章 38: 21
Chapter Ten
Calista was in a long, narrow hallway. Wooden planks of flooring stretched out before her and behind her; she could not actually recall where she was, or how she had gotten here, and this house was at once familiar and foreign. She had a sense that there was someone else in the house with her, but friend or foe she couldn't say.
She stepped forward, hoping that continuing on would jog her memory as to why she was here. The floorboards creaked and groaned underneath her slight weight. Doors rose up on either side of her, looming into existence only when she drew close; perhaps it was too dark for her to see them properly until she was nearly on top of them, or perhaps they really were appearing from nothing as she came near. In this house, that seemed somehow to be a reasonable possibility.
She came to the end of the hall, and found herself looking up at a long, narrow staircase. It was so long, and so gloomily lit, that it disappeared into shadow mere steps above her.
She had dozens of choices, but they really only amounted to two: she could try one of the doors lining the hall, or she could climb the stairs and see what was up there. She glanced back over her shoulder, but the darkness behind her somehow felt more dangerous than the darkness ahead; she set one foot on the the first stair, gripped the banister. Her heartbeat felt thready and light in her chest, as she slowly ascended.
There was a landing, and then the stair turned back on itself. Well, she had come this far. She rose, and found that the stair ended in a hallway much like the one downstairs. Just as before, doors rose up on either side of her as she walked. This time, she stopped in front of a door to her left, at random. She put her hand on the knob, and pressed her ear to the door. There were no sounds from inside.
She felt, all of a sudden, that there was someone else at the other end of this hallway, someone drawing closer to her. She hadn't yet decided if this was someone she wanted to encounter or not, so she turned the doorknob, and stepped inside the room.
It was a sitting room, of sorts. There was a large, faded rug on the floor, a sturdy coffee table, a floral sofa. She knew at once that this room was empty of other people, had been for some time. She stepped into the center of the room, pushing the door closed behind her. The person in the hallway was coming closer still; she couldn't hear footsteps, but she had found that somehow, in this house, she was finely attuned to the presence of whoever else was here with her.
They were close, now; she knew, without understanding how she knew, that this person was trying doorknobs in the hall, too, but that none of them were turning. As the presence approached the room Calista was in, she felt her pulse quicken, her heart pound. This person was someone familiar, she felt now, and she wasn't sure if it was someone she wanted to face.
She looked again at the door. It was ajar, but she was certain she had closed it behind her. Had there been a draft? She looked all about the room, and noticed another door to her left. Feeling a sudden anxious need to leave this room, now, she crossed the room, pulled open the other door. The knob turned for her, just as the first one had.
She glanced back at the door she had first entered the room by, lingering in the new doorway. Did she have time to go back, to push the first door closed again? She felt the presence right outside of the room; no, she didn't have time. She slipped out of the room, pulling the second door shut.
She found herself, unbelievably, in another hallway. This one was wider, and instead of doors, there were empty doorways, beyond which she could view a variety of other rooms; except, she realised, they were all sitting-rooms. They had different rugs, different furnishings,and some had plants or bookcases, but all were sitting-rooms. She ducked into one at random, found that it had a door inside of it, too.
The other person was in the wide, open-doorway hallway now, too. Calista glanced back through the open archway into this room, and saw only the person's shadow playing against the long wooden planks of the floor, following her in earnest.
She opened this door, too, and found herself at the foot of another staircase. The other person was right at her heels; she ran up the staircase in a hurry, not even bothering to pull the door closed behind her.
This staircase was longer than the first. Just when Calista reached the top, she felt the other person setting their foot on the bottom step. Calista turned the corner hurriedly, and found that she was in another, tiny hallway. This one had only one door, at its end.
She took only five or six steps before she reached the door. It had a window in it, unlike any of the other doors she had seen in this house; in fact, she reflected now, she could not remember having seen a single window anywhere in this house before now.
She pulled open the door, and stepped into a round room, with windows all around. It was like the top of a lighthouse, minus the lantern. She closed the windowed door securely, took stock of the room she was in.
There was no furniture. The floor was plain wooden planking, like that of all the hallways. All of the windows were bare, but the glass within them, she saw upon examination, was frosted, so that one couldn't properly see in or out of it. Dim, grey daylight seeped through; it was dawn or dusk.
The other person had reached the top of the stair, stepped up to the door. Calista walked back to the door quickly, looked out the window set in the door, the only window in the room that wasn't cloudy.
