Chapter Seven: Hide-And-Seek
[Remus]
Not long after I have “woken up” and gone upstairs to my room, I hear the fire roaring into life downstairs.
“You have a visitor!” Mum calls, back to her normal self now that the full moon is over for another month. There is another roar and she adds, “Make that two!”
I smile to myself and jump down off my bed, before making my way downstairs. Sirius and James are standing in the living room.
“Hi, Moony. Wormtail should be along in a minute,” Sirius says. He looks much better than when I saw him last; living with the Potters is clearly doing him good.
“Great! Did you, uh ... see the Prophet?”
James nods. “Yeah. Awful isn’t it? I used to go to that place as a kid. And after I was a kid, too.”
“What happened?” Sirius asks. “What place?” I stare at him. It was headline news. Surely he couldn’t have missed it?
James rolls his eyes. “Sirius has only been up for ten minutes,” he explains. “Did you sleep until noon all holiday when you lived with your family, too?”
“‘Course. Meant I didn’t have to see them, didn’t it? It became a habit. Besides, Mr Up-At-Seven-Even-Though-We-Don’t-Have-Any-Classes. I’m making the most of our temporary freedom. So what happened? Was someone attacked?”
“Yeah,” I say, ignoring their previous steer in conversation (being friends with those two, you learn when to change the subject, as neither of them like to let things go). “Yeah, someone did. It was“”
The fire bursts into life once more, cutting me off and Peter stumbles out.
“Hi guys!” he says cheerfully. “How did it go, Moony?”
I cannot help but smile at my ever-faithful friend. Even if his hair is sticking up in some rather inhumane directions ... that’s normally James’s domain. I think I know someone else who is making up for lost sleeping time.
“It went fine. Just like I said it would,” I reply, sneaking a meaningful glance at James and Sirius, who are looking rather a little too innocent. “And how are the multitude of relatives?”
Peter looks appalled at the mere memories. “Gone, at last. If I’m ever asked how old I am again, I’m joining the Death Eaters. Same goes for whether I have a girlfriend and any statement referring to how much I’ve grown. So, what’s the plan for the day?”
The subject of the latest attack is forgotten about until much later when we are sitting on the grass in the garden, after a rather unusual game of hide-and-seek. Don’t ask how we ended up playing that particular game, because I’m not sure anyone could give a sufficient answer. All I know is that we’re now all looking a little worse for wear, after hiding in various bushes, spidery outhouses and, in Sirius’s case, quite a deep pond. In fact, I think there may still be a frog in his hair. Naturally, when told to hide somewhere harder to find than behind a bush, he presumed this meant underwater. I don’t want to think about how he managed to breathe. One would hope with some kind of straw.
“Hey,” Peter says. “Did you hear about the Price family?”
I look up and feel a little guilty for forgetting the terrible misfortunes of others, even if it was only for an hour or two. “Yeah. We were discussing it before you came.”
“We were?” Sirius asks. “I thought we were discussing the ethics of waking up at seven versus noon?”
“We were,” James confirmed. “But we were also discussing the attack on the Prices last night.”
“Price ... Price ...” Sirius is evidently trying to place the name.
“As in, Marty,” I fill in for him, raising my eyebrows, sceptically.
“Oh! Of course! I think some of your pond water addled my brain, Moony. Is she okay?”
“Yeah, we think so,” James says. “It was one of the women who ran that tea shop. Either her aunt or her mum.”
“Her mum,” Peter supplies. We turn and stare at him. It’s rather unusual for Peter to know the details of something we don’t. He’s never been one for reading up on background information, so to speak.
“How do you know that?” James asks.
“Well, you know what my Mum’s like,” Peter says, shrugging. “Everybody’s business is automatically hers. She liked talking to the sisters, apparently. Saw them as her own personal priests or something ...”
We stare at him blankly some more. Has pond water addled someone else’s brain, too? But it couldn’t have done ... he had concealed himself in the compost heap, which would explain the leaf sticking out of his ear.
