Chapter 448 - A Patronus Message

Chapter 448: Chapter 448 - A Patronus Message

Evening. The border between Cumbria and Lancashire, in the hills south of Lake Windermere.

A three-story stone building sat hidden at the edge of a pine wood, beside the narrow road running from the Muggle village of Cartmel up to the Lake District. Concealment charms and an Unplottable charm had erased it from the Muggle world. Anyone passing would see only two crooked trees and a stretch of mottled low wall.

A cast-iron sign hung above the door frame. A raven perched on a fiddle. Now and then the raven tilted its head, and now and then the fiddle plucked one of its own strings.

The Raven and Fiddle.

Regulus was curled up in a soft leather armchair by the window, right leg crossed over left, silver-white hair spilling over his shoulders, a steaming cup of Cumbrian mead in his hand.

He still hadn’t changed out of the battle outfit McGonagall had transfigured for him. It was comfortable enough for lounging.

After so many days on the road, he finally had a decent place to rest. Compared to the Hog’s Head, this place was practically heaven.

Dumbledore sat across from him with a cup of tea and a small plate of Grasmere gingerbread that Mrs. Fernley had brought out herself. A local Lake District recipe, she’d said. Cumbrian honey and a touch of cinnamon.

His traveling robe was open at the collar. He’d taken off his half-moon glasses and was slowly polishing the lenses with a cloth.

He finished polishing, put the glasses back on, and picked up a piece. He held it under his nose, sniffed, nodded in satisfaction, and bit down with a crunch, chewing loudly and with total focus, cheeks bulging, a few crumbs caught in his white beard.

Regulus held his mead and watched him chew.

Dumbledore swallowed and picked up another piece, lifting his chin toward the kitchen. He was still chewing, and crumbs jumped out along with the words.

"Mrs. Fernley. Her gingerbread recipe is the best in the Lake District. The secret is the honey. Cumbrian wildflower honey. You can’t get it anywhere else."

Regulus grinned. "You went straight to praising the honey."

"The honey deserves praise."

Dumbledore’s expression was serious. He dipped the piece in his tea before putting it in his mouth, catching the drip off the edge with his other hand just in time.

Regulus watched the tea-dipping method, hesitated, then took a piece of gingerbread and dipped it in his mead.

He put it in his mouth, chewed twice, and his jaw froze.

Soaked in mead, the gingerbread turned into a wet, sweet mush, the bite of the ginger and the cloying sweetness of the alcohol mixing into something neither sweet nor spicy with a strange sour, fishy edge. The taste shot straight up into his skull. He clamped his mouth shut, forced it down, and the sourness on his tongue wouldn’t go away.

A tiny orange-red flame flickered at the corner of his mouth, magic on the tip of his tongue burning the taste away with precision before going out. He picked up his cup and took a sip, as if nothing had happened.

Dumbledore’s eyebrows went up, and his blue eyes flashed behind the lenses.

"Young people," he said, popping the remaining half of his tea-soaked biscuit into his mouth and chewing at a leisurely pace, "can’t appreciate the subtlety."

Regulus pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth and scraped. "...What subtlety?"

"The taste of time." The old man lifted his teacup and winked at him. "You’ll understand when you’re my age. Some things can’t be appreciated when you’re too young."

There was a note of real curiosity in Regulus’s voice. "A last-century way of eating?"

The old man sipped his tea with perfect composure, wiped a drop from his beard with the back of his hand, and said lightly, "All the wizards in Berlin ate it that way back then."

Regulus answered without thinking. "The Berlin wizards’ taste buds probably all died in ’45."

Dumbledore’s hand paused at the rim of his cup. The light in his blue eyes wavered and settled on the amber liquid swaying in his glass.

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said softly, "Yes. I’m the only one left now."

Regulus looked at the old man’s face and thought that had been a bit careless of him. He lifted his cup toward Dumbledore and took a drink.

Dumbledore watched the gesture, his blue eyes crinkling, and said nothing. He just lifted his own cup and drank.

Mr. Fernley came around from behind the bar just then to top up the water, a copper kettle in his hand. Tall and thin, silver-rimmed pince-nez, slow in his movements and slow in his speech.

"Anything else? Damson gin. Made with local wild damsons. I brew it myself."

Dumbledore held out his glass. "One, please."

Mr. Fernley filled it, pushed the glass back, nodded to them both, and walked off.

Dumbledore took a sip and nodded. "That’s what gin should taste like. Aberforth’s stuff..."