'Of course' she heard herself say, as she locked eyes, through the glass, on her mother, Bellatrix. Her mother's skin was milk-pale, her eyes wide, dark, hollows in her face. Perhaps it was only Narcissa's suggestion echoing in her mind, but she thought she could see something of herself reflected back in the high arch of her cheekbones, the narrow chin, the delicate expanse of her forehead.
The doorknob rattled, but didn't turn. 'Let me in, child,' Bellatrix mouthed through the glass, and Calista could decipher her words perfectly even though she couldn't actually hear them.
Calista shook her head, pressed her palms against the inside of the door. She could feel the rough grain of unfinished wood beneath her hands.
'Please,' Bellatrix's lips moved again, 'Open the door. I can't see you properly through the glass'.
It must have been true, Calista realised, because even though the glass was smooth and clear, she couldn't quite make out the irises of her mother's eyes - perhaps there was too much shadow in the hall, or perhaps the glass wasn't so clear, after all.
'Mother,' Calista breathed, uncertain. It felt like a false name; like a rope you would grab to stop yourself from falling, only to realise it was, in actuality, a snake.
'Yes, child. It's me.' Bellatrix lifted her hands, placed them at either side of the window, set her nose only a hair's breadth from the cool glass. 'Let me in, so we can speak, so we can be together'.
'But I don't want to,' Calista said, reflecting, 'I want to be my own self.'
Her mother's expression twisted, and her hands began to claw at the glass. The slipping, screeching sound of it broke the silence, and Calista started, stepping back from the door. Her mother must have been kicking at the door, too, because it rattled and shook in its frame.
Calista looked around again, but the room was still bare. All she had were herself, and the robes she was wearing. She looked down, fingered the black cloth of her robes, the silver clasp of her cloak. Bellatrix howled, and even though Calista couldn't hear it over the force of her fury against the wood and glass, she could see the way it twisted her mother's face.
Calista's fingers twisted the clasp of her cloak, and she pulled it off her shoulders, held it up against the glass, and then - just like that, the door stopped shaking, fingernails stopped scraping against the glass.
Astonished, she stared at the black fabric of her cloak, until she realised that the darkness was actually the inside of her own eyelids. She woke up, eyes snapping open, and the little windowed room, the house, melted away into the nighttime.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
The next morning, Calista sat at a study table in the Slytherin common room, trying, for the thousandth time, the damn mouse-snuffbox spell, fruitlessly. It was a Saturday, and she'd skipped breakfast, finding she didn't have much of an appetite.
The memory of last night's dream still lingered around her like an aura. She couldn't shake the feeling of being hunted, haunted. The dark, gloomy hallways, the looming doors, the round, windowed room cloaked in grey semi-light; they all felt real, like it was a place she had been before.
And then there was Bellatrix, and Calista couldn't decide which incarnation was haunting her more; her mother's corporeal form battering at the door, or the shadowy, swift presence that had dogged her progress through the strange house.
She had Occlumency lessons soon, and she knew she needed to tell her father about her dream, and she wasn't particularly looking forward to either of those things. She felt exhausted, physically and mentally, as if she had been up all night studying, or perhaps practising this horrid spell.
She swished her wand again, created another whiskered snuffbox, and sighed, changing it back.
Just now, while she kept the dream to herself, she could tell herself that it didn't mean Bellatrix was really still trying to reach her; the whole thing, she could almost believe, was only the product of her exhausted, overworked mind. She spent hours each week preparing for an attack from Bellatrix, so wasn't it possible that her preoccupation had caused the dream, that it hadn't been an actual attack at all?
Except she was fairly certain what her father's opinion on that would be, and she wasn't ready to hear it. She wasn't ready for the impending onslaught of intense Occlumency lessons, either. She wished she could talk to him about the dream without those particular consequences. It would be nice, she thought, to feel like a normal daughter, to go to him with her fears and receive only comfort, not more lessons and more paranoid vigilance.
Without extra lessons and paranoid, protective vigilance though, would he still be her father? She toyed with the idea briefly, as a philosophical question. She stifled a smile by biting the inside of her cheek; it was a clever thought. She wished she could share it with someone.
Just when Calista thought her morning couldn't get any more complicated, Olivia slid into the chair opposite her, and waved her wand. The mouse turned into a beautiful silver snuffbox, and Calista looked across the table, meeting Olivia's gaze. The blonde girl sniffed.
