‘Is that your mother’s maiden name? Prince?’
Jack nodded while sorting the plants in his hands, and he did so almost tenderly. ‘Today she informed me that she has returned to that name.’ He snorted.
‘You don’t approve?’ Elena observed his face him carefully as it was difficult in the dark to detect any emotional expression.
‘I don’t care’, he growled, ‘she can do as she likes as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Then why are you mentioning it?’
He looked up as if caught; smiled tentatively. ‘It makes no sense.’
She tilted her head, asking him to go on. As always when she sensed that he was in a talkative mood (though ‘talkative’ in Daysen’s universe meant something slightly different than for the rest of the world), she felt a shiver of excitement. It was marred, however, by her bad conscience because in listening to what he had to say about his mother, she was also sounding him out.
‘You have no idea how often I begged her to leave him’, he went on. There was no need to explain who he was talking about; yet, doing so appeared to embarrass him because he didn’t look at her, but at some elusive point over her shoulder. ‘Pack up and go back to her family, resume her old name, forget she was ever married to my father. She wouldn’t have it. Said she became a Daysen when she married him and she’d made her bed, hence she would lie in it. ��� So I’m wondering why she bothers now. After so many years, and with my father long dead.’
‘Maybe it’s only now that she feels free?’ Elena suggested, resorting to instant psychology.
‘What the hell do I know?’ he mumbled, his need to talk suddenly terminated, and turned once more towards the pond.
Elena watched him turn up the sleeves of this robes over his elbows. It was in that moment that the heavy clouds parted slightly and in a vague moonlight, she saw a blackish shadow on the gleaming white skin of his left forearm. With a start, she realized that it must be the Dark Mark. She had never seen it before, not even during that night in the lighthouse when she had been too busy with other kinds of impressions. Jack knelt down by the pond, stuck both his arms ��� and the Dark Mark ��� into the black water and Elena saw him groping for something under its surface. What he brought up looked like algae, slimy and dark green. He explained to Elena that it was a native type of Gillyweed, not as good as the one from the Mediterranean which he would have preferred but which was often already rotting from within by the time it arrived in the shops. Then he noticed Elena’s blank face, realized that she had no idea what Gillyweed was and sighed deeply. ‘What do you have your new friend for when you don’t learn anything from her?’ he nagged.
Elena grinned at him. ‘You know, she offered me to help in the family business to earn a little wizarding money. Picking herbs and stuff. The Clearys have a Potions shop on Diagon Alley.’
‘I’ve heard.’ He made a point of appearing disinterested.
‘They’re struggling’, Elena went on.
‘I’m not surprised. It takes a lot of stamina to establish a business in Diagon Alley, and I’m not sure Castor Cleary has it.’
‘Cassie says his stamina is fine, but he could do with a couple of customers who trust him.’ Elena looked at Jack pointedly, but he immediately raised a defensive hand.
‘I’ve been using the same shop for decades, have no reason to switch’, he pressed forth between his teeth, and it sounded final.
Elena frowned at him. ‘Yes, I guess you’re not exactly the flexible kind.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
She merely winked and he twitched uncomfortably, preparing a repartee in his mind.
‘Well, in any case, it’s not a bad idea, you helping in the Cleary business. Maybe it’ll provide you with some herbological understanding and hence improve your potions performance. And since they do not appear to be concerned that you might crash their business ���’
‘I beg your pardon?!’
As she glowered at him playfully, something very rare happened; he looked up at her with a broad grin on his face. In spite of the darkness that was hardly broken by their combined Lumi, she noticed ��� as she had before, and each time with her heart beat speeding up ��� that smiling strongly improved his looks. Probably, no ordinary person would have said that it made him handsome, but in Elena’s mind it was quite true.
‘You’re a cad, Jack Daysen’, she said, but it came out quite gently which he must have noticed because he allowed his eyes to catch hers, and as frequently happened between them in such moments, time appeared to stop or at least pass slower as they both struggled to snap out of it while not really wanting to snap out of it.
From afar, a ferocious bark could be heard and they both turned their heads, breaking eye contact.
