I trust you will be there to find me
Like reaching through the blue
I place my faith in you
I do believe…
“Bong-sore, mawn-sewer,” said Ted Tonks as he stepped into the French pub, squinting farsightedly at the little phrasebook clutched in his hand. “PAR-lay voo Ang””
“Right, I don’t speak French,” growled the grumpy-looking bartender, looking up at the broad-shouldered blond man who had just spoiled his atmosphere, “and clearly, neither do you. So you can shut up now, actually.”
Ted blinked and glanced at the sign over the door. It quite clearly read “La Tête Du Porc". He glanced back at the bartender and opened his mouth in confusion.
“Yes, Mr. Tonks, this is France,” sighed the bartender. There was a distinct bleat from under the bar. “Not now, Clytemnestra, I’m working!” he snapped, hastily closing a cupboard door behind him.
Ted’s eyes lit up. “Hang on, I know who you are!” he exclaimed. “You’re Aberforth, Dumbledore’s wei”Dumbledore’s younger brother!”
“Guilty,” sighed Aberforth, rolling his bright blue eyes. “I’ve been outsourced here to France, apparently on business for the Order of the Phoenix. Personally, I think Al’s just trying to get rid of me so I can stop telling the other Order members the story about that one time when I walked into his so-called study, and he was--”
“The Order of the Phoenix?” exclaimed Ted, his face full of youthful awe. “You mean, you work for the Phoenix?”
“Guilty again,” said Aberforth. “Blackmail was involved. Hog’s Head wasn’t getting any business anyway, so I’ve been sent here to help all the Muggle-borns that the Phoenix is ferrying off over the border. Speaking of which, Mr. Tonks, it’s okay to bring in the wife and daughter now. This place is protected by the Fidelius charm, you know.”
Ted gave him a dazed smile. “Ah. Right, sir. Little worn out from all the travel. I’ll… go get them.” He waved and ducked out the door.
Aberforth waved and smiled as well. “Bloody idiot,” he muttered as soon as Ted was out of earshot, and resumed rubbing out a filthy glass with a dishtowel covered in several exciting varieties of mould.
A moment later, Ted reappeared with two others, a tall young woman with light-brown hair and a worried expression, and a rather excitable little girl with two long pigtails of lilac-coloured hair and a rapidly melting pink ice-cream cone in her sticky hand.
“This is Mr. Aberforth Dumbledore,” Ted said to the little girl, picking her up and plopping her in a chair. There weren’t any booster seats for her, but this was to be expected, as it was a bar and all.
The girl giggled. “You’re silly, Daddy. That’s not a name.”
“I wouldn’t be talking, Miss Nymphadora Tonks,” shot back Aberforth.
“No fair!” The girl howled belligerently, folding her arms and slopping ice cream onto the floor in the process.
“Don’t make a mess, now,” cautioned Aberforth, which was a bit rich of him seeing as the pub was already unimaginably squalid.
Ted sat down in a chair, which creaked ominously. He was big, the chair was lousy, and the combination was bad. “Mr. Dumbledore’s here to help us. He’s learned all about us from the Phoenix.”
“What, a bird?” squealed Nymphadora.
Aberforth rolled his eyes again. “For the love of goat,” he muttered. “Have you told the girl anything, Ted?”
The man’s wife answered for him. “To be honest, sir, we don’t know much about him ourselves. We never even saw him, and we never heard his voice. We followed his directions in a series of Patronuses, and then we got in his boat”the Death Eaters are watching all of the magical channels of transportation, of course”and we got a meal and lots of notes telling us what to do in France, but we never saw him. He stayed in his cabin the whole time.”
“Sir,” repeated Aberforth, snorting again. “Can’t remember ever being called that before. Well, no one’s s’posed to know too much about the Phoenix. Not even some of the Order know who he is… heck, I don’t.”
Ted laughed, then stopped when he realized that Aberforth wasn’t kidding.
“Important thing is to trust the Phoenix and trust me, and everything should go okay. The Death Eaters haven’t infiltrated the French Ministry yet”they’re still sticking to England, so you’re safe here. If too much about the Phoenix was leaked to the public, you never know who’d get the info. The wrong people could find out.”
Mrs. Tonks nodded grimly. “I know what you mean. I can’t believe what happened to Mary MacDonald.”
“Which would be?” Aberforth raised his bushy eyebrows. “Enlighten me, I’m stuck here in France, and owls delivering Daily Prophets in English would be kind of a dead giveaway.”
A crease appeared between Andromeda’s eyebrows, and her pretty young face fell. “Oh, didn’t you hear? Death Eaters killed her and her entire family. No doubt my wonderful sisters had a hand in that.”
Aberforth dropped a glass, where it shattered against the slimy floor.
“Don’t make a mess now!” cautioned Nymphadora, swinging her pudgy legs.
Aberforth smiled extremely tautly. “Precocious little brat you’ve got there,” he muttered, then shook his grey head. "But the Phoenix was supposed to save the MacDonalds! What happened?”
Ted spoke for her, putting a comforting arm around his wife. “They got a tip-off. From Lily Evans.”
