What a question.
The last thing she remembered feeling was the abject humiliation of having her lawyer escort her back to school.
Accusatory, it felt like. How are you feeling? Not: how are you doing? But: how are you handling this? The tone held the undercurrent of a question no one felt comfortable asking: Do you realize how stupid you’ve been? Maybe: Are you regretting it now?
She still hadn’t come up with an adequate answer, though Petra -- her attorney -- had raised the question every time she’d arranged for them to meet in Holding.
And a month? That was a long time to think.
But Petra wasn’t getting an answer. Cleo had spent several minutes saying nothing, the both of them bathed in moonlight as they crossed the grounds toward the Hogwarts entrance.
And, assuming Cleo's silence was simply par for the course, Petra pulled a hand through her bright orange pixie cut and moved on. “You’re a sixth year, right?”
That, at least, Cleo felt capable of answering. “Yes.”
“That’s when they teach Apparition around here, isn’t it?”
“This term. In Spring, I think.”
“Good,” Petra remarked as she pulled a packet of gum from her trousers. “Get on that.”
Cleo’s head lifted in surprise. “I’m allowed?”
“Why wouldn’t you be?” the woman contended. “Nomaj that make bail are still allowed the ability to freely roam. Falls to reason you’d be allowed the same.”
“Wouldn’t they be afraid of me fleeing the country?”
Petra snorted as she peeled the foil off her strip of gum. “No more than they do for any adult they give conditional releases to.”
“Oh.”
“They’ve got your wand, besides.” The woman before her -- svelte, shrewd-faced and clearly overworked -- raised her eyebrow as if that were something stupid for Cleo to forget.
“I know,” Cleo said in brief defense of herself. “I just mean -- if I learn Apparition, or am at school at all, I’m going to be allowed a wand on loan.”
Petra’s lips smacked with some amount of satisfaction as her next sentence came out all chewed up. “The court isn’t going to baby you.” Her arms crossed in front of her, expression gone tight and amused. “You were, what, case number five on a docket of at least twenty seven? If you decide to take a loaner wand and flee the country, let the consequences be on your head.”
It did sound rather ridiculous when she put it like that. “I wouldn’t, for the record,” Cleo felt necessary to make clear.
“Point being,” Petra moved along, her mouth going slack as her head slanted toward her. “You’re a peach, and I adore you, but I’d prefer not to have to give you a ride again.”
“Right.” Cleo winced. “Sorry.”
Petra brushed the apology away with a dismissive wave. “It’s nothing big. I understand -- difficult circumstances, short notice, family with no easy access to the Ministry of Magic.”
Speaking of.
“Have you heard anything?” When Petra merely stared, Cleo cleared her throat before clarifying, “From my family?”
“Not directly.” Petra’s expression grew pitying. “Amina never passed anything along. Though I imagine your family has been attempting to contact you in Holding, and I can certainly promise that they let messages get lost when they reach Holding.”
Cleo felt her heart plummet. “Right.”
“They’re fine, I’m sure,” her lawyer said with swelling confidence. “Give it a day, your release will be passed along. If anything, I’ll have my wife call them so that they know.”
Cleo nodded. “Thank you.”
Petra brushed her statement off again. “About that loaner wand, though?” she redirected, eyeing Cleo with some amount of interest. “I’d advise you to obtain one as soon as possible.”
That stung, despite the fact she couldn’t conjure up any reasons why it should. Cleo sounded more despondent than she preferred when she replied, “I know.”
Her lack of enthusiasm did not go unnoticed. “It would be a good idea,” Petra tread carefully, “to see to making up the exams you missed while in custody.”
The dimly lit windows on the castle towers above leered down at the both of them. “I know, but it’s been kind of hard to think about that at the moment--”
“You should be,” Petra cut in. “It presents a good image as to what you’ve been up to during your release.”
Something about that felt ominous, though that didn’t stop Cleo from chuckling out an airy and incredulous, “What, because that’s something I have to worry about?”
Her lawyer let out a soft, contemplative hum.
The sound of it was a stopper in the banter that Cleo had assumed was about to happen; her insides lurched at the uncomfortable behest of her sudden, jerking turn toward her attorney, expression hitched up in apprehension as she addressed her again, with a much more serious, “Wait, is it?”
The woman’s head bobbed left to right in consideration. “Eh… It’s hard to say. I always prefer to err on the side of caution. But I cannot even begin to tell you what idiocy they will throw our way. At present, they’re being dodgy about whether or not an investigation is actually happening. That way I can’t file for disclosure.”
Cleo’s eyes widened. “Whoa, wait, wait--” She felt winded suddenly; the conversation had jumped far enough ahead that Cleo felt almost as if she had to sprint to catch up. “Disclosure?”
Petra didn’t even have the courtesy to look concerned. “Mhm.”
“Like… trial disclosure?” Cleo pressed, her voice straining.
The woman’s nod was jaunty enough to create a horrible pit in her stomach. “Yes ma’am.”
“But I thought I was taking a plea?”
“Circumstances changed,” Petra replied in a voice clearly meant to be mocking someone, but Cleo hadn’t the faintest idea who.
The ground suddenly felt off kilter. “What could have possibly changed?”
Petra smiled.
There was something Cleo had learned about her lawyer in the short time they’d known one another: She had two kinds of smiles. One genuine: A generously widened mouth, teeth gleaming, always on the tail of a discussion about her wife, or their son, or various other amusing bric-a-brac. The other was more slight. Taut. Embossed with a thinly veiled attempt to hide an ire that her professional integrity wouldn’t allow her to express.
At that moment, Petra was wearing the latter.
“Your confession,” she uttered in a deathly quiet voice.
This again. If it wasn’t the first she’d heard of it, it wasn’t going to be the last. Cleo winced in anticipation.
“Look, I know--”
The woman waved her hand to brush away the start of Cleo’s sentence before it could reach. “You made a statement that contradicted Miss Ayers’s testimony.”
That statement nearly made her stumble. “Excuse me?”
“‘Her captor’,” Petra quoted, as if that alone was meant to jog her memory.
It took a moment of thinking for it to dawn on her. Even then, she still wasn’t sure she was correct when she ventured, “What, like, when I said one of her captors--”
“-- was being given free roam of the hospital, yes.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Cleo blinked. “But--”
She faltered. Petra raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t understand. Violet and I talked about her… That’s why I said that.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t--?”
“Narcissa Malfoy was not mentioned in any of Miss Ayers’s testimonies and was never seen in any of her surrendered memories.”
"Because Violet didn't want to involve her," Cleo filled in, as if that would solve the problem. "She said Narcissa saved her life. That's why Violet never--"
"Yes, Miss Ayers could have withheld information for a myriad of reasons." She observed as the woman's tongue laved over the gum she'd pinned up against her teeth; her expression was distinctly irritated, but the lack of exasperation in her voice gave Cleo the sinking feeling she was angry at parties not currently present. "We could probably spend hours dissecting each and every one, but doesn't change the fact that on official record, Narcissa Malfoy is not implicated in any capacity."
Cleo's disbelief practically exploded out of her. “And that’s all it takes?”
Petra’s lower lip jutted out as she pursed her lips, eyes to the ground as she gave another exaggerated, almost distracted, nod. “That’s all it takes.”
“Okay, but--" Her words came out in a blustering stammer, edging on a panic she began to feel welling up somewhere in the pit of her stomach. "What-- okay, what do they think that means?”
The woman’s shoulders lifted into a shrug. “At the moment? Not a lot. But it’s enough of an opening for them to make a line of inquiry into your involvement.”
“Involvement?” Cleo sputtered. “What, like--” She felt winded again and sucked in a hard breath. “No, seriously? Like I’m involved with what happened to Violet? That’s what they’re going to say? Seriously?”
Petra’s gaze was hooded. “Seriously.”
“But I didn’t--”
“Again, doesn’t matter.”
She felt herself growing indignant. “I think it really does--”
“Cleo, all they need is the tiniest bit of suspicion that you may know more than you’re supposed to," the woman averred, arms crossing. "Civilians have not been privy to any details about the investigation. You having that detail, no matter where you got it, automatically makes you a suspect. That’s what they’re going to ride this investigation on. It doesn’t matter if it sits on the shakiest foundation. It’s all they need to open an inquiry.”
She tried, uselessly and ineloquently, to find a response to that bit of information. All she ended up saying was a sulky and ill-tempered, “How is that even remotely fair?”
“It’s not,” Petra volleyed back, though her tone was unsettlingly restrained, as if she were used to this sort of realization by now. Cleo immediately anticipated her going into why ‘fairness didn’t have much to do with anything’, but was surprised when she said, “Look, I know this is something they don’t teach you on this side of the magical world, but when those little coppers promise that ‘anything you say or do may be given in evidence’, it’s about as honest as they’re ever going to be with you.”
Cleo’s frown only persisted. “Wizards have a right to silence?”
“Not legally, no,” the woman prefaced. “Which is lucky for them, I suppose -- otherwise I’d be filing left, right and center for your case to be dismissed.”
“So what difference does it make? They never bloody cautioned me--”
“Well, you grew up around Nomaj, didn’t you?” Petra challenged, her head going aslant. “Seen a few movies here and there? A thrilling crime drama?”
“I mean, yeah? Sure, I have."
Petra shrugged again, as if that admission alone was evidence of wrongdoing. “So, there you go. You’ve heard people be Mirandized.”
“That’s not--” Cleo stopped herself before she could be uselessly petty. Another tack. “Okay, well, cinema isn’t real life, and I sure as hell haven’t been arrested before. Never really thought I would be. So forgive me if I’m not really practiced on what one does when taken into custody.”
The woman’s lips twisted in consideration. “Fair enough,” she conceded. “So keep this in mind for the future: Magical law enforcement may not have to caution you, but being aware of your rights, legally given or not, is smart. This rule of thumb applies in every situation, magical and non-magical: You don’t talk to the police without legal counsel.”
Cleo felt burdened under the weight of this lecture, but capitulated with a slightly curt, “Fine. Okay.”
Apparently, Petra felt it salient to quiz her. “So if a nice little Auror drops by, all chipper, offers to buy you lunch, maybe, and requests that they ask you a few more questions, nothing serious,” The woman’s eyes rolled briefly, almost as if this was a reprisal of a situation she’d encountered before. “What do you say?”
Cleo let her head bob back as a frustrated breath escaped her. She tamped down the urge to roll her eyes when she looked back and answered, by rote, “‘Not without my lawyer.’”
Petra didn’t seem convinced, but she mercifully didn't press any further.
A forlorn sigh came on the coattails of Cleo’s next question: “Okay, so now that this is apparently going to trial -- how long until that?”
Petra met her with a shrug. “If goes to trial. Keep that in mind. Nothing is certain; I’m just speculating from the MLE’s behavior.” Her hand circled in the air, a contemplative gesture. “However, should that be the eventuality, it’s impossible to know the timeline of these things. All I know is that Arkwright wants to make a show of it.”
That name was unsettlingly familiar. "Wait… Penny?"
Petra was surprised by this response, if the raising of her eyebrows was any indication. "No," she said before drawing herself up slightly. "Her father, actually."
Father…? Her mind drifted to the photo she'd seen in Penny's bedroom: The older man, his stern features fractured by an odd, though sincere, grin. Bald and reserved, with an arm wrapped about Penny's shoulders in a way that was both tender and protective. "Is… he part of the prosecution or…?"
“The current head of Magical Law Enforcement," she supplied without enthusiasm. “Soren Arkwright.”
Petra’s tone was impossible to ignore. “You don’t care for him, I gather.”
The woman’s hands went up in some vague, listless gesticulation as her eyes could only commit themselves to a half roll. “I don’t care period,” she stated, her irritation flaring again. “Guy’s a pain in the ass to deal with, and I’m not the first to think so. Depending on who you talk to, he’s either a saint or one of the worst things to happen to the department in the last fifty years.”
“Oh, great,” Cleo acerbically drawled.
Petra snorted. “Truth be told, you should probably feel lucky.”
“What, you want this to go to trial?”
“Absolutely,” Petra uttered without a moment’s hesitation. “The most I can plea you down to is Unlawful Transport and Misuse of an Issued Portkey. That’s still a couple months in either Holding or Azkaban, depending on the judges’ moods. You could bank on trying to get a suspended sentence with time served, but I wouldn’t stake my life on it. A trial makes things more complicated, which leans in our favor.”
That didn’t sound favorable at all -- months in Azkaban versus a decade or more? What kind of fucking choice was that?
Her hands came up to her face, the butt of her palms going to press hard against the sting forming in her eyes before her fingers raked down, hard, over her cheeks, down her jaw, to her neck. She tossed her head skyward, groaning. “Fucking god--”
“Fuckin’ A,” Petra commiserated, unenthused, and a second later she tossed her head to the side to spit her gum to the ground. But, with a practiced fan of her fingers through the air, the wad shimmered into non-existence before even touching the grass.
