging her away from him. He had apologized before turning her in, but he had still handed her over to this man. Simon had wanted her to go with them. The man wanted her to answer. Simon would want her to answer. She couldn’t think clearly enough to decide what she wanted for herself.
“Elena Wood,” she said. She wondered then if she could have kept silent. She should have kept silent. She didn’t know who this man was. But she told him anyways. She was going to tell him everything. Her mind was dissolving under the stress: she had said one thing, why stop now that he knew everything important.
“Find out who the hell that is,” the man snapped and Elena saw a man dressed in black peel themselves off of the wall, as if he had been synthesized from the wood at his master’s command. Elena, heard, more than saw the insect-like peons scuttling away to do his bidding.
She huddled on the stone floor, as far from the man as she could, trembling. Thankfully, he seemed to have postponed any further interrogation until his underlings had returned, which left Elena with precious moments to process. What had happened? She was so confused that even her thoughts were betraying her. She was so tired, so defeated, and why? Why had she decided not to fight this man? What had made Elena so compliant? The answer floated, nebulous, just out of her reach. All she could see were possibilities, not the truth. Perhaps it was because of exhaustion, or shock, said her Healer self. Or perhaps they had drugged her with potions, though she didn’t know when. Her heart sang of betrayal, for she had kissed Simon only to have him give her to the Aurors. He had come to find her, but only to turn her in. Her mind was too dulled, too confused to have its own answer.
The men returned in force, five tiny beetles clattering against the stone floors. “Elena Wood,” a blank voice reported. “Twenty-five year old witch. Healer at St. Mungo’s. Daughter of Elizabeth and Thomas Wood. Sister of Auror Oliver Wood. Resident of—”
“Is that IT?” the man screamed. “You’re resorting to telling me her street address. Find something that’s damn useful you incompetent bastard! Maybe start by figuring out how the fuck she ended up in the middle of a bloody battle.”
“Sir,” the bland voiced man said, undisturbed, “the altercation was not Official—”
The man’s wordless scream sent the insects scurrying again.
This time, the absence of the others did not offer Elena a respite. After pacing along the shorter wall of the long, narrow room, the man stopped and turned to his prisoner, who was still cowering in the corner. “Can you tell me?” the man asked Elena in a sickeningly calm voice. He ran his fingers along his wand, which he held loosely in one hand, contemplating: “Or will I make you tell me?”
Elena felt vomit rise up in her throat as drops of spittle fell onto her face, where they mixed with tears. She slumped forward, her head cracking on the floor, sobbing so hard that she could hardly breathe.
“Get her up!” the man ordered probably to more insects who lived in the walls.
Several pairs of hands hauled her upright, not bothered by her thrashing.
The man licked his lips, “I won’t repeat my question.”
“You can’t do this,” Elena managed, scrambling back, away from her captors. “You can’t do this.” The more she said, the more he would have to believe her. The more time one of the others would have to help her. “You can’t.” It wasn’t legal, it wasn’t allowed. There had to be someone that would come to stop this madman.
“I can do whatever I want,” he said with laugh that made the spidery veins in his neck bulge. “You don’t understand, do you?”
Elena squeezed her eyes shut, as if not seeing would also keep from hearing. “No, no, no,” she pleaded. “No.” She wanted to cry out for Simon but her lips wouldn’t move to form the word. All she could do was whimper. Her legs were failing her again.
“I have no patience for snivelling women. Ask her again,” he ordered one of the insects, who had returned and was dressed in sterile white.
“Sir,” the white insect bowed. Like a soldier, he turned and spoke to her from across the room. “Why were you at the battle, ma’am?”
Elena looked up, knowing that they would have the answer no matter what she did. Lights shone down brightly. There were no shadows in the room. The horrible man above her was merely a dark outline of a face, light creating a halo of his hair. “I was taken there,” she said.
“By whom?” he leaned closer towards her lips, as if hoping they knew the answers he craved.
“You can’t,” Elena repeated. “You can’t.” It was impossible: the spoke only to save herself, but the more answers she gave, the more dread she felt. This could never end well.
“Can’t what?” he scoffed, all he could manage of a laugh. “Can’t force you? Can’t hurt you? Elizabeth and Thomas, your parents. They could be here if I snapped my finger like this,” a slap echoed off the walls, seeming to rebound onto Elena’s cheeks. “Marianne, little Oliver. All of them. What would you say then, if they were here watching?”
Panic swept over Elena. She would tell him anything, anything he wanted, all of the truth, if it would spare her family from him. “Simon Burke. Corinne Dupont. She took me.”
“Dupont?” the man smiled gleefully. “I should have known it was that bitch.”
Elena spat hair from her mouth and smeared tears out of her eyes.
“Why?” the man continued, now agitated in his excitement. Life seemed to disappear from his eyes as he lowered his voice: “If you do not tell me I will pry it from you mind.”
His hands, mottled and twisted, extended towards her temples, as he if could physically steal the memory from her. The thought of him rooting through her mind made Elena almost vomit once more. She had seen what happened to those who had been forced to give up their memories. If they fought, they were gone, shells without a mind. If they agreed, they were broken, blathering and destroyed.
“I already know what it is,” the man said, placing a thick finger on Elena’s lips. “There is no need to resist.”
She spat at him. “You cannot possibly know.”
He shook his head sadly and his hand moved to stroke her cheek. When Elena, repelled by his touch, leaned away, he spoke. “I know everything about you now. There is no need to hide anything. You cannot tell me something that I do not know.” From the triumph in his face, he believed it. But Elena knew that her secret was one that he could never find in any file, or hear from any spy.
With deliberate slowness, she raised her head, so that she was staring into his glassy eyes as she said four simple words, clearly, and without hesitation: “The Minister is dead.”
It was worth it all to see the shock obvious on his features, the gloating blasted off in an instant. Around him, the composed insects let out horrified cries. “Liar,” he said, though his voice had lost its confidence. “I spoke to him this morning.”
It was Elena’s turn to smile, her lips curving in a knowing manner as she stood tall in defiance. “You know everything about me. I could not possibly lie to you.”
He shoved her down, so that she sprawled on the floor. “Do something!” he shouted at the insects. “Go!”
Another voice, female and frigid spoke from the doorway at the end of the blinding room. “Stop.” There was a shuffling as the insects stopped, and murmured, greetings from several. The woman continued imperiously, “I will handle this interrogation from now on. Give me the girl.”
Elena raised her head to look at the scene and blood filled her mouth. She could not see the face of the woman; the lights in the room left her features dark, but she knew the voice.
“No,” the man said with relish, turning to face this new adversary. “You cannot order me you traitorous bitch.”
Corinne took a step into the room. “I have orders from the Minister for Magic himself. Give me the girl.” Her eyes flashed as they landed on Elena, struggling to stand.
“You cannot possibly. He could not have spoken to you.” The man leered at Corinne, and took another step closer, trying to force her from the room.
Corinne approached him, not intimidated by his immense presence. “The Minister is ill disposed, but he still has time to speak with me.”
The man rubbed his hands together. He had recovered from any shock he had felt upon Elena’s news. Now it was a weapon he could form to his own will. Anticipation laced his voice when he spoke. “The Minister is not ill disposed, Miss Dupont. The Minister is dead.” The words fell into silence.
“And so are you,” Corinne hissed. In a blur, her wand was in her hands, and she spat two words: “Avada Kedavra.”
Green light carried the man into the air, lifting him high before dropping him. The spell created a breeze that blew Corinne’s hair around her head. All Elena could see was her outline, illuminated like a halo in the green and white lights. She was glad that she could not Corinne’s face as the man died.
Calmly, Corinne stepped over his body, went to Elena and pulled her upright. Elena saw the insects, plastered against the walls of the room, as if hoping they could merge back into it, horror frozen on their flat faces.
“An apoplexy,” Corinne said as she exited, Elena in tow. With a dark laugh, she added, “He had it coming for years.”
Elena barely registered her surroundings as Corinne dragged her down the hallway—all she noticed was more blinding and whiteness. Her feet scuffed along the now-tiled floor, barely able to move. Part of her wanted to run, as far and as fast as she could, and another part wanted to simply collapse.
The scene replayed over and over. The man, with his grotesque face, leaning forward. Corinne, entering. The man gloating. And Corinne’s face, as she left the room with the dead man on the floor—cruel in its humour.
“What did you do?” Elena managed to say, though she was almost sobbing.
Corinne kept walking, as if she hadn’t heard Elena. Though there was no one else in the long corridor, she moved so fast she was nearly running. Elena kept waiting for a contingent Aurors to break through the doors and arrest them both but they remained alone.
They neared the end of the hallway, and Corinne yanked the door open ferociously. After it was shut, and locked, she paused.
“What did you do?” Elena repeated. She had so many questions, but that was only one she could vocalize.
Corinne turned to face Elena. “I killed him,” she said evenly and there was no remorse in her eyes.
“Why?” Elena whispered. She knew she should be afraid of Corinne and what she had done, but now she only felt immense gratitude. The man would have stopped at nothing to get the answers he wanted, and Corinne had stopped him. The secret that Elena had spoken was gone with him.
Corinne merely shook her head. Though her eyes were hard, she looked shaken. “It was nothing he did not deserve,” she said at last.
Elena had more questions than she could think to ask. She tried to sort out the most important ones, when Corinne suddenly cursed. “Come on,” she hissed and began to pull Elena forward again.
They traversed another empty hall, before Corinne produced a ring of keys and unlocked one of several doors. It opened into yet another hallway, this one lined with cells. They were tiny, white, sterile spaces, visible through the small glass windows on each door. All were empty of prisoners.
Corinne ushered Elena into one of the rooms, then moved to leave herself. Elena went to follow her out, but Corinne shook her head. “Stay,” she ordered.
Elena balked. “I thought,” she began. “I thought you came to get me out.”
A rueful expression crossed Corrine’s face. “I got you away from him. But I can’t take you out of the Ministry. Listen, I can’t stay to talk, I need to run, but don’t tell them anything. Unlike him, they won’t be able to force you. They may try to convince you, but they won’t use torture. Legally, they can’t even use Veritaserum, without a court order. That should take time. Don’t mention me or Simon unless they do first. Don’t mention how this all began. Delay them.”
With that, Corinne left the room, snapping the door locked behind her.
Elena threw herself against the door, trying in vain to open it. “Damn,” she muttered, suddenly recalling her first day in the warehouse, where she had also been locked inside of a room, unsure of her future.
After hours of pacing, she lay down on the tiny bed and fell asleep.
Corinne had been wrong. They could hurt her.
Elena sat at the table, nervously turning a pencil round and round in her hands. She was in a large conference room, though she was the only occupant at the time.
This was so much worse than anything she had thought they could do to her. The door opposite her clicked open and Elena closed her eyes in resignation.
“Elena, my darling!” a woman called, running down the table.
Elena opened her eyes and saw Elizabeth Wood standing in front of her, wearing a Muggle skirt and blouse. Her grey hair was back in a loose bun.
“Hello Mum,” Elena said softly, feeling some strange emotion stabbing her heart: a mix of bitter regret and helplessness.
“Oh darling,” Elizabeth said, and reached down to hug her daughter.
Elena stood awkwardly, and let her mother stroke her hair soothingly. “How horrible this must have been for you. Kidnapped! I can’t imagine.”
Elena nodded once. “Yeah,” she said laconically. They hadn’t bothered to tell her mother the whole truth. She had been fed a version that twisted the story. While it could be construed from the few facts they knew about her, it was the most unlikely scenario.
“Your father is with Marianne and Ollie, settling them back in, but he’ll be here soon. Though honestly, Elena, I don’t see why they won’t let you just come home with me! You’ve been through so much! They can’t honestly need you to stay for more questions.”
“Mum,” Elena began. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine here. I’ll be safer here.” It felt odd to console her mother about this, when all Elena wanted was to leave.
“Don’t worry!” Elizabeth cried. “I’ve been worrying ever since you showed up in our fireplace in Vienna, telling us to extend our holiday. And then yesterday, to get that Owl…I’ve never worried more in my life! I had no idea you’d even been missing, much less kidnapped. What sort of mother am I, to not realize my own daughter was missing?”
“If it’s any comfort, no one else thought I missing either,” Elena, whispered, then instantly regretted it. . The guilt surged through her was only checked because her mother hadn’t seemed to hear. She didn’t want to think she’d caused her family so much pain. It had been necessary though. Since Christmas, she and Simon and Corinne had made so much progress. They had been so close to finding the answers, and now, she was in custody and the others had left her.
Elena wished she knew if they were in trouble. She didn’t know which scenario was worse. Either they had been arrested, or suspended, or punished for their involvement of the matter, or they had simply abandoned Elena, cutting their losses and continuing their secret investigation without her.
“I’m fine,” Elena said suddenly, pushing away from her mother. She didn’t want all this sympathy or attention. She just wanted things to go back to how they were before.
“Of course you are now,” her mother said. “But I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you! Did they hurt you?”
Elena frowned, what had they told her mother? Hurt her? “No,” she snapped. “No, you don’t understand. They were wonderful people. I was happy, Mum. I wanted to stay there.”
Elizabeth Wood’s face fell. “Oh darling,” she whispered, stepping towards Elena again. “You can’t mean that. It’s some awful psychological thing, I’ve heard of before. You get attached to your kidnappers. But they aren’t nice people at all. They’re insane, at the very least.”
“Do you even know who they were?” Elena snapped, suddenly defensive
“I don’t have names, if that’s what you mean, but I know that they were some sort of wandering rabble.”
Elena scoffed. “Rabble? Do you know what we were doing? Do you have any idea at all?”
“Tell me,” Elizabeth said suddenly. “You can tell me anything, darling.”
Elena blanched at the rapid shift in the conversation. “They asked you!” she hissed. “They asked you to get me talking. But I won’t! Goodbye, Mum.”
Elizabeth froze, tears forming in her eyes. “Please, don’t ask me to go again. Elena, I was so worried. I can’t lose my little girl, especially since we haven’t heard from Oliver in so long.”
“I’m not your little girl,” Elena said automatically, then regretted it. Regardless of whether or not her mother had been sent in to question her, she was still her mother. And she didn’t know about Oliver’s death. “Mum,” Elena began, not sure if she could break the news. A part of her had hoped her mother had already found out. “Mum, I—” her voice trembled. Elena felt a tear make a warm trail down her cheek.
Her mother reached for her, and wrapped her in her arms. For a moment, they comforted each other, both grieving for different reasons, but both equally sad.
“How could you do this?” Elizabeth said at last. “How could you want to stay with them?”
Elena bit her lip. “They’re not bad people,” she promised, thinking of Corinne, who would go to any lengths to do what was right, and Simon who would protect everything he loved. “What we were doing was not wrong. I may not have wanted to come with them at first, but now all I want to do is stay. They could have let me go, but I wouldn’t abandon their cause.”
“You could have gone?” Elizabeth broke away from her daughter, looking incredulous. “They would have let you go, and you chose to stay? Elena, we hadn’t heard from you for more than a month! Your boss, Quentin Yarbourough called, asking after you, and we could tell him nothing. You certainly weren’t taking the holiday he said you were.”
Elena paused: her boss had called her parents. This was a scenario she had never considered. She had been so intent on working to find the Minister’s killer and so distracted by the mystery and her brother’s death, that she had not had time to think of all the ramifications of her disappearance. She would likely lose her job now, would not be allowed back to be a Healer. She had hoped that her conversation with her parents, at the beginning of the ordeal, would have kept them from worrying, but she should have known better. She had only told herself it was all right, because she didn’t have the energy to deal with it all. And now, she was a prisoner, possibly a suspected criminal, and she didn’t know what to do.
A sense of abandonment washed over Elena. Why had Simon turned her in? He could have assumed she would be safe. Why come looking for her, only to hand her over to the other Aurors? Corinne, too, had had the chance to save Elena. She had rescued her, to some extent, but then had put her in the cell. Since the door shut behind Corinne, she had not seen either of them, nor had she even heard their names mentioned. Her questioners seemed not to care whom she was associated with, and instead focused on why she was at the battle.
“Darling,” her mother said again. “Are you ill?”
Elena frowned. She wished that she could categorize her feelings that simply. “No.”
There was a pause, then, “Would you like me to go?” Elizabeth’s voice trembled.
“Can I come with you?” Elena asked, in a moment of weakness. She wanted nothing more, in that instant, to be coddled and loved, and fussed over.
“Oh Elena, you know you can’t. They want to keep you here for safety’s sake.”
“Will Dad or Marianne come to see me?”
Elizabeth shrugged, not meeting her daughter’s eyes. “Only if you want. Only if they permit it.”
Elena hoped she didn’t have to make that decision now. She might manage seeing her father, but she couldn’t handle Marianne. How could she face her sister-in-law, knowing that her husband was dead? She would have to tell Marianne, but then that would lead to questions she couldn’t answer. Elena could never tell her how Oliver died, nor even how she had found out about it.
The thought of her brother made her pause. “Mum,” Elena said slowly, feeling an idea growing in her brain. “I know he never mentioned it to me, but did Oliver ever speak to you about his work?”
Elizabeth tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and looked puzzled. “Your brother? Of course he did, but why are you asking?”
“Did he ever mention Albania to you?” Elena took a step forward, surprised at the ease of her mother’s affirmation.
There was a pause, and then Elizabeth paled. “How could you know that?” she breathed. “No one knew that’s where Oliver was.”
“How did you know then?” Elena countered, feeling her excitement rising. Was it possible? Could she even hope her mother might know something helpful?
Elena’s mother looked around furtively. “They told me they weren’t going to listen in to this,” she said in a hushed tone, “but I’m not sure if I believe them.”
“Mum!” Elena cried, all the more curious.
“Listen,” Elizabeth whispered. “He wrote me, once. Only it was different than normal. It didn’t have any of the official Ministry stamps on it. He told me where he was, and that things were dangerous. I was surprised, because this was after the end of the war, you see. Though now, I suppose all the chaos was why he was able to sneak his letter to me. The last part of the letter was the oddest. I remember there being some sort of name, and something about Ravenclaw.”
“Do you remember the name?” Elena could barely contain her excitement.
Elizabeth shook her head. “Not now, I don’t. But I still have the letter. It really was so odd. I could just see Oliver, pacing before writing it. He said that he was telling me because the war was over, and he didn’t think anyone would listen. He didn’t know who to write to but me.”
Elena’s heart thudded wildly at the news. It could be the key to linking all the elements: her brother, the Minister, Natalya, the Death Eaters. “I need to see what he wrote,” she said earnestly.
“I can’t,” her mother looked towards the door again, as if fearing that Elena’s captors would rush in and catch her. “He begged me not to tell anyone.”
“Why me then?” Elena wanted to know. If he had been so insistent in his letter, why was her mother volunteering this information.
“I just meant that I can’t bring it here,” Elizabeth corrected, not meeting her daughter’s eyes. “Elena,” she breathed. “They searched me, before letting me see you. They’d certainly find the letter if I came back.”
Elena began to walk the length of the conference table, thinking. She had never expected her mother would know anything useful, much less anything potentially this important. She had not planned for how to proceed. There were tiny windows in the conference window that let in the afternoon sunlight and left lacy patterns on the floor. Elena waved her hand through one of them, absently, watching as the design transferred to her skin in glowing gold.
“Do you trust me, Mum?” Elena asked finally, turning to face her mother. “I know that these past few months, I’ve done nothing to prove that I am worth believing, but I’m asking you to believe me in this.”
Elizabeth’s face contorted into an expression of worry, and puzzlement. “What are you asking me?” she said softly.
“I need you to send a letter for me.”
Tentatively, Elizabeth approached her daughter. “They lied to me, didn’t they?” she said sadly. “About you. About Oliver. They always told me that my children were safe, from any real danger, but after all of the hundreds of incidents to the contrary, I can hardly believe that now, can I? I don’t know what happened to you, but you don’t seem traumatized. I don’t know what Oliver is doing, but I’m sure that he’s not as protected as the assured me.”
Tears constricted Elena’s throat. It was even worse, she decided, to have her mother realize the truth of the situation because then, no amount of reassurance could settle her mind. “If it’s any consolation,” she said slowly. “I don’t think they always know how much they’re lying.”
“Oh, darling.” Elizabeth shook her head sadly, and embraced her daughter.
“I know, Mum,” Elena said, understanding how difficult uncertainty could be.
After a few moments, Elena bit her lip, trying to contain the tears, as she asked again, “Will you send that letter for me?”
“What should it say?”
Elena wanted to write the letter herself, so she could explain the intricacies of the situation, as well as how she found out, but knew that the letter had to be as brief as possible, to avoid detection. “Begin it with ‘For Corinne.’ Then, just copy down the bit of Oliver’s letter you told me. And then write ‘I need to be out before I can explain more.’ And sign my name.”
Elizabeth nodded after a moment. “Who shall I send it to?”
Elena would have preferred to send it directly to Corinne, but knew that was impossible. For one, she didn’t know of an address. And she was sure that Corinne’s Ministry post was being monitored. She could think of one person, however, who would know how to safely get the message to Corinne: “Alice Longbottom.”
“Not this Corinne?”
“Mum!” Elena cried at her mother’s suddenly louder voice. “Quiet! You realize you can’t tell anyone about it. Not Dad or Marianne.”
Solemnly, Elizabeth nodded. “I understand, Elena. I’ll write it as soon as I get back home.”
Elena was so anxious that her mother send the note that she had little to say to her after that. “Thank you, Mum,” she said for the fifth time.
Elizabeth laughed lightly, her smile erasing the frown lines etched onto her forehead. “Is that your way of asking me to leave?”
“No!” Elena lied, blushing a little. Her mother, when she was paying attention, was far too alert for Elena’s liking. “I’m sure you must be hungry, though. It’s almost supper time.”
“All right,” Elizabeth said with another small smile. “I suppose I am getting a bit hungry.” She picked up her coat off of the long table and put it on.
Elena watched her mother fasten up the jacket sadly. She only wished that she could be a better daughter. Her mother didn’t deserve to have to worry as much as she did. “Goodbye, Mum,” Elena said softly. “Thank you for coming.”
“Of course. And, let me know, the next time something happens. I am trustworthy and I’d rather know the truth, even if it isn’t happy.” Elizabeth gave her daughter a kiss on the cheek and then walked from the room, leaving Elena alone to think.
Note: Thanks to everyone who is still reading. In the last chapter, the story finally passed the 50,000 word mark, which, for me, is a huge milestone. This chapter is also, interestingly, the longest so far, at just over 5000 words. I'm really glad that so many people have liked the story so far, and I hope that you continue to enjoy it. As you may have also noticed, I had to increse the rating of the story from 15+ to M because I thought it was really too intense for 15+ anymore. Also, I added some M-rated language in, not to be gratitious, but because I think it adds to the effect of the interrogation scene.
chapter image (featuring Alice and Elena) made by me (laelia @ TDA)
Chapter 16
Alice Longbottom walked through the door of Elena’s cell two days later. She was dressed in formal gray Auror robes, her hair up in a formal knot—the picture of comportment—but her dulled eyes betrayed an unstable interior. “Come along,” she said briskly upon entering.
Elena sat up from her bed, feeling confused. “What do you mean?” It was unlike the motherly Alice to be this hurried.
“You’ve been released,” Alice said, with a trace of a smile.
“What?” How was that possible? Wasn’t she supposed to be questioned longer? All Elena could ask, though, was, “Where’s Simon?”
Alice only shook her head, something like pity on her face. “Please, Elena.” It was unclear whether she didn’t know, or couldn’t answer.
Without trepidation, she followed Alice as she was taken from the cell. “Where are we going?” Elena demanded. Had Corinne received her letter from Alice? Why was it Alice rescuing her? As ridiculous as it sounded, during her sleepless nights in the cell, Elena had visions of Simon being the next one to open the door.
There was an obvious shift in scenery as the two women left the corridor through a metal plated door. The stone floors were covered in plush carpet. The walls were suddenly papered, the lighting now more subtle. The decor of the new hall made Elena remember her visit to Simon’s office. This was a place of historic luxury, and not what one would expect near prison cells.
Alice walked with all the purpose of an Auror, though not so fast as to leave Elena behind. The few older wizards they passed in the hall made no move to speak to Alice, seemingly so oblivious that Elena wondered if Alice had cast an invisibility spell upon them.
Finally, Alice stopped at an ornate door. Inside was an expansive office, with an immense desk, and huge bookshelves that lined the dark, wood panelled walls. A fire crackled cheerfully in the corner. The warmth of the room harkened Elena back to her days at school and the always comforting Gryffindor common room.
“We will be travelling by Floo,” Alice explained, taking a small box of green powder from the desk. “But before we go back, there are a few things you need to know.”
“Why are they letting me go?” Elena asked again, feeling utterly bewildered. Her first interrogator had made it clear how much trouble she was in with the Ministry. Corinne had killed the man, once he had extracted the truth about the Minister, but there had been witnesses. Corinne was probably in Azkaban by now and unable to receive Elena’s mother’s letter.
With a sigh, Alice perched herself on top of the desk, her feet dangling inches off the ground. “I know this must be confusing,” she said with a shake of her head. “I must admit that I was reluctant to do this in the first place because I knew that you probably don’t trust me. But please, wait. Once we are safer, I can answer more questions.” Alice paused for a moment before beginning again, her tone now all business. “They’ve captured Ethan MacDonald and are questioning him as we speak. We will meet with Frank at our home before meeting with the others. They’ve changed locations for security.”
Elena thought that this made some sense, though she was obviously missing key events from the days she had been captive. “Floo?” she asked at last.
Alice shook her head, setting the ornate box back onto the desk. “Apparation,” she countered.
“But,” Elena began in confusion, Alice had mentioned Floo before.
“It’s always a good idea to be unpredictable.” With that, Alice hopped off the desk, took Elena’s arm and spun into the void of apparation. Echoes of a knocking on the door chased them as they travelled.
The two women appeared in the garden of the Longbottom house. Unlike her first trip to the home, Elena felt aware after the apparation. She scanned her surroundings, waiting for Alice’s next instructions. When the woman made no move to go inside, Elena posed a question: “Did you get a letter?”
Alice turned to respond, but before she could speak, the doors to the house burst open, and two masked figures leapt out, wands raised.
The sudden pounding of Elena’s heart arrested the scream in her throat. Instead, she cast a shield charm just as a hex flew from the wand of one of her attackers. As it hit the shield, the hex made wrenching sound, as if a physical projectile had been hurtled at the barrier. Elena’s arm shook at the effort to sustain the spell.
Next to her, Alice was duelling the second attacker. While it was impossible to see the faces behind Death Eater masks, Elena guessed that Alice’s shorter opponent was a woman. Her own attacker was well over six feet tall, with burly muscles only a man could have.
For a few minutes, Elena managed only to hold off the Death Eater. He forced her back, across the lawn, but she managed to block, or avoid his curses. He did not seem intent to kill her, for if he had been, he could have done so on numerous occasions. Instead, he eschewed Unforgivable Curses, and used spells that would stun an opponent for capture, but not kill.
Elena was an inexperienced dueller at best, and here, one-on-one her weaknesses showed. It was more than just her ability to cast difficult spells. There was a certain physicality required to leap, duck and roll out of the way. While she was in shape, Elena did not possess the necessary athleticism.
After another hundred heartbeats, the fight began to feel inevitable. Elena was going to lose. She could hold out for only so long before she grew tired. Already, her reflexes were slowing: a purple jet of light had singed the hair by her ear.
She felt a surge of regret run through her veins as she realized that no one was coming to her aid. This battle, neither Corinne nor Simon could rush in to save her. She was alone. It was difficult to accept that this was where she would die. Perhaps, if she were lucky, she would feel nothing from that final curse.
The twin to this inevitability was sadness. Elena was glad that she had seen her mother in the past days, but she wished she could have spoken, even seen, Simon one last time. She needed to know the truth about him. Since the Minister’s death, there had been so many times when he had been kind to her. There had been those glorious moments when she had finally thought that he might have returned her feelings, only to have him betray her. While part of her mind argued that it had all been some sort of misunderstanding, it was also impossible to dismiss it. This uncertainty left bitterness in the air. She didn’t want to die doubting him.
Time was elastic as Elena duelled the Death Eater; it stretched and warped, turning seconds into minutes. She could see the normally blurred spells coming, yet she too moved more slowly in this new languid time.
The air danced with ribbons of light that others might have called a beautiful, out of context. Through the cage of spells Elena caught glimpse of Alice, who seemed to be having more success. The woman she was fighting was madly dancing with ripped robes and wildly billowing, curls that had fallen out of her mask.
Elena felt detached from it all. Her arms burned mildly; her eyes watered slightly. Now her battle was internal: could she accept the end? Why prolong the inevitable? Death was in the shadows that darkened her vision. Even the flares of spells had lost their brilliance. The darkness was not the terrifying abyss of nightmares, nor was it the welcoming embrace of sleep; it was impartial, a new, uncaring existence that was waiting. It was what blurred time, for it was both content to wait eternity and impatient to claim. Its lack of humanity was terrible.
Her ears were starting to ring. The spells around her crackled and sang a fanfare for Death. This was another cruel tactic of the mind, designed to disorient and confuse as one slipped from life. First sight, then sound had twisted. She could not tell where the sound came from, only that it was all around her like a clock ticking towards her doom.
It was not long now.
Elena’s mind retained its normal acuity despite her dwindling senses. She knew that she did not have the strength for fighting anymore. It would take just one slip, and she would be gone.
Even the thought of her family, of Simon could not give her energy. She was beyond saving now.
She parried once, shielded twice, ducked a spell. She didn’t dare waste her precious energy on the offensive. Now, her only desire was to prolong her existence another heartbeat, another breath.
The earth beneath her feet tilted and Elena moved with it. She was falling. This was the slip that she had known would come. She collided with earth and the ringing in Elena’s ears did not completely cover the crack that wrenched through the air.
She waited a heartbeat, a breath, and yet there was no change. The shadows did not close in, but rather they receded.
“Bella!” Elena’s opponent screamed in horror.
The sound had scared away the last traces of lingering Death, and Elena took the opportunity to stand, shakily. The Death Eater woman, Bella, lay sprawled on grass. Her mask had slipped off, exposing aristocratic features twisted into a mask of hatred. A tangle of curly hair surrounded her face like a dark halo. No one—not Elena, seeing her life solidify one more, nor Alice, a picture of vitality in the background, nor the opponent, staring in horror at the wounded woman—dared to breathe.
The tension in the air burst as, the male Death Eater aimed his wand at the Longbottom house, and fire erupted from within.
Suddenly, sound rushed back into the world. The man roared as he raced towards Bella. The fire angrily spat. Elena gasped in air: now that she could see how close she had been to death, panic encroached on her mind. Alice, with a cry, tore towards the home, screaming, “Neville!” A harsh crack sounded as the man grabbed Bella and disapparated.
Panic leant Elena the strength she had been unable to find in her previous acceptance. She caught up with Alice, who had stopped, ten feet back from the flaming door. This was no ordinary fire: chimera’s and dragons danced in the inferno.
“Fiend Fyre,” Elena said hoarsely, recognizing the substance from a case at St. Mungo’s. It was horribly beautiful. The fire was a deep crimson, laced with bruises of purple. The beasts twisted in savage, elemental rituals of ancient magic.
The fire entranced Elena: she barely noticed the blistering heat on her skin, or Alice’s whimpers of her son’s name beside her. A strange serpent coiled at the flaming door. Its rippling muscles alone foretold its strike. Elena moved a second ahead, grabbing Alice’s arm and stumbling back as the viper shot forward, its diamond teeth dripping in glittering venom.
“Alice!” Elena said frantically, shaking the other woman. She could smell burned fabric from her charred robes.
Alice stood petrified as her home burned. She did not respond to Elena, but watched the advancing tendrils of the inferno with a mix of pain and fury in her eyes.
