Chapter 5: 5
Severus stayed with Calista until she fell asleep. He held onto the little piece of her mind that he had taken into his, used it as a bridge into her psyche, so that he could maintain the barrier he had placed between her normal, waking mind, and the horrors that lurked just beneath the surface, haunting her.
It was taxing, draining, to keep such a barrier erected in the mind of another person. It wasn't as simple as expending a set amount of energy to build the barrier and then simply leaving it in place, but it required a constant influx of effort to maintain.
Like an infection, it was a foreign substance, one that the host wanted to be rid. The next layer of her mind, the one that he was trying to block out, was pushing to get back in, seeping around the edges of the shield he'd erected. He had to keep adjusting it, feeding it, to keep it intact.
If he had been less certain of her skills, he never would have attempted it; if he hadn't been able to maintain it at a precise strength, the weight of her memories could have crushed it, and there was no telling what would happen if they all rushed in and bombarded her at once.
There was a reason why every book on the subject of legilimency carried strong cautions about trying to alter things in someone else's mind; Modifying someone's memory was always tricky at best, and in a case where a legilimens was manipulating the way the mind naturally operated, there was a high risk.
It was a very temporary measure, just to give her a chance to rest, to sleep, without the burden of those dark memories. While she slept, he had some hours to try and determine what to do now that he knew the depth of trauma that she had experienced. Where would they go from here? It didn't seem as though things could continue in their old way, with her a silent shadow of a child, and he merely trying to appease the consequences of what Bellatrix had done.
Now that he could see the complete picture, the timeline that had led Calista to this point, he understood that she was in a kind of suspended animation; unable to go forward with such a heavy burden weighing her down, yet unable to go back and change what had happened, she simply blockaded herself away behind a blank expression, hoping only to survive each day.
She couldn't go back, change what had been, but perhaps Severus could change what she remembered of it. It was his first instinct, when he emerged from the depths of her mind. He wanted to reach back into her mind, pull out all of her painful, frightening memories, and let her start fresh, without their burden.
Once Calista was asleep, Severus went down to his workroom to consider it further. He found it easier to think when he was surrounded by his familiar rows and rows of jars, bottles, and vials. They were arranged, always, in perfect order, and somehow, that made it easier to organise his thoughts as well.
He considered the landscape of Calista's mind carefully. It wasn't the same as an adult's mind; it was not as multi-layered, not as compartmentalised. Part of that was her age; her mind wasn't fully developed, so its system of organisation wasn't as sophisticated yet as an adult's. Part of it, too, and part of the problem he considered now, was that, as her mind was still forming, it was being shaped by her memories.
Not only would it be a highly nuanced and complex process to attempt to remove an individual memory which might branch off into a thousand other memories, might be embedded in several areas of her mind at once, but her mind had literally grown around some of those memories; to remove them could possibly change who she was.
It was possible that removing the memories could simply allow her to be the child she would have been all along, had she been raised in a loving, safe home, but it was equally probable that removing such a critical volume of memories would leave so many holes in her mind that it would be permanently damaged.
This wasn't to say that modifying her memory would be impossible; only that it would be very, very difficult, and require a great deal of care. Still, he couldn't even consider such a thing until he had really analysed the contents of her mind, until he truly understood the ways in which all of her varied puzzle pieces fit together. That way, he could ensure that, if he removed certain memories, he could make the rest of her mind fit together correctly, leave her with a picture that still at least appeared complete. The mind generally knew when it had been tricked, and it could sometimes refuse to cooperate.
If only Severus had known her at the time that her mutilation at the hands of Bellatrix had occurred - firstly, he could have prevented it, but even if he hadn't been able to, if he had met her the day after, or the week after, or perhaps even a month after it had happened, he could have removed just that single memory. The rest of it, he believed, she could heal from, given enough time in a safe environment, enough care and support around her.
But he hadn't been there then, and that memory, her worst memory, had been melted and moulded into the very fibre of her psyche, had been allowed to weave its sinister threads all throughout her mind. Extracting it now would be an immense job.
At any rate, it was plain to Severus that Calista needed to heal, regardless of whether he could remove her worst memory or not. With it or without it, she was still incredibly damaged emotionally. She would need a long time, perhaps years, in an environment where she felt safe, where she felt comfortable; and she needed someone, or perhaps a group of someones, that she could trust. But what Severus sensed that she needed more than anything was incredibly simple, and also incredibly hard to come by: love.
Severus paced through the workroom, all the while concentrating simultaneously on analysing what he'd seen in his daughter's mind, and on keeping the barrier in her mind intact. It did make thinking more difficult, keeping so much of his concentration elsewhere, but it seemed necessary to give her some peace after the dual traumas of her nightmare and of his own albeit well-intentioned intrusion into her mind.
