She whispered

by Lucas Chesterton

  ‘What did Dumbledore say?’

  ‘He promised me that he would do everything in his power to protect the Potters. In exchange, he asked for my allegiance.’

  ‘Which you gave him?’

  Daysen nodded. ‘I did.’

  ‘To no avail, though.’

  ‘No.’ It was only one simple word, but it sounded forlorn, empty.

  ‘When Dumbledore did not ��� could not ��� live up to his promise to keep the Potters safe’, Nolan continued slowly, ‘you could have walked away. You didn’t owe him anything anymore.’

  Daysen met her gaze, and there was some astonishment in it. ‘Maybe I didn’t owe him anymore’, he admitted, ‘but ��� there was Lily.’

  ‘I see. So you promised to at least keep her son safe’, Nell Nolan said, ‘and to do everything in your power to achieve that aim.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nolan said nothing for a while but let what had been spoken sink in. No one moved, even the journalists had momentarily stopped scribbling or halted their quills. Slowly, Nell Nolan walked back towards the bench, then turned.

  ‘I met Lily Potter when I was a girl’, she said suddenly and brightly. ‘She was a very lovely person.’

  Jack Daysen looked at her, and what was at first a glare suddenly softened into a very intense gaze. He nodded.

  ‘I also think you’ve done her proud’, Nolan said solemnly. ‘Surely she would agree.’

  And with that simple statement, she went around the edge of the bench, found her seat and sat down without looking at Daysen anymore. He, however, followed her with his eyes, and there was amazement in them. Elena could see him swallow, and then he slightly bowed his head, stared at is hands again ��� long, thin white fingers that had stopped fidgeting ��� and he seemed lost in thought, or in memory. Hesitantly, people started to move in their seats again. However, something had changed. Elena could feel it by the tingling of her skin.

  With his admission and by finally showing some feelings, Jack Daysen had ��� probably quite unwittingly ��� gained at least a quantum of respect in the assembled wizarding world. It was, maybe, for the first time in his life. All the same, Elena was not sure whether this would truly be the end of it all. Her intuition ��� always a faithful companion of hers and enhanced since she had started to study magic ��� told her that anything could happen. Such was the quality of the times they lived in.

  Jack Daysen had fully expected to be arrested after the trial. Upon his admission of guilt concerning the death of Lawrence McKinnon, he had warily watched the shackles attached to his chair, waiting for them to wrap themselves around his wrists and pinning him down until the arrival of the Azkaban staff to take him away; it had not happened. Even when he was led out of Courtroom Ten after proceedings, he would not have been surprised if they had waited for him, processing him quickly and shipping him off. Nothing of the sort had happened. The only thing that had occurred was that he’d been cautioned to keep himself available for any questions the Ministry of Magical Law Enforcement might think up in the coming weeks and months. He had replied dryly that surely everyone in the wizarding world knew where to find a Hogwarts Professor. Upon which the snotty young official ��� they were all incredibly young these days, for lack of proper material ��� had informed him that there were sure ways of ascertaining someone’s whereabouts, so he should think twice about fooling the Ministry; otherwise, however, he was free to go.

  Free to go. Not quite. From the small cloakroom where he’d been taken to, he could hear the shuffling feet of a herd of buffaloes overhead. There was no way he was going to walk out among the crowds, only to be hissed and hollered at, or ��� even worse ��� accosted by journalists. So he dawdled in the cloakroom, found himself a small bench and sat down between formal robes hanging on pegs, merging comfortably with the shadows of the dark corners. Members of the Wizengamot dashed in and out of the small space, swapping their robes and walking out briskly with an air of importance on their faces. He watched them, unmoving. Most of them didn’t notice him and if they did, they reacted a little shocked to see him perched there among the robes, and quickly looked away.

  Nell Nolan was one of the few who saw him at all, and only after she had slipped out of her black robe and exchanged it for a bright blue one with trumpet sleeves and a wide pink collar. It made her look very different, more girlish in spite of the completely white hair.

