Unplottable

30 - Aisha

There was no way she was going to see Romulus. No way whatsoever, she had told Varlerta.

"C'mon, the guy's miserable, and he says all he wants to do is apologise to you," Varlerta had tried to persuade her.

Stubbornly, Aisha stuck to her refusal. Romulus had lied to her. He had slept with her pretending to be someone he wasn't. He had used her to get his own ends, had gullied her with sweet lies. On top of all that, he was a spy for the other side, for Varlerta's and Roary's biggest enemy. How could her band mate even suggest she should go and see him?

Varlerta brought her Romulus' greetings every now and then. Aisha tried to ignore them. The man had deceived her, like so many men had before him. She wasn't going to take it any longer. If a guy had lied to her once, he would lie to her again. She never wanted to hear of him again.

Of course Varlerta and Roary, tactless as they were, liked to discuss matters related to Romulus over a beer or during band practise.

"To get Sirius and Remus free, we need to get in touch with the people who are holding them captive," Roary reminded Varlerta while she was tuning her guitar. "Romulus has promised he'll ask his friends to let them go in exchange for his own freedom. However, we can't just let him go like that."

"I disagree," Varlerta replied, playing a few flageolet notes to check the tuning of her guitar. "We know he can't go back to Voldemort anyway, because Voldemort would skin him alive for getting caught, and for setting Sirius and Remus free. We could promise him that we'll let him go only when the two have made it safely back to the castle."

"I'm not sure how far we can trust him," Roary said, fiddling with his microphone stand. "He seems rather like someone who is working for his own profit than like a fanatic follower of Voldemort, but we already know that he is a good actor. He might even be accepted back into the Death Eaters' ranks if he offered them sufficiently good information. Goodness knows what he might tell them."

"Like what?" Varlerta asked, taking off her guitar and placing it on its stand. She seemed eager to discuss rather than to play. Behind her drum set, Aisha sighed, because she would have preferred playing a few songs to hearing more about Romulus.

Ignoring the sigh, Varlerta went on: "What could he tell them? That we're against Voldemort? Big deal - big shnirking surprise, if you ask me. Tell him about the strength of our armed forces, or the outlay of the castle? I'm positive Voldemort already knows all of this, because Romulus says he's been sending him information a few times via Pettigrew."

"Sounds like you are bent on setting the guy free," Roary said, frowning.

"Sounds like I shnirking well want Sirius and Remus safely back here in the castle," Varlerta retorted. "What would you say if it was Pat who was held captive?"

"That's not the same thing," Roary said with a glance towards his lover of many years. Pat smiled in response, but his body language suggested unease.

"Why not?" Varlerta hissed, turning white with anger. "Do you think I love Sirius any less?"

Roary merely raised an eyebrow. Aisha wished to be far away. She'd seen Varlerta blow up at people, and she didn't like it.

"Cut it out, everybody," Pat said. Everybody looked his way. Pat wasn't one to say a lot in the company of a larger group, but if he spoke up, people usually listened to him.

"We're here to make music, not to discuss your war strategies, let alone anybody's love life," Pat said. "Now, are you going to play or not?"

Both looking a bit sheepish, Roary and Varlerta returned to microphone and guitar and got ready to play. Aisha cast Pat a grateful glance, and then broke into the snare roll which announced the intro of Pat's latest song. There was no need to talk or discuss any more; the band members knew what to play, and how to blend their instruments into one unifying sound. Aisha felt the tension ease. In their music, the four of them could resolve all the conflicts that sometimes smouldered between them. Suddenly she intensely longed for the good old times, for the time they had spent together in New York before Varlerta and Roary had decided that they were needed in this strange, slightly eerie magical castle.

