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 of this. I’m just having some fun adding my own little corner to the amazing world she has already created.

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CHAPTER 13—ALL THE NEWS YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR

Antonin Dolohov’s sandy hair had faded with years and imprisonment. His mutton-chop sideburns had thinned, and the stout and solid frame of his youth had drooped into a soft belly. Despite these changes, there was no mistaking the escaped prisoner in the Daily Prophet.

Uncle Antie.

… Uncle Antie, who smelled richly of cigar smoke and who had never minded how his toddler goddaughter stumbled over his name.

… Uncle Antie who had simply turned her unintentional pun in a new direction. “An ant I am, ’Rorya,” he would say to her when the family visited his Dover home, an underground fortress tunneled into the white cliffs overlooking the sea. “That’s why I love making castles in the earth.”

…Uncle Antie, who in typical bachelor fashion gave her the most delightfully noisy toys to the chagrin of her parents, who didn’t give a Doxie about the five food groups, and who orchestrated the most elaborate games of hide and seek in which she never found him unless he let her.

“That’s because your godfather is a master at hiding,” her father had explained, “especially when he’s in a spot of trouble.” When the Bad People (that is, the Order of the Phoenix) had taken Uncle Antie away to Azkaban, Aurora had asked Wolfram why her godfather hadn’t hidden like they did in their games, but she’d received an answer she didn’t really understand: “Funny thing, Schatz. This time he wasn’t really in trouble. Guess that’s why he wasn’t so good at hiding.”

Antonin Dolohov had been her father’s best friend. Like the Kiebitzei’s, he was from an expatriate family that had come over during the Grindewaldian War—on the Allied books as refugees, in the Axis files as spies for the Dark cause. He and her parents had gone to Durmstrang together, had spent beachside holidays together, and had, of course, joined the Death Eaters together.

To her ten-year-old self, Uncle Antie had been the next best thing to family after her parents had died, and she had spent her first several months with Aunt Ebba and her Muggle Uncle Albert throwing trilingual tantrums about how she wanted to go and live with her Uncle Antie, Dementors notwithstanding.

No, there was no way she could fail to recognize the escaped convict in the newspaper, and with a sudden dawning of panic she realized that there was probably no way he couldn’t recognize her either.

Of course, the fear was silly. She’d bet her last Sickle that Antonin Dolohov had gone straight from Azkaban to his hidey-hole in Dover. What were the chances of him spotting her in London when the Prophet still had his mug shot plastered across the front page of the paper? Still, she nearly went into a panic attack then and there after she had made her hasty good-byes to the Weasleys and was scuttling out of the bookstore, only to come face-to-face with an enlarged photo of her godfather making smug faces from a WANTED poster hanging on the door.

So what if her godfather hadn’t seen her since she was a child? He’d known her fair-skinned, yellow-haired mother, who, though taller and more willowy than Aurora, was undoubtedly the mold from which her daughter had been cast. Even if Antonin Dolohov wasn’t around to spot her, who was to say that another of her parents’ friends wouldn’t recognize her, disguised as she was by only her Muggle uncle’s last name, as the uncanny image of Minka Kiebitzei?

Self-consciously, Aurora dropped her face to the ground and Apparated out of Diagon Alley the moment she set foot on its cobbled stones. Not even the empty, tree-lined road outside the Hogwarts gates seemed sufficiently free of knowing eyes, and the thirteen steps from her Apparition point to the warded side of the iron bars could not come quickly enough.

Hustling up the dirt path to the castle, she realized she had been far too blasé in her movement in public. She had spent too many years far outside her parents’ old circles to even consider the possibility of being recognized. Of course, recognition was what this whole scheme would eventually gamble upon, but for the time being, she needed to remain sufficiently anonymous.

Albus had been insistent upon her not getting anywhere near anyone or anything connected to Voldemort until she had completed her lessons with Severus. She wasn’t to reestablish her family’s connections. She wasn’t even to go snooping around for more information on the Horcruxes. Anything that brought her into the Dark Lord’s radar would require her approaching him immediately, lest he question her slowness at joining him. Albus wanted her prepared, and—she suspected—he wanted her to have sufficient opportunities to back out.

No sooner had she crossed the threshold of the castle than she was making a beeline for the Headmaster’s office. The reentry of her parents’ closest friend into the free world threw dangerous complications into their plans. She needed assurances that Antonin Dolohov would be caught or at the very lest be kept far, far away from Hogwarts.

She reached the gargoyle in front of the entrance to the Head’s office and gave it the password—Ton Tongue Toffee. (Apparently Albus had already made a visit to Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.) The stone statue gave way to an opening in the wall, behind which a spiraling staircase was slowly ascending. She rode the corkscrew stairs until they disappeared underneath a little wooden landing in front of a polished oak door. With a step and a half to spare before the staircase disappeared from view, she hopped onto the wooden planks, vaguely recalling her paranoia of getting her toes caught in the metal teeth at the end of Muggle escalators. It was a generally irrational fear in the Muggle world, but given wizards’ often macabre sense of humor, not entirely out of place here. Thankful to still have all her digits attached, she reached out to grasp the griffin-headed brass knocker when she heard two familiar voices on the other side of the door.

