The sign on the door of the Hog’s Head quite clearly reads ‘closed’ (actually, it says ‘cloasd’”spelling never was one of Aberforth Dumbledore’s stronger suits), but that doesn’t deter me. The door’s locked, but that doesn’t, either.
I reach into my pocket for my wand, fumbling clumsily with my bandaged hands. I’ve taken to bandaging my hands lately for the simple reason that people tend to die when I snap my fingers. It all has to do with the whole having-been-an-apprentice-for-the-Grim-Reaper thing, but that’s another story. Namely, a story called “Oh No, Nott Again” by Schmerg_The_Impaler, who certainly likes her name related puns.
But I digress. There’s another reason, too, why my hands are bandaged, and that’s simply because I don’t want to leave fingerprints. Not many people are in on the secret that I’m still alive. There’s my best friend, November Gibbs, there’s Sirius Black, there’s a few select members of the Order of the Phoenix, and then, there’s Mr. Mortimer Deathly, the Grim Reaper himself, though he prefers to call himself the Minister of Death.
But apparently, Aberforth Dumbledore knows that I’m not as dead as I pretend to be, or else he wouldn’t have sent me a letter this morning. I give the note he another glance in the dim glow of wand light, trying to make out exactly what incantation he wanted me to use.
Theador Not,
Com too Hogs Hed Thurs 10 at nite after cloasing. Youse this spell Unenkumbrus. I nede too speke with you yes I no your alive no nede to pretend. Onestly you wer never all that suttel about it. This is very importent so if you dont com you wil end up regreting it.
--Aberforth Dumbledore
P.S. Dont go around tocking about this its confedenshal. Beleiv me I will find out and you can bet I wont be hapy is that clere boy.
Aberforth’s spelling may be abysmal, but at least it’s usually phonetically correct. Probably the spell he gave me isn’t TOO grievously mangled. “Unencumbris?” I murmur, directing my wand toward the door.
At first, nothing seems to happen, but when I push on the door, it swings open as smoothly as the trapdoor of a gallows.
The first thing I notice is the dark. Okay, after the strong smell of goats subsides, the first thing I notice is the dark. It’s eerie, really, and I’ve been to Mr. Deathly’s all-black office. (Have you ever tried to really examine the wording of a contract that’s written on black paper with black ink? It isn’t easy.) I’m not exactly a regular at the Hog’s Head, but I’ve never seen a bar that didn’t have at least one solitary, optimistic light somewhere in the place. Aberforth lives in a flat above the bar as far as I’ve heard, and I don’t seem to remember him having any night-vision superpowers.
As I stumble through the ridiculously dark room, the floor creaks like Voldemort’s joints. My wand casts eerie shadows on the walls”one of them looks a bit like Snape”and I’m beginning to feel not-so-comfortable. Why is it that I, who plainly fits none of the Gryffindor criteria keeps ending up in these dangerous situations?
My wand illuminates a crack in the wall at the back of the bar. It seems to be a door leading upstage, pulled just sliiightly open. On closer inspection, the stairway is very, very, very narrow but makes up for it by being extremely creaky, rank-smelling, and cobwebby. It’s really weird how silent it is in here”my footsteps are thunderously loud on the stairs, and Aberforth hasn’t once yelled at me to ‘keep down the racket, boy, you’ll rile up the goats again.’
When I reach the top of the stairs, I’m rather surprised that there’s only one tiny room, more of an attic than anything else. I would have thought that the brother of the bright-and-shiny Albus Dumbledore would live in more comfort.
No sign of Aberforth up here, either. It’s as silent as the grave, only not a grave inhabited by, say, a vampire, because those can get fairly raucous from time to time, especially late at night. (Growing up near a wizarding cemetery does things to your personality. I distinctly remember sharing this joke with an irritable vampire when I was about eight: “How do you catch a vampire? Have a stake out.” He was not amused, but I thought it was a bloody good joke. Heh. Bloody. Get it?)
Erm… anyway… my detour down memory lane is promptly ended as my eyes adjust to the darkness and take in the strangeness of the room around me. There are flowers everywhere”on the tables, the floor, huge pots of flowers on every available surface. They look pretty commonplace at first, just plain white flowers about the size of my fist, but after a good look with a decent Lumos, it becomes quite clear that these are not your garden-variety flowers. (Heh. Garden-variety. Get it?
