Chapter Text
{St. Mary’s College for Girls,
London,
17th of July,
1975.}
On the last night of term, St Mary’s College for Girls slumbered, while all around London beeped and pulsed. Enough out of the way of the mayhem and mischief of the night crowd, only the odd yelled word echoed through the well-established trees guarding the brick dormitories, and jagged towers adorned with crosses and crucifixes.
On such a balmy summer night, however, the windows were cracked. The hush of the street breezed through, lulling its occupants deeper and deeper... The tangling sheets around legs…a rolling over to the cooler side of sheets…sighs and kicks… headlights from the streets beaming warm yellow shapes on the wood-panelled walls…
“Katherine – Katherine…”
Katherine Spencer opened bleary eyes to her dormmate, Fiona, kneeling on the edge of her mattress – their door ajar –
“… It’s Nancy Woodbridge.” whispered Fiona, tugging Katherine’s elbow in the direction of their window – where a willowy silhouette leant out their window, examining the ground beneath.
“Quick… quick…” came a whisper through the door, as well as the scattered light of a nearly dead torch. The shuffle of socks on the floorboards grew slowly louder, closer –
“Nancy?” whispered Katherine, pushing back her blanket, and pulling down her nightgown as she edged out of bed.
Nancy Woodbridge turned, the distant glow of streetlights lit her fair hair – and her day clothes –
“Sorry, girls! I’ve got to get out of here before they realise I’m gone and call my parents…” she whispered, grinning impishly, and checking out below the window again.
Katherine rubbed her eyes, “Where are you…”
Nancy turned back with an odd sort of expression – one that signified a greater maturity, usually. Tones of well-meaning pity. She crossed to Katherine’s bed, sitting beside her. Nancy laid her hand atop the younger girls’ –
“We’re eloping. George and me. I don’t give a fat rats’ about being Head Girl next year –”
Katherine had already mentally prepared – and had been looking forward to – being a prefect under Nancy as their Head Girl –
“– or going into nursing,” Nancy gave a mad sort of quiet laugh, eyes alight, patting Katherine’s hand, and turning earnest, “It’s all bollocks! All you need is love.”
Katherine privately thought perhaps a roof over one’s head might also be prudent –
“Nancy – will they let you back at all? Your parents?” came Fiona’s question, as the girl fiddled on the end of her plait, eyeing the door as it swayed.
“Don’t care, do I?” said Nancy, with snorting laughter as she sprung back to her feet. She rested her hand atop of her stomach, becoming pensive – but sappily so, “Going to start our own family…grow our own food…”
Backlit by the window, beautiful Nancy Woodbridge’s slim figure had a noticeable bulge beneath her paisley dress…
The door creaked softly open, and in a line, stringing tied-together-bed sheets, came Nancy’s dormmate and friends.
“Alright… ready, Nance?” came a quiet whisper.
She really was going. Katherine shared a look with Fiona, both silently staying back and letting the older girls commandeer their window for the safest propulsion down to the ground. They held the precarious end of their makeshift rope, huffing and giggling as they pulled and walked in place in their socks to make sure Nancy had a slow – and quiet – descent below.
It took all of two minutes. Then the girls were waving out down below, reeling back up their bed sheets, and running back on their toes through Katherine and Fiona’s door. They, politely, closed it behind themselves.
Fiona and Katherine wordlessly rushed to their window.
The older girls were carefully chucking down Nancy’s bags to her from their window, of which she had to then retrieve from the shrub as they had underestimated the amount the shrub jutted out from their building. With her belongings, Nancy was off – hurrying towards the gate.
Other girls in the surrounding dormitories had woken, and were hanging out of their windows –
“What on earth is going on –”
“Go Nancy – Go!”
Katherine was half expecting a teacher to run out, and tackle Nancy to the ground.
But they didn’t.
She went, and went… and Katherine watched, still feeling the grips of sleep and confusion leeching from her limbs. What a night. And, well… if it were to be anyone –
Who would have expected the Prefect?
Nancy had turned sixteen back in December and taken her O Levels. Her dad being a police officer, she would know the law allows sixteen-year-olds to take a job, rent a house (if they can afford it), smoke tobacco, have sex, and move out of their parents’ home—and parental consent is not needed for any of this. Oddly enough, however, you do need your parents’ consent to leave school or get married, hence…
“– and Woodbridge clears the fence!” came the commentary of the gripped onlookers.
Katherine found herself wanting to join the elated cheers and quiet whooping of her classmates, but found herself awed into silence still.
On the street, there was the sudden splutter of an engine, and then one sole headlight beaming out. Nancy’s boyfriend had come to collect her on his motorcycle. She had been their house’s prefect – and exactly what Katherine had aspired to be. Then Nancy met her guitar playing boyfriend who was in a burgeoning local folk-rock band –
“C’mon, love!” came a deep, but cheerful voice.
Katherine felt a flutter low in her stomach –
The wandering headlight advanced, and the pair came into view on the bike – Nancy’s bags strapped to the back. Her arms around his middle, the last Katherine ever saw of Nancy Woodbridge was with her fiancés guitar strapped to her back as they sped away down the street. They took the left, into the growing lights, and then…
They were gone.
