Late at night, Friday
8 January 2010

Hooch was not a great reader of the Daily Prophet.  She perused the odd copy left in the Hogwarts staff room, or took up a folded issue handed down to her at dinner.  She rarely sought it out other than to check up on the scores in the Quidditch league.  (She was a staunch Harpies supporter.)  And so it was that those closest to her knew her.  And so it was that she came about this article via a clipping sent to her by owl with no return address.

War Hero Found Dead in Hogsmeade
by Niobe Thursby
8 Jan 2010

HOGSMEADE - The life of one of Wizarding Britain's heroes was cut tragically short this week.  Hector Harrison (95) perished in The Three Broomsticks on the afternoon of 6 January. 

For many, Harrison's name might be lost to history.  For the last decade or so, Harrison lived a life of obscurity mainly consisting of frequent visits to his local pub.  But for those more versed in the dark times of Gellert Grindelwald's reign of terror, Harrison's is a name synonymous with a war hero, a warlock of the highest esteem.  As a young wizard, Harrison infiltrated Grindelwald's followers and became instrumental in the events that ultimately lead to his defeat. 

[continued on Page 18 - HARRISON]

She'd read it twice, and half way through the second reading, she was swarming up from her chair in her Edinburgh house and fumbling into her riding clothes.  She was on her way within minutes, almost forgetting to feed the owl a tip.  Her head was full of fear and panic.  This was no accident, she could be sure of that.  Hector Harrison was the sort whose name didn't land in the paper, or indeed, who allowed himself to be remarked upon in any way unless he wanted it so.  Even in the event of his death. 

"Hooch.  And...Harrison.  You'll be here at this cauldron."

She'd met him in her first year.  In Double Potions.  And that's how she'd always remember him.  Round-faced, dark-haired, funny eyebrows.  Smiling.  Hooch with her brown plait and witch's hat, her pale green eyes.  They'd been cauldron partners.  She looked back on that day whenever she thought of what had become of him.  The paths he'd chosen for himself.

She flew like the wind over hill and dale, skimming the tops of trees on her usual muggle-free route from Edinburgh to the home of Hogwarts Castle, the cozy cot of Hogsmeade.  With the wind whipping by her, she was for a moment sent back into a memory.

"Hooch.  Here.  They need it in Marseilles before dawn.  Can you make it?"

She'd made it.  She'd flown all night, dodging city lights, aeroplanes, bullets.  She'd crossed the English channel in the pitch black.  But she'd made it.  And Hector Harrison had made it as well.  To a lavish dinner with Gellert Grindelwald.

The castle's hulking outline against the night sky appeared, but it was not Hooch's destination.  The old witch with the weather-beaten, wrinkled, face, alit deftly onto the cobbles of Hogsmeade's town square and strode into the Three Broomsticks.  The last place where Hector had been seen alive.

By a nineteen-year-old bartender.

There was no 19-year old bartender working at the Broomsticks on that particular Friday night. Bethan Ellis hadn't been down by the ancient pub since Wednesday and, after hanging around the crime scene and pestering anyone who looked capable of answering a question, she had been told that it would be best if she didn't come around until her shift the following Saturday. If the Aurors needed anything more from her, they'd call her in. That had given her two and a half days off – two and a half blessed days, which she hadn't had off in a row since the previous summer, back when weekends still meant leisure. This was a luxury!

 Naturally, she hadn't had a clue what to do with herself. It wasn't like this was a holiday, or like she'd been given these personal days because of her diligence, skill and positive rapport with the patrons. No – she'd been given these days off because she'd seen an old man die, and she felt strange using it for celebration (even if she was secretly feeling quite chuffed, having acted so cool under pressure). Ultimately, she'd slept in, spent some time retelling the story of the whole ordeal to her parents and to Brynn, and she'd gone, at long last, to get her cauldron repaired so that she might begin her NEWT revision again. It was amazing how quickly her day filled up. In the evening, however, she was feeling listless, so Beth went out, apparating to one of her old, predictable places.

