A/N: I based the setting at the beginning of this chapter on the very real weather that we’re having in Paisley at the minute. For those of you not aware, Scotland is in the midst of a heat wave. That begs the question as to why I’m indoors when I should be outside, well I have fiery hair and it doesn’t mix well with the sun, unless of course you think that beetroot is a good look. So instead I’m here entertaining you wonderful people!
August was turning out to be an unbearably hot month. The sky was a crystal clear blue; there wasn’t a single cloud to spoil the perfect view. The temperature was so blistering that you could see the heat rippling through the air. To some the weather would have seemed idyllic but to the people of Scotland it was too much. They had been accustomed to the cooler weather of years gone by and found the new excessive heat intolerable. The land rose and fell in random places and in the centre of all this beauty lay a sprawling estate. The edges of the surrounding hills were tinged with a fuzzy shade of purple created by the hazy heat that was beating down on the hundreds of thistles that adorned the landscape.
The small castle rose up from the ground majestically, it refused to be suppressed by the sweltering heat. Several of the windows were thrown open wide in an attempt to entice the heat in to the building. The rooms beyond the windows were perfectly fresh and cool, when the temperature had started its sudden ascent the owner of the property had placed a Cooling Charm over the whole building. The said owner was now stood at a sitting room window with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other. The label on the bottle read Ogden’s Old Firewhisky and the man poured a large amount in to the glass he was holding.
He wasn’t overly tall, maybe six feet. His hair was so black it could make even a raven’s feathers look brown. The hazel eyes that were set deep in to his face behind his black glasses usually danced with the sort of jolliness that is born out of an easy life, but these days there was very little to be jolly about. Good genes had graced him with a handsome face that only slightly showed his age. He was a shade under fifty but he was starting to feel much older. He had bags under his eyes that were almost the size of suitcases and the lines around his mouth were becoming more pronounced.
He reminisced of the Sundays gone by when his family would gather around one of their large dinning tables for a good old-fashioned roast dinner. Although they had several house elves his wife, Elizabeth, was such a splendid cook that Sundays were reserved for her. His two sons Andrew and James would come over with their wives and children. For Andrew, his eldest son and heir, this meant coming from A wing, which was off to the east of the house, but James had to Portkey in from Godric’s Hollow which was his new home.
Andrew was the taller of the two; he was a strapping figure of a man at six foot three and had always been slightly more sensible than his brother. His wife Jane was a vision of loveliness, a petite woman with auburn hair and a heart of pure gold, unsurprising since she was the daughter of Albus Dumbledore. Albus had been the headmaster of Hogwarts for ten years and was generally acknowledged as the best thing that ever happened to the school. Andrew and Jane now had a daughter, Elizabeth. She was the apple of her father and both her grandfathers’ eyes. She was a tiny girl who was the spitting image of her mother with the rather unfortunate exception of her father’s nose and temperament, even at three years old she was stubborn as a hippogriff.
James was the same height as his father and because of the older man’s agelessness they could almost pass for one another. His younger son had always been a bit of a troublemaker; he was no less intelligent than his brother just a good deal more conniving. James’s wife Lily was a very interesting character; she had a first class degree in manipulation. She could read her husband like a book and knew exactly how to make him do what she wanted. She had the uncanny ability to make him do things that she had instigated while keeping him under the impression that he had thought of it. Jane had the same talent but she was much more subtle in her approach, Lily was blatantly obvious and everyone but James could see it. They now had a son, Harry, who, unless he was very much mistaken, was going to look exactly like his father and grandfather. Harold and Elizabeth had been so proud when their grandchildren had been named after them and were pleased as punch when it became very apparent that the pair of them were starting to look exactly like their grandparents.
On a Sunday morning Lily and Jane would automatically go and help Elizabeth with the meal while James and Andrew would join their father in the sitting room or one of the toy rooms to play with the children. This was usually an eventful affair because when they got together the three men couldn’t help but start showing off for the children. They would do all manner of things, from making each other float to transfiguring limbs and light duelling all in the name of entertaining the two toddlers. Ellie would sit on the sidelines with Harry on her knee and cheer the men on. Being so young she was rather fickle and her support wavered fairly often. She had the tendency to support whoever looked like they were winning, one minute she would be cheering ‘Go, Daddy!’ and the next ‘Get him, Uncle James!’ Often at this point she would pull Harry’s hands in to the air and wave them from side to side. More often than not she would end up championing her grandfather ‘Yay, Papa!’ she would shout and scream as he sent her on a celebratory lap of the room.
