The Last Fight

BRITTANY

I’d a hard time of finding a baby sitter for the evening. I had dropped by Jennifer's flat, but no one was there, so I went by Stacey's and after some talk, I left Diana with her and went to my patrol. I hated dropping her off on friends at such short notice, but she was far safer at someone’s flat than she would be with me while I was out.

It was a much shorter walk from Stacey's place to the diner where Jared and I would meet than from Jennifer’s. I pulled my jacket tighter against myself to protect from the chilly air, my want poking me in the side. At least the streetlights were lit in this part of town, so I didn’t have to worry about Dementors just yet. I saw the diner in the distance and picked up my pace, eager to hold a warm cup of coffee in my hands.

The bell jingled when I walked in. There were only two people inside – a guy sitting on a stool, finishing off a drink, and the girl who normally worked nights behind the counter. She looked up and gave me a smile when she saw me.

"Coffee?" she asked.

“To go, if you can, please.”

The guy turned around and I saw that it was Colin Parker. I frowned.

"Where's Jared?" I asked as I sat down next to him. The waitress slid me a coffee and I pulled out a few crumpled notes from my pocket and handed them to her.

"He's on patrol at Hogwarts tonight with Jennifer," he replied, sipping his own beverage.

"Oh, alright. I just would have liked to know that ahead of time.”

He sighed, finished his own drink, and said, "Well, should we get going?"

"Yeah, I guess," I replied, standing and taking a sip of my coffee. The drink was hot but soothing. I could see why Jennifer drank this stuff like it was pumpkin juice.

"What direction?" he asked as we walked outside, the cold biting our faces.

"South. Tonks sent me a message earlier that there were some Death Eaters spotted there."

"Let's get to it then," he said, and we set off side by side down the street. Though it was cold, it wasn't frosty or misty. Come to think of it, I hadn't seen a Dementor in a while now, and I didn’t know if that was terribly concerning or not.

"So, how's life going with you?" Colin asked after we had gone about three blocks.

"Mmm. Sleepless." I took another sip, trying to warm up again. "Diana keeps me up the nights that I'm not patrolling."

"How old's she now?"

"Five months."

He whistled. "Wow. Time flies."

"You're telling me."

Another sip, another two blocks. "You've found a job, I hope?" I asked.

"Yeah, I'm in the Accidents Department at the Ministry. It's been mental down there."

"I bet."

"We had this one witch come in to St. Mungo's, claiming she had bought some talisman to protect herself from Dementors but when she put it on, she started spurting all sorts of... things on her body. Luckily, it got deferred to Arthur Weasley's team and the Healers fixed her up, but that's pretty much what's been going on. People just being scared."

"Mmm."

"What about you?"

"I've been working a bit part-time at Gringotts, but I can't do much because I have to watch Diana and it's not quite fair to dump her on my friends all the time."

"True. Still, that's got to be interesting. Do you get to see inside any of the vaults?"

"Hardly ever, it's mostly just counting and evaluating worth, but I have been doing some cataloging since we’re so short-staffed. Just yesterday, actually, I sorted through the Lestrange vault. I know, I should have swiped something, but I couldn't. Anyways, Bellatrix has this really nice little gold goblet that I think has the symbol of Hufflepuff on it."

Colin's eyes brightened. "Really?"

"Yeah. It's got badgers and a great H and everything. It's probably school history."

"And worth a fortune."

"That too."

I chucked my empty coffee cup in a rubbish bin that we passed, longing for another drink to warm my hands with.

"How far south do we need to go?" Colin asked after a while.

I frowned, looking around. We had gone quite some distance. "I don't know," I responded truthfully. "Tonks didn't give an exact street or location, just somewhere in the area."

"Great," Colin grumbled. “This looks like a right creepy place.”

"Lumos," I muttered, lighting up my wand as we passed into a park. The grass was rather damp and the trees blocked the stars. Colin was right. The surrounding houses looked not only ancient and dark, but vaguely familiar. Was this a wizarding neighborhood? It very well could have been. Then again, I had only been living in London for five months, and everything tended to look the same when it was dark.

Colin followed suit, and we continued. We were almost out of the park when I stopped. "Wait," I muttered, flashing my wand around. "Nox."

Now it was dark save the streetlight that twinkled from the distant edge of the park.

"What is it?" Colin asked.

"I heard something over there," I whispered, starting off the path and into the bushes as quietly as I could. He followed hesitantly.

When I heard low voices, I stopped and backed up to the nearest tree. I set my foot and started climbing slowly, careful not to hurt myself or make a lot of noise. It took Colin a moment to get what I was doing, but once he did, he found his own tree and started climbing.

When I reached a sturdy branch that stuck out towards where I had heard the voices, I laid down on it and inched along, gripping my wand tightly. I couldn't see the faces, but I could see outlines of two people standing below me. I leaned in to try and catch snatches of their conversation.

"...do you not trust the Dark Lord's judgment?"

"Not this time, no," the second voice said almost immediately. "To trust this mission to a boy, let alone Lucius's—"

"Would you rather it had been entrusted to Lance? No, the Dark Lord has confidence that Dumbledore will fall whether the boy succeeds or not," the first voice reasoned.

"And how does he plan on getting inside the castle?"

"I've heard he doesn't need to. Dumbledore will fall."

The second voice scoffed. "But to trust a child with this errand, it seems very arrogant. Why not entice Dumbledore out into open combat?"

"Dumbledore would never go for it," the first voice said, almost bored. "He's too worried about his precious school to even leave his office."

