Upon opening the Divination trapdoor, she narrowly ducked an object that came flying directly at her head. The thing splattered against the wood behind her, a chunk of it sluicing downward and bouncing off her shoulder before landing on the floor below.
She brushed crumbs from her robe.
The hell?
"Whoops! Sorry, Cleo!"
She peeked her head back up. Ren was standing there, appearing apologetic but also on the verge of laughter.
"I, uh… thought you were Peeves."
She squinted. “Yes, I get that often.”
When she fully emerged into the room, she was surprised to find it absolutely covered in baked goods. Every available surface held the debris; an alarming amount of powdered sugar dusted the silk overhangings, an assortment of cupcakes were icing-down on the floor as if they’d been launched from across the room, and the crumbled remains of cookies were scattered on cushions and tables.
Ren grinned at her unabashedly. "Thought I’d be able to land my coup de grace before Sybill’s next round of students came in, but I suppose it wasn’t meant to be.”
After Cleo took in the oversized jumper and blue jeans dotted with bits of frosting, Ren’s stranger features began to reveal themselves. The first thing she noticed was the tail: Lizard-like and long, it trailed heavily behind them on the floor. Next, the eyelashes: They were bright orange and membraned, like fins, sticking together briefly with every blink. And last, their bird-like feet, lacking shoes and attached to spindly flamingo legs, extended past the length of their jeans. The ensemble was as bizarre a mixture as it always was.
Ren jutted a thumb over their shoulder. "She's in the office with Bridge, if you were wondering."
Somehow, that revelation was still one of thousands, and equally impossible to appreciate at the current moment. “Does, uh. Professor Trelawney know about--” She gestured to the chaos.
"Hm?" Their eyes followed her motion. "Oh, this? Yeah, she knows." A bright, mischievous smile alighted their face. "There's a reason she's fled to the next room, but I just can't figure it out."
“Uh.” She swallowed hard, peering into Ren’s unflinching and unblinking expression. “Why?”
“Well, if I had to put my finger on--”
“No,” she cut in, sharp. “Why?” She made a grand sweeping indication to the room. “Why? ”
Their eyebrows raised, the mirth still crinkled in the corners of their eyes. "If you've never engaged in merry war with ol’ Madcap Peeves, then you have missed out on one of life's purest joys."
“Right.” She made the executive decision that she was better off not knowing more details. With a side step away from the trap door, she dismissed herself with, “Office? Office. Okay. Morning,” before hurriedly making her way across the room. Not wanting her entrance to be too bombast, she forced herself into a casual stroll for the last couple of steps and opened the door with a short series of knuckle knocks against the threshold.
She ushered her way in before the professor had a chance to give the full go ahead, the beaded curtain over the door heralding her arrival, and Trelawney turned her way with all the energy of a startled rabbit, her hands already reaching up to shield her face.
"I told you to stay out, out, out! "
Cleo was quick to close the door behind her.
"Have you no common decency--?! "
“Sybill,” a voice cut in smoothly. “It’s a student.”
The woman heaved in another quaky breath, likely to continue her barrage, but those words came clear to her a moment later. Her arms sank halfway downward, and she peered over top of them to meet Cleo’s eyes. "Ah. So it is."
Her arms wilted the rest of the way into her lap and she looked about Cleo's frame as if to divine something from her appearance. The woman looked very small where she was seated on the floor beside Professor Tenenbaum. Curious, but clearly still out of sorts, Trelawney opened with, "Cleo? Are you--?" before she performed an awkward little hum in the middle of her sentence, starting on a different track. "What-- what is it? Why have you come?"
“I, uhm--” The absurdity of the scene was settling on her in the delay: Professor Trelawney, disheveled and haggard, balancing on two mis-matched throw pillows while the rest of her limbs were splayed awkwardly on shag carpet. Professor Tenenbaum, regal and beguiling, lounging on a lion’s share of the cushions, her legs carefully propped on a stack of pillows that kept them elevated to head-level, the lavender monstrosity of her wheelchair exiled in a corner.
It wasn’t nearly as difficult to understand as the baked-goods mishap a room over, but strange all the same. She forced herself to blink. To swallow. To breathe.
To speak. “I needed to give you my official notice for temporary absence.” Her eyes drifted, momentarily, to Professor Tenenbaum. “To you as well, I guess, since you’re already here.”
"Temporary?" Trelawney's voice wobbled. "But… I thought you had given up on the divining arts…?"
Cleo grimaced.
Yeah.
Okay.
This wasn’t unexpected. She’d hoped-- well, she didn’t know what she’d hoped, but--
“I-- No,” she stammered, uncertain of where to position herself in the room. “I know I haven’t been coming to class, but--”
“Oh, there’s a but to that statement,” Tenenbaum cut in, blithe, as she stretched her arms over her head.
Suddenly, she rather wished Ren was in the room with them. At least their bon vivant attitude could temper the frigid atmosphere. Or maybe Cleo would have felt less judged.
Not that she was undeserving of being judged--
“No ‘but’,” Cleo was quick to correct herself. “I haven’t been coming to class. I’m sorry.”
Trelawney blinked several times very quickly, the motion made further dramatic by the magnification of her glasses. "My dear, you… you aren't angry with me?"
“Sybill, honestly, ” Tenenbaum interjected, sitting up. In a second, the intensity of her attention was foisted in Cleo’s direction, the switch so jilting she felt the urge to stumble.
That look in her eye... Cleo could feel something terrible coming if she didn’t--
“No,” she amended immediately, taking a step forward. “Of course not, Professor. I was in the wrong.”
Trelawney fiddled with a shawl draped over her shoulder. “You gave me such a fright, leaving like you did,” she murmured, frowning. “Your aura was quite disturbed.”
Tenenbaum’s eyebrow raised at her. Cleo felt a shiver run down her spine. “I know. I’m really sorry.”
"And such fiery words you had! I was so very singed that I was forced to cancel classes for the rest of the day!"
“I’m so sorry, Professor.”
"The students were so unsettled that none experienced any visions of the Beyond!"
“I can’t imagine. I apologize.”
With a blink and a short sigh, she continued still further, "To think you would resort to falsehoods in order to impress me! The whole business was so very unfortunate--"
“She got it, Sybill,” Tenenbaum interrupted, boredly scratching the calloused leg stump she’d plopped over her left knee.
"Well," Trelawney huffed. "These two weeks I have performed daily readings and even monitored her horoscope to be certain nothing horrible had happened to her-- and now, after being missing, to announce another leave of absence! It does not bode well!"
“It’s a family matter,” Cleo explained, gaze flitting between the two faces. “That’s all.”
The woman drew a worried hand to her chest, jostling her many beaded necklaces. "Has some terrible misfortune befallen your mother?!"
“No,” Cleo deadpanned.
Tenenbaum forced her way into the fray before Trelawney had much of a chance to continue. “How long will you be gone for?”
“The Headmaster granted me a week,” she answered.
"A week?! " Trelawney squawked. "But my dear, you are already so behind!"
“I know, but--”
“I imagine,” Tenenbaum practically purred, “that Miss Croft is fully willing to make up what she misses to the very best extent of her ability. Like a grown up. Is that right?”
Cleo forced a smile down the barrel of that threat. “Yes, of course.”
“Well then,” with a slight cant of her head, the diminutive woman flashed a bright grin in Trelawney’s direction. “All settled.”
The professor looked poised to fret some more, but she was distracted by the auspicious arrival of Ren. They popped through the beaded entryway with all the energy of a gale force wind, startling Trelawney so badly that she upset the tea tray sitting between her and Tenenbaum.
"Hey, what a surprise! It's my favorite people!" they announced, clapping their hands together.
Trelawney was incensed. "You are disrupting the energy of my office!" she shrieked, her hands waving to shoo Ren away.
“I see you realized Peeves isn’t in this part of the castle,” Tenenbaum commented, breezy, as she lifted her other leg with her hands.
"That slippery codger retreated again," Ren sighed, wandering further into the room. "Is it a sign of old age that I can't be bothered to chase him down?"
“Yes,” Tenenbaum dismissed before she waved them over. “Make yourself useful for once, please. My leg is starting to feel stiff.”
"For once?!" was their affronted reply. Despite their exaggerated offense, Cleo noticed that Ren immediately went to her side. "I'll have you know I am a highly useful person! The usefullest! "
“Oh, is that why you’ve spent the past hour making a horror of Sybill’s classroom?”
"A horror? I'd say I positively livened up the space!" Ren informed them all, head held high. Not a touch of shame. "Say what you will about my methods, but you must admit the decor is a touch old hat."
“Excuse me?!” Trelawney objected, looking fit to burst. "My rooms were perfectly harmonized until you-- you unbalanced them!"
She wasn’t going to get a cue much more solid than that. Taking a step back, Cleo excused herself with a soft, “Well, thank you for speaking with me. I hope you have a good day.”
"Oh, hey, Cleo!" Ren addressed her, one of their membraned eyelashes sticking as they blinked. "Been meaning to ask you something."
Cleo started. “Uhm, okay?”
“You’re friends with Thea Waters, yeah?”
"I--" she paused. "I know her, yeah. Why?"
Ren’s eyebrows drew upwards in earnest concern before they asked, “Is she doing alright?”
That particular question settled uneasily. "I haven't talked to her for a while," she explained, before taking a step back into the room. "Why? Is something wrong?"
“Well…” They sat back on their heels, adjusting their tail by hand so it curled beside them. “I’m not really supposed to tell you this, but since I’m not a real teacher, I don’t strictly care about the rules--”
"What a marvel idea," Tenenbaum remarked, scowling at them. "Perhaps you should stay out of it, then?"
Ren’s smile shined toward her, bright and unwavering. “Darling, never, ” they sing-songed before turning back Cleo’s way.
The next few moments were a chaotic flurry of motions as the -- married? -- couple attempted to speak over one another.
“So, here’s the thing--”
Tenenbaum sat up.
“Ren.”
“--I’ve noticed her in class--”
Her eyes narrowed as she leaned forward.
“Ren. ”
“--she’s very smart and enthusiastic usually--”
Her arm launched forward, barely brushing past Ren’s face as they sat back further in a masterful, practiced dodge.
“--but lately-- ”
The rest of their sentence was muffled as Tenenbaum’s palm finally hit its mark. She held fast to their mouth as they stared back at her, both eyebrows raising far up their forehead in a way that appeared almost like they were impressed.
“Enough, ” was her stern, yet soft, command.
Ren was hardly moved.
The two of them stared at one another for a while until Tenenbaum’s expression rapidly deteriorated, her gaze drifting to her hand. Although Cleo couldn’t tell what was happening exactly, Tenenbaum’s next words helped paint a picture.
“Really? Ren, I’m not a child, that’s not as gross as you think--”
Ren wrenched the woman’s wrist away from their lips, her palm glistening with spit.
Their voice came out in a gasp. “Sorry, Cleo. Anyway, as I was saying, she’s very attentive but--”
Tenenbaum’s torso twisted as she attempted to pull out of Ren’s vice grip, but was barely able to budge. “Ren, I swear-- ”
Ren’s other hand came down on her shoulder, pinning her down against the throw pillows. “--but her heart just doesn’t seem in it, you know?--”
Tenenbaum let out a mighty cry as she attempted to push up against their pin. “Ren! ”
She twisted hard and, to her credit, was able to lift Ren up with her as she rose a few inches off the ground. However, with their weight bearing down on her, she immediately plummeted, upsetting some of the pillows in her circle as they scattered across the floor.
Ren beamed. “That’s good, honey. Really good upper body workout--”
“-- I’ll show you an upper body workout--!”
She grunted loudly again. Ren looked Cleo’s way.
“It’s just that Thea seems distracted--”
“--Merlin’s balls, Ren--!”
“--and I’m just, you know--”
“--Fine! Fine! Just get off--!”
With an exaggerated lurch backwards, Ren let the woman loose, exhaling the last word of their sentence in victory. “Worried.”
Cleo blinked, her eyes flitting between the two hyperventilating bodies before she plunged her hands into her robe pockets. “I don’t know, like--” she took in a sharp breath and frowned. “She was incredibly upset by what happened in Divination a couple weeks ago, but I thought I’d handled that--”
Ren tipped their head minutely. “What happened in Divination?”
“Cleo was acting quite out of sorts,” Trelawney supplied, taking a prim sip of her tea.
Cleo couldn’t help the scowl. “That wasn’t--” She stopped herself with a breath, her frustration tensing into the pucker of her lips before she turned to face the woman. “You told her she was going to die.”
“I only say what I see, child,” the professor informed her, not a single twitch in her expression. “If what you say is true, then I was merely a messenger for the Fates.”
She couldn’t disguise her disgust as she stared at the woman, incredulous. “How is that even remotely appropriate?”
Trelawney seemed to realize the animosity in the room, and she stuttered, defensive, “I- I have no control over the visions I see with my Inner Eye! You-- you know that… don’t you?”
“That doesn’t--” Cleo grit her teeth, hard, as she closed her eyes. She tried taking a breath. It wasn’t making her any less irritated. “You told her she was going to die horribly in a fire. She’s eleven.”
“I said nothing of the sort--!”
“So, what? She lied?” Cleo balked. “Were Harry Potter and Ron Weasley in on it? Because they heard it too.”
Her voice was very small. “I don’t…”
“We’re veering a bit from the point,” Ren cut in with a sigh. “I just wondered if you knew anything about where she might go outside the common room.”
“Why?” she asked suddenly. “You just said she looked dispirited in class. What does that have to do with where she hangs out?”
“Well, ” they began, shifting a look toward Tennenbaum, who had haphazardly tossed her leg at them. Without missing a beat, they caught it, taking the atrophied-looking limb and stretching it out before pushing it back in, repeating the exercise a few more times before addressing Cleo again. “At the last staff meeting, Snape mentioned he’s assigned her three separate detentions for skiving off, but she didn’t bother showing up to any of them.”
Cleo’s head tilted. “She’s been skipping Potions?”
“Seems so,” Ren replied, flippant.
“Do you know how long?”
They shrugged. “S’pose you’ll have to ask Snape yourself.”
“No, you won’t,” Tenenbaum interjected, a soft grunt escaping her as Ren pushed her leg up against her chest in a stretch.
Cleo grimaced. “Why not?”
“Because it’s none of your business.”
“If she’s not going to a class, wouldn’t she end up--”
“Whatever it is, yes, she most likely will,” Tenenbaum uttered, a bit callous, glancing her way as Ren leaned back to stretch out her leg again. “And that still doesn’t make it any more your business.”
Ren looked between them both as they remarked, “Friends take care of friends, don’t they?”
“Friends don’t parent friends,” Tenenbaum objected, scowling at them. “Don’t encourage her.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, dear,” they replied, serene and smiling.
“Then couldn’t one of you?” Cleo asked, spotting an opportunity. “Considering you are her teachers and responsible for her education--”
“Very cute, Miss Croft,” Tenenbaum commented without missing a beat. “But you’ll have to try harder than that.”
Cleo frowned. “I’m just saying-- ”
“I know what you’re saying.” Another sharp shiver cascaded down the length of her spine as the woman’s eyes looked her over, picking her apart. “But unfortunately for you, I am a huge proponent of learning through experience.”
Her rigorous practicals could attest to that. The girl’s frown deepened.
Tenenbaum’s attention directed itself to the other woman in the room once more for a spectacular, albeit subtle, shut down. “Sybill, don’t you have a class soon?”
The professor sprang up from her seat so quickly that she spilled her tea all over the cushions. “Oh, no-- The classroom!” The horror in her voice was overpowered by Ren, who outright laughed, lifting themselves into a standing position as well.