For a while, they just let the music flow. During their fourth song, however, the door of Varlerta's building opened, and in came Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick and Professor Vector. The band members stopped playing immediately and put their instruments away. Aisha knew that something important had happened. She had seen the Headmaster of Hogwarts only a few times, but never had she seen him enter Varlerta's building. If she wasn't mistaken, the teachers in his company were some of those he trusted most. If they all entered unbidden, it had to mean that they wanted to talk to Roary and Varlerta on some extremely urgent matter.

Dumbledore, who looked as ancient and fragile as ever, sat down on the sofa; the teachers, including Varlerta and Roary, placed themselves around him, patiently waiting for him to speak.

"We have received an owl," Dumbledore said at last. "See for yourselves." And with these words, he handed a dog-eared, fray-edged piece of parchment to Varlerta and Roary. Aisha, who had remained seated behind the drum set, was curious, but could not read the two or three words scribbled on it from the distance.

"Verus," Varlerta said quietly. "It's from V - from Professor Snape. I recognise the handwriting."

"'Eliminatus, this summer, Malfoy's son,'" Roary read aloud. "You mean, the enemy means to attack us with the Eliminatus curse?"

"It certainly seems like it," Dumbledore said gravely.

"You think they want to eliminate something?" Roary asked on. "Not - not us, I suppose, because a curse of that magnitude...." He stopped, frowning. "That's impossible."

"The note is not very precise, admittedly," Professor McGonagall replied, "but it must be important, because Professor Snape probably risked his life by sending it."

"But he was alive when he sent it," Varlerta murmured, touching the piece of parchment very lightly with her fingers.

"What do you make of that bit about Malfoy's son?" Roary asked.

"We believe it refers to Draco Malfoy, who attended Hogwarts until he was transferred to Durmstrang about two years ago," Professor McGonagall replied crisply. "We have no precise information about how he might be connected to the curse, but it certainly sounds credible that he is working for the enemy now, young though he is."

"You really think they're going to attack us with that curse?" Varlerta murmured, rubbing her chin with her index finger.

"It sounds unlikely, but it does seem to mean that the enemy has found a way to exercise an Eliminatus curse to an extent that can become a threat to us," Roary commented. "The note must be intended as a warning for us, telling us to work up a defence against that curse. We must start looking for one immediately, and we certainly need the help of an expert."

"Bill Weasley, the curse breaker," Professor Flitwick suggested. Professor McGonagall nodded.

"What about Pettigrew and Romulus Lupin?" Varlerta asked. "They might know something about what the Death Eaters are planning. Is there a way we could get more information from them?"

"Pettigrew isn't saying a shnirking thing," Roary reminded her.

Cosinus Vector looked like he was about to say something, but Dumbledore raised his hand to stop him, obviously guessing what the teacher had on his mind.

"We won't resort to the methods of the enemy, Cosinus," the headmaster reminded him. "We will not harm our prisoners to press information from them."

"In theory, I agree with you, Albus," Roary said. "Torturing people is out of question, and no ends justify such means. However, if Voldemort has really found a way to cast an Eliminatus curse of that magnitude, pressing information from our prisoners might be a way of pure self-defence."

Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall exchanged glances. The witch had paled visibly, but she shook her head. "It is true; this curse may be all of our deaths. However, if we torture people to elicit information, we are no better than the enemy. Cruelty and abuse of power irreversibly corrupt those that use it. We must find a way to defend our lives without such means."

"I respect your point of view - but what about the children?" Professor Flitwick asked. "What about the many students in this castle? If we are attacked and they die because we were too noble to resort to torture, we will be to blame. We do not know enough about the curse to defend ourselves against it."

"It may be time to evacuate the castle," Professor McGonagall said, paler than ever.

"We should at least try to question our prisoners again in the normal way, you know, just ask them, maybe bribe them or something," Varlerta insisted. "Maybe at least Romulus Lupin will tell us something." Suddenly she turned to Aisha, on her face a slightly wicked grin. "We will send you to him. If you ask him to help us, we might stand a chance."

When all heads turned towards her, Aisha felt herself blushing. She had assumed that the accomplished, powerful witches and wizards in the room had forgotten she and Pat were present at all.

