The Silver Swan

Chapter 10

For several weeks after the events in Hogsmeade, nothing happened. In my heart, I knew that it was a false calm, but as the days went by I allowed myself to hope. Maybe cooler heads had prevailed. Maybe Dumbledore had finally got through to Harry. Maybe Hermione had persuaded them all to leave well enough alone. It was wishful thinking, of course. When I asked Hermione, she refused to talk about it. I couldn't help but notice, however, that, in public at least, she and Neville had gone back to being cordial but distant. Closer to home, meanwhile, Cho was now gone nearly every evening, and came back exhausted and tense. None of this boded at all well.

In late October what I had been dreading finally happened - the night when Cho didn't come home at all. When she finally turned up the next morning, she was pale and dishevelled, although seemingly unharmed. I couldn't help myself.

"Cho, where ..."

"Don't ask, Padma. Please, just don't ask."

All became clear at breakfast, when the owls delivered the Daily Prophet. 'Mysterious Death of Former Ministry Executioner' was front-page news, and then, down the page in even bigger print, 'HEAD SEVERED WITH HIS OWN AXE!!' It went on to tell of a mysterious break-in by person or persons unknown, of signs of fierce struggle, of traces of powerful spells. Near the bottom of the page, in small print, as if an afterthought: 'Housekeeper Mrs. Florence Goodpastor, 67, also killed.'

I dropped the newspaper and read no more. Just what crime had Mrs. Florence Goodpastor committed? Had she tried to come to the aid of her employer? Had she inadvertently put herself in the way of ... his killers? Did they simply decide to leave no witnesses? Hermione's words in Hogsmeade were ringing in my head.

"They would have taken out everyone there to get at us, Padma. They just don't care."

The day went by in a haze. I went through the motions of attending class, and then took refuge in the library, unable to face dinner in the great hall. I sat in the far corner, hidden behind a pile of books I couldn't remember having fetched, looking at words I could no more read than if they had been written in the secret language of Demons. At last it was closing time. Automatically, I went back home, but no sooner through the door I realised I couldn't stay. The Ravenclaw common room seemed hostile and oppressive. To stay here was to risk meeting her again and that, I couldn't do. Even worse was the prospect of going upstairs, where every detail reminded me of her, of our years of common existence.

I needed a refuge, and the unquestioning welcome of Hufflepuff House, with its soothing disorder, seemed the only place likely to offer it, and so for the first time I went there uninvited and unannounced. My arrival caused little comment. Looking around I saw why; I was not the first to have sought asylum that night. Sitting in the corner farthest from the fire were Susan and Hermione, and one look at them told me all I needed to know. It was bleakly obvious that Hermione, ever courageous, had just had in Gryffindor the confrontation that I had avoided in Ravenclaw - and that it hadn't done any good. She turned to look at me as I went to join them. Before any of us could talk, Susan gathered us up. We went back to the upstairs room we were coming to think of as ours. We settled in. For a long moment we kept silent, but this conversation could not be avoided, and we all knew it. I looked at Hermione, at her dead despairing eyes that I knew were mirrored in my own. As she began to talk, the reason for the depth of her anguish became obvious.

"They did this for me ... even though I'm perfectly safe, even though Neville did everything that needed doing that night without killing anyone, they couldn't leave it alone. They had to do ... this. I don't know them any more, it's like they've become different people."

This was actually something I had thought a lot about.

"No, I don't think so. Hermione, listen to me, I don't know Harry like you do, that's true, but I do think I know Ginny. And as for ... we all spent the summer together, you know. I saw what they mean to each other. And now they're afraid - not of the Death Eaters, not for themselves; they're afraid of losing each other like they lost Cedric and Ron and Mr. Weasley. I don't know, but I think it must be the same for Harry. You should have seen him that night in Hogsmeade. He was desperate, Hermione; he's afraid of losing you too."

That brought a bitter laugh.

"I know. How's that for irony? He tried to save me and now he's lost me just as surely as if the Dementors had caught me. That's what Ginny kept saying tonight, kept yelling. 'How can you, Hermione? You're abandoning him too!' It was awful ..."

I couldn't help remembering my conversation with Ginny, 'Hermione thinks I've gone crazy with grief...' I had denied it at the time: I was beginning to wonder. Even so, it saddened me to think of the bond between Hermione and Harry, the bond whose strength I had glimpsed the night of her birthday, being broken.

"Hermione, are you sure?"

