Escaping
Minerva raced back to the road as quickly as she could, leaping over fallen tree limbs, slipping through the bracken, and dashing beneath bushes. As she approached the spot where she’d left Frankel, she slowed and crept quietly forward toward the edge of the road. She saw no one. She heard nothing. Nonetheless, she remained completely motionless, as she could only in her Animagus form, and crouched by the soft shoulder of the road, waiting, listening intently, and testing the air with her nose.
Underlying the odours still emanating from the burned-out jeep, Minerva could smell petrol in the air – or was it diesel? – that hadn’t been there before. She didn’t know how long such a scent would take to dissipate, normally, but there was a light breeze, and she decided that a Muggle vehicle must have driven through recently. After several minutes of crouching by the roadside, hearing nothing unusual, Minerva stood and sauntered into the road. Batting a fallen leaf about, she attended to the sounds around her in the night. She still heard nothing. She walked in a seemingly aimless pattern, tossing her dry leaf, patting it along the ground, jumping on it, catching it, and losing it. She then chose a small stone to bat about and send skittering along the surface of the road, never pawing it too far from her. Whilst an observer may have thought that she was a mere house cat out on a lark in the middle of the night, Minerva was making note of everything she saw and everything she smelled, remaining attentive for any sounds that might indicate the presence of another person.
As she tossed her leaf about, she found tyre tracks, barely visible on the hard-packed, frozen dirt road. Indeed, if she hadn’t been looking for them, believing them to be there, she wouldn’t have seen them, even with her acute night vision. As a cat, she was somewhat farsighted, and so when she leapt onto her leaf to capture it beneath her, and examined the track closely, she used her nose, and her slightly opened mouth, more than she did her eyes. She would really have to begin a study of the way thing smelled at different intervals, she thought. Although she believed the tracks smelled fresh, she couldn’t be sure. She was fairly certain, however, that they were much more recent than that morning, and did not belong to the jeep that had been carrying Dumbledore and the two Aurors.
Abandoning the leaf in favour of a small, round pebble, she criss-crossed the road until she finally reached the spot where Frankel had fallen. Stopping there and sniffing would be perfectly natural for a cat, so Minerva explored the ground carefully, opening her mouth slightly in order better to smell, or taste, the odours around her.
The Auror had bled quite a bit, she decided, but she also found discarded bloody cloths that had apparently been used to staunch the flow. Following the scents along the ground, she deduced that the soldiers had lifted Frankel and carried him to the south side of the road, where they’d laid him down again. There was very little blood there; they must have bandaged him up and perhaps stopped the bleeding.
She sat by the spot where Frankel had lain, and washed her face, something she normally disliked doing in her Animagus form (although, truth be told, it did feel rather nice), but she needed to think. If anyone was watching, they would just see a finicky cat bathing at the side of the road.
Minerva was discouraged. She had hoped to find Frankel still there, although she had known that there was a good chance he would be gone by now or that she would be unable to reach him even if he were there. Wondering whether he had managed to use his Portkey yet, she washed her shoulder, then her hip, and then chased her tail in a circle.
The soldiers had left cigarette ends tossed by the road, she noticed. She sniffed one, then batted it aside. Disgusting things. Another discarded bit of bloody gauze. A button. Putting her nose to it, she thought it smelled of Frankel. She was glad now that he had held her in her Animagus form when they Portkeyed. She certainly wouldn’t have noticed his particular scent, otherwise. She played with the button, tossing it back toward the spot where the soldiers had laid him, apparently to wait for the vehicle that had come and, she surmised, driven them away.
Minerva lay down and sniffed the air again. Still no scents that she wasn’t expecting to be there. She wished that she could sense magic in her Animagus form. After working with Albus at Hogwarts, Minerva had come to be able to detect the tingle of a powerful ward while she was in her Animagus form, but she was completely blind to any other magic when she was a cat. Of course, it was not as though she were particularly sensitive to magical traces in her ordinary form, either. That type of heightened sensitivity, if not a natural gift, was the product of years of training and hard work. Even if she were in her ordinary form, Minerva doubted that she would sense any common magic being used in the area without using her wand. She had promised Albus that she would stay in her Animagus form, though, and she would. It wouldn’t be particularly wise to wave a wand about out here, anyway.