"You overestimate my power over Mr. Lupin," she said, managing a slight sarcastic undertone.

"No, Varlerta may be right - he asked about you every time we questioned him," Professor Flitwick piped happily. "Miss Riq, you may indeed be helpful in this matter - if you are willing, that is."

Aisha hated to have everybody's eyes on her. What did they expect from her? She felt powerless and, let's face it, very ugly. All her life, she had been told that she was no great beauty. She just didn't have what it took to charm important information out of a professional wizard spy.

"Give it a try, Aisha," Varlerta pleaded, her face softer than before. Without a comment, and perhaps unnoticed by everyone but Aisha, she took Professor Snape's note from the table and sneaked it into her pocket. "You see we're in a kind of fix here, and you might really be the one person who can help us." Then her eyes grew mischievous. "See it as a way to get back at him. If you can make him tell us what we need to know, you're even after all the lies he's told you - or rather, you will be the winner in this match."

Aisha shrugged. She was not convinced. "I think you all will be very disappointed in me, but I wouldn't want you to think that I don't want to be helpful," she replied. "If you believe it may be of any use, I'll go and talk to him."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Descending the stairs to the dungeon with Roary, Aisha felt increasingly strange. She had been told that Romulus was not imprisoned in a wet, mouldy hole in the ground, but that they had locked him into a subterranean, moderately comfortable room down there. Still, walking down to a dungeon to see her imprisoned ex-lover gave her a strange feeling. She could not help imagining him half-starved and in rags, wearing a ball and chain, begging her for bread.

On the way down, the two of them met Argus Filch, the ill-favoured, sour-looking caretaker of Hogwarts. Aisha flinched when she noticed a thumbscrew and a vicious-looking saw in his hands. "Enemies of Hogwarts, I will teach you to fear us," Filch murmured. Roary grinned at Aisha, but shook his head in a reassuring way. Aisha hadn't thought so, no, but with these wizards you could never be too sure.

Deep down in the dungeon, along a chilly passage of roughly hewn stone, Aisha could see a number of doors. Roary halted in front of the fourth. Before he opened it, he took something from his pocket - a small, ordinary pebble as far as Aisha could see.

"This thing is enchanted to work even in the hand of a Muggle," he told her and pressed the object into her palm. "Keep it in your pocket - and if you feel threatened or anything, rub it. I'll be waiting right outside the door, and if my pebble grows hot -" he showed her another, identical-looking pebble, "I'll come to your help immediately. - Or do you want me to come with you?"

Was she afraid to be alone with Romulus? Aisha shook her head and put the pebble in her pocket. Somehow she couldn't imagine him trying to strangle her or attack her in any other way. On the other hand, if Varlerta was right at all, if she could elicit information from Romulus by using her questionable womanly wiles, Roary's presence might spoil the effect.

"I'll be okay," she said to Roary, nodding for him to unlock the door and let her in.

She found Romulus sitting on the cot in a small, white-washed cell lit by magical candles. He looked thinner and had grown a greying stubble, but otherwise he seemed okay. When he saw her, he stared at her with his bright green eyes for a moment. Then, just as the door closed behind her, he got up to greet her.

"So - you've decided to come and see me after all," he said in a light and even voice, or rather, a voice that might have been intended to sound light and even.

Aisha nodded. She didn't know what to say. He looked so unhappy. He deserved it, she reminded herself.

"Why are you here?" Romulus asked. "Have you decided not to hate me after all, or is there something else you want?"

Aisha wasn't good at this game. "We've been warned that we will be attacked by a certain curse this summer, by the son of the Minister of Magic, it appears. We've been wondering if you might be able and willing to help us."

"Which curse?" Romulus asked hoarsely, holding her eyes with his.

"It's called Eliminatus," Aisha replied.

Romulus broke eye contact and looked at the white wall opposite her. He probably would have stared out of the window, Aisha thought, if the room had had one.