"I can't believe you're still struggling with this simple spell," she said haughtily.
"What do you want?" Calista snarled, immediately defensive. She felt a dull headache begin.
"What did you think you were playing at in Potions class? Portia got a detention because of you."
Calista blinked, sucked in a breath, rocketed to the present moment against her will. "Because of me? Portia got a detention because she cheated and sabotaged someone's potion - which could have been extremely dangerous, since we both know Portia had no idea what she was doing-"
Olivia waved her delicate hand dismissively. "Save it, Snapelet. You weren't so concerned about safety when you brewed Amortentia in our wardrobe."
Was this inane conversation really happening right now? It was, and Calista resented it for more reasons than Olivia could possibly understand.
"You made me do that!" she hissed, "And it's not the same, I actually know what I'm doing-"
"Did you know what you were doing when you blamed Portia for Weasley's junk potion? You-"
And Calista interrupted her this time, slamming her palms down on the table. The snuffbox rattled metallically. "You know as well as I do that Portia's the reason that potion went junk. She sabotaged him, just like I said. I only told the truth."
Olivia's eyes narrowed. "'The truth'," she said icily, derisively, "Never mind that. You're supposed to have your housemates' backs, not Percy Weasley's."
"Why do you care again?" Calista retorted, "I mean, it's not like you got a detention, and since when do you care about any of us?" she waved her arm, inclusive of the whole common room, though she only meant herself, Portia, Emily.
A couple of other students, likely bored and avoiding homework on a Saturday morning, looked over with mild interest at the pair, Emily among them - though her eyes were wide, darting from one girl to the other as if she had a stake in their discussion - which, maybe she did.
"Honestly, Calista," Olivia said, nose wrinkling, "It's like you want to be an outcast for the rest of your life. I'm giving you the chance to apologise to me and you're throwing it away."
"Apologise to you?" Calista said, and now she was really angry; she could feel rage pulsing all around all of her edges - but she could also feel the eyes in the common room, the way they were on her. She could feel the cool, disdainful blue of Olivia's own gaze, and she hated the way that all of it felt; hated, suddenly, the warmth of the sunlight that streamed into the common room, hated the heat of her own anger that was threatening to cause her, again, to act aggressively, erratically. She hated it all.
Her fingers curled reflexively, gripping the edge of the table; they practically spasmed for want of her wand. It was in her pocket… she knew she could have it in her hands, could shut Olivia up in just a few seconds…
And then, unbidden, she had the flash of an image in her head; the wooden door from her dreams rattling. The shadows and planes of her mother's face, clear through the glass but for her eyes. The twisted way her mouth had moved, her long fingers had clawed, trying to get in at any cost.
And wasn't this seething anger she felt familiar, too? Didn't she burn now with the same energy that had rattled that door on its hinges, that hungered for the chance to get inside that little frosted-window room, to win? She thought that she could feel Bellatrix crawling through her mind, feeding her anger, egging her on - but there was no intruder. There was only her own rage, so real and hot that it was taking on its own form, inside of her head, inside of her blood. Making her ache with the need to reach for her wand, to curse, to hurt...
She drew in a great breath again, for the second time in their argument. She spread her hands flatly on the table in front of her, deliberately, closed her eyes for a fraction of a moment. It wasn't very different from Occlumency, the way that she gathered the threads of her ire, suffocated them with a cool, dulling blanket of reason. She would get in trouble; Olivia would find a way to get even; everyone was watching her; it wouldn't solve anything long-term. Doing it, cursing Olivia - it would probably amuse her mother, if she ever found out. Most certainly, it would disappoint her father, and he would find out.
"I am sorry, Olivia," she said at last, fully expecting her words to sound weak, like retreat. She spoke quietly, because backing away from a fight seemed, to her, like admitting defeat; but she knew in her heart that deferring to Olivia was the lesser of the losses she faced in that instant. "I'm sorry that we can't be friends, because it was nice having the four of us, you and me and Emily and even Portia…"
She paused; she knew what she had to say, had to decide, but she was afraid. Giving up, for good, on Olivia's friendship meant giving up the identity she'd more or less clung to since she started at Hogwarts.
"Well, that's a start," Olivia sniffed, "But if you want it all back, you're going to have to find a way to make it up to me."
