Chimaera of Judgement



CHAPTER TWO: An Unexpected Guest

"Dobby?"

A pale, thin face poked its way into the drawing room, bright green eyes sweeping from the faded old tapestry to the curio cabinet filled with dusty heirlooms. Hesitating in the doorway, the young man decided to give the room a closer look before checking the rest of the house.

"Dobby, are you in here?"

But he found himself distracted from his search at once. The mysterious objects in the display case held his interest as always they did; sure, there was the Order Of Merlin, First Class, which was more or less ordinary other than the fact that not many people earned them, but then there were the things his father had told him about at bedtime, and when they went camping in Uncle Bill's tent. Sometimes he wondered if the stories were nothing more than faerie tales, but he caught himself fantasizing about them, imagining himself doing all the brave deeds his dad had done when he was a boy.

The old, battered diary... a yellowed fang the size of a boomerang... a ring without a stone... but the one that always drew his attention, that sent a wave of nausea and excitement through his stomach, was the severed snake's head, stuffed and mounted on a plaque. It almost made him question whether his parents had once been Dark, or known Dark wizards and witches, but all he needed was to talk to them again to know it was not true. Even so...

"Albie?"

Albus Potter's eyes squeezed shut, willing her to go away. "What?"

Her auburn hair almost preceded her head into the room. "Mum says supper'll be ready in a bit."

"Thanks, Lil."

Of course, it was too much to hope this would be enough to get rid of her, and sure enough Lily crept into the room to stand behind him. 'Here it comes,' he thought to himself. 'She can't resist...'

"Looking at Dad's, er, trophies again?"

"Yeah. I was looking for Dobby, but got sidetracked."

She rubbed her earlobe absentmindedly as she hovered near his shoulder, gazing into the case. "Why are you so fixated on those? It's not like any of them are Corhuxes anymore."

"Horcruxes," he corrected her reflexively.

"It's... it's kind of morbid. Mum says you shouldn't spend so much time staring at them, Albie, they're just-"

"Stop calling me 'Albie'," he snapped. "And who cares if I have a look? They're cool."

"They're creepy," she said in hushed tones, blue eyes flicking to the snake's head and back to his face. He saw this, and chuckled bemusedly.

"C'mon, it can hardly bite you anymore."

"Alb-"

"Can't you give over? Why should you care I'm looking at them? If we weren't supposed to look at them, Mum and Dad would've binned the lot ages ago!"

"Yeah, well-"

"What about this tapestry?" he said, gesturing over his shoulder. "It's not even our family tree on there, yet we still have it!"

She sighed exasperatedly. "Oh, don't try that one on me, Al, you know that's only because there's a Permanent Sticking Charm on it."

Oops. "Yeah, well... anyway, you still haven't told me why you should care."

The corner of her mouth turned down. "Well... you're my brother. How can I not?"

It's the only argument she'd ever been able to give that made a dent in his hard-headedness, and he could already feel it working again. To avoid admitting this, he walked past her and said, "C'mon, Mum'll have kneazles if we take too long."

Even so, he grabbed her around the head affectionately and ignored her pleas for help as he half-dragged her toward the stairs, her feet trailing along the floor and rumpling the Axminster.

As they reached the bottom step, the doorbell rang. Glancing at each other and grinning, they raced to the front door, and after a brief scuffle, flung it open.

"Uncle Ron, Auntie Hermione!"

"Oh, Lily!" their aunt cried, lifting her off her feet as she squeezed her into pieces, muffling Lily's slightly-smaller face in her bushy brown hair. "How's my favourite niece?"

Ronald and Hermione Weasley, Albus's favourite relatives, had been planning to drop by and spend the night for a special occasion. Though beaming up at the adults, Albus already found himself peering between elbows for the children - their eldest was his age.

"Wotcher, Al," Ron muttered, shaking his hand as he stepped in from the porch. "How's this and that?"

"Good, good," Albus said, grinning still wider. "Where's Rose and Hugo?"

