October, 1970

Autumn rain filled a bleak evening in Diagon Alley. The narrow winding streets were quiet, sparse of people. The shops had closed by this hour. Her booted footsteps hurried on cobblestones towards the Leaky Cauldron, splashing puddles onto the hem of her waterproof robes. Hunched under the black hood, warm and dry, Clare passed by Quality Quidditch Supplies with a glimpse at the display window. Black and white memorabilia overspread the shopfront: Montrose Magpies’ players zoomed through sequential posters, smiled on teapots, and had their names painted on toy broomsticks. There were hats with beaks that would open and emit loud squawks, which were floating atop scarfs coiled around sweaters. Plastered on the window, by the locked entrance, was a Daily Prophet front-page that caught her eye.


It was dated today with a centrepiece photograph of a slight young man kneeling in front of a terrace house and bawling into his hands. Sobs wrecked his frame. Several Ministry officials stood awkwardly in the background in the midst of Muggle residences. Clare thought the scene looked familiar and was a strange visual to use for a resignation. She remembered it had been captured on the night of the murder and printed the day after on the newspaper a few months ago, albeit the two photographs had been from different angles. It wasn’t the first time the rapacious editorial had chosen to exploit a man’s devastation for gain when there would be less provocative images suitable for use.

The street light behind her barely illuminated the words as she read:








The page pinned beside further analysed the Quidditch League.

Clare walked away, indignation roused however much it was no surprise to her that Muggle troubles were dismissed even when they hit close to home. The paper’s sentiments reflected those of the wizarding population at large, including the Minister. Lip service had been paid to the Commissioner to settle the issue; in truth, which was no secret, he and related witnesses had been duly handled by the Muggle Liaison Office. It had been business as usual to uphold the International Statute of Secrecy. They had been charmed to forget the central detail of the Boyd case that differed from the other six bloody killings: the unknown, perplexing cause of death - without a trace of poison or injury.

Few Aurors in the Office suspected the Killing Curse, herself and Leopold Remmart counted among them. Most were either too busy to investigate or believed the official stance from higher-ups for convenience. The interdepartmental memo flown in had implied accidental casualties: perhaps, as history had shown, the deaths had been an unfortunate result of burglary. Boyd’s family had been relegated a priority below catching the Dark wizard who sold Blistermouth potion. The injustice of it all spurred Clare on. Her mentor Leopold might have procured useful information for their meeting at the Leaky Cauldron.

A short distance ahead, Clare noticed the distinguishable silhouette of Allan Ploward, who always wore a bulky cross-body satchel, filled with rare and exotic herbs for trade, and slung over his shoulder a long hessian bag for pelts. He rounded into a side alley. Seconds later, a slender cloaked figure ducked in, too, and disappeared from view. Clare knew Mr Ploward to be a kindly man and concerned for his safety, followed them.

Ainsley Jayne-Grey MacAlistar had never taken to the half-blood players on her Quidditch team, let alone anyone who was lesser, and by lesser it was obvious she meant muggleborns. Uphold the honor that was pure-blood wizardry. Being the youngest of the family and the only female, Ainsley had always been compared to the magnificent intellect of Anthony, her eldest brother who worked with their father in the Wizengamot, the charm of Arlington who now found himself in the Ministry working in the Department of Magical Transportation, and the friendly nature that Adrian had, who works in the Department of Magical Catastrophes. Of course, Ainsley had none of these qualities, at least she never saw them in herself. All of her life she wanted to be a professional quidditch player, a chaser for the Pride of Portree to be specific and she was finally living her dream – being a nightmare on the pitch to everyone else. It was clear, Ainsley had all the skill it took to be such a great player, but deep down that’s all she thought about herself, she was nothing but a quidditch player.

Pulling her hood up and framing her face, Ainsley slipped down an alleyway after a man with a cross-body satchel, what she needed to obtain had nothing to do with him, but certainly, the apothecary down the block was her intended target. Tucking her wand into her cloak, Ainsley kept her eyes down at the ground not wanting to draw attention to herself, she got enough of that if she went out in public – children wanting autographs, people asking for pictures, occasionally she would get harassed by some old hag who shouted she should have been locked up in Azkaban for her actions in school. Surely, she had a temper, it was true but it was mal-aimed curse, and it was not intentional, the Ministry proved that, and that’s why she was sentenced to house arrest for a while. The thought caused the blonde-haired woman to shake her head, trying to banish the intrusive thought from her mind.

The echo of her footsteps off the damp cobblestone, caused Ainsley to pull the hood around her head a bit tighter. This man in front of her was walking incredibly slow and she had somewhere she needed to be and soon. In an attempt to dodge around him, Ainsley turned sideways and pressed herself against the wall but her sleeve caught on the strap of Ploward’s bag and prevented her from moving in front of him. “Pardon me,” she said softly as she tried to remove her sleeve from the strap, “in a bit of a hurry.” The woman explained, trying to be sympathetic to the cause that she caught herself in, probably giving the man such a fright as he may have thought he was being robbed.

Finally, after a bit of frustration, Ainsley lifted her head and made eye contact with the man, she blinked once, then once again but didn’t bother to say much of anything else, except she turned on her heel and walked briskly ahead of Ploward and into the nearest apothecary shop. The woman behind the counter smiled kindly at her, “It’s all here, had Jimson make it up last night for you.” The dark haired woman stated and pushed a small wooden box towards Ainsley, who took it in both hands.

