A Marauder's Guide to Falling Apart

Chapter Thirty Two

Apparating into Hogsmeade should have brought back unfriendly memories, but instead she looked around the quaint and empty street with little emotion. It was silly to hold on to the bad memories that had transpired in the village because she knew that it wouldn't change anything. She was a different person for what Hogsmeade had done to her, and she accepted that that wasn't a bad thing.

She was strong.

Much stronger than she had ever allowed herself to believe.

She knew that now.

The sun was nearly set and the lighting along the pathway that lead to the Hogs Head was dim. Even so, she was careful to take to the shadows and gracefully glided in and out of them as she made her way towards the tavern.

She entered in through the front entrance and the door creaked threateningly, causing the bar keep to look up from the bar. She had never been inside the tavern before and noted that it smelled quite musty; a mixture of liquor and rotting wood. She wrinkled her nose in distaste, instead drawing forth memory of the cinnamon from earlier in the day.

A man that looked strikingly similar to Albus was behind the counter drying glasses. For a fleeting moment Marlene believed it to be him until she moved closer to get a better look.

There were no other patrons in the bar despite the fact that it was quite late in the evening and surely prime time for business. Marlene was inclined to believe that it was no coincidence.

The man made eye contact and his scrutiny of Marlene was evident. An uncomfortable silence met the space between them before he finally broke their trance and spoke in a deep, commanding voice.

"What'll it be then?"

"Er," she hesitated. "Fire whiskey."

He gave a curt acknowledgement by nod of his head and jerked his thumb towards a door at the side of the room. It was an ambiguous offer; surely she could be waltzing into a dangerous trap. However, her wand was securing fasted to her side and she moved past him towards the direction he indicated for her to go.

A set of narrow, spiraling stone steps led downwards towards the musty smelling cellar and she descended quickly. Albus was waiting for her in the dimly lit corridor at the base of the stairway. His smile illuminated in the light that bounced from the torches strapped against the wall.

"Good evening, Marlene," he had a merry sort of tone.

"Good evening, Albus," she replied politely, not quite able to match the same level of enthusiasm as he had demonstrated.

"I do wish we had somewhere a bit more comfortable to meet," he said apologetically. "But I didn't have a lot of notice and with the times being what they are, well this was the best I could do."

"The man upstairs," Marlene recalled Dumbledore's likeness. "He looks very much like you."

"Aberforth," he smiled. "Is my brother. I can assure you that we are perfectly safe here from wandering ears."

Marlene hadn't had a lot of time to prepare what she wanted to say. In fact, she still wasn't entirely certain of any plan she had concocted in her head since she had walked out of St. Mungos only hours before. All she knew was that this was where she was supposed to be, and everything else would fall into place as long as she just went along with it.

"I am not going to convince Tom to join us by simply asking him to," she said sadly. "He thinks that what we are doing is betraying the Ministry, and he refuses to do that."

"Tom is a loyal man," Albus said fondly. "Very noble."

"I've been thinking about this quite a bit," she admitted. True, it had been pushed aside many times due to the other pressing matters that had happened recently. But all the same, Marlene had been thinking about it, and she had finally come up with an idea. "I think I have an idea of how I can help."