So, he mused, he knew the contents of the memories that plagued her, knew what emotions ruled her mind, knew so much more about her than he had only hours ago. But he sensed that there were still other answers to be had from what he'd seen in her mind, answers that might somehow tell him what on earth he should do next.
His biggest problem was that she did not trust him, would not willingly take his help no matter how badly she needed it. He felt that he had seen something in her mind that was tickling at him now, some conclusion he should have drawn, or memory he should have looked at the edges of, a puzzle piece he'd thus far been missing that would help them connect.
He considered what he had seen. For a start, he had been absolutely correct in assuming that she had a natural talent for Occlumency. It had been clear when he entered her mind, for he'd had to brush a barrier aside. It had been a weak barrier, little more than gossamer; but it was more than some adults he had met had to protect their minds. And, as weak as the barrier had seemed to him, it appeared from Calista's memories that it had effectively stopped Bellatrix from seeing into her daughter's mind. Bellatrix did have some skill in the art of Legilimency, but so far as he knew, she could not perform it wandlessly; perhaps it was only this distinction that had saved Calista's secrets from discovery by her mother…
But then, that was another question he had to work through. Most of what Calista had been hiding from him were things that had been done at her mother's hands; certainly, Bellatrix was aware of all of these memories, so precisely what had Calista been trying to hide from Bellatrix?
Severus had heard Calista's own voice in her mind, so he knew that she could speak, that it was even likely that she did speak now, when no one was around to hear her. Certainly some of the things he'd heard her say in her mind seemed like things that she would have said since coming to live with him, or at least since being placed in the orphanage. Perhaps it was logical to assume that she didn't want him, Severus, to know that she could speak, but Bellatrix had obviously already known that, since he had seen them arguing.
Severus had seen the potential in Calista's mind for her to develop, someday, as a strong Occlumens; perhaps this was what she was hiding? But it didn't seem likely that the child even knew the potential was there, or she would have tapped into those reserves to protect herself. She had a strong mind, that was plain, and a strong mind was one of the critical components for becoming an Occlumens of any considerable skill, but when he'd entered her mind, he had not found even a shred of understanding about the art of Occlumency. She simply knew that when Bellatrix looked into her eyes, it had kept her safer to clear her mind, keep her face blank.
Severus fingered his wand in his pocket, thinking as he stared absently at the cauldron that lived on his basement worktop. It was almost as if…
As if she didn't even understand that Occlumency was a magical art at all.
And then, suddenly, he had it. He knew what else he had seen flitting among his daughter's memories, what she had been desperately trying to hide from Bellatrix at all costs, knew precisely what she was afraid that he would somehow find out. He couldn't help but chuckle darkly to himself; this was what had kept her so distant all these months?
It had been perplexing him, wondering why she didn't want to speak to him, why she carefully avoided him most of the time, why she would look at him blankly whenever they were close to connecting. At first, he'd assumed that she disliked him, the way she seemed to dislike nearly everyone she'd ever been in close contact with, but that wasn't at all the picture he'd gotten from her mind.
Although it had been jarring to hear his own voice replaying inside her mind, he'd gotten a distinctly positive feeling from it; he'd felt a tinge of warmth in those words, gotten quite a different impression entirely - that Calista actually did like him, or was as close to liking him as she knew how to get. And that was why he couldn't understand why she was so loathe to allow him to get any closer to her, to allow for even the tiniest spark of trust to ignite between them.
When he thought of it now, in light of what he had just realised, it explained a great many things, little thorns of ideas that he had felt in her mind and not quite been able to decipher at first glance.
There was the terror she'd felt when bidden to grip Bellatrix's wand and cast along with her mother. She'd been horrified at what Bellatrix was doing, wanted Calista to do, but there had been something else that had not quite made sense to him at first, a fear that this moment would be the one convinced Bellatrix to make good on her threats to offer the child as a sacrifice to the Dark Lord, nothing more than a component of a bloody ritual.
There was, too, the way that she'd snapped to attention once when they were reading from his red book, the way she pored over it herself when he'd caught her in his study that day, eyes roving across the pages with a dedication bordering on desperation, as if the book had some answer that she desperately needed.
Being placed in the Muggle ward of the orphanage hadn't helped her, either. Belatedly, he realised that she'd seen this only as proof of something she'd already suspected, already been afraid of.
Severus allowed himself a small smile. Well, now that he had considered the things he'd seen in Calista's mind, considered the way that she thought, the way she truly felt about him…
Now, he had a plan.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
Calista breathed evenly, feeling as untroubled as she ever had. She dreamt, on and off, but none of them were unbearable; only the hint of a shadow, here and there, kept her sleep from being perfectly peaceful. The dark things, the bad places in her mind, tried to eke into her dreams, but something was keeping them back. To Calista, it was like a big, shiny gold wall, a magical castle protecting her.