“Now!” Elena insisted, dragging Alice back again as more beasts lunged from the flames. “Take us there NOW!”
Alice gave a horrid, shuddering sob and nodded. One of her hands reached towards the house, as if she could will the fire to go out and the other gasped Elena’s elbow. She spun in mid air, and the world of heat and light dissolved into darkness.
They landed in the midst of a dark, covered copse of trees. Alice immediately collapsed onto the ground, shaking. Elena, feeling unsteady herself, saw a stone cottage at the centre of a clearing and began to cry out as she ran towards it. “Help!” she yelled, not knowing if Alice was injured or not. She would not be surprised if the other woman had splinched, at the very least, from the stress.
Before Elena had even reached the door, Frank burst out of the cottage. He scanned the scene, and cried out in alarm as his gaze fell upon his wife who lay broken on the earth.
To Elena it seemed that Frank flew to Alice, and was crouching at her side before she could even realize he had moved. “What happened?” he demanded of Alice, lifting her into his arms.
Alice looked up at him, with tears in her eyes. “Neville?” she asked pitifully, as if the question was all she cared about in the world.
“He’s at my mother’s,” Frank said in a passive tone. “Are you hurt?”
Alice shook her head. “Oh thank God,” she sobbed, again and again. “Thank God.”
A clattering was heard from inside the cottage and moments later, Simon burst from the door.
Elena, whose heartbeat had slowed upon hearing that Neville was not back at the burning, infested Longbottom home, started in horror, at seeing him. She hadn’t thought through how she would act around him. She wasn’t sure what she would do… She certainly couldn’t think about it now. How could she, when she had been willing to leave a child to die to save her own life? Never mind that had Neville been inside the house, he would have been dead by the time they left. Elena had cared more about her own self than that precious child. It was even worse, now that Frank had promised that his son was alive. Because what if he had died? Elena didn’t think she could bear to see Frank and Alice have to mourn their son.
Simon seemed to sense Elena’s confusion, if not the source, for he stopped and stared at her. After a moment, he took several steps towards Elena, and placed his hand on her cheek. “Are you all right?” he asked with a soft note in his voice Elena had heard only a few times before.
She was uninjured, but her mind had been damaged enough. She was a Healer and she had sworn not to harm others—yet she had fought the Death Eater with intent to kill, and she had believed she was leaving Neville to die. If she could break this most sacred tenet, without even a pause, who was she?
Elena wanted desperately to melt into Simon’s arms and have him reassure her that everything was all right. But the thoughts of her own failure brought the memories of Simon’s betrayal to the front of her mind. “How could you?” she demanded, taking an angry step backwards. How could the world allow for failure in its foundation? How could she want to kill? How could Simon be disloyal?
The tenderness on Simon’s face vanished, and he dropped his gaze in what appeared to be shame. “You don’t understand,” he said in a heavy, tired voice.
“What don’t I understand?” Elena asked in a dangerous, slow tone. “You let those men take me away. They handed me off to some sadistic, interrogating criminal without a second thought. I was not prepared for any of it—there was nothing I could do to escape. That man threatened me, and my family, if I didn’t talk. What was I supposed to do? I told him everything, Simon, everything! If Corinne hadn’t showed up and killed him, I would still be there, and they would know everything. What is there to understand?” Her voice slowly rose to a scream as she threw the words at him.
Simon winced at the speech. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “So sorry. But, you don’t understand.”
A wave a fury hit Elena, the by-product of adrenaline and relief. “Are you saying you used me?” she spat, feeling revulsion numb her veins. “Was I just someone to be turned in when it was convenient? Was I a pawn that you would sacrifice for the greater good? I know you felt that way, before. I heard you trying to convince Corinne to replace me. I had only hoped that had changed.” Her voice caught on the last word, as she remembered her joy as she had kissed Simon.
Elena hoped that Simon would explode and argue back at her, denying that what she said was wrong, but he merely shook his head. It looked rueful, and maybe a bit sad, but there was no anger. “Are you all right?” he asked again, this time in a more clinical sense.
She shook her head angrily. She knew that Simon had meant physically, but honestly didn’t care if he worried a little at the moment. Maybe then, he could taste some of what Elena had felt, waiting in her cell.
Before she could see the look on his face, Elena turned away, to where Frank and Alice stood. Alice looked to have calmed down after learning that her son was safe and was now in her husband’s arms, looking at Elena and Simon with worry in her face.
Elena needed to get away from Simon, but didn’t want to intrude on Frank and Alice. She wished desperately that she had some place to escape to, but instead was stuck in this clearing, unable to get away.
With a sigh of exasperation, Elena whirled and pushed past Simon to get to the door of the cottage. She wrenched it open, and slammed it closed before any of the others could comment.
Inside, she paused, for the interior of the cottage did not match its exterior. Instead of seeing a charming stone interior, with low ceilings, wooden furniture and cosy rugs, she was startled by the vastness of the room that stretched in front of her. The walls were wrought of dark concrete blocks, and the roof lay twenty feet above Elena’s head. The floor was simple stone and there were bluish flickering lights set high up on the walls.
A long table sat in the centre of the room, and papers and maps were spread across it. Shelves of books and files lined one side of the room. The other side had an immense map, with wriggling symbols tacked onto it. At the other end of the room, Elena could see several doors.
Slowly, she walked to the table, curious about what this room had been designed for. She was tempted to call out a greeting, but could not think of who else would respond, except Corinne, if she were there. And Elena knew that if Corinne were present, she wouldn’t get to explore.
Elena rifled through the parchment, looking for anything of interest. There were handwritten recordings of Natalya’s memories, some in her hand, some in Simon’s. She saw an inventory of the guard’s flat. There was even a photograph of her corpse, which Elena hastily cast aside.
Other files included lists of known, rogue Death Eaters and their potential whereabouts. Elena caught sight of the woman Alice had duelled: Bellatrix Lestrange. Her face had the same haughty look to it, but there was not the madness Elena had seen during the fight.
At last, Elena found a roll of thick parchment. She unfurled it and recognized immediately her mother’s handwriting. She skimmed through the pleasantries, instead focusing on a few words at the bottom of the letter. Printed, in her mother’s neat hand, was a copy of Oliver’s message: Ravenclaw’s relic, A. Gordon.
A wave of disappointment drowned Elena’s hopes. She had hoped that the letter would be important, but this was nothing to work with. Rowena Ravenclaw had been a founder of Hogwarts; she must have had many relics. And A. Gordon was only half a name—the only interesting part about it was that the Minister, too, had been Gordon.
Why couldn’t this be easy? Elena wondered, her former anger replaced with resentment towards the last months. She had lived through the war and knew that life was a dangerous, complicated thing, but it seemed like mysteries, at least, had a structure. There was the crime, the gathering of evidence, the dramatic revelation, the epic fight and the conclusion. Yet this search had been all out of order. Evidence had been followed by fights, skipping over revelation and confusing the whole process. More evidence was discovered, and there had been false leads, and confusion and a dreadful mixing of reality. The final goal of finding the Minister’s killer was far in the improbable future. Now, the joy of discovery came from small successes that only complicated the situation.
Albania, Elena mused, seemed to be present in every thread. The Minister had mentioned the country in his last breath. It was where her brother had died. Natalya had been gathering information about the country before her death. Wherever the country emerged in their search, it was always accompanied by death. By murder.
What secret lay in Albania that someone was willing to kill for? Who was the killer? Elena ran her fingers over the letter, as if her brother’s words might give her the answer. Yet there was no response. The parchment was only parchment.
A beam of light brightened the room as someone opened the door from outside. Elena heard three pairs of footsteps—Simon, Frank and Alice—enter the room.
After a moment, the others were beside her. “I see you found the letter,” Alice said, taking her hand from Frank’s and moving closer to the table.
Elena nodded, making a point not to look at Simon. “I just wish it helped,” she said with a sigh. Now she looked silly and reactionary for involving her mother in the first place. “Now we only have more questions. What is Ravenclaw’s relic? Who is A. Gordon?”
To Elena’s surprise, Alice laughed at the last question. “It’s me,” she said with a smile. “Alice Gordon. That was my name before I was married.”
The simplicity of the solution sent Elena whirling. How could she have been so stupid? She knew that Alice was the Minister’s daughter. Of course, her maiden name would have been Gordon. Of course Alice was a Longbottom now, but Elena should have seen the connection. “Do you understand the second part?” Elena asked, hoping that perhaps Alice knew something she didn’t.
To that, Alice answered in the negative. “No. We were speaking about it before I came to get you. None of us know.”
“The question is,” Frank said, stepping forward to join the conversation, “why did your brother mention Alice?”
Elena hadn’t had time to think through the ramifications of who A. Gordon was, in context, but it was an interesting question. “My mother said,” Elena began slowly, trying to process as she spoke, “that this letter was different than the others Oliver had sent. It hadn’t gone through the Ministry. And he begged my mother to keep what he’d written a secret.”
“The only thing I can think of,” Alice mused, sitting on top of the table, “is that he wanted it to get to my father. That would explain why he used my maiden name. I just don’t know why it couldn’t have gone through the Ministry.”
Simon, who had been quiet before, now spoke. “I’m only guessing,” he said slowly, “but the Auror Office seemed to think that Albania was no longer a threat after the war. Perhaps Elena’s brother wanted to alert Minister Gordon of something, but was afraid that it would be stopped if he sent it through the Office.”
It was a theory, maybe even a plausible one, but Elena’s head was spinning from this sudden influx of information. The problem she had thought was a dead end now had a thousand blossoming possible solutions. Briefly, she glanced at Simon, unable to avoid looking at him any longer. His eyes latched onto her, and she quickly directed her attention back to her mother’s letter. She would not forgive him when he was unwilling to explain.
Elena was about to ask another question when she saw a silvery light out of the corner of her eye. Before she could turn to look, Corinne’s voice spoke two words: “Come now.” As Elena reacted, moving towards the light, she saw the haze of a Patronus fade.
With worried glances between them, Frank and Alice began to walk rapidly towards the doors at the back of the room. Simon paused, turning to look at Elena. He gave a slight nod of his head, in the direction of the couple, before following them.
Elena pulled out her wand as she walked a safe distance behind Simon. He slowed pace several times, as if to wait for her to catch up, but Elena wouldn’t walk beside him. She was too afraid that she might be tempted to forget what he had done, and cave in to emotions. She would regret whatever she might say to Simon, good or bad. It was better to avoid the pain all together.
They found Corinne pacing in a narrow hallway. She had a manic energy to her, and seemed too confined in the small space, as if she could no longer contain whatever emotion she felt. It was not happiness, for her face was drawn into a frown, but it was something consuming.
“Here,” she said sharply, indicating to a door to her left when they were all squished into the corridor. With a flick of her wand, the door slid open.
Elena could not see what was inside because Frank was blocking her view, but as Corinne entered, she heard her say, “I’ve given him Veritiserum.”
Alice followed her husband inside, and as Elena went through the door after her, she saw whom Corinne had been referring to. A man sat on a chair in the centre of a tiny room, arms and legs bound with a glimmering magical rope.
With a gasp, Elena realized that this skinny, emaciated man was Ethan MacDonald, the man who had been a suspect in the murder. He had lost all of his previous vitality, however, and now looked as if he had not eaten in days.
The silence in the room was broken as Simon shut the door behind him and the latch slipped into place. Elena was aware of him standing behind her, and, after a moment, felt his hand take hers.
She wanted desperately to keep holding his hand, and to be reassured, in that small way, that she was safe, but this was not the place. She might have forgiven him, for a moment, if the others hadn’t been there to see the gesture. So, Elena bit her lip, and tugged her hand free. Instantly, she regretted the action, but was unwilling to apologize and instead crossed her arms across her stomach, as if hugging herself.
Elena was saved from having to think more about Simon by Corinne’s voice. The woman turned, with a glint in her eye, to MacDonald. “Tell me your name,” she demanded in a clear, triumphant tone.
The man’s face twisted into a grimace as he replied: “Rabastan Lestrange.”
“And who are you?” Corinne hissed.
“A servant of Lord Voldemort,” the man who had called himself Ethan MacDonald said with a smile.
image by me (laelia @ TDA)
Chapter 17
“What should we do?” There was silence as Alice’s whisper hung in the air.
“Find what we need from him,” Corinne said tersely, glancing at the door behind her back, as if the prisoner inside would somehow dare to escape through the four Aurors and Elena.
Frank laughed wryly. “Of course he’s good for information. It’s just a matter of who will make him talk. I can think of a few blokes at the Office who would love to get their hands on him.”
“But we can’t just turn him in,” Alice protested. “If we did, they would cart him off to Azkaban first. And if we did get to talk to him, we’d have to make our way through the red tape first.”
“I say we interrogate him,” Simon said from across the small huddle of people. “If we’re going to find out who killed Marcus, we need information now, before the trail gets cold.”
Everyone murmured their assent to that statement. “But what we do after,” Simon continued. “That’s the real question.”
“Azkaban.” Alice said definitively, her normally kind face set and unyielding. “If he killed my father, he deserves nothing less.”
“Now, I think, is more important than later. He,” Corinne jabbed her wand towards the door that led to Rabastan Lestrange’s cell, “may have friends.”
“These are things we have to consider, Corinne,” Frank said with a shrug. “He may have friends, as you said, who will target us if we are too obvious about his capture.”
“Then, I’ll go get what we need and be done with it,” Corinne said with a toss of her hair. She stepped across the circle, and moved to elbow Simon out of the way.
He caught her arm, and shook his head. “No,” he said sharply. “We need to have a plan before we talk to him. I may be for interrogating him, but I don’t want to be too hasty.”
Corinne wrenched her arm free, and stomped back into place, between Elena and Frank. “Alright,” she snapped. “But make up your mind. Either it’s now, or it’s not now. You can’t have it both ways.”
“Yes, we agree,” Alice said slowly. “Of course. But Simon is right, we should plan first.”
Frank put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, but turned to address Elena. “What do you think?” he asked.
Elena, who had been watching the dynamic between the four, was surprised to be included. She knew nothing of interrogation or magical law. But she still had an opinion, and was glad that Frank had been considerate enough to ask her, instead of assuming she didn’t care. “If you can get the information out of him, we should do it,” she said definitively. This Death Eater might provide the vital link between her brother’s death and the Minister’s murder.
“See, even Elena agrees,” Corinne said, though not harshly, sending a smile towards Elena.
Simon threw up his hands. “Then if we all agree, can we please figure out a strategy?” Though he had, at first, sounded exasperated, Elena could see that the discussion was now taking a more lighthearted tone. The stress in the air was still palpable, but now they were laughing in the face of horror, looking for hope in the gloom of the world.
The laughter swelled, and faded, slowly dwindling into echoes in the long hallway. In the silence, everyone seemed ashamed that there had been mirth, when there was so much death. Corinne squared her shoulders, and cleared her throat. “We should begin discussing, no?” But even her voice grew softer, the final word a question.
Frank and Alice were now holding hands, a duet of sorrow. Elena absently fluttered her own fingers, looking at Simon across the circle, who seemed unwilling to meet her eyes. Corinne, who was always confident and self aware, was glancing around at each individual. “Or,” she said hesitantly, “we could wait until the morning. He’s spelled so that he won’t go anywhere.”
Elena nodded, though she knew that the decision had already been made. Their anger had morphed into laughter, which had dissolved into sadness and inaction. The emotions muddled her mind, making her think of her brother, and of all she had lost. After being interrogated and after her fight she only wanted to rest. The questioning could wait until morning.
Slowly, without anyone ever answering Corinne, the group drifted apart. Frank and Alice were linked together, as if they had been apart for months, instead of hours. Simon had made a few muttered excuses, before retiring to his room.
Elena wandered out into the large, main room, and sat in a chair in the corner. After a moment, she saw Corinne coming out of hall, and leaned forward. “Corinne,” she called out, in a clear voice.
The French woman looked at Elena and surprise, and walked over slowly. “What?” she said, though it was not a demand and sounded passive.
Elena suddenly felt silly for wanting to ask, but it was a question that had been bothering her for days and she didn’t want to speak to Simon. “Who was the man you killed?”
Corinne paled, but remained standing awkwardly, a few feet from Elena’s chair. “He doesn’t deserve a name,” she said finally, studying the ground beneath her feet. “He was one of those evil men who try to live under the pretence of lawfulness.”
It was a remarkably philosophical thought coming from Corinne. “So you knew him?” Elena was sure such a comment could only come from long acquaintance.
“Yes,” Corinne said briefly.
Elena was reminded of the time that Simon had been so furious, and Corinne had taken Elena to some sort of garden, just to get away from him. There was a vulnerability to Corinne that Elena had seen then and that she saw now. Perhaps, it came from the sadness that blanketed the occupants of the building, for Elena herself was battling hopelessness, but it might have been that Corinne finally trusted Elena.
“Who is Christian?” Elena asked, reminded of the name Corinne had spoken in the frozen garden.
With a sigh, Corinne sat down in the chair next to Elena. She shook her head, slowly, as if trying to remember something from the past. Her eyes were luminous as she looked upwards, towards the dark, vaulted ceiling above. “He was my fiancé,” she said flatly, as if the emotion in her face had left none for her voice.
“Was?” Elena asked. She knew that it was impolite to press, but she wasn’t sure if Corinne would ever be willing to speak about it again. The strange sense of inevitability that had infiltrated the building had made Corinne answer and fed Elena’s curiosity. There might never even be a time to ask again.
“We were Aurors together, in France. He died.” Corinne seemed even more distant now. She was not detached but rather reliving her time with this fiancé, remembering.
Elena had assumed that Christian, whoever he was, was no longer in the picture, but this somehow seemed worse. She had always thought Corinne was not used to pain, for she seemed unaffected by everything, but perhaps it was that she was numb. “I’m sorry.” It was too impersonal, and the wrong thing to say, but it was the only one Elena could think of. She was a Healer and this was how she had dealt with the grief of her patients and their families: she apologized. The words were automatic, even after months out of St. Mungo’s: I’m sorry.
Corinne looked at the floor. “Don’t be,” she said softly. “It’s done now. He’s gone. His death is avenged.” She laced her fingers, before looking up at Elena. “That is why I killed him,” she said. “Your interrogator. He was the one who sent Christian into a nest of Death Eaters. He refused him backup. He just wanted more prisoners to crush. That was what he did best—crush people. He murdered Christian; I returned the favour.”
Elena was reminded of Corinne’s words upon killing the man: he had it coming for years. So it had been revenge. It all made sense; nothing seemed out of place. Elena could see her interrogator crushing people—with his insect-like servants, the word seemed particularly apt. His ruthlessness and his sense of being above the law made Corinne’s anger justified, especially if his actions had led to the death of her fiancé.
“But you don’t care about that,” Corinne said, straightening up, shedding the weight of the memories that had hunched her shoulders.
“What about Simon?” Elena asked, hoping to gain more insight through Corinne. “I mean, how did you meet?”
Corinne laughed, and shook her head. “Don’t talk to me about Simon,” she said dryly. “If you want to know, ask him.” With that, she stood, and walked out of the room, leaving Elena to contemplate how much Corinne knew of all that had happened between Elena and Simon.
There were screams throughout the night that wrenched through the air and echoed off the walls. Elena listened as she lay with her eyes closed on the tiny cot that had been set up for her in one of the cell-like rooms.
Rabastan Lestrange cried like a dying man: desperate and without help. It was if he hoped his shouts would reach his friends, his family, and bring him aid. But, Elena knew that there was no hope for the man. He was not being tortured, not in a physical sense, however Legilimency was an art that, when combined with Veritaserum caused hidden memories to resurface, against the victim’s will.
It was only a slight comfort to know that the screaming man was not in pain.
Elena tried to pretend she was paralyzed as she lay in bed, telling herself that she could not move. She was in control of her body and she was in control of her mind. She could stop her eyelids from twitching and thus she had to have the power to redirect her mind. Yet the mind was a different substance than the body, and Elena could not will hers as she wished. She could not darken the flashes of light that ripped, like scars through her memories. She could only watch as spell after spell was cast, recreating the previous day’s battle behind her eyelids.
It was no use trying to sleep. Even as she thought she might win the war inside her head, and finally force herself to rest, the screams would begin again. They would cease. Minutes would pass. She half wondered if she was imagining them, and then they would again break through the night.
At last, she could stand it no more. If she lay still for another moment, she was sure her voice would join Lestrange’s.
Elena shuffled out of bed and into the main room of the building, where she hoped she might find solitude in the open spaces. At least there she would not feel trapped.
To her surprise, when she opened the door into the large meeting room, she was not greeted by the anticipated void of darkness. Instead, a lamp was lit off in a corner, highlighting a shadowy figure that sat in one of the chairs, its back to Elena.
She floated across the cold concrete floor, instinctually drawn towards the beacon of light. Light was what she needed. Light was a respite from the darkness that taunted her mind.
It wasn’t until the shadow turned that Elena wished she had thought more carefully. It was Simon. Of course it was him. Corinne was with the Death Eater. Frank and Alice had each other. It was only Simon who would be alone this night.
She thought, vaguely, about turning and running the other way, back to her bed, but there it was dark and here it was light. And after a sleepless night, her quarrel with Simon had lost its edge. She could at least be civil.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Elena explained softly as she sat down in a chair across from Simon.
He nodded, and Elena could tell from the circles under his eyes that he shared her affliction. “How could anyone?” he said darkly, as another round of cries slithered into the room.
Elena shuddered and lifted up her knees so that she might hug them to her chest. “Are you sure,” she began, uncertain, “that Corinne isn’t hurting him?”
Simon shook his head solemnly. To Elena’s great relief there was no affectation of anger over her question. He didn’t ask how dare she think such a thing about an Auror. “Corinne would never,” Simon said.
“Because of Christian?” Elena asked, thinking of her conversation with the other woman earlier that day.
Surprise flickered over Simon’s eyes at the mention of the name, but he nodded. “Yes.”
Again, silence fell over the room and Elena stared across the gap at Simon. His dark hair was rumpled as if he had been tossing and turning before coming to sit in the room alone. His eyes were dim as if he were close to sleep. He sat, slouched, in the chair, his wand lying on the table beside his right hand. There as a strange mixture of exhaustion and alertness in his expression.
Elena felt the urge to comfort him, but didn’t know for what.
Simon was staring back at Elena, who began to wonder what she might look like to him. She had gotten little sleep in the past few days. Her hair was braided back from her face, but she could feel a piece that had fallen out and now rested on her shoulder. A dressing gown was loosely tied around her waist, but it was one of Alice’s she had borrowed and rather small.
Did she look pathetic, sitting here, unable to sleep? She must appear nothing more than a shadow. Elena certainly felt unsubstantial. It was as if the world were slowly disintegrating, falling out from under her feet. The strings of identity that tied her to together were being cut. She had been Ollie’s aunt and caretaker, but now had not seen her nephew in months. She had been Oliver’s sister, but now her brother was dead. She had been a Healer, but she had left her work after the Minister’s death. Who would she be if she were no longer anything to anyone? A ghost, a spirit, an essence of tragedy…
“Say something,” Elena directed Simon suddenly, realizing that sitting without speaking was no better than living in her own mind: her thoughts turned too quickly to a poetic extreme.
He jumped, as if he had too been lost in his thoughts.
But Simon did not speak quickly enough, and Elena began to talk again, this time pouring all her insecurities into a stream of questions. “What happens now? What can MacDonald—Lestrange—tell us? What are you going to tell the Ministry about this, when the time comes? What about me? Why is he screaming so much?”
Simon held up a hand, as if to stop the babbling. “Elena,” he said in a quiet, rough voice.
She halted, suddenly feeling foolish, and a blush spread across her cheeks. “Simon,” she said in an equally low voice.
He gave a small smile and shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s the awful truth of it all. I don’t know the answers to any of your questions.”
She bit her lip. “Why did you hand me over to those men?” He had refused to answer that afternoon but perhaps in this quiet, strange world of night he could give her an answer. Now that softer emotions blanketed the building, perhaps they could avoid anger.
“Don’t ask me that.” Simon looked intensely at her. “I—” He stopped and shook his head. “Please.”
In response, Elena reached her hand across the distance between them. He watched her in confusion, before extending his hand as well, and lacing their fingers together. It was not a peace offering; Elena still wanted an answer, but for now, for this night, she could afford to let him be silent. After all, the answer would not be one she would like; she was sure.
So, for that moment, she was content to sit curled a chair, listening to the building creak and to the man scream and holding Simon’s hand and praying for morning to come. Night would soon end its slow suffocation of the world and she would be able to breathe again. And maybe then she would let go of Simon, but for now he was all that was reminding her of the potential for morning. There could be hope and this would not last forever. But as the prisoner began to sob again, Elena had to wonder if the cries were not portents of a darker future.
They sat around the huge table, maps and parchment strewn across its surface. A large pot of tea sat to one side. “So, according to Lestrange,” Frank said, “he was not the one who contacted Natalya. He says he joined after Marcus’s death.” He pointed to Christmas Eve on a large calendar in front of him.
“He would not answer any questions about who confounded Natalya, or the other guard,” Corinne said darkly. Her eyes looked heavy, and she had once before fallen asleep on the table.
Elena couldn’t blame her. She had gotten a few hours of rest after finding Simon, but was still yawning. Even her schedule as a Healer hadn’t been this demanding.
“Lestrange has family,” Alice said, rifling through a stack of papers. “A brother, Rodolphus, and his wife, Bellatrix.” She grimaced. “She’s a piece of work, more so than the brothers. She was the one who attacked Mary’s family.”
Elena didn’t know who Mary was, but she had heard the name Lestrange. It was a pureblood name, and one feared by all during the war. It was a Death Eater name.
“She’s a Black,” Simon said. “She’s got to be more than a little bit mad—the whole family is.”
“Not Sirius,” Alice said sharply, then paused. Elena recalled the story of Sirius Black, the insane man who had killed all those Muggles. He was the age to have been in school with Alice.
Everyone turned their gaze down or away and Alice looked ashamed. “But Bellatrix is the worst,” she said faintly.
“Might she have done it?” Elena asked, trying to erase the awkwardness in the air. She didn’t know the history of Death Eaters, like these Aurors did, but it made sense.
“It was a man in Natalya’s memory,” Simon reminded her.
“And besides,” Corinne interjected. “I asked him directly about her.”
“So no?” Elena clarified, her tired brain needing that certainty.
“No.”
Alice reached for another cup of tea. “Do you think,” she said slowly, “that Albania is more important to all of this?”
Frank looked at his wife incredulously. “No. It isn’t. I know that Wood mentioned it, in his letter. And your father spoke of it too, but the Office just hasn’t found anything about it of importance. Before the war ended, maybe, we thought there might be some dark magic there. But afterwards, there wasn’t any sign. It was probably just Wood’s understandable paranoia, being alone and isolated in some foreign country.”
Elena sat up indignantly. That was her brother Frank was talking about! Simon, beside her, put his hand on her arm, somehow sensing she was about to explode. “Never mind,” he murmured under his breath.
Elena gritted her teeth, but kept silent.
“I think we need more information,” Alice said at last. “Corinne, is there any way that you can get Lestrange to tell you more?”
Corinne shrugged. “I can try.”
“Thank you,” Alice said sweetly. After a moment, she looked up at her husband. “I think Frank and I are going to go visit Neville for an hour or so. God knows Augusta needs a break from caring for him.”
“Alright,” Simon nodded.
Corinne stood, and began to make her way back to the cell.
Elena followed Simon, Frank and Alice out of the house, to the small clearing. She glanced behind her, and marvelled at the enchantment that made the expansive building appear to be a quaint cottage.
“We won’t be long,” Alice promised, taking Frank’s hand, and disapparating with a crack.
Simon nodded and said, “Goodbye,” though there was no longer anyone to say it to.
Elena turned to go back inside when Corinne burst from the door, her face wild. “Did they already leave?” she asked, looking frantically around.
Elena nodded.
“Merde!” Corinne hissed. Shit!”
“What?” Simon demanded, alarm settling onto his face.
“He’s fucking gone,” she said bleakly.
“What?” Simon snapped again.
Corinne rolled her eyes and grabbed Simon and Elena simultaneously. “Shut UP!” And with that order, she disapparated, the force of her turn sending Elena tumbling towards the ground before the spell arrested her fall.
They landed dizzily in a head on a stone terrace of some noble manor, Elena’s head was cushioned on Simon’s arm, and Corinne’s foot had collided into her stomach. “Could you please explain?” Simon said in a muffled voice, extracting himself from the pile and coming to his feet.
As Corinne stood, Simon extended a hand down impatiently towards Elena, and pulled her to her feet. As soon as she was standing, he dropped her hand, and crossed his arms across his chest.
“I said that Lestrange is gone—vanished. I went to go check on him in his cell, and it was empty. He couldn’t have gotten out through the door—it was spelled—and he couldn’t have apparated but he was gone.” Corinne’s voice had an almost frantic undertone to it and he looked more shaken than Elena had ever seen her. If Elena had to guess, she would say that no prisoner had ever escaped Corinne before.
“So why did we leave?” Simon said, uncrossing his arms. “Why are we here?” He gestured to the elegant house to his right and the expansive grounds on his left.
Corinne looked defiantly up at Simon. “We need to warn Frank and Alice,” she said sharply. “If Lestrange goes to his friends, they’ll try to kill us all.”
Simon gave a resigned nod. “I’ll start explaining to Madam Longbottom.” With that, he strode towards an elaborate door, and knocked twice. A golden lion’s head set into the oak sprang to like and roared majestically.
Elena took a step towards the door as it opened. A tall, formidable woman stood, dressed in a rather heavy looking maroon velvet gown. Her gray hair was pulled into a knot high on her head, and she carried a decorative walking cane of ivory. “Simon Burke!” she exclaimed, gesturing with the cane. “What are you doing here?”
“Good morning, Madam Longbottom,” he said with an incline of his head. “May I speak to Frank and Alice?”
She raised an eyebrow. “But they’re with my grandson now.”
“Of course,” Simon said politely. “But this matter is urgent.”
Frank’s mother sighed, and stepped forward. “Well, do come in then.” She glanced out of the house, and her eye fell onto Elena and Corinne. “Corinne, ma cherie,” she said with delighted smile. Elena almost laughed at the term of endearment my dear. Who would apply that to someone as aloof as Corinne?
“Bonjour, Madam,” Corinne greeted her formally. Good day.
“And who’s this?” Madam Longbottom pointed her cane towards Elena.
Simon smiled slightly at Elena. “A fellow Auror, Elena Wood.”
Elena stepped forward, blushing slightly at the designation of Auror.
“Charmed,” the older woman said extending her hand delicately. Elena shook it carefully.
Madam Longbottom led the trio through a grand entranceway, with a crystal chandelier and halted outside a carved oak door. “They’re inside,” she said. “You had best be quiet so that you don’t wake my grandson.”
“Of course,” Simon said graciously. “Thank you, Madam.”
She nodded, and began to walk back towards the front door. Simon paused, looking between Elena and Corinne. “I’ll go inside and tell them,” he said. “You wait out here, for a moment.”
Elena would have protested, but Corinne quietly assented, and Elena presumed there must be some reason for this.
Simon opened the door slightly and stepped inside, but left it open enough for the others to look inside. Elena saw Alice and Frank, sitting on a sofa at the end of the room. Alice held Neville in her arms and was laughing as he failed his arms. Frank watched his wife and son with a tender smile on his face. One of his arms was wrapped around Alice’s shoulders.
Alice looked up, as Simon approached, her face switching from maternal love to apprehension in seconds. Frank said something in a low voice Elena couldn’t quite make out. She reached for her wand, to cast a charm to amplify the voices, when she realized that she had left it back at the cottage, on the table where they had been discussing strategy.
“Corinne,” she hissed, stepping away from the door slightly. “I left my wand behind.”
“What?” Scorn tinted Corinne’s words. “How did you manage that?”