They’re a strange white, a little too bright, whiter than snow. They’re slightly translucent, and practically glow in the dark, whiter than Draco Malfoy on the rare occasion that he and his precious skin dare to venture outside. And each flower is exactly the same, like they’re all cut from the same stencil. It’s odd, I’m here in a dark, deserted, silent bar full of spiderwebs and who knows what else, and for some reason, the scariest thing here is a bunch of flowers.
I’ve never really liked flowers. One of my earliest memories is my mum’s funeral. (Don’t expect anything sentimental; I don’t remember my mother, and I’ve never angsted about that”that’s what I don’t understandabout Potter. How can he miss something he doesn’t even remember?) Anyway, at the funeral, there were flowers everywhere, just crowding the place, and everyone kept bringing more in. I felt like it was me who was getting buried instead of my mum. Everyone still assumes that when I started crying, it was for my mother. Nobody believes that I just didn’t like the flowers, or that I can even remember anything that far back.
So in my mind, there’s always been a pretty distinct correlation between flowers and death. And despite what you or Mr. Deathly might think, I’m really not all that fond of death.
I take a tentative step in the dark, trying to put my foot somewhere where there are no creepy soul-sucking flowers, and end up planting it right on the edge of a very small, low table that I’d managed to miss earlier. What happens next is a scene straight from a slapstick pantomime. The table flips over, I fall flat on my face (popping two or three spots in the process), the flower pot flies about five feet in the air, lands on my head, and shatters against the ground. Oh, very smooth. Classic Theo Nott.
As I scramble to my feet, my wand illuminates something that causes me to fall down again.
It is Aberforth Dumbledore’s face.
When my heart begins beating normally again, I let out a nervous laugh. “Oh. Erm, uh, Aber… that is, Mr. Dumbledore! Erm, sorry about your flowers, er, I’ll try to clean that up. I didn’t hear you come in.”
And that’s when I realize exactly why I didn’t hear him. It’s because he’s not breathing.
I am alone in a very dark room with a dead man.
Naturally, I do what any sensible man would and run around in circles screaming and knocking over flowerpots. (What, I said ‘sensible,’ not ‘courageous.’ This is Slytherin Sensible we’re talking here.)
The first thought that comes to my mind (well, after ‘OH SWEET MERLIN, DEAD GUY, DEAD GUY, DEAD GUY’) is, “Oh dear. I didn’t happen to snap my fingers, did I?”
After a cursory examination of my (very, very, very shaky) hands, I come to the conclusion that they’re still securely bandaged. So this isn’t me, then… or at least… not directly. Because the truth is, Aberforth knew I was still alive, and he wanted me to come to the Hog’s Head to tell me an extremely important secret. Someone else found out the secret. That someone didn’t want me to find it out. I smell a rat, and that rat is Mr. Deathly scented.
I realize dreamily that during the thought process of the last paragraph, I’ve managed to race down the stairs, out of the Hogs’ Head, and am standing in the middle of a dark Hogsmeade back alleyway, clutching a broken pot of creepy-looking flowers. Funny the things that your body can automatically do when you’re scared out of your wits.
I have no idea what I’m doing. But maybe the flowers are the place to start. I don’t know what they mean, but they have to be important somehow. And I do know only one person who (a. Knows that I am nowhere near as deceased as Aberforth, and (b. Knows nearly everything about plants. Her name is Eglantine Mackle, she is an expert Herbologist and Order of the Phoenix member, she works nearby, she has a reputation for being extremely eccentric, and… she lives surrounded by countless extraordinarily dangerous carnivorous plants.
Oh joy. This is going to be a bumpy ride.
* * * * * *
The journey to Eglantine Mackle’s is unexpectedly long, given that she only lives a few blocks away from the Hog’s Head, but when you take into account that I have to be very careful that no one sees me, it’s a bit more understandable. What will all of the ducking into alleyways, cloaking myself in midnight and flattening myself against walls whenever anyone passes, it makes me feel like some kind of inept cat burglar.
The faint glow of those eerie white flowers I’m carrying doesn’t help the whole ‘trying to be inconspicuous’ thing, so I’ve wrapped the flowerpot in my cloak. That means my poor scrawny little body is freezing cold, which means I’m shivering, which means it’s getting more and more probably that I’ll drop the pot with a deafening ‘smash.’