There was a moment of silence. I prayed that neither Colin nor myself would make a noise. "Bellatrix doesn't trust it either."

"But Snape does. He made an Unbreakable Vow," the first voice said., “with Narcissa."

"What did he say?" the second voice asked with curiosity.

"That he would finish the job if Draco cannot."

I nearly slipped out of my tree. 'What?' I thought hysterically.

I didn't listen to the rest of the conversation. I couldn't. My own thoughts were far too loud. Draco Malfoy had been employed by Voldemort to kill Dumbledore? What was Voldemort playing at? And Snape had said he would kill Dumbledore if Draco couldn't? What was he playing at? None of it made sense. Snape was on our side, no matter how much of a despicable git he was, Dumbledore was sure of it. But could he have been fooled?

It seemed like hours before the two Death Eaters left. When they did, Colin and I met down on the ground. We lit our wands. Colin looked dead on the inside.

"Did you hear the same thing I did?" he asked, his voice a bit hollow.

"That Draco Malfoy or Snape is going to kill Dumbledore?" I replied, swallowing hard.

Colin took a shuddering breath and checked his watch. "It's one."

"We need to warn Dumbledore," I said, setting off through the bushes for a clear place to Disapparate.

"Will he be awake?"

"He will be when we get there," I said, holding out my arm to him. "I'm going to Hogsmeade, you coming?"

He paused, but finally took it. We spun on the spot and found ourselves just outside the Shrieking Shack. Without a word, we set off at a fast pace down the path to the gates.

Jared was there. "What's up?" he asked, puzzled. "Did something happen?"

"We've got to talk to Dumbledore," I told him. He frowned.

"What's your daughter's middle name?" he asked me.

"Clymus."

"How many teeth did Cedric Diggory get knocked out in his first Quidditch match?" he asked Colin.

"Three, his front ones, from Marcus Flint," Colin said, looking alarmed.

Jared nodded, satisfied. "Alright, go in," he said, waving his wand and opening the gate.

"Thanks," I said before Colin and I charged up towards the castle.

There wasn't anyone in the Entrance Hall. In fact, we didn't meet anyone at all as we worked our way up through the familiar corridors to Dumbledore's office.

"Acid Pop," Colin told the statue, and it sprung aside and let us up. I rapped sharply on the door.

"Dumbledore? It's Brittany Chang and Colin Parker," I announced.

"Come in," I heard his weary voice say, and we did. He was bent over the swirling silver of the Pensieve, eyes completely lost in it. "Yes, Brittany?" he asked after a moment, tearing his eyes away from the Pensieve and closing the cabinet around it, and finally shook the sleeve of his robes over his right hand. "If you're looking for Miss Potter, she left just half an hour ago."

"No, we need to talk to you," I said urgently. "We were on patrol tonight."

"We walked all the way through South London, and came to this park," Colin offered.

"I have no idea how we got so lucky, but we overheard some Death Eaters talking."

"Are you sure they were Death Eaters?" he asked, his blue eyes seeming to analyze me. I tried again to get a glimpse of his hand – I caught sight of some blackened flesh before he shook it out of view once more.

"Yes, I recognized one of the voices," Colin said. "It was Yaxley and some other bloke."

"Right. Well, they were talking..." I swallowed. "They were talking about how Draco Malfoy's been given the mission of killing you."

He smiled faintly. Why would he smile?

"Miss Chang, Mister Parker, I thank you for this information, but I am already aware. In fact, I've been aware of it since the summer."

"That's not all," Colin interjected nervously. "They also said that... Snape's supposed to kill you if Draco can't do it."

Again, Dumbledore just smiled knowingly. How could he do that? His life was being threatened!

"Yet again, I know this."

"But how?" I asked, almost exasperated.

"How is between myself and Severus."

"But sir—"

"I have said this many times; I trust Severus completely. Now, I suggest you go back to your patrol. We can't have the streets of London threatened."

I opened my mouth to argue, but closed it because it was pointless. "Yes sir. Goodnight," I said. Colin nodded, and we left the office.

"What's Dumbledore up to?" Colin asked as we descended the staircase.

"I don't know," I frowned determinedly. “Did you see his hand?”

“What?”

“His right hand. It’s all burnt and black. And not like, a normal burn either. It looks like it’s been cursed.”

Colin gulped. “You don’t think… someone attacked him?”

“Nah, we’d have heard about it.” We left for the Entrance Hall. “It looked cursed.”

“What kind of curse could do that?”

“Something nasty. I’m sure there are other side effects we can’t see.” We stopped to wait for the staircase to come back to us. “I’m going to talk to Jennifer soon, she see why she was there. She may have some clues.”

“But, Brittany, isn’t that sort of… intrusive?”

“Well, we both know Dumbledore isn’t going to tell us if something is wrong with him, especially not if it’s life-threatening. He wouldn’t want us to worry and not focus on our work. But I want to know what’s going on. So we can prepare.”

“Prepare for what?”

“The worst,” I answered grimly, pushing open the massive oak doors. “The way it sounds, I’m worried about Dumbledore making it to Christmas. And I know we don’t want to imagine life or Hogwarts or fighting this was without him, but it’s looking like a possibility now.”

Colin was quiet while we walked across the grounds. Finally, he spoke up. “At least we have Harry. And each other. But really, if anyone can kill Voldemort, it’s gotta be Harry.”

I managed a smile. “Yeah. We have Harry.” I took a shuddering breath. “I just hope to whatever god is up there that it’ll be enough.”

“It will be.”