Boxes

The boxes are endless. He has no idea when they arrived but now the whole living room is buried under the hills, towers and castles of those boxes. It gets worse upstairs where faded wallpapers can’t even be seen behind the columns of boxes. Boxes are everywhere. Boxes won. It wasn’t until the beginning of September when they started arriving, or so he thinks now, looking at all the work that lies ahead. It’s difficult to keep track of time since the fateful battle between two boys scared to shit, one of which just happened to be in his seventies or something. “I’m too old for this shit,” he says out loud, and is not surprised to receive no answer whatsoever. “I’m not doing it. Let them rot.” He decides to leave the boxes till winter, and then, maybe, send them back with the Christmas mail. Back to the sender. “Have a great Christmas, Minerva. PS: Take these bloody boxes back, I don’t need them.” That is a greeting card he’s contemplating until it’s already too late. It’s really amazing how one person can have so much stuff. The boxes seem to keep arriving when he’s not watching. It’s only after he trips over one of the sneaky bastards on the stairs that he understands it’s the time. “I will burn you all, feckers,” he says out loud and decides to start with the lair of evil. He pushes the door that still has a very old-fashioned wooden sign on it with carved ivy leaves that used to be golden and green, forming the name. Albus. Aberforth walks into his brother’s bedroom, and is surprised to see how little had changed. The four-poster bed still has the dark-blue cloth over it covered with charmed stars and galaxies. The magic has faded a little but it’s still there. And there’s no one to watch, and no one to judge, so Aberfoth takes his time, even though it feels stupid. He gets into his brother’s bed and watches the stars shining over his head. At night those stars are still gleaming, he thinks. Just like many years ago. The bed doesn’t smell of Albus. “Oh, you must be shitting me!” Some boxes are filled with clothes. The cloaks, and ropes, and costumes are neatly folded as if somebody is actually going to put them on. The lilac, the purple, the deep maroon… the sapphire blue, the indigo, the emerald… “You must have had a bloody fashion show for every new school year, you, old twat!” Aberforth picks up the most horrendous which he can so far see from the box, and this one is actually maroon and trimmed with gold. “A freaking parrot, aren’t we… I only hope you used to stick a feather or two up your bony ass to go with this one!” Aberforth checks the inner pockets and finds a dried up piece of a sherbet lemon in a candy wrapper. “I hate you so much right now, you’re lucky you’re dead,” Aberforth says aloud to the empty room and sticks the candy in his mouth. It doesn’t taste good. It tastes salty. Dusty old robes make his eyes watery. When the boxes with clothes are done, he starts working on the books that Albus decided against donating to the Hogwarts’ library. Most of those books are not to be read by anyone meaning good. It’s a mistake they all used to make. A mistake of assuming that saint Albus would never touch anything connected with Dark Magic. He was an eager reader, Albus, always with a book, and he was deeply enamoured with knowledge. “Dark Arts for you are firstly arts, and only then they are dark,” Aberforth knows that he’s talking aloud but he doesn’t care. There’s no one in their family house but him, and it’s not like Albus can argue back. Finally. He had stopped blabbing for good. And now it’s Aberforth’s turn to speak up his mind. “A decent human being wouldn’t even touch this shit. Not with a five-yard stick he won’t…” he looks at the large book that reeks of evil and doesn’t touch it. “But that’s you, Al. You have never been a decent human being in your fecking life.” It is not true but it’s good to say. “What am I to do with that? I bet I won’t even be able to destroy half of them… what a fecker you are, Al, you know that, right? Now you’re dead and have no worries in the world. Left me to clean your shit up… typical.” There are books, there are notebooks, and there are letters. That old sentimental fool kept all of the letters Aberforth had written to him. They are neatly gathered and tied with ribbons. Some of them look as if they had been read over and over… Aberforth doesn’t know what to do with them. There’re letters from Grindelwald as well. Few of them, actually. They are all very old, and they burn quickly and well in the fireplace. Aberforth watches them burn with grim satisfaction, and that feels right. There are boxes with strange instruments and mechanisms, some of them come with notes and instructions written by Albus. He must have invented some of them, and Aberforth is so very much not interested that he just puts those boxes away to the attic. He makes a mental note to write about all of them in ten years to that Potter boy who his older brother had destined to become a hero. The Potter boy is a good lad, a smart one as well, but there’s no reason to bother him straight away. He has a whole life to finally start living, and it’s no joke to do that after you lost someone. He’ll come around by himself eventually. Because Albus never lets go of anyone. “I fecking hate you,” Aberforth sighs and goes to sleep in his dead brother’s room. Again. “How are you coping, Aberforth?” “Not bad, the business is running again.” Aberforth smiles when he sees Minerva’s lips become even thinner, narrower. She was his friend, all right. Maybe, she was the only real friend Albus had, and she surely is mourning his death much more than he does. “How’s Hogwarts?” “Not bad either.” They have nothing to talk about, so he just pours her a drink. “You can visit the house, you know,” he finally says. “If you want to, of course. The books might…” “I don’t.” “… interest you. Oh.” She leaves the Hogs Head very soon. “You never let anyone go, do you,” Aberforth thinks. And returns back home. He sleeps in his older brother’s bed every night now. He watches the stars dancing on the dark-blue velvet of the canopy, the meteor showers swiftly lurking over it, and now he can actually smell the roses when he closes his eyes. “I hate you so much, Albus,” his eyes are watering again, that’s the dust from the canopy for you. “Why do you never let go…”