“So, like,” Cleo’s words shuddered out as her expression strained against the horrible, miserable pressure building in her face, trying not to cry. “That’s it, then? I’m fucked either way?”
Petra must have felt something in the wake of how pathetic and weepy she sounded; Cleo didn’t realize how fast she’d been breathing until Petra’s hands landed with a loud slap on her shoulders, forcing her breath to stutter to a stop in a loud hiccuping noise.
“Listen, the situation is this,” Petra began in a voice Cleo could only interpret as her idea of soothing. “You wouldn’t have heard of this, since it hasn’t been that widely covered -- but there’s been a swath of kidnappings occurring over the span of a year. Which isn’t saying much -- hundreds of thousands of children around the world are abducted every day. But there were twelve particular cases of interest: Twelve children that had some connection or another to the magical world. And after review of these cases, Arkwright made the executive decision that there was no evidence of Dark Wizard activity and deemed that the cases should be dealt with by Nomaj law enforcement. That’s where it ended.”
“Until Violet,” Cleo surmised automatically, which Petra confirmed with a solemn nod.
“Until Violet.”
“But--” A hapless breath filtered out of her mouth as her countenance became perplexed. “Poke never let any press into the hospital. That was a very solid rule so we could protect her privacy--”
“For Arkwright’s benefit, yes,” the woman supplied for her. “You’re right that personal details are often withheld from the press to protect the parties involved, but Arkwright insisted on a full shutdown. Violet’s appearance raised very difficult questions for the MLE. After all, they’d neglected this investigation for the better part of a year. Now suddenly they have the victim of a very egregious crime, with a crime scene that’s too old to investigate and draw evidence from, a family who claims Ministry officials had already come to interview them despite the fact no Aurors had been dispatched--” Cleo’s stomach involuntarily contorted. “--and testimony from said victim that has led only to dead ends. With eleven more children still missing, and no means to push forward--”
“Arkwright’s in trouble,” Cleo cut in, if only to force the sudden onset of anxiety to ebb.
“They’re all in trouble,” Petra remarked. “There are Aurors in the department whose reputations stand to lose a great deal if a serial abduction case goes cold. Last I heard, Alastor Moody is edging toward a full blown mutiny if something doesn’t give.”
Cleo’s eyes squinted as she attempted to process this. “Why in the world did Arkwright get appointed, if it’s this bad?”
“Scrimgeour and him had a very good working relationship when Arkwright was still part of the Ministerial Prosecution Services,” Petra answered, her words petering into a soft, amused snort. “Scrimgeour worked two jobs while he was still in the MLE. As both Department Head and Head Auror, he liked to keep a strong line of communication between the specialized Auror units, regular beat cops, and the bureaucratic end. It worked: The department ran like a well oiled machine. But now?" Petra paused briefly as she gave Cleo a wry look. "Communication's broken down. Arkwright and the new Head Auror, Kingsley? They don’t agree on much.”
Cleo’s brow furrowed as she peered at the woman before her. “How do you know all this?”
“You literally cannot set foot in the building without getting a whiff of it,” Petra replied with a disturbing casualness. “Not to mention the serial abduction case has been of particular interest to Amina and I.”
“Why?”
“That’s on a need to know basis,” she remarked, before dissembling: “What I can, and what I will say, for the sake of us being on the same page, is that everything Violet’s testified to, from the way she was abducted and victimized, to the tattoos? All hallmarks of well-known magical human trafficking rings in this country.”
“Jesus--”
It made sense. The fact she’d been raped and horribly abused -- those tattoos, perhaps, like brands? Her memory, her inability to name her abusers… If she were being set up for an illegal sex trade, it all fit. Almost perfectly.
The only thing, though, was the issue of Voldemort; Harry had been so certain of his appearance, but…
What that led to, what that meant, Cleo didn’t know. Some part of her didn’t even want to begin the work of unraveling it.
“Point being,” Petra guided them away from ruminating too long on such dark thoughts. “The evidence for it is there, and unless you’ve been hiding some incredible and untraceable double life, you are by no means connected to or part of any human trafficking ring, much less any well-known Dark Wizarding group.” Petra's lips curled into a disgusted scowl. “This is nothing but a massive PR ploy.”
Cleo swallowed. “So he’s that desperate.”
“People want Arkwright fired,” Petra replied, her hands dropping away from Cleo's shoulders. “And he wants any and all excuses to garner good press. Focusing on you as a possible suspect is a minor stop gap; it makes him look as if he’s actually attempting to solve the problem. If he overcharges you and decides to make your trial a media circus, I welcome it. It can only lead to your acquittal.”
“You keep saying that like you’re so sure it will happen.”
“You had a five to two ruling on your release,” Petra reminded her. “It’s a good sign. You were never going to budge right-wing nutjobs like Kavanaugh and McGill -- but the rest? I’d probably stake my life on them ruling to acquit when faced with charges the prosecution has no solid evidence or probable cause for.”
“But I did do something bad,” Cleo couldn’t help but argue. “I put her in danger. That’s something I really did. Wouldn’t they-- I don’t know, wouldn’t they want to make sure something is done about that? Wouldn’t her parents want that?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Ayers don’t get much of a say on that front,” Petra pointed out with an air of someone who thought they’d dodged a bullet. Her tone said it all: And you should feel lucky they don’t.
But somehow, that made it worse. “Okay, sure, maybe not, but like-- the State does, right?” Cleo pressed, desperate beyond reason. “Like... I kidnapped someone. From a hospital. And then I nearly killed them. They have to care, don’t they? It’s their job -- their entire job is to seek justice for Violet.”
The look Petra gave her was drenched with pity. “Hon, I learned a long time ago that sometimes--” Her lips twisted as she paused. “Most times -- law enforcement won’t concern themselves with justice when there are other things on the line. If your acquittal leads to a few months of good press that keeps Arkwright from losing his position, then that’s a tradeoff he’ll consider worthwhile.”
And that little nugget of wisdom festered, ugly and disquieting, in the short pause Petra allowed for.
Suddenly, a loud clap dispersed into the night air as Petra drew her palms together, a wide grin slashing her face open with forced glee. “Well, what a cheery note to end the evening on!” she chirped. In a moment, she dropped all pretense of false cheer as her arms plummeted to her sides. “It’s getting late -- you should probably check in with Dumbledore.”
“Ah, my life for the next year,” was Cleo’s sardonic rejoinder. She tried to ignore the niggling dismay that wasn’t quite ready to dismiss itself, despite the change in subject. “What was that about the court not babying me?”
Petra pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Think of it as practice for parole.”
Cleo leveled the woman with a bland stare. “Right.”
“You need a refresher on your other release conditions, or are you fine?”
“I’m fine,” she replied. A momentary pause passed clumsily between them before Cleo added, “Thank you.”
And like always, the woman waved her hand through the air. “It’s nothing.”
“No, like--” Cleo faltered. “Thank you. And Amina. You know, for helping me.”
The woman stared at her for longer than felt comfortable. “Surprised you, did we?”
A meager shrug overtook Cleo’s shoulders. “I didn’t know I could even get help from Concordia.”
“That’s what community’s for, kid,” Petra informed her with a raised eyebrow.
Still. Cleo shifted uncomfortably, her hands pushing into her pockets. “Sure, I guess. I just mean... I appreciate it. And if I’m honest, I still feel kind of guilty about--”
“Mention money again and I’ll quit,” the woman threatened, though there was a playful glint in her eyes.
“It’s just nice of you, I mean.”
“I worked as a PD for the better part of twenty years before I moved to this country, Cleo,” the woman reminisced. “Pro Bono work makes me feel at home. Being in a firm, the whole actually making money thing--” A hissing click came through the woman’s teeth as she graced her with a self-deprecating smile. “Not used to it.”
“Well, you know,” Cleo waffled. “I appreciate it--”
She’d had enough of that, apparently, as she'd already begun a casual stroll back the way they had come. “Good night, Cleo.”
"Thank you!" Cleo barked, unperturbed by her terse dismissal.
"You've said!" the woman shouted over her shoulder. She raised a hand and brushed her away again, still walking. "Now go report to Dumbledore before you get a violation and I'm forced to haul your ass back to Holding!"
"You're good at your job!” Cleo called after her.
"I'm fucking amazing at my job!" the woman proclaimed with perfect confidence and, as Cleo watched her silhouette fade into the dark, she could imagine the sly, gleaming smile adorning the woman’s features, one which somehow only seemed to enhance her already unparalleled charisma and exceptional charm.
She spotted him on the way down.
At the mouth of the dungeon stairwell, there were alcoves in which the castle’s vast, supporting pillars were sequestered in hollowed-out sections of wall. When exams were nigh, they were frequented by many Slytherins who desired a quiet study nook, but rejected the full journey to the library.
Today, though, with the term barely begun, there was only one student curled up in its recesses. Cleo might have passed him by entirely had she not caught sight of the red trim of his robes. His arms were folded, knees tucked up into his chest and head lolling to rest on his shoulder, but she’d recognize that familiar silhouette anywhere.
“... Harry?”
He startled, snapping upright so quickly he actually teetered before catching his balance and letting out a full-voiced, “Yes?”
Her brow furrowed as she stepped closer to him.
Harry blinked several times in succession, the motion distinctly lethargic, as he tried to regain his bearings. Then, staring as if he couldn’t quite comprehend her, he blearily ventured, “... Cleo?”
She frowned at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Er…” Harry cast a cursory glance about him, taking in the mess of parchments crumpled in the crease of the alcove and the half-eaten muffin abandoned on the floor, evidently trying to draw a conclusion from the evidence. “Waiting?”
“For?”
Another blink. “You, actually.”
“Me?”
He brought a hand up to the back of his neck, briefly wincing in pain. “You’re back,” he mentioned with a vague, relieved sort of awe.
“I’m back,” she mirrored, head canting. “How did you know I was getting out today?”
"Oh, uh--" He shook his head, voice coming clearer. “I… didn’t.”
“So you had a hunch?” she guessed.
Harry’s grimace was timid. “No, I’ve been sort of… coming here every day. Y’know. Just in case.”
The thought of him languishing here in much the same manner for the month she was gone made her voice grow dispirited and tentative. “Harry--”
“Sorry, ehm-- Hermione told me I ought to try looking in the Prophet for news,” he said, gesturing to the papers stuffed in the corner. “But I’ve not seen much of anything.”
That apology didn’t sit well with her. At all.
“Listen,” she broached carefully, tempering her voice to a low, deliberate cadence. “We should talk--”
“Not here,” Harry said at once, casting a nervous glance down the hall.
Though his reaction was troubling, there wasn’t any obvious reason to object. “Where, then? Would you like to go to your dorm?”
“Not if I want a conversation to stay private,” he snorted. Then, a little uncertain, he suggested, “What about yours?”
"Oh," she huffed in surprise. "Well, uhm… Yeah, sure. This way."
For the entire trek down into the dungeons, they didn’t speak. With every twist and turn of the corridors, Cleo tried to sneak a quick glance at him as a noiseless query. Before they’d left, Harry had hastily gathered up his papers, and was now holding them in a haphazard scrunch between his ribs and elbow, his expression agitated. It wasn’t like him to stay quiet, but Cleo did not disturb him; he seemed deep in thought, his silence tinged with anxiety.
It wasn’t until they reached the entrance to the Slytherin Common Room that she got an inkling of what might have been on his mind. Harry stopped her with a tentative hand on her arm. “Shouldn’t I… er, use my cloak or something?”
She shot him a bemused look. “Why would you need to do something like that?”
He stared right back, just as incredulous. “I mean… Slytherins don’t usually like me around.”
“I’m inviting you to my room; they don’t get much of a say.”
Harry eyed the entrance with some confusion. “What, so, I can just… walk in?”
She turned toward him, one hand resting on her hip. “Of course you can? People bring their friends from other Houses all the time.”
He blew out a puff of air. “I didn’t think Slytherins had many friends outside of their House.”
“Evidently, we do,” she countered, gesturing toward the common room again. “C’mon.”
She stepped up to the blank wall as she had countless times before, reciting clearly, “His health and happiness.”
The passageway opened and she walked through, Harry trailing uncertainly behind her.
The common area was bustling as it usually was on a Wednesday night, pockets of friends gossiping and showing off, playing games, arguing about Quidditch, or lounging beside the fire for warmth. When they arrived, Harry tensed as several pairs of eyes caught and held on them, some curious where others were distrustful or openly hostile. But not a word was spoken in objection; her present infamy and fearless posture forbid it.
Cleo led them through to the dorms, easily winding through the labyrinth to her room, which was on the outer cusp of a hallway shaped like a curlicue. Speaking her password once more, she swung open the door, an action which rustled the green beaded curtain draped over the threshold, before gesturing for Harry to go ahead.
With a tentative air, he parted the curtain and gingerly stepped into her room.
