During my stint working under Mr. Deathly, I learned a thing or two about death. For example, dead people usually don’t stir and blink dazedly when you let out a strangled-sounding gasp and trip over them. And yet, Eglantine Mackle does just that, something that I am unprepared for in my line of training.
I’ve long considered myself a realist, though lately with all the weird turns my life has been taking lately, I may be becoming more of a surrealist. But I’m not the sort of person who would stand over a hopelessly mangled corpse sobbing that it can’t be dead, it’s not dead, there has to be a way we can solve it. So needless to say, I’m rather taken aback when the more gruesome sight I’ve ever seen turns out to be alive after all.
I guess this just proves that Eglantine is invincible.
“Go away,” she mumbles, a trickle of blood running down from her mouth and joining its fellows in the puddle on the floor. “’M trying to sleep. Get out, it’s freezing.”
I gape. “Egl… Ms. Mackle, we need to get out of here. Now.” My teeth are chattering like prepubescent schoolgirls, and the hairs on my arms are standing up straight. If the grievous bodily harm and severe blood loss doesn’t finish her off, the cold certainly will.
“Five more minutes,” mutters Eglantine, rolling over directly into her shed blood.
“Look, are you… are you all right?” I ask. My footprints and fingerprints are already the last in Aberforth Dumbledore’s house, and they’re the last in Ms. Mackle’s greenhouse as well. If she ends up dying on me, it won’t reflect too well on my reputation.
“I guess I have a headache, but it’s nothing that bad,” she mumbles sleepily. “Just leave me alone. Who are you anyway?”
“Theo? Theodore Nott?” I reply. “I came into your greenhouse earlier today with an Aspweed plant?”
Eglantine says nothing. She’s lapsed back into unconsciousness.
I don’t like taking matters into my own hands, I really don’t. But I seem to have been doing that a lot lately. With unwonted Herculean strength, I somehow manage to grasp Eglantine under the armpits”her clothing has frozen stiff, I notice”and drag her back out of the meat locker into the cellar. The sudden warmth is almost as jarring as the first blast of cold air when I stepped into the meat locker, and it wakes Eglantine up again, squirming out of my arms just as my biceps are beginning to give way.
“Where are we?” she asks. “What did you do to me?”
“I… what… no,” I splutter. “Look, I just came here to the butcher shop, walked down into the basement, opened the meat locker, and you were in there. I don’t know anything about this. I certainly did not club you over the head with a, a, dragon drumstick. I’m a good guy now, and besides, I probably couldn’t lift it anyway.”
My words fall on deaf ears, because she goes unconscious again.
This is not good. I seem to vaguely remember that after a bad head injury, you can get yourself a concussion, and when you have a concussion, going to sleep is a horrible idea because you may never wake up again.
Eglantine has always scared the living daylights out of me, but even so, I muster up the courage to slap her lightly on the cheeks and yell, “HELLO? WAKE UP! HELLO?” Her eyelids flutter open, a bit like Sleeping Beauty, only covered in blood and not beautiful.
“Do you remember anything about how you got here?” I prompt gently. “Do you remember anyone hitting you? Why did you leave the greenhouse?” I feel like I’m playing Detective or something.
I never liked to play Detective when I was little. I never understood why anyone wanted to solve murder mysteries”the dead person is already dead, so he doesn’t care who killed him, and the killer will probably get to you and finish you off as well if you’re snooping around. But frankly, I generally care about anything when it concerns me, and solving a murder mystery seems like a great idea when I’d otherwise be implicated in the murder myself. And then there’s the matter of the murderer still running around. I may have been pretending to be dead these last several months, but I don’t actually want to end up dead.
Eglantine squints thoughtfully. “I don’t remember anything,” she admits at last. She pauses. “How do I know you? Are we friends or something?”
She looks very suspicious. The only safe thing to do is lie. “Er, yes,” I stammer. “Very good friends. We’ve known each other a very long time.” It seems like she’s under the influence of some kind of Memory Charm, but the question is, how powerful is it? Did it just wipe her memory of the last several days, or all together? “By the way,” I add, “Can you tell me what an Aspweed is?”
“How am I supposed to know something like that?” she asks sleepily, starting to drift off again. Oh, no. Ohhhh, no. Eglantine Mackle is all about dangerous plants. If she doesn’t know something about plants, then the situation is looking very grim indeed. And then there’s the fact that she’s lost a huge amount of blood. The wound on her forehead has begun to clot up”probably partly due to the cold of the meat locker”but she still looks pallid and ill, and that can’t possibly be good.
