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I was in my usual booth at the Leaky Cauldron. I like to spend my time there – the landlord Tom and I go way, way back to before the first war. I’m one of the few people who get automatic table service, and I always pay my tab on time. It’s a useful place to read the various newspapers, get a good gauge of the atmosphere of the whole wizarding world, and at least once a day it’s a good place to make contact.
I was reading my paper and mulling over my response to a letter I’d received when someone sat down in the booth opposite me. The wooden seating creaked beneath him, and I lowered the paper just enough for my eyes to burn a stare over them. It was a tall, long-faced man with black hair and a scrubby, awkward little beard. He kept glancing around suspiciously, warily, and my paranoia flared up – I’m paranoid at the best of times, so this was exceptional.
“Are you Lucinda Baker?”
“I’m not,” I lied, “But I know who is. What do you want?”
“My name is Aldermath Reeve, of the Somerset Reeve’s. You have heard of me?” he asked, officiously.
“Never heard of you,” I lied, even employing my most sincere cockney accent. It wouldn’t fool a genuine Londoner, but I was testing him.
“Well, nevertheless, I have business with your mistress,” he said. I had to suppress a snort of laughter, but I lowered my newspaper.
“Business?”
“I’ll discuss it with her alone.”
“Listen, Aldermath, to get to her you need to get through me. So tell me your story and let’s see if you’re worth her time, eh? You look like a man who needs something.”
“Well, yes. I need her help.”
“You’ve got my ear. What do you need help with?”
“Um, I’m very uncomfortable discussing it out here, in public,” he muttered, leaning forward. I learned forward too, close enough to smell his breath.
“We’re alone,” I said in a low growl, it was the late afternoon, on a Tuesday. I watched him look around nervously . He pulled out a long, dark, ostentatious quill from his cloak. As he scribbled on a napkin, it flicked his face. Then he pushed the napkin towards me, and I saw that he had written one word: ‘murder’.
I pulled the napkin towards me and plunged it into my pint glass that was still half full. The wet ink and the paper dissolved in the beer, and I pushed the glass away.
“You owe me a drink,” I told him. He looked from the glass to me, taking in my eyes and expression, then nodded and got up.
He seemed furtive enough that he wasn’t a Ministry operative. He might have been a paid snitch or a vigilante, but his accent made that unlikely. He seemed a legitimate, welcomed customer. I watched him walk back from the bar. He hadn’t tried to put anything in my glass of wine, and he’d got a pint of beer for himself. Unobservant of him – I liked that. Like I said, I’m paranoid, and anyway I keep a decent store of cures to poisons in my pockets at all times. I drank, and detected nothing expectant in his eyes beyond the eagerness to do business.
“Who?” I said.
“I told you, I’m Aldermath Reeve,” he said, looking puzzled like a fool, drinking from his pint.
“No, I mean who’re we discussing,” I said.
“Oh! Of course! Well, it’s my sister,” he raised his glass to his lips again.
“What?”
“Yes, my sister. You see, our mother died a long time ago, and quite rightly left all of our finances and the estate to our father. But my father died recently, and left my fortune to my sister. She’s intent on wasting it on stupid gardening, and all sorts of nonsense.”
“I see. So you want to spend a portion of that fortune on getting your fortune away from your sister, right?”
“Yes,” he whispered, and gulped down more beer.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Adda Reeve,” he said. While I’d heard of Aldermath – a loud and obnoxious duellist – I’d never heard of his sister, Adda.
“In a few days, you will receive a letter. It will have a number on it, along with further instructions. That number will be the fee,” I said, in a brisk, business-like way, “I should warn you now, it will probably be more than you expect.”
“It’s gone beyond money, at this stage. It’s now a matter of pride,” he growled, and I had to hide my grin. He drank the last half of his drink and got up unsteadily. “I look forward to her letter,” he said with a curt nod, and then he turned and strode out of the pub. His swirling cape attracted a few idle glances. I sipped at my wine glass thoughtfully.