There were not even cicadas to colour the silence that was left in their wake. Excitement still pulsed in all the girls’ ears as they remained, spellbound, at their windows.
“She’s mad.” laughed Fiona, shaking her head, eyes wide.
Katherine tried to defend the older girl, but found herself a bit at a loss, “I mean, I’ve never been in love…”
Fiona snorted –
“If I ever see you riding off on the back of some bloke’s motorcycle, never fear – I’ll have you committed,” joked Fiona, turning to Katherine with mirth, before making her way back to her bed, “A sensible girl like you would have to lose her mind.”
Fiona sat with a bounce, and began pulling her blankets back up.
“Cheers, Fee.” said Katherine lightly, going back to her own bed.
As if either of them could have slept anyway, the sky was already lightening. The stars going out one by one, minute to minute. It was only a matter of time before…
“Awake – awake!” came the shrill tones of their teachers, combing the halls and knocking doors, “Your parents will be here soon enough – get a move on girls –”
Hair frizzy, Katherine and Fiona shared a look at the pause that was happening outside their door – in the hallway. Or rather, across from them –
“– and where is Miss Woodbridge?”
Nancy had made her bed, left behind her neatly stacked schoolbooks and folded uniform. Her prefect pin sat atop it all.
Katherine knew this, because all the girls on the hall were lined up, socks falling around their ankles, and hair at sixes and sevens, in the hallway. The questioning started with the dorms down the other end of the hall, and worked all the way back up, with the thumping cane in the hand of their Head teacher along with it, and the repetitive whisper of ‘No, Miss’ when asked for the happenings of the previous evening.
“Fiona James.”
“Yes?”
“Do you have any information to share on the sudden disappearance of Miss Woodbridge.”
“No, Miss.”
The boots of their headmistress clicked to a stop in front of Katherine –
“Katherine Spencer.”
Would it be possibly the worst time to burst into tears?
“Yes, Miss?”
Oh gosh – she knew. She knew! Katherine swore it. Her eyes hadn’t been nearly as beady when she stopped with the other girls, surely. With a creak of the floorboards, the smell of coffee wafted into Katherine’s face –
“Do you have any information to share on the sudden disappearance of Miss Woodbridge?”
Behind her head, were the scrutinising eyes of the older girls.
“No, Miss.”
The cane never came, just the ghosting whoosh of it as their Headmistress turned on the spot to the older girls –
“Hold out your hands –”
SNAP! – SNAP! – SNAP!
The girls gave only the slightest of flinches and tightening of their lips. It was not their first time.
“Now –” said their Headmistress, swiping a fly away hair back into place, “Eat your breakfast, say your goodbyes – and we will welcome you all again in September.”
Once in the absence of faculty, the true questioning began –
“Who snitched?” demanded the new ringleader of the older girls, now that Nancy was gone. The inquiry was almost amused.
Almost.
All the younger girls – bar Katherine and Fiona – grew antsy. Whispers broke out, and a chain eventually reached back to the older girls –
“Colleen Jenkins! You’re a manky slag!” came the accusing call.
Laughter wracked the hallway, and everyone filtered back into their rooms to do just as the Headmistress had directed earlier. The approving eyes of the older girls helped absolve the terror Katherine had felt in lying to their Headmistress for the first time. Katherine was going to be Prefect the following year. She was a good girl, and it had always kept her out of trouble. Doing the right thing came easily to her.
Dressing into their mufty clothes, Katherine and Fiona packed away their night things – and any last bits and bobs around the dormitory.
Fiona zipped her beige leather case, and leant on it with a pointed look at Katherine, “Are you super sure that your uncle won’t have a change of heart – and let you come to Switzerland with us?”
Fiona was going away for the summer to Switzerland, to watch polo, soak in hot tubs, and chow down on fondue. She came from about the same amount of money that Katherine did – she had ascertained that in their early years at St Mary’s. It was a social dance at such schools – all you had to do was figure out where people holidayed, the spec of their riding boots, and how much the teachers let them get away with.
Fiona ‘Fifi’ James was perhaps the most high-profile student at the school, in terms of who her father was. She would have been incredibly popular, if it wasn’t for her being a bit of a liability in social situations due to her crippling nerves. Katherine had been nervous sort of child too, and they barely spoke for the first two weeks they were paired in the dormitory. Maybe they weren’t as particularly close as some of the others, but Katherine had no doubt that if Fiona ever married, that an invitation would make its way to her doorstep.
“Uncle Henry is pretty firm on me not leaving the country without him and Aunt Victoria.”
“Does he let you wipe your arse on your own?”
Katherine let out a laugh as she did up her powder blue case her uncle had bought her, “He means well… I think.”
Fiona pulled on her travelling hat, and her shoes over her stockings.
“Mother will be waiting; I have to go. We’ll always have next year – when we get to have a chance to do dance practise with the St Paul’s boys,” sang Fiona, as she danced towards the door, with her case, “Get pregnant even.”
With a joyful wave, Fiona slipped out the door into the cacophony of noise that was all the other girls too departing the dorms.