When queried about her whereabouts, the burly fellow behind the bar at the Broomsticks had no idea where Bethan Ellis might be found, only that she'd been given the night off. Her replacement was her opposite in every way – tall, dark, and not terribly chatty – and he only worked behind the bar on nights when Beth didn't. He couldn't have picked the witch out in a lineup. Luckily, the Friday night patrons who came to count on the presence of the young, sprightly barmaid had some ideas regarding just where she might be. If Beth had been present, she would have been heartened to see her favorite half-drunken regular patrons coming together, recalling the little things that she rambled at them while on the job. The ears of a smartly dressed older witch and a laid back middle aged wizard seemed to perk up to hear someone asking about Bethan, and were quick to put in their two knuts – shouting from opposite ends of the bar.

“If you're looking for Beth,” the witch started, “She'll be down at the Sword and Chant in Diagon, I bet. She hasn't said so, but I think she sees a fellow when she's down that way.”
“Naw,” the wizard retorted casually, resting one bent elbow on the edge of the bar, “It's a dog. She sees a dog. Or, erm, feeds a dog. Talks about it all the time.”
“That's where she goes, though. Diagon, in that pub. But I'm sure her dog isn't a dog. You've got to give the lass some credit!”

The banter continued from there, but the conversation didn't linger on the topic of the barmaid-turned-hero for very long. The wizard got up and dragged his glass along, sauntering over to sit by the lady so that they might finish their conversation at a decent volume.

Meanwhile, Bethan, too, was settled down at the bar – at the Sword and Chant in Diagon Alley, as predicted. Frankly, guessing her location wasn't such a major feat, as the blonde witch was about as predictable as a person could get. She liked her comfort and she liked her routines. What she didn't like was that her usual pub, which was often a ghost town on Tuesday nights, seemed to be quite the happening place to be on Fridays. The barkeep was too busy to linger nearby and tell her his endless terrible jokes, and her favorite dishwasher, that werewolf Jack Howell, was nowhere to be seen. She meant to ask Ethan about it, but he always grew surly whenever she brought him up and, as daft as she could be at times, she'd caught on. That left her by herself in the midst of a crowd, staring into her glass of ale as though she wished it were a pensieve. Every trace of adrenaline from that day with the dybbuk had fled her body, leaving her feeling more languid than usual. Though part of her wanted to, she hadn't even tried to butt in on someone else's conversation. Feeling disenchanted with this whole visit, which didn't feel nearly enough like the Tuesday night visits she'd come to count on, she took up her beer and knocked back the rest of the glass, leaving her coins on the counter. Without a word, she hoisted herself upward, snarling to herself. This quiet creature was not the Bethan Ellis her regular patrons down at the Broomsticks had missed.  If she'd been home, her mother likely would have checked her for a fever.

Brusquely, Beth threw her cloak over her shoulders and headed for the back door, hoping to spend some more time with her favorite scrappy mutt. She dropped right down on the dirty ground, her back to the stone of the building, and waited for the quirky-eared dog to trot right over and cover her with fur. Only a few more hours and she'd be back to the grind – and, oddly enough, she was looking forward to it. 

The old Hooch would have called off her search for the night if it hadn't been for the effusive regulars who seemed to know the witch - Bethan Ellis - quite well.  And to boot, they seemed dead certain of where she'd be on her night off.  Another pub.  She'd heard of it, the Sword and Chant.  With a determined nod of her head and terse thanks, Hooch left the Three Broomsticks and Apparated to Diagon Alley from Hogsmeade's square.

CRACK

Broom in hand, the white and black cloaked witch turned on the spot to get her bearings.  Soon she was on her way down the cobbles in an orange-y lit, mostly deserted Diagon Alley.  Most of the shops were dark.  Only pubs and the upstairs residences were illuminated.  Soon, Hooch was ducking into the pub and scanning the dense Friday night crowd for a young, blonde witch. 

Seeing nothing immediately, she approached the bar.

"Looking for Bethan Ellis.  Young.  Blonde," she asked of the bartender who'd inclined her head to take Hooch's drink order.  She'd seen her, doing what she did strangely often. 

"She's out back."

Out back?  Hooch looked where the bartender pointed, to the rear of the building a corridor under the stairs must lead to the back alley.

Creeeeaaaak went the back door and Hooch finally found who she was looking for.  She looked small and humble, almost childlike sitting there against the wall like she was waiting for something, or had forgotten where she was going.

"Ellis.  Bethan Ellis." 

