Chapter Text
The short, sharp scrape of wood against stone snapped him from his thoughts. Sparing a glance down at the nearly-broken leg on the chair he was sitting on, Argus Filch snorted and returned his gaze to the corpse lying in the center of the room.
The body lay there like hardened wax, placed on a cobbled pyre surrounded by the noxiously sweet smells of incense potions. Pulled and stretched over the body, the lavender fabric of the dead man’s robes clung to his frame in harsh rivulets of silver lace. Cloves, cinnamon, and fennel burned in the low candle light clouding the stale room as the sole, living, inhabitant glowered at the pile of stone, brick, and herb that composed the temporary resting place of Albus Dumbledore.
“You’re a fool,” the caretaker gruffed toward the pyre, “always were a fool.”
Kneading his sore right knee with bony, calloused hands- Filch scowled into the darkness.
“All the power in the world and here you are, laying on a pile of rocks,” he growled as he hoisted his body from the broken chair with the aid of his push broom.
Stretching his right leg out for the familiar snaps and pops, he never took his eyes off Dumbledore’s body. Slowly, he shuffled towards the pyre taking his time inspecting his old employer. As he reached the body, he lowered his head and cast an inquisitive eye- examining all the small details one usually misses when looking at the living. A slight glimmer of light on precious gems caught his eye as his gaze was drawn to the obscenely decorative Dumbledore Family ring. The rubies and amethyst spilled across the gold band with the kind of delicate thread work alerting to exhausted workmanship long abandoned.
He’d seen that ring for the first time many decades ago as he was brought to the front of the shop he worked at in Diagon Alley to be praised for his handiwork with a brush and paint.
“Argus, someone’s here for your painting.”
“Then sell it.”
“He wants to meet you.”
“Tell him I’m out.”
“You’ll want to meet this one, I promise.”
“I doubt it.”
“It’s Albus Dumbledore.”
“Not interested.”
“Argus, he's a war hero.”
“Fine."
Wiping his hands on the dirty bit of cloth by his easel, Filch stood and shook out his right leg before walking to the front of the store where he was nearly blinded by a tall man wearing the brightest yellow and fuchsia robes he’d ever seen. Actually, the only yellow and fuchsia robes he’d ever seen. Rumor had it that Dumbledore had an unusual taste in fashion, but he couldn’t understand why the most famous wizard in the world was standing in a tiny, Squib-owned restoration shop.
“Ah, you must be Argus Filch,” said the tall man- his face pulled up in a wide smile causing his half-moon glasses to slide down his crooked nose, “I’m Albus Dumbledore,” he said cheerily as he stuck out his hand.
“Mmhmm…” replied Filch looking the man up and down with unmasked disgust, his hands glued to his hips- though Dumbledore didn’t seem phased by his lack of civility.
“I was rather taken with the painting of the garden party with the unicorns and gnomes displayed in the window there,” he gestured towards the front where his hand caught a beam of sunlight sending a shock of light right into Filch’s eyes.
He didn’t hear anything else the man said as his eyes found the culprit… a large, golden ring bathed in rubies and amethyst sat perched above the snow capped peak of the old man’s knuckle. Typical wizards… hoarding all the power and all the wealth just to wear something so wretchedly distasteful.
“Anyway, I find myself quite lacking any interesting pieces- and the restorative work on this 17th century Baumhuemmel is so impressive I had to meet the person responsible.”
Argus wore his snarl as his eyes followed that bulbous monstrosity moving back and forth and up and down as the old man gesticulated around the room.
“You should have left me there to rot,” he callously said to the lifeless body. The small door made of wood and iron slowly creaked open sending a small breeze into the windowless room. Argus looked up to see the tall, pointed figure of Minerva McGonagall standing in the doorway.
“Argus,” she said quietly as she looked toward him, her wire glasses illuminated in the candlelight.
“Headmistress,” he replied sullenly, noticing the way her new title washed over her like cold water. Before she could respond, the hunchback quickly shambled past her into the empty corridor in long, uneven strides- refusing to look back.
As he rounded the corridor, a light vibrating came from the front left pocket of his tattered brown waistcoat. Reaching in, he pulled out a small metal compass the size of a pocket watch- battered and dull with use, he twisted the small dial on the top and watched as the slim, red arrow whirled around to point in the direction of his beloved cat, Mrs. Norris. Based on the principles of a Sneakoscope, this clever device alerted him to when Mrs. Norris felt threatened—thanks to a handy attachment fastened to her collar- which normally happened when she encountered students. He wasn’t sure entirely how it worked, the witch who made the charmed device explained something about heart rates at such lengths that Filch plopped down the galleon owed and spun around on the spot feeling insulted at not understanding a word of it.
Looking at the compass, he saw Mrs. Norris was in the dungeons close to the Slytherin common room. Normally, he would have jumped at the alert and used the Caretaker’s passageways to quickly catch the unsuspecting students off guard, but something stopped him. It’s like his whole body was paused staring at the small, red arrow… he was unable to move, unable to think- a thick fog rested in his head numbing his mind, coating his limbs in rust. He felt a hopelessness, a pointlessness like he’d never felt before. Placing the compass back into his waistcoat pocket, Filch stood in the middle of the corridor like a statue- staring at nothing, feeling nothing until the sound of a slamming door brought him out of his trance. Uncaring as to where the noise came from, he dragged his feet to the opposite wall, pulling back a tapestry of Gaspard the Ghoul to reveal a small rune which looked like an upside down tree on the smooth surface of stone. His gnarled hands brushed the symbol exposing a dark, winding passageway.
