"Take to the Heather" (Ernie, Justin, Hannah, Snape, Nev, Blaise)
Author: Anonymous
Prompt/Prompt Author: Justin needs help during the war (perhaps even before he goes on the run). Ernie never thought he'd have to "activate" his Pureblood connections, but to save his friend he might have to engage in things he hadn't considered before. / alley_skywalker
Title: Take to the Heather
Characters: Ernie; Justin; Hannah; Snape; Nev; Blaise; Carrows and other dodgy sorts.
Rating: BBFC 12A.
Warnings: Buchan; Chesterton; Kipling; Larkin; Saki; scenery; Scots, broad; Stevenson; Test cricket; weather; wildlife.
Word Count: Just shy of fifteen thousand.
Summary: Respectable people, as a matter of course, protect the persecuted and hide the hunted. And the Macmillan motto is, after all, miseris succurrere disco.
Author's Notes: A largely epistolary tale, with interruptions. And scenery. And of course some very unlovely people. I am obliged to M for editing this balls despite his distaste for fannish activities, as B, N, and F should have been far too busy.
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'Is fearr deathach a' fhraoich, na gaoth a reodhaidh': Better is the smoke of the heather than the wind of the frost.
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'Oi - you! Hufflepuff, there. Where d'y'think you're going?'
'To send an Owl.'
'We don't want Mudbloods sending out whinging letters. Hand it over.'
'I am, in fact, a Pureblood, so far as that matters.'
'Can't be much o' one, if you're a Dufferpuff. Proper Purebloods is in Slytherin.'
'You, obviously, aren't one - at all - if you don't know who I am. I am a Macmillan, damn your eyes: the Younger of Asknish.'
'Why you little -'
'What's this, then?'
'Eh. Little bastard claims as he's a Pureblood - sodding Hufflepuff. And I wants to see that letter afore it goes out of here.'
'Hand it over.'
'Shall I read to you as well? It has several words of more than one syllable.'
'You -'
'That shall quite do, Alecto. Put that wand away. Amycus. Macmillan.'
'Headmaster.'
'Look 'ere, Severus -'
Snape's eyebrow raised with baleful eloquence.
'"Headmaster", then. He's trying to send a letter.'
'Give.'
Ernie handed over the letter, impassively.
'You write to old Abigail Gamp, Macmillan? I suppose you've expectations: she cannot have spent a Sickle in ninenty years, and I imagine she'll cut up for a tidy sum when she does go. Or is this simply a Hufflepuff cousin's usual dutifulness?'
'Personally, I was taught that filial piety is a virtue, Headmaster. Whether at Hogwarts or amongst, say, the halfbloods of Little Hangleton.'
'A virtue? That may be, Macmillan. Cheeking the staff, however, is not, nor is knowing more than is good for you - a fault of which, luckily, the Professors Carrow are fortunately free. My office, at once; I shall not be far behind you.'
The Carrows began to follow Ernie.
'No,' said Snape. 'Your presence - in light of your many other valuable duties - is hardly required.'
'But -'
'At all.'
Alecto was made of sterner stuff than was Amycus. 'Being in charge of discipline, I've a right to know: what are you going to do with him?'
'Being Headmaster … anything I like. What I intend to do is set him lines. I make quite certain Madam Umbridge left a quill or two behind.'
'Ahh…. I suppose it'll have to do.'
'I have decided it shall. Be about your business, both of you. And do feel free to consult Phineas Nigellus in future as to who, here, is a Pureblood, and thus valuable to our Lord, whatever their youthful follies. You can confirm Macmillan's status with young Malfoy.'
'May as well,' said Amycus. 'Get some use out o' the snivelling little weakling. I hates snivellers.'
Snape's face was a colder mask even than usual. 'Oh, quite.'
'C'mon,' said Alecto, wisely. 'And I can think of some uses for little Malfoy. For all his faults, he's a lovely bum, and my wand'd make us both happy….' Leering, she dragged her brother away.
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Every House in every year has its trios and quartets….
Indeed, more than one. Sometimes by affinity, sometimes by sympathy, sometimes by sex or common interest or hobby. Alicia, Angelina, and Katie were a formidable and inseparable team off the pitch as on; Lee Jordan and Gred-and-Forge, a standing threat to order; Malfoy had his clique, and claque; Nev, Dean, and Seamus were a trio in their own inscrutable fashion; Michael, Terry, and Tony were a Ravenclaw Brains Trust unto themselves….
Ernie, Justin, and, within the first months of their first term, Hannah, had become a trio as well, if less dramatically than by defeating a troll in the loo.
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In only a few strides, really, Snape had reached the corridor upon which the Headmaster's office's way-in debouched.
'You are not in my office, Macmillan.'
'I was foiled by the lack of a password … Headmaster.'
'Yes.' Snape, Ernie thought, had not wished to give it out before the Carrows. He didn't credit the man with virtue, but even villains might have taste - and feel distaste. 'For now, it is, "Purity" -' the door opened and the staircase began to move - 'a matter we shall discuss. Come along.
'Now. Sit down, Macmillan. Longbottom, as you have written your lines in my absence - I trust: for your sake, indeed, I truly hope - you may go. Oh: and take this to the Owlery for Macmillan, on my authority. Get out, Longbottom.
'Macmillan. Here is a quill. Here is parchment. Write fifty lines.'
'Of?'
Snape sighed. 'Don't be a dolt, Macmillan. Or pretend to be one. Listen very carefully to my instructions. Write "fifty lines".'
'Of course, Headmaster.' Ernie wrote for a moment. The quill was a perfectly normal one. He handed up his parchment, which read:
Fifty lines.
'You can be taught,' said Snape, dryly. 'Now. As a prefect, even for such a House as Hufflepuff - a distinction you may wish to enjoy whilst it lasts - you are charged with knowing the whereabouts of your Housemates. Where is Finch-Fletchley?'
'I couldn't say. Headmaster. He is, after all, not at school; I was, personally, unaware that a prefect's duties extended to former students no longer on the grounds.'
'Macmillan, if you imagine that you are a fit and proper person to duel me with banter and pomposity through the night, you are likely to find yourself very … painfully … mistaken. Where - is - Finch-Fletchley? The Ministry - specifically, the Commission - want him.'
'I, personally, do not, actually, know. Headmaster.'
'Indulge yourself in speculation, Macmillan. You know him better than most - de gustibus non disputandem. Guess if you must.'
'I do know him. Quite like him. And with all the respect that is your due, Headmaster, I can't imagine that even your lot could winkle him out of, oh, Sandhurst, say, without taking casualties that should be a much greater disappointment to you and your master than they'd be to decent Wizards.'
'Yes … I'd forgotten: his family are military in the main.' Snape looked at Ernie with cold appraisal. 'I have never understood why it is that clotpolls and fools - that people like the worthy Carrows imagine baiting a cornered badger to be a bloodless undertaking.'
'Personally, I put it down to a lack of knowledge of natural history. Badgers eat snakes for breakfast.'
'They don't always survive the contact. Bandage your hand, Macmillan: the appearances must be preserved. And get out.'
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Trios form in all manner of fashions.
A study group, as much as a band of pranksters or three Quidditch teammates, can find itself transformed into a friendship.
For Hannah, becoming friends with Ernie and Justin was a calming influence. Ernie's seriousness - well, yes: occasional pomposity, really - was, had been, and remained oddly soothing, coupled as it was with Ernie's imperturbable self-assurance that was the reverse of arrogance or pride. Ernie simply believed in an ordered world in which virtue, however stodgy it might seem, was rewarded. And Justin, although quite as determined to excel - he was the sort of chap who could not pick up a cricket bat or a squash racket without making a sustained assault upon County form, although he always remained rather a Gentleman than a Player - and quite as determined not to give up being who he was, a Muggleborn with a foot in each world (just as Ernie simply was a Pureblood, and that was that), hid his appetite for 'honest toil' beneath a studied languor of the sort one associated with the men who built the Empire in the old days whilst remaining 'sweet, just, boyish masters'.
But if Hermione Granger, in her own more famous Trio, had a cross to bear in the form of Ron Weasley's and Harry Potter's Quidditch obsessions, Hannah also suffered from a bond between her two male friends in which she could not share and which bored her to tears. The Macmillans had never been ones to send their occasional Squibs into the Muggle world unfound and un-provided for - even if that occasionally meant pretending that a Squib with no Muggle papers was but a puir crofter frae the Hielans wha had made guid - and in consequence, Ernie numbered amongst his connexions a line of publishers who had culminated in a Prime Minister who could have given even Justin points at Etonian-style casualness. And Justin had as a matter of course been raised on just the sort of things that various Macmillans had been wont to publish, and which chaps at a prepper that was an Eton feeder school tended to have imbibed with their nursery teas.
When Ernie and Justin - Ernie for the moment in a state of slippered ease - began playing 'Kipling Characters Who Ought to Have Sorted Hufflepuff' or arguing the route David Balfour and Alan Breck took (And Did It Approach Hogsmeade At All at Any Point? Give Textual Support For Your Answer) or debating whether John Buchan's Heroes Were or Were Not Sporting, Hannah early developed the habit of thinking of something - anything - else.
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Ernie had always been a dutiful correspondent, keeping up quite regularly with all the members of his extended family: and, he being a Macmillan, that meant, in effect, with every respectable Pureblood in British Wizardom.
The majority of these, although respectable, were not precisely inured to civil conflict, resistance, and derring-do. That subset of his connexions, however, who resided North of the Border, or in Ireland (Northern or not: the Muggle border meant nothing to Wizards), or in Wales, were rather more on the qui vive. It was traditional.