“I’m not normally one to clean up my own messes,” they admitted, stretching out their arms as if preparing for a workout. “But for you-- ”
“If you finish that sentence I’ll divorce you,” Tenenbaum uttered, the severity of her words belied by the bored way she scratched her leg stump.
Ren’s response was sly. “Oh? Have we tied the knot, then?”
Tenenbaum met them with a raised eyebrow. “I’ll drag you to the Ministry, marry you, then divorce you.”
“Don’t think you’re in a state to do much dragging, dear--”
The professor let out a growl that somehow managed to sound both irate and amused as she lurched over her stack of pillows to grab one soaked through with tea.
But by the time she’d turned to hurl the thing, Ren had slipped back through the veil of beads, their almighty cackle resonating loud and heavy in the enclosed space.
Cleo spotted Harry at his House table at lunch, seated beside Ron and a few other Gryffindors she recognized from classes. As she made her way over, they all turned to stare, including the redhead, who glared suspiciously the moment his eyes caught her.
Well. She supposed it was too optimistic to think that he might come around.
Harry was the last to notice her. In an instant, his countenance shifted to that of a spooked deer, holding himself incredibly still and watching her with wary anticipation. Clearly, he hadn't been expecting her approach.
Unsurprising.
"Er… hey…" he greeted her, a question implicit in his tone. What are you doing here?
“Wanted to shift our tutoring session up a bit,” she announced, breezy, “since they changed my schedule at work. That alright with you?”
He stared at her. "What?"
“I’m pretty sure you don’t have Quidditch practice this afternoon,” she commented. “Unless you have prior engagements?”
She caught his brief wince. "Ehm. No, I don't. But…" His voice petered out.
“You’re still struggling a bit with antidote fundamentals,” she pointed out. “I want to make sure you’re settled when I’m absent.”
Harry cast a significant glance at his friends, his expression utterly bemused. "Right-- of course," he murmured.
She flashed a grin to the other Gryffindors watching as Harry rose from his seat. When she began walking away, he caught up to her quickly, his voice hushed as he addressed her before they’d even made it past the doors. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”
“Do what?”
He frowned, hiking his school bag further up his shoulder. “Pretend like nothing happened.”
“I just thought you’d prefer not to talk about it.”
“Me?” he balked, incredulous. “What about you? ”
She rose an eyebrow. “I’m ready to talk whenever you’re comfortable.”
Harry stopped in his tracks to stare at her. "What is wrong with you?"
She halted a few paces ahead once she realized he wasn’t going to keep walking. “Nothing.”
"No, really," Harry said, glaring. "Stop acting like this."
This was already exhausting. “I’m not sure what you want from me.”
"Get angry! Tell me what a colossal prick I am! Get snide, or-- or I don't know!" he demanded with a huff. "Just do something! "
“I don’t know what people you hang around, but retaliation isn’t my style,” she told him, frowning.
"Yeah, well, not reacting at all is dodgy as hell!"
Her hands slid into her pockets, expression shifting to something more grim. “You fucked up. Really bad. But, I know you’re not a bad kid deep down. So, I figured before writing you off completely, I’d let you explain what happened.”
"What?" Harry's hands slackened their hold on the strap of his bag, baffled. "You serious?"
That was the voice of someone who’d had a rough go of it. Someone who hadn’t expected, but clearly needed, the reassurance. She watched him. “Yeah, I am.”
For several seconds, he said nothing at all; his prolonged stare was fixed to her face. Then, at length, Harry commented, "We'd best be off before I completely give up on studying."
“Well, I couldn’t book us a workroom on such short notice,” Cleo informed him, shrugging. “So wherever you feel like going.”
"I don't care," he sighed, scratching the side of his head. "Just somewhere I won't have to run into any Gryffindors. They're… none too happy with me."
“I know that feeling,” she joked, but the cold reception of her words killed that attempt at levity pretty quick.
Right. Not in the mood for humor. “I think I know of a place, yeah.”
"Good." Harry grimaced. "I'm all tapped out on thinking of good places to avoid people."
He followed her up the staircase and onto the third floor in silence. The mood between them was strange, but not uncomfortable; the boy just seemed… checked out. His mind was elsewhere.
When she reached the torn tapestry of Rigurd the Wise, Cleo gestured for Harry to hang back. Approaching the wall hanging, she cupped her hand around Rigurd's embroidered ear and whispered, "His health and happiness."
The vertical cut in the tapestry swept aside to allow entry. Harry took a step forward and she glanced back at him before stepping through the patch of wall and into the room on the other side.
He emerged a second later, marvelling at the seemingly-solid wall behind them. "Just like the train platform…" he muttered, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah,” she breathed, indifferent. The magic didn’t hold the same wonder anymore. “Just about.”
They passed by a series of heavy draperies which divided the space into a semicircle of wedges around the defunct fireplace -- their destination. It was where all the windows and couches were; Harry would feel more comfortable there than in the dark corners her housemates often frequented.
When they arrived, a fourth year girl looked up from the parchment she was writing on, took one look at Harry, and then left the room entirely without saying a word. If Harry was puzzled by that, he didn't show it; instead, he walked around the space unbidden, taking in the scenery. It wasn't much -- just some bare, dusty bookshelves, a grouping of broken statues, a stack of eight trunks against the wall, some oak furniture weathered with age, a boarded up fireplace, old textiles covering the floors, and the odd decorations from past visitors.
Harry, for his part, was surveying the most prominent feature of the room: The larger-than-life statue of Merlin, fully intact and without a hint of cobwebs or dust. The stone beard billowed far above the Gryffindor's head. Though his eyes shone with curiosity, the rest of him seemed weighed down. Sluggish. He didn't ask her any questions. He just sat down on the floor at the foot of the statue.
When he cracked open his textbook, without prompting or preamble, she frowned. His energy, or lack thereof, was uncomfortably familiar. She settled on the rug beside him, cushioning their impending conversation with a soft, neutral, “Snape has set the antidotes quiz for this Friday. We’ll just go over those until you have them down.”
For a brief moment, she saw a shadow pass over his face. In the next instant, it was gone, though he still seemed rather sour. "Right. Lovely."
“Sorry,” she attempted to smooth over, a smile arriving half-baked on her face. “Just thought maybe you’d want some buffer before we got into it.”
"It's fine," he said. "I just hate everything about this subject so… what else is new."
“I meant about the fight.”
"Oh." His expression was frozen between discomfort and chagrin. "Right, yeah, that… makes more sense."
She gestured toward him. “So…”
"Erm." Harry took in a bracing breath before looking at her squarely. "This is going to sound… I don't know."
“What?”
"Like I'm a bit mental," he remarked with a frown. "Like… I'm making excuses, when I'm… I know it's an excuse, but that's not to say I think what happened was good--"
“What does that even mean? Being mental?” she interjected, furrowing her brow. “You know it’s okay to have struggles, right?”
"I know that," Harry replied, though there was a touch of defensiveness to his tone. "What I'm saying is-- I wasn't myself, when I, you know. Attacked you."
The phrase appeared to leave a bitter taste in his mouth. Cleo nodded, sympathetic. “I’ve been there. I’ve been that angry. I didn’t feel quite like myself either.”
"I wasn't angry," he stressed. "Not that much-- I was going to walk away like Hermione said! But suddenly I was casting spells at him, and everything went… very wrong."
“You were angry,” she emphasized, frowning. “That’s okay to admit. I was angry. Truth be told, I was close to giving that snotty little prick a good smack myself.”
"Look, Malfoy's an arse, but he's done worse before," Harry pointed out. "I've never put him in hospital over it. But this… this wasn't right. I wasn't just angry, I was… I mean I think I really wanted him to bleed, and that's not me. He's an awful person, but I've never wished him death. It doesn't make sense to me at all."
“Harry, he taunted you about the fact that you’re going to be killed,” she pointed out, “by some genocidal maniac, no less. The same one who murdered your parents. The same one who wants to murder me and your best friend and everyone you care about. It’s okay to have felt a little out of control--”
"I have never wanted to kill someone as much as I wanted to then," he cut her off. "And that includes all of the real life murderers I know! That feeling-- it wasn't natural. And even if I really did 'just get that angry', that doesn't explain why I would have a go at you, too."
“You were out of control and I tried to stop you. I was the next nearest object to vent your rage at.”
"I'm not a violent person!"
“I’m not saying you’re a violent person. Just that you were being violent in that moment.”
"No, that's not what I--" He cut himself off, visibly frustrated as he searched for his words.
She squinted, her expression twisting up before she shook her head. “Okay -- we’re clearly missing each other here. I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me. You were angry but you weren’t angry. You did it but you didn’t do it. What are you trying to say?”
His countenance was pained, but his words were adamant. "Malfoy must have done something to me."
“How? ”
Harry frowned. "Well, it would have to be dark magic, wouldn't it? How else?"
“That’s not what I mean,” she uttered, sighing. “My point is -- how could he have? He didn’t do anything. His wand was out, yes, but he didn’t have time.”
He was quiet for a moment. "I know. But I just… Even though I remember what happened, I just know it wasn't me. Not really. I didn't lose control of my temper, I lost control of everything that makes me… myself. "
“So, what? He cast Imperius on you or something?”
"No," he said, bringing his knees up to lay his arms on top of them. "I know what that feels like, and it doesn't work on me besides."
That was a hefty thing to claim. Way more arrogant than she was used to hearing out of him. “There aren’t a lot of mind control spells, you realize.”
His lips twisted. "Yeah, I realize. But there's more to magic than just spells, you know? A potion, or-- or a cursed object or something."
“I don’t know of any potion that causes rage second-hand. And Malfoy didn’t have much on him more than his wand.”
"But you can't deny that it's a bit strange, isn't it? Malfoy getting into fights all the time, and now this. I mean, why did he even stop you?"
“Because he’s a hot-headed bigot with something to prove,” Cleo told him. “He doesn’t have the same clout as he used to in his own House. All he has now is the ability to assert what little power he has on people he thinks are weaker than him.”
"Well-- sure," he conceded. "But why miss class to do it? If he only wants to terrorize people, he's doing a shoddy job of it, since he's the one laid up in hospital all the time."
“I don’t think he’s trying to accomplish anything. I just think he’s desperate and scared and lashing out.”
Harry’s nose wrinkled. “Malfoy’s always up to something or other. There’s got to be more to it than that.”
She shrugged. “His father has been publicly outed as a terrorist and sent to Azkaban for it, which was a complete blow to his family’s reputation. Now even people who agree with him can’t associate with him if they want to remain crypto. Not to mention how the arrest in general has cast a huge spotlight on Slytherin as a whole and how it’s been kept as a hotbed for fascist recruitment for God only knows how long. Which means Dumbledore has been cracking down, and everyone blames him for it.” Cleo’s jaw tightened. “I don’t think he has a lot of room to be up to much of anything. I don’t think he’s even in the mindset to maneuver out of this. He knows his life is basically over right now.”
He was looking at her oddly. "That's very… thorough."
Her brow wrinkled. “It’s just what the situation is.”
Harry didn't reply, his gaze falling to the textbook laid by his side.
“I’m not saying he isn’t dangerous,” she assured him. “Someone with nothing to live for and even less to lose? But--” She grimaced into a pause, before leaning forward and lowering her voice, as if it were possible for the very walls to hear them if they weren’t too careful. “You’re trying to say he’s -- taken the next step, am I right?”
"Well, it's like you said," he murmured, his eyes shifting toward the curtains dividing the room. "He's got nothing to lose. I mean, you’d think someone would start checking people’s arms at some point…"
“They did,” she informed him. “Beginning of the year. Did active checks for Dark Marks, even on the Muggleborns.”
"What? When? " he questioned. "I mean you said at the beginning of this year, but I never heard anything like that--!"
She frowned. “It's one of the main reasons Urquhart organized the Slytherin students to walk out during Dumbledore’s speech at the Welcoming Feast. Returning Slytherins were checked the second we got off the train.”
Harry frowned. "Guess that means Malfoy's clean," he mused, though he still looked troubled.
She shrugged. “Not necessarily."
"What do you mean?"
“Well,” she exhaled, before lowering her voice again, “if I were the leader of a fascist movement that had lost its only advantage of being able to work undetected because no one believed I was around, I’d reorganize. I’d stop marking my followers with something that easily identifies them to outsiders in a way that screams ‘hey! I’m a domestic terrorist! Better stop me!’ I’d start rethinking my recruitment strategies. I’d do everything I could to work in plain sight without announcing my presence.”
Harry’s expression was utterly confused. “So… you’re saying he’d focus more on not getting caught, yeah?”
"It's the only way to proceed if he actually wants to accomplish anything," she argued.
"Then, Malfoy could be a Death Eater right now, and there would be no way to know," he sighed.
“But he’s a child,” she whispered. “I cannot even fathom what someone like--” She let her sentence hang for a beat, looking at him knowingly, “--would want with someone like Malfoy.”
Harry shrugged, though he did seem to consider it. His ruminations were troubling, if his furrowed brow was anything to go by, but he voiced none of them. Instead, he sat up straighter, expression clearing when he quipped, "As a general rule, I make it a habit not to think like Voldemort."
She pursed her lips. That name sounded idiotic when hearing it out loud. “You should start.”
"Tried it," he intoned, giving her a look. "Didn't fancy it."
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t mean agreeing with his beliefs. I’m talking about being aware of how people like him operate. That way there are no surprises.” She sat up, eyes trained on him. “Know your enemy. Art of War, that kind of thing.”
He didn't seem to appreciate her efforts; his expression dipped into annoyance. "I get it. Can we talk about something else?"
Okay.
“The point still stands. Malfoy is definitely volatile, probably dangerous. But I can’t see him planning anything. And I don’t see him having the means to have brute forced you into beating the shit out of both of us.”
He folded his arms. "If you don't believe me, you can just say so."
“I don’t know what to believe, Harry,” she confessed, exasperated. “I live in a world where, with a word, I can make a bird appear, right into my hand. Out of nothing. Life out of nothing. Okay? So nothing is off the table for me. I just don’t understand how it happened and I’m trying to get clarity on it.”
"You and me both," he commented, voice hollow. He passed a frustrated swipe over his eyes with a free hand. "At least you're talking to me at all."
“Well, you’re my--”
She stopped herself, eyes diverting to her hands. Friend, she was going to say. But that wasn’t really true, was it?
“Well, anyway,” she smoothed over with a hum. “You deserve the benefit of the doubt, is what I mean.”
He blew out a breath. "That's-- Ehm… thanks."
She looked him in the eye, then. “You really believe it was something Malfoy did?”
His stare didn't waver. "Yes."
Their eyes remained locked before she nodded, the break in contact feeling almost tangible. “Then I forgive you.”
His smile was thin. Worried. "Just like that?"
“Even if it were anger, Harry, I would’ve forgiven you,” she admitted. It wasn’t like she was in a position to be throwing away allies willy-nilly. “I know you think Slytherins are basically the denizens of the damned, but I’m not really a vindictive person.”
"I didn't think you were," he mentioned, off-hand, taking up the Potions book again.
A breath pushed itself out her nose as she mirrored his movement, pulling the cover off her textbook. “Okay.”
He was quiet long enough for her to think the conversation was over, but the silence was broken by his address. "Hey, ehm… Cleo?"
Cleo…?
She sat up straighter. “Yes?”
Harry's posture shifted, matching hers, though his gaze was pensive. "I'm sorry," he told her, quiet and sincere. "For… for what happened. What I did."