His uncle shrugged, tossing a walking stick into the umbrella stand shaped like a troll's leg. "Oh, they wanted to arrive by Floo. Seem to think it's a treat, more adventurous or something."

"Listen to him," Hermione told them conspiratorially as she released Lily. "He only prefers to Apparate himself so as to prove he's capable."

"Oi, that's hurtful, 'Mione! I just don't see the point of wasting perfectly good Floo powder when we can-"

"Rubbish," she whispered as she led them away from the stoop and Uncle Ron closed the door; Arnold, the family's aged Pygmy Puff, was drifting lazily through the entrance hall as they walked inside. "Did I ever tell you about the time he Splinched himself in his schooldays? Well, there've been several occasions, actually, but he once left behind half an eyebrow! Kept me in stitches for-"

"If you're done, dear," Ron said pointedly, trying to scowl as if offended. "Let's hush up before we wake Mrs Black."

"Oh," Lily said, smiling slyly. "Haven't they told you?"

"Hmm?"

"Mrs Black is gone!"

"Really?" Hermione gasped, glancing up at a pair of floor-length curtains. "But- but how? We've all tried everything, a thousand times, and nobody could-"

"Dad thought of it," Albus said proudly. "Just came to him one day."

"What finally got rid of the old bag?" Ron asked.

"Paint thinner."

His eyebrows knitted. "What's that?"

"Just what I said," Lily muttered.

"It's a kind of Muggle potion," Albus continued as they came to a halt in front of the curtains. "Dad said he figured they should give it a go, since they'd tried every magical solution in the book, and sure enough, no more Mrs Black. We can't get the frame down, though..."

"Sounds like one of Granddad Weasley's mad notions," Ron laughed, pulling back the curtain to reveal the ornate, empty frame. There was still a kind of half-hearted wheezing emitting from the blank canvas.

"Oh, I can't believe I didn't think of it!" Hermione said exasperatedly. "It's so simple!"

"That's probably why," Ron said knowingly. "Always straining at that twenty-pound brain of yours, never letting your thoughts flow."

"Like you do, you mean," she shot back. "The original Mr Relaxed-State."

"Kids!" The shout came from the stairwell up the hall to their left, cutting off Ron's retort. "Supper!"

"Is your father downstairs?" Ron whispered.

"Yeah," said Lily.

"Good."

As the three descended the steps into the kitchen, a red-haired witch turned from where she was messing about with the stove to face them. There was a greasy smudge on her cheek, and her bright eyes swept quickly over her children to the guests standing behind them. Just as her mouth dropped open, Albus noticed Ron raise a finger to his lips, and she closed it again, rolling her eyes.

The back end of a man was protruding from under a rather aged dresser as he attempted to wrest a wriggling something from underneath. "Blast you, Bandy, you mangy thing! Can't you behave like a normal cat?"

Their uncle's shoes echoed on the stone floor as he paced toward the middle of the room. Albus and Lily's mother and aunt both tensed. The rump under the dresser had stopped moving. All at once, Ron withdrew a wand from inside his robes as the man slid from underneath the chest and they both shouted, "Expelliarmus!"

Ron's wand sailed through the air, and the other man caught it just as he had finished rising to his feet.

"One of these days, Harry..." Ron gusted, shaking his head as he strode forward to take back his wand.

"Never in a million years," Harry Potter said with a grin, pulling him into a brief one-armed hug. Albus's father was almost his mirror image, save that Albus did not need glasses, and his jet-black hair was not greying at the temples. There was also the oddly-shaped scar on his father's forehead, the one that brought stares from passerby everywhere they went; Albus had often voiced the wish that he would find a way to remove it for his father's sake, but Harry always told him it was an important reminder of what happens when people talk to snakes too much. "Did well that time, though, might've got me if I hadn't heard the footsteps..."

"Stop trying to stroke my ego, you prat." Glancing over, he said, "Any sign of my little monsters yet, Ginny?"

"Not yet," Albus's mother replied, now wiping the grease from her face with an old rag. "Did you send them on ahead?"

