Dagger of Doubt

Chapter Ten

The Flawless Plan

Monday 14 July 1997 – Saturday 16 May 1998

Susan was resolute about not including me in the escape plans. She made me sit on her garden swing while she sent owls and talked through the Floo, even though (Roger later said) it was all done in code, so even if I had been a spy, I couldn't have understood a word. Then she showed me a photograph of a strange bedroom, apparently built under the eaves of an attic.

"Can you memorise that picture?" she asked. "Good. You need to Apparate to that place. No, I can't tell you where it is or who lives there. But they're expecting you."

I only hoped I had a clear enough idea of "destination" to make the journey to such a vaguely-defined place. But I certainly had the determination to stay alive, so I placed my whole mind on the blandly nondescript bedroom and soon felt the constricting disembodiment of Apparition. When I opened my eyes, the strange attic was all around me.

"So you made it," said Ernie Macmillan – of all people! "You'll have to stay up here for a while, but we promise we'll get you out as fast as we can."

Macmillan wouldn't tell me any more about the escape plan than Susan had – as if my own escape were none of my business! I wondered what Susan was telling Roger. I had to sit up in Macmillan's attic, browsing through clothes, books, quills and photographs that apparently belonged to his absent brother, for hour after hour while the world happened around me. One of the Macmillans was always in the room to check that I didn't double-cross them and escape, but they wouldn't give me any news about my parents or the Death Eaters.

More than twenty-four hours later, the monotony was broken by a loud pop! A bald, black Auror had Apparated into the attic.

"Good morning, Miss Davies," he said. "I've brought you a Portkey."

"Who are you?"

"It's all over," he said. "Cobbler's Cordwainery was destroyed an hour ago, but there was no-one inside. The Death Eaters blame you for Mr Cobbler's escape, so they are now hunting you down. You have no time to lose. Take this Portkey."

He held out a black cloth, careful not to touch the flat stone in its centre.

The instant I took the stone, something hooked around my navel and I was thrown into a whirling blackness. It seemed a very, very long way – further than any Portkey ought to take anyone – before I collapsed onto hard floor tiles, and Dad was helping me up.

"You made it," he said. "We were worried."

"Where are we, Dad?"

Before he could answer, Mum flung her arms around me and squeezed me breathless. "Tracey, you're safe!" she sobbed. "You've been so brave and clever in rescuing so many people! We're so proud of you and Roger!"

* * * * * * *

It turned out that we were in a small villa in Portugal. Aunt Angela had bought it after her own escape, and we all lived there with her for the next ten months.

The escape plan had really been very efficient, considering how many people needed to be organised so secretly. Susan had gone to Cobbler's in person to tell the staff that they were in danger, and Dad and the apprentice had agreed to Apparate to safe houses immediately (Dad to Michael Corner's; the apprentice to Justin Finch-Fletchley's). But Mr and Madam Cobbler said they couldn't close the shop before evening as this would arouse suspicion. So Susan went to St Mungo's to warn Mum (who was assigned to hide at Hannah Abbott's house), then sent Roger off to Anthony Goldstein's.

The apprentice wasn't a specific target, so it had been safe for him to spend a week at the Finch-Fletchleys' and then pretend he had been on his summer holidays. But the rest of us had needed to leave Britain. Susan's Auror friend couldn't make more than two International Portkeys without inviting awkward questions, so Mr Abbott had hired a Muggle motor boat to ferry Mum to Porto. Dean Thomas had constructed magically-forged passports so that the Cobblers could travel through the Channel Tunnel on the Muggle train. They had arrived in Paris several hours before the Death Eaters exploded their shop. The Goldsteins had put Roger on a Muggle aeroplane, which had been a terribly extravagant way to travel; Roger said the aeroplane wasn't nearly as exciting as a broomstick.

The Auror with the Portkey had gone to Dad yesterday, but he came to me last of all. It didn't seem to matter what I said or how I behaved; Susan and her friends simply hadn't trusted me not to double-cross them.

Aunt Angela didn't ask any questions; we lived at her expense for weeks and weeks. After a while, Dad started to make shoes, which he was able to sell to Muggle tourists. Roger found part-time work in a Muggle café, but he seemed to spend a lot of time on the beach, showing off on a Muggle surfboard and chatting up Muggle girls in bikinis. Mum did paperwork for Aunt Angela, who was trying to continue her interior design business in Portugal despite not speaking the language. She said it wasn't too hard to find customers because so many British expatriates were building retirement villas in Porto, but she had to be careful to leave any spellwork undetectable.