  ‘Hello there’, she said a little breathily when she saw his still figure. Her eyes were wide and of a dark ink blue. ‘Are you waiting for the crowds to disperse, Professor?’

  He nodded and scrutinized her. Within himself he felt the urge to say something. Thank her, perhaps, because he saw now how her line of questioning had really done him a service although he was still a little rattled by what that woman had extracted from him. However, Thank-yous didn’t come easily to Jack Daysen and eventually he reminded himself that the woman had only done her bloody job.

  Anyway, Nell Nolan did not appear to expect gratefulness. She pointed to a door. ‘There’s a spiral staircase out there’, she said. ‘It will take you to a gallery above the courtroom. It is closed to the public. You can wait up there until everyone is gone.’

  He got up immediately with an acknowledging twitch. In spite of himself, his eyes remained glued to her face and she returned the look with a little smile.

  ‘You look familiar’, he remarked at last.

  She smiled very slightly. ‘Yes. I was in my sixth year at Hogwarts when you started teaching there.’

  Daysen frowned. He prided himself on never forgetting a face that had appeared in his classroom, but he could not place her.

  ‘My hair was dark blond then’, Nell Nolan said, pointing to her head.

  Daysen tried to imagine her as a blonde, but didn’t succeed, the snowy white of her hair was too dazzling. ‘What happened?’ he asked in his lowest voice.

  ‘My family and I were held prisoner by Death Eaters for three weeks. They killed my husband. That’s when my hair turned white.’

  He stared at her, then looked down. Murmured something that sounded remotely like ‘I’m sorry’, but might also have been something else. Nell Nolan shrugged, although her smile was a little sad.

  ‘Resilience is a wonderful thing’, she said, ‘but I’m sure you know that.’

  With that, she hung her Wizengamot robe on a peg, nodded to him and left the cloakroom. Daysen remained standing there for a while before finally starting to move and quietly gliding out by the door.

  A little while later, he was standing on a curved gallery which followed the course of the circular corridor enclosing Courtroom Ten. It was a place to his liking, because from up here he was able to survey the crowds without being seen. There were still an awful lot of people about, standing in groups and discussing the hearing. He spotted a couple of familiar faces ��� Remus Lupin talking to Hermione Granger, Harry Potter holding hands and sweet-talking with a glowing Ginny Weasley, while Molly Weasley was ruffling her son Ron’s hair, no doubt telling him that he should get a fresh cut. Daysen winced. So they had all been there to witness how he had bared not only his neck but his soul, as well, and how he’d been goaded into speaking about Lily. Splendid.

  Jack gave the crowd another sour look-over, searching for a very specific face. He had first seen it during the hearing and although he didn’t really want to set eyes on it again, he couldn’t help looking. However, it was nowhere. Maybe the problem had solved itself before becoming a problem. Maybe old promises had been kept. But an uneasy feeling in his gut didn’t allow for too much optimism.

  About to turn away from the gallery’s bannister, he suddenly spotted Elena. His heart did an awkward little jump. He had almost failed to recognize her because she wore a pointed hat, although she had once informed him that she would ‘rather bite the tip of my tongue off than wearing one of those blasted things’. Beside her stood Eddie Hincks, talking at her adaman
tly, but she didn’t pay much attention and stared pointedly over the young man’s shoulder. Daysen wondered what the Hincks boy was telling her. Giddy Gryffindor stuff, probably. Once again, he couldn’t help noticing what a handsome couple they made and the realization gave him a sting. Old fears promptly raised their ugly heads, and now he did turn away and went on a slow and lonesome walk around the gallery. He tried hard to put the hearing out of his mind ��� there would be enough time to ponder it later, at home, with a glass of Fire Whiskey in his hand ��� and focussed instead on what he would do next. It was only past noon, the day still comparatively young. Maybe Elena would be up for a lesson tonight? In his mind, a plan formed how he might pick up where they had left before the night of the lighthouse. However, other thoughts interfered. It irked him, for instance, that she had been present during the hearing. That she had heard. Not only about Lawrence McKinnon, because he had already told her about the assassination, no matter how much he might have regretted it in the meantime; but about Lily.

