Disavowals

Chapter Six - Dolce

"I heard you interviewing Cornelius Fudge this morning," Monique said to her husband on Tuesday evening. She was sitting at the kitchen table doing accounts, while Callum was making tea. Theo was in the living room, reading, but he could hear them clearly through the open door.

"He sounded like an idiot," Monique continued. "You didn't have to be quite so ironic."

Callum snorted. "I don't need to make him sound like an idiot, he is an idiot. That's why he's our ex-Minister, not the Minister any more. 'Course, that just makes him think he can make unjustified remarks about how the current administration is doing things."

"It was a fairly dicey coup that got him out of office -"

"Yes, I know, and Minister Bones gets hammered for it in the media daily. I thought it was time we stopped the retrospective canonisation process Fudge is going through."

"I thought the media were unbiased."

"We are unbiased. We're hard on politicians whether they're in office or out of it. Isn't that what unbiased means?"

Monique laughed. "No, that means totally biased."

"You think I'm right, don't you, Theo?" Callum called through the door. "We're very even-handed."

"Hmm? Oh, yes. You're desperately trying to backtrack after the debacle last year when it turned out Harry Potter was telling the gospel truth about the Dark Lord being back. But you are doing an enthusiastic job of attacking the current Minister, I'll grant you that."

Reading in the living room was a sort of compromise. Theo would have felt much more comfortable spending his time holed up in his room. But Monique and Callum had taken him in, and he owed them some sociability. It wasn't as if they weren't hard to get on with, or anything like that.

"That wasn't me," Callum protested, "that was Helena Summerby. She interviews like a Jarvey. I have great respect for Amelia Bones."

"Yes, Callum, most unbiased," Monique said blithely. "Admit it. You hated Fudge when he was in office, and you still do. I'm quite happy to despise him. He lost us a year to prepare for this war."

"So am I," Callum admitted. "Mostly because I was taken in. It was so much easier to dismiss Dumbledore and Harry Potter than to face reality, and Fudge encouraged that every step of the way. Who told the truth? The Quibbler and Rita Skeeter, for God's sake. Talk about an unholy alliance. The most nonsensical publication in the country and the most unscrupulous, untruthful journalist I know. And what about us, the mainstream media? We played right into Fudge's hands." He sounded disgusted with himself. "Never again. At least, not me. The Daily Prophet is still a Ministry mouthpiece. Better than last year, though. They made Pravda or Izvestia look unbiased."

"Pravda?" said Monique and Theo at the same time.

"They were Muggle newspapers, in the Soviet Union - Russia, that is - totally government-controlled. The names meant "Truth" and "News", but the joke used to go that there was no truth in the News and no news in the Truth."

"You still can't believe the Prophet," muttered Monique.

"But between it and the Quibbler - how that persuaded people, I'll never know."

"You mean, you'll never know why people didn't listen to your august station instead," Monique teased.

"They believed because it was plausible," Theo called. "They believed at Hogwarts because Umbridge banned it as soon as it came out. The parents believed because their children told them it had been banned. Everyone else did because the details matched up, and besides, who swallowed that story about Diggory and an accident?"

"They tried to censor it?" Callum's voice was incredulous. "If that had happened in Hogwarts in our day, there would have been full-scale rioting!"

"There was full-scale rioting. As soon as Dumbledore left, all hell broke loose for Umbridge. She'd put so many stupid rules in and taken so many House points away, everyone realised that they had nothing to lose. So they started fighting back."

"Did you?" inquired Monique.

Theo snorted. "I couldn't. It would have been tantamount to standing up and declaring myself against the Dark Lord."

"Fudge is stupid, but he isn't a Death Eater," Callum commented, but there was a tinge of doubt in his voice.

"Of course he isn't. But he was incompetent enough to help the Dark Lord by accident. He wanted Fudge in power, so anyone at Hogwarts who did sucked up to Umbridge. She sent Dementors after Potter, for Merlin's sake."

"I never heard that story," Callum said. He sounded thoughtful. "You don't know if there's any way to substantiate it...?"