I know Madame Pomfrey can solve this type of problem in a split-second, but I don’t trust my own feeble barely-seventeen-year-old powers. But… I do trust my slightly less feeble barely-seventeen-year-old intellect. I have a rather cunning idea.
A few minutes later, I’m nudging Eglantine awake again. It seems like whenever I turn my back, she goes unconscious again. “Hey,” I say, holding out a cup. “Here, drink this.”
“No, I don’t wanna…”
“Come on, drink it. It’ll make you feel better.”
“Nooo…”
“Look, Eglantine, you’re going to drink this before I count to five, or I’ll pour it into your mouth for you.” I sincerely hope I never get it into my head to have kids. This whole Eglantine incident is more than enough parenting for a lifetime. “One… two… three… four…”
She snatches the cup away with the same iron grip as ever and downs it. The cup, that is. Not her iron grip.
When Madame Pomfrey had to heal big injuries, she’d always pour out a cup of blood replenishing potion. And I got the idea into my head that I am in the basement of a butcher shop, as in, the place where very large animals get cut up with very large sharp implements. Chances were good that Mr. Smugg, who is after all one of the most ancient-looking people I’ve ever had the displeasure to see, doesn’t have quite as keen eyes as he once did. Chances were good that he’s accidentally sliced open his hand more a few times. Chances were good that he has a bottle of blood replenishing potion lying around somewhere. So I took the chance, and what do you know, it turned out that I was right. There was indeed a decent stock of the potion in the same cupboard as the humongous and rather unhygienic blood-stained knives.
Despite all of the wacky misadventures I’ve been having these days, I never ended up in the Hospital Wing when I was in school (unlike some people I know who made more trips to the Hospital Wing than I’ve had hot dinners), so I’m not quite sure how blood replenishing potion works. But it is blood red, and I can’t help but imagine it being nothing more than just drinking a plain cup of human blood, an idea that I have to confess has always sickened me a bit. So when Eglantine starts slurping down the bright red, glutinous liquid, I have to look away. Not that this helps much, because I’m only looking at the hanging bodies of dead animals and splatters of Eglantine’s blood. If I ever need to torture a vegetarian, I’ll know the right place to do it.
When the slurping noises subside, I turn around again and give Eglantine a wan smile. “Feel better?” I ask.
She smiles back, if confusedly. She looks rather dramatically better, a lot more colour in her face, and her eyes look less like they belong on a corpse. If it weren’t for the dried blood all over her and the huge wound on her forehead, she’d look almost normal. “You know,” she says, “I’m sorry I can’t remember you.”
“It’s okay, really.” It’s extremely weird seeing Eglantine as anything other than intimidating and fiercely confident. Strangely, I don’t like her better this way at all. “Look, just like down for a bit. But try not to go to sleep”you might have a concussion. I need to go do something. You can, I don’t know, put a steak on your face and see if that helps.” I gestured expansively around the wide array of exotic meats. “There’s quite a selection.”
I am both a pacer and a list-maker. I decide to use both of these talents at once. My internal dialogue as I march back and forth across the room goes something like this: “1. Get Eglantine back to health and get rid of her, I mean, take her back home. 2. Look around her place for some sort of clues. 3. Solve the mystery. Somehow. 4. Save my hide and get somewhere safe. 5. Eat a thoroughly meatless meal… I’m starving, but I’ve suddenly lost my appetite for anything that contains blood.
The catch is, I have the same problem as before I found Eglantine. I have to find a way out of the butcher shop without Smugg seeing me, especially with Eglantine. I still have no way of knowing if he has anything to do with this whole murder shindig. The only solution to this problem is to come up with yet another list, this one consisting of such fanciful solutions as tunneling out with butcher knives, pretending to be undercover health inspectors, and tricking Smugg into locking himself in his own meat locker in a very Hansel-and-Gretel-ish sort of way.
But just when I’m about to make good on escape plan number forty-eight (break down the wall using Eglantine as a battering ram), I hear a most inviting sound from upstairs. It’s the faint noise of jingling keys and Mr. Smugg closing up shop and vacating the premises, humming tunelessly to himself all the while.
It excites me even more than the sound of an ice cream truck does a four-year-old. Immediately, I scramble over to where Eglantine is lying and peel the creepy blue-tinged steak off of her face. “Hey! Excuse me! Do you want to get out of here?”
