A Matter of Black and White

DISCLAIMER: This story is based upon the works of JK Rowling. Anything you recognize is hers. I’m making no money off this. I’m just having some fun adding my own little corner to the amazing world she has created.

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CHAPTER 10—FAST TRACK TO CHAOS

On Monday morning, Aurora wove her way through the Muggle commuter traffic at King’s Cross Station. Her trolley had a wobbly wheel and kept veering into streams of groggy, start-of-the-week workers who, from their glares and disgruntled comments, apparently believed that anyone traveling with such odd baggage as cumbersome, old-fashioned trunks and an indignantly caged owl must be intentionally trying to make normal, hardworking citizens late to the office. She would have Magicked a wheel repair had her wand not been deep in the inner pocket of her white raincoat. Accessing it would have required stopping in the middle of traffic to set down the bags she was balancing on each shoulder and consequently being trampled by the crowds.

At one point a handsome Muggle in a finely tailored Italian suit gallantly offered to help her take her luggage to her train. She would have gladly taken him up on his offer would it not have required explaining that she was departing from Platform 9 ¾. Instead, she pressed through the throng of bodies, allowing the solid mass of her laden trolley, not to mention Lilitu’s bossy hoots, to part the way through the masses. She paused regretfully at Platform 6 3/8, where she had arrived from Switzerland three weeks ago, but pressed forward before she could allow herself to dart through the barrier to check the timetable for the next train out of the country.

The one good thing about the crowd was that everyone was too busy to notice her passing through the solid barrier of Platform 9 ¾. In an instant she went from feeling claustrophobic from the pressing bodies, rucksacks, and jackets dampened by the wet, heavy air to gasping at the almost dizzying flow of fresh oxygen circulating on the magical platform.

A whistle was shrieking just as Aurora shook her head to get her bearings. The noise made Lilitu cry in a most unowl-like squawk and flutter in her cage, sending it toppling from the top of the trunks and unsettling several smaller parcels along with it. Aurora scampered after the clattering, hooting, rolling cage, which crashed into a brick column, sending the wire door flying open. It was a blessing actually that Lilitu was too disoriented to fly away. With a quick coo to her bird as it rotated its head a discombobulated 360 degrees, she pressed the owl back into the cage and collected her fallen belongings.

As quickly as her wobbly wheel allowed, she directed her trolley in a serpentine path toward the train. With the bags on her shoulders nearly offsetting her balance, she clambered precariously up the steep, narrow steps into the single carriage connected to the scarlet steam engine.

“’Urry up! We got a schedule to keep!” the mustached conductor tapping a large gold pocket watch called after her.

She wanted to point out that there was no one else in the open car to care whether they departed a minute late, but instead dropped her bags in the carriage entrance, withdrew her wand, and started Levitating Lilitu’s cage and the rest of her things up into the train. They were already in motion by the time she had lifted the last and heaviest of her trunks off the trolley and managed to maneuver the floating object through the open door.

“Please keep all hands, limbs, wands, and belongings inside the carriage at all times,” the conductor chided, snapping the train door closed with his wand.

“But my things….”

The conductor, however, simply scoffed at her pile of trunks and bags littering the narrow aisle. “Please keep all belongings clear of the aisles,” he droned mechanically.

Aurora rolled her eyes and started shifting some of her bags to the luggage racks and seats around her. She was mid-Levitation of her largest trunk when the conductor, who had been watching her dumbly, asked for her ticket. “Would you mind…? Oh, never mind.” She blew a wisp of hair out of her face and let the trunk down with a “THUNK.” The mustached man tapped his patent-leather shoes while he waited for her to fish through a calf-skin satchel for her ticket. Just as she had started to wonder whether the conductor would toss her from the moving train if she had lost it, she retrieved the piece of paper for him to scrutinize before he finally punched it and moved back down the aisle. He stopped in front of each set of seats as if expecting to find other ticketed passengers in the deserted carriage and then disappeared toward the engine.

With a sigh, Aurora cleared the last of her things from the aisle and set Lilitu’s cage on a seat across from her. The bird was busy plucking her ruffled feathers back into order. As she settled into her own seat, she marveled at the emptiness of the train. It was a wonder it even provided service when there weren’t enough passengers to fill even a single carriage. Then again, Wizarding folk did tend to be set in their ways. She wondered whether the Hogwarts Express was always this empty on runs when it was not transporting students for the beginning and end of term or whether the lack of travelers was due to fears about rampaging Dementors, Inferi, and Death Eaters.

