The Fowl Heart, Chapter 5: The Mistaken Identity

 The Mistaken Identity

    Something was hitting him in the face. He was being hit in the face and he was cold. Why was he so cold?

    Xander realized his eyes were still closed, and he very much preferred not to open them. He could remember what happened, but did not understand most of it, and the idea of making sense of it all seemed daunting and made his head hurt more than it did already. And something was still hitting him in the face!

    It didn’t exactly hurt him, but was very annoying, like an unwanted poke from a very fuzzy finger of a toddler. He tried waving away whatever was hitting him, but instead whatever it was changed tactics and scratched him!

    Xander opened his eyes to find the bright blue eyes of a white cat staring back at him. Its mouth was opening and closing but no sound seemed to accompany the action. He assumed he still could not hear anything, including this cats meowing or the windy evening. As Xander raised himself up into a sitting position, he realized he was on the fire escape of the neighboring apartments, somewhere around the fourth or fifth floor.

The cat was standing on his outstretched legs, still meowing. It seemed to not like his presence on the fire escape, constantly preparing to attack as if guarding its territory. New York cats are strange! thought Xander.

    As he stood up, a flood of pain filled his head, and his eyes blurred. He felt dizzy and shivered from the layer of snow that was falling from his chest. He must have been unconscious for some time and looked up to see there was still daylight left, and then noticed two floors above the shoulder bag was hanging by the broken strap on the edge of the fire escape.

    He quickly climbed up and retrieved the bag, inspecting the straps frayed ends where his weight was too much to hold but noticed the strap was cut on one side. Xander realized it must have been cut on the remaining shards of his shattered window when he flew out the building, only to look across and see all the windows of the seventh floor of his building were whole and unbroken!

    After trying unsuccessfully to coax the shoulder bag into floating him across the gap and realizing it would not fly again, he quickly descended the fire escape, only to find the white cat at the bottom waiting for him. Xander sprinted up the fire escape to his own apartment building, noting the cat was still following him.

    “Go away”, said Xander, not knowing if he was whispering or shouting. The cat simply meowed, seemingly irritated, but did not return to its home.

    Xander shook his head, taking a deep breath and opening his bedroom window as softly as he could, unsure if the attacker was still in his home. Upon examining his room and seeing no one present, he slipped one foot and then the other inside preparing himself for the worst. Immediately, he realized he made a mistake. A wand appeared out of nowhere, only two inches away from his face and pointing straight at him, and the person holding the wand was saying something. It was a young woman with cropped brown mousy hair, and had an expression that clearly said ‘don’t mess with me’. Xander didn’t. He dropped the shoulder bag and put his hands up in gesture of surrender and indicated his ears as he tried to say softly “I can’t hear you.”

    He apparently did not say it very softly. The woman flinched as he clearly screamed the words, and seemed to indicate something with her wand, but he didn’t understand. She pointed to her wand, and then to the pocket of the robes he was wearing where Xander noticed for the first time the handle of a wand sticking out. He stared in confusion for a moment, wondering where it had come from before understanding she wanted it. As he lifted the wand slowly and gave it to this stranger, Xander remembered – it was Gavin’s wand! That was why Gavin didn’t fight the Death Eater, because Xander was so jealous of magic and inadvertently disarmed his own magical brother from protecting himself when he put on the school robes.

    “Where’s my brother? Where’s my mother?” shouted Xander.  He didn’t care at this point if the whole building heard him, he wanted answers. Why were they attacked?  Who was this woman? Was he now an orphan, and the cause of his brother’s death?  Was his mother able to fight off the attacker after wasting precious moments magicking Xander first to safety?

    The woman didn’t seem to be paying attention. She was tapping Gavin’s wand with her own, seemingly expecting something to happen. She then pointed her wand at Xander  saying something. He felt a rush of wind and a sensation like spider legs crawling all over him from head to foot. After nodding her head, she lowered her wand and handed the other wand back to Xander, and motioned him to follow her from his room to the kitchen. What was happening?

    Upon entering, he found the home to be tidy, with all the glass fixtures, front door, and furniture repaired and in their proper place as if no attack had happened.  There was a man and another woman that he did not recognize standing by the dining room table in discussion, but his brother and mother were nowhere to be seen.

    The mousy haired woman brought Xander a cup full of some purple steaming liquid and gestured to his ears. As he was about to pour it onto his right ear, she stopped him and imitated drinking something, then pointed to his ears again. He finally understood and drank, assuming if he really was in danger, these attackers didn’t know what they were doing, and hearing would only help him. He felt pressure in his ears like diving into a deep pool, and then a soft pop – and he could hear again!

