Quocumque Modo Part II: The Promise

Found

When did it become real?" she asked him.

"At the start," he said, brushing her hair out of her face.

*****

Valeria moved the curtain just enough to see a sliver of the quiet streets below. The sun had already set some time ago, the streets were empty and had been growing emptier with each passing day. The once bustling street was eerily silent, the only visitors keeping their heads down as they walked in a rush to get where they needed as fast as possible.

Almost a month? It must have been almost a month since she arrived at the Leaky Cauldron. She had kept a calendar so as not to lose track of time, but her erratic sleep schedule made keeping time difficult. Plagued by the inability to rest and bad dreams when she did eventually pass out from shear exhaustion meant Valeria was up at irregular times with no pattern to regulate her internal clock. Keeping time became nearly impossible.

She was stressed more than usual tonight. She had not planned her escape well at all. When she arrived home, finding the castle empty, she dashed through the halls and rooms collecting items of value and necessities. Her mother's fine clothes and jewelry, Twilfitt and Tattings had taken those eagerly, though the shopkeeper was unnerved by Valeria's hooded face and rude haste. Her father's items, strange devices, artifacts, and books she had sold to Borgin and Burkes, taking a discount for discretion. Her father's prized mead she managed to sell too. It was enough money to get her this far, but she had given most of it to Tom.

"I need a room," she told him, the sound of her shaken voice seemed to startle him. It frightened her too. "Until September first." He eyed her suspiciously.

"That's a long—"

"I can pay," she said, emptying a large amount of coin onto the table. "I'll also need meals brought to the room twice per day. The Daily and Evening Prophets, absolute privacy and total secrecy."

Tom had counted the coin and, though suspicious, seemed satisfied. He showed her to the room and she hadn't left since. She was dangerously low on money, not knowing if she would have enough for school supplies, if she was even going back to Hogwarts. It was the safest place for her, but would her O.W.L. results even arrive at the Leaky Cauldron? Her vault in Gringotts had nearly infinite funds, but trying to access them would reveal her. The account was likely frozen after her disappearance anyway.

She'd cross those bridges when she came to them. She was far too miserable to muster up the energy to plan her next move, it was too daunting. She lived in a dark place, somewhere between grief and apathy, hardened by emptiness. All she had to consume her time was rereading the papers obsessively, in her haste she had forgotten to bring books to entertain herself. The only other thing she did to pass the time between waking and sleeping was put on her glamours each day, which she had been sure to collect from home. It became a sort of ritual, one piece of regularity in a now volatile world. She was a shadow of herself and she could not stand to look herself in the mirror without them. Besides those things, all of her dearest belongings, all the things she could distract herself with she had left behind at Hogwarts.

At least it was quiet there. It wasn't the natural silence of the Welsh mountains of home, but it would do. She was grateful for the fear people now possessed as they avoided the once bustling Leaky Cauldron. She could hide better, just under the nose of the wizarding world.

But it was dawning on her that she had nowhere to turn. Was she one of the Death Eaters now, on their side at least? She didn't fight against them at the Ministry, that was certain. They were her closest friends, her family, and there was no way she would bring herself to turn against their side if it meant losing them. But she didn't want to be taken in by them either, she did not want to be in their clutches or under their control. Her mother, her poor mother. She read the articles over and over again. Her mother was silent for once, not turning to the media, not doing damage control with her honeyed words. Her mother's silence frightened Valeria the most. The Order was not an option. They had shattered her world, and it seemed unlikely they would dare help her now, given who her family was revealed to be. Her single greatest mistake was doing the right thing by helping Potter and his friends, that much was clear.