Albus Dumbledore was often invited to social happenings-holiday parties, christenings, weddings. Former students, social climbers, and general acquaintances often sought his presence at gatherings. Dumbledore liked to oblige his students past and present, and friendly acquaintances. He sometimes went to the gatherings of social and political climbers too. As the newly-made headmaster of Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, he had to attend these now and again.
This particular wedding, on the fourth weekend of September, was particularly ill-timed. The fall term had begun at Hogwarts with odd disasters in its wake. Two students from Slytherin had simply left the school, one the first week, one the third week. Both had argued with professors-the first, with Minerva McGonagall, the second-and this was difficult to believe-with Professor Binns, the ghost who taught History of Magic. It was difficult to get Professor to stop lecturing long enough even to speak. It would have to have been something of near-earthquake proportions to have gotten the ghostly History of Magic teacher to argue.
As Dumbledore sat down on the bride’s side of the church, he wearily scanned his fellow well-wishers. The bride, Melinda Douglas, had left Hogwarts two years previously, after earning nine NEWTs. The groom had left Hogwarts seven years before, had gotten one NEWT in Charms, and was closely enough related to the Malfoys to have brought Abraxas Malfoy, his wife, and his two sons, aged six and four, to sit primly on the groom’s side. Dumbledore sighed as he settled his deep-purple robes around him. There was no getting around it; he’d have to talk to the Malfoys. A shame, really; until he’d spotted them, he’d thought perhaps he’d have a “pureblood mania” free event. There was altogether too much talk of pure blood these days.
Also present was Cornelius Fudge, a blustery, cheerful little political hanger-on who worked as a senior clerk at the Ministry of Magic, and who was eying the assembled guests with enthusiasm. He looked oddly similar to the cheery round-faced cherubs that had been charmed into existence and who now dropped rose petals and little lawn daisies onto the assembled guests. Dumbledore chuckled to himself.
No doubt the politically ambitious young Fudge had marked the presence of the wealthy and influential Malfoys already, though from the delighted expression on his face, Fudge did not share Dumbledore’s own deep misgivings about them.
As the last of the guests sat down on the wooden pews, Dumbledore caught sight of a face he had not expected to see again, and this face held his interest even more than Abraxas Malfoy’s had. The man’s name was Anir. He must have had a last name, but Dumbledore had never heard it. Tall, thin almost to the point of gauntness, and wolf-fierce, Anir slid his eyes from person to person in a predatory fashion. When he locked eyes with Dumbledore, he did not look away. But neither did he let anything slip-why he had come to this wedding, what he had been doing with his life since Dumbledore had last seen him striding elegantly from Knockturn Alley years ago, or why nobody had noted him anywhere in the Wizarding world in recent years.
Anir only broke eye contact with Dumbledore when he sat down, and Dumbledore turned his eyes to the front of the church with a troubled mind. Despite the blankness of Anir’s public mind, he could feel something, like greasy fingerprints, or poorly-healed cuts, on Anir’s mind, or on his soul. It was as if Anir had come to this wedding while leaning his soul far out over a cliff to see what darkness lay below. Dumbledore found himself wishing Anir was not sitting two rows behind him. Having somebody who had probably been dealing in the dark arts behind him did not do anything to dispel the tenseness in his life.
Anir had not been a student at Hogwarts, Dumbledore knew. Dumbledore was old enough to have remembered him, had he attended. As the cherubs continued to toss little daisies (the rose petals were becoming scarce), the bride’s mother was seated in the front pew. Dumbledore risked another glance at Anir. The man’s face was inscrutable. He smiled slightly at Dumbledore and nodded his direction.
Melinda, the bride, looked lovely as she walked down the aisle on her father’s arm. The groom was awkward enough in his responses to the minister’s prompts that Dumbledore almost laughed. The boy had not been particularly intelligent, though good-humored and pleasant. He and Melinda would make a cheerful pair, though Dumbledore couldn’t help hope that, if they had children, they would inherit Melinda’s mental faculties and not the groom’s.