  He sighed inwardly and walked on, focussing on magical lessons again. The light on the gallery was dim and he wandered between pillars and below arches. When he had come full circle, the crowd in the corridor had thinned out considerably. Elena and Eddie Hincks were gone. Where to, he wondered, and had they gone together? Again, he commanded his mind to go in other directions.

  Finally and after another full circle, he dared to creep down the stairs to the corridor. Only a small number of people were still about. House-elves swept up the marble floor. Jack kept his head down and steered towards the doors that would take him to the elevators, thus reaching the large entrance hall of the Ministry. There, business had taken up as usual. Ministry employees were walking back and forth with rolls of parchment in their hands, looking occupied. Daysen was about to enter one of the crevices in the wall that were connected to the Floo network, when he heard the voice behind him; it was a voice he immediately recognized because its sound was etched into his soul.

  ‘Jack.’

  He didn’t even bother to turn around, but an angry scowl appeared on his face. ‘What, in Hecate’s name, are you doing here?’

  ‘Come on, Jack. That’s no way to speak to your mother.’

  ‘And what, pray tell, would be the correct way of talking to you, considering that we have resolved to never see each other again?’

  Silence answered him and so he turned, in spite of himself. She was standing there with a look of feigned meekness on her face. Like him, she was all dressed in black and looked like a Greek widow in eternal mourning. Mourning for what, exactly? Her hair was still as pitch black as his ��� Princes didn’t grey until well into their seventies. As always, her face looked worn-out and sullen. And as always, the sight of her brought up a complicated mix of emotions which, with everything else on his plate right now, was just a little too much.

  ‘I read about that hearing in the Celtic Observer’, she said. ‘What did you think? That I’d stay at home calmly performing household jinxes while they were putting my only son on trial?’

  ‘It was a hearing, not a trial’, he reminded her. ‘And you’re no good at household jinxes.’

  Eileen Daysen shrugged. She was one of the few people he knew that were completely immune to his sarcasm and moods. ‘What was the purpose of the whole thing, anyway?’ she asked in a plaintive voice. ‘They should be glad they had you around to do their dirty work. The entire proceedings were a scam!’

  He couldn’t object to that, but had no intention of agreeing with his mother, either, so he said nothing. It gave her ample opportunity to rant on.

  ‘Really, it was a disgrace, especially this man ��� what was his name? ��� and how hostile he was towards you!’ She surveyed her son critically. ‘You really shouldn’t have given so much away.’

  He was close to issuing a bored moan, but decided at the last moment that it would be too adolescent a reaction. Why did parental presence always do that, make you want to behave like a recalcitrant teenager? Because that was how they still saw you, he reasoned with himself. No use fulfilling her expectations. He forced himself to answer evenly. ‘I had to give away something. Things don’t look too good right now.’

  Her features softened and her mouth curled a bit. ‘We have to take a look at that scar of yours, sweetheart’, she said after a while as if it was the most natural thing in the world, ‘as soon as we get home. Didn’t you try to concoct a potion for it? If you did, I’m afraid it was quite a sloppy job.’

  Desperately, his inner eye watched on as something inside him snapped ��� already. ‘What do you mean, ‘as soon as we get home’?’ he flared. ‘We had an agreement! I don’t know about you, but it suited me quite well! And now you’re here as if nothing happened and threaten to ‘take care’ of me?’

  ‘Don’t throw a tantrum, Jack’, Eileen said, completely unimpressed. ‘You are very much like your father in that way, you know?’

  ‘You have a nerve, even mentioning him!’ Daysen growled. ‘After all that happened ���’

  ‘Not with the old stories again.’