Had the Carrows, or various Slytherin pupils, or anyone well affected towards Voldemort, bothered to look into his correspondence since returning to Hogwarts, they'd have been bored to tears by its contents. Only someone with Snape's sort of mind might have remarked upon the preponderance of Border, Scots, Isles, Welsh, and Irish correspondents, almost to the exclusion of most of the Macmillans' connexions much south of Settle or Carlisle or east of the Vale of Pewsey. And if Snape had remarked it - which Ernie rather suspected the man had done - he'd said nothing.
This was an anomaly. Obviously. And Ernie, personally, did not at all care for anomalies, actually. He might - and, unlike, say, Percy Weasley, he perfectly well knew he might - tend rather to speak like a leader in The Astrologist or a civil servant engaged in defensive obfuscation, but he was not precisely a fool: far from it. And he raised the point with Neville later that night, in the Room of Requirement.
'It's really an extremely critical point. I, personally, think it equally possible that he is trying suasion by - for Snape - blandishment and a comparative politeness of address, or that he is not altogether so committed to his ostensible cause as he wishes to seem.'
'Happen he isn't,' said Nev, rather shortly. 'Yet - sithee - happen he is. I don't see how you can give t' bugger anything but same answer, either road.' Nev liked Ernie, really he did, but when Ernie began prosing on in the tones of some ministerial bumph, Nev always reacted by retreating into an affected persona of commonsensical, bluff North-Countree flat-'attedness. Justin had remarked, in happier days, that when they really went at it, hammer and tongs, he always felt, rather, that he wanted to lay on beer and fish-paste sandwiches, what, for the latest labour negotiations. (Hannah had always simply left them to it, which had always been something of a disappointment to Nev, who, though he quite liked Justin and Ernie both, had rather looked forward to seeing Hannah above all and had tolerated her friends as a means to that end. It was only since the resistance had started, coeval with the school term, that Nev and Ernie had become fast friends in their own right, as allies will do.)
'Perhaps not,' said Ernie, 'but I, personally, should quite like to know. Did you in fact send out my letter?'
'Aye. And no charms or tracking cantrips on it: I damned well checked. Never stopped once on way, by anyone - though I'd a dirty look from t' Carrow woman. Happen she's learnt that if Snape himself sends me on my way, coming from his office with a letter, she'd do better not to interfere.'
'Possibly. I was stopped. Oh, no, not by those creatures. Zabini. He also wanted to know if I knew anything of Justin.'
Nev grinned. 'Aye, well. Reason for that, I reckon, and it's nowt to do with war.'
'Really?'
'Justin's your chum, lad.'
'And there have always been a few issues we have preferred not to discuss.'
'Aye, well. A shut mouth keeps flies out, I grant thi that much. But….'
'Personally, I'd quite like to believe Zabini asked only because he cares. As I cannot trust him, however, I must continue to be evasive.'
'Aye. Which is what you want t' do with Snape, for same reason - not that Snape -'
'I should think not.' Ernie shuddered. 'Justin has better taste than that.'
Nev grinned and raised a surprisingly salacious brow. He'd grown up fast already this term, had Nev; so, Ernie reflected, had they all, perforce. Unfortunately.
'Neville, I am perfectly comfortable in myself, thank you; and I can admit that Zabini is … decorative. If only he'd a personality transplant. Of course, it's hardly our opinions that matter, and Justin and he did seem to get on well.'
'One way o' putting it.'
'Oh, really, Neville….'
'Awreet, owdonabit, sirry, no need to meither.'
Ernie looked at him, solemn as any owl, and replied in the language of Nev's country. 'Longbottom … don't be an eggwap.'
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It had started in the Summer, in the long vac. By the last week of July, it had become clear to Ernie and Justin (and Hannah), trading off their hols as usual with a week chez Finch-Fletchley, a week at the Macmillan place, and a week getting underfoot of every Abbott in creation, turn and turn about, that things were about to wax very tiresome. They exerted themselves not to alarm Hannah: one must look to the ladies, bless them, and not alarm them unduly….
'I think,' had said Justin, staring up at a deceptively cloudless sky, 'that a gap year might be wise, for me.'
'I suppose you might knock about Australia or New Zealand - unless you've your heart set on India?'
'Much as I'd like to see the Little Master take India on tour in Sri Lanka, I think, old man, I want to be close at hand should anything happen. And I couldn't possibly leave England in any case until the Ashes are done, I shall be at Trent Bridge next week and the Oval a fortnight after.'
'TMS on the wireless not sufficient?'
'Not quite the same thing, is it? And I do want to be on hand for the wireless.'
Hannah had sat up and glared at them. 'Will you two idiots give over? Justin can't go back this year, they'll kill him. And he's planning to be here, on the run, rather than buggering off - and I suppose it's something to do with those owls and firecalls with the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan and Professor Lupin.'
'Steady on, Abbott -'
'Do not be chivalrous with me, you clots. I am not a fluttering, helpless maiden. Ernie, you're the one with the impeccably Pureblood connexions. You and I can do what we can to keep Justin abreast of events, and your innumerable friends-and-relations can hide him as he moves about.'
'I say, I can't possibly put the two of you, let alone Ernie's people, at risk like this -'
'You can and you shall.' Hannah had had no time for these scruples.
'Do you mind terribly a fair bit of rambling, and rural accommodations, mostly in the Isles, Ireland, Wales, the North of England, and all 'round Scotland?'
'Ernie…. Do be serious, old thing, I fear I'm practically a model for Barbour - although in fact the actual gear is mostly, I'm afraid, bespoke. And rather patched, really. I can't help that, it was all handed down….'
Whilst England had collapsed at Headingley on the second day of the Fourth Test, the three had set to work, planning Justin's possible routes and boltholes and striving to develop a safe means of communication. After hours of argument and research regarding evanescent inks, Charms (including the Protean Charm), Potions, and everything else they could think of as tending towards communications, Hannah had thrown up her hands and tossed her wand at the wall.
'We,' had she said, 'are idiots. Honest toil is all well and good, but this is absurd.'
They'd simply looked at her, dutifully and loyally declining to be affronted.
'Just write to each other via Ernie's relations and all. You needn't develop a secret code: the two of you talk in allusions half the time anyway. Do you think the Death Eaters read Kipling? Or John Macnab?'
'Surely not,' had Justin smiled, lazily. (Hannah had thought then as she was always to think, and had thought for several years before, that it was a pity Justin was not partial to the company of Witches: such a waste, really, although he wasn't a patch on Dear Nev….) 'Should think it'd've l'arned 'em better, had they done.'
'An excellent suggestion,' had Ernie said, with all the middle-aged gravity he'd commanded since the age of six. 'You'll not only take to the heather, Justin, you'll Take Heather.'
'Whilst you, Pertinax, hold the Wall against the Winged Hats? I suppose that makes your people my Allo.'
''Allo, 'allo!' Ernie was not above the occasional relapse into juvenile humour, even at his plummiest and most crusted-old-tawny. 'You'll be more like David Balfour, Justin, if not Richard Hannay - or Bonnie Prince Charlie, really, with Hannah as your Flora MacDonald. The -'
'Oh, God,' had said Hannah, who had forgotten, in the excitement of her Great Idea, how incredibly tiresome her friends became at times. 'And you, Justin! You're not even Scotch -'
'Scots,' had said Ernie, in awful and affronted accents.
'- Anyhow, you're English -'
'Which means, old girl, I've the usual bits of Welsh and Scots and French and Irish and God knows what in the old pied-de-grue.'
'And, Hannah, my people are Scots, and a few Irish of the better sort, and about three Welshmen, much more than they are Sassenach. You see,' had Ernie said, sinking comfortably into lecturing tones, 'the Ministry, be it run by Fudge or You Know What - I, personally, really cannot call that ghastly little oik as "Who": doubt he's actually human, really - or, as it might be, by dear old Arthur Weasley, is a London Ministry. North of, say, Wolverhampton, and West of Southampton, even the English prefer to ignore and are prepared to resist it - look at the Longbottoms, let alone the Weasleys. And we Scots … well, really. It's the '15 and the '45 every year, actually.'
And so, adopting Hannah's Bright Idea (somewhat to Hannah's bitter regret), it had begun.
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On 22 August of what ought to have been his seventh and last year of school, Justin Finch-Fletchley's name had appeared (rather down-market of them, he'd rather thought) in the Daily Prophet, as wanted for interrogation by the Ministry, failure to register with the Muggle-Born Registration Commission, and (it had been implied) anything else the Ministry might care to think up. (Unlike Hermione, he had not made the front page.) Whilst his name had been, quite impertinently and without any leave of his, in the public prints, his body had been seated comfortably at the Pavilion End - indeed, thanks to his connexions, in the Pavilion - for the second day of the Sixth Test of the Ashes, at the Oval. Absurd to think that, beyond the iconic gasholder, far from the Oval, in a hidden realm, things were being done that were the ultimate negation of all that is cricket. His mood had darkened as he thought, the lines beating in his mind: as if it were all an August Bank Holiday lark … never such innocence, never before or since, never such innocence again…. Yet, damn it all, one never says die; here, for example, is England, making a stand for respectability even if they cannot win the series, determined at least to win the last match and go down fighting….
The five-day Test match had been done and dusted in three, with Tuffers and his everlasting tea edging the Baggy Greens by nineteen face-saving runs. As ticket monies for the fourth and fifth days had been being refunded at the Oval, Justin had bought his own ticket to ride. The Pride of Anglia, his local Canaries - now part-owned by Delia - had been already embarked on their League campaign (irony of ironies, at the home ground of Carrow Road); cricket had been giving way to footer as season follows season; and Justin, embarked on another journey altogether. Sturdy brogues with rubber soles and grip, in which a man could ramble or fell-run as required, had been on his feet; tweed and waxed cotton, in his as-sturdy bag. It hadn't been the Hogwarts Express, but it had been a train, headed Northwards: Cambridge to Ely to Peterborough to Leeds, with connections, if he chose, to Settle, when he liked; and at every station, infinite possibilities, wanting only time and a willingness to wait, to go where safety beckoned, and confuse his trail.
