November-December 2004 Summary
After the fall...
In November, while hiding away an artifact from the Dark Lord, Rabastan investigates an explosion and finds a magical child. He seeks sanctuary for the ill girl with an old muggle friend and becomes concerned about his Dark Mark which has been hot and itchy for days.
Rabastan is able to get the girl to a wizarding couple that lost two of their children in a Death Eater raid years ago. Having saved their youngest, Rabastan gained their favor. The witch had some medical training and had patched him up a few times in recent years. He felt confident that they would be able to take good care of the little girl. While there, he learns the reason for the change in the Dark Mark... the Dark Lord is dead. Details aren't clear, but the rumor is that Bellatrix was taken out too. Rabastan allows himself to hope so, but is reluctant to count on gossip.
Having confirmed that both Voldemort and Bella were indeed dead, Rabastan decided that it would be best to take himself out of England --make that Europe-- for awhile, and set off for Northern Africa.
In December, Rabastan visited old friends and surrogate family in Morocco before moving on to surrogate family in Egypt, but his heart, for once, wasn't really in his travels. He worried about the state of Wizarding England and worried even more about his brother, Rodolphus. He thought that Roddy would get word to him if he had been set free, and began to despair of it happening.
Rabastan spent time thinking of ways he could buy freedom for Rodolphus if necessary. He had hoped that the information his brother had provided on the Dark Lord would be enough to guarantee a pardon, but Britain's wizarding population wasn't exactly known for forgiveness. Rabastan began making plans in case he needed to get Roddy out of England in a hurry. He received several Owls and muggle post from friends and associates in England telling him that Rodolphus was still in the Stoatshead Prison and that things were still too unsettled to be able to say for sure that it was safe for Rabastan to come home.
An unexpected offer to take over his old mentor's position teaching Magical Theory at the Durbar Sahib, set Rabastan into a fit thinking about all the knowledge lost during the war in Britain. How was his homeland to recover? Could it recover? What was being done to see that the children received adequate magical education? Who was left to train apprentices and mentor adult students? The loss of magical knowledge wasn't something Rabastan took lightly. He needed to figure out how he could help even if he wasn't able to return to England. Rabastan decided he needed to visit his old friend and mentor in person, instead of sending a letter, and set off for India. While spending Christmas with his mentor, a large scale tsunami hit Asia. Rabastan was part of the search and rescue mission in Sri Lanka before returning to Egypt.