"See, that's the thing," Calista said, and she was surprised to hear that her voice, even though it was soft, was firm, steady. In the absence of her rage, she felt something else taking hold inside of herself - something similarly hard, but without any aggression in it. Something that made it not only possible, but natural, for her to say what she needed to. "I don't think we can be friends, anymore. I don't like the way you treat people, and I don't like the way I treat people when I'm friends with you. Making you happy always seems to hurt someone else, and it makes me act like someone I don't want to be."
"What are you trying to say?" Olivia raised her voice in disbelief, glanced around the common room. Calista's declaration had been quiet, but as Olivia's voice rose hysterically, she garnered an audience. "I'm not giving you another chance, Calista. If you walk away from me, you're going to be an outcast until we graduate."
"That could be true," Calista said, and she felt a pang of regret; was this a mistake? But there was that something-else inside her, that reassured her. This felt… maybe not right, exactly, but it felt… true. It felt like stirring the contents of a simmering cauldron, knowing they were exactly the right colour. "But it doesn't seem as bad, anymore, as being a person that I don't even like."
She took another deep breath, let it out. She lifted her hands from the table, rose from her chair. Her eyes met Olivia's, and she saw more or less what she had expected; twin irises of cool blue, an expression of mixed disbelief and disdain.
"Excuse me, Olivia. I have extra lessons to get to."
Olivia stepped back, and Calista made to walk past her. But if there was one thing Olivia could be counted on for, it was cruelty in front of an audience, so long as that audience didn't include a professor, or someone else with more power than she had.
"I don't need an ugly, misfit little crybaby for a friend," Olivia said, so the whole common room heard, "You were crying again last night - did you have a scary dream again, ickle Snapelet?"
Calista felt the air still around her; her anger simmered in the background of her mind; she wanted, badly, to lash out, but nothing she did could erase Oliva's words, or the fact that everyone had heard them. She turned her head to look at Olivia, and the other girl's expression was triumphant.
Everyone was watching; no one was saying anything. Calista found it took nearly all of her energy to step towards the common room door; and then her vision blurred, and she knew she was about to cry, in front of all of them, and she suddenly felt as if the common room door was a thousand miles away. Where was her new feeling of strength, that had gotten her through her declaration? Now she felt only hollow, defeated.
There was a motion at her right; she thought, wildly, that Olivia was going to hex her, and then someone gripped her elbow, and she started, blinked. She felt a tear slide down her cheek, and the heat of it was nothing to the rush of humiliation she felt welling up inside her.
"There's more than one kind of ugly, Olivia," a boy was saying, and when Calista blinked again, she realized it was Marcus Flint, that he was the one that was holding her elbow. He was in his Quidditch gear, and his broom was in his other hand. Calista was sure he hadn't been in the common room when their argument started, and his being here now made everything seem a thousand times worse; he'd make fun of her now, too, and who would she study Transfiguration with? "Being horrible to someone that's supposed to be your friend is pretty ugly, if you ask me."
Marcus, inexplicably, was steering her through the common room. He glanced back at Oliva, and said, loudly, "You were right, Calista. She is a spoiled, stupid prat, and no one needs friends like that."
He set his broom down and nodded at another Slytherin boy, which apparently passed as some form of communication, and opened the door, and they stepped out into the corridor together. As soon as they were through, Calista lifted her arms, wiping her hands across her eyes, working against the flow of tears. Marcus released her elbow.
"Are you all right?" he shifted, uncomfortably. "I hope I said the right thing. I just… she was reminding me of someone, and I couldn't stand it."
Calista sniffled, and rubbed at her eyes, and managed a reply, even though it bubbled around a sob that was caught in her throat. "I don't… I'm trying really hard not to yell at you right now," she said, "Because that's what I always seem to do whenever anyone is nice to me."
Marcus' expression was uncomfortable, too; then it cleared, and he shrugged. "I think I'd rather if you yelled at me," he said, "At least I know how to handle that."
"I know," Calista said, wiping furiously at her face again; she swallowed another sob. "I'm being… I don't know…"
"A girl?" Marcus supplied helpfully, and Calista didn't quite laugh, but at least she was able to stop crying.
"Yeah, a bit," she admitted, and shook her head. "I'm sorry. I just let her get to me. I don't usually… um, cry."
"I know," Marcus said, shrugging again. "Like I said, she was being a prat. Where are you going? I'll walk with you, if you want."
"Potions classroom," she said, "I have, uhm, extra lessons with my dad."
Marcus nodded, and they started walking. "Seems like a downer to me, to have extra lessons, but then I just had early morning Quidditch practise, so I guess it's kind of the same thing."
