She whispered

by Lucas Chesterton

  ‘I have. Briefly.’

  ‘And?’ The blue eyes were hard now, examining her as if she was an experimental specimen.

  ‘And ��� what?’

  ‘What was your impression?’

  Elena shrugged. ‘Another pureblood bitch refusing to talk to the likes of me.’

  Magrathea fidgeted a little, no doubt at the expression ‘pureblood bitch’. ‘I see. Not a successful encounter then.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter anymore.’

  ‘Of course. ��� But she still ��� lives with him, doesn’t she? With her son?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘You don’t? I thought you lived just across the street?’

  ‘I spend most of my time here at the academy. Or with Draco. When I’m home I study and don’t have much time to gawk out of the window.’

  Magrathea studied Elena’s face for a while. ‘I understand’, she said eventually, but it wasn’t entirely clear what exactly she understood. ‘Well. Don’t let me keep you any longer, Miss Horwath. You have to fly now.’

  Elena hardly waited for Magrathea to give her a queenly nod before she took off and ran through the gardens. However, it didn’t occur to her to re-enter Abrasax House. She was looking for Stephen Periwinkle, sure that he was hiding somewhere. Elena had a few ideas about what an ideal hiding place would look like for Stephen; however, no matter how much she looked, she couldn’t find him. She even called him, cooing softly into the dark corners of the garden as if she was trying to coax a kitten out of its hiding place. No reply. And yet, all the time while she was looking, she had the uncomfortable feeling of being watched. It made her hair stand on edge and was probably a precursor of paranoia which appeared to be the inevitable result of spy work (and explained a lot to her about Jack’ psyche). As she was running out of time, anyway, she hunched her shoulders and hurried back into Abrasax House.

  In the end, Stephen found her.

  By the end of classes, it was already dark outside. Elena had packed up her stuff as quickly as she could and was waiting outside for the carriages that would take the students back to Diagon Alley, from where they were free to depart in whatever direction by Apparition; it was a service the academy provided as a matter of course. A couple of students were queuing in front of her, so she switched off her mind while she waited for her turn. Inevitably, her thoughts wandered to Jack. Was there any way she could lure him out of Hogwarts tonight? Write him an owl, maybe, allude to the strange conversation she’d had with Magrathea, dramatize things a little and ask for a meeting in ‘little gnat’? She loved those; they allowed her to be close to him, to bask in his presence in a confined space. However, there was really no reason; nothing had happened that she couldn’t tell him at the weekend just as well. Plus, he would resent it to be summoned without cause. Then again, Elena imagined how she would bat her eyes at him and tell him that she’d missed him. She had a feeling that it might be just about enough to soften him up. At the same time, she was a little hesitant to risk it ���

  A whistle pulled her out of her reverie. There were still about ten people queuing in front of her, several more behind her and the whistle might have come from any of them, it might not even have been directed at her. When she turned over her shoulder, however, it came back. A five-note whistle, a dactyl and a trochee, and for some reason she had the uncanny feeling that it spelt her name, ‘��-le-na H��r-wath’. She tried to look around as inconspicuously as she could and thought she sensed a movement in the shadowy arcades at the front of Abrasax House.

  Elena made a little show of rummaging in her bag, then issued a string of swear words while she stepped out of the queue.

  ‘Forgot something?’ the girl behind her asked kindly.

  Elena rolled her eyes. ‘It’s always the same, I’m such a slob ���’

  She hurried towards Abrasax House, but took a swerve at the last moment and dove into the shadows, walking a small distance along the front of the house. Stephen Periwinkle was waiting for her, leaning against the wall. His earlier nervousness was gone, he looked as cool as a cucumber.

  ‘You’re a good liar’, he welcomed her without pretext, ‘a really good liar. I could never lie like that. But you are really good.’

  ‘Am I?’ She didn’t quite know where this was coming from.

  ‘You lied for me’, Stephen reminded her, ‘to that woman.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ She waved it away. ‘You know, she seemed so touchy about her blasted cemetery ���’

  ‘You told a lie as if it was the truth.’