Katherine straightened her blazer, tugged down her skirt, and flattened her hair before placing on her own hat.
Two more times. She would only have two more years at the school, and then she would have to go out and discover the world that the likes of Nancy Woodbridge already had. She stood in the mirror with her blue case at her side; fifteen, and still in the image of a girl – all milky lanky limbs and blonde hair.
When did it all start happening?
Down the stairs, Katherine marched carefully, in the thick of the exodus of teenage girls. Through the heavy wooden entrance hall she went, and out into the courtyard – where the sun was beaming.
“Mum!” came the chorused cries of dozens of Katherine’s classmates, as they ran for glamourous, tall women, varying in degrees of warm receptions. The younger girls were taken by the hand and whisked out the gates, skipping and chatting happily.
Others, and mostly the older girls, often went to waiting cars – sent by their families. They did this with quiet maturity and the sound of clicking little shoes, straight-backed.
Amongst the parents and children were the odd dotting of tall, lean young men with boyish grins – who greeted their girlfriends with passionate embraces and some even with flowers. If they noticed the blushing cheeks, stares, and giggles of the girls around them, they had the grace to pretend they didn’t.
In the shade of large tree by the gate, was a lanky grey-suited man, with the beginnings of silver in his slicked back blond hair. He leant on an umbrella, squinting up at a growing cloud above, and then checking his ancient looking fob watch.
Katherine quickened her step to her uncle, but turned her gaze skywards when a cloud blocked the sun, and the temperature dropped.
WHOOSH – CLICK – up went Uncle Henry’s umbrella. Not a second later, came the tapping of rain on the paved courtyard –
“The car is this way… we had to park a little further with all the traffic…”
Wordlessly, he reached for her blue case.
Katherine kept her steps in time with her uncle to stay under the cover of the umbrella.
The zoo of the city was not as disturbed by the sun shower, and they needed to skirt around a protest of sorts on a corner. News bulletins were being waved in the air – “It was the IRA!” cried one, to the agreement of some –
“Shut your whinging pie hole – you always say it’s the bleeding Irish!”
Uncle Henry moved the umbrella to the same hand that held the case and placed a hand between Katherine’s shoulder blades – urging her forward. And to stay close. The rain had all but stopped. He gave no sign he even saw the protestors.
Katherine caught sight of a headline at last, just as they were turning down a quieter street.
‘TRAIN OFF THE TRACKS IN SUMMER HOLIDAY TRAGEDY’.
“What does it mean?” cried one girl, in a rain drenched mini dress, her hair slicked across her forehead.
Katherine thought they might all be on drugs –
“None of you hippies want the bloody jobs – they’re striking for a living wage – that’s what it is – striking! And then how are the trains supposed to run?”
“Hopefully they don’t need oil!” came one joker.
An outbreak of laughter quelled the crowd.
Uncle Henry kept his eyes straight ahead and his expression blank – until a man strode by in a top hat and no shoes.
“We all know what it really was, though, don’t we?” he said to Uncle Henry with a wink. It was only as he walked away that Katherine noticed that his trousers were actually arse-less chaps. He whistled an odd tune, laughing, “They really are clueless.”
That was King’s Cross for you. All of London, the past few years, had been going a bit bonkers – in actuality. Katherine spent a lot of time sequestered away at St Mary’s, but a lot of girls had been pulled out over the past few years because of the recession. Unrest in the streets was mounting though, like Katherine had never seen…
Ahead, however, was the sleek-backed car of Uncle Henry’s driver. It felt almost illegal to get in and drive away from the gritty scenes on the streets.
“Miss Katherine.” greeted Alby, as he took Katherine’s blue case and placed it in the boot.
Katherine smiled but couldn’t muster more than a quiet “Morning.”, keeping her head down – and waiting for eggs to be thrown from the crowd if they realised what kind of sort she was.
“We’ll be going home, thank you. If that’s alright, Alby.”
“Of course, Mister Spencer.”
Spencer. It was a perfectly normal last name. Quite unremarkable in London. Particularly unexceptional. As was fifteen-year-old Katherine, who shared it with her aunt and uncle that she lived with.
She didn't live with her parents, her aunt and uncle had told her that they had died in a fishing accident off the Isle of Wight when Katherine was four. And she had been sent to the middle of London to live with them. Not that it was often that she was actually with them, attending her boarding school, St Mary's, for the whole of the school term.
Tucked away in North-Western London, a twenty-minute walk from King's Cross Station, lied Claremont Square. She lived in Number Twenty-Four. It was a skinny townhouse, perfectly rectangular. And inside where the squarest people Katherine had ever met.
“Home, Mister Spencer.” said Alby, dutifully. He stepped out of the car, and opening Uncle Henry’s door before heading around to the boot.
Uncle Henry stepped out, waiting for Katherine to slide out behind him as he accepted her blue case, and his umbrella, from Alby.
As their long-time driver pulled away at a regal pace, Katherine spoke to her uncle for the first time, “Do… do we pay him well?”
“Yes.” said Uncle Henry, with an absent smile, before heading for the black front gate.
Katherine followed slowly and was closing the gate behind herself – when a bicycle bell halted her.
