#chartemis

A creak on the bottom step this morning made Dragon roll off his back and onto his belly, which his honorary packmate had been scratching for him a few seconds earlier. He let out a low growl.

“It’s just me, Dragon.” As his master’s voice called up the stairs, Dragon stopped growling, and wagged his two tails. “Am I alright to come up?”

The female human moved beside Dragon so that she was more upright. “Yeah.”

Dragon’s master smiled as he reached the top of the staircase, carrying what looked like two narrow, tall water bowls.

“You’re taking liberties again,” Charlie muttered as he sat on the end of the bed. He passed Artemis one of the mugs of tea and added for her benefit, “Him, not you.”

“I guessed as much,” replied Artemis, taking the mug from him. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. I thought that if I was going to wake you up, I should at least bring you tea.”

“I was already awake.”

“Right.” Charlie inclined his head and took a sip from his tea, regarding Artemis over the top of the mug. She had yet to drink, and was instead staring at the wall opposite the bed, chewing the inside of her gum and tapping one finger against her own mug. “You know, you don’t have to wait for it to cool down. It’s not actually that hot.”

Artemis said nothing. Charlie tried not to sigh as she continued to ignore the drink in her hands. She had been in this state for four days now, ever since he had awoken to the sound of banging at his front door and opened it to find her on his doorstep unannounced, broomstick in hand and completely bedraggled.

He had known immediately that something was very, very wrong. She had clearly flown to the reserve overnight — and that wasn’t exactly a short journey to make — and from the grimly panicked expression on her face, she’d done so out of shock and desperation. If that wasn’t enough, the fact that she couldn’t even find the words to tell him what the matter was when he asked her paid testament to how shaken she was.

It took a lot to shake Artemis Hexley.

It wasn’t until after he’d arrived late for his shift and been remonstrated for it by his boss Magda that he found out what the reason was behind Artemis’ unexpected arrival. It was all anyone was talking about: the death of one of the competitors during the final challenge of the Triwizard Tournament. His heart sank further when he learned the name of the victim.

Diggory. Cedric Diggory. No wonder Artemis was in such a state.

He had decided to act as if he hadn’t heard about Cedric’s death. Knowing Artemis — which he did, very well — there wasn’t much point in forcing her to talk about it. She’d speak when she was ready. In the meantime, he’d just have to wait, and hope that he’d not have to wait too long.

That morning, though, he had received a letter from his family in England that had made him rethink this strategy. The news they’d sent was… strange. Strange, terrifying, and overwhelming.

There was a growing pit of uneasiness in his core as he considered his next move. Somehow, though, he managed to force a smile and a tone of voice that could almost pass for cheerful.

“I was just thinking,” he said, scratching Dragon the Crup behind his light brown ears, “that maybe this morning you’d like to come for a walk with me and Dragon, before it gets too hot.”

Artemis’ answer was simple: “No, thank you.”

“Or we could go for a fly after breakfast?” Charlie persisted, smiling in spite of Artemis’ blank stare and his own feelings of dread and fear. “I just think it might be good for you to do something other than sit in my bed all day, that’s all.”

Artemis’ eyes narrowed, and she pursed her lips as she slowly turned her head towards him.

“Is that your way of saying you want your bed back?”

“No. Not at all, I just thought you could do with getting some fresh air and a change of scenery. Maybe even eat a vegetable, and have a shower.”

Artemis frowned, and sniffed herself in a way that was almost subtle — subtle for her, at least. Charlie’s smile became entirely genuine for a few moments, before it faded. He wasn’t getting anywhere with this. He didn’t want to, but he was going to have to push the subject.

“I got a letter from Dad this morning,” he said, not sure even as he spoke how this conversation was going to go. Judging from the way Artemis had already stiffened, it was unlikely to go well. “He was talking about some stuff that happened after the last challenge, and it was a bit confusing. From what he said, it sounded like you might know what he was going on about, so I figured that I should probably just ask you about it.”

