The Unfortunates

Ah, yes... An update. Not too eventful, but a nice - as my beta said - sort of reminder of all that\'s going on. :) Read!

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: HIS SISTER INDEED


The sound of expensive china smashing on old manor walls had sparrows taking off in fright as the sun rose on the morning of the 1st of December.

“Fuck you!” raged Draco, his gaze fixed on the broken vase pieces before him. “I can’t believe I appointed this task to you; I should’ve known you wouldn’t be able to do it!”

Gregory Goyle stepped over to the broken china and, with a slightly clumsy wand movement, restored it back to its original glory.

“Come on, Draco,” he said sheepishly, “I’ve had them looking everywhere. Even Dad’s been telling some of his friends to keep their eyes open. Many of them have been to see her too you know; they all remember what she looks like and everything. I’m telling you, she’s not –”

“Bollocks!” interrupted Draco furiously. He stepped over as his friend was picking up the restored vase. “She can’t have simply vanished from the face of the earth, Gregory! She doesn’t have permission to leave Britain, she couldn’t have gotten a Portkey, as far as we know she’s without a wand and the Apparition Center hasn’t traced a single move from her! She’s here, damn you!” With those final words, he wrenched the vase from Goyle’s hands, physically hurling it straight into the floor. It felt good.

“No one’s seen her, Draco,” said Goyle desperately. “Personally, I suspect she might’ve ended up with that Granger bloke after all...” A slight pause. Then... “Perhaps if you hadn’t left him there to chase after her...”

“Shut the fuck up!” bellowed Draco, pushing Goyle brutally in the chest as he made his way back to his desk.

He couldn’t believe this was happening. Mira was gone. Vanished. Since the fight at Lilly Barrette’s and the chase through the alleyway Draco had seen neither her nor her mysterious friend Granger. The latter had even vanished from the brothel room by the time Draco had returned, apparently taking its resident with him, because Mandy Brocklehurst was now nowhere to be found either. It was a real mystery, and it was driving the young Malfoy heir crazy.

“Look, can’t you just forget about it, Draco?” begged Goyle tiredly. “There’s hundreds of other girls in London who’d give anything to spend a night with you; you wouldn’t even have to pay those, you know!”

“I know that,” snarled Draco immediately.

“So just forget about Mira Gideon, mate,” sighed Goyle, apparently believing he had convinced his childhood friend, “I know she’s humiliated you, but let’s face it: If she’s vanished, who can she brag about it to anyway?”

Draco smiled nastily. “That sentence really emphasizes the simplicity of your petty mind, Gregory. This is not over. It won’t be over until I find her and give her as she has well deserved. No one treats a Malfoy like that!”

“You’re beginning to sound like your father,” mumbled Goyle.

“Good! He happens to agree with me on this; damn Mira has humiliated us and she isn’t likely to get away with it.” He locked eyes with Goyle and raised a threatening finger. “Now you get those idiots you call associates to find her, or you’ll seriously regret ever having spoken a single word to me. I mean it.”

---

There had been decades since so many people had been gathered around the majestic dining table of the Snape estate. Not since his time as a Hogwarts student, if Severus remembered correctly.

Forty-one Rebels had been squeezed around it; there were just a tad too many of them to be comfortable, even with the table being as large as it was. There was an uneasy air about the room that morning as gradually, people were finishing their plates and turning their faces to the young man at the head of the table.

Finally, the tension of expectancy was unbearable, and Lupin gently cleared his throat in Potter’s direction.

“What? Oh – right.” He awkwardly got to his feet, smiling hesitantly. “I’d like to start off by saying I’m not totally comfortable with this,” he began earnestly, “but I guess what with me being who I am and all... Well.” An awkward pause. “If I didn’t welcome you all properly last night, I will now. I’m genuinely happy to see so many people seated around this table, and – before I forget – remember to show your gratitude to... to Professor Snape; without him we wouldn’t have Killengreen as our base.”

A few nods of appreciation were dedicated to Severus, but he barely registered them.

“Now, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you,” continued Potter. “I know many of you newcomers came in here last night thinking that everything would be okay, and that we have it all sorted out... Well, it’s far from it. We’re in just as much trouble as you are; we can’t even set a foot outside the estate without being in disguise. But now,” he added, his voice shaking slightly, “I think our luck might be changing.”

People around the table exchanged glances, and Severus accidentally caught Hermione’s eye. She gave a quick smile, then returned her attention to Potter.

“There are many of us now,” he said. “With a bit of help from Professor Snape, we might be able to estimate what sort of an army we might be up against. And we might manage to find other refugees... I seriously believe there must be more survivors out there. So in the upcoming weeks, I suggest we do a bit of background work. We organize search parties to look in places similar to the forest Hermione found you in,” he nodded to some of the newly arrived Rebels with a slight smile, “and then we’ll need to get our hands on some wands for you. That’ll be dangerous work, but not impossible. I’m convinced we’ll make some progress now; there’s not forty of us for nothing, right...?”

“Hear, hear!” said Fred Weasley, banging his palm on the table. Several others joined in with comments and murmurs of agreement.

“In the meantime,” continued Potter, “we’ll still have teams working on developing charms and potions that may work in our favour. I’d like to ask Bill and Professor Snape to be in charge of this, if that’s okay...?”

Bill immediately nodded his agreement. Severus decided this wasn’t time the to act like a childish fool, and gave a small nod, too.

“Good. Okay, well... It’s all a bit confusing right now, but I’m sure we’ll get organized soon enough.” Potter paused to sigh. “Er... I think that’s about it for now. I’d like to spend some time talking to a few of you individually, we’ll need to sort out who’d be best suited for which job and so on – so for now, you’ve got the day off, so to speak.” He smiled sheepishly. “But if there’s anything in particular you’d like to do, anything you know you’re good at... Well, let me know.”