Calista didn't think so; lessons were something real, and Quidditch was just a stupid game. But Marcus had just helped her out, so it didn't seem like the most appropriate time to point that out to him.
"Who did Olivia remind you of?" she asked, instead.
Marcus sneered. "Gerald Boot. You know him?"
Calista shook her head.
"Well, he's this Ravenclaw," Marcus said, "In my year. We're in the same class for Charms, and he's always calling me out in front of the class whenever I get something wrong. He likes to throw it in my face that I'm behind the rest of the class, like I don't already know it. He's in Flitwick's house, so he doesn't get in trouble. He used to really give me a hard time, calling me a Troll, and hexing me when no one was looking. It's not so bad anymore, though."
"What happened?" Calista asked, "Why isn't it so bad anymore?"
"Well," Marcus said, and he grinned at her, just as they approached the door that led to a little hallway that contained the doors to the Potions classroom and her father's office, "He was at one of the Quidditch matches, right? Sitting right in the front of the stands. Tried to hit a Bludger at his face, but it turns out the stands are bewitched, you can't hit anything into them. So, after the game, I just went right up to him and punched him in the face, as hard as I could. Broke his nose and everything. Got a detention, but it was worth it. More or less leaves me alone, now."
Calista laughed darkly. "Somehow I don't think the same solution's going to work for me."
"I dunno," Marcus said, "Maybe that's just what Olivia needs, a punch in the face. Anyway, I still think you should try knocking a Bludger around sometime."
He pulled open the door, motioning Calista through to the little hallway. The Potions classroom was on the left, her father's office door on the right.
"And I still think that's a bad idea," she said, stepping through the doorway, "But then again, the idea of smashing Olivia's stupid face in…"
He grinned, again."Think about it, then. I'm going to go change out of these Quidditch robes and see if I can find some more breakfast."
Calista nodded, and Marcus turned to leave; she surprised herself, again, by calling after him, pushing the hall door open and sticking her head partway out.
"Wait. Marcus?"
"Yeah?" he half-turned.
"Why did you stick up for me?"
His brow furrowed; he looked genuinely confused. It wasn't a new expression on his face, but it was the first time she remembered seeing it outside of a classroom or a study session.
"Because you're my friend, duh. See you later, Calista."
He left, back the way they had come. Calista felt a flicker of something a little bit like whatever had given her the strength to sign off Olivia's friendship forever; something solid and true.
She pushed open the door to her father's office.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
Severus stood in his office at precisely half-past nine, the time when Calista usually came for Occlumency lessons. Earlier in the year, he'd shifted their lessons from afternoon to morning so she could go to the Quidditch matches with her friends. She wasn't typically late, but today the minutes passed.
He became dimly aware of a flash of negative emotion that wasn't his; it had to be coming from Calista. Was she in trouble? He didn't think it felt like fear - was it anger? He wondered if he should go fetch her, but he didn't want to embarrass her if it turned out to be nothing.
After fifteen minutes, he was prepared to go and find her anyway, but then he heard voices in the hall outside his office door. He couldn't make out the words, but he recognized the pitch of his daughter's voice.
He turned around just as the door opened, and she stepped into the office. He searched her face immediately, intensely.
Calista backed up a step, meeting his gaze warily. "What?" she snapped, defensively.
Severus backed up a step, too. He reached a tendril of thought out to her, testing. Her mind was guarded, and there was nothing in the very first layer that gave him any clues. Except… hm. A quarrel of some sort with that Avril girl?
"You were upset, a few moments ago. I felt something coming from you, for a few seconds."
She dropped her gaze, shrugged her shoulders. "It's fine now, I guess."
Neither of them spoke for a pause, which is why he could hear it when her stomach rumbled.
"Did you eat breakfast?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I wasn't hungry."
"But you are now." He didn't wait for a response, just opened the door to his quarters, ushered her in. He didn't keep much in the little kitchen, since he usually ate in the Great Hall with everyone else, but he did have some bread and jelly. He used a controlled-flame spell to toast the bread, and set it down on a plate at her usual place at the little wooden table.
She sat down without a word, and spread jelly on the toast. He puttered around the kitchen for a bit, making two cups of coffee - he didn't let her have it much anymore, but she had had her birthday a couple of weeks ago, and she was thirteen now. He supposed once in awhile wouldn't harm her.
Of course, the entire time, he was also testing her defences. She had several layers intact, from what he could tell, without any apparent weakness. He felt a swell of pride; she was getting better.