Limping down the narrow staircases of the old Caretaker’s passageways, Argus remembered when Dumbledore gave him a tour of these long-abandoned sections of the castle. They were once used by servants and caretakers centuries before the House Elves were bound to the school, back when Squibs were in charge of maintaining the castle, heading every beck and call of the wizards and witches who had employed them. Using a rather ingenious combination of transfiguration and charms, the staircases and corridors behind the walls of Hogwarts shifted and moved to allow quick passage from one end of the castle to the other in mere seconds- a useful tool when catching students and others unawares. In the nearly 30 years Filch had been at Hogwarts, he’d seen and learned more of the hidden features of the school than any student or professor, save Dumbledore… but even then, Filch wondered if he knew even more than the old Headmaster.
Arriving on the ground floor, Filch pushed past the portrait of a withered stone mason revealing the staircase to the West Towers. Descending the stairs he took a sharp right approaching the worn, wooden door to his office covered in crude names and messages clumsily painted by Peeves. Where he normally would have cursed the poltergeist’s name and ran off to find him, Filch simply pulled out his iron key, unlocked the door, and went inside with unseeing eyes, clicking the door shut behind him. The small, windowless room was given to him more out of formality than necessity. A single oil lamp hung from the ceiling slightly swaying from a draft, tall wooden filing cabinets lined the walls leading to a shabby pine desk stained with ink and covered with molded copies of The Daily Prophet and yesterday’s abandoned fish stew.
Sitting in his moth-eaten chair behind the desk, Filch raised his eyes to see Mrs. Norris staring at him from the topmost filing cabinet. Her large, amber eyes looked at him with questions and malfeasance for his lack of coming to her aid.
“I’m sorry girl,” he croaked out as he lowered his head, “how about I make it up to you, eh?” he tapped the wooden bowl of half-eaten fish stew. Mrs. Norris would have raised an eyebrow if she had the ability, but she simply stared at her companion before turning her back to him and casually licking her paws. Filch leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes with a long sigh. He didn’t know what had come over him in the upstairs corridor, it was a kind of foreign feeling of inactivity he’d never experienced before and it still lingered in his mind. The dense fog curled and muddled his thoughts, dampening his limbs so they felt stiff and heavier than normal. The fires of injustice he’d stoked for years seemed reduced to embers, the bitterness toward both man and wizardkind that normally simmered in his stomach like boiling bile felt like cold, thick sludge.
His mind mulled over everything that had happened in the last couple days… Hogwarts being overrun by Death Eaters, Snape killing Dumbledore, the second wizarding war truly beginning- the fact is, he simply did not care. Where there should have been some sort of emotion or opinion… anything, there was nothing. A great, bleak expanse of nothingness. He knew he should feel some sort of outrage at the defilement of the school, but he didn’t. He knew he should be in mourning for Dumbledore, but he felt nothing. What was the point?
The faint sound of metal clanked as he heard Mrs. Norris’s tail brush the manacles hanging on the walls as she jumped off the cabinets down onto the desk. He gingerly combed her fur with his fingers as she curled up to lick the cold fish stew. Everything’s gone topsy turvy lately… not like when Umbridge ran the place. She reminded him of a lieutenant he’d had in the army- strict, no nonsense yet compelled one to perform to one’s best. There were no flagrant displays of magic from 11 year olds whose only purpose was to irritate and destroy giving little regard for others. No boastful Gryffindors, snobby Ravenclaws, holier-than-thou Hufflepuffs, or arrogant Slytherins strutting about the castle, putting on airs as if to tell him “we are better than you.” Umbridge saw an end to all that and even more- held him in a position of esteem. She had assured him that the Ministry’s current stance on Squibs was not like the cruel policies of the late 1960’s, in fact- they were preparing to overhaul the entire government with new edicts that would eventually create more equality. She said that the magical world needed to be fixed starting from the majority population (that is, witches and wizards) and once that was sorted, the rest would simply trickle down to the more minor populations. A ministry where everyone had a purpose and a place, where every strength and weakness would be closely evaluated so that jobs could be assigned based on availability and eligibility- a ministry that would thrive as much on the sweat of one’s brow as much as magical prowess. He didn’t have a mind for politics, either wizarding or muggle- but he prized action and momentum, so he swallowed Umbridge’s sugared words and as a reward, placed in a position of power where he was acknowledged for his skillset and utilized it accordingly.
Then Umbridge was gone and everyone expected everything to return to how they’d been before. Whatever proclamations hadn’t been blasted off the walls by the Weasley Twins had been removed overnight by the elves, her office wiped clean, all rules she’d put in place tossed to the wind. Filch wasn’t tossed aside because that would entail that he was noticed in the first place. No, he was forgotten. The entire summer and the following year, Dumbledore spent the majority of his time either traveling outside the castle or holed up in his office not to be disturbed. The few times Filch tried to approach him with his grievances, the Headmaster would simply nod and state that they would speak later. A sort of emptiness began to form in him taking the shape of a small hole in his stomach that steadily grew until it consumed him as he walked away from Dumbledore’s lifeless body. The hundreds of portraits in the castle were in fine shape thanks to the heavy concentration of magic in the school keeping them well preserved, the house elves did all the cleaning and maintenance… what purpose did he have? He felt a type of gnawing he hadn’t felt in 73 years when he didn’t receive his Hogwarts letter. Memories buried long ago dredged up into his mind… the cold anger in his parents’ eyes as his 11th birthday came and went, the indifference with which they’d ejected him from their lives.
He sat stroking Mrs. Norris like she was an anchor to this world, but it did little to quell the meaningless he felt in his bones as he sat in his moth-eaten chair in his windowless room, behind his vandalized wooden door, in a stale castle, surrounded by a harsh landscape run by a cruel government while the muggle’s God laughed from his crystal palace in the sky… and magic stood by and watched it all happen.