A tense silence hung in the room. Artemis shook her head.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, eventually, her voice quiet and hoarse.

“Yeah, I know, but I just want to understand what… it doesn’t make any sense, what Dad’s written. His letter says that You-Know-Who… that he’s back,” Charlie frowned, and Artemis shuddered. “Is it true?”

Artemis merely nodded in response. Charlie swallowed, hard.

“And Cedric?”

“He’s gone,” Artemis closed her eyes. “He was killed.”

“In the challenge?”

“By… him.”

Charlie swore under his breath, and ran a hand through his hair.

“How? Why?” he asked, his voice catching with both one-word questions. “What happened?”

“The Cup. It was turned into a Portkey, transported Cedric out of the maze. Your brother’s friend, too,” Artemis still hadn’t opened her eyes. “Apparently there was a duel and some Death Eaters, and You-Know-Who. Alive. They came back and Cedric was… Everyone was screaming, and crying, and then there was all this chaos, and there was a Death Eater spy at Hogwarts. I saw Dumbledore afterwards and he told me all of it. I didn’t know what to do, so I came here.”

Charlie had to force himself not to put his arms around her. His chest tight from the gravity of the news and aching for his friend’s sake, he drew a shallow, almost painful breath before speaking again.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t know how.”

That was fair enough, he supposed. The whole situation was so bizarre and terrible that it was hard to know what to think, let alone how to talk about it. Still, he wished she had told him. This was important, after all.

“That’s alright,” he said, with a shrug. Artemis shook her head.

“No, it’s not. I should have told you.”

“You didn’t know how. I wouldn’t have known how to say it either, it’s so—”

“That’s not…” Artemis drew a shaky breath and pulled her knees into her chest. “I just didn’t want you to hate me.”

“I could never.”

“Not even if it was all my fault?”

Charlie frowned, and Artemis lifted her hazel eyes to meet his. They had a sincere expression and were almost tear-filled. Though Charlie doubted that Artemis could have actually caused this horrific turn of events, it was obvious that she thought she had.

“Try me,” he said, with a sad smile. Artemis sighed.

“I… it was really busy that morning, getting things ready and everything. Bagman was being useless as always, so I was running around like mad, and I was already not quite… Well, I had a stressful evening the night before. It’s not important, not anymore.”

Charlie’s eyes drifted to her knees, where her hands were resting, the tips of her bare fingers digging into her legs. Artemis, either by instinct, having caught Charlie looking, or sensing that he was looking, shifted the position of her hands, so that the right covered the left. Both were bare. Charlie felt his heart skip a beat.

“Anyway,” Artemis continued, “I got there and I offered to help Badeea by taking the Cup into the maze. But then, I ran into Moody and he took one look at me and said I could do with a break, and he was happy to take the Cup into the maze for me so I had one less thing to do, and I… I gave him the Cup.”

“You’ve lost me, sorry,” Charlie said, placing his not quite empty mug onto the floor by the bed. “How does that make any of this your fault?”

“Don’t you see? Moody was the Death Eater spy.”

“What? But he’s an Auror!”

“No, it wasn’t actually Moody. It was the spy using a Polyjuice potion,” Artemis explained. “But that was his plan. Get the Cup, turn it into the Portkey. And I just… handed it to him. Just like that.”

Her eyes lifted to the ceiling and she blinked, hard. A single tear rolled down her right cheek, its course altered slightly as it deflected at the level of the small scar under her cheekbone. Charlie’s fingers itched to wipe it away for her, but he didn’t. There were certain lines he didn’t want to cross, and touching Artemis’ face would definitely definitely overstepping some kind of boundary.

Artemis rubbed the right side of her face forcefully with the heel of her hand and inside of her wrist. She blinked again, and took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for judgement. But judgement never came. Not from Charlie.