“It’s not your fault,” she assured him, if anything, to show that she did believe what he was telling her. “It’s okay, Harry. Thank you.”
A puff of air whooshed out of him. "It's really not, but I'm going to find out what happened." If it kills me, she heard, even if he didn’t say it.
“Well you know who to come to for overly convoluted insights into Slytherin politics,” she lobbed at him, off-hand.
"Everything about Slytherins seems overly complicated, so you can hardly be blamed," he remarked, a fledgling smile curling the corners of his mouth.
Her smile was lop-sided. “You’re probably right about that.”
They lapsed into a comfortable quiet, punctuated by turning pages and the occasional murmured question. Although ‘occasional’ was, perhaps, being generous; Harry seemed to have no end of inquiries, and would only fall into silence for a few minutes at a time.
Still, the hour passed gently, and Harry seemed well soothed by it.
Lacing his fingers behind his neck, he arched his back. "I don't think I can read another potion recipe. My head is about to explode."
“I appreciate the effort,” she offered as some paltry comfort, “considering the fact that we didn’t really have to study this at all.”
"Well, I didn't want to waste your time," he commented, stretching his arms over his head.
“Not really a waste,” she remarked. “I’m free until work.”
The boy cast his gaze around, surveying the stack of trunks in the corner. "How'd you find this place, by the way?"
Her shrug carried itself, lackadaisical, as she watched him. “Open House secret, I guess.”
His observational mien turned critical. "I've never heard of this place.” This statement was uttered with the undercurrent that it was a personal affront.
“You wouldn’t have,” she pointed out. “It’s a Slytherin hang out. You can’t get in without the dorm password.”
He leaned back to frown at the statue of Merlin. "Odd place to put a password on."
“I’m sure this was meant to be some sort of… I don’t know, posh little study or lounge room for the noble Slytherins during Salazar’s time or whatever but--” She shrugged again. “The Sacred 28 and their lot don’t stop by much anymore. So it’s a nice little hideout for the rest of us.”
"Shouldn't it be in the dungeons, then?"
“I don’t know. I’m not the castle’s architect.”
"Yeah. I don't suppose you are," Harry remarked, absent-minded. Standing, he wandered over to the mantle of the boarded-up fireplace, peering at the banner hanging there. It slouched after months of neglect, Justice for Montague! drooping along the edges of the wrinkled cloth.
"Were you one of them?" he asked, turning back toward her. "The ones who walked out on Dumbledore at the start of term?"
She shook her head. “The first demonstration was chaotic and disorganized. I had no idea what it was trying to communicate at the time, other than being disgruntled with Dumbledore. It could’ve stood for a million other things outside of the target on Slytherin’s back. I didn’t want to risk associating myself.”
He grimaced as he turned away from the banner, his apparent restlessness dipping him into a meandering circle about the couch before he halted just beside the armrest. "I don't understand Slytherins," he admitted with a frustrated sigh.
“I suppose we are a little tricky, yes,” she offered, a gentle smile creasing her face.
"That's not it," he said, arms crossing. "I mean-- If you didn't know what they were about, then why didn't you just ask?"
That familiar bristle of irritation made itself a home at the base of her skull. It took everything in her to restrain herself from the eye roll and sarcastic retort that belonged as a natural response to something so obviously naive--
But he didn’t know. He didn’t mean how it sounded. So--
“Because it’s like navigating a minefield, being in Slytherin,” she explained, doing her level best to sound as patient as possible. “There are people in there who genuinely want to see me dead. And sometimes the best thing you can do is make yourself as small and inoffensive as possible. Avoid obvious confrontation. If that demonstration had anything to do with supporting Voldemort-- ” she grimaced; no, it wasn’t sounding any less stupid, “--then putting myself in the line of fire isn’t advantageous to me in the slightest.”
"I don't see why they couldn't have been more clear from the start," Harry mentioned, plopping down to sit on the armrest. "Why are Slytherins all about appearances and plots and… hiding the truth?"
“Why do you handle conflict the way you do?” she questioned. “Why do you feel things the way you do? Why do you think the way you do?” With her eyes trained on him, she didn’t allow him much time to ponder the question before she went on, “It’s just the type of people we are. It would probably seem way less strange to you if they didn’t segregate us like this.”
“Who is ‘they’?” he countered, frowning. “Slytherins are the ones who keep themselves apart, who step on other people to get by--”
“Slytherins aren’t a monolith,” she lobbed back, unable to sufficiently veil the annoyance in her tone. “My son’s deadbeat father was a Gryffindor; do you think it would be fair if I measured the entirety of your House based on his actions?”
Harry stared at her. “Wait-- really?”
It occurred to her rather suddenly that the information she’d supplied wasn’t… well, anything obvious to anyone but her. Of course it wasn’t. She didn’t tend to be candid with the details.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “He was a seventh year and I was in my sixth. Benjamin Stockton.”
“Aren’t you in sixth year now?” he asked, visibly confused.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Yes?”
“And you were gone for two years…?”
“Yes…?”
“How--?” He hesitated, frowning. “How old are you?”
Right. She supposed that had never come up either. "I just turned twenty."
“Twenty?!” he echoed. “I didn’t think you were that old!”
She sat up. "It's not ‘that old’," she huffed.
“I thought-- I don’t know.” Harry’s arms folded. “I suppose I didn’t really think about it, much.”
"I guess I can't blame you for that," she conceded. "It's not terribly common."
“That’s… I mean, I just didn’t expect--” His gaze was cast at the floor. “Must be… strange. Y’know. Being back.”
In her view, it was more strange that they were going over all this again. But perhaps the entirety of the situation hadn't quite settled on him until that moment. "It has been.”
“I’ve not been a very good friend to you, have I?”
Her brow furrowed. What was that about?
“We weren’t really friends then,” she objected.
“Not really an excuse for suspecting you of conspiring with Malfoy," he pointed out. "Or letting Ron be as rude as he was, or--"
“Is this productive?” she asked him, abrupt, as she frowned at him. “Does dredging up every little mistake you’ve made help you at all?”
“What?” He looked at her strangely, not comprehending. “I’m just saying-- I should be trying harder, is all. I haven’t even been tutoring you like I said I would.”
“We’ve study grouped enough,” she insisted, albeit a bit exasperated. “Or will you find a way to blame yourself for the fact my magic doesn’t work in the way Professor Tenenbaum needs?”
“Tenenbaum’s a whole different thing; I just want you to do alright on your N.E.W.T.--”
“Well, fantastic news -- I’m not sitting in for the Defense N.E.W.T.”
“What?” he balked. “Why?”
“Because I don’t need it.”
"Don't you need it to be a healer?"
“Not even remotely.”
Harry stared into the middle distance, brow creased. "Huh."
There was a weightiness in her limbs as she rubbed the side of her face with her hand. “So you can absolve yourself of whatever imagined responsibility you tow for my school success.”
With a grimace, he mentioned, "Well, now it feels like I can't repay you for all the Potions help you've been giving me."
“The fact you think this needs to be some sort of transaction is concerning,” she remarked.
"It doesn't have to be." Harry hunched over, leaning on his knees, his tone sheepish. "I just… thought I was contributing, but I wasn't."
“You’ve helped me where you can,” she assured, trying to not sound as tired as she felt. “Need I remind you again that it’s not your fault that I cannot cast offensive spells?”
"I know," was his mild grouse. "But-- why can't you? It just doesn't make sense."
She hesitated for a moment as she floundered for the right answer; she knew exactly why, but it felt so stupid to say. “Because of how I taught myself how to control my magic.”
Harry eyed her. "What do you mean? Didn't you do it how the professors taught you?”
There was an irritated air with which she shrugged; all the energy of someone who’d just been cornered. “I guess, yeah? At first? But my magic was always so wild. Explosive. Sometimes just refusing to work entirely. I only started getting the hang of things when I--” she faltered, lips pursing. It took another second for her to pick up her thought where she’d left it. “I set intentions, like my mum taught me. And things started to work the way I needed them to.”
"Setting intentions…?" he echoed. "Isn't that just visualization? Because we were definitely taught that."
“It’s more than that,” she emphasized. “It’s manifesting my will; manifesting what I want.”
“Well, yeah, Professor Flitwick always did stress that ‘confidence is key’…” Harry said, his voice assuming a slight recreation of the professor’s usual inflection as he repeated the phrase.
“No, I don’t mean confidence,” she stressed, a little more harshly than she intended. “I just mean-- I need to want it. Like really want it. I need to want to make it happen.”
He was quiet for a moment, evidently contemplating. “Doesn’t that just mean you need to… I don’t know. Make yourself want harder for the spells you can’t do?”
“I-- don’t, though,” her response meandered from her, cryptic and timid.
“But why not?” Harry pressed, looking at her. “A lot of what we’re learning in class is really useful.”
“Because I don’t--” She exhaled, the force of it enough to push her body forward as she buried her face into her hands. “I can’t make myself want to hurt someone. I can’t imagine myself doing it. I can’t make myself want to make that happen.”
He stared. “What, not even to make that tiny cut on my arm in Charms? You were just going to heal it anyway!”
“What do you want me to say?” she balked, looking up at him. “I know it sounds stupid. But it’s the truth.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid, it’s just… I’ve never heard anything like it,” he commented, scratching his head. “But, y’know-- There’s all sorts of things I’ve not heard about.”
“I guess.”
Then, Harry's gaze turned shrewd. "Wouldn't that mean you really didn't want to smack Malfoy after all?"
“You got me,” she lobbed back, blithe, as she lifted her hands in surrender. “I didn’t want to be the one to do it, anyway. Talk big. Can’t deliver. Still think he deserved it, though.”
“Rather someone else do your dirty work for you?” he questioned, sardonic.
“I guess that’s one way of putting it.” Cleo shrugged. “I’m not against the idea of violence. Sometimes it’s necessary. Like, fighting Voldemort--” Jesus Christ that name, “-- I wouldn’t lament about how things could be ‘more peacefully resolved.’ I just-- I don’t know if I could do it myself. I don’t know if I have it in me. No matter how much I hate someone.”
His reply was stiff. “You’d be surprised what you’ll do under pressure.”
“I don’t think I ever want to be in that position,” she remarked. “But you’re probably right.”
“I hope you never are.”
She leaned forward, rapping her knuckles on the weathered mahogany table. “Me too.”
He sat up, rotating his shoulder before his attention settled back on her. “Hold on, so-- before, you said your magic didn’t work very well until you er, ‘manifested what you wanted’--” The phrase seemed to sit uncomfortably in his mouth. “But, didn’t you want to cast spells before you figured that out?"
“No, not at all,” she confessed. “I never wanted to come here. I never wanted any of this.”
"‘Here’, as in-- You never wanted to go to Hogwarts? " Harry murmured, aghast, as he slid off the armrest and onto the proper seat of the sofa. "Why?! "
Plenty of reasons. All of them somehow too difficult to encapsulate into something she could readily voice.
Until one arrived at the forefront of her mind, so unbidden and unwelcome that she scowled.
Because it shouldn’t have been me.
Her jaw misaligned as she clenched it, her next few moments spent marching out a line of thought that would satisfy his curiosity. “I didn’t want to spend ninety percent of my year in a boarding school away from my family in a world I’d never known or understood. It terrified me. I only ever wanted to go back home so I could be myself again.”
"But--" He paused, similarly casting about for what to say. "Magic is-- It's amazing. I can't imagine what my life would be like without it."
“It’d be fine,” she averred. “A majority of the population live without it and have long, fulfilling lives. You can be happy without it.”
"I mean, I could live, sure," Harry commented, leveling a perturbed look at her. "But happy? No, I don't think I could ever be happy without it."
“Maybe you can’t,” she conceded, feeling her hackles rise. “But plenty of us can. Plenty of us do. And we’re no worse off for it, either.”
"Why's there got to be an 'us' and 'them' at all?" he challenged, his tone dark.
“There doesn’t have to be,” she shot back, eyes narrowing. “But you put up the divide every time that you place magic as superior. Every time a wizard speaks as if magic is the pinnacle of human achievement, success, or the ultimate measure of happiness, you separate us--”
“I’m not like that--!”
“I’m not done speaking.” The words stomped down between them, silencing him forthright. She took a sharp breath through her nose. “I don’t know how often I have to sit there and listen to people speak about the Muggle world as if it’s inherently lesser because of its lack of ‘power’ -- whatever the hell that means.”
“Who is ‘people’?! I never said--!”
She threw her hands up. “We’re the same! You get that? The same. Magical, non-magical -- two sides, same coin. And I’m so tired of having to choose sides. I’m both. Take all my magic away tomorrow and I’d still be me. Magic is something I can do, but it doesn’t define me.”
In a second, Harry was standing again, jabbing a finger in her direction and raising his voice. “That’s all well and good for you, but magic is all I bloody have! ”
“That’s sure as hell selling yourself short,” she accused.
“If you hate magic so much, then leave!” he shouted, his gesture toward the door a touch frantic. “I didn’t come here to be called a freak because of how I live my life--! ”
“I never once called you a freak and I never, ever would,” she seethed, crossing her arms. “Do you even hear yourself right now? Leave? You want to add ‘you Mudblood ’ to that, too?”
His teeth clenched, Harry spat, “You didn’t believe me at all, did you? You think I’m violent and unstable, just like everyone else does.”
“I think you love assuming a lot of things,” she returned, every word punctuated with virulence. “I think you love jumping to conclusions and making grand, sweeping generalizations about shit you have no knowledge of whatsoever.”
“And you think you’re better than everyone,” he shot back, “because you’re so sodding ‘normal’! ”
“Yep, you’ve got me down to a T,” she answered, acerbic. “As always, your insights are so biting and exact. So scientific.”
Harry made a noise of disgust. “God, you sound like Snape, ” he sneered, snatching up his bag.
She knew it was meant as an insult; it certainly wasn’t a good accusation, but she couldn’t find offense at the comparison. She watched as he stomped around to gather his books and quills, her own irritation barely diffusing, even though sobriety was setting in. This was not what either of them needed.
The stares of the other occupants of the room boring down on the two of them didn’t help either.
Yet, she said nothing. Not one word as he stormed out of the study, almost knocking two second years over in the process.
And even in that flurry of anger, she could hear him uttering an apology to the group before his footfalls faded from the corridor.
Very Harry. Just like him.
An inane, pointless observation.
But one she couldn’t help herself from noting.
A sigh rang out of her, all hollowed out, as she leaned back against the sofa.
So much for not squandering allies.
Her name was Violet Ayers.
She was sixteen years old, a Ravenclaw Alumnus, a Muggleborn…
… and part of an ongoing investigation into her own abduction.
Cleo wasn’t privy to the particulars -- even Pye, who had been present for the first witness interview, was tight-lipped when it came to divulging what he'd heard. For the best, really. It wasn’t her business. But the sadness in his eyes when he relayed the fact that Violet was a “very brave girl” spoke wonders.
Cleo hadn’t seen her since she first woke up. She was swamped by Aurors for hours at a time and, during the more sensitive parts of her interviews, only a select few Healers and Minders were allowed through. So it was a surprise when she was summarily asked to deliver the girl’s afternoon regimen of potions, despite the fact she was still with the pink-haired Auror Cleo had witnessed enter the ward an hour earlier.
“It’s the final interview, so you should be alright to go in when they’re wrapping up,” Pye assured after her initial protest.
If anything, this statement left room for a line of inquiry she’d wanted to touch on for a while now. “So, then, if it’s over, then we can finally get in contact with her parents--”
The man’s auburn bangs shuffled against his brow as he shook his head. “Not yet.”
