Chapter Three.
Harry’s Pensieve.
Harry appeared so busy during the few days after Maeve arrived at Grimmauld Place that she didn’t get the chance to speak to him. He left early in the morning and she didn’t see him around the house again until late evening, always with a grim expression of tired anger on his young face. Under this oppressive atmosphere she knew she couldn’t approach him about the events of the summer; it would only serve to aggravate him. But as each day passed she grew more and more conscious of the fact that Severus was slipping further and further away from her. If Harry didn’t talk to her soon she would have to visit Malfoy Manor and Hogwarts without the information he could provide “ more distance threatened to appear between herself and her husband.
On the fourth morning, after what Maeve had come to think of as the worst day in her life, she arrived in the kitchen as usual, expecting to find it empty. She was surprised, therefore, to find Harry thoughtfully munching toast while allowing his eyes to drift absently over the front page of the Daily Prophet. As usual the newspaper was aiming for the sensational and its headline read ‘Severus Snape “ The Awful Truth’ and in smaller type ‘” by those who knew him’. It was accompanied by a fuzzy picture of Severus trying to hide his face as he left the Ministry of Magic. The photograph was an old one, probably taken around the time of the first wave of Death Eater trials, and it made her look away, a warm sensation beneath her eyelids making her feel suddenly vulnerable.
The kitchen had the sour smell of a place that was becoming unused to happiness. It missed the presence of Molly Weasley, who had retreated to The Burrow with Ginny and Ron after Dumbledore’s death. No longer did Order members file through, chatting, plotting and drinking endless mugs of hot tea. The crockery sat silently on the dresser, unused and unwanted, and the cutlery slumbered in drawers, waiting for the clamour of shared meals to wake them from their stupor. Grimmauld Place had been abandoned to its fate and its owner, for the time being at least.
“Maeve,” Harry said by way of a greeting. “There’s some tea in the pot, or I can make you coffee if you would prefer.” He watched her with guarded eyes, trying to judge what she would do or say next.
“Thanks,” she said, ignoring the steaming teapot and making for the kettle. She buried her mind in the mundane task of making coffee while she tried to decide if now was the right time. She could have the discussion with Harry and be at Malfoy Manor by mid-afternoon; especially now she had a new way to travel. The teaspoon dropped with a clatter into the sink and Harry shifted in his seat, folding the newspaper up and carefully placing it back on the table.
“What are your plans for today?” she asked, sitting across from him and disguising her uncertainty behind her too-hot coffee.
“I’d leave it to cool a bit,” Harry said with an almost-smile as she withdrew her lips sharply from the scalding drink.
“I know,” she sighed, putting it down to scorch a ring in the wooden table. Now wasn’t the time to scrabble around for a coaster. “I just, well, I don’t know what to say to you.”
“Me neither,” Harry admitted. “It’s not easy, is it?”
The kitchen paused in its clock-ticking, kettle-boiling melancholy and listened to their silence with interest. Elsewhere in the house they could hear Remus moving around, trying his best to avoid upsetting either of them. He had spent the past few morning trying to ease her worries, before going off to do something in the afternoons that he hadn’t told her anything about, not that she was interested. The minor details of life were passing her by as she grappled with her problems.
“I think it would be best if we didn’t talk about, well, you know who.” Harry made a small moue of apology, embarrassed by her marriage and trying to bridge the gap between hating Severus Snape and feeling sorrow for the predicament she had ended up in. He didn’t want to know how she felt about the man who had killed Dumbledore, nor did he want to know what she was doing to find him. No doubt he would come across Severus Snape soon enough, without the necessity of going looking for him.
Maeve looked alarmed at Harry’s use of the term “you know who”, because she knew he wasn’t talking about Voldemort. Was it that in his mind it seemed that Severus had become an even greater enemy than the Dark wizard himself? If they didn’t talk about Severus could they talk about Dumbledore? She decided to test the water carefully.
“You spent a lot of time with Dumbledore over the summer?” The question was delivered in a humbled tone, persuasive and innocuous.
Harry didn’t meet her gaze but gave her a mumbled yes. She realised this was going to be painful for him and she wanted to spare him that hurt, but if she did so it would be at the expense of her own. Maeve had to press on with the questions and hope he didn’t pull the shutters down on their first real conversation since she had arrived.
“Was it important, Harry?” Her use of his name made him look up quickly. The adult in Harry was fighting the boy as he debated which course of action to take. Maeve was close to Dumbledore too; he had seen that over the long months of the previous school year, but what he and Dumbledore had been doing in the last few weeks was more important than anything he had done before. Dumbledore had explicitly told him not to tell anyone, apart from Ron and Hermione, about what they had been discovering. He wondered if Dumbledore would have included Maeve in that secret had he known what would happen. And then he felt the bathing warmth of her light and knew he couldn’t keep it a secret from her. It was not easy to forget what they shared.