But, miraculously, I don’t. I tiptoe through the outer door of the Mackle Exotic Nursery (which sounds to me like some sort of naughty burlesque featuring underage performers) without even letting the bell on the door let out a single muffled jingle.
Of course, Eglantine immediately negates that by barking “Nott!”
I wince. It’s like being in Professor McGonagall’s class again. “Can you please keep your voice down?” I say very, very quietly and not as calmly as I would have liked.
“Why?” says Eglantine solidly, her expression not changing a bit.
“Because I’m not dead,” I explain simply.
Eglantine’s face is still impassive. “I think I’d be talking rather louder if a dead person just walked in,” she says. “Like, screaming at the top of my lungs.”
I can’t imagine Eglantine frightened enough of anything to scream”the woman lives among killer plants, for the love of Merlin”but I’m sure that if she did scream, it would shatter all of the glass in the greenhouse.
“Look,” I explain, trying to sound patient. “Nobody knows I’m alive except for the Order of the Phoenix and… well, er, a few select other… beings.” A plant shaped like a deformed lawn mower at my feet purrs menacingly, and I shift my balance in an ungainly sort of jig. “I’m not exactly eager for the rest of the world to know.”
Eglantine shrugs. “Nobody told me that,” she says, pulling a massive steak out of her pocket and flinging it at the lawnmower plant, which devours it in one gulp and is immediately placated.
Eglantine is… is a sight You do not often see a woman who looks like her. She’s probably about six-foot-one and is built like an Erumpet. I wouldn’t call her fat”mainly because I’d be afraid she’d beat me up if I did”but she has uncommonly broad shoulders and a solid, powerful torso that could be used as a battering ram. She has a complexion as dark as potting soil and strong, decisive features, not beautiful by any stretch, but as imperious as any queen. Her tightly curly frizz of black hair is pulled back into a chaotic ponytail, and she wears a pair of shredded overalls that look as though she lost a fight with a Chimaera in them and an ominously stained old cloak. She wears a pair of thick-rimmed glasses low on her nose, and the way she’s staring at me, it’s like I’m an ant and their lenses are two magnifying glasses focused on me. If I’d had feelers, her eyes would have burned them off minutes ago.
“Is there a specific reason why you’re here, Nott?” Eglantine asks in her peculiar voice, brisk and clipped to excess but still commanding and almost unfemininely deep. “Or do you simply want to impose your company on me?
Charming young woman. I clear my throat. “Well, er, actually, I had a bit of a, er, question about this… plant thing.” I set the flowerpot on the table and whip the cloak off with a flourish.
Eglantine blinks slightly.
I don’t know what I was expecting. The lady’s seen every freakish plant in the world. But a part of me can’t help but feel that these flowers are somehow deeply sinister, somehow involved with Mr. Deathly and his sordid little schemes.
“Exactly what would you like to ask?” says Eglantine, turning up the intensity of her eyes.
“Well, first of all, I’d like to know what it is,” I say in my mildest voice.
“Aspweed,” Eglantine replies promptly and a little more matter-of-factly than I would have preferred.
Well, a name didn’t exactly help me much, except that I now know for sure that it isn’t an Audrey Two. “Does it, you know, typically… eat people?” I ask carefully, not wanting to offend a person who breeds carnivorous plants for a living.
She lets out a bit of a snort, but doesn’t exactly look like she wants to sic and plants on me, which is at least rather comforting. “If it was a maneating plant you’d brought here,” she says, “Then it would have eaten you before you even made it through the door. Aspweed isn’t the sort of plant I usually deal with, but I’ve taken a bit of an interest in it lately. It’s fascinating, really- it’s more alike an animal than a plan.” Before I can even ask her what she means by that, she pets one of the creepy white flowers lightly with a finger and explains, “It’s perfectly harmless when it’s dead, but if it’s alive, it’s deadly.”
Great. Just great. If I die because of this plant, the first thing I plan on doing when I get to heaven is beating up Aberforth.
Eglantine seems to sense my shock, because she gives me a gentle smile. I almost fall over, not because of the whole ‘deadly plant’ thing, but because this woman, this… thing is smiling at me. It’s like running into a humongous tiger and having it do nothing more than purr and bat around a ball of string.
