A Dark Time For The Light

59

The nightmares were back. Both experienced them.

I’m totally lost, I’m wandering listlessly, people are either looking at me strangely or ignoring me. When I catch sight of myself in a shop window, My face has dried blood and grimy teartracks all over it, no wonder folk are looking at me oddly. I dip into a foetid Gents and do what I can with a bit of bog roll and cold water, would I be able to drown in such a small amount?. The water tastes god-awful anyway. I wash my hands and wander on. From the road signs at intersections, I surmise I’m in Yorkshire, then I see a Council building, okay, I’m in Sheffield. Why here?, why did Snape bring me here?. Does he have a connection to the area? At this moment, I really can’t bring myself to care.

****
I look down at myself. There are voices all around me but they are a blur in the background. I’m in full dress whites that fit me perfectly. I look up, my father is standing before me gripping my upper arms, he’s hissing something at me, there are dots of spittle leaving his mouth as he speaks, he shakes me and I feel my head snap back and forth but I cannot properly hear or understand what he’s saying. He turns me then, and steers me to the Staff table his hand warm in my back. I am brought face to face with HIM. All I have the presence of mind to wonder is - why is that git in Dumbledore’s chair?

****
I follow signs for the railway station on automatic pilot. I have nowhere else to go. I daren’t go to the Dursley’s, I’m certain I will be tracked there, so I buy a single ticket to Manchester Piccadilly. I have decided. I’m going to throw myself on the mercies of Aunt Marge and if she rejects me, then I’m going to kill myself. Maybe this would be the best solution anyway, save everybody lots of trouble, including me. I find myself looking longingly at the tracks as I wait on the platform. I can feel the tears on my face but I don’t care. I wipe them with my sleeve and when I look up, the train is pulling in.

****
A hand is being pressed into mine. A far-off voice asks me to repeat the words after him. My voice doesn’t sound like mine, but my lips move and out it comes. I don’t know what I’m saying. I look at the hand, a girl’s, long and slender, white skin dotted with freckles. Someone takes my free hand, slips something cold and hard into it. I look down, a slender gold ring. I am assisted in placing it on the slim hand. The girl is also helped to place a ring around my own finger. More incomprehensible babble then applause, polite, restrained. I am vaguely aware of my Father’s booming laugh and the pop of a champagne cork. As we are led from the Staff table, I am jostled severally. There are people patting my shoulder, I hear murmurings of congratulations around me and I dimly wonder what all the fuss is about. I am holding the girl’s hand still. Whose?. I look towards her, pretty face, dead eyes, long lustrous red hair, beautiful gown. I look away again, then down at the gold band encircling my finger, the third on the left hand. Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, I know. I have just been married to Ginny Weasley.

****
I arrive at Marge’s as dusk is setting in. It seems weird to think that I should be sitting down to dinner in the Great Hall about now, celebrating the end of the Arithmancy NEWT, casting lustful glances at my lover across the Hall, flirting outrageously, he’s such a tart, he does things as he eats that are downright obscene, the way he pulls his fork out of his mouth, giving the ends of the tines a lick, that thing he does with the tip of his tongue on the edge of his glass before he drinks, and, Merlin!!, when we have sausages. Don’t get me started. These thoughts are flitting through my mind as I’m on the bus to Aunt Marge’s. I’m overwhelmed again by loss. I’ll never see him again and my soul dissolves. I ring the bell and slump on her front step, heart-sore and lost, howling my grief as she opens the door.

****

We are lost in space and time for a moment. Oh, yes, Apparation. I know this place now. I’m home. By instinct I turn to go to my own chamber. I feel a gentle hand steering me, my Mother. I still have Ginny’s slack hand in mine. Instead of my own rooms we are taken into the East wing. The suite we are led to is comfortable and sumptuous like the rest of my home. My Father and two others are there as we are welcomed to our new home as man and wife. The other two people are our newly appointed bed-chamber attendants. They move towards us and begin to divest us of our robes. We are soon naked and led to the high bed. We are made to drink a Potion. The curtains are closed around us. I know that the three are still in the room. I am ordered to ‘Get a child on the Weasley bitch’ and if there’s no blood on the sheets, there’ll be trouble.

