Remedial History

Chapter Twenty: Returning

“I have finished interviewing your housemates,” announced Professor Snape. “I am satisfied that they believe your cover story, that you left school to care for your sister after your father’s arrest. I think you will be able to return to Hogwarts tomorrow. You will signal me by overturning your cauldron in Potions class when you have anything to report, and I will give you a detention. That seems to be your usual approach to anything more complicated than a basic cure for boils in any event, so it should pass without notice. Try not to do it by accident.”

“Yes, sir,” said Theo.

“The rest of the time, you will appear to be your usual self – cowed, quiet, a bit slow. You will not speak to me unless I call on you in class. And you will not speak to Mr. Potter or Mr. Longbottom at all.”

“All right. And thank you.”

“For what? It was not my choice to allow this. It was entirely your own decision, and I still consider it an incredibly foolhardy one.”

“I understand, sir. That’s why I’m thanking you – because you let me make the choice anyway.”

A pair of black eyes rested on his face for a moment that seemed to last ages. “You’re welcome, Mr. Nott.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

Theo re-packed his few possessions and tucked Buffy into his pocket, where she squirmed a bit and settled into a comforting lump. At least, he thought, one thing in his life had held steady.

He went downstairs, where several of the adults were sitting around the kitchen table. Theo helped himself to a cup of coffee and one of Molly Weasley’s freshly-baked muffins.

“Professor Lupin? Are you going to see Harry over the Christmas holidays?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Will you tell him – and Neville, if you see him – what I’m doing? I understand that you can’t put it in writing, and I can’t be seen talking to them at school, but I’d really like them to know.”

“Why don’t you tell them yourself?” asked Regulus. “I’d be delighted to have you here over Christmas. What d’you say to eggnog, mistletoe, and learning how to play ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Hippogriffs’ on the ukelele?”

“Reg, I’m not sure that’s – ”

“Oh, come on, Moony, where else is he going to go? And this house is one of the few places with a direct Floo connection to Hogwarts that’s set up for transportation, so it’s not like there’s any risk of him being spotted.”

“True. We’ll see. It depends on how well his cover story is working.”

“Am I taking the Floo network back to school?” Theo asked.

Lupin shook his head. “You’ll be taking the Knight Bus to its Hogsmeade stop. More consistent with what you’ve been telling people – that you went off for a week on your own to look after your sister and the family business. Reg’s volunteered to escort you back. And, Reg? Don’t forget your job here is to keep Theo safe and inconspicuous.”

“No worries, Moony. I can be conspicuous enough for the two of us.”

Lupin looked as if that hadn’t been exactly what he’d had in mind, but he decided to let it pass. “Goodbye, Theo. And take care.”

Regulus’ method of drawing attention away from Theo turned out to involve passing out Stubby Boardman autographs and leading the entire Knight Bus in a rousing chorus of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Firewhiskey on the Wall” on his ukelele.

Ninety-nine bottles of firewhiskey on the wall,

Ninety-nine bottles of firewhiskey,

You drink one up, and if you’re not dead

You feel like a mountain troll clubbed you over the head.

Purple Crumple-Horned Snorkacks galumph through your brain,

Your mates think you’ve gone completely insane.

Your senses are reeling, the fumes blind your sight,

Let’s do it again tomorrow night!

Ninety-eight bottles of firewhiskey on the wall...

Theo suspected he was making most of the lyrics up on the spot, but the song turned out to be a huge hit, especially with a group of young witches and wizards who were sitting at the back of the bus. They all had enormous backpacks, and they were passing around a bottle of wine.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Germany,” replied a girl who looked like she was only a year or two older than Theo.

“Australia,” said several of the others.

“Canada,” said a man who reminded Theo, in some odd way, of Lavinia’s boyfriend, David McCartney.

“Er, anywhere near Montreal?” Theo asked.

“Other side of the country. Vancouver. Why?”

“No reason,” said Theo, feeling grateful that the stranger was unlikely to know Blaise. “What are you doing in Britain?”

“Traveling around. And working a little. Ever heard of a Wizarding Holiday Visa?”

Theo hadn’t, so the Canadian wizard explained how it worked. Apparently foreigners could get a job in Britain for two years, as long as they were fully qualified witches or wizards and they promised to leave afterwards. Theo thought it sounded like an attractive way of living: meeting people with whom you didn’t have years of complicated history, moving on whenever you got tired of a place, not having to deal with – well, everything. He thought maybe he’d try it after he left Hogwarts, if he got through the next year and a half in one piece.

