There was no rush to make it back to the tent Pandora could only call home when it was filled with Xenophilius’ warmth. Life had seemed to lose all urgency, in a place like Godric’s Hollow time had no meaning. She set a meandering pace for the short walk back through the village, the faded brick of the town glowing like fools gold in the sunrise. A rusted key flittered through the air just above her head and Pandora reached out to it. It flew from her grasp and seemed to blink out of existence. Pandora had been unsuccessful in her attempts to capture one of these curious objects, desperate to unlock whatever secrets they kept hidden.
“Xenophilius is…” Pandora paused, twisting her fingers, brow furrowing as she searched for a concise answer. Xenophilius was struggling in Godric’s Hollow, the quiet of the town seemed to amplify the voices in their head. But Xenophilius was brilliant, always so brilliant. “Struggling.” Pandora began. “We all are, but this curse, this affliction - it isn’t getting better. There isn’t a lot we can do until we figure out what the curse was in the first place, we’ve looked everywhere.” Pandora sighed in frustration.
She didn’t often talk in great detail to others about what was happening in her husband’s mind. But Alice was someone Pandora loved and trusted deeply. Pandora spent so much energy trying to Heal Xenophilius, to keep him safe and sane it was easy to forget herself. “These voices, they tell him what to do. It terrifies me at times Alice.” Pandora admitted. “This is very dark magic and I just feel…hopeless.”
A shiver coursed through Pandora’s body, prickling the hair at the back of her neck. “We will get there though. I know we will.” Her hands didn’t betray her uncertainty the way voices could. “And as I said, the things he has managed to grow in our garden are just incredible… Look at this.” They had finally reached the Lovegood tent, Pandora set her basket down and led Alice towards the garden. Vibrant colours, the scent of life almost overwhelming. “Please, make yourself at home here Alice. Help yourself to plants, sow anything you can. This garden is for you, too.” There were signs Xenophilius had been in the garden already this morning, a forgotten glove, a slip of paper, a quill. Pandora picked these up and tucked them into a pocket. She waved both hands towards the tent, flourishing her wand to get the kettle boiling once more.
She watches Pandora as she stretches her limb up towards the rotted keys; she looks vacantly on as her fingers seem to glide through the things, like phantoms, like ghosts. In its most essential sense, that was Godric’s Hollow; tangible, she supposed, but a little clandestine. Everything always seemed a little beyond, a little outwith the stretch. Secrets remained secrets; they remained arcane. Reclusive and friendless, but too frightened by the witch’s touch. Life certainly persisted, though the village had an insubstantial quality; as if several days passed in a night’s sleep, or anything you touched was an illusion and none of it had even truly been there.
Credulously, she signs: “Yes, I believe that.” Of all those in hiding, Alice could say with absolute certainty that Pandora would be amongst the last to relinquish her intransigence. The woman did not give up—particularly not her husband. Rather, Alice could not doubt for a moment that the oils from both their fingers had daubed over more pages of parchment than she herself had even read. Her hands were certainly not idle. “I wish I could help somehow. But, between us, I think we have read more books than the world has seen people,” she signs whimsically, her smile grave, seceding to mouth the words she cannot sign.
Alice allowed Pandora to guide her through the town. It appeared to softly pass her by, the houses metamorphosing into an obscured blur, the gravel beneath her feet crunching inaudibly as they moved. Rehashed by Pandora’s stillness, Alice allows herself a moment to re-assimilate; the Lovegoods’ home, where, somehow, flowers still grow. Even without its ceremonial four walls, it felt to Alice more a home than that untenanted place, those cold rooms, Frank sheltered bearishly within them. Rather, she enjoyed it here, where she could sit reticently, warming a mug of tea in her hands, hefted from the pressure to speak, to disclose, to admit others into a sea of thoughts she herself continued to fail to grasp.
“It’s lovely,” Alice signs, reaching out to touch its petals diplomatically, always mesmerised by the beauty that Pandora surrounded herself with. It was a manner in which they slightly diverged; though she appreciated all plants, all life, Alice would be drawn to the barbs, the thorns, the poison roots indelibly. Dangerous as dusk, shying away from the light—but beautiful nonetheless. Siphoning the seeds from manifold plants, she turns to her friend, beckoning towards the plethora. “How many of these are indigenous?”
