Chapter Twenty-Three: The Phoenix’s Secret
Lottie was only one bite into her warm cereal when Palmyitor appeared before her and Andrea.
“I would like you to meet me in my office.”
It was not a request.
Andrea stood up immediately and beckoned at Lottie to follow. With one last look of longing at her breakfast, Lottie stood up and trotted along after her.
The bags under Palmyitor’s eyes were extraordinarily apparent in the dim light of her office. The phoenix pendent that Lottie had given Palmyitor at the end of the summer sat on her desk, glimmering tauntingly. “I spoke to Professor Moon, and your calculations have proved to be correct. Congratulations.” She pushed Andrea’s calculations across the desk towards them. The phoenix charm fell from her desk onto the floor. Lottie reached down to pick it up; it was cool to the touch again.
“Apparently Neville Longbottom is still alive.”
The charm suddenly grew warm.
“Now all we need to do is find him,” continued Palmyitor.
“Wait, this thing just got hot,” Lottie said, holding out the charm.
“Then put it down, Rowe.”
“No, I mean it just got warm again. It was hot when we were in Grimmauld Place”it was nearly burning”and when we were near Snape.”
A vein in Palmyitor’s forehead pulsed threateningly. “Mr. Snape.”
“Mr. Snape.”
Palmyitor laced her fingers on her desk. Her dark eyes pierced Lottie, sending pins and needles rocketing up the back of her neck. Tapping her long, painted fingernails against the desk, she carefully surveyed Lottie with raised eyebrows.
Lottie could feel her mind being pulled apart and rummaged through. Her stomach lurched as echoes from past conversations slowly grew in volume. Familiar voices shot through her head”Andrea’s, Colm Scrivener’s, her mother’s… Frantically, she broke her gaze, eyes transfixed on the floor.
Palmyitor heaved a heavy sigh. “Rowe, I don’t follow.”
Lottie turned to Andrea, but her eyes were so intently focused on the wall, she didn't seem to notice anything. Exasperated, Lottie turned back to Palmyitor.
“Well is Snape”Mr. Snape”a member of the Order of the Phoenix?”
“Yes, he was.”
Lottie punched her first in the air. “Yes! See? It gets hot whenever you’re near or when you mention something about The Order of the Phoenix! See? It’s getting hot now! Look.” She grinned and held it out into the light. “Harry Potter! OWWW!”
Andrea gasped. “I got it! We need to find where Neville Longbottom””
“Ow! Stop it!”
“Sorry Lottie. We need to find where the”the Secret Keeper lives, right? So what if we put it on a map and say the Secret Keeper’s name? I’m sure it will get hotter when it gets close to his location.”
Tiredness emanated from every one of her pores as Palmyitor stared at Andrea. “Woolbright””
“Can we just try it?” Andrea asked, exasperated.
Palmyitor pursed her lips and flicked her wand. “Fine,” she said. A conjured map appeared on her desk. She held out her hand and, reluctantly, Lottie dropped the phoenix charm into her palm.
“Neville Longbottom,” she said casually. Despite Lottie’s constant warnings, she hissed and dropped it heavily on the map. Lottie whistled in an “I”told”you”so” sort of way, but only received one of Palmyitor’s infamous glares in return. Palmyitor scooted the charm onto England’s spot on the map and waited. “Well it’s not much warmer,” she said. “That may mean that he’s here or not. Let me try a few other countries.” She ran the pendent over an ocean, muttering, “Cold…”
She checked the Americas, Britain, Italy, Spain, Antarctica and all of Asia before running the pendent over France. Hissing under her breath, Palmyitor removed her hand from the pendent and stared at the third years. “I suppose I should congratulate you, Woolbright. You have shown reasoning that is rarely seen in members of my house.”
Andrea smiled.
“It seems that our Neville Longbottom”” she winced as the pendent flared red “”is in France.” Palmyitor cleared her throat and sat up straighter in her chair. “You two may go to your first class,” she continued. “I will look into this.”
Lottie had trouble concentrating through Potions, but still had much more success than Andrea. Her Shrinking Solution was the correct color of green and had a watery texture. Andrea’s, on the other hand, was so thick, her wooden stirrer snapped in half.
Professor Dyer sauntered over to Andrea and stared at her potion in disgust. “You’d think a student would tell me if their potion was stewing into the realm of complete hopelessness.” He sighed and waved his wand; the potion evaporated. “No, Woolbright, there’s no point in trying again.” Andrea dropped her stirrer dejectedly. “Just watch Miss Rowe.”
