The fires had died down now, leaving black ash all over the place. Charlie picked through the Death Eater’s bodies carefully, scanning every inch of the ground. He looked under every piece of wood and picked through every pile of ash looking for any clue. Finally, half-hidden near the mangled, burnt body of Fenrir Greback Charlie spotted his mother’s enchanted clock.
It was ash covered and a little beat-up, but it was still functioning. Percy’s hand alternated between Work and Mortal Peril and everyone else’s pointed, as usual, at Mortal peril. All except Ginny’s which was running dizzyingly back and forth between Home and Work. Work? Charlie summoned his broomstick and rode on it for a couple of minutes, staring down at the clock. His own hand went to Travelling until he landed on the ground again, at which point it went back to Mortal Peril.
He sent several repairing spells at the clock and watched the dents and ash disappear, but Ginny’s hand was still switching back and forth between Home and Work. Finally, Charlie allowed himself a small smile. Ginny was not dead and wherever she was she was doing something useful like she had always wanted. Charlie may not know where she was or with whom, but he knew she was the only one of the Weasley family that was not currently in Mortal Peril.
…
Hannah was busy stitching a dizzying orange and red design into the hem of the cloak. Malaika was throwing out dirty pots and pans and making biting comments about how disgusting this place was. She had managed to turn the filthy, mold-infested kitchen into a place that shone with cleanliness and was currently working on the old oven.
“What’s the point of cleaning that?” Millie was asking, “Nothing electric works anymore!”
“The point,” Malaika said, “Is that I refuse to live in a house with filth and mold and grease in it. Besides, they’ll get the electricity back up eventually.”
Hannah knew that the Muggles were suffering from the lack of electricity. The candles and gas lamps and torches that seemed so normal to her were backward and uncomfortable to her new Muggle friends who constantly commented on and complained about the lack of electricity. She wondered how the Death Eaters had managed to make the electricity stop working. She had asked Malaika earlier, but the response about generators and wires made no sense to the young witch.
She supposed they would get accustomed to it eventually, just like they had grown accustomed to the constant darkness and just like she was slowly growing accustomed to life without magic.
An urgent knocking sounded from the door.
Hannah began to get up and Malaika pulled her arms out of the oven, but Millie cried, “I’ll get it!”
The little girl had already opened the door by the time Malaika’s frightened, “You will not!” came.
An old man stood in the doorway, holding a gas lamp very similar to Mahmoud’s. Hannah strode across the room and placed a hand on Millie’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” the old man said. “I know you just got here a few hours ago and you must be tired, but we need some sane female influence. Emmett and Jeremiah are at each other’s throats… again.”
Hannah had never met Emmett, but Jeremiah, though big and strong, had not struck her as a person prone to fighting. “What are they arguing about?” she asked. Their voices were rising and falling from down the hall, but she could not make out their words.
“The usual,” the old man said, “Jeremiah and Mat just came back in looking tired and bruised and Emmett started his usual line about needing to fight. He’s trying to convince Jeremiah to help them get guns so they can fight the gang members… Jeremiah insists he refuses to kill.”
Malaika picked her little sister up and strode down the hall, looking angry. Hannah followed, in step with the old man, her brow furrowed. This Emmett must be a particularly stupid Muggle if he still thought they could fight the Death Eaters.
The boys’ apartment was very messy. Emmett was thin and red-haired. He wore glasses that reminded Hannah of Ginny’s prefect brother. He stood behind a pile of books and papers and shouted, red faced at Jeremiah. “If you want to stay dead and run out on your duty to fight for your country then fine!” he said. “What’s happening here right now is more important than distant battles half way across the world anyway. But don’t try to convince me that you’re anything but a coward when you refuse to put your strength and training to use fighting these bloody monsters. They’re brutal, they don’t care if they kill babies - they enjoy it!”
“So you want us to become like them?” Mahmoud said calmly from an armchair.
Emmett rounded angrily on the other boy. “I don’t need you to teach me about morals, terrorist!” he spat. “Jeremiah might be convinced that you’re alright, but how the hell do I know you didn’t actually kill off your entire family and then start feeling guilt-”
“Shut up!” Jeremiah said furiously, grabbing Emmett’s shirt and turning him around to face him. Hannah did not miss the pained look in Mahmoud’s face at Emmett’s words.
“You’re an ignorant prat, Emmett,” Jeremiah continued. “No one in their right minds believed that story about a seventeen year old kid somehow killing off his own family and every bloody person on the street. The reporters wanted someone to blame and there he was, dark skinned and with a strange name - and a teenager to boot, who better to pin the blame on? You’re a racist, insensitive prick. And if you cared about all the people who were dying out there you’d volunteer at the hospital or come out with us and help little kids escape from the real murderers.”
“We don’t need to run, we need to fight back!” Emmett interjected. “And what use is a poor, innocent seventeen-year old boy in the middle of a battle, what use am I in a battle without a weapon to defend myself with?”
Jeremiah stepped closer to the bespectacled young man and looked down at him menacingly. “What use? We saved tens of people today. Mat nearly got himself killed pulling a little girl out of the rubble. Half her ribs were broken and the left side of her face was mangled.”
Mahmoud was turning green at the memory. Hannah stepped closer, trying not to let the image of the broken little girl form in her mind.
“He dragged her in his arms and carried her five bloody blocks to the hospital. She’s alive but she’s never going to be the same. Her brain got messed up from lack of oxygen. And you know what the doctor said? She said all the girl needed was someone who knew CPR and a functioning defibrillator and she would have been alright. And here you are sitting and whining about not having a weapon-”
Jeremiah’s story was interrupted by loud retching. Mahmoud throwing up all over the floor, his face twisted in pain. He emptied the contents of his stomach and continued heaving out stomach acid and air. Hannah and Malaika went to him right away, pulling him away from the disgusting mess.