For a while, nobody spoke or moved. Then Romulus got up and walked over to his small table, from which he took a piece of parchment and a quill. Frowning at the outdated method of writing, he jotted down an address in Boston and a line of figures before he handed the piece of parchment to Aisha.

"Do you have enough money for a plane ticket to Boston?" he asked.

Aisha shrugged. "I suppose I might, but what do you want from me?" she retorted.

Romulus held her gaze once more. "I want you to get out of this shnirking hell-hole of a castle before the trouble really starts here. You will find the key to my apartment hidden below the roots of the left yucca plant outside the door. It's buried deep down there, so don't be too shy to get your hands dirty. Behind the moving portrait in the dining room, you will find the safe. If the portrait guy gets upset, just ignore him. The combination to the safe is on the parchment here."

"You want me to get something for you?" Aisha asked, promising herself not to get entangled in his web of deception again. "What is it?"

"I said I want you to get out. You are a Muggle, and have nothing to do with our wars. The money in the safe will help you hide from this mess. Get a nice house somewhere in the country-side, maybe in the Midwest, where witches and wizards are scarce, to put it lightly. There's cash and plastic money, all valid, don't be afraid to use it."

"Are you saying I should hide because things are becoming dangerous here?" Aisha asked, beginning to comprehend.

"Aisha, what the shnirk do you think I'm talking about?" Romulus snapped impatiently. "We are talking about a shnirking war here, in which all the shnirking wizards of this country will blow each other's mentally substandard heads off. You are a Muggle, right? You are utterly defenceless and therefore, one could say, to a certain degree innocent. Get the shnirk out of here while you still can, or you will be killed alongside with everyone else."

"So what are you going to do?" she asked. She did not want to think about the impending danger for her, her friends and all the people in this castle; first of all, she wanted to understand what he was telling her.

He chuckled mirthlessly. Then, without looking at her, he said, "It seems that, like most people in this castle, I am doomed if I stay here and doomed if I manage to get away, because I suppose the Dark Lord's followers are already looking for me. Still, I might be able to buy my freedom in an exchange of prisoners. In that case, I'd try to go into hiding somewhere."

Suddenly there was a glimmer of light in his eyes. "Let's agree on a time and place to meet. If I make it, I'll come, and we can hide together if you want to. If I don't -" He shrugged. "If you decide you don't want to see me, just don't show up. So - let's agree one someplace obscure. Des Moines? Salt Lake City?"

Aisha raised her hand to stop him. "Wait a minute. The people in the castle here are my friends. I'm not going to run away and leave them in danger."

Romulus snorted. "Fine friends - they draw you into this mess and expect you to die at their side."

"I didn't want to stay behind in New York," Aisha retorted. "Plus, they were afraid I might become a hostage. They didn't make me come here. I wanted to come along."

"But they didn't tell you of the danger," Romulus retorted.

The danger.... No, nobody had told her how dangerous this magical world could become for her. True, they had warned her of mischievous, trouble-making wizards, of the reckless crowd in the Basilisk Bar, but....

"That night in the Basilisk Bar," Aisha said on sudden impulse, "would you have watched me be taken or even be killed?"

A grim smile on his face, Romulus replied, "I didn't know you then, right? I was confused, because you knew my name, and I decided to just see what would happen. I have no idea how I would have acted if Lucullus hadn't eventually pulled her trick, if the wizards would really have had the chance to harm or take you. I wanted to figure out what was going on before I took sides, but I don't usually appreciate a battle of four against one. - By the way, it was you who gave me the idea that my twin brother might be alive. All my life, I had thought he had been killed by a werewolf, but the incident in the bar made me have second thoughts about it. When I met him at the airport by some freak chance, I knew at once that I should try to get him into my power - especially as you apparently knew him, and people told me you were associated with Lyons."

"Roary?" Just when she thought she might grasp the meaning of what he was telling her, he had confused her again. "What does Roary have to do with all of this?"