  The tone was sharp and words got stuck in his mouth. He stared at his mother in disbelief. For the thousandth time, he marvelled at her capability to make and re-make the reality in which she lived as she pleased. He also wondered why she was still able to shut him up when she wanted to. Of course, the reason was obvious; all those years of living together on a wizarding island in a sea of Muggle trash, and with a Muggle monster to guard them. As uneasy as their relationship might have been, they were forever connected by shared secrets and decade-old pacts. In that moment, he suddenly had a scene before his inner eye in which he saw his childhood self slipping in by the back door after long hours outdoors ��� never mind the weather ��� and creeping towards the kitchen where his mother was making another futile attempt at baking a cake; she seeing him and nodding ��� ‘It’s alright. He’s gone.’ ��� and his first move had always been to the tiny fridge to take whatever scraps his father had left; and then to the kitchen table where he had sat down with her and she had shown him spell after spell, had let him use her wand generously, warning him every time not to tell anyone as he would get her into trouble with it, and she only did this because he was such a talented boy, a true Prince; the warm feeling spreading in his belly then because these were the times when she was most attentive towards him and even affectionate. This image, etched into him by routine, was a representative of their relationship, with magic as glue. He knew at the same time that he would not be able to turn away and send her off. If truth be told, he had known this the moment he had first spotted her today, sitting in one of the spectators’ rows, following proceedings with a doubtful frown on her face.

  With all these thoughts running through his mind, he completely forgot to deal out a snappy reply and instead merely stared at an elusive point between her and himself. As a result, Eileen Daysen assumed that everything was well and she came closer, lightly patted the lapels of his coat. ‘What about we go and visit Callistus first? And then we take it from there.’

  He rolled his eyes. One part of him was ready to draw her into a fight. The other, however, just couldn’t be bothered, and so he sighed. ‘Hell, yes, why not.’

  Eileen Daysen gave a satisfied little smile and together they walked towards the exit.

  Diagon Alley was business as usual, and that meant that he was at the receiving end of a range of dirty looks. However, the elderly witch walking beside him served as a kind of buffer. No one accosted him and he was well practiced at ignoring stares.

  For the most part of the way, they walked in silence. If anyone spoke, it was his mother and only to make some deprecating remark about the sister she lived with these days ��� in her view, she was too lenient towards her children, allowing them Muggle ways and Muggle talk which would never have happened if her mother had still been alive ��� and Jack used only about a quarter of his auditory capacity to
listen. Every now and then, he glanced sideways at this older and female version of himself, at her small thin frame. No one would ever have missed that they were mother and son, they looked too much alike (except for the nose, of course, which he had courtesy of his father). The same complexion, the same heavy black brows and the twitchy way of walking. He was astonished at how natural it felt to move beside her, as if the years in between hadn’t happened. How long was it, anyway? Seven, eight years? Yes, eight years in which he had not seen her and hardly heard from her apart from the occasional motherly owl. Had he missed her? Certainly not. Did he like her? Hardly. (But then, he didn’t like an awful lot of people.) But did he love her? ��� The answer to this question was infinitely more complex.

  While he was still musing, they turned into Knockturn Alley and soon entered the dimly lit and low-ceilinged shop of old Callistus Applethorne, a man who had done Daysen more than one service during his time as a double agent, providing obscure dark arts and advice. The vault-like sales rooms appeared deserted at first, but after Eileen had coughed loudly and pointedly, they heard the shuffling of feet coming from the back of the shop and shortly after that, its owner appeared, blinking his rheumy pale-blue eyes, his back bent by an almost biblical age. It took him a few seconds to recognize who had come to his shop, but when he did his features brightened up. ‘Eileen! My girl!’

  Callistus Applethorne was certainly old enough to call his mother that. Yet, Daysen winced a little at the form of address. In his mind, there was nothing girlish about her and he couldn’t even imagine her young. Hence, it disturbed him a little when she let out a delighted squeal ��� the only times Jack had ever heard her squeal, it had been due to the ‘careful attention’ of his father ��� and even went over to lightly hug the old man. It was a mode of behaviour on her part that he had rarely ever witnessed, not even with her sister.

  ‘How long has it been?’ cooed Callistus ��� he was becoming sentimental in old age, Jack noted.