He sat across from her, sliding one of the mugs over to her. She finished her toast and reached for the mug of coffee.
"Thanks," she said at last, lifting it and blowing gently into it to cool it down.
"So," he said, prodding gently, "What happened? Are you all right?"
Calista looked at him over the edge of her coffee mug. "You know, I had this thought today," she said, "You know that old saying, if a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Well I was wondering, if I came to visit you and you weren't giving me extra lessons or worrying about me, would you still be you?"
Severus' brow lifted slightly. "Perhaps if you ever came to see me when you weren't in need of extra lessons or being worried over, we would find out."
She took a sip of coffee, set the mug down, and toyed with it, running her fingers through the handle, and pushing it gently back and forth on the table.
He gave her the space of several minutes, and sure enough, she came around with an answer.
"It was a bad morning. A bad night, too. I had another dream about her-"
Severus tensed; he knew Calista could feel it, when she shot him a brief look.
"It's fine, I think. I don't know. And then, I had a fight with Olivia."
Ah. So he had been right about that. Still, a schoolgirl quarrel hardly seemed worth the burst of emotion he had felt from her earlier. Then again, that Avril girl was a piece of work… his lip curled.
"I told her I'm done trying to be friends with her, forever."
He kept his expression neutral. "I see," he said, carefully, "What made you decide that?"
"I just…" she lifted her cup, took another small sip, then wrapped her fingers around it. "It seems like whenever I'm trying to make her happy, or trying to get even with her, or trying anything to do with her at all, I'm unhappy and I'm angry, and I don't like the way it makes me feel."
She looked at him earnestly; he wanted to ask her, immediately, about the dream, but he bit his tongue, let her continue.
"It's something Kim Avery said to me, and I think you kind of said it once, too. She's not a very good friend. And I feel like whenever I'm friends with her, I'm doing things that I'm not proud of."
"Your argument with her is why you were upset today?"
"Yeah," she said, and then amended, "Well, kind of. It's just… I get that way a lot, and it seems to have to do with her more often than not… I get this anger, and it's just boiling inside me, and it makes me want to lash out, and hurt someone."
She set her cup down, and pulled her legs up onto the seat of the chair, folding her arms tightly around them. She set her chin on her knees, and her voice was suddenly small.
"I felt like I wanted to hex her, and it wasn't… Dad, it wasn't like normal being angry and wanting to get even, it was like… like I just had to do something to her, like it was hurting me not to do it. I felt like… like she probably feels every time she casts an Unforgivable Curse. And I don't want to feel like that. I don't want to be like that."
He studied her, the earnestness in her face, the way she hugged her knees tight to her body. He wished she was small again, that he could allay her fears by buying her a kitten again… except, when he thought about it, the last time he had done that, he'd wound up with a damn cat, so maybe not a kitten.
"What did you do?" he asked her quietly.
"I tried as hard as I could to calm down, and eventually, I did. I told her that I couldn't be her friend anymore, ever. And then I came here."
She paused, but he sensed there was more coming. She hunched her shoulders, pulled herself into a tighter ball of girl on her chair, and muttered something into her knees.
"Of course she called me an 'ugly little misfit crybaby' first, and I basically proved her point by crying in front of nearly the whole common room."
He set his own mug down quickly. Could he give the Avril girl detention for that? He probably could. "But you weren't crying when you came into my office," was all he said aloud.
"Yeah," she said, "Marcus Flint stuck up for me. He kind of cheered me up before I got here."
"Ah, Mr. Flint. Is he a friend of yours?"
She lifted her chin, set it back on her knees. "I guess he is," she answered, tilting her head. "We study together sometimes. I help him with Potions and he helps me with Transfiguration. He keeps wanting me to go play Quidditch though, which is about as likely as Hagrid performing an opera."
Severus chuckled. "So any day now, you're saying." He smiled. "Does that mean that you're the one that helped him manage to brew a Shrinking Solution without burning down my classroom?"
"Yeah," she said, "It was just the leech juice. He didn't know how much a dash was."
Severus nodded. He flicked at her barriers again; they were still solid. Of course, he could break through them if he chose to; that wasn't the point. The point was that she was holding them, even while having a conversation.
"I'm not sure if you're soliciting for my opinion or not," he said, "But I think you probably made a wise decision to try and find some alternative friends to Miss Avril."