‘Let’s go’, Daysen said quietly, ‘I have no wish to run into a cur walking its Muggle.’
‘A what?’ she asked, closing up to him as they moved away from the pond.
‘A cur’, he repeated, amused, ‘word for ‘dog”.
‘You don’t like dogs?’
‘Not very much, no’, he responded, remembering a very specific dog by the name of Padfoot.
They squeezed past the shrubs and young trees until they found the path by which they had come. No one seemed to be about, neither person nor dog, and so they walked on while Daysen was still arranging the plants he had picked in a cloth bag he had conjured out of the depths of his robes. When Elena looked up at the night sky, it appeared to have become even cloudier and the dark grey masses overhead moved against each other threateningly. Not a scrap of sky was visible and certainly no stars. The path ahead of her she could only see thanks to her Lumos, as Daysen had extinguished his. He seemed altogether more comfortable in the dark, while Elena’s hair stood on edge for reasons that she could not fathom. She kept close to his side and felt the urge to take his arm, to press her face against his shoulder, but she didn’t quite dare. Below their soles, gravel and pinafore needles were crunched, but that was the only sound apart from a sharp cold wind rustling the trees.
Then the bark came back.
It was much closer now and a strange kind of instinct made Jack and Elena slow down their pace. Their eyes met, asking each other a silent question, but also looking for reassurance. Hesitantly, they started to move again, more alert now, their eyes scanning the dark night.
Suddenly, the atmosphere changed.
Elena perceived it as an increased pressure on her eardrums. At the same time, her skin started to tingle and all her senses screamed ‘danger!’. Instinctively, she reached out to grab Jack’ arm, only to find that his body had stiffened and that he’d got out his wand.
‘Stay close’, he snarled unnecessarily.
They were upon them within seconds, materialized ��� seemingly ��� out of thin air. Dark-clad figures, maybe half a dozen of them or more, enclosing or rather trapping Daysen and Elena in a circle. The pressure in the air increased, bearing down on them and accompanied by the deafening noise of angry barks. The moment Elena saw the dogs, she started to whimper. They looked like hounds out of hell. Even in the dark, she could see their furious bloodshot eyes that were more purple than red, and their bared sharp fangs ��� fangs as she had never seen them, huge and ragged ��� with viscous strings of saliva jittering between them. These weren’t ordinary dogs, but magical ones, each of them a Cerberus. They tore at long leather leashes that their owners seemed only just able to hold on to, owners in long cloaks wearing masks. Burying her face at Jack’ shoulder, she squinted at the masks and realized at the periphery of her mind that they were golden and had jackal shapes, Egyptian style.
She felt Jack’ hand grabbing her wrist as he pulled her behind himself, shielding her with his body. She felt his tension, a trembling even; heard him murmur an incantation, but whatever he tried doing did not appear to work.
‘Disapparate!’ she coughed.
His reply was no more than a wheeze. �
��Can’t.’
She understood. The atmosphere was laden with dark magic. Probably it was a ban of sorts, kept up around them by the circle of figures and madly barking dogs that closed in on them. Those dogs ��� why did she have the feeling that they had it in for her specifically, that merely looking at her made them ever wilder as they struggled against their leashes? A green jet issued from Daysen’s wand, hitting one of the salivating snouts. The dog yelped, then resumed its barking with increased ferocity as it jumped up on its hind legs and bared its fangs, threating to bite Daysen’s hand off. He stumbled back, pushing Elena with him.
‘What is the meaning of this?!’ he demanded furiously, but over the mad snarling and barking his words could hardly be heard and sounded feeble.
Behind his back, his hand was still clamped around her wrist, and she dug her fingers into the cloth of his robes. One of the dogs in her back had come dangerously close and snarled at her, as if it had a private threatening message. ‘Fuck off!’ Elena hissed at it. It was like a trigger. The dog leaped forward, being given a degree of freedom by the person that held its leash, and bit into Elena’s cloak, tearing at it viciously. She squealed and another green jet hit the dog, which made it retreat for a second, only to start on a new attack that would have been successful had the leash not been tightened and the beast pulled back.