A dark-haired boy lazily zig-zagged down the rain-slicked street on a thin metal bicycle. He turned, as if sensing Katherine's gaze. Neither could see the other clearly from their distance. His dark head of hair disappeared around the block into the glare of the bright sunshine.
It was odd, Katherine was sure she had seen him before, but she couldn't remember from where…
{Number Twenty-Four Claremont Square,
Islington, London,
31st of August,
1975.}
It was clear blue afternoon, and a late summer breeze was cooling Katherine through the window in the front room of Number twenty-four. All her chores were done, and all her things were prepared to go back to St Mary’s the following morning. She had been taken to get her hair cut earlier in the week and her nails were trimmed – all was done. Every year she did hope for a tan, but she never got out of the house enough to procure one...
Aunt Victoria, however, was pacing. Wearing a hole in the carpet really. All the while, she was muttering to herself – and eyeing the telephone.
“Is… everything alright, Aunt Victoria?” Katherine managed up the courage to ask.
“I wanted to get dinner ready for when Henry gets home, but I need to go to the butcher – and Octavia is due to call any moment…”
Octavia. Katherine’s cousin – on her Aunt’s side – who she was not particularly fond of. Let alone eager to hold a conversation with on the telephone should she call while her aunt was out of the house.
Katherine perked up, “I could go to the butcher for you.”
Aunt Victoria paused her pacing, eyeing Katherine out of the corner of her eye. Hesitation was thick in the air. It was a rule of Uncle Henry’s – Katherine was never, under any circumstances, allowed out in London alone.
RING RING – RING RING! The telephone rang out, as if deciding the matter –
“You know the order?”
“Yes, Aunt Victoria.”
“Here’s your money, and Katherine –”
Katherine paused at the door, folding the envelope of money in her palm tightly –
Aunt Victoria face was twisted with apprehension, “Don’t tell your uncle Henry.”
Katherine carefully shut the door as the loud tinkling greeting of “oh, hello, Octavia!” bloomed down the front hallway.
Sun on her skin, and the sound of car horns in the distance, jostled her immediately into the bustle. She kept a quick pace – if anyone wanted to do her any harm, they’d have trouble catching her in the crowd if anything. She reached the butcher in nigh fifteen minutes, and breathlessly spluttered out her aunt’s order, and handed over the money. With a happily accomplished ‘Thank you! Bye-bye!’ Katherine was on her way again.
It was upon returning, through the bustling streets of London – so busy, in fact, that she took a particularly hard knock as someone rushed past. Katherine turned around and caught the back of the man she had ran into.
His lithe, gold-topped figure simply loped away.
If that’s the worst… Katherine turned back into her bounding pace, side stepping, protecting the tightly wrapped parcel she clutched to her chest. Before she knew it, she was crossing onto Claremont Square once again, and jogging up the front steps.
The meat was even still cold.
The activity of the floo at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place had woken Sirius Black from the last sleep before Hogwarts.
The fact that the wards of the ancestral home of Black were blood-based, meant that every member inside the walls felt a faint rush in the veins of their forearms each time the threshold was breached. It was usually easily ignored, unless people flooded through en masse.
It was as he rubbed sleep from his eyes that he noticed it was freezing cold on that late summer night.
He pulled his pyjama set on over his underwear and made his way to the window. He rubbed a circle clear of an unseasonal frost and immediately jumped back with a shout.
A horde of black robed creatures swarmed down the street, skeletal claws outstretched. Dementors. One, however, had strayed from the pack and attached its fleshy mouth to the outside of his window.
Ears hot, and his neck throbbing uncomfortably with his racing pulse, Sirius could only watch as it pulled itself away. The window squelched like it had been suction cupped. The creature then vanished over the top of Grimmauld place.
To Claremont Square, thought Sirius, as he leant on his windowpane.
By the time Katherine finished dinner with her Aunt and Uncle, it was dark outside.
Just before she set foot on the stairs to go up to her room, Victoria's voice rang through from the sitting room where the television was gently playing.
"Katherine, double check the post please!"
There were no letters to be seen inside the mail slot on the floorboards, but Katherine opened the door in case a package was left on the doorstep.
An early evening breeze rushed against Katherine's face and chilled her, suddenly, to the bone.
The street looked as it had done for the past eleven years that Katherine had lived there, but it was strangely quiet, considering its placement in the bustling section of the city.
Muffled voices, and a brief flash of black, preyed on Katherine's paranoia. There were always gangs around the city, and other shady characters to boot.
The night was not a time to be outside in the street unless one was up to no good.
Katherine failed to see the sources of the muffled voices. Trying to calm herself, she only let herself think that one of her neighbours had someone visiting –
"Katherine,"
Uncle Henry’s presence filled the doorway behind her.
"There's a pot of green powder on my desk, throw a handful of it into the fireplace and repeat what I am about to say very clearly,"
Uncle Henry's knuckles were white around the front door.
"Claremont is compromised, send the Order."
The Cheshire countryside was green and quiet on the last night of August, all apart from the gentle pitter-patter of rain.