His heralds had gone before him: Ernie's indefatigable correspondence.
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'Well, Parnesius,' had Ernie said, as they had shaken hands and parted for what might be a month, a year, or forever. 'No Floo, no Apparating save where necessary, no Knight Bus … shanks' mare for you, and the Muggle rail, I suppose.'
'And driving, Pertinax, on occasion, don't forget, and riding, I suspect quite often. And crowds to lose oneself in, or solitude that gives a chap ample warning. I shall jink like a jinking fox, I imagine - but I'm damned if I shall miss the Sixth Test before I go.'
Hannah had been dabbing at her eyes, which had persisted quite stubbornly in leaking, for all her efforts.
'Yes, well, when you've sense enough to come down from Town, I trust you'll take the rolling road.'
'Oh, quite: I shall go to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier, and to Brum via Beachy Head.'
'Do try not to stuff it up and get yourself killed. I, personally, should find that vexing.'
'Too tiresome for words,' had Justin agreed. 'Boring, really.' He'd turned to shake hands with Hannah, and had found himself unexpectedly with an armful of clinginess - although, of course, no undignified sobbing. By the time he and Ernie had exchanged a startled look of dismay, Hannah had retrieved her composure - indeed, her sanity - and stepped back, looking into the middle distance a few degrees left of Justin's right shoulder.
'Well,' had he said. 'I'll be seeing you.'
She had managed a smile. 'In all the old familiar places. Best of British, eh, Flinch?'
'Absolutely. And you - the both of you.' He had shouldered his bag and ambled off, in an awkward silence which none of them had any idea how to resolve.
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The wingèd heralds had gone forth before him.
'My dear Cousin Isobel,' had Ernie written, and written innumerable variations on the air and theme: My dear Torquil, as it might be; My dear Aunt Agatha, Cousin Margery, Uncle Iain, Catriona, Great-Aunt Agrippina, Rabbie, Aunt Maud, Rory, Cousin Æneas, Eva, Gemma, Cousin Archibald, Patrick, Uncle Alpheus, Christian, Great-Aunt Charmian, Terence, Aunt Tullia, Alun, Uncle Watkin, Cousin Alys, Octavia, Cousin Evan, Great-Uncle Euan….
'I don't wish to badger you, least of all as the news - if you credit it - goes from bad to worse, but one of our old sett who's on a walking tour may pitch up quite near your place at some point. I should take it as a kindness to me if you had old Parnesius to tea….'
When one has impeccably Pureblooded connexions christened Atia and Flavius, Agrippina, Æneas, Alpheus, Tullia, and Octavia, a 'Parnesius', even if some bugger reads your correspondence, is apt to pass unnoticed. And - it being unthinkable that a Hufflepuff should be a Death Eater, or serve the sods - it wasn't terribly likely that 'badger' and 'sett' with a double 't' should be looked at twice, Ernie rather thought: the masked bastards weren't a clever bunch, in the main.
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Honoria, Lady Marchbanks to Ernest Macmillan Younger, 4 September, from Ingle Hall, Chapel-le-Fell, nr Ribblehead:
My dear nephew,
What on earth is going on at that school of yours? We have had the news even here, in my English exile, that Severus Snape has been made head beak. I must say it seems an interesting, not to say Pratchettian, way of gaining promotion.
The hysteria in the public prints being put to one side, we have not, in fact, been at all overrun with savage Muggles here. There was one young chap rambling on a gap year, or so we supposed; as it happens, he's actually doing some wireless work - the Beeb, presumably - on, as I gather, their Autumnwatch programme, if I have that correctly. His speciality seems to be otters, so I suppose that to mean he's engaged in an Otterwatch! If the poor young man is expecting otters in Winterscales Beck, I fear he is to be disappointed. He seemed well-spoken enough, with a rather OE sort of manner, so we gave him tea and cakes as he passed through. Some of the Muggles, poor things, are really almost clever, aren't they. (He's a lovely speaking voice, not at all slangy and common and down-market as seems the fashion nowadays: quite a pleasure to hear: but is apparently on the technical side rather than a reader. Pity, really.)
Parnesius has not been seen here, but I did have speech with the old fool (although he's quite as young, to me, as are you), and he sends his regards to you - and wishes to be remembered, he said, to 'your own Fionnghal NicDhòmhnaill' - whoever that may be. (Flora MacDonald, indeed! Silliness, I call it.) Are you walking out with a good Scots girl at last, nephew? I never can determine what you young people are on about - or what that silly ass Parnesius is driving at.
Gervase has had bad reports of the grouse this year and is assured that the whole of British Wizardom is going to the dogs - and not the gundogs. You of course shall be able to take your uncle's choler and pessimism with the appropriate dose of salts. Were he not a complete savage with no memory for les convenances, he'd no doubt join me in sending his regards. As you are neither a game bird nor a gundog, however, I imagine he has quite forgotten your existence.
Recalling as I do how vexing one's Seventh Year can be even in the most Settled times, I have spoke several Galleons' worth of chocs for you and your wee friends at Honeydukes. It may serve in emergencies to keep you from becoming quite demented.
If there is anything else I can do for you within reason, you have only to ask
Your affectionate if occasionally exasperated aunt,
HONORIA MARCHBANKS
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Ernie Macmillan to Gemma Gamp, Monksrigg Farm, nr Armathwaite, 7 September, from Hogwarts:
My dear Cousin Gemma,
Aunt Honoria and Uncle Gervase are by all accounts well. Or, in his case, as well as can be expected. (No, he's no madder than commonly; on the other hand, he's no more sane than he's been for yonks.) Living as they do quite near to the Viaduct, I worry about them, and have done so since the Brockdale Bridge collapsed; and it's not wholly unlikely that old Parnesius intends to potter about on the Settle and Carlisle Railway, as well. I should take it as a very great kindness, and a considerable relief to my mind, were you to keep a weather eye out for the dear old things - I mean Honoria and Gervase, of course.
Hogwarts is uncommonly chilly this year. I am more than ever obliged to you for the scarves and mufflers.
Yours aye,
ERNIE
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Gemma Gamp to Ernie Macmillan, 11 September, from Monksrigg Farm:
Ern, honestly, have you really been fifty since you were weaned? The Viaduct is not going to fall down atop Aunt Honoria - it shouldn't dare to do - not if the peak of Ingleborough itself tottered. As for that daft anorak Parnesius, I shall tell him of your worries if I see him, but it's much more likely he'll simply drift past like a particularly absent-minded bit of thistledown.
Oh, and there's more wool where that came from: I've been spinning and knitting like an Acromantula since the last clip, and have hardly made the least impression on its absurd bulk. (There is such a thing as too good a year for a flock, really.) I have been reduced to simply giving away mufflers and socks and All That to passing ramblers - even Muggles, my dear! (There was a woolly-headed and woolly-minded one came through on the footpath just the other day, actually - speaking of Parnesius' sort of person. Toothsome, in a public-school, nice-but-dim sort of way, but rather evidently uninterested in women, which is always a relief to a literal spinster of a Lesbian, I assure you. I kitted him out simply to be shot of another bale of wool, and he was such a complete baa-lamb to begin with it seemed only fair. The poor bugger left in haste after receiving a ring on his mobile, so I didn't even get a PG out of it, thus rendering my giving away knitted things wholly an act of unrecompensed charity. Apparently he's something to do with broadcasting, and something came up suddenly.)
If things in that draughty old castle get colder yet, fear not. At this point, I could manage a cosy for the whole damned pile.
GEM
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Hon. Watkin Watkin-Tudor to Ernie Macmillan, from Cwmcastell House, Powys, nr Pont Senni (Sennybridge), 17 September:
My dear Ernie,
Your father writes to tell me that you are holding up well enough through the inevitable annoyances of Seventh Year. I suppose an elderly second cousin wants to be grateful for even that much news of you; you can imagine that I was therefore the more pleased to have had a line of you last month, if less so than not to have heard anything directly since.
Parnesius stopped to tea yesterday - fortunately, I had just returned an hour before from doddering about the Forest of Dean, simply to get away from trippers here at Pont Senni (and it shall only get worse; as the trippers fade away, the ruddy SAS come back - I cannot think it a happy situation for the red kites). I was a trifle tired from the journey, but I don't think I'd dropped off into dreams, and I distinctly heard him say something about missing some Italian johnny and that you ought to be advised accordingly. I don't recall in my Hogwarts days that there was a decent purveyor of ice-cream in all Hogsmeade, but perhaps things have changed: you surely know better than I what if anything the man was on about. He seems to have been expelled from Eden, as it were, quite recently - if Honoria and Gervase and Gemma of the Wool can be said to live in Eden -; I suggested that if he must mope, the Beacons were hardly the place for it, no matter what latest madness (otter-watching, if you can credit it!) brought him to potter about here instead. I don't say I sent him off with a flea in his ear, but I am happy to note that he took my advice and followed my example in travelling on to the Forest of Dean, where, no doubt, in his pottering, he'll look out hiding places for weasels and what not. I'm in favour of a bit of botany and natural history myself, but he takes it I think to extremes; then again, it keeps him out of trouble.
I trust you also are keeping out of trouble so far as that comports with doing well and doing what good you may: this is after all an important year, as Seventh Year always is. Do send an owl, with reports of how you are getting on, to
Your ever-concerned cousin and courtesy-uncle,
WATKIN WATKIN-TUDOR
_______________________
'Macmillan. My office.'
