New Beginnings
Avalon’s heart grew heavy as the train let off a final, ear-splitting whistle, and the reality of what was to come began to set in. Thick smoke clouded the window, giving her an excuse to tear her eyes away from the platform. She fixed her gaze resolutely on her shoes, worn and dirty as they were. Mother’s gaze pulled at hers like a magnet. They were gathering speed, leaving the platform, and the temptation became unbearably insistent. Their eyes caught each other as the train rounded a corner. Her mother’s were red with tears.
The clouds that had hung grey and low that morning began to disperse as the Hogwarts Express settled into a comfortable, steady rhythm. The sound of footsteps in her carriage told her that students began to bustle about, or perhaps that latecomers were finding their seats. Nervous anticipation gripped her, but mercifully, no-one came into her compartment, and she remained blissfully alone.
For want of something better to do, she took up the tattered copy of the wizard Plato’s Phaedrus that she kept in her robes by way of a Pocket-Expanding Charm. The book had been required reading for her Prophecy elective at Beauxbatons, and she’d taken to carrying it around last year. It had been useful, she’d been happy to find, in warding off unwanted conversations. The words seemed to swim off the page and dance blurrily, and as morning bled into midday, she tried to concentrate, irritated. The first appearance deceives many. That was certainly something she could understand. All she had to do was hope no-one looked to closely for the impossible year ahead. After that, she didn’t know. If all went to plan, she would be given what had been promised to her. She wasn’t a fool, though – she harboured no illusions about how unlikely it was that she’d be able to pull everything off without a hitch, no matter what her correspondents told her.
She realized that her eyes, like her mother’s, had become teary. How long since Avalon had seen her cry? Come to think of it, she couldn’t think of a time she had seen her mother really upset. Scared, yes, and angry too – but a cold detachment always concealed her truest emotions. Her red-rimmed eyes just added to the unreality of it all.
Approaching footsteps pulled her swiftly from her thoughts, and panic set in as they stopped outside her compartment. The thought of making conversation was unpleasant. Perhaps she should feign sleep. Yes, that would be best. Her hands became limp and her head lolled against the window, eyes closed, as the door slid open with a clatter.
“Honestly, ‘Mione, come off it. I’m starting to think you’re as mental as he is,” a voice was saying loudly. “He’s more likely to secretly be a ghoul that a… a you-know-what.” His voice lowered and there was a tense silence. “Reckon she’s really asleep?”
“Yes, it looks like it,” a female voice responded.
Avalon heard them settle into the seat opposite her. There was a crinkling sound, followed quickly by the smell of something beef-like, which told her sandwiches were being unwrapped.
“It looks like she’s been crying,” the female voice said, softer now.
“Or she’s ill. Reckon it’s Spattergroit?” His voice was full of mirth (and sandwiches), and Avalon suppressed a snort.
“Ronald! All I’m saying,” the girl continued, serious again, “is that the idea can’t have come from nowhere. And after that creepy hand in Borgin and Burke’s…”
“Makes sense that he’d be a bit paranoid, though, doesn’t it? I mean, after facing You-Know-Who so many times, bloke’s probably looking for danger everywhere. That’d mess anyone up. I know he’s our best mate, but this…” He sounded resigned. “Even evil dark lords don’t recruit teenagers to carry out their plans.”
How wrong he was, she thought.
“You’re right.” The girl sighed too. “Let’s talk about it later.” Avalon heard a gentle clinking sound, like things being set down on a table. She chanced to open her eyes ever so slightly, and from under her eyes she saw that they were setting up Wizard Chess. The girl, seated across from her, sported a head of the bushiest hair she had ever seen. Her companion was ginger-haired and freckly, and seemed to gangly and long for the compartment.
“Pawn to E4,” he said, and Avalon, without noticing it, slipped gently into the warm cradle of sleep.
***
It was her sixteenth birthday. Shadowy figures were seated around the stone table, neither speaking nor moving. She hardly dared to breathe lest it disturb the stony silence that enshrouded the room. A chill gripped her from the inside out and she was silently thankful for the darkness that partially obscured her face, and kept her expression private. Outside it was high summer, the hottest day on record for the city of Poitiers for fifty years, but here, underground, they were immune to it. It felt otherworldly down here, like she had stepped into the shadowy realm of the afterlife.
“Pray tell, Duclair, why you called us here.” She knew the Death Eater that the cold voice belonged to, and behind a thick layer of shadow and grease, she could make out his harsh features. “Surely you cannot think we all have nothing better to do than attend your tea party.”
“Please – calling zis meeting… eet was imperative.” The familiar, accented voice of her father came from her left, and gave her some comfort. “Zere ‘as been a mistake in ze plan. She is too young – far too young! I’d sooner go myself…” Avalon caught sight of his face, and she realised what he was offering. He’d walk into the arms of death himself on her behalf, if it meant she could stay safe in France, away from the coming war.
“You dare to defy me…!” it came out as a furious roar, and the Death Eater jumped to his feet, brandishing his wand at her cowering father…
***
“…You reckon we should wake her?”
