Things Ain't Like They Used to Be

Things Ain't Like They Used to Be

**

"Dumbledore's dead," he said briskly, not looking at her.

"W-what?" she gasped, dropping the stack of books she had been carrying to the Restricted Section.

Argus knelt down, knees screaming in pain as he remembered he wasn't a young man anymore, remembered that he was irreversibly an old man, always tracing the same paths through the same castle with worn feet and arthritis-withered hands. What was left for him in this old castle, now that Dumbledore was gone?

He picked up the books, carefully smoothing wrinkled pages to a semblance of their prior perfection. The same couldn't be done to him, couldn't be done to Irma, but her books could remain perfect and unchanged for centuries.

"Argus, you must be joking!" Irma said, voice still drenched in disbelief. "I've told you before, your sense of humor is abysmal."

He stood slowly, books held carefully with one arm, the other pushing his body up. He looked at Irma, looked at the annoyance etched in her features and regretted that he had to let her know. "I'm not joking. You heard the attack."

"But Dumbledore was... away, he was away and the attack was a scuffle between students, the war can't be here," Irma babbled, biting nervously on her clawlike nails.

Argus lead the way to the restricted section, and allowed Irma to point him to the proper shelf to replace the books on. "You knew it was a matter of time," he said. He'd known that Dumbledore wasn't immortal, and that sooner or later the old man would go, one way or another.

Irma stared, unfocused, at a book with wax dribbles down the spine, obscuring the title.

Argus patted at her arm, knowing that Irma's loyalty to Dumbledore ran deeply. His did, too, forged in trust and opportunity. Dumbledore had given him, a useless Squib from a squalid, backwoods family, a decent job in a proper Wizarding place, something more than he had ever dreamed he would have.

With Dumbledore gone, his future was uncertain.

Irma began to shake, slightly, and Argus stepped closer to wrap his arms around her, tightening his embrace to try and stop the woman's sad shakes.

"Oh, Argus," Irma said, sliding her arms around him and pressing her cheek into his old coat. "I can't believe it, I don't want to believe it!"

"You not believin' isn't going to make it not have happened," Argus said roughly. That damnable old man, he thought irrationally, managing to make his Irma cry.

It was hard to believe that he would never again have to march up to the Headmaster's office to remind him to mention the banned items at the Sorting Feast. He would never bump into the man, dressed in indecently brightly colored robes in the middle of the night, wandering through the halls, trying to ward off insomnia and whatever problems were plaguing him that day.

"Don't be such an insensitive clout," Irma sobbed into his coat, which was becoming increasingly damp.

Argus wondered if someone sensitive had been impersonating him in Irma's presence. "All I'm sayin' is that pretending that what's happened didn't happen is a good way to end up like the old man."

Irma pulled slightly away, looking up at Argus with red, puffy eyes. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that there's a war on," Argus said. "And it's worse than it was before, because before we had Dumbledore to protect us."

"We still have Hogwarts to protect us," Irma said, looking around at the shelves of books she had spent her adult life taking care of. "Please don't say what I think you're going to say, Argus. I couldn't bear it."

"It's not safe here anymore," Argus said. Irma tried to pull out of his embrace, but he held tightly to her arms. "Please, just listen to me. Dumbledore was killed here, at Hogwarts. There were Death Eaters here, at Hogwarts. It's not safe."

"I don't care," Irma replied. "This is my home, this is where my life has been spent. I can't leave."

"I've spent a good number of my years here too," Argus said. "But you're more important to me than these walls or books or even everything that this castle means to me. Irma, if you was killed like... If you weren't here, I wouldn't want to be, either."

She bit her lip, looking around at all the books she had lovingly cared for, thinking about her set of rooms with their comfortable, staid feel, and then looked at the grizzled crotchety man who had swept her heart away so many years ago.

"We can't leave until after the funeral," she said, staring straight at him.

"Of course not," Argus agreed.

"And we'll leave the country, we'll stay away from this war," Irma said.

Argus nodded.

"And, when things are safe again, when this is all a bad memory, we'll come back and take back our lives," Irma finished.

"As long as you're there," Argus said. Irma relaxed back into his arms, and Argus stroked her grey, wiry hair to comfort himself, to assure that she was still there and still part of his life.

Life just wouldn't be worth fighting for without her.