Elena disliked the slightly mocking tone. “You came tearing out of the cottage, and whisked us away before I could think of it.”
Corinne rolled her eyes and took Elena’s arm. “I’ll take you there, but I must come right back. You can find your wand and apparate here by yourself.”
Elena, glad she was being somewhat accommodating nodded. Corinne spun, and in an instant, they were back in the clearing. Corinne, true to her word, disapparated once more, leaving Elena alone in the woods, in front of the cottage.
Elena exhaled and entered the cottage.
She thought she had left her wand on the table but once she reached her seat, it wasn’t there. She saw her mug of tea, still warm, and her quill, but no wand. With a frown, she began to walk towards the room she had slept in.
After turning on the lamp, she surveyed the stark chamber, but saw only the cot, the night table, and a glass of water. “Where are you?” she muttered as she went back into the dark hallway. Perhaps her wand had fallen onto the floor and was underneath the table.
Elena entered the large room again, and stopped, hearing a rustling, as if a breeze were wafting through the still room. By the table, she noticed a strange flickering, as if light in the room were reflecting off a surface. Yet nothing was there to cause the reflection.
Apprehension fluttered in Elena’s stomach as she slowly took several steps towards table. From this new angle, she could now see her wand, lying on the ground underneath her chair.
But, even at a closer distance odd shimmering did not disappear. It looked like some sort of spell, hanging in the air. But what could be hidden beneath it? Elena advanced towards her chair, taking care not to look too closely at the spot where the spell still flickered.
Purposefully she bent to pick up her wand, and then, with a burst of speed, she stood, screaming “Homenum revelio!” The patch of air waved, and began to slide down, as if water were running off a figure. Within seconds, a man formed as the spell of disillusionment disintegrated.
Another few seconds told Elena who he was: Lestrange. The man had a wild expression on his dark features and a cruel laugh was already bubbling from his lips. “Smart little bitch, aren’t you?” he said in a gravelly voice.
Elena grew cold as she kept her wand trained on the man. “Don’t move!” she ordered, trying to make her voice sound as fierce as Corinne’s.
He reached one hand towards his pocket, defiantly.
“Don’t!” Elena shouted. “Move again and I’ll hex you.”
Lestrange kept his hands still but shook his head. “For a blood-traitor of an Auror, you’re quite a coward.”
“Petrificus Totalus!” Elena shot the body bind spell at him without really thinking.
The man was prepared and lazily flicked a shield spell up. “Boring,” he said in a taunting, sing-song voice. “Are you a mudblood, little Auror? Is that why you don’t dare to kill me? Are you afraid?”
Elena sent another curse at him, this time silently, but he again blocked it. “You can do better than that,” he said cruelly and lifted his wand towards her.
A wave a panic washed over Elena. She couldn’t duel him here, one-on-one. She wasn’t prepared, and he was obviously cleverer than he looked. She needed to get the upper hand on him.
With a slight movement in her wrist, Elena tilted her wand down at the table, covered of their plans and maps. It was imperative that he didn’t see what they had been plotting. She took a deep breath, and whispered the spell: “Incendio.”
Waves of fire burst from the papers, and the wooden table further fuelled the flames. Without staying to watch the growing inferno, Elena bolted to the front door. If only she could get outside, she could apparate away from this place.
As she ran, she sent several more fire spells behind her, hoping that she would be able to destroy enough of the parchment. A curse soared over her right shoulder as she pushed through the door, and left a searing mark above her eyebrow, but she kept running.
She jumped down the steps, and before her feet had hit the ground, turned in the air, thinking of Madam Longbottom’s home.
Elena landed in a heap outside of the room Frank and Alice had been in.
She moved to stand up, but a wave of dizziness clouded her brain. Voices sounded from behind the door, and moments later, Elena saw Alice, Simon, Corinne and Frank looking down at her.
“My God!” Alice cried. “What happened?”
Simon rounded on Corinne. “You said she was just going to get her wand. You said she would be all right. Does this look all right to you? Does it?”
Corinne pressed her hands together, not responding to Simon. “What happened?” she repeated Alice’s question in a flat tone.
Elena licked her lips and tried to speak, but felt something wet trickling down her cheek. Absently, she reached up and dabbed at the liquid, feeling only mild curiosity when she saw that her fingers were red. “That’s blood,” she said in a matter of fact voice.
Simon cursed. Alice leaned down, and muttered a quick healing spell, and Elena felt the flow of the blood stop. “There,” Alice said soothingly. “Now, tell us what happened.”
Elena looked at Simon as she said, “He didn’t escape. He stayed behind.”
“Who?”
“Lestrange,” Elena said weakly. Though her injury was healed, she still felt lightheaded.
“Corinne!” Simon began again, rounding on the woman. “You said he had escaped!”
“Merde,” Corinne cursed, adding several other French words that Elena didn’t understand. “I thought he had." She was frowning, as if she found Elena's story hard to believe. After a moment though, her scowl reformed into a grin of animalistic triumph. "But at least he’s gone now.”
Elena looked at her blankly. “Gone?”
“Well, you killed him, didn’t you?” Corinne said, the smile still on her lips.
Elena didn’t have to answer the question, for Simon did, with unexpected anger. “Of course she didn’t. She’s not an Auror and he’s a trained Death Eater.”
“Perfect,” Corinne said with a sarcastic sigh . “Now he’s running around the damn cottage, probably stealing everything we wrote down.”
Someone, Frank, Elena thought, helped her sit up. “No, he’s not.” Elena smiled internally at the thought of her small success. “I think he’s rather trying to put out the fire I set in the building.”
There was silence, for several beats, before Simon broke out into a huge grin.
“See?” Corinne said, though she too looked relieved. “She’s perfectly competent.”
“Good thinking,” Frank said quietly.
Simon still smiled down at Elena, looking proud. She waited for him to speak, but before anyone else could make a move, Madam Longbottom’s voice rang out down the hall. “Would anyone like some tea?”
I tried to translate all the French in the text, but I'll put a little glossary here as well:
-Merde: shit
-Ma cherie: my dear
-Bonjour: hello/good day
-Mon Dieu: my God
I can't believe I've written so much of this story. It always felt like I would never get past the halfway point, but I think that now, we're at least over half way done. I'm so excited that I've written this much. And I always appreciate all the support readers have given me. I love you all!
Chapter 18
For once in her life, Elena felt more hurried than those around her. She stood while the others sat drinking Madame Longbottom’s tea, and held baby Neville. Elena couldn’t understand why they were content to be stationary when she had just barely escaped from Lestrange, who was now free and probably out for revenge.
Elena bounced on the balls of her feet, wishing that Simon, Corinne, Frank and Alice would stop their conversation and do something. She had always thought Aurors possessed remarkable self-control, but this was too an extreme. At times such as this, it was better to be rash, to try to prevent more death, than just to rest.
Neville, as if sensing Elena’s impatience, began to cry and she looked down at his face, round with chubby, baby cheeks. Alice, for the first time in an hour, moved hurriedly. “I’ll take him,” she said to Elena apologetically.
But Elena shook her head. “No need,” she promised, and walked out of the room, so the crying wouldn’t disturb the others. She had plenty of practice entertaining babies. Elena had watched her nephew Ollie for Marianne at least once a week since his birth, and Ollie had been a difficult, boisterous baby. Neville was much more subdued, Elena discovered, as the child calmed down after a few minutes of soothing.
“Your mum and dad are resting,” Elena said to him. “But they’ll be back soon, don’t worry. For now, you can stay at your gran’s house. It’s a lovely place. That’s right, don’t cry.”
Neville sniffled, and relaxed at the words. Satisfied that he was no longer noisy, Elena moved to go back into the room, but from outside the door, she heard hushed voices, as if the others had began to discuss once she had left. Elena’s stomach felt uneasy—after all of this, would they really still hide things from her?
“I just don’t see how we can solve this without more help,” Alice said.
“Alastor would help,” Frank suggested, and Elena remembered the name from before, when Simon had insisted on telling another Auror about the Minister’s murder.
There was shuffling, as if the chairs were being moved, before Corinne spoke: “Do we honestly want to involve him? How do we know he can keep a secret?”
“Is it wise to keep this a secret anymore?” Frank said evenly. “It appears there are more Death Eaters left than we previously thought. We don’t want to see another surge of attacks.”
“Moody has information,” Simon said. “He could get us a list of suspected Death Eaters, so we could at least have potential names for the actual murderer.”
“If there is only one killer,” Corinne said sharply. “I still think that it was some sort of last ditch conspiracy.”
“That’s only because you can’t accept that security was lax enough to miss one man,” someone muttered.
Elena leaned forward, only to jostle Neville, who had been falling asleep. He startled, and looked indignantly at Elena, as if to ask her why she had disturbed him.
“I still vote Moody,” Simon said. “We need his help if we’re against a group, and we can’t just call him to a duel at the last moment. Knowing Alastor, he’d think it was a trap. Best to brief him before we need his help.”
To Elena’s dismay, Neville was beginning crying again. With a sigh, Elena opened the door, ending the conversation she had been listening to. “Sorry Alice,” she said a bit too loudly. “He was almost asleep, but now I don’t know what he wants.”
Alice stood, and accepted her child from Elena, looking concerned. “That’s alright,” she promised. “He’s probably hungry. I’ll go try to find Augusta to see where she’s been keeping his bottles.”
Elena was left standing by the other three Aurors. She wasn’t sure if she should mention hearing their conversation or not. Maybe she should wait for them to tell her instead of alerting them that she had been eavesdropping.
“How many Death Eaters are still left?” she asked instead. It was a thought she had been wondering, ever since she had seen them in the fights. The public had been told a few were left, but was reassured that they were in hiding and Ministry officials were waiting to capture them.
Frank shrugged. “No one knows, really. There are probably ten with dark marks left. Those we know about and haven’t been able to catch yet. But there are more sympathizers, who can be just as dangerous, since they’re unpredictable.”
“But the killer is certainly a Death Eater?” Elena wasn’t sure the matter had ever been defined.
Corinne nodded. “All our evidence says yes. And if they were recruiting the likes of Lestrange later on, I have no doubt.”
“Ten?” Elena asked, feeling that Frank’s estimate was too small. “There’s Lestrange, and the two others we fought at the Longbottom house. Plus the one in Natalya’s memory. And then there were at least five at the battle, though I suppose those could be duplicates.” She paused, thinking. “Simon and I also fought two of the when we were following Ethan, or Lestrange.” She had almost forgotten that incident, though it had been dramatic. It had been overshadowed by her brother’s death, and her own interrogation. At one time, it would have been all she could think of, but now, it seemed horrible, but distant.
Simon frowned, and turned his gaze down towards his teacup. “Those were probably some of the same,” he said darkly.
Elena looked at him, searchingly. He seemed shaken, as if something she had said was uncomfortable for him. “Were they?” As she spoke, Elena began to remember the fight more clearly, and her mind landed upon an odd recollection. “One of them was talking to you, Simon. He definitely said your name.”
“It must have been—” Frank began, but stopped when Simon gave him a pointed look.
Corinne was not deterred by Simon’s obvious unease. “I never heard about that,” she said in a curious voice. “What exactly did he say to Simon?”
Elena thought back to the incident. They had called Simon by his last name: Burke. The Death Eater had taunted him about Elena, calling her his girlfriend. And there had been some vague reference to his last girlfriend—someone the Death Eater had known. It was funny, Elena had forgotten all of that until now. “He called me Simon’s girlfriend,” Elena said with a blush that she wished she could hide. Really, she wasn’t sixteen anymore.
Simon wheeled on her. “Enough,” he said, his tone turning caustic. “I think that’s all he said.”
Elena looked away. She didn’t know why Simon was so keen to hide what had been said, but it was important, at this point in the search, that there were no secrets. She continued, now facing Corinne, and put her back to Simon. “He mentioned something about another girl, I think?”
Corinne, who had looked triumphant and teasing before now grew serious. “You never mentioned this,” she told Simon, her eyebrows raised. “That could be important. There are only a few who would know to say that to you.”
“I didn’t think,” Simon said sounding annoyed through his anger. “I thought it was unrelated. We didn’t know that Lestrange was involved at the time. I thought it was an attack on me, because I was an Auror, not because it was related to this damn murder.”
Frank, Elena noticed, looked taken aback by Simon’s reaction. “If we’re talking about Lara,” he said tentatively, “It would have to be Mulciber, or Avery, or Rosier, or Wilkes. Or perhaps one of their friends.”
“Lara?” Elena asked, never having heard the name before. “Who’s that?”
Simon glared at Frank, and avoided Elena’s question. He instead crossed his arms. “I said that it was because I was an Auror they attacked me. Besides, half of them are already in Azkaban.”
Elena was unwilling to be distracted by Simon. She knew him well enough to tell that he was trying to divert attention by being inflammatory. “Corinne?” she asked instead. “Frank? Who’s Lara?”
Frank opened his mouth. “She was—”
This time Corinne interrupted. “Oh no,” she said with half a smile. “You don’t want to get between those two.” She gestured between the confused Elena and the glowering Simon. “So, we are going to find Alice.” With that, she stood, and pulled Frank by the arm towards the door.
Simon moved to follow them but Corinne shook her head dangerously and blocked the door. “No,” she ordered. “You are not leaving. You’re going to tell Elena about Lara, which I thought you might have done already, considering how things are.”
“Corinne, move,” Simon snapped. “This isn’t time to joke.”
Corinne raised an eyebrow. “I’m not joking, Burke.” Her voice had taken on a steely edge that signalled her insistence.
“Damn it Corinne,” he muttered, taking a step towards her.
Corinne twirled her wand in her fingers, and with a flick, shut the door. “Honestly,” Elena heard her speaking to Frank, “They act like fucking teenagers.”
Simon, as if determined to conform to Corinne’s statement twisted the doorknob violently, only to find it wouldn’t budge. Apparently, Corinne hadn’t trusted that he wouldn’t follow.
Elena watched him, as he finally gave up and slumped down into his chair. She rather wished that Corinne had let him leave, despite her curiosity about Lara. It would be miserable to sit here with Simon sulking.
“I could just go,” she said softly.
But to her surprise, Simon shook his head. “She’s right,” he said reluctantly. “You should know.”
Without turning around, he began to speak quickly. “I’ll keep this simple. Lara was my girlfriend, during the war. She was an Auror, too. Her parents sympathized with Death Eaters, and were caught hiding one in their basement. Somehow, the suspicion on them was thrown over onto Lara. They were deciding what to do with her, to arrest her too, for treason, or to hold a trial, when they sent her out on another mission. She got caught fighting more Death Eaters than she could handle, and managed to call for backup. The message reached head quarters, and they thought it was a trap for Aurors, that Lara was working against us. So they sent out a huge party, with some delay, hoping to catch her conspiring with the others and arrest her. Only, they found her dead,” Simon paused for a long moment. “There was some suspicion on me, after, that I should have recognized signs of her being a Death Eater, for that’s what they still thought she was, even after she died. She wasn’t, of course. But that’s a black mark on my file in the eyes of the Ministry.”
Elena’s head reeled as she tried to process the speech. She felt horrified. That was so much worse than she had imagined. Maybe Simon had never gotten over Lara. Maybe he actually hated or resented Elena for living, when Lara was dead. She had never guessed. And Corinne was right, she needed to know this. It made Simon’s actions so much clearer. Of course, he would be protective if his girlfriend had died because of some horrible misunderstanding. Anyone would be. And of course, he wouldn’t want to talk about it, though Elena was glad Corinne had forced him to.
“Simon,” she began, taking a single step towards him. “I don’t know what to say.” Was saying sorry wrong, in this case? It certainly felt hollow, even to Elena, who always apologized for everything. Perhaps, it was better for her just to be silent. And maybe he would say something first, so she didn’t have to worry about what he was thinking.
He turned his chair around, so that he was facing her. “It was a few years ago,” he said flatly, as if it didn’t matter. “At the start of the war.”
If he had looked upset, Elena would have tried to comfort Simon, but he only looked blank, and exhausted. She licked her lips, wishing she could think of the right thing to say to Simon, but she kept coming up with nothing. “Well,” she said awkwardly. “Was Corinne right?”
Simon stared at her, looking confused. “That we’re acting like teenagers?”
Elena blushed and shook her head. “I meant, about being about to tell who the Death Eater in the alley was, because of what they said about Lara.”
“Mulciber is in Azkaban and Wilkes is dead. Rosier and Avery are still out there, for all I know, but I can’t tell you that they didn’t let their friends know all about Lara.” Simon gave a shrug. “I just don’t think it has anything to do with this.”
Elena rather sided with Corinne, that it was important, but wasn’t about to say anything. “I think we should go find the others,” she said, going over to the door, and pointing her wand at it. “We need to plan.”
For once in her life, Elena felt more hurried than those around her. She stood while the others sat drinking Madame Longbottom’s tea, and held baby Neville. Elena couldn’t understand why they were content to be stationary when she had just barely escaped from Lestrange, who was now free and probably out for revenge.
Elena bounced on the balls of her feet, wishing that Simon, Corinne, Frank and Alice would stop their conversation and do something. She had always thought Aurors possessed remarkable self-control, but this was too an extreme. At times such as this, it was better to be rash, to try to prevent more death, than just to rest.
Neville, as if sensing Elena’s impatience, began to cry and she looked down at his face, round with chubby, baby cheeks. Alice, for the first time in an hour, moved hurriedly. “I’ll take him,” she said to Elena apologetically.
But Elena shook her head. “No need,” she promised, and walked out of the room, so the crying wouldn’t disturb the others. She had plenty of practice entertaining babies. Elena had watched her nephew Ollie for Marianne at least once a week since his birth, and Ollie had been a difficult, boisterous baby. Neville was much more subdued, Elena discovered, as the child calmed down after a few minutes of soothing.
“Your mum and dad are resting,” Elena said to him. “But they’ll be back soon, don’t worry. For now, you can stay at your gran’s house. It’s a lovely place. That’s right, don’t cry.”
Neville sniffled, and relaxed at the words. Satisfied that he was no longer noisy, Elena moved to go back into the room, but from outside the door, she heard hushed voices, as if the others had began to discuss once she had left. Elena’s stomach felt uneasy—after all of this, would they really still hide things from her?
“I just don’t see how we can solve this without more help,” Alice said.
“Alastor would help,” Frank suggested, and Elena remembered the name from before, when Simon had insisted on telling another Auror about the Minister’s murder.
There was shuffling, as if the chairs were being moved, before Corinne spoke: “Do we honestly want to involve him? How do we know he can keep a secret?”
“Is it wise to keep this a secret anymore?” Frank said evenly. “It appears there are more Death Eaters left than we previously thought. We don’t want to see another surge of attacks.”
“Moody has information,” Simon said. “He could get us a list of suspected Death Eaters, so we could at least have potential names for the actual murderer.”
“If there is only one killer,” Corinne said sharply. “I still think that it was some sort of last ditch conspiracy.”
“That’s only because you can’t accept that security was lax enough to miss one man,” someone muttered.
Elena leaned forward, only to jostle Neville, who had been falling asleep. He startled, and looked indignantly at Elena, as if to ask her why she had disturbed him.
“I still vote Moody,” Simon said. “We need his help if we’re against a group, and we can’t just call him to a duel at the last moment. Knowing Alastor, he’d think it was a trap. Best to brief him before we need his help.”
To Elena’s dismay, Neville was beginning crying again. With a sigh, Elena opened the door, ending the conversation she had been listening to. “Sorry Alice,” she said a bit too loudly. “He was almost asleep, but now I don’t know what he wants.”
Alice stood, and accepted her child from Elena, looking concerned. “That’s alright,” she promised. “He’s probably hungry. I’ll go try to find Augusta to see where she’s been keeping his bottles.”
Elena was left standing by the other three Aurors. She wasn’t sure if she should mention hearing their conversation or not. Maybe she should wait for them to tell her instead of alerting them that she had been eavesdropping.
“How many Death Eaters are still left?” she asked instead. It was a thought she had been wondering, ever since she had seen them in the fights. The public had been told a few were left, but was reassured that they were in hiding and Ministry officials were waiting to capture them.
Frank shrugged. “No one knows, really. There are probably ten with dark marks left. Those we know about and haven’t been able to catch yet. But there are more sympathizers, who can be just as dangerous, since they’re unpredictable.”
“But the killer is certainly a Death Eater?” Elena wasn’t sure the matter had ever been defined.
Corinne nodded. “All our evidence says yes. And if they were recruiting the likes of Lestrange later on, I have no doubt.”
“Ten?” Elena asked, feeling that Frank’s estimate was too small. “There’s Lestrange, and the two others we fought at the Longbottom house. Plus the one in Natalya’s memory. And then there were at least five at the battle, though I suppose those could be duplicates.” She paused, thinking. “Simon and I also fought two of the when we were following Ethan, or Lestrange.” She had almost forgotten that incident, though it had been dramatic. It had been overshadowed by her brother’s death, and her own interrogation. At one time, it would have been all she could think of, but now, it seemed horrible, but distant.
Simon frowned, and turned his gaze down towards his teacup. “Those were probably some of the same,” he said darkly.
Elena looked at him, searchingly. He seemed shaken, as if something she had said was uncomfortable for him. “Were they?” As she spoke, Elena began to remember the fight more clearly, and her mind landed upon an odd recollection. “One of them was talking to you, Simon. He definitely said your name.”
“It must have been—” Frank began, but stopped when Simon gave him a pointed look.
Corinne was not deterred by Simon’s obvious unease. “I never heard about that,” she said in a curious voice. “What exactly did he say to Simon?”
Elena thought back to the incident. They had called Simon by his last name: Burke. The Death Eater had taunted him about Elena, calling her his girlfriend. And there had been some vague reference to his last girlfriend—someone the Death Eater had known. It was funny, Elena had forgotten all of that until now. “He called me Simon’s girlfriend,” Elena said with a blush that she wished she could hide. Really, she wasn’t sixteen anymore.
Simon wheeled on her. “Enough,” he said, his tone turning caustic. “I think that’s all he said.”
Elena looked away. She didn’t know why Simon was so keen to hide what had been said, but it was important, at this point in the search, that there were no secrets. She continued, now facing Corinne, and put her back to Simon. “He mentioned something about another girl, I think?”
Corinne, who had looked triumphant and teasing before now grew serious. “You never mentioned this,” she told Simon, her eyebrows raised. “That could be important. There are only a few who would know to say that to you.”
“I didn’t think,” Simon said sounding annoyed through his anger. “I thought it was unrelated. We didn’t know that Lestrange was involved at the time. I thought it was an attack on me, because I was an Auror, not because it was related to this damn murder.”
Frank, Elena noticed, looked taken aback by Simon’s reaction. “If we’re talking about Lara,” he said tentatively, “It would have to be Mulciber, or Avery, or Rosier, or Wilkes. Or perhaps one of their friends.”
“Lara?” Elena asked, never having heard the name before. “Who’s that?”
Simon glared at Frank, and avoided Elena’s question. He instead crossed his arms. “I said that it was because I was an Auror they attacked me. Besides, half of them are already in Azkaban.”
Elena was unwilling to be distracted by Simon. She knew him well enough to tell that he was trying to divert attention by being inflammatory. “Corinne?” she asked instead. “Frank? Who’s Lara?”
Frank opened his mouth. “She was—”
This time Corinne interrupted. “Oh no,” she said with half a smile. “You don’t want to get between those two.” She gestured between the confused Elena and the glowering Simon. “So, we are going to find Alice.” With that, she stood, and pulled Frank by the arm towards the door.
Simon moved to follow them but Corinne shook her head dangerously and blocked the door. “No,” she ordered. “You are not leaving. You’re going to tell Elena about Lara, which I thought you might have done already, considering how things are.”
“Corinne, move,” Simon snapped. “This isn’t time to joke.”
Corinne raised an eyebrow. “I’m not joking, Burke.” Her voice had taken on a steely edge that signalled her insistence.
“Damn it Corinne,” he muttered, taking a step towards her.
Corinne twirled her wand in her fingers, and with a flick, shut the door. “Honestly,” Elena heard her speaking to Frank, “They act like fucking teenagers.”
Simon, as if determined to conform to Corinne’s statement twisted the doorknob violently, only to find it wouldn’t budge. Apparently, Corinne hadn’t trusted that he wouldn’t follow.
Elena watched him, as he finally gave up and slumped down into his chair. She rather wished that Corinne had let him leave, despite her curiosity about Lara. It would be miserable to sit here with Simon sulking.
“I could just go,” she said softly.
But to her surprise, Simon shook his head. “She’s right,” he said reluctantly. “You should know.”
Without turning around, he began to speak quickly. “I’ll keep this simple. Lara was my girlfriend, during the war. She was an Auror, too. Her parents sympathized with Death Eaters, and were caught hiding one in their basement. Somehow, the suspicion on them was thrown over onto Lara. They were deciding what to do with her, to arrest her too, for treason, or to hold a trial, when they sent her out on another mission. She got caught fighting more Death Eaters than she could handle, and managed to call for backup. The message reached head quarters, and they thought it was a trap for Aurors, that Lara was working against us. So they sent out a huge party, with some delay, hoping to catch her conspiring with the others and arrest her. Only, they found her dead,” Simon paused for a long moment. “There was some suspicion on me, after, that I should have recognized signs of her being a Death Eater, for that’s what they still thought she was, even after she died. She wasn’t, of course. But that’s a black mark on my file in the eyes of the Ministry.”
Elena’s head reeled as she tried to process the speech. She felt horrified. That was so much worse than she had imagined. Maybe Simon had never gotten over Lara. Maybe he actually hated or resented Elena for living, when Lara was dead. She had never guessed. And Corinne was right, she needed to know this. It made Simon’s actions so much clearer. Of course, he would be protective if his girlfriend had died because of some horrible misunderstanding. Anyone would be. And of course, he wouldn’t want to talk about it, though Elena was glad Corinne had forced him to.
“Simon,” she began, taking a single step towards him. “I don’t know what to say.” Was saying sorry wrong, in this case? It certainly felt hollow, even to Elena, who always apologized for everything. Perhaps, it was better for her just to be silent. And maybe he would say something first, so she didn’t have to worry about what he was thinking.
He turned his chair around, so that he was facing her. “It was a few years ago,” he said flatly, as if it didn’t matter. “At the start of the war.”
If he had looked upset, Elena would have tried to comfort Simon, but he only looked blank, and exhausted. She licked her lips, wishing she could think of the right thing to say to Simon, but she kept coming up with nothing. “Well,” she said awkwardly. “Was Corinne right?”
Simon stared at her, looking confused. “That we’re acting like teenagers?”
Elena blushed and shook her head. “I meant, about being about to tell who the Death Eater in the alley was, because of what they said about Lara.”
“Mulciber is in Azkaban and Wilkes is dead. Rosier and Avery are still out there, for all I know, but I can’t tell you that they didn’t let their friends know all about Lara.” Simon gave a shrug. “I just don’t think it has anything to do with this.”
Elena rather sided with Corinne, that it was important, but wasn’t about to say anything. “I think we should go find the others,” she said, going over to the door, and pointing her wand at it. “We need to plan.”
They were gathered in Augusta Longbottom’s dining room, an improvised war room of sorts. Half-eaten sandwiches lay in paper wrappers, and glasses were half filled with pumpkin juice.
“That settles it, then,” Alice said with a yawn. “Tomorrow, we find them.”
She was trying to sound casual, Elena could tell, but there was a wavering in her voice that belied her worries.
“I’ll go speak to Alastor now,” Frank said, standing. He was to go speak with the other Auror, to get the files about the Lestranges, and Rosier and Avery. Corinne had finally caved and agreed that, now that they were hunting the actual killers, having information about their whereabouts was vital. Alice and Frank had sworn Moody was trustworthy, as well, which Simon corroborated.
Alice went over, and gave him a quick kiss, following her husband out of the room, most likely to visit Neville. Her departure left Elena, Simon and Corinne in alone once more.
“Well, this is it,” Corinne said softly. “Tomorrow.”
Elena nodded, feeling slightly dizzy. Perhaps it would be only a few minutes, but she could easily imagine the battle going for hours. The images in her head of flying spells featured mostly green killing curses. It would be a deadly fight.
“Do you know what this means?” Simon asked Elena, almost gently.
She looked puzzled. “What?” Perhaps she had missed his question.
“You don’t have to fight,” he said directly. “You don’t have the training, and above all, you didn’t sign up for this. People will die tomorrow, and you didn’t volunteer to help us find the murderer, much less die in the process.”
Elena could see he was giving her the only out from the situation she would ever get. But she didn’t want to leave the fighting to the others, while she hid like a coward. “It’s implicit, isn’t it?” she said with a tiny smile. “I may not have asked to help, but these past few months I’ve had plenty of times I could have left. But I stayed. I know the dangers, and I will still fight.”
Simon nodded slowly, as if he had expected the answer, but still didn’t like it. “I won’t stop you.”
“Of course you won’t,” Corinne said, but the fierce look Simon gave her quelled the rest of her indignation.
“Do you want to talk to your family?” Simon said at last. “There’s a fireplace.”
Elena hadn’t thought of it being a possibility. But she owed it to her mother, at least, to speak to her. She looked around the room and found the fireplace in the far left corner. “Now?” she asked, not entirely prepared to go, but knowing there would be no better time.
“If you’re ready,” Simon began to walk towards the fireplace. Elena mutely followed. She wanted to ask him to go with her, but knew that it would only confuse her family more to see her show up with a man they’d never met.
“I’ll be back soon,” Elena promised when they were standing side by side in front of the fire.
“Don’t hurry,” Simon said, handing her the box of Floo powder. It was a skeleton of a conversation. Each said what expected, though behind the spoken words, Elena could almost hear the implicit words being spoken. I wish you could come. I don’t think I can do this alone.
But neither of them had the courage to speak aloud, so Elena squared her shoulders and dropped a pinch of powder into the flames. “Thomas and Elizabeth Wood’s house,” she said clearly, and stepped into the fire.
She emerged into a familiar sitting room and a wave of nostalgia surged. She hadn’t been home in months, since before Christmas, and she hadn’t realized how much she missed it. All the details were unchanged, a welcome constant in her life, which now was marked by change. The bright Persian rug was still on the floor, the plush sofa still sat near the fire.
Elena stood and smoothed her hair, trying to compose herself. She needed all the strength she could muster for the next new minutes. “Mum? Dad?” she called. “It’s Elena.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs and Thomas Wood entered the room, his wand raised. Upon seeing his daughter, he looked surprised, but relaxed slightly. “Are you all right?” he asked, coming over and putting a hand on her shoulder. “The last I heard from your mother, you had been released.”
Elena leaned in to embrace her father. “I’ve been better,” she said softly, wishing she could tell him all of her troubles. But now was not the time for such broad confessions. “Can you get Mum?”
Thomas nodded, concern etched into his lined face. “Elizabeth!” he called, moving towards the door.
Moments later, Elena was sitting on the sofa, next to her parents, feeling slightly uncomfortable. She had no idea what to say to her family now. She could hardly tell them she was going to fight. But she wanted to say goodbye nonetheless. “I’m sorry,” she began at last, apologizing for everything with the words. “I didn’t want you to worry.”
Elizabeth patted her daughter’s hand. “Darling, we’re just so happy you’re safe. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t hear from you. But they told me just yesterday you had been released.”
“Yes, thankfully it was a misunderstanding.” That wasn’t really a lie: Elena had not been held against her will, as the Ministry had told her mother.
“And you’re safe now.” Thomas had meant it to be reassuring, but Elena felt like she ought to correct him. She was not safe; no one was safe.
“I love you both,” Elena said, feeling tears well up in her eyes. “And I wish I didn’t have to say this.” She stopped to sniffle. She hadn’t known she was going to do it when she arrived, but now she was certain she had to tell them about Oliver. If something were to happen to her, they would be alone, and she couldn’t have them find out about Oliver’s death at the same time as well.
Her mother made a concerned sound. “What’s wrong?”