"Yeah," he said with a frown. "You don't reckon they got lost?"

"Hmm..."

"Maybe we should check Borgin and Burkes," Harry muttered.

But at that moment, the fireplace erupted in green flames, and out spun two soot-covered figures, coughing and sputtering. The boy pitched forward onto the floor.

"Rose Nymphadora!" Aunt Hermione gasped, stomping across the kitchen. "Where on earth-?"

"It's Hugo's fault!" she coughed, brushing debris off her shoulders. "The git said it wrong!"

"Did not!" he whinged as his mother helped him up, scrubbing at his face with her handkerchief. "I said it perfectly fine!"

"You said 'Gimrold Place', not Grimmauld!" Rose sighed with an eyeroll. "Blimey, it's a wonder you don't gag on your own tongue!"

"Enough, please," said Hermione wearily. "Be glad you had extra powder with you."

"Told you they'd need it," Ron said under his breath.

"All right, Al?" Rose called to him as she shook the soot from her flaming orange locks. She seemed to have shot up over the Summer, making her appear to be all elbows and knees and (as always) just a bit taller than Albus. Still, the button nose and mischievous blue eyes hadn't dulled in the slightest, and they lent her an intense sort of beauty.

"Better than you, I suppose," he said, stifling a grin.

As they all became more comfortable in the kitchen (Rose and Hugo eventually magicked clean), Albus's older brother, James, came down to dinner. His reddish-brown hair, usually an untidy sort of tidy, hung clear down to his shoulderblades.

"What's all this?" Uncle Ron laughed at the sight of him. "You fronting for the Weird Sisters, now?"

"Gerroff," he muttered, shoving his Aunt's fawning hand away from him and adjusting his spectacles. "Potions homework... I just, wanted to see if it worked, that's all."

"And he's going to let me cut it before school starts," his mother said loudly. "If he wants us to let him buy that shiny new racing broom he's been saving up for."

"C'mon, Mum, give it a rest! I'm lead Chaser, and Dad's old Firebolt just isn't fast enough to keep up with the Slytherin team's Nimbus Two-Thousand-Twenty-Nines - I don't care how many disasters it survived!"

"Then give it back," said Harry bemusedly.

"Oh, get out of it," said James sulkily under his breath; his father knew full well he'd do no such thing until he had his own broomstick. James had been selected for his House Quidditch team almost before he even tried out, and had become increasingly nauseating about it ever since.

Right about then, a heavily-wrinkled old house-elf wearing a gold locket hobbled toward the table, straining slightly under a silver tray of onion soups. Aunt Hermione immediately rose.

"Let me help you with that, Kreacher!"

"Not necessary," he wheezed. "The day Kreacher can't serve Master's supper is the day Kreacher's head shall join his ancestors on the wall."

"Which might be any day now," Harry breathed once Kreacher was out of earshot, digging in the pantry. "Hate to say it, but... he's really having trouble. I've tried offering him clothes, said he could keep living here in his retirement, but..."

"How did he take you getting rid of Sirius's mum?" Hermione asked, a sympathetic crease playing at her brow.

"Not well," Ginny whispered. "But we've got him convinced it was only because she was too loud and we were trying to quiet her down."

They worked their way through the soup, a delicious shepherd's pie, and a pudding that made Aunt Hermione ask for the recipe before Uncle Ron cleared his throat and withdrew a rather flat, square package from beneath his cloak.

"Well, as I'm sure you'll remember," he said rather pompously as Albus's father rolled his eyes, "today happens to be somebody's birthday. Now, I wanted to get this to you last year on your fortieth, but I couldn't get the permits and the gold together. Finally, however..."

But by this time, Albus's father was already ripping the brown parchment off, a curious smile playing over his features. At last, he displayed to the room a blank frame.

"What, you don't think Mrs Black's empty portrait is enough?" he laughed.

"Ask him to come out," Hermione said, beaming.

"Er..." Harry held the frame at arm's length. "Hullo?"