“You know,” he says uncomfortably. “Going there was like going to Confession or something. They were nice to me, though. They were nice to everybody.” He shrugs, still watching our perplexed stares warily.
“So, it was her Mum who was killed?” I ask, diverting the subject away from Peter’s unexpected knowledge. “That must have been horrible. Especially considering the way we left things with her.”
Now it’s my turn to be stared at.
“Eh?” Sirius asks, eloquently.
I sigh. The incident has been secretly nagging at me since I read the paper this morning, but apparently the others need some reminding. Honestly, they have memories like sieves, the lot of them. If it didn’t happen two seconds ago ...
“You remember ...” I prompt. “In the Entrance Hall? With Snape? Sirius, you were horrible to her, you must remember!”
“I wasn’t horrible ...” Sirius insists, sitting up straight and pushing his wet fringe out of his eyes. “I mean “ I didn’t mean to be horrible “ I mean “ it was ages ago!” I am oddly satisfied to hear the note of guilt in his voice.
“Maybe it was a bit harsh,” James concedes. “But it was ages ago and ... well. She has bigger things on her mind now, right?”
I shrug again. “I just feel bad. Maybe we should send her a letter or something. Let her know how sorry we are. After that, maybe we could go into Diagon Alley or something?”
Peter nods enthusiastically, while James shrugs in agreement.
“Yeah, all right,” Sirius says, nodding. “Go and get some parchment then.”
I stand up and just as I’m about to go back into the house, Sirius calls, “And Moony? Get a towel, too, won’t you?”
[Marty]
Sometime around midday, Aunt Tabby enters my room. I am lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about ... well. My mother, mostly. The future. Voldemort. The Cause.
“Would you like some lunch?” Aunt Tabby asks, kindly.
“No thanks,” I say, not particularly wanting to move.
“I could bring it up to you.”
“No thanks,” I say again, because not wanting to move was just an excuse and to be perfectly honest, eating is not at the top of my agenda right now.
“You should keep busy,” Aunt Tabby says. I look over at her and notice she is wearing an apron, those funny rubbery yellow gloves and a strange turban type contraption to keep her hair out of her way. Cleaning, then, is my Aunt Tabby’s distraction from her troubles. I can’t say I’m surprised. It won’t do much, though. I like Garfield and everything, apart from his stupid goatee, but this house is so cold. It’s just been him living here for years, on his own and he’s always at work, at St Mungo’s. No amount of cleaning can bring life to a house. For that, you need ... well, life.
“There’s nothing to do,” I tell her as an excuse, which is true. “All my stuff’s at the café.”
“Maybe ... maybe you should go collect some stuff later, then,” she says. “Some schoolbooks to read, or one of your notebooks to write in?”
The thought of going back so soon makes me want to jump out of the window, but I try not to let that on. “Another time,” I say and look back at the ceiling pointedly, waiting desperately to be left alone.
“Okay,” Aunt Tabby says softly and the door closes. For a few minutes “ or maybe hours “ I stay where I am. And then, there is a tapping at the same window I had considered leaping out of, days “ or maybe only moments “ before.
I look over and see an owl. Remus’s owl, to be exact, name of Chudley (a joke of James’s, because he said it was too scraggly to ever get very far, but I’ve always thought its raggedness had a kind of sweet charm to it, like a street urchin, only in the form of an owl), acquired sometime in between second and third year.
The sight of old Chudders makes me jump over to the window with a speed I wouldn’t have thought possible a minute or two ago.
After fiddling with the ancient stiff window for a moment (Garfield’s house is just so old and he doesn’t take care of it nearly as well as he should), I manage to open it and Chudley sweeps in and lands on one of the highest shelves, before settling down and promptly going to sleep. At least, I hope he’s asleep and not dead, because that wouldn’t exactly make my day. I poke him, to make sure and he grunts. Even though I’m overcome with excitement at what the letter could possibly contain, it still takes a few attempts to retrieve it. Eventually, though, I can sit down on my bed and open it.
