They assembled at the entrance to the bunker, a resentful silence the only outward sign of their inner fears. Remus took command as best he could, although, in truth, he had not much stomach for the role that had been thrust upon him. He had always been tenacious in fighting Voldemort, but now that things seemed so hopelessly weighed against them, that tenacity was wearing thin. Harry stood between Hermione and Neville, his face stony as Remus thrust a hooded cloak in his direction. Maeve stood apart, feeling a sickness in the pit of her stomach that owed more to her husband’s abrupt disappearance than the power Voldemort now wielded. It was Roderick who shepherded Draco, protecting him from the simmering anger Harry was trying to control.
Remus shifted uncomfortably. “There must be no magic until we are safely away from this place because it will be marked We must stay together, there will be strength in our numbers “ ”
“Or a bigger target to hit,” Harry interjected.
“There will be greater chance of us leaving this place with our lives if we stay together,” Remus reiterated firmly. “We will take a route through the forest towards the fens. This country is open and we must take extra care. I know of a place we can take shelter overnight in Cambridge, but after that we must head northwards and make for the coast.”
“Shelter!” Everyone looked to Neville, whose face was suddenly furious. “Why are we taking shelter? We should be fighting them not hiding from them.” His face trembled with years of unspoken courage.
“Not now,” Maeve entered the conversation, her voice soft. “You can see we are in no state to attack. What would you have us do, storm the Ministry. Look at us, Neville. Harry, who must not be seen by anyone, two witches and three wizards plus Draco whose mind is not quite up to the job at the moment. What could we do?”
“Then why is Severus allowed to go and fight them.” He managed to make the petulant question seem well-intentioned.
She sighed at the defiance that Neville was now exhibiting. “He is not fighting, he is undermining “ and undermining is all we have. Once a tree’s roots are damaged the tree will fall; felling Voldemort in this manner is the best we can hope for.”
This short speech silenced him, a mute nod signalling his conformity.
“We will pair up. Harry and Neville, Roderick and Draco, I’ll watch out for Hermione and…” His eyes rested on Maeve.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, nodding her affirmation of this fact. It felt natural to be without a partner, for there was no better partner than her husband, and as he was not available she would rather have none.
“Stay close to me or Roderick,” he said by way of a weak compromise.
The door opened reluctantly, its old hinges no longer as greased as they once were. A dull, ill-mannered shaft of light filtered in, indicating that once again a thick mist had made the day sodden with gloom. Stepping out, the weary group looked to each other as the disillusionment dripped about them. Maeve allowed herself a glance back before they set off, observing the grimness of their sanctuary, reflecting that the ugliest of places could be capable of offering safety while the prettiest could be so treacherous.
It was a dreadful march, filled with sniping and dissatisfaction. Their feet were soaked within just a few yards of the bunke,r and the mist dragged at them, plaguing their movements with ambiguity. Roderick had tried to draw Draco into conversation and failed as the younger man drew his world-bitten cloak around him in an attempt to keep Roderick at bay. Maeve barked at him to leave Draco alone and he’d made a face of mock indignation. Time slipped by, the minutes heavy, and they lost all sense of place as they followed Remus, their trust implicit.
Severus walked into the Ministry with a brusque step, unsurprised that the interior bore battle scars. There had been hasty attempts to restore order and gloss over the fact that something dark had happened to the institution, but the attempts were weak and unconvincing. He could not help but think that there was a lack of interest in promoting a business as usual atmosphere and the vague sense of disquiet was exactly what Voldemort wanted. An unwelcome witch attended to the desk and as he approached she treated him to a scowl that she had clearly been birthed with. Pity the poor mother, Severus thought, who had faced that particular newborn.
“And you are?” she snapped.
He considered for a moment the probability that she would know who he was and eventually settled on ignoring the question. She squinted at him in a most unappealing way, one eye rather larger than the other as she raked his mind.
“Poor effort,” he said, breaking her attempt to probe his thoughts. “I am here to see the Minister.”
“No one sees the Minister,” she barked, her lines well rehearsed.
“I’m here to see the Minister.” There was no Minister; there had not been time. The fact that no one could see someone who did not exist was apparently causing the blank look on the girl’s face.
Her dull eyes looked on with little interest and she repeated herself. Severus hated this sort of petty officialdom; whether benign or malignant, all regimes depended on this sort of unwavering attitude to rules to such a degree that he could almost have wished for anarchy if only to depose these petty despots.