She met his gaze, expression suddenly serious. "Dad, what if some of my new friends might be from other Houses?"
"I don't see how that changes anything."
"Even…" she swallowed, "Even if one of them might be a Gryffindor?"
He curled his lip in an expression of exaggerated disgust, and then he gave her a wry smile. "Just please tell me it's not Mr. Wood, unless you're going to teach him not to melt cauldrons as well."
"It's… uhm… Percy Weasley," she said, and then rushed to explain, "It was nice, working with him in class this time. He's not bad at Potions, and he helped me bottle mine at the end. I went to watch a Quidditch practise, and he was there, and he invited me to sit with him and his friends, and most of them actually weren't bad. Except for Oliver Wood," she added, curling her own lip, too.
"Calista, I hope you don't think that I would disapprove of the friends you choose just because of which House they're in. I'm far more concerned with how they treat you and how they make you feel. If Miss Avril makes you unhappy, and Kimberly Avery and Marcus Flint, and yes, Percy Weasley, make you happy, then I think you've already figured out which of them are worth your time."
"I met this Hufflepuff girl too," she said, encouraged. "Nymphadora Tonks. She's a metamorphmagus, she can turn her hair all sorts of colours… she seemed nice, too."
"Ah," Severus said, leaning forward a bit. "She's your cousin, actually."
"What?" Calista's feet hit the floor again, and she leaned forward, too. It was probably a good thing she didn't have a mouthful of coffee, or he would have been wearing it. "I thought Draco was my only cousin."
He shook his head. "Narcissa and Bellatrix had one other sister, Andromeda. She's Nymphadora Tonks' mother. I gather from Narcissa that Mr. Tonks is a Muggle, which is why your new friend won't be invited to Christmas Dinner at the Malfoys' anytime soon."
"So," Calista said hopefully, "Could it be possible, then, that I could be a metamorphmagus too, only it hasn't come out yet?"
Severus smiled at her ruefully. "I'm afraid not. They're quite rare, and from what I understand, they exhibit their ability very early on."
Calista frowned, reached for her coffee again, and drained the majority of what remained in one long sip.
"You'll have to settle for being quite possibly the youngest Occlumens in the world," he said dryly, watching her. Her expression lit up immediately with pride, and she smiled. Good. That's what he'd been hoping for. He smiled, too, and then:
"So. About this dream…"
Calista rolled her eyes. "Why'd you have to go and ruin it? We were having a moment, and now you're right back to worrying."
"In my defence," he said, "I've been quite anxious to ask you about it since you got here. It's been -" and he glanced through the kitchen doorway. He could just glimpse the clock in his study from here. "Thirty-eight minutes. What happened? Did she reach out to you again?"
"I'm not completely sure," she said, tilting her head, and setting her elbows on the table.
"Did she touch you again?" He remembered every time that Bellatrix had given Calista the impression of having physically touched her in a dream, because every time, Calista had broadcast her alarm to him. He hadn't felt anything last night, though. He hoped that meant that it had simply been a dream.
"She didn't touch me," Calista said, "She never reached me, but I knew she was following me, only at first I wasn't sure it was her."
She described the dream, the long, narrow hallways of the house, and the round, windowed room at the end. When she got to the part about Bellatrix looking at her through the glass, asking to be let in, he started.
"She actually said those words? 'Let me in'?"
Calista nodded, and Severus stood, began pacing in the tiny kitchen. "And you felt her presence? Was it any stronger when she was trying to break the door down?"
Calista frowned, considering. "I guess. I mean, she was definitely trying hard to get in the room, and at first, I just told her no, but then when the door started rattling… I had this idea that I had to cover up the window, but there was nothing in the room, so I took my cloak off and held it up against the window."
"And that made her stop?"
"Well, I woke up after that, but I think it worked."
He paced in silence a few moments, and then said, "This is the first time that you've dreamt of her and had a door between you?"
Calista nodded. "It was the only time that I felt like I was still in control," she said, "Normally, it's like she's overpowering me, and it's so hard to say 'no' to her, but this time… I guess it's because she couldn't touch me, and I couldn't see her eyes, so she must not have been able to see mine, either. But this time, I felt like, of course I knew that I didn't want to let her in, and it was easy for me to tell her so, to keep from opening the door. I was just afraid she was going to break it down, eventually."
"Your barriers," Severus said, pausing in his pacing to stand aside of her chair, placing a hand on her shoulder. "That's what protected you. It means you're keeping them up, even when you're asleep. That's good. We just need to make them strong enough that there isn't even a door she can batter on to try and get in."