Theo shrugged, even if Callum couldn't see him. "She confessed in front of witnesses, but you won't get a word out of Draco Malfoy and his cronies. Potter and his friends heard it, but they have bigger fish to fry than Umbridge."

"That must have been an interesting year for you," Monique said. He could hear the scratch of quill on parchment again.

"I spent a lot of it sadly unable to be located." Theo paused. "You know, I've spent most of my time at school sadly unable to be located. It's so much easier."

"Easier for what?"

"Easier when your classmates expect you to come and bully first-years, or get Gryffindors into trouble, or watch Quidditch in thunderstorms. I'd as soon not have anyone actively against me."

"Tell me you don't not go to Quidditch matches!" Callum said in mock astonishment. "Where's your House spirit?"

'"I have plenty of House spirit!" Theo said indignantly. "Quidditch isn't the be all and end all of life at Hogwarts."

"It must have changed a lot since we were there, then," Monique said.

"It's not the be all and end all for me. I like watching it, I just can't be bothered going out in the rain and wind and sleet to yell myself hoarse over a school game. I go if it's sunny."

"That's reasonable, I suppose," said Callum. "Tea? Either of you?"

"Yes, please," Monique said.

"No, thanks, I'm fine." Theo turned the page. Not that he was paying that much attention to the book. Mysteries did not require attention, unless you wanted to spoil the plot. That was why he read them.

"Right, then."

"There we go." Theo heard Monique rolling up parchment. "That's that over with for another month. Oh, thanks."

Callum emerged into the living room, tea in hand, and sat down on the couch. "Perfect. Time for Coro Street."

"Time for what?"

"It's a television programme. Totally trivial, of course. Monique, are you coming?"

"I suppose so. Don't worry if you don't understand, Theo, he's been making me watch it for thirty years now and I still don't understand it."

"I won't worry." Theo shook his head as Callum turned on the tele- television. It was fascinating how Muggles did that, but he didn't really see the point of it. There wasn't much point to a lot of things Muggles did. Football, for instance. No matter how many times Anne explained it, he was never going to understand the attraction.

"Coro Street" turned out to be a lot of Muggles from Manchester having fairly mundane problems with their lives. None of it made any sense whatsoever. After the first time Theo asked Callum for an explanation, despite Monique shaking her head frantically, he left well alone. A three-minute speech on who this or that character was still didn't enlighten him, and he suspected three hours would not have.

Muggles. They invented television, and they used it for this.

*

Almost as soon as Anne had decided that she wanted to go back to the wizarding world, it decided to come to her, in the form of Mai Ng, who came over for the day on Tuesday. Anne had almost forgotten the plan. Mai lived about an hour's drive from her - amazing, when the rest of her friends were scattered all over the country - but she'd been out of the country for the last month, so Anne hadn't communicated with her for quite a while.

"So," Mai began, seating herself in Anne's chair, "how's your life been lately?"

Anne hesitated. "Er...pretty boring, really. You know what the last few weeks of the holidays are always like. Too much homework and too little else to do. How was Vietnam?"

Mai shrugged. "All right. It's just so...strange. I don't know. With going to Hogwarts I've forgotten most of the Vietnamese I knew when I was little, and all my relatives there expect me to speak it to them. I could understand them all right, but talking back was hard."

"You're lucky, though, knowing another language."

Mai rolled her eyes. "It's not like it's useful or anything. How many times in my life am I going to go to Vietnam?"

"Lots, if your family lives there." Anne paused to shut the window - it was getting breezy. "Have your parents decided about...well, you know."

"Not yet." Mai looked down at the floor. "They're still thinking about it - if this stupid war doesn't keep on going, I think they'll stay. It's just so dangerous."

"You're pure-blood, you'll be fine." Anne sounded more bitter than she intended to.

"Oh yeah? Lots of pure-bloods have got killed. It's who you support, not what your blood is. That's just the excuse. No one would be stupid enough to actually believe all that stuff about blood purity."

"They believe it," Anne said flatly. "No one would be stupid enough to go to war to put a psychopath in power. But they'd be stupid enough to go to war on a lie, or a belief, or...maybe not all of them. But they believe."

