For a Breath of Fresh Air
Author’s note: The reference to The Lord of the Rings is just that, reference… I think.
Warning for: prolonged psychological and emotional impacts of war, violence and forced poverty on children and young adults
Grimmauld Place no. 12, 25th May 2004
“Um, first of all, sorry for meeting you only now, Dennis, and I’m really sorry I didn’t ask after you, after the battle and Colin, before you tried to contact me. I was… not good, myself.”
“No mind. Your people said you’re pinned up somewhere.”
“Eh. Not my people, really. Just friends. But yes, I couldn’t leave what I was doing or there’d be disaster – bigger disaster – later on. Sorry.”
“Friends don’t just obey, you know. Just admit it, Harry. You’ve got your own following, n’is not a bad thing. You’ve got quite a way with words, and you can back it up… for the most part.”
“Erh….”
“Sigh. Just forget it, Harry. I just…. You’ve got some space in that school of yours for me and a few others?”
“A few others?”
“My li’l sis, other Muggleborn dropouts and runaways, a few sympathetic friends of ours, and kids Greyback bit when Tom Riddle got us all by the little curlies that year.”
“Greyback bit more kids? That year?”
“Quite a few, actually. Mor’an half of’em were Muggles. You know Parvati and Fay got semi-turned like Bill, right? Well, they went searching for the kids after the battle, after Greyback boasted to them before mauling them half to death. Me n’few others joined in, tried to raise’m, n’we’ve been making do. Parv’s parents got’em a place to live, Lav’s parents donate some money each month in memory of her, and the rest of us teach and feed and clothe them, with some help from Bill’s mum. It’s Hogwarts year for the oldest uns, now, but y’know well how Hogwarts was, forget right now, so I thought to come here. The others didn’t…. Well, we could teach’em ourselves, but the kids need some fresh air too, y’know? They’re already messed up enough, as it is.”
“Oh.”
I sit still across from an exhausted, rumpled, wrung-out-dry Dennis Creevey, who is… well, unrecogniseable, really, from the bubbly, excitable child – and later, teen – that I got to know, who loved to trail behind the late Colin Creevey, nagging me and others with all sorts of questions.
Dennis Creevey is now an old, world-weary man hidden behind the façade of an unkempt, rather sickly young adult, who rambles drunkenly rather than bubbles excitedly.
And he is like this because he’s been dealing with almost literal hell for years, along with many others.
The 1997-1998 period likely has never ended, to him and his kind-hearted and desperate fellows.
And here I’ve been bemoaning never getting more than a few hours of holiday.
“I want to meet them,” I say at last, and I can’t care less that my voice is hoarse with the emotions churning in my gut.
The Sussex Smial, 25th May 2004
Parvati Patil is yet another Hogwarts student of my acquaintanceship who really hasn’t come out unscathed from what people have been dubbing the Dark Year. And it’s not just because her prized “exotically beautiful” face – as various boys whispered about, then – has been turned into a mess of angry slashes, which look barely healed despite the long years that have gone by.
She looks so jaded that it’s highly alarming, and her flat gaze is highly unnerving. It’s worse when she has to do a triple take before she finally recognises Hermione, her own roommate at Hogwarts.
If she, the caretaker, is like this, I daren’t imagine how her charges are, and daren’t ask her, either.
Numbly and mutely, I trail after her alongside Hermione-Arga, Dennis, George and Susan to where no doubt more like her have been living – no, surviving – for the past six years.
And, from the tiny clearing ringed by scraggly trees that apparently acts as this place’s Portkey and Apparition point, we troop into… a bigger clearing with even more trees.
I exchange a baffled look with Hermione-Arga, but neither of us dare to ask Parvati about this mystery.
Well, Parvati or Susan, really, as the latter seems unsurprised with everything, but it’s all the same anyhow.
Fortunately, before I can seriously contemplate casting detection spells to find out where the house actually is, a very rude gesture since I’m now a civilian and without permission to do so from the people living here, Parvati reaches down to a spot by the treeline somewhere a little to the left of where we have just emerged, and a section of the turf there slides aside as she straightens up, exposing a vertical, earthy shaft.