"Roary Lyons? Loads, actually." Romulus half-sat down on the table. "You know, before I met Pettigrew, I was never one of the Dark Lord's followers, but I belonged to a group of wizards called the Magical Society - I suppose you could call them elitist and separatist. Unlike the British pureblood fanatics, they care less about birth and more about magical powers. They believe that it is the destiny of wizards to rule the world - to rule the Muggles, basically."

"So you think you should rule us, right? Well, screw you!" Suddenly, Aisha was very angry again.

A sheepish look on his face, Romulus replied: "See, I didn't know you then, and the Muggles I did know were - well, unmagical in all their doings. They were bureaucrats, company managers and mortgage payers; they lived for making money and spending it, for polluting nature and buying new cars and TV sets. They weren't able to see the beauty of the world, or to relate to anything beyond their narrow Muggle grasp, and if something happened that was beyond the power of their sciences, they pretended it didn't exist. I didn't want to leave the rule of this world to such people. Now I know you, and I know that you are different. You care for the people around you, you live for music, and you seem to have an eye for nature and everything surrounding you. You are brave and willing to take risks; you are resourceful and can relate to all sorts of creatures. I could still laugh my ass off about how you tricked these house-elves, if only everything hadn't turned out so badly. Now, I'm not sure whether you are the only Muggle in the world who's got a heart and a mind, but if I'm granted another chance to live, I'll be willing to find out."

While listening to him, Aisha felt showered with conflicting emotions: Anger at his arrogance, a certain understanding of his point of view and at the same time a kind of disgust with it, yet again excitement about his words of love - if they were words of love - and an underlying wariness. Yes, she was still attracted to him, intrigued by getting to know this side of him, but she wasn't sure whether she could trust him. Ransacking her mind for a way to react to his speech, she actually found a path that seemed the right one to tread: Stick to her agenda and ask him about the Eliminatus curse.

"You might have another go at living, and so might all of us, if you help us with that curse," she reminded him. "Is there no way we can fight against it - or they, rather?"

Romulus scratched the greyish stubble covering his cheeks and chin. "I'm not sure, because I haven't worked on this curse myself. However, I do know a thing or two about curses in general, because I've got a Masters in Dark Arts from Northern Magic University. The Eliminatus curse is a tricky little thing that conjures up anti-matter, which works like a big, black hole that swallows up everything. Whatever the curse is directed at simply ceases to exist. Unfortunately, or should I say fortunately, the curse is quite difficult to administer for a normal human mind, even for one trained in large-scale curses. Therefore, you can't annihilate anything big - at University, they taught me that a rabbit was about largest thing you can make disappear with it. The Death Eaters have been said to be able to annihilate humans, but I used to think this was only a rumour. Now I heard that the Dark Lord's followers have found a way to use the curse on a grand scale which might enable them to eliminate a whole building, maybe even this castle. If this is true, they can just turn us into nothing."

All of a sudden, Aisha felt very cold. "What happens to people if they are turned into nothing?" she asked softly.

Very tentatively, Romulus laid a finger on Aisha's cheek, which had broken out into goose bumps. "I don't know," he replied quietly. "Nobody knows. Some say it's just like dying, some say it's worse than being dead, because you can't even die properly, so that means your body, or soul, or whatever you believe in, can't re-enter the cycle of life and death. See, that's why I want you to get out of here and to save your little ass."

Unsure whether she should be mollified or indignant at his macho condescendence, Aisha turned away from him. "There's got to be a way to fight against this curse," she half-whispered.

"I don't know of any," Romulus replied. "Pettigrew may know more - the madwizard who was captured with me and who tried to hurt you, remember? I heard he was involved in the development of the curse. Unfortunately, I don't know whether we can make him talk - I heard that the Dark Lord has magical ways of preventing people from talking even in captivity."