She'd taught her to fly nearly a decade ago, and however near it seemed to Hooch, the students felt the distance more intensely.  For Bethan Ellis it might have been an age ago.  But to be honest, only just now seeing her face did Hooch remember the tiny little Gryffindor who always wanted to figure things out for herself.

"I need to talk to you."

As ever, Hooch was no mother hen.  And even though she was being gentle, hoping not to spook the girl, her business was urgent.

When you're sitting by yourself in a dark alleyway and you're expecting a dog, the appearance of... well, anything else on the planet is enough to provide a bit of a shock. Clumsily, Bethan scrambled for her wand and drew it, her eyes narrowing. The whole gesture was starting to feel incredibly familiar.  If she had to save the wizarding world from dark creatures again tonight then she was just going to have to march up to the Ministry and demand to be put on the payroll. She'd already done more work for them this week than that Bailey fellow had! When she looked up and into the eyes of, not a monster, but her old flying teacher, however, the former gryffindor lowered her wand and groaned, muttering a long, colorful oath under her breath. She hadn't actually paused to wonder what Madam Hooch might be doing in the alley behind the Sword and Chant which, she realized, was more than a little bit odd. Maybe she was feverish. Maybe she was dead and this was the afterlife? Merlin's beard, she really wouldn't have been surprised. It had been that kind of week.

She saw professors from school all the time, but usually it was in Hogsmeade, in the shadow of Hogwarts castle, where one might expect to see the school's employees out and about. Honestly, the first time she'd poured a drink for one of her former teachers she'd been completely tickled by the notion that they had lives, and every now and then she still liked to make a fuss over Hogwarts staff members paying a visit to the Broomsticks. This meeting, however, was odd. She wasn't at work now, she was nowhere near Hogwarts, and she wasn't serving drinks.

”I need to talk to you.”

“Is that a fact?” Bethan remarked, as she often did, quirking her brow curiously. This time, however, she was genuinely confused. “Well, alright,” she allowed boldly, pushing off of the wall and hoisting herself to her feet. “I haven't got anything better to do, really, but I reckon you'll want to sit inside, isn't it?” she asked, looking back toward the door to the pub as though mentally willing it to catch on fire. Luckily, she was far more curious than she was glum, and she took a few steps toward the door she'd only recently exited. Did Madam Hooch talk about anything besides brooms? Was that even allowed? It seemed unnatural. Beth had always wondered if there was some truth to the rumor that Hooch slept either in the owlery or the top box of the school's quidditch pitch, and she couldn't help smirking to herself at the thought. She'd really liked it much better in the days before she knew that her teachers were all real people.

Bethan's animated mannerisms were familiar to Hooch, a silver memory glowing a bit brighter in her brain.  She was charming.  Pretty.  Forward in a way that would put some people off.  Not Hooch, though, not at this moment.

"No," she said to stop Bethan from going back inside.  "Would you come with me? It's very important and I can't risk anyone hearing.  It's about that man."

Hooch knew she wouldn't have to say more right now, or at least she hoped so.  From the article in the paper, Hooch couldn't imagine that 'that man' could be anyone else other than Hector Harrison to Bethan Ellis tonight.  She'd found him dead.  She'd fought... a Dementor?  Regardless, Hooch was wary to even say his name until she felt like they wouldn't be observed.

She hoped that Ellis would trust her.  She let her broom go and it hovered at her side, ready.  It was her new broom - custom-made last fall in the hands of a great woodsmith and enchanted herself with the assistance of her old girlfriend and age-old companion Heloise Bailrigg.  It was a fine broom and would take them where they wanted to go.

"We won't go far. Please."

“Come with you where?” Bethan asked, gruffly and without frills, crossing her arms over her chest and giving Hooch a scrunchy-browed look of perplexity. It wasn't that she didn't trust the woman. After all, she was in charge of preventing over excited first years from cracking their skulls open. If that didn't make her trustworthy, she didn't know what did. Even so, Beth couldn't help but to feel skeptical about this, mostly because she didn't quite understand what was actually going on. This whole situation was incredibly queer, and while she was sure she knew what 'man' the aged flying instructor was referring to, she'd yet to make any useful connections between Hooch, this alleyway, the attack at the Three Broomsticks, and herself. This didn't feel like a coincidence, though.