“His apartment is just across the hall!” the old man said, leading the way.
Jeremiah and Emmett were still shouting as the girls dragged the shaking Mahmoud across the hall. Their voices distracted Hannah as she tried to help the old man search Mahmoud’s pockets for a key.
“YOU use your bloody skills, Emmett and stop telling me to become a killer!” Jeremiah shouted. “Any bloody idiot can kill someone with a knife or a big enough rock to the head, but no one else that I know has managed to get all their electrical appliances working! People are walking around with bloody candles-”
The old man slammed the door forcefully. Millie began bouncing around Mahmoud’s apartment excitedly, staring in awe at the brightly colored walls. Even Hannah could not help stopping to look around. She stared at the beautiful paintings on the wall as Malaika and the old man helped Mahmoud clean up and led him to the small couch. Every single surface was covered with artwork. There were a few canvases, but he had eventually run out and began to use the walls as his canvases.
Some of it was dark and depressing, reflecting the mood of the world outside, reflecting the feelings that he must be experiencing after the deaths of his family members. Other parts of the walls were bright explosions of color and light.
“Look, Hannah!” Millie said, pointing at a painting of a girl lying unconscious in a dark alleyway. The blonde curls, the torn Hogwarts robes, all of the details in this painting were familiar. It was a painting of Hannah as Mahmoud had found her, but, unlike herself, Hannah noticed that the girl in the drawing had a bright, almost glowing face that seemed to light up the world around her. She ran a finger over the concrete ground and the strewn rubble and the discarded car tire in the painting. In the corner of the painting there was a small, scribbled signature: MaT.
…
“Queen to G8!” Ginny ordered. She watched Blaise’s face carefully as he considered his next move. Just a few days ago she had hated every bit of that handsome face; she had considered him an enemy. Today… Ginny hadn’t felt this comfortable, this much like herself, in years. Theo was, as usual, reading a book by the fireplace and she suspected that he had something to do with the increased sense of comfort and ease she was feeling.
Lee Jordan’s voice was reciting a long list of people who had recently been killed by the Death Eaters. Pottermore was their only source of news about the Wizarding world here.
“Phineas Pineworthy, Frederick,” Ginny’s heart leapt, “Finch. And just two days ago… Ginevra Weasley. As our listeners may know, before she went into hiding Ginny Weasley was one of the few students who resisted Snape’s hold on Hogwarts. Despite her age and her small size she was well known for her powerful spells… you didn’t want to be on the receiving end of Ginny Weasley’s bat bogey hex. She was loved, and given every protection by her family, but when the Biggest Death Eater wants you dead your chances of survival are very slim. Ginny did not go down without a fight. She singlehandedly defeated and killed several Death Eaters, including the dangerous and insane werewolf Fenrir Greyback…”
Ginny focused her attention back on the matter at hand. She could not lose to Blaise again, that would be embarrassing.
“Any news on that weather charm?” Blaise asked Theo.
“No, but I’d better go check up on the protective enchantments,” Theo said, putting the book down. Ginny wanted to go with him, but Blaise held her behind with a firm grasp of her wrist.
“Sorry,” he said, releasing her hand when Theo was out of earshot. “Listen, Ginny, I have to ask you…”
Whatever he had been meaning to ask had obviously been preying on his mind for the past two days since the attack on the safe house. It was not characteristic of Blaise not to be able to find the right words. Finally, he overcame whatever hesitation he felt and spoke.
“Why did you burn down the house? I mean, I know you want to fight Death Eaters, to do your part in the war, that you always have, but… you don’t want your parents to know you’re still alive, do you? What Theo and I did with the corpses, that was to fool the Dark Lord, but-”
“But I don’t see you running off to tell your mummy you’re still alive!” Ginny said a little defensively. She immediately regretted falling back on her usual defensive attitude with the Slytherin. Things had changed now; these two Slytherin boys were better friends to her than anyone she had ever known.
“I don’t want to be locked up. I’m sick of it.” She let a little bit of the regret she felt steal into her voice as she explained. “Maybe you were trying to get free of – him – but I needed to be free of all the bloody protectiveness, of the fear all around me. What you’ve decided to do here…”
Blaise nodded understandingly, and he seemed to be about to say something, but then he noticed something on the Chess board and grinningly cornered her King.
“Yeah, well,” Ginny said packing up her chess pieces, “I’m still way better at curses. Care for a quick demonstration of my superior skill?”
“Oh,” Blaise said, “Well if you’re so much better then I think you should have a turn being alone today.” They trained for hours every day; each one of them taking a turn at being alone against the other two. It was very difficult to duel two opponents, but in a real battle they were likely to be much more seriously outnumbered.
Ginny took her time strolling through the hallways and running her hands over the smooth wooden walls and the cool, darkened windows. If they found the right spell these windows would be letting in streaming sunshine, making the place bright and sunny as a healing house should be, regardless of the actual weather.
Blaise and Theo had spent what was, to Ginny, an unimaginable fortune buying this old, but roomy Muggle mansion. They had spent hours planning to fake their own deaths and Ginny’s so that they could escape Tom and make a place for themselves far from both the ranks of the Death Eaters and the ‘theatrical antics’ of Harry Potter. Ginny had been surprised by how easily she had been able to accept their distaste for Harry and the Order and their adamant insistence that their Healing House, a place they hoped to turn into a Healing Academy one day, should remain detached from any loyalty to a person or group.
“Our Healing House,” she whispered to herself.
“That’s right,” Blaise said softly.