“Lily?” Aberforth looked as though he had just swallowed a large, spiny lizard along with his drink, which was not too improbable in an establishment like his. “But… but that’s insane! And she’s not Lily Evans anymore, either, she’s Lily Potter”got married just before I left. And I know Potter, he’s a good bloke, if more than a little bit daft. No way he’d marry any Death Eater. Besides, Lily’s Muggle-born, just like you! Just like Mary!”
“She was friends with Severus Snape in school, though, from what I heard,” said Andromeda. “And he’s not a confirmed Death Eater, but he hung out with them, and he certainly was involved in the Dark Arts. I don’t know why she married James Potter”he’s an idiot if I’ve ever met one, and I’ve met Ted--”
“If I didn’t love you so much, ‘Dromeda dear, I’d punch you.”
“”yes, and I’d say there’s definitely something odd about her marrying James. You never know who to trust anymore.”
Aberforth nodded sadly. “I’ll say. Thank Godric for the Phoenix. There’s a man you know you can trust.” He raised a glass in cheers, although the glasses were so dirty that neither of the Tonkses joined him. “Speaking of the Phoenix, I ought to send a message back to the Order. Like I said, I’m out of the loop, but I don’t know if the Phoenix knows about Lily yet. They should know who to watch out for. Can’t believe what this war’s doing to people…”
He sighed and got to his feet, kicking the cabinet behind him (which let out another muffled bleat) as he passed. “Your room’s upstairs. It’s no palace, but we’ve got rid of most of the roaches.”
“Oh,” said Andromeda weakly. “That’s, er, good.”
“Yeah, the scorpions ate ‘em.”
5 Signs You Got Married Too Early
1. You have a pimple the size of a kumquat on your nose. (I thought that was supposed to clear up after adolescence!)
2. You had your wedding in the United States so Death Eaters wouldn’t crash it, and you weren’t old enough to have champagne at your own wedding. (What kind of drinking age is twenty-one, anyway?)
3. Your husband is singing the “Roadkill Stew” song again, and he still thinks it’s funny. (It wasn’t even funny in first year!)
4. Wait, my mistake. He’s switched to “Frogs Go Pop.” (Yes, the infamous song that suggests that ‘we all know frogs go pop in the microwave.’ Interestingly enough, I didn’t know that particular tidbit about frogs until after hearing said song. Even more interestingly, I don’t believe James knows what a microwave is.)
5. You’ve told all of this at least ten times to your favourite teddy bear, Boris.
“Ah, Lily! Working on your great novel?” boomed Horace Slughorn jovially, giving Lily a companionable pat on the back that nearly knocked her out of her chair.
Lily quickly stuffed the scribble-covered napkin inside her boot and looked up with youthful innocence shining in her bright green eyes. “Something along those lines, Professor,” she said. Memo to self, she thought. Actually get to work on that novel. Her two roles in life were writer and wife, and she wasn’t succeeding too well in either of those particular fields.
“Ohhh, don’t call me Professor, Lily!” tutted Slughorn, shaking his head and causing his walrus-like mustache to dance most amusingly. “You a grown woman of nineteen and all… lovely party, isn’t this?”
“Er… yes… Amos and Claudia certainly know how to throw a party. If it weren’t for the tone-deaf people singing ‘Frogs Go Pop,’ I’d think I was at some sort of multi-million Galleon gala.”
“Oho, your wit’s as sharp as ever, I see!” Slughorn roared with laughter and carried on for several seconds too long. Lily strongly considered gently taking his goblet of mead away from him. She estimated that it would be approximately twelve minutes before he, too, joined in on the chorus of ‘Frogs Go Pop.’
Lily sighed. She knew she should be enjoying the Diggorys’ party. But somehow, she couldn’t quite bring herself to be happy. Usually, she was the life of the party, but that spot had been taken over by her husband and his ridiculous behaviour. She wasn’t sure whether or not he knew that everyone was laughing at him, not with him, but she sure didn’t see the comedic value in covering one’s face with a napkin and sticking one’s tongue out through it.
Well, except for that one time when, his eyes covered by the napkin, he’d accidentally licked Professor McGonagall’s nose. That had been pretty funny.
She knew that marriages often began to grow cold after awhile, but she and James had only been married two months. She was fairly certain that love had not blinded her in regards to James’s less desirable character traits, because she’d spent years trying to use them as justification for her choice not to date him.
But he was more than just another silly, arrogant rich boy. True, he ran a joke shop called Zonko’s for a living, but he was deeply compassionate”with one major exception, this particular exception named Severus Snape”and he liked all the same Quidditch teams and bands as Lily. Not to mention he’d been really intelligent”they had spent hours talking, and Lily had never met anyone who seemed to share her views so completely”and most of all, insanely brave and loyal.
At least, he had been. So what on earth had happened? He hadn’t been stuffing people’s wands up his nose and pretending to be a walrus when Lily had married him. She definitely considered bogey-decorated wands a deal breaker.