And as the two families stared, a wizened old face edged into view, half-moon spectacles perched on his crooked nose. Mouths fell open, and Hugo gasped.

"Happy forty-first, Harry," the painting said, blue eyes twinkling as he smiled. "I hope you'll not think me rude for neglecting to buy you a gift, but it is rather difficult for me to pop down to Diagon Alley these days."

"Not at all, Professor," he replied automatically, his own eyes brimming with tears. "Where- how did you wrest this from Hogwarts?"

"I didn't," Ron said, leaning back in a self-satisfied manner. "Got another one made - and you wouldn't believe what it took to stop them keeping it for themselves and hanging it in the Ministry, I think they only handed it over cos I was gonna give it to you - course, you always get the best of. Hang it up next to Phineas if you like."

For the first time since their meal had begun, Albus found he wanted it to be over. Before he could excuse himself from the room, more of his father's words reached his ears.

"This- you guys- cheers," Harry finished feebly, wiping his eyes on his napkin while trying in vain to make it unnoticeable. "It's perfect."

o o o

"That was old Professor Dumbledore, wasn't it?"

Albus nodded, bouncing the miniature rubber Quaffle off the wall of his room, catching it when it came back to where he was leaning against his bureau. He'd felt depressed since supper, and Rose, oddly insightful as ever, had cut straight to the heart of it without meaning to.

"Cor, I had no idea Dad was planning a great gift like that," she said, stretching out on Albus's bed, hair hanging nearly to the floor as she stared at him upside-down. "And for over a year, no less!"

"Hmm."

"Don't you think it's brilliant?"

"Whatever."

His cousin rolled over onto her stomach, eyebrows raised at him. "You don't?"

"Sure I do, I just... it's weird."

"What is?" she scoffed. "Never seen a moving painting before?"

"Not that - I mean, Headmaster Dumbledore. He's... he's dead and all."

"Well, yeah."

"And I was named after him."

At this, Rose frowned with dawning understanding. "Oh... but still, might be nice to get to talk to him now, right? Find out more about the man."

"Yeah, sure - what fun. You'd like to have a talking painting of Aunt Nymphadora in your room, then, Rosie? Suppose that wouldn't be weird at all."

The frown deepened. "Point taken, mate. Wow, I'm sorry."

"I'm... I'm not saying I blame your dad for doing it," he said carefully. "I mean, to everybody else I guess this is the best gift ever, and it is dead amazing that he could pull it off. It's just-"

"Hey, you don't have to defend yourself from me, Al; I hear you."

The silence deepened as they stared at the old coat-of-arms painted on the wall, thinking about the complicated matter of namesakes and those passed on. Even as it disturbed him, Albus began to see how it could be truly interesting to speak with the old headmaster's portrait, and wondered what he might learn.

Before they could think any farther on this, a knock sounded at the door. "You lot not getting frisky in there, are you?"

"James Sirius Potter! That is disgusting!"

"All right, all right, gerroff me, Mum, I- hey, put that wand away!"

Albus and Rose glanced at each other and sighed toward the ceiling as one; Albus's brother had always maintained that cousins of opposite gender made for strange best friends, and constantly reminded them of this. Being that they'd been thick as thieves from the pram, both had long ago become desensitised to his gleeful chiding, and even appreciated the levity now and again - though if they weren't in the mood it was simply tiresome.

"It's almost bedtime, you two," Albus's mother called through the door (and gritted teeth).

"That's my signal to swap spots with Hugo," Rose sighed, rolling forward onto the floor, where she landed in a crouch.

"Don't let Lily keep you up all night jabbering away."

She laughed. "Like I can stop her. G'night, Al."

"You too."

"And..."

He glanced up to see her hand hesitating on the serpentine knob. "Well, er... sleep tight."

As Rose exited and Hugo poked his bushy, light-brown cranium in, Albus realised she'd been trying to make him feel better about Dumbledore's portrait joining them at Number Twelve. Not entirely a successful effort, but he appreciated it all the same.

o o o

The next morning, Hugo woke Albus by whinging loudly at his mother when she came in to force him into a bath. Albus wasn't keen on speaking to him the rest of the day.

