Fic: The Hermit
"The slow, plodding passage of time - sometimes a very long time, indeed."
1. 0000hrs
“It just happens. It’s the unlucky card that life deals you with, and you just have to play your hand and hope for the best.”
- Argus Filch on being a Squib
Present
His internal clock was set, and just a fraction of a second before his Muggle alarm clock started its atrocious beeping, Argus Filch reached over and turned it off. It was the start of another day for the caretaker of the school who spent the dark hours of the night tidying the main areas of the school.
The corridor outside the Potions classroom was always the worse. It was no exception today, for a couple of fourth years had gotten into a fight right after class, and their half-completed potion projects burnt foot-deep craters in the floor of the corridor. Argus, though known to be a squib, was still born and bred of magical persuasion - with concentration and determination, he could use the potions and equipment that the Headmaster had kindly provided him to clean the castle and repair mishaps like the one he had to deal with tonight.
There were times when he could deal with other magical objects, such as when he was cleaning up the Headmaster’s office, or when Professor Flitwick needed some assistance in being pried from the ceiling after some student’s particularly vigorous sticking charm.
But most of all, Argus found himself dealing with wands - the younger students, especially the Muggle ones, had a tendency to misplace them; at other times, a student would lose his or her wand in a corner of the castle, only to return to find that the castle had changed. And when the castle changed again, Argus would find the wand which he would first grip tightly in a white-knuckled fist of jealousy, and then relax his fingers to a caressing touch. Every wand he touched felt like a ghost limb, like the existence of a body part which his mind insisted upon but his core rejected. It was at times like these, when he found himself missing his pre-Squib days.
Yes, a wizard without his magic was a Squib, but few children knew that a Squib could be made. It was fact hidden from them by their over-indulgent parents.
1st June, 1971
The temperature outside his window had dropped into the negative range moments before a twelve year old Argus Filch woke up with a start. The clock chimed loudly in the sitting room downstairs just as it did every night, but something did not sit well with Argus tonight.
Barely a week ago, Argus finished his first year at Hogwarts, continuing the proud tradition of the Filches when he joined the House of Hufflepuff. He came home all smiles and excitement, happily telling his family about his time in school - how he came in 2nd academically amongst the Hufflepuff first years, how there was a pretty brunette two rows behind him in Potions class, and how the seniors in the House looked after him and taught him to swish and flick his wand for Wingardium Leviosa. His mother had hugged him with a smile, while his father patted him on the shoulder and commented on how quickly he had grown.
But there was none of that excitement, that pride that he returned home with now. Something was wrong, and as Argus scrambled for his wand in the drawer by his bedside, his suspicion was confirmed by a piercing scream that rang through the house. Barefooted and unconcern of being seen in pink pajamas, he rushed to the source of the noise - the sitting room.
Argus didn’t know what to expect, but when he stumbled into the room, he saw his father bound with thick black ropes, slumped at the corner of the room, a trickle of blood running down his right temple. His mother was being held down by two men dressed in black robes, while another three stood back and laughed. He couldn’t think, but rushed straight for his mother, whereupon his small five foot frame was swept up in a parody of a hug, and a wand pointed at him shot ropes that bound him as tightly as his father was bound.
A quick enervate was fired at his father, and when the older Filch opened his eyes and started pleading and yelling at the men to release his wife and child, one of the men who was not holding Mrs. Filch down strode over and shoved Argus’ father’s head back to a painful degree, before a gloved hand forced open his yelling mouth, and a severing charm split Mr. Filch’s tongue and vocal chords. He choked on his own blood, and Argus watched the split tongue loll around his father’s mouth as he screamed noiselessly.
Argus was stunned. He had never heard of the charm being used in such a way before, much less seen such a brutal application of it. The older boys who knew the charm used it to severe each other’s belts to cause embarrassment in front of the girls, not to shut someone up. He clenched his eyes, trying to get rid of the sight, but the version that played beneath his eyelids was much more vivid than the one he had just seen.