“Yes,” he said, “it was important. It was very important. I saw Voldemort and I know what he did to survive. I saw things I wish I hadn’t seen and I know now what I have to do.”
Maeve allowed him the luxury of time to collect his thoughts before he rushed on with what he had to say. She kept her head and didn’t force information from him. Harry took another sip of tea to loosen the words that wanted to fly from his throat.
“I can’t go back to school,” he continued. “I have too much to do to waste time there. It would -”
“You can’t not go back.” Maeve was far more scandalised than Remus had been when she had suggested she wouldn’t go back either. “You have to finish you N.E.W.T.s, Harry. You want to be an Auror.” She didn’t give him the opportunity to disagree with her as she ploughed on. “And I won’t be there if that’s what you’re worried about. You won’t have a reminder of Severus around.”
Harry blanched at the name, cold fury bending his fingers tight around the edge of the scarred table. He understood why she had made the suggestion but he still couldn’t stand her presence if she was going to talk about her husband. Just thinking of Severus as her husband was enough to make Harry want to throw up.
“I’m sorry,” she said, instantly repentant and knowing that she couldn’t afford to upset him. “I didn’t mean to, well, I didn’t want…” She groaned inwardly. “Tell me about what you discovered with Dumbledore and what you have to do.”
For the first time she felt the real value of her connection to Harry. Had she been just anyone, with no necklace and no prophecy to bind them together she had no doubt he would have told her to get lost. Indeed for a moment she thought he would still tell her to get lost. He pushed the cup away and stood up, uncomfortable in the cold kitchen.
“I’ll tell you in the study. There are things there you might want to see.”
“What things?” Maeve asked as she prepared to follow him. The study was the last place she would have expected to find Dumbledore’s secrets, used as it was by so many of the Order members.
“His Pensieve for a start.”
“His Pensieve is here?” she asked. “What’s it doing here? Hasn’t he been at Hogwarts over the summer?”
“Not much,” Harry shrugged. “Although I have been back with him a few times.”
“Didn’t you return to the Dursleys’?” Dumbledore had told her of the blood protection he received from the awful Muggle family and she would have been surprised if he had allowed Harry to forgo that protection.
“Yeah, I spent two miserable days there after your wedd - after Ireland.” He led the way from the kitchen, head bowed at the thought of the two days he had spent as a best man, a best man to someone he would now willingly send to the furthest reaches of hell.
The door to the study was locked and Harry pulled a small brass key from his pocket. Something told Maeve he had been guarding this room heavily since Dumbledore’s death and she wondered what secrets it would reveal. The key slid into the lock with ease and the door opened onto a small, dusky room that was filled with the odour of leather and cheap cigars. Harry moved quickly to drag the half-opened curtains together and waved his wand towards the candles on the mantlepiece. The room was, if not exactly flooded with light, then made less dingy and Maeve eyes grew accustomed to the simmering half-light. The walls were caked in books, all with the same ominous titles as those at Spinner’s End and she wondered why Harry had not been through them and removed the worst offenders. The desk dominated the room with its vast expanse of wood and masculine objects that reeked of old money. It was on the desk that she spotted Dumbledore’s rune-marked Pensieve, sitting amongst the less unusual paraphernalia like something foreign.
She turned quickly as the sound of the lock clicking home broke the uneasy silence. Harry left the key in the keyhole and smiled apologetically.
“I’ve been studying in here. Perhaps you thought I was out a good deal of the time, but I had things I needed to do in peace. There’s a lot of stuff in these books that I couldn’t have found anywhere else.”
“I wondered where you had got to for all that time,” she said. “I assumed you were at the Ministry, or Hogwarts maybe. It’s very stuffy in here. Don’t you get too warm?” She was only wearing a thin summer dress but she could feel the fabric begin to cling to her clammy back as the trapped heat of the room made her temperature rise.
“You get used to it,” he replied, picking up a pile of books of one of the green leather chairs so that she could sit down. “I don’t want to open the window because you never know who will be lurking out there.”
“But Grimmauld Place is protected. It’s Unplottable, surely?”
“Can’t be too careful.” His furtive glances at the fireplace and the window suggested that Harry had become very security conscious over the past few days. He sat down and asked her what she wanted to know, not really wanting to relive the summer but realising he needed to get it over with. He hadn’t even had the chance to talk to Ron and Hermione properly about it yet. Hermione was off on holiday yet again with her parents, something about New Zealand, and Ron had been busy mooning around over the fact that she wasn’t around to talk to. And now, of course, Ron was back at The Burrow with Molly and so he was friendless for the time being. Molly had tried to persuade him to come back with them too but stubbornness and the need to keep busy had prevented him.