Closing the door behind them, Cleo sighed, leaving her shoes by the door. Harry, observant as ever, copied her action, though she couldn’t help but notice him looking around with some amount of wonderment.
She couldn’t blame him; her mother had been a bit enthusiastic with the décor she sent. Cleo’s bed was a mass of plush, patterned fabric and feather pillows, and on every available surface was a vast array of cranberry-scented candles. Her mother had insisted on several hanging accents of hempen macrame, but most of the rest of the wall space was taken up by posters of various interests she’d favored over the years. In the corner was a weaved folding screen, behind which she’d created her own little study nook. Her broad wicker chair and her favorite tasseled blanket were sequestered directly next her stack of cauldrons and school supplies. On the other side of the room with the shag rug, Cleo kept some plants on her desk for decoration and study; despite the obvious lack of sunlight in the dungeons, she’d used them to practice her weather charms for her aconite garden. In fact, she realized, there was quite a lot of evidence of her work with Snape, including a crate of ingredients he’d passed along to her for analysis, several books and charts relating to potion theory, and a wooden tackle box filled with extra vials and dissection tools.
“Well,” Harry said when he’d concluded his initial observations. “That went better than expected.”
“You can sit wherever,” Cleo directed as she moved toward her desk to grab a few books from the tabletop and replace them where they belonged on the nearby bookshelf. “Sorry for the mess.”
“This is messy to you?” he blurted out, a disbelieving scoff rattling in his throat. “Remind me to never invite you to my room.”
Cleo snorted. “Sorry the walk was so long,” she quietly excused, going to straighten out and put away some essays still left out on her desk. “I know it’s disorienting for people not used to it.”
“S’fine,” Harry waved her off, pausing to shuffle about with his own papers, trying and failing to neatly stuff them back in his bag. “I’ve been here before, anyway.”
“Oh. Right.” She looked at him a bit awkwardly. “When you, uhm--”
“Yeah,” he confirmed, leaving his bag next to his shoes. “All seems a bit silly, now that I know I could have just walked in with you.”
“I would’ve been useless there, regardless,” she admitted. “I've no idea where Malfoy’s room is.”
“At least I would have had somewhere to hide out,” Harry mused, beginning to wander the space.
Cleo offered him a non-committal hum as she passed over to the folding screen to hang her bag over it. “Would you mind lighting the candles for me?”
For a moment, he looked puzzled, like he was about to ask her why, but then the expression dropped off his face, giving way to a grimace. “Right, er… Yeah. Of course.”
He began the work with relative aplomb, his quiet Incendios occasionally puncturing the silence. Then, as she was pulling out the chair from her desk, Harry spoke again, his voice inquisitive. “What’s this?”
He was pointing to one of her posters, featuring a trio of witches vamping to a beat only they could hear.
“Spellbound,” Cleo answered. “A wizard band. Cal got it for me.”
He squinted. “Why are they wearing suits of armor?”
“It’s just their gimmick,” she quickly dismissed before she shifted to look at him again. “So, Harry--”
“It’s so hot in here,” he commented, finishing the last candle before shrugging off his cloak.
“Wish I had a fan,” she lamented, a bit flustered. “I mean, I guess a cooling charm works, but--” She sucked in a breath. “Look, I know you’re probably--”
Harry spoke simultaneously, “Sorry, I really didn’t mean to be--”
They both lapsed into a short silence, punctuated only by the ticking of her wall clock, before he finished his sentence. “... rude.”
Her lips quirked in a small smile. “You’re nervous.”
He let loose a breathy laugh. “Yeah.”
She settled into the desk chair. “What about?”
“Oh, you know. It’s just… a lot’s happened. After you left, I mean.”
She frowned. “Do you need to talk about it?”
Harry shrugged, but the motion was stiff. “Well. I’m… not quite…" He cut himself off, eyes travelling across her shelves before he paused, divulging, “Dumbledore tried to have me Obliviated.”
Her response was an emphatic, “What?”
“He didn’t go through with it!” he quickly assured her, likely reacting to the alarm in her voice. “It’s just because I said some stupid things about talking to the Aurors.”
She didn’t really feel a need to dance around the subject. “I understand why you wanted to do that, Harry, but I didn’t need you to.”
“I know.” He paced further across the room, pausing to light a candle he’d missed. “But I had to do something, which is…” Harry frowned, turning again to face her. “Which is why I went after Malfoy.”
She knew that judgment wouldn’t soothe his nerves, but she couldn’t help the tension in her voice as she confronted him with, “Why in the world would you do that?”
He leaned against the foot of her bed and folded his arms, his reply a little defensive. “Because he nearly killed Violet, that’s why.”
Habit almost made her cave to the impulse of saying that’s not a good enough excuse. However, her frustration, even if understandable, was not what Harry needed. She forced herself to take a stabilizing breath, the back of her hand going to rub the bridge of her nose as she brought herself to ask the more important questions: “Are you okay? Did anything happen?”
"I'm fine," he was quick to say. "Nothing I couldn't handle." He reached up to scratch at his temple, the motion reflexive and halting. "But he-- You were right. He's Marked."
He was reaching toward the bigger picture; however, Cleo couldn’t help but hone in on one detail. “So you found him?” Her head lifted slightly. “He’s been arrested?”
“Ah… no.” Harry scowled. “He met me because he thought I had the watch, but when he found out I didn’t…” He let that sentence hang.
He seemed to shift slightly away from her intense peering as she checked him over, scooting further to the edge of her seat. “Did he hurt you?”
“Not really.” He shrugged. “I’m just sorry he got away.”
“That’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it?” he challenged, tense. “I promised you and Violet that I’d protect you, but then I couldn’t do anything.”
“That’s what we need to talk about,” she broached. “You shouldn’t be blaming yourself. You don’t need to be sorry. I’m the one who needs to be sorry, Harry.”
His expression turned doubtful. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Nothing about what happened that night was your fault,” she told him, stern. “I need you to understand that.”
He pushed off the foot of her bed, pivoting to face her squarely. “You’re the one who went to jail for almost a full month, Cleo! And it’s just like Snape said--”
Her anger was so intense and quick that it propelled her to stand from her seat. “He talked to you?”
Harry seemed wary of the movement. “Yeah… he did.”
She knew she should’ve stepped back, taken a moment to control herself. However, the mere mention of Snape had sent her emotions roiling. He’d promised. “What did he say to you?”
“That…” He dithered, his gaze falling to the floor. “That you might not come back. That you’ve lost your apprenticeship, and… and you can’t work at St. Mungo’s anymore. And that I… put you in danger--” Harry cut himself off, his voice breaking on the last word. “By, ah…”
He lapsed into silence, shuffling his feet and heaving in a tremulous breath.
And without hesitating, she crossed the gap and scooped him tightly into her arms. Her head shook, displacing strands of his hair against her cheek. “No,” she insisted with urgency. “No, Harry. No.” Her hands squeezed his upper back.
His shoulders were very tense, but he at least unwound enough to let his folded arms drop back to his sides. “I just shouldn’t have got you involved…” he murmured into the air behind her.
"Got me involved?" she huffed incredulously as a slight sway began in her body, arms tightening as she unconsciously rocked him. "Are you kidding me?"
“I told you about some… secrets that you probably shouldn’t know,” Harry confessed. “About Violet, and Voldemort… and I shouldn’t have put you in Malfoy’s path when you can’t even duel--”
"Harry--"
“I just-- I’ve been waiting to tell you, for weeks, how very sorry I am.” He shifted restlessly. “For everything I did, Cleo, I’m… so, so sorry, and-- and if I could take it back--”
His breathing halted as she pulled him away, her stern expression looming over his distraught one. "Don't."
“But--”
She shook him once by the shoulders. "Don't," she warned again, the word slipping by on her wavering breath. "You have nothing to be sorry for."
Harry stared at her, confusion painted on his features. “You were arrested, Cleo.”
"And I knew I was going to be.”
He didn’t seem to understand what she meant by that, since all he said was, “We should have got you back earlier.”
Her head shook. "No, honey, we couldn't have."
“Why not?” he demanded.
"My portkey wasn't going to work until my next shift," she explained. "There was no way of returning her to the hospital that night."
“Then you should have just taken her here,” he said, lifting a hand to vaguely gesture at their environs. “Kept her out of the way, instead of at the Ball.”
"I should've," she admitted. "Bringing her into a crowd was a mistake. My mistake. But it wasn't going to prevent me from getting arrested."
His objection was merely a short huff, as if he was gathering an argument.
“I’m the adult, Harry,” she quickly dove in. “Above all else, I need you to understand that. I’m the adult. And how I acted--” She grit her teeth. “I took advantage of you, Harry. And that was not okay.”
"You didn't take advantage of me," he immediately disagreed. "I knew what I was doing--"
“No, you didn’t,” she objected. “You had no idea. And I didn’t let you know what you were getting into. I knew that I was going to get arrested when I brought you into this and chose not to tell you. That was beyond selfish of me. I needed you to enable me, and I put you in a position where I knew you would. I was looking for permission and I did that at the cost of your trust and Violet’s safety.”
Harry shook his head. "You were only trying to protect her. It's not your fault if--"
“It absolutely is, Harry,” she asserted. “Because at the end of the day, I took that little girl out of the hospital. I dressed her and I paraded her in front of a bunch of people who had a lot of reason to do her harm--”
“That’s not--” he tried to interrupt her.
“I should’ve known that there was a good chance Malfoy would show up. I don’t think he planned to do anything but bother you that night -- but I gave him the opportunity. I put Violet in the line of fire when I was well aware of the fact that his family was at least tangentially involved with her abduction. I did that, Harry. Not you. You supported me, because you were always going to support me. I knew and needed that. So if there’s anyone who needs to be apologizing, Harry -- it’s me.” She felt a tell-tale sting in her eyes. “I am so sorry, Harry. I’m so sorry for not thinking of you -- I’m sorry I didn’t stop and even consider what witnessing something like that would do to you. I’m sorry I didn’t think of what would be said to you; I’m sorry that I apparently didn’t care enough to realize that you’d blame yourself. I’m so sorry, Harry.”
“You're being too hard on yourself.” His expression was pained. “I'm fine; it's you and Violet who suffered in all this, so there's no need to apologize to me."
“Don’t do that, please,” she lamented, breathless, as her fingers tensed around his shoulders. “Belittle what you’ve gone through. Don’t. Especially when I’m the one who put you through it -- when I’m the one who put you up to all of this.”
He leaned back out of her reach with a pronounced frown. “You can lie to the Aurors all you like, Cleo, but you and I both know you wouldn’t have done anything without me.”
“I wouldn’t have,” she conceded, but before he had too much time to feel vindicated, she added, “But only because I needed someone to enable me. That’s how I used you, Harry. I didn’t need your cloak; I didn’t need counsel from your friends; I didn’t need you for anything other than to encourage me to do something I already knew was immensely stupid.”
Harry sighed. “It’s not stupid to protect someone who needs help, Cleo. We could have just planned better, is all.”
“She didn’t need help, Harry,” Cleo averred. “Not from me. Not from you.”
“She was going to be taken to Voldemort,” he stressed.
“No, Harry, she wasn’t.”
That took him aback a great deal. “What?”
“Nothing was going to happen to her,” Cleo uttered the words slowly and deliberately, keeping direct eye contact with him. “There was not even one ounce of a chance Voldemort would’ve made an attempt.”
His attention was wary. “But… you said…?”
“I know what I said,” she prefaced. “I do. But the truth of the matter is that she was very safe that night.”
Harry’s gaze dropped to the floor, meandering about as if he were searching for understanding.
She felt her eyes watering again. “Harry, nothing was ever going to happen.”
For a few moments, his steady breaths were the only sound in the room. For someone normally so talkative, so quick to respond, the quiet was disheartening. But then, as if no time had elapsed at all, he lifted his head to say, “You can’t know that for certain.”
“Harry, the only reason why I could even get her out of that room was because I had access and a portkey,” she said as gently as she could.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“How?”
He leveled a patient look at her. “It’s easy to criticize yourself in hindsight, but you can’t have known, Cleo. For all we know, Narcissa could have had a portkey too!”
She stepped forward to grip him by the upper arms. “St. Mungo’s is a fortress. There are Anti-Apparition wards with exceptions made only for Emergency Medi-Wizards. The internal Floos only work for hospital personnel. There was an Auror stationed at Violet’s door for the entirety of Narcissa’s visit and -- what’s more -- the woman was flanked on all sides by hospital admins as they gave her a tour that went nowhere near that wing of the hospital. Violet was heavily supervised by the Minders assigned to her case; I was able to take advantage of a window of time when she was unwatched, and only because I am allowed in the room since I am part of her care team--”
Harry huffed. “Yeah, but--”
“My portkey,” she barreled right on, “is tied to my magical signature and every use of it is logged in Ministry records. The only reason it took most of the evening for them to find us was because hospital protocol makes it necessary to lock down the building and summarily check every department to confirm that the patient is not sequestered within the premises; then, afterwards, they’d have to sort through the myriad of signatures coming into and out of her room, excluding every person of staff accounted for until only hers and mine were left.”