“I’ll wait,” he said eventually, a line that she could not trump. She made a gargling noise and then screeched “next” to the unfortunate who stood behind him.
There had never been a suitable place to wait in the Ministry. All visitors had to mill about feeling lost and out of place. Only those that worked here felt truly at home in this warren of a building; only those with a complacent sense of belonging could ignore the power such a place wielded. Severus hovered, unafraid now that Voldemort controlled it. He scanned the room, watching people’s eyes as they milled to and fro, seeing the fear there, the hope that the Ministry might hold the last dreg of normality, when, in effect, it had become the seat of a new normality; the normality of evil.
Severus sighed, and turned away from the sheer hopelessness of the hope. The man who was now pleading for news of his wife would probably soon join her in whatever death she had faced. The small child that was mewling by the damaged fountain would be better off plunging itself into the murky, still water, for there was little else to look forward to. So much wizardry, and so much misery abounded.
He waited for six minutes and seven seconds and then, seeing that no one was paying him any attention whatsoever, walked towards the lift. Once inside he produced his wand, muttered to himself, and the contraption shot downwards with a decisive jolt. If you wish to seek a demon, he thought wryly, you must first descend into hell.
Draco was quietly going mad. He could see things in the trees, could feel the stab of something piercing his soul. The idiot walking with him was speaking, but all Draco could see was a working mouth from which poured nonsense. He tripped constantly, the walk a series of jolting saves from the mud that pawed at their feet. His mind was desperately trying to claw at something, a face, an image, yet whenever the image tried to clarify he moaned with pain and it flew away.
His companions knew he suffered. They all suffered. Abandoning magic was proving the deepest cut of all as they trudged eastwards toward the city, keeping off the main roads and tackling difficult ground. Greasy mist clung to their robes, and Maeve wondered that Remus could keep to such a determined direction. She wore her loneliness stoically, a hair shirt beneath a velvet outer garment. Severus had gone, leaving her with no clue as to his actions, and despite her trust in his better judgement, fear ran rampant within her heart. He would head for London, that much she knew. London meant only one thing; the Ministry.
“Psst!”
She jerked her head towards the sound, the mist covering all traces of a source. Minutes passed and there was no repetition of the urgent hiss. They continued on, Roderick trying to coax a conversation out of Draco behind her, Harry seething ahead.
“Psssssst!”
Maeve stopped dead. “Who’s there?” she hissed back. Roderick’s striking figure loomed out of the darkness, his hair limp and distracted. Beside him Draco failed to raise any interest in the fact that they had halted their trek.
“What are you doing?” Roderick looked at her in surprise. “Keep moving or we’ll lose the others.”
“Did you not hear it?” she whispered.
“Apparently not, whatever it is.”
“Someone went psst.”
“Went or was?” He looked at her as if she was the embodiment of psst.
“Someone was trying to get my attention,” she went on doggedly. “Twice.”
“Psst.”
Roderick’s face twitched slightly. “Let’s move,” he insisted, placing a hand on her shoulder, “or we will lose the others.”
The mist, thick as it was, seemed to grow thicker, and Roderick became more insistent. “Now, Maeve, or we will lose them, strength in unity and all that.” For all his insistence, there was something unconvincing in his manner and his voice seemed to come from a distance, a distance to the right of her. In fact it came from the exact place that the psst had come from. She squinted at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Moi? Doing? I don’t think so.”
“Roderick, if you learn to throw your voice so well then at least learn to do it consistently. Why were you pssting me when all you had to do was call me.”
“More fun that way.” He looked sheepishly unabashed. “And beside, the confusion has given the others the time to get well ahead of us. Do you want to go blundering through the mist and crash into who knows what in an attempt to locate them?”
“Why?” Maeve was economical with her questioning.
“Hiding, Maeve? Do we do hiding? I don’t! And hiding with those people? Remus is, I am sure, delightful in the right circumstance, but if I am to skulk about I would far rather do it with people I choose.”
Maeve struggled with the conflict he had provoked. Yes, she loathed the idea of lying low, as they had been doing, but she also wanted to do as Severus had asked. Yet Severus was always asking her to lay low when it suited him and to risk her life likewise. What if she did something because she felt it was the right thing to do? What if she let this rascal guide her for just a short while?
“Where are we going?” she asked, after a moment’s hesitation.
“We are going to London,” he said, “to look at the Queen.”
She frowned at the allusion. “Who’s the mouse?”
“That, my lovely, depends entirely on who is the queen.”