  Elena couldn’t quite decide if this was praise or reproach. ‘It was a white lie, Stephen. I knew she wouldn’t be as mad with me as she would be with you. I’m the newbie here, so my chances at being forgiven are fairer.’

  ‘I could never lie like that’, Stephen informed her.

  Elena was struggling for words to defend herself. ‘I know it’s not right. One shouldn’t lie. But sometimes ���’

  ‘Did you lie for me because I am your friend?’

  The question was blunt and rendered with an intense stare. Elena looked Stephen in the eyes. ‘Yes’, she said, ‘I consider you my friend. And you lied for me, too, remember?’

  Stephen shook his head. ‘I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell. And I won’t. Tell. I cannot lie, but I don’t tell on my friends. Never.’

  Elena smiled at him and mouthed a ‘Thank you’.

  ‘I don’t like that woman’, Stephen went on seamlessly.

  ‘Nor do I. ��� What do you think she was doing in the cemetery?’

  ‘It is the Crowley family cemetery. She has every right to be there.’

  ‘Sure. But then, why is she so touchy about anyone going in there?’

  ‘I told you. There are a lot of secrets.’

  Elena examined his shadowed handsome face for a while. ‘How do you think Aeneas Crowley managed to just ��� appear there? I can’t get my head around it. If Apparition is not possible ���’

  ‘It is entirely banned on the grounds.’

  ‘Then how ���’

  ‘He came through one of the graves. The one I was drawing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He came through one of the graves’, Stephen repeated monotonously.

  ‘I heard you. ��� But what does it mean? Through the grave?’

  Stephen gave her a look as if she was a little bit obtuse. ‘Well, obviously there is a secret passage.’

  ‘A secret passage?’

  ‘This place is full of secrets.’

  ‘Do you know this for a fact? About the passage?’

  Stephen Periwinkle hesitated a little before giving her a cautious nod. Elena scrutinized him carefully, and she couldn’t do it without a degree of amusement. ‘You’ve got this place totally sussed out, haven’t you?’

  A rare smile appeared on Stephen’s face although he said nothing.

  ‘So I’m sure you know where that passage leads to?’

  He nodded, and the smile became a little mischievous.

  Elena waited a few seconds before asking the next crucial question. ‘Will you show me?’

  Stephen, too, waited before the replied; he scrutinized her face. Then he said, ‘I would show a friend.’

  ‘I am your friend’, Elena said and it felt entirely sincere.

  ‘A friend with secrets’, Stephen said, ‘and a friend who knows how to lie.’

  ‘I don’t lie to my friends.’

  ‘One shouldn’t lie to one’s friends’, Stephen commented, ‘but friends should share their secrets.’

  ‘I think so, too’, she said warmly, but then her face became serious. ‘There’s one thing I should probably tell you’, she mused, feeling insecure. ‘Just so that you don’t ��� misunderstand me. ��� There is someone ��� a man ��� who means a lot to me. To be quite honest, I’m head over heels in love with him.’

  There was a faint look of astonishment on
Stephen’s face; it was clear that he didn’t get the relevance of what she was telling him and Elena breathed with relief. She saw now that she was the one who had misunderstood, and that she had allowed Magrathea’s ‘warning’ ��� ‘you might not be able to get rid of him’ ��� to mislead her. ‘I just thought ��� that you should know ���’, she stammered.

  ‘But I do know’, Stephen said with a shrug.

  Elena stared. So he, too, had heard about her involvement with Draco? ‘Oh ���’, she issued, feeling uncomfortable.

  ‘I’ve seen you, remember?’

  Again, she stared; opened her mouth, closed it again. Only after a while she dared a weak, ‘So you’ve seen that, too?’

  ‘I saw the sentiment. Not the person it refers to.’