*
Later that night, I visited my favourite ‘freelance troubleshooter’. He was a mercenary assassin, and organising a meeting with him meant leaving marks on two different trees in Hyde Park. I was sitting on the pre-arranged park bench when he approached, wearing a long trench-coat. Myself, I was just wearing a simple woollen hat and long, dark, heavy coat with a light scarf. In the cold wintery air, I was the less conspicuous. It wasn’t his long coat, it wasn’t his dark glasses, despite the dark of the night, it wasn’t his huge stature, hauling around his bulk like a troll, it was the cheap, comical wig that he wore like a small dog that stood out.
“You took your time,” I said, trying to keep my teeth from chattering.
“There is a procedure,” he said. He looked over his dark glasses at me, pushing his wig back into place.
“How are you?” I asked – he was my favourite assassin, after all.
“I’m not bad,” he said, dusting the snow and frost from the bench next to me, “The baby is starting to sleep at nights. Or maybe me and the missus are starting to adjust to the weird nights.”
“I’d have thought you’d be used to weird nights and strange sleep patterns,” I commented as he sat down.
“I used to prize silence. It was a mark of my trade. Let’s just say I’m not used to the screaming,” he said with a sardonic grin and a sidelong glance, “How are you?”
“I’m okay. I saw Grey the other day.”
“How’s he doing?” asked the tattooed man, knowing that Josh had been in Azkaban for several weeks having recently lost his eye.
“He’s not very happy,” I said, “But that’s to be expected.”
“After what he did, he’s bloody lucky,” the bald man growled.
“You didn’t need to blind him.”
“He didn’t need to snitch,” he said, shrugging, “Anyway, it wasn’t me.”
“I know,” I said, shrugging too, “I just feel bad for him, is all. You know what he’s like.”
“I do. He’s a dreamer and a fool. But then, he’s always been bloody lucky,” he said, grinning at me once more without turning his head. I shot him a look.
“ Grey is useful. Listen, I have a target for you, and I need a quote.”
“Go on,” he sighed.
“Adda Reeve,” I told him.
“Eh?” he said, looking alarmed.
“Adda Reeve?” I said again, less certainly.
“Of the Somerset Reeves? No fucking way,” he said, shaking his head violently
“Don’t you remember? Her little boy used to be in the year below us. Then he came home one Summer to the Ancestral home and boom, he was killed by one of the traps. That whole family is fucking psycho, you know? I bet the contract is from the fucking brother,” he said.
“What do you know about him?”
“Not much. I’m sure you probably know more than me, - I only know what everyone else knows. He’s a ruthless duellist, a cheater, and I’m pretty sure you’d have to have eyes inside his head if you were going to outthink him.”
“He seemed to like his drink, when I met him,” I said, “And I mean, yeah, if a man wants to kill his own sister then I’m thinking he’s not exactly husband material, right? But if his money is good…” I said, leaving the sentence hanging.
“Lucinda, don’t get me wrong,” said the bald man, standing up, “I’m up for the odd contract here and there. I mean, it keeps the money rolling in. You know how useful that is, with another little mouth to feed,” he said unthinkingly, “But if you want to invade the Reeves house, you need to be fucking insane or fucking well paid. With my new baby, I can’t take missions of complete and total suicide.”
“How much do you think someone would charge?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Twenty thousand galleons at the very, very least,” he said, “And that kind of money is too hot for my tongue. Sorry, Lucinda,” he said, turning as snow started to fall.
“A definite no?” I asked him.
“This time you’ll need to find someone else. See you later!” he said, waving a gloved hand as he strode off down the asphalt path into the snowy night. I sighed heavily, sending a great cloud of steamy breath into the air, the frost making tiny, flaking noises on my long dark coat as I walked away .
*
It seemed I was on my own. I sent off a letter with a thirty thousand quote, and got one back saying Aldermath would pay twenty-five thousand but no less. I accepted twenty seven thousand, five hundred. The next day I received half of the payment. To be fair these letters were just buying time – I was prepared to accept twenty, but I was conducting research. It started when I acquired the architect’s plans of their ancestral home from four hundred years ago, and every record I could scavenge about the changes to the buildings since. I found a lot of paperwork on the traps and curses installed on the property. All of this is easily discovered using the wizarding tax office as a research database. The records are meticulous, and if you have a well-paid friend on the inside then it’s the perfect place to start this kind of research.