"He didn't keep you from talking, did he?" Aisha asked. Suddenly she was afraid; was it possible that the Dark Lord, or Voldemort as Varlerta and Roary called him, was controlling Romulus even as he stood here talking to her?

"I've tried to keep my contact with him and his followers to a minimum," Romulus replied. "As a spy, I was too valuable for them not to comply with my eccentric wishes not to become a Death Eater and to have no mark or spell applied to me. Also, I suppose they thought I knew what I was doing, as I've done spy jobs before. I thought I'd do well, too, stupid oaf that I was." Once more, he laughed without amusement.

"Why did you do it, though, if you aren't a follower of Voldemort?" Aisha asked.

Romulus flinched at the mention of the name. "It was a spy job, and a demanding one, one only I could do, so I was intrigued. The money was good, too - more than good, I admit. The Death Eaters were seeking to integrate the Magical Society into their ranks, and as I was a member, I was willing to check them out, see how they worked and what they could accomplish. When I told them about having captured my brother, they knew exactly who he was and wanted me to take his place at Hogwarts. I was one of the top spies of the Magical Society, so I wanted to show this British Death Eater group what I could do. It seemed to be a smart choice at the time," he added with a self-conscious smirk.

Right, he had been a spy for this society. Thinking about what Romulus had said earlier in the conversation, Aisha replied, "I still don't understand what Roary's got to do with all of this."

"Lyons? Well, he's the president of the Magical Society's biggest opponents - of an internationally operating group of radicals, called the League," Romulus replied. "Of course, that's largely kept a secret - I did some spying on the League a while ago, in disguise, and was the one to find out that Lyons is their president," he added with a hint of pride.

Aisha shrugged. "I suppose it's kept a secret, even from me, because it's the first thing I've heard of it."

"And that's a good thing," Romulus replied. "They've drawn you into these matters far too much as it is."

"Stop treating me like a child, you condescending chauvinist," Aisha snapped back. "The fact that I don't have magical powers doesn't mean that I am stupid, or innocent, or in need of protection."

"I agree with you but for the last point," Romulus replied, his face serious. "I still advise you to get the shnirk out of here, because -"

"Forget it," Aisha cut him short. "If you want to protect me in any way, devise a way how my oh-so-powerful friends can defend the castle against that blasted curse. Is there any way you can get information out of that Pettigrew guy?"

Romulus shrugged. "I'd be willing to try," he replied. "As I said, I think he mentioned to me that he was protected by a spell to keep him from giving information to the enemy - to your side, that is - but maybe I could try to talk to him, because I'm not really one of your side. However, he's bound to suspect something if you finally permit the two of us to have contact."

"I'll suggest that to the powerful witches and wizards of this castle," Aisha said with a hint of irony. "But how can we know that we can trust you?"

Romulus smiled in his slightly sarcastic way. "If you approach trust from logic's point of view, you can argue that the Dark Lord will now believe me to be pretty worthless as it is, so I have little to lose by helping your side. On the other hand, I have everything to gain by helping you, considering I will die alongside everybody else here if we fail. Therefore, it should make sense to trust me." Then he took both of her hands in his. "But what about your heart, Aisha? Does your heart say you can trust me?"

"It used to say that, and it got disappointed pretty badly," Aisha replied, withdrawing her hands. "It's a pretty stupid heart, if you ask me. I'm never going to trust it again."

"So you did not forgive me?" he asked, his beautiful green eyes locking with hers.

"No," she replied stubbornly. You did not even ask for my forgiveness, she thought.

"I will try to get something out of Pettigrew," he said, "and I will do what I can to help you. Maybe I can contact a few people you could consider neutral in this fight - colleagues, scholars, people who know even more about curses than I do. However, you must promise me one thing. If I succeed in helping you all against the curse, you must forgive me. Promise?"

Aisha swallowed. Maybe this was his way of apologising. Men were complicated, she reminded herself, and hardly ever straightforward, especially if they were not lying.

"Promise," she replied.