“What?” Cleo’s gaze screwed up as she took a step toward him, lowering her voice. “Why?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” Pye offered, his voice modulating itself to a low murmur as well. “Not my decision.”
“But she desperately wants to see them,” she objected. “‘Dad’ was the first thing she said when she woke up. And as parents, they have a right to know--”
“No, they don’t.”
It surprised her, the nonchalance that permeated his voice. How unperturbed he appeared. How utterly banal the information seemed to be, how unremarkable.
Taken aback, Cleo’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean they don’t?”
Now he appeared confused, before his expression twitched, as if he remembered what she was all over again. It made her uncomfortable. “Oh. Well-- hm. How to explain--”
The man shifted in place, shoulders raising up slightly as he bobbed his head in consideration. “All a bit routine at this point but -- Muggle parents don’t really have parental rights over their children. Not the way Wizard parents do.”
“What?”
His hands came up as he shrugged. “Muggles aren’t citizens of the Wizarding World, right? And it’s impossible to anticipate which Muggles are going to end up having magical children. I suppose, in the Ministry’s opinion, giving blanket rights to Muggles is a bit nonsensical, if not dangerous, so--”
Dangerous.
Her eyes narrowed slightly in disgust. Pye, catching himself, prattled on, “I don’t think they are! I’m just speaking to the perspective of politicians, see? I mean these bylaws have been in place since the time of Merlin, y’know, when people were still happily 'burning witches' and the like. So, the idea of making Muggles citizens in what is essentially a private society seems a bit counter intuitive, no?”
He looked at her as if she was supposed to see the sense in it. Instead, she scowled, uttering a sharp, “So, what? Muggle parents aren’t the legal guardians of their magical children?”
“Not in the eyes of the Ministry, no.”
Confounded, Cleo sputtered, “What does that mean? Are all Muggleborns wards of the state, or something?”
“Sort of,” Pye agreed. “I mean right now it works a bit like this -- Muggleborn children are often in the guardianship of the magical school they attend. The headmaster is liable to the well being of those students and all decisions regarding their care, education, et cetera, are in their hands.”
That bit of information brought clarity to the many questionable decisions Cleo had witnessed at Hogwarts over the years, but… “My parents submitted my request for temporary withdrawal from Hogwarts when I was pregnant, though.”
Pye’s mouth slanted. “Doesn’t matter. That was an unnecessary formality on their part. Dumbledore decided to grant that. He could’ve refused and there was nothing your parents could’ve done.”
Her heart dropped. To even think that the fate of her pregnancy had been left in the hands of a man that didn’t even know how to help her--
“What about Violet, then?” her words lanced through that line of thought before she went down that rabbit hole. “She’s not a Hogwarts student anymore. Is she legally an adult or--”
"Violet?" Pye's brow furrowed briefly before his expression cleared and he shook his head. “Ah, you mean Miss Ayers-- she won't be considered an adult until she’s seventeen. So for now, a witch from MOG is in charge of decisions about her medical care.”
“What, like a guardian ad litem?”
His eyes brightened. “Oh, you’ve got those too? Yeah. Like that.”
“But, how in the world are they supposed to know what’s good for her? Medically?” Cleo pressed, exasperated. “Better than her parents? Who know her history? Who know who she is? ”
The Healer merely shrugged. “I don’t agree with the law. It makes things incredibly difficult for us at times. But that’s how it is.”
He sounded so resigned. Just how things are? How was that even remotely a suitable answer?
“So when can she see her parents?” Cleo pressed, trying to tamp down her own impending anxiety.
“I suppose when the Auror’s investigation is concluded, or perhaps when she’s fully recovered enough to be released from care.”
Her head rushed with a sense of panic, of empathy. “She’s been missing. For weeks. They probably think she’s dead. So we’re just going to allow them to continue to think that?”
“Oh, no,” Pye had the audacity to allow these words to slip out of him with an incredulous chuckle. “No, Aurors aren’t usually that cruel. I don’t know personally, but I imagine the lead investigators on her case have already dropped by her home to inform her parents of her status.”
Like that was any better. Her nausea roiled in her stomach, coiled and heavy. “But then tell them they’re not allowed to see her until someone else decides that it’s appropriate for them to?”
Pye’s smile was sad. “Unfortunately, yes.”
Cleo threw her head toward the ceiling. “That’s fucked up.”
“It is,” the man agreed softly. “But don’t use language like that in the hospital, please.”
She wasn’t in the mood to be tone policed. The way she looked at him said as much.
To her surprise, he rose up slightly, his expression growing more stern than she’d seen it before. “I mean it, Cleo. This is a professional setting. If you can’t handle this, then I can easily ask someone else to attend to Miss Ayers and her medical needs--”
“Fine,” Cleo cut in, the word rushed out on an exasperated breath. She gave herself a moment to school her expression, forcing her posture to relax. “You’re right. I apologize. I can do it.”
He looked her over as if her contrition was a bit difficult to swallow, but eventually relaxed as well. He apparently felt generous enough to throw her a bone, too. “I know stuff like this is hard to hear. Really. And I sympathize. I really do. But we can’t lose our composure. Ever.”
Cleo’s face remained carefully neutral. “Understood.”
The deadness of her tone must have gotten to him because, in a moment, he shifted in place, uncomfortable. “I’ll talk to Poke about the situation with her parents. I’m not promising anything, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Taking the nearby tray of Violet’s evening potions off the lab counter, Cleo nodded. “Thanks.”
Seeing this as a cue, the Healer cast a Tempus and hummed as he noted the time. “Good thinking,” he complimented, but it felt hollow and wrong. “Best get to it. You’re okay to clock out after you bring back and clean the vials.”
She was halfway through the lab when she called back with a deadened and unenthused, “Sure.”
One floor up, six doors down. The Curse Reversal Ward, private room three. Cleo was relieved to not have to ask for directions; she was finally starting to feel comfortable with the hospital’s layout. Raising a hand to knock on the slightly-opened door, she hesitated when a voice drifted through the crack.
“... appreciate it. If you’d be willing, of course,” the Auror was saying. She was seated beside the bed, one leg crossed at the ankle and a rolled parchment and quill resting in her lap.
Violet was leaning back against her pillow. Her response was a feeble, half-hearted nod.
“The process is very easy. No pain, no discomfort, and the evidence makes it easier in the long run to prosecute.”
After a languid blink, Violet’s voice peeked out. “When?”
“After I get approval from my superior for use of a Pensieve,” the pink-haired woman promised, leaning over to place her hand on Violet’s leg. The girl jerked away and, not missing a beat, the Auror pulled her hand back into her lap. She spoke as if she hadn’t noticed the rejection at all. “Then I’ll come back, we’ll get the procedure done, and you can focus your time on recovering.”
Violet’s gaze meandered from the woman’s face to the ceiling, before it settled to where Cleo was standing and remained. Quite steadfast. Cleo’s blood ran cold, like she’d been caught.
Hesitating for only a second, Cleo pushed open the door, her tone apologetic as she excused herself, “Sorry-- I, ah… It’s time for your afternoon-- I mean, I can wait out in the hallway until you’re finished--”
“No, we’re wrapping up,” the Auror assured her, affectation much more chipper than seemed appropriate on a cop. “I should leave you to it. Unless you have any more questions, Miss Ayers?”
Violet frowned, her head tilting as she seemed to consider something. Then, “My parents?”
The words were tired and practiced, like this hadn’t been the first time they were uttered. And, considering the situation, they probably weren’t. The Auror’s response confirmed as much: Her smile grew sad as she looked Violet over in silence, before rising from her seat with a cordial, “I’ll see you when we get approval for the Pensieve, Miss Ayers. Rest well.”
The woman excused herself with a slight smile thrown in Cleo’s direction, the sound of her footsteps pitching in the disappointed silence she'd left behind. When they finally shuffled out, Cleo stood there, eyes anchored to Violet’s body. Tipped over. Wrung out. Nothing left to give.
Shit.
It seemed wrong to follow that up with some nonsense about how she needed to take her medicine. Her arms lowered, glasses clinking against one another as they were jostled on the tray. Violet didn’t acknowledge the disturbance, gaze tethered to the side of her bed.
The silence turned expectant. Looked her straight in the eye and bade her, get on with it. Get on with it. Get on with it. Tell her what to do, what to take. Tell her what she needs. But her stomach churned with that electric combination of guilt and nausea.
Knowing, just knowing, that Violet would’ve done whatever she said felt like a violation of the worst kind. It wasn’t comparable, she understood that. But still somehow--
The vials chattered amongst each other as she set the tray down on the bedside table before she occupied the seat the Auror had abandoned. She folded her hands into her lap.
And she waited.
For how long couldn’t be measured.
Long enough, probably. Long enough for Violet to grow perplexed with the arrangement, her pillow sinking beneath her elbow as she forced herself to sit up.
“What are you doing?”
Cleo’s curls slid off her shoulder as she looked up. “Thought you’d want time before I started bothering you.”
The girl stared at her, apparently still trying to work out what she’d just said. When she couldn’t really make sense of it, she offered a feeble, “I thought I needed to take my medicine?”
“Do you want to do that now?”
Violet blinked. “Huh?”
“I can wait here until you’re ready.”
Her eyes drifted from Cleo’s face to the line of bottles on the table in gradual swoops. “Don’t I need them?”
“Yes.”
The girl frowned.
Cleo’s intentions hadn’t quite landed.
So they stared at each other in silence.
However, when it got too unbearable, Cleo sat back. “Just-- talking to the police, I guess, is hard. Especially when you’re discussing trauma. I figured you were--”
Cleo’s hands gestured vaguely in the air before dropping to her lap once they’d inexplicably helped her find the word she’d lost. “Overwhelmed.”
“Overwhelmed.” The word sounded odd coming from Violet; tumbling halfway out her mouth, somehow both chagrined and castigated. Her eyes were having a hard time finding Cleo’s.
Cleo’s head dipped into an absent-minded nod, before a self-effacing chuckle tripped out of her, dead on arrival. “Is that dumb?”
“No.” This response was unflinching. One that seemed a little too nervous about sounding harsh. For once, Violet’s posture relaxed in a way that didn’t have the sag of the infirmed or the impression of a corpse. “I can’t keep track of how things feel anymore.” Her expression twitched, nose scrunching up as if she were trying to fight back something painful. “Is that dumb?”
“No.” Just as unflinching. Unapologetic.
Violet’s laugh shimmied out and carried the threat of tears with them, ones that she bit back with that familiar, off-put grimace, before her expression deadened again.
“So I can wait,” Cleo concluded, eyes trained on the droop of her body.
“Don’t you have other patients?”
“You’re my last one.”
“Before what?”
“Before I leave.”
Violet squinted at the bed. “I’d think you’d want to go home.”
“I do,” Cleo admitted. “I have a train to catch in an hour. But I can wait for a little bit.”
The girl flexed her fingers in her lap, glancing to the wall that stood over Cleo’s shoulder. “No offense, but you’re kind of weird.”
Her smile was tender. “And you’re honest.”
Violet’s agitation settled into her as she grew more restless, fingers fidgeting in their harried attempt to grasp at air. “I really don’t get this.”
Cleo frowned. “Am I scaring you?”
She grimaced again. All teeth. “A little.”
“I’m sorry, I--” Cleo lurched forward in her seat, her sigh kicking itself out of her. “I just-- it didn’t really feel right foisting your medication on you after what you’ve had to deal with. I thought you’d maybe like a say in it, a chance to recover from your interview, the ability to consent--”
“Oh.”
That was it. Every inch of apprehension expelled from her with the arrival of that sound. Oh. Like she’d stumbled upon something that should’ve been obvious.
Her eyes pinned themselves to Cleo’s shoulder. “I get it now.”
“I’m sorry, that must have--”
“No, it’s okay, I just uhm--” Violet stammered, her head bobbing from side to side as she appeared to consider something. “It’s been overwhelming, like you said. I get it now. I appreciate it. That was nice of you.”
She had a hard time believing that, considering how bungled the attempt had been. At the very least, the girl was kind. Incredibly gracious.
“I remember you now, actually,” the girl continued without the chance for Cleo to recover. “The one who was there when I woke up. You talked to me while putting that lotion stuff on me.”
Cleo’s expression was a little pained. “You remember that?”
“Kind of hard to,” Violet admitted. “On account of the sleepiness. But, uhm. I remember the sound of your voice. Sorta like--” Her mouth bit down on a few garbled hums that tried to sound like words, before she shrugged. “Like that. Except more you. I think that’s what woke me up.”
“I hope that’s good,” Cleo put in, tender.
Violet’s head dropped in a nod, though it was unbalanced and stymied by the way her expression winced as her thoughts trailed out of her mouth, unimpeded by any sense of inhibition. “I don’t know if it is, sometimes.”
She regretted saying it, if her grimace was anything to go by.
Impulse to mouth. Just like Harry.
But this was different in a way she couldn’t place. Maybe less impulse. More like compulsion. Her honesty compelled itself to be revealed.
Oversharing, maybe. But Cleo wasn’t going to judge.
“I think it’s good you’re still with us,” she imparted, her hands clasping in her lap. “Though I know that’s hard to swallow with the consideration that you’re the one having to be here. With the burden. So--”
It felt very specious, her sympathy. So much so that during their silence, she couldn’t bear to look the other girl in the eye.
But Violet’s response forced her to, with all the shame it carried in the aftermath of that bleak pause. “Thank you.”
“Don’t,” Cleo objected, the weight of her own frown pulling her forward in her seat. “You don’t have to feel like--”
“No, just,” the girl cut in, looking down at her hands. “Thank you. For not making me feel guilty about the fact I wish I wasn’t here.”
The weight of that sentiment, I wish I wasn’t here, was familiar when it settled on Cleo’s frame. A strain she was disturbingly comfortable with carrying. Emotional muscle memory kicking in, taking the load, practiced; making her sick, troubling her. Exercised just enough that the idea couldn’t shock her anymore.
Didn’t know what that said about her, really.
Not that it mattered.
This wasn’t even about her.
Violet wasn’t smiling, exactly; it just looked like there was a slight tear where her mouth should’ve been. “See,” she emphasized, her levity still managing to have some weight to it. “I’m the weird one now.”
“Not weird just,” Cleo’s eyes went to the ceiling. “Sad.”
She could feel Violet’s stare bore into her for a long while. She was considering something. Cleo didn’t push.
Then, it came, as casual as her last admission. “Do you think it’s bad? To die?”
The sound of Cleo’s laugh was harsh. A solitary sound that burst out of her and quickly faded from her lips. “That’s heavy.”
Violet’s shrug was in her voice. “You don’t have to answer.”
Cleo lowered her gaze back to the bed. “I don’t think it’s bad or good,” she explained. “I just think it is.”
The girl’s lips twisted.
“Why? Do you think it’s bad?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t even know why I asked.”
“Has it been on your mind?”
For the first time, Violet met her stare. It was a brief, albeit intense, contact. “I have a lot of things on my mind.”
“We don’t have to talk about the heavy things, you know,” Cleo offered. “We don’t have to talk about anything at all if you don’t want to.”
She started scratching the back of her hand. “I don’t know what I want.”
Cleo watched the movement, the way Violet’s overgrown fingernails dug hard into the flesh of her knuckles. “That must be frustrating.”
A soft hum found a home against the girl’s lips. “Dad used to help with that,” she divulged. “Sorting out everything, you know, when it got to be too much.”
“Yeah?”
Violet nodded. “Now it’s just like, there’s too much. And I don’t know how to talk about it, I guess. Or make sense of it.” She ceased her scratching, letting her arms stretch out toward her legs. “So now I’m just saying things.”