On top of the Express running with just a single carriage and a discourteous conductor, Aurora discovered, come noon, that off-peak travel also lacked any dining service. As the train chugged slowly to the north, she started to wonder just how terrible Lilitu’s owl treats might taste.

Still, her wish to arrive somewhere with food was tempered by her utter dread at arriving at Hogwarts. As the train wound its way toward Scotland, Aurora could feel her comfortable life in Switzerland slipping away. Maybe the Swiss obsession with peace wasn’t so preposterous after all. Already she had missed Bern’s arcaded streets with their lively, international bustle. Now, riding through the murky permutation of English mist and Dementor-induced bleakness, Aurora missed the cheery green and blue alpine hillsides of her childhood summers. These things were precious—maybe too precious to risk losing by becoming entangled in someone else’s war.

But this wasn’t someone else’s war. She had been born into it, as the heavy weight of the Kiebitzei ring in her pocket reminded her. Moreover, she told herself, the Swiss weren’t the only ones entitled to a climate of peaceable freedom. She had been young when she had left England, but she remembered a far sunnier place than this, one where people did not speak in strained whispers or peek nervously from behind closed curtains. Of course, she had been a child then, and her family had certainly never had to fear a Death Eater attack. All the same, Aurora sensed that the rising tide of the Second War was fast building into something far more terrible than the First. The Dark Lord had not crossed the Channel the first time around, but who was to say that Europe would be so lucky now? How could she live with herself knowing that it was her family that had powered his first rise, had known about or maybe even helped in the creation of the Horcruxes that had kept the Dark Lord from dying and enabled this horrible Second Coming? How could she not feel responsible?

Slowly the landscape outside grew rougher and more rugged. She could feel the train slowing as it rounded the edge of a thick forest, circled around a dark lake and then pulled into an outdoor station with a plaque labeled “Hogwarts/Hogsmeade.” The brakes squealed to a halt, stopping her in front of an enormous, dark-bearded man straining to see into the carriage. He was wearing a moleskin coat and was carrying a bent bit of cardboard on which he had scribbled, “Arora Bernard.”

Aurora took her satchel and Lilitu’s cage by hand and made her way to the carriage door. The man had already released the lever and was standing at the bottom of the steps. She was startled to realize that she barely stood eye-level with him even while she was standing on the raised floor of the train.

“Professor Bernard?” the man asked in a deep voice that might have been officious had it not been so gravelly.

“Yes?”

“Rubeus Hagrid, Gamekeeper and Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts,” he introduced himself with a swell of his broad chest. “I’ve come to take yeh to the castle.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Aurora answered, shaking the thick-fingered hand that he reached into the carriage.

“I can help yeh with that,” he offered, taking the cage and her bag.

She gratefully started handing down her things, all the while noting the conductor who had stepped onto the platform and was suspiciously watching the large man as if he were going to try to sneak onto the train without a ticket. Chivalry might not be dead, but it certainly wasn’t wearing double-breasted robes and carrying a pocket watch.

When she had finally sent all her things down to the Gamekeeper, she climbed down onto the platform. Only once she was standing on level ground next to him did she fully appreciate just how large the man before her was. He wasn’t just tall—he was a giant (in metaphorical terms at the very least). She now stood barely even with his stomach, and though she herself was anything but tall, she hadn’t come up that short next to someone since she had been about eight—unless of course you counted standing next to Madame Maxime. In fact, Aurora would have found his monstrous size intimidating had he not been crooning over Lilitu and feeding her owl treats from his pockets.

“Fine bird yeh got there, Professor Bernard,” he said, poking a finger through the bars to stroke her feathers.

“Thank you,” she answered, smiling at the way Lilitu was delightedly leaning into his caresses. “You can call me Aurora, by the way.”

He beamed at her. “Thanks, I’d like that. Yeh can call me Hagrid. Ain’t nobody ’round here calls me Rubeus. Probably wouldn’t know teh answer.” He gave Lilitu another pat. “Might as well let this one fly on to Hogwarts. It’s a right bit faster, and I’m sure she’s wantin’ teh stretch her wings a bit. We’re takin’ the carriage back to the castle.”