Blushing furiously, Andrea turned to Lottie and sighed. “I’m just distracted,” she said. “Well even if I had been trying, I probably wouldn’t do much better but””
Lottie couldn’t let herself lose concentration due to Andrea when she got to the very precise procedure of adding the beetle wings. “Hold on for a second, can you?” she muttered as she added one wing and stirred forty-five degrees clockwise.
“What?” she whispered, now waiting for her potion to reach a boil.
Dyer turned to her with raised eyebrows.
“Sorry,” Lottie muttered. “Just…worried I was doing it wrong.”
Once he had turned his attention to another unsuspecting victim, Lottie hissed to Andrea, “Can you just focus, please? I can’t get in trouble in my best class.” The bell rang. Lottie put a cover on her potion and left it in the third years’ shelf before following Andrea silently to History.
Once the class began, Andrea grew completely silent and busied herself with her notes. Lottie tapped her quill against the table impatiently and stared at her empty roll of parchment. Lottie shot a subtle glance at Andrea's parchment. She gasped. "You're not taking notes! What are you doing?"
Andrea didn’t have the usual neat, careful outline in front of her. Instead sat what looked like some kind of chart. “Just trying to figure out a bit more about You Know Who.”
“No, I don’t know who. What are you talking about?”
Andrea sighed. “You know, NL. Our friend who lives in France.”
“Oh. Right.” Lottie rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you just let Palmyitor do her job?”
“Sshh!”
The class dragged on for what felt like days. Once they were dismissed”a good six minutes after the bell rang”Lottie and Andrea made a beeline for Palmyitor’s office. Lottie pulled desperately at the bronze doorknob, but it was locked.
Lottie put her ear to the door, but all she heard was mumbling and whispering. Andrea leaned in as well and sighed. “Let’s just wait until later,” she said. “I think we’ll just get in trouble if we try to eavesdrop.”
For the rest of their classes, Lottie had to resort to making ridiculous, gruesome faces at Andrea to prevent overwhelming boredom. After what felt like hours, the professor wiped the blackboard clean and dismissed them for the day. Immediately, Lottie and Andrea sprinted to Palmyitor’s office and burst through the door.
“Well?” Lottie asked expectantly.
“Well what, Miss Rowe?” Palmyitor looked at them above a roll of parchment that extended off the table and curled up on the floor by her feet.
“Pal”Professor, we know that you were looking into Neville Longbottom.”
“And what makes you think I’m going to tell you what I found out, Rowe?”
“Because”because”if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have known about him!”
“If you hadn’t stolen the snuffbox, we would all have found out about this much earlier on.”
“But Professor,” Andrea said, brandishing her scroll of parchment. “I think I figured out a lot about””
“Miss Woolbright, the way you will help the cause is by concentrating on your studies, not by trying to take my job. We have narrowed a long list of possibilities.”
Andrea dropped her parchment and leaned against Palmyitor’s wall sulkily.
“The only two wizards in the country we know of with the correct age range and alliance are Bill Weasley and a man called Victor K. Lontelles.”
“Well who is it?” asked Andrea.
Palmyitor sighed heavily. “Woolbright, Bill Weasley has been tracked to have only one identity. So it must be this Lontelles.”
“So how are we going to find him?” asked Lottie. “Get a bigger map?”
“Hardly,” Palmyitor answered with a cold laugh. “We have contacts who used to be members of the Order who can help us.” She rolled up her extremely long piece of parchment and added, “Not you two.”
“But””
“Thank you, Miss Rowe,” Palmyitor said. “That is quite enough.”
“Andrea”Andrea?”
Andrea’s eyes were unfocused, pointed towards the phoenix charm. Lottie tapped her on the shoulder and she suddenly snapped back to attention.
“Professor,” she began cautiously, “would you mind if I take”borrow the charm? I promise I’ll take care of it.”
“Woolbright, this is an extremely valuable artifact. Do you think it would be wise to entrust it in the hands of a third year with a record for ignoring rules?”
“Professor, I just… I have an idea and””
“You two and your ideas! When will you give up on trying to run the war for us?”
“Well I don’t know!” shouted Lottie. “But we seem to be have helped you a lot more with our pitiful third year ideas than your dead best friend, haven’t we?”
Something inside of Palmyitor seemed to crumple. She sat, gasping for breath, staring blankly at the top of her desk. Slowly, she raised her gaze, raw and accusing. A chipped nail shook, pointing to the door. "Out."
“I””
“Out.”
A sickening thump reverberated dully against the stone walls of Palmyitor’s office.
“Oh hell!”
Lottie spun around. On the other side of the doorframe stood Colm Scrivener, furiously rubbing a lump on his forehead. Andrea, blushing furiously, protested hurried apologies.