  Elena had sensed all along that there was more to Stephen than met the eye. Now she was certain. He might be considered an idiot and dimwit by a lot of people, but Elena saw how Stephen might even welcome this attitude because it ensured that he was mostly left alone and free to pursue his interests. He was resourceful, and over the years he had found a way of getting back at the world that treated him so poorly. He might not be able to lie, but he certainly knew how to keep the odd ace up his sleeve. The fact that people didn’t see how smart he was had become the axis on which he operated and exacted his subtle revenge.

  ‘Alright’, Elena said suggestively, ‘so you know another one of my secrets. Very clever. ��� Anything else that you know?’

  Another vague grin. ‘I know that you’re not here for learning.’

  She stifled a groan. Was it that obvious? But then she realized that it probably wasn’t obvious to anyone but Stephen Periwinkle. She recovered and said, ‘Well, you’re exactly right. ��� But, Stephen! No one must know this!’

  ‘I’m not stupid’, he said with dignity.

  ‘I never said you were’, Elena pointed out. ‘But you must know that this is a huge secret. No one must find out or I’ll get into real trouble!’

  ‘Oh yes, you will. But I won’t tell.’

  ‘What are you going to do when somebody asks you? If you’re asked for an opinion on me?’

  ‘Nobody is interested in my opinion’, Stephen said reasonably, ‘but if they ask I will say that you’re very clearly a Muggle-born.’

  It made her sputter with laughter. Of course, that she was clearly a Muggle-born was the complete truth, but the comment also had the merit of ending any discussion as for most witches and wizards it was an obvious dismissal. ‘Alright’, Elena said after she’d calmed down, ‘so you know another one of my secrets.’

  ‘And I’m going to tell you one of mine’, Stephen promised. There was an eagerness in his voice. He was really dying to share what he knew with someone that he could trust.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon.’ Stephen pushed himself away from the fa��ade. ‘I have to find a good time to do it. And it’s got to be at night. You’ll have to stay behind.’

  ‘I’ll figure something out’, she promised.

  ‘Good. ��� But now you have to go. They’re down to the last carriage.’

  ‘What about you? Don’t you go back with them?’

  Stephen shook his head. ‘No. I’m doomed to stay here permanently.’

  ‘Why?’ She frowned.

  ‘My father doesn’t want me at home. He says I upset him.’

  Again, she felt painfully what his life must be like; lonely; isolated. ‘I met your father’, she told him, ‘just once. To be quite honest with you, I didn’t like him much.’

  She had said it to comfort him, but once again Stephen surprised her. ‘My father is a good man. Deep down. It’s just ��� over time a lot of things have come in the way. Piling up on the goodness.’

  ‘Whatever that means’, Elena thought sarcastically, but she was glad that Stephen had obviously found a way to deal with his father emotionally, that he saw him as a flawed person, even had pity on the man.

  There was a call from the front yard, announcing the departure of the last carriage. Frantically, Elena gathered up her stuff and mumbled a quick ‘Good night’ in Stephen’s direction. However, she found that he had already turned and was now walking away into the nightly shadows. So she took off, ran as fast as she could and was only just in time before the Hippogriffs spread their wings to fly away. The carriage was full, but she managed to squeeze in on one of the cushioned benches, completely ignoring the glares of her fellow students.

  Elena felt light, excited. Going into the academy didn’t feel useless anymore. She was going to find out at least some of its secrets and, what was more, she had an ally. During the ride, she thought about what she was going to find out. Secret underground passages, originating from a grave ��� it was enough to make her shudder. However, there was another realization that heightened her excitement even more; because the way she saw it, there was now a valid reason to ask Jack for a meeting. And if she was lucky, it would be tonight ���.

  On this very day, however, a meeting with Elena was the last thing on Jack Daysen’s mind. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t think about her at all ��� he did so every day, to a degree that he found ridiculous sometimes. The truth was that he was busy. Not with ordinary teaching stuff; thankfully, he was relieved of that this afternoon due to an orientation event for all years in the Great Hall for which his presence wasn’t required. It left him free to pursue his own interests, and hence shortly after lunch and having made sure that Horace Slughorn was out of the way, Jack had locked himself up in an old and now largely unused potions classroom in the Hogwarts dungeons.