Beth took a step forward, out from the shadows, her arms still crossed and her expression just as unsure. “I'm not asking for the exact coordinates, like, but if you could give me something then I'd feel a whole lot better about what you're asking of me.” It would be nice to know she wasn't been dragged off to some decrepit basement, or the bottom of the thames. The whole subject of the attack at the pub was a little dark and sketchy, so anything associated with it was sketchy by default. Could she be blamed for being a little wary?

Bother.  Hooch found herself glancing at the door, the windows above them, down the tiny alley that ran between the pub and its neighboring buildinds all smooshed together.  It was dark and it all felt very close.  After a moment's hesitation, she leaned in close and cupped her hand around her mouth to whisper into Bethan's ear.

"A rooftop.  Here in Diagon."

She backed away and tried to look understanding of her apprehension.  She'd been through a lot.  Then she said in full voice.

"Just a bit of space.  You can always Apparate away if you want to."  She smiled again, trying still to be calm and gentle.  A witch of 90 years had both infinite patience and none at all.  In this case, she felt as if there was some dark smoking shadow on her very heels, lurking in the shadows.

Hector Harrison was a not a wizard who died and now that he had, Hooch believed in her guts that they all had reason to fear.

“Alright,” Bethan announced simply as she dropped her arms to her sides, not moderating her volume in any way, “Alright.” The slightly skeptical witch gave her head a short shake and then allowed her eyes to come to rest on Hooch's hovering broom. She'd never been bad on a broomstick, at least when it came to goofing off at school – messing around in the air sort of came with the territory when your former best friend was the gryffindor quidditch captain. Ellis's fear of locker rooms meant that she was left to support the quidditch side from the stands, so her actual level of flying expertise was questionable. In fact, Beth hadn't been on a broomstick at all since last June, and she'd never been the sort to ride tandem even when she was flying semi-regularly. This small adventure definitely wasn't the sort of thing that she did everyday and, after just a few seconds of thinking about it, her face lit up with a small but genuine smirk of amusement. This was strange but, hey, strange was interesting! She didn't know what the hell was going on, but she wasn't sure she cared. Hadn't she wanted an interesting evening? “Let's go, then,” she announced, tapping the top of her thighs with her palms, looking slightly more open than she had just moments before, and perhaps even a little bit anxious.

Hooch sighed with relief, but it was short-lived. 

The rode a-broomstick up and out of the alley, Hooch forward on the stock with the slight young witch holding her around the waist.  The night was damp and frigid up on the open air, but they didn't have far to travel.  Hooch soon lit them in a narrow cozy nook underneath a jutting rooftop.  On two sides, brick walls; above them a deep overhang to keep them dry and protected from the wind.

Hooch took a stance against the wall and tucked her hands into her armpits.  Her breath crystalized in the air in front of her.  She didn't know how to begin.

"I knew him.  The man you found.  Please. Tell me what happened.  Did he say anything? Did he speak to anyone?"

She was riding an edge between hope and despair - she wanted Bethan to have some consoling words for her, some sort of clue that all was well, but she knew it wouldn't happen.  Hector Harrison shouldn't have died that night in the Broomsticks. 

There was a whoop and a laugh lurking in Bethan's chest that she'd had to hold inside of her using every bit of self control she had available. She settled, instead, for a wide and toothy dragon charming grin, beaming even as the frigid winter air smacked her in the face. Flying a broom was one thing, but straddling the shaft and giving all of the control to someone else provided a sort of rush that she hadn't experienced before. That sort of thing was usually for the girls with quidditch playing boyfriends, whose shrieks of delight during tandem broom rides had always sounded to Bethan like obnoxious cries of “Look at me!” Clearly she hadn't given those clingy harpies enough credit. It was enough to make that aromantic girl wonder if she might be able to find some bloke to drag her around on a nimbus sometime. If this short trip had been taken under different circumstances, it would have been a blast.

She was still beaming when they touched down on the rooftop, however, unable to wipe that grin completely off of her face. Exhilaration always made it difficult to keep one's facial expressions appropriate. Bethan couldn't help but take a few semi-wobbly steps forward, toward the edge of the roof. She wanted to look down and out, and maybe try and figure out just where she was. It was frigid up there, though, and the icy wind seemed to have no qualms about mussing her hair up until every strand was wind swept and tangled. She was satisfied after a few seconds and came back to join Hooch against the wall, still looking overstimulated with her wide, bright eyes and frozen pink cheeks. She certainly noticed the cold, but wasn't bothered by it yet.