A Manor, set apart from the others and nearly a half-day's journey by car to the nearest village, was warmed by a sitting room fireplace. A grandfather clock ticked softly, nowhere near the hour. There was a gentle scrape of paper as a page was turned. A plume of steam danced from a Chinese-patterned tea set, thick with expense.
The room didn't lose any of its warmth when the orange flames turned a brilliant green. Dust, however, rose from the floorboards at the volume of the voice that erupted from the fireplace –
"Claremont is compromised, send the Order!"
The sole occupant winced, a porcelain teacup spilling onto a silk bathrobe.
"Bugger!"
The man ceased his cleaning of his hot, sticky pyjamas at the face flickering in his fireplace.
A stick of Hornbeam wood was snatched from the coffee table, and the man flew out of the room.
She needed him.
As Katherine ran between Uncle Henry's office and the front door, a commotion erupted outside.
Her stomach swam away from her. Katherine almost fell down the stairs with her speed. She flung open the front door to find four cloaked figures advancing towards her front gate. The light from the streetlamps glinted off their silver masks.
Panic rose in Katherine's throat. Her feet became clumsy. Her hands, however, found the door frame; clinging to it.
Aunt Victoria stopped behind Katherine at the door, her lips trembling, "What's going on!?"
"Avada Kedavara!"
Uncle Henry stepped back, splaying his arms to cover Aunt Victoria. A green jet of light shot out of nowhere and Uncle Henry took a fall as it struck him.
The green ebbed around Katherine's vision but the words still rang in her ears.
"No!" Victoria wailed thickly.
Katherine was pushed into the doorframe as her Aunt scrambled around her.
"MOSMORDE!" The cloaked men had not stopped like her world had. One had a stick of wood pointed up at the sky. Another pulled up his sleeve.
A new green glow exploded over the street. Katherine looked past the street lamps to find a skull with a snake slithering out of its mouth.
It was unlike fireworks; a permanent, ugly fixture against the night sky.
Katherine shivered.
A flash of blond hair out of the corner of her eye, however, could not go unnoticed. More heads of hair followed; brown, black…
Not just green, but red, purple, and pink lights lit up the street. A skirmish had broken out. People not wearing masks or hoods had arrived in a flurry of soft POP's. Like… like magic…
"They've called him!"
A cloaked figure ran for Katherine, gloved-hand outstretched.
Katherine had the sense to stumble back– away. Her shoe caught on the uneven pavers and gravity pulled her to the ground. A pulsing, hot pain in her tailbone made her gasp.
The man was still advancing.
She used her hands to propel herself backwards, hoping… just hoping –
"Petrificus Totalus!"
He halted suddenly, an ice-blue glow encapsulating him. With wild eyes and stiff lips, he fell onto her.
Katherine shrieked at the weight atop her; trapped.
Vehemently, she pushed at the man. She even tried to roll out from underneath. But it was all at a loss.
Just when she was ready to accept being stuck there for the rest of the night, she was suddenly freed from the weight of the man. Katherine scrambled up in time to catch sight of a lithe, blond man leaping away with a stick in his hand.
She watched him while she crawled behind a rubbish bin for cover, as he came face to face with one of the silver-masked cloak wearers.
Katherine had to duck a purple jet of light; and it hit the rubbish bin, reducing it to dust. Katherine's stomach vanished, along with her cover. On her hands and knees, head low, Katherine scrambled behind her neighbour’s Volkswagen parked on the street.
Her eyes found the blond man and the cloaked man once again.
They both had their sticks of wood raised. But then they just looked at one another. It was a long moment, considering that they were in the middle of a clash.
The rest of their respective comrades however, hadn't found reason to stop.
"How'd they find her!?"
"They saw him with her at Grimmauld Place!"
The blond man's face was imperceptible, but he stumbled back and into action at the yelled words of his comrades.
The cloaked man turned also. His eyes found Katherine with unnerving speed. The lack of his identity, skewed by his silver mask, made Katherine sick with fright.
She ducked back behind the car, closed her eyes, and tried to breathe. But all that came out of her chest was a strained sound of resignation. She wanted to be anywhere but there.
"Bloody hell!" a voice exclaimed, "When I get my hands on him when we're through here –"
An audible, sudden chill silenced the man and stalled the skirmish. It wrenched Katherine's eyes open with the peculiarity of it.
Both sides of the fight had stopped. Looking around, she found that all eyes were on her. She realised far too late that they were not staring at her, but at something behind her.
She turned and found a sucking hole of flesh. And then it was on her.
"Expecto Patronum!"
Katherine opened her eyes in enough time to watch a cloaked creature be hurtled back by a ball of bright, white light. When it disappeared from sight, she turned her attention to her saviour.
The man was illuminated by the red and green burst of lights from the resumed skirmish. Katherine could make out his dark curly hair and jutting cheekbones, but the rest was in shadow.
The church clock around the corner started chiming loudly. Katherine thought that such an ordinary sound had no business in such an extraordinary situation.
"He's coming!" a raven-haired man cried to his plain-clothed comrades.
Katherine's saviour scanned the fray around them with dark, protruding eyes.
"You will incur the wrath of the Dark Lord for intervening here tonight!"
"Oh, piss off, Nott!"