“Dear Merlin.” Palmyitor stood up and swept around her desk to where Colm was standing. “What on earth were you doing, boy, standing that close to the door?”
“I”I was just trying to find out wh-what Rowe was””
“Miss Rowe can handle herself,” Palmyitor said flatly.
Lottie shifted her gaze from Colm, on the verge of tears, to the charm on the desk in front of her. Keeping her eyes slanted towards Palmyitor, she palmed the phoenix and dropped it into her pocket.
“I’m so sorry!” Andrea shouted. “I just opened the door and hit him. I”I really didn’t mean to. I””
“That’s quite enough, Woolbright.” Palmyitor turned to Lottie and raised an eyebrow. “Rowe, Woolbright, go back to the common room. Scrivener, leave the spying to our house, will you? Get to the hospital wing, if you’d like.”
Once they had safely left Colm going in the other direction and were a good flight of stairs away from Palmyitor’s office, Lottie hissed, “You should thank me.”
“Why? For nearly making her cry? You should know better, Lottie. Comments like that just aren’t””
Lottie pulled the charm out of her pocket and slipped it into Andrea’s hand, whose jaw dropped.
“Oh Lottie! Thank you!” Andrea squealed, pulling Lottie into a tight hug. “Thank you so much!”
“Don’t worry about it. But in return, you need to tell me your idea.”
Andrea nodded feverishly. “Of course I will.” Let’s just wait until we get to the common room.”
They ran along in silence, Andrea staring at the phoenix charm, Lottie leading the way so that Andrea wouldn’t run into anything. The common room was crowded. Every upperclassman in sight was preoccupied with one of Matilda, the prefect’s, long-winded stories of her various Quidditch accomplishments. Lottie and Andrea took advantage of that distraction and found the most secluded corner in the common room.
“Okay,” Lottie said, just audible over the roars of laughter coming from the center of the room. “What’s your idea?”
“Right, so, Victor K. Lontelles.”
“Yes?”
“That’s not a very French name, is it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Lottie said with a shrug.
“Oh. Well. It’s not. I mean, it sounds like it, but French people hardly ever use Ks, don’t they? So what do you think that K stands for?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“If Neville Longbottom is the Secret Keeper and he’s going by Victor K. Lontelles”” She paused, raising her eyebrows expectantly.
“Andrea, I actually have no idea where you’re going with this.”
“It’s an anagram!”
Lottie blinked. “Bless you.”
“No, look. My dad and”” She stopped suddenly and stared at the floor. Politely, Lottie averted her gaze and nodded silently. “A-anyway,” Andrea said feebly, “my”my d”we used to play word games like this.” She pulled out a parchment and a quill. “Look.”
Carefully, she wrote out ‘Neville Longbotom is the Secret Keeper.’ Under it, she wrote the name ‘Victor K. Lontelles’ and crossed out all of the corresponding letters in the sentence above it.
“See?” she whispered, brandishing the parchment. “Every letter in his name comes from a letter in the sentence.”
“But what about the other letters? What do they mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Andrea said, resting her head on her fist. “Maybe it’s a city or”or””
“An address?” Lottie suggested.
“Yeah!” Andrea stared at the remaining letters and ran her fingers over the phoenix charm. “It”it… Oh, I need to go to the library.” She stood; Lottie stood as well. “No, Lottie, you stay here,” Andrea said apologetically. “It will look to suspicious if we’re together. And you’ll get in so much trouble if Palmyitor finds out you stole the charm… again.” She smiled weakly. “I promise I’ll be back soon.”
Lottie sighed and fell back into her armchair as Andrea slipped through the clock. She didn’t know how she was going to get that charm back without Palmyitor seeing her.
With her head in her hands, Lottie sank into the state in between consciousness and sleep, the rhythmic laughing of the older students lulling her further into relaxation.
Vague images of metallic phoenixes and mysterious French men haunted her subconscious. It felt like seconds later when she woke to a much quieter and relaxed common room. Lottie blinked the sleep out of her eyes, and the room slowly blurred into focus. She could see Matilda in the far corner of the room, chatting (a little less energetically now) about her latest endeavors in History of Magic. Next to Matilda rested Julianne, who was braiding her hair absentmindedly, humming to herself. Lottie shook the hair out of her eyes, scanning them across the room.
"Glad to see you've enjoyed your nap." Lottie jumped two feet out of her chair, sending papers cascading to the ground. It was Palmyitor.
Halfway to Infinity by Eponine
Chapter Notes: Hey guys! This has been a long and tiring chapter. TheBird and I nearly stayed up until three in the morning working on it. So a big round of applause for her. Yay TheBird!
This chapter is dedicated lovingly to the memory of my Uncle Lew.