"Yes, Padma, I'm sure. It's not just him; it's all of them. You know, I always remember what you told me last year, how Ginny helped Cho get over losing Cedric. I hoped that's how it would be now, but it's not. It's the opposite. You're right about those two; they make each other more desperate and then they both work on Harry. Not that it's all that hard ... he was always a great one for saving people. The only difference is that now he wants to strike first. He's convinced that if they'd started this earlier, he could have saved Sirius; he could have saved Ron. But he didn't, so now he has to avenge them. He thinks he's doing this for Ron."

She stopped to draw a ragged breath, and went on biting off her words in building rage.

"That's how I know. That's why I'm sure. Because Ron would never have done this. Never! Everybody thinks I'm the sensible one, but it was him. He's the one who kept Harry under control; he's the one who kept him sane. He would never have allowed this. He would have hated this ..."

... which finally brought us around to the topic we had been so carefully avoiding for so long.

"Hermione ..."

"I miss him too. Why can't they believe that I miss him too?"

Hermione wept.

Instinctively, I moved to comfort her, but a gesture from Susan stopped me, and I understood. We sat quietly and gave Hermione time to regain her composure and her dignity. Finally, she was able to speak again.

"They're all together, the three of them and whoever else they've managed to round up. They're planning something even more horrible, I just know it ... What do we do now? We have to stop them."

We sat in silence. Finally it was Susan who spoke.

"We need to see my aunt. All three of us. Millie too, if she'll come."

"Do you think she can help? Can she stop them?"

"Probably not officially. You heard Alden. Whatever they do, the Ministry are going to look the other way, if they don't back them openly. But she needs to hear about this. She knows a lot of people, different people. There's more to the wizarding world than the Ministry of Magic."

I liked the sound of that, but still, I craved reassurance. I looked from Susan to Hermione and back.

"Please, please, please tell me we're doing the right thing ..."

Even as I said it, I knew it sounded pathetic, that a childish ritual wouldn't help me here even if the other two had understood it, but neither of them seemed to mind. Susan just gave me a reassuring nod, but Hermione took time to consider my request seriously and, as she did, the last vestiges of doubt left her eyes, to be replaced by grim determination. Her answer was direct and final. Maybe she did understand.

"Yes, Padma, we are."

As I had on that night in the twins' back room, I took a deep breath, as if before a perilous dive.

"All right, then. Let's go."

*

* *

Knowing that we had a plan of sorts gave me the courage to return to Ravenclaw. Before we left, Susan explained ways and means.

"I'll send an owl to my aunt tonight. If I know her, she'll find a way to get us there discreetly. You should be ready to go tomorrow right after afternoon lessons. I'll try to get a message to Millie."

A thoughtful pause, then.

"It won't be easy, we've always been so careful and now it's more important than ever. I can't very well march into the Slytherin common room. Pity we don't have Arithmancy tomorrow. I'll try to slip her a note at breakfast."

But Hermione had an answer.

"Don't worry, I see her. We have Muggle Studies first thing in the morning."

Well, that was a shock.

"Millicent Bulstrode takes Muggle Studies!?"

For the first time in a very long time, Hermione laughed.

"Yeah, 'know your enemy,' she says."

"Thanks, Hermione, I should have remembered. All right then, meet back here tomorrow afternoon after your last lesson. If my aunt sends what I think she will, we can leave right from here."

*

* *

What Susan's aunt sent was an innocent-looking tin of treacle that turned out to be a Portkey. We four gathered in the upstairs room in Hufflepuff after afternoon lessons and prepared to go where it sent us.

Susan's aunt lived in a semi-detached house in Ealing, with rose bushes at the front and a tiny but meticulously tended garden to the rear. The house itself was comfortable rather than elegant, but seemed distinctly larger once you were in it than its outside dimensions suggested. Madam Bones saw me looking around.

"Yes, we've taken some liberties."

She was surprisingly different from Susan, as large and square as our friend was slight, her hair very short and silver grey, her voice loud and commanding. The eyes were the same, though, piercing grey-blue eyes whose gaze felt like a touch of chilled steel, although they seemed to warm when she smiled at me. Even so I would not, I decided on the spot, care ever to be interrogated by her.

No interrogation was in the offing, however. We sat in her kitchen and drank tea. Susan was silent as usual, but we were treated to the odd spectacle of Millicent Bulstrode and Madam Bones chatting like old friends, which, I later learned, they in fact were.

"I was very sorry to hear about your grandmother, Millicent. She was a remarkable woman."

"That she was. I wonder how many will be sorry, though."

"More than you might think, perhaps. You'll meet some tonight. They'll be very interested in you."