Elena wiped her eyes. “There’s something you need to know. It’s about Oliver. While I was at the Ministry I was told that he’s dead.” The words could barely make it past her lips, and once they were said, Elena began to cry in earnest.
Elizabeth put a hand over her mouth, and sagged into the sofa. “Are you sure?” Elena’s father sounded defeated and faint, only speaking because it was a courtesy.
“Yes.”
For long minutes, there was only the sound of sobbing, as the three processed the news individually. For Elena, seeing her parents’ reaction was more horrible than she could have imagined. They had gone from relieved to broken and Elena, too, was hardly capable of holding herself together. It had been easy to distract herself from the idea of her brother being dead while she was working with Simon and Corinne, but here, it was everywhere, with nothing to distract.
In the silence, Elena was left to contemplate what it meant to be dead. She had not seen Oliver in months, and how was his death different than his absence? It meant he would never come home. He would never see his son grow. He would never ruffle his sister’s hair, or help his mother, or joke with his father. He was murdered, lying in a foreign grave. He would never be brave again, would never serve his country. He would become a name only, someone remembered, not known. He would become the past tense, a memory. He would be gone from this world.
That was what it meant for anyone to die.
The Minister was dead. He was Alice’s father and though he had often seemed to be an extension of his title, he had a family too. He would never see his grandson grow up. He would become a martyr to the fight against evil. He would lose who he was and be a scandal and the face of a crime, a reminder of a lapse in security.
And, if tomorrow, Elena were to die, what would she be? She had been a Healer, had been a sister. She was not these things any longer. She would be forgotten by the world. She would become the source of her parents’ continued sorrow. She would be a nameless victim of war. She would have no children to carry her name on. She would be gone from this world, forever.
But thinking that way made Elena only cry more. She could not die. She would not. She was sure that Simon would protect her, even at the cost of his own life. The very thought terrified her and erased any composure she had gained: Simon, dead. How could she live, knowing that he had died for her? If she did not fight, she would not be a liability. She would not contribute much anyways; she had little training. She wanted to, of course, but not at such a high cost. Simon’s life was too valuable. It was better she be a coward and he be alive. She could live knowing she was not brave. She could not live knowing he had died for her.
Or was she only being ridiculous about the matter?
Elena’s mind and her imaginings were causing her destruction. She could not sit here, listening to her parents’ quiet crying and thinking about death. No one could think about death for long before it started to leach at their own life. It was draining her will away slowly, and Elena needed all the strength she could get. She could not let death steal from her more than it had already taken.
“Will you tell Marianne?” Elena asked, thinking of Oliver’s wife.
Thomas Wood nodded. “I cannot ask you to do so.” Elena was glad. It would have been too much to see Marianne, who had always denied the danger her husband was in, and who had lived expecting her husband home at any day, hear the news. Breaking her fantasy would have been too much of a burden for Elena. She had caused enough unhappiness.
Elena wanted to leave this sadness, for she knew her parents wouldn’t be able to move on for days, but she also felt obliged to stay. She had brought this awful news, now she couldn’t just leave. Yet she had to, else she was going to start confessing to them other things: the Minister’s death, the fight tomorrow. And those revelations would only add to their sorrow. It would not be long now before they started asking such questions now.
“I love you,” Elena said softly. “But I need to go, if that’s all right.”
“Do you have work?” Elizabeth said, attempting to wipe her eyes.
Elena nodded, feeling like she was lying. But, it was not all false, finding the Minister’s killer was her work now. “I’m so sorry.” If she stayed longer, guilt would force more painful confessions free.
“I love you,” she repeated in turn to each of her parents as she hugged each of them. She would not think about never seeing them again. She would be all right. Simon wouldn’t let her die. She would live. Saying it over and over might even make it come true.
With a final, tearful, “Goodbye,” Elena stepped into the fireplace once more, wishing with all her heart she could bring her brother back to life, for the sake of everyone.
Simon and Corinne were still in the room when Elena arrived. She stood shakily, trying to hide her sobs, but the others had looked up when she entered, and Simon walked over, seeing Elena’s obviously pained expression.
She didn’t hesitate. She went into his arms, needing him there to comfort her. “I told my parents about Oliver,” Elena said, trying to explain her tears.
Simon smoothed her hair, and didn’t say anything. She was glad. She had no words at the moment. All she could focus on was a horrible urge to cry and cry that made her sick and dizzy and miserable.
She thought of death and of Oliver and her body seemed to think that crying would banish these thoughts. It subscribed to the belief that pain was required for healing. But Elena knew enough to doubt her own self, for her tears were not cathartic. They were instead the violent emissaries of tragedy. As they brought their message of sorrow, they ripped her throat to pieces, and left her eyes stinging and swollen. Only by accepting that crying helped nothing could she control herself and stop this assault.
Slowly, Elena calmed and looked up. Corinne had, for once, understood when it was best to be quiet and had left the room.
“Sorry,” Elena apologized in a whisper. Her voice was hoarse from the tears.
Simon tightened his arms around her. “I’m sorry,” he echoed, as if it were his fault.
That gesture almost made Elena break down again. He was so selfless, so willing to take the blame. And tomorrow, she could not let him die to save her. “Promise me,” she said softly, “that you won’t try to protect me tomorrow.”
“What?” Simon’s voice sounded worried and confused.
“Don’t die for me, Simon.” Elena knew she was being emotional, and that the words would have sounded comical in another context, but she had to say it to him. “Don’t get yourself killed trying to save my life.”
He drew back from her, taking hold of her hands instead, so that she could see his face. “You don’t have to go.”
Elena gave a tiny, rueful smile. “I figured you would say that. ‘Don’t go, Elena, and I won’t have to worry about protecting you.’ But you know I have to.”
Simon nodded. “And I can’t promise I won’t try to protect you. You don’t have the experience we all do. If it comes to fighting, I won’t let you be killed.”
Elena was suddenly caught by how strange her relationship was with Simon. Here they stood, promising to protect the other until death. And they had only kissed twice. This sort of devotion normally appeared after years of a serious relationship, not after a few of months of attraction-turned-dubious-romance. Even with all the doubt between them, there was still the unspoken vow of loyalty. I don’t want you to be hurt. I won’t let them hurt you.
That more than ever made Elena want to know why Simon had turned her in to those men. How could he betray her then when he would protect her now? “I need you to tell me why,” she said at last. “What happened before you handed me to Dawlish and that other Auror?”
Simon sighed and led Elena over to a small sofa. “Sit,” he said and she did. While before, Simon had never answered, or avoided the question, it appeared that now he was willing to speak.
“You can guess now,” he said, taking hold of one of Elena’s hands.
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
He only shrugged, before continuing. “I was found by Dawlish, after the explosion. He ordered me back to the Ministry. But I knew that you were still there, and no one was looking for you. The Death Eaters were going come back, once we left, and you would be still there.” Simon was not looking at Elena directly, but rather around the room. She turned to follow his eyes, but saw only a blank wall. “I had to tell him that you were still there, so that he would let me find you. And he insisted that he come. After Lara, there was some suspicion that I had sympathies for those opposing the Ministry, and Dawlish always believed those rumours. So, he made me promise that you could be questioned once you were found. What was I supposed to say? I had to find you.”
Now it was Elena who couldn’t look at him. That sounded rather self-sacrificing, and not at all like betrayal. She had accused him of being disloyal, when he had only been being noble. “Oh,” she breathed.
“I found you,” Simon continued. “Then, Dawlish decided to show his dramatic flair and made to arrest you. That was never part of our agreement. I had always assumed it would be a few questions, just to make sure you weren’t a Death Eater, a background check of sorts. I thought I would go with you, stay for the test, and leave with you.”
Again, Elena could hardly think what to say. “I’m sorry.” She had acted inexcusably towards him. She had thought that he could betray her. Simon, who had never shown her any reason to doubt him.
He had not wanted to explain only because it involved Lara. He felt ashamed that the Ministry distrusted him because of her. And because of those rumours, he had not been able to rescue Elena.
Elena looked up, slowly, and saw Simon looking down at her. Slowly, they leaned towards each other, meeting in a kiss. Elena felt her sadness and shame melt away, and she started to feel happy once more. Everything was going to fine. Everything was fine, and wonderful and better. She was kissing Simon and he was kissing her and that proved it. It was perhaps a naïve belief, but to her, it signified the resilience of the world. Nothing was forever broken.
After a moment, Elena pulled back, and wiped the tears from her eyes. A smile played upon her lips, and a matching expression slowly formed on Simon’s face. She wanted to say something to him, but didn't know quite what it was. Besides, this was not the time to speak. Even if this was the last moment she might have alone with Simon, it was not the time to add the complications of romance to the picture.
It was only later that night, as Elena lay alone in her bed, unable to sleep that she thought of the words, no matter how premature, she had wanted to say to Simon. I think that I might love you.
Again, if you're reading this, thank you. Really, I love just knowing that some people are out there, reading what I'm writing. And I adore all of your reviews as well. Anyways, this story is really progressing in terms of word count, I think we're at 70,000 words now. Which is a lot.
Also, I want to give a shout out to forsakenphoenix for helping me work out a few issues in this chapter. Thank you!
perfect chapter image by violet ephemera @ TDA
Chapter 19
Today, Elena thought as she awoke. She had gone to sleep with her stomach in knots, and now she felt even more apprehension. Today.
The group convened again in Augusta Longbottom’s dining room. While they had lost many of their maps when Elena had set them on fire, they had been able to find replacements and not much time had been sacrificed.
Frank and Simon were eating the breakfast that had been spread on the table, but Elena wasn’t sure how they could manage to even think about food. She felt lightheaded with worry, and was sure there was no room in her twisted stomach for even tea.
Alice, too, looked pale. Elena noticed that her face had grown thinner, over the past month, and her hair hung limply around her face. Even the invincible Corinne looked tired. She had circles under her eyes and a pasty tone to her skin.
“We should eat,” Alice said reluctantly, reaching for a bowl of eggs. She spooned some onto her plate, but didn’t seem able to take a bite.
Corinne followed her example and took slightly more food than Alice. She, however, didn’t seem to have a problem eating the food. It was just as if she had forgotten that she was hungry.
Elena served herself a piece of toast, and nibbled at it. She needed strength, but the thought of food made her throat dry and her head spin.
“Alastor will be here soon,” Frank said, trying to diffuse the tension in the air.
“And from there,” Simon added, “we will take our short list of Death Eaters, and track them. “
The plan had been explained to her before, but Elena still found it difficult to understand. If the Death Eaters could be found, with enough determination, why hadn’t they been rounded up earlier?
The Aurors all had answers. The Ministry was waiting to see if a Death Eater would contact others, and give them more information. It was very dangerous to try to capture a skilled dark wizard, and might result in excessive Ministry death. Some of those on the list had been merely suspected of being Death Eaters and it wasn’t strictly legal to arrest them without more evidence in this post-War world. There were also a few candidates who had been tried and acquitted after claiming to have been under an Imperius curse, but who could have been lying. And, of course, some of the Death Eaters weren’t easy to be found. It would require visiting places they had frequented during the war, and asking questions, and being conspicuous and hoping the Death Eaters were still out for blood and would show themselves. Elena had the sense that the others were trying to convince themselves that these reasons were logical as much as they were trying to convince her.
Rabastan Lestrange had also given Corinne some valuable information about tracking known Death Eaters on the run. And, if he hadn’t been able to warn them yet, they might be able to catch them off guard. This was the tactic they would try first, hunting down the short-list of Death Eaters whose whereabouts Lestrange had revealed. If they wanted the element of surprise, they needed to move quickly.
Alastor Moody did not arrive until five minutes before the group was about to depart. He had said he would come at eight, but it was nearly half past nine when the pounding on the door was heard.
Madame Longbottom greeted the older Auror and brought him into the room where the others stood waiting.
Elena heard a series of dull thuds, and wondered if Moody walked with a cane. But if he was as superb an Auror as Frank seemed to say, he would have to be more physically fit, wouldn’t he?
The door opened, and Frank jumped to his feet. “Alastor,” he said, holding out a hand in greeting.
Before Elena could even get a close look at the man, he had his back towards her, and had pinned Frank up against the door, wand pointed at his face. Elena gasped, and couldn’t understand why none of the others was rushing to Frank’s aid. “What spell did you use to kill Nott?” Moody growled in a deep voice.
“Stupefy,” Frank said rather calmly. “Who gave you your eye?”
That seemed a strange question to Elena. But, Moody responded quickly, “Dumbledore.”
The exchange seemed to have satisfied him, for Moody backed up from Frank, and shook his hand. “Thank you for coming,” Frank said with sincerity, not looking shaken at all by the questioning.
Elena snuck glances at Simon, but he didn’t seem alarmed either. She didn’t dare speak though, because Moody had turned around and was now facing the rest of the group. She couldn’t help but recoil at his appearance. He looked—simply—dangerous. He had huge scars across his face and a chunk out of his nose. His hair was tangled and a dull brown. But most disturbing of all was a whirling magical eye in his left socket was a brilliantly blue colour. Elena felt slightly nauseated as the eye rolled upwards, so that only the white was visible.
“None of us are imposters,” Simon said with a grin, going forward to shake Moody’s hand.
“That’s what an imposter would say,” the man growled, but extended his hand anyways, after Frank gave a nod of assurance.
Elena inched her way backwards, not sure if she was going to be introduced, or if Moody had already researched her. That seemed like him.
Frank, however, seemed to see Elena’s uncertainty and waved her forward. “This is Oliver’s sister,” he told Moody.
She tried to hold her head up and walked towards the formidable Auror. “Alastor Moody,” the man said with a nod. “I knew your brother—a good man.”
“Elena Wood,” Elena said, meeting his unsettling gaze. She felt as if Moody could read her mind as his magical eye turned inside its socket at an unnatural speed.
“Constant vigilance,” the older Auror said, as if it were a greeting.
Elena wasn’t sure what the correct reply was, so she just stepped back again.
After a quick greeting to both Corinne and Alice, Moody sat down heavily at the table and pulled a flask from his jacket, taking a sip.
FIrewhiskey? Elena mouthed at Simon, feeling a bit shocked. It was too early for alcohol, especially if one was about to go fight dark wizards. No one had mentioned Moody was a drunk.
“No,” Moody said casually, as if Elena had asked him the question. She jumped, looking at Simon quizzically.
Simon smiled a little bit, and pointed to his eye. Elena blushed, realizing how stupid she was making herself look.
“So, we’ll travel in pairs,” Moody said, as if the exchange had not occurred. “That way it won’t seem odd to anyone who sees us. We’re going to a small town, after all. But it’s large enough that people won’t talk about all the newcomers.” He pulled from his pocket roll of parchment. “I made my own map,” he said by way of explanation.
Everyone slowly drifted towards the table and Moody, drawing closer to see the map. It was odd, Elena thought, how much the others deferred to him. He obviously looked like a fighter, with his wooden leg, scars, and magical eye, but Elena could sense that he was a leader as well.
“You two,” Moody said, pointing at the Longbottoms, “Will take a portkey that will put you here.” He pointed to a spot in the centre of town.
Alice nodded, confirming what had already been outlined the night before. “We’ll say we’re visiting a friend.” It seemed that Frank and Alice were too prominent to be able to travel unnoticed.
“Corinne and I will ride brooms and land here.” He gestured at a forested area outside of the town. They would not go into the two unless it was necessary.
Corinne seemed to have gained back much of her energy since Moody had arrived. She looked attentive and ready for battle, as if she were trying to impress the older Auror—which she might be, Elena thought to herself.
Moody took another drink from his hip flask. “The both of you will apparate to the pub and investigate their lodgings.”
Elena wasn’t sure she appreciated this direction. She opened her mouth to ask a question, but Moody seemed ready to depart.
“Ready?” Moody stood, seeming not to care what Elena thought of the plans.
Everyone assented. Corinne gathered two broomsticks from a cabinet. Frank and Alice found their portkey (a tarnished vase). Simon moved closer to Elena.
“See you soon,” Simon said to the others, and grabbed hold of Elena’s arm. The portkey wasn’t set for another half hour, so they would be the first to leave. Casually, Simon turned in mid air and they were gone.
Elena blinked at the brightness of the sun. Despite the light, the air was frosty and Elena shivered. Simon, who had let go of her arm, gave her a reassuring smile and gestured towards the pub in front of them. It was a cheery building with a wooden sign that read “The Tawny Owl.”
Elena felt a wave of panic. She hadn’t had time to prepare much for the acting she was going to have to do next. She and Simon, she knew, would try to ask information about the first death eater they were searching for, Avery. But she wasn’t sure how one went about searching for a dark wizard.
With a sigh, Elena took step forward, but instead, Simon shook his head. He started walking towards the alley between the pup and the next building. “I thought we were going inside,” Elena whispered, running a bit to catch up with him.
Nonchalantly, Simon turned the corner, striding into the alleyway. Once he and Elena were a few feet in, he stopped. “We’re looking around back, first,” he said.
Elena felt a wave of annoyance. “Does nobody bother to tell me what’s happening?” she asked with a grimace. It was as if they just thought her along for the ride, at times like this.
Simon smiled and Elena hated that she felt like mimicking his gesture. “Sorry,” he said softly, with a glance towards the street. “You should know. There’s a bit chance we will find dark wizards in this building, or one of the others we search. If at all possible, we won’t fight them without the others, but we may have no other choice if we want to prevent their escape. Can you be ready for that?”
“Of course.” Honesty was all that Elena wanted from him.
“Personally,” Simon said, starting to walk again, “I doubt that there will be anyone here. But you can’t be too careful.”
The back of The Tawny Owl was not as welcoming as the front. There were several waste bins, and a barren garden. A single door needed to be cleaned. “I imagine this is where the owners enter,” Simon said and with a flick of his wand, opened the door.
Elena rather wondered why he wasn’t being more cautious, but was appeased as Simon moved more slowly into the back entrance. They entered into a confining hallway. There was a single light that cast a faint glow on the walls. A staircase took up most of the room, and lead up into more darkness. It was clear that this part of the pub was not often used as Elena choked on the dusty air.
They headed up the stairs, and Elena winced each time the steps creaked. Despite the charming front, this part of the building appeared abandoned and almost sinister. Perhaps the Death Eaters they were hunting were at the top of the stairs, waiting in ambush. This would be the perfect place to catch them off guard. They were so vulnerable here on the steps.
But this worrying was nonsense. The point of the hasty mission was to catch the Death Eaters by surprise. Elena reassured herself once more as they reached the top of the stairs and opened another door to a more cheery hall. This corridor was carpeted with long windows that let in sunlight. Bright signs proclaimed the numbers of the guest rooms.
Without a pause, Simon knocked on closest door. Elena barely had a chance to think before a middle-aged wizard opened the door. “Yes?” he asked.
Simon put on a charming grin and extended his hand. “Sorry to bother you, sir. I was told by the owner that I might come up here and look around the rooms. My wife and I were thinking of renting one.” At that, he reached over to put his arm around Elena’s waist.
Only her healer training let her paste a smile on her lips, while her mind was reeling. Wife? Simon wasn’t so good of an actor as to be able to improvise that twist. He could have at least told her before what he was planning.
The wizard, who was wearing a gray striped dressing gown, shook his head. “Sorry,” he said in an irritated tone. “I was asleep when you knocked. Ask someone else.” With that, he slammed the door shut.
Elena stood there stupidly. The man had been lying, of course—the door had been open in instants. How could Simon have known that there wasn’t a trap behind the door? He was being too hasty and was again leaving her in the dark as he improvised.
Simon’s hand came up to brush her cheek. “Are you alright?” he asked softly.
She jumped at the gesture. It was so familiar, so romantic. It was not a gesture one made when one was in some confused sort of relationship. “I thought this was going to be more planned,” she said bluntly. She didn’t want to be angry with him, but she had no choice, the way he was acting. He might be able to improvise, but she could not.
He smiled. “I’m sorry.” There was a playful sound to his voice that Elena found odd. She had only seen Simon look this happy once and there was no reason this situation should make him at all happy. She was rather annoyed.
But as Simon started to laugh, Elena couldn’t help but giggle at the ridiculousness of it all. Perhaps he didn't know what he was doing any more than she did. After a moment, the two stopped laughing at the same moment, and Elena could hardly breathe. She leaned forward, towards Simon. Never mind that romance was unimportant here, she decided. Never mind that now.
Their lips had almost touched when the sound of a door opening made them jump apart. “Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry,” said an older witch. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you both. It’s just that I heard what you were saying to Richard, and thought you might want to come in for a cup of tea and take a look at my room instead.”
Elena blushed, trying hard not to shirk away from the woman in embarrassment. “Thank you,” Simon said graciously, seemingly unbothered. He let Elena walk through the door first.
“I’m Peter,” he said by way of introduction. “This is my wife, Callida.” If she hadn’t already been embarrassed, Elena would have laughed. Callida? Could he have invented a more unsuitable name? Surely the woman would be suspicious of that.
“Vera,” the woman said cheerily. “I’ll just start the kettle now.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Elena said in as friendly a voice as she could muster. She glanced around the room, taking note of the eclectic decorations. Framed bits of embroidery hung on the walls in between photographs of famous celebrities and newspaper clippings. Too many overstuffed chairs were congregated around a small fireplace, where a gray cat was curled up on the hearth. The various patterns of fabric—checks, plaid, velveteen, spotted—made for a rather disorienting view. But despite the rather random décor, the room felt well lived in and homey.
“Please sit,” Vera called out from the small kitchen.
With a look at Simon, Elena took a seat on the sofa, leaving room for him to sit beside her. Almost absently, he took a hold of her hand. Elena shot him a look. “Not here,” she hissed, feeling like blushing again. Their poor hostess was going throw them from her flat.
“What?” Simon whispered back, a grin on his face. He leaned forward, as if to kiss her, but Elena put up her hand. Really, when did Simon start teasing her so much? They were supposed to be serious. She was bad enough at acting as it was; she couldn't switch from "Callida" to Elena at a moment's notice.
“Simon,” Elena glared at him. “Honestly?”
He carefully, pulled her hand down and again moved closer, but instead kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
Elena’s nerves were on edge, and she felt the ridiculous urge to giggle at the situation. If they had been doing anything other than hunting for murderers, she would have let herself be giddy, but she couldn’t afford to let herself get distracted. She didn’t have enough experience to begin with.
The sound of the kettle boiling made Elena sit up straight and brush her hair out of her face. She gently pushed Simon back, so that they were sitting without touching. Yet even with a few inches between their shoulders, Elena had to exert every effort not to be distracted by his presence.
Once they were settled with their tea, Simon began to ask questions to Vera, still posing as a potential neighbour. At first, his queries were irrelevant, how much did it cost, was the landlord fair, how long had she been there. Elena tried to say something once in a while, but mostly listened. But soon, he began to shift towards more relevant inquiries. “How are your neighbours?”
Vera took a sip of tea, and stroked the cat now curled up on her lap. “Most of them have been here for ages as well. And some of them are quiet, but none of them are horrible. One lad, he used to cause a bit of trouble, but he moved out a week or so ago. I think I heard him telling Mrs. Elswint that he was going to live with some family.”
“That’s a pity,” Elena said.
“Yes, but it’s his flat you two would take,” Vera said with a smile. “You know, I think you might be able to take a look, if you’d like.”
Simon and Elena exchanged a glance. It was possible, perhaps, that this man was only an unfriendly civilian, but his reclusiveness marked him as a suspect for a potential Death Eater. “That would be lovely,” Elena said faintly.
A few minutes later, the two were alone inside the uninhabited flat, after thanking Vera and promising to say goodbye to her before they left. The room was not empty, but had some rather basic furniture set neatly up. “It’s probably nothing,” Elena said with a sigh. “It can’t be this easy.”
Simon shrugged and walked the perimeter of the room. “But sometimes it is,” he said. “Even during the war, Death Eaters would try to hide in plain sight. Many of them had Ministry jobs and had to act normal during the day.”
“Are you expecting to find something?” Elena asked as Simon kept pacing. She thought it unlikely that the man would have left anything of importance behind.
With a grin, Simon raised his wand. “Watch this,” he directed. At his silent command, a bubble of air expanded out from the point of his wand and surged to encompass the room. It distorted the air with bumps and whirls, and with the sound of a harsh alarm, popped.
Simon looked grimmer. “There’s been dark magic here,” he said definitively.
Elena heard his words, but at the same time heard the sound of the lock turning in the door and a few clicks throughout the room. “Simon,” she said slowly, looking around. “The door.”
Elena moved over to it and turned the handle, but it was frozen in place. A simple unlocking spell produced no effect as well. “We can always apparate out,” she reassured herself. But as she tried to turn, she simply couldn’t.
“What did you do?” she demanded of Simon. “That spell…”
He blanched. “There must have been enchantments to try to trap anyone who came looking for this man. If I know the spell correctly, they’ll know we’re here.”
“Then let’s leave,” Elena snapped, spinning towards the wall of windows. To her horror, they too were locked. “Break them,” she told Simon.
“Would you jump?” he asked, as if doubting that she could survive the fall.
“Just do it,” Elena said, not wanting to waste time discussing. She would have done it herself, but she sensed that Simon knew what might work.
“Magic won’t work,” he said bluntly, and reached over to lift one of the end tables, before smashing it though the glass.
Elena jumped backwards as shards of the window cut through the air. Simon has moved so quickly, she hadn’t had time to step away.
Simon dropped the table, and peered down through the window. “As soon as you jump,” he told her, “cast a cushioning spell.”
“Not before?” Elena now saw that they were higher off the ground than she had thought. Broken glass now littered the ground below.
“You can’t cast magic inside this room now. Most likely, it will wear off as soon as you’re outside.”
Elena gulped. Most likely. She looked at Simon. “You’ll be right behind me?” she confirmed, not wanting him to stay and put himself in more danger.
He nodded. With an inhale, Elena climbed onto the windowsill and flung herself off. As soon as she was no longer touching the building, she screamed the spell that would arrest her fall. For a moment, she was still falling, but then she jerked to a halt, inches above the ground, as if a rope had caught her.
A moment later, she dropped the final bit to the stone pavement and scrambled out of the way. Above her, she saw Simon squeezing out the window, and watched as he too fell. Even though she knew he could stop himself, it was still terrifying to see him careen towards the ground. He wasn’t going to stop, Elena thought for a second, but with moments to spare, he slowed, and tumbled to the ground in a heap. Her heart nearly stopped as she saw his motionless body. Panic coursed through her veins: Had he hurt himself? A moment later, her healer training sprang to the front of her mind, and Elena rushed towards Simon.
But by the time she reached him, Simon was already sitting up. He appeared unhurt, except for a red gash on the side of his cheek.
“Are you alright?” she asked, feeling her fear subside.
He nodded, and pointed to the glass on the ground as if to explain the injury. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, pulling up to his feet. “We need to go.”
“Where?” Elena looked around, searching both for an escape and potential trouble.
A shout sounded from the building above and Simon moved rapidly, grabbing Elena and dragging her towards the end of the alleyway. They rounded the corner at a full pace run, pausing only to turn to the left, so that they were running behind several storefronts.
The sound of footsteps vanished as they ran though Elena didn’t bother to look behind to confirm that they weren’t being followed. Still they ran and had covered several blocks when there was the distinct crack of apparation much closer behind them.
Simon pulled Elena into a narrow street that ran between two shops. They slowed to a jog and reached the main street, which was bustling with unknowing citizens.
Simon jumped up the steps that led to the nearest store three at a time and Elena followed him, breathing hard. A cheery bell rang as they entered. Elena made out the shapes of various pieces of old furniture and stacks of mouldy books. There was an empty sales counter to the left with a curtain hanging behind it.
It seemed that Simon was acting purely on training as he veered towards the back of the store and away from the counter. Elena followed on his heels, her heart pounding as she glanced around for a place to hide. Simon, it seemed, was searching for the same and after turning another corner, deeper into the recesses of the store, stopped by a large table. It was some strange wood, and covered in a lacy tablecloth that touched the floor. Behind it was a large cabinet that acted as a sort of divider that created the winding rows of goods.
Simon lifted up the cloth and Elena ducked underneath, moving so that her back touched the cabinet, Simon followed as soon as she was settled. As the tablecloth fell to hide them, an elderly man’s voice cried out from the front of the store. “Hello?”
Elena was sure that she was breathing loud enough for the whole store to hear, as she slumped under the table. Simon, who was much taller than she was, crouched uncomfortably, facing her.
“Why are we hiding?” Elena said between gasps for air. She felt a drop of sweat trickle her spine.
Simon looked grim. “Have you ever apparated while running for your life?” he asked.
“Oh.” He was right, of course. She would have splinched for sure. Even if Simon would have been safe, she simply didn’t have the training to escape in that way. “Who were they?” she wondered in a whisper.
He shook his head and the gesture seemed too expansive in the small hiding palce. “I suspect we’ll find out. But I know that they came for us after we sprung their trap.”
A moment later, the bell rang again, followed quickly by the slamming of the door. “May I help you?” the old man said loudly.
Elena restrained a gasp and shrunk further back towards the cabinet. Simon raised his wand and sent a quick glance towards Elena. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, reaching out his free hand to cover hers.
The old man’s cry prevented her from answering. “Where are they?” a harsh male voice said.
“Who?” the owner said, sounding bewildered.
“Don’t bother,” a deeper voice responded. “They’re in here somewhere.”
There was a horrible crack, and the old man’s pleadings stopped.
“Who do you reckon it was?” the first voice said amid the sounds of footsteps. They made no attempt to be quiet.
There was a crash, as if a pile of books had been knocked over. “Burke,” the second said. “And some girl. It looked like the Minister’s brat.” He had mistaken her for Alice, Elena realized.
“Aurors,” the one man spit. “Lestrange said to be expecting them.”
“He also said we should call him if anything like this happened.” A scraping sound ripped through the air, as if a large piece of furniture had been moved.
“Do you hear that?” the question was said in a raised voice, directed at Elena and Simon. “The Lestranges will come very soon. But if you come out now, that won’t have to happen.”
“Fine,” the man spat, after a drawn out silence. “We’ll just wait outside until then.”
“Don’t bother trying to apparate,” his companion chuckled. “I’ve already spelled the place against it.”
Laughing, the men exited the store to the incongruous bell. “Say your goodbyes,” one called out.
Simon turned around as best he could in the small space. “Elena,” he said softly. “I want you to run.”
“You heard them,” she replied, her voice trembling. Almost involuntarily, she clasped her hands together and pressed them against her chest, trying to contain a seed of growing panic. "They’ve spelled it against that.”
“I don’t care.” Simon gazed intently at her, as if trying to convey his words with his eyes as well. He reached up and put his hands firmly on her shoulders. “You need to run.”
“I can help you fight,” she said petulantly, feeling a bit hurt that he wanted her to leave so badly. If she was gone, Simon would be horribly outnumbered. She heard the sound of the old man hitting the counter and shuddered: Simon’s fate would be worse.
He sighed, looking back nervously. “I’m not saying this because I think you can’t fight. If it was just Avery, and the other man, I would want you here. But he means more than just one Lestrange. The brothers may be deadly but the woman is mad. She would torture and kill you for sport. Now that she has a reason to be furious..." He trailed off with a shudder. "Listen to me, god damn it.” Simon raised his voice, glaring at Elena.
Elena had looked away, unable to face what he was saying. “But you…”
“I need to make sure they don’t escape. So, go find the others,” he continued. “I suspect there might be another exit behind the counter. If you’re lucky, they haven’t thought of it yet.”
There was a note in Simon’s voice that made her turn her head back; it was something she had not heard before: desperation. He lifted a hand to her cheek.
Elena closed her eyes and nodded. Perhaps that was another lesson to learn—when it was time to fight and when it was time to run.
Simon’s eyes were bright even in the dim light under the table. He looked as if he would have said something, in any other situation, but he was silent as he watched her.