”I knew him.  The man you found.  Please. Tell me what happened.  Did he say anything? Did he speak to anyone?”

The man she'd found? She made it sound like they'd been playing hide and seek or something. She hadn't found him. She'd known where he was the whole time – before, during, and after. Bethan allowed the last traces of anything resembling mirth to slip from her features. This was sort of strange. It had been a lot easier to think of him as 'the bloke who came in every Wednesday and never spoke to me' and, later, 'the old, dead man.' Thinking of him as a real person, outside of that context, was... well, it made her question the way she'd been thinking about this whole ordeal. Yes, she'd seen his photographs, but even then they hadn't seemed so very personal. Beth sucked at sensitivity, and she knew that she sucked at sensitivity. She stood sucking her teeth for a moment before she spoke.

“Well, he didn't say nothing to me that day, I can tell you that,” she began, launching right in once she'd started. “He never did, except when he was ordering, and after a while he even stopped ordering, since I reckon he figured I already knew what he wanted – which, I mean, I did, isn't it? He wasn't the chatty sort. I gave up trying to talk to him about the same time he gave up on ordering. We both figured out there was no point, like.” Maybe that wasn't what she'd meant – she'd probably been looking for some inspirational dying words, but that was the best that Bethan could tell her.

Inspirational dying words were not what Hooch was searching for - something more along the lines of the name of his murderer or something like that.  Something to confirm Hooch's steeltrap suspicious that this was no innocent accidental passing.  She set her jaw and shook her head, trying to make sense of what Ellis was talking about.

"It doesn't make sense," she said.  In that it made perfect sense.  She hadn't spoken to him in twenty-five years, but it seemed totally in-character.  Withdrawn old man at his local, in a routine rut as deep as a grave.  But something wasn't right.

"The Aurors said it was an accident.  Dementor or something," Hooch said, looking hard into Ellis's face.  "What do you say?"

Frankly the article hadn't been at all clear on actually what had happened.  'Smoke' sounded like Dementor, but not exactly.  And whatever it was, was being examined by the Department of Mysteries, not the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.  It sounded like an earnest Keep Calm and Carry a Wand sort of message meant to assure the public all was well when really, it wasn't.  Or perhaps Hooch was latching onto things that were there - just whisps of harmless smoke.

“Well, I know it wasn't any kind of a dementor, and I can tell you that much for certain. I know what those look like, and I know how to get rid of them and that, and that's just not what I saw,” Bethan explained firmly, looking right into the aging teacher's hawk eyes, her own green ones growing wide as she went on. “A dybbuk, I think it's called. It was like smoke, only it wasn't smoke, because smoke doesn't move like it's alive, and smoke doesn't scream like hell when you pelt it with nuts.” She shook her head a few times, her eyes going just slightly out of focus as she pictured the creature in her mind – the way in which it has slithered through the air in a manner that was just too intelligent, and the way it had made her feel when it was still strong and whole.

“What the two had in common was, well... the thing about dementors is that they make you feel real sad, isn't it? And this thing made me feel...” she paused, squinting her eyes as she tried to put words to the feeling. “Scared, I guess. But not scared of whatever it was, scared of... erm... well, just scared, like.” She couldn't quite explain why, but she'd felt convinced that she was going to burn alive, even though every flame in the room had gone out and she hadn't been near any of them. She released a slow, heavy sigh through her nostrils and folded her arms across her chest. She'd felt so elated once they'd lured the thing into the bottle that she hadn't really thought back on that overwhelming veil of fear she'd felt before they'd put the creature on the defensive, turning the fear back on the dybbuk itself. 

“But, you know, dementors don't kill people. They come close, but they just don't kill people. And I even said, back at the pub, I said 'do you reckon that dybbuk could've killed someone?', like, and I still don't know. So I can't say if he was murdered or not, because what I saw was that old bloke falling, and nobody touched him, and I don't know if that smoke thing was supposed to kill him, or just shake him up real good.” And that is what Bethan had to say, though there was likely more where that came from. It took some people more words than others to say 'I don't know'.