“Remus mentioned that you and Dumbledore had been working together over the summer. What was it that you found out?”
Harry felt the calloused touch of sorrow as he prepared to start at the beginning and fill her in on the happenings of the eventful summer. Sitting down and leaning heavy arms on the desk he began, in a voice thick with tiredness.
“Dumbledore picked me up from the Dursleys the Wednesday after” “ there was painful hesitation again over her wedding day “ “after seeing you and took me back to Hogwarts. You can imagine how surprised I was by that. I’d expected to come back here or The Burrow with the Weasleys. He said he had some things he wanted to show me, things that it was important I see. Using the Pensieve he took me to see some of Voldemort’s early life, the orphanage he grew up in, his parents and grandparents, school stuff. I wasn’t sure why he was showing me all of these things at first ” he called it homework for the holidays ” but I gradually came to see that it was good I got a better glimpse of Voldemort and what makes him tick. And then he showed me one memory of an old Potions professor - he was probably your Potions professor.” Harry looked to her for a name.
“Slughorn?” She smiled as she remembered the larger-than-life character that was her old Potions master. He had collected influential people in the same way that children collect Chocolate Frog cards. “What did old Horace have to do with Voldemort? Ahh, but he was professor during Riddle’s time at school, wasn’t he?” Maeve relapsed into silence as Harry nodded and continued with his story.
“He told Voldemort about a thing called a Horcrux. Do you know what they are?”
Maeve narrowed her eyes and nodded, only too aware of that particular piece of Dark Magic. “A Horcrux is a particularly dark thing that contains a piece of a human soul, a piece of a human soul that has been removed by its owner and placed for safe-keeping in an object, or a creature. To remove the soul the owner has to commit and act of murder and perform a spell. I don’t know what the spell is though.”
“Slughorn didn’t know either and Dumbledore never said, even if he knew.”
“Oh, I’ll bet he knew.” The frown that the mention of the Horcrux had caused was shooed away by the memory of Dumbledore, a memory that threatened to confirm to her that he was really dead.
“So, anyway.” Harry said, ignoring the remark. “Apparently Voldemort made six Horcruxes, two of which have already been destroyed.”
“Why six?” Maeve interrupted again; her inquisitive mind forcing Harry into ever more detail. She wasn’t as surprised by this news as she perhaps should have been, but she was wondering how this would fit into the task she had been set by her father. Indeed, she wondered if her father even knew about the Horcruxes.
“Because Voldemort believes that seven is the most powerful magical number, and because he kept a part of his soul in himself. Did anyone tell you about the diary that Ginny found?” The mention of Ginny made Harry’s chest leap and then die down in quick succession. Had things been different he might have spoken to Maeve about his burgeoning feelings for Ginny and his reasons for not pursuing the relationship, but for now it seemed far too frivolous.
Maeve nodded, recalling something Remus had said on the subject last year.
“Well, that diary was one and Dumbledore found a ring that had belonged to Voldemort’s family ” he destroyed that one.” The sudden image of the blackened hand that Dumbledore had sported for the past three weeks floated before his eyes. This picture was quickly followed by images of the cave - the cave that had been the start of Dumbledore’s demise. “So that left four more,” he ground out the words to make the distressing visions go away.
“And where are they?”
Harry gave her a withering look that suggested she really wasn’t very intelligent. “We don’t know. If we knew - if I knew - then I would be able to get them more easily. Dumbledore thought he had found one, in a cave on the Kent coast, but it turned out to be a fake, and he took a potion ” it was poisoned. He made me make him keep drinking, even though he pleaded with me, begged me - he even asked me to kill him, but…”
The rawness that blazed from Harry’s eyes was too bright and Maeve looked elsewhere while he drew breath. She was clinging to something he had just said but didn’t want him to realise it. Surely if Dumbledore could plead with Harry to kill him then he could equally have pleaded with Severus?
“It was a locket, Salazar Slytherin’s locket” “ Harry wrenched her back from thoughts of her husband “ “or it was supposed to be, but it had been replaced and the real one is gone. We don’t know what or where the others are but Dumbledore suspected Nagini and maybe an item belonging to Helga Hufflepuff, some cup Voldemort had stolen from one of Hufflepuff’s descendants. That left one more.”
“And I’ll bet he went for something belonging to one of the other founders,” Maeve said shrewdly. “But surely Dumbledore has the only relic of Godric Gryffindor’s? Nothing but the sword has ever been found.” She paused for a moment. “And the Sorting Hat,” she added as an afterthought, although she had grave doubts whether the vociferous Sorting Hat would have allowed the ripped soul-fragment to lodge inside it. “That would leave Ravenclaw.”