Eight chimes…
"Who…" Katherine's mouth was dry, "Who are you?"
Nine chimes…
"Who's coming?" Katherine tried again.
The long sleeve of his black robe tickled her wrist as he pulled her tight against him without a word.
Ten chimes…
The sensation of being squeezed through a tube overcame her abruptly. All air left her lungs – and her shoe fell from her right foot.
Eleven chimes…
As quickly as the man had pulled her to him, she was on all fours; emptying her tea and biscuits into a bush conveniently at her feet. Eyes wet and face warm, Katherine wiped at her lips and looked around.
They were no longer on Claremont Square.
Twelve chimes…
They had not missed a chime; and yet they were standing one block over in the nature reserve outside Grimmauld Place.
Katherine was vaguely aware of the man shucking off a robe and stowing it behind a bush.
"What…" Katherine's breath was still hard to come, but she pointed back in the direction they came from, "What was – that?"
"We apparated," He did not meet her eye as he answered. Instead, he vigilantly scanned their surroundings, "Instantaneous teleportation."
Katherine shook her head at the nonsense, "Who are you?"
He checked his watch.
"Felix Giles; Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," he still didn't meet her eye, "You can call me Giles."
Katherine blinked once.
"Witchcraft and wizardry…" Katherine repeated, her tongue working around the foreign words, "Like, magic?"
"Like magic," said Giles, with a tight smile that dropped quickly.
He poked his head out of the gate, unlatching it with his fingers as he watched the street.
"We need to call the police!" shrieked Katherine.
"We need to get walking."
From the confines on the sealed window, Sirius all but pressed his face against it to see more of the street below.
He was about to abandon his watch to stoke the fireplace at the foot of his bed when he saw it.
Two people POPPED into the visible realm – right out the front of Number Twelve, in the nature strip.
At the blonde hair of the girl in the pair, Sirius' mind was cast back to his earlier passing of the girl on Claremont.
For as long as he could remember, he had come up with all sorts of fantastical excuses to go outside and sneak around the block to watch the muggle children. They all came and went over the years. Except for one.
He had once witnessed her kick her football an impossible distance – beyond retrieval – and wondered if, perhaps, she was like him – if she was a witch. A tall, severe woman had pulled her back into their house by the ear, reprimanding her.
He had felt a spark of kinship. He too was always getting in trouble for doing what he was not supposed to.
His first year of Hogwarts came, however, and she was not on the train.
It was as the pair moved out onto the street that Sirius realised that it was her.
She limped; a shoe missing, her dress torn, and her hair a mess as she glanced over her shoulder.
She had just apparated, Sirius realised with a start. His heart endured another peculiar sensation as her eyes drifted curiously over his home. He had watched many others do the same, the miss-numbering usually drawing a second look.
She couldn't see it, he knew. But somehow, it seemed, her eyes met his.
Giles strode quickly.
Katherine followed.
After all, she had nowhere else to go.
Her tentative trust of the man did not stop her from being suspicious about the lunacy he was sprouting about magic.
"Did you not hear me?" said Katherine, "We need to call the police! My Aunt and Uncle are… are…"
The night air made the word 'dead' harder to say.
Giles sighed and shook his head. He opened his mouth to speak, but sirens blared instead of his words.
Numerous police and ambulances sped past and turned right onto Claremont Square. A block over from the edge of Grimmauld Place, where she and Giles were halted.
"The muggle authorities will take care of your Aunt and Uncle," Giles said blankly, but then something flickered in his eyes.
He turned his head either way to watch the traffic before stepping off the gutter to cross the street.
Katherine hurriedly limped after him, torn between taking off her left shoe and wanting to keep at least one foot clean.
"I've had a very long night, if you're having me on… I'll… I'll…" she lost her words as they stepped into the full light of a streetlamp.
"Merlin," Giles breathed, big eyes unblinking, "Did Henry not teach you anything?"
This man knew uncle Henry? All Katherine could manage was a dimwitted shake of her head. Anything. Uncle Henry had taught her many a thing... to tie her shoes... how to cheat at bridge... to cross a busy street...
Giles blinked, once, twice… and then watched his path again, shaking his head and muttering "Jealous squib…"
"Squib?"
Giles made a dismissive gesture with his hand, still looking ahead, "A non-magic person from a magic family."
He had spoken more quietly than before, most likely because of the busy main street they had just stepped onto from Grimmauld Place.
Something thick jumped forth in Katherine's throat, "I've got other family?"
Giles seemed to slow his step ever so slightly. With a quick side sweep of his eyes, Giles cleared his throat.
"They're no longer around, I'm afraid." he said, maintaining his gaze ahead.
Katherine's frantic scurrying at his side slowed.
Oh.
Scantily-clad girls stumbled arm-in-arm… Groups of young men in bell bottom trousers swayed with bottles in hand, laughing at something escaping Katherine… Neon lights consumed Katherine into something other worldly...
Katherine thought back on Giles' explanation.
If Uncle Henry knew about magic… that meant… it meant that her father was magic – and perhaps her mother too. But… Katherine was completely ordinary. She had never done anything of sort she had seen that night, not even in her dizziest daydreams.
