May 28th. Evening. Various locations, increasingly annoying ones.
The Weasley twins were not easy to find when they didn't want to be found, which was most of the time, and were not easy to negotiate with when they were found, which was all of the time.
It took Arthur three hours.
He located them first in the corridor outside the Gryffindor common room, where they were conducting what appeared to be a field test of something that smelled strongly of aniseed and ambition. Fred looked up when Arthur approached. George kept his eyes on the small, suspicious package in his hands.
"Reeves," Fred said pleasantly. "What can we do you for?"
"Kitchen access," Arthur said.
"Ah," George said, still not looking up. "A man of taste."
"We don't give that out for free," Fred said. "Information of that specificity has a market value."
"How much," Arthur said.
The twins exchanged a look that contained an entire conversation.
"Ten galleons," Fred said.
"Five," Arthur said.
"Eight," George said.
"Six," Arthur said.
"Twelve," Fred said.
Arthur looked at him. "That's the wrong direction."
"Negotiating is an art form," Fred said serenely. "Not everyone has the gift."
"Twenty," George said. "Final."
"That's twice your opening number."
"We've incurred emotional distress in the interim," Fred explained.
Arthur paid the twenty galleons, which he considered highway robbery and which the twins accepted with the satisfaction of people who had identified a market inefficiency and exploited it responsibly.
"The pear," George said.
"The pear," Fred confirmed.
"Tickle it," they said together.
Arthur looked at them. "Huh?"
"The painting," Fred said. "Large fruit bowl. Near the kitchens. Find the pear, give it a tickle, the handle appears."
Arthur considered this information.
"You're telling me," he said, "that the entrance to the Hogwarts kitchens is a ticklish pear."
"Correct," George said.
"In a painting."
"A still life, technically," Fred said. "Though 'still' is doing a lot of work given the pear's response to stimulation."
"I paid twenty galleons," Arthur said, "to be told to tickle a pear."
"You paid twenty galleons for information," Fred said cheerfully. "The inherent dignity of that information was not part of the transaction."
Arthur left before he said something he'd have to follow through on.
---
The painting was exactly where they'd said it was — large, hung in the corridor on the right side of the stairs leading to the basement, depicting a bowl of fruit with the specific peaceful abundance of things that had never had to worry about anything. Pears, apples, grapes. Painted with the loving detail of someone who had strong feelings about fruit.
Arthur stood in front of it for a moment.
Reached out.
Tickled the pear.
The pear squirmed. Actually squirmed, the painted fruit wriggling under his fingers with the giggling energy of something that had been waiting for exactly this. A handle materialized in its side, green and solid.
Arthur looked at it.
"Twenty galleons," he said, to no one.
He opened the door.
---
The kitchen was enormous and warm and smelled overwhelmingly of whatever had been made for dinner plus everything that was being prepared for breakfast plus the general accumulated warmth of an industrial cooking operation that never fully stopped. Copper pots hung from the ceiling in dense rows. The fires were banked low but present. Surfaces gleamed.
And everywhere — elves.
Dozens of them, moving with the coordinated efficiency of a system that had been running longer than most of the students upstairs had been alive. They carried, stirred, arranged, cleaned, communicated in gestures and short bursts of sound that functioned as a language Arthur couldn't follow but could recognize as having internal logic.
They noticed him immediately.
Several stopped. Others slowed but continued working, watching from the periphery. An older elf near the central fire straightened up and looked at him with the alert assessment of someone trying to determine whether this was a problem or a manageable situation.
Arthur looked around the kitchen.
A smaller elf near the pastry section was arranging cupcakes on a cooling rack. The rack was directly in front of him, the cupcakes perfectly aligned, the elf's back to him.
And then Arthur registered the hat.
Mismatched socks. Small voice talking to itself. Enormous ears.
He had his wand out before he consciously decided to.
"Stupefy."
The spell crossed the kitchen in a streak of red light. The elf wasn't there anymore — a small, sharp crack of displaced air — and the Stunner hit the cupcake rack instead, distributing twelve vanilla cupcakes across a significant area of kitchen floor with considerable force.
Several elves made sounds of distress about the cupcakes.
A beat of silence.
Then another small crack, and Dobby reappeared.
Dripping wet.
Head to foot. Water running off his ears, off his makeshift clothes, pooling on the kitchen floor around his feet. He blinked several times, water streaming down his face. He appeared to have returned from somewhere that was not the kitchen and was not dry, and had brought evidence of this with him.
He looked at Arthur.
Arthur looked at him.
"What," Arthur said, "the hell are you doing here, you homicidal bag of bones."
Dobby drew himself up to his full height, which was not considerable, and said with great dignity: "Please, Master Reeves. Dobby is here to work, sir."
"You're here to work," Arthur repeated.
"Yes, sir. Dobby works in the kitchens now, sir. Dobby is very happy to be working in the kitchens, sir." He paused, dripping. "Dobby is also very wet, sir."