Mai shifted in her chair. "Why are we talking about the war, anyway? It's too depressing. So. What have you been up to these holidays?"

"The usual. You know. Playing my flute, doing my homework, looking after my brother and sisters. Stressing over my exam marks. Reading the paper. What else is there to do?"

Mai shook her head. "Honestly, Anne, don't you ever do anything exciting? It's like you're happy to just sit there and let life drift on by. You should be out...I don't know. Enjoying yourself. Seeing boys. Doing things."

"I prefer not to measure happiness by how many dates I have planned. It doesn't seem like a very good yardstick."

"Well, not necessarily dates." Mai looked around, then leaned forward conspiratorially. "Don't tell Gabby, but I think that's all a bit overrated."

"I wouldn't know, I've never been on one."

"Never?" Mai said doubtfully. "Are you sure?"

"No," Anne said firmly, "I've never been out with anyone." It was true. In a literal sense.

Mai sighed. "Anne, you need to be...here, more often. I mean, you're always here, you just never seem to be here. We keep not noticing you, except when you're not there, and then we notice that. How do you do that?"

"Being not noticed is much easier. Much less stressful." Anne picked up a pen from her bedside table, turning it over and over in her hand.

Mai frowned. "But then you can't talk to people. Or...I don't know...interact with them. That's what being in Hufflepuff is supposed to be about, we're people people."

"Any other criticisms of my personality you want to tell me about?" Anne said, replacing the pen with more force than she'd intended.

Mai flushed. "No, no, we like you the way you are, I just don't understand why you're like that."

"You don't need to." Anne knew she was being unreasonable. Theo understands perfectly, but I've never expected Mai or the others to even try. Why start now?

She decided to steer the conversation towards safer ground. "Look...oh, never mind. Sorry. So, I never asked. How were your exam marks?"

Mai perked up. "Pretty good, actually. Mum and Dad were pleased. Divination was awful. I dried up completely with the crystal ball. Transfiguration was the best. What did you think of that?"

"I did okay. Failed Herbology, though. I'm going to have to marry someone with a green thumb, or live in the city. Plants die when they see me coming."

Mai nodded, grinning. "Sarah still thinks you were responsible for that gerbera she tried to grow in second year dying -"

"I never went near it!"

This is better. So much safer.

In the afternoon Anne and Mai took Terry to see a film - rather, Anne took Mai and Terry. Mai had done Muggle Studies, but never been to the cinema before. She kept staring at everything, and Anne had to remind her not to talk so loudly about magic ("not that anyone will put two and two together but it's better if we don't draw attention to ourselves.") Anne was reminded strongly of Theo watching the electric jug boiling, and promised herself on the spot that she was going to get Theo to come see a film some day.

Or watch one on video, at least. Maybe Shakespeare. I know he'd like that. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a whole play. I suppose I have to sometime.

The actual film was the only downside to the whole affair. Mai was held by the spectacle, and Terry was held because it was about the Spice Girls, but Anne was left convinced that if she heard one more Spice Girls song in her life, she would be forced to seek the wretched excuses for musicians out and murder them. Slowly.

Anne's mother drove Mai to a stop along the train back to her home, and Anne went as well. It was only when she got in the car for the journey back that she realised she'd managed to not think about the war or anything related to it for almost a day. She'd been too busy talking to Mai, teaching her how to shoot a netball, and then taking Terry to the cinema. They'd talked about school, and OWLs, and what the others were up to, and the Quidditch rankings (that had been mostly Mai, of course), and whether there would ever be another ball for them to go to, and what the chances were of getting a decent Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Mai had been optimistic, pointing out that three out of five had been competent (even if one had turned out to be a Death Eater in disguise.) They'd only had two really incompetent teachers. Anne had pointed out that since it got harder and harder to find someone every year, and they were already scraping the bottom of the barrel, the omens were not good.

It had been, Anne realised on the way home, a good day. A good day in both her worlds.