He shook his head and swallowed the rest of the sentence. "Mr. Fernley was seventeen years below me in Ravenclaw. He’s run this inn in the Lake District for twenty years and never slipped up once. The Ministry has come to inspect three times and found nothing."

Regulus glanced toward the bar. Mr. Fernley was sorting his ledgers behind the counter. Quiet, respectable, proper. Ravenclaw from head to toe.

Regulus was interested and asked straight out, "Tax evasion?"

Dumbledore blinked. "What..."

Then he caught up and found it funny. "Of course not. The Ministry has no tax department. Wizards don’t pay tax to run a shop."

Then something else occurred to him, and his blue eyes went wide with confusion. "What has the Black family done that requires paying tax?"

The corner of Regulus’s mouth twitched. "No. Nothing."

He cleared his throat. "I mean, why was he inspected?"

Dumbledore’s gaze swept over his face, then let the subject go. "Illegal use of magic to attract Muggle customers. In reality, his cooking was just too good. The Muggles followed the smell and found their way here on their own."

Good cooking was illegal? Then what did that make the stuff Aberforth made?

Regulus asked, "Good cooking counts as illegal?"

"There’s a gray area in the Ministry’s Statute of Secrecy. If a wizard-run establishment continuously draws Muggle attention, it can be classified as a secrecy risk, whether or not magic was used."

Dumbledore took another piece of gingerbread, dipped it in the damson gin, and crunched into it. Regulus grimaced watching him. The old man’s face was pure enjoyment.

"Mr. Fernley later put a ring of Muggle-Repelling Charms around the inn, and the problem was solved. But I imagine he still finds it a shame."

Regulus asked, "A shame the Ministry didn’t come a fourth time?"

Dumbledore’s brows knotted and he shot him a sideways look. This child. What a mouth.

He shook his head, beard swaying along. "Mrs. Fernley believes a good cook shouldn’t pick her customers."

Regulus grinned and glanced toward the kitchen, where Mrs. Fernley leaned halfway out every so often to check the guests still had enough tea.

---

Over the past few days, he’d followed Dumbledore to three places.

The first was at the edge of the Cumbrian lakes. A retired investigator from the Improper Use of Magic Office, hair gone completely white, who never once stood up from the rocking chair on his porch, a ginger Kneazle sprawled across his knees.

He said his old bones would only slow everyone down, but he could keep an eye on movement along the Scottish border.

"If anything stirs, my Kneazles are faster than owls."

Dumbledore thanked him with a smile. "That counts as help too."

The second was in Lancashire. A witch who ran a potions shop, half-blood, threatened by Death Eaters twice and her shop smashed up once. She wanted to join the Order, but she had elderly family to care for. She brewed four pots of tea, hesitated an entire afternoon, and finally said she’d think about it more.

"I know I should go. But the house can’t do without me."

Dumbledore said, "That’s all right. If you ever need help, come find me."

The third was outside the Forest of Bowland. A retired Auror who refused flatly. He had a wife and children and couldn’t take the risk. But if the Death Eaters came to his door, he’d fight back.

Dumbledore nodded. "Thank you. If you change your mind, contact me."

The same words as Crow, from a different person.

Regulus followed behind. He didn’t step in the way he had on the moor. He just watched the old man’s back trail a long shadow in the afternoon sun, white hair lifting in the wind.

None of the three had agreed on the spot. Dumbledore smiled and said goodbye to every person who turned him down, and never pressured anyone.

The route had a purpose, though. Cumbrian lakes to Lancashire to the Forest of Bowland, all the way southeast toward the North York Moors, where the densest cluster of disappearances sat not far from the coast. Recruiting and investigation overlapped. At this pace they’d arrive tomorrow or the day after.

Along the way, he’d gained a much more direct understanding of the lower layers of British wizarding society.

The light through the window faded to a last streak of dark red in the west.

Dumbledore was reaching for his fourth piece of gingerbread when a ball of silver light burst in through the glass.

A silver bull, passing straight through the glass. Translucent, thick-horned, broad across the shoulders. Its four hooves landed on the air beside the table.

It opened its mouth, and a rough, low voice came out, fast and urgent. "Albus, the Prewett brothers are surrounded. Dolohov. Ten of them. North of Skipton..."

A tiny point of light sprang from the tip of the bull’s horn and hung in the air, a clear image turning inside it.

"...I’m watching them. They can’t hold much longer."

The bull dissolved from the hooves upward, the horns last, the silver light breaking into a few wisps of white smoke.

Dumbledore swallowed his gingerbread. Crunch.

He looked at Regulus and said quietly, "Moody."

---

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