After a few days of acclimatising to the Portuguese sunshine, I didn't know what to do with myself. Susan's horrible words kept haunting me: What do you want more – to save your father or to carry on hating your brother? I had proved that saving my father was more important to me than hating my brother because I had debased myself in front of Roger rather than leave Dad to die, so why did I keep thinking about Susan's harsh accusation?

I couldn't push away the inkling that it was because I had considered, just for one moment, leaving Dad to die in order to spite Susan.

I was forced to remember that I had even considered letting myself be killed rather than beg for Roger's mercy.

If I could entertain such wild caprices, it made Roger far too important. He was more important to me than Mum or Dad, or even than my own life. And Roger had no right to be the most important person in my life!

These hauntings were so disturbing that I retreated into books. I read a great deal during that sunny Portuguese summer. How could Susan claim I was selfish when the very last thing I wanted to think about was myself? I wanted to think about ideas and puzzles, not people. Fortunately, Aunt Angela was always exchanging books with her new Muggle friends, so there were always new ideas pouring into the house.

"Always so quiet and good nowadays!" joked Roger as he once again barged through the veranda colonnades and into my personal space. "You're turning into a bookworm."

"I am not!" I slammed the book to the paving stones. And it was a book I really wanted to read. There, it had happened again! Roger had the power to stop me doing what I wanted. "You don't change at all, Roger. You smell of perfume, so you've been chasing girls again."

He grinned. "I've been selling ice cream to girls. There has to be service with a smile, doesn't there?"

There had probably been more than smiles in Roger's service, but I couldn't be bothered arguing. Roger was as annoying as ever, but he seemed quite unable to take offence at anything I said. How had Roger ended up controlling my life when all I really wanted was a Roger-free zone?

I had given up art, music and flying because of Roger.

I had been sorted into Slytherin because of Roger, and because of being in Slytherin, I had made friends with all those violent boys and boring girls.

Because of my friends, I had paid lip-service to the ideology of pure-blood superiority and Potter-hostility, and that was why Susan didn't trust me.

Because of my attempts to play the Slytherin game – to be unlike Roger – our family had become Death Eater targets.

And still Roger could end my enjoyment of an ordinary thing like reading by daring me to prove that I wasn't a bookworm. Bookworm or not, I simply wanted to read this book at this time. It was a Muggle chemistry book, and I was really interested in how Muggle chemistry compared with magical Potions. It wasn't fair to let Roger disrupt that.

I picked up the book and determinedly re-focused on chemistry.

All at once, where I thought there was an empty space in my mind, I suddenly located IT. The theory in the chemistry book was floodlit by a memory – a memory that shouldn't have been about Roger.

What had really happened on that long-ago day in Snape's dungeon when I had been so angry with Roger that I hadn't noticed what was in my cauldron? Once again, I had been giving all my attention to Roger, and I just hadn't noticed IT. Once again, Roger had been powerful enough to distract me from what I had really wanted to do.

He wasn't going to distract me today! I turned back to the previous page and re-read it slowly. Could IT be true? If so, why hadn't anyone else ever noticed?

But I already knew why I was the first to put this particular puzzle together. All this exotic theory about atomic structure and covalent bonding was quite different from the Hogwarts approach to Potions. Understanding these Muggle theories required as strong a background in Transfiguration as in Potions, and not many wizards had advanced skills in both subjects. Of the few who had, most were too isolated to bother to read Muggle textbooks. If there ever had been any other wizard who had noticed IT, it would have been some eccentric scholar who had never published or exploited the discovery.

But there seemed no doubt about IT. It was real. I knew it could be done, because I had already once done it. I could have long since confirmed IT if I hadn't been thinking so much about Roger.

So I would not think about Roger now. This was my project. I summoned a notepad and feverishly scribbled down everything I could remember about what I had tossed into my cauldron on that angry day nearly four years ago. What had been the vital catalyst, the secret component that would prove to be my very own Philosopher's Stone?

Half an hour later, I entered the villa's kitchen. "Aunt Angela," I said, "I need to borrow a cauldron."

* * * * * * *

Plenty of other people have written about how Harry Potter defeated the Dark Lord, so I can't be bothered repeating the story here. The war ended; most of the surviving Death Eaters were captured; and it was safe for the exiles to return to Britain.

Within days of You-Know-Who's death, Aunt Angela leased her villa to Swedish holiday-makers; I packed up my cauldron and potion box; and we all took an International Portkey home to London. Aunt Angela's shop in Diagon Alley had been wrecked, but she could afford to hire a new one and re-open her interior design business without a hitch. Dad helped Mr Cobbler to rebuild the old shoe shop, then they ordered in a load of Spanish leather and returned to cutting out shoes. Mum reclaimed her job at St Mungo's. Roger went back to the Caerphilly Catapults, only to find that their Keeper had been killed in the war and so he was warmly invited to fill the vacancy. Roger is always so lucky!