“Oh, one Aspweed alone isn’t dangerous at all,” she assures me. “But they breathe… poison into the air, in very small amounts, of course. If you have a lot of them in one place, the poison paralyzes your muscles and slowly eats away at your brain until you are. Not a pleasant way to go.” She holds up a little jar of glowing, pearly-white goop. “This is pure Aspweed poison, right here. I’m using it to bottle-feed some of the seedlings.”
“Get that jar of death away from me,” I mutter, probably turning about the same colour as the neon white Aspweed blossoms.
Eglantine laughs, not a friendly laugh. The tiger is angry again. “Oh, please,” she says. “You’d need to be exposed to, what, twenty of the plants at least an hour for it to even make you ill, unless I gave you a direct shot of the poison straight to the vein. People even use it for seasoning-- I hear they’re putting the flowers in cocktails or something stupid like that. Aberforth Dumbledore ordered a boatload from me just the other day.”
“Oh, Godric,” I mumble.
Eglantine’s eyes intensify again. “What?” she says sharply.
“Well,” I sigh, “I hate to break it to you, but Aberforth Dumbledore is dead right now, and there were about a million of these plants lying around.”
Eglantine’s face grows as hard and impassive as stone. It looks like if I tapped her on the cheek with my pinkie finger, her whole head would shatter into little bits. For a minute, she looks as dead as Aberforth, but just when I’m ready to start freaking out again, she says in a flat voice, “No disrespect for the dead, but I never suspected that even he could be so stupid. I know he knew better than to put them all in the same room… and why would he stay in there with them? There is absolutely no way he didn’t know that.”
It’s almost embarrassing to hear her sounding… unsure. “I… well, I don’t think it was Aberforth who ordered the flowers,” I say, keeping a safe distance.
“What?”
I wet my lips with my tongue, hoping that no bodily harm came to me. “Can I, er, see the order he filled out, at least?”
“Sure, whatever,” Eglantine says with a heavy dose of disbelief, and she bustles over to the most terrifying, spiky-looking plant you can imagine. She gives its spiny pod a gentle stroke, and the pod pops open immediately to reveal a stack of paper. “I store my records in here to keep them secret,” Eglantine explains. “If it were anyone else who did that, he’d get his arm bitten off. So don’t go trying anything.”
Yeah. As if I’d ever stick my hand into the mouth of something that looks a lot like a floral crocodile.
Eglantine hands me a sheet of slightly damp paper with Aberforth’s name and address written across the top. It looks like Aberforth’s handwriting, but then, so do most messy, illegible scrawls.
Then I look at the message.
“Twenty-five Aspweed plants delivered directly, as soon as possible. “A.M.L.T.D.”
“Egl… Ms. Mackle, there’s no way Aberforth sent this.”
Eglantine’s brow creased. “What do you mean?”
“Well, for one, everything’s spelled right.” I let out a nervous laugh. “Anyone who knows anything knows that Aberforth could never spell to save his life.” Ooh. Maybe not the best wording when discussing the departed.
The crazy plant lady looks momentarily flustered. “I know plants,” she says, beginning to pace back and forth, “not people. And I would bet you anything that I know a lot more about plants than you know about people.”
She has a point. I decide to keep my mouth shut and watch her pace for a few minutes, reading and rereading the order and rummaging around for various assorted papers. At last, I say, “Well, did Aberforth give you the order in person, or did he mail it over?”
“No, he sent his delivery boy over with the note. I gave him the Aspweeds and he took them over straightaway. This was… last night, I think?” Eglantine’s eyes go squinty behind her glasses. It’s odd, I feel like I’m the dominant one in this conversation all of a sudden. I would be relishing it if I weren’t so panicky.
“Do you remember what the delivery boy looked like?”
Eglantine’s eyes go even squintier, not a great sign. “I have to say, I cannot remember,” she replies slowly. “I couldn’t see his face. He was tall, I know that for sure. Tall, and he had a soft voice.”
Well, at least it wasn’t Mr. Deathly himself. He’s small enough to represent the Lollipop Guild, and if it had been him, Eglantine would not be having trouble remembering what he looked like. There is something not quite right about Mr. Deathly’s appearance that people don’t soon forget. “Was he taller than you?” I ask, trying to picture who it could be.
“I…” Eglantine paused and calculated a spot in the air with her eyes. “I’m not sure. I was sitting down. He was probably about your height. Maybe a bit taller. No, he might have been shorter, I’m sure he can’t have been taller than the Omnivorous Oak sapling, and you’re almost the same height…”
She pauses in mid-sentence. “I’m notifying the Aurors at once,” she announces, regaining her regal assurance.