“You shouldn’t feel guilty for that,” he told her. She stared back at him, clearly disbelieving. “Artemis, you weren’t to know. You can’t beat yourself up like this over something that you didn’t know about.”

“No, but I should have known—”

“How? How would you have possibly known that? I mean, the whole thing is unbelievable. You’d have to be mad for the idea to even cross your mind that someone might… that any of that might be true.”

“I guess,” said Artemis, unfolding herself slightly to stroke Dragon, who was nudging her arm. “But I should have known something was wrong.”

Charlie shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. You were stressed out, and someone you thought you offered to help you. There’s nothing suspicious about that. Besides, we have all trusted the wrong people before.”

“That was different.”

“How come?”

“We were children, then. You’re meant to trust your teachers when you’re at school,” Artemis reasoned, her eyes still firmly on Dragon. “We were told Rakepick had our best interests at heart, so we believed it. We weren’t to know better, not when we were only teenagers.”

“I suppose not,” said Charlie, frowning, “but at what point would you say that you should know better?”

“I dunno.” Artemis’ nose wrinkled. “It’s just that when you’re growing up, you just assume that adults know what they’re doing and have all the answers to everything, and if they do things that are wrong, it’s because they are all wrong. But now, we are the grown ups, and I don’t know about you, but I still feel like I’m just making things up as I go along.”

So, it wasn’t just Charlie that felt that way. “Yeah, me too.”

“Shouldn’t we know by now? What we’re doing, and what is right, and what is wrong?”

“I… I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like you turn seventeen and the trace disappears and gets replaced with some kind of fountain of wisdom, is it?”

“No, but it would be good if it did,” Artemis said, with the shadow of a smile.

“Oh, yeah. Instead we just carry on not knowing things, with the addition of feeling bad for not knowing them. It’s pretty crap, if you think about it.”

“When do you think it will happen? That we will figure it all out and stop having to muddle through our lives?”

“You’re asking the wrong person. I’m as clueless as you are.” Charlie half-laughed. “Maybe when… Maybe never. Maybe no one actually knows what they’re doing.”

“So what, everyone in the world is just stumbling around blindly trying to find their way, every single day, until they die?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Even McGonagall?”

That was a good question. Charlie considered it for a moment. “I think she might be an exception.”

Artemis grinned, smiling properly for the first time since she’d arrived.

“Probably. I can’t believe that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. What about Dumbledore?”

“He definitely thinks he knows what he’s doing,” Charlie replied. “But I reckon he doesn’t. He hired Rakepick, didn’t he? And this person who wasn’t actually Moody, he obviously didn’t know about that either.”

“No, that’s true,” Artemis bit her bottom lip. “Do you think he feels guilty, too?”

“I bet he does.”

Both of them were quiet for a while, Artemis watching Dragon, and Charlie watching her.

“It must be easier if you’re a Crup,” Artemis said eventually. “Life, I mean.” Charlie nodded, and she raised her eyes to meet his, before telling him, “I would like a hug now.”

“I think I can manage that.”

Charlie wrapped his arms around Artemis’ shoulders and pulled her against his chest, while Dragon jealously nudged his way between them. Artemis mumbled something, and Charlie made a questioning noise.

“I said” — Artemis lifted her head from his sternum to talk to him — “what happens now? Now that…”

“Now that he’s back? I don’t know. But I don’t think life’s going to get easier any time soon.”

“What should we do?”

“I’d start by having a shower.” Charlie kept his face straight as Artemis scowled. “In the nicest way possible, you don’t smell good.”

Dragon wriggled out from the middle of the hug as his new packmate batted his master with a forepaw. She stood up and padded away from them, and he turned to look at his master with pleading eyes and two sheepishly wagging tails. He knew he was about to be scolded for being on the bed.

But, to his surprise, his master merely patted him on the head.

“Good job, Dragon. Well done, boy,” he said, before he also walked out of the room.

Dragon watched his master leave without even telling him to get down. He tilted his head to one side and whined to himself softly.