'Headmaster.'
'And you, Abbott.'
'Sir -'
'Now. If. You. Please.'
When the door had snicked-to behind them, Snape sat as if in state in the Head's chair. Ernie and Hannah remained standing.
'Do the two of you really have no interest in keeping your badges as prefects?'
Hannah and Ernie made sure not to catch one another's eye: both could hear with the hallucinatory clarity of memory their lost Justin, declaiming, 'Badges? Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges'….
'Not particularly - Headmaster,' said Ernie, stoutly. 'Not if there are - shall we say, new conditions? - appended.'
'And yet they do grant certain … privileges … that have a certain protective quality. Particularly in Miss Abbott's case, as her lineage is considered, in some regards … to be lacking. It should be a very great pity were she, particularly, to forfeit those protections. Would it not.'
'Badge or no badge, Headmaster, I'd remain a Badger.' Hannah was quite proud that her voice had not discernibly quavered.
'So long as there is such a House, yes. Much good it may do you.
'Where is Finch-Fletchley?'
'I really don't know. Headmaster.'
'Abbott?'
'I've even less idea. Sir.'
'Were you not Hufflepuffs, and effectively incapable of a decent lie, I should pour so much Veritaserum down your throats as to leave you in the Janus Thickey Ward. And I may yet. Where is Finch-Fletchley?'
'Not the foggiest.'
'"Not the foggiest" what, Macmillan?'
'Not the foggiest idea.' Ernie gave it a full measure of time before adding, in tones of contempt, 'Headmaster.'
'I realise that the standard of tuition in this school has been, under previous Heads, lamentably low, not to say laughable, but you want to realise, Macmillan, that your mind - such as it is - quite as much as your face - such as it is - and your insolent tones, is an open, if remarkably boring, book.'
'If that be so - Headmaster - then there's hardly any point in hectoring us verbally with questions we cannot possibly answer.'
'Unless you can conceive of my giving you a chance, yes. Your chances are running very low, Macmillan. Abbott's are effectively non-existent, and she hasn't your … status … to fall back upon. Or hide behind. I was given to understand that loyalty was a Hufflepuff trait. Or at least, claim. In order to find a Muggle on the run who - the Ministry assure us - has stolen his magic from real Wizards and Witches, the sacrifice of a not terribly talented or useful Halfblood is quite likely to be approved. You want to consider your position, Macmillan. And your little friend Abbott's.'
'I'll take my chances with the boys, Headmaster.' There was no chance now of Hannah's voice shaking with anything save fury. 'It's not as if your lot have a character for gallantry to begin with, and I shan't be patronised simply because I'm a Witch rather than a Wizard.'
'Dear me,' said Snape, steepling his fingers. 'Macmillan, you are reputed to be fond of Kipling. Evidently the female of the species is deadlier than the male. I - personally, as you should no doubt add with your usual unnecessary tics, Macmillan - don't consider Kipling very safe reading just now. As you consider your positions, you might do much better to research Legilimency and Occlumency, and contemplate what the sad lack of the latter could so easily mean to you both - and your little friend.
'I suggest you go now and begin. I shall give you a pass to the Restricted Section, so that you may learn precisely what you are up against as you decide how far you wish to push me.'
_______________________
Torquil Macmillan-Maclaine of Knockmore to Ernie Macmillan Younger, 25 September, from Cnoc Mor Lodge, Ross of Mull:
My dear cousin,
'Is fearr deathach a' fhraoich, na gaoth a reodhaidh' is all very well, but at this time of the year the wind of the frost is already stronger, if inferior, to the smoke of the heather. There are times I quite wish that we were hidden away after the manner of Hogwarts: we had a lad through here yesterday madder than Martin Miggs, as one might expect. I don't say it's not marvellous how well some Muggles cope without magic - or Squibs, or someone who's lost, or cannot use, his wand, for that matter - and I make quite certain that a few of them are almost as clever as a good sheepdog. I cannot for all that think a sort of primitive wigwam is at all the right sort of shelter for September in even the Inner Hebrides. I confess that in a moment of weakness I allowed him to use the old bothy overnight: he was a well-enough-spoken lad, for a Sassenach. He dug in like a badger through the worst of the weather, I must say. We fed him and sent him on in rude health - bodily, at least; I doubt me but that his mental stability is precarious, or why would a lad be going about in this season in the wild?
It's as bad as Parnesius, watching for otters - and there's a man who, I've been told this very morn, is in good health and spirits, if but mad as a stoat. I trust that you by contrast are as safe and as sane as one may be in one's Seventh Year, and cleaving close to your set books. Do mind how you go, and let me know how you do.
Yours aye,
MACMILLAN-MACLAINE OF KNOCKMORE
_______________________
Ernie Macmillan to Terence Fitzgerald-de Burgh, 30 September, from Hogwarts:
My dear Cousin Toirdhealbhach,
I trust that you and Sibéal, and wee Martin, are flourishing.
I ran across an interesting reference the other day to the 'King of the Otters' in Irish myth, which may differ to Scots lore on the 'dratsie'. Have you information on that heading?
In academic haste,
Yours aye,
ERNIE
_______________________
'Macmillan. Abbott. I shan't insult such intelligence as you possess by pretending you don't know why you are here. Can you, Macmillan, look me in the eye and tell me you do not know where Finch-Fletchley is?'
'As I don't, actually, personally know where he is, then, Yes. Yes, I can. … Headmaster.'
'You remain, I see, as assiduous a correspondent to and with your appallingly ramified family as ever. They are all, of course, Purebloods? Quite so. Not the sort of people likely to shelter a Muggle who has stolen magic.'
'They'd not dream of sheltering such a person. Were one to exist.'
'And you, Abbott. Half, I know, in blood and I think in wit. Do any of your people know Finch-Fletchley, bar your parents?'
'No, Headmaster.'
'And do they know where he is?'
'Not in the least, Headmaster.'
'Do you?'
'I do not, Headmaster.'
'I think a hundred lines, tonight, twice over.'
They bent to their task, and in a few minutes' time, handed up their parchments:
A hundred lines.
A hundred lines.
'Sufficient. Have you availed yourselves of the pass I gave you to look into Legilimency - and of course that Occlumency in which you are woefully deficient?'
'Yes.'
'Macmillan….'
'We have. Headmaster. And we have considered our position.'
'See that you do. Get out. And do not deviate from a straight route to your dormitories: this is not the night for it.'
_______________________
Terence Fitzgerald-de Burgh to Ernie Macmillan, 4 October, from Bellasa House, nr Foxford, Co. Mayo:
Ernest Bloody Macmillan,
Is it the second sight you have, then, of old Aunt Fiona? She always suspected it might come to you. No, I've no more to add than you'll find in your books about the Otter King; but, Christ, old Parnesius was stopping with us when you wrote. (He's no worse than ever he was, although he's since vanished like a daft maneen into the Nephins and the Ox Mountains, as you'd expect. Mad, that man, I tell you: a dratted dratsie himself, he is, but.)
We are all of us well; do write a line now and then to assure us that you are also, and relieve the minds of wee Martin, his mother, and
Your distracted cousin whom you must leave off calling as 'Turlough',
TERENCE
_______________________
'MACMILLAN! My office in five minutes!'
As Snape stormed out of the Great Hall, Malfoy smirked. Ernie was as imperturbable as ever, finishing his pudding and leaving for the Head's office with a positively Justinian languor.
'Do you know why I am about to impose a thousand lines on you, Macmillan?'
'I really do not - Headmaster.'
'Mr Malfoy had a bright idea, and put it up to the Carrows, whence it went … elsewhere.'
'Draco Malfoy had a bright idea? I must say, I am shocked.'
'Do not try my patience, Macmillan. His idea was that in addition to monitoring your incessant correspondence with your far too large family, checking it for Charms, and otherwise investigating it, it wanted also to be read through, closely. And that task has fallen to me. To me, Macmillan.'
'Better you than others, Headmaster. I doubt some of the newer additions to staff could read all the words.'
'Their lips, at any rate, should become tired. Most amusing, Macmillan. The fact remains that I must now plough through the inane drivel you and your connexions are forever owling one another. Had anyone ever doubted that boredom - and yours, Macmillan, must be the most thoroughly, stupefyingly boring family ever to set quill to parchment - had anyone ever doubted that boredom might rival the Cruciatus for misery, I can now disabuse them, of experience, of that notion.
'Therefore, you shall give me a thousand lines on that parchment. They needn't be long, or straight. After which, tonight and every night, you, Macmillan, as detention, shall read your puerile maunderings and those of your family aloud, to me, here, for one hour after dinner, so that I may at least attempt to do something with the time I should otherwise be compelled to waste on that rubbish.'
_______________________
'Macmillan.'
'Zabini.'
'You don't trust me.'
'Why ought I to do?'
'I, however, trust you - not least not to be a fool.'
'If I cared, actually, for your good opinion, I should no doubt be burdened with a sense of obligation to you for that remark.'
'You do realise it wasn't Draco who had the bright idea that Snape should read over your letters.'
'So far as I am concerned, personally, he can publish them in the Death-Eaters' Journal and Faily Advertiser.'
'As I said, Macmillan, I trust you not to be a fool. It seems I was right.'
'Zabini? Sod off.'
'I'd love to, darling, but not until my beloved returns to me. I'm sure you can find a way to pass that sentiment on to your missing Housemate.'
_______________________
'Aye,' said Nev. 'I almost can just imagine the possibility that it might almost be possible to trust t' buggers now. Makes no odds, though, Ern: so long as Carrows and such be about.'
'Oh, quite,' said Ern, glumly.