When dinner was ready they would all clamber in to seats around the teak table and talk about all the things that they had done this week. This involved the men regaling their tales of the captures they had made to each other while the women talked quietly amongst themselves about how their work was progressing. Harry and Ellie spent most of the meal trying to make each other wear various bits of food rather than trying to eat the stuff.
When they were all here the house felt as though it was alive, it cried out for a new generation to explore it. Now the house felt empty, as though its very soul had been shredded. Deep and unending sorrow was etched into the beams that kept the structure together, the walls cried out for stories to keep and the occasional creak of a floorboard was nothing more than a wail of despair.
The change in the atmosphere had been wrought five months ago when the war with Voldemort had been brought home to the Potter family. Andrew and Jane had been forced to flee Potter Hall and go into hiding; they had gone to some old cottage that Albus owned in Devon. After only two months there Voldemort had found them. He had killed Andrew and Jane while Elizabeth had been able to escape with Aberforth Dumbledore. Harold had taken the death of his eldest son very hard. He couldn’t grasp the fact that he had outlived his son. No parent should outlive their child. He would have given anything to take Andrew’s place; he wished that his son and daughter-in-law had never left the safety of the castle. At least here there would have been more people to fight; Andrew and Jane might have stood a chance.
“Dad?” That one word bought yet more grief crashing down on Harold Potter’s shoulders, he recognised James’s voice. “Dad, are you all right?” James came to stand beside his father.
“I’m okay, James. I’ve just been thinking,” Harold replied.
“Mum says you’ve been doing that a lot recently, penny for them?”
“Nothing important.”
“It’s enough to drive you to drink, which tells me it is something important.” James had that critical look in his eyes that Harold recognised so well. He wasn’t a big drinker, never had been, and the fact that he had consumed three bottles of the very strong Firewhiskey this week was evidence of his state of mind.
“Where’s Harry?” He avoided the questioning glare his son was giving him.
“Lily’s taken him to see her mother, it could be months before we see them again so she wanted to spend plenty of time with them before we have to put all the charms up around the house and keep low.” James and Lily were not effectively in hiding from Voldemort, word had been passed on from a spy within Voldemort’s ranks that the Dark Lord had a fair idea about what the prophecy said and was determined to make sure that it didn’t come to pass.
“I think you should stay here.”
“We can’t do that, Dad,” James felt horribly guilty for leaving his parents. He knew that Andrew’s death had been hard for them all, it had pulled them together as a family and now James was pulling away from that but he had to, he had to keep Harry safe.
“I know, son, I’m just being a selfish old man.” Harold shook his head and put his bottle and glass on a nearby table.
“Glad you said it and not me,” James grinned. It was that devilish grin that made him look more handsome than he already was, the grin that had reduced so many of the Hogwarts female population to gibbering wrecks.
“Are you going to see Ellie before you leave? She’s missed you and Sirius terribly. We’re quite worried about her, she’s been very subdued.” His stomach twisted horribly every time he thought of what his little granddaughter had witnessed.
“Not surprising is it? I’ll go and see her though. Is mum with her?” James adored his niece and had promised Andrew that if anything ever happened to him he would take care of her.
“Yes, Remus is too. She’s hardly said a word since that day.” He shivered.
“I’ll see what I can do, where are they?”
“The playroom next to your mother’s study, I’ll come with you.” The two men walked down the hall in silence and entered the toy room. Remus had Ellie curled against his chest and was singing a gentle lullaby to her. Her pretty brown eyes were slowly drifting closed until she heard the movement, when they fluttered back open. Lupin’s lullaby was having a better affect on Ellie’s grandmother. Elizabeth Potter was lying on the couch fast asleep. Harold smiled at his wife’s exhausted form, this was the first time he had seen her sleep properly in months.
“Look at you!” James exclaimed quietly to Remus. “You’ve got the Dad thing sorted before you’ve even got kids; I wish I could have done that!” He couldn’t help but think that his friend was a very dark horse.
“I’m just doing what I can,” Remus replied. Ellie was now sitting up properly and trying to rub the sleep away from her eyes.
“Daddy?” she called due to her blurry vision.
“No, sweetheart, it’s Uncle James,” he told her as he kneeled down on the floor in front of Ellie and Remus. She looked at him for a moment and burst in to tears.
“I want Daddy!” She pushed James away and curled back in to Remus’s shoulder to sob.