“That’s okay,” Cleo assured her. “It’s not a bad thing, trying to process.”
“The detective didn’t like it,” Violet commented, off handed. “And I mean, I get why, I guess. I have to explain what happened. They need to keep me on the facts. I have to recount everything. But it gets hard.”
“I’m sorry.”
Her brow crinkled as she squinted in Cleo’s direction. “Why?”
“Because it sucks that you have to be the one who has to deal with all this,” she told her. “It's awful when someone else does something horrible and you have to clean up the mess.”
Violet’s expression loosened. “It’s unfair,” she concurred. “I don’t know how to understand unfair.”
“Maybe you’re not meant to.”
The girl’s expression scrunched up again. “I don’t like that.”
Leaning back in her seat, Cleo exhaled. “Yeah, it’s a bit bullshit, isn’t it?”
Then, something Cleo quite hadn’t expected, but was pleased to hear: The same sort of short laugh exploded out of Violet, so violent that Cleo was momentarily fearful that it might have hurt her. Despite the recovery she’d made, she still looked so… fragile.
The corner of Cleo’s lips twitched upward. “What?”
For the first time, she noticed Violet’s smile. Very faint. Sweet. Where it belonged. “I didn’t expect you to say that.”
“I’m not supposed to.” Cleo leaned forward again, lowering her voice, all conspiratorial. “So don’t tell my boss.”
Violet swiped her fingers across her lips and threw away the key.
And then, in sync, their faces fell to their hands, the remnants of the joke lingering on their lips until it faded into the quiet.
It didn’t feel right, dithering. Inappropriate, maybe. But she didn’t want to bring up the matter of medicine.
Scratching behind her ear, Cleo sat up again, prompting the girl with a soft, “Sorry, this is dumb, but I really like your tattoos.”
Violet didn’t react. Her fingers smoothed over her wrist as she stared at it.
“I noticed them the day you woke up,” Cleo explained. “Didn’t know there were even magical tattoos.”
“Me neither.”
Cleo frowned as she watched Violet push her arms under her blankets, her lips pursing before her eyes drifted to Cleo’s knee. “They’re not mine.”
Cleo squinted. “I don’t…”
“He put them on me.”
She didn’t know who he was, but the girl’s tone communicated enough. A noise strangled in Cleo’s throat as she buried her face in her hands, its remains falling out a few seconds later, strained. “Shit.”
Violet laughed again. Magnitudes weaker. “Shit.”
Cleo’s voice collected in her hands, muffled and heavy. “I am so bad at this.”
“Is anyone good at it?” Violet countered.
Her hands scraped down to prop her head up by the neck as she frowned at the girl. “Someone has to be.”
“Yeah?”
Cleo’s grin was self effacing. “Just not me.”
Violet’s stare, although kind, was an accusation. “But you thought you’d be.”
“You know, I guess I did,” Cleo admitted, slouching in her seat. “Kind of stupid, now that you say it out loud.”
“Not stupid,” Violet promised. “Just--”
The sound of her exhale carved her in half. She fell back against her pillow. Cleo picked up Violet’s thought from where she had dropped it. “Just?”
“This is real life,” she explained. “And things are complicated.”
Yeah.
Things were complicated.
It was sitting there, basking in the lukewarm glow of Violet’s company, that Cleo realized how out of her fucking depth she was. And to think she could have provided her any solace was laughable at best, arrogant at worst.
But there was that laugh again, disrupting the flow of her thoughts. Sharp and sweet but pungent. Short lived. A cough of humor. Violet gestured toward her vaguely. “And for the record, your taste in tattoos is garbage.”
“Probably.” It wouldn’t have served her to mention she’d been trying to be polite. She didn’t know what that said about her. “Well, if it were your choice -- what would you get?”
It didn’t take long for Violet to deliberate. “Treguna Mekoides Trecorum Satis Dee.”
Cleo’s raised eyebrow was enough for Violet to excuse herself with a soft, “It’s from something stupid, but means a lot to me.”
“No, like,” Cleo blurted, pensive, “it sounds familiar, is all.”
“It’s from Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” Violet informed her, very deliberately turning her head to face the other wall.
“Oh!” Cleo gasped. “The Disney flick? With Angela Lansbury?”
Her eyes remained deliberately averted. “Mhmmm.”
“Wow, that brings me back,” Cleo mused with a wistful sigh. “Don’t think I’ve seen that film since I was a kid.”
Violet’s demeanor darkened. “Yeah, well…”
“That was a spell from it, right?”
The girl took a moment to stare at her, warily, before proceeding. “Yeah.”
“Like the uh,” she stammered, deep in thought. “The big one, right? The one they were looking for the entire time.”
Something pleasant twitched onto Violet’s expression. “Yeah.”
“I think I remember the song, too, a little bit--” Cleo paused briefly, before her voice warbled, albeit off tune. “Substitutiary locomotion; mystic power that’s far beyond the wildest notion-- ”
Her voice petered off as the next lyric escaped her; she sat there, trying to remember, before Violet cut in, much prettier, “It’s so weird, so feared, yet wonderful to see-- ”
Then, together.
“Substitutiary locomotion come to me! ”
They shared breath with a laugh as Cleo scooted her chair closer to the bed. “God, yeah. Amazing how that comes back after all these years.”
Violet uttered, for the fourth time but much lighter, “Yeah.”
“So, uhm,” Cleo broached, leaning toward her. “Why that one in particular?”
Violet rolled her eyes, carried by no emotion in particular. It felt like a nervous action. “It’s going to sound dumb.”
“Try me.”
The girl’s shoulders shrugged, dismissive. “Just-- it’s not what the spell is, but what it means.”
“It made objects move on their own, right?”
“Well, yeah,” Violet confirmed, twisting in her bedsheets to face Cleo. “But I don’t mean what the spell does. Like--” The girl sighed, her lips twisting, as she appeared to take inventory of something intangible. “The entire movie, Eglantine goes through the trouble of becoming a witch for this one spell. The final one in the Correspondence College of Witchcraft. All this work for this one spell, and why?”
Her enthusiasm, her steam, built gradually in the pace of her speech, “To help everyone else in her community. Because it’s World War II, and the Nazis are coming, and they’re winning and no one knows what to do. And Eglantine seeks power not for herself, but for the sake of helping others.
“And when I learned I was a witch, she was the kind I wanted to be.” It was the most animated Cleo had seen her, and by the end she was leaning off the mattress, perched on the palms of her hands. “I decided if I was going to have magic, then I might as well use that power for the sake of helping others, instead of myself.”
Cleo didn’t allow this to hang for long. The glimmer in the girl’s eyes suggested she might shatter if Cleo didn’t understand, or at least comprehend, the sentiment she was sharing. “That’s really beautiful, Violet.”
The girl sat back on the mattress. “Yeah, well--”
Her silence ate her up again, now that the conversation had meandered back to the abstract.
Cleo tried to fill in the gap. “So, then… Why aren’t you doing your N.E.W.T.s?”
The girl picked at her nail beds. “Because wanting to be a good witch isn’t the same as being one.”
This, in the very least, was something Cleo had experience with. It felt horrid, but it was nice to be on common ground. “Yeah. Hogwarts is rough, isn’t it?”
“No one ever got it,” the girl complained, scowling at her hands. “Because people are mostly excited, and you’re just crazy if you don’t think being there is the most amazing thing in the world.”
“Yeah.”
“And the teachers are really hard to talk to. I couldn’t ever be honest with them. Especially Snape. It’s not like he’d get it, you know, that I had problems. They didn’t know the name for it. And I didn’t feel like explaining it, not without sounding mental. Or them even believing me in the first place. So I was just a lazy student. ”
“You weren’t,” Cleo averred, quite stern. Probably wasn’t the best idea to pry too deeply into the details, either. “Whatever you were going through, it wasn’t your fault. Hogwarts isn’t all that accessible.”
“Well,” the girl sighed, glancing up to fasten her stare to Cleo’s torso. “Seems like you did okay. What with you being a Healer and all.”
“Oh, uh--” Cleo’s head shook. “I’m-- no. I’m not. I’m still a student.”
Violet’s nose wrinkled. “But you don’t look--”
“I had to take a few years off,” Cleo cut her off before she was confronted by the same, inevitable sentiment she felt like she’d heard too many times that day. “I got pregnant. So I took time off to have a baby. I came back this year. And even then, I’m still a year off from graduation.”
Violet’s brow crinkled. “So… Why are you here? ”
“Because my advisor got me an apprenticeship position,” she explained. “Sort of like work-study.”
“Oh.”
“So-- y’know.”
Violet’s head appeared to shake off a thought. “Are you…” The girl hesitated. “From where I’m from?”
“Hm?”
“I mean you know what Disney is, and you understand, so I figure--”
“Oh, ” Cleo exhaled. “Yeah. Yes, I am.”
“So you know what it’s like,” Violet concluded, before she grimaced. “Unless you were excited, too.”
“I wasn’t,” Cleo assured her. “I was scared and I didn’t know what to do.”
The girl appeared relieved, which would’ve been odd, had Cleo not understood the very essence of that comfort.
“I didn’t really know how to talk about it,” the girl divulged, “before my family and I got involved with this group. Concordia. And I got to talk to other people like me, and other parents, who’d gone through the same stuff.”
“I know of them,” Cleo said. “My parents are members, actually. It’s been really helpful for the two of them.”
Violet made eye contact again. And, like before, it was brief, but intense. “You don’t go?”
“I didn’t know if it was for me,” she explained. “It seemed more like a support group for parents, y’know. So they could understand things from my end better.”
“Oh, it’s more than that,” Violet told her, catching that excitement from before. “They teach you so much about your rights and have such amazing advice. Like, did you know that--”
“Miss Croft.”
It’d seemed stupid, right about then, that she could’ve harbored any doubt about Wil Tenenbaum’s relation to the professor of the same name, what with the same bone-chilling horror inspired by the very accusation of her voice.
Upon hearing it, she’d risen from her seat, ignoring the harsh cry of her chair as it resisted the push.
The German lilt made it worse, somehow. Like she’d just been condemned to die.
Considering Minder Tenenbaum’s scowl, that idea didn’t seem far off the mark. Too afraid to answer, Cleo merely stared back at her, wide eyed.
The woman’s frown deepened, her eyes making a slight pendulum swoop as she surveyed the scene. Then, the charge: “I wasn’t aware that you were scheduled for a break.”
“I--” Cleo stammered, swallowing hard. “I wasn’t--”
“Oh no?” Minder Tenenbaum cooed, her lips drawing into a severe pucker. “Then I hope you have a suitable explanation.”
“I--”
“I seem to remember Miss Ayers being due for her potions.”
“She was--”
The woman’s arms crossed over her chest; her face pulled itself in mock-confusion. “I fail to understand why she has not taken them?”
Then, the unexpected.
Violet bolted up in her bed with an energy Cleo didn’t know she was capable of, explaining the situation with a profusely sincere, “I’d complained, ma’am. I didn’t want to take them. Not yet. So she waited until I was ready. That’s all.”
Not exactly a lie, but she wondered if it was a half-truth they could get away with.
The precise swipes the woman’s gaze made as she peered at both their expressions felt akin to being completely stripped down. “Have you forgotten you are a witch, Miss Croft?”
Cleo blinked. “Ma’am?”
“Have you a wand?”
“Yes...?”
“I believe you’ve been taught Iaculis? ”
Cleo’s frown deepened. “Against her will?”
Minder Tenenbaum’s eyes rolled. “It is a painless, non-invasive procedure, Miss Croft,” she ridiculed, “not a method of torture.”
“But--”
The sharp sound of a snap resonating from the woman’s side both frightened and shut her up.
“Need I remind you that Miss Ayers is not your only patient?”
“Yes, ma’am, but she was my last until my shift was over--”
“I rather don’t care,” the woman averred. “This is not a habit you should cultivate, Miss Croft. I imagine Miss Ayers is a wonderful conversationalist. And you can make use of your free time to explore that during visiting hours, rather than your shift.”
Cleo stared at her squarely and nodded.
“I’d like to hear you.”
“Understood, ma’am.”
“Gut,” the woman softly acknowledged before jerking her head in the direction of the other side of the room. “You’re excused.”
“Shouldn’t I--?”
“I’ll take care of it, Miss Croft,” Minder Tenenbaum told her as she rounded to the other side of the bed. “Good afternoon.”
Cleo hesitated a moment as she looked toward Violet who caught her gaze again, earnest and intense. For a moment, the two of them watched each other before Cleo’s shoulders sloped down. She offered the girl a feeble smile.
“If you would, Miss Croft,” Minder Tenenbaum dismissed, albeit much gentler than before.
Cleo ducked into a stroll to exit the room. Though, not without hearing one last exchange.
One, chastened and remorseful, “It really was my fault, ma’am.”
The other, tender and amused, “I don’t doubt it.”
The sight of Severus Snape perched on the bright blue seat of a Muggle train was not one Cleo could possibly have prepared herself for. Without those characteristic billowing robes of his, he looked… Well, not terribly different -- the man was still covered neck to toe, attired exclusively in black -- but the alteration of his silhouette was quite off-putting.
The image grew stranger when he leaned on the little table between them in just the same manner he would his desk at Hogwarts. Her bewildered attention clearly hadn't gone unnoticed, for he prompted: "Have you something to say, Miss Croft?"
Plenty. Where to even start? She hadn’t had time to get any answers from Dumbledore when she'd arrived at his office to begin her departure back home. The bemusing detail of Snape attending her sabbatical had been thrown on her last minute without real cause or explanation.
Professor Snape will be joining you. Simple as that, unsettlingly routine. As if he had a good reason to even be there -- as if he were meant to be. She wasn’t ungrateful, she just didn’t see how a boarding school professor was going to be any help whatsoever when it came to tracking down her kid--
“Is Thea really skipping your classes?” her mouth started for her, abrupt.
Snape’s eyebrows raised, just as perplexed as she was by the sudden inquiry. “Why do you ask?”
Good question.
It had nothing to do with their present occupation. She had no idea why that, of all things, had been her first concern.
But--
“Because it isn’t like her,” she answered. “And I’m worried.”
“On the contrary, it is very ‘like her’,” the professor replied, leaning back in his seat again.
Her eyes narrowed. “How is it even remotely-- ”
“She has been absent nine times, Miss Croft,” Snape cut her off. “That is over a third of class time missed.”
Nine times?
“But-- you’re her Head of House,” she reasoned, leaning forward, the action desperate. “How in the world could she have avoided you for this long?”
His gaze was calculating. “That is exactly what I would like to know,” he sneered, voice pitched low. “I have been lenient up until now, but she has not been to class for two weeks. If this matter remains unresolved, she will most certainly fail the end of year exam.”
Come to think of it, Cleo hadn’t really seen much of Thea in the places she’d usually expect to see her. She thought that, perhaps, she’d been too distracted to notice if she were there, but--
“What about her other classes?”
"Standard attendance. Although she has now begun leaving end of day classes early."
That tracked with what Ren had indicated. “So she’s avoiding your class specifically.”
"Evidently." He didn't sound pleased. She knew exactly what that would lead to.
“Professor,” she broached, her gaze going as pleading as she could make it, “before you do anything, please give me the chance to talk to her. Sort this out.”
His eyebrow raised. "I fail to see a reason why this would necessitate your involvement.”
Maybe not. And maybe, to a degree, she was overstepping her bounds. Somehow, Tenenbaum’s influence could be felt over the expanse of hundreds of miles. Her blood ran cold.
Still, she pressed on. “I’m just asking for the chance to talk to her myself, is all-- before she gets punished.”