Remembering the almost unnatural stillness that had emanated from the hollow where Albus had lain beneath his Imperturbable Charm, Minerva pricked her ears, trying to detect whether there was no noise where she would expect to hear at least the rustle of the wind. She finally concluded that, for the moment at least, she was alone and unobserved. Keeping in mind that her situation could change at any second, Minerva began a minute, inch-by-inch, search of the ground near where she’d found the Auror’s button. She primarily used her nose, but stayed alert for anything that might gleam unnaturally against the dirt, and pushed aside leaves and debris with her paws.
Just as she was prepared to give up and return to the middle of the road to examine the spot where Frankel had originally fallen, her paw encountered something beneath a prickly bush – perhaps a berry bush, thought Minerva – which did not feel like a leaf, or dirt, or anything else that one would naturally find beneath a berry bush at the side of a road.
Unwilling to raise her own hopes too high – after all, it could be a bloody handkerchief, or something – Minerva crouched as low as she could and crept under the thorny stems, wishing that her coat were heavier, or her fur longer. It wasn’t a handkerchief. It was cloth, though. Her heart racing, Minerva hooked her paw around the object and dragged it toward her. It smelled of Frankel. She backed out from under the bush, no longer noticing the thorns, dragging the object along. When it made a very nice little jangle as she pulled it more forcefully from its hiding place, Minerva could have danced for joy. It was her stupid, blasted, belled collar, still buckled, and other than a bit of dirt and sweat, apparently none the worse for having been discarded under the berry bush. Minerva hadn’t smelled any footprints near the bush, nor anything else human, hence her readiness to give up the search and return to the road. Frankel must have either tossed it there or Levitated it wandlessly. Either way, he had taken a risk. Of course, the soldiers could have found it on him and kicked it or thrown it aside, but it had been so far underneath the bush, it had to have been tossed from a very low vantage point – such as that of a man lying on the ground – or been whisked there with a charm.
It was also possible that he had managed to leave the Muggle fountain pen behind in the same manner, but Minerva didn’t want to take the time to look for something that might not be there. Besides, she could fairly easily carry the collar; she supposed she could have managed the fountain pen, instead, if she’d had to, but she didn’t believe that she could carry both Portkeys at once without some difficulty.
Minerva manoeuvred the collar about with her paws, then lowered her head and caught the bell up in her mouth. When it was well-settled, she stopped, looked, listened, and smelled the air again. Still nothing to indicate the presence of anyone but herself. She dashed across the road, hunkered briefly beside the shoulder, then began to pick her way back through the underbrush, going more slowly and carefully this time. She didn’t want to drop the collar: picking it up by its bell had been a difficult operation to do once, she didn’t want to have to repeat it. In addition, she had to avoid snagging the thing on the overhanging limbs and stems that she had been able simply to brush past on her way there. As frustrated as Minerva was that this journey would take a bit longer, she felt immense satisfaction, both human and feline, that she would be able to present Albus with a prize upon her return.
She was several yards in from the road when she suddenly heard several loud cracks coming from the area between the jeep and the site of Frankel’s ambush. Those cracks would be recognised by any witch or wizard: multiple Apparitions. Minerva froze, glad that she was a dark tabby, glad that she was several yards from the road, and glad that there were trees and bushes between her and whoever had just Apparated in. She stayed to listen, unmoving. Who had arrived? Friend or foe? The sound of their voices answered that question for her. They weren’t speaking English. The Ministry had not sent these wizards. Grindelwald had.
Minerva slunk quietly away, knowing that rushing could draw attention to her. Albus was not safe in his hole. He may be well hidden from Muggles, or even from a desultory inspection by a wizard. But these wizards knew for whom they were looking. They would find his path; they would not be fooled long by a Disillusionment Charm; they would capture him; they would bring him to Grindelwald. Grindelwald would subject him to the unspeakable interrogations for which he was infamous, and then, if Albus were lucky, they would kill him. But Minerva would not let that happen, not if she had to die to prevent it.