“I know. That’s what Dumbledore said too, but maybe there was something else.”
“Okay, just to get this straight. There are six Horcruxes.” Even as she said the name she felt the darkness of the concept on her tongue. “The diary, the ring, the locket, possibly Nagini and two other items that we don’t know about, and Voldemort himself. Two of these things have definitely been destroyed. And now you feel you have to find the others, because without them we can’t kill Voldemort.”
“That’s about it,” Harry agreed.
Maeve nodded thoughtfully, working through the possibilities in her mind. “And why do you think it is up to you to find these things?”
“Because I believe that’s what Dumbledore wanted me to do. That’s why he took me on the visit to the cave; he wanted me to see - to appreciate - what it would take to retrieve the other things. And then he died, so there’s only me left that knows about all of this.”
“Are you sure, Harry? You know what Dumbledore was like. He always left a safeguard of sorts.”
“No one knew,” Harry said in a convincing voice, but even so, Maeve wasn’t sure.
“Someone knew, Harry. Someone knew enough to replace a real Horcrux with a fake one.”
Harry’s face was bleached of colour for a moment as he thought of the implications of this. He hadn’t fully considered the replaced locket until now, hadn’t even examined the thing. It was sitting in the large Black-crested goblet that sat on the ash sideboard beneath the window.
“Did you even look at it?” she asked. “You must have to know that it was fake.”
Harry nodded, getting up to retrieve the item that he hadn’t paid any attention to since it had fallen from Dumbledore’s grasp on the soft fields of a strange village that he had later learned was the very place his parents where buried. He had seen from the lack of a proud ‘S’ engraved on the surface that this wasn’t Salazar Slytherin’s and couldn’t have been the one that contained Voldemort’s soul. He scrabbled around in the cup and handed her the piece of jewellery.
Maeve held it to the guttering candlelight and realised it was a tawdry attempt at a locket, its golden body a little bent out of shape and the clasp loose. As she turned it over in her hand she flicked a nail beneath the metal overhang and flipped it open. Harry opened his mouth in annoyance as he saw what he should have found himself. A small piece of paper had dropped into Maeve’s palm and she placed the locket on the table before peeling back the folds of the parchment to reveal cramped handwriting.
To the Dark Lord
I have stolen your trinket and left you this pale imitation in return.
No doubt I will be dead before this locket comes back into your possession but I want you to know that I discovered your secret and it is I who will destroy the real Horcrux. I die hoping that with the destruction you will be mortal once more and will finally meet your match.
R.A.B.
Both Harry and Maeve looked perplexed. Neither spoke for a moment as they re-read the note several times. To Maeve’s surprise Harry then took the note from her, screwed it up and was about to throw it into the fireplace, but she was too quick for him and caught his arm as it drew back.
“What are you doing? That could be important!”
“Who cares about a stupid note? It’s obvious now that the other Horcrux has been destroyed, one less to worry about,” Harry insisted.
“Think! That Horcrux may not have been destroyed. R.A.B. - whoever they may be - may have failed. That Horcrux could well be lying around somewhere just waiting to be found, or it could be that we’ll never find it.”
She prised the crumpled parchment from his hand and smoothed it out, putting both it and the necklace down on the desk before addressing Harry again. “And the Pensieve? Why is that here?”
“I thought you might want to see the proof of what he did to Dumbledore. I thought that unless you saw it with your own eyes you wouldn’t believe it.” His own eyes were fragile with self-sacrifice, frightened that she would want him to accompany on this journey into memory.
Maeve looked to the Pensieve, shifting uncomfortably in the heat of the room. Did she want to? What happened if, when she saw what had really happened, she knew that Harry was giving the right interpretation?
“Do you want to?” Harry asked, his wand clutched to his side ready for the moment when he could pull this memory out for her. Dumbledore had spent three long evenings teaching him how to retrieve his memories and he could still feel the ache that the intensive lessons had left at the front of his head.
“Yes,” she said in a voice barely audible above her trepidation. “I don’t want to but I suppose I must.”
She watched as Harry placed his wand tip to his temple, silvery strands jerking from his head reluctantly, his brain not wanting to share the appalling tragedy of that night. The memory dripped slowly into the Pensieve and Harry allowed his wand hand to relax, rubbing his temple with his other.
“It still hurts to do that,” he said, waiting for the ache to abate. “But I think it will be worth it in the long run.”