****

I open the door and the Potter brat is wailing all over my front garden. He doesn’t even notice me, but then I hear the keening in his wail. He has lost someone. I made the same sounds when my husband passed, when they turned off the machines and I watched all of the vital signs flatline. I stand resolute, however.

It’s the bloody dog that’s my undoing. I’m just about to slam the door again. I want no part of Potter and his strangeness, he’s caused my dear brother enough problems over the years. But then Snapper darts out around my feet and snuggles up to the boy.

I knew I shouldn’t have taken an Animal Shelter dog, but Ripper had just passed and I couldn’t resist him, the smartest little Jack Russell you ever did see. Now he’s making these little yelps as he tries to worm his way into the boy’s arms. Somewhere in the grief, Potter notices and moves slightly to allow the dog on his lap then embraces him. Snapper loves this and shows his appreciation by being licky and yipping, his whole body taut with affection. The Potter boy’s howls get louder, his tears wetting Snapper’s coat who doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he senses the boy’s genuine distress and is doing his best doggy thing in trying to alleviate it. I always did trust dogs more than humans anyway. I nudge the Potter boy with the toe of my shoe, “You’d better come in then”.

****

I am only half-hard, she is dry. It hurts for both of us and neither wants it. There are tears on both of our faces, but I manage to break her hymen and there are the few spots of blood that my Father seems to desire. I don’t know if I even ejaculated. There was no pleasure for either of us. A while later, our sleep is disturbed by our Masters of the Bedchamber who whip the bottom sheet from under us, replacing it then taking the bloody evidence away, probably to be hung from the fucking battlements. In the event, we have to do this a few times before she catches. We both try to make this better for ourselves, strictly in private, of course after the first debacle. Under an Imperius you can do nothing else. We both, in the very backs of our minds, realise what has been done to us. We can do nothing but submit, and make it as good as we can for each other.


****

Aunt Marge kicks me and invites me in. I like her new dog, he’s very affectionate, even while it makes me sadder. I have something alive in my arms again. I pick up the dog and enter the house, a neat suburban three bed detached much like her brother’s house. Understandably, Marge is terrified of me. She hasn’t seen me since I blew her up in third year.

As I collapse and weep all over her living room, she makes a pot of tea and presses a cup into my shaking hands. She asks me if I have run away from my Approved School. I turn red eyes to her and tell her the truth. I’m not a criminal but a Wizard, my parents didn’t die in a car crash and that I’ve just lost everybody who ever meant anything to me, including the love of my life, yes, a boy. I wait for the blow to fall, the angry exhortation to ‘leave now’. But it doesn’t come. The dog is quiescent in my arms, content to lick away the salt on my face. Then I feel a tentative hand on my shoulder, “I know what it is to lose the love of your life”. I nearly choke on my tea. I lift my head and look into her eyes. I know I look a real fright. Hair stuck up all over the place, not very clean, in need of a shower. Then she surprises the life out of me.

****

She knows this is not what I want, but she is a Gryffindor like my Harry. She is brave. It’s not what she wants either. I know she is in love with Hermione Granger and I with Harry Potter, but we persist and we get the news that they want to hear. She’s pregnant with my child.

****

She reaches down and hugs me. It seems, because her dog took to me, that she will too, something about dogs knowing stuff, getting past the lies, even though this woman is repulsive to me, a little of our common experience sparks across the gap between us and she helps me to my feet. She shows me to a bed I can collapse in, a shower I can bathe in, and gives me a pair of outsize pyjamas to wear and a large bathrobe. Before I sleep, she insists on feeding me although the food tastes like dust in my mouth. I eat like an automaton. Chew twenty times. Swallow. Then another forkful. She watches me as I eat and lays a hand on my other arm, “That’s how I forced myself to eat when Bertrand passed. You have to keep your strength up”. Her words are somehow soothing. I’ve no idea what I’m eating. After the meal is over, I feel tears well once again and tell her everything about this hellish day. I am a howling wreck by the time she leads me upstairs. She holds me as I lie in her spare bed. She goes to her own bed as my sniffles quiet. She leaves the door to my room open and the landing light on in case I wake disorientated. The dog climbs onto my bed and it’s he that I hold as I finally sleep.