She looked up at him, guarding her eyes. "But she's miles and miles away now," she said, "How much stronger will she be if I ever have to face her in person?"
"I don't know," Severus told her honestly, "That's why I aim to teach you until I can't anymore."
Calista shivered. He realised how that had sounded.
"Until I've taught you everything I can," he amended. He pulled his hand from her shoulder, took up the seat across from her again.
"I think it's time we tried your defences against an armed attacker again," he said, drawing his wand. He could see the way she steeled herself, exhaled, squaring her shoulders, as if preparing for a physical attack.
"Legilimens," he intoned softly, letting himself into her mind.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
He hated the feeling that he was invading her mind, hated that he always had to push her just a little further. But he couldn't deny that it was working. He could sense the difference, between when he had begun these lessons and now. Her defences were much stronger now than when they had started out.
Her talent wasn't close to fully developed; if he'd wanted to, he could have picked through her mind, thread by thread, dismantled it, even. But he was starting to suspect that the group of people who could have done that to her was diminishing, with each lesson. Once, he had questioned whether he could train her well enough to defend against Bellatrix, against his own enemies someday.
Now, he didn't question whether she'd be strong enough; only when. Because that was the other thing that he was seeing, when he infiltrated her mind, when she gathered her defences…
Occlumency was a tricky, nuanced art - to practise it, one needed magical potential, mental fortitude, a high degree of willpower, and a strong sense of emotional intelligence. Even then, all of those things had to come together, in just the right way, along with a focused dedication and at least a speck of natural talent for it, for one to become truly skilled at deception. It was often difficult to pull all of those things together, to get them working in tandem, even if you had all the elements, and so it was equally difficult, sometimes, to assess someone's potential for Occlumency.
Except, for Severus, he had spent so much time traversing the hills and valleys of Calista's mind, that he could assess her potential. He could see all the elements she needed - the willpower she had been demonstrating, week after week, when she pushed doggedly through his lessons, no matter how exhausted she was. As for power...she had it. She didn't know how to use it, yet. But it was there, most of it lurking beneath and behind the rest of her mindscape. It was what she had tapped into when she had managed, as a small child, to keep Bellatrix from reading her, how she had kept her eyes so carefully blank when he first met her.
He could see it, when he was training her in Occlumency, and Bellatrix had seen it, when she had launched her takeover on Calista's mind a few years ago. It was why she was so keen, now, to get her claws into their daughter, to exert her influence while Calista was still young, mostly untrained (or so Bellatrix thought).
Calista had never really had access to her full potential. When she was young, she had pulled from it, unconsciously, to protect herself, but that wasn't the same thing as being able to use it at will. And now, all of the pieces were there, everything she needed to be an exceptionally powerful Occlumens. They just weren't connecting in all the right places - it was like there was a tear in the fabric of her mind, a missing piece, a loose thread, that should have connected her to the full extent of her abilities.
He'd say it again - Occlumency was a tricky, nuanced thing. He'd tried, back when he'd rescued her from Bellatrix's intrusion, to remove the one, the darkest, memory cleanly. He'd had to do it; it was the key that Bellatrix had used to connect to her across an entire ocean and countless miles, and it had been destroying Calista. He couldn't take back what Bellatrix had done to his child, but he could allow her to grow up, to find herself, without the memory of it clinging to every step she took, and that's what he had done.
With every day of her life after he had taken the memory, he had seen that it had been the right thing, a necessary thing. She'd transformed; she'd gone from a haunted wraith to a child. A clever, stubborn, spirited child with opinions, and desires, and, almost unbelievably in light of the way she had been when he met her, a capacity to love.
It could have caused her entire mind to come unraveled, plucking out the thread of such a central, core memory, if it had been done by anyone less skilled, less connected to her, than he. But he was skilled, and he was connected to her, and he had known it could be done. And yet, altering the mind - it was never done lightly, because it was never done without consequence.
She couldn't access all of her potential, yet. He didn't know if she ever could, without the missing piece of her memory. The worrying part was that he couldn't say, with utmost certainty, that she would be able to even after it was inevitably returned to her one day; and the terrifying part was that, with all of that potential, all of that power - if Bellatrix ever did gain control of it all, and use it against Calista, it could utterly destroy her, from the inside out.
That was his job, he thought. To ensure that it never happened.
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