“Ugh.” She pulls a face. “Not really. I’m so tired.”
“Come on, you can’t stay here forever.”
Eglantine groans. “You’re the boss.” I wish I could have recorded that sentence and played it over and over again whenever I feel down. You don’t understand. Having Eglantine Mackle say ‘you’re the boss’ to me is pretty much tantamount to be told so by, say, the Minister of Magic or Lord Voldemort or something.
As I help her up the (disgustingly sticky) stairs and back up into the abandoned butcher shop, she says, “I just wish I could remember who you are. I wish I could remember anything. I don’t know what I’ve been up to at all. Everything is so fuzzy.”
“That’s because you don’t have your glasses on. Also, you’re talking to the stuffed yeti. I’m over here.”
THIS. IS. SO. WEIRD. Why do I want so desperately for Eglantine to get back to bossing me around and making me feel like pond scum? The weirdest part is when she says after a moment of contemplation, “I can’t believe you’re so patient. Are we married?”
OH GODRIC. I WILL HAVE NIGHTMARES FOR MONTHS NOW.
I prepare to think up some kind of tactful response to this question, but before I can come up with anything, I see a sight that takes the words right out of my mouth.
Eglantine’s greenhouse is right down the road, and I can see it from where I’m standing. Normally, I wouldn’t be able to make it out when it’s this dark outside, but tonight, it’s rather helpfully illuminated by the giant orange tongues of flame leaping out of it. The place is on fire.
“Look, it’s a building on fire,” Eglantine says, squinting mildly. Then all of a sudden, something strange happens. Her eyes light up, and her jaw drops to an area somewhere around her knees. “OH NO, YOU DON’T!” she bellows. “NOT MY GREENHOUSE!” She turns on me. “I still can’t remember who you are, but you are not going to just stand there while my babies are burning up.” She smacks me in the face, leaving what I imagine is a giant red handprint indented about an inch or so into my face. “Well? Don’t just stand there looking stupid, go do something! Now, boy! Quick!”
“Eglantine, I…”
Another smack. How very biblical; now I’ve been struck on the other cheek as well. “Don’t you ‘Eglantine’ me, boy! That’s Miss Mackle to you. Now you””
She (mercifully) trails off as we both notice the same thing. Eglantine pretty much lives in her greenhouse, but on the rare occasion she needs a bed or new clothes or a shower, she has, almost as an afterthought, a run-down little house right next door. The shack is not on fire, at least, not yet, but it is illuminated by the blazing greenhouse right next to it. And clearly visible through the window is… a hand.
No one has ever been inside Eglantine’s house except for the lady herself. Until now.
I drag Eglantine behind the butcher shop, a difficult feat as she is kicking and punching and shouting all the way, probably waking up half the block. I’m beginning to wonder why I ever wished she would return to her old self. At this rate, I’m going to end up with a head injury as bad as hers.
“Let go of me right now, or you’ll be sorry!” she shouts. “I’m going to go in there and give that… that plant murderer a piece of my mind!”
“That is not the best idea right now,” I say, trying not to lose my temper. It isn’t easy.
“Whatever do you mean?” snaps Eglantine, giving me a stare icy enough to freeze the flames in her greenhouse.
I sigh. “Let’s put it this way. How much magic do you remember?”
“What?”
“Your memory. You still can’t remember me. How much magic do you remember?”
Eglantine replaces the ‘icy’ in her stare with ‘penetrating.’ “Don’t be ridiculous at a time like this. There’s no such thing as magic.”
Lordy, lordy. I open my mouth to speak, but Eglantine elbows me in the gut with a steel elbow and is well on her way striding across the street like a rampaging cape buffalo before I can even get a single syllable out.
What can I do? She doesn’t know any magic, and she hardly remembers anything at all except for a few select plant-related things. I have no choice. I follow her.
If any other Slytherins could see me right now, I’d have an awful lot of explaining to do.
Like most wizards and witches, the front door to Eglantine’s seldom-used house is sealed with an incantation. Naturally, she doesn’t remember it at all, nor does she remember that there are such things as incantations. Instead of bothering with such things, she simply hammers on the door with her fist until one of the hinges gives way and kicks it in. I can’t remember ever being so terrified, which is really saying a lot. All I can say is, I’m glad Eglantine’s on my side. She’s not the sort of person I’d want to run into in a dark alley.