“You’re not worried about traveling in a country where there’s a war going on?” he asked.

“Well, I think about it this way. You can wait and wait until you think it’s perfectly safe to visit a place, and while you’re waiting you might go out to pick up the paper one morning and get devoured by a manticore – if you don’t die of old age first, because there is no such thing as perfect safety in life. Or you can just go and see what happens. I’ve always had good luck with that approach, so far.”

Just then the Knight Bus made a wild leap forward and materialized with a bang on Hogsmeade’s High Street. “This is my stop,” said Theo. “Hope you keep having good luck.”

“Thanks,” said the Canadian wizard. “You too.”

“Is it all right if we stop by Honeydukes before I go back to school?” Theo asked Regulus, who had gotten off the bus with him and seemed determined to accompany him all the way to the castle gates.

“‘Course it is, kid. I haven’t been there in ages.” Once they were inside the shop, Regulus made a beeline for the corner labeled UNUSUAL TASTES. “Cockroach Clusters! Now, don’t those bring back memories – my brother used to bring them back from school and tell me they were chocolate-covered popcorn. Of course I had to hex him six ways to Sunday when I found out the truth, but they don’t taste nearly as bad as you’d think. And blood lollipops, those were my Uncle Vlad and Aunt Erszabet’s favorites. Got any vampires in your family? They make great Christmas presents.”

“No. I was just going to get regular chocolates,” said Theo. “They’re a bit boring, but I think they have more ... universal appeal.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

Theo had been hoping for a few minutes alone to collect his thoughts, but almost as soon as he stepped into the common room, Tracey grabbed him by the arm and dragged him over to the fire where Blaise was sitting.

“Long time no see,” said Blaise casually.

“How’s your family?” Tracey asked, looking concerned.

“All right,” said Theo. “Medea’s doing better, and Dad –” He lowered his voice. “He’s got a hearing before the Wizengamot scheduled over Christmas.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. Over the past year, criminal charges against people’s parents had replaced Slytherin’s string of ignominious Quidditch-cup losses at the top of the list of touchy conversational subjects.

“You should have been at the last P.Y.L. meeting,” said Tracey. “You missed a huge set of fireworks – Blaise nominated himself for League president and me and Dionysius for secretary and treasurer, and he made this campaign speech about how he was going to usher in a new and brighter era of literacy, numeracy, and the invention of the wheel. Everyone except Crabbe and Goyle thought it was hysterical, and he got elected by a margin of about seventeen to three.”

Blaise grinned. “And then Malfoy stormed off and said I was going to pay for this, only he and his hit men must have really bad eyesight, because somehow they mistook Millicent Bulstrode for me ...”

Tracey nodded. “I felt really bad for her, to tell you the truth. She’s still in the hospital wing.”

Tracey was a decent person, Theo thought. Despite what Snape had said, he might be able to talk to her in private about everything he had learned.

“Malfoy seems to have come to terms with it, though,” Blaise was saying. “He doesn’t want to be left out of this. The P.Y.L. is going to be big.”

“We met his uncle in Hogsmeade last weekend,” Tracey added.

“You met Draco Malfoy’s uncle?” Theo said stupidly. He thought back to what he’d learned about the family relationships during his sojourn at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. He was pretty sure Tracey wasn’t talking about Ted Tonks.

“Yeah,” said Blaise. “Under a Glamour Charm, of course, because he’s a fugitive, but he was the real deal – I know, because everything he said checks out with what we saw in the Come and Go Room.”

“And he told us –” Tracey shivered, “about everything they did to him in Azkaban and ... before. Did you know the Aurors used Unforgivable Curses in the war? Not just Imperio, Crucio too. And I asked him why on earth they’d need Crucio to capture people, and he gave me this look – sort of wild-eyed – and said I was very clever for thinking of that, and they didn’t have any need to do it at all. After everything he said – well, I reckon anyone who makes the Ministry out to be the good guys is either lying, or being lied to.”

The gravity of what he’d done to his father hit Theo straight in the stomach. He tried not to let his queasiness show on his face, and fortunately, Blaise and Tracey were absorbed in what they were saying.

“He promised he’d have work for all of us after we left school,” Blaise continued, “and – don’t tell Malfoy, but he took me aside and said he’d been hearing promising things about me, never mind where from, and that I was definitely going to go far if I kept in touch with him.”