“Are you coming with me?” she asked. It had been a long time since she had seen a Pensieve. They had had one back at the Ministry in Ireland but she had only ever used it twice to see memories from a colleague who had been tracking the illegal transport of Rathlin Red-Spotted Toadstools. This was an altogether different prospect as she prepared to see her husband do something so terrible it might just break her heart.
“Only if you really want me to,” Harry said, looking at a spot just over her left shoulder.
“No,” Maeve replied, recognising what it would cost him to experience the night again so vividly. “I’ll go alone.”
“You should know that Dumbledore put a spell on me throughout what happened. I couldn’t move. He did it to save me, I think,” Harry said quietly.
She stepped towards the table, bowing over the Pensieve and feeling her face washed with the shifting reflection of the pearly surface. Taking a shallow breath she bent forward and felt herself twisted sharply through the air, the murk of the study giving way to the shadows of a cloud-ridden night.
The cool tang of the fresh night bit into her lungs as Maeve felt the change in atmosphere. She was standing in a meadow, a gate to her right was unlatched and open, to her left Harry was struggling with the bent figure of Dumbledore. In one hand Harry had his wand illuminating the darkness while the other did its best to support Dumbledore, whose face was a grey desert of pain. She stepped forward, knowing that she could do nothing and wanting to do everything. Dumbledore straightened a little, searching their surroundings for something.
“Severus should be here soon,” he croaked softly. “It was arranged, should anything like this happen.”
“Why Snape,” Harry protested. “Why couldn’t it be one of the other Order members?”
“Oh, Harry, I know you have a terrible suspicion of him, but he knows enough to…” His voice seemed to flag and it took him a few seconds to renew his energy. “He knows enough to help me.”
Harry muttered something unintelligible and suddenly Dumbledore straightened a little, his head cocked in the direction of the lane that lay on the other side of the hedge. With startling swiftness he had his wand out and gave Harry a hurried instruction to wear his Invisibility Cloak. She watched Harry debate the order before giving in to the promise that he told her he had made. He was gone in an instant and Maeve saw Dumbledore’s wand flick in his direction. At the same time the gate behind her moved and she turned to see the white-topped head of Draco Malfoy striding into the field with his lit wand outstretched and a glint of something violent in his eyes.
Dumbledore staggered back a little, a venerable oak providing the support he needed. His face was slack with mortality; for there was no doubt in Maeve’s mind that the potion Harry had told her the old wizard had drunk was something fatal unless treated. She felt that if she peered hard enough into the gloom she would see the cloaked figure of death pressing against the night, waiting to claim another adventurer.
Draco’s strange voice broke the silence, grating against nature.
“So, your little adventure with Potter failed then did it? Where is he? Abandoned you like the coward he is, I suppose?”
“Draco, you do not understand things and there are others that are beyond your knowledge,” Dumbledore replied, his mind still strong but his voice weak. “What brings you here tonight, as if I didn’t know?”
Maeve watched in horror as Draco stepped closer to the shuddering form of the headmaster. “I’ve come to kill you, didn’t you realise?”
“Of course I realised,” Dumbledore said heavily. “I have known for the past few weeks that you had something planned. Although I must admit you chose a rather more immediate way of attempting the deed than I would have imagined. What did they have to do to get you to agree to this, Draco?”
“The Dark Lord didn’t have to do anything. He knows a good prospect when he sees one.” Maeve could hear the flicker of fear in Draco’s voice and wondered if Dumbledore could hear it too. But of course, Dumbledore was an excellent Legilimens. No doubt he was raking through the coals of Draco’s seething mind as they spoke.
“I see you have been learning rudimentary Occlumency,” Dumbledore said, scotching Maeve’s idea. “But you are not as accomplished as you could be, Draco.”
“You can’t see everything!” Draco retorted, his voice rising sharply in the still of the night. “You can’t see your own death or you wouldn’t be here tonight. You would have saved yourself rather than be killed.”
“Oh, I can see many things, but I cannot see you killing me.”
There was a scuffling from the gate and two robed figures rushed through, white faces showing excitement beneath their dark hood.
“Do it!” hissed one of them, a female. “Finish him now.”
Draco glanced back and frowned, a tight stitching together of his eyebrows that showed some frustration. “I’m doing it,” he shouted. “Let me enjoy the feeling before I finish him off.”
But there was something in Draco’s voice that spoke of anything but enjoyment and Maeve understood what she had always really known. Draco Malfoy was all mouth and no action. Strangely she was pleased by this confirmation, it meant that he could possibly escape the fate of so many others that had gone before him, if Dumbledore gave him the chance. She could see the dying wizard’s wand still grasped between his pallid fingers. He could, quite easily, have saved himself from Draco but instead he was choosing to save the misguided young man. Dumbledore’s eyes slid towards Maeve and she smiled, ignoring the fact that he couldn’t see her, and wasn’t remotely astonished when he smiled back.