Part Two
Prompt/Prompt Author: Justin needs help during the war (perhaps even before he goes on the run). Ernie never thought he'd have to "activate" his Pureblood connections, but to save his friend he might have to engage in things he hadn't considered before. / alley_skywalker
Title: Take to the Heather
Characters: Ernie; Justin; Hannah; Snape; Nev; Blaise; Carrows and other dodgy sorts.
Rating: BBFC 12A.
Warnings: Buchan; Chesterton; Kipling; Larkin; Saki; scenery; Scots, broad; Stevenson; Test cricket; weather; wildlife.
Word Count: Just shy of fifteen thousand.
Summary: Respectable people, as a matter of course, protect the persecuted and hide the hunted. And the Macmillan motto is, after all, miseris succurrere disco.
Author's Notes: A largely epistolary tale, with interruptions. And scenery. And of course some very unlovely people. I am obliged to M for editing this balls despite his distaste for fannish activities, as B, N, and F should have been far too busy.
_______________________
_______________________
'Is fearr deathach a' fhraoich, na gaoth a reodhaidh': Better is the smoke of the heather than the wind of the frost.
_______________________
'Oi - you! Hufflepuff, there. Where d'y'think you're going?'
'To send an Owl.'
'We don't want Mudbloods sending out whinging letters. Hand it over.'
'I am, in fact, a Pureblood, so far as that matters.'
'Can't be much o' one, if you're a Dufferpuff. Proper Purebloods is in Slytherin.'
'You, obviously, aren't one - at all - if you don't know who I am. I am a Macmillan, damn your eyes: the Younger of Asknish.'
'Why you little -'
'What's this, then?'
'Eh. Little bastard claims as he's a Pureblood - sodding Hufflepuff. And I wants to see that letter afore it goes out of here.'
'Hand it over.'
'Shall I read to you as well? It has several words of more than one syllable.'
'You -'
'That shall quite do, Alecto. Put that wand away. Amycus. Macmillan.'
'Headmaster.'
'Look 'ere, Severus -'
Snape's eyebrow raised with baleful eloquence.
'"Headmaster", then. He's trying to send a letter.'
'Give.'
Ernie handed over the letter, impassively.
'You write to old Abigail Gamp, Macmillan? I suppose you've expectations: she cannot have spent a Sickle in ninenty years, and I imagine she'll cut up for a tidy sum when she does go. Or is this simply a Hufflepuff cousin's usual dutifulness?'
'Personally, I was taught that filial piety is a virtue, Headmaster. Whether at Hogwarts or amongst, say, the halfbloods of Little Hangleton.'
'A virtue? That may be, Macmillan. Cheeking the staff, however, is not, nor is knowing more than is good for you - a fault of which, luckily, the Professors Carrow are fortunately free. My office, at once; I shall not be far behind you.'
The Carrows began to follow Ernie.
'No,' said Snape. 'Your presence - in light of your many other valuable duties - is hardly required.'
'But -'
'At all.'
Alecto was made of sterner stuff than was Amycus. 'Being in charge of discipline, I've a right to know: what are you going to do with him?'
'Being Headmaster … anything I like. What I intend to do is set him lines. I make quite certain Madam Umbridge left a quill or two behind.'
'Ahh…. I suppose it'll have to do.'
'I have decided it shall. Be about your business, both of you. And do feel free to consult Phineas Nigellus in future as to who, here, is a Pureblood, and thus valuable to our Lord, whatever their youthful follies. You can confirm Macmillan's status with young Malfoy.'
'May as well,' said Amycus. 'Get some use out o' the snivelling little weakling. I hates snivellers.'
Snape's face was a colder mask even than usual. 'Oh, quite.'
'C'mon,' said Alecto, wisely. 'And I can think of some uses for little Malfoy. For all his faults, he's a lovely bum, and my wand'd make us both happy….' Leering, she dragged her brother away.
_______________________
Every House in every year has its trios and quartets….
Indeed, more than one. Sometimes by affinity, sometimes by sympathy, sometimes by sex or common interest or hobby. Alicia, Angelina, and Katie were a formidable and inseparable team off the pitch as on; Lee Jordan and Gred-and-Forge, a standing threat to order; Malfoy had his clique, and claque; Nev, Dean, and Seamus were a trio in their own inscrutable fashion; Michael, Terry, and Tony were a Ravenclaw Brains Trust unto themselves….
Ernie, Justin, and, within the first months of their first term, Hannah, had become a trio as well, if less dramatically than by defeating a troll in the loo.
_______________________
In only a few strides, really, Snape had reached the corridor upon which the Headmaster's office's way-in debouched.
'You are not in my office, Macmillan.'
'I was foiled by the lack of a password … Headmaster.'
'Yes.' Snape, Ernie thought, had not wished to give it out before the Carrows. He didn't credit the man with virtue, but even villains might have taste - and feel distaste. 'For now, it is, "Purity" -' the door opened and the staircase began to move - 'a matter we shall discuss. Come along.
'Now. Sit down, Macmillan. Longbottom, as you have written your lines in my absence - I trust: for your sake, indeed, I truly hope - you may go. Oh: and take this to the Owlery for Macmillan, on my authority. Get out, Longbottom.
'Macmillan. Here is a quill. Here is parchment. Write fifty lines.'
'Of?'
Snape sighed. 'Don't be a dolt, Macmillan. Or pretend to be one. Listen very carefully to my instructions. Write "fifty lines".'
'Of course, Headmaster.' Ernie wrote for a moment. The quill was a perfectly normal one. He handed up his parchment, which read:
Fifty lines.
'You can be taught,' said Snape, dryly. 'Now. As a prefect, even for such a House as Hufflepuff - a distinction you may wish to enjoy whilst it lasts - you are charged with knowing the whereabouts of your Housemates. Where is Finch-Fletchley?'
'I couldn't say. Headmaster. He is, after all, not at school; I was, personally, unaware that a prefect's duties extended to former students no longer on the grounds.'
'Macmillan, if you imagine that you are a fit and proper person to duel me with banter and pomposity through the night, you are likely to find yourself very … painfully … mistaken. Where - is - Finch-Fletchley? The Ministry - specifically, the Commission - want him.'
'I, personally, do not, actually, know. Headmaster.'
'Indulge yourself in speculation, Macmillan. You know him better than most - de gustibus non disputandem. Guess if you must.'
'I do know him. Quite like him. And with all the respect that is your due, Headmaster, I can't imagine that even your lot could winkle him out of, oh, Sandhurst, say, without taking casualties that should be a much greater disappointment to you and your master than they'd be to decent Wizards.'
'Yes … I'd forgotten: his family are military in the main.' Snape looked at Ernie with cold appraisal. 'I have never understood why it is that clotpolls and fools - that people like the worthy Carrows imagine baiting a cornered badger to be a bloodless undertaking.'
'Personally, I put it down to a lack of knowledge of natural history. Badgers eat snakes for breakfast.'
'They don't always survive the contact. Bandage your hand, Macmillan: the appearances must be preserved. And get out.'
_______________________
Trios form in all manner of fashions.
A study group, as much as a band of pranksters or three Quidditch teammates, can find itself transformed into a friendship.
For Hannah, becoming friends with Ernie and Justin was a calming influence. Ernie's seriousness - well, yes: occasional pomposity, really - was, had been, and remained oddly soothing, coupled as it was with Ernie's imperturbable self-assurance that was the reverse of arrogance or pride. Ernie simply believed in an ordered world in which virtue, however stodgy it might seem, was rewarded. And Justin, although quite as determined to excel - he was the sort of chap who could not pick up a cricket bat or a squash racket without making a sustained assault upon County form, although he always remained rather a Gentleman than a Player - and quite as determined not to give up being who he was, a Muggleborn with a foot in each world (just as Ernie simply was a Pureblood, and that was that), hid his appetite for 'honest toil' beneath a studied languor of the sort one associated with the men who built the Empire in the old days whilst remaining 'sweet, just, boyish masters'.
But if Hermione Granger, in her own more famous Trio, had a cross to bear in the form of Ron Weasley's and Harry Potter's Quidditch obsessions, Hannah also suffered from a bond between her two male friends in which she could not share and which bored her to tears. The Macmillans had never been ones to send their occasional Squibs into the Muggle world unfound and un-provided for - even if that occasionally meant pretending that a Squib with no Muggle papers was but a puir crofter frae the Hielans wha had made guid - and in consequence, Ernie numbered amongst his connexions a line of publishers who had culminated in a Prime Minister who could have given even Justin points at Etonian-style casualness. And Justin had as a matter of course been raised on just the sort of things that various Macmillans had been wont to publish, and which chaps at a prepper that was an Eton feeder school tended to have imbibed with their nursery teas.
When Ernie and Justin - Ernie for the moment in a state of slippered ease - began playing 'Kipling Characters Who Ought to Have Sorted Hufflepuff' or arguing the route David Balfour and Alan Breck took (And Did It Approach Hogsmeade At All at Any Point? Give Textual Support For Your Answer) or debating whether John Buchan's Heroes Were or Were Not Sporting, Hannah early developed the habit of thinking of something - anything - else.
_______________________
Ernie had always been a dutiful correspondent, keeping up quite regularly with all the members of his extended family: and, he being a Macmillan, that meant, in effect, with every respectable Pureblood in British Wizardom.
The majority of these, although respectable, were not precisely inured to civil conflict, resistance, and derring-do. That subset of his connexions, however, who resided North of the Border, or in Ireland (Northern or not: the Muggle border meant nothing to Wizards), or in Wales, were rather more on the qui vive. It was traditional.