*

Theo was heading to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich when he spotted the photo albums on the bookshelves. He'd noticed them last night when Callum has been watching the "television." It was amazing. Like a very, very good illusion - or a Pensieve, from what he knew of them - except on a screen, and it was real. You could see, not just hear, things that were happening at the same time somewhere else There was a lot of Muggle technology in the O'Neill household; Callum's mother was a Muggle, so he'd grown up with it. The more Theo saw, the more impressed he was. Of course, it wasn't anything near as good as magic, but for people with no magic at all they'd done pretty well.

Theo got out the bread, then gingerly opened the fridge to find the leftovers from last night's roast. He could see the point of having something to keep food cold if you couldn't use Cooling Charms, but it hummed. Theo wasn't sure what it would do next.

Sandwich made - he'd learnt that over two summers of caring for children - he took it back to the living room. He was sure the O'Neills wouldn't mind if he had a look at the photo albums. Just to see if there were any pictures of his mother. Not that he hadn't seen them before, of course, but most of the ones at home were of Adrienne Nott in her last six or seven years, including the last few shots, taken when she was nearly skeletal with the cancer that had killed her. He wanted to see if there were any of her in younger days.

The first album began with Monique's departure for Hogwarts. There were photos of her in her school robes, laughing with her friends, yelling at Quidditch matches, walking through Hogsmeade. Callum featured in some of those, a stocky grey-eyed boy with a cheeky smile.

Theo turned another page, and there was his mother, tall and gawky, sitting in the courtyard. She was leaning back against the mossy stone wall, glancing up only occasionally from the book in her lap. Her hair was much longer than in any photo Theo had ever seen, flowing over her shoulder nearly down to her waist.

Addie, sixth year, the caption read, but Theo wasn't sure if that meant hers or Monique's.

Adrienne figured in several more photos. Mostly she was on the edge of the crowd, or caught unawares, hair swirling about her. Theo lingered longest over one that must have been taken during her last year. Adrienne and Monique stood in the middle of snow-covered Hogsmeade, arms around each other, breath steaming in the air as they waved at the camera. A blue-and-bronze scarf, or so Theo knew it would have been, was wrapped around his mother's throat, and her still-long hair was lifting in the breeze. She was smiling, and laughing. She looked very young.

Addie and me, Hogsmeade, Christmas '64.

The rest of the album showed Monique's final two years at Hogwarts. Theo flipped through that fairly quickly - there was no one he recognised - but he did note the growing prevalence of Callum in the pictures, until the last two pages didn't have a single picture of Monique without him. In one on the last page, Callum, in full Quidditch gear, had picked Monique up and was spinning her around in sheer exuberance, in what looked like the middle of the school pitch. The photo was filled with other players and Hufflepuffs celebrating.

Hufflepuff 280, Ravenclaw 150, the caption read. 'PUFFS WIN THE CUP!!! And one reserve Chaser finally gets to fly.

Probably the last time they ever won the Cup, thought Theo. When would that have been? The sixties?

He realised that he'd finished the sandwich. Putting the plate on the coffee table, he got up for the next album, a relatively thin blue leather affair. The first page showed a serious-looking Monique, her hair in the messy low bun she had worn it in for the five days Theo had known her, standing with her parents in what must be their house. The Jugsons had lived somewhere in Oxford; as far as Theo knew, the house had been sold when his grandparents died.

Grandfather and Grandmother Jugson look happy. Must have been before Monique left home. Adrienne was there, too, hair pinned up this time, smiling approvingly at her sister.

Starting work - Mum and Dad very happy! said the caption beside it. Photo-Monique shifted on her feet, and something shiny glinted at the neck of her robes. Theo leaned closer, trying to see, and for just a second a chain with a ring slipped out. Photo-Monique reached up hastily to stuff it back down the neck of her robes, looking startled. Her parents didn't appear to notice, but Adrienne wore an unhappy frown.

Mum knew about her sister running off with a half-blood before the wedding? And didn't tell anyone?

Apparently not, because the next few photographs - after a couple of Monique and Callum - were of their wedding. The happy couple were positively radiant, even if the bride's parents were conspicuously absent. Adrienne was standing to one side of Monique, wearing elaborately embroidered dress robes. Her hair scarcely whispered around her chin.

