Nocturne

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nocturne, n. 1. A composition suggestive of night, usually of a quiet, meditative character.

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(This is a story that begins with a death. Sometimes death is the end of things, and sometimes it’s the beginning. In this case, the man who died was a firm believer that death was the beginning of a new adventure, so it seems not inappropriate to begin our story with his end.)

It’s nearly morning by the time she gets out to the observatory, which is bad for watching the stars but that wasn’t really what she came up here for anyway. The Aurors finished searching the school for Death Eaters who might have lingered, and they finally allowed her to leave school property. They do insist on knowing where she’s going. She tells them she wants to be alone and look at the stars and it’s not a lie, not quite, and perhaps they sense this, or perhaps they recognize her as the astronomy teacher, but either way they believe her and let her go without further question.

(A bit of background before we go further: the observatory was built in the seventeenth century and was originally for use of astronomy students, but they made far too frequent use of it for activities in no way relating to astronomy. So they stopped telling students about it and eventually the students forgot about it, but astronomy professors, like the one we’re discussing, still occasionally use it for astronomical observations as it’s away from the distracting lights of the school and nearby village. It is nowadays very rarely used for activities in no way relating to astronomy.)

When she reaches the battered old building atop a nearby crag, it’s cold as ice from the Scottish wind but she can’t be bothered to cast a warming spell. The cold suits her grief and she lets it wash over her, getting perverse pleasure out of her own discomfort. A man she greatly admired is dead and another man she greatly admired is on the run, and the thought of being in warmth right now disgusts her.

She pulls out star charts and focuses a telescope on her favorite constellation (the Archer, if you must know) but doesn’t go any further. Star lover as she is, she’s not interested tonight. She stands in the center of the room and stares at the floor.

(Despite being four hundred years old, the observatory does have comfortable chairs, but she is not interested in being comfortable, and in her agitated state she cannot contain her restless energy or force herself to sit. If you have ever been very upset, perhaps you will understand.)

She’s met him here a hundred times (back in another lifetime which ended quite suddenly tonight with a flash of green light) and she almost expects him to be here again, so it’s no surprise to her when he bursts in like a storm. It is, however, greatly unnerving, because he is, after all, a killer. He’s always pale but today he looks white as death, and her hands are suddenly cold with fear and she wishes she’d been wrong about him showing up.

(As I said, this isn’t the first time they’ve met like this. Being both creatures of the night, it is perhaps inevitable that they would become strange and tenuous friends. It was most likely not inevitable that she fall for him, but she did and that’s that.)

The door closes behind him and the room is dark save the globe of light hanging over her notes. All is silence except his anguished breathing and her heart, whose fearful palpitations must, she thinks, be audible at least as far as Glasgow.

He says her name (tentatively, as though maybe he’s forgotten it) and the sound of it shatters her stillness. She takes a step toward him but he backs away until his back strikes the door, and now she’s truly afraid because he never backs down from anything or anyone: that’s how he became a Death Eater, after all.

(In truth, she knows little about his Death Eater doings, but that much he’d told her one still night last year, searching her face all the while like a child waiting to discover if he’s going to be punished. She saw that little child that day and since has been careful never to deliver that blow she knows he still inwardly waits for. Today, though, he deserves it. What remains to be seen is if she will give it.)

She asks him, “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be off reporting to your lord?” Annoying a known Death Eater is probably a bad thing but she feels bad right now so perhaps her actions make sense.

Black ghosts swim behind his glassy eyes and her throat tightens with sadness for him, even as her mind contemplates how to call the Aurors without catching his attention. Still, she’d like to know why he came, as it must have been terribly dangerous to come back so close to the school. The thought occurs to her that he came back to see her, and apprehension and joy mingle in her chest. But he’s a killer, she reminds herself, everything he ever told me is a lie. He could be here to kill me.

He looks her in the eye a moment, then “I should go”s himself to the door.

She’s already feeling upset and this annoys her. “Then why’d you come here?”

He doesn’t turn around but his “I don’t know” reaches her ears and suddenly she’s tired, too tired to deal with him right now. She’s about to pull out her wand and send for the Aurors but something in her reminds her he’s your friend; he’s stood by you; you love him. This last one frightens her because she’s not accustomed to loving murderers, but on the other hand she’s not accustomed to being a murderer, and she knows that sending him to the Aurors is tantamount to sending him to his death or (worse) to the Kiss.

(In her fifth year at Hogwarts she joined a debate and public speaking club. It’s long gone now, but they used to hold speeches and formal debates over hot topics in the wizarding world every Thursday after dinner. She won a gold medal for her argument about the inhumanity of using the Dementor’s Kiss as a punishment. She got assigned the topic, but over the course of her research she became firmly convinced of the validity of her stance, and she’s felt that way ever since. It’s one of those things teachers love: when something you learn in school sticks with you.)

And now she feels guilty, so she gestures at the door. “If you leave right now,” she says lowly, threateningly (some people have a knack for threatening without raised voices), “I won’t call the Aurors on you.”