Hooch was not prepared for how much Bethan had to tell.  Bethan proceeded to tell her everything like they were old friends.  The tale just spilled forth and Hooch could only stare back at Bethan's animated re-telling.  A re-telling that sounded very different from what she'd read in the paper.  It chilled her.

In the chilly calm after Bethan spoke, Hooch was silent as the wind whipped around them.  Hooch couldn't shake a feeling of being observed, that something was about to happen.  Bethan had confirmed some things that had seemed off to Hooch - smoke being used to describe a Dementor, a Dementor causing a death...? It didn't add up and now she knew why.

But what was that word?  "Dybbuk?" she whispered.  An enchanted smoke? Smoke could be cast from a wand or formed by a potion, but she'd never heard of this... fear-inducing, living, screaming smoke...

"He fell? He was standing? When? Did he do anything against this... dybbuk?" 

Bethan had already told her so much, and Hooch was grateful, but it didn't make her feel at all like she knew what happened.

"And the Aurors? They took the bottle? And the body?"

It was starting to get cold now, and Beth drew the edges of her cloak around herself further, hoping to keep the paltry amount of heat her body was giving off safe. She exhaled deeply, just to watch her breath turn to vapor before her eyes and then dissipate, much like that dybbuk creature had when exposed to the storm of peanuts she'd rained upon it. Her mind was back at the pub, thinking over all of the details that she'd explained over and over again over the course of the past few days. She didn't think she was missing anything. She'd just told it like she'd seen it – again and again and again, and to whoever wanted to hear about it.

”He fell? He was standing? When? Did he do anything against this... dybbuk?”

“Wasn't standing for long,” she explained, going back in her mind to the very beginning of the series of events, when the soft tinkling of the bell above the pub's door had signaled the arrival of their villain, good old Whatshisface, all draped in black. “He was at the bar, at his old spot, but once that bastard came in – you know, the man who let out that dybbuk – well, once he came in, the old man got up like he was going to talk to him, right? And it was queer as hell. Neither of them said anything that I could hear,” Bethan reported, giving her head a shake to show that it really didn't make a bit of sense to her. She pursed her lips in thought, pausing only a second before launching right back in to her tale.

“It just didn't look right to me, so I shouted for the other fellow to get lost. Can't remember what I said, but it worked. And then that's when the dead bloke just collapsed, right there on the ground near the door, like, and he pissed himself all down his leg,” she explained, recalling the events the best she could. “The smoke hadn't even come out yet, so he couldn't have fought it off if he wanted to, like.” Bethan had clearly forgotten that she was going to make an attempt at being sensitive in her retelling. It didn't seem to matter, though, if the goal was to tell an unbiased story. She wasn't particularly talented at mincing her words.

”And the Aurors? They took the bottle? And the body?”

“As far as I know, yeah,” she answered, shrugging. “I haven't seen a bottle full of dybbuk around the pub, so if they don't have it then I couldn't tell you who does. I do know they sent the body to Mungo's, like, but I couldn't say whether it's still there or not.” That was really all she knew as far as what had ended up where – as nosy as she was, it hadn't really been her business. “I fished some of his things out of his pockets before that Auror showed up, and they took all that, too. Nothing but keys and peppermints, plus a few photos and that.”

Hooch's frowned deepened and she rubbed her face with a gloved hand to hear Bethan tell in irreverent detail of the indignities of passing.  She had no room to blame her for it.  Old Hooch has seen war.  Witches, wizards and muggles dying in the bombings.  She'd flown over war-torn France and seen the men in the trenches.  But old Harrison...dead in the pub like that...

But wait - what she said.

"You said there was a man.  Who Harrison spoke to. Who let out the dybbuk?"  Hooch was incredulous.  How could Bethan not have told her right away! 

"What happened to him? Who was it? What did he look like?"

Aside from Bethan, this was the last man to see Harrison alive, and from the account, possibly the agent of his demise, the one who loosed this dybbuk creature, or whatever it was.

She could almost guess what answer would come.  He wore a hood.  She couldn't get a good look.  He disappeared before anything could be done to stop him.  Of course.  The clue she needed was a phantom.