Aurora released the catch on Lilitu’s door and watched the bird fly up over the brown roof of the station. Then she followed Hagrid, who was pushing the laden baggage trolley as easily as if it were a doll pram, off the platform, around the tiny ticketing office, and onto the muddy road out front.

If the enormous size of her greeting committee had not been enough to remind Aurora that she was far from home, the transportation to Hogwarts was a sure and ominous confirmation of the fact that she was entering a far darker world than the one to which she had become accustomed. Here were no powder-blue carriages with the gilded Beauxbatons crest and a team of noble Abraxans. Instead, they were met by a shabby black vehicle drawn by a black, skeletal creature that sent chills down Aurora’s spine.

“You have Thestrals,” she breathed without enthusiasm.

It wasn’t that she believed the old wives’ tales about seeing a Thestral being a bad omen. Aurora simply didn’t appreciate the fact that she had always been able to see them, at least since she had started at Beauxbatons anyway. The Care of Magical Creatures teacher had kept one as a barn mate for Madame Maxime’s prized palamino Abraxans. She could still remember the start she had had when she had gone with her friends to the stable as a First Year and had ventured into what everyone else had assumed was an empty stall, only for her to discover a black winged beast with gleaming white eyes that only she could see. When one desperately wanted to be like everyone else, how did one explain why one was the only person who could see a Thestral?

“This here’s Tenebrus,” said Hagrid proudly, ignoring the wide berth she took around the creature. “Go ahead, give him a pat.”

“Sorry, I’m allergic,” she lied. What kind of school kept Thestrals for transportation? Aurora was not superstitious by nature, but at the moment she couldn’t help but wonder if there was something to the bad omen business. This was not how she wanted to make her entrance to Hogwarts.

Hagrid said something about allergies being a shame and then loaded her luggage easily into the coach. He gave her a hand up onto a seat and then squeezed in next to her with his knees nearly up to his chin. “Alright!” he called out, and the carriage started its slow, bumping journey along the rutted road around the lake. No sooner were they underway than he asked conversationally, “So yeh’ve come teh work for the Order?”

Aurora braced herself from bouncing between the carriage wall and the moleskin mass that was Hagrid. “Pardon?” Surely he had not just asked what she thought he had.

“No need to worry ’bout keepin’ it secret from me,” he said easily. “I’m in the Order too. Lots of us here are. Dumbledore’s been sendin’ me out on missions.” His broad chest swelled with pride. “Great man, Dumbledore. It’s an honor to be workin’ for him.”

Note to self: Don’t tell any secrets to Hagrid.

All the same, there was something endearing about the Gamekeeper’s obvious pride in his work for the Order and his love for Albus Dumbledore. “I’m sure Albus appreciates you too, Hagrid.” She received a broad beam from him. “Is serving the Order a prerequisite for being on staff here then?”

“Most all of us are loyal to Dumbledore in our own way, but there’s only a couple of us that’s actually in the Order—just me an’ Professor McGonagall an’ Professor Snape. S’pose you might be working with him,” he went on. “Not the friendliest man in the world, mind, but Dumbledore trusts him ’nuff.”

Aurora debated whether she should reveal that she had already met the Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher, but the almost sure knowledge that Hagrid would tell her anything she wanted made her set aside caution for curiosity. “Yes, I’ve met Severus Snape already. He certainly seems…serious…about his job. He’s a difficult one to crack, though. Do you know how Albus came to trust him so?”

To her surprise, Hagrid did take a moment to brush off some unseen lint off his moleskin coat as he considered how to answer. “Yeh wouldn’t be the first one to wonder how Professor Snape turned. Ain’t no question he joined the Death Eaters as rotten as the rest, but then a bit before the end of the war he came here to Hogwarts. I remember the night he came here—October it was—he looked like a Kneazle bein’ chased by a werewolf. Dumbledore won’t say what happened, and Professor Snape, well, he ain’t the type yeh just go up an’ ask, but the Headmaster’s trusted him ever since. Kept him from goin’ to Azkaban after all was said an’ done—testified in front of the Wizengamot an’ everythin’.”