“BAD idea,” I splutter, almost falling over. “Aberforth’s flat is full of my fingerprints. And you know that any security spells would come back saying that I was the last person in there… and seeing as I’m supposed to be dead, well, that wouldn’t go over so well.”
“Well, what do you suggest I do?” Eglantine snaps, glaring at me harder than ever. She gets to her feet, and she looks even taller than I remembered. “I think it’s best you go now, Nott. I have enough problems of my own. In case you didn’t realize, this is not going to be good for my business.”
I open my mouth to protest, then realize that not only will that be futile, but that I don’t really want to be here anyway. I don’t know what I want to do, but I’m sure that it doesn’t involve being glared at by Eglantine Mackle and her myriad dangerous pet plants. I crack the door open and squeeze myself out, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, should anyone be looking. But as soon as I reach the pavement, I lose my footing on something slippery and fall down on my backside in a really debonair sort of way.
I mutter something not-so-nice under my breath as I scramble back up to my feet, hoping nobody spotted me… and then I realize.
What I slipped in is not your everyday puddle or Krup dung or what have you. It’s a pearly, glowing white goo, the exact bright white of Aspweed blossoms, and I know at once what it is. It’s pure, undiluted Aspweed poison. And it’s… not just a single blob on the ground either. Illuminated in the weak moonlight is a faint but unmistakable trail, leading up to a small building across the street.
What do you expect me to do? I follow it. And immediately wish I hadn’t.
There’s a reason why I’ve never been in Quincy Smugg’s Gourmet Butcher Shop before. There’s also a reason why it’s directly across from Eglantine’s greenhouse. I’ve always had no qualms about eating tasty dead animals, but I draw the line at more… interesting species like dragons, hippogriffs, and sautéed giant flesh-eating slugs (which are apparently a delicacy at Beauxbatons).
I’m fairly certain that most of wizarding Britain’s a bit hesitant to eat the sorts of things that Smugg’s sells, which is probably why Eglantine’s by far his best customer. Some of her plants are quite picky.
“Oh, hello, I was just about to close up shop!” exclaims Quincy Smugg the second I step into the shop, rubbing his hands together and looking eager at the prospect of a new customer for once. “What can I do for you?”
Smugg’s a cheerful guy, but I can’t say I feel all too comfortable around him. Maybe it’s the liver-spotted grayish skin and the long stringy white hair falling past his shoulders in a ring around a shiny bald spot. Maybe it’s the incredibly crooked yellow teeth with little bits of discoloured bits of meat wedged between them. Or maybe it’s the apron that doesn’t quite have all of the bloodstains washed out, or the huge meat cleaver he’s wielding.
“I’d like your name, if that’s okay with you,” adds Smugg, leaning forward over the counter and directly into a platter of spiny-looking fish.
The hood of my cloak is pulled up over my head to keep out the cold and keep in my identity, but I still can’t be too careful. Without even thinking about what sort of alias I plan to give, my mouth answers for me.
“I’m January Gibbs, sir,” a strange voice answers. Ugh, how did that hoarse sort of treble come out of my mouth? Why on earth did I give the name of my best friend November Gibbs’ great-aunt? And what on earth possessed me to decide to play a girl? I accepted long ago that I just wasn’t meant to be a very good-looking bloke. I would make a sinfully hideous girl.
Mr. Smugg peers nearsightedly at me, and I hurriedly hide my chin in my cloak to conceal the sparse, bristly hairs I’ve been trying to cultivate there.
“You know, I went to school with a January Gibbs,” Mr. Smugg says thoughtfully, scratching the wart on his chin. “Lovely girl. Vegetarian. She used to hex me whenever she saw me.”
“She’s my great-aunt,” I add hastily, though given the weird scratchy voice I’m using, I sound more like someone’s great-aunt than anything else. “I’m named for her.”
Smugg nods and absentmindedly chops up something bright orange and fuzzy that oozes pale teal blood. “How is the old girl?” he asks. “Tell her that Quincy still hasn’t given up on his Jannie, will you? I heard her husband died a couple of years back… something about a giant squid…”
I let him ramble on for a couple of minutes about how he’d give anything in the world to hunt down that giant squid and finish it off once and for all, but when it looked like he was getting a shade too ‘Captain Ahab,’ I interrupted, “Er, I was just wondering if you’ve seen my… boyfriend?”