“Dear Marty,
“I was very sorry to hear about your mother’s death and when I heard, I couldn’t help but remember the terms we left on. It was hardly very ideal and I apologise for myself and the others, who, I can assure you, feel remorseful about it all, too. I’m not really sure what to say to be honest. I had the idea of sending you a letter of our condolences, but didn’t really think what I should write beyond that.
“You helped me a lot, Marty, towards the end of last year and I’m grateful. Even though it maybe didn’t seem like it.
“Sorry to bother you. There’s probably been loads of letters and things, so I’ll stop now and let someone else have a turn. See you next year.
“- Remus”
I smile at the first part of the letter and feel my eyes wet a little. I had brushed aside their treatment of me quite quickly and hadn’t really thought about it much since I got back, just read over the years’ observations and filed them properly with the others. The thought of Remus still being upset about it made me sort of happy in a way. Like someone besides my family might actually care about my feelings.
“Hi Marty.
“Uh, this is James, if you were wondering. Sorry about the handwriting. I was really sorry to hear about what happened, too, I used to love that tea shop. My Mum would take me when I was a kid and buy me some pumpkin juice. I know she liked your relatives, she’d always have a small chat with them, but everyone loved them, as far as I can tell, although you probably know that, it’s just that it feels so awful for me to think about what happened, because they didn’t deserve it at all and this sentence has gone on far too long already, but I’m nervous, you see and have a tendency to ramble and now I can’t seem to stop, even though I’m not saying anything that’s very important at all, I just don’t know what else to say and once you finish one sentence, you have to start another, with a new topic and I can’t think of any other topic right now apart from how very sorry I am about what happened to your family. I just counted the words in that sentence. There were one-hundred and thirty-five. I think I broke some kind of international record. What did Remus say to write about?
“Oh. Yes. What happened, with the Entrance Hall and “ actually I can’t remember exactly what was said, but it wasn’t good, was it? Whatever it was, you probably didn’t deserve it.
“Sorry that this letter (or my part of it, Remus’s seemed quite nice really) has been so useless so far. I’m not very good with comforting people.
“- James”
My eyebrows have found their way right to the top of my head. James’s letter writing shows off the awkward side to him, doesn’t it? It’s sweet, really. I don’t know why Lily seemed to hate him so much last year, he’s really quite nice when you study his behaviour for five years.
“Marty
“So, um, sorry about your Mum. That’s really
“Also ... yeah, sorry about that thing I said. People do like you. You’re just a little annoying sometimes. There’s no way I should have said what I did it was
“I apologise for the utter shambles that this letter has turned out to be.
“- Sirius
“PS. Sorry about all the scribbles out, too.”
I smile, immediately forgiving Sirius for everything. He always makes me laugh and this letter is no different, whether that was his intention or not.
“Hi Marty, it’s Peter. How are the pixies? I’m really sorry about what happened, because it was a great tea shop and I know my mum really liked it there, for a start, same as Remus and James’s mums did and probably everybody’s mums, really (except Sirius’s). Also, Remus says we should mention what happened at the end of last year. I presume he means that time when Sirius said nobody likes you and then you ran away. Sorry about that. People do like you really, it’s just that sometimes when Sirius is getting excited about something he’s doing, he doesn’t like to be interrupted or corrected and he lashes out. But he felt guilty when Remus brought it up just now and he probably said sorry in his bit of the letter. But in case he didn’t, sorry. That’s from all of us. “ Peter. PS. Sorry if the parchment’s a bit wet, Sirius hid in Remus’s pond when we were playing hide-and-seek.”
I try not to think about why the Marauders were playing hide-and-seek, particularly when it involved hiding in a pond (although that does explain the damp patches). Now that I’ve reached the end, I feel a little disappointed that it’s over, as well as excited. I received post from the Marauders! Remus was wrong “ this is the first letter I have got about what happened last night and will probably be the only one.
I read it through again and then fold it and slip it into my pocket, before leaving my bedroom and heading downstairs to get my coat. Hearing from the Marauders has given me the push I needed to stop studying the cracks in the ceiling and actually get something done. Even if it’s just to go up to my bedroom (my real one, at the café, not the bleak, shabby room I spent the night in, upstairs) and collect a fresh notebook to analyse the meanings behind the letter in.