A low moan came from one of the men, and Argus opened his eyes reflexively, only to see his mother naked from waist down, and a man forcing himself on her so brutally that she, a married woman, was bleeding onto the floor. The pain caused her to slip into unconsciousness, but a series of well-timed enervates ensured that she was awake to scream throughout the worse.
By the time the man had finished, Argus had emptied the contents of his stomach several times over onto his own lap, for the ropes that bound him didn’t allow him to turn away. He had tried to shut his eyes, but a cruel hand yanked at his hair and a rough voice commanded him to watch, and when he shut his eyes, a shock of his brown hair would be pulled out, leaving his scalp to bleed.
Mrs. Filch was then turned around so that she was facing her son, and Argus knew that it was his turn. When the first Cruciatus hit him, he screamed and screamed while he watched the blank eyes of his mother tear.
The Argus’ ordeal lasted for nearly three hours, and Cruciatus was merely an appetizer. The men seemed to realize that seeing Argus hurt tortured his parents more, and so Argus was put through unimaginable tortures. The pain was too much to bear, so much so that Argus, when he grew up, would only have a hazy memory of the events, from when a blunt bread knife was used to saw runes into his stomach, to when his nails were pulled out one by one and all the joints in his left leg, from toe to thigh, fused together to form a single bone then crushed with a blunt bludger bat.
When the clock in the sitting room chimed three, the men decided that they had had their fun. Argus was found, still bound and horrifyingly injured, the next morning by Headmaster Dumbledore in the middle of the debris. His father had suffocated on his blood, while what was left of his mother was only fit for St. Mungo’s. She eventually killed herself two nights after being admitted.
Argus, however, was healed at St. Mungo’s, but when the Professor took him under his wing for the remainder of the holidays, it was discovered that he could not perform anymore spells. It was the theory of the Healers at St. Mungo’s that Argus’ core was drained of magic when he was tortured. Additionally, some part of Argus’ mind felt that his magic had not protected him, and was now rejecting any magic that his body tried to generate. It was only later that Argus learnt that the men in black were Death Eaters.
And it was in the early days of Voldemort’s rise that Argus Filch was made a Squib.
***
2. 0300hrs
“It exists, you know. Love exists. The silly students know nothing about me, but I will let them have what little comforts them in this cynical age.”
- Argus Filch on love
Present
It was hard work, but he had successfully repaired the floor outside the Potions classroom. Argus gathered his supplies into a basket - plastic, pink and very unsuitable for him - and headed down to the Quidditch stands.
The Quidditch stands should have been empty at this time of the day, but Argus Filch had known to expect two boys to be there on the mornings prior to certain matches - Gryffindor and Slytherin were playing against each other today. Argus’ duty at the pitch today was to clean up the stands (the players tended to leave paper cups and the like after training on the sits) in preparation for the match. The students were lectured over and over again to keep the pitch clean by their respective Heads of Houses, but after a few days, the teachers’ words would be forgotten and the cleaning would become Argus’ work again.
From where he stood on top of the stands, the unmistakable shock of Malfoy blonde hair stood out proudly against the dark cloth that the fair head was laid upon. Draco Malfoy’s grey eyes were closed, while Harry Potter leaned back deeper into the seats and ran his long fingers through the blonde strands that were splayed across his lap. The boys didn’t speak, but Argus, even from a distance, could sense the calm affection emitting from the two boys.
It was tough, falling in love at the time of war when you could lose anyone at anytime, and Argus was more aware of this notion than anyone else, and so he allowed this couple their freedom to move around school in the wee hours of the morning. When they crouched giggling in a corner under the Potter boy’s Invisibility Cloak, Argus would shuffle past on his bad leg as though he heard nothing. When Mrs. Norris sniffed accusingly at an empty room, he would sweep her up in his arms and make a big show of asking if there was anyone in the room.
