In the end, Minerva couldn’t figure a way to let Lord Macnair know about the cave without also admitting that she had been there. But she kept Giggie out of it, saying that she and Petey had gone back out on the mountain spur after Gig went home. She stripped the story down to the bare essentials with just a passing mention of the various rooms, but said nothing of Petey’s entering the Crypt itself, or the encounter with the Erkling. She couldn’t help implying his cowardice in leaving her alone in the dark, but to salve the Macnair pride, she hinted that the way out was relatively short. She hoped no one would mark the disparity when they started exploring the chambers.
Lord Macnair owled clan leaders for a search party. Daybreak saw Minerva leading large hairy Macmillans, Sykeses, Campbells, and Flynts to the sinkhole. The McGonagalls, excepting herself, had not been asked. Magnus MacDonald, an underfed, tow-headed boy of Minerva’s age, trailed behind them unbidden. Magnus had a smooth face of no distinguishing feature, except rather paler-than-usual blue eyes and a large space between his upper incisors. He looked puny and awkward. But he was brave (some said reckless) and what he lacked in talent he more than made up for in a dogged insistence on being included in any and all adventures and a penchant for describing said adventures afterward in exacting, tedious detail.
After she led them to the mouth of the cavern, Minerva watched a few moments as Lord Macnair gave orders. The volunteers descended one by one into the earth under his brooding scrutiny. Though he had ignored her utterly throughout the trip, he now gave Minerva a piercing glare and squeezed his bulky frame through the opening.
She plodded on home, sick at the possibility of their finding Petey’s broken body at the bottom of the Erkling-hole. For surely that must be his resting place. Clan Macnair had already combed the countryside and found no trace of him. If he’d run a mindless course from the Crypt in his panic, he would have made straight across that cracked, earthen floor, not thinking, not remembering the crater at its center.
Magnus visited her later with a wide-eyed report. For once Minerva was grateful for his need to boast, although his meandering way of telling a tale made her at times want to shake him. They didn’t find Petey in the cave. But he did find this unusual rock, shaped like an Erumpent head, if you held it just so...Did she want to see it? Well, yes, they’d searched every room, even as far as the front door, with the Laird leading the way to ward off ghosts and curses. Did she know there were three Unforgiveable Curses? Banned by the Ministry, they were. They'd learned about them in Defensive Arts last-- Anything unusual? Oh,just some rusty sand at the base of a wall in the library, not far from the doorway”which might or might not be blood. By the way, did Minerva know the twelve uses for dragon's blood? The first --Yes, yes, they’d found the hole in the floor and Magnus himself had insisted on being lowered into it. He being light and slender--and, thought Minerva, otherwise useless--the adults had agreed. But first they put many spells of protection and disillusionment on him, which he proceeded to name.
She stopped him mid-list and questioned him closely about the hole, but not too closely. After all, she hadn’t told anyone about her encounter with the Erkling. She was able, in a roundabout way, to ascertain that there was nothing, not so much as a bone or a scrap of cloth, at the bottom. And no tunnels leading off it either, into which the creature might have dragged itself, mortally injured. Where then had the Erkling’s body gone?
She and Gig puzzled over this anomaly, and, at Gig’s suggestion, snuck around listening at keyholes and peeping over balconies, searching for clues in the adults’ whispered conversations. But they had scant reward for their spying, except for a conversation they overheard two days after his disappearance, one that she was even now trying to put out of her mind.
They’d watched from the gallery as Lord and Lady McNair paid a visit to Da. He escorted them into the parlor, and closed the double doors. But Gig and Minerva ran down the wide curved stairs, then tiptoed across the Great Hall and pressed an ear apiece to the stout oak planking and strained to hear the latest news.
“…but what were they doing in that cave?” Milady’s voice, quivering with some emotion Minerva could not gauge.
“You’ve questioned my daughter. She fell through a sinkhole and Petey insisted they explore it.”
“My son would not do such a dangerous thing. I have always forbidden”he knows…” The voice trailed off. Minerva tried to imagine the redoubtable Lady Macnair curled over her handkerchief, silently weeping.
“Boys will be boys, my Lady.”
“Do not speak of Peter as if he was some Muggle turd!” Lord McNair’s voice. Minerva had to pull back from the door. The latch reverberated under his booming rasp.
“Sir, I did not mean…”
“That’s your weakness, Jupiter, you never mean”and you never think”not about the important things. You sit here in your hidey-hole, brooding over petty inventions, tending your sheep, mucking about with Squibs and halfbreeds. Once a year you travel to Inverness and show lesser mages and those stinking Muggles what a great Highlander you are, tossing a puny tree trunk about and some hunks of lead not even worthy to be called Bludgers. But what do you know of policy, of power? You’ve no sense of your place, man. Married a sickly Muggle-born. And no son to carry on your name. You eschew your very birthright…”
“Enough!”