He sagged a little in her grip. With every new reason she gave, the more his frown deepened, until his entire expression had become fractured by dejection.
She regarded him, crestfallen. “Harry, the Aurors were here before Professor Snape had even had the chance to Floo call the hospital to report her injury--”
He abruptly pulled out of her grasp, pacing away to the other side of the room. When he reached the opposite end of her bed, he let loose a gusty sigh, rounding on her with a clipped, “If you knew all that, then-- why?”
Her breath kicked out of her, sounding perilously close to a bittersweet laugh. “You should’ve seen her, Harry,” she bleated as a fresh set of tears slithered down to her neck. “She looked -- she was so alone, Harry. And it didn’t matter if there wasn’t a danger. It was real. Everything that happened to her, everything that fucker did--” She grimaced hard as a spike of anger shot through her spine. “It was real. And in that moment she needed someone to believe her. I wanted her to feel like someone believed her.”
Harry’s answering gesture was a touch desperate. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes!” she belted a little too quickly, too frustratedly, before she faltered. “I mean-- I believed she truly thought she was in danger. I believed every word she told me about Narcissa. But you should’ve heard them, Harry -- 'This account is no more illuminating than your original one,' 'I think you may be confused,’ ‘Memories are easily tampered with’--” Her next breath came out distraught and tight. “And I was the one to tell her to go to the Aurors. I had to badger her into it. I promised they would help, that they would do something -- but the minute they came, all they did was cast doubt on everything she said. It didn’t even matter if they were right; it didn’t matter if I didn’t think it was possible for Voldemort to come in and harm her. I needed her to know that someone believed what she was saying -- would do anything to help and protect her. I promised her, Harry.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you wanting to take care of her,” was his quiet protest.
“But I chose to do it by making a pointless and dangerous gesture,” she stressed. “I could’ve offered to do a double shift and stay with her all night. I could’ve done a number of things that didn’t involve removing her from the one place that was keeping her safe. But I didn’t. I stupidly didn’t. And because of that, I have hurt so many people.”
Harry stared into the middle distance, his expression troubled. “Cleo...”
“I don’t even know if Violet’s stable,” she lamented, her voice cracking. “No one will tell me. An-- And, and, and... it’s-- it’s not like I’m entitled to know, but--” She tried to swallow, but her next admission was practically hurling itself out of her before she had the chance. ”Her parents? They haven’t been able to see her because she’s ‘part of an ongoing investigation’ -- and I’ve extended that. Now there’s no saying when they’ll get to see her, or if they’re even being actively told if she’s okay or not. Nevermind the fact that they’re sitting with the idea that some random, crazy bitch stole their daughter from the hospital and nearly killed her all over again.” She let out another shaky breath. “I--... I mean, God, Harry-- I put you in danger. Twice. Maybe Malfoy wouldn’t have hurt you in the hallway, but when you went after him the second time? You could’ve died, Harry. And Snape?” She tripped on his name, the weight of it enough to force her to sit down on her bed. “He has gone out of his way multiple times to help me this year. I got that apprenticeship because he vouched for me. He helped me find my son. And now that I’m a criminal that kidnapped a patient from a hospital? I’ve tarnished his reputation and completely destroyed everything he’d done to help me succeed. I didn’t even think about it. I threw it all away like it meant nothing.”
It hurt to swallow, but the words kept coming. “The hospital had to shut down and God knows how many patients were affected by that -- staff having to stay overtime, treatment schedules disrupted -- I could’ve hurt someone. And my--... my family and my--”
The tears came in earnest this time. “My-- my son, if I go to prison, I don’t know what-- what he’ll even do--”
“Dumbledore said you probably won’t go to Azkaban,” Harry told her in an attempt at reassurance.
Petra had said as much. But Arkwright was going to fight for it and, faced with even the slightest chance of her being sentenced to Azkaban...
A wave of desolation crashed into her, abrupt enough to force her to close her hands into fists and fight the urge to scream, or tear the bed apart, or worse. “I don’t know what--” A small whine interrupted her as she tried to swallow back a few sobs. “What I was even thinking-- ”
The mattress sank as he sat down on the other end, his face etched with worry as he placed a soothing hand on her arm. “It’s okay, Cleo. You only did what you thought was best, and that’s--”
The rest of what he said filtered out as her eyes fell to his hand.
There was a bruise there, at the divot between his forefinger and thumb -- a yellow-blue notch, slowly healing, cradled atop her elbow.
Something about that--
Seeing that--
The panic momentarily abated; her breathing stuttered to a halt.
She caught his eyes and realized she was doing it again. Depending on him.
He waited, staring back, tight lipped and patient. And, as she felt his thumb plane over her forearm, she shook her head and dislodged a tear-stained chuckle from her throat.
He clearly hadn’t expected that reaction. “Cleo…?”
Her head shook again and she abruptly turned to face him, her hand capturing the one that rested on the crook of her elbow. She gave it a tight squeeze. Forced herself to smile. “You know what?”
His eyebrows raised. “What?”
“I don’t want you to worry,” she said, every word deliberate and affectionate. “Because it’s going to be okay.”
Harry frowned. “You’re still crying.”
She lifted her other hand to wipe a stray tear from her cheek. “I know. But I’m going to be fine.”
The look he gave her was disconcerted. “Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?”
No.
And that was the entire problem.
“You know, Harry,” she uttered, squeezing his hand again. “I wanted to tell you I was sorry because I think that, as a friend, that’s the right thing to do. That if I do something to hurt you or act in a way that does harm to you, I should take responsibility for that and let you know that I won’t do such a thing again.”
He shifted, his gaze dropping to the mattress before returning. “I know you won’t.”
“Because you deserve that courtesy from me, Harry,” she emphasized. “You deserve that respect.”
He fixed her with an attentive stare, though he didn’t seem the least bit comfortable with what she’d just said. “Okay.”
Her head tilted. “But I also think it’s important that you understand that, whatever happens to me, I’m going to be okay.”
His expression was openly doubtful. “Will you? Because Snape said you’ve lost…” He grimaced. “A lot.”
“I don’t know why he felt the need to say those things to you,” she asserted, reaching out to cup the side of his face with her hand. “Whether angry on my behalf or something else, he was wrong. And he shouldn’t have put that on you. Whatever I’ve lost is my responsibility. You didn’t lose me my job; I lost my job myself. And what’s important is that it’s not the end. I have options, Harry. Okay?” She nodded, and he mirrored the action after a second of urging. “I have options. I’ll figure things out. And none of what happened is your fault. I need you to understand that, alright? It’s not your fault.”
His eyes drifted away again. He was silent, but at least he didn’t move out of her reach.
“I promise, Harry.”
His small laugh was barely more than an exhale.
She blinked.
“Sorry, it’s… it’s nothing,” he answered the question she didn’t ask. “You just reminded me of someone, is all.”
Her hand slipped from his face to his shoulder as she smoothed out a wrinkle on his shirt. "Yeah?"
“Yeah.” Harry brought up a hand to sweep his fringe away from his face. “He, ah… had your same impulse, I think.”
"Impulse?"
He shrugged. “To apologize. To make up for… whatever." He lifted a hand in a vague, uneasy gesture. "I think he didn’t want me to worry. To feel like… everything would be okay. But I… didn’t know how to respond, and I kind of… insulted him.”
"Yeah?" she repeated, leaning back slightly to give him the room to speak.
“He’s written me a few times since then, but I’ve never replied. I just… don’t know what to say,” he admitted, threading his fingers together in his lap. Then, he looked back at her again. “And I don’t know what to say to you, either.”
Her face felt like it cracked open when she tried to smile. "Nothing," she answered with confidence. "Not unless you feel like there are things to say. Stuff to vent about. Concerns to raise." She paused again to reach over and grasp his conjoined hands. "It's not your job to take care of me. Or to absolve or comfort me. Because this isn’t about me, Harry." She gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “And I’m sure that your friend feels that way, too.”
“I guess.” He shifted again. “I just don’t like to see my friends upset.”
“I understand,” she commiserated. “But I’m okay--”
“You’re not,” he uttered, his expression tensing slightly. “And you don’t have to keep saying that for my sake.”
“I’m scared, yes,” she admitted. “I don’t know what’s coming, not completely. But that’s not something I want to unload on you, right? Because that’s what I need to deal with. That’s not something you need to be worried about.”
“But… I want to help--”
“I know,” she acknowledged. “I know. And you are. By being here. By doing your schooling. By concerning yourself with other things. By staying healthy, happy and safe. That helps me in more ways you can even begin to understand, Harry. And, like-- the important thing is…” She paused as she grasped his hand. “The important thing is that I’ll find my way, whatever happens. I’ll have my family, I’ll have my friends, and I’ll have a really good life. And--” Her head tilted slightly as she tried to catch his eyes. “I’ll always be here if you need me, alright?”
“Yeah.” That single word carried a world of weariness. “I know.”
“And if there’s anything else you want to talk about,” she continued, her smile turning sad. “Or anything you want to ask, you can. No holds barred.”
It was reassuring to see Harry take that at face value, as his demeanor grew contemplative. “Well. I’ve been meaning to ask what’s… happened? Since… you know.”
She allowed a breath to escape from her nose as she glanced away, only offering him a vague, "I've been fine. I was safe."
“Yeah, but, I mean…” His nose wrinkled. “We don’t really even know what’s going on? Hermione said there was an article in the Daily Prophet about you, but it didn’t mention any names at all.”
"Because the people in charge of my case aren’t naming names right now," she was careful to mention, looking back to gauge his expression. "They're investigating, and it'll be a while, but they want to tie my charges into something bigger."
His eyes went wide with alarm, but his tone was measured when he repeated, “Bigger?”
This was wandering into dangerous territory. "It won't ever get that far," she stated, matter of fact. "The lead investigator, I guess, Arkwright? My attorney says he would be an idiot to even try. He has no evidence, and overcharging me is a surefire way to get me a full acquittal, so…" Her shrug was the epitome of nonchalance. "He'll make a ruckus of it. Make it look like he's doing his due diligence. I'll sit on my conditional release until everything is sorted out. And we will see where my charges are at then."
Harry visibly deflated, but still questioned, “Why would he do that at all, then?”
"Because he's currently sitting on a PR nightmare," she breezily divulged. "The MLE has been in shambles since Scrimgeour left it. People want him sacked."
“What’s he done?”
This wasn't helping him. And, catching herself before she could fall into habit, she shook her head. "Doesn't matter. You don't have to worry about it." She allowed her posture to relax slightly. "Anything else?"
He frowned. “Don’t put me off! The three of us have been poring over the Prophet for ages looking for news about you.”
“Then that article you’ve supposedly read should’ve given you the information you’re looking for,” was her stern, albeit tenderly delivered, rejoinder.
“Well…” He turned away with a meek smile. “Ron and I might have skimmed.”
Her grin turned conspiratorial. “Uh huh.”
“I don’t understand politics.”
“You’re sixteen,” she reminded him. “You don’t really need to.”
“Sixteen is nearly grown, you know.”
That drew a loud guffaw from her.
Harry reacted with a bemused chuckle of his own. “What? It is!”
“I think I thought the same too,” she mused, her eyes darting over to one of the nearby photos of her and Gabriel.
“It’s strange to think I’ve only got a year and a half left of school,” he mentioned.
“Goes by fast, doesn’t it?”
He didn’t reply. When she looked back at him, Harry was regarding her with a troubled expression. “Cleo… Are you going to stay at Hogwarts?”
“Of course I am.” She patted him on the top of his knee, the movement overly sprightly. “Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t intend to.”
He was skeptical, obviously. “But, I mean… until you graduate?”
Her smile waned. “I’m going to try.”
He paused, sighing. “Will Snape still be your advisor?”
“That’s up to him,” she said. “I hope he will. But even if he doesn’t, I can figure something out.”
“But…” Harry shook his head. “You said before that you’d leave, if you couldn’t get him to advise you.”
“I know,” she acknowledged. “But, I don’t know -- I figure I shouldn’t give up on magic until I don’t have any options left, you know?”
“I guess,” he murmured, but then, his gaze dropped to the bedsheet. “I suppose you can’t be a Healer anymore, yeah?”
“No,” she answered honestly. “But I can still work in Potions. I still got into Aberdeen. I can go to medical school, if I want. There’s lots of things I can do outside of St. Mungo’s.”
He was quiet, staring at his fingers clasped loosely in his lap. “Right.”
“I deserve to be here,” she told him, tentative, but deliberate. “You know?”
Harry met her eyes. “Yeah. You do.”