The inside of the house is, to put it simply, really weird. Most of the rooms are completely empty of furniture and decoration; some have a single chair or a small table, and what looks to be the kitchen has a little cupboard of some sort and a sink, but otherwise, there’s almost nothing in the house but dust and overflow plants. There are plants in every room, scattered haphazardly around the bare floors. Most of them are very small, and I’m guessing that these are the seedlings that Eglantine has to personally bottle-feed. Some are as humongous and vicious-looking as her usual stock, but look ill or injured with splints or drooping leaves or bandages tied around stems. How can a person devote so much of her life to plants? A sane person certainly wouldn’t.
I’m so fascinated by the sight of Eglantine’s house, if you can call it that, that I almost forget about the perpetrator who just so happens to be in this very building doing who knows what. That is, until I hear a creak at the top of the stairs.
Eglantine and I both freeze in our footsteps, I stepping behind Eglantine and hoping she makes for a good human shield, while she picks up a candlestick holder and wields it like a club.
“Well, this is interesting,” says a strangely familiar voice at the top of the stairs.
Eglantine drops the candlestick holder as the figure at the top of the stairs makes its slow descent, grinning horribly. This cannot be possible. This makes no sense at all.
The person on the staircase… is Eglantine.
Very little has made sense today; now, even less does than before. All I know for certain is that I am in a house full of man-eating plants located dangerously close to a raging fire… with two Eglantine Mackles. And one of them cannot possibly be real.
The Eglantine I’m behind makes to smack the other Eglantine in the face, then quickly decides against it. I wonder, if you slap your clone on the cheek, will you feel it?
“Why does this kind of thing always happen to me?” I mutter.
The Eglantine I’m with turns to me. “Do I have an identical twin?” she asks. “I can’t remember…”
“No, you definitely don’t,” I say darkly. And a scary idea comes to mind. What if the Eglantine I rescued from the meat locker wasn’t the real thing? What if she hadn’t lost her memory”what if she really just knew nothing about the real Eglantine Mackle’s life? No, that didn’t make sense. A fake Eglantine wouldn’t be so upset about her greenhouse being on fire. Which meant that…
“I’ll give you a hint,” says the Eglantine on the stairs. And then something terrifying happens. Her skin starts to bubble and melt like she’s the one on fire instead of the greenhouse, her long kinky hair shrinks back into her scalp, and she starts to shrink and wither. I want to run away”the wise thing to do”but honestly, I’m suffering from morbid curiosity. It seems very likely that whoever this fake Polyjuiced Eglantine is is also responsible for killing Aberforth, beating up Eglantine, and setting the greenhouse on fire, and I’d like to know who on earth would do that.
But I never would have expected Argus Filch.
“You can’t get out,” he says. “The fire’s spread to the front walk. Pity, pity.”
“Wait, what?” I splutter. “This doesn’t even make any sense!”
“Let me explain,” Filch cackles, wiping his runny nose on his sleeve. Ohhhh, no. Ohhhh, no. Now that we’re trapped inside the house, he’s going to do the stereotypical fictional villain thing and explain everything that he’s done and what he plans to do next. I guess the good part is, these long speeches usually seem to give the stereotypical fictional hero a chance to escape. The bad part is, if that doesn’t happen, I’ll probably end up dying a long, painful, toasty death.
“You see, it started a couple of hours ago. Thought I heard a student out of bed, so I was trying to catch the blighter. Well, I heard a noise behind me, and I shouted ‘aha!’ and I turned around, only it wasn’t no student, I can tell you that much for sure. It was a dodgy-looking fellow no bigger than a fourth-year, only I knew he wasn’t a student, on account of he had a proper mustache and he was wearing a suit like a Muggle. And he was real pale, weird looking. So I said to him, I said, ‘What are you doing in here? You’re in trouble, you are.
“Well, he tells me he’s Mortimer Deathly, and I don’t need to tell you that bit, because I know you know all about him. And he says to me, ‘Mr. Filch, you are scheduled to die of a heart attack in five minutes. You can choose between that or doing a little favour for me.’ So I says, ‘what sort of favour, eh?’ And he says he wants me to do someone in, and then get rid of the evidence. Says Aberforth Dumbledore has to die, only it’s urgent and his schedule’s all full of appointments, so someone else has to do it for him.”
Mr. Deathly? Personally hire Filch? As an assassin? This is vile. I seem to remember that Mr. Deathly rarely makes house calls anymore, that he has to book appointments for when he’s going to personally visit someone. But he must have been really desperate to choose Filch, of all people, to do the job.