Elena broke away. She couldn’t think to say goodbye nor did she have the time; instead she moved quickly from under the table, wand ready. This was the most dangerous part—she was now in the open. If she had waited too long, perhaps the others would come inside. At a run, she traced their path back to the font of the shop. The sales counter now featured a slumped and bloody man.
Elena forced herself not to care as she stepped over his legs and pushed through the curtain into the back room. She barely registered that it was cluttered.
Instead she focused only on the door that was miraculously at the far end of the room. Perhaps there was such a thing as luck.
The world appeared in fragments to Elena. Her mind could simply not process complexities. If she thought of emotion and sentiment, she would crack. This was the detachment she had experienced as a Healer, during times of the most intense stress.
There was the door.
She opened it.
The outside air was cold and crisp.
Her mind seemed to thaw slightly, despite the chill of the street. Elena had been told to run, but she wasn’t about to leave Simon alone. If they were to try to trap these Death Eaters, they needed reinforcements. Raising her wand, she thought of the man still inside the building and spoke two words softly, “Expecto Patronum.” From her wand, her silvery patronus appeared. Thinking of Alice and of Corinne, she willed them a message: come now.
She had never performed this spell before and wasn’t entirely sure if it had worked as the patronus faded. Either she had failed, or it had gone in search of the others.
Elena knew that she had only a few minutes before it was too late. But she could not think about what too late would mean. Nor did she dare to try to discover if the Lestranges had arrived yet. Elena instead huddled in the darkest corner and waited. She should go back in to find Simon, to tell him to just leave, but she couldn’t. That would reveal them both. If he had only left with her while they had the chance. But then the Death Eaters would have vanished, going so deep into hiding they could never be found. No, they had to make sure that they were captured.
So preoccupied was Elena that she didn’t smell the smoke until the door was consumed by fire. She screamed as it singed her face and clothing, leaving tiny sparks of pain on her skin.
The crackling of the fire had hidden the sound of four more people appearing behind her, so when Elena turned, she almost screamed again. In front of her, stood Corinne, Moody, Frank and Alice, looking fierce and alert. At once, they all spoke at her, throwing their questions towards her but she couldn’t understand because their words were drowned out by the noise of burning. Feeling as if she were in a dream, Elena slowly turned back towards the shop and saw fire everywhere. It choked the air, teased at the roof and put up a wall of flames that blocked the doorway. Sparks of magic danced within, creating a breathtaking display of destruction. A single thought filled Elena’s mind, the face of the man she had left behind.
“Simon,” she said in realization, in horror, in hope, in lament.
Note: I'm sorry that this took so long to update, I really am. Let's just say that real life (school, exams, job hunting, etc) took up way too much time and energy this past month. But I will do my best to keep updating. I won't leave you with this cliff hanger forever :D
image by me (laelia @ TDA)
Chapter 20
Tendrils of flame danced out from the doorway, searching for fuel. Sparks drifted to land on Elena’s clothing and settle in her hair and yet she did not move.
A hand reached out and snatched Elena back, pulling her away from the inferno. She stumbled, suddenly feeling the sting of the tiny burns left by each touch of fire.
The same hands spun her around, so that she was facing a group of concerned faces. “What happened?” Corinne asked sharply.
Elena coughed her throat, hoarse from the smoke. “The Lestranges are coming,” she said in a soft voice. She felt dazed, her mind as hazy and sluggish as the smoke-filled air.
She remembered she need to say more—about Simon—but at those words, the other Aurors broke out in anxious cries. “How do you know?” Frank demanded, looking dangerous.
“Two other Death Eaters called them,” Elena responded, still speaking slowly. “But—” She tried to tell them, again that Simon was still trapped, but the others talked above her.
Moody’s eye was moving so fast that Elena couldn’t make sense of where it was. How could he see anything if he didn't stop for a second to look at it? “I don’t see what the fuss is,” he growled, contorting his face into a grimace. “We outnumber them.”
The others, however, still looked perturbed. “These aren’t the kinds of numbers I like, Alastor,” Frank said, with a glance at Alice. His tone had lost some of it's earlier edge, but Elena still thought he seemed rather menacing.
“Elena,” Alice asked suddenly, not looking at her husband. “Where’s Simon?”
“Inside,” Elena tried to yell, but only managed a whisper.
Slowly, the gazes of the four shifted towards the burning building. “What?” Corinne said in a toneless voice.
“I was supposed to get help,” Elena said, trying to explain why she had left him behind, but the words seemed foolish as she spoke them.
“They won’t fight here,” Moody continued, as if Elena had never spoken. “The Ministry will already come for this fire, I suspect. They’ll try to draw us away.”
Frank and Alice watched Moody with twin attentive gazes, as if awaiting orders. Elena, however, was able to catch Corinne’s eye. The other woman gave a slight nod at Elena and tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ears.
“Where is he?” Corinne asked in a voice pitched lower than Moody’s.
Elena took a step away from the group. “Hiding in the store. I came to get help and the fire followed me. I don’t know where it started.” Her mind was starting to clear, her alarm for Simon's well being destroying the numbness.
Corinne nodded once and gestured to Elena to follow her. Then, without saying another word, she began to run towards the front of the store, though she was careful to avoid the flaming rear entrance. Elena gripped her wand tightly as she followed Corinne to the main street, ignoring the questions Alice and Frank called out. If they hadn’t cared enough to save Simon when she had first told them, she wouldn’t waste time explaining to them now.
Already, there was a small crowd of people a fair distance back from the store but none of them seemed to be doing anything to stop the fire, though, from the front of the store, it wasn’t so dramatic. Only a large plume of smoke gave evidence to its true severity.
Corinne stopped and looked around warily. “I don’t see the men who followed us,” Elena said, carefully examining the crowd. Of course, it was possible that they were inside, but more likely they had fled, deciding to let the Lestranges handle this fight.
“Alright,” Corinne nodded and looked at the building, as if deciding if it were safe to enter. She was silent, before turning to face Elena. “You know,” she said softly, “you don’t have to worry about Simon. He is going to be fine.”
The amount of care in Corinne’s voice surprised Elena. “Thank you,” Elena replied, almost wanting to hug Corinne. Hearing her reassurance meant that Simon had to be safe.
Corinne gave a small smile. “Ready?” she asked.
“Of course.”
With that, Corinne ran towards the door of the store. She didn’t bother with an unlocking spell, but rather blasted lock away into pieces. Elena ducked the fragments of metal and choked as a wave of smoke rolled out of the door.
Corinne didn’t hesitate to enter and with one last deep breath, Elena followed her inside.
She could see very little. Smoke clouded the air and it seemed that all the light in the building had been turned off, except a faint red haze burning in the distance. “Lumos,” she murmured and a ghostly blue light appeared near her outstretched hand.
The air was terribly hot, and drops of sweat already ran down the length of Elena’s spine. She made out Corinne’s shadowy figure a few feet ahead, but she could not see any details: it was simply too smoky.
“Ministry for Magic!” Corinne shouted, her wand pointed at her throat to amplify her voice. “Put your wand on the ground and step forward slowly.” Her voice sounded unyielding, and compelling. Elena wanted to recoil and do exactly what she said, at the same time. But she had to wonder why Corinne was being so formal. They were coming to rescue Simon! He wasn’t an enemy.
There was a shuffling sound that Elena could hear even over the dull crackling of the flames.
Corinne had heard it to: “I said step forward.” The spell sent her words careening throughout the building.
Elena moved closer behind her, trying to get a good look through the suffocating smoke. “The fire isn’t spreading,” she said softly. She had watched the flames in the back corner of the store and if anything, they seemed to be diminishing. Perhaps, they had only been a distraction, or something aimed at anyone trying to leave the building, rather than an actual attempt to burn down the building.
However, even if the fire proved little danger, the smoke would eagerly fill that role. It was a double edged sword that blinded and choked. Even after casting a small spell to clear her lungs, Elena yearned for fresh air.
The shuffling sound stopped. In front of Elena, Corinne took a step forward. She appeared little more than a shadow, haloed in red from the dying flames. “This is Ministry for Magic,” she said again, in a loud and clear voice. “Put your wand on the ground and come forward slowly.”
After another moment, Elena realized that no one was going to come out. She thought of Simon. He hadn’t been hiding near the fire, but perhaps he had tried to follow her out. Perhaps in the confusion he had escaped some other way. Or he could be unconscious from the smoke. Or, worse, the Death Eaters had found him.
But they had heard a sound, Elena was sure of it. Whether it was Simon, or some other person, she couldn’t be so certain.
Corinne still had her wand raised, but was now slumped. It was apparent that she had thought that her command would have some response as well.
“We need to search,” she said in a low tone. “Do you know the spell to help you breathe?”
“Of course.” Elena was a Healer, after all.
With a flick of her wand, Elena felt air wash through her lungs again. The spell was an elegant one. It filtered the air around the caster for a short period of time. She could have used a Bubbled Headed Charm, but that was both cumbersome and ridiculous. The only problem with her simple spell was that it didn’t follow her. She would be able to breathe clean air only in the locations where she had cast the spell.
Corinne nodded in approval. “You take the left side.” She indicated towards the part of the store farthest from the dying fire. “If you find anyone who needs help, don’t shout. Send up green sparks.”
“And if the Lestranges arrive?” Elena had to wonder how Corrine would account for that danger.
“We’ll be done searching before that.” Corinne would have sounded utterly sure of herself to most people, but Elena had known her long enough to realize that she was not entirely confident.
Elena nodded once and stepped through the smoke, down one of the precarious aisles. She was close to where she had hidden with Simon previously. Was it possible that he was still there?
She barely bothered to search under other pieces of furniture, instead practically running towards the back of the store. She saw the table, with its long tablecloth, through the smoke and fell to her knees. Her heart was pounding as she ripped the curtain away. But there was nothing, no sign that the two of them had crouched beneath the table only minutes before.
All of Elena’s energy faded and she sank back onto her heels. She had been so sure that Simon would still be here hiding. The alternatives were just too impossible. She hadn’t been gone for long—he couldn’t have left the building that quickly. And the other Death Eaters couldn’t have found him—where could they have taken him? There would be a sign of struggle.
Wordlessly, Elena cast the spell that cleared the air around her. She needed clean air so that she could think.
After a moment of rest, she stood. She should still look around the area. Perhaps Simon had shifted his hiding place. Yet, as she looked at the chest of drawers, the ancient carpets, the tall lamps and the sinister gargoyle, all balanced haphazardly on various end tables, she could see no place to hide.
But Elena felt that time was running out. She no longer cared if this building was full of traps. She just wanted to find Simon and get out of the suffocating air. They no longer had time to search in this pile of junk. Elena took in a breath of purified air and raised her voice: “Simon!” she shouted. “Simon!”
She listened intently, but heard no response. “Simon!” this time her voice cracked, turning the last of the word into an airy shriek.
Biting her lip to try to stop the tears that started to form in her eyes, Elena looked down at the ground. A red and blue Persian rug carpeted this section of floor, though it was full of moth holes and other signs of age. There was no need to panic, she assured herself. She just needed to find Corinne and help her search. Two people together might be able to locate Simon.
When Elena looked up, filled with renewed resolve, she almost screamed again. Standing in front of her was Simon. Or at least, part of him. His torso was visible, but his legs seemed to have vanished, leaving him hovering. As Elena watched, substance seemed to return to the rest of his body and the invisibility peeled away.
Finally, Elena lifted her face back to meet his eyes, warm and brown. She felt such a profound relief that she couldn’t think of what to say. Part of her wanted to scold him, part of her wanted to cry, part wanted simply to collapse.
With a level expression, Simon lifted his wand towards Elena’s chest. “What was the last thing that Marcus Gordon said?”
Elena realized that he was questioning her, the same as Moody had done earlier that day. “Albania,” she said softly.
Simon nodded and lowered him wand. “What are you doing here?” he asked finally, in a rather cold tone.
She frowned. “The fire…” Had he not noticed it? That was ridiculous.
“You need to leave!” Simon grabbed a hold of her shoulders. “You shouldn’t have come back!”
Elena stepped back, tears stinging her eyes again. “I thought you were dead!” she snapped at him. “You’re being so stupid with your life. You don’t need to sacrifice yourself at every turn.”
“I’m an Auror,” Simon said darkly. “I can fight off a fire myself, I think. You, on the other hand, should have thought before coming back here alone. What if the Lestranges had been waiting?”
Elena clenched her fists, feeling her nails bite into her palms. “I can’t believe you think that I’m that idiotic. You heard when we first came inside.”
“Heard what?”
“Me,” Corinne said, stepping around the corner and rolling her eyes. “Honestly, do you two want to have the whole town hear you arguing?”
Simon looked shocked to see her, so shocked that Elena had to wonder if perhaps he had not heard Corinne after all. “What are you doing here?” he managed after a moment.
“I didn’t come alone,” Elena said, before Corinne had a chance to respond. “I called for help. Moody, Frank and Alice are all here.”
“That was smart,” Simon admitted slowly, still looking confused.
Elena had had enough of his surprise. “Stop it,” she shouted. “I came inside to save you, not to hear you belittle me! I can’t understand why you still think that I’m so incompetent.”
Corinne rolled her eyes again, though her relief at finding Simon was evident. “Save your arguing for later,” she said, wiping a drop sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
“Corinne’s right,” Elena said, turning her back on Simon. “We need to leave.”
“You know the Lestranges are coming?” Simon told Corinne.
She nodded. “So I’ve heard.” Her tone was dry. “Though, I don’t think we want to have to deal with them in a half burned building. So if you don’t mind, we can re-join the others outside.”
Elena started to move, retracing her steps. She was done talking to Simon. She had been so worried about him and now he seemed ungrateful. She had been trying to save him. Why should he be so angry? It only took a moment, however, for her anger to be replaced with misery. She had thought that he cared about her, but perhaps she had been wrong.
They had neared the door when it flew open. Alastor Moody stood on the doorstep, looking terrifying. His face, normally rigid and scared, was stone, and his eye surged wildly around. “Outside!” he ordered in a growl, casting severe looks down at Elena, Simon and Corinne.
Without another word, Moody gestured towards the door with his wand and marched them out of the building. He didn’t stop until they were down the steps of the building and stood amongst a bed flowers that decorated the garden in front of the store.
“What were you thinking?” he demanded of Corinne, once they had stopped walking.
She looked up at him, defiantly. “We were trying to find Simon.”
“With the racket you were making,” Moody snapped, “the whole of the town heard you.”
“I doubt that,” Corinne said bitterly.
Elena had to admire her audacity. She could tell not everyone would dare to talk to Moody as Corinne did. Though it was almost amusing to hear Corinne arguing with Moody when a moment ago, she had reprimanded Elena and Simon for their noise.
Simon was standing as far away from Elena as possible, against the opposite railing of the stairs. He was looking away from her as well.
Fine, Elena thought. He could sulk if he wanted to. She didn’t care if he was acting like a child. So instead, she looked around the street. There was a crowd of people some feet back from the building, apparently watching the smoke. None of them were doing anything to stop the fire themselves, but rather gathered as if to gossip about the spectacle. She had to wonder if the Ministry had been notified. If they had, that might explain why Moody had ordered them to leave.
A moment later, Frank and Alice appeared from the group of observers across the street and strode quickly back towards where Elena stood. Both of them nodded at Simon before addressing Moody. “I don’t think anyone bothered to tell the Ministry,” Frank said. “We’ve assured them that this is all under control and they seem to believe us.”
“Good,” Moody grunted.
Elena knew she should be discussing with them, but she instead stared at the street, watching the crowd of people begin to disperse. The day had grown dark with heavy clouds and she shivered at the wind that seemed to descend from the clouds. There was a certain peace to this stormy weather. She relished the clearer air and the coolness after the steamy interior of the store.
It was the type of day where sound carried far, and thus it took her a moment to realize where the screams were coming from. But more important was what had elicited the cries. A few stragglers across the street were pointing up into the sky, staring in awe before scattering.
Elena ran several steps out into the middle of the street and looked upwards. Hanging above the store was a monstrous skull. It sat in the clouds, illuminated as if made of tiny stars. Out of its mouth flicked a smoky green snake, with glowing eyes. Elena’s heart flew into her mouth. Every witch and wizard in Britain knew this sign and what it stood for. Only the closest supporters of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named knew the incantation for the Dark Mark. Elena didn’t know when it had been cast, but knew that they had only minutes, perhaps, before they were attacked.
Elena tore her eyes away from the sign in the clouds and looked at the others. Frank, Alice, Corinne and Moody were still talking quietly to each other. Simon, was off on his own, making a point, it seemed, not to look at Elena. She wished, for a moment, that he would glance over at her, and that he could reassure her that this sign meant nothing. But he didn’t look, and he didn’t lie.
Elena instead moved quickly back to the larger group of Aurors. By now, they had reacted to the screams, but none had bothered to look up at the sky. “The Dark Mark,” Elena said.
Around her, five heads gazed upwards at the sky. “Merde,” Corinne cursed in French. One by one, each lowered their heads and turned to Moody. He was the senior Auror, he would know how to handle this situation.
There was a pause as the man considered. “Be ready,” he said at last. “We want one of them alive.”
As he spoke the last words, columns of smoke accompanied by loud cracks descended from the sky. It was all for show, but somehow this arrival was more chilling. The three appeared in a triangle formation, flanked a moment later, and less spectacularly, by two other men.
Masks glinted out of the receding fog and the robes were trimmed with dark green. At once, the three arrivals began to fire spells at the Aurors. Elena was shoved towards the back of the group by Corinne, but she tried her best to protect the others all the same. The Mark had brought a new influx of people, perhaps too interested in seeing if it was a hoax or not to be properly afraid and run.
The two lesser Death Eaters now faced them and shot spells into the crowd.
In the fray, it was almost impossible to tell, but Elena thought with horror that the spells sent at the civilians were killing curses. A jet of green light hits its mark and a man crumbled to the streets. People had abandoned any hope of order and were running, and shouting, though a few attempted to fight back. Now they knew, without a doubt, that there was real danger: this was no tasteless prank.
Frank and Corinne looked ready to engage one of the Lestranges in a one-on-one duel; however, Moody raised his wand suddenly. “Inside,” he barked, pointing to the building.
There was a tone to his voice, a certain calmness that made Elena obey without thinking. She scrambled up the steps, not bothering to cover her retreat. Others scrabbled up the stairs next to her, at a somewhat quicker pace. Elena saw Frank pull Alice through the door and watched as a gust of smoky air was vented out of the building, up towards the skull in the sky.
The air around them seemed to contract and grow darker, as if all the light in the street were gathering into a single point by Moody’s wand. Elena didn’t see it expand, but felt the strange sensation as the ball of light expanded into a brilliant flare. Even with her back turned, the light was disorienting, and she felt herself slip on the stairs.
Moody, despite his leg, vaulted over her, as if he were unaffected by his own spell of distraction.
Elena tried to scramble to her feet and felt a strong pair of hands lift her upwards. Simon took her hand and pulled her up the remaining stairs and into the building. She was still disoriented and couldn’t see his face, but he put his hand on her back as he pushed her gently through the door.
As soon as it had closed behind them, Moody began growling protective spells. Elena recognized the power behind his voice as he cast charms to prevent entering, dark magic and detection. Simon squeezed her hand quickly, and then drew away, pausing only briefly to touch her shoulder. Elena wished he had stayed but instead turned to Corinne. “What are we going to do here?” she asked.
“We’re trying to draw them away from the civilians,” Frank said. “And we hope that the Ministry will show up soon, with backup.”
“They’ll spend all their energy trying to get into this building,” Alice added.
“Won’t they just run?” Elena didn’t understand why barricading themselves was the safe option.
Corinne laughed dryly. “Because they’ll get in eventually. We don’t have time to cast strong enough spells, and they know it. They want to kill us. They have us trapped here, they won’t just leave.”
Elena winced. So they were making themselves bait. It wasn’t the most attractive option, but it was better for her, she supposed. She would last longer here than out in a fight.
“Elena,” Alice said, after a moment of conference. “Come with Frank and me. We’re going to guard the back entrance.”
Elena would have preferred to stay with Corinne and Simon, but wasn’t going to contradict the others now. Besides, though she wanted to be assured of the safety of Simon, she didn’t want to have to actually interact with him.
Despite the fire that had raged recently, the building was not destroyed. The flames appeared to have been magical, for though they had scorched the contents of parts of the store, all the walls were still intact. Alice led the way to the back door. They paused only briefly when they saw the body of the owner. He still lay slumped over the counter. Carefully, Alice reached over and closed his eyes. With a sad smile, she brushed a piece of hair out of his face. Frank had to gently pull her away from the man and led the rest of the way to the back door.
The door was black, the handle still glowing slightly from the receding heat of the fire. Alice conjured up a chair and sat down while Frank cast more protective spells on the door. “That should hold them off a bit longer,” he said after a moment. The door now had ribbons of blue that crackled across it, physical representations of protection that now lay on it.
“Do you want to sit, Elena?” Alice asked, offering her the chair.
Elena wanted to be polite, but realized that she was exhausted and in fact did need to sit. She sank gratefully into the armchair, and almost had to laugh. She was about to defend this building against siege in a plush chair: the thought was ridiculous.
With a wave of her wand, Alice conjured up a small, blue sofa and sat down onto it. Moments later, Frank took a seat next to his wife. “We’ll stand up when they start attacking,” Alice said with a small smile. “But I’m sure that all their effort is concentrated on the front door now.”
“Will the others be able to hold them off?” Elena felt a twist of worry in her stomach as she craned her head to try to catch a glimpse of the front door, but she couldn’t even hear, much less see them.
Frank put his left arm around Alice’s shoulders, but kept his wand hand free. “They’re evenly matched,” he said solemnly. “Moody is probably the best Auror of his generation. And neither Simon nor Corinne is half bad.”
That was only a slight comfort. “If we outnumber the Lestranges,” she clarified, because it seemed as if Frank were forgetting the other two men, who had initially attacked, “Why didn’t we duel them? Why hide?”
“We might be able to duel them, but if a Ministry team gets here, they can capture them. We need them captured, so that they can be questioned about my father’s death,” Alice said softly. “Otherwise, the best we can hope for is trying to stay alive. You shouldn’t underestimate them—ever.”
Elena bit her lip and closed her eyes, trying to hear outside of the building, but could not make out any sound of battle. “Alright,” she said, feeling helpless.
“I’d tell you not to worry,” Alice said with a small smile, “but that would be a lie.”
Elena appreciated that honesty. “I’m sorry that we were so careless,” she said with a sigh. It was her fault, after all. She and Simon hadn’t bothered to check for traps when searching the room.
“This might be our only chance to capture them,” Frank commented, with a hint of a threat in his voice. “Whatever you were searching had to be important, or we would never have drawn them out into the open.”
Alice looked up at her husband, “But Bellatrix is mad. She isn’t one to consider discretion.”
“After her master died? She’s been careful. She doesn’t want to go to Azkaban.” Frank shook his head. “But all I’m trying to say is that this may be our only chance to capture the murderers. If we waste this, then they probably won’t try to attack us again. We may never find them.”
Elena considered that. “I’m probably wrong,” she said slowly, “but I feel as if this all leads to something bigger. The Minister died saying the country where my brother was killed.”
“Elena,” Alice said gently. “I know that it seems tempting to make those connections, but don’t expect to find anything. I’m so terribly sorry that your brother is dead, but it’s very possible that my father was delirious at the end. He didn’t know what he was saying.”
“This was all supposed to be over.” Elena thought of the joy and celebration at the end of the war. People had thought that life would be golden again, filled with prosperity and happiness. Instead, Elena had felt only more pain. At first, there had only been monotony at work, but it had quickly morphed into this nightmarish search for a murderer. Elena had not been expecting this complex web of deception, of search, of danger and even of romance. This was not her life. She was not prepared for this shadowy world that had enveloped her, erasing all that had happened before. Could she go back to being a Healer now that she had seen how much danger still lurked in the world? Would they let her? Would there even be a job to return to, if they did not succeed in stopping the murderers?
Alice leaned against her husband’s shoulder. “It was,” she said in a voice that spoke of regret. “In November, we both decided to work less to take care of Neville. We wanted him to have a parent around, because we hadn’t been there for him during the war. I wouldn’t have come back to this,” she indicated to the glowing door with her wand, “if it hadn’t been my father who was killed.” She pressed her lips together, probably realizing that now it was again possible that little Neville would have no family.
Elena again felt a twinge of guilt. It was her fault that the Minister had died. Not directly, of course, but he had been under her care when he died. She might have saved him and the Longbottoms could have stayed with their child.
“After this, it will be all over,” she said, trying to convince herself that it was true.
Frank kissed the top of Alice’s head, and Elena wished again that she had been asked to guard the front door. She felt like she was intruding on the couple.
She would have tried for a new topic of conversation, but a shout from the front of the store kept Elena from any more thoughts along that line. She jumped up from her chair, and was about to run to see what the matter was. The voice could only have been Simon’s.
“No!” Alice jumped to her feet and grabbed Elena’s arm. “They’re probably trying to warn us.”
Frank was on his feet, shoving the sofa aside and pacing in front of the door, his wand trained on the handle. Alice moved to his right side, having made sure that Elena was not leaving.
Unsure of what exactly to do, when the time came, Elena moved to Frank’s left. She could probably cast Protego against them, but beyond that, she wasn’t sure how to repel an attack. She wasn’t even sure what form the assault would come in. Perhaps, they would only try to weaken the protective spells. Then, there was nothing Elena could do because she was utterly ignorant of such difficult magic. However, they hadn’t told her to stand off to the side, so there had to be something she could do to help.
The room seemed to grow darker, while all the fleeing light concentrated in the enchantments of the door. Elena could hear nothing, expect for the breathing of the others around her. Her eyes watered from staring so hard at one spot on the door. It was only a matter of time.
It was only because of the silence that Elena recognized the pattern of footsteps. Someone was coming closer. After a moment, they stopped. Elena stopped breathing, but there was no more noise. She glanced sideways, to make sure that Frank and Alice had heard as well. Alice almost seemed to be trembling with anticipation, while Frank had turned to stone as he waited.
Suddenly, there was a sound much closer than before. A hard, insistent sound. A knock on the door. Once. Elena felt a shock throughout her body. Twice. She clenched her hand, ready to attack. Three times.
Beside her, Frank exploded into action. “Expulso,” he roared, slashing his wand across the door. The spell seemed to pass through the wood and Elena heard a crunch a moment later as a body collapsed onto brick.
Sweat ran down Elena’s forehead, dripping into her eyes. The door began to spark with energy, red and green threads of light joining the blue momentarily, before dissolving. Alice closed her eyes and put her wand next to the door. Her lips moved as she sent reinforcing ribbons of blue light into the door. With each new surge, the number of red and green streams of light diminished, but it was a constant struggle.
Frank narrowed his eyes and occasionally flicked his wand towards the door, issuing a silent spell towards an unseen opponent.
Elena felt utterly unsure of what to do. She had no idea how Frank’s curses managed to slip through the door without destroying it: she had no idea that such a thing was even possible. Alice seemed so deep in concentration that Elena dared not to ask how to help. Frantically, she looked around, the small storeroom and strained to hear sounds from the front of the store, but she noticed nothing of use.
She could only watch as the red and green threads in the door grew more and more frequent. Alice was turning grey, and her hair seemed limp with sweat.
“They’re all attacking here,” she muttered. “I don’t know how much longer I can renew the spell.”
“I’ll help,” Elena said, kneeling down as well.
Alice whispered an incantation, and Elena nodded. She tried to say the words silently, as Alice did but did not manage anything, other than a few blue sparks. After another attempt, she managed a blue thread, so tiny and short that it barely seemed to counter any attacks.
It was a repetitive process: think the spell, hope that it had some result. Elena was sure there was some nuance she hadn’t understood from Alice, but there was no time to ask.
Frank still was on the offensive, but it was clear that he had not managed to do any real damage, because the assault did not lessen. If anything, it became more brutal. Elena saw tendrils of black fire join the attack and felt a numb feeling fall over her body.
She could not think of anything other than the spell now. Any thoughts of Simon or Corinne, of her family, all faded from her mind. This was the kind of intense concentration required for only the most difficult healing.
Thus, it took her a moment to realize that more of the red, green and black lingered on the door than before. She glanced over at Alice, to see what had caused the enemies’ sudden gain and saw the other woman slumped on the floor. With a cry, Elena moved to her side, feeling for a pulse. Had a spell managed to get through, or was it exhaustion that had caused her collapse?
“She’s alive,” Elena said, dropping Alice’s wrist. There had been a pulse, albeit a weak one.
Frank looked down, a tortured expression on his handsome features. “I can’t—” he said, before wrenching his attention back to the door. If he stopped, then the protective enchantments would fall.
Elena didn’t bother with the usual diagnostic spells. She didn’t have time to figure out the best path of treatment, she just had to choose one. “Rennervate,” she said, casting the typical waking spell. Alice’s eyes fluttered and her finger twitched. Elena wanted to discover what had caused her collapse, but saw with horror that the door was more red than blue now. Alice was alive and that would have to do for the moment.
She raised her wand to begin renewing the spells when there was a flash of green light. The door shuddered and buckled, as if trying to hold off a barrage of spells. The light faded rapidly, and when it did Elena was shocked to see the door still in one piece. However, it was now a black piece of wood and retained not even a hint of blue light. Elena blinked her eyes, the after image of the green still seared on her eyes. She reached her hand forward, to touch the door, leaning her weight on it to check that it was still solid.
Behind her, Elena heard a series of dull thuds. She turned her head and saw Moody, with his wooden leg, looking grim. He hand his wand raised, and pointed at the door. His electric blue eye spun in its socket, taking in the scene.
In the next instant, the door flew open, moving out from Elena’s hand and she tumbled forward, suddenly off balance. She caught a glimpse of black, feminine shoes on the steps outside the door. A golden mask clattered down on the steps. Elena had only a second to recognize what is was before her hands collided with the wooden landing and she could push herself back into the store.
As she twisted around, she saw Moody, outlined in the doorway. His cloak billowed behind him; his face was dark and ominous. His wand shifted so it was pointed to the now-open door. Elena saw the spell before the words reached her ears. The bolt of green light that danced through the air was a beautiful thing: letting off tiny sparks and wound twinges of gold. The Auror’s rough voice had roared two words: “Avada Kedavra.”
Note: I'm sorry that writing this chapter took so much time! I meant to have it finished sooner, but I ended up redoing a lot of it. Also, it's my longest chapter yet, at 6k--sorry about the lenght! But, I've been made a trusted author, so that means, hopefully, that in the future you don't have to wait so long for me to post new updates. Also, I just wanted to say thank you to anyone who is still reading this story. This is the 20th chapter, which is huge, for me. I've never had a story this long. Also, with this chapter, Vital is over 80k in length, probably also the longest story I've written, ever. So thank you for helping me along this far!
Translation from the French-- Merde: Shit
Chapter 21
The air outside was cool and still. A bird chirped in the distance. Elena inhaled and exhaled—the entire breathe taking longer than Death Eater’s escape had. Her gaze shifted to Moody. He stood, a monument to endurance. His cloak hung heavily, brushing the floor. He had yet to move his arm from where it had been outstretched when he cast the deadly spell. Even his magical eyeball had slowed so it revolved once every five or so seconds. Only one aspect marred the image: the feral grin that was set upon his features. But even it faded as he saw Elena looking his way.
Or perhaps he stopped smiling at the sound of heavy footsteps, pounding on the wooden planks of the floor. Simon and Corinne burst through the doors. “Who is dead?” Corinne demanded, looking from Moody in the doorway, to an exhausted Alice on the floor.
Moody shook his head once. Frank helped Alice to a sitting position. “No one,” he said without affect. “Bellatrix avoided Alastor’s curse and they all fled.”
Corinne looked down and shoved her sweaty hair behind her ears in a vicious movement. “So you lost them.” Her words were combative, as if she wasn’t ready to end the battle in defear.