The acknowledgement resonated, warm and meaningful, in a way Cleo didn’t expect. She nearly burst into tears again, but laughed instead to allay the sensation as she leaned over and bumped him playfully with her shoulder. “Just you wait,” she teased. “The world of magical obstetrics has my name written all over it.”
The beginnings of a smile stirred in the corners of his mouth. “I don’t know what that is, but I’m sure you’ll be the best at it.”
“And that’s probably the most glowing recommendation I’ll ever receive,” she laughed, beaming. “Thank you.”
“Any time,” he airily returned, leaning back against the bed frame.
And, feeling more comfortable herself, she leaned back with him, reaching to grab one of her fuzzy pillows to hold against her stomach. Soon enough, however, she was leaning over to prod her shoulder into his again, prompting him with a blithe, “I’d like to know the good things that happened to you this past month too, you know.”
He shrugged. “Guess I did alright on my exams,” he mentioned without enthusiasm. “I… got my first E in Potions.”
The surprise of that was a bright, glowing sentiment that excited her more than she expected. “You did?”
“Yeah.” Harry scratched the side of his nose, the hint of an embarrassed smile tugging on his lips. “Hermione was proud, but maybe also a little professionally insulted.”
Cleo let out a short laugh. “I’m proud of you too.” When he looked away, bashful, she reached down to pat his hand. “Really. You earned that.”
“Thanks,” he sighed. “My essay was just about dripping with red ink, though.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be Snape if he wasn’t nitpicking something to death,” Cleo joked. Though, after they shared a brief bout of soft laughter, she added, “Do you need help understanding his corrections?”
Harry fixed her with a puzzled stare. “Aren’t you…?" His grimace was somehow both hopeful and uncertain. “I mean, you don’t have to tutor me anymore, if you don’t want to.”
Cleo shot him a look as she rose from the bed. Seconds later, as his book bag careened through the air before thwacking against his thigh, she playfully announced, “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
The last person she’d expected to have on her side was Ronald Weasley.
Her classmates had given her a wide berth, but, in the two subjects they shared, Ron had purposefully, almost defiantly, made a point to stick close by. They hardly spoke to each other at all, but the silence passed easily, the two of them persisting in their own separate routines uninterrupted.
It wasn’t difficult to figure out his reasons; he wasn’t a particularly subtle guy. But whether or not his efforts were necessary was another matter entirely. They shared a tense sort of peace; Ron’s challenging posture suggested he was anticipating trouble, but Cleo had, in fact, observed the opposite since she’d returned to school.
In a world where a young girl was found in critical condition after a violent assault and then, only an hour later, Clytemnestra Croft was escorted from the premises, flanked by Aurors, to only-God-knew-where for an entire month… The student body knew when to leave well enough alone.
For how long that would hold out, Cleo couldn’t be sure. And frankly, she didn’t care to find out.
The past day and a half were spent busily organizing appointments for make-up exams; Sprout’s and Flitwick’s had been relatively smooth to schedule, but Tenenbaum’s had been a pill.
The professor had all but insisted on a ‘talk’, though said talk had ended up being an awkward, wandering, terse back and forth where Tenenbaum had, perhaps, expected her to give some deep insight into her actions. But when corralling her had led nowhere, and the professor had reached her limit, she’d offered up a derisive snort as she went back to preparing the classroom for the day’s practical. A dueling lineup of some kind, by the look of it. “You are perhaps the biggest idiot I’ve ever met, you know that?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Cleo thought she heard the woman utter something under her breath that sounded perilously close to what a fucking waste.
“Monday, first thing,” she dismissed with a jerk of her head toward the door. And Cleo knew that if she was smart, she’d get the fuck out. Nevermind bothering to ask what the hell ‘first thing’ meant, time-wise. Either she’d show up, or she’d fail, and at that point, Cleo couldn’t make herself care.
She was preoccupied with the one meeting she’d been purposefully avoiding. Her last ditch effort was to put Professor Trelawney before it, but the woman was nowhere to be found when Cleo crawled into her vanilla-scented, teal-tinted room after an exhausting slog up to her tower. By then, she’d run out of excuses. She couldn't try another call (hopefully successful, this time) to her home until Saturday. Her classes had finished for the day. Her homework was completed. Nothing of note really required her attention.
But she still didn’t know what to say to Snape.
She’d tried to rehearse it for hours -- barely paying attention to lectures as she attempted to construct the perfect way to approach the veritable iceberg of things she had to address with him.
Maybe he wouldn’t want to hear it; maybe he wouldn’t care if she was willing to admit she had been a hypocrite, or hear how much she regretted violating his trust, lying to him, ruining everything he’d done to help her. Maybe he’d resent the imposition, deride her for feigning that moral superiority she’d had the audacity to laud over him the last time they’d spoken.
But, truly, knowing him… He probably wouldn’t do any of that. Knowing him, he’d be as professional as possible. And maybe that was worse -- the idea that he wouldn’t be angry enough to berate or disparage her. That, by the end of their perfunctory, clinical meeting, she’d be desperately wishing he’d raise his voice, just once. That he’d call her worthless, idiotic, selfish or worse. Reprimand her at length. Lay bare every detail he loathed about her. Anything.
So it was a cold comfort when, after she’d finally gathered the courage to face the inevitable, she found his office unceremoniously empty.
Stepping through the threshold, it was strange to realize how very familiar this room had become. Entrusted with a key, Cleo had often found herself alone in the quiet little space, content to await her portkey’s activation or study before her meetings with the professor. She’d hardly describe the atmosphere as ‘warm’, but it was, in its own way, comfortable. The walls on either side were filled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and drawers brimming with Potions detritus; the desk was a warm mahogany, and stretched wide and heavy beside the shelving; and the three chairs available were clinically comfortable, but not plush. Snape kept things very neat and orderly, every rare specimen and delicate brew fastidiously labelled and catalogued, and every bit of paperwork for his lesson plans lined up on the countertop with all the expert precision expected of a man in his line of work.
He had a penchant for documentation, she’d realized early on, and the professor had often let her peruse the massive collection of Potions journals which took up most of the space along the eastern wall. At least a decade’s worth of notes and research, compiled by date and topic, all penned by Snape himself -- and she was one of the privileged few to lay eyes on his life’s work. Cleo marveled at it now just as she had when he’d first introduced it to her, but…
It felt different. She’d spent a good portion of her term ensconced within these four walls, but they felt different now. She realized, with a sinking, gnawing feeling, that the comfort of her stay had always been tied to the strength of her welcome; the professor had gone out of his way so many times to facilitate her success, to make her feel like he accepted her input. And now, the room seemed all the more staid and imposing for the lack of it.
So much so that it almost felt predatory, what she did next, although she’d done it a million times before. Pulling a piece of scrap paper from her bag, she fumbled with one of Professor Snape’s quills before writing:
Professor,When she stood up again, she gawked at it. The little scrap of torn, wrinkled parchment paper... it looked so wrong sitting there on the desktop. This one little note, a stain on an otherwise immaculate surface.
Couldn’t find you here. I’m going to try the garden. If I don’t find you there, could you please meet with me when you’re free? Please. I know I’m not even remotely in a position to ask, neither do I possess the right, really, but there are some things I want to say to you.
I’m sorry.
- Cleo
She started to feel like one as well, and forced herself out of the room before she could rethink leaving the note at all.
Stepping out on the grounds was meant to feel like resurfacing for air, but the winter-drenched day felt dry and dense in her throat. The forest stood in opposition to her, the large expanse of trees crowded and huddled together as if trying to keep warm. The greenery had finally given way to something more barren and empty, so much more foreboding than they’d ever appeared to her before. Perhaps because of what they held inside; the promise of something that Cleo was finding herself more and more reluctant to face.
The closer she approached, the bigger the copse of trees expanded and swelled, seeming to rear upward in challenge.
And, at the base of trunks she normally would have entered without hesitation, she stopped.
The cold bit at her nose and she rubbed it with the back of her hand.
Her gaze swung to the side.
Unexpectedly, she found a person.
An immediately recognizable one, in fact. A shivering mass of fabric and baubles encircled Professor Trelawney’s waiflike form where she stood, her layered skirts wet from where they trailed on the icy ground. And, abashedly realizing that she was happy to find any excuse to avoid doing what she was supposed to be doing, Cleo began her trek down the hill to approach the professor.
When she was close enough, Cleo saw the matted curls of her professor’s hair sway as she vacillated from one unsteady foot to the other. Trelawney didn’t seem to take notice of her at all, her arms wrapped around her stiffly as if she were shielding herself, and her lips were making tiny, distracted little movements. There was something distinctly unsettling about it; normally, the professor, even at her worst, had some amount of frenetic, excited energy about her. Today, though, she seemed consumed with an unnatural exhaustion which made her appear inordinately fragile and small as she stood at the base of the trees towering above her.
“Thinking about going in?” Cleo announced herself, keeping her voice as low and tender as possible.
The woman did not reply. Her attention was both pensive and transfixed, focused on the tree line, and her curled fingers were fretfully pressed against her lips. Cleo observed as a laconic blink overcame the woman’s eyes, lids drooping as if they were too heavy to stay open.
“Professor?” she softly coaxed.
“Hm?” The inquisitive hum was preoccupied, like an afterthought. She did not turn away from the forest.
It took a good long moment of consideration before Cleo decided to place her hand on the crook of the woman’s arm. “Are you okay?”
Trelawney instantly pulled away, eyes wide as her head snapped in Cleo’s direction. Then, just as abruptly, her posture slouched with relief. She clumsily waved a hand in front of her face as if to clear the air. “Oh. It’s only you.”
Cleo tried to steady her smile. “Just me.”
“Sorry, I… thought you might be…” she trailed off, her stare drifting toward the forest once more. Cleo noticed the way her mouth was slack; the flushed tint to her cheeks. The professor made a back step that caused her to stumble slightly, though she caught herself.
The situation felt disturbingly familiar and, without thinking, Cleo found herself occupying a role she hadn’t for some time. “Yeah? That’s okay. What’s brought you to the forest today?”
“There’s something in there.” A twinge of fear broke her voice.
“Right,” Cleo quietly returned, her eyes darting to the tree line. “What’s in there?”
“I don’t know,” the woman admitted, clutching at the heap of shawls wrapped about her shoulders. Her next sentence staggered out, the words sounding too close together. “I think it’s a tree.”
Cleo shifted slightly, returning her hand to the professor’s upper arm. She kept a firm grip, as if to steady her. “You don’t know if it’s a tree?”
“In my dream,” she answered a question that hadn’t been asked. “There’s something wrong with it.”
She offered the woman a slight nod. “Do you need to talk about it?”
Trelawney turned her way, her face contorted with worry. “Cleo? I don’t want to go in.”
“Hey -- no, that’s okay,” Cleo assured, her breath choppily shuffling out, overcome with an onset of sympathy. “You don’t have to, alright? No one’s going to make you.”
“But..." Her breath caught as she struggled to swallow, her brow creasing in a manner that was much too exaggerated. "But my tea leaves…?”
Cleo offered a firm shake of her head. “Can’t make you. You can stay right here.”
Her eyes were watery behind her over-large glasses. “Really?”
“I wouldn’t lie to you about that, would I?”
Trelawney raised her hand to Cleo’s and began absentmindedly patting it as if she were the one doing the comforting. “No… no, of course not.”
She appeared to believe it, which was the important part. Cleo had to steady her nerves with a large breath. “You don’t have to answer if you can’t, but do you know how you got here, Professor?”
It took her several blinks to formulate her reply. “Well, I… I only followed it.”
“Followed what?”
“My dream,” she said, as if that should have been obvious. “The grass was… shivering… and, ah--" Her head shook as if she were trying to clear it out. "There’s something underneath.”
“And you followed the grass from the castle?” she questioned.
“No, there’s…” Trelawney gazed across the stretch of grounds, searching. “It’s a ribbon. I think…? A red ribbon. I have to follow, or something terrible might happen.”
“How do you know something terrible might happen?”
“Last time, it was Sylvia,” she murmured, grave. “But…”
“Sylvia,” Cleo quietly repeated. “Okay, is that someone you know?”
A heavy frown weighed down her features, but all she said was, “It’s cold.”
“I bet,” she commiserated, her hands reaching to grasp Trelawney’s bare ones and encapsulate them in her palms. “But we can take care of that. Did you bring your wand, Professor?”
“Oh…” Her hands pulled away from Cleo’s before they fumbled with a little knitted pouch at her waist. The wand seemed to slip from her grasp a few times, though, eventually, she proffered the thing before her, cradled unsteadily between her wrist and chest. “It’s here.”
“Do you feel like you can do a warming charm yourself?” Cleo inquired. “Or do you want help?”
Trelawney nodded, her necklaces jingling, despite the fact she told Cleo, “I can’t.”
“That’s fine,” Cleo assured her as she moved to grasp the professor’s wand by the tip. The woman kept firm grip of it. “You’ll have to give me the wand, though.”