Snape threaded his fingers together, meeting her eyes. His expression blanked.
Moments later, the train drew to a stop as the announcer chimed, tinny and nearly unintelligible, above their heads, “Now approaching: Hassocks Station. Next stop, Preston Park.”
A few people shuffled toward the doors and Snape finally addressed her again. “I trust your family is aware of your arrival?”
Cleo didn’t need any other indication that their previous conversation was over. She scooted toward the edge of her seat. “I called my dad ahead of time, yeah.”
“Called?”
She shook her head. “This mirror thing the Headmaster arranged as a means for me to contact home.”
“Ah.” Snape surveyed her a moment. “Not a common phrase, for the magically-inclined.”
She didn’t really understand the point of bringing that up -- but it wouldn’t do her any good to be annoyed. She hummed, noncommittal, her attention directed toward the bodies shambling past her.
He spoke again. "If you believe your father might be disturbed by my presence…"
Her head snapped back to him. “What? No, he won’t be.”
Snape raised an eyebrow at her. He looked as if he wanted to say more, but only murmured, "I see."
Well, she wasn’t going to let that slip by. “What?”
"I have no further inquiry down that line of thought," he smoothly informed her. "However, I will admit to some interest in your planning."
Leaning back in her seat again, Cleo softly sighed. “My mum had haunts. Places she’d take me repeatedly, in a roulette, whenever she pulled a stunt like this. I figured I’d start there, since that’s where she’s most likely to be.”
"And if she is not?"
“She will be,” she emphasized, peering at him.
Snape hummed, dissatisfied. "There is no guarantee that events have proceeded exactly as they have in the past, Miss Croft."
“Are you trying to panic me or something?”
He stared at her, brows drawn low. “I assume you have not thought that far.”
“I have,” she asserted, irritated. “If I can’t find her, then I have no choice but to make this a police matter. I’ve purposely not dwelled on that fact.”
"Clearly," the man intoned, lightly derisive.
Her eyes closed. “Please don’t start.”
"If you would rather not involve the authorities," Snape commented as the train began moving again, "then you should consider more than one path for your investigation."
“As flattered as I am by your habit of being over-confident in my abilities,” she dryly told him, “I’m by no means a professional investigator. I’m a single mother. So I’m going with what I know.”
“I in no way implied that you were gifted in this area,” he told her, point-blank. “It is merely wise to leave yourself options when events do not unfold in an orderly fashion.”
“Can we skip to the part where you tell me what those options are?” she lobbed back, unflinching. “So we don’t sit here for another five minutes pretending as if I’m in any capacity to know what you seem to believe I should have known ahead of time. Somehow. ”
"It would be remiss of me as a teacher if I simply handed you all the answers," he pointed out, tone bland.
Her voice rang out with a flat “ha, ha” before she frowned. “Don’t joke about this.”
"It is not a 'joke'," Snape frowned, arms crossing over his chest. "This is a time for careful consideration, not panic, Miss Croft."
“No shit?” she blurted out, loud enough for the couple one seat over to shift uncomfortably in their seats. Cleo glanced down the aisle before swallowing hard, her voice lowering to a harsh whisper. “I’m not panicking. You’re trying to make me panic. Then you’re dangling this apparently key information about how to find my kid in front of me as if it’s some riddle I’m supposed to figure out? We’re not at school. That isn’t appropriate.”
"I asked you to think; I did not assign an essay or boast an answer," he shot back with a glare. "What insight could I possibly have when I am unfamiliar with your family and hometown?"
Holy fucking shit --
Her hands clenched on the table as she leaned forward. “You just said-- ” her whisper strangled itself before it could slither completely out of her mouth. Jaw squared and aching from how tense she held it, she sat back again, pulling her fists into her lap. She hoisted a sharp glare at him before pinning it to the window.
His gaze burned the side of her face for a few moments before he, too, turned his attention away. The leafless trees whipped past her vision in horizontal streaks. Though the scenery was uniform, there was a small comfort to this stretch of the journey; these scattered landmarks were always the last things she would see before returning home for the summer.
Too bad everything was fucked.
It wasn't until the train was approaching the railway station that the professor spoke again. "Is your home within walking distance of the station?”
“No,” her answer was clipped. “My dad is likely meeting us.”
"Ah."
She’d positioned herself toward the aisle so that when the train came to a rolling stop, she was out of her seat and halfway toward the opening doors before the other passengers had the chance to gather their things. It was difficult to care that she’d left Snape behind.
He managed traversing the rush hour crowd, however, because he was right behind her by the time she’d exited the station and entered the vast, overburdened carpark. She heard a friendly shout from nearby and headed to its source without thinking.
Her father was standing there, in the front row, seated on the bonnet of his vehicle, wide smile plastered to his face. His wave transitioned into a wide, open invitation for an embrace the closer she approached.
She was too angry to accept her father’s arms as they drew out toward her, ducking into the front seat as she slammed the door closed. She watched as her father gazed, astonished, into the windshield before his head turned to glance at the professor a few paces away. Snape strolled to him with a greeting muffled by the insulated space in which she sat; whatever he'd said to her father, it evidently granted him entry to the car, since he moved to open the door to the back seat without preamble. Her father allowed a few moments to pass before his shoulders dipped and he entered the driver’s side.
Irritatingly, he didn’t start the car. She glared out the window, hating the way her father’s eyes felt boring holes in the side of her skull. She heard the leather of his seat squeak as he adjusted his position when he must have realized the silence wouldn’t cajole her.
So, he was direct. “You okay?”
Her lips planed over her teeth as she grimaced. “Drive.”
“Did something happen?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
His fingers made dull thudding noises as he drummed them on the driving wheel. Then, the sound of his sigh filled the air. His keys jangled, chaotic, as they were turned in the ignition. The car roared to life. She was jostled in her seat as he backed out.
She heard the seat groan again as he leaned forward, then his voice drummed out, awkward. “Didn’t realize you’d have someone with you.”
She leaned toward the window until her shoulder made contact with the door. “Me neither.”
“Why is he here?”
“I don’t know. Ask him.”
"My purpose is to see to Miss Croft's health and safety while she is abroad from the school," Snape supplied smoothly.
Her eyes closed as she heard her father rattle out an uncomfortable laugh. “Isn’t that my job?”
"The school year is still underway; it is protocol for the school to maintain responsibility for its students unless we are divested of it in writing," the man explained.
That sure was a funny way of saying that her father basically had no rights as a parent, and felt tempted to say as much. However, when she looked at him, her father was staring at Snape’s reflection in the rear view mirror as they hovered at a stop light. She decided against it.
“Seems a bit inconvenient to send staff with every student on temporary leave,” he mused as his eyes slipped back to the road. The light turned green and they slid back into movement. His lips flattened into a straight line. “Especially the adult ones.”
Snape appeared entirely unfazed by her father's tone. "The situation is highly irregular," he explained, "but it is no inconvenience to me."
Her father’s eyes darted to her as if searching for confirmation. Cleo didn’t really have any to provide.
“Do you have a place to stay?” The very question twisted at her insides. She hadn’t even thought of that. “I wasn’t exactly expecting my daughter to have a chaperone--”
"There will be no need to provide any accommodations; I will manage myself."
“You know your way around Brighton?” her father asked, this time much more conversational.
"Not as such," the professor replied without missing a beat. "But I have done my fair share of traveling."
Typical to her father, whatever apprehensions he had washed away in an instant, giving way to his more gregarious nature. All bark and no bite. As always. “Oh yeah? Where to?”
"Several European destinations for work, but in my youth I spent a year in Africa."
Her father sat up in her seat, visibly intrigued. “Oh? Where at? I did a stint with Doctors Without Borders in Sudan when I was still a nurse.”
"I was apprenticed to a man from a small fishing village in Egypt," Snape told him, his voice taking on the same tone he used in lectures.
“Apprenticed,” her father repeated, his lips pursing in thought. “What in, if I can ask?”
"My master was an herbalist and herpetologist. I was there to assist his research into antidotes for the villagers; they had long been plagued by venomous creatures."
She observed as her father glanced between her and the rear view mirror, pensive. “Like drug trials?” he asked, though his focus was directed at her again.
“Sort of,” she uttered, noncommittal.
“So a researcher?”
She shook her head. “More like a pharmacologist.”
“And you teach…?” he paused.
“Potions,” she filled in.
“And you teach, uh -- potions at a school now?”
Snape inclined his head. "As you say."
“What made you switch from your previous career?” her father asked, glancing over his shoulder, his attention on the back window rather than the man occupying the seat behind him, before he made a wide left turn. “Felt a call to teaching?”
"One might say I never left it," Snape clarified. "I still develop made-to-order brews and conduct my own research."
"So like a tenured professor?" Her father offered. Then, his eyes widened in apparent realization. "Oh! Potions. You must be-- you're the, ah-- Snape, right?"
Cleo tossed her head over her seat. "You didn't introduce yourself?"
He leveled her with a stare so bland she couldn’t help but feel affronted. "Who I am is of little consequence to our present occupation," he intoned. "You seemed rather in a hurry."
Yeah. Right.
She was.
She faced her father suddenly. "I need to use the car."
"That's fine," he said. "I just figured we were going straight off--"
"You wanted to come?"
He looked at her oddly. "He is my grandson, isn't he?"
Maybe it was a dumb question. But she'd anticipated the comfort of being completely alone for when things got too… difficult.
"I thought maybe it would be a bad idea," she excused, a bit lamely. "Like, if she saw you, and then got rash--"
The way he looked at her stopped her short.
"Nevermind," she muttered. "You're right. I would appreciate the help."
They were steeped in silence for several minutes. Now that she was paying proper attention, she realized her father was driving aimlessly around town. Waiting on her.
The worst part was that he would’ve kept on like that until she was ready. As if the very center of his universe was oriented to her.
She leaned into the window again, frowning. “There’s one near here. East of Preston Park.”
His lane change was seamless and, although he seemed to know where he was going, he checked, “The Travelodge?”
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “The Travelodge.”
A few minutes later, when they steered into the carpark, the taste of bubblegum stung her mouth. She speared her tongue into her cheek, pins and needles buzzing in her teeth. The aroma of diesel turned her stomach. Snape didn’t follow them out of the car.
The chime on the lobby door rang too correctly; the bent position she took at the front desk wasn’t hers. Her father hung too far back, to give her control that she suddenly realized she couldn’t handle.
But it was here.
She could feel it fumbling out of her fingers as they spread out, too familiar, on the linoleum counter. When the front desk girl looked at her, Cleo grinned with a smile prim enough to make her cheeks ache.
It was clear the girl had expected her to speak up first, but was quick to reorient when Cleo’s silence was forthcoming. “Can I help you?”
“Sorry,” she excused herself. “I was just wondering if you could answer a question?”
Chipper but on edge, the girl slid toward the counter, her gaze making a quick sojourn toward her father, who had taken a position up against the wall. “Oh, uh-- yeah, no problem.”
Cleo’s head bowed as her smile fell to the counter. A nervous laugh filtered through it quickly to diffuse the tension. “I know this-- well, just-- is there any way you could tell me if you’ve seen someone here? At the hotel?”
When she looked up, the girl blinked at her, jaw caught slightly slacked. “I mean, I think--”
“Just uhm, I’m-- we’re looking for my mum and my son? And we weren’t sure what hotel she was staying at?”
The girl’s head bobbed once. “Well, uhm. If you provided her name, I could confirm whether or not she is checked in currently?”
“It’s Holly Croft?” Cleo offered, before her voice wobbled into an uncertain stammer. “It’s-- It’s just that she doesn’t always give her real name? She’s done that before and I’m not certain of what the alias might be.”
The twitch at the corner of the girl’s mouth was as much an indication of hesitation that Cleo needed to understand how nervous the situation was for her. It resembled Violet in a way that unsettled Cleo.
“Okay, well, I can’t really give out information about guests. I can only confirm if someone is checked in.”
A hopelessness guided the sudden slant that took over Cleo’s shoulders as she repeated “Holly Croft,” resigned.
The girl took a moment to peruse the company Amstrad before her polite smile twitched back up to Cleo again. “I’m sorry, I don’t see anyone checked in under that name here.”
Cleo rubbed her hands down her face before leaning forward again. “She looks like me. But her hair is short; pixie cut. She was with a two year old. Blue eyes, dirty blonde hair--”
The ponytail at the back of the girl’s head swayed violently as she shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t--”
A presence manifested beside her, tall and dark, and Cleo half panicked until she felt the familiar weight of her father’s arm over her shoulder. She hadn’t realized she’d been trembling until he kept her steady. “We’re really not meaning to bother. It’s just my wife and grandson have been missing for almost a week now and we’ve exhausted most of our options.”
The girl’s eyes flitted between his face and hers before they plummeted down to her own hands. “I’m really sorry, but--”
“We just need to know if they’ve been seen at all,” he promised, his voice so ginger it was soothing. She noticed the other girl’s posture relaxed. Her lips slithered into a pucker. “If anyone has.”
The girl seemed to consider this a moment longer, her head stretching over her shoulder to observe the open office behind her. When she addressed them again, her voice lowered and she leaned toward them. “I haven’t. I mean I’m not here for every shift but I haven’t seen anyone like that around here.” She leaned away again, back to normal volume. “I’m sorry.”
She felt, rather than saw, her father smile. “Thank you.”
“I could call the police for you, if you like,” the girl offered in some last ditch effort to help; her guilt was welded to her face. “It really wouldn’t be a problem--”
Her father fielded this with a kind, “No, thank you,” as he guided Cleo away from the counter. Her legs didn’t feel quite like they were working, so she had no idea how he managed to do it. But her father was resourceful like that, she supposed. “We really appreciate the help.”
The last thing she heard over the uneasy chime of the doorbell as they stepped outside was that girl eagerly calling after them, “I’m really sorry! Good luck!”
And at the curb of the carpark, he waited as she stared down at the paint that lined the spaces. Waited as she swallowed the taste of gum. Waited as she breathed diesel. Waited as she tried to ignore the sound of Holly’s voice in her head.
She’d lost it.
Already.
And maybe her father was comforted by the fact that he was there to help take the brunt of the blow, but she wasn’t.
Especially when the blows kept coming.
Russell Square. Kings Road. Regency Square. Cavendish Place. Middle Street. Ship Street. Grande Parade.
Not a trace.
And she kept growing more and more useless. By the time they’d checked the last hotel, she’d stayed out on the curb, just like she used to, and waited for the news. His frown brought it to her. Again, he helped her in the car. He backed out. He drove, awaiting her next directions.
Except there weren’t any.
That was it.
He didn’t seem to realize, though. There was that perfect faith again. Like he’d forgotten he’d taken over three stops ago.
Snape had become skilled at filling in the gaps between her silences, which had grown significantly with each failed attempt. Her father apparently appreciated the breaks to answer whatever inane question Snape offered to appear polite and involved.
"You mentioned being employed in the medical profession?" was this round’s inquiry.
“Was a nurse for a few years before I went on and became certified as a midwife,” her father confirmed.
"Ah. Your daughter follows your footsteps, I see."
“Nah, not mine,” her father objected. “She’s much more ambitious than me. Did you hear her idea?”
Her eyes closed as she pressed her forehead against the passenger’s side window. “Dad.”
“Brilliant, it is. You must’ve thought so too, considering--”
“Dad. ”
His silence questioned her. She glanced back to him. “Stop.”
His frown was perplexed. “What? You don’t have to be embarrassed--”
“Pull over,” she said suddenly, sitting up against her seat.
“What?”