“But if Albus spoke up for him publicly, how did Severus manage to go back? Why did the Death Eaters still trust him?” Whatever magic it was that made his compatriots blind to his disloyalty, she wanted some of it.

“Don’t quite know, though the Professor stayed thick as thieves with lots of his ol’ crowd. Easy to do as Head of Slytherin. Gets a lot of people worked up the way he favors that lot, but Dumbledore still won’t hear a word of bad about him. Gives people a chance when others won’t, he does. Take me, for instance…never even finished school, but Dumbledore let me stay on as Gamekeeper. Even hired me as a teacher,” he added matter-of-factly.

“What do you teach?” she asked with what she hoped was not too much surprise.

“Care of Magical Creatures,” he answered with another swell of his chest which nearly popped some buttons on his coat.

“You must be a very busy man, Hagrid,” she offered kindly.

“Glad teh do it,” he answered gruffly. “Always glad teh help Dumbledore, an’ Hogwarts has been my home most of my life. Ah,” he added, looking out the window of the coach, “yeh can see the castle now.”

Sure enough, they were about to round a final bend that would then lead them straight through a set of imposing iron gates. The daunting first impression of the black iron bars was counteracted somewhat by a pair of almost cartoonish winged boar statues that looked down upon them and reminded Aurora of the Muggle saying “when pigs fly.” (Funny, that’s about the time she thought she would ever find herself here at Hogwarts.) The structure beyond the gates, however, had nothing funny about it. Pointed turrets rose out of dark gray stone and into the air like towers of gleaming spears. It looked like something out of a gothic horror novel and seemed better suited for Hungary or Romania than for the Scottish Highlands.

“What do yeh think?” Hagrid asked as they rattled through the iron gates.

“It’s very different from Beauxbatons,” she said quietly. The French academy was nearly as old as Hogwarts, but it had been completely renovated during the reign of the Muggle King Louis XIV. The new palace celebrated beauty and grandeur, unlike the castle here, whose thick walls and high battlements served as reminders of centuries of Wizarding wars. Who was she kidding? The fortifications weren’t merely reminders of bygone violence. In her lifetime, magical Britain had defended itself in two wars, and both campaigns had been led by the man who also headed the school. Here was the heart of the resistance, and these walls were waiting for the fight the Dark Lord was sure to bring to them.

“Yeh’re from Beauxbatons?” Hagrid asked. “Pretty place there.”

“Yes, it is,” Aurora said absently. She could have sworn that the willow tree they were driving past was swatting at birds in the air.

“Don’t s’pose yeh know Olympe Maxime?”

Despite her preoccupation with her new surroundings, Aurora couldn’t help but catch the eagerness in Hagrid’s voice. “She was Headmistress when I was there.” She gave the giant man another look. Was she interpreting the flush under Hagrid’s thick beard correctly? She tried to imagine the propagator of all Beauxbatons’ pageantry with the simple, patched Gamekeeper beside her. “Do you know her?”

“Took care of her Abraxans durin’ the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Olympe said she couldn’tve taken better care of ’em herself,” he said with pride. “Me and her went on a mission for Dumbledore together, we did. Fine woman, Olympe, fine.”

So Madame Maxime was helping the Order of the Phoenix? It seemed her “big-boned” former Headmistress was full of surprises. It was no wonder Albus had gone to her for information when Aurora had first contacted him.

The carriage pulled to a stop in front of two heavy oak doors. “Here we are!” Hagrid cried happily. He stopped her from trying to gather up her things. “No need teh worry about yer luggage, ’Rora. Reckon yeh’re starvin’ after yer ride—Express don’t even run the tea trolley but for the students. We’ll get yeh somethin’ teh eat, an’ the House Elves will get yeh all settled.”

As he gave her a hand out of the carriage, her eye caught a glint of something in the hazy light from the climbing moon. She looked to the west edge of the castle, where a bit of the lake snaked around to this side of the grounds. She could have sworn she had seen several swaying tentacles reaching lazily out of the water. “Is that…?”

“Giant Squid,” Hagrid explained. “Go on, give him a wave. Yeh can feed him some toast in the morning.”

Thestrals and a Giant Squid. There was no doubt about it. Aurora was very, very far away from home.