Trelawney wasn’t looking at her as she gave an acknowledging hum. Her sight was glued to the woods again.
“Is that alright? You’re okay with giving me your wand?”
“I suppo--...” She was so distracted that the word couldn’t form all the way through.
“I’ll give it back,” Cleo promised. She felt Trelawney’s fingers loosen and began to pull the slip of wood through. “Just like before, yeah?” she coaxed. “With the letter? Remember that?”
The woman’s nod was sloppy and ill-rhythmed, and eventually Cleo had her wand by the handle. She was careful when she made the first swipe across Trelawney’s shoulders, muttering a warming charm just under her breath. She imagined the warmth like a blanket that she draped over the woman’s back, across her hips, around to her chest.
“Just tell me if it’s too warm,” Cleo said. The professor raised no objection, keeping her silence in the length of time it took to finish weaving the spell over every inch of exposed skin. She only barely seemed to acknowledge Cleo’s presence when she straightened up after having applied a drying charm to the professor's skirt. “I know you’re having a rough go of it, but I just need to check, okay? Do you know you’re awake right now, Professor?”
Her expression was puzzled. “... What?”
Orient her. "You're awake," Cleo said clearly and evenly. "You're standing at the easternmost sector of the Forbidden Forest, not far from Hagrid's Hut." She made a gesture just over the woman's side, indicating, but Trelawney made no move to look. "Understand?"
She nervously played with the beads at her sternum. “I’m awake?”
"You're awake," she confirmed, her smile turning pitying. "Do you think you can repeat back where you are?”
“I’m…” Trelawney darted an uneasy glance at her surroundings. “On the grounds? By…” Her troubled gaze was drawn again to the trees.
“Right,” Cleo said with a shaky exhale, her hands going to grip the woman’s shoulders again. “Can you remember if you’ve taken anything?”
“Hm?”
“Have you had any medicine?” she clarified, trying to catch the woman’s gaze.
“Oh… ah...” Trelawney’s moment of deliberation stretched beyond a comfortable length of time. “I had a potion.”
“Do you know what kind?”
“Hmm… Dreamless Sleep?” Her voice was meandering. “Didn’t work.”
A bitter tang on the woman’s breath ignited Cleo’s suspicion. “Anything else?”
“Tea,” she said before elaborating: “Jasmine, with cream.”
It was a lie they both immediately recognized. The frown pulling at Trelawney’s mouth suggested an anticipation for Cleo to call her on it.
But Cleo heard something else entirely -- something more important: I’m not ready to admit it yet.
So, with a slight nod, she lifted her fingers to Trelawney’s carotid, middle and forefinger pressed with a practiced delicateness as she tried to ease her professor’s dour mood with a soft, “Do you feel unstable on your feet right now? Like you might fall over soon?”
She shook her head, gazing down at her fingers to fiddle with her rings.
“Good,” she murmured. She had to concentrate to even feel the faint pulse beat against her fingers. Heart rate’s slow. “And you didn’t have too much difficulty walking down here?”
“Mmm…” Trelawney blinked, long and slow. “It was snowing.”
Still really disoriented. “I need a yes or no, Professor.”
“... No.”
“Difficulty breathing?”
She took in a gulp of air as if she were checking. “No.”
Pulling her fingers from the woman’s neck, she held them up before her to demonstrate a precise motion: Sequentially, she tapped the pads of each of her fingers against her thumb, fanning backwards and forwards on repeat. Cleo only spoke when she was sure Trelawney was paying attention. “Think you can try doing this yourself?”
Raising her own hand, the professor squinted in concentration as she copied Cleo’s movement. Her imitation was clumsy, but nonetheless successful.
Gross and fine motor skills seem fine. Which was a comfort, but not by much. “Have you thrown up at all?”
It seemed to dawn upon Trelawney that she was being assessed. She drew back slightly, her grimace arriving half-baked on her face. “Yes-- maybe.” The grimace withered into apprehension. “Why?”
There was relief in Cleo’s next exhale. “No, it’s good. You only did it once?”
“Maybe…” Trelawney’s voice petered out meekly. Cleo could barely hear the next admission, uttered under Trelawney’s wrist as she turned away, almost as if she were trying to hide the words. “Couple times--”
“Even better,” Cleo praised, tempering her voice in a manner that would have, hopefully, made the professor feel less self-conscious. “Would I be right in thinking that you’d give me a bit of a hard time if I suggested that I take you to the Hospital Wing?”
The answer was obvious in the souring of her expression and the relative firmness of her tone. “I don’t need a Healer.”
Right. “I hear you,” she promised. “Then would it be alright if I stay with you for a bit, to make sure you’re safe?”
Apparently mollified, Trelawney replied with a listless and slurred, “I suppose.”
“And maybe you can agree that if you start feeling like you’re about to pass out, or that you have to focus really hard to even breathe, you’ll tell me?”
Trelawney raised an eyebrow at her, but the expression couldn’t stick. Seconds later, her eyes drooped again, the premonition of another laconic blink lingering in her half-lidded eyes.
It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no either. Which, for Cleo, was enough. She felt room enough to needle, “And I suppose it goes without saying that perhaps you shouldn’t take ‘tea’ with your sleeping potions anymore, yeah?”
There was a jarring shift in the professor’s demeanor as she again clasped her hand where Cleo’s rested on the woman’s shoulder, patting it a few times. “You worry too much, dear. I know--” She paused on a laborious swallow. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Hey now,” she played off with a forced chuckle, attempting to ease the tension that had held the past few minutes hostage. “You gotta leave me a little room to fuss, right?” She turned her hand over slightly to catch the professor’s. “It’s in my nature, you know that.”
Trelawney let out a puff of breath, her lips curling upwards into a fleeting smile. “I know.” She patted Cleo’s hand a few more times. “I know.”
“Well, how about this dream of yours?” she suggested, letting her arm drop to her side. She needed to keep the woman talking, at least for a bit longer. Cleo made a half-turn and then dropped into the grass, splaying her legs in front of her. “Shivering grass, and a ribbon? Sounds pretty abstract. Have you tried interpreting it yet?”
She indicated for the professor to sit on the grass next to her, but Trelawney either didn't want to, or hadn't noticed.
Guessing by the way her countenance grew troubled once more, Cleo figured it was the latter. “Forests are… omens of neglect. I thought…”
Cleo let that sentence hang long enough for it to become awkward when Trelawney didn’t immediately pick up on elaborating. Eventually, she prompted, “Thought what, Professor?”
“I took care,” was her wistful admission. “I left acorns. But my books aren’t clear -- the forest… sometimes it’s night and sometimes day. And they’re watching me.”
“Who’s watching you?”
Uncomfortable, she whispered, “The trees. I can see them breathing.”
“Breathing trees,” Cleo observed quietly, her eyes going to the forest before them. “I don’t remember the symbolism for that.” If there even was any.
Trelawney shook her head in response, the motion inelegant. “Red ribbons -- portents of love, unity… but…”
"Symbols of love directing you toward living, breathing nature," Cleo ventured as a counterpoint. "That doesn't sound insidious."
The professor’s brows drew together, a hint of frustration in the slant of her mouth. “It’s not right-- the ribbon, it wants me to follow, but I know there’s a dreadful something at the end,” she insisted. “I can feel it.”
"Do you ever go inside the woods, in your dream?" she questioned. "Or does it always end there?"
“I tell my feet to stop moving, but they never listen,” Trelawney said, her gaze dropping to the ground as she curled her arms around herself. “No road to follow, but I always take the same path… Unstable, rocky. Treacherous. Only moss and roots and… breath at the back of my neck.”
Oddly, a shiver ran down the length of Cleo’s spine, unbidden. She rolled her neck and stretched her arms as she questioned, "But you wake up before you get to where they want you to go?"
“Sometimes, I catch a glimpse; the trees start to thin, and I see…” She closed her mouth around a thick swallow. “And I feel terribly ill.”
Worrying she was losing focus again, Cleo pressed, "You see what?"
“I don’t know,” was her quavering reply. “But I don’t want to see it.”
"Maybe you're supposed to," Cleo reasoned, offering a sympathetic look. "Maybe the fear comes from the anticipation of facing something that's hard to face, like the truth." She let out a breath. "I mean, a forest in a dream can be an omen, but you have also taught that it can symbolize life. Abundance. Wisdom. Protection. Maybe the forest isn't hiding something meant to harm you; maybe the forest is there to guide and support you as you come to face what you're meant to see."
Trelawney’s magnified eyes were watery again when she settled them on Cleo. “I can’t.”
I'm not ready.
And Cleo, smiling still, dipped her head into a nod. “Not now, no,” she agreed in gentle, soothing tones. "But one day, you will be able to."
She watched the woman grip her arms tighter across her chest, her voice very small when she spoke. “How do you know?”
“Because I’ve seen it done before,” she divulged. “And I’ve seen people do it again and again, no matter how many times they lose their way.”
“Have you--” The woman’s voice faltered, almost as if choked. The gleam behind her coke bottle glasses shimmered and shuddered before Trelawney forced herself to take a breath. But when she spoke again, Cleo had the sinking feeling that it wasn’t with what she’d meant to say before. “Have you-- ah, ever had reoccurring dreams?”
“One,” Cleo answered, respecting that boundary.
She pressed her lips together into a small frown. “What happened?”
Cleo’s face turned to the sky. “Do you remember how I used to tell you that my mother really loved to tell stories?”
Trelawney loosened her grip on her upper arms a little as she contemplated this. “Mm… You would tell some of them when your friend came to the tower with you.”
She meant Cal, the thought of him pinned her smile to her face. “Yeah, he loved them,” she agreed. “So does my mum. She loves regaling me with her ‘Haight-Ashbury’ days.” A laugh left her, though it sounded more like a sigh. “Times she’s overdosed, the weird things she’s seen, the protests she’s been part of, the music she made with her homeless friends, the time she swears she almost got recruited into the Manson family.” Her head shook. “But, like -- out of all of them, only one really stayed with me.”
When she lapsed into silence, the professor lifted her eyebrows. “Which?”
“My grandfather was a piece of shit,” she said with an amount of venom that she hadn’t expected to express. Though, in a moment, she remembered who she was with, grimacing and excusing herself with a soft, “Sorry.”
Trelawney offered her a worried smile. “It’s fine, dear girl,” she crooned, almost sounding like her normal self.
Cleo’s eyes fell to her knees. She could already feel the discomfort climbing in her insides. “I just mean, for context, my grandfather was a horrible person. He did a lot of bad things to my mum. Things fathers should never do to their daughters.” She grit her teeth. “And like, I already knew that. But when I got pregnant and left school, I hadn’t figured out what to do with the baby. Mum wanted to talk, but I didn’t really know what to expect--” Her nose wrinkled as she felt a pressure behind her eyes. “But she sat me down and told me about the one and only time she’d ever tried to get help. She was fifteen. Things had escalated and become scarier than they had ever been before. And she asked her mother for help; sat down with her in the kitchen and told her everything that her father had done since she was six years old.”
She paused. She felt Trelawney’s gaze against the side of her face.
Cleo’s head shook. “She said it took forever, telling her everything. Like once the truth had come out, it just kept coming. She couldn’t stop it. And her mum just sat there listening the entire time. Never said anything. Never asked questions. And, like?” She sucked in a breath through her teeth. “She stared at my mum, blank faced, and I remember her describing it like -- like there was a switch that went off. That some part of my grandmother shut down, but then suddenly reset, kind of like she’d realized something. Except, all she said was, 'I think you're confused, Holly,' before she smiled and asked what my mum wanted for dinner.” Her lips stretched over her teeth as she scowled. “Didn't matter how many times my mum tried to bring them back to the conversation. How many times she begged her mum to listen -- to do something, anything. I think you're confused, Holly." Cleo's head rattled with a disbelieving, bitter shake. "That’s when she knew she was completely, utterly alone. That no one was going to help her. That no one would ever believe her about what he'd done. A month later, she ran away from home and took care of 'the problem' on her own.”
Cleo’s mouth fell open briefly, the pressure against her eyes becoming a heat that radiated through her entire face. “And, ah--” She swallowed. “She told me that story because she wanted me to know that, ahm--” Her jaw tensed. “That she understood and had been where I--”
Her voice broke in a crack, the heat in her face coalescing tightly across her muscles, forcing her to strain her expression. At the first sign of tears, she turned her head sideways, wiping them away with a muttered expletive. For a while now, the unthinkable had stopped becoming the unthinkable. She understood and had been where I was.
But it hadn’t become sayable.
Not yet.
Never would, maybe.