“Pull over. ”
He complied; or tried to, at least. The car fell into a perpetual roll as he struggled to find an empty patch of sidewalk. The evening sun palmed her cheek as the harsh right hand turn signal clucked in her ear. All at once, she knew she needed out.
Now.
Her hand fell to the door handle and pulled. Nothing. Like smashing her head against a brick wall, she tried again, inexplicably hoping for a different result. Nothing. Again. Again. Again. Again--
She knew that it wasn’t going to open the more she pulled. Yet somehow, the maddening sense of two men looking over her shoulder, one thinking Alohamora and the other just flip the carlock spurred her to continue manhandling the door in some pitiful show of defiance.
She'd practically swung her whole body into forcing it open when she heard the lock unlatch after her father pressed the driver side button. The door finally obeyed and she careened out of the enclosed space, heading in the first direction her feet took her.
Around the left of the car. Toward the pebbled shore. Toward the dozing sun. Toward the sound of open water. Just away.
She needed away.
From responsibility, from people, from expectations, from failure, from discourse, from identity, from politics, from--
Her feet didn’t know what to make of the transition from solid land to the uneven, sloping ridge of the beachside. They made a valiant effort to keep up with the frenetic desperation of her pace, but faltered on an odd slant of embankment. Her soles collapsed with the rocks. She crumbled, bracing her fall with the palms of her hands.
No grace to it, no theatrics.
Just a sharp pain in both ankles and palms, mocking her clumsiness.
It was embarrassing, in a way. How unremarkable and innocuous it was. She picked herself up again and continued forward, unimpeded by the sound of her name being pelted at her back.
It was getting harder to ignore, however, the louder and more insistent it became. Not an inch of malice or irritation in it, though. Just care and concern. Somehow that made things ten times worse.
Eventually, her name caught up to her. Grasped her so tentatively that she wheeled around to face it, wrenching her arm away with a force that toppled her over onto the ground again.
Her father stood above her, wide eyed and uncertain.
She felt something inside her fracture. “Stop.”
He was halfway bent toward her, arm outstretched when she said it. The word shoved his hand away. His fingers flexed, helpless; his response was just as impotent. “What?”
The water clinging to her jeans felt heavier than was possible as she struggled to her feet. Her father was smart enough not to help. “Just stop. ”
“I don’t understand. Stop what?”
An inexplicable rush swam across her eyes; she was blown back by the force of it, her hands coming up to hold the side of her face as she stepped away from him. “I don’t know! ” she yelped. “Just-- stop! ”
His hands came up as well, but in surrender. In complete and total capitulation. “Okay! Okay -- listen, I can’t--” His eyes closed and although the sound of the frantic seabreeze drowned out any other noise, she knew he was taking deep breaths from his nose.
When his eyes opened again, it was with purpose. He’d grown solid again. “What’s wrong? ”
“I’m angry!”
“I get that,” he told her. “I can see that.”
She wheeled around, hands clenched into tight fists at her sides. Her legs led her to meander in frenetic, frustrated circles. “Then there you go!”
“Cleo-- I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”
“You can’t help me at all,” she seethed, leaning against the heavy breeze as it whipped violently past her shoulders. “You can’t. Okay? No one can. Not when I’m the fucking problem.”
His brow furrowed. “Cleo--”
“Shut up! ” she demanded, eyes widened as she pointed at him.
Flabbergasted, he stared at her. “What--”
“No,” she warned again. “Stop. ”
“Listen--”
“I swear to God, ” she seethed. “No! Just -- no! I didn’t want to hear it in the car, and I don’t want to hear it now-- ”
“What are you talking about?” he sputtered, taking a step toward her.
“You defending me! Singing my praises!” she exclaimed. “Insisting on telling this lie about me, about how apparently brilliant I am, completely ignoring the fact that the only reason why this conversation is even happening right now is due to how much of a massive fuck up I am. As if I am not the only reason why we even have to look for my kid. You know, the one I abandoned.”
He was ready to object, she could see it in the slant of his mouth. The glimmer of disbelief in his eyes.
“You know why he made me so upset?” she barked, her arm jabbing in the direction of the car. “Because he told me that I wasn’t taking this seriously enough. And he was right. And it makes me so fucking mad that he’s right. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You wouldn’t--”
“Stop! ” she shrieked. “Stop defending me!”
His defiance propped him up. “Why?”
“Because it’s bullshit! ” she sneered, rounding on him.
“It’s not,” he argued. “Not to me.”
“How?” The incredulous word seeped from her, carried on the breeze that passed between them. It sounded so distant in her ears. “Do you even know me? Do you even know what you’re defending?”
“Yes, Cleo, I know you--”
“Then why are you never able to be honest about me?” she accused. “Where’s my sense of responsibility, in any of this? Why do you never hold me accountable? Why am I fucking blameless? I can blunder around with complete disregard for anything or anyone else and yet somehow -- somehow -- I come out the other end your blameless, perfect little girl. How? ”
His head shook. “You are being incredibly hard on yourself--”
“I’m being honest! ” she shouted. “I hurt people, Dad! I alienate them, or I abandon them, or I lie to them, or I fight with them and it’s all so fucking pointless and I never change, no matter how much I promise that this is the last time-- ”
“Cleo--”
“I have one friend at that hellscape of a school. One. And you know what? I completely fucked it up. Over nothing. Semantics. An argument that wasn’t even worth it. Do you know how maddening that is?”
Looking at him, she immediately knew that he did. Of course he did. He lived that. She bared her teeth. “I don’t know… how many times I’ve heard you or Dr. Harding explain how to disengage. I know every warning sign. I know how to spot the very second a conversation has stopped being productive and yet I don’t do anything about it. I never do. I sit there and seethe and I say things I shouldn’t or I completely lose it. I only come back to myself when it’s too late. And--”
Even in the midst of the chaos about them, there reigned a honey thick silence, choked up in stale, bitter air.
She swallowed.
“I looked him dead in the eye and basically accused him of calling me a hateful slur when he hadn’t. At all. Is that okay?”
“Cleo-- ”
“Is that okay!? ” she snapped, stepping up in front of him.
He watched her a long while, his frown stretching his face taut. Then, with a breath, he answered, unwavering, “No.”
“Is skipping out on a class for two weeks because I’m too cowardly to apologize for yelling at a teacher okay?”
“No.”
“Is exploding on a teacher in the middle of her class because of my abysmal distress tolerance okay?”
“No.”
“Is abandoning my responsibilities as a parent because I want to achieve some frivolous sense of self fulfillment okay?”
Nothing on that one. His eyes narrowed. So did hers.
“Is that okay? ”
His stare was unwavering. “It’s a bad question.”
She scowled. “What?”
“You’re asking me this in bad faith, Cleo. Yes, base value, those things sound horrible. But context matters-- ”
“Context,” she jeered on an exhale, her head throwing itself skyward. “Really. Context. There we go. Another way to absolve me of all sense of responsibility--”
“Stop.” His hand took purchase of her upper arm. She twisted out of his grip and he didn’t try again. “It is not that black and white.”
“Sometimes it is,” she argued. “What does context do for my argument with Harry? I looked him dead in the eye and I said, ‘call me a Mudblood, why don’t you?’ And all I could think of was every time she did the same thing to you. Every time she stood up and accused you of cheating, of abusing her, called you a liar--”
“Stop it.”
She grit her teeth. “Why?”
“Because I know what you’re doing.”
Her mouth parted slightly, jaw taut. “I’m being honest.”
“You’re being cruel.”
She clapped suddenly; the reverb so violent and abrupt that it made him flinch. “Yes, I am! Glad we can agree on something.”
His head shook. “It’s pointless. Do you even see how unfair you’re being? How does this serve you in any way--”
“Why does it have to serve me?”
“Because you have to be your own best friend, honey. You have to be in your corner--”
“Why though?”
“Because you have to love yourself.”
Her shoulders rolled back. “What if I’m not worth loving?”
His expression scrunched up. “You can’t think that.”
“Why not?” she questioned, her voice giving way to a tremble. “Why is it so hard to believe?”
“Honey--”
“If you even acknowledged half the things that were wrong with me,” she argued, “it wouldn’t be that hard for you to fathom. It just wouldn’t.”
His words flowed, pained, from his wound-like mouth. “I’m not in denial, honey. I don’t know what you want--”
“To get pissed at me!” she confessed, breathless. “To tell me that I fucked up and that this is my fault. I don’t want to paint this shit over anymore. Act like any of this is okay. That her being like this is okay. That me being like this is--”
“You’re not--” He quickly stopped himself, gulping down air. It was only after a moment of collecting himself that he approached again, taking a different tact. “You have struggles. But they’re not as grave as you think they are.”
“You have no idea.”
“Cleo, I live with you,” he argued. “I raised you. I’m not as unaware as you seem to think--”
“I’m angry, right now, and if you can’t even--”
He beat her to the punch. “I acknowledge it, Cleo. I see it.”
Inexplicably, the pain of that sentiment felt more intense than anything else. “It’s a problem.”
His hands reached halfway toward her before he stopped himself, fingers twitching inward. “Cleo…”
“I get so mad.” The sentence barely crawled out of her tightening throat. The whine of a creature losing heart. “I get so mad that I don’t know who I am. I don’t recognize myself and I--”
A breath, all chopped up.
“Like I’m possessed --”
Her exhale rushed with the breeze that kicked up her hair into her face.
“Just like right now. You were just being nice and I couldn’t take it because I don’t deserve it. I just hurt people and I don’t want to. I don’t want to hurt Gabriel but I already have--”
Her tears seared her eyes. Her father’s expression crumbled. “Cleo…”
“I hurt him. I did that to him, Dad,” she warbled, her breath a harsh, uneven staccato. “For absolutely nothing. Because what? I had a dream? Why do I get to have that? What room do I have for that? I don’t want it!”
Her hands dug into the fabric of her clothes, wrinkling them between her fingers, like she could wrench it out of her. Her sobs grew more desperate. “Just take it from me! I don’t want it anymore! I want to be with him! I want to be something for him! Give it to someone else . I don’t want to hurt him anymore!”
His hands rested on her shoulders. Strong and warm. The comfort it brought felt so revolting, but she didn’t have the strength to pull away.
“You aren’t--”
“I am,” she wailed. “I hurt him. Just like she hurt me. I did that to him. I did that to him and I’m starting to realize how-- how much--” She swallowed the end of that sentence. It went down sharp. Painful. Her next breath came out labored. “And I-- I don’t… I don’t-- want to… I don’t want to-- be like her--”
Those arms encapsulated her with ease, pulling her against his chest so close and secure that she gave herself the room to completely fall apart.
And somehow, he was able to keep the pieces together. Like he always had.
His words were hot against her hair. “You’re living too much at once.” She felt the rough of his cheek against her crown, his chest broadening as he took a breath. “We’re not in the past, we’re not in the future. We’re right here, right now. We’ve only just started looking for Gabe. Alright? And I won’t ever let--”
Jarring, the harsh sound of another voice cut right between the two of them.
"Is your son magical?"
Even standing a few feet away, Snape’s presence was overpowering. The exact moment of his arrival was impossible for her to pinpoint, but all his prior pleasantness was gone, that normal austerity front and center.
Even through the haze of tears, she couldn’t help but falter. Her father even more so, practically rearing up in shock as his voice squeezed out a tense, “Excuse me?”
The professor ignored him, his weighty stare fixed on her. “Is. Your son. Magical?”
A few stray tears fell from her eyes as she shook her head. “I-- I don’t know?”
“I will need an object which belongs to him. Something he would have spent a great deal of time around.”
“Why?” she bleated, swallowing down syrupy, tear-stricken breath.
“If I am not mistaken,” he remarked, his voice laced with irony, “this entire excursion is for him, correct?”
Her father straightened. “That tone is entirely unnecessary--”
“The longer we dither here, the more time we waste.”
She felt ready to shatter under the weight of that pressure. Her breath stuttered as she stared at him, petrified.
Snape's gaze narrowed, his response sharpened to a point. "Have you not glutted yourself enough on self pity?"
Her father grew incensed. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
Snape's dark eyes were locked on her. "Tell me-- what exactly have you accomplished with this undignified display?"
She felt her father slip away, even as his arms remained fastened to her body. He practically lurched in Snape’s direction. “Hold on --!”
"I don't recall speaking to you," was the professor’s cold dismissal.
“Well you bloody well are now,” he barked. “I don’t know what passes as acceptable where you’re from--”
"Acceptable?" Snape echoed, tone mocking. "Do not speak to me of decorum when you are the very picture of impropriety.”
“I swear to God,” her father sneered with a glower so baleful it frightened her. “If you say one more thing--”
“Dad,” she entreated. All at once, his full attention was directed on her again.
She frowned at him before her eyes cast themselves on the man towering to her right, in that way he often did that made her feel so… small. Insignificant. “What do you want me to say?”
“You’ve said enough,” he scoffed, arms folded over his chest. “It would serve to divert energy from these theatrics to something more productive.”
“What do you want me to do? ” she corrected, barely able to stifle the quiver in her voice.
His demand was immediate. “Answer my question.”
She lifted her hand to wipe the dampness from her cheeks. “I don’t know if he’s magical. How do you know tracking him like that would even work?”
Snape raised an eyebrow. “Entertaining the possibility of success would, at the very least, be a better use of my time than throwing a tantrum on a public beach. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes.” Her voice wavered as she sniffed. “I would.”
The professor’s gaze pivoted between them, precise. “Then; the object?”
Hapless, she floundered, “I-- I don’t know.”
"Think. "
She trembled. “It’d have to-- I don’t know, something from home, maybe, but--”
“Would a car seat work?” her father blurted. She looked at him, surprised to hear him speak up.
Snape turned on his heel, walking back to the car, his muttered “Perhaps,” following behind him.
Cleo’s movements were sluggish as she unlatched her arms from around her father’s torso. The two of them shared a look before following the man back up to street level. When the three of them reached the car, her father made quick work of unlocking the boot. He motioned for Snape to approach once he’d opened it. “Been sitting in here for about a week, but we use it a lot when we take him out.”
Without preamble, the professor took hold of both sides of the carseat, murmuring, “Pertento Solus.”
Nothing outwardly happened, but a moment later Snape’s eyes followed the road behind them, saying, “The trail is very faint, but… serviceable.”
Stepping up beside him, Cleo glanced in the direction he had. “What are you talking about? There’s nothing there. I didn’t see anything.”
“It is a visualization spell, Miss Croft,” he informed her, the words crisp, as if this was something she ought to know already. “You must cast it yourself.”
Right. Like in the Forest.
Her head felt about ready to topple over, but the frantic, agitated energy that coursed through her made that easy enough to ignore. “But it’s his trail?”
“Unless your parents possess latent, untapped magical power, then yes,” was his dry retort.
She let out an eager breath, reaching out to grasp his arm. “And if we follow it, we’ll find him?”
He offered her a displeased frown. “Presumably; however--”
“Then we have to go now, ” she insisted, her hands dropping his arm in a violent rush to push past him. She was a few feet down the sidewalk before she glanced behind her, arms motioning in the direction she was heading. “You said it was this way, right?”
“Miss Croft,” he addressed her, stern and unmoving. “A word before you get ahead of yourself.”
Her irritation was full bodied, expressed in the startling lurch of her halt. “What?”
Snape’s gaze went from her, to her father, and back. “It is, as you mentioned, still a shot in the dark. Even from where I am standing, the trail is piecemeal. This plan is not foolproof, you understand.”
“But we can still put the pieces together,” she reasoned, wiping the last remnants of her tears away. “Even if there are patches missing, we can narrow things down, find exactly where he was going.”