At the same time I was asking around about the sister’s habits, as anonymously as I could. It seemed she lived in the family mansion exclusively. Once a week her house-elf came out for groceries and various gardening supplies, which were delivered to the gate with the minimum of personal contact. It seemed I couldn’t fake my way inside with a delivery note and a uniform.
I wasn’t put off by how every contractor rejected the work. The money was enough that I obsessed over the plans of the estate and started to see how I could accomplish it myself. I was also no stranger to murder.
So it was that late one winter night, with thick snow on the ground, I levitated myself over the wall of the estate and perched in one of the high pine trees. I was wearing enchanted goggles with night-vision, with thick black clothing and heavy black boots. I’d enchanted every article of my clothing with as much protection as I’d thought worth my time. But as I landed on the tree branch, I became instantly aware that I’d been thinking like a damn wizard.
A steel axe came swinging down out of the higher branches. It was chaotic, merely attached to a slightly cursed rope, and it missed me by a mile. It was unexpected enough that it took me by surprise, but it was unwise – it made me more alert. I didn’t even need to dodge the thing. I climbed closer to the trunk of the tree, delicately keeping my balance as I pushed snow off the branches. It fell silently beneath me.
I slung a rope around the tree and shimmied down it. Every footprint would be one I had to erase. I curved around to the east wing, now converted into a greenhouse. The least defended section of the house. There was a wide, snowy expanse between me and the building. Devoid of trees, I would stand out like soot on a bed sheet. I curdled the snow in front of me, swirling it up into a cloud as if a gust of wind had disturbed it. A few lights were already turning on inside the building, and I was sure the axe had just been a sign that I had triggered some silent alarms.
I approached the wall as the snow settling behind me without a footprint. I crept up the old bricks to where the glass began, it was easier than trying to undo the spell that prevented levitation near to the house. Peering in through the greenhouse walls, I saw a mass of greenery that was completely alien to the desolate wintery landscape behind me. I looked up to my target – a newly installed window, wide and vulnerable, high above the pointy greenhouse roof. It was five stories up the huge Eastern tower. I lightly stepped along the foot-wide shelf formed by the ancient stone, finding both handholds and treachery in the glass wall beside me. I disturbed more snow as I walked, landing silently below me. I proceeded up the wall like a child’s toy. I swung my arms up, letting my legs and slim torso dictate the speed of my climb. I was rubbing against the wall, and the scraping of my durable clothes against the stone was uncomfortably loud. I passed a tiny window that lit up as I came near it, and I froze against the wall.
The light passed quickly. Some sort of guard, descending the tower to check out the alarm below. This suited me perfectly. I continued up the wall, swinging my hands quickly, trying not to think about the distance below me to the glass panels. In my paranoid mind, I could vaguely hear shouts and alarms below me, around the snow I had disturbed. In reality there was nothing but the cold, gentle wind. I vanished the wide pane of glass silently. It was the only window pane in the entire building not guarded against this specific spell. I gripped the windowsill with one firm hand, curled around the wooden frame like a claw. I hauled myself up, letting the sticking charms of the gloves do most of the work. Finally, I was inside the ancestral home of the Reeves.
I made it to a landing, and hid gratefully behind a statue, far away from any light. There were cobwebs and dust everywhere – clearly the ancestral home was falling into disrepair. A few suits of armour stood along the dark walls.
I watched the door to Adda’s room listening for any sign of life, but a vision of pure white emerged from the doorway. I pushed myself further into the shadow while she stood in complete innocence before me. She had long, white hair but a youthful face, with the slightest suggestion of crow’s feet. Her eyes were bright pink, but her expression belied her inexperience. She ran to the left, her thighs shuddering beneath her long night gown as she ran.
Almost instinctively I was sneaking through the door, which sucked shut behind me as she rushed down a stairwell far away. I thought at first it was stark and barren, but then I saw the delicate floral motif in the wallpaper. There were no vases here, but there were a few trophies and awards lying haphazardly on the dresser. No makeup, but discarded medals. There were several thick dressing gowns hanging from the wall, with several thick wellingtons beneath them. But the few childhood photographs on the wall were animated, waving in glorious naivety, pale and delicate.