As for me, I returned to Hogwarts. I thought I might as well attempt my NEWT exams, although I was quite nervous about all the changes to the school. Gaping holes leered at me where once there had been solid walls, and the gargoyles flanking the staffroom door had been smashed. I knew classmates would be missing from the Slytherin dungeon, for Vincent had died, Draco had fought on the wrong side, and Pansy had thoroughly embarrassed herself by being publicly practical at a moment when she ought to have been brave.

I didn't even know the current password; but I only had to wait ten minutes before someone opened the dungeon door. As soon as I entered, Cecilia squealed and dropped her cards so that she could race to fling her arms around me.

"Tracey, you're alive! Why didn't you answer my owls?"

I explained that I had been Unsearchable, surprised to learn that the frivolous Cecilia had bothered to write. She really had been a better friend to me than I had ever noticed. I had only allied with her out of convenience, and she had often bored me silly, yet she was the one person in Slytherin who actually liked me, and she had been as loyal to me as the other girls had allowed. I decided on the spot to give her a present.

"Look, I made you something while I was in Portugal."

Cecilia squealed so delightedly over the trinket that I brought out of my pocket that I wished I really had created it especially for her. "Tracey, it's dead gorgeous! It just matches that lizard-brooch that Pansy gave me on our first day at Hogwarts – and now I have a lizard-bracelet to remind me of our last few days! Did you really make this all by yourself? You're dead clever! I'm so glad you've come back to school – I thought you never would!"

"I'm going to have a try at the exams next month," I said. "I was very busy with Potions and Transfiguration in Portugal. But I'm probably going to fail Herbology and Charms – even after Susan sent me the right books, I didn't read them much." By "fail" I meant "do worse than Roger". I really must stop this habit of letting Roger set my standards for me!

"I'll tutor you," said an unexpected voice behind me.

"What? Theo!" I blurted out. "You've changed! You never help anyone!"

"I think the war has changed all of us," said Theo. "Never helping anyone else never did me any good. Let's sit at a table and study properly. Cecilia, are you joining us?"

"Not likely! You're dead mean to force Tracey to study on her first night back!" Cecilia skipped back to her card-game, fingering her lizard bracelet as she went, and I settled at a study-table next to Theo.

"That bracelet was a cunning piece of Transfiguration," he said. "Did you use a Protean Charm on a template?"

"No, I need you to teach me how to do a Protean. I just, um, saw the lizard in my mind. Look, you can have this one." I pulled another ornament out of my pocket, this time a gentlewizard's cloak-fastener, elaborately shaped like a Celtic knot and studded with flashing diamonds. "Keep it, or sell it if you need the money. I want you to have it because, um..." I looked away, embarrassed.

"Actually I do need money," said Theo. "My father will never be out of Azkaban, and all his assets are frozen as long as he lives. So I have to make my own way in the world."

"In that case..." Since Theo had proved that he knew when to keep his mouth shut, it would be safe to tell him the truth. I whispered, "As I was saying, Theo, I want you to have this brooch because you never cared what anyone else thought, even when everyone else was flattering and lying. But don't be cheated when you sell it – the silver is just a cheap alloy but those diamonds are real."

Astonished, he began to ask, "Can you afford to give me – ?"

I stopped him. "So now you have a little financial backing, what are you going to do after your NEWTs?"

"Study at some Muggle university. Learn engineering – or perhaps history – and do something useful with my knowledge. What about you, Tracey? Do you have a plan for your future?"

"Yes, I'm going to make more of these diamonds." I brought the last bauble out of my pocket, a pair of diamond earrings. "I think I'll give these to Susan Bones; she's my cousin and she organised my escape. But the next lot I make I'm going to sell at a profit."

Theo stared. "Can you make diamonds? I thought they had to be mined."

"I spent my exile learning how to make diamonds. I combine charcoal with a few cheap catalysts and then use my own special formula to Transfigure it into genuine diamonds. I'm becoming more efficient all the time, so I'll soon be able to set up shop and become a diamond merchant."

I knew Mum and Dad would be proud that I'd chosen such an original and skilled career, even though they wouldn't care much about the profit aspect. I did wonder briefly what Roger would think, but fortunately I had not the least idea. Nowadays I wasted far less time thinking about Roger. Instead, I contemplated the lovely diamonds that were growing in the bottom of my cauldron. One day soon, I was going to be very, very rich.

THE END