    “I’m Tonks”, said the mousy haired woman. He could hear! Tonks introduced the other two as Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle.

“We’re members of the Order of the Phoenix. Your mother works with another Order member, Arthur Weasley, and when your muggle protection charm went off, he was in the office and got the message. He was held up by something and asked us to Apparate over immediately to check on your family. We apparently were – “

“Too late,” finished Xander, bitterly. “Aren’t there Aurors that should be doing this sort of stuff, protecting us and catching the Death Eaters, and faster, too? Why did he attack us anyway?” he demanded. 

Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle seemed embarrassed while Tonks seemed equally frustrated and offended.

“I am an Auror, and you were attacked because you don’t side with You-Know-Who,” said Tonks angrily, her hair changing color as if it lit on fire from brown to bright red, “and the reason why the Ministry didn’t send Aurors on duty is because they’re all busy already responding to other attacks that happened before yours. We admit we were surprised your family would be attacked so far away from the Daily Prophet’s usual reporting border, but that doesn’t seem to matter to You-Know-Who.”

Xander felt bad about losing his patience, muttering ‘sorry’, only to see Tonks regain her own composure as she asked Xander to describe the attacker and Dedalus Diggle took notes.

“Doesn’t sound like anyone we know,” said Tonks, “but there are plenty of wizards to choose from, especially if he was under the Imperius Curse, which he might have been considering the twitching.”

“Uh, excuse me, um, Tonks,” started Xander sheepishly, still embarrassed for his outburst earlier, “do you know what happened to my mum and brother? What happened here?”

“Well,” said Tonks, “best we could tell from your hearing loss, the attacker used the Mandagora Curse, which is like hearing a baby Mandrake plant, only more destructive and disorienting than faint-worthy, but usually bursts the eardrums. That potion is one of many Hestia happens to carry with her.”

“Home remedy,” said Hestia proudly, beaming with a wide smile.

“Thank you,” said Xander, nodding his head, “worked like a charm.”

“Oh, not a charm, a potion,” said Hestia, who seemed eager to explain the full recipe or differences between this potion and charms that may heal parts of the ear, but was cut off by Tonks.

“Your brother was cursed, but not dead,” Tonks said. “Even so, we sent him by Portkey to Saint Mungos for the trained Healers to help him, because I couldn’t be sure which curse was inflicted on him. As for your mother…” Tonks looked at the other two, and then looked back at Xander. “Well, she wasn’t here when we arrived. We have no idea where she is. To be honest, we thought you both were taken to be held for ransom of some sort, but now we’re not so sure. They usually take Squibs because they’re easier to control.”

Xander was confused and didn’t know what a ‘squib’ was, but seemed to not realize what kind of expression he was making, because Tonks apologized for using that kind of term. 

“All I mean is it’s easier for Death Eaters to hold non-magical persons for ransom because they can’t fight back with a wand,” she said offhandedly. So that’s what she meant. The attacker probably would’ve wanted Xander as insurance and ransom to get money or power, and with Xander’s mother working for the Ministry collecting illegal and potentially powerful dark objects, their family would be the prime one to attack. Why hadn’t anyone thought of this before and put better protections on their home?! Why did his mother ever have to accept that promotion?

Tonks seemed to be moving to action. “Well,” she said, “best to get you out of here for the time being, keep you safe. The Portkey is set to go back to your brother at Saint Mungos in about a minute, I suggest we all go see how Xander is doing, and then we can make arrangements to keep you both safe until we can figure out where your mum is. Sound alright, Gavin?”

Xander was again confused. Did she just call him Gavin? How did she even know their names?

“Don’t worry. Arthur told me your names before we left, he’s your mum’s boss. He’s the one that let me know about your brother being non-magical, but any muggle hospital wouldn’t know what to do about the curse.”

Xander nodded. So Tonks knew their names, but seemed to mix up the two of them, which made more sense the more he thought about it. He was wearing Hogwarts school robes, had Gavin’s wand which she must have identified earlier as his, and Gavin was unconscious of sorts in muggle clothes when they found him.

Not caring to correct anyone, Xander simply agreed to the idea and grabbed his mother’s shoulder bag. Dedalus Diggle repaired the shoulder strap, and Tonks, Jones and Diggle circled around the dining room table. On the table was a small lumpy item the size of a plum. It was his hackysack.

The three of them placed a finger on the hackysack, and Xander simply did the same thing, unsure if this would work with his inability to perform real magic. However, once Hestia counted ‘one, two, three’, there was a strange sensation, like a hook being jerked right behind Xander’s naval and his feet were lifted from the floor. His finger seemed magnetically stuck to his hackysack, and he was flying next to the others through a whirlwind of sound and color.