He glanced at Lupin at this point, who nodded, and Potter sat back down. Talk slowly erupted around the table again as people were getting to their feet or engaging each other in conversations.

Severus looked around discreetly, only to find that Hermione had already left.

---

She was hastily making her way through the hall to the lounge, where she was to meet Ron, when a casual gaze through one of the windows to her left made her stop dead on the spot.

Through the tall, dusty windows Hermione could see the outskirts of the Killengreen garden, where it lay ghostly and cold as always. Although it was early and sunny out, it was as though a dampened mist from nowhere had wrapped itself around the garden, preserving its dark feeling despite the bright light of the December morning. Frost had crept its way up the stone path and into the trees and plants, yet they had hardly changed from the weather; it looked as though this garden just wouldn’t let its leaves fall, not even for the ice cold of winter.

Hermione felt chills run down her spine.

She was about to move on, go straight to the lounge where she’d promised Ron she’d meet him, when it caught her eyes again.

She’d forgotten all about her, the mysterious phantom Hermione had spotted on her very first night at Killengreen. Severus had been all worked up about it – she remembered that night well – and since then so much had been happening, Hermione had completely forgotten.

But here she was again.

In broad daylight, standing as though frozen on the spot in the Snape garden, her gaze absently staring at something in the frosty hedges of the garden, clad in nothing but mere remnants of deep, silvery purple robes that looked as if they’d once been of the finest quality. Now they looked so torn they could barely cling on to their owner.

Hermione was mesmerized. The sight of this woman, who was so obviously distorted beyond sanity even in the afterlife, was both horribly frightening and strangely fascinating at once. There was a sort of melancholic beauty to her, albeit a brutal, shattered one.

And then... The woman’s head whipped around, so quickly it almost looked as though she would’ve twisted her neck off, and locked eyes with Hermione.

Those eyes... Not until this very moment had Hermione ever realized the true implications of the term “windows to the soul”. Every single emotion this woman felt was represented in those eyes; those wide, glittering eyes of a clear silver that seemed to reach straight into Hermione’s very mind, seeking out a soul in exchange for her own.

The woman moved. Making Hermione’s heart skip at least three beats.

She was approaching the window; she appeared to be gliding rather than walking, and if it wasn’t for the way her ragged robes moved Hermione almost would’ve thought she was.

As the phantom got closer to the windows of the hall, leaving most of the Killengreen garden behind her, Hermione found herself drawn towards this strange, silvery creature. She moved, hesitantly at first, then with more confidence, towards the window, never taking her eyes off the ghost before her. They met, finally, standing less than half a meter from one another, the only barrier between them being the tall, dusty window.

She was so close now... Hermione studied her, without shame, as it almost appeared that was what the woman wanted her to do, and took in every inch. She saw the emptiness in her eyes, her slightly transparent, silvery form and the garden behind it. She saw the ragged robes, and realized with a fright that they had been cut and torn open by what had to be a creature of some sort; wear and tear alone couldn’t have done it.

But apart from the eyes, the wounds were the worst. The wounds, and the dark, dry spots of blood.

It was pretty much everywhere. An ugly gash snaked its way down from her cheek to her left collarbone; stray cuts and nasty bruises covered pretty much every visible part of her body, and what little the robes covered was splattered with dried blood. Hermione couldn’t help but stare wide-eyed at the particularly big spot on the part of the robes covering her abdomen.

Suddenly Hermione’s question from her first night at Killengreen was answered; there was little wondering in her mind as to how this woman had died. And although the robes appeared to be torn by a creature, the blood on her abdomen certainly wasn’t made by any sort of wild animal. This spoke of “man”, loud and clearly.

When Hermione slowly looked up into the woman’s eyes again, she was startled to see the ghost had inched her face millimetres close to the window. Her gaze never left Hermione’s as she suddenly opened her mouth to blow gently at the window, making momentary fog appear there.

Slowly, the phantom raised her finger, and in the fog she spelled out a single word:


H I G S L E Y


Hermione blinked, and the words faded away along with the fog, vanishing so quickly she almost thought she hadn’t seen it. But she had.

“Higsley?” she repeated; her voice was nothing but a hoarse whisper. She wondered if the woman outside could hear her. “You mean Jim Higsley, the man who arrived here last night?” She paused, then whispered: “So you are his sister then...!”

The ghost outside didn’t move, but it felt to Hermione as though her eyes were confirming the guess. She couldn’t be certain, though.

Then the creature outside breathed on the window again, making a bigger fog on the window this time, and raised her finger again. She wrote something longer this time, and although the letters were backwards, Hermione could just make them out before they started fading away again.

When they vanished, so did the ghost – just like that, she was gone. With no explanation whatsoever. But Hermione wasn’t stupid; she knew what the ghost’s last message had been. It was all too obvious what it was.

Something strange came over Hermione then, and she did as the phantom had done and breathed on the window, creating another fogged area. Raising her index finger, she slowly wrote on the old hall windows of the Snape home the very same words that the ghost had written on the outside seconds earlier.


MOHRAG D. HIGSLEY


That was her name.

But who she was – that was still a mystery.


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A/N: As always, I must thank my so unbelievably kind, faithful and patient beta-reader, JessiokaFroka.

I\'d also like to give a thanks to yutamiyu, who\'s been helping me wih the block and kept my spirit going. :)

Now, what to say? First, before I forget it - yes, I know the \"fog on the window\" concept isn\'t exactly a new one, but it still works, doesn\'t it? I\'ve always adored that way of delivering messages, so to say. So yes, I know it\'s been used before, but hey - I don\'t care. :) Mohrag Higsley wanted to use it, that\'s my excuse.

Reviews are necessary. Cannot live without them. You make my day! :)