“So, Alecto, you have come to witness the blooding of another innocent child, have you?” Dumbledore wasn’t smiling at her; he was giving acknowledgment to the Death Eater who had taken up a position at her elbow.
“Someone has to keep the Malfoy name out of the gutter,” the thickset woman sneered. “Lucius isn’t going to do that where he is, out in Serbia, scrubbing around with the proles!”
“Draco,” Dumbledore once again turned back to the now faintly shivering boy. “You have your whole life to be lived. Do not blight it with this unreasonable act. I could ensure your safety, and that of your family. If you do what you came here to do you will never know another moment’s safety.”
“What makes you think I won’t be safe with the Dark Lord? Once I do this he will shower me with everything I could possibly want. I will be all-powerful.”
The other Death Eater stepped forward and Dumbledore addressed him. “Amycus, what do you hope to achieve?”
“Your death, old man! Isn’t it obvious?” the gnarled voice carried through the air, making Draco wince. “Come on, Draco! What are you waiting for? DO IT!”
And once more Dumbledore moved a weary head in her direction, but this time it was not the two Death Eaters he was looking at, nor was he merely looking straight through her. This time he was watching for something, waiting.
And she knew, without moving her head the tiniest fraction, that the creak of the gate was caused by Severus. She snapped her head round to see his hardened face flash through the darkness with a strange, tormented rage in his eyes.
“Snape!” Amycus shouted. “Finally, we’ll get to see some action. Draco’s having a little problem.”
Maeve’s heart stopped the blood flowing through her veins as she looked at the face of a man she did not know. She had never seen that battle-hardened look on her husband’s face before, never seen Severus so completely oblivious to all that was around him. Moving quickly, in order to see exactly what Harry had seen, she caught up with him. As she drew level she could see his stony profile, could see the bitterness twisting at his mouth. There could be no doubt now that he was still associated with Voldemort, that he had found some way to explain her presence by his side, sharing the bond of man and wife. How long had Dumbledore been using him again?
And then Dumbledore spoke, a soft sound barely heard above the rustle of hate pouring from the Death Eaters.
“Severus.”
She watched as Severus’ face screwed itself into a ball of revulsion and hatred and she couldn’t help the cry that ripped from her chest, echoing Dumbledore’s single word.
“Severus!”
It flew around the memory, looking for a place to land, an ear to grant it refuge, and it found none. She moved towards him, wanting to clutch at the wand that now stuck out, pointing directly, triumphantly almost, at its subject.
Draco stood struck; he didn’t know which direction to move in as he saw a way out of the task that had been given him.
And Maeve watched the air between Dumbledore and Severus and wondered what was passing between them. She wanted to throw herself into the communication and snatch its meaning from the ether but she knew she was powerless to affect the past. Knew, even as Dumbledore spoke, that this was beyond her.
“Severus, please…” the dying man said, his eyes continuing to look steadily at the only person that seemed to matter in this tableau.
And she felt the world implode beneath her feet as Severus dropped his eyelids only briefly before mustering the words she desperately didn’t want to hear him speak.
“Avada Kedavra.”
And it was done. Death stepped forward and swept up its new companion into the night, several shouts were heard from the lane as Order members began to arrive and her husband grabbed Draco by the shoulder. Harry, freed from the binding of the spell Dumbledore had tried to protect him with, tore away the Invisibility Cloak and raised his wand.
“Stup-”
Severus raised his wand and with a snarl of satisfaction blocked the spell. Amycus and Alecto had their wands pointed at Harry now and Maeve was screaming into the past in an agony of ineffectuality.
“Cruci-”
“Blocked again, Potter,” Severus snapped. “And again,” he repeated as he deflected the Impediment Jinx that Harry tried to cast. “Keep your mouth shut and your mind closed and you may just get somewhere.”
Maeve moved closer to her husband, marvelling that even at a time like this he was still trying to give Harry advice, advice that Harry would close his mind to because of its source. She reached a tentative hand out to touch the expanse of air where his face should have been. Her white fingers moved through the image, crying out for something solid to connect with.
“Let’s kill him,” Alecto shrieked, excitement at seeing the body of Dumbledore making her eager for more.
“No!” Snape ordered. “He is the Dark Lord’s business, not ours.”
“Levi-”
“ENOUGH!” Severus shouted. His wand swirled swiftly and there was a sharp bang that left Harry on his back, looking up at Severus with unadulterated hatred on his face. He clasped a hand tightly on his wand but Severus was ahead of him and sent Harry’s wand flying from its owner’s grasp with a rapid hex. “You do not learn, Potter. You are too clever to learn anything useful. Had you paid more attention during our Occlumency lessons you might be better at this.”