Millicent looked considerably less than thrilled at the prospect.

When we had finished our tea, Madam Bones finally deigned to include the rest of us in the conversation. More to the point, she questioned each of us closely about what we had seen and done, although she seemed to know all of the facts already. When we had finished, she turned to Susan and nodded.

"You were right, the Crones will be very interested in all of you."

Hermione, of course, had to ask.

"Please, who are the Crones?"

I was secretly delighted that, for once, I wasn't the only one not to know. Madam Bones looked thoughtful.

"They are a group of witches. Officially, they don't exist at all. In fact, this group or something like it has existed for far longer than the Ministry, perhaps as long as witchcraft itself."

She looked at me with a faint smile.

"Think of them as our council of eldests - although not all of them are old. In any case you'll find out soon enough. I'm taking you to see them. They'll have gathered by now; they know we're coming."

She had us all hold hands and prepared to Apparate with us.

*

* *

The Crones, as it turned out, met in a flat with fading flowered wallpaper and old-fashioned furnishings. It reminded me of the one in which my father's aunt had lived for many years.

"You were expecting perhaps a blasted heath?"

I blushed at having been so transparent, and looked at the assembly. The speaker, I realised, was none other than Madam Marchbanks, head of the Wizarding Examination Authority, whom I remembered from OWL's the year before. Her colleagues were a varied and colourful lot. Several resembled the Muggle children's book picture of witches, while others could well have been account executives or headmistresses of second-rate girls' schools. For all I know, they were just that. One smoked a green cigar. One wore a hat topped with a stuffed vulture. One was Penelope Clearwater. I did a double take. Yes indeed, my friend Penny, former eldest of Astraï. She smiled at me, in gentle mocking of my obvious surprise.

"A long way to go before I'm eldest here, eh Padma?"

These people were entirely too good at reading my mind. I was in for a bigger shock, however, when one of the children's-book witches turned to me.

"Patil?"

"Yes, Padma Patil."

"I knew your grandmother. Fine witch."

"Grandmother Morgan ... ?"

"Obviously. Not the Indian one. Met young Patil at University, wouldn't hear of anyone else. Stubborn as a mule, she was. At least the son had the sense to marry a witch."

Of all of the things I had expected from that evening, to hear of my Welsh grandmother, who had died long before I was born, who even my father barely remembered, was without doubt the last.

The grandmother they were really interested in, though, was Millicent's, but their conversation seemed to be carried out in a code to which I was not privileged. Was Millicent the heiress? they wanted to know. Had she received it? What 'it' was, I had no clue and no one was telling. I hated that.

About our immediate problem, however, there was no uncertainty.

"They may be misguided children, but it's evil they're doing."

"Evil! Surely you don't think they're gone over to Lord Voldemort? Is he controlling them somehow?"

Madam Marchbanks gave Hermione the pitying look she generally reserved for students on their way to the sort of examination results not calculated to make their families proud.

"You still don't understand, do you, girl? Young Riddle fancies himself the worst thing since Mephistopheles, but he's just a pawn, same as they are. Evil's the deed, not the doer."

Hermione nodded in agreement, but wasn't prepared to go without a more definite and useful answer. If these women were to be our new authority, her attitude made clear, they owed us a clear explanation.

"What should we do? How can we stop them?"

There was a general murmur, whether of disquiet or disapproval, I couldn't tell, but clearly this was not the question they wanted to hear. Finally, the woman in the vulture hat answered, and although her words were kind, the tone was brusque, almost bitter.

"There's probably nothing you can do to stop your friends just now, dear. Any more than I can stop my fool of a grandson."

Clearly Hermione understood who she meant.

"He thinks he's doing it for you. He told me so. He wants you to be as proud of him as you were of his parents. Can't you tell him ...?"

"No, dear, I can't, and neither can you. One of the things you have to learn is that we all make our own way."

But it was Millicent they came back to. One of the women who could have been a headmistress entered into the conversation for the first time.

"Once you come into your inheritance, that might all change. You will have power then, if you learn to use it. Do not be hasty, though. Think well before you act."

And then they gave us tea and biscuits and sent us home.

Our visit with the Crones gave us confidence but, truth be told, very little in the way of actual assistance. Indeed, about the only piece of practical advice they could seem to come up with was to keep our heads down and our eyes open, which we probably could have worked out on our own. Susan's aunt tried her best to explain.

"They live a very long time, you know. For them, a crisis doesn't mean next week or even next year. They've survived dark times before. They'll act when they're ready and no sooner."

"At least now we know we're not crazy ..."