‘Hold on, Daysen!’ The voice was a hoarse rasp and hard to locate due to the masks. It could have come from any of the figures, or out of the air for all they knew. ‘The more you resist, the worse this is going to get!’
‘Show your faces, you bunch of cowards!’ Jack bellowed, but Elena knew him well enough to hear the fear in his voice.
Harsh laughter responded and the barking, too, acquired a derisive note.
Daysen tried again. ‘Leave her alone, at least!’ he shouted with all the authority that he was able to muster. ‘Whatever you want, you want it from me, not her!’
Another bout of laughter and snarls.
The circle of bodies moved further in on them. Elena was now hardly able to stand up; she didn’t feel her knees anymore and she summoned all her will to look away, not to meet the purple eyes of a hellhound. However, she felt them sniffing her, taking up her scent, and it brought them on the brink of a complete freak-out.
While they stood surrounded, clinging to each other, every second that passed stretched into eternity. Only when they both fully expected to be torn apart by the dogs in the very next moment, they heard a voice. It was the same voice that they had heard before, hoarse and impossible to identify as it sounded somewhat distorted, but menacing, hissing like a snake.
‘ My, my. The great Jack Daysen. As incapable as a Muggle. And that’s supposed to be the wizarding world’s hero?’
Sniggers abounded. Wheezing snarls from leash-impaired throats followed.
‘ Remember this moment, Daysen. Remember how useless you are when duped. Great dark wizard you may be, but what can you do when dark magic conspires against you?’
Daysen didn’t reply, he was as stiff as a board. Her face pressed against his back, Elena could feel him swallowing hard. He was completely at a loss on what to do.
The hoarse voice went on. ‘This is no more than a warning. A warning to leave the fate of the wizarding world be. You have done your part, your kind belongs into the past. So you better stay there, and if you want to have a peaceful life, don’t meddle. We know everything about you. All of the Half-Blood Prince’s darkest secrets. And we have the power to destroy you, and those close to you. So keep your large nose out of things! We will know when you don’t, because we have our eyes on you, and be assured: next time we’ll have your little Muggle girl ripped apart in front of your eyes!’
As if to prove a point, one of the dogs shot forward, dragging a slackened leash behind it. It attacked, growling and blind with anger. As Daysen stumbled back, Elena fell with him. She felt the claws of the beast on her, its foul breath in her face, and knew that the next thing would be the huge fangs biting into her flesh, tearing bit by bit from her bones until she’d be no more than a bloodied mass.
There was a horrible high-pitched wailing in her ears. She didn’t know where it came from, but it went on and on, deafening and nerve-racking. It ripped her apart, in much the same way as the fangs would any moment now ���
Hands grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her fiercely.
‘Stop it! Elena! STOP IT!’
She looked up with wild eyes. Suddenly she realized that the high-pitched wailing was her own scream. All the same, it took quite an effort for her to turn it off, but when she did, everything was quiet. The masked figures and the hellhounds had vanished. There were only the nightly woods, the clouded sky and Jack bending over her, trying to shake her to her senses.
‘They’re gone’, he whispered urgently. ‘Calm down, they’re gone.’
The realization came slowly. She was as if frozen and needed his help to get up from the soggy ground. Then, suddenly, all the tension fell from her and transformed into a huge sob that forced its way up from her throat. And although her better and more rational self knew that this was childish and pitiful, she collapsed against his chest and started to cry.
Once she’d started, she could not stop herself. Within a short time, the front of his robe was soaked. Yet, he held her tightly in his arms, and even through her shock Elena distinctly noticed his fingers caressing the scalp beneath her hair. He was murmuring softly and soothingly, but from his trembling frame she knew that he was consoling himself as much as her.
Then she felt him wave his wand behind her back, there was a crack and in the next moment they were at Spinner’s End. Jack loosened his grip around her, but took her hand instead. His face was distraught and extremely pale in the orange light of the streetlamps as he led her towards his house.