The wedding ceremony went as most wedding ceremonies did, with a few glitches to prove no day could be perfect. The small boy who carried the wedding rings dropped his ornate satin pillow as the groom untied the rings. The cherubs reached a frenzy of flower throwing as the wedding couple kissed, and Dumbledore spotted buttercups and a few stray dandelions tumbling down from the cherubs’ fingers. One bridesmaid stepped on the hem of her ornate orchid-colored robes during the recessional, and Dumbledore clearly heard the sound of tearing cloth.
Dumbledore hoped to be as well entertained at the reception, but such was not the case. The cherubs, having tossed most of their flowers, took to flapping around the church’s meeting hall and laughing in tinkly little voices whenever somebody spoke to them. The reception was long. And it was boring.
In addition, Dumbledore found himself seated, not near Anir, as he had hoped, but right by Cornelius Fudge, who took the opportunity to briskly interrogate Dumbledore on his ideas about becoming the Minister of Magic. And when Fudge finally turned to the owner of Mesmer’s Calming Tonics, who was seated on Fudge’s right, Dumbledore sighed in relief and turned to smile at the young couple across from him.
But they did not smile in return. The man, who was not familiar at all, nodded gravely. The woman, who Dumbledore recognized as his former student Stella Marie Douglas, at least before she was married, only looked at Dumbledore, then gave him a blank smile with no joy in it.
This was as troubling, in its own way, as seeing Anir at the wedding. Stella Marie was-or had been-a friendly girl with a sparkling laugh all the way through school, charming the boys and befriending girls with her open ways and her friendly heart.
“Stella Marie, how good it is to see you again,” Dumbledore said as warmly as he could through the almost palpable fog of emotionless emanating from the couple. “So you have come to Melinda’s wedding. Are you married, as well?”
“Yes, Professor.” Stella Marie’s voice was emotionless. “I married Henry two years ago.”
“I am glad to meet you, Henry,” Dumbledore said politely to the blank-faced young man. He ignored a cherub as it hovered over Stella Marie’s head and gave a tinkly little laugh.
“Glad to meet you, sir.” Henry had a monotone voice with an accent that was probably American.
“You have children?” Dumbledore asked. Rarely had he been so at loss for words when faced with somebody he knew.
This commonplace question, instead of bringing forth another blank yes or no, instead seemed to stab at the young couple, for both of them flinched, and the fog of emotionlessness parted for a long moment to reveal sharp pain, in both of them.
“Yes, Professor,” Stella Marie answered, her voice choked. “A daughter.” And before Dumbledore could inquire as to the health of the child, or think of something suitable to say, if there was anything suitable to say, Stella Marie leaned over and lifted an infant-sized wicker basket from between her and her husband and set it on the table. And there, sure enough, inside the basket, lay a baby, dressed neatly in a pink dress and wearing a silly-looking white bonnet with eyelet lace around the face edge.
But the infant herself was anything but silly-looking. She opened blue eyes wide and blinked twice, and Dumbledore could not help but lean close to admire the child. She had the rounded features of a baby, but her skin was clear, her lips perfectly shaped, and her eyes-they held depths Dumbledore had never seen before in a baby, nor even in a child. She was deep. And then she gave Dumbledore a slight smile, and he could not help but smile back.
“What a beautiful child,” Dumbledore said honestly, admiringly. “What a truly lovely child. How old is she, Stella Marie?”
“Four weeks old,” Stella Marie answered dully. “She’s too young to be smiling. She shouldn’t be.”
“Oh.” Dumbledore glanced at Stella Marie. She had returned to looking blank. “Why not? Perhaps she’s simply ahead. Babies smile at different times. What is her name?”
“She doesn’t have a name,” Henry said sharply. “And she won’t have one. Give me that, Stella.” And Henry jerked the basket off the table. The infant within let out a sudden wail.