Moody took two uneven steps towards the centre of the room, his wooden leg sounding on the hollow floor. “She may have missed the Killing Curse, but she didn’t avoid the tracking spell.” A triumphant look settled on his face as he reached inside of his robes for a moment. “She won’t be expecting anyone to follow. I’ll send word in ten minutes. Anyone who can handle themselves in a fight should come after me then.” With those words, Moody disapparated, leaving Elena’s mind reeling.
A small smile crept onto Corinne’s lips, but Elena felt numb. She couldn’t make her brain process everything that had just happened: her mind couldn’t take so much contradiction. Bellatrix was going to die, but she escaped. They had lost track of the Death Eaters but Moody had tracked them. The battle was over, but Moody would summon them in minutes to continue the fight.
With a sigh she rose to her feet, feeling unsteady. Did she have strength to keep fighting? Despite her still pounding heart, she felt no adrenaline rush. Dread pooled in her stomach. Across the room, Simon was watching her, but Elena didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, she turned to Alice, who was conscious, but pale. “Are you alright?” she asked.
“I’ll be fine.” Alice’s voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.
“In any other situation I’d tell you to go straight to St. Mungo’s,” Elena said slowly, thinking of the barrage of tests that would normally have been performed on the victim of an unknown curse.
“We can’t take her there,” Simon interjected, as Corinne added: “No!”
Elena turned around, frowning. “Are you even listening?” she snapped. “In any other situation. Not here, not now.” Why did they always assume she couldn’t think practically?
Corinne gave a shrug, “I wasn’t,” she said dryly.
Frank gave a choked laugh from the floor. “You’re going to be fine,” he said to his wife, brushing a strand of hair out of her face.
“Of course she is,” Elena said with certainty that she didn’t have, it was a tone she’d learned from addressing the hysterical relatives of her patients. She crouched down, so she could address at Alice. “You did collapse, but now you’re awake. If you were in any serious danger, you’d be unconscious. Okay?” That wasn’t entirely true, Elena could think of countless curses that postponed damage. The patient seemed fine, until they were suddenly bleeding and near death. But those were obscure spells, and complex. Elena had to assume that Bellatrix hadn’t been going for subtlety during the attack.
A hand closed on Elena’s arm and she flinched in surprise as Simon pulled her upright. She didn’t speak as she turned around to face him and Corinne. They seemed to share the same mercurial mood that let them switch from sarcasm to anger to gravity in an instant. “Alastor is going to send instructions soon.” Simon said. “As soon as he gets a handle of the situation, he’ll call us to help with an ambush.”
Elena didn’t even know what question to begin with. How did they know what Moody was planning? When would he call for them? Would the Lestranges be expecting them?
“This is our best chance of capturing them,” Corinne added, as if that knowledge would somehow make the uncertainty easier to bare. She looked from Simon to Elena and nodded once, as if the gesture settled things. “I'll talk with Frank.”
“Yeah,” Simon’s voice sounded strained. He stared over Elena’s shoulder at Corinne, and sighed. “Come over here,” he said finally in a low tone and motioned for Elena to follow him away from the others, over towards a blackened dinner table.
She bit her lip. This conversation was going to be unpleasant. Simon would tell her he didn’t think she should come because it wasn’t going to be safe. But she didn’t care. “I’m not staying behind,” she said before he could speak.
Simon’s eyes were strangely tinged with green in this light, Elena noticed as she waited for him to speak. “Elena,” he said at last. “That wasn’t what I was going to say, at all.”
“No?” Elena couldn’t decide whether to be incredulous or relieved.
“Listen to me: we need all the help we can get.” Simon seemed to interpret her question as disbelieving.
That wasn’t what he had said after she had come to find him. He had been furious with her for putting herself in danger. And the situation hadn’t been nearly as dire. “Is that it then?” Now was not the time to start any sort of dispute, surely Simon knew better than anyone that Moody would summon them in mere minutes. They needed time to prepare, time to plan. Elena turned back towards Corinne and the Longbottoms.
“I’m sorry.” Simon’s voice had an edge to it that made her turn back. He paused. “We need to talk and I know that we can’t now. But I’m sorry.”
Elena looked up, staring at his face. It had grown familiar these past few months: his dark hair, his warm eyes, the open friendly look that he could adopt when he wasn’t being an Auror. And yet, for some reason, she felt a surge of anger at his apology. “Are you?” she snapped.
He nodded, the frown crinkling his forehead a profession of his sincerity. “Yes.”
Elena clenched and unclenched her hands. “You can’t do this to me,” she said. “I don’t know what’s happening between us, if you even care.” She looked away. “I thought you were dead, Simon. I thought you had died. And you yelled at me.”
“Don’t tell me that,” Simon’s voice was low and shaking. “I sent you out of that building so that you would be safe. And you came back! You didn’t even bother to save yourself.”
The bitterness of his words made Elena want to cringe away, but instead she kept speaking. Apparently they indeed were having this conversation now. “I came with Corinne.” Elena’s voice was more confrontational than she had wanted it to sound. “Besides, who are you to decide what I do and do not do? You should have left the building, leaving me inside. You’re more use than me in a fight.”
“Elena,” Simon snapped. “You’re being ridiculous.” His eyes had lost any warmth and were now staring at her, as if he couldn’t believe she was standing there. “Why would I leave you behind?”
She looked down, not wanting to see his face so transformed. “Because you think I’m worthless to you in a fight! I can’t duel; you’d waste energy protecting me.”
“That’s a lie.” Simon slammed his hand down the table top. “You’re still alive,” he said sharply. “Yes, you’re a Healer not an Auror, but you aren’t worthless.”
Elena laughed dryly. “I can’t heal dead men, Simon. A Healer isn’t much use to us now.”
“You saved my life.” Simon’s voice was quiet.
Elena was about to make another cutting remark, but stopped. A tight sensation filled her chest, and she realized that she was, perhaps, on the verge of tears. This was exactly what she wanted to tell Simon—that, as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t, shouldn’t be trusted to be strong, not when she couldn’t even control her own emotions. Ashamed of her obvious weakness, Elena turned her back so Simon couldn’t see her face.
“You are not worthless.” His voice was loud, too loud for the room, with the others nearby. “You’ve been as much help as any other Auror could when we were searching. I don’t want you to leave. I didn’t want you to leave then. I was just—” Simon paused, as if waiting for a reaction.
Elena studied the floor, scarred black with flames and dusted with silvery ash. “Just what?” she asked in a whisper, still not trusting the strength of her voice.
“You shouldn’t have to die for this.” Simon replied vehemently. “You didn’t sign up; you never agreed to this. I was wrong to take you along and ask you to stay. It’s selfish of me that I still want you here.”
“What are you saying?” Elena couldn’t make sense of his point. He had just told her that she wasn’t worthless, and now he regretted ever asking her for her help? Besides, she hadn’t been forced to stay—that much had been made clear early on.
He took a step closer to her. “If something happens to you, it will be my fault.”
Elena sighed, and forced herself to turn around. “You are being ridiculous,” she said, shaking her head. But this time, she managed a smile. She realized a bit dizzily that she was standing very close to Simon. If she just leaned forward another inch, they would be touching. As a healer, Elena had prided herself on her composure, her ability to isolate her emotions and stay focused in any situation but here she lacked that self control and managed to stop questioning why they were having this sort of discussion practically in the middle of a battle. She still didn’t understand all of Simon’s actions but she felt that she understood, at the very least, the emotions that caused them.
He returned her smile and reached his hand towards her face. Elena smiled wider. She couldn’t forget what he had said to her, but at least he hadn’t meant to be malicious. That small act of forgiveness surprised her. In another time, she would have found it hard to believe any justification for Simon’s actions but here, she couldn’t know how much longer she would have to hold such a grudge. Her life had accelerated and her emotions along with it. It was both thrilling and disorienting, to go from resentment to fear, to concentration, to anger, to forgiveness in such short time.
A noise, a crackling of sorts, called Elena back to reality. It had come from behind her, but it sounded in Elena’s mind as a reminder from the past. It was the exact same pitch and tone as the buzz that preceded the magical intercom at St. Mungo’s, the sound that alerted Healers to emergency cases. Elena had been conditioned to drop whatever she was doing at the sound and even months out of St. Mungo’s hadn’t allowed her to forget the reaction. She stiffened and turned, looking for the source of the noise.
Simon caught her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
Elena only shook her head and walked closer to the centre of the small room. Corinne, who had been discussing something with Frank, gave a little smile. “Thank God,” she said dryly. “I was afraid that I was going to have to put a stop to you two.”
Elena couldn’t even manage a glare at Corinne. She was staring instead at the spot on the floor that she was sure the noise had come from. A small silver cigarette lighter lay on the floor. She reached down to pick it up, sure she hadn’t seen the object before. Moody would have been standing on it when he disapparated.
“What is that?” someone demanded. Elena ignored them, and flicked the catch of the lighter almost automatically, wondering if it worked. But, instead of producing the usual flame, the room instantly plunged into darkness as all the light in the room surged into the silver device. Alice cried out in surprise from the floor and Elena heard footsteps stop as Simon and Corinne froze in the darkness.
“Lumos,” Corinne said, and for an instant there was light, until it too flowed into the lighter. “God damn it,” Corinne hissed. “Where’s Alastor?”
“Elena, put that down,” Frank said in a cautious tone, as if dealing with a skittish animal.
“Give it to me,” Simon used an equally calm tone. “I’m right behind you; just give whatever that is to me.”
Elena felt the cold metal against her skin and shivered. “Where?” she asked Simon, trying to keep her voice steady in the absolute, unconditional darkness.
Corinne tried again to cast a spell for light, only to have it vanish into the object in Elena’s hand.
“Here, I’m here,” Simon’s hand pressed softly against her back. “Just hand it to me, alright?”
Elena nodded before realizing he couldn’t see the action. “Yes.”
She felt his hand on her elbow, then her wrist. With a tiny gasp, she laid the silver lighter into his hand, as delicately as possible. As soon as Elena had let it go, Simon stepped back, as if he were trying to put as much distance as possible between the device in his hand and her.
“I’ve got it,” he said, still in that unnaturally calm tone.
The voice that spoke next came from below Elena. “I can’t see.” Alice had a touch of hysteria in her tone. “It’s all black.”
“Don’t worry,” Frank reassured her. “It’s just dark in here. You’re fine.”
Alice’s breathing sounded heavy in the darkness. Elena listened to her struggling for air and wished she could determine if it was a result of her panic or a latent symptom of a curse. She thought about asking several diagnostic questions but her mind was distracted by the blackness that was crushing around her. And the device, whatever it had done, was dangerous. The other’s surprise and worry had been evident.
“What happened?” Alice asked.
Corinne made a sound that was like laughter. “Elena picked up this silver thing from the floor and all the light went out. In other matters, we’re still waiting for Alastor to tell us where to meet him, and he should have told us about three minutes ago.”
There was a shift as Alice moved. “Sliver thing?”
“Yeah. One of those Muggle cigarette lighters,” Corinne sounded as if she didn’t think it were the time for technicalities.
“I’ve seen Alastor with that.” A note of lucidity had returned to Alice’s voice.
Elena exhaled in relief, not realizing that she had been holding her breath. She hadn’t realized how apprehensive she’d been until now. There were a million terrible things the lighter could have been, but if Moody had it, it couldn’t be terribly dangerous. She turned towards Simon once more, only to see a pinprick of blue in the darkness. At first, she thought it was just her eyes playing tricks, hallucinating in the darkness, but the glow seemed to grow. “Simon, do you—.” She could see movement as he nodded.
“Are you sure it was Alastor’s?” Corinne questioned, though her voice sounded relieved as well.
The light was now bright enough that Elena could see Simon, who was standing several feet from her. “Yes.”
“You know, it looks like a Portkey.” There was a noise as Frank rose to his feet.
Corinne was at Simon’s side in a second, her previous distance forgotten. The glow was the brilliant, unmistakable blue of a Portkey—Frank was right. Elena glanced at the man and saw that he was trying to help Alice to her feet. She gave him a tight smile. “Go,” she ordered. “I’m strong enough to make it home.”
Elena didn’t see what his response was because Corinne grabbed her and pulled her towards the blue light. Corinne’s hand was clenched around Simon’s forearm, as if she didn’t dare to touch the source of the light itself. Elena reached out and took Simon’s other hand in her own.
“Frank,” Corinne said. “If you’re coming, do it now!” Her words were accompanied by a surge in blue light that ran up Simon’s arm, spilling over into Corinne’s hand. Elena felt Simon’s fingers tighten on her own.
Frank took one last look at Alice and flung himself towards Corinne, catching hold of her shoulder just as the cascade of light grew to mask Elena’s vision. She could still feel a familiar tugging sensation that lifted them upwards, out of the burnt building.
The instant of travel blurred into a gentle landing that masked the haste of their departure. The cool air misted as the blue light diminished and Elena was left blinking at the contrast. But before Elena could take in the gloomy forest they now stood in, the Aurors fell back on years of training and were alert, with wands ready. She felt a touch foolish as Simon pulled his hand from hers.
“Took you long enough,” Moody rasped, stepping out from behind a tree into a patch of sunlight.
“What the hell was that?” Frank demanded. “I thought you were going to send a Patronus message.” The normally level headed man took a step towards Moody.
Moody held out his hand and Simon dropped the silver lighter into it. “No idea what it is. Borrowed it from Dumbledore. He said it should do the trick for something like this. Didn’t bother to explain to me how it worked though.”
Elena balked. Dumbledore? Moody knew the Headmaster of Hogwarts that well? There was something so unintellectual about Moody that she was surprised that the professor could stand him.
“Never mind that,” Corinne snapped, as if irritated by the question. “Where are the Lestranges?” She didn’t even consider that he hadn’t found them.
Moody grinned, showing uneven teeth. “Quarter of a mile that way,” he jerked his head to the left. “I think they’re waiting to meet that cousin of theirs Rosier.”
“Rosier’s cousin to Rabastan Lestrange?” Frank frowned.
Simon narrowed his eyes, “Aren’t they all related somehow? Rosier and his lot?” The venom with which Simon said the name reminded Elena of where she had heard it before. It was who Simon had blamed for Lara’s death. Perhaps, he had been one of the men who had attacked them ages ago in the alley.
“Right, that’s why I called in a bit of backup,” Moody said with a grunt, adjusting his cloak as the insistent wind pushed it off his shoulders again.
Elena turned her gaze slowly to Corinne, who had set her jaw. “Simon,” she said in a carrying, cutting tone, “Am I hearing this correctly? Isn’t Ministry involvement exactly what we’ve been avoiding this entire time?”
Simon took a step back and shot a glance at Moody, as if wondering why he was taking the brunt of Corinne’s fury. “I didn’t suggest it,” he began.
“Don’t start!” Corinne snapped.
He held up his hands, again sending an imploring look at Moody. “Though it’s not a terrible idea. Listen, it’s better we capture the Lestranges alive and this is our best chance.”
“I can’t believe this,” Corinne stalked towards Frank, before rounding again on Simon. “You’re just saying that because Rosier will be there and you want a shot at him. Is that it, Burke?”
Simon seemed to have overcome his surprise and didn’t move as Corinne moved closer to him. “I want the bastard dead as much as anyone, but you have to see the logic. This is almost over now and we can use the extra help.”
Corinne had descended into muttering in French, and Moody seemed to take that as a sign of her acquiescence. “We need to change position,” he said curtly. “If they’ve got half a brain or a half decent alarm system, they picked up on your yelling. We surround them on all sides, keep them from moving. The others are coming in minutes.”
“Dupont, you’ll be on the North. I’ll take the South side of camp. Frank has the East, Simon, West.” He nodded at each as he said their name. “We wait until their guests show up and trap ‘em.”
Elena took a deep breath. Moody hadn’t instructed her to stay behind, so he had no right to leave her out of his plan. “And me?”
“I don’t know you,” he said, as if that were reason enough to ignore her.
“You can come with me,” Simon said putting an arm over Elena’s shoulders.
Corinne pinched her lips together into a thin line. “No. You shouldn’t be distracted. Elena can come with me.” She sounded less exasperated than cautious, as if she were expecting Simon to object.
“Or maybe you just need someone to listen to you whinge,” Simon joked, before placing a kiss on top of Elena’s head. She blushed; she hated being treated like a child who had to be cared for. But, for the hundredth time, Elena told herself that in this situation, she was not the best, not the expert and had no idea what Moody’s plan was. She wasn’t an Auror and shouldn’t expect Moody to treat her like one.
Without further words, the group divided as Moody had described, casting disillusionment spells and charms for concealment and silence. There was something to be said for the communal knowledge the Aurors seemed to share—they weren’t asking any of the usual tactical questions.
Elena shivered as a charm dripped down her spine, and watched as the magic began to camouflage her skin. Corinne, now little more than a blurry shape against the forest touched Elena’s arm and set off at rapid pace. Elena didn’t have to be told to scan her surroundings, to listen for any sound. She knew that she could never be careful enough.
As Corinne tapped Elena’s arm again, and stopped moving, Elena realized that they were on the edge of a clearing. It wasn’t a natural opening in the forest, but rather one hacked into the woods. Burnt trees lay scattered and snapped on the sides. Scorch marks covered the dirt and the skeletons of several shrubs lingered on the edge.
A crude black pavilion provided some shade to three figures underneath it. Elena couldn’t see their faces, but she noticed that the two men were pacing while the woman sat on a chair like a throne.
“Now we wait,” Corinne said softly.
Elena nodded, not wanting to speak. There was something about the place that made her skin crawl. It looked diseased. The air was stagnant here and had lost the shocking coldness of before. There was a particular odour, that of rotting bodies that seemed to ooze from bright orange fungus on the trees.
Time seemed to be as frozen as the earth beneath Elena’s feet. She could only mark the passing of time by the numbing in her fingers and toes. At first, they stung but over time the initial pain grew to a heavy, dull ache.
How long could they wait here? Moody had spoken as if it would be minutes before the Ministry arrived. But perhaps the man had a different sense of time than most.
It was all the worse for the silence. Elena didn’t dare talk to Corinne, for fear of distraction. It was easier to be quiet if she pretended she was alone here. She might as well have been—Corinne was very nearly invisible.
The Lestranges seemed unbothered by the cold. Bellatrix remained seated, while the two brothers paced, their paths never extending past a certain point. They were not conflicted, nor even particularly alert, simply trying to pass the time, as Elena was.
But passing the time wasn’t the ultimate goal for either party. Corinne tensed beside Elena as the clearing exploded with a crack, producing a burly man, dressed in Death Eater garb.
The surrounding woods seemed to exhale and a dozen or so people burst out of the trees in unison. The Ministry had arrived.
Note--I know that it took me forever to get this chapter out. And because of that, it should be fantastic. But it's not. I realize that this is short, and doesn't advance much, but think of it as Part 1 of a chapter. I wanted to post something, to show that I haven't stopped writing all together. That being said, feedback would be very much appreciated!
Note (Dec 2012)--So in anticipation for the next chapter (which is coming up very soon!) I've had to make a few decent edits to this chapter. Nothing major changes until the end, which has just been changed to help the pace of this chapter and to better set up the next few chapters.
Chapter 22
Battle readiness was not an instinct. It took Elena’s brain a minute to catch up with what her eyes were seeing. Her head spun until she could name the cloaks cracking through the air, and the whips of light that sliced through the fog.
Corinne had pushed her aside in an effort to enter the fray, leaving Elena’s arm throbbing. The slight pain brought her mind into focus and she stopped her absent musings about the way the mist glowed with blue and green, about how she wasn’t sure how the Ministry could tell themselves apart from the Lestranges.
Instead, she sprinted after Corinne, feeling the disillusionment spell fly off her back like drops of water. She wasn’t going to try to attack any of the Death Eaters head on—Elena knew from experience that she would last a minute at best—but she could help in other ways, shielding the Aurors from whatever they missed.
But battle wasn’t quite as neat as that, especially with so many bodies trying to tear each other apart. Spells didn’t scream out their destinations, but rather travelled indiscriminately, hitting whatever they first touched which in the whirl of battle was not often their intended target.
Even on the relative fringes, Elena had to duck to avoid rogue curses. At the start, they were simple hexes; no on seeming willing to risk killing or maiming an ally. That was the problem with dueling—you had to be too close for it to be effective. This wasn’t the showy, gentlemanly sport that old families participated in, dressed in lace collared robes. This wasn’t at all the optional class at Hogwarts that had stressed protocol and sportsmanship above all else. No, this was fighting where a slash of a wand might hit actually hit an opponent. This was a physical attack, where kicks were exchanged as often as disarming spells.
She couldn’t make out more than flashes of faces, most unfamiliar to her. Was that Corinne’s arm? Did she see Simon hurl a jinx into Evan Rosier? The air was loud with gasping breaths and shouts of curses—silent spells didn’t matter when no one could hear your voice anyways.
“DEAD OR ALIVE,” Moody bellowed, his contorted face becoming clear for a second as his words lifted above the crowd. There was no further strategy than that. This was not an organized assault, this was a last ditch attempt to eliminate threats, in whatever manner proved most convenient.
Yet that seemed to signal some change in the gravity of the fight. Each side now lanced forbidden curses at each other. The Death Eaters knew that they were outnumbered and were indiscriminate. The Ministry knew their opponents had the advantage of fighting for their lives.
A slender figure detached itself from the mass of black fabric and light, stumbling to the ground. She shuddered once and went limp. A list of potions and charms flooded Elena’s mind unbidden. Suddenly, she felt ridiculous. She was a Healer! She was not needed as a fighter, not when there were so many others trained. There was no reason she had to stand guard at the fringes just as the Aurors didn’t stop to practice their limited healing skills.
Taking a deep breath, Elena dove forward, towards the woman on the ground, hoping that if she crouched low, she could avoid the worst of the battle.
For an instant, Elena hunched next to the woman, felt her breath on her hand and started to drag her towards the edge of the clearing. Something less physical—apparation—simply wasn’t possible with the woman covered in blood. And she wasn’t so much dragging as pulling the woman—she was levitating inches off the ground, enough to keep the rocks from opening new wounds.
“Get down!” a voice shrieked and Elena dropped, falling heavily, a stone snagging her knee. She smelled the burning of hair as an acrid jet of light seared the air above her head. Had it been an attack, or simply a meandering spell Elena couldn’t tell, but she heaved herself to her feet a second later, and shuffled the last dozen yards to a cluster of brush, which provided a modicum of shelter.
She let her patient settle and took a better look at the woman. Mid-twenties, close cropped dark hair, broad features. Blood smeared her left cheek, and was oozing from a wound in her side. A quick spell told Elena that her breathing was normal enough—it the spell hadn’t hit a lung.
There was no time for complex diagnostics that searched for obscure hexes. Field Healing wasn’t so academic. Instead, Elena held her wand up to the long slice and cast a spell to affix the wound shut. It wasn’t as effective as the searing of Dittany, but one hardly carried a vial of it around.
As Elena traced the gash, blood congealed and the skin drew together, leaving a heavy scar but stopping the immediate danger. It didn’t appear as if any vital organs had been damaged and the sealing spell would mend the ruptured veins, but Elena wished she could be more certain.
After all, this woman could have been her brother. Until the War, the Auror Office had attracted men, primarily, and that was whom they had dispatched in early days. But as the older veterans died, they had to dispatch the youth, knowing they too would die in droves. Maybe this fighter had a family who worried of a day they would hear in rumors that she was dead.
But that couldn’t matter, not when the woman was still pale. Elena cast another spell, speeding the replenishment of the lost blood. Pending any arcane curses, she would live. This woman was not Oliver, was not going to die alone.
“Silencio,” she hissed. “Rennervate.” The woman’s eyes shot open and her hands flew up to grasp Elena’s wrists. Her nails dug into Elena’s wrist in stabbing bites of pain.
“Stop it,” Elena ordered. “I’m a Healer. Don’t hurt me.”
The woman’s mouth opened as she struggled to speak and Elena saw her mouth several obscenities before she relaxed her grip. Elena suspected that offering her back her wand might have also had something to do with it.
“You’ve only been out a few minutes,” she explained, casting a brief glance in the direction of the battle, wishing she could see the progress. “But you shouldn’t move,” she tacked on as the woman tried to roll to her side.
Elena’s patient gestured to her mouth angrily. “Right. Sorry about that, I didn’t want you to scream when you woke up,” Elena said with a laugh, relieved that the woman seemed to have healed well. “But really, before you can try to convince me otherwise, just promise you won’t move.”
The woman rolled her eyes, and nodded in sullen agreement. Laughing, Elena pushed her hair back from her face and was about to mutter the counter curse when the woman jabbed her knee into Elena’s ribs. She sprung into a crouch as Elena recoiled in indignation. She was about to reprimand her patient when she felt something warm brush her back.
Before she could even look, her wand jerked out of her hand, as did her patient’s. The injured woman launched herself to her feet, only to be met midway with a boot to her injured ribs. She collapsed to the ground, still unable to speak or cry in pain.
Elena tried to scramble away, but the brush was too dense and full of brambles. The attacker caught a hold of her hair and yanked her head back. Elena felt her scalp sear with pain and screamed as she was forced to stand. An arm wrapped across her chest, pulling her towards the assailant, restraining her.
“Avada Kedavra!” a female voice laughed in brashly in Elena’s ear, sending the final spell to Elena’s patient. At such a close range, there was no way for the woman to escape, and Elena screamed again as she watched the woman’s body tense for a second, before falling utterly limp.
But her shock was not dissimilar from her fury and Elena stomped her foot down on her capturer’s instep, and jabbed her elbow back, all the while twisting against the arm that pinned her to the attacker’s chest.
“Stop that,” the voice was tinged again with amusement. Elena knew the tone, haughty, amused, aloof, deranged. Bellatrix Lestrange seemed impervious to pain as she tightened her grip on Elena. “I’d rather not kill a pureblood if I don’t have too.”
Elena refused to let herself feel sick at the words, at the sight of the dead woman who had just moments before tried to rejoin a fight despite her injuries, and let her weight drop. She twisted to face Bellatrix, surprised that she was nearly the same height as the other woman. With a gasp, she freed an arm and pulled at Bellatrix’s hair, trying to reach her wand.
“Crucio,” Bellatrix replied in a monotone, and Elena felt a wand jab into her side. There was a flash of searing pain, so intense it was bright in her eyes. She half wondered if she were bleeding, if she were going to die from whatever injury had caused this searing.
But instead, her body went limp, the pain fading and once again she was contained by the Death Eater. “Walk,” was the given order, and this time Elena didn’t try to resist. Anything to avoid that pain again.
She shuffled forward, a wand trained at her head, walking straight into the clearing.
A few yards in, Bellatrix stopped with a yank on Elena’s hair. She didn’t announce her presence or her hostage, just stood, waiting to be recognized.
Tears blurred Elena’s vision and she could do nothing to wipe them away. Her body was weak from the curse as was her mind. She didn’t want to die, not like this, not as a hostage. She didn’t want her friends to have to kill her so that they could kill Lestrange. They wouldn’t have a choice, not if Bellatrix Lestrange were the ultimate target—the woman was enough of a menace to warrant extreme measures and certainly collateral damage.
“Look!” Bellatrix, cried out, raising her wand to the sky. Elena felt the spell explode into the air and green light fell upon the clearing. From the hissing of the fighters, Elena knew that if she could tilt her head up, she would see the skull and snake of the Dark Mark. “The Dark Lord remains, even now!”
That if nothing else stopped the fray. “I’ve got one too!” someone shouted triumphantly, stepping aside to reveal a bound Lestrange brother—Elena wasn’t sure which. It seemed from the way the Aurors had grouped that the other Death Eaters were not there. The battle must have fragmented. Or Elena hoped that perhaps, the enemies were some of the bodies lying on the ground.
Bellatrix laughed, her breath was rancid has Elena struggled to keep herself clam. “Are we going to exchange hostages now and part ways? I’d much rather not. How about this? You remove the anti-apparation jinx you’ve put on the place. I leave.”
A tall man stepped out of the crowd. “We don’t negotiate with Death Eaters.” Elena didn’t recognize him, in fact, she didn’t see a single familiar face in the small group. Simon, Moody, Frank, Corinne, no one to even shout her name. She couldn’t think straight enough to rationalize why they might be away, just that they had to be. There weren’t enough bodies on the ground for them all to be gone.
“I’ll kill your Healer,” Bellatrix took a step, nudging Elena forward. “If any of you so much as call for your other friends, I’ll kill her. Now, remove the jinx.”
From the way the Aurors shifted, none of them seemed particularly worried. None of them knew Elena. No one there thought her life was particularly worth saving. “We can’t,” the same tall man offered, now sounding sheepish. “Moody set it.”
“Please,” Bellatrix giggled. “When will they ever teach you to lie properly? Why would I summon the only worthy opponent out of you back here?”
The man trained his wand on the Death Eater. “We don’t negotiate,” he repeated softly this time, calculating how fast he could call the others, or kill Bellatrix.
Another sharp pain began in Elena’s neck. “I didn’t want to spill pure blood, but I will.” Elena felt the sound in her back and heard her own wail as blood began to stream. It wasn’t a deep cut, she was relatively certain, but enough to make her dizzy from the blood loss. Not fatal if they caught it soon enough.
There was a shout as someone mimicked the cut on the hostage Lestrange brother. “What are you doing?” the spokesman demanded sharply.
“An eye for an eye,” was the reply.
Elena suddenly noticed how cold she was, despite the heat of the blood that now soaked her collar. She was so cold, and so tired. In the distance, too far away for her to tell whom, someone said her name. Her ears were ringing and her vision speckled, but she tried to see. Only she was tired.
It was almost too easy, this time, to relax her legs, to let her weight shift down and forward. There was an instant where Bellatrix shifted her weigh forward too, bending slightly because she couldn’t help it. It was either let Elena go, or lose focus to hold her upright.
The vise-like grip loosened, and Elena slid to the ground. A stunner passed just above her head. She had to move, she knew. She was still too close, but now the Aurors had the advantage. Bellatrix had lost her hostage and her shield.
Absently, Elena wished she had a blanket and reached her hand up to rub a drop of water from her neck. Only the pain was so sharp that she nearly lost consciousness. Her head spun and her eyes squeezed shut.
And then there were hands, turning her onto her back, brushing her hair back. Everything was soft now, blurred and floating and she thought she would just sleep, rather than try to think. Even the pain was gone now, and her mind couldn’t even remind her why it had been there at all.
And then sensation returned as jolts of energy ratcheted down Elena’s limbs and her eyes sprung open. The fog had lifted and she sat up, ending up face to face with Frank Longbottom. “Did you remember to replenish lost blood?” Elena asked, running her fingers along the now sealed scar at her neck.
Frank looked mildly surprised at the question. “Elena, get up and run.” He kept his voice even, but as soon as he had finished, he lifted her to her feet and started to sprint.
She ran without thinking about how to, without realizing that green spells chased them. She didn’t know where or why they were running, or how long she could, but that spell that had woken her had also kept her from caring. Adrenaline surged and she followed Frank as best she could.
She stopped when Frank did, at the sound of voices. She couldn’t see the speaker, but she could hear the menace in his tone.
“What is in Albania?”
“I don’t know,” Simon said.
Elena was breathing hard from running, but still managed to gasp. Frank grabbed her arm, as if he expected her to move.
“You know she mentioned Albania to me,” the voice was male and rough.
There was a pause, then a grunt from Simon. “I don’t know who she is.”
“The guard.”
Natalya. There was no one else he could be talking about. Elena felt her limbs shaking and her pulse in her newly formed scar. She couldn’t run past the clump of trees to Simon, she shouldn’t.
“I never talked to a guard.” Simon kept his voice even, placating.
The man laughed once, more a bark than anything. “That’s because I killed her.”
“What did she do?” The calm was gone from the conversation.