  A cauldron was simmering over a small fire in a sooty corner. Daysen checked on the contents, fanned the fumes into his face to check on the smell and gave off a satisfied grunt. He added a range of powders that he’d brought from his private stocks and watched closely as the colour of his potion changed subtly. After a while, he whipped out his wand, directed it at the almost boiling liquid and ��� with a concentration that brought beads of sweat to his forehead ��� reeled off a long and complicated incantation. Immediately after that, he skimmed off the thick foam that had formed on top, chilled it with a cooling spell until it was no more than a small and compact piece of sponge on the palm of his hand. He looked at it, sighed, and with a look of disgust bit into it. Chewing was hard, swallowing and not gagging on it even harder, but he was determined. The means to stunning magical ends were often disagreeable and Daysen knew all about sacrifice.

  When he was sure that the foam sponge inside his system was beginning to take effect, he extinguished the fire, threw over his cloak and left Hogwarts at a swift pace. The taste in his mouth was sour, but he felt the magic working in his body, coursing through his veins. Untraceable Potion. It had taken him an entire night’s search in the library to unearth the recipe, but it would be worth the effort. If the Ministry of Magic was really monitoring his every move, they would have a hard time today and that was enough to put an evil smile on Jack’ face as he walked towards the Apparition spot near the Forbidden Forest, from where ��� after a last quick look around ��� he vanished with the usual crack.

  He touched down at an abandoned factory site. It was a dismal place just outside of Glasgow, and as Daysen arrived a bitter cold downpour somewhere between rain and snow whipped his face. He sought shelter under the projecting roof of an old, viciously vandalized staff canteen and looked around. The place smelt of wear, rust and machine oil gone bad. The factory buildings were sinister grey oblongs, dreary reminders of a time when this had been an industrious place; now they had become the tombstones of the principle they stood for.

  Daysen wasn’t too impressed by the dreariness. He knew it well, he had grown up in an area similar to this. It did, however, stir memories. For the time it took an eye to blink, he had a vision of his father. Not the formidable threatening version of the man that usually occurred to him; no, it was his father lying on the sofa, bathed in h
is own cold sweat and pleading ‘You can help me, son, can’t you?’ Irritated by this flashback, Daysen jolted himself into action and walked out from under his shelter over the dreary, brown-puddled factory yard towards one of the larger buildings. Icy drops wet his scalp and he gritted his teeth.

  He came to a dented iron door that he opened with an impatient Alohomora. It led him into a large production hall that was empty except for piles of scrap metal and an abandoned machine that looked like an immovable monster, frozen in time. Daysen’s steps reverberated on the stone floor and he moved cautiously, checking several times behind his back. However, there appeared to be no one around. He started to wonder whether this lead of Narcissa’s would get him anywhere.

  Jack crossed the hall, then the next directly adjacent to it, yet another large space with rusty conveyor belts and an iron staircase leading to the second floor. He went up, found himself in a long narrow room lined with empty metal shelves, obviously an abandoned storage. Again, no sign of human presence. Or that was what he thought at first, before he heard the noises and stopped short in order to listen.

  Music. Voices and laughter. The sounds came from the far side of the building and Daysen hesitated briefly before he walked on in the direction from which they originated.

  He came into what appeared to have been an office space once. Broken desks and swivelling chairs were pushed against the wall and rough brick pillars supported the wide low ceiling, the high windows were covered in dirt. And there was also a sickly sweet and at the same time sharp smell wafting towards Daysen along with a new bout of laughter.

  At the end of the room, a small group had gathered around a portable radiator. A ghetto blaster was blaring in a corner. At a glance, Jack saw that the figures huddled in a circle were very young people who probably had no business being here. He also noticed that they were all dressed in black, had extravagant hairdos in pitch-black and faces so pale it was obvious they were made-up.

  Daysen hesitated. He felt as disinclined as ever to talk to Muggles. But hell, these were no more than teenagers, and he had a feeling that they spent an awful lot of time here and might be able to give him some information.