Katherine tucked her hair behind both of her ears and began wringing her hands. Her dirty, scuffed kitten heel still gave her a limp– the other absent. She could not feel her feet carrying her.
"Are you sure I'm not one?" Katherine inclined her head, as to not let any passer-by's read her lips, "A squib."
"Very sure." said Giles, looking ahead.
His words, the familiarity he seemed to have with her, was not lost on Katherine.
"How is it that you know who I am?" Katherine finally asked, stepping around a fire hydrant.
Giles faced forward, "A story for another time."
Katherine halted everything; her thoughts, her feet…
She crossed her arms, "No."
Giles stopped and turned back, squinting.
A red light turned green behind him, casting a strong glow.
"No?" Giles repeated, glancing around them.
People passing them were giving the pair strange looks.
Their curiosity was well-founded; Katherine had grazes and dirt all over, and Giles was wearing a full pin-stripe suit.
"You show up out of nowhere – and just kidnap me," Katherine whispered furiously, endeavouring to not be overheard, "I want to know how you know who I am."
Katherine knew that she was acting like a petulant child. But she could not stop. And, with a heaving chest, she stared defiantly up at Giles.
He had stilled and stared back down at her. He didn't blink.
"Your parents didn't drown on a fishing trip," said Giles suddenly.
He sighed, looked either side of himself, and fixed Katherine with a tired look.
"They were murdered by the darkest wizard the world's seen," He paused, and then nodded down at her, "And now he's after you."
Murdered. It was one thing to know that her parents had died, but… murdered?
"Why?"
Giles nodded his head forward in indication to keep walking, "That bit I don't know."
Katherine begrudgingly fell back into step with the man and thought quietly as she looked down at her crossed arms.
"Was it in the newspaper or something?" Katherine tried to catch his eye, "Is that how you know who I am?"
After a beat of moment, a far too long one, he nodded curtly.
Katherine turned away, recognising his reluctance on the subject, and mulled over everything that she had learnt. Her eyes took in London; the way it always had been. The way that it had always been hiding another world just out of her peripheral vision.
But what was expected of her now?
"I've got nowhere to go, where could we possibly be going?" Katherine asked, her curiosity rejuvenated, "They're expecting me at St Mary's tomorrow –"
"It's September first," Giles said with an incredulous glance at Katherine, "The train to Hogwarts leaves at eleven o'clock."
Katherine turned her mind back to him saying he was a Professor at this 'Hogwarts' place, meaning that it was some kind of school…
"You… you don't mean to say that I'm going to this Hogwarts place?" Katherine all but spluttered.
Giles was not perturbed, his sights set on something up ahead.
"Castle," Giles corrected her casually, "And, yes, I do."
"But I don't have any books or –"
"We are going to Diagon Alley first to get your school supplies." Giles stopped by a sign to the underground and glanced around.
Katherine stopped in front of him, her heel on the gutter, and resisted a laugh.
"Diagon Alley?" Katherine repeated, her tongue struggling around the foreign name, "We take the underground to this magical place?"
Giles almost looked amused.
"At –" Katherine checked her wristwatch –"one in the morning?"
Giles produced a stick of cherry wood; gleaming smooth apart from six rings at the base.
"Not the underground," said Giles, looking around with visible effort to appear inconspicuous, "This is just a clear spot to call the Knight Bus."
There was a thickness to the moment. A feeling of a joint between what Katherine had known up until that point and what was awaiting her. It was in the face of a new world that Katherine found herself clinging to her old one. She remembered her Aunt and Uncle, and felt instantly guilty.
"What about… what about their funerals… I…I can't just leave them there…" Katherine stammered, feeling her eyes burn.
Giles looked upon her with immediate understanding.
"And all of my things –"
Giles held out his right arm, the stick of wood in his hand, "Will be taken care of,"
There was a loud BANG and then a midnight blue bus slowed against the curb.
Alarmed at the ear-splitting arrival, Katherine glanced around but found not an eye on them or the bus.
A man that strongly resembled a pipe cleaner with eyes moseyed up to the door from the inside and leant on the pole. He eyed a card in his hand with a bored expression.
"Welcome aboard the Knight Bus; emergency transportation for the stranded witch or wizard," he droned, sighing and blinking, "My name is Dave Jenkins and I will be your conductor this evening."
Dave Jenkins looked up, raised his eyebrows, and waved an arm in indication that Katherine and Giles step aboard. He peered behind them all the while.
Giles stepped up, paused, and waved Katherine forward.
"No luggage this evening." said Giles as he turned back to Dave Jenkins.
Dave nodded and retreated into the bus.
"Well, come on, then," said Dave, hitting the back of the driver's box, "It's a busy night – Tuesday, you know?"
Dave pulled lightly on a crank that slammed the doors shut behind Katherine and then the lights of the city began to blur past sickeningly fast.
Katherine followed Giles' lead and sat in an armchair against the windows.
Dave was unfazed by the ludicrous speed and jarring turns that made Katherine's knees regularly hit Giles', and casually leant against the back of the Driver's box.
"Where are we going this evening, Sir?" Dave asked, righting his navy fiddler cap that neatly matched the rest of his uniform.