But Stella Marie made no attempt to stop her husband from roughly treating their child. Even when Fudge gasped, “Well, I never,” Stella Marie said nothing. The cherub dropped one mangled-looking dandelion into Fudge’s hair before it suddenly whizzed away from their table. Henry marched across the hall, and the baby’s cries grew slowly fainter as he stepped through the door, perhaps outside, perhaps merely down the stairs and away from the crowd.
Dumbledore was left with nothing left to say to his former student. He did not want to discuss any of this with Fudge, who now turned troubled eyes to him. Instead, Dumbledore stood. “Excuse me.” He wound his way through the tables and chairs, his heart more troubled than he had thought it could be at a wedding reception.
What startled him was that, by the time he had reached the door Henry had disappeared through, he had company. Anir, his carefully studied amusement gone, strode out the door behind Dumbledore. Dumbledore again caught the feeling that Anir leaned far, far out over an abyss of evil. But something had caught his attention-perhaps a flash of wide eyes, or a frightened cry, and even as Anir leaned over his personal abyss, he looked back. The vault of evil beneath Anir called out, and the light flickered, then gleamed again. Evil, with all its subterfuges and dishonest, twisted paths, hung in the balance with nothing more than a small gleam of light.
“Don’t bother telling me to go away,” Anir said tersely to Dumbledore when he turned around. “I saw what happened. I’m related to the girl.”
Looking back can sometimes be a good thing. How Anir was related was a mystery to Dumbledore; he couldn’t place Anir anywhere on the well-known family tree of pureblood families, nor of the more far-flung half-bloods.
Henry, when Dumbledore caught up to him, sat out beyond the churchyard, an expression of twisted fury and helplessness on his face as the baby in the basket cried. The basket was a good seven feet from Henry, as if he was afraid of it, or worried about being contaminated.
“I assume,” Dumbledore said with no preamble, “that you have a good reason for mistreating the baby. Are you thinking she is not your daughter?”
Henry turned his face toward Dumbledore. “You have no idea,” he said savagely.
“You think Stella Marie has had an...”
“No, I do not think Stella has had any kind of an affair, professor.” Henry glared at Dumbledore with something akin to hatred. “Who’s that you brought with you?”
“Anir.” Dumbledore made no further explanation. Either Henry knew about Anir, in which case no explanation was necessary, or Henry knew nothing of Anir, in which case two or three hours worth of explanation of what Dumbledore knew or suspected about Anir and his life would not have been enough.
“What, you brought somebody from the Ministry with you to spank me?” Henry ground out.
So Henry knew nothing of Anir. Interesting. Stella Marie had not told her husband about this relation. Perhaps Anir had meant he was related to Melinda, the bride, and not Stella Marie-though the two girls were cousins to some degree, and families usually exchanged stories on family oddities like eccentric and dangerous relatives.
“I am not from the Ministry, no.” Anir’s voice was so totally blank, Dumbledore glanced at him. His eyes revealed nothing-nothing at all, except a tiny glimmer of some kind of battle, a battle Dumbledore had seen before, though not in this place, in this man. The abyss no doubt beckoned, and would claim Anir soon, very soon-unless the light somehow, at this late hour, pleased Anir more.
Could anyone hope for that?
“If you know so much, professor, you tell me what happened.” Henry pointed at the basket. “That... that thing...”
“... is a baby,” Anir finished for Henry in a voice with a well-honed edge.
Was it light, or was it a deception?
“Baby!” Henry turned to Anir. His voice took on a mocking tone. “Oh, a baby, is it? I do believe Stella had a baby four weeks ago. What happened last week? This thing is not the baby my wife gave birth to. Have a look for yourself. Ever seen a four-week-old baby like that before?”
Dumbledore walked slowly to the basket and looked, in the faint yellow light from the hall window, at the baby. The infant was too young to see all the way up to his face, at his height. Her eyes were screwed up into typical infant wailing expression. But there was something eerily familiar about the face, the tiny hands clenched in little fists, the skin that seemed almost to glow in the faint light.