“Come on here, one by one. I need to key you to the wards,” is the first thing that I hear from this new Parvati, and I have to fight not to flinch. Her voice is cracked and hoarse and flat, as if she’s too weary to speak most of the time.
I put myself forward, as penance for the near-flinch and many more.
She doesn’t acknowledge me in any way, as she holds out a hand for my own.
We crouch by the lip of the shaft, and questing magic with the taste of Bill’s signature washes over my hand as she dips it into the shadows of the deep earthen hole. The magic runs up my arm and washes all over me from head to foot, then, lingering in my mind to briefly rifle through my intentions for this place, before it runs back down into the shadows like rainwater passing over one’s body.
And then, without further ado, without any more words, she shoves me into the hole.
I land on a crouch on the thankfully cushioned bottom of the shaft after what feels like an eternity of falling. As my boots make firm contact with the earthen floor, the tunnels leading every which way that converge on this small spot light up with a soft, ambient light, startling me into drawing up a protective cocoon of magic all round me.
“Oh,” I mumble stupidly, just as the air above me stirs, signifying an on-coming projectile that must be one of the others still left aboveground, which forces me to scurry down one of the tunnels to avoid being landed on.
The lighting on the other tunnels fade away, just so, leaving me alone bathed in a soft yellowish white glow.
Dennis joins me presently, and, without waiting for others to join us or looking at me, waves me to follow him further into the tunnel – the low-ceilinged, two-abreast, down-sloping, winding tunnel, which is sometimes decorated by jutting rocks and hanging roots, though thankfully otherwise dry.
I can’t imagine anybody living in such a place for six years, though, let alone children. No wonder why Dennis wanted to get at least some of the children out of here.
But…, “Why didn’t you contact me right away, Dennis? You know you needn’t have any reason even just to talk to me, right?”
The question – the concern – slips out before I realise that I’ve vocalised it. The thing that alerts me to my runaway mouth is Dennis’ stiffening back, and by then it’s too late to do anything about it. I can’t say sorry, either, as it’s an honest and valid concern.
He doesn’t answer, in any case, nor say anything. He quickens his pace, forcing me to follow suit and stifle more of the concern and confusion bubbling up in my mind.
Openings begin to litter the walls at either side of us the longer we walk, but Dennis keeps on our main path in his new pace. Hurried footsteps soon approach, and the sound of my old female friend huffing and puffing follows suit.
It’s eerie and rather unnerving, to hear somebody walking and breathing behind me in this cramped place, so deep underground, but Dennis doesn’t even twitch.
And then everything is blown clear out of my mind, as we arrive at the end of a tunnel, which is a rather large natural cave lit by the same ambient glow from floor to ceiling. It looks like a kitchen, a classroom, a dorm room, a living room and a storeroom rolled into one. A few kitchenette areas dot along the walls nearly equidistant to each other, consisting of a few magical stoves, a few cupboards whose tops act as kitchen counters judging from the few ingredients strewn on them, and a rack of cooking paraphernalia. Stacks of crates and boxes and books and foam mattresses stand on other spots similarly right by the walls, placed close to worn wardrobes and shelves containing miscellaneous items, equally worn. A few beat-up table games stand on yet other spots, side by side with open chests with a few tools – or are they toys? – sticking out of them. Lap desks, writing tools, whiteboards, pillows, blankets, a few sad-looking toys and a few clothes are strewn nearer the middle of the cave.
It’s clearly lived in, and clearly just used, but there’s no soul in it but the newcomers.
The inhabitants fled from us.
My breath stops in my throat, which bob convulsively.
I feel unclean.
I am seen as an invader.
But aren’t I indeed the invader here? I could have let Dennis arrange a meeting between them and me, or even just a few representatives. But no, I had to be a busybody and invade their home, the only safe place that they’ve got.
And Dennis daren’t forbid me, I bet, because he desperately wanted that spot at the school the Residents at Black Sanctuary opened a few years ago.
Damn it. “I’m sorry, Dennis.”