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m fairly certain that’s the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever said.
“What?” Smugg is trying carefully not to look taken aback that January Gibbs II has a boyfriend. Very little of my face is visible from under my hood, but what with the pimply nose sticking out, the stringy build, the hair on my knuckles, and the voice reminiscent of a dying female moose, it’s painfully clear that I am lacking in feminine beauty.
“My boyfriend? You haven’t had anyone in here lately?” I repeat. “Because… er… he said that he was going to pick up some, er, meat and then come by my house, and he never showed up.”
Smugg’s wearing his sympathetic face now. I can tell he thinks I got stood up. “Well, what does he look like?” he asks patiently.
Dang, dang, dang. “Errrrrrrrrrm... he’s really hard to describe,” I say lamely. “Er, he’s tall, not really tall, about my height I guess... maybe a little taller. Or a little bit shorter. He’s, he’s, er, he’s got a soft voice.”
Smugg is squinting at me. “The only person who’s come in here the last couple days is Eglantine Mackle,” he says. “Wonderful, wonderful woman, don’t you think? She’s done more for carnivorous plants than the rest of London put together!”
I’m not entirely sure that’s an accomplishment. In my opinion, the only thing that should be ‘done for’ carnivorous plants is spraying them with toxic chemicals and chopping them into tiny bits. But I nod and smile and say, “You’re sure that sometime... just a few hours ago... there wasn’t a boy who came in? Are you sure you remember? This is pretty important.”
“No, no, I’m quite sure. Business isn’t exactly booming.”
Urgh. “Well... thanks anyway,” I say, heading toward the door. Super, my one clue was a dead end, and now I don’t have a single lead. Why can’t real life be like those murder mysteries where there’s the neat little procession of handy clues that all point directly to the next one?
“Sure you don’t want to take anything with you while you’re at it?” Smugg calls. “Some spiny blowfish, or maybe a sliver of porlock? We’ve got centaur shank fresh in!”
“I think I’ll pass, thanks,” I say, heading toward the door.
But something stops me in my path. I see a dark figure heading his way toward the butcher shop, as improbable as this sounds. A dark figure that I know all too well. Even in shadow, that slightly stopped posture and outrageously prominent nose is unmistakable.
My disguise is not all that convincing”I’m not even sure that Smugg is completely falling for it”and I know for a fact that the man who has been my teacher and head of House since the age of eleven will recognize me. Especially since he’s extremely clever, skilled in Legilimency, and all that.
I look around frantically for something to hide behind that ISN’T a taxidermied Yeti. “Mr. Smugg,” I exclaim, forgetting to use my ‘girl voice’ altogether and lapsing back into an unmistakeable baritone, “Can I... use your cellar?”
“Why?” he asks calmly, apparently not even noticing my freakish voice.
I look behind my shoulder. Snape’s advancing. “Because... that’s my boyfriend’s dad,” I blurt. “And, er, he hates me. And he doesn’t know we’re still going out.”
Smugg winks. “Oho, I know how that is. Young forbidden love...” I’m finding it rather hard to believe that Smugg does know how it is. From the sounds of it, he was madly in love with November’s great-aunt, who found him disgusting and offensive. But it’s not like my love life’s been any better, so I guess I can’t talk.
“So... cellar?”
Smugg shakes his head. “Go ahead, sweet pea, but I’m not sure you’ll like it down there. Got to have a strong stomach... don’t have any pets, do you?”
Ulp. But if I’m choosing between seeing bloody carcasses and BEING a bloody carcass, I’ll choose seeing, thanks. I pull the door to the cellar open and slam it shut just as Snape is stepping inside the butcher shop.
Huddled in the dark, dusty stairway and breathing heavily with my heart pounding somewhere in the region of my throat, I hear a low, nasal voice say, “Strange, I could have sworn there was someone else in here.”
“No, no, not at all,” Smugg’s old wheezy voice replies. “You must’ve been looking at my taxidermied yeti. Beautiful specimen, isn’t she? I call her Flossie.”
“Indeed.” There is a faint pause. “Three mermaid tails, please, with the scales scraped off.”
Smugg lets out a giddy laugh, apparently thrilled to be getting actual business at last. “Unusual request, sir.”