Had the Carrows, or various Slytherin pupils, or anyone well affected towards Voldemort, bothered to look into his correspondence since returning to Hogwarts, they'd have been bored to tears by its contents. Only someone with Snape's sort of mind might have remarked upon the preponderance of Border, Scots, Isles, Welsh, and Irish correspondents, almost to the exclusion of most of the Macmillans' connexions much south of Settle or Carlisle or east of the Vale of Pewsey. And if Snape had remarked it - which Ernie rather suspected the man had done - he'd said nothing.
This was an anomaly. Obviously. And Ernie, personally, did not at all care for anomalies, actually. He might - and, unlike, say, Percy Weasley, he perfectly well knew he might - tend rather to speak like a leader in The Astrologist or a civil servant engaged in defensive obfuscation, but he was not precisely a fool: far from it. And he raised the point with Neville later that night, in the Room of Requirement.
'It's really an extremely critical point. I, personally, think it equally possible that he is trying suasion by - for Snape - blandishment and a comparative politeness of address, or that he is not altogether so committed to his ostensible cause as he wishes to seem.'
'Happen he isn't,' said Nev, rather shortly. 'Yet - sithee - happen he is. I don't see how you can give t' bugger anything but same answer, either road.' Nev liked Ernie, really he did, but when Ernie began prosing on in the tones of some ministerial bumph, Nev always reacted by retreating into an affected persona of commonsensical, bluff North-Countree flat-'attedness. Justin had remarked, in happier days, that when they really went at it, hammer and tongs, he always felt, rather, that he wanted to lay on beer and fish-paste sandwiches, what, for the latest labour negotiations. (Hannah had always simply left them to it, which had always been something of a disappointment to Nev, who, though he quite liked Justin and Ernie both, had rather looked forward to seeing Hannah above all and had tolerated her friends as a means to that end. It was only since the resistance had started, coeval with the school term, that Nev and Ernie had become fast friends in their own right, as allies will do.)
'Perhaps not,' said Ernie, 'but I, personally, should quite like to know. Did you in fact send out my letter?'
'Aye. And no charms or tracking cantrips on it: I damned well checked. Never stopped once on way, by anyone - though I'd a dirty look from t' Carrow woman. Happen she's learnt that if Snape himself sends me on my way, coming from his office with a letter, she'd do better not to interfere.'
'Possibly. I was stopped. Oh, no, not by those creatures. Zabini. He also wanted to know if I knew anything of Justin.'
Nev grinned. 'Aye, well. Reason for that, I reckon, and it's nowt to do with war.'
'Really?'
'Justin's your chum, lad.'
'And there have always been a few issues we have preferred not to discuss.'
'Aye, well. A shut mouth keeps flies out, I grant thi that much. But….'
'Personally, I'd quite like to believe Zabini asked only because he cares. As I cannot trust him, however, I must continue to be evasive.'
'Aye. Which is what you want t' do with Snape, for same reason - not that Snape -'
'I should think not.' Ernie shuddered. 'Justin has better taste than that.'
Nev grinned and raised a surprisingly salacious brow. He'd grown up fast already this term, had Nev; so, Ernie reflected, had they all, perforce. Unfortunately.
'Neville, I am perfectly comfortable in myself, thank you; and I can admit that Zabini is … decorative. If only he'd a personality transplant. Of course, it's hardly our opinions that matter, and Justin and he did seem to get on well.'
'One way o' putting it.'
'Oh, really, Neville….'
'Awreet, owdonabit, sirry, no need to meither.'
Ernie looked at him, solemn as any owl, and replied in the language of Nev's country. 'Longbottom … don't be an eggwap.'
_______________________
It had started in the Summer, in the long vac. By the last week of July, it had become clear to Ernie and Justin (and Hannah), trading off their hols as usual with a week chez Finch-Fletchley, a week at the Macmillan place, and a week getting underfoot of every Abbott in creation, turn and turn about, that things were about to wax very tiresome. They exerted themselves not to alarm Hannah: one must look to the ladies, bless them, and not alarm them unduly….
'I think,' had said Justin, staring up at a deceptively cloudless sky, 'that a gap year might be wise, for me.'
'I suppose you might knock about Australia or New Zealand - unless you've your heart set on India?'
'Much as I'd like to see the Little Master take India on tour in Sri Lanka, I think, old man, I want to be close at hand should anything happen. And I couldn't possibly leave England in any case until the Ashes are done, I shall be at Trent Bridge next week and the Oval a fortnight after.'
'TMS on the wireless not sufficient?'
'Not quite the same thing, is it? And I do want to be on hand for the wireless.'
Hannah had sat up and glared at them. 'Will you two idiots give over? Justin can't go back this year, they'll kill him. And he's planning to be here, on the run, rather than buggering off - and I suppose it's something to do with those owls and firecalls with the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan and Professor Lupin.'
'Steady on, Abbott -'
'Do not be chivalrous with me, you clots. I am not a fluttering, helpless maiden. Ernie, you're the one with the impeccably Pureblood connexions. You and I can do what we can to keep Justin abreast of events, and your innumerable friends-and-relations can hide him as he moves about.'
'I say, I can't possibly put the two of you, let alone Ernie's people, at risk like this -'
'You can and you shall.' Hannah had had no time for these scruples.
'Do you mind terribly a fair bit of rambling, and rural accommodations, mostly in the Isles, Ireland, Wales, the North of England, and all 'round Scotland?'
'Ernie…. Do be serious, old thing, I fear I'm practically a model for Barbour - although in fact the actual gear is mostly, I'm afraid, bespoke. And rather patched, really. I can't help that, it was all handed down….'
Whilst England had collapsed at Headingley on the second day of the Fourth Test, the three had set to work, planning Justin's possible routes and boltholes and striving to develop a safe means of communication. After hours of argument and research regarding evanescent inks, Charms (including the Protean Charm), Potions, and everything else they could think of as tending towards communications, Hannah had thrown up her hands and tossed her wand at the wall.
'We,' had she said, 'are idiots. Honest toil is all well and good, but this is absurd.'
They'd simply looked at her, dutifully and loyally declining to be affronted.
'Just write to each other via Ernie's relations and all. You needn't develop a secret code: the two of you talk in allusions half the time anyway. Do you think the Death Eaters read Kipling? Or John Macnab?'
'Surely not,' had Justin smiled, lazily. (Hannah had thought then as she was always to think, and had thought for several years before, that it was a pity Justin was not partial to the company of Witches: such a waste, really, although he wasn't a patch on Dear Nev….) 'Should think it'd've l'arned 'em better, had they done.'
'An excellent suggestion,' had Ernie said, with all the middle-aged gravity he'd commanded since the age of six. 'You'll not only take to the heather, Justin, you'll Take Heather.'
'Whilst you, Pertinax, hold the Wall against the Winged Hats? I suppose that makes your people my Allo.'
''Allo, 'allo!' Ernie was not above the occasional relapse into juvenile humour, even at his plummiest and most crusted-old-tawny. 'You'll be more like David Balfour, Justin, if not Richard Hannay - or Bonnie Prince Charlie, really, with Hannah as your Flora MacDonald. The -'
'Oh, God,' had said Hannah, who had forgotten, in the excitement of her Great Idea, how incredibly tiresome her friends became at times. 'And you, Justin! You're not even Scotch -'
'Scots,' had said Ernie, in awful and affronted accents.
'- Anyhow, you're English -'
'Which means, old girl, I've the usual bits of Welsh and Scots and French and Irish and God knows what in the old pied-de-grue.'
'And, Hannah, my people are Scots, and a few Irish of the better sort, and about three Welshmen, much more than they are Sassenach. You see,' had Ernie said, sinking comfortably into lecturing tones, 'the Ministry, be it run by Fudge or You Know What - I, personally, really cannot call that ghastly little oik as "Who": doubt he's actually human, really - or, as it might be, by dear old Arthur Weasley, is a London Ministry. North of, say, Wolverhampton, and West of Southampton, even the English prefer to ignore and are prepared to resist it - look at the Longbottoms, let alone the Weasleys. And we Scots … well, really. It's the '15 and the '45 every year, actually.'
And so, adopting Hannah's Bright Idea (somewhat to Hannah's bitter regret), it had begun.
_______________________
On 22 August of what ought to have been his seventh and last year of school, Justin Finch-Fletchley's name had appeared (rather down-market of them, he'd rather thought) in the Daily Prophet, as wanted for interrogation by the Ministry, failure to register with the Muggle-Born Registration Commission, and (it had been implied) anything else the Ministry might care to think up. (Unlike Hermione, he had not made the front page.) Whilst his name had been, quite impertinently and without any leave of his, in the public prints, his body had been seated comfortably at the Pavilion End - indeed, thanks to his connexions, in the Pavilion - for the second day of the Sixth Test of the Ashes, at the Oval. Absurd to think that, beyond the iconic gasholder, far from the Oval, in a hidden realm, things were being done that were the ultimate negation of all that is cricket. His mood had darkened as he thought, the lines beating in his mind: as if it were all an August Bank Holiday lark … never such innocence, never before or since, never such innocence again…. Yet, damn it all, one never says die; here, for example, is England, making a stand for respectability even if they cannot win the series, determined at least to win the last match and go down fighting….
The five-day Test match had been done and dusted in three, with Tuffers and his everlasting tea edging the Baggy Greens by nineteen face-saving runs. As ticket monies for the fourth and fifth days had been being refunded at the Oval, Justin had bought his own ticket to ride. The Pride of Anglia, his local Canaries - now part-owned by Delia - had been already embarked on their League campaign (irony of ironies, at the home ground of Carrow Road); cricket had been giving way to footer as season follows season; and Justin, embarked on another journey altogether. Sturdy brogues with rubber soles and grip, in which a man could ramble or fell-run as required, had been on his feet; tweed and waxed cotton, in his as-sturdy bag. It hadn't been the Hogwarts Express, but it had been a train, headed Northwards: Cambridge to Ely to Peterborough to Leeds, with connections, if he chose, to Settle, when he liked; and at every station, infinite possibilities, wanting only time and a willingness to wait, to go where safety beckoned, and confuse his trail.