****

At last I can give the girl some dignity and space. She’s pregnant with a son. The first night I move into a separate chamber, she has no sleep. She asks for me. I go to her. It is not congress that she needs, just some-one close in the night. I happily oblige. I miss that closeness too, someone to fall asleep with, someone to hold, even though we weep for our loved ones onto each other’s shoulders each night before sleep claims us. My Father is happy that we seem to get on so well. He has great hopes for a string of little Malfoys from this fertile Weasley.

****

Within a couple of weeks I have a job, albeit lowly. I’m a machine minder in a biscuit factory, but the pay is good and Marge helps me with a deposit on a bed-sit nearer to work. I lie a bit about how much I need and put a down-payment on a scooter with the rest. One day I’ll pay her back. Honest, I will.

****

Was it the weed?. Did this make them paranoid? What was going on?. Then Draco thought of it. “Harry, when was the last time you had a true nightmare, not just disturbing dreams?”. Harry smiled a little shyly, “Not since you asked me to marry you, if I recall. Why?”. Draco persisted, “When did I ask you, baby?”, in a low voice. “Well, we’d just got back from that awful trip to Hogwart’s, hadn’t we?”, he frowned, lost in thought.

“Harry, what have you had under your pillow every night since then?. It’s not the weed, love, it’s Fawkes’ feather, you need it back, and it’s still in the fake wand that George made for Alice”. Harry shivered slightly, he didn’t fancy contacting her just yet, still somewhat frightened by the recent events, but admitted, ruefully, that he was missing the presence of the bright orange feather. Somehow it kept him connected to the idea of Magic, even when he wanted to give it all up occasionally.

Reluctantly, he called her. She answered, bright as a button, “Hi, Harry, how’re you doing? Hope the other day wasn’t too awful for you”. He ashamedly admitted to being scared. “Harry, I was shittin’ a brick with me name on it, lad!!. Just like I did when Percy Weasley called ‘my’ name. I thought you were used to death-defying activity. A scene like that has frequently involved either rival gangs shootin’ each other or the busies pokin’ their noses in. Anyway, sweetheart, don’t want to say any more....To what do I owe this honour?”, her tone light, amused.

As briefly as possible, he explained, “You can keep the wand but I need the core, it matches the one in my own wand and it seems to lessen my nightmares”, he finished lamely. Her voice was instantly sympathetic, “Good God, Harry, then come and get it. I’m going to be late home, though, I do my late night at the Bunker for phone orders”. Harry was bemused. “The Bunker....I don’t understand?”. She laughed, “It’s where I have my book warehouse, it’s an old fall-out shelter. Will tomorrow do?. No, perhaps not. I’d hate to think of someone having nightmares. Come over here, if you can. You have transport. Grab a bit of paper and I’ll give you directions”.

Within minutes, the boys were picking their way across London on the bike, then north of the river, then further west following the instructions. They fetched up in the strangest place. Behind a high but delapidated fence lay eight rectangular buildings a single storey high without windows. Harry nosed the bike through the gate. There was a large numeral painted on each and they parked the bike near the door to number 8.

They dismounted and Draco looked around him curiously. Harry went to the door of the unit and knocked. The door was solid steel and he just hurt his knuckles. Then he noticed the intercom and rang the bell three times. Alice’s voice came to him, “Pull the door towards you, be warned, it’s heavy”. He laid his hands around the handle and pulled hard. The thing squealed on it’s huge hinges as it slowly opened. “Merlin!, this door has to be two feet thick. Solid steel, too”, he murmured. They went in, to be faced with steps down immediately before them. She popped her head out and greeted them as they descended towards her. Another huge thick door was thrown open at the bottom of the steps.

She stepped back into the space and the boys entered. To receive a shock. They could feel the crackle as they stepped over the threshold.

Magic.

Harry turned and placed his hand back in the doorway, palm forward and fingers splayed. “Can you feel it, Dragon?”. “Fuck, yes”, he touched his own open hand to the wall beside the doorway, “Wards. Pretty old and not maintained, but still there. Still strong, too. I bet an Auror could read this plain as day”. They turned to Alice, surprise all over them. She was grinning, her head on one side regarding them. “It’s Magic, isn’t it?. It always felt as if I was entering through an invisible bead curtain, like it tickled around me, but you have just confirmed it”.