“And are you going to?” Theo asked, though he knew what the answer would be.

“What else would I do? Go back to Canada and ask Daddy Dearest what he plans to do for me? Maybe he’ll take me on as a janitor at the Ministry, if I’m lucky.” Blaise snorted. “No, I’m going to have to look out for myself – and here, I’ve got a future. Because I may be a bastard, but I’m still a pureblood, and the other side is going to win the war, this time.”

“You too, Tracey?” Theo asked.

She pushed back the sleeve of her robes and toyed with her bracelets. Randomly, for no reason at all, Theo remembered that she had very pretty arms.

“Yeah, I reckon I will. It’s like Pansy says, we can’t just let the Ministry take away our rights the way they did last time.”

Theo nodded. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to my sister now. She’s not well, and she needed Dad to look after her.”

He must have sounded convincing, because Tracey turned toward him with wide sympathetic eyes and said, “It must have been awful.”

She covered one of his hands with both of hers, and Blaise discreetly faded into the background.

“Oh, I have missed you,” she whispered as soon as they were left alone together, tilting her face forward with a hopeful expression.

A few months ago he would have been thrilled. Now it was all wrong. He had come back to school prepared to slip back into most of his old roles, but he couldn’t kiss someone he was meant to be spying on...

“This isn’t going to work. I’m sorry, Tracey. I like you a lot as a friend, but being more than friends just isn’t right – for me – right now. It isn’t you, it’s just that I have too much to think about.”

She looked hurt, and the best he could do was stammer out more apologies and make awkward conversation about Quidditch, which was not a subject that really interested either of them. He went back to the dorm after half an hour of feeling like everything he said had made things worse.

Blaise was already there, and eager to talk about P.Y.L. politics. Knowing that Professor Snape might find the details useful, Theo was equally eager to listen.

“Tracey said you got elected by a margin of seventeen to three,” he said. “Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle make three right there, so what happened with Pansy Parkinson and her crowd?”

The knowing smirk that Theo had never liked, even before he knew the truth about Blaise, crept over his friend’s face. “Don’t tell anybody just yet, but Pansy’s the sort of girl who knows which way the wind’s blowing and keeps that in mind when she chooses her boyfriends – and since the Ferret started losing his grip, she’s discovered I’m a good deal better-looking than he is. We’ve been meeting out by the lake for more than a week now.”

“Good for you,” said Theo, trying not to sound sarcastic. “But I didn’t know you liked her.”

“I don’t particularly. But her father’s pretty high up in the Ministry – and he’s on our side, but respectable – and besides, she’s good about telling her girlfriends which way to vote.”

Theo remembered a long-ago newspaper photograph of Undersecretary Zabini and his wife, and wondered if Blaise had more in common with his father than he’d like to admit.

Blaise, who had begun to unlace his shoes, stopped suddenly and turned his face toward him. Theo couldn’t remember the last time he had looked so vulnerable. He remembered that expression from their first year, when Blaise’s robes were always too short and he hadn’t yet acquired a reputation for cleverness. Even then, he had only looked that way when Draco and the others weren’t around to see it.

“Theo,” he said slowly, “I’ve got something to tell you, and I think you’d better hear it from me before you hear it from anybody else. It’s about Longbottom. I, ah, found out a few things about his family, and I told him I’d keep it quiet if he came to just one P.Y.L. meeting, no pressure to join or anything. I reckoned if he showed up, it would get Malfoy off your back. But it didn’t go very well – he doesn’t scare as easily as he looks – and I just wanted to say if I’ve got you into any trouble, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” said Theo. “I don’t think he’s ever going to forgive me, but I don’t mind. I’m best mates with you, not Longbottom, right?”

His friend looked relieved. “Yeah, but I heard he tried to take it out on you, and that wasn’t what I meant to happen. I wasn’t completely thinking straight.” Blaise shrugged sheepishly. “Firenze would call it a bad planetary influence moment, I guess. Blame everything on Uranus.”

Theo forced himself to smile.

 

                                                            *          *          *

“You’re coming to the P.Y.L. meeting this evening, of course?” Draco Malfoy asked after Transfiguration class the following day.

“Naturally,” said Theo.

“I advise you to take anything you hear about the last meeting with a grain of salt. Not all the rumors about what happened are true. And you might find that Zabini isn’t as good a friend to you as you think.”