Slughorn seemed to realise what was on Lily’s mind because he said in his horribly jolly voice, “You needn’t worry, m’girl, it’s perfectly normal for a man to get a bit tipsy at parties like this.” He hiccupped conspicuously.
“Yeah,” said Lily, rubbing her arms. “But James doesn’t drink.”
Slughorn looked momentarily nonplussed. “Ah. Well. Er, if you don’t mind, Lily, I think I see young Dirk Cresswell over there””
“Be my guest,” said Lily, relieved to have her old potions teacher leave her alone to her thoughts. Absentmindedly, she grabbed a miniature spinach puff off of a table and stuffed it into her mouth.
And spat it out into the scribble-covered napkin that she managed to dig frantically out of her boot. E. Coli Puffs were not among her favourite foods. She must really have had a lot on her mind if she’d gone so far as to have eaten spinach, of all things.
Strains of music, if you could call it that, drifted through the room.
“We all know frogs go pop in the microwave,
Pop in the microwave
Pop in the microwave
We all know frogs go pop in the microwave when you turn it onnnn!”
It was all Snape’s fault, she thought madly, though she knew that couldn’t be the real reason. James had no clue she’d even spoken to Snape since fifth year. But everything in her life seemed to have gone downhill since Snape had turned up.
It had been at her wedding reception. She had no idea how Snape could have found them in North America, but he’d been right there in the hotel eating the canapés and those awesome puffy little pastel-coloured mints that James hated so much.
She’d just come back from the ladies’ room, still giddy with joy. And as soon as she returned to the reception room, who had she run into but Severus Snape, clad in oversized black robes and sickeningly unwashed, just like in school. If possible, he’d looked even worse than the last time Lily had seen him.
But he’d been surprisingly polite and cordial if more than a little aloof, congratulating Lily on her marriage and complimenting the catering. And then he’d asked the question. He’d wanted to know how Mary MacDonald was doing and whether she still lived in her old Middlesex home.
Lily, her already-questionable sense of logic clouded by newlywed bliss, had told him that she had moved and offered to give him her address. She hadn’t been thinking. She should have known Snape was a Death Eater. But she hadn’t even thought about the possibility that a Death Eater would just casually stroll into such a well-protected wedding and have a chat with the bride.
James hadn’t seen him. No one else had mentioned seeing him. But two days later, Mary and her whole family were dead.
It had all been Lily’s fault for being so stupid, trusting Snape just because they’d once been playmates way back when Lily had liked pink and wanted a pony and Snape had been a soprano called ‘Sev.’ And the worst part was, she couldn’t even confide in James, because it was right about then when he’d started acting like an idiot.
“We all know frogs go splat in the ceiling fan,
Splat in the ceiling fan, splat in the ceiling fan,
We all know frogs go splat in the ceiling fan
When you turn it onnnn…
We all know frogs go bang in the toaster…”
“Lily!” cried Claudia Diggory, vaulting over toward her while simultaneously dragging her young son Cedric away from the singing men. The little boy showed every sign of precocious male idiocy, because he was singing in his little angelic treble, “We all know frogs go WHIRRRR in the disposal…”
“How are you? I haven’t seen you in ages! Still working on your novel?”
“Yeah,” said Lily, lying through her teeth. “Yeah, I am.” She’d done about three pages since she’d last seen Claudia. Writer’s block was a disease nearly as debilitating as male idiocy.
“What about James? Is he here, or is he working late at Zonko’s?”
It was then that a very familiar, very loud, and very off-key baritone voice chose the moment to start up a new song.
“I have a sad story to tell you.
It may hurt your feelings a bit.
One day, I walked into the bathroom,
And I stepped in a big pile of…
SHAVING CREAM! Be nice and clean!
Shave every day and you’ll always look keen!
I’m laughing so hard at these lyrics
I think my sides are gonna split
I stopped laughing just now, however
‘Cause my pants just filled up with my…
SHAVING CREAM! Be nice and clean!
Shave every day and you’ll always look keen!”
“Er, yeah,” said Lily. “He’s definitely here.” Across the room, James let out his ridiculous sick-horse guffaw of laughter and launched into the next disgusting verse of the song.
It wouldn’t be so bad if he acted like a mentally deficient first year just at parties”she could cope with that. But he was like that at home as well, if not worse, and Sirius, Remus, and Peter”who Lily had always liked”only encouraged him. There were days when Lily just got fed up with of all of his… shaving cream.
“Ah,” said Claudia, sounding suspiciously similar to Slughorn. “I, er, can’t believe I didn’t notice him before. Well, I’d better get little Ced off to bed before he starts, er, picking up bad habits.”
“Right,” said Lily, blushing slightly. She sat down on a sofa and closed her eyes in exasperation. She still couldn’t quite bring herself to admit that this was the man she had loved and married”if you could call him a man. She hadn’t quite gotten to the point where she could blame her unhappiness on James. “All Snape’s fault,” she muttered. “Stupid Snape.”
And a low voice from behind her replied in a dangerously soft whisper, “What’s that about me?”
A man deluded by his wife
A figure ripe for ridicule
Who’s lived a vain and useless life.