And it was fitting, wasn't it? Sleepily, in between dreams, she marvelled at it. This man, with dark eyes like hers, who was something to her - was her father, he said - first he had brought her to the big castle on the hill to live, sheltered from the mean girls at the orphanage, and even, she could almost believe, sheltered from her mother, since Calista had not seen a sign of her here. And then he had created this other castle, much smaller but just as strong, inside her mind. Except that this castle wasn't holding her in - it was holding the bad things out.
But why would he do that, for her? She didn't understand why he did most of what he did. Making sure she ate, slept some, generally stayed healthy, that was easy to figure out - if something bad happened to her before the right time, she couldn't be given to the Dark Lord. That was what Bellatrix had always said. But it was puzzling, the rest of it - reading to her, letting her help him make potions - and she worked it around in her mind a little bit, eventually drifting into a dream, one she thought she had had before, where he came to rescue her from the orphanage.
But, she thought, half-waking again, that had really happened, hadn't it? It must have, or she wouldn't be here. It didn't surprise her that he had wanted to take her - people were always taking her, and she could never figure out why, so she'd stopped trying, simply accepted that when she was taken somewhere new, she had to be on her guard, had to be sure that she didn't let any of the people get too close to her.
That had never really been difficult for her, keeping people at a distance. Bellatrix had made sure of that, early on, and now it was second nature. Except, a few times, in that cheery little house where she had been taken after the orphanage. The pretty lady, Lily, and the quiet man, Remus, had both disarmed her. She'd wished, more than once, that she could have spoken to them, could have found something to say that would make them like her, make them think of her in the way that they'd clearly thought of the baby boy.
But that would have been dangerous, she knew. It was probably just like that James had said, they wanted her to talk so they'd know how much she was going to tell Bellatrix if they let her go. Well, she wouldn't have told Bellatrix anything, even if she could have, because by then she'd already decided that talking only ever got her in trouble.
And now this man with his castles… her father. He was kind to her, too kind. Perhaps it was as she originally had thought, that he was being nice so she would forget to be afraid, and then he could catch her when she wasn't expecting it, make her try to hurt someone, which she wouldn't - couldn't, if she'd wanted to, anyway - do. Except, when she thought about it, she couldn't remember ever seeing him hurting anyone. Of course, she didn't know what he did all day, when he left her alone in the flat, but he never came back with blood on his robes, never looked at her in that glinty way where she knew that she was going to be hurt, never pointed his wand at her, not even once. He never even came in ranting about Mudbloods and blood traitors, spitting with rage.
Perhaps he simply made potions all day, in some other place. Maybe even somewhere else in the big castle; there had to be a hundred rooms, more even. Maybe that was how he hurt people - maybe he gave them potions that made them sick, or caused them pain. She wished she'd thought of that before now, she would have been careful not to drink anything that he gave her. But then again, she had been drinking things, and nothing bad had happened so far…
But then she remembered that something bad had happened, just this very night. It was hard to remember, with the shiny golden castle wall in her head, and she was tired. She wanted to let herself go back to sleep, enjoy the relative peace she had felt ever since the wall had appeared in her mind. She almost did it, too, almost surrendered to her tired body and mind, almost drifted away again. But then there was a dark little tickle somewhere at the edge of her mind; a seeping darkness, and she saw the flash of a knife, felt the pounding of fear in her heart. And then, like some kind of benevolent snake, a bit of the shiny wall lashed out, wrapped itself around the darkness, pulled it back, and Calista forgot why she had been afraid, only remembered that she had been.
But it reminded her, that shiny wall with its reaching, shielding arms. It reminded her how it had gotten there in the first place. The man, her father, had been inside her mind, looking at all of her memories, stealing all of her secrets. But that would mean…
That would mean that he knew, Calista realised with a start. He knew the thing that she was afraid for anyone to know, the thing that she had kept from everyone else for so long. He was probably thinking about it right now, angry that she had tricked him, disappointed that he had gone through all the trouble to take her, and now she was useless. Probably any minute now, he was going to march in here, and he would go all glinty-eyed, and tell her to leave, right now. Maybe he would send someone to take her somewhere else, now.
She felt her heart speed up again, opened her eyes. Yes, that was what would certainly happen. and what if… what if the person he sent to come and get her was her mother? What if she had to go back and live with her again, and even worse, what if he told her secret to her mother? Maybe she should just leave now, pick up her book, take her clothes from the wardrobe, and just run away, before anyone had the chance to take her somewhere…
Just then, another golden tendril came out of the wall, plucked the seed of her fear right out of her thoughts, tucked it somewhere far away. Calista felt her heart slow again; she took a deep breath, and before she had even let it out, she was sound asleep.
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