“What you did, refuse to talk. That’s right, I see you looking scared. I see that fear. I saw it a year ago when you found your girlfriend’s body.”
Elena wished she could see something, wished she wasn’t just hearing something that sounded like a nightmare.
Simon didn’t use words to respond to the taunt, instead there was a cry and a thud. The sounds of fighting. And then a single word: “Crucio.”
Screams—Simon’s—filled the air and Elena had to cover her own mouth to keep from joining in. That man was going to kill him. Simon sounded like he was dying and Elena couldn’t even reach him. She wanted to tear at the man who was torturing him, to rip his wand from his hand and snap it in half.
Silence. “What is in Albania?”
“I will kill you, Rosier,” Simon said in a growl to the Death Eater.
“What is in Albania?”
Elena didn’t think, and launched herself forward, towards the voices. Frank didn’t even try to stop her. Her leg caught on brambles, and her hair snagged on sticks. She realized as she left the cover of the trees that she wasn’t holding her wand. But still she stopped between the man and Simon, who was tied and on his knees.
“My brother,” she replied.
For a second, the man looked shocked, but then Simon made a sound, exhaling in resignation.
Before anyone could move, Elena lunged at the man, knowing that she couldn’t over power him. But she didn’t have a wand, so attack was her only option.
But it was a futile as she had guessed it would be. He dismissed her with a flick of his wand, sending her skidding into Simon. With a swirl, ropes tightly bound her ankles and wrists.
“Your girlfriend, Burke?” Rosier said, wiping a drop of blood from a scratch on his forehead. “She seems even denser than that last one.”
“You bastard,” Simon hissed, trying to shift himself so that he was at least partly in front of Elena.
“But at least she knows how to talk,” the Death Eater mused. His hood had fallen back and Elena could see oily brown hair. “So why was your brother in Albania, sweetheart?”
Elena bit her lip. “Work.” She could stall by giving the vaguest answers possible.
Rosier shook his head and bend over. With a jerk, he lifted Elena to her feet and put a hand on Elena’s cheek. “And what was his work?”
Elena stared into his eyes. “With the Ministry.”
“Bitch,” Rosier pushed her, so that she stumbled backwards. “I asked you what why he was in Albania!”
If Elena could have taken her eyes off the man, she would have seen Simon’s face, splotched and red. Saw the fury in his eyes. “Don’t touch her,” he said in a deadly voice.
“And who are you to stop me?” Rosier said absently, rolling his wand in his fingers. “I could kill you both and I could kill you now.”
“No,” Elena said, setting her jaw.
Rosier blinked and a smile slid onto his face. “Good girl. Keep talking.”
This was a risk and Elena knew it, but she had to waste time as best she could until someone could think of something. “It’s a long story,” she said, glancing towards the ground. “Tell me what you already know.”
“Oh?” Rosier smirked. “It sounds more like you’re trying to stall me. You know what would be faster, to torture your friend here.” He jabbed his wand towards Simon.
Elena bit her lip. “He was in Albania because of the War,” she blurted out. “He was an Auror.”
“Elena, stop it,” Simon ground out. “Stop it right now.”
She shook her head marginally. She could tell him everything because he was going to die soon enough. That was what she had to bet on. “He found something,” she continued, staring so hard at Rosier’s face that she noticed the pocked scarring on his cheeks, covered by a shadow of a beard. “It was important too, important enough that he wanted everyone to know. He sent a letter to the Minister’s daughter Alice. That’s how the Minister knew it.” Now she was hedging, trying to fill in the story as best she could. “That’s why Natalya knew. He had asked her to look into it. But when she couldn’t tell you, you went after the man who would know.”
Rosier had stopped sneering; there was a glint in his eyes that let Elena know she was telling him what he wanted to hear. The only problem was, she had no idea what the thing her brother had found was. “Who’s in Albania?” The Death Eater demanded, looking gleeful.
Who. That was the wrong word—Oliver’s letter had mentioned a relic. “You mean what.” Elena said, aiming for dramatic flourish.
As soon as she said the words, she could tell that they had been a mistake. Rosier’s face darkened and he took a step forward. “No,” he said slowly. “Who not what.” As he enunciated the words, Elena could see the flecks of yellow on his teeth.
“He always said it was a what,” Elena began, her voice trembling. “My brother that’s what he said.”
Rosier hit her again, this time hard enough that Elena fell to ground. With her hands bound, she couldn’t catch her fall and hit the ground roughly. A rock jabbed into her ribs and her feet were tangled awkwardly in their ropes.
“Liar!” The man’s voice rang out. “How’s this, Burke, you tell me the truth or I’ll hurt your girlfriend here.” Ethan Rosier stepped over Elena so that he was between her and Simon.
Simon had managed to stay silent through the whole exchange but Elena could hear him struggling now. She turned her head and saw a streak of blood running down his temple. For both their sakes, Elena hoped Simon could follow her logic. Rosier would be dead soon; Simon could tell him everything. Of course, that depended on Simon knowing the truth and on someone coming to kill Rosier before he decided Elena and Simon were no longer valuable.
“I don’t know,” Simon snapped. “I don’t know anything.”
“It’s not hard,” Rosier drawled. “Just tell me something.”
Elena moved her feet experimentally, wondering if her fall had loosened the ropes. They were slightly less constricting, but not by much, and certainly not enough for her to run.
“Go to Hell,” she heard Simon say.
From her angle on the ground, Elena managed to see Rosier step forward and whisper something in Simon’s ear. When the Death Eater stepped back, Elena saw Simon’s face go pale. “Okay,” he said with a nod. “Yeah, okay.”
Even crushed beneath her, Elena could tell that the bonds on her wrists were secure. But as Rosier screamed a round of questions at Simon, Elena realized that the rock currently digging into her side had a rather jagged edge. If she shifted slightly, she could saw at the rope.
“I don’t know any more,” Simon ground out, in response to some question. Elena tried to meet his eyes, to assure him that she was working on their escape, but he only had eyes for Rosier.
Without turning around, Rosier sent his foot back, aiming a kick at Elena. It hit her arm and she gasped, just as the rock severed the ropes around her wrist. “Start thinking,” he ordered.
Elena tried to not to hear the sound Simon made—it was too horrible, too unlike him. He was truly terrified of whatever Rosier had promised to do to her. But he had to keep the Death Eater distracted. Moving as little as possible, Elena reached down to untie the knot at her ankle. Though it was a magical bond, Rosier had been sloppy and she managed to free herself.
“Think faster.” This time when Rosier kicked at Elena she rolled out of the way and onto her feet.
“FRANK!” she bellowed. “A little help!”
Rosier whipped around and Simon lunged forward, knocking his hands against the man’s knees. It wasn’t enough to knock the Death Eater over but it made the stunner he had sent towards Elena veer to the right.
“Frank!” she called out again looking towards the woods. She didn’t have a wand, and Rosier was already straightening to his feet. Simon was giving her a look that seemed to say, what can you do? It wasn’t so much resignation as an acknowledgement of the dilemma. Elena could run, or she could stay.
There was a sound in the woods, enough to make Elena turn her head, sure Frank was coming. He had been there, had watched her run to Simon. He had to have some rescue plan. But no one appeared and Elena’s split second was over. Rosier bound her hands with a quick flick of his wand and pulled her over to Simon, forcing her to her knees.
“I’m tired of your games,” he snapped, all traces of humor gone. “I want the truth and I am going to kill one of you slowly until the other talks. I need to know who is in Albania.”
Elena was kneeling so close to Simon that her shoulder touched his. She leaned slightly against him, as if to apologize. “I couldn’t leave you,” she whispered, “You know that.”
He smiled a little. But Rosier didn’t seem to have patience for such conversation. “Crucio,” he hissed.
Once again, Elena felt her body become a pyre. Every bone was breaking in the heat, every thought burning away. And then it was over and she was lying on the ground again. Simon, above her, looked ready to murder.
“Who?” Rosier repeated calmly.
Simon sneered. “I don’t know. The Dark Lord? Who?”
Elena winced in anticipation of the cruciatus curse, waited for Rosier’s fury at Simon’s joke. No Death Eater would take kindly to jab about their dead master.
But instead, Rosier’s face turned gleeful. “I knew it,” he breathed. “I knew this was all worth it.” He turned his wand towards the sky. “Modmorta!” he cried in a triumphant voice.
As the sky darkened with clouds, skull and snake, Simon looked down at Elena, who was gasping on the ground. “He’s mad,” he hissed.
“He’s alive,” Rosier said blissfully, staring that the mark in the sky. With a laugh he rolled up his sleeve and pressed the twin on his arm. “My Lord, you have returned to us at last!”
Elena knew with icy certainty that Simon was right. Rosier was frothing mad. He wasn’t logical and he would probably kill them just to kill. She should have run. Simon had been joking and yet, Rosier was practically praying now. The Dark Lord Remains, that was what Bellatrix had said. Was that what they believed? Were they so fanatical that they thought their leader the master of death itself?
Simon seemed to be having the same thoughts. “Elena,” he said softly, looking down at her, face battered, bloody. “I love you.”
She bit her lip, about to respond, when she felt the bonds on her wrists vanish. Simon, looking as shocked as Elena felt, stood shakily and hauled her to her feet. Rosier’s back was to the two, so Elena had a second to scan the area. Moody stood resolutely several yards away. He jerked his head towards the woods.
With a flick, Moody summoned Simon’s wand from Rosier. Elena felt frozen and was glad when Simon pulled her towards Moody and his wand. Rosier’s cry sounded in her ears. Moody tossed Simon his wand. “I’ve got this one,” he said darkly.
“Alastor,” the Death Eater replied.
Elena didn’t wait to hear more, she just started to run. Even with Simon pulling her along, Elena couldn’t go far, just enough so that she could no longer see the clearing they had left. The curse had left her weak and her lungs ached from the effort of breathing.
As the paused, Elena leaned her back against a tree. Simon scanned the area once, before giving a satisfied nod. His gaze turned back towards Elena and she swallowed once. “You know,” she said with a smile, “I love you too.”
Simon shook his head and stepped closer. After a second, he mimicked her smile. Elena put her arms around his neck and reached up to kiss him.
For the first time, she didn’t care where they were. There was always an excuse not to: they were hiding, it was too soon, they were acting, the others were around. It wasn’t the right time. And now she just didn’t care. Simon pulled her closer.
After a minute, he leaned back. “It’s going to be alright,” he promised, placing a hand against her face.
Elena shook her head slightly. Simon was staring at her as if he never wanted to let her go. “No it’s not,” she said, thinking of the woman on the ground Bellatrix had killed, of the pain of the curse, of Rosier’s madness. But all the same, he lifted her head up to kiss Simon again and he didn’t protest the kiss or her statement.
Again, Elena felt her thoughts dull, but this time for an entirely different reason. Terror was replaced with desire. Her weakness had not come from any injury.
Simon ran his hands down her sides, fingers settling at her waist. Elena pulled him closer, feeling the tree’s bark scape her back. But that wasn’t enough. She wanted him to kiss her harder, wanted them to be closer.
Their breaths were shallow and fast. Elena wished she hadn’t worn a jacket with so many buttons. Then the coat was on the ground and Simon pressed his hands against the skin of her back. Her skin was burning and this time she wanted more of the fire.
“Did you ever think we were going die?” Simon whispered, kissing her neck.
She bit her lip. She had an answer but it didn’t matter. “Shut up, Simon,” she announced and kissed him again. There would be time to talk later.
She didn’t hear the other person until they were shouting. “Hey! Come on!” The panic in the voice made Elena jump.
She dropped her arms from around Simon’s neck, and he let go of her waist. The world seemed at once too bright and too fast. Elena’s mind felt hazy from exhaustion and lust. Simon stepped aside and Elena rolled her shoulders as she stepped away from the tree. Frank didn’t seem to care that he had stumbled across the two kissing in the middle of the battle; instead, he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“What is it?” Simon asked, clearing his throat.
“They’ve got Corinne.”
Note: It's been forever since I've updated for a lot of reasons, lack of time, for one, and also I've been worried about writing a huge battle scene.
This is a pretty long chapter and honestly, the past 3/4 chapters have been one continuous scene--basically, everyone should just drop dead from exhaustion now. But as for the rest of the story, I estimate five more chapters maximum (and one possibly two of those are epilogues). I am really eager to write the end, so hopefully the updates should be more frequent.
Anyways, if you're still around, you are a wonderful person--thanks for reading and drop me a review maybe?
Chapter 23
“Who?” Elena asked, feeling her stomach drop. “How?” Corinne was the absolute last person she’d imagine could be captured; the woman wasn’t one to be careless.
Frank shook his head, looking ten years older. “The Lestranges, who else?”
“How many?” Simon demanded. He tried to sound strong, but Elena could hear the fear in his voice. She understood—Simon and Corinne might argue but they were still close. Corinne hadn’t hesitated to run into danger to rescues Simon, and Elena was sure he would do the same for her.
“Bellatrix left her with Rabastan.”
Elena remembered the sneering man who Corinne had forced to reveal his memories and shivered. “He’ll want revenge.”
“That’s why we’re going to get her back,” Simon set his jaw.
There was never a choice not to, Elena knew that, but she was beginning to feel exhaustion settle in. She had been awake for hours, escaping the trap in the Death Eater’s flat, hiding from the men who had chased them, rescuing Simon from the fire, fighting, following, attacking the Lestranges, capture, escape, sacrifice and then escape once more. She didn’t know how much longer she could run without collapsing. And surely Simon and Frank had been through as much as her.
“Moody’s duelling Rosier,” Elena said, looking in the direction of the clearing where the Death Eater had questioned her. So there was little chance that he could help in any rescue mission.
Simon rubbed at his right elbow. “How many of them are dead?”
Frank voice sounded heavy. “None of them.” Elena saw his fingers turn the wedding band on his left hand round and round. There were only four Death Eaters and none of them were dead. Perhaps they were stronger, more powerful that the Ministry officials but Elena thought it was more desperation than anything. They were the last stand of a dead era and they were utterly convinced—to the point of madness—that their cause was still strong.
“And how many of us?” Simon could have been strategizing but Elena wondered if she might detect guilt. After all, so far, they were all alive. Only the others, who had been brought in with second’s notice without knowing the truth of things, had died. True, Simon hadn’t called them, but he had been in favour of telling the Ministry, of getting help. Perhaps he wondered if they’d be alive if they had been properly prepared.
“Seven.”
Simon gave a resolute nod, as if that was what he had been expecting. “So we get the others. And we find Corinne. I’ll go for Rabastan, take care of him. If Rodolphus is there, he’s yours Frank. Elena can help Corinne if she’s hurt, and the rest of them will be there to help.”
That seemed so simple, but Elena knew it couldn’t be. “Where are the others then? If Rabastan has Corinne and Moody’s with Rosier.”
“Searching the woods. So yeah,” Frank continued, sensing the real question behind Elena’s words. “There’s not time to get them all together.”
“We’ll manage.” Simon shrugged. “The others were just back up anyways.”
Elena felt like she had to be honest. “Will we? Simon, I know we have to get Corinne but I’m exhausted. Fighting our way just seems like a way to get us killed and to let them escape.”
“We’ll manage,” he repeated tersely, not meeting Elena’s gaze.
There was something wrong about his tone of voice. “Listen to me Simon!” Elena bit her lip, “We will not manage. I don’t even have my wand.”
He frowned, “Well, well then just wait. I’ll make you a Portkey, send you to Alice. You’ll be safe and we’ll get Corinne. Come here!” With that, he summoned a stone from the ground and started transforming it into a Portkey.
“No!” Elena snapped and wrenched it from his hands, shoving it into her pocket. “No stop it, Simon. Look at you! You’re not alright. Look,” she grabbed his elbow, finally noticing a round puncture mark and bruising on the skin around it. “Did you even notice that? Did you think you wouldn’t bleed too terribly much if you just forgot about it?”
He winced as Elena prodded at the wound. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“Oh yeah?” she looked up at him, and saw a rather petulant expression settle onto his face. “Then it’s even worse than I thought.” When Simon was being so difficult it was hard not to take a tone with him. “Shut up and give me your wand,” she interjected when he began to speak again.
Frank cleared his throat. “Actually Elena, I have your wand.”
She raised an eyebrow at him and held out her hand. Frank tossed it over and Elena caught it, not bothering to thank Frank before turning back to Simon. She wasn’t actually worried about his arm, per say, though it was obvious it did hurt him. And with her own wand back, it wasn’t very difficult to purge any infection and knit the skin together.
Once the redness in the skin had faded, Elena was satisfied and turned back to Simon. “Hey,” she said softly, putting her hand on his face. “Hey, listen. We’re not going to leave Corinne behind. But we can’t just go storming in hoping to overpower them. Don’t pretend like you’re not exhausted. Okay?”
He sighed. “Sorry. I’m sorry and you’re right. But I’ve got to get Corinne.”
“If she heard you talking like that she’d hit you,” Elena smirked. “She’d say she can take care of herself.”
“Yeah she’s more capable than me, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need help.”
Elena reached up and kissed him quickly. “Okay, Frank,” she said, taking a deep breath. “You have any ideas?”
Elena watched Frank stumble into the clearing. He had an arm clutched to his side and a smear of fake blood on head.
“Alice?” he cried, dropping suddenly to his knees, as if he could no longer stay upright. He crouched beside a body, shaking it anxiously and peering at the face.
“No, no. ALICE?” Frank bellowed, standing again and shuffling over to the next body, this one splayed on the ground on its back.
Again, he examined the fallen woman, only to force himself to his feet. “Alice?” this time his voice sounded weaker, more desperate. “Where are you?”
With a groan, Frank pressed his hand to his side, and sank to his knees once more. “Is there anyone there? Please! I’m injured.”
Silence and then scrabbling as Frank began to drag himself across the ground, panting loudly and whimpering in pain every few seconds. “Alice!”
In a minute he had crossed to the other side, where the trees were more densely clustered. Looking utterly exhausted, he collapsed, body crumpled and bent awkwardly. His left hand rested with the palm open and a wand lay on the ground a few inches away.
Elena inhaled, exhaled. She clutched her wand tight in one hand, and ran the other through her hair. Her fingers just grazed the rather impressive gash across her forehead. Simon had told her it was easily visible from far away. “Good,” she said to herself, nodding. With one more deep breath, Elena raised her voice. “Hello? Where are you?”
“Here!” Frank choked out.
With one more smile of assurance to herself, Elena started to sprint. She had mapped out a pathway, so that she wouldn’t come near any of the bodies, except Frank.
“I’m a Healer!” Elena said loudly, as if she were afraid he might be hard of hearing. “What happened?”
Frank shifted, rolling to one side. “Alice.”
In order to get close enough, Elena had to crouch down, but she made sure her weight was on the balls of her toes, so she could stand at any moment. She noticed that as Frank had rolled, he had freed his right hand and the wand that was clenched tightly in it.
“I’m a Healer,” Elena repeated, keeping her eyes locked on Frank’s face. She couldn’t see into the trees behind him, but he could. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Frank moved his head, in a tiny nod and Elena sprung upright, as Frank rolled to his feet. Elena pushed her way through the trees.
It was only a few yards until she saw a slight shimmer in the air. “Simon!” she screamed, putting out an arm to stop Frank.
At that, the barrier warped, bent and pulled away, leaving Elena with a clear view of Corinne, tied to a tree and a tall man in front of her.
The man pulled back, a look of surprise on his face. He had to have heard the distressed man searching for his wife among the dead and the brave Healer racing across the clearing to save her friend but he probably hadn’t suspected that the injured man had just sprinted without any assistance from the Healer. He had probably spent just enough time scoffing at the spectacle that he hadn’t notice when a third man had skirted the edges of the clearing undetected.
Of course, his surprise all depended on Corinne’s acting skills. If she appeared confused as to why Frank was searching for Alice when she was safe at home, the ploy might have failed. But Corinne was slumped against the tree, held upright only by her bonds—there was no need for her to act.
“Stupefy!” Simon leapt out from another tree.
The Death Eater dodged the spell, only to whirl around and barely block a silent hex from Frank.
Elena didn’t waste time making sure her path was clear—she knew Simon would cover her—before running towards Corinne. With a quick slice of her wand, the taller woman was free from the ropes that held her against the tree. Elena wrapped her arm over Corinne’s shoulders, trying not to stagger under her weight.
“Rennervate,” she hissed, as she began to drag Corinne away from the fight.
The Auror mumbled a few words and was silent.
“Damn it.” Elena kept pulling Corinne. A featherweight spell would have worked under normal circumstances, but who knew what kind of injuries Corinne had and what such a spell might do to her.
Behind her, Elena heard a cracking of wood and a thud as a tree limb fell. Simon and Frank just had to distract Lestrange for few more moments. They had agreed that if they couldn’t capture him easily, they were all going to leave. Everyone was injured, at least slightly, not to mention the crippling exhaustion. It wasn’t defeat, so much as a retreat and it was certainly a transfer of power to Moody and those he had summoned.
At the sound of another spell hitting a tree, Elena turned around. It really wasn’t helping to have to worry about avoiding tree branches while carrying Corinne. Surely Simon could be a bit more creative in his methods of distraction than chopping down the forest around Elena.
And then she saw it. A spinning ball of purple fire, hurling through the air straight at her. “No!” Elena screamed, dropping Corinne so that she fell to the ground. She tried to follow, knowing that there wasn’t enough time to pull her wand from her pocket, but Elena didn’t have the advantage that being unconscious gave to falling.
The spell hit her chest, and Elena screamed again, expecting fire. Instead, she felt only numbness. No heat, no ice, only a weight as her limbs lost sensation and dragged her down. She tried to say something again, only to have her head sag to the side. Thud. Her heart seemed confused as to whether it needed to keep beating. Thud.
She didn’t feel Simon’s hands on her face, turning her head so that he could look at her but she could see him and hear him calling her name. Thud. He was asking her to move, to squeeze his hand. She hadn’t realized she was holding anyone’s hand.
Thud. Just nod your head. Thud. Just blink.
That Elena could do. Her eyelids were dropping, too heavy. She was going to blink, to show Simon she was still thinking. She closed her eyes. Thud.
She was shivering. So cold, shivering and shaking and trembling. She wanted to huddle up, to stay warm but she couldn’t think how to do that.
Something soft touched her arm, not exactly warm but soft. Something heavy, a blanket. But that didn’t stop the chill; she was still shaking, still unable to hold still.
Her eyes were closed but still the world was able to darken. A shadow passed over her face and this darkness was warm.
Later, the world reappeared. Images flickered above her, as if it were a dream. She saw bits of white mist floating through her vision. It was cool and a gentle breeze ran brushed across her face. The light this time was dim and soothing. She felt content, ready to sleep. But that was wrong, for she had only just woken up.
There was pressure below her right wrist and Elena became aware of someone’s hand, holding hers. Her eyes flickered, again, and this time her vision cleared.
“Elena?” a voice asked and Elena turned her eyes down a little, so that she caught sight of Simon’s face.
The sight of him, with a bright red line cut across his cheek made her gasp. “You’re hurt,” she said softly, trying to reach one of her hands out to touch it. It didn’t mar his features, but rather seemed to be pasted on top of them, a scar like an afterthought.
There was a slightly smile on his lips as he shook his head. ““No, I’m not. I’m absolutely fine.”
Elena bit her lip, unsure as to why she felt apprehension growing in her stomach. Hoping she could shake the feeling, she moved to sit, only to have Simon grip her hand tighter. “You, however, are not.”
“Simon, I’m a Healer,” Elena frowned, “I think I can tell when I’m injured.” Yes, she had dim recollections of drifting in and out of consciousness but now she was utterly lucid. There was no pain, no sign at all that she had been injured.
When Simon didn’t immediately protest Elena’s assertion, she moved her left arm to lever herself upright. “See?” she declared when she was sitting. “Perfectly fine.”
But the motion had occurred too quickly, Elena realized as her head and her vision clouded. She held still for a moment, waiting for equilibrium to reestablish itself. And then she noticed her heart. It was pounding, faster than usual. It wasn’t so much nerves as an escape attempt, for the rapid beating was accompanied by shocks of pain and crushing pressure on her chest. It was suddenly hard to breathe, knowing that each breath meant more pain.
Even as her body entered a state of distress, Elena’s years of training brought a diagnosis to the front of her mind. Even if she could barely stand the pain, she knew what each symptom meant. Simon had been right, after all—she shouldn’t have moved. Sitting up had dislodged a residual curse, bringing on this attack.
“Elena?” Simon stood so that he was leaning over her. “Do I need to call for help?”
Elena’s mouth had gone dry but she still managed to reach out and grab a hold of his forearm. “Simon, Simon listen closely. You need to do exactly as I say, right now. First, cast a counter spell for every choking curse you know. You mustn’t move me, my heart can’t take it. Then, I need you to put me to sleep, the deepest sleep you can. Slow everything down, breathing, blood flow, brain function. Get me as close to dead as possible without actually killing me. That should buy you enough time to get help. Listen, you’re going to have to do this quickly and if my heart ever stops, just restart it as fast as you can, okay?”
Simon had gone very pale. “Get someone here now,” he demanded through clenched teeth.
“You’re the only one I trust,” Elena felt tears in her eyes but she didn’t dare move to wipe them away. “I know you’re brave enough to help me. It has to be you.”
She barely noticed as Simon’s eyes flicked behind him for a second. “I’m going to help you lie down,” he said in a measured tone.
“No!” Elena gasped. “You can’t move me. You absolutely can’t.”
“Shh,”he gently peeled her fingers from his arm. “Just relax, alright?”
Elena saw his hands moving to behind her head. “I’ll die.” She hadn’t wanted to say the words, hadn’t wanted to scare him, but she had to stop him.
“What?”
“I didn’t say it before, but if I move my heart is going to stop. And nothing you can do will fix that. So just don’t, Simon.”
The look on his face might just kill her too, Elena realized. Her heart felt frantic as she read the stricken expression on his face. But she knew him. She knew him and she knew that he was strong enough to help her.
He nodded once and took a step back. Elena stayed frozen, waiting for him to start the countercurses. And then the cold slipped over her again. Except she couldn’t shiver this time. Elena felt her muscles relax, felt her head go light.
“Let lie her down,” a new voice said.
“What?” Simon cried, echoing Elena’s own thoughts.
And then she felt herself being moved. Elena couldn’t even manage regret that this was how she had to die. She was too tired, too cold. Her heart was beating slower now. Soon it would stop.
She looked up at the ceiling, which was tiled and sterile white and all she could see. Maybe it would be the last thing she would see. But she knew that ceiling, she had stared at it often in her office, whenever she was taking a break from work. St. Mungo’s.
“I’m a Healer,” the new voice said. “I think I know what I’m doing.”
Again Elena woke, but this time, she felt lighter, could breathe finally. She noticed Simon in a chair next to the bed, and closed her eyes. “Why are you still here?” she asked with a smile.
“Elena!” Simon sounded a little too surprised. “You’re alright! I mean, you’re awake.”
Her eyes opened again. “Yeah.”
“It’s just that I thought, God, I was scared that you were—”
“I know,” Elena shook her head. “Listen, who’s my Healer? Can you get them? Is it safe for me to move?” She wondered if she were being treated by someone she knew well.
Simon frowned a little. “Yes, you’re safe now. And her name’s Healer Edwards.”
“Ruby!” Elena exclaimed, thinking of the older woman fondly. “But if I’m her patient that means serious curse damage…” Her voice trailed off. She had known it, of course, when she had felt the sensation in her chest, but she had been hoping she’d been wrong, or overreacting. Had been hoping that Ruby hadn’t had to bring her to the brink of death to slow the curse so that there was time to administer all the necessary potions.
“Yeah.” Simon lowered his head. “Yeah she should be here any moment now.”
“Oh my God.” Elena finally saw behind Simon to where two solemn figures, a man and woman, were standing like soldiers, wands at the ready. “Who are they?”
Simon didn’t even have to turn. “Protection.” But there was a note to his that made Elena pause. He was being too casual about it.
“Protection from what?” Elena began, before stopping. “Oh my God. I didn’t even ask. What happened?” Her mind was astonishingly clear, given her recent lack of consciousness, but she kept forgetting details, kept forgetting that there were questions that still needed answers.
This time Simon turned around for an instant, looking at the two stoic guards. “Everyone’s alright,” he said with a single nod. “Alice, Frank, Corinne, Alastor.”
“Oh.” Somehow, Elena hadn’t been expecting that answer. From the look Simon was giving her, she doubted that was the whole truth. Something was wrong about the others in the room. Something about the absent way Simon brushed a piece of hair out of Elena’s face as he looked behind himself again.
But before Elena could think further, the door swung open and a short older woman walked in. “I said to call me as soon as she woke. That was our agreement. You aren’t supposed to be here in the first place.” Ruby Edwards stood just inside the doorway, brandishing her wand at Simon.
He leaned back hastily. “Sorry, Healer,” he said in a tone that was much happier than it had been a minute before. He even winked at Ruby for good measure.
“How are you feeling?” Ruby asked, walking over towards Elena with a shake of her head at Simon.
“Ruby,” Elena shook her head. “I’m fine. Can you just give me a minute though? I need to talk to Simon.”
The older healer shook her head. “Absolutely not. You can talk to him after we have a little chat about your health. And you,” she turned and motioned to Simon and the guards, “Out! All of you out! Go get some tea if you can’t go home.”
Simon, apparently set on appearing as cheery as possible, was smiling widely as he walked out the door. That too was odd—he had gone from hiding something to a more casual demeanour, barely bothering to say goodbye to Elena. The man and woman said nothing but they followed him.
“So tell me about your young man then,” Ruby said, as she helped Elena sit up.
“Simon?” Elena asked warily. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t it be better to talk about what happened to me?”
Ruby started waving her wand at various cupboards, summoning several vials of potions. “First things first—don’t lie to me,” she said shaking her head. “I only saw you two together for a minute and I know.”
Elena blushed a little; she hadn’t meant that there wasn’t something between them, only that she didn’t know what to say. But she was saved from having to clarify as Ruby began to give her several of the potions. “You’re mostly better now,” Ruby said, before launching into a description of all the medicine Elena had received in the past days. “I do wish you hadn’t frightened that poor boy though, telling him you’d die if you moved.”
“I didn’t know I was here,” Elena protested. “If I had been—elsewhere, that would be the case.”
But that was all Ruby wanted to say on that subject. She was much more interested in telling Elena how lucky she was to have survived the curse than speculating on whether she would have had she been in the field.
Frank and Alice came the next day, carrying Neville.
Elena was still weak, but she managed to stand up to greet the family.
“You’ll be better in no time,” Alice promised, kissing Elena’s cheek.
Elena grinned, and waved at Neville, who waved back. “Yeah. And it’s good to see that you’re feeling better as well.” She could still hear the anguished cries of Frank, even if he had been only acting.
“Thanks to you,” Alice shrugged.
“No!” Elena shook her head. “No, you would have been fine without me.” That wasn’t strictly true, but she hardly wanted to be in debt for saving Alice’s life when anyone would have done it.
“Elena’s a Healer and brilliant actor,” Frank said, placing his arm around Alice, as if he still had to check to make sure she was beside him.
Elena responded immediately with a laugh: “Really, I’m not.” And she wasn’t. Her acting in the forest had been sketchy at best and she had never been one for pretending to be something she wasn’t. Laughing made her side hurt, and Elena realized that she should probably sit down.
As soon as Simon saw her moving towards the bed, he was at her side, offering her his arm. She accepted the help with only a touch of reluctance. “You certainly never act as though you’re scared,” Simon said, though is tone was less teasing.
Elena wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. “But I do. I act scared when I am scared.”
Alice and Frank chuckled at that, as if it were amusing. “So you’re never scared then?” Alice offered jokingly when Elena couldn’t understand what was so funny.
“Oh.” She blushed. “No. No, that’s not it.”
Simon helped Elena sit down with a bit of smirk and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Stop it,” she whispered, and pulled his face down for a proper kiss.