“Thank you.” Were the only two words Ainsley managed to say before glancing over her shoulder to see Ploward just coming into view from the long corridor and someone else behind him, someone Ainsley had not noticed was behind her. Knowing she hadn’t done anything wrong, Ainsley tucked the box under her arm, as if it were a quaffle and left the apothecary heading back the way she had just come.

The thief followed Ploward and quickly caught up to the ambling man, squeezing between his bulk and the brick wall to create an opportunity to pickpocket in the momentary scuffle. Hurrying over, Clare drew her wand and cast “Locomotor Mortis!” at the back of him scurrying away when Ploward unwittingly stepped into the fray. Struck by the purple light, his legs bound together, shocking him, he fell like a log onto the wet cobblestones.

“Dammit!” she swore under her breath. The thief escaped. Ploward sputtered yells into the puddle.

Clare turned him over - “I’m gonna getchu! You’re going to pay for this!” - whose eyes widened in surprise at the sight of her, a long-time family friend; his nose was smashed crooked and bleeding. “I’m sorry Mr Ploward, I’m so sorry!” she apologised, feeling genuinely guilty for the accident. “I was aiming at the thief! Now hold still.” She pointed her wand at the injury. “Episkey.” The bridge mended itself straight to leave only the dark red blood dribbling from a nostril down his lips and chin. Clare reversed the curse on him: his legs unstuck themselves and he immediately struggled to get up away from her with his bags.

“What are you talking about, Clare?!” Ploward hissed after he had wiped off the stain on his face. “There was no thief!”

“I saw him steal from you when he passed you by!”

“Do you mean Miss MacAlistar?” he asked with sudden realisation. “She is a star, why would she want dirty old herbs and skins?” Ploward opened his satchel and checked it over. “They’re all here.”

“MacAlistar?” Clare repeated the familiar sounding name.

“The Prides’ Chaser, that’s who!” Ploward was beaming and swept away in the excitement, he carried on rhetorically, “I’m going to ask her for an autograph. It isn’t too much, is it? I won’t take up too much of her time, wouldn’t want to bother her. Just a quick scribble will do.” He absentmindedly fingered his scarf coloured in the Prides’ royal purple. It had been carefully tucked away from the rain.

“Mr Ploward,” Clare said hesitatingly with a touch on his forearm, worried if the fall had knocked his wits out. “Are you sure it’s Ainsley MacAlistar?”

“Of course I am!” he insisted with utmost certainty. “She looked at me dead in the eyes!”

Clare absorbed the revelation that it had been her own misunderstanding with some small measure of relief. It was pure luck that she had done no lasting harm to a friend and had missed a curse at the popular quidditch player. Clare wondered aloud, “What is she doing out here this late?”

“Off to see Betty - good ol’ Betty, gotta get her a bunch of pink wineberry for this. She sent me an owl to tell me that she’s picking up supplies tonight.”

“Supplies?”

“Well,” he moved in closer to say in a lower voice, “Betty wouldn’t tell me what she’s buying, apothecarist confidentiality and all, but MacAlistar comes by regularly just after the shop closes. I suppose it’s hard to get around being a famous Chaser. So I thought to myself, why don’t I bump into her? And I did! But flobberworms! Lost my bloody tongue right when I needed it.”

The quick light footsteps returned. Clare and Ploward turned to see Ainsley MacAlistar carry a box under her arm, head down and hooded to keep her privacy. Clare had never known Ainsley to be the friendly sort and now didn’t seem like a good time for Ploward to ask a favour from her. The cliquish ex-Slytherin, as most of her House were wont to stick to their own haughty, dark kind, was flagrantly contemptuous of non-pure-bloods; the likes of Ploward, a squib, weren’t taken kindly to either. While Clare didn’t think Ainsley would offend them with more than a few choice words, she readied her wand hidden beneath her sleeve for defensive spells should the notoriously ill-tempered witch decide to send one of them to St Mungo’s. Clare never forgot the dazed, drooling boy and his mother crying at his bedside.

Ploward went to meet Ainsley, shy like a schoolboy and holding the end of his scarf, now exposed and trailed on his chest. “Good evening, Miss MacAlistar,” he greeted, sounding uncharacteristically formal and polite. “I’m terribly sorry about before, bit clumsy I was there. If it isn’t too much to ask of you after that….” He held out the scarf getting rained upon. “It would mean so much to me and mine.”

It had been more than a decade since they had last met in person, but Clare thought it would be best to assume Ainsley remembered her from their quidditch days in Hogwarts. After all, they had been frequently neck-and-neck in the air, quaffle in hand, and Ainsley would elbow hard into her ribs and face or try an unscrupulous curse. More than once Clare had gone home bruised in tender areas, usually after a visit to the hospital wing, and ranted to whomever would listen about the foul, incorrigible Ainsley who, as the darling of the Slytherin Head-of-House, had been penalised far less than what should have had been fair. And from what sports journalism reported, age didn’t mature the hard-nosed Chaser whose nasty underhandedness had been normalised as her insignia, much to Clare’s disdain.

Putting aside the deep-rooted grudge, Clare said simply with a courteous smile, “Hello.” She didn’t expect a decent response from the snobbish MacAlistar whether to herself or Ploward.