She was pictured next to her much sulkier brother, or her invalid mother. Her father was consistently resolute and strong, despite his greying hair as the years wore on. I considered waiting in the bedroom, but the only place to hide was beneath the bed. I sneaked into the main body of the house and track her through territory unknown to me.
I was circling around a large stairwell when I heard a voice. It was light, feminine and posh but strained from stress.
“I locked all the doors in the west wing when I saw him coming across the grounds,” someone was saying. I assumed it was the voice of Adda Reeve, who I had seen running from the west wing looking distressed. She continued, “In the east there’s nothing but the greenhouse.”
“You check the greenhouse, then. I’ll check the kitchens and the cellar, okay?” said another voice, and I recognised the tiny resonance of a house elf. He was strong, blustery and officious.
“Do you think he’s after the seeds?”
“It’s the most valuable thing in the house, madam, and they can be easily carried. I think you should preserve your life’s work,” he said.
“Yes, okay,” said Adda with relief, her voice echoing off the tall ceiling.
It sounded like these two were the only ones in the house. I waited, listening to the footsteps fade away across the marble floors. I had memorized the layout of spells and landmarks outside the house, but paid less attention to the interior. It was a combination of guesswork and dimly remembered architectural plans that led me now through the dark hallways. After a few minutes I only needed to follow the smell of rich earth and humid plants. It led me through a door standing wide open into the huge, pitch-black greenhouse space. A few dim lanterns glowed green through the huge, tropical leaves. The foliage was denser than Kew Gardens, the greenhouse was silent. I stayed close to the trunks of the trees, moving slowly. I listened for the sound of footsteps, but there wasn’t even a rustling leaf in the windless environment. Every step I took on the damp greenhouse floor made me worry.
Suddenly there was a tiny rustling noise. I pointed my wand from left to right, trying to pinpoint it. It seemed to be coming from everywhere, unceasing. Too late, I realised it was coming from all around me. Two vines curled around my torso and Before I could bring my wand up pulled me into the trunk of the tree ., another one darted out of the dark leaves around me. It coiled around my wrist before I could even fire a spell, forcing me to drop my wand . I was completely trapped, and the more I struggled the harder it became to breathe.
Adda walked through the black and green shadows, appearing like a ghost. She looked at me fearfully her wand pointed right at my head. With one trembling hand she reached forward and pulled my goggles off . I looked up at her with a calm, level gaze. All was not lost – I could still talk my way out of this.
“You’re a woman,” she said, blinking in surprise. She gripped my chin, looking deep into my eyes. I continued staring at her for a fraction of a second. Her hands were rough and strong from gardening.
I tried to avert my eyes, but she put her face closer to mine so that it filled my whole vision. I could feel the power pushing down on me. It only took one foolish glance back into her eyes , and she’d made contact. I was summoning all my willpower to keep her out, but she had a watery, silvery way of leaking through the cracks. Her mind was swift and agile. I could feel her rifling through my mind, flicking through my memories like a filing cabinet, exploring each one briefly. I only had one possible course of action, I realised. There it was – when she learned who had contracted me to kill her, there was a flare of emotion. Shock, pain, betrayal, sadness. It allowed me to trigger a sort of mental feedback, and use legilimency in return. Her occlumency was strong, but she was still uncertain from finding out how ruthless her brother was.
There was no specific purpose to my raiding her mind. I could have found out about a crippling weakness, or some other way to escape. I could appeal to her mercy, or lie to her. At the very least I could predict how she’d react when we broke the mental connection a fraction of a second later.
Her mental defences must have been powerful once, but they’d clearly atrophied after a decade of isolation. I was sorting through her memories just as she had done with mine – flowers, everywhere. Flowers and petals and even some scents, flooding my senses, swarming around me like angry wasps, trying to keep me out. It was another defence, but an effective one. For a while I thought about being just as careless, but I wanted to be thorough if it meant my survival. Quick glimpses of her childhood, being home-schooled by her parents and grand-parents. The swarms of flowers changed to daisies and dandelions, and other simple growths. She was sixteen when sent off to Hogwarts.It was a strangely old age for her to join the school. Of course a few of the kids picked on her for being a weird, isolated albino, but her brother had been at the school since a normal age and he helped look after her. Enthusiastic in herbology and gardening, of course, but unremarkable in every other class. Suddenly the flowers were chaotic, but there were irises and foxgloves and other small, delicate flowers. There were memories of boys – mostly harmless flirting, but a stolen kiss here and there. Her first boyfriend and the unrewarding intimacy. An orchid blooming then withering on its stem, feebly trying to bat me away from continuing my march through her life.