Theo gave a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t care about that stuff one way or the other,” he said. “It’s better if we all work together, isn’t it? We’re not going to be able to do anything about those Muggle-lovers who put my father in Azkaban if we’re fighting among ourselves.”

“Quite right,” said Draco with a curt nod.

“See you in Herbology,” said Theo. “I’m just going to run up to the dorm and finish my essay. I got a little behind while I was away.”

Back in the dormitory, he took the box of chocolates he had bought in Hogsmeade out of his trunk and tucked it under his arm. He walked to the hospital wing and asked Madame Pomfrey if he could see Millicent Bulstrode.

He wasn’t sure whether any of Millicent’s housemates would be allowed to visit her, but one of the professors must have briefed the school nurse about Theo, because she agreed at once. “Of course you may,” she said, the worry lines on her forehead deepening. “Perhaps a visitor will perk her up. I don’t know what’s going to become of her, poor child. I don’t believe she’s safe here or at home, to be honest.”

Millicent didn’t look at him when he entered; she was staring up at the ceiling as if she were trying to memorize every ridge and knothole in the ancient beams. Although it had been less than a week since the attack, she seemed to have lost weight. Theo thought she was wounded more in heart and spirit than in body. The bruises about her face had begun to fade, but her eyes were dull.

“I brought you something from Honeydukes.” Theo placed the box of chocolates on her bedside table.

“How do I know they’re not poisoned?” she asked without a trace of humor.

“I’ll eat one,” he offered. “You pick.”

She handed him a piece of dark chocolate filled with orange liqueur. He let it melt on his tongue, filling his mouth with the bittersweet taste.

“You eat the rest, all right? Chocolate’s good for you. Keeps dementors away.” He smiled at her and tried to shake off the thought that she would probably carry her own dementors around with her for the rest of her life, chocolate or no chocolate.

Millicent took a piece of chocolate. “Thanks,” she said in a lackluster voice.

He leaned forward so nobody else could overhear. “Listen, Millicent. I want to see that the people who did this to you can’t do worse things to anyone else. I won’t necessarily be able to act friendly to you in public because – because of the way things are in our House, but I want you to know that I’m here and I’m not like them, all right? If you need ... well, any kind of help, find a way to talk to me in private, and I promise I will do my best for you.”

She rolled over and turned her face to the wall. He couldn’t tell whether she believed him.

As Theo was about to leave the hospital wing, he ran into Professor Snape, who was carrying a cross-eyed, hissing bundle of fur that Theo recognized as Millicent’s cat, Murgatroyd.

“You should not be here, Mr. Nott,” he said under his breath. “It is unsafe for you to appear to sympathize with Miss Bulstrode under the circumstances.”

“That means it isn’t safe for you, either, sir,” said Theo.

The cat squirmed and clawed at Snape’s robes. The Potions Master looked as if he were in an especially unpleasant corner of purgatory, but he maintained a firm grip on the animal.

“I am Miss Bulstrode’s Head of House. I can visit her in the hospital wing without attracting undue notice; indeed, it would look odder if I were not to visit. You, I think, have never even been her friend.”

“I haven’t,” Theo admitted. “But I am now.”

“Friendship is not a luxury you can afford at the moment, Mr. Nott. It will interfere with your work – our work.”

“Yes, sir.”

Professor Snape idly stroked the cat behind the ears, as if his mind were elsewhere.

“You didn’t have to bring the cat, did you?” Theo couldn’t resist asking. “Won’t that attract undue notice?”

“It is also part of my job to ensure that Miss Bulstrode does not decide to slit her wrists or brew herself a poison on my watch. Animals are useful for this type of work. Their presence tends to remind the owners that they have certain responsibilities which can only be fulfilled if they remain alive.” He looked through the doorway at Millicent, who was still lying motionless, and at the open box of candy on the table. “The chocolates were Lupin’s idea, I suppose?”

“No, sir. They were mine.”

“I see that you have begun to think for yourself, which is all that I have ever asked of my students and more than most of them manage to do. I think you will be able to handle your new position. And it is possible – just – that you will be able to survive without making the compromises I have had to make. You are the one who will have to make those decisions. All I ask is that you never forget that you also have certain responsibilities which can only be fulfilled by remaining alive, and that everything else is secondary.”

Theo nodded. “I understand. And I will.”

He walked down the corridor of the Hospital Wing and, just before turning around the corner, glanced back. He was surprised to see that his Head of House was still standing in the doorway with the large black cat in his arms, and that he was gazing back at Theo with something like sympathy.

The End