“Necessary for unusual potions. You seem to be the only... legitimate vendor in England, unless I wished to obtain them my self from the Hogwarts lake.”
Could the ‘delivery boy’ Eglantine mentioned be Snape? He knows everything there is to know about poisons”and his voice certainly is soft. Just hearing him talk, I can’t help but remember when I was in his class and the room was quiet enough to hear a needle drop in a haystack, everyone straining to make out every word Snape said. And then there’s the obvious”the man killed Dumbledore. Who’s to say he didn’t want to finish the job off and do the other Mr. Dumbledore in while he was at it?
But Eglantine said that the delivery boy was tall, about my height. Snape is not a big guy. He really only comes up to about my chin, and it’s not like I’m a giant or anything…
As I listen to the conversation between Snape and the terribly excited Mr. Smugg, I begin to realize with growing discomfort that the wall I’m leaning against is… sticky. When I first slammed the door to the cellar, I couldn’t see anything but, well, nothing, but now I can make out dim outline, and I can’t say I like what I see.
Dangling from the ceiling around the room are the sinister shapes of various dead animals. I don’t want to know specifically which ones they are. I prefer my lunch without identifiable body parts.
But it’s not the hanging carcasses that really spoil my appetite. It’s the fact that… when I examine my hands, the bandages wrapped around them are damp with congealing blood. And I know nothing’s wrong with the hands underneath those bandages.
Beginning to feel very revolted, I back away from the wall and whisper “Lumos.” My wand is lightly smeared with blood where I’m holding it, but the blood on my hands and the wand I’m holding is nothing compared to the wall.
You know those horrible modern art museums, where they display the most idiotic things as Great Art and insinuate that you’re a total philistine if you don’t see any, I don’t know, splendid beauty in a rusty old soup can or an ink blot or a dollop of dog poop? Yeah, I went to a lot of those when I was younger. It was my ‘edgy intellectual’ phase, that phase when I decided that I would try and make up for my lack of friends by becoming a Master of Counterculture.
Anyway, I was obsessed with those paintings where the artist would just grab a bucket of paint and splatter it all over a canvas and go, “there, done, that’s art,” and sell it for millions of Galleons.
Well, this wall looks exactly like one of those. Done in bright red.
This is right about when I start to realize that something is very, very wrong.
Let’s see… my decision is… remain trapped in a cellar decorated in a tasteful ‘blood and gore’ colour scheme… or run back upstairs into the clutches of the psycho Mr. Smugg who’s been doing who knows what down here. Stay down here, disgusting as the notion is, seems the safer option… until Mr. Smugg comes back downstairs.
This is mind-warpingly strange. Butchers deal with a lot of the less desirable bits of an animal, but I’m positive that nothing under that job description involves splashing blood all over the walls and the floor. And lying on the ground is a huge frozen dragon steak, covered in bright red blood.
Dragon blood is green. What kind of a sick person would use a dragon steak as a murder weapon?
There has to be a cellar door, some sort of quick easy way out that doesn’t involve facing Mr. Smugg. I thought he bought that January Gibbs story too quickly, and I should expected something was up when he claimed that nobody came into the butcher shop except for Eglantine. All cellars have doors, don’t they? I shine my wand around the room, but it’s still too dark to make out any cracks in the wall that could turn out to be an escape route. There’s only one thing left to do, and it is not something I would have chosen to do in any other circumstance. I feel my way around the room, the bloody, horrible room with animal carcasses on the walls.
Next time someone questions my masculinity, I’ll be ready for them.
Eventually, my finger strikes the edge of… a small but unmistakable crack in the wall. I slide my hand down until I feel… yes, a handle. Thank God, thank Merlin, thank whoever built this cellar. I pull it open, and immediately feel as though someone swiftly encased me in a giant block of ice. Oh, great. Oh, wonderful. This isn’t an escape route to the less bloody and disgusting outside world. It’s some kind of highly refrigerated meat locker, packed with even more gory specimens. Oh, just perfect indeed. I’m just about to slam the meat locker shut and contemplate my grisly fate when I notice something.
The trail of blood leading from the wall is no longer just a steady trickle. Massive amounts of blood pool around my feet, beginning to freeze into bloodsicles in the cold of the meat locker. And lying in shadow in the corner of the meat locker is a motionless figure, blood still oozing from its forehead.