“Well, I wasn’t going to kick the bucket, was I? So I says ‘why not,’ and he gives me the Polyjuice Potion in no time. So I gave Dumbledore the flowers while he was asleep, and then I got rid of the girl seeing as she was the only witness and everything, and then I acted the part when you came into the shop so you wouldn’t think nothing was up. And I burned the greenhouse, on account of the evidence. Only I didn’t think the girl would still be alive.” Filch looks disappointed, as though he was promised cake and only got melba toast.
Wait a second. Am I hearing this correctly? The Eglantine I talked to earlier today”that wasn’t Eglantine? That was Filch? But… but she acted exactly like Eglantine. There is no way Filch is that good an actor.
“That was you?” I blurt.
Filch lets out a wheezy cackle that makes his jowls wobble. “Mr. Deathly gave me instructions, like,” he says, holding up a small scrap of parchment. There were lines written on it. As I peered at the paper, a new line appeared on the bottom as if written by hand, reading, “Argus”give me twenty minutes. I will arrive as soon as inhumanly possible.
“Mr. Deathly’s on his way over, I see,” Filch says, mostly to himself. “I’ll give him ten minutes. Then you won’t be happy, lad.”
Oh, so he wasn’t just telling us what he’d done to flaunt his cleverness? He was stalling for time until Mr. Deathly could get here? And I dragged Eglantine out of the butcher’s cellar into this death trap. Nice going, Theo. Lovely. And the rapidly spreading fire will finish us off if Mr. Deathly himself doesn’t get there first.
This whole Filch situation makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but finally the puzzle pieces are falling in together. I thought it seemed odd that someone would kill Aberforth in such a slow, iffy way when a Killing Curse would do the job so much faster. And then, to beat Eglantine over the head instead of using a Killing Curse again?
Of course it would have to be someone without magical powers. Only someone like Filch would use… alternative methods. And who was strong enough to attack Eglantine and get away with all limbs intact? Who was strong enough to use a gigantic chunk of dead dragon as a bludgeon? Only Eglantine herself was that strong. And if it was Filch, I guess no memory charm was responsible for everything she’d forgotten. It was just an Eglantine-style power concussion.
What the heck. Theo, what on Godric’s green earth are you doing? Get a grip, please. says an irritated little voice in my head. It sounds a lot like me a couple of months ago, back when I thought I was the smartest guy on earth and nothing was too weird or difficult or scary for me to deal with. Why are you standing there gaping like a codfish? Wipe that stupid look off your face and do something. You can kill anything with a snap of your fingers, and you’re scared of Filch, of all people?
I stare at Filch, who’s just standing there, sneering smugly and panting a little bit. Then I look over at Eglantine, who’s glaring in a disoriented sort of way. I don’t blame her. She doesn’t have a clue who Filch is, or Mr. Deathly, for that matter, or nearly anything. Then I look back to Filch, back to Eglantine, at the brilliant flames next door, and then down at my hands.
The bandages I’ve wrapped around my hands are still sticky with blood from the gruesome butcher shop scene, and starting to fray and unwind themselves. They look as though they’re just begging to be torn off, and maybe if I just let my hands free for a minute or two…
Come on, Theo, says that horribly confident little voice in the back of my head. What are you waiting for? Why are you chickening out? And don’t say it’s because you’re a Slytherin. Slytherins chicken out when their lives are on the line. They don’t chicken out when it’s someone else’s line in danger. Aren’t you supposed to be GOOD at saving your own skin?
Slowly, I grab the end of my bandages and unroll them, throwing them to the ground. (I notice to some discomfort that the large carnivorous plant in the corner stretches slightly and makes a strange purring noise when I drop the bloodied bandages near it. Ugh, how does Eglantine like these things so much? They’re nothing short of creepy.)
My hands look bright white after such a long time wrapped up, and my fingers feel damp and shriveled, like I’ve been in a bathtub of pickle juice for a couple of months. I flex my fingers experimentally, feeling out of practice of using them.
Come on, seriously. Just do it. Just look at Filch and snap your fingers. He works for Mr. Deathly, and it was Mr. Deathly who gave you those powers in the first place. It’s full circle, really.
No. No, I just don’t want to kill this guy. He joined Mr. Deathly to save his life. I have to respect that. Why did I join Mr. Deathly in the first place? Why did I end up on Voldemort’s team? Same reason. And as much as I’ve always hated Filch, I can’t just do in someone I’ve known so long.
