Forever for Avalon Chapter 14
Two weeks to school, all you college Yanks and fellow readers. Two weeks till classes resume!
Chapter 14
Death is not the end. It's just a new beginning.
-Arthur Abraxas Keeney, Dec. 1954
Each day that he woke up, Harry felt as though time were moving a bit too fast. Just after New Year's he, Ron, and Hermione had set out again, figuring that if Voldemort were to come after Abigail, it would be best not to give him what he wanted twofold. Worried, he ate less and less, trying to come up with a solution that didn't end with Voldemort winning.
Near midnight on January the fourth, he, Ron, and Hermione were sitting at the table in their tent, watching as the clock ticked closer, counting down the last seconds of any immunity Abigail had against the Death Eaters, whether it be real or imagined. Ron looked paler than usual while Hermione had remained focused on the same spot in her book for the past fifteen minutes.
The clock struck twelve, jerking them all out of their reverie. Hermione lit the candle in the center of the table.
Harry jumped up, heading outside. One down, one to go. In August, Ginny would be seventeen and that would save none of them from the Death Eater's wrath.
A quick three-note whistle sounded from somewhere to his right. He jumped, grabbing his wand out of reflex. "Who's there?" he called. A slower, four-note whistle responded. Recognizing the whistle, he repeated the last four notes. The first, three repeated themselves.
"Where are you?" he called, edging further away, still suspecting a trap. "Où penses-tu?
(Where do you think?)" a familiar tone replied.
"Ce mieux ne pas être un truc.(This better not be a trick)" he said, hearing the sound of horses as he came closer. "Abigail," he said. "I see you haven't wasted any time."
"Je vois tu as. (See you have)." she replied, "Comment alles-tu? (How are you?)"
"Fine," he said, putting his wand back in his pocket. "You?"
"Well, that would be telling." she replied. "Ginny says thanks for the heads up by the way." Harry raised an eyebrow and Abigail slid off Yankee in a graceful move. "Fine. Everyone's pissed at you lot for up and leaving. There's not much I can do. I'm stuck."
"That didn't stop your mum," he replied. "Why should it stop you?"
"We both know that the curse Mum unleashed went to hell when you destroyed Voldemort the first time. Now, it's sixteen years later and Draco and I have been together for the past three. No matter how you play it, I'm not going to make it much past Beltane. I've accepted that. The least you can do is let me at least see the twins to their first birthday. After that, full steam ahead."
"Does Draco know?" Harry asked. Abigail snorted. "Course he doesn't. He still thinks it's a load of shit. I'm not asking you to keep this up for another year. I just need a couple more months."
Harry sighed. "I'll see what I can do. The earliest we'll be on the move again is Candlemas. Try to stall on your end till then."
"I will." Abigail said. "D'you want to take Yankee? I know there's three of you, but you'd be able to carry more supplies that way." Harry shook his head. "No. Let him have an easy time till we really need him." He pulled her into a hug. "Stay safe," he whispered.
"You too," she replied, as they broke apart. "I'll try to send information if I can."
Abigail swung herself up onto Yankee, using a nearby rock as a mounting block. She waved as she pushed Yankee into a trot.
"Merde" she called as she disappeared.
"Merde" Harry replied, wishing her luck as well.
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Abigail was fairly certain that Harry would assume that she was going back wherever she had been previously. She was, but she felt perfectly justified in taking her time.
Fresh air was a luxury that they couldn't afford if they wanted to stay safe, at least, for the moment. And, even if Draco didn't know it yet, this would be her last winter. She wanted to remember it as it was, not some fluffed up version that the historians would write. So she didn't panic when she saw the sun begin to set even though she was less than a mile away from the Titanica. Instead, she felt perfectly justified in arriving well after dinner, not wanting to surrender her freedom till spring.
Draco didn't say anything when she came to bed well after ten, having spent time in the stables, dragging out the routine of brushing down the horses and making sure that they had their stable blankets even though the warming charms kept the stable warm, then taking the time to polish her saddle, carefully making sure that she left no residue with the polish-it irritated Yankee's skin, something she usually only did half-heartedly. She just didn't want to admit defeat, that for now she was in retreat until she heard from Harry.
Trying to avoid thinking about the whole situation, she watched the twins sleep. Eileen was going to need her own room simply because it would allow Arthur to sleep without her snores waking him up. Sometimes she even woke herself up. She glanced at the opposite wall. The Keeney family tree mocked her. Generations of names crisscrossed and revealed only half of the puzzle: previous generations seldom kept record of the parent that wasn't a Keeney and cut out many of the Britions that they'd had children with. That made the web of family connections only more complicated. If you added each and every so-called Pureblood family tree into this one, names would overlap, and some would wind up even more closely related than if you simply took out the Keeney family.
It was a network of alliances and other evils that her mother had tried so desperately to avoid. Some ministers, like Fudge, had ignored Avalon and the Keeneys altogether and hoped they would go away. When Barty Crouch was in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, he understood that her grandmother's methods were unconventional: sending in underage kids to fight, inserting spies into Voldemort's ranks that didn't report to anyone but her, undermining his efforts at a semblance of Ministry control at every turn.
Crouch, however, had underestimated her mother. When Crouch had Aster, her dad, James Potter, and Lily Evans in on breaking the Reasonable Restriction for Underage Sorcery, he knew that if he touched any of the Avis in the group, he was risking a two-front war. So he had gone for the weakest target-Lily Evans and threatened her with expulsion from Hogwarts. Even then, he'd underestimated the three of them. Potter had applied for an Avalon passport on her aunt's behalf, her dad had gone immediately to Aunty Andy to advise them in the legal aspects of the confrontation, and her mum had made call after call to Minister Johnson to push the paperwork through to make Lily Evans (officially) an Avalon citizen.
The paperwork had gone through just in the nick of time and Crouch had no choice but to agree to the decision the Avalon Civil Courts had made: Lily Evans was an Avalon citizen with a student passport for Hogwarts while in the summer official custody was granted to her parents until she turned seventeen, at which time she would be required to be formally sworn in as a citizen of Avalon.
Crouch resigned shortly after her mother had died, citing personal reasons, but everyone knew that he'd had enough. Enough of Aster barging in when he was trying to negotiate with Moody about proper interrogation techniques. Enough of Aster taking over his office without permission.
And enough of Aster being the only thing keeping the stress keeping him from keeling over. When she was gone, what had been the point when even Moody was calling him loony? He'd since transferred to the Department of International Cooperation which made him a semi-regular visitor to the Titanica, mostly to update the roster of Muggleborn students, but mostly (she suspected) to reinforce the reality of her mother's death.
Abigail tacked off another day and sat up, waiting for something to happen.
Of course, I'll continue to update. I will let you know if I can't for whatever reason. And I apologize in advance if I can't, miss an update or RL takes over.
Well, happy reading and enjoy the remainder of summer.
Mischief Managed,
Sparky