She found when she returned from Hogwarts that her grandmother was increasingly senile, until finally her death while bedridden. Lilies and black roses. Discovering her stockpiled collection of bodily fluids, including blood, urine and faeces – so disgusting. The flowers stopped then, for a while. She took several apprenticeships working for famous herbologists around the world, and the blooms came flooding back past me, slowly at first. She fell in love with another herbology student, and the flowers all became pink and green, moving sickeningly, scarily fast through every memory like a hurricane. Finally there was a moment that crystallised around a potion.
It involved urine, which reminded her of her grandma. A sample of her piss was mixed into a solution. It turned blue, she was pregnant. The man she loved went back to Brazil, and she was left to care for the baby in the ancestral home. She was just twenty. With her mother and father, both furiously shame-faced, and her brother who could barely look at her – despite being a womaniser himself, with several scandals in his past. She gave birth in her room, attended by a Healer who stayed in the house for several days until she was confident that Adda could care for the baby. Everything was orchids again, and huge fluttering bells of flowers twisting and flapping through the air. They were hardly attacking me now.
Then there was the death of both her parents, and struggling to prevent her brother from selling off everything in the house to pay for his debts . More lilies and black roses, forget-me-nots and even a few thistles made their way past me. Her son, Andrew, was walking now. He could climb up the huge stairs, but Adda worried he was too lonely. She sent him to a muggle school for the first few years of his life, which her brother hated. Then he went to Hogwarts, and it seemed like he would grow up to be a strong, sensitive boy with his father’s colouring but his mother’s delicate, youthful features. All manner of flowers were cascading around me now – all of them flying and swirling happily.
Her son was killed by one of the forgotten traps set up by her paranoid father. He had been fourteen when it happened, while Adda was thirty four. A single black lily bloomed in the darkness on the night of his meagre funeral. The lily grew and grew, and then it turned, and I saw that it had eyes. Gigantic goats eyes, which were staring fixedly at me. It lunged towards me, giving off an intense stench of death and mould. I thought it would be harmless petals, but it was teeth that sank into me. I hurtled out of her mind in shock and pain; I hit the back of my head against the trunk as I exited her mind so violently.
It was a strange experience. I had never had one like it, so abstract and surreal with flower petals floating around like ridiculous snow. I can’t explain how it felt to be batting at flowers swarming at me, while on another level of awareness my body was still bound by thick, leathery vines. Adda was still standing over me, looking at me expectantly.
“Oh, Aldermath,” she sighed, muttering to herself, “He’s such a fool. Well, listen, Miss Baker. I’d rather live, so if you agree not to kill me, I’ll compensate you for your loss. I’ll pay you twenty seven thousand five hundred, if that’s all I’m worth to him,” she said. I stared at her mutely, thinking. “Of course, the alternative is that I kill you here and use your body as fertilizer. I know several plants that would thrive on genuine human meat. There’s nothing quite like it,” she said, turning her wand idly between her fingers.
“I’m listening,” I said, coldly . She looked at me for a very long time with a sceptical air.
“I know you like money. But I’ve also seen your memories of killing people. Quite a lot of people,” she said quietly. “What does it feel like?”
That was when I started to panic. I make my money from keeping secrets, or exposing them. I’ve always been so, so careful about preserving my privacy, my information, the thick layers of lies and deceit between me and the rest of the world. Somehow she had squirmed through it all, like water that seeps into a stone then freezes, smashing it open. She was full of tricks, sure enough. I think she must have seen the sudden terror of exposure in my eyes, because she tutted.