Don’t be ridiculous. You left Voldemort and Mr. Deathly because they wanted you to kill an innocent person. Filch knocked off Aberforth, and he practically clubbed Eglantine to death. He could have left as well, but he didn’t.
Yeah, I left because I didn’t want to kill anyone. If I murder Filch, I won’t be any better than him, will I? I’ll be a little junior Mr. Deathly, just what he wanted me to be. I’ve never killed anyone before. I’ve always thought killing people was a terribly inefficient way to solve problems. Why start at my time of life?
Because. If you don’t kill him now, then you and Eglantine will both die. Then you’ll effectively be responsible for killing TWO people, and one of them will be you. And Eglantine’s a terrifying, terrifying woman, but you like her a lot more than you do Filch, don’t you?
Man, I can see why I annoyed people so much back at Hogwarts. I’m seriously beginning to annoy myself. That little voice in the back of my head needs an attitude adjustment.
I’m just standing there, staring down at my hands. Filch has been blabbering on and on, probably boasting about his awesome Squib powers or something, but I haven’t been listening to a single word he’s been saying. My heart is beating ridiculously loud, and every heartbeat seems numbered. All I know is that I do NOT want to end anyone else’s heartbeat forever.
I lick my dry cracked lips and taste blood. “Listen,” I say weakly, not sounding like half the action hero I mean to. I raise my hand and point it at Filch. This is it. This is the only possible solution. I have to”
“YOU!” roars an unfamiliar voice, suddenly behind you. “Take that! And that! And some of this, while you’re at it!” Out of nowhere, a hand socks Filch hard in the face.
What happens next is a scene straight out of a dream. As if in slow motion, Filch falls back… back… back… straight into the hungry, gaping mouth of a gigantic plant.
It is a surprisingly clean demise. No blood, no screaming, just a few horrible crunching noises and a slight belching sound that no plant should ever be able to produce.
I turn around and see standing there… Aberforth Dumbledore, clutching three bottles of murky-looking liquid and wearing a livid expression.
“Wait,” I say, sounding even less masculine than I did on my previous line. “You… you’re supposed to be dead.”
“So are you, boy, but nothing’s stopping either of us, eh?” Aberforth calmly kicks the terrifying plant’s pot. “Stupid flowers nearly killed me. I never did like flowers, never did. And then I wake up and my favourite goat, Clytemnestra, she’s lying there on the floor dead. Ate all those flowers himself. It’s enough to try to kill me, but no one messes with my goats.” He turns to Eglantine. “And I don’t know you from Adam, lady, but you have got a lot of explaining to do. I don’t want to know how those things ended up in my bar, I just want some cold hard Galleons in my hand.”
My eyes still aren’t quite through bugging out of my head. “But how did you get in here?” I demand. “The… the fire? On the front walk?”
Aberforth shrugs and holds up the bottles. “Oh, I put that out in no time. Used everything I could get my hands on that didn’t have any alcohol in it. Turns out there wasn’t much, but it was enough.” He squints at Eglantine again. “You’re banged up pretty bad, eh? Tell you what, you’re going over to St. Mungo’s and they’re looking you over, and then you can pay me when you’re out again. Takin’ money from an injured woman never looks good. Come on, let’s get out of here. I don’t have all night to waste savin’ stupid kids.”
He grabs my arm and yanks me out the front door, and I follow gladly. I’d rather not be hanging around when Mr. Deathly shows up. My blood’s still running cold from Filch’s disgusting death, and my mind is still a scrambled mess, but I have enough sense to realize that I don’t want to deal with Mr. Deathly on top of everything else tonight.
“When I get my memory back, I am taking out every insurance policy under the sun on those plants,” mutters Eglantine. “Filch did not just get away with heartlessly murdering eighty percent of my plants.”
“Amen to that,” grunts Aberforth. “Nobody kills my goats without answering to me. Getting eaten was too good for him.”
I look at the pair of them. “I have a feeling you two will get along great,” I mutter. How can they just talk calmly like this after all of the terrible, bizarre things that have been going on.
“Hey, just one question, Mr. Dumbledore,” I say when we’re at a safe distance from the rubble of Eglantine’s house. “Why did you want me to come to the Hog’s Head in the first place? You said it was urgent?”
Aberforth looks over at me. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, got a letter from someone over at the Ministry. They’ve got a mission they want you do to. Something real dangerous, I think. You up for that?”
Oh, brother. Here we go again.