And always, when he turned his back and left, he would listen to the sigh of relief of the undiscovered couple. On days when this happened, the Headmaster would smile a knowing smile at him when they passed by each other in the corridors, and Argus would feel a surge of pleasure in his soul - he gave the boys one more day to be together, and love was something that deserved a day more.
It wasn’t just for the boys that he did this. He turned a blind eye to Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom’s night outings, and slipped into a hidden enclave when he saw Pansy Parkinson and Michael Corner emerge from the Quidditch sheds. But when Ron Weasley had snuck out from the Gryffindor dormitories for a midnight rendezvous with Lavender Brown, Argus had been on them like ants on honey.
The students, in all their youth, couldn’t understand for the life of them why some couples constantly got caught by the caretaker while others got away with murder. They chalked it up to the carelessness of their peers, and left the matter at that. They were children, and did not know the difference between love and infatuation.
Argus did though. He clamped down hard on infatuation and lust, but allowed love, whether it be an epic love or puppy love.
After all, Argus Filch had been in love before too.
24th December 1980
Winter at Hogwarts was always a beautiful season, even more so on Christmas Eve and Christmas itself. At the edge of the Forbidden Forest, Argus Filch, now no longer a boy but a man, clambered awkwardly up a ladder to reach the mistletoe that grew parasitically on the tree.
As he manually snipped of sprigs for mistletoe to decorate the school, a noise from the path not thirty yards away from his tree drew his attention to it. It was a carriage, sleek and white, pulled by four non-magical horses. The horseman that drove the carriage tugged on the reins in his hands, bringing it to a halt right next to Argus’ ladder. He tilted his wrinkled, weather-worn face up to the caretaker.
“Excuse me, young man, my lady is looking for the Headmaster but has no idea where to look. Would you kindly lead us to him?”
Argus nodded, and climbed down the ladder slowly, his bad leg hampering his movement. But he made it, and in a few moments, found himself sitting in the carriage with the loveliest girl he had seen in his life.
She had no magical aura, he was certain, but it did nothing to subtract from her beauty. Her hair was hidden under a hood, but a few stray locks peeked out from the dark material letting Argus know that her hair was a silvery blonde. Argus knew that she could not have passed her twentieth summer yet. She turned to him with a shy smile on her lips, her green eyes slightly lowered.
“Thank you for helping us, sir.”
A hot red flush rose from the vicinity below Argus’ collar, before it overtook his face. He stuttered a reply, and then proceeded to tear his eyes away from her face and stare at his hands intently. All of a sudden, the lonesome introvert wished that he was in cleaner clothes, had a nice haircut and did not smell like the sweat of his recent work in the forest.
And just like that, Argus Filch fell in love for the first time at the age of twenty one.
He held himself straight and attempted to lessen his limp as he led her through the passages of Hogwarts to the Headmaster’s office, trying to reclaim what little dignity his years of solitude had left him with. She, on the other hand, visibly slowed down her strides to match his labored walk, and when Argus dared to glance back at her, he saw in her eyes a look that he never seen before.
Admiration.
Argus had long been on the end of sympathetic looks and cruel stares, but it had been too long since someone looked at him with respect. The last time it had happened, in fact, was when he finished his first year in Hogwarts, and he had been announced second in the House. It was a proud moment, and his fellow dorm-mates had clapped him on the back and smiled at him in admiration. Now, the look which he received from the young lady told him that she admired him for overcoming the odds that life had dealt him with, and he felt like he was twelve all over again.
When they reached the Headmaster’s office all too soon, she smiled at him again, this time with less shyness, and shook his hand.
“Thank you, sir.”
Later in the day, Argus found out from the Headmaster that she was the elder sister of a seventh year student from Slytherin. In fact, the Headmaster invited Argus to his office to tell him about her.