They had hardly entered the hallway, when Eileen Daysen hurried down the stairs, apprehension on her face. ‘What happened?’ she demanded, immediately sensing their shock if it was not plainly visible on their faces. Almost automatically, Jack’ arm went around Elena, as if he still felt the need to shield her from a lurking outside danger.
‘We were attacked’, he snarled, ‘please leave us alone.’ With that, he pulled Elena with him into the sitting room, firmly closing the door behind him and ignoring his mother’s protests to bloody wait and tell her what in Hecate’s name had happened.
Jack sat Elena down on the couch, perched on the edge beside her and let his hands glide over her face, her upper body, looking for injuries. She had stopped crying, and instead stared ahead blankly.
‘Did that beast get you?’ he asked urgently, because this was the best way he knew to deal with his own shock and regain control, playing the healer, focussing on the immediate.
‘I don’t think so’, she murmured. And after a while. ‘But you are bleeding.’
Jack hadn’t noticed it. There were bite marks on the cuff of his robes, and blood was seeping through. He didn’t even remember when the creature had bit him, so deep was his shock. However, his rational mind was still, in a manner, alert. He jumped up, hurried to his desk and got out a kit from one of the drawers. With pincers, he lifted dog hair from his sleeve. With a fine pipet, he rescued a half dried foam that was very likely dog saliva, and after a few more samples stored all this safely away to be inspected later. The worst of the wound he dealt with quickly by means of his wand, saving greater care for later, as well.
When he turned back to Elena, she still sat unmoving, eyes empty and staring into nothingness. It made him frown with worry. He had not seen her like this, almost catatonic. Carefully, Jack sat down next to her again, but it hardly seemed to register. For a long time, he just stared at her, not knowing what to do, suddenly blocked.
Eventually, she spoke. ‘Maybe I should just go back home. I’m not made for all this.’
The flat tone of her voice gave him a jolt even before the contents of her words hit home. He knew that with ‘back home’
she didn’t mean the Crawford house, but Vienna, Austria. He had hardly ever made it clear to himself that she was only in this country temporarily, that actually she might go back at any time and that in fact this might provide her with a solution to the problems he was constantly involving her in. What could he possibly say? He should really congratulate her on the idea, but his immediate urge was to protest, ‘You want to leave me? What happened to you being in love with me?’ He saw how egoistic that was. At the same time, he already felt deserted, but firmly pushed the painful emotion out of his mind, wondering instead what he could say to her to make her snap out of this mood. The problem was, he had no idea.
As he continued to stare at her ��� face and eyes blank, seemingly unaware of his presence ��� he had a rare intuition. Suddenly, it was obvious to him what she needed and by some saving grace it was so obvious that he didn’t even hesitate. Carefully, he reached out, took both her hands in his. Her ice-cold fingers didn’t respond, but she didn’t resist, either. He edged closer, pulled her hands on his lap. A part of him observed this action, watched his own hands handling hers, and marvelled at the uncharacteristic forwardness, but it didn’t stop him from going on with it. His thumbs stroked the backs of her hands. When she still didn’t look at him, he slowly lifted her hands to his mouth and lightly touched his lips to them. ��� Was he really doing this? The new attack must have upset something in him ���
When he looked up again, he met her gaze. The strain was visible on her face now, but there was also the shadow of a smile around her mouth. He set her hands back down, reached out for her shoulder. His original intention was no more than a protective gesture, but he’d discounted her affectionate nature. With a swift and determined movement, she was in his arms, buried her face at his neck and issued a deep shuddering sigh. Jack was a little overwhelmed at first, but then the scent of her hair invaded his nostrils, and his body recognized the scent at once, it pushed him into a different mode where his shock was a mere memory, and he warily watched his arms encircling her while he felt hers sneaking around his waist, and in the next moment he was greedily inhaling her scent, noticing by her deep breathing that she did the same, that she had the same need to take him into her, and that realization made him ��� dizzy, lightheaded ��� perhaps a little mad even ��� in any case he felt that his body reacted with the acuteness of someone much younger. He allowed himself a tiny moan as he held her tighter, and she responded with another drawn-out sigh.
She whispered Page 33