Minerva was having trouble following the train of thought in this conversation, but even through the door, she was quick to catch the change in her father’s tone. It had started out gentle, almost servile, with him calling his neighbor and boyhood chum ‘Sir.’ Now his voice was still quiet, but pricked with menace. She gave Gig a warning look. If Lord Macnair pursued this line of talk, he’d find himself bounced out on his ear and they’d be discovered. They started to edge away from the door, but then Minerva heard Petey's name and strained for more.
“ ...disappearance has obviously upset you, so I forgive your insult. But Minerva is scion of my flesh, and she will have my land and title when I move on.”
“Not if I have any say in the matter”and I am thane of this valley!”
Da’s voice became quieter still. “Why would you do such a thing”supposing of course that you could.”
Milady McNair reentered the fray, her voice now under control. “It is because of her that our son is missing.”
“You wouldna blame a child…”
“No babbie she. I’ve seen the knowing look in her eyes. Canny she is, and older than her years. And she’s not told the truth of Peter’s disappearance, not the half of it.”
“Begging your pardon, but you’re no mind-reader, Milady. And I’ll not have you calling my daughter a liar in my own house. Minerva’s not perfect, but she knows what’s right and she has a very scrupulous conscience.”
“I may not be a Legilimens, but I am a mother--and I know! I’ve seen her in action, your little hoyden. She’s got your brains, Jupiter McGonagall, and her mother’s wild and secretive ways. She leads the boys around like they were Nifflers and she a piece of purest gold. I don’t believe a word of her story, but you’re so wrapped up in your ‘bairnie girl’ you can’t see it! There’s something she’s not telling us.” And in the silence Minerva thought she heard a whispered “…and I’ll have it out of her…” But she didn’t wait for more. She ran, Gig after her, back across the Hall, through the kitchen doors and outside to the comfort of the beech tree.
~*~
So when Minerva visited the family Crypt with her father by the dark of the moon, it was with a certain hesitancy and guilt. She hoped that there would be no evidence of Petey’s visit remaining in the catacombs. But would the ghosts of her ancestors recognize her as one of the intruders of the week before? She'd put the question to Gig, who replied without hesitation, “You said yourself your pin are good keeple. They hon’t warm one of their own.”
Minerva hoped not. But what of the Erkling she had killed? Would its shade be haunting the Crypt, seeking vengeance?
These questions plagued her as she climbed the foothills with her father. His bulk cleared a path through the heather, and she dogged his steps. He chattered incessantly over his shoulder about his adventures at Hogwarts and her own undoubted success once there.
Now another worry assailed her. Most kids her age would have buried the subject immediately as bold, even risible, to broach with an adult. But this was not Minerva’s way; her relationship with her father had always been an open, easy one.
“Da, how will you get along”when I’m gone to school?”
He stopped and turned.
“You think your auld Da canna take care of himself?”
“No…I mean, yes...of course you can.” But she looked doubtful.
“I think I can learn to mix my own brose again, if that's what you mean. And of course there’s Goodie and the servants…”
Minerva grinned wryly. She’d witnessed the many arguments her Nurse and Da had got into over the years. They could go at it hammer and wands for hours, and always, after the Master put his foot down”“my final word on it, auld woman”I’ll not hear another””Goodie Gudgeon would stretch out the argument for days with ‘humphs’ and ‘tuts’ as often as their paths crossed. Would she return home over the holidays to find that they'd hexed each other into oblivion? She knew she was letting her imagination run wild again. But there was another, more cogent concern.
“But Goodie’s old, Da. She relies on me to”to remember where she puts stuff and help fetch things…”
“When her spells go wrong, you mean. Aye, I’ve noticed her Craft is failing a bit. I’ll keep an eye on her…”
“Gently, won’t you?”
“Yes, I’ll try not to hurt her feelings. I promise, Minerva.”
“Thanks, Da.”
She hugged him hard--as if for the last time. After all, she’d be starting on the path to the Magicosm’s deepest secrets soon. Who knew what that knowledge would do to her relationships, her outlook, her very self? Every one of her playmates who had gone to Hogwarts before her had come back in summer, changed in ways she couldn’t express. Much as she would like to deny it, even featherbrained Petey had come home the summer before more grown up and aware of his magical birthright than she could have imagined.
Petey! She hoped and prayed that the spells he had learned at school were somehow keeping him alive, wherever he was.