Harry was incensed now, struggling to get to his feet.
“Kill me then! Kill me like you killed Dumbledore. Kill me while I am helpless and unharmed, you coward!”
Maeve looked back to Severus, saw the look of intense pain that crossed his already ravaged face, saw too the anger, the sheer naked fury that stalked his expression.
“DON’T CALL ME COWARD!” he shrieked, injustice and anger making his voice a scream of outrage. He dragged his wand through the air and Harry yelped loudly in pain, falling back on the grass clutching at his face in agony.
Maeve didn’t notice the warm swill of her tears as they leaked from her eyes, she didn’t even notice that she was repeating her husband’s name over and over. All she was aware of was Severus reaching out to touch Draco on the shoulder again and then they were gone with barely a pop. Shouts came from the road that ran by the meadow, a female voice loudly protesting that it was not her fault they had been standing guard on the wrong field. Maeve recognised the voice as Tonks’ and knew that the cavalry had arrived a touch too late. The gate was breached again as Tonks, Remus and Kinglsey entered the field just in time to see the two Death-Eaters Apparate out of harm’s way.
And then she heard Harry’s voice pulling her out of the Pensieve, drawing her away from the sorrow that she had just witnessed. Her wet face was no longer night-bound as the candlelight in the study reflected off the salt water beneath her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said, wondering now if he had done the right thing.
She shook her head mutely, too emotional to make any other response.
“It must have been painful. I’m tempted to leave it in the Pensieve for good.” Harry cast a glance at the stone bowl.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it, Harry, but do you have any idea, any idea at all where Severus went?” Her voice bobbled up and down as she tried to control it.
Harry’s face became a mask of ice as he shook his head. “Why would I know where the traitor went to? To hell hopefully.”
Maeve was disappointed to hear the malicious sentiments but now she had seen what Harry had experienced she could understand it. Fortunately for her sanity she had understood more than Harry had. She had read his face better than Harry ever could and she knew he had not done what he had done willingly. There was more to what Severus had done that night than they had been told and she strongly suspected that both Dumbledore and the Unbreakable Vow were behind it all.
She gathered herself together quickly, realising that time was passing and she had other things to do. If Harry could give her no clue to where Severus had gone then she would have to track him down by others means. An afternoon visit to Malfoy Manor might reveal something but failing that she would have to have a poke around at Hogwarts. Filch was usually a good source of information.
She wiped a hand across her damp face and said goodbye to her tears. They were the first she had shed since arriving here and they would be last until she found her husband again. Tears would be a weakness she could ill afford with the likes of Narcissa Malfoy waiting to pounce on her every insecurity. She looked to Harry once more, calmer now as her emotions were brought to heel.
“What are your immediate plans?” she asked, wondering how he was planning to track down the Horcruxes.
“I’m going back to Godric’s Hollow. I want to see my mum and dad’s graves but I’m going to wait for Hermione to come back before I do so that the three of us can go together. She’ll be back in two days and Ron’s coming up from The Burrow.”
“I’m sure you will find their support invaluable,” she said, wondering if she would be able to offer him any real support throughout all of this. Severus was once again standing between them, a dark moth between two butterflies.
“Yeah, they’re always there for me.”
“Good, that’s good, Harry.” They were suddenly back to stilted conversation and Maeve knew it was their shared knowledge and different interpretations that was the cause of it. “And what of the Horcruxes?”
“I have a little more reading to do, and I may need to visit Hogwarts to have a look around, just in case there is something still there. If I find anything I’ll let you know.”
“Don’t do anything rash if you do find one,” she warned. “Do not go rushing off on your own to recover one of these things. At the very least tell Ron and Hermione. Remus should know too. He was one of Dumbledore’s most trusted friends.”
“I’ll see,” Harry replied, more to placate her than as a promise that he would actually consider telling Remus. If Dumbledore had wanted Remus to know about this then he would have told him. “What are your plans?”
“I have somewhere I need to go this afternoon,” she said, deliberately vague over the exact nature of the visit. “Then I will collect my things from Hogwarts and I’ll see how things are.”
“And will you look for…” He didn’t need to say Severus’ name, Maeve knew exactly who he was talking about from the look of disgust on his face.
“Of course, Harry. You can’t expect me not to. I have questions I need answers to.”
“Yeah, well, just make sure he doesn’t cross my path.” Maeve knew what the implication of these words was and hoped that Harry would not commit an act that Severus had so selflessly saved Draco from doing.
“I need to get going,” she said, the stuffiness of the room suddenly choking her with its heaviness. “I’ll be back later this evening.”
