His words had not stung her like he had surely meant them to. She had given up on regretting how her actions affected others long ago. She picked up the now empty vial she had tossed aside after healing her professor. She looked at it thoughtfully, remembering the urgency with which it had been bestowed upon her.
Attica was bored. She was supposed to be learning the next potion on her grandfather's list. Instead, she was sitting on a table in his private laboratory, swinging her legs and waiting for him to return. She was reproaching the visitor's appearance, which had interrupted her brewing. She felt privileged to be studying under her grandfather's tutelage. His expertise would help her to hone her Potions skills and maybe even earn her a desperately coveted compliment from Professor Snape. Now, it seemed that her grandfather was distracted by the man who had made himself at home in the study. While he was absent from the laboratory, Attica decided to take on the role of the taskmaster with more aplomb than anyone would have expected of a child who had only just finished her first year of school.
The door adjoining the study and the lab to the study was cracked, and she heard a voice float out that she did not recognize and without giving it much thought, she began to listen. She had been warned by her grandmother several times that adult business was not for the ears of children and that it was rude for her to listen in. Attica didn't put much stock in her grandmother's warning – after all, without eavesdropping, she never would have learned that her grandfather had created a