His heralds had gone before him: Ernie's indefatigable correspondence.
_______________________
'Well, Parnesius,' had Ernie said, as they had shaken hands and parted for what might be a month, a year, or forever. 'No Floo, no Apparating save where necessary, no Knight Bus … shanks' mare for you, and the Muggle rail, I suppose.'
'And driving, Pertinax, on occasion, don't forget, and riding, I suspect quite often. And crowds to lose oneself in, or solitude that gives a chap ample warning. I shall jink like a jinking fox, I imagine - but I'm damned if I shall miss the Sixth Test before I go.'
Hannah had been dabbing at her eyes, which had persisted quite stubbornly in leaking, for all her efforts.
'Yes, well, when you've sense enough to come down from Town, I trust you'll take the rolling road.'
'Oh, quite: I shall go to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier, and to Brum via Beachy Head.'
'Do try not to stuff it up and get yourself killed. I, personally, should find that vexing.'
'Too tiresome for words,' had Justin agreed. 'Boring, really.' He'd turned to shake hands with Hannah, and had found himself unexpectedly with an armful of clinginess - although, of course, no undignified sobbing. By the time he and Ernie had exchanged a startled look of dismay, Hannah had retrieved her composure - indeed, her sanity - and stepped back, looking into the middle distance a few degrees left of Justin's right shoulder.
'Well,' had he said. 'I'll be seeing you.'
She had managed a smile. 'In all the old familiar places. Best of British, eh, Flinch?'
'Absolutely. And you - the both of you.' He had shouldered his bag and ambled off, in an awkward silence which none of them had any idea how to resolve.
_______________________
The wingèd heralds had gone forth before him.
'My dear Cousin Isobel,' had Ernie written, and written innumerable variations on the air and theme: My dear Torquil, as it might be; My dear Aunt Agatha, Cousin Margery, Uncle Iain, Catriona, Great-Aunt Agrippina, Rabbie, Aunt Maud, Rory, Cousin Æneas, Eva, Gemma, Cousin Archibald, Patrick, Uncle Alpheus, Christian, Great-Aunt Charmian, Terence, Aunt Tullia, Alun, Uncle Watkin, Cousin Alys, Octavia, Cousin Evan, Great-Uncle Euan….
'I don't wish to badger you, least of all as the news - if you credit it - goes from bad to worse, but one of our old sett who's on a walking tour may pitch up quite near your place at some point. I should take it as a kindness to me if you had old Parnesius to tea….'
When one has impeccably Pureblooded connexions christened Atia and Flavius, Agrippina, Æneas, Alpheus, Tullia, and Octavia, a 'Parnesius', even if some bugger reads your correspondence, is apt to pass unnoticed. And - it being unthinkable that a Hufflepuff should be a Death Eater, or serve the sods - it wasn't terribly likely that 'badger' and 'sett' with a double 't' should be looked at twice, Ernie rather thought: the masked bastards weren't a clever bunch, in the main.
_______________________
Honoria, Lady Marchbanks to Ernest Macmillan Younger, 4 September, from Ingle Hall, Chapel-le-Fell, nr Ribblehead:
My dear nephew,
What on earth is going on at that school of yours? We have had the news even here, in my English exile, that Severus Snape has been made head beak. I must say it seems an interesting, not to say Pratchettian, way of gaining promotion.
The hysteria in the public prints being put to one side, we have not, in fact, been at all overrun with savage Muggles here. There was one young chap rambling on a gap year, or so we supposed; as it happens, he's actually doing some wireless work - the Beeb, presumably - on, as I gather, their Autumnwatch programme, if I have that correctly. His speciality seems to be otters, so I suppose that to mean he's engaged in an Otterwatch! If the poor young man is expecting otters in Winterscales Beck, I fear he is to be disappointed. He seemed well-spoken enough, with a rather OE sort of manner, so we gave him tea and cakes as he passed through. Some of the Muggles, poor things, are really almost clever, aren't they. (He's a lovely speaking voice, not at all slangy and common and down-market as seems the fashion nowadays: quite a pleasure to hear: but is apparently on the technical side rather than a reader. Pity, really.)
Parnesius has not been seen here, but I did have speech with the old fool (although he's quite as young, to me, as are you), and he sends his regards to you - and wishes to be remembered, he said, to 'your own Fionnghal NicDhòmhnaill' - whoever that may be. (Flora MacDonald, indeed! Silliness, I call it.) Are you walking out with a good Scots girl at last, nephew? I never can determine what you young people are on about - or what that silly ass Parnesius is driving at.
Gervase has had bad reports of the grouse this year and is assured that the whole of British Wizardom is going to the dogs - and not the gundogs. You of course shall be able to take your uncle's choler and pessimism with the appropriate dose of salts. Were he not a complete savage with no memory for les convenances, he'd no doubt join me in sending his regards. As you are neither a game bird nor a gundog, however, I imagine he has quite forgotten your existence.
Recalling as I do how vexing one's Seventh Year can be even in the most Settled times, I have spoke several Galleons' worth of chocs for you and your wee friends at Honeydukes. It may serve in emergencies to keep you from becoming quite demented.
If there is anything else I can do for you within reason, you have only to ask
Your affectionate if occasionally exasperated aunt,
HONORIA MARCHBANKS
_______________________
Ernie Macmillan to Gemma Gamp, Monksrigg Farm, nr Armathwaite, 7 September, from Hogwarts:
My dear Cousin Gemma,
Aunt Honoria and Uncle Gervase are by all accounts well. Or, in his case, as well as can be expected. (No, he's no madder than commonly; on the other hand, he's no more sane than he's been for yonks.) Living as they do quite near to the Viaduct, I worry about them, and have done so since the Brockdale Bridge collapsed; and it's not wholly unlikely that old Parnesius intends to potter about on the Settle and Carlisle Railway, as well. I should take it as a very great kindness, and a considerable relief to my mind, were you to keep a weather eye out for the dear old things - I mean Honoria and Gervase, of course.
Hogwarts is uncommonly chilly this year. I am more than ever obliged to you for the scarves and mufflers.
Yours aye,
ERNIE
_______________________
Gemma Gamp to Ernie Macmillan, 11 September, from Monksrigg Farm:
Ern, honestly, have you really been fifty since you were weaned? The Viaduct is not going to fall down atop Aunt Honoria - it shouldn't dare to do - not if the peak of Ingleborough itself tottered. As for that daft anorak Parnesius, I shall tell him of your worries if I see him, but it's much more likely he'll simply drift past like a particularly absent-minded bit of thistledown.
Oh, and there's more wool where that came from: I've been spinning and knitting like an Acromantula since the last clip, and have hardly made the least impression on its absurd bulk. (There is such a thing as too good a year for a flock, really.) I have been reduced to simply giving away mufflers and socks and All That to passing ramblers - even Muggles, my dear! (There was a woolly-headed and woolly-minded one came through on the footpath just the other day, actually - speaking of Parnesius' sort of person. Toothsome, in a public-school, nice-but-dim sort of way, but rather evidently uninterested in women, which is always a relief to a literal spinster of a Lesbian, I assure you. I kitted him out simply to be shot of another bale of wool, and he was such a complete baa-lamb to begin with it seemed only fair. The poor bugger left in haste after receiving a ring on his mobile, so I didn't even get a PG out of it, thus rendering my giving away knitted things wholly an act of unrecompensed charity. Apparently he's something to do with broadcasting, and something came up suddenly.)
If things in that draughty old castle get colder yet, fear not. At this point, I could manage a cosy for the whole damned pile.
GEM
_______________________
Hon. Watkin Watkin-Tudor to Ernie Macmillan, from Cwmcastell House, Powys, nr Pont Senni (Sennybridge), 17 September:
My dear Ernie,
Your father writes to tell me that you are holding up well enough through the inevitable annoyances of Seventh Year. I suppose an elderly second cousin wants to be grateful for even that much news of you; you can imagine that I was therefore the more pleased to have had a line of you last month, if less so than not to have heard anything directly since.
Parnesius stopped to tea yesterday - fortunately, I had just returned an hour before from doddering about the Forest of Dean, simply to get away from trippers here at Pont Senni (and it shall only get worse; as the trippers fade away, the ruddy SAS come back - I cannot think it a happy situation for the red kites). I was a trifle tired from the journey, but I don't think I'd dropped off into dreams, and I distinctly heard him say something about missing some Italian johnny and that you ought to be advised accordingly. I don't recall in my Hogwarts days that there was a decent purveyor of ice-cream in all Hogsmeade, but perhaps things have changed: you surely know better than I what if anything the man was on about. He seems to have been expelled from Eden, as it were, quite recently - if Honoria and Gervase and Gemma of the Wool can be said to live in Eden -; I suggested that if he must mope, the Beacons were hardly the place for it, no matter what latest madness (otter-watching, if you can credit it!) brought him to potter about here instead. I don't say I sent him off with a flea in his ear, but I am happy to note that he took my advice and followed my example in travelling on to the Forest of Dean, where, no doubt, in his pottering, he'll look out hiding places for weasels and what not. I'm in favour of a bit of botany and natural history myself, but he takes it I think to extremes; then again, it keeps him out of trouble.
I trust you also are keeping out of trouble so far as that comports with doing well and doing what good you may: this is after all an important year, as Seventh Year always is. Do send an owl, with reports of how you are getting on, to
Your ever-concerned cousin and courtesy-uncle,
WATKIN WATKIN-TUDOR
_______________________
'Macmillan. My office.'