After breakfast, Rose and Albus set out to explore the rest of the house. They'd done it a thousand times, and it hadn't turned up much since they were eight, but it was more fun than yet another game of Exploding Snap or tormenting Lily and Hugo. Also, it afforded them the opportunity for idle chatter, which they didn't get as much of during the Summer holidays.

"Never again. Not after last year's fiasco."

"Come off it, Al, that was a fluke - you've always done so well when we play at the Burrow! And how could they have known it was a thestral knocking you off your broom?"

"But they all laughed. Even you!"

Rose had the decency to let her ears pinken as they ran their hands behind the tapestry, checking for hidden doorways they knew didn't exist. "Y'know, I'm starting to get sick of apologising for that - I only laughed because I could see what really happened. You don't know how comical the whole thing looked!"

"Genevieve Nott was out there, though," Albus growled. "I might've lived it down if the Slytherins hadn't got wind of my spectacular dive."

"It wasn't your fault," Rose reiterated forcefully. "And hey, I tried to back you up later, but they were all too busy l-" But she quailed under his glare.

"Leave it. I'm not putting myself through the pain and suffering again; I'll just keep cheering you and James on."

Rose sighed resignedly. "If you like. Still say you'd make a better Seeker than that Creevey prat."

"Well, anybody would," Albus said conversationally now the pressure was off him. "How could they let a first-year on the team, anyway?"

"It's his size." She leaned in conspiratorially. "Wood confided in me that she only picked him cos he had the right build and didn't fly straight into the goal posts at tryouts."

"Mm."

"'Course, in that last game he did all right - actually caught the Snitch! Granted, we were a hundred and eighty points down, and I think it was an accident, but... hey, what's wrong?"

Albus blinked, turning his attention back to Rose. "What? Sorry, I-"

"Oh, not this again," she said, glancing at the curio cabinet he'd just been eyeing.

"Sorry," he said more earnestly.

"Let's get it over with," she gusted airily, grabbing him by the arm and jerking him over to the glass. As she did so, he thought he heard a creak outside the door, but when he looked nobody was there; must have been Kreacher skulking around.

"Here lies the remnants of what used to contain bits of Lord Voldemort," said Rose, sarcastically pompous as her father. "They're old, they're musty and dusty, and they don't do anything. Hufflepuff's sippy cup, Slytherin's ugly necklace, Ravenclaw's formerly-fabulous headgear, and some other rubbish. All they're good for now is paperweights."

"Dammit, Rose, don't you realise?" said Albus in hushed tones; he knew he sounded quite silly, even mad, but he couldn't help it. "The most contemptible wizard of all time split his soul into seven parts and sealed them away, one-hundred-per-cent sure nobody would ever find them, and along comes my dad and-"

"Stabs them to pieces," she finished in a bland tone. "You've told me. Billions of times."

"But wouldn't it be great to have an adventure like that? To go toe-to-toe with evil, to save the wizarding world? I'd kill for that kind of excitement!"

"Kill?"

His fervent grin slipped a notch. "Okay, fine, but I might chop off a leg or two."

Rose laughed reluctantly. "Thing of it is, Al, we're not likely to trip over Salazar Slytherin's cursed pants or something. Obviously it might be fun, a decent conversation starter, but... it's just not going to happen! We're never gonna hunt down our own Philosopher's Stone, or raid the Department of Mysteries, or any of it!" When Albus continued to look mutinous, her voice lost all edge. "Or maybe we will - who knows? But the old rubbish in this case isn't where we're gonna find honor and glory."

"Fine, fine," he sighed. "I know I'm being stupid."

"Not stupid, mate. Only swept up in a pipe dream."

At least heartened that she didn't think he was dim for having fantasies, he coughed and suggested they move on to Lily's room - assuming, of course, that Lily wouldn't be needing it.

END Chapter Two

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