“You think I wanted to see Emmeline Vance dead?” Severus Snape was demanding, his elastic voice now nearly on the verge of snapping.

“I did not say that, Severus,” Albus answered evenly.

“No, but that is what you’re implying,” the younger man spat. “A Slytherin calculates his moves like a Potions Master measures his ingredients. How could I have given the Dark Lord her whereabouts without knowing the end she would meet?”

“We’ve been through this before, Severus,” the Headmaster sighed, but the younger man paid him no heed.

“I’m telling you that I thought the information about the Government change would be enough. I told him about Vance, too, because it was that or my bloody ass staked in front of the castle gates…”

Aurora cringed.

“…I thought if anyone could take care of themselves it was Emmeline Vance.” There was a pause before he added with a sneer barely masking his defensiveness. “Guess I was wrong.”

“Severus, I don’t blame you.”

“But you do,” the spy insisted, “because you think that light and love ought to triumph on their own, because you send other people out to get caught in the fray while you pretend that the difference between right and wrong is as apparent as that between vanilla and chocolate. You forget that sacrifices must be made.”

Aurora braced herself for a reprisal of fireworks, stunned that even Severus Snape would dare to speak this brazenly to one of the most powerful wizards in the world. Instead, she had to strain to hear what the Headmaster said next.

“I have never forgotten the meaning of sacrifice.” His words were soft and melancholy and charged with meaning that seemed to pass between him and Severus, because now the spy was silent as he seemed to step back from the line that he had just crossed.

Several soundless seconds crept by and the landing on which Aurora stood was beginning to feel claustrophobic. She reached up again to knock on the door but again stopped short.

“How are lessons progressing with Aurora?” Albus asked unexpectedly.

“Speaking of sacrifices…” Severus said acidly, jumping right back into hypercritical mode.

“Now, Severus,” Albus answered with surprising joviality, given the tension just moments before. “Spending time with Aurora Bernard hardly qualifies as a sacrifice.”

The Headmaster ignored Severus’s guffaw; Aurora, however, could not. She also didn’t particularly like the fact that she had seemed the natural transition out of the previous conversation. It implied she too fell into the category of possible sacrifices.

“She’s a lovely woman,” Albus continued. “Most men would enjoy spending time in her company.”

“Lovely women are for planning tea parties and modeling broomsticks,” Severus answered curtly.

“And how are they at learning Mentior Occlumency?”

“Rotten. She won’t let me anywhere near that fluffy-pink-cloud mind of hers.”

Aurora’s lips settled into a seething line. Fluffy pink cloud?

“I see,” said Albus knowingly. “I take it you haven’t gotten very far?”

Right in one, Albus, Aurora thought. As someone who had actually done a thorough inspection of her mind, he knew that there was little that was fluffy or pink about it.

“She hasn’t gotten very far,” Severus corrected, his snide emphasis on “she” now seeming like part of a familiar tune. She hadn’t failed to notice how he never said her name or how he uttered every pronoun in reference to her like a curse. Maybe if he got over his fear of being contaminated by her apparent pink-fluffiness he would realize his own hand in impeding their lessons.

“And,” he added with asperity, “she insists upon wasting our lessons with the most preposterous schemes.”

Severus proceeded to tell the Headmaster about her use of the Rosetta Stone playing cards, which—to Aurora’s immense satisfaction—merited a delighted response: “Ingenious! She is innovative in the classroom, isn’t she? I can’t wait to see what she does with Runes.”

Severus dealt with this setback with remarkable reserve. “Sir,” he said with sudden silkiness, “I think you ought to be more concerned with what she does with real magic.”

Aurora had the sudden compulsion to throw her heaviest runic dictionary at the greasy git on the other side of the door.

“Did you know she was the Longbottom of her Defense Against the Dark Arts class?”

Shut up, Severus.

“How exactly do you expect her to last with the Death Eaters? She doesn’t even have a clue how defenseless she’ll be.”

He might be surprised.

“You underestimate her, Severus,” Albus said wearily.

Maybe. Maybe not.

“She won’t make a spy, Headmaster,” Severus pressed on. “You might not like the…choices…I’ve made, but if you send her to the Dark Lord you’ll see what I’ve had as my alternative. If she can’t make the sacrifices, she will be the sacrifice.”

Verdammt. She was not hearing this.

“Is that all you intend her to be—a new Lily Potter to shed her blood so you can have a new weapon? Because right now that’s about the only thing she’s good for—a little white lamb to be led to the slaughter.”

“That’s enough,” declared Albus warningly.

He was right. It was enough. On shaky legs, Aurora stepped back onto the staircase, now spiraling downwards, and fled.