“I want your Daddy too but he’s gone away. I wish he hadn’t but he has and I promised him that I’d take care of you. Give her here, Remus,” James said gently. Remus pulled the girl away from him and handed her to her uncle. “One day you’ll see your Daddy again and he’s going to be very proud of you.”
“I want Charlie!” Ellie decided to wail instead.
“You can’t go and see Charlie just yet because his mummy is going to have a baby very soon,” James was cursing the reproductive cycle of the Weasley family.
“A baby?” Ellie stopped crying very sharply. He smiled; he had said the magic words. Ellie loved babies.
“That’s right, any day now Charlie is going to have another little brother. How about this? After Molly has the baby we can go and visit, would you like that?”
“Yes. When are we going?” she asked, warming to the idea.
“As soon as Mrs. Weasley has the baby we’ll go and see her,” James assured the little girl on his knee.
“But when?”
“We’ll see, but I promise we’ll go!” James said hurriedly, he could see her bottom lip beginning to quiver. This seemed to appease her and she curled in to his chest before dropping off to sleep soundly. The three men chattered very quietly for sometime, being careful not to wake the sleeping females. When it got to seven o’clock James had to make his way home. He put a fully clothed Ellie in to her cot; her sleep was so deep that she didn’t stir once. He and Remus said their goodbyes and Apparated to their homes at the same time. Perhaps if James had known that it would be the last time he saw his mother and father alive he would have stayed.
It was at twenty past midnight that an explosion echoed through Potter Hall. In reactions yielded from over twenty years spent as an Auror, Harold was awake and shuffling stealthily across the landing with his wand out. Elizabeth was only half a step behind him and although she wasn’t an Auror she was an accomplished dueller. There was the sound of quite a ruckus in the entrance hall two floors below them, he could distinguish several voices, Lucius Malfoy was one of them, and he thought that Severus Snape might be another. One thing he knew for certain was that Voldemort was down there. “Spread out and find the girl, I want her brought to me,” Voldemort hissed.
“That won’t be necessary,” Harold announced as he stepped out of his hiding place.
“Ah! There you are, I was beginning to wonder where you might be,” the Dark Lord said nonchalantly.
“Here I am.” He was not in the mood to partake of the other man’s mind games. He couldn’t believe the difference in Tom Riddle. Harold had been at Hogwarts with the handsome Slytherin - when he had joined the school Tom was in his fourth year and was very popular. He was tall, dark haired and good looking; on top of that he was also very clever and had been elected as a prefect and Head Boy in his later years. Nowadays his raven locks were flecked with grey and his handsome features were lost in the wrinkles of his tired and dull skin. The dark eyes that were once full of life and youth were now empty. They were two deep icy pits that betrayed no emotion.
“Tell me, Harold, where is your delightful granddaughter?”
“You’re out of luck, she’s not here.” Harold braced himself for the onslaught he knew would come and sure enough it did. He felt the brutal attack as Voldemort attempted to break in to his thoughts but he had underestimated this wizard. Harold immediately directed him to the image of Albus holding tiny Ellie and disappearing with her in a swirl of his robes. This seems to satisfy the evil man, Harold smiled inwardly; the memory was fake.
“That really is a shame; I’ve been so looking forward to meeting her. Is it true that she is the image of her mother?”
“That is no business of yours.”
“Very well. It seems I shall have to settle for taking you and your wife are you prepared to duel, Mr Potter?”
“Whenever you’re ready?” Harold replied with a nerve of steel.
“Let us begin presently.” Voldemort and Harold bowed to each other and their duelling began in earnest. On several occasions one of the men had to duck behind the support pillars of the entrance hall to avoid oncoming spells and it was having a rather bad effect on the house; there was a disturbing rumbling that appeared to be coming from the walls themselves. Elizabeth had been discovered in her hiding place on the first floor and was now trying to fend off three Death Eaters who were relentless in their attack against her. Harold groaned as an Incapacity Spell caught his left arm, it fell limp by his side, no longer of any use. A second later a Blasting Curse had slammed in to the pillar he was taking cover behind, it immediately crumbled and the roof that it was holding up gave an ominous creak. As Harold took cover in the archway that lead to the formal dinning room a piercing scream resonated through the hall. He looked at the first floor landing in time to see his wife toppling over the banister, he knew before he even saw her face that she was dead.