Her name was Lisa Todd, and she wanted to see her brother to give him his Christmas gift. The Todds were an old pureblood family, and when Lisa, a Squib, was born to them, they left her with a nanny in the countryside to grow up without any ties with her family, for they saw her as a disgrace to the name. Her brother had found out about her a few months back, and they had been corresponding on a regular basis before Ralph, the brother, asked the Headmaster for permission for Lisa to visit the school.
“He wanted to meet her so badly,” said the Headmaster, “But he couldn’t let his parents know. And that’s why she’s here.”
“Oh and Argus,” the Headmaster said before he left, “She will be dining with her brother at all times for the week. Let’s give them some time alone tonight,” he concluded with a wink.
Argus walked thoughtfully back to his room, taking the long way to let himself think. That night, he scrubbed himself clean with hot water and soap, and brushed down his best robes and washed and brushed his long brown hair till it gleamed. A bouquet of perfumed lilies stood in a vase of water on his dressing table. He had pleaded with the Herbology professor for them, knowing how hard it was to find flowers in the wild in winter, and he had whooped for joy when they were given to him. They were meant to be a gift for Lisa. He was going to meet Lisa Todd properly, and he damn well was going to make it count.
The next morning, Argus dressed himself and pulled his long hair back into a low ponytail at the base of his neck. But when he opened the door, the Headmaster stood at the doorway with a sad look on his face.
“Argus, I’m sorry. Ralph’s parents found out about her trip here and she left in the wee hours of this morning to avoid a confrontation with them.”
Argus closed the door in the Headmaster’s face, and stumbled back to sit down on his bed. He buried his face in his hands, and unbidden tears fell from his eyes.
Yes, Argus Filch had loved and lost, though others might say that he had never loved at all.
***
3. 0600hrs
“It’s where I live, where I work, and it will be where I die. Hogwarts is more than a home to me, I am a living, breathing part of the school as much as it is a part of me.”
- Argus Filch on what Hogwarts means to him.
Present Day
Students, as a rule, thought too highly of themselves, or at least they did in the opinion of Argus Filch. The Weasley twins were familiar with the passages in the castle, and they thought that the caretaker would never catch them plotting and carrying out their acts of mischief. But unlike the Weasley twins, and now the Potter boy, the hidden passages weren’t for escaping teachers or heading out to Honeydukes on a school day.
The hidden passages were his home, his work, his life.
For instance, the boys never found out about that the ‘cave in’ of the passage behind the mirror on the fourth floor was merely an illusion. It was a favor that the Headmaster had done for him, creating a wall that resembled a cave in that responded only to Argus’ touch. When he placed his hand on the ‘rubble’, it would automatically reform itself into a wall with two doorways - one which led to his room; another which bent the laws of physics and led him straight to the cemetery where his parents were buried, several hundred miles away from Hogwarts.
The boys simply knew it as a blocked passage that used to lead out of school.
And now, after making sure that the stadium was spick and span for today’s match (after which it would be in a disgusting condition again), he slipped under the stands and when he was somewhere beneath the Hufflepuff section, he leaned against an unassuming pillar of wood as though he was stopping to catch his breath…
…only to sink right into the hard wood, and reappear in a corridor off the Ravenclaw dormitory, where he headed down the corridor which lead to the entrance of the Great Hall.
His task at the Great Hall was rather simple. Some students had stuck an obscene picture of Professor Trelawney on the doors of the Hall, and no un-sticking charm could remove it, and so he had to do so by hand. Argus always felt a twinge of pride when work like this came to him, as working with their hands was something most wizards forgot how to do by the time they reached their teenage years.
And as he scraped at the parchment, students started to trickle into the Great Hall for breakfast.
2nd September 1974
When he had first returned to the school after the night of torture, he had tried to proceed with life as though nothing happened. But it wasn’t long before the looks of sympathy that came his way started to take its toll, and with no friends his age (the students now no longer considered him one of them), Argus started to withdraw into himself. He tried, he tried so hard to make friends with the students, but they would drift away from him as their magic got stronger, and he would get left behind again and again.