“Okay,” Harry said, not pressing her for details. He unlocked the door and watched her walk towards the stairs, hoping that she did not find her husband ever again. She was better off without him anyway; a few months not having him around would soon show her that.
Maeve had considered asking Remus to accompany her to Malfoy Manor, but decided against it. Narcissa was hardly likely to talk to her with a member of the Order of the Phoenix sitting on her no doubt dainty sofa, especially a member that also happened to be a werewolf. As she descended the stairs, her light summer cloak draped over her shoulders, she found him carefully pretending to dust the cloak rack.
“Nice try, Remus,” she smiled. “But you and I both know that no one dusts that thing in case they wake the monster.”
He grinned guiltily. “I was waiting for you, but I didn’t want you to know that.”
“So I see,” she said. “Are you not going out?”
“Not today, I’m waiting for Professor McGonagall to arrive with details of the funeral. She wanted to give them to Harry in person.” A ghost of grief was in the room with them at the mention of the funeral and they both frowned. “Are you attending?”
“No, I couldn’t do it to Harry.”
“You have the right to be there. Dumbledore had a great deal of respect and love for you. He would not want you to hide away from this last paying of respects. If you are worried about what people will say, then don’t be. I’ll gladly escort you.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” she said, the thought that Dumbledore would not want her to stay away was a new one and one that needed careful consideration. “Thank you for the offer of an escort. When is the funeral?”
“The day after tomorrow, two o’clock in the afternoon. It will be quite a send-off if the guest list is anything to go by. There’ll be no accommodation to be had in Hogsmeade with the amount of people travelling up.”
“Are you staying at the school?” She wondered how quickly her rooms would be taken over someone new, yet another new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for the poor students.
“Yes, Professor McGonagall has kindly offered me a room for the night. I have a feeling she may attempt to persuade me to go back and stand in for her in Transfiguration, rather ironic, don’t you think?”
“I think you’d be a perfect Transfiguration teacher, but you could always have my old job back.”
“Don’t be too sure that she will let you get away with handing in your resignation. So, where are you off to and should you be going alone?”
“Oh, just off to visit a friend, nothing to worry about,” she said with a blasé shrug. “I’ll be travelling safely enough and will be back in time for dinner I should think.”
Remus didn’t like to argue the point that she had no friends in England - or in Ireland for that matter. She obviously had her reasons for not telling him where she was going and he respected that, even though it wasn’t the most security-conscious thing in the world.
“Well, as long as you are sure you’ll be safe. At least no one can waylay you with your new mode of travel.” Remus was very impressed with her new party trick and couldn’t help wishing it was something he could do. It sounded remarkably liberating to be able to disappear into the firmament. He gave her a peck on the cheek and smiled, opening the door to let in the fresh sweep of a breeze that stirred the old house with the promise of an awakening.
“See you later,” she said and he watched her as she became a blurred fug of sparkling atoms that were picked at by the wind and thrown into the bright wave of the day beyond the gloominess of Grimmauld Place.
With a resigned puff of breath he closed the door again and wondered what she and Harry had spoken about in the study. He felt a little left out of the equation and wished Harry would confide in him more. It would be gratifying to help in a more practical manner than just offering the odd reassuring word now and again.
Maeve soared into the air and marshalled her atoms in the direction of Wiltshire, which was where DeFictus’ Who’s Who in the Wizarding World had reliably informed her Malfoy Manor was situated. She reformed on the outskirts of the small village of Upper Wapping and prepared herself for the short walk to the large grounds that the house stood in. The sun was high and she removed her cloak to allow its touch to warm her bare arms as she negotiated the neat hedgerows and well-maintained lanes that led to the Edwardian elegance that was the seat of the Malfoys. DeFictus had given her a lot of information about the house and she knew it had been extensively re-modelled by Lucius’ great grandfather, as the nineteenth century had hurried out of the way to make space for the twentieth.
The gates where impressive; pale-grey stone columns rose proudly, supporting a wrought iron gate that was standing slightly open. She pushed at the black metal and stepped onto the wide drive that led up to an impressive façade. But she sensed something wasn’t quite right, something in the atmosphere of the place suggested a recent upheaval of some description. She proceeded with caution, her hand wrapped around her wand as it sat in her pocket.
As she finally reached the house, dwarfed by its size and elegance, the front door was whipped open and she saw Narcissa standing there, her face streaked with fresh tear-tracks and her hair wildly out of place. Maeve was more than a little surprised to see the socially astute woman answering her own front door and it added to her feeling of unease.
To Maeve’s horror the blond witch suddenly threw herself into her arms and began sobbing onto her shoulder with wild abandon.