Grief and fury burned through his veins at the same time. He and Elizabeth Lufkin had first started going out in her third year; they had been a couple for four years. They had married only six days after she had left school; that was thirty years ago. He was nothing without her. In his anger he sent a Reductor Curse in Voldemort’s direction but missed, the spell shot straight past his enemy and in to the sitting room. There was an almighty crash as the room collapsed on itself and the floors above fell through the gaping hole that was left.
Several badly aimed curses later and the only thing that was left standing was the entrance hall itself. Harold prayed to any and every God that he could think of, for his granddaughter’s safety. The realist in him couldn’t believe that she had survived, the castle was now a heap of rubble and she was just a tiny child. In a moment of desperation he made a run for the stairs and was almost at the first landing when a Full Body Bind caught him. He saw Voldemort’s tall shadow on the wall before he saw the man himself. “Running away, tut tut. I would have expected better from someone like you. Say goodbye, Harold, it has been nice to know you. Avada Kedavra!” and with those words Harold Potter was dead.
“Let’s get out of here, I can’t stand the stench of devotion any longer,” Voldemort ordered. Outside he threw one last curse at the building and the whole thing collapsed.
It was only half an hour later that ten Order members Apparated to the front gates of what had once been Potter Hall and was now a jumbled heap of stone and wood. Amongst the order members present were Remus Lupin, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew. Upon seeing the wreckage Remus and Sirius made almost identical noises in the back of their throats, it distinctly sounded like growling. “Where’s Ellie?” Remus asked in a panic. “I want to find Ellie now!” He rushed forward and began picking his way through the wreckage, the others followed suit and the longer that they went without finding anything, the more frantic their search became.
“Over here! I think I’ve found her!” Dorcas Meadowes shouted through the darkness. She was standing next to a pile of debris that appeared to be howling .
“Elle Belle?” Sirius called through a gap in the wreckage. The crying got louder. Everyone concentrated their efforts in moving the ruins of furniture and wooden panelling away from this spot. When they got to the bottom of the pile a large pine cot was the wrong way up on what used to be one of the formal sitting room’s settees. In the centre sat a thoroughly distraught Ellie. She was squealing as loud as her little lungs would allow her. “You’re all right, Uncle Sirius has got you. How are you?” Sirius pulled her from under her cot and she clung to him for dear life. “Are you okay?” He looked her over carefully. She sniffed and nodded slightly.
“Where’s Papa?” she asked with a tremble. Sirius and Remus shared a look. What should they tell her?
“The bad men hurt him and he had to go away,” Sirius said in the gentlest voice he could muster. The Potters had been like parents to him; they had taken him in and treated him like one of their own. He was devastated by their loss and seeing the distress that Ellie was in was making him feel even worse. The news that yet another person was gone from her life only served to further distress the young girl. Sirius looked from the sobbing girl in his arms to his friend; he didn’t really have paternal instincts necessary for comforting a distraught child. Remus immediately took over; he lifted his goddaughter from Sirius’s arms and began to cradle her tenderly. Within minutes she was quiet and almost asleep. “Well somebody’s got the magic touch,” Sirius smiled emptily as he ran his hands through Ellie’s hair. “What do we do now?”
“We get Elizabeth away from here. May I?” This came from the newly arrived Dumbledore. He reached out for his granddaughter.
“Where will you take her?” Remus asked.
“Some place far away from here where it is safe,” the old wizard replied.
“You will let me know where you take her won’t you?” Remus had been so honoured when Jane and Andrew had asked him to be Ellie’s godfather, he had never been asked to care for something so precious and now that he had he didn’t want to lose her.
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Ellie,” Remus whispered as he kissed the top of her head.
“Take care, Elle Belle,” Sirius muttered as he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Be good,” Peter said as he patted her on the head awkwardly.
“She’s the only one that is any good, Peter,” Sirius said spitefully. The shorter man just looked at him unsure of what to say. Dumbledore walking away from them without another word stole their attention away. As he strode across the lawn of Potter Hall Albus felt terrible. He didn’t like lying, in fact he hated it but he had done it all the same. He would not tell any of them where Elizabeth was, one of the three men he had just left was a traitor, he didn’t know which one but it was definitely one of them. Was it Remus and his wolfish tendencies? Was it Sirius and the blood that ran through his veins? Or was it Peter and his jealousy of his friends? He felt confident that he wouldn’t have to wait long to find out but until then his granddaughter was going to be where she was safest. Anywhere but here.
Just one more chapter to go!
As ever I would like to give a gracious thank you to Magical Maeve who has been working through my chapters like a little beaver. She really is wonderful!