And now at fifteen, Argus Filch was a lonesome boy, with a limp in his left leg and hair that hung haggard and limp down the sides of his face. When Professor Dumbledore had taken him in, he had told him,
“The school shall be your home, Argus. Learn it well.”
And he did. He explored the nooks and crannies of the school, learning about how some rugs could be pulled, literally, right from under your feet the hard way, and how the one could go from one spot to another in the castle in the quickest time. As he learnt more and more about the castle, he could feel Hogwarts learn more about him. He was still bitter, for he was young and felt it unfair for him to be a mere fixture in the school, but the castle made it easier. It would show him secret doorways that opened up to magical gardens, or corridors that led him to what looked like a piece of the starry night sky.
Now, as the students headed to breakfast, he stood in an enclave near the Great Hall watching them. The enclave made anything which entered it invisible, and it was there where he could comfortably watch the students enter and leave the Great Hall.
It was something he had done for two years in a row now, watching the students on their first official day back, though the teenager wasn’t sure why he did it. He had an inkling of an idea that it had something to do with the twinge of longing and streak of jealousy that emerged in him on the 1st of September each year, when he felt the castle awake with the many untamed magical cores within it. But he knew it was also because when they walked past, if he just imagined hard enough, he could see himself as one of them, spending seven happy years in school.
Seven happy years…
And that was when it struck him that he did it because he wanted to feel like he was a part of Hogwarts. Sure enough, it was supposed to be his home, but for Argus, there was the fear that this home would be taken from him when he grew up. And while others would leave it saying that they were graduates from Hogwarts, he would leave it unable to say the same. He wanted, no, needed, to have some form of permanence in Hogwarts, and with his abilities, or lack thereof, there were few things that he could do.
He tried helping out the Herbology professor as a gardener, but could not cast the necessary spells to take care of the plants or to protect himself from the more vicious ones. He could not work in the infirmary because he wasn’t medically trained and was unable to communicate with the students - they simply didn’t see him as an equal.
It took a while, but Argus found a way that he could stay as part of the school for the rest of his natural life - as a caretaker in the school. A caretaker only had to know how to clean, wash and tidy, and all could be done without magic. He pleaded with Dumbledore, who allowed him to be an apprentice to Apollyon Pringle, who taught him everything he needed to know about being a caretaker. The old caretaker’s methods were tough, and they included hanging Argus from manacles when he failed to clean the cauldrons for the Potions professor properly. Such methods, at the start, sent Argus into seizures as they threw him back to that hot June night.
Yes, the methods were harsh, bordering on brutal, but they worked.
And when Argus Filch turned 18, he took his first salary payment from Hogwarts, when Pringle announced his decision to retire and leave the position to Argus.
For sentimental reasons, because Argus was cold, lonesome and introverted but not devoid of humanity, he kept the manacles that once hung him up well polished, hanging from the ceiling in his room to remind himself of how he should continue to be meticulous in his work.
And of course, he wouldn’t deny that he thought the best form of discipline was the harsh type he had undergone himself.
***
4. 0900hrs
“She’s evil, isn’t she? Scratches, bites and leaves fur all over the place for me to clean up. But she really is my companion. No one can deny that.”
- Argus Filch on Mrs. Norris
Present Day
With the picture finally taken down, Argus headed down to the Forbidden Forest. While the house elves took care of the cooking in the kitchens, they didn’t get the ingredients by themselves. House elves chose to do menial tasks like the harvesting of vegetables by magic and this would change the nutritional value of the plants so Madam Pomfrey, insisted on the plants and fruits eaten in school to be harvested by hand.
And so on the far Western corner of the forest, there was a large vegetable garden which a team of gardeners took care of. They ensured that the conditions within the area were warded off from external influences, creating an ideal environment for the vegetables to grow in a week when in uncontrolled conditions they would have taken months. It was a tedious task, but ever since Voldemort’s first ascent to power, the staff of Hogwarts decided that they had to ensure the survival of students in case of sieges, and it involved making the school self-sustaining - in other words, they started to grow their own food.