When she faced forward again, it was only when she’d composed her breathing, and cleared her throat. She gave a wet sniff. “She just wanted me to know she’d be there for me, no matter what I chose to do,” she explained hastily, her arms going up to cross against her chest. “And like, after that? I started having this dream with increasing frequency, about sitting in my mother’s childhood home. My grandmother was faced away from me at the kitchen table. And I’d just sit there and yell at her. Every time the dream came, it’d be something different. Sometimes my mother was there, sometimes it was just me and her alone, and I run through all the things I’d do to intervene. I'd play out the various ways I wished I could save her. But then, after Gabriel was born, the dream changed.” She forced herself to look to the sky again. “I’m on the second floor of a luxurious home, standing in a bedroom. Across from me there is a sliding glass door that leads out to a patio. There’s a man standing at the edge, facing out toward the backyard. But everything, even the ground, is impossibly far away. Meters and meters, all the way down. I’d stand there and stare; I’d never seen him before in my life, but I knew who he was. My grandfather. And every time, I go to the glass sliding doors, I open them, I walk out onto the patio, and without hesitating, I push him over the ledge.”
Her gaze dropped to her professor. “It terrified me at first. That every night, I’d have this dream where I killed him and felt nothing, or even this latent sense of joy. I never really wanted to tell my mum, you know? I never wanted to bring him up to her. But, honestly, my mother doesn’t miss a thing. And when she noticed that I'd started staying up to avoid sleeping, she arranged us to have this huge dream interpretation session, right? And then she’d banish the negative thoughts, like she used to do when I was a kid. It took about an hour for her to get it out of me, and I was surprised when she just… laughed.” Cleo’s squinted at the ground; she could still remember the expression on her mother's face, clear as day. “Not like, happy laughter. It was way more self-deprecating and grim. Like it was ironic. I told her I was sorry, but she promised me it was fine -- it just meant I wanted to protect her, and above all, she appreciated that. She didn’t want me to carry the guilt. And, you know, we had a really good talk about it, so I followed her advice -- I let the fear and guilt go. I wasn’t dreaming about how I literally wanted to murder my grandfather, my mind was processing anger. That was just how it manifested.”
The sound of Trelawney’s necklaces clinking against each other as she nodded resonated loud in Cleo’s ears. “I let myself be less afraid of the dream, and it didn’t come as often. But whenever it did, I’d just say in passing to her, ‘Got him last night for you, Mum,’ and she’d just--” Cleo’s lips twisted. “She’d twitch a little smile, but it was sad. And then she’d move the subject along, like she didn’t want to address it. Couldn’t even stand to think about it. It always confused me.”
Bringing her knees up to her chest, Cleo pressed her chin into them, her stare pinned to the woods. “But... I think I finally understand now.”
After all, a month was a long time to think.
Trelawney finally sank to the ground beside her, the motion only minutely wobbly. When she was finally settled, the woman turned questioning eyes in her direction, hands going once more to absently turn her rings around her fingers.
“I made it about me,” Cleo confessed without prompting. “I became obsessed with the hero fantasy, you know? What I would do if I was at a certain place at the precise moment I was needed; how I’d be the brave rescuer. How I’d martyr myself, what I’d sacrifice, how I would fight.” A heat flared in her neck. “I never once asked what she needed from me. I just assumed that her hearing how I'd killed her abuser in my dreams would bring some sort of solace. I assumed so much without just asking what I could've done to make her feel better. I focused on how good it felt to have beat the bad guy and thought that would be enough for her. And I just became consumed with that entire idea, you know? How important the gesture is. How good it would feel to do the right thing, to show what lengths I’d go to help someone.” Halfway through, Cleo realized she was referring to someone else. “And that’s what I’m sorry for, I think. That I didn’t actually try to help her, I just wanted to feel like I had.”
Trelawney frowned at her lap. “Yes, I… can understand that.” She looked as if she had more she might say, but did not give voice to any of it.
“I guess all I mean is,” Cleo excused herself, the beginnings of regret settling in a chill over her skin. “Just that-- I mean, if you--” Her expression scrunched up as she let out a frustrated exhale through her nostrils. “If you ever need to talk to someone, you know, about what’s going on, I’d--” Her shoulders drooped as she foisted a helpless look at her professor. “Y’know.”
There was a subdued air about the woman. “I know.” She took a deep breath through her nose. “... Thank you.”
Cleo's head shook.
And above them, the tree boughs bent at the gentle urging of the winter breeze; the sound of it enrapturing and soothing in Cleo’s ears. Her own hair splayed messily against her cheeks and shoulders. She felt the briefest suggestion of Trelawney’s headscarf fluttering against her upper arm.
The air tasted crisp when she opened her mouth. “What do you think,” she began as she lowered her legs to the ground again. “Will it be the forest today, or back to your office for some tea?”
The woman gazed at the nearby trees, her expression brimming with trepidation. But, in the next moment, the line between her eyebrows smoothed as she heaved a meditative sigh. “... Tea, I think.”
With a nod, Cleo rose to her feet and offered both her hands to help Trelawney struggle to a clumsy stand. The woman wrapped her arm around the elbow that Cleo held out for her.
And as the two of them made their slow, wandering way up to the castle, Cleo glanced back at the tree line and frowned.
It wasn’t how she’d planned to spend her time, but this was where she was needed. Where, for once, she could maybe, actually help.
And Snape, for a day, could wait.
It was easier, amidst the bustling activity of the Ministry’s Atrium, to accept the end of things.
She could have -- or perhaps should have -- waited for her disciplinary hearing to commence in the unbearably quiet hallways of the courts in the undercroft, deeper below ground. Should have kept to her promise of taking the punishment, quiet and dignified. She’d been determined to, completely and wholeheartedly, distance herself from self-pity, to force an acceptance of the idea that, when playing the devil’s game, you paid the devil’s price.
But experience had led her to the opposite conclusion: The more often she allowed herself solitude, the more likely she was to feel sorry for herself. The simple thought of the end of her career in Healing was enough to bring tears to her eyes, not to mention the threat of being consumed with self-preserving fear at the coming legal battle.
Amongst people, it was different.
Amongst people, she could not help but be reminded of the unrelenting progress of life.
Obstacles came, paths closed, but things -- people -- pressed forward, regardless of how final circumstances appeared.
She could look at this crowd of equally varied beings; those who arrived to work, those who fought for their jobs, those who sneered at the inconvenience, those who paid little mind at all, those whose rushed steps brought them closer to an appointment they’d almost missed, and she could imagine a multitude of setbacks. Death, divorce, affairs, arguments, traumas, crimes, mistakes, misgivings, sickness, pain, hopelessness -- all interwoven, all intersecting, in some part of the people who passed her. Most importantly, despite those things, they endured. Despite those things, they were here.
Life adapted, for better or for worse. People would go on. They would find another way.
Just as Cleo would, too.
The door to St. Mungo’s was about to close; her chapter there would end.
But there would be something else.
And when she caught herself drawing toward the frenzied, cynical thought that there might not be, she’d reorient. Empty out her thoughts; let the Atrium trickle in. Remember the hard stone beneath her thighs, the cold reflection of water on her back, the claustrophobic rush of air as the crowd raced by. Breathe in the bitter tincture of water, filtered through a tangled, rusted underground pipeline, mixed with the aged, eroding copper knuts huddling together just beneath its surface. She’d listen to the harsh cracks of Apparition, the dulcet patter of flying memos, the roaring sizzle of magic, the click-clack of hundreds of boots on tile.
And the conversations.
A chaotic assemblage of fragmented conversations that descended on her like a swirling, jumbled deluge.
“... wish I could have gone with the rest of the…”
“Richard! You sly dog…!”
“... do you want, dear? Have a blue one…”
“There’s simply got to be a better way than…”
“... No, really, you think I’m joking but…”
“Just wait here while I go get you some…”
“WE RE-FUSE! WE RE-FUSE…!”
“... can’t believe he did that right in front of the committee…!”
“... think she’s queued up for Nettle’s, but I’d rather…”
“You’re on the clock, Hawthorne…!”
“No you bloody pillock, I told you it needed to be for this Monday…!”
“... ought to send a proper memo, instead of...”
“... it’s just passive aggressive, is all-- if she didn’t want anyone touching her lunch, then…”
“... shouldn’t tease her like that when you know she can’t…”
“... Hamish, if you don’t quit right this…!”
“... They called you a what? ”
That last exclamation was to her immediate left, the proximity of the voice bidding her open her eyes briefly to catch the indigo outlines of two strolling patrol officers.
“A ‘scab’,” the officer recited to his partner on the coattails of an amused snort.
“What in Merlin’s maggoty bollocks is that? ”
“Some Muggle word for a strike breaker,” he explained, derisive. “Had to ask the muddy in Admin to figure that one out; ‘bout laughed my arse off when he told me.”
The other scoffed. “What, so we’re using their language now?”
“Told you,” said the first. “It’s been like this for ages with these sorts. And it’s getting worse.”
“Hah, don’t have to tell me twice--”
“Hey!”
A third voice boomed to her right, so sudden and appropriate for the conversation she was eavesdropping on that she didn’t flinch at the abruptness of it.
Though, when the two patrolling officers continued to stroll farther away, their conversation drowning in the low drone of voices, she thought it odd.
But then, again: “Hey, uh-- Croft?”
Smoothly, unbothered, Cleo glanced toward the voice. It belonged to the pretty, diminutive, red-haired girl whose cocksure attitude more than made up for her stature: Ginny Weasley. All boldness and mettle despite the fact they were virtually strangers, the girl stared at Cleo with puzzled interest. “You good?”
Not even remotely. “Uh huh.”
“Noticed you were off on your own, is all,” Ginny off-handedly commented. “Reckoned I should come say hello.”
Cleo’s hair slid over her shoulder as her head went aslant. “Hello.”
There was an awkward pause as the girl looked her over. “You’re looking all swank,” she observed, breezy. “Got a job interview or something?”
“No.” Cleo’s hands drew from her forehead and raked down her neck. “Complete opposite, actually.”
“Good,” the girl said at once. However, a sudden look of horror overtook her face when she realized what she’d just said. “Er, I don’t mean good, good, you know--” She winced. “Just-- would be a bit shit if people had to harangue you for crossing the picket line.”
“Right.”
Ginny cleared her throat. “Speaking of,” she broached, not all that delicately, “Whenever you’re done with, uhm -- your thing, we’d be happy to have you. My Dad and I are standing with my brother and Hermione at the lifts. If you want. It’ll be fun.”
“Maybe,” Cleo uttered, noncommittal, as she hoisted her head over her shoulder to glance at the picketers nearby.
They were broken up into several groups, some stationed at one end of the expansive Atrium by the Floo and Apparition areas, some crowding around the Eateries by the lifts, and some in the middle, loitering at the center of the three connected rotundas, near the job fair kiosks. Cleo guessed there were a few hundred demonstrators, all shouting booming, magically-enhanced chants, blasting showers of sparks and colorful messages into the air above them, or expressing their displeasure with signs and banners. Several caught her eye: such messages as “MORE PROGRAMS, NOT LESS”, “WE REFUSE”, “FUNDING IS NOT OPTIONAL”, “OUR WORK IS ESSENTIAL,” and, amusingly, “GET FUCKED, DOLORES” were proudly among their number. Surrounding each pocket of congregated strikers were rings of patrol officers designated to keep them in check; Cleo watched them clear pathways to the lifts for commuters, dispel any magic which strayed outside the designated border, and several, with hostile expressions, simply had their wands trained on the group.
Cleo brought her attention back to the other girl, adding a thoughtful, “I’ll try, at least.”
“Cool.” Ginny’s voice petered out in a way that signaled that they’d reached the natural end point of their conversation. And yet, the girl hovered.
Cleo stared at her with half-lidded eyes. “Did you actually come over here to talk to me?”
“Not really,” Ginny gave up the ghost immediately. “Sorry. I just wanted to be polite. I’m actually looking for Harry. Have you seen him?”
“No.”
The girl’s lips pursed in frustration. “Damn. Okay. Thanks anyway. Sorry for the bother--”
“It’s really not,” Cleo interjected, realizing at once how cold she seemed. “Sorry if I sound, y’know--”
“No, yeah, that’s--”
“-- it’s just I’m stressed--”
“-- no, yeah, that makes sense. It’s fine, Croft, really--”
"Oh, Ginny, there you are!" a jovial voice blustered into the proceedings. A dowdy, cheerful, middle-aged man with a mop of ginger hair was waving his hand over the heads of the crowd as he made his way toward them. When he emerged from the press of traveling bodies, Cleo could see he had someone in tow, but, before she could identify them, the older man had walked up to encompass her whole field of vision.
"Arthur Weasley," he immediately introduced himself, fixing Cleo with a wide, winning smile as he reached for a handshake. She offered him a cursory smile in return as she took it, and her body jolted and shook from the sheer vigor and excitement of the motion. "Pleasure to meet any friend of my little Ginevra!"
She couldn’t help but notice that Ginny made zero effort to correct him, though she did wrinkle her nose.
“You as well, sir.”