“I know you’ll want to kill me for what I might have learned. But you’ll know that everyone I cared about is dead now. Apart from Aldermath, I suppose, but… well,” she continued, “I only care about the plants. I don’t care what you’ve done, and I don’t want your money. Honestly, Lucinda, this deal will only work if you trust me. I know you’re capable of it. I’ve seen it in your memories. I’m going to untie you now, but if you make a sudden move then you’ll be plant-food before dawn, okay?” she said.
She stepped away from me, into the leaves, muttering something. The vines around me relaxed, and collapsed to the ground like they were suddenly dead. I stumbled forward and holstered my wand. Her wand was shaking in her hand , and Although her voice was flat and level and her eyes were stern, there was a tear running down her cheek.
“Thirty-five, you say?” I said, rubbing the feeling back into my hand.
“I want you to know that you can trust me,” she said, “So that you don’t come back later and kill me, of course. If I feel you can’t trust me, I’d have to kill you first. Does that make sense? It feels backwards somehow.”
“Yeah, you know too much about me now. But if I don’t kill you, someone will,” I said frankly, “Your brother wants the family fortune.”
“I know,” she sighed, “It’s sort of a good thing that my parents were so paranoid.”
“I don’t know how you can say that,” I said quietly, “After losing your son, and being cooped up in here for so many years.”
Her face went through several emotional transformations. I thought for a second that she’d curse me out of spite.
“I’m protected here,” she said coldly. I considered trying to talk her into letting me kill her, but then I had another idea.
“You’ll never be safe, as long as your brother lives,” I said. She took a step to the left and looked at me in a new light. Almost half a minute passed until she finally seemed to understand what I was offering.
“You think he can be killed?” she asked, as if tasting the idea.
“He’s only human. Of course he can be killed. I’ll do it for forty,” I said
“How much of that is your management fee, and how much goes to the man you’ll get to actually do the deed?” she asked, smiling briefly, sarcastically.
“It’s hard to negotiate when you’ve read my mind,” I said.
“You’ll do it for twenty seven thousand five hundred, the same price you were charging me not to kill me,” she said.
“No, you don’t understand. That’s thirty-five for your brother, on top of the thirty-five not to kill you,” I said. She laughed, then.
“You’re impossible!” she exclaimed.
“I have a friend who used to say that we make the impossible happen all the time,” I said.
“Yes, your friend Joshua Grey. A shame about his eye. When does he get out of Azkaban?” she asked, and I frowned. “I’m sorry. Like I said, you need to trust me in order for me to live. I’ve seen how your mind works. Come and look at this,” she sighed, beckoning me into the jungle. “I’m going to show you the most precious thing in this greenhouse. It’s my life’s work. There are plants here for all sorts of purposes,” I followed her at a distance. I considered just smacking her across the back of the head with a log or something, and I could tell from the stress in her neck and shoulders that she knew I’d be thinking it. But she continued on regardless, determined to prove something by not turning around. “There are plants here that can keep someone young for decades. There are plants that can put people into a magical sleep for thousands of years. Some people are very excited about my work here, thinking it might be something to do with Merlin. And there are plants here that one day might be able to heal all sorts of ailments beyond our current magic, if I can breed them correctly. Ailments like your mother’s brain damage, Lucinda,” she said softly. I was almost dismayed enough to stop walking, turn around and leave the estate, washing my hands of this whole family and its mess. Let some other assassin kill the sister, or the brother, or hell even both. But I’ve always kept good control of my emotions, so I continued to follow her, wondering if what she said was true.
We reached the end of the greenhouse, and she started climbing a wrought iron staircase. At the top, there was a glass door with the same enchantment as the rest of the glass panes. She unlocked it with her wand, and motioned for me to go through. There was a stone balcony inside a cage of heavy, black iron bars. Everything was thick with snow, and the air was surprisingly still at this freezing altitude. Adda wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her torso. She must have been freezing in the cold, wearing only her night gown. Our breath fogged in the air. In the centre of the balcony there was a wrought iron podium, the black metal standing out against the white snow. On top there was a black vase, with a white rose growing from it. The soft, white petals were almost blue, and almost beige, but really neither. There was a soft glow coming from it, shining off the snow and the black pot. Its long black stem held it high above the snow lying in the pot.