“That is not the baby my wife had,” Henry stated icily. “It’s a changeling. Somebody knew they’d had one of... of those things. They didn’t want it. They knew we had a baby. I even knew the night it happened. We stepped out to look at the sunset... just to look at the...” Henry’s face crumpled, and he sat hard back on the bench, burying his face in his hands.
“You are delusional,” Anir said dispassionately.
“I am not delusional!” Henry reared his head up and stared at Anir with wild eyes that gave credence to Anir’s accusation. “I know what happened!”
And the worst of it was, it might have been true. And Dumbledore knew it. And if Anir was what Dumbledore thought he was, if Anir was so given to evil that he had studied both good and evil to the enormous extent that he would have, leaning so far out over the abys... well, Anir might know. He might know as much as Dumbledore himself did. He might know more.
But it was Henry’s turn to snatch Dumbledore’s attention now. “It’s a Sarameau,” Henry cried. “Look at it!” He pointed at the basket.
Dumbledore’s stomach dropped in dull response to the young man’s words. So Henry knew, too. However he came by the rare knowledge, Henry knew something of the Sarameau.
“Sarameau do not become evident as infants,” Anir stated. “Never.”
Henry stood again and pointed at the basket. “Look,” he ordered. “Look at the creature. And you tell me what you see. You know so much about Sarameau, do you?”
Dumbledore held up one hand. “This is pointless. Bring the child up, Henry. Love her. She needs parents as much as any other child.”
“Oh, no,” Henry answered, his voice shaking. “No. I won’t have a changeling dumped on my hands and then have you telling me to raise it as my own.”
“That baby,” Anir interrupted, “needs loving parents as much as any other child, Sarameau notwithstanding.”
That baby, Dumbledore thought grimly, needs loving parents more than any other child. Whatever happened with Sarameau children happened only that much sooner when they were not loved.
Henry’s voice rose to a near-scream. “I will not take that thing...”
Anir cut across Henry. “That thing, as you call her, may very well be your own, Sarameau or not.”
“I have no such hideous creatures in my family, and Stella has none in hers!” Henry shrieked.
Anir stared harshly at Henry for several seconds. Then, without warning, Anir took three steps forward, snatched the basket with the baby in it off the ground, and turned in a whirl of dark robes. And as quickly as that, he was gone-Disapparated, gone who-knew-where.
“What... where did he...” Henry gasped.
“Gone, and taken your daughter with him,” Dumbledore said heavily. “I do hope you were in earnest when you said you would not take that...” Dumbledore could not bring himself to quote Henry completely-not to the last word. He could not refer to the baby as a “thing,” no matter what Henry called her.
Henry turned toward Dumbledore to stare at him with eyes gone dull. “He took it.”
“Yes,” Dumbledore confirmed. “He took her. And do not forget that you stated that you would not take the child. The fault is yours.”
“He... he took...” Henry gaped at the spot Anir had Disapparated from.
Yes, he had taken the child. Either the abyss or the light had won out. And as of yet, Dumbledore had no way of knowing which had succumbed, and which side had triumphed.
Disturbed by the events of the evening, disgusted with Henry-and truthfully, with Stella Marie as well-Dumbledore turned away from Henry, from the churchyard, from the cherubs and their irksome tinkly laughs, and from the day, and Disapparated. His own study back at Hogwarts awaited him. No doubt someone from the Ministry would call upon him to give account for what he had witnessed, but he would not discuss it that night-not with a Ministry official. And some parts of it he would not discuss with anybody-not until sufficient years had passed.
Changeling by Spottedcat
Chapter Notes: This is the beginning of a series about a character who will be showing up, in later years, in Anne Rhys's life. This is going back a ways in time, before the Mauraders were at Hogwarts... and actually, before some of them were born.
Enjoy!