He normally excels at hiding his emotions, but this clearly throws him; it seems he never thought that she might turn him in. This throws her too, that he trusts her like that, and they stand together, thrown.

He turns to leave, probably not wanting to be turned in (with the threat of the Kiss looming, who wouldn’t feel the same way?) and she speaks, not meaning to but doing so anyway. “Don’t go,” she says. “I couldn’t really turn you in—”and she couldn’t, not really, she realizes now—“please stay and talk to me.” She grasps his wrist. “Why did you come up here?”

She expects to be shaken off, but not with such vehemence. “Don’t touch me,” he growls.

And now she’s angry, (conveniently) forgetting everything she knows about him, about a lifetime of abuse at the hands of nearly everyone he knew and how he spent the last few years trying bravely to get past it, focusing instead on this one outburst, and she darts around to be between him and the front door. “Don’t come in here and interrupt my work without telling me why!” she shouts, glad the only ones to hear them are the deer and the grass, ignoring the fact that she hasn’t done a bit of work since she’s been here.

“Star charts are being called work now, are they?” he spits back, and this one catches her off-balance because he never belittles astronomy (being annoyed, she knows, at all the people who belittle potions. The man has a strange sense of fairness, but a strong one). Something must be really wrong, and no matter what he says, if he came up here it was because he wanted to talk to her about it, and suddenly she wants to talk back to him. It’s crazy—he’s a Death Eater—but she needs to talk to him, needs to hear his side, needs to believe it, even if he kills her.

(I do not know, dear reader, if you have ever looked death in the face, but it is a momentous experience. She has faced death one time before, when she was young, and what saved her then was her ability to stay calm and think clearly. That same calmness is suddenly with her now, though it’s not clear if that’s because she’s a very level-headed woman or because she’s not actually in any danger from the man standing before her.)

She touches his wrist again. “Please come sit down,” and she does so herself. He doesn’t move. If this were anyone else she would be annoyed, but she knows him, knows him very well indeed, and she knows that even when he’s reluctant to talk, he wants someone there to listen. And if he risked his life to find her, the least she can do is wait until he’s ready to talk. “Please,” she repeats. “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t!” his voice comes through gritted teeth, and she knows this is what he’s been trying to say all along. “Don’t you understand? I killed him!”

She doesn’t ask why. Information is power and in this war it’s best not to have any, to stay beneath the enemy’s notice. (Besides, she doesn’t think she’ll like the answer.) He repeats his words. “I killed him! He was our only chance . . .” He looks at her, his eyes begging for her absolution. “He asked me to, he didn’t want the boy to become a murderer, but I could have said no . . .” His shoulders sag and he whispers, “What have I done?”

She wants to reach out to him, figuratively, and the only way she can think to do it is to reach out to him, literally, so she holds out her hand. He curves to her and crashes on her shore, crumpling at her feet like a dropped rag. He’s grasping the hand she’d outstretched, his face buried in her lap. He’s crying and she’s never seen him do that, so she cries too, one hand in his dark hair.

(For the record, this is only the second time he’s cried in his adult life. The first time was when his mother died, early, heartbroken and damaged, and he thinks that on that day he was crying for her life, not her death. But he did mourn her loss, because she was the only thing he’d ever loved.) (His list of things he’s loved recently doubled in size, but he’s never told that to the woman holding his hand, for fear that it would frighten her away from ever holding his hand again. After all, how could she ever love such an inherently flawed being as him?) (Not that any of that matters now.)

And when her first tear splashes on his bowed head, she begins to whisper, “You did what you had to; it’s for a greater cause,” even though she’s not sure she should believe him, even though she’s not sure what to believe at all anymore. And his crying slows and so does hers, and she runs her fingers over his cheek, because she never gets to touch him and she might never get to again.

It’s over, after this. The life they used to belong to died tonight as though it was the one to be cursed, because he’s now openly allied with the Death Eaters (whatever his reasoning for the murder was) and she knows she won’t see him for a long time, if ever again. So she kisses his hair (it’s not as romantic as it could be, because let’s face it, the man’s hair is a mess), and he stills as he feels it, and it makes her cry again as she hopes that there is not another Kiss in his near future, and then he is gone out the door leaving nothing but the tears in her lap as a remembrance.

And tomorrow he’ll be a Death Eater and she’ll remain firmly entrenched on the side of good, and when the darkness falls they’ll both fight. And maybe he’ll die fighting for good, and maybe he’ll die fighting for evil (that’s still a possibility, she’s forced to admit). But maybe he’ll survive and then when this is over they’ll learn to live without fighting. She looks out the window at the fading morning star and wishes.

(The end of a story, like a death, can be either a beginning or an end. And perhaps their story has ended, or perhaps the end of the war will be the beginning of a new chapter in their lives. But whatever the end of their story, our story ends here, closing on a weary woman crying on a mountaintop and a dark-haired man striding away from the sound of her tears as the Scottish dawn falls into the valley. It’s not a happy ending; sometimes endings aren’t. It is, however, an ending laced gently with the feeling that both our players find lingering stubbornly in their hearts: hope.)

fin

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