“It’s magic,” she said, “Normal roses use fertilizer. I’ve never liked it, and if you saw my nana in my memories then I’m sure you understand why. But this rose is incredibly rare and magical. It uses snow like other plants use soil. It can only grow in the winter.”
“Why does it glow?” I asked.
“So that animals can find it and eat it, spreading its seed. But that’s not important. The point is that it’s delicate, and beautiful, and almost entirely useless. This is the pride of my entire collection. This single plant. The most difficult to grow, and the most beautiful. All my other research ideas, growth experiments, hybrid projects, they all serve a function. Better medicine, better food, more knowledge. This one is just for me. It’s a Winter Rose,” she said.
“It reminds me of you,” I said, “Flowering here all cold and alone. Kept safe by the bars but also trapped by them.”
“Strange. I was about to say the same about you,” she said, turning to me. I felt her hot breath mist on my freezing cheek, “So distanced, always forcing yourself to be apart, alone, private. Your bars are in your mind, obviously.”
I looked at her in the snow, trying to understand her. As I looked at her I realised we were too much alike. She tried to kiss me, darting in quickly, shyly. Her lips were soft, and warm, but even from the brief contact I could tell they were shivering.
“Sorry,” I said, stepping away as if to look at the glowing Winter Rose. That wasn’t what I wanted, even though she was beautiful, fragile, elegant and tragic all at the same time.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said, “I shouldn’t have tried to do that. Maybe I’m more alone than I thought. But you get the idea now, yes? I’ve shown you my most precious possession, frozen and locked away up here, aloof. We’re very alike, you and I. So now you don’t need to fear what I know. Now you don’t need to kill me, and I don’t need to kill you, alright?”
“Alright,” I said, and crossed my arms – more hugging myself more than shrugging. I let out a long, shuddering breath of released tension, “So, let’s settle on forty thousand for the whole package?”
“Okay,” she said sadly.
“It’s a very beautiful thing,” I said quietly, “But it’s such a sad kind of beautiful.”
“I know,” she said, and stood next to me. Her thin, cold fingers found mine and we held hands as we looked at the white, glowing rose lighting up the snow around it. More flakes started to fall from the sky.
*
It wasn’t difficult, to kill Aldermath. I arranged a meeting in the pub, saying I’d been successful and wanted the final half of my money. Adda had agreed to take a brief holiday, and her house-elf let everyone know that she had died mysteriously. I paid Tom, the barman at the Leaky Cauldron, to put a tiny, brown ball of feathery earth-like substance into Aldermath’s drink when he ordered himself a pint, and me a glass of wine, of course. It dissolved instantly, noiselessly – without bubbles or any sign that it had ever existed. I’d gotten it from my favourite poison provider.
He sat down at my booth, pushed a plain brown envelope towards me and then toasted to his ‘dear, departed sister’. Of course I was controlling my expression. But I toasted with the pint I had already been drinking, rather than the glass of wine he’d bought me. He paused, wondering at my actions, then shrugged and drank like a fool. If he had thought for a second that I had been suspicious then he should have paused to inspect his own drink. I worried for a second that he’d pre-emptively swallowed one of the many so-called ‘poison cure-alls’, which might interfere with the thing I’d dosed him with. But he seemed stupid enough not to suspect.
I chatted idly about what he’d do with his family’s fortune – pay off his gambling debts, buy several duelling instructors – and then he left. It would take one or two hours, then the poison would react instantly in his veins and he would die without a noise, without a thought.
Adda was as good as her word, and paid me as much as we’d agreed. She’s always been a very reclusive woman, but I still see her sometimes to discuss her work. Especially how it might relate to curing my mother’s condition. It turns out now that I did manage to keep a few secrets from her, and I’ve built many more since we first met. One that I hope she never somehow discovers is that I’ve borrowed her mental techniques, pretending to harass people with a weak defence while showing them a narrative that actually leads them right into the biggest mental trap of them all. I’ve also learned how to squirm into someone’s mind rather than smashing my way in. There is one, huge secret that I will always, have always and shall always keep to myself – that in my heart of hearts, deep down beyond every layer of mental defence, at the very core of my mind? There is a white rose glowing in the snow. It’s not big, important or useful in any way, but it’s worth every protection I can give it.