As she got further from the road and could no longer hear the wizards, Minerva broke into a trot. She was still unable to proceed as quickly as she had earlier, but she would reach her destination in just a few minutes. Running through the woods, scrambling over fallen trees and through the ferny undergrowth, she considered Albus’s situation. Before they left – before she left, she corrected herself – she would have to eradicate any sign of his having been in the area. She didn’t know how much he had bled when he had been near the jeep, but she knew that he had cleaned up any detectable blood between the road and his hiding place. She hoped that whatever blood was at the original scene was Moody’s or Carson’s, or at least that it was so well mixed with theirs as to be unusable for any Dark Art. Yes, she would have to banish all the blood from the scene, as well as the traces that he had left when he had leaned against the tree. Minerva hadn’t heard of urine being used in a Dark Spell, but she had not made a study of such things, either. She couldn’t be too careful.
She arrived. Albus was there, dozing. Minerva crept in beside him and dropped the collar on his chest. He woke up at that and was just about to say something when Minerva quickly put a paw over his mouth and shook her head. Paw still to his lips, she slipped back into her ordinary form with barely a whispered pop. She did not remove her hand from his mouth, but felt for her wand with her free one. Awkwardly, she cast a light nonverbal Imperturbable, then took her hand from his mouth and moved it to his chest.
“Shh,” Minerva breathed. She grasped the collar, taking hold first of the bell to silence it, despite the charm she’d just cast. Still holding the collar tightly, she found his hand and pressed the collar into it. Letting go, she whispered, “Grindelwald’s men. No time to talk. The trigger word is ‘spero.’ You must use it alone, if it comes to that. You must promise me. Do not make Carson’s life, and mine, wasted through delay. I need to destroy all traces of your blood in and around this spot. I will do the area beneath you last. If need be, I will do it after you Portkey. You know what they’d do with your blood, Albus.”
“I will not leave you behind, Minerva.”
“If we do this right, you won’t have to. If worst comes to worse, I’ll return to my Animagus form and find the British or American Army. I’ll be fine. It’s you they’re after. They don’t even know I’m here.”
“Unless they’ve questioned Frankel,” Albus whispered back, urgently. “They may even know what form you take.”
“We will not need to risk that if we are quick about this. Stop arguing, Albus. Lie there for a moment, but be alert in case you need to get out of here.”
Minerva rolled out from beneath the rock. First, she dashed over to the tree where Albus had relieved himself, and cleaned up there, doing away with any bodily fluids he left behind. She then returned to the rock and began casting strong, nonverbal cleaning charms over the rock and the surrounding ground, first Dilutus, then Ablutus. Fortunately, Albus had been very careful, and had eradicated his traces up to that point.
“Hold on, Albus,” Minerva whispered. “This may not be comfortable.” With that warning, she swished and flicked and Levitated Albus from the hole, just missing hitting his head against the scrubby tree as she did so.
“All right, I’m going to Levitate you upright. Take hold of the tree to stay that way. Try not to lean on it. You’ve still got blood on your clothes.” Albus had little choice but to obey. He gripped his borrowed wand in the same hand that held the cat collar and wished for his magic and his physical strength to return. Wishing it did not make it so.
After giving Albus his instructions, Minerva Levitated the Transfigured body from the cavity and deposited it at his feet. Then she thought of something.
“Your jacket, Albus, where are the sleeves?” she whispered desperately. She thought she heard the popping of a branch breaking somewhere in the distance.
“Under the rock, further under,” he whispered back. He, too, had heard something, and his stomach was a riot of dread and foreboding. “Hurry, Minerva, hurry!”
Hurry she did, throwing herself onto her stomach and waving her wand, Summoning the sleeves and hoping they would respond despite being hidden in the gloom. Successful, she stood, holding the bloody remnants in her left hand, and cast the Ablutus Charm at the area where Albus had lain for so many hours. Just as she finished, she could hear voices, and rustling, approaching from the distance.
Turning toward Albus, Minerva thrust her wand into her belt. She bent and hefted the log that was Carson’s body in her left arm, grabbed Albus’s hand with her right, and said, “Now, Albus, now!”
Albus needed no further urging. “Spero!”
And they were gone, as if they had never been there.