'Headmaster.'
'And you, Abbott.'
'Sir -'
'Now. If. You. Please.'
When the door had snicked-to behind them, Snape sat as if in state in the Head's chair. Ernie and Hannah remained standing.
'Do the two of you really have no interest in keeping your badges as prefects?'
Hannah and Ernie made sure not to catch one another's eye: both could hear with the hallucinatory clarity of memory their lost Justin, declaiming, 'Badges? Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges'….
'Not particularly - Headmaster,' said Ernie, stoutly. 'Not if there are - shall we say, new conditions? - appended.'
'And yet they do grant certain … privileges … that have a certain protective quality. Particularly in Miss Abbott's case, as her lineage is considered, in some regards … to be lacking. It should be a very great pity were she, particularly, to forfeit those protections. Would it not.'
'Badge or no badge, Headmaster, I'd remain a Badger.' Hannah was quite proud that her voice had not discernibly quavered.
'So long as there is such a House, yes. Much good it may do you.
'Where is Finch-Fletchley?'
'I really don't know. Headmaster.'
'Abbott?'
'I've even less idea. Sir.'
'Were you not Hufflepuffs, and effectively incapable of a decent lie, I should pour so much Veritaserum down your throats as to leave you in the Janus Thickey Ward. And I may yet. Where is Finch-Fletchley?'
'Not the foggiest.'
'"Not the foggiest" what, Macmillan?'
'Not the foggiest idea.' Ernie gave it a full measure of time before adding, in tones of contempt, 'Headmaster.'
'I realise that the standard of tuition in this school has been, under previous Heads, lamentably low, not to say laughable, but you want to realise, Macmillan, that your mind - such as it is - quite as much as your face - such as it is - and your insolent tones, is an open, if remarkably boring, book.'
'If that be so - Headmaster - then there's hardly any point in hectoring us verbally with questions we cannot possibly answer.'
'Unless you can conceive of my giving you a chance, yes. Your chances are running very low, Macmillan. Abbott's are effectively non-existent, and she hasn't your … status … to fall back upon. Or hide behind. I was given to understand that loyalty was a Hufflepuff trait. Or at least, claim. In order to find a Muggle on the run who - the Ministry assure us - has stolen his magic from real Wizards and Witches, the sacrifice of a not terribly talented or useful Halfblood is quite likely to be approved. You want to consider your position, Macmillan. And your little friend Abbott's.'
'I'll take my chances with the boys, Headmaster.' There was no chance now of Hannah's voice shaking with anything save fury. 'It's not as if your lot have a character for gallantry to begin with, and I shan't be patronised simply because I'm a Witch rather than a Wizard.'
'Dear me,' said Snape, steepling his fingers. 'Macmillan, you are reputed to be fond of Kipling. Evidently the female of the species is deadlier than the male. I - personally, as you should no doubt add with your usual unnecessary tics, Macmillan - don't consider Kipling very safe reading just now. As you consider your positions, you might do much better to research Legilimency and Occlumency, and contemplate what the sad lack of the latter could so easily mean to you both - and your little friend.
'I suggest you go now and begin. I shall give you a pass to the Restricted Section, so that you may learn precisely what you are up against as you decide how far you wish to push me.'
_______________________
Torquil Macmillan-Maclaine of Knockmore to Ernie Macmillan Younger, 25 September, from Cnoc Mor Lodge, Ross of Mull:
My dear cousin,
'Is fearr deathach a' fhraoich, na gaoth a reodhaidh' is all very well, but at this time of the year the wind of the frost is already stronger, if inferior, to the smoke of the heather. There are times I quite wish that we were hidden away after the manner of Hogwarts: we had a lad through here yesterday madder than Martin Miggs, as one might expect. I don't say it's not marvellous how well some Muggles cope without magic - or Squibs, or someone who's lost, or cannot use, his wand, for that matter - and I make quite certain that a few of them are almost as clever as a good sheepdog. I cannot for all that think a sort of primitive wigwam is at all the right sort of shelter for September in even the Inner Hebrides. I confess that in a moment of weakness I allowed him to use the old bothy overnight: he was a well-enough-spoken lad, for a Sassenach. He dug in like a badger through the worst of the weather, I must say. We fed him and sent him on in rude health - bodily, at least; I doubt me but that his mental stability is precarious, or why would a lad be going about in this season in the wild?
It's as bad as Parnesius, watching for otters - and there's a man who, I've been told this very morn, is in good health and spirits, if but mad as a stoat. I trust that you by contrast are as safe and as sane as one may be in one's Seventh Year, and cleaving close to your set books. Do mind how you go, and let me know how you do.
Yours aye,
MACMILLAN-MACLAINE OF KNOCKMORE
_______________________
Ernie Macmillan to Terence Fitzgerald-de Burgh, 30 September, from Hogwarts:
My dear Cousin Toirdhealbhach,
I trust that you and Sibéal, and wee Martin, are flourishing.
I ran across an interesting reference the other day to the 'King of the Otters' in Irish myth, which may differ to Scots lore on the 'dratsie'. Have you information on that heading?
In academic haste,
Yours aye,
ERNIE
_______________________
'Macmillan. Abbott. I shan't insult such intelligence as you possess by pretending you don't know why you are here. Can you, Macmillan, look me in the eye and tell me you do not know where Finch-Fletchley is?'
'As I don't, actually, personally know where he is, then, Yes. Yes, I can. … Headmaster.'
'You remain, I see, as assiduous a correspondent to and with your appallingly ramified family as ever. They are all, of course, Purebloods? Quite so. Not the sort of people likely to shelter a Muggle who has stolen magic.'
'They'd not dream of sheltering such a person. Were one to exist.'
'And you, Abbott. Half, I know, in blood and I think in wit. Do any of your people know Finch-Fletchley, bar your parents?'
'No, Headmaster.'
'And do they know where he is?'
'Not in the least, Headmaster.'
'Do you?'
'I do not, Headmaster.'
'I think a hundred lines, tonight, twice over.'
They bent to their task, and in a few minutes' time, handed up their parchments:
A hundred lines.
A hundred lines.
'Sufficient. Have you availed yourselves of the pass I gave you to look into Legilimency - and of course that Occlumency in which you are woefully deficient?'
'Yes.'
'Macmillan….'
'We have. Headmaster. And we have considered our position.'
'See that you do. Get out. And do not deviate from a straight route to your dormitories: this is not the night for it.'
_______________________
Terence Fitzgerald-de Burgh to Ernie Macmillan, 4 October, from Bellasa House, nr Foxford, Co. Mayo:
Ernest Bloody Macmillan,
Is it the second sight you have, then, of old Aunt Fiona? She always suspected it might come to you. No, I've no more to add than you'll find in your books about the Otter King; but, Christ, old Parnesius was stopping with us when you wrote. (He's no worse than ever he was, although he's since vanished like a daft maneen into the Nephins and the Ox Mountains, as you'd expect. Mad, that man, I tell you: a dratted dratsie himself, he is, but.)
We are all of us well; do write a line now and then to assure us that you are also, and relieve the minds of wee Martin, his mother, and
Your distracted cousin whom you must leave off calling as 'Turlough',
TERENCE
_______________________
'MACMILLAN! My office in five minutes!'
As Snape stormed out of the Great Hall, Malfoy smirked. Ernie was as imperturbable as ever, finishing his pudding and leaving for the Head's office with a positively Justinian languor.
'Do you know why I am about to impose a thousand lines on you, Macmillan?'
'I really do not - Headmaster.'
'Mr Malfoy had a bright idea, and put it up to the Carrows, whence it went … elsewhere.'
'Draco Malfoy had a bright idea? I must say, I am shocked.'
'Do not try my patience, Macmillan. His idea was that in addition to monitoring your incessant correspondence with your far too large family, checking it for Charms, and otherwise investigating it, it wanted also to be read through, closely. And that task has fallen to me. To me, Macmillan.'
'Better you than others, Headmaster. I doubt some of the newer additions to staff could read all the words.'
'Their lips, at any rate, should become tired. Most amusing, Macmillan. The fact remains that I must now plough through the inane drivel you and your connexions are forever owling one another. Had anyone ever doubted that boredom - and yours, Macmillan, must be the most thoroughly, stupefyingly boring family ever to set quill to parchment - had anyone ever doubted that boredom might rival the Cruciatus for misery, I can now disabuse them, of experience, of that notion.
'Therefore, you shall give me a thousand lines on that parchment. They needn't be long, or straight. After which, tonight and every night, you, Macmillan, as detention, shall read your puerile maunderings and those of your family aloud, to me, here, for one hour after dinner, so that I may at least attempt to do something with the time I should otherwise be compelled to waste on that rubbish.'
_______________________
'Macmillan.'
'Zabini.'
'You don't trust me.'
'Why ought I to do?'
'I, however, trust you - not least not to be a fool.'
'If I cared, actually, for your good opinion, I should no doubt be burdened with a sense of obligation to you for that remark.'
'You do realise it wasn't Draco who had the bright idea that Snape should read over your letters.'
'So far as I am concerned, personally, he can publish them in the Death-Eaters' Journal and Faily Advertiser.'
'As I said, Macmillan, I trust you not to be a fool. It seems I was right.'
'Zabini? Sod off.'
'I'd love to, darling, but not until my beloved returns to me. I'm sure you can find a way to pass that sentiment on to your missing Housemate.'
_______________________
'Aye,' said Nev. 'I almost can just imagine the possibility that it might almost be possible to trust t' buggers now. Makes no odds, though, Ern: so long as Carrows and such be about.'
'Oh, quite,' said Ern, glumly.
Part Two