Tortured :||: Loved Series #5

9) A Lot Has Changed

Ft. Minnie

Lily's POV

While the others were looking back up the stairs, waiting for our saviour, my gaze followed Harry as he stared at a mirror hung on the wall. He pulled a jagged piece of mirror out of his pocket and gently slipped it into the gap in the mirror. 

The figure came stomping down the stairs. "You fools, what were you thinking? Have you any idea how dangerous it is coming here?!"

"You're Aberforth, Dumbledore's brother," Harry asked. The man indeed looked exactly like Dumbledore, though with darker hair and a grimmer expression. "It's you I've been seeing in here." Harry pointed to the mirror. "You're the one who sent Dobby."

"Where have you left him?" The man demand, walking over and pulling the blinds safely shut.

"He died," I replied coldly.

Aberforth stared at me with scrutinizing eyes. "I'm sorry to hear it, I rather liked that elf."

The man's eyes travelled down to Draco's hands wrapped firmly around my waist, his eyebrows shooting up. "Draco Malfoy and Lily Potter, last I heard you two were Death Eaters?" His eyes flickered to our arms, Dark Marks out in the open and exposed.

"Pretending to be a Death Eater and being a Death Eater are two very different things," Draco assured quietly.

"Who gave you that mirror?" I asked him.

"Mundungus Fletcher, about a year ago."

"Dung had no right sending that to you! It belonged to–"

"Sirius," Aberforth interrupted Harry. "Albus told me, he also told me you would be pissed off if you ever found out I had it but just consider this, where would you be if I didn't?"

"He's got a point, Harry." 

Soon after, Aberforth returned with a tray full of food and warm cocoa. We all dived for it, each of us starving and half asleep. "Do you hear from the Order?" Hermione asked.

"The Order's finished, You-Know-Who has won, anyone who says otherwise is killing themselves." He turned to face my brother and I, sitting side-by-side on the only two chairs at the table. "Now, we have to figure a way to get you out of here."

"We need to get into Hogwarts," Harry interrupted him. "Tonight."

"That's a fools errand!"

"We don't care!" I stood up, facing Aberforth. "We don't care that you've given up. Your brother left us a mission and we are the only ones who can destroy You-Know-Who. So, we need to get into that castle tonight."

Everyone was silent, the only noise was the loud sound of Ron chewing. Aberforth's top lip twitched back into a sneer. "A mission? A dead man sent you on an errand? Easy, is it? The sort of thing you can expect five underqualified wizard kids to be able to do?"

"Dumbledore cared about Harry and Lily very much," Hermione snapped at him. "He protects them still from beyond the grave and yes, I've heard things about what Dumbledore did in his youth, Grindelwald and what-not, but sometimes you've got to think about more than your own safety, about the greater good."

Her voice had gone quiet now and you could see Aberforth starting to calm down now as well. He glanced up at the girl in the painting above the crackling fireplace. "You know what to do."

She gave him a nod and smile that showed her beauty, before turning and walking down the lane headed deep into the portrait. "Where is she going?" Harry asked.

"You'll see."

"That's your sister, Ariana isn't it?" I asked as Aberforth turned away, towards the stairs. He froze, the others settling down to catch a few winks. "She died very young, didn't she?"