I pass through the neglected, dusty rooms on my way downstairs, but don’t linger. Don’t get me wrong, Garfield really is an okay guy. But if he’s not at St Mungo’s, then he’s at the café, with us and if he’s not there, then he’s so exhausted that he’s already crashed out here and is practically comatose. He just doesn’t have time to do simple things like housework and probably wouldn’t know how to, if he did. Well, there’s no way that staying here a moment longer will help me in any way. I have to get out. There’s nothing to do except brood and then I’ll never be able to move on and be happy. And if I’m not happy, I won’t want to help campaigns for The Cause and if I don’t help campaigns, then no one else at school will and if no one else at school will, then no young witches or wizards will have their say about these important issues.
And if that doesn’t happen, then future generations will never understand the importance of the people’s right to protest and then something awful will happen (and perhaps already is happening) and no one will be able to stand up and defend the world from evil. And if no one does that, we’ll basically all die.
You can call me egotistical, but in short, if I don’t leave this house, everybody in the whole world will be killed.
And I really don’t want to lose anyone else, right now.
“I’m going to Diagon Alley, Aunt Tabby!” I call, as I grab the floo powder out of an old jug on the mantelpiece and throw it into the fire. Before I have the time to doubt what I’m doing.
“Oh! Are you sure, you don’t have to go so soon, if you don’t “”
“DIAGON ALLEY!” I roar over the top of her, to block out the uncertainty her words brought up inside of me. I feel myself spinning and try not to think about what state the café might be in. Just one step at a time; or, at the moment, one spin.
When I come out of the fireplace, it seems like the whole of the Leaky Cauldron has turned to stare at me.
“Martina,” an old witch I have served tea to before mutters, standing up to come over to me. “Oh, Martina, I was so sorry to hear about what happened.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, before hurriedly making my way out into the yard, keeping my head down, so that no one else can come up to me and start telling me how sorry they are ... because frankly, I won’t be able to stand it.
Luckily, the street is as busy as ever and no one recognises me as the dead woman’s daughter as I gravitate towards the tea shop, slowing down the closer I get. When I am just a few feet away from it, I stop. The floor is covered with bouquets, all with messages and notes attached. I stoop down to read some.
The world is just a little less bright without you around “ and so are our lives.
To an angel, from one of the many who basked in your light.
Our thoughts are with you and your family, Saffy. You’re in a better place.
To the family and friends of Saffy Price: Merlin be with you in these troubled times.
We’ll all miss you, Saffy. Let your example live on in our lives.
Not one of the cards is signed and I am glad of this. Not only will it keep them safe (Mum was, after all, killed because she was too outspoken in her views and it’s good that people seem to have learned from this) but if I knew the names of these people, I would probably be able to connect a face and a voice to their words, which would only serve to make me start crying over their kindness, right in the middle of the street. I stand up.
The front of the shop is the same as ever, although the curtains are still drawn from last night and one or two of the posters advertising various meetings, groups and Causes have half come off, leaving them hanging pathetically from the large windows. I try to move towards the door, but find that I can’t. It may look relatively normal from the outside, but I know that inside is a different story. I can’t bring myself to see the destruction caused. Who knows what the Death Eaters did to it once we had Disapparated?
“Marty?” I hear someone say. They sound surprised, but caring. I whip around to find myself face to face with Remus Lupin. For the first time, I remember that I am wearing yesterday’s clothes, have not yet washed or brushed my hair even and my eyes are most likely red rimmed and puffy. “Are you okay?” He touches my shoulder lightly. It’s all too much.
Before I know what I’m doing, I have leapt at him, thrown my arms around his neck, buried my head in his shoulder and burst into tears.
AN: Oh, poor Marty. Don’t worry, things will look up for her very soon! Until then, leave a review and tell me what you think! And thanks to Chomione for beta-ing.