“…We’re almost at Hogsmeade, we probably ought to.”
With a start, Avalon realised the voices were talking about her, and she opened her eyes to see that night had fallen. The chess game lay abandoned, and the smouldering black king told her that White had claimed victory. The memory of the dream faded the more she tried to remember it, and all she was left with was a distantly panicked feeling.
The long shadows on the compartment floor told her that she’d slept through most of the afternoon and almost into the night. It occurred to her how close they were – how close she was – to Hogwarts. She had never been this far north before. There was something bewitchingly alien about the fierce Caledonian terrain, and despite herself, she couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement. Outside, the neat little fields of earlier that day had given way to wild mountains and hills, arranged as haphazardly as a splatter of paint across an artist’s canvas. Though it was only autumn, gloomy clouds hung low and cold. The train was pushing steadily through a glen, following the trail of a narrow river that seemed to glow in the darkening evening.
“Hello,” the girl said kindly. “Sleep well? We’ll be there soon, you out to put on your robes.” She and the boy both wore crimson and gold ties now, yet Avalon was still in her Muggle clothes.
“Thanks.” Better to find a bathroom than to make them leave the compartment while she changed. Fortunately, her robes weren’t too hard to find in her trunk and she managed to locate a bathroom at the end of the carriage. The high neck and long sleeves of her robes were too warm for September, and she felt more and more uncomfortable as she made back to the compartment.
“Forgot your tie?” the girl said, grinning.
“I don’t have one.” Avalon took a breath and felt her face redden. “I haven’t… I don’t have a house yet or anything. I’m new.”
“You look to be our age.” Her bushy eyebrows furrowed to make a frown. “Are you a first year?”
“Sixth, actually. I’ve transferred here from Beauxbatons,” she explained. “I don’t know how to get to Hogwarts from the train or anything, actually. Could I bother you to help…?”
“Of course!” She beamed. “Dumbledore mentioned something about a new student in sixth year, how could I have forgotten? I’m Hermione and this is Ron. We’re Gryffindor prefects; you’ll be alright with us. We’re sixth years too. What did you say your name was?”
She finished and took a breath, having said this very fast, and Ron made sheepish eye contact and gave her a lopsided grin. She was about to reply when her eye caught the tag on her trunk, written in her own careful handwriting. Avalon Anne-Laure Duclair. At Beauxbatons Avalon had earned her some curious stares; it was a name little found in France, and so she had always gone by Anne-Laure. Here though, in Britain, she was in the homeland of her Arthurian namesake, and she guessed that English tongues were more likely to trip over her middle name.
“Ava,” she said finally, and smiled too, for the first time that day, or perhaps that year; she couldn’t quite remember.
***
Hogsmeade village lay in the crook of a mountain, and looked like nothing more than a sleepy Muggle hamlet from afar. As they drew closer, though, what had looked like part of the land shimmered and rippled to become houses, shops, and streets, all of which had that distinctively magical feeling that only wizarding settlements do. Hogsmeade station was at its heart, completing a scene so picturesque that Ava was sorry to see it disrupted by the shrill whistle of the Express as it drew to a shuddering stop and the platform began to come to life. Students poured out, talking eagerly among themselves with renewed energy.
“Stay by me, I’ll help you find a carriage,” Hermione’s voice said at her ear as they navigated the crowd. “We’re supposed to make sure the first years get to Hagrid safely, as prefects, so we might be on the platform a little while… First years this way! Over here, first years!” Ava didn’t have time to ask what Hagrid was before Hermione urgently started directing children with the authority of someone who had been doing it all her life. Ron appeared on the other side of her and joined in. “Yeah, over there mate, keep walking… OI, you can’t take that up to school! Five points from Hufflepuff, hand it over. Sweet,” he added, winking at Ava as he pocketed the confiscated item, a flesh-coloured ear attached to a long, silvery string. “Extendable ears are dead useful; this’ll come in handy.”
The platform slowly emptied, the older students seeming to head in one direction and the first years in another. They had begun a slow procession towards a distant, glimmering lake, led by a figure she could only assume was at least part giant. Satisfied, Ron and Hermione followed the last couple of students down a stony path and into a clearing, Ava tagging along behind them.
She could see now that a procession of carriages was slowly passing through the clearing. A carriage would emerge from the forest that bordered this side of the station and draw to a halt. Students would embark, and the carriage would set off, through the woods and towards the distant castle like a Grecian chariot pulled by an invisible Balios and Xanthos. The castle! She had barely noticed it in the pandemonium of finding her way to the platform, but it swam before her now as if floating, dark and foreboding and yet somehow warm bright at the same time. Beauxbatons was a resplendent work of early Baroque architecture, but with none of the gloomy Medieval allure of Hogwarts.
Hermione pulled her out of her trance by tugging urgently on her robes. “Get in, Ava! It’s getting late, the feast ought to start soon.” They settled into what looked to be the last carriage, Ava with her back to the invisible horses, and it creaked into motion.