The boys nodded. “This is cast magic. Have you ever been visited by Death-Eaters?”, Draco asked. She shook her head. “Okay, these wards are a few years old, but they will still have a detectable signature”. By now both boys were feeling around what bits of wall they could reach, “It feels like a protection ward. It seems to go all around the inside of this room”.

The space they were in was like a very large box, some sixty feet by forty, with a small slice of corner holding the stairwell, and a square chunk sectioned off in the opposite corner, probably loo facilities. The rest of the space was filled with case after case of books all neatly organised. Some cases jutted out into the room at right angles to the walls. Slightly off-centre to the room were two large tables forming an ‘L’. A computer and printer on one, the other looked to be some kind of packing area, with a pile of cardboard wrapping material and a heavy duty set of GPO scales for weighing parcels.

“So, Alice, how come you’re surrounded by wards?”. “I’ve no idea. But if you say they’re old, then they probably date back to when these bunkers were occupied shortly after they were built by anti-nuke protesters”. The boys looked askance.

“After the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 in America, suddenly the threat of Nuclear War seemed very real. These bunkers were built, probably to house minor government functionaries or something, maybe early computers, but when anti-nuclear protestors got wind of them, they were squatted and occupied, so only eight were ever built. On this site anyway. When the protesters were eventually evicted, the threat didn’t seem so great anymore and they were left idle and locked up for a long time. Then, a few years ago, someone bought them and they’ve been let out as cheap warehouse space since then, but these doors are one megaton blastproof and the walls are eight feet thick with layers of lead and asbestos encased in steel-reinforced concrete, so no problems with break-ins”, she finished, lightly.

The boys cast each other significant looks, lead-lined, oh, Merlin. “Are there any of these units to let?”, Harry casually enquired. She’d seen the looks, “Why?”, her tone gentle but inquisitive. Her guests looked a bit sheepish, hell, they’d seen her gun and she’d trusted them, why not?. “Lead lined rooms are Magically undetectable. From Him”.

“That’s probably why these wards have stayed so strong, too. The Magic can only leak out in tiny dribs and drabs. I presume you keep at least one of the doors closed most of the time?”, Draco added. She signalled her agreement. Their eyes cast about, “We could practice Magic again in a space like this”, Harry whispered, “Train you Demi’s, too”, he flicked her a side-long glance. Her eyes widened appreciably, “Really?”, her tone one notch away from ‘squeak’.

All three regarded each other. Draco reached a tentative hand for Harry, who grasped his fingertips. “Maybe you could do something here?”, She cautiously offered. Harry grinned, “Oh, no, the space would have to be completely bare. Some spells are very dangerous. I mean we couldn’t exactly cast in Incendio in here, that starts fires, by the way”. She quirked a wry mouth, “I am of the generation that suffered through rote Latin at school”, she rolled her eyes. “I don’t know if there are any units free, but I could certainly enquire for you”.

She bent and rummaged in one of the desks, withdrawing the wand. She’d wrapped it in a gaudy silk scarf and handed it to Harry who dug a long thin box out of his jacket and held the lid open, “You don’t even want to hold it?”, she asked. “I daren’t. The core of that wand is the same as my old one.....the same as His”, he pushed his hair back, “The wand that cast the worst of the Unforgivable curses that gave me this scar”, she was aghast and took the box, tucking the wand inside. “If you don’t want it, after you’ve extracted the core, that is, could I have it back?, only I kept it as a bit of a souvenir, along with the robes and mask and coins, I mean, if that’s all right with you. Only I may never see Diagon Alley again”, she sighed.

“Of course you can, Alice. I’ll get it back to you as soon as possible”. Draco, by this time was lost in the stacks, a few books in one hand, the other ghosting over the spines. Harry watched his lover a moment, enjoying the rapt enjoyment on his face then left him to it after enquiring of Alice whether it was okay to purchase off the shelves. “It’s all business to me, love, your money is as good as anyone else’s”. They chatted awhile as Draco browsed then came back to himself, “Sorry, love, you know what I’m like in bookshops. Can I buy these, Alice?”. The purchases amounted to a few pounds and she refused his money, laughing, “Don’t be daft. You guys did me a real favour this week”. He accepted, red-faced and they said their goodbyes just as the phone rang, “Good evening, Bunker Books......”, she waved at them then turned to take the call. They let themselves out.