Elena looked up for a moment, past Alice and Frank, and her gaze fell upon the silent duo, standing by the door. Whenever Simon was in the room, they were there and whenever he left, they left. She had to wonder what exactly he needed protecting from. “What is it?” Simon breathed in her ear.
Before she could think of what to say to Simon, Alice was holding Neville out to her. Elena set him on her lap, welcoming the excuse to avoid answering. “Hello, sweetie,” she whispered. “How are you? How’s your Mum and Dad? Are you glad to see them?”
“Papa,” Neville said.
Elena laughed and looked over at Frank. Simon had stepped away from her and the two were now having a quiet conversation. “Yeah, there’s your Dad, over there. I bet you’ll be just like him one day.”
Alice looked proudly at her son. “I hope so.”
“Seeing him makes me miss my nephew,” Elena said, thinking of Ollie smiling at her in the kitchen as they were baking. “He’s older than Neville, but I can remember when he was this little. I used to take care of him a lot while Mari was at work.”
“Your sister?”
“Hmm? Marianne? No, sister-in-law,” Elena shouldn’t have brought her up. Shouldn’t have started thinking about her brother.
“So do you want children, someday?”
Elena blinked, not expecting that question at all. She couldn’t help but glance at Simon again—just to see if he was listening, she promised herself. When she looked back, Alice had put on a very knowing look. Elena laughed and shook her head. “Caught me. And yeah, I think I do.”
Alice nodded, still smiling widely. “You’re good for him,” she said, motioning to Simon. “You didn’t know him before, but he used to be so reckless. He and Corinne—they’d always try to one up each other, do something more risky than the other, and then once it went wrong, they’d have a competition to see who would take the blame.”
Elena could see that. “Yeah,” she laughed. “That sounds about right, doesn’t it?”
“And it was funny to watch,” Alice continued. “It shouldn’t have been, because there was a war, but it was. But I don’t really think either of them were very happy. They had both lost people and liked to hide that by being stupid. But now, I don’t think Simon has to pretend to be alright.”
It would have been easy to be ridiculously happy about what Alice had just said, but there was something that was bothering Elena more. “Listen.” Elena scanned the room once. “You’ve got to tell me the truth. What happened? Simon won’t. Are they dead?”
Neville started pulling at Elena’s hair, and she gently detached his fists from her head. “Okay,” Alice lowered her voice. “Rosier’s dead, but that’s it.”
“Corinne? She hasn’t come to see me.”
“Well she’s perfectly healthy,” Alice shrugged.
That seemed like a half answer. “The men? Why are they protecting Simon?”
“Really? Death Eaters, of course,” the other woman laughed.
“So they’ve told everyone, about your dad.”
Alice’s face froze. “No. No, not yet. I believe the term is ‘devising a strategy.’”
Note: So I meant to post this sooner, I really did. The worst part is that I had about 90% of it written (minus the last scene with Frank and Alice). I also have about 50% of the next chapter written, but I keep reworking it, and that kept changing this chapter, hence the delay. If you're still around reading, you're awesome, maybe let me know that you're here?
Finally, the endless (5 chapter long) scene ends in this chapter! Basically Chapter 19 up until the first break in this chapter has been one long scene, without any breaks for anyone. Elena, as she says in the chapter, is exhausted.
We're near the end! I really can't believe it. There are a maximum of four chapters yet. One of them is definitely an epilogue, another is a sort of epilogue. And the other two could, quite possibly, be combined into one chapter. So that is where things are as of now. While I'm not in a huge hurry to have this story completed, I also would say that updates will hopefully be frequent, given that I know exactly what happens in all of these chapters--they've been planned out for a while.
Chapter 24
“I’ve got a present for you,” Simon smiled as he sat down next to Elena. He looked like he wanted to say something more but Ruby was in the room bustling about with some potion. After a moment, he reached into his pocket. “It’s your wand,” he said, holding it out to Elena.
She frowned, not remembering how he had gotten it, or where she had even left it in the first place but took it and placed it on the table beside her. “Thanks.”
“You know, only Healers and Ministry Staff are allowed to have wands inside St. Mungo’s.” Simon accompanied his conspiratorial remark with a wink.
“Yeah, because the relatives will hurt the Healers and the patients can’t control themselves when they’re ill.” Elena rolled her eyes. It was a rule for a good reason, but one that caused more trouble than it was worth. Few wizards and witches willingly gave up their wands, and even fewer did so without a bit of an undignified fuss. Elena was glad that she had never had to placate the upset guests like the Welcome Witch, Therese had to do.
Simon smirked. “Well, seeing as you’re a Healer and I’m from the Ministry,” he leaned closer, “I don’t think that’s a problem for us.”
“Stop it,” Elena couldn’t help but laugh. “I think that’s what they’d call going against the spirit of the law. But anyhow, thanks.” Elena leaned over to give him a quick kiss.
When she sat back, she caught Ruby’s eye, and blushed a little. The Healer was looking like a cat that had gotten the cream. She was really too much like a scheming version of Elena’s mother. Ruby had been bothering Elena about boyfriends ever since the war had ended, and now had decided, apparently, that Simon fit the bill. Elena was never going to hear the end of it once she was alone. Which is why, Elena decided, she was never letting Simon leave her side.
“Out, you,” Ruby jabbed a finger at Simon, apparently trying to test Elena’s new resolution.
Elena grabbed hold of Simon’s hand and squeezed. “Ruby,” she began in a cajoling voice. “I don’t really see why Simon has to go.”
The older woman narrowed her eyes. “Elena, you know the rules.”
“Yeah,” Elena began. “And I’m rather sure that the rules say that Simon shouldn’t be here in the first place. So I don’t know why it’s any different if he just stays now.” She looked down as she said the words, half sheepishly, knowing that Ruby was never going to buy this sort of nonsense. But she was feeling better, and she really didn’t want to have to deal with all the queries about her relationship with Simon, so she decided that it was worth a try.
Ruby, having children of her own, would have none of it. “Yes, that’s right, dear,” she said with a shake of her head. “So I could just send for Quentin to come check in on you. And if he were here, imagine what he would say to all of this nonsense.”
Elena winced at the idea of her boss—was he still her boss even though the status of her job at St. Mungo’s was dubious?—discovering the breach in rules. “You wouldn’t,” Elena tried to keep her voice confident.
Simon, on the other hand, was caving. “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” he said with a charming smile towards Ruby.
“Hey!” Elena swatted at his arm. If he had looked over at her, she would have glared. Whose side was he on anyways? Was he really that terrified of Ruby’s threats?
Ruby absolutely simpered. “That’s a good boy,” she declared. “Go and get yourself a cuppa. I won’t need that long with Elena here.”
It really wasn’t fair that Simon gave in that easily. Elena was sure that Ruby would have agreed had he held out a minute more. But instead, she felt his hand slip from hers. Elena continued to stare at him darkly, and was rewarded when he winced. Any remorse on his face, however, quickly changed to mirth and he gave her a wink before leaving the room.
“I don’t believe you,” Elena declared the moment the door had shut.
Ruby set a cup filled with a reddish potion on the bedside table. “Don’t get upset, dear.”
And Elena really wasn’t all that devastated, but annoyed, certainly. “Well what do you want to ask me then that you couldn’t when Simon was here?”
“Oh, nothing much. I just wanted to chat. Is what the two of you have serious?” Ruby spoke passively, muttering over the potion.
At that, Elena couldn’t help but sigh. “We haven’t talked about it,” she said wistfully. “Though, I suppose that has something to do with not having a moment alone.” Elena turned a pointed gaze onto Ruby.
Ruby scoffed. “If he had stayed, you still wouldn’t have been alone, Elena.”
She had a point. Elena was trying to formulate a response when a beeping ran throughout the room. Ruby examined a now pulsing bracelet on her wrist. “Oh,” she said with a sigh. “That means I’ve got to run. Drink this,” she thrust the potion towards Elena.
The red bracelet signified an emergency situation so Elena just waved Ruby away, not bothering with pleasantries. The woman must have another patient needing more serious attention. Ruby did work in the curse department, after all. With a sigh, Elena swallowed the potion, ignoring the acrid taste, and wished that Simon would come back.
Her wish was granted when a few minutes later there was a knock at the door. “Come in!” Elena called, starting to smile. Any visitor would be better than sitting in absolute silence.
When Simon entered the room, shutting the door quickly behind him, her grin widened. He matched her expression, though at least he had the decency to look a bit sheepish. “So Ruby’s gone then?” he looked around, as if expecting her to be hiding in the corner.
“Yep,” Elena said shortly.
“Oh,” Simon nodded once.
“Yeah,” Elena mimicked him. “She left ages ago.” It was all she could do to keep her voice aloof.
“Leaving you all alone?” Simon raised an eyebrow mockingly.
Elena dropped her head, so her hair fell over her eyes. When she looked up she couldn’t manage to be severe or even maintain a remotely serious expression. “Oh come over here, you idiot,” she relented, patting the bed with her hand.
He was smirking again and Elena wanted to make him lose that smug expression. An idea had floated into her mind by the time Simon obeyed, sitting on the edge of the cot.
She was about to lean over and kiss him when the door flew open again. Elena jumped back; had Ruby made good on her threat and sent Quentin in? But before she could even formulate an excuse, she saw that it was only the two guards, taking their usual places by the door.
Elena sent Simon a cutting look, like this was all his fault, and he awkwardly shifted on the bed.
After a minute, he cleared his throat and began to speak. “So, did they feed you recently? Because I snuck you a scone.”
Elena was so surprised that she couldn’t help but giggle as he pulled the crushed pastry out of his jacket. “They did,” she said, but still took the food, laughing as crumbs spilled onto her lap. “But it wasn’t much. This looks delicious.”
She took a bite of the pastry, and felt her frustration diminish as it crumbled in her hands. “I’m making a mess,” she said, shaking her head. “Ruby would absolutely murder me if she saw this.”
“Well, Ruby’s not here,” Simon said in a quiet voice.
Elena instantly sobered up and set down the scone. “No she’s not,” she whispered, fixing her eyes on his lips. But goddamn it if that man and woman weren’t standing beside the door. Elena was about to say, forget them, but wasn’t sure what the protocol was for snogging in a hospital room.
Simon’s eyes darkened and he leaned closer, obviously not thinking about the protocol in this situation. Elena noticed the scar on his cheek absently before her eyes floated closed.
It was then that Elena heard the scream.
Her eyes flew open and she pulled her head back before Simon could start distracting her. It wasn’t the sound that was so shocking as was its proximity. There had been no transition to the sound; it had just started.
And it was an odd sound, not one to be expected in these wards of St. Mungo’s, the ones where longer term patients were kept. Everyone here was stable, not likely to experience sudden fits of agony.
Even as she pondered this, Elena noticed something else odd about the noise. It didn’t fade, as a normal scream would, but rather continued almost as if whoever was screaming wasn’t even stopping to breathe.
Elena tilted her head towards the door, wondering what the commotion was. If a relative was that distressed, they normally would have been calmed by now. And any patient in that much pain could have easily been sedated.
“Elena?” Simon followed her gaze.
“Listen.”
Another layer of rough cries joined the continuous shriek. The emergency wards were rather far away, but if there had been some large scale accident this could be an overflow of that? That would certainly explain why no staff had come to help. Or perhaps someone had simply apparated into the wrong region of St. Mungo’s and was crying out for help. There was a system in place to direct all apparating patients to the waiting room, but sometimes it got a bit overloaded and people ended up throughout the complex.
Still, there was something distinctly odd about the noise, given the normal peace of the corridors. Elena had worked at St. Mungo’s long enough to know when something was off, and she had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach now. Biting her lip, she kicked off her blanket and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
“What are you doing?”
Elena didn’t bother to answer, and walked to the door. But, as she moved to open it, the witch held up her wand. “You’re not permitted to leave,” she said in a steely voice.
“What?” Elena could scarcely believe the woman. “Can’t you hear the screaming? There’s got to have been some kind of awful accident. I’m a Healer. I can help!”
“You cannot leave,” the other guard repeated.
“The Hell I can’t!” Elena reached again for the door. The female guard took a step towards Elena and blocked her again so that Elena would have to shove her aside to reach the door knob. That was enough! What did she think she was doing? Elena whirled on Simon. “What, exactly, are they doing here again?”
His face was blank but his eyes looked regretful. “They’re trying to protecting you.”
“Simon. Don’t lie to me. They’re your protection. They follow you everywhere. This has nothing to do with me!”
“Yeah? And have you seen that?” his tone turned rueful. “One of them’s mine. One is yours. They leave the room, sure, but someone’s always outside this door.”
Elena looked back at two solemn figures, but they hadn’t moved. “But why? I still don’t understand why I can’t leave. Look, one of them could come with me. I’ll be perfectly safe if someone’s close by.”
“The Minister is dead, Elena.” Simon’s tone was slow. “You and I, we knew and lied about it. No one knows what to think and no one is sure we didn’t do it ourselves. Which we didn’t,” he added hastily, looking pointedly at the guards.
Elena shivered, several pieces of information suddenly colliding in her mind. “Corinne. That’s why she’s not here.”
“Yeah,” Simon said shortly. “It was hard enough convincing them to let me in here. Well,” he paused with an assured smile, “Not that hard.”
Elena couldn’t even react to this revelation. She could still hear the screams, a horrific two voiced symphony that went on and on. But now, listening harder, she heard a third voice, less desperate, more commanding. It was a voice that she knew well and one that she wasn’t expecting to hear in the hallway outside of her room in St. Mungo’s. “Simon, that’s Moody.”
“Let her out.” Simon didn’t even hesitate. He grabbed his wand and Elena’s and was at the door in seconds. “Now. Stand five inches away from us; we won’t run. Just let her out.”
With a sneer, the woman stepped aside and Elena shoved the door open.
She leapt into the hall, and felt Simon inches behind her. To her left, there was an empty sterile hallway but no unusual commotion. Yet to the right, she saw the recognizable figure. Moody was shouting at an orderly who wore a horrified expression.
Before Elena could even start towards him, Moody’s head whipped around. His countenance was as severe as normal, but now his face bore several new gouges carved into it. “Go!” he bellowed, and the orderly scrambled off.
“What happened?” Simon began to ask and Elena didn’t stop to listen.
Her eyes had fallen on two bodies. They were on the floor behind Moody. One sat leaning against the wall, the other had slumped from a similar position, body curling in on itself. Elena was running before she connected the bodies to the sound of that keening scream.
She skidded to the ground. Her hand reached out, hovering in the air. Elena thought she might have been moving to brush the hair away from the face of the woman on the floor. But she wasn’t sure. She didn’t need to. Even before she had gotten a proper look at them, she had known.
Besides, it only made sense: not just anyone could bypass the apparition redirect. And Moody wouldn’t accompany just anyone to St. Mungo’s. No.
Elena saw her hand shaking, still extended as if to reach out to the couple on the floor. She felt her muscles tense, as if to pull it back, to curl her fingers into her palm until her nails met skin. And then the man moved, his arm jerking in a series erratic spasms.
Elena snapped and surged forward, latching onto the man’s arm, holding it still. She felt the twitch of muscles beneath her fingers and she looked to the woman. The hair that covered her face was matted red, but Elena knew that underneath it would blonde. With her free hand, she pushed the woman’s hair aside, a single strand was matted and stuck to her face, and Elena gently tucked it behind the woman’s ear, brushing it aside even as the woman screamed.
A howl cut through the keening and Elena felt someone shove her aside. Her head slammed into the floor when she couldn’t release her hands in time to catch herself. “Healer!” a voice shouted.
The tone of the voice, or maybe the shock of the fall brought Elena’s world into focus, and everything sped up. She leapt to her feet and found herself eye to eye with the familiar face of Therese the Welcome Witch.
“Oh Elena, thank God!” she cried. “They say that’s the Minister’s daughter! I don’t know how, I really don’t but they’re in the wrong place. They’re here instead of in the lobby.”
Therese kept talking but all Elena kept hearing was the word Healer. Perhaps someone was crying for help, but Elena only heard Therese’s voice, saying Healer with a kind of desperation, like it was something to hang onto.
“What happened?” Elena said in a level tone, pitching her voice above the sounds around her.
There was a pause as her words registered and then the sound rushed back, brushing around her as if she had never spoken. People heard her, Elena knew, but they hadn’t bothered to respond. In that single second of silence the realization built, burning the numbness from Elena’s chest.
She flung out a hand to her left and grabbed a fist of Moody’s cloak. “What happened?” she demanded again, screaming the words at the Auror, pulling him around to face her. She would get an answer.
Moody’s face was an impassive mask marred only by that blue eye spinning manically around in the socket. Elena tried to catch its focus and Moody’s complete attention and she noticed when his brow creased in an almost imperceptible frown.
He didn’t want to tell her. “I’m a Healer!” Elena barked, answering the question he hadn’t bothered to ask.
The electric blue eye snapped to Elena’s face. She slowly loosed her fingers from his cloak, and kept her eyes trained on the magical eye. She never noticed before, probably because she didn’t make a habit of staring at Moody but there was something off about it. Even as the pupil in his normal eye dilated, the blue eye had only a pinprick of black in the centre.
After a second, the eye resumed moving again and the mask of Moody’s face melted as he spoke. “Cruciatus curse. Don’t know what else.”
Elena saw the flash of a Death Eater mask and for a moment red tinged her vision. She could smell the soil of the forest and heard her own screams and that bellow: Crucio!
Her lips trembled and she pushed away from Moody. There were two orderlies standing next to Therese, looking utterly paralyzed as they took in the scene. “You lot, get them onto the cots!” she snapped. “Get them into this room.”
“Okay,” she exhaled. “Okay, then. They’re going to be fine. The curse is painful but that’s okay.”
As the orderlies wheeled out two beds, Elena ran over to her patients. Frank’s hand was still twitching. Simon kneeling on the ground, his fingers pressed into Alice’s neck. Elena watched his lips move, counting out a rhythmic pattern.
“She’s screaming, Simon,” Elena said gently. She pulled his fingers away, wrapping her hand around them briefly. “You don’t need to take her pulse to know she’s alive.”
He nodded and stood, looking paler than Elena had ever seen him. But she couldn’t talk about that now. “You, you and the two of you, get them onto the cots!” Elena jabbed fingers at the guards and the orderlies who looked lost now that the cots had been procured.
They didn’t move right away. The orderlies were looking nervously between the guards and Elena. She figured everyone but her had known exactly why Elena and Simon needed guards. They thought her dangerous. “Faster!” she snapped.
Spell damage needed to be treated soon, if it was going to be fixed. If they didn’t hurry, there wasn’t going to be time to explain the situation to the wizards in the Emergency Ward, who probably didn’t even know there was a problem.
Elena followed the beds into the room and grabbed her wand off from the table. She turned her attention to Alice first, noting the gash on her cheek and casting several preliminary evaluative spells. As they were working, she did the same to Frank. Elena had chosen spells that offered a thorough evaluation of the situation, but they took moments to scan the entire body. Elena looked down, not wanting to stare into the faces of the Longbottoms; she couldn’t be efficient if she let things become personal. Instead, she tried looking at Alice’s hands, but then she noticed cuts that matched patterns of fingernails spotted on the other woman’s palms.
The spells Elena had cast were meant to provide clear results. The colour indicated the type of problem, the shade the severity. She watched as a dark black sheen appeared in the air above Alice, and a second later, above Frank.
“Oh God.”
A hand came down on her shoulder and pulled her back, away from the beds. “Sit down,” Simon ordered. “You’re ill.”
Elena didn’t even bother to respond. She wrenched back, looking again at the black results of the spell. Perhaps there was something wrong with her vision. It had only been the Cruciatus curse.
“Elena!”
She reached behind and pulled Simon’s hand off her shoulder. “Therese!” she called out, not bothering to acknowledge Simon’s cry. “Go get everyone. Get them now!”
This wasn’t Elena selfishly calling on extra help to try to save her friends. There might have been little external damage on the couple but based on the colour of the indicator spell, it was a miracle they were still breathing. Her initial assessment had been utterly wrong. There was very real damage and it went much deeper than a few surface scratches.
The Cruciatus curse was horrible, certainly, but it didn’t cause this kind of damage unless used in conjunction with other spells, or used often. “What else can you tell me?” Elena turned just enough to catch Moody’s attention
“I wasn’t there,” the Auror said. “I just showed up in time to catch that Lestrange bitch and her husband at it.”
“And Rabastan Lestrange?” she asked, as if it mattered who had done it.
Moody nodded once.
“God,” Elena breathed. Alice had told her that only Rosier was dead. Elena had hoped that the others were captured and that in the mess of it all no one had told her, but apparently every Lestrange had escaped.
But she couldn’t stop to think, not if she wanted to save Alice and Frank. She turned round and began to cast every healing spell she knew, every general counter curse, every spell that would numb the pain they must be feeling.
Despite her attempts to concentrate on the matter at hand, she still heard scraps of the conversation.
“But they’re dead; at least they’re dead now.” That was Simon.
Elena fixed the cut on Alice’s cheek, watching as the blood siphoned away and the skin knitted together.
“No.” Moody’s response caught her attention once more.
Elena moved her wand to heal the cuts on Alice’s palm, but stopped. This was evidence; every visible sign of the ordeal might help illuminate the invisible. Fixing these visible signs of struggle would do nothing to aid the true damage.
If she had more experience treating spell damage, Elena might have attempted to figure out a cure, but she wasn’t. And the severity of the spell made her less inclined to just try options. The other Healers would arrive soon, she knew. And she just had to keep Frank and Alice stable until then.
Behind her, Simon was speaking again. “I’m going to find them and I’m going to kill them,” he growled. “Where were they?”
That was enough to fully attract Elena’s attention. “You are not,” she declared, whipping around to glare at Simon. “You do not get to leave.”
She couldn’t even look at him for long, not when she could see that his eyes were red, not when she could remember him holding his fingers to Alice’s pulse, checking that she was alive even as she screamed. Her eyes kept roving back towards the beds where Frank and Alice lay. But she couldn’t look at them either, not when Alice’s scream was the only thing wilder than her eyes, not when Frank’s arms wouldn’t stop twisting and twitching.
“Elena!” Simon’s voice was a confused shout, as if he had no idea what tone to affect.
“Don’t you dare leave me,” she ordered, her voice cracking.
Simon’s arms went around her, but she pushed him away, half-heartedly. “Don’t.”
“Elena,” this time his voice was softer, his touch more comforting.
She shook her head once and pushed him away, harder this time. “Frank!” she said in a determined voice, shaking the man’s shoulder roughly. “Frank, tell me if you can hear me.”
The man gave no reply. A thin strand of drool left the corner of his mouth.
Elena cast another awakening spell and held her breath. She counted as she waited: one, two, three. She reached twenty, before she had to let out a shuddering breath. Why would the spell work anyways? They weren’t asleep.
Elena growled in frustration. She couldn’t make spells work and she couldn’t ascertain what the next step was unless she had more context. She wasn’t trained enough in this field. The damage had to be internal, something that was harder to test. Elena thought of all the textbooks she’d read in training and knew that she had learned the spells at some point. There was a certain potion she could give them for diagnostic purposes. It would probably be within the room, but she didn’t remember anything about its application or how to interpret the results. “Think,” she hissed, clenching one hand into a fist. She could think of it and she had to.
But she didn’t remember.
The door behind her slammed open and Elena spun around when she heard heavy breathing. A senior Healer stood in the doorway, looking rather bewildered at the unconventional scene.
“Charlie, thank God.” Elena latched onto his arm and directed him to the beds. “I’ve been told Cruciatus Curse.”
He nodded, thankfully not making any comments about why she had been the one treating them, and began to go to work, stopping only to let the other Healers who rushed in on his heels to take a place beside him.
Elena took orders now, casting whatever general spells Charlie directed. Much of his work was silent, so Elena couldn’t tell what, exactly, he was doing.
The only thing she could see was evidence vanishing. They looked better, yes. A touch more pink to the skin, the erasure of the faint scar on Alice’s face. Little signs that made them look less battered, less beaten. But Elena knew that that did not make them better.
A half dozen Healers streamed into the room and Elena felt marginalized. She wanted to be close to the beds, but she no longer knew the plan of action for treatment so she was taking up valuable space. These new Healers were more specialized, more advanced and all wanted a hand in saving the Minister’s daughter.
With these new Healers had come Ruby, looking absolutely shocked to see her patient’s room converted into the emergency ward. She caught sight of Elena instantly and practically dragged her off to the side. “You have no business standing,” she told Elena, all traces of teasing humour gone from her voice.
Elena nodded, feeling unsteady on her feet as Ruby’s words had erased whatever strength had been keeping her upright. With a sigh, she sank into a chair. She would at least watch, even if she couldn’t stand close enough to see Alice or Frank’s face anymore.
But Ruby was not satisfied. She strode away from Elena and approached Simon and Moody. There never should have been non-Healers in the room with a case this serious, but Moody looked so formidable that Elena thought no one would dare ask him to leave. Ruby was speaking now, saying something to Simon that Elena couldn’t hear. Moody moved to protest but Ruby shook her head and that was that.
Before she could even begin to imagine what Ruby had said, Simon was at Elena’s side, helping her stand, and directing her out of the room.
Elena protested, but it was only weakly for it soon became clear that Simon took Ruby’s order to heart and would have no problem physically carrying Elena from the room.
Simon wrapped an arm around her waist and helped her manoeuvre out of the room, shutting the door heavily behind them and drowning out the noises.
Simon, still holding her tightly looked at their two guards who had, on orders from Moody, remained in the hallway. They were not as stoic as before, and had relaxed their formal stance. “Go,” he ordered. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing watching us in the most secure place in London, but I know what you should have been doing. There were other people who needed to be guarded and you couldn’t be there because you were too busy following me to the tea shop.”
They didn’t protest. With two cracks they were gone.
The cracks almost muffled a scream from inside the room, but Elena still heard it and it turned her blood cold. This was not the same keening cry as before, this was a shout of pain and of horror. She turned and pushed herself at the door, trying to yank it open and see what was causing that awful noise.
Simon, almost tenderly, stepped in front of her so that she could no longer reach the door.
Elena twisted, trying to shove him aside, “Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me inside!”
Simon shook his head. “No. You don’t get to leave me either.”
“Please!” Elena implored, kicking at his shin. “Damn it Simon! Let. Me. In!” The last word was shouted so loudly that Elena’s ears rang as it echoed down the halls. Her throat ached from the force of crying.
He did not let her in. And as stopped struggling, she understood. It was a detached realization: she could help nothing. She was too weak to perform any real magic. And besides, she was not an expert on this.
“God damn it,” she sobbed, collapsing forward into Simon’s arms. “Goddamn.” Tears started flowing in earnest from her eyes as she saw Alice and Frank again, lying there, unmoving.
Simon slowly began to stroke her back, but she could feel him shaking as well.
“They have a baby,” Elena muttered. “God, what about Neville?” There were only two options if the child wasn’t at St. Mungo’s.
“Shh, shh. They’ll be alright,” Simon mumbled, though he sounded so unsure of himself.
Elena looked up at him and shook her head. “I’m not sure. That’s the awful part of it. I don’t know that.”
He nodded, as if he had been expecting that, and pulled her close again. She felt water drop onto her arm as Simon’s tears mingled with her own.
Elena wanted to say something, to mention that he hadn’t left, that he hadn’t run after the Lestranges, the ones who had done this. She thought it might be right to thank him for obeying her reckless order, but she didn’t think that was something for either of them to be proud of. He could have helped, but she was here and she wanted him here with her.
They stayed in the hallway for hours. The stream of Healers that flowed into the room was at first steady but slowed as night fell.
Elena knew many of them, but she couldn’t bear to watch them as they walked past her without so much as an acknowledgment. Was it because she had been gone so long? Or was it because she was just a family member now? Or perhaps they had heard rumours and wanted to avoid any association with suspected criminals. She didn’t know which was worse.
Simon, at one point, had gotten into a shouting match with Moody. Elena tried to shut out the noise, but heard Corinne’s name mentioned frequently. Even in anger, Moody was recalcitrant and Simon grew more and more furious as he refused to provide a useful explanation as to why Corinne couldn’t be brought to St. Mungo’s.
“It doesn’t matter,” Elena said in a rough voice, after she thought she could take no more of their arguing.
“Yeah, it does!” Simon sounded too tired to be properly angry about it anymore.
He turned back to Moody and shook his head, utterly resigned. “Look, you’ve always liked Corinne better than me. Do it as a favour for her.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Elena repeated in a hiss. “They won’t let Corinne inside. And what is there to see anyways? It’s better that she doesn’t have to wait here too with nothing to do.”
“But you have to at least tell her! Someone has to and if I can’t leave, it has to be you.”
Moody, if it were possible, looked almost pitying. “I’m not leaving them here,” he said, without malice. “But I’ll make sure she knows.”
Elena sank down along the wall, too tired to stand. She was feeling better, but her chest was starting to feel tight again. All she wanted to do was to sleep. At least that would stop her from thinking and worrying.
Eventually, hands shook her awake. “What news?” Elena gasped. She had dreamed of Alice and Frank smiling.
Ruby’s kind face swam into focus. “They’re quite alive.”
“So they’re awake? We can see them!” Elena scrambled upright.
The older Healer paused. “No. No, they’re not awake yet.”
“Ruby.” Elena wasn’t really ready to play word games. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“They’re alive, both of them. No real chance of them dying now. But they haven’t woken up yet. It’s probably just the shock of it all, poor things, but it wasn’t pretty when someone tried to wake one of them up.”
“But that’s good.” Sleeping to heal was expected.
“You should know,” Ruby put a hand on Elena’s shoulder, “that sometimes such large amounts of pain can leave side effects, even if the body is healed.”
“Of course they’ll be traumatized.” Elena bit her lip, thinking of how Alice’s smile might now be sadder.
But Ruby shook her head, a pitying look on her face. “Elena. I’m talking about mental—disturbances. It’s not natural to have so much pain. Sometimes it damages the mind.”
Elena knew that despair was pointless. They were going to be alright. Alice and Frank were strong, brave people. Ruby, of course, didn’t know that. “Okay,” she said blankly and watched as Ruby went back into the room.
Elena’s eye fell onto Simon and she went over to him, wrapping her arms around him. He looked as if he had been awake the whole time Elena was sleeping.
“We’re going to leave, okay?” Simon said after a minute, tightening his arms around her, if that were even possible.
“What?” They couldn’t leave when there was news to be had at any moment now that Frank and Alice had woken up. Elena glanced at the door, expecting Ruby to come bursting out with a grin on her face. Any moment now. Any moment.
He sighed into her hair. “The guards, they left to go make sure that the Lestranges are dead. But they will probably be ordered back soon. And when they come back, they’re going to take me away. You’re still ill, so you’ll stay here, but now that this has happened, they’ll want me somewhere safer, somewhere more guarded. I told you I’m not leaving you. So, come with me then.”
“You go,” she whispered. “I should stay here. I should help. I’m a Healer. I know them. I might be able to help.”
Simon pulled back a little bit. “Maybe, just maybe, that’s true,” he whispered. “But I don’t care. I know it’s selfish, asking you to come with me, because you’d be better off here. Safer too, not with some renegade Auror. But,” he paused, “I need you.”
“Go where?” Elena managed, because he was right. They needed to be together.
“Does it matter?”
It didn’t. Elena really, truly didn’t care. She could be here and there could be news—though if she were to be realistic, that could take hours, perhaps days—but she would be alone. Or she could be oblivious, elicit and hiding but with Simon. It wasn’t even a choice.
Did it matter where?
“No.”
Just a quick note: this story is now over 100,000 words! It's definitely the longest thing I've ever written, which is sort of insane. We're nearing the end now, which I know I keep saying. But I'm thinking no more than 3-4 chapters left (including epilogues--yes epilogues, there are sort of two...)
http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com