He looked as if he’d like to argue, but instead he offered a pointed declaration, “This process will go faster if there are two sets of eyes on the trail.”
She didn’t need further prompting. Fumbling to dig her wand from her coat pocket, she scrambled back to the car, practically stabbing her wand tip into the cushion of Gabriel’s car seat before her voice stumbled out of her mouth, clumsy. “P--Parento-- ”
She heard, rather than saw, Snape's irked expression. “Pertento.”
“Pertento,” she quickly corrected, “Solus. ”
It took a moment. Too many moments. Too many than were comfortable, really. She was about to complain to Snape that it hadn’t worked when she noticed the faint light glimmering beside her pinky. So easy to miss.
The fragment shimmered and pulsated, coiled and wriggled, strung together like loose, connected threads; effervescent and flowing, neon-like. It panted beside her knuckles and waited.
She was reacquainted with a feeling.
A quiet, unremarkable moment that she’d thought had been stolen from her. When his fingers curled around the length of her pinky to make up for lost time. An introduction, repackaged. No less meaningful than how they were meant to meet, just belated. He’d waited.
Hello, Mum.
She brushed her finger over the light. Felt nothing and everything.
It was Gabriel.
She knew it in her marrow.
She’d imagined herself fearing this moment, too. The inevitable confrontation with the reality of his magic. What it meant. How it would define him. How it would ruin him.
But as she cradled the traces of her son’s magic in her palm, the truth settled at the base of her spine. Fanned outward in warm tremors. She'd never imagined herself smiling. She’d predicted the tears, though.
“Cleo?”
Her head swiveled to where her father was standing, bent over the side of the boot. He watched her.
A few stray tears shuffled out of the corners of her eyes and she turned toward the street.
“What do you see?”
Magic littering the ground like patchwork. She pocketed her hand, still clenched in a fist, holding on to that sensation. She was careful to hide her wand in the hem of her jeans before she looked toward the road. Her words tasted tear-stained. “He’s right. The trail leads down that way.”
Snape was already turned away from them. “Come.”
Her father had stopped the car close to the Pier, and they appeared to be headed in that direction, she noticed. The professor walked several strides ahead, so far removed that a casual observer would not know he was a member of their party at all. Her ankle ached from her fall on the beach, but she quickened her stride anyway.
The wind picked up her hair and tossed it to the side, the chilled air on the back of her neck making her shiver. To the left, ocean and clouds, to the right, cars and houses. One of them, further down the road, was hers. The sea smelled of home.
Cleo ran a hand along the minty green guardrails which separated beach from city. They were cold to the touch, but familiar. She’d walked this stretch of road with Gabriel many times. Even now, she felt him beside her; his signature was sprinkled across the wide sidewalk like sea foam, and it continued ahead as far as she could see.
Further along, the trail lifted into the air in a long ghostly line, hovering at chest height, but at the entrance to the Brighton Pier, it disappeared entirely.
The loss of him was palpable, like he’d been torn right from her arms.
“What?” Cleo gasped, turning to Snape, panicked. “Is that it? How is that it?”
A stream of people filed past them, all clad in thick coats. The professor shot her a look. “Patience,” was all he said.
Evidently, he meant it, because they stood in one place for several minutes. The man didn’t move a single muscle, simply gazing around the environs in a way that put more than a few passersby on edge. She fidgeted, restless.
When he next moved, Cleo was only a step behind. The three of them stepped through the archway onto the boardwalk in silence.
Despite cold weather, it was still very busy. They were surrounded by chatter and ocean breeze; the plod of footsteps on wood was a percussive compliment to the steady waves. As they traversed the length of the pier, passing by shops, food stands, the arcade, restaurants… each step felt heavier than the last. There was no sign of the trail at all.
Still, Snape did not falter in his forward march. Straight on until they reached the very end of the line, the portion of the pier which housed its attractions. It was there, amidst the rumblings and loud musical accompaniment of the rides, that the professor addressed her again.
“Signatures are brightest where they are slow or unmoving.”
All at once, she understood what he’d been looking for. Her head shook. “This isn’t like her.”
He raised a questioning eyebrow at her. Striding up level with them, her father had his hands deep in his pockets, a nervous gesture. “She hated this pier.”
Cleo grimaced at a patch of wood railing that was rotten and damp as she added context, “Dad would bring me here when we spent time together. Alone. Without her.”
Snape sidestepped a gaggle of excited children with practiced ease, his scowl enough to deter all the rest from getting any closer. "Out of character is not the same as impossible," he commented, eyes planing over their surroundings. "Based on where the trail ends, this is the most obvious destination."
“Even if she did,” she conceded, “this is an amusement park. There’s nowhere to stay. They had to have gone somewhere else.”
"Has your mother ever slept on the street?"
Her father fielded that one rather quickly. “Not since she was a teenager.”
Snape's frown indicated the barest of acknowledgement. "If there is no trail to be reclaimed here, then we return to the street to choose a new speculative direction to walk in."
He turned away so fast that she felt the impression of robes billowing where there weren’t any. Her father dawdled a second, uncertain, before following suit.
But Cleo remained fastened in place, watching the flow of humans. The drone of their voices broke against her ear. The sunset was ebbing, just above the carousel, floating amongst whitecap clouds.
Something wasn’t right.
“Dad?”
She didn’t hear him stop, but she knew he must have. “Yeah?”
“You still have your car.”
The scrape of his footsteps approached her, bewildered.
It seemed like such a stupid thing to realize; even worse that she was just now noticing. “You still have your car,” she repeated, her head turning to her left, where he stood looking down at her.
“I do.”
“She didn’t take it this time.”
His frown deepened. “She didn’t.”
She could have kicked herself. She should have asked this earlier. “What happened? When she left?”
“She had Gabe in her arms,” he recounted, his eyes searching her expression for something she couldn’t place. “So I couldn’t take him. Not without hurting or panicking him worse. She packed her things. We were still arguing. Then she went outside, still screaming. Saying that if I got near her, she’d call the police, like usual--”
That wasn’t what she was looking for. She waved a hand as she shook her head. “I don’t mean usual. Was there anything different? ”
“Well, she didn’t take the car.”
“We established that. Anything else?”
“I-- Well, I’m not sure--”
“Did she take anything she doesn’t normally take? Did she say anything she normally wouldn’t? Was there anything she did that--”
His eyes widened, his words cutting through her line of questioning, frothy. “She made a phone call.”
“She called someone?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I wasn’t even paying attention. Gabriel was crying and everything was chaotic, so--”
“So someone could have picked her up,” Cleo posited, rapidly swiveling in the direction of the professor, her next statement for him, panicked, “She could have been with someone.”
He was several paces away, staring at something she couldn't see, but evidently still keyed in to their conversation. "It is certainly plausible," he agreed, his gaze belatedly shifting her way. “But it would seem we have confirmation that they came this way.”
She frowned at him, nonplussed. “What do you mean?”
He didn’t answer, pointedly directing her attention to where he’d been staring. Initially, it was obscured by bright blonde hair, a blue-checkered dress, a queue overflowing with guests. Then, a little girl, guided by the hand, shifted forward to reveal a trace of Gabriel floating there, pure white and glowing.
The girl crossed again in the opposite direction, clutching a bundle of candyfloss in both hands, but her gaze didn't waver. Gabriel’s magical signature was easy to see, hovering in front of the sweets kiosk before it turned a corner. Cleo followed without thinking. It weaved ahead of her in irregular curls and she lagged behind, the throng of people jostling her.
The lead concluded almost as soon as it began, brightening considerably at the edge of another queue before tapering off into nothing. Another dead end.
“Seriously? ” she yelped, exasperated, disturbing a couple who were passing to her left. She turned away from their eyes. “God damn it--!”
Snape stepped up to her side, casting her a displeased look, but did not reprimand her. A small mercy; she felt fit to burst with how inconsistent the stupid trail was.
Her father strolled up behind them, the only signal of his approach being the hand he rested on her shoulder. “Hey,” he murmured, a clear attempt to soothe. “Just take a breath, sweetheart--”
Why did people always suggest that? As if it wasn’t the most annoying thing to hear while on edge?
But apparently it was only one useless suggestion among many in her father’s vain attempt to feel helpful. The tentative touch became much stronger once he’d squeezed her shoulder. “Hey, how long has it been since you’ve eaten?”
She scowled at him. “Food is literally the furthest thing from my mind right now.”
“Starving yourself won’t help you much,” he told her.
“I’m not hungry.”
His smile was good humored. “No?”
Snape glared, though the expression was directed at her father this time. “We are in the middle of an investigation, in case that escaped your notice--”
“We’re at a dead end,” her father reminded him, impassive. “And detectives need breaks, too.”
“Do they,” the professor intoned.
In a second, a smile broke across her father’s face as he looked back down at Cleo. “Well I’m hungry,” he announced, before squeezing her shoulder again. “I’ll get you something. You don’t have to eat it, but it’ll be there--”
Why was it that the first parental instinct was to comfort through feeding?
Nevermind.
Stupid question.
Cleo sighed and her father took that as signal enough. Side stepping into the crowd, Cleo watched as her father meandered a length of the boardwalk to a nearby chippy, planting himself at the end of the queue, his balmy smile greeting the people in front of him.
Snape grimaced, crossing his arms. “This is a pointless distraction.”
Despite the fact that she'd been irritated with her father moments ago, Snape’s criticism had her on the defensive. “He’s just trying to help.”
He gave her a sideways glance. “By derailing what little progress has been made?”
“It’s not his fault the trail died,” she pointed out as she turned to face him fully. “There’s not a lot he can do right now. My dad’s not used to that. Normally he’s the hero. He’s the one stepping in to protect me. He doesn’t like feeling useless.”
His primary reaction was to deepen his frown. “That is hardly an excuse.”
“He’s just being a dad,” she excused. “Wasn’t yours like that?”
For a moment, Snape just stared at her, his vexed expression frozen in place. Then, saying nothing, he walked away, bisecting the queue her father was standing in to perch on the other side entirely. Up against the rail, watching and waiting. All business, even still.
It was well enough, she supposed. She’d given up on being bothered.
Standing here, though, waiting for a miracle that was never coming wasn’t going to take the edge off, either. She carried her anxiety to her father and dumped it beside him.
He didn’t seem to want to comment on that, though. “I see why you admire him so much.”
He appeared much too self-satisfied while saying that. Cleo frowned at him.
His shrug was the epitome of nonchalance as he stepped forward in the queue. “He’s very blunt.”
Her arms crossed as she glanced down at her shoes. “I mean, yeah.”
“You respond well to that.”
“I guess.”
“God,” he exhaled, his head hoisting itself toward the darkening sky. His laugh came out more like a breath, heaving out of him with an effort that tired him. “I sure dropped the ball on this one, huh?”
The sudden onset of guilt folded her expression over. Damn it. “No, Dad--”
“See, now you know where you get it from,” he pointed out, reaching an arm around her shoulders to pull her up against his side. “You like to protect my feelings too.”
Her stare grew more insistent. “Dad.”
“I’m glad you have someone like that, really,” he admitted, squeezing her again. “I’ve never seen you calm down so fast.”
Cleo rested her temple against his shoulder. “You’re not bad at this.”
“No, but I’m not good either,” he confessed, another laugh slipping between the two of them. He guided their bodies further up the line, before he planted a kiss on her crown.
“Think I should skip out on the Scotch Egg?” he joked.
She didn’t feel much in the mood to smile. But his attempt, at the very least, was heartening. “I’m not getting in the car with you if you don’t.”
“Fair enough,” he chuckled. “You sure you aren’t hungry? Haddock sounds like it’d hit the spot.”
“Maybe,” she muttered, non-committal. “I think I’d puke up anything I tried to get down.”
“Well, if that’s the case,” her father began, rising up as his chest puffed out, “then I’ll just have to hold your hair back as you give it the good ol’ heave-ho--”
Despite herself, she grinned, her fist punching into his side. “Dad --”
Her objection was cut off by the way he pulled her up closer to the counter, his arm still fully draped over her shoulder. The woman opposite them was stocky and attired in a stained apron and thick cardigan. Her smile was painted on.
Her father beamed, affable as ever. “Good evening. Hope you’re doing well.”
“Doin’ alright, thank you,” the woman replied, automatic. The careful, searching look she’d placed between the two of them was expectant.
“Great. I was wanting the Haddock and Wedges--”
Cleo’s gaze veered toward the the decor, not that there was much of it. There was a fishing net draped in front of the counter, sporting holes from human (or child) interference, with wooden aquatic creatures holding it in place. The counter itself was cluttered with the register, utensils and condiments, a tip jar which was labeled “Fishing for Compliments!”, and a few takeaway menus. The wall behind was littered with nautical detritus as well, with several fish-shaped plaques boasting the freshness of their food.
With how humdrum everything was, she shouldn’t have noticed it. It hung beside an innocuously framed Our First Pound, tucked away in a corner of the kitchen. Their business license. Signed and sealed.
Her focus locked onto the row of four that underlined the official’s signature.
She recognized one of them.
And that was the problem.
She shouldn’t have.
“Honey?”
Her stare snapped back to her father.
“You sure you don’t want anything?”
Taking a step back from the counter, she sought Snape’s figure in the crowd. “Uh--”
She could hear the confusion in her father’s voice. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” she murmured. “Just, cod and chips, maybe-- I’ll be right back--”
Snape had moved across the pier again, meandering the perimeter of where the last trail had died. His concentration etched hard lines into his face, eyes peeled to the details of the scene. Her approach was not nearly as careful.
Cleo took his arm again and pulled him toward the chippy. “You have to see this.”
Quick enough to be automatic, he jerked out of her grasp, glaring.
Her voice came out in a harsh whisper, urging him. "That kiosk is connected to the Floo Network."
His glare didn't falter, but he did somewhat relent. "How do you know?"
“Their business license,” she muttered, stepping closer to him, “it has the St. Mungo’s seal on it. Wand and bone. I’d know it anywhere. Pye told me that seal is used to mark when a nearby Floo is connected to the hospital's emergency network.”
“Hm. That would explain the large amount of foot traffic in the area.”
Her expression was dubious. “What are you talking about? This is a popular boardwalk. Of course a lot of people come here.”
Snape inclined his head toward the crowd with a murmured reply. “I expanded the tracking spell to visualize all signatures in the area. It would seem the magical population is just as numerous.”
Wait.
“So are you saying this boardwalk is a hub for--”
Her father’s hand appeared right over her shoulder, proffering a greasy wad of newspaper. His greeting wafted over the scent of fried cod. “Here, honey.”
He’d already, somehow, eaten half of his haddock, the chippy’s receipt still hanging between his pinky and ring finger, fluttering helplessly in the passing seabreeze.
She ignored it completely, staring off into the middle distance between Snape’s arm and a nearby photo booth, out into the last flecks of sunlight scattering and dying on the surface of the ocean.
“Cleo?” she heard her father prompt. “You alright?”
The street lamps nearby were beginning to light, one by one. As one passed overhead, her attention jerked to Snape. “This wasn’t an accident.”
He caught on quickly. “Nor was it a visit.”
Her expression grew more earnest as she nodded, stepping closer to him. “The seal, the Floo Network, his trail ending here, her deciding to be here, the one place she wouldn’t be--
Her father had approached them both, hunched slightly over with two handfuls of take-away, lowering his voice to join them. “What’s going on?”
“Dad!” Cleo gasped as she turned to him, hands latching desperately to his shoulders. The quiver of her voice drowned in the deluge of bodies seeping by. “I need you to tell me every magical person Mum knows.”