My aunt rebelled by acquiring a Muggle mother-in-law. My mother got a haircut.

Seems like I take after the wrong sister.

Adrienne carried herself ramrod-straight, and she was smiling, but it was a glittering smile, pinned on for the occasion. When she looked at Monique, basking in happiness, it softened into reality, but when her gaze touched on Callum it froze again. The groom's parents got pure pure-blood scorn.

No guessing what she thinks of this marriage. But she's there. Maybe a little more rebellious than I thought.

Theo skimmed over the rest of that photo album, and the next. It was all Monique, Callum and their children. His mother appeared occasionally - always noted as "Addie" - always, if Callum was in the photo (or clearly taking it) with that fixed smile. If he wasn't, it was different. In one picture of Adrienne surrounded by her niece and nephews - she had the youngest, Catriona, on her knee, and Janet was leaning on her shoulder. Just any maiden aunt with her sister's children, any woman with well-loved young relatives. Or in one with Monique, they stood, arm around each other, just as in the photo from Hogsmeade.

You were very good at pretending, Mum, weren't you? Too good.

It was a shock when, three albums in, he turned the page to see his mother sitting in this very living room cradling a dark-haired baby. It took a moment for Theo to realise that it was himself.

I didn't see any pictures of Da-

No, I wouldn't, would I?

He flipped back to the last photo of Adrienne; yes, there was a wedding ring on her finger. A few before that, and it changed to an engagement ring. So this was well after she'd met Eric Nott. But never a mention, never a photo. Of course there wouldn't be. Not in this household. Did his father even know it existed?

Theo put the album down, and went to make another sandwich. One hadn't really been that much, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to continue. All too soon, the pictures would come to an end.

Appropriately armed with food, Theo forged ahead to the last two years of his mother's life. There were quite a few of her with Theo, Monique's children with Theo, Monique with Theo, even one - he recognised it with a jolt - of Liam O'Neill holding him in the living room of Theo's own house. This was an era he recognised; his mother's increasing paleness and frailty. In the very last one, where she sat with a squirming two-year-old Theo on her lap, she looked as though his struggles to escape might shatter her at any moment. The page had been stained long ago by water.

There was nothing to note Adrienne's passing; just the cessation of her appearances in the album, the blankness in Monique's expression in the following photos. Theo drew back into himself to find that the sun through the net curtains had shifted around to fall directly on him, it was three o'clock, and he'd barely touched his second sandwich. He sat there for a long moment, watching his mother stroke his hair and whisper at him to hold still, before he closed the album and laid it aside.

I never really wondered, did I? Adrienne Jugson Nott. She wasn't even a name, really, she was just my mother and Dad's wife, some old photographs and a dusty harp. She had a sister, and friends, and a job, and a life. She was thirty-four when I was born; she'd lived twice as long as I have now. She was more than just my mother. She had her own choices, and her own decisions.

But they weren't the same ones as mine, were they? Everyone says she believed in what the Dark Lord did, even Aunt Monique. She loved her sister and her sister's children, and she loved a man who believed they should all die. How did she rationalise that away? How did she pretend until the day she died that it all made sense?

Maybe she didn't. Maybe she worried and wondered. Maybe she didn't even try.

Why did you have to die then, Mum? Why can't you answer any of my questions? I chose to walk away from my family. I chose that, but you went away almost before I can remember.

I would have liked to have a choice.

He wrote to Anne that night. Even if he had to be careful how he phrased it, he needed her - no, advice wasn't the right word. Or maybe it was. He needed her thoughts, anyway. Her answer came back the following morning, offering a small piece of calm.

...I don't know if your mother could have given you any answers, but I think that you can find them yourself. Pretending isn't the answer, you have decided. Maybe she would have decided that. Maybe...I want to give you the answers myself, but I'll leave it there, because that is the thing I absolutely cannot do for you. It wouldn't be fair.

Anyway, I'll be seeing you in four days. We'll talk.

Love, Anne

It wasn't what Theo had wanted. Anne was right, though; she couldn't give him any answers. The whole point of...everything, at the moment, was that he worked out what he was doing and why for himself.

Still. Only four more days.