“Wait!”
Footsteps echoed loudly on the now quiet platform and down the stone path. A pale, thin hand gripped the carriage and hoisted its owner up to sit next to Ava, and she saw that it belonged to a scowling, angular boy in a green and silver tie whose face was peculiarly familiar, although she couldn’t place it. The boy showed no sign of recognition, and Ava thought she must have imagined it.
“All your Slytherin mates ran off, did they?” Ron snapped. The boys glared each other down with animosity, and Ava felt like she was missing out on some sort of inside knowledge.
“Had to stay back and wrestle my Kneazle to get him into his cage,” the newcomer finally said, lowering his gaze. “Don’t delude yourself that I’d sit within ten feet of you given any other choice, Weasley.” He turned around to regard, with considerable unease, their invisible consorts. “Bloody awful things. They give me the creeps.”
His voice was familiar as well; it was high pitched and nasally and she was certain she’d heard it before. Even his posture seemed to resemble someone she knew; he sat hunched and awkward as though his skinny frame was too long for the carriage.
“You can see them, Nott?” Hermione’s face was pale and sad in the moonlight.
“As if I would talk to you about it, Mudbl-”
“Sorry, but, see… what?”
They all turned to Ava, as if they’d forgotten she was there.
“Thestrals,” Ron said with distaste. “Big bloody winged horses… well, if horses and bats had babies together, anyway-”
“Ronald!”
“Sorry! You can only see them if you’ve seen death. Not that I have,” he added quickly, glancing among the three others. “There’s a drawing in the Care of Magical Creatures textbook though, and they’re not pretty…”
Ava stilled as she mulled over his words in her mind. You can only see them if you’ve seen death. She’d seen her father die at the hand of the Death Eater, only a foot or two from where she’d been standing in that underground room, cold and dark as the inside of a sepulchre. And yet the beasts had so far failed to make themselves apparent to her.
“You’re sure everyone who’s seen death can see them?” she pressed.
“Everyone,” the boy called Nott replied, surety in his voice.
Maybe it took a while for them to become visible, she thought, and was glad when Hermione gave her one of her exuberant smiles and said, “Let’s change the topic, shall we? Tell us about Beauxbatons, Ava. In Prodigous Palaces of Western Wizarding Europe it says that no English wizard-”
“-Or witch-”
“Or witch…” She gave Ron a small, affectionate smile. “None have ever been able to find the precise location of Beauxbatons in France.”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to be the one to give it away,” she said archly. “But I can tell you it’s beautiful; perhaps just as beautiful as Hogwarts.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I felt that Thestrals were really lacking from the curriculum,” Ava said, and Ron and Hermione laughed. Even Nott raised an eyebrow. “No, I spent my childhood in England, and my mother wanted me to experience Hogwarts like she did.” It wasn’t a lie, but neither was it the whole truth, of course. The other three seemed satisfied, however, and the tension between Nott and the others had even seemed to dissolve slightly.
“Do you speak French?” he asked.
She said that she did, and he practised some phrases with her, having had (as all well-brought-up purebloods do) rigorous training in French as a child, and she humoured him and said “Très bien fait” and “Oui, j’ai tout compris” despite his mediocre accent.
“What house do you reckon you’ll be in?” Ron finally asked. The carriage had come to a halt outside the castle, and they began to disembark, Theo giving Ron a final scowl for good measure before marching inside without them.
“I’m hoping for Slytherin,” she admitted. “My mother’s given me her old tie and scarf and everything, so it’d be a bit of a waste of a uniform if I went anywhere else.” The joke fell flat, and Ron and Hermione were looking at her with a mix of surprise and discomfort.
“I’d be happy anywhere, though,” she added, and Hermione forced a smile.
“Right. Any of the houses would be good options. After all, they each have enviable qualities.” It didn’t seem entirely genuine though, and she added with less warmth than before, “I’ve been told that you’re to wait here. A teacher will fetch you in a minute, I think, so we’ll see you in the Great Hall. Will you be alright?”
“Yes,” Ava said. “Thanks for all your help. Nice to meet you two.”
Perhaps seeing how nervous she looked, Ron leaned in and briefly squeezed her arm. “Good luck, mate,” he said. “We’ll see you on the other side. Sorting’s not too hard, all you have to do is fight a troll-”
“Ron!”
She ushered him inside, and they both turned to wave before disappearing inside the warm castle. Ava wished desperately she could follow. She was alone in the dark, and her teeth had began to chatter in the cold Scottish night. Distantly, an owl hooted, and she wrapped her cloak around her more tightly against the frigid air.
“Miss Duclair,” said an icy, familiar voice. “It occurred to me that I forgot to wish you a happy birthday at our last meeting in August.” She whipped around to face him as an ugly mix of fear and anger gripped her heart. She’d know the voice of her father’s killer anywhere. She’d watched her father tremble and plead for his life before the sudden burst of smoke had taken away everything she held dear.
“Or maybe I did, in a way,” Severus Snape said, and his mouth twisted into a cold, humourless smile.