Argus was tasked with the chore of heading down to the garden each morning to pick up the day’s harvest.
And when he stepped up to the castle’s exit, right on cue, Mrs. Norris turned the corner and rubbed herself up to his leg. Argus smiled a yellow, weary smile which students never saw, and reached down to scratch her scarred ears.
“Good kitty, good Mrs. Norris.”
Then as they did every day, Argus and Mrs. Norris headed out to the vegetable garden.
14th February 1985
If Argus Filch at fifteen was lonesome, at twenty-six he was downright hermit like. He left his rooms only late at night, and had settled into a routine whereby he would not be seen by the students. He was the phantom caretaker, the one who caught students at night and dragged them to the Headmaster by the scruff of their necks for staying out after curfew.
He was a bitter, bitter man.
And so when Valentine’s Day came, he sat alone in his room, staring out the window and watching the youthful couples enjoying each other’s company by the lake. An unmistakable shock of red hair caught his eye.
‘The older Weasley boy,’ he thought disdainfully.
It was unfair, or so Argus thought, that he should be alone at the age of 26, forgotten in the depths of the castle which he loved so dearly. He wanted to be out in the fresh air, the sunlight, laughing with a few friends and having fun in general. But he didn’t know how to approach them. ‘Hell,’ he thought, ‘even acromantulas in the forest stay away from my grumpy personality. How could I possibly make a friend?’ And so when a knock on his door startled him out of his reverie, he had worked himself into a right state of angst, and was prepared to blow his top off at whoever was at his door.
When he flung open the door, ready to launch into a tirade of not having his privacy disturbed, a warm bundle of fur was thrust into his arms. A pair of amber yellow eyes stared up at him adoringly, and a rumbling purr threw Argus’ solitary world off its axis. Somewhere in his mind, a voice told him to shove the animal back at the Headmaster who was now standing at the door with his eyes twinkling like stars on a clear night, but he couldn’t bring himself to release the creature in his arms that was now rubbing its head against Argus’ neck.
“Why?” he managed to say to the Headmaster.
“Because everyone needs someone sometimes, my boy. This little creature was found alone outside the castle by Professor Flitwick, and we think that she’s a cross between a cat and a kneazle. Keep it Argus, take good care of it and let it into your heart.”
And he did. Argus Filch spent Valentine’s Day playing with his new kitten in his rooms. He named her Mrs. Norris from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, as he had been greatly amused by her nosiness when he read the book given to him by the Headmaster on his sixteenth birthday. He let the fluffy little kitten into his heart, and felt himself open up to warmth that was lost that fateful night over a decade ago.
That night, when Argus was out and about doing his chores, he stayed away from the popular make-out spots in school and turned a blind eye to the more careless students who strayed in his path.
***
5. 1200hrs
“I do love my job. It seems unbelievable to the students, who find me disagreeable and horrid, but I do. It’s inexplicable. But it gives me time to myself and time in Hogwarts. So I love it.”
- Argus Filch on his job as Hogwarts’ caretaker
Present Day
The school bell rang, signaling the arrival of noon. Argus had delivered the vegetables to the kitchen, and his tasks for the day were over. Slipping behind a curtain by the Transfiguration classroom, he took a short cut to return to his room, with Mrs. Norris stalking at his heels.
He knew that a hot lunch would be waiting for Mrs. Norris and him in his room, and he looked forward to it. The rest of the day would be his own, and he planned to read Nicholas Nickleby for the rest of the day after he took his bath. Muggle literature always relaxed him. It was in the world of Muggle fiction where he could avoid magic and be as normal as he allowed himself to be. Mrs. Norris would curl herself around his feet, and breathe in a rattling sound, telling him that both of them were still alive.
By midnight tonight, everything would start over again, but for now, the hands of his alarm clock had made a completed revolution, and his day as Hogwarts’ caretaker was over.
The End