"I trust, Miss Granger, that you knew that already."

*

* *

In the end, it wasn't Hermione who finally helped me to make up my mind; nor was it Madam Bones, or even the Council of Crones. It was my sister.

The day after our visit to the Crones was a Hogsmeade Saturday. Once again, as on the memorable Valentine's Day of the previous year, it was raining. The Lonely Hearts Club and Marching Society had long since disbanded however. Ginny went openly with Cho. Marietta was no longer with us. Michael ... I have no idea what Michael was doing but, knowing him, I am sure he wasn't left on his own. I was trying to decide whether to go at all when Parvati came in uninvited, wearing bright pink plastic boots and a matching waterproof cloak.

"Come along, dear, the glories of Hogsmeade await."

"Parvati, I don't know ..."

She looked down at me (a neat trick, as we were identical in height as in all else save personality) and did an imitation of Sibyll Trelawney so accurate I swear I could see the butterfly glasses.

"Miss Patil, I have Second Sight and Know the Future: The Inner Eye tells me that if I do not take you into the village and feed you butterbeer for the good of your soul you will spend the day here moping. So let's be getting on with it if you please."

She lost her struggle to keep a straight face and we both collapsed onto my bed in a fit of giggles - in my case a convenient smokescreen for a wave of gratitude that very nearly brought tears to my eyes.

"Thank you."

"What are sisters for?"

My own boots and cloak were promptly transfigured into a waterproof copy of hers - turquoise, of course. It was, I decided, a small price to pay.

*

* *

We never got around to the butterbeer. One look into the Three Broomsticks, crowded to overflowing with our fellow students, discouraged us both. Instead, we did what one does on a rainy Saturday in Scotland: we went for a walk in the rain.

As we walked, I found myself unburdening my troubled mind, telling my sister the confused tale of the past few days and weeks, of my own hesitation and vacillations, of my deepest and most secret doubt.

"Ever since I can remember, we've been taught that we had to fight against evil, fight against ... against You Know Who. That's what the DA was supposed to be all about. And now they're really doing it. How can that be wrong? Is it because I'm afraid? Is it because I don't dare join them? You were with me at Malfoy Manor; you saw what I was like. I could never do that again, never! Maybe all the rest of it is just rationalising, because I know I can't do it."

"Would you if you could, Padma? Do you really agree with what they're doing? With the way they're doing it?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you, I don't know!"

For the second time that afternoon, I was close to tears, but this time it was from sheer frustration. I went on, desperate to end this torture of indecision.

"What about you, what are you going to do?"

She said nothing, but I suddenly realised that her reticence was not like mine. There was something else, something she was reluctant to share with me.

"Parvati, what is it? What are you going to do? Tell me."

And then I knew.

"You've seen something in that damned Orb of yours, haven't you? Third time, Parvati: what are you going to do?"

She thought for a long time before answering, obviously choosing her words carefully.

"I've explained this to you before, Padma. I can never be sure what I'm seeing. What I think ... I think I do have a part to play, but not yet. For now, it's important that I not be too closely involved. Coming with you to Malfoy Manor, that was already a mistake; I knew it at the time. If I hadn't been there, the little girl wouldn't have died. I just couldn't let you go alone. I won't do it again, though."

More than that, she refused to say.

"So what about me? What do you see for me? You told me you could."

"I can't say, Padma."

"Can't or won't?"

"I wouldn't even if I could. Please don't ask again."

"I always knew Divination was useless ..."

Again we walked in silence, my sister obviously deep in thought. It occurred to me, suddenly and incongruously, that this was how I must often look to others. Still, I respected her silence. Clearly she was trying to help me, trying to tell me what she thought I needed to know without telling me how she knew.

"Padma, do you remember when Mum told us about Gandhi?"

I wasn't likely to forget. We were nine years old at the time and I was trying to come to grips with who I was: a witch among Muggles, neither wholly Indian nor altogether English, identical to and yet so different from my sister. I had been fascinated with Gandhi because, to my young eyes, he seemed so comfortable with himself, so ready to do whatever seemed right to him without caring what anyone else thought.

"Of course I remember; I must have talked about him for months that year."

"Incessantly. You were very annoying actually."

She smiled at the memory, but clearly this new line of conversation had a serious purpose.

"What you didn't know at the time is that all the while I was telling you to stop going on about him, I was also listening to what you were saying. Do you remember what he said about means and ends, Padma? I think it's the answer to your question."

I did remember, now that she reminded me, and she was right. It was the answer.

The end is in the means, as the tree is in the seed.

I knew what to do.