Mr. Weasley released her to step back, presenting the familiar figure behind him. "And look who I’ve found!"
Harry nearly toppled over as Mr. Weasley dragged him into the limelight. He gave Cleo an inquisitive look, eyes darting between her and Ginny, but lifted a tentative hand in greeting. "Hallo."
Before Cleo could return the acknowledgement, Ginny cut in. "And where've you been, then?"
His answering shrug was stiff. "Just… around?"
"Found him by the career kiosks, chatting up the Auror division," Mr. Weasley proudly declared with an exuberant slap to Harry's shoulder.
"I wasn't-- I mean, Professor McGonagall just told me I ought to--" he fumbled with a grimace.
Ginny did not appear remotely impressed. “You know Luna’s been looking everywhere for you, right?”
He frowned. "Me? Why?"
Ginny’s scowl was contemptuous. “What do you mean ‘why’? She came with you!”
"Well, I…" he floundered. "I told her where I was going..."
“She didn’t seem to know that!” the girl snapped. “Merlin, Harry, what kind of boyfriend are you? She's clearly having a hard time being in such a large crowd; why didn’t you bring her with you?”
Harry's eyes nearly bulged right out of their sockets as he spluttered out his reply. "Wha-- Boyfriend?! I'm--... Did she...? Hold on--"
"Gin, you shouldn’t tease him like that,” Mr. Weasley gingerly chastised his daughter through barely suppressed puffs of laughter.
“It’s not teasing!” was her heated protest, her arms ramrod straight and fists clenched against her sides. “It’s the truth! She’s wandering around, near in tears, and it’s Harry’s job to--!”
“I didn’t-- I didn’t know she was--!” came Harry’s winded response as he went distinctly red in the face. “And we’re… It’s not… like that--”
“Oh come on!”
“All right,” Mr. Weasley jumped in, moving to grasp his daughter and embrace her from behind. “Let’s not get hostile.”
Ginny wriggled in his grip, though not too forcefully. “I’m not being hostile!”
“Ah! How about a joke?” Mr. Weasley abruptly suggested.
And the horror that arrived on Ginny’s face was unrivaled by anything Cleo had ever witnessed.
“No!” she protested immediately. “No, not again!”
“Alright, so--”
Ginny had begun to droop so far forward that the only thing keeping her from falling was her father’s arms clasped across her chest. “Daaaaaaaaaaad--”
“Why did the scarecrow--”
“I hate you so much!”
“--win an award?”
Cleo and Harry merely stared.
“Because he was outstanding in his field!” A wide grin split his face as he awaited a burst of laughter from the three of them.
His daughter instantly let out a loud, painful groan, the sort which could only be cultivated in the children of embarrassing, proudly shameless parents. Harry’s brow furrowed with puzzlement, while Cleo watched the lot of them with a flat affect.
Ginny was still hanging precariously from her father’s arms, her hair obscuring her face as she vowed, “I’m going to kill Fred for getting you that Muggle joke book for Christmas...”
“But it worked,” Mr. Weasley remarked as a point in his favor. “No one’s fighting anymore!”
“No, everyone just doesn’t know what to say now because that was literally the lamest thing ever!”
As the two of them continued to bicker, Cleo’s body suddenly jerked as a heavy weight draped itself across her right shoulder, and a mouth sloppily whispered against her ear: “You know medical stuff, right?”
Cleo’s nose scrunched as she was forced to blow strands of bushy hair from her face. “Hello to you too, Thea.”
She turned her head to face the child, and Thea met her with an impatient expression. “Don’t you?”
Cleo raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Why?”
“This isn’t really a difficult question, Croft.”
“Thea.”
Her full lips offered a petulant pucker as she leaned harder against Cleo’s shoulder. “Because someone needs help, obviously.”
“Who?”
“A girl.”
“A girl,” Cleo echoed.
“Yeah?” Her thick locks bounced as she tilted her head. “I just met her at the other fountain. She’s by herself, and I think she has a fever or something.”
“Most of the students are by themselves--”
“She’s not a student, she’s too young!” Thea objected. “And she’s not wearing Hogwarts robes. I didn’t see her parents anywhere, Cleo.”
A hollow sigh made its way out from the deep of her chest. “Nowhere nearby? Did you think about talking to one of the police officers and asking them for help?”
The look Thea shot her was incredulous to the core, as if she couldn’t comprehend Cleo suggesting something so stupid. “Can you just come check on her, please? You’re a nurse and stuff.”
“I’m not actually--” Cleo halted her speech as she closed her eyes, stifling another sigh. “Never mind. Okay. Show me.”
Without hesitating, Thea gripped her hand and pulled, causing Cleo to trip slightly as she stood.
And before she even had the chance to excuse herself, Harry was prodding, “Where are you going?”
“Uhm, Thea’s--” Cleo brought a hand to rub the exhaustion off her face. “She said a kid’s been left by herself and may need some help.”
Obviously sensing an escape route, he announced at once, "I'll come with you."
"Hey, no!" Ginny complained, hands on her hips. "We're not done here! What about Luna?!"
"I'll… meet up with everyone else in a minute. Alright?" Harry suggested, a desperate edge to his tone. Ginny looked fit to burst with a retort, but Mr. Weasley placed a hand on her shoulder.
"We'll head back to the lifts," he said, waving Harry off as he began to pull Ginny away. "Go help your friend."
Ginny huffed, turning an exasperated glare at him. "Dad--"
Whatever he might have said in reply, Cleo didn't hear, since by then Thea had begun insistently pulling at their conjoined hands, guiding her deeper into the crowd, toward the fountain of Merlin, with Harry trailing awkwardly behind them.
The girl wasn’t hard to spot, at least when looking for something out of the ordinary. She was seated at the edge of the fountain of Merlin, arms draped over one another on her lap, posture drooped, eyes anchored to the ground.
She didn’t look that much out of place, not in a crowd like this. At this distance, the most egregious thing a person might assume was that a child had been left unattended by irresponsible parents -- nothing immediately dangerous, nothing to bother yourself with if you weren’t inclined or had better things to do.
But up close, it was easier to spot the things that were amiss.
For Cleo, it was the barest suggestion of a purpling, fresh bruise peeking from the collar of the oversized coat draped over the little girl. She didn’t appear to register their approach, even as Cleo knelt to her level to look at her face.
“Hello,” Cleo carefully greeted her. She could feel Thea leaning over her back, attentively watching the proceedings.
The girl didn’t respond.
“My name is Cleo,” she introduced herself, hands resting on her knee caps. “What’s yours?”
Nothing.
“My friend noticed you were by yourself and thought you needed some help. Do you know where your parents are, sweetheart?”
Not a word.
No tears, no distress, no shyness or overwhelming distrust at being approached by people she did not know. She was completely unresponsive.
“Cleo…” There was a distinct twinge of dread in Thea’s voice.
Cleo didn’t delay. “I’m going to check you over, sweetheart,” she announced. “I want to make sure you're okay, but if you aren’t comfortable, you just let me know, alright?”
She didn’t wait for a response she didn’t expect to receive. With calculated, delicate movements, she gripped the child by the face and lifted her chin slightly so she could look at her.
The curtains of her hair, thin and stringy, fell to frame her face. She stared back at Cleo, blank-faced and unmoved. Her mouth was slack, pliant like her head, which Cleo was required to hold steady for it to stay aloft. She couldn’t have been older than ten. Her mind went straight to work at taking an inventory of symptoms, ignoring the distressed ache that began to form in her belly. Unhealed cuts on the jaw. Sunken in cheeks. Dilated pupils. Thin, papery skin. Chapped lips.
Her free hand fell to the girl's neck. Faint pulse. Shallow breathing. Clavicles are protruding; distinct lack of muscle tone.
She glanced down, saw the fingers protruding from underneath the sleeves drowning her hands, saw her bare feet barely dragging against the ground. Discoloration in extremities.
She quickly moved to snap her fingers over both the girl’s ears as she carefully observed the muscles of her face. Not even a twitch. Still unresponsive.
The list of symptoms was familiar in a way that Cleo wished it wasn’t.
“Cleo?” Harry, that time.
Without answering him, she moved herself closer to allow the girl’s head to rest on her shoulder, supporting her body fully as she went to grasp her arms.
There was no resistance when Cleo pushed them up toward her chest; they hung loosely over her knees when she allowed them to drop back down with a smack that caused Cleo to wince, even though the noise was barely a blip in the boisterous environs. The little girl's fingers felt skeletal against her palm, and when Cleo adjusted their position so she could get a better look at the discoloration, she noticed it.
A small blotch of color on the small bit of wrist peeking out of the oversized sleeve. It was reasonable to assume it was just another bruise, but some gnawing unease compelled her to check.
She would’ve given anything for the cold wash of humiliation to draw over her upon the realization that she’d overreacted. To be faced with yet another inconspicuous, dark bruise once she pulled the bit of fabric away. However, when the harsh, black outline of a lion bared its teeth and roared silently up at her from the base of the girl’s right wrist, Cleo felt a hot shudder thrum through her muscles, strong enough to cause her knees to buckle.
“Harry,” she called, controlling her voice to a neutral, calm intonation. She didn’t want to alarm him.
When she felt him approach, she brandished the tattoo to him.
Their eyes met.
And without prompt, Harry turned off to rush into the crowd at full speed.
The tension in Thea’s voice was still present when she asked, “Cleo, what’s going on?”
“It’s fine,” she lied. “Just stay back, okay?”
Thea complied, but Cleo could hear her feet shuffle with a distinct, agitated energy.
She pulled the child into a sitting position again to begin a more thorough examination. There were signs she was already anticipating: The evidence of starvation and physical abuse; markers of possible fractures that hadn’t been allowed to heal, or had not set properly; a litany of horror she could catalogue and give to the Emergency Medi-Wizards that would arrive soon enough: Her last act as a disgraced staff member of St. Mungo’s. She could be happy, leaving it like that. Knowing that her last day was spent on this, instead of festering in humiliating impotence as she quietly left that part of her life behind.
She’d been careful to hold the girl by the shoulder as she began to strip the coat from her overwrought and emaciated frame, her eyes scanning every inch of skin for even the barest hints of abrasions, when she was met with something that shouldn't have been there at all.
Black Kevlar. Furling, tangled wires. The corners of objects tightly packed in what looked like plastic or parchment paper. Not a full picture, but disjointed pieces of imagery that somehow snapped coherently in her mind as immediately recognizable.
Without thinking, she twisted to look at Thea. “Run.”
The girl peered at her, both alarmed and bewildered. “What?”
“Get to the Floos. Now.”
The girl lifted herself on her tip toes, trying to see what was obscured by Cleo's body. “What’s happening?”
Cleo pulled the coat back around the child's shoulders so Thea couldn't even get a glimpse. “Just get out of here, Thea.”
“But--”
“I said go!”
The urgency in her voice was so forceful that Thea momentarily stumbled back, but she was quick to do as she was told, bolting into the crowd and disturbing some passers-by in the process.
Cleo turned back to the child. She should’ve gotten up too, sought help -- but her instincts, as a mother, kept her where she knelt, working immediately to try to get the explosive vest off the girl’s bare chest. She tore the coat off the rest of the way and it fluttered down into the fountain’s calm waters as Cleo’s hands went to pull the straps off the girl’s shoulders.
The vest wouldn't budge, no matter how hard she’d pulled. Even as she quickly adjusted to tear at the backing, finding purchase on the edges of the rough, irritating material, it wouldn’t give way. She thought the thing was adhered to the girl with a permanent sticking charm until the child, laying prone over her shoulder, made the first and only sound that Cleo would ever hear her make.
A high pitched, throaty groan. The noise was so primal and pained that it brought nausea crashing into Cleo's insides: The mewling, ungodly sound of the girl's body feebly and ineffectively attempting to defend itself.
She pushed the child to a sitting position again, her hands going to cradle her face, as she frantically searched for the source that drew the response.
And then, she saw it.
Four evenly-spaced punctures just under her pectoral muscles, with shimmers of metal peeking through, crowded by dried blood, inflammation, and the beginnings of infection.
Horror overtook her as she pulled slightly at the front of the vest, watching as the metallic rods shifted, breaking scabs, and then catch on something unseen. The child’s distressed droning picked up in pitch and desperation.
Cleo’s breath burst out in a terrified gasp.
She rose to her feet, turned to the crowd. A few people had stopped, had begun to observe the scene with a concerned, startled curiosity. She ignored their faces, tried to spot a silhouette of indigo somewhere within. The police.
She spotted a couple at a nearby kiosk.
There, the faintest glimmer of hope.
Unconsciously, she took a step forward. Her arm foisted itself into the air as she began to bellow, “HEY--!”
But then, she felt it.
A high current of heat; a powerful, expanding pressure; a gritty palm against her mouth; an ethereal tug just behind her navel.
And the world abruptly plunged into undulating, chaotic, screaming darkness.