A particularly sharp turn in the middle of a busy intersection sent Katherine from her seat. Before she could go headfirst into one of the occupied rolling beds, Giles' arm flashed out.
Katherine's collar bone met the back of his elbow unpleasantly.
"The Leaky Cauldron." said Giles, retracting his arm without so much as a glance to Katherine.
Katherine sat beside him, rubbing her chest for a moment, before looking around.
It was real. Magic was real.
It made sense that magic folk had their own means of transportation, but Katherine was curious as to how it went undetected. She assumed they used spells of some kind, with their wands. Well, that's what Katherine assumed the sticks of wood she had seen firing jets of light all night were called.
She had seen magicians pull rabbits out of hats... cut people in half… use vanishing cabinets with what must have been imitations. Because surely that sort of magic was tomfoolery to people like Giles and Dave…
In the beds rolling around the open floor of the bus, were snoring men and women of varying ages and degrees of shabbiness. Katherine saw wands in hands and poking out from beneath pillows. One particularly shrivelled old woman, sleeping with boots and her hat on, snored so violently that gold sparks shot out from the end of her wand.
It was then, in her first moment of calm for the night, that Katherine discreetly used her collar to dab at her eyes; feeling very silly for doing so. She had not even realised that she had been crying.
Katherine looked down at her hands that she wrung in her lap, waiting for the weird air to pass from between them.
"How do you know my Uncle?" Katherine finally asked.
Giles took a long breath and watched a bed almost collapse in front of them, "I lived next door to him for a time."
"You lived on Claremont?" Katherine asked, stunned that she hadn't ever noticed him.
Giles shook his head, his lips pursed.
"I lived next door to your grandparents."
Katherine's mind positively hummed with questions at his casually thrown words.
"Did you know my father?" Katherine asked, bobbing in her seat.
Giles gave a curt nod, his eyes firmly on the window, "I'm sure you've heard all about him from your Uncle."
"No, actually," she said quietly, shrugging and tucking her hair behind both of her ears, "I haven't."
Giles' eyes slid back to her –
"Leaky Cauldron, Stoney Street!"
Katherine did not believe that they could have arrived at their destination so quickly. The bus was still hurtling along at sickening speed. A long, loud SCREECH made Katherine grip the arms of her chair. She knew better than to assume the bus would stop like a normal bus.
It did not.
If Giles had not clawed his hands into the arms of his chair, he would have knocked his head into the back of the driver's box.
The rolling beds bunched together at the front of the bus before they slowly rolled back from the sudden lurch.
Giles gripped Katherine's elbow and led her from the bus, giving a rushed 'thank you' and 'goodbye' to Dave Jenkins. They succumbed to the crisp night air once again.
The pavement was wet and rough beneath Katherine's bare feet, and the breeze went straight through her blouse.
The bus disappeared as quickly as it had arrived for them. Another deafening BANG echoed around the street long after it had left Katherine's sight.
Giles' hand around her elbow pulled Katherine out of her reverie and through a black door.
Loud chatter and the clinking of tankards contrasted the quiet street they had stepped in from. A short bar had labels on the taps such as 'Butterbeer', 'Elven wine' and 'Ogden's firewhiskey' – brands Katherine had never seen. The next thing that drew Katherine's eye was the over-sized fireplace that people were stepping in and out of, barely grazing their heads. Before they could be burned by the orange flames, they threw in powder that turned them green –
"Leave enough floo powder for the rest of us, Fawley." a stocky man grumbled at a lamp-post-thin man with a dripping fistful of green powder.
Giles guided Katherine to a stop at bar and leant over it to call over the bartender. But Katherine's eyes were stuck on the fireplace.
It was like her Uncle's.
He really had known about magic… always linked to it without her or Aunt Victoria being any wiser…
The swaying men, dressed in floor length robes that looked very alike to dresses, disappeared into the green flames. No one seemed as alarmed as Katherine at the development. It must have been normal to travel by fire in the magic world, Katherine thought to herself.
Giles acquired a key from the barman, and then he guided her again. They had to navigate around cluster of small round tables and one long galley before they reached the staircase. They went up without pause, the sound of chatter and clanking cutlery settling beneath them the higher they went.
In the upstairs hallway, a new noise presented itself. A train shook the windows, screaming along below their feet. Dust lifted from between the floorboards.
Katherine resisted a sneeze.
The doors were a dark green with peeling gold numbers. Number seven was nearing the end of the hallway on the left.
The small bronze key revealed a shoebox room with one bed and a threadbare rug.
Giles shuffled in past Katherine and went straight to the small fireplace, squatting by it. His back hid most of what he was doing, but when a sudden warmth spread through the room, Katherine didn't need to see the flames flickering out of his wand tip.
Katherine, unsure of what to do, padded over to the rain-dotted window. They must have just missed one of the intermittent downpours that had plagued the night. A farewell to summer.
"Go ahead and sleep,"
Giles' voice turned Katherine around, her hands gripping her upper arms.
Giles scrubbed at his face, already turning back to the door, "I've got to contact the Order to update them on your whereabouts…"