"I noticed," Arthur said. "Why are you here to work."
"Because Dobby's master gave Dobby clothes, sir."
Arthur looked at him. "And?"
"It means Dobby is free, sir," Dobby said, with the reverence of someone describing a religious event.
"I know that much, Dobby."
"Dobby's master presented Dobby with a sock, sir, and that means Dobby belongs to no one and Dobby can work where Dobby chooses, sir."
"Your master just — gave you a sock."
"Yes, sir."
"Why."
Dobby's enormous eyes went slightly complicated. "Dobby believes it was because of you, Master Reeves, sir."
Arthur stared at him.
"Because of me," Arthur said.
"Yes, sir. Dobby remembers it very clearly, sir. Master Lucius was in a very bad mood, sir, after meeting with your uncle, sir. Your uncle was very — " Dobby searched for the word — "cold, sir. Master Lucius came home very angry, sir, and he was in such a bad mood, sir, that when Dobby made a small mistake with the evening linens, Master Lucius—" He stopped. Reconsidered. "Master Lucius said some things, sir, and then he threw a sock at Dobby's head, sir, and that was that."
"Whoa... Slow down. Malfoy... is your master."
"Yes, sir."
"So he accidentally freed you," Arthur said, "because Cassian Reeves put him in a bad mood. That's barely viable."
"Because of you, sir," Dobby said earnestly. "You were the reason Master Lucius went to speak to your uncle, sir. And your uncle was the reason Master Lucius came back so angry, sir. So in a way, sir—"
"That is the most convoluted chain of causation I have ever heard," Arthur said. "And I have two people living in my head so... stop talking."
Dobby closed his mouth.
Arthur looked at the cupcakes on the floor.
Looked at Dobby.
Looked at the assembled kitchen staff, who had arranged themselves in the careful posture of people who were technically continuing to work and were absolutely listening.
"Does anyone here," Arthur said, to the room generally, "know a Winky?"
Silence.
Not the comfortable silence of people who didn't know. The specific, loaded silence of people who knew and were deciding what to do with the knowing. Several elves found urgent reasons to look at things that weren't Arthur. Two moved fractionally closer together.
"Right," Arthur said.
He looked at Dobby.
Dobby looked back at him with the expression of someone who knew where this was going and had complicated feelings about it.
"You," Arthur said.
"Yes, sir," Dobby said, quietly.
"Take me to Winky."
---
May 28th. Evening. Hogwarts Kitchens, far corner.
Winky was behind the large flour storage, in the narrow space between two shelving units where the warmth from the ovens didn't quite reach. Someone had put a small crate there, low to the ground. She was sitting on it.
Around her feet: bottles. Small ones, sized for small hands, the Hogwarts house elf variety of butterbeer that Arthur hadn't known existed until this moment. There were enough of them to constitute a statement.
She was crying, quietly, in the persistent way of someone who had been crying for long enough that it had become ambient. Her pillowcase — she still wore a pillowcase, Arthur noted, which meant she hadn't accepted new clothes from Dumbledore, which meant something — was damp at the collar. Her eyes were enormous and red-rimmed and she stared at the floor with the focus of someone who had found something very important to look at down there.
She did not look up when Dobby stopped at the edge of the shelving unit.
Arthur looked at Dobby.
Dobby's expression said: I have brought you here and this is where my responsibility ends and also I don't like this.
Arthur looked back at Winky.
He crouched down, putting himself closer to her level, because he was not an idiot and because things that were already afraid of you didn't give you better information when you loomed.
"Winky," he said.
She startled. Looked up at him. Her eyes went wide — the reflexive alarm of a creature unused to being addressed by name by strangers — and then her face did something complicated and she looked away again.
"Winky is not speaking to strangers," she said. Her voice was thick.
"That's fine," Arthur said. "I'll speak. You can listen."
She didn't respond to this. He took it as permission.
"You worked for Bartemius Crouch," Arthur said. "Senior. For a long time. You were dismissed around the World Cup."
Winky's hands tightened in her lap. She said nothing.
"His son died in Azkaban. His wife died of grief. He dismissed you months ago. Now he's missing." He paused. "The whole family, one by one, and you're the last one who was there for any of it."
"Winky doesn't talk about Master Crouch," Winky said. Low and flat and final, in the way of things that had made a decision about this a long time ago. "Master Crouch is a good wizard. A great wizard. Winky is loyal."
"I know," Arthur said.
"Winky doesn't talk," she repeated.
He looked at her. She was still staring at the floor. Her fingers were very tight, knuckles strained, holding something invisible very hard.
She's not going to tell me anything. She would rather sit here and drink herself into the floor than say one word that felt like betrayal.
He smiled. That's fine.
The compulsion was not a spell. There was no incantation for it, no wand motion, no defined parameters in any textbook Arthur had encountered because it wasn't that kind of thing. It was closer to what he did when he listened to creatures — the same reaching-out, the same extension of something that lived behind his sternum — but inverted. Less listening. More pressure.
He had discovered it by accident, two years ago. Had not used it since. Had told no one. Not even himself.
He reached out now.
Tell me about the Crouch family.
Winky flinched. Her whole small body, like something had touched her without touching her. She looked up at him and her eyes had gone strange — still wet, still red, but beneath that something else. Awareness of a different kind.
"Winky — " she started.
Tell me what you know about Barty Junior.
She made a sound. Not quite pain. Not quite fear. Something in the intersection.
"Master Barty," she said, and her voice came out wrong — thinner, less her own. "Poor Master Barty — "
She stopped. Pressed her hands to her head. Her breathing had changed.
Don't stop. Keep talking.
"Winky doesn't — Winky shouldn't — " Her eyes were squeezed shut. "Winky is loyal, Winky is — "
The wife. She visited Azkaban. What happened when she came back?
Winky shuddered. Full body. A thin sound escaped her that Arthur's ears identified as involuntary — the kind that came before or after something hurt.
Good, said something in his chest. Keep going. You're almost through.
"Mistress came back," Winky whispered. "Not mistress. Mistress came back but — not — Winky doesn't — please — "
Not mistress. What does that mean? What did she bring back with her?
"Master Crouch was so ashamed," Winky said, not quite to him. Her voice had gone distant. "So angry. So careful. Always so careful after. Always so — "
She folded. Just — folded, suddenly, both hands pressing to her stomach, her whole body curling inward. A sound came out of her that wasn't words.
Keep talking. You're almost there. What was he careful about? What was he hiding?
"Winky can't — " Her voice was very small. "Winky can't, please, please, Winky is loyal, please — "
Stop being loyal and tell me what you know.
"Arthur!"
Auren. Quiet, for once. Not chaotic, not pushing — just: Just... look at her.
Arthur looked at her.
Winky was shaking. Fine, continuous tremors running through her, visible even from here. She had pressed herself back against the shelving unit as far as she could go, which was not very far. The tears had stopped in the specific way that happened when something else was happening that took precedence. Her face had the color of something that had gone wrong.
He looked.
Ardyn said nothing.
Arthur thought about that, in the way he thought about things he didn't want to think about, which was quickly and from the side.
He thought: at some point in the last two minutes he had stopped wondering if he should keep going and had become interested in how far she would go before she broke. Not the information. Her.
He pulled back.
The compulsion released. He felt it go — the pressure, the reach, the inverted listening — and Winky sagged like something had been removed from inside her. She stayed curled, breathing in shallow careful increments, her hands still pressed to her stomach.
The full picture was still locked. He'd gotten fragments — poor Master Barty, mistress came back but not mistress, so ashamed, so careful — but the thing behind it, the thing she was guarding, the actual truth of whatever the Crouch family had done and hidden and carried through years of careful management: that was sealed. It would stay sealed. She would die before she let it surface, and her body had understood that before her mind caught up with it, and had started making good on the promise.
Dead elves told him nothing.
He stood.
Winky didn't look at him. She reached, very slowly, for one of the butterbeer bottles. Her hand was shaking enough that she missed it on the first attempt.
Arthur watched her find it on the second.
He thought: the information is still there. She knows. The whole shape of it is in there — he'd felt it, a locked room with something moving behind the door. He just couldn't make her open it. Couldn't make her open it without killing her, which was inconvenient.
He had been almost interested. In the breaking point. Not the destination. The process.
He thought about that for a moment.
That's new. He wasn't sure when it became new. He wasn't sure if it had always been there and he had just not had occasion to notice.
He filed it. The way he filed things that didn't have an immediate category — not denial, not integration, just acknowledged, set aside, return to later, or don't.
Winky was not looking at him. She was very focused on her bottle, and the effort of the focus was visible, and Arthur had put that effort there.
He didn't apologize. She wouldn't want it and it wouldn't undo anything and the words would be for him, not her.
He turned.
Dobby was at the edge of the shelving unit, exactly where he'd left him. His enormous eyes moved from Winky to Arthur. His expression was not accusatory. It was more painful than accusatory — it was the expression of something that understood too much about what happened to small creatures when larger ones decided they wanted something.
Arthur looked at him.
"I know," Arthur said.
He didn't define what he knew. Dobby didn't ask him to.
Arthur walked out of the kitchen.
The ticklish pear painting was still on the wall when he passed it. The pear looked exactly as it always had — painted, peaceful, unaware of anything.
Arthur did not look at it.
He walked back through the castle with his hands in his pockets and the fragments Winky had given him turning over quietly in his mind — poor Master Barty, not mistress, so careful — and underneath that, quieter, the other thing.
How easy it had been.
How easy it had been, and how quickly easy had become something adjacent to interesting, and how Ardyn hadn't said anything, and what it meant that Ardyn hadn't said anything.
Living things, he thought.
And then stopped thinking it, because the end of that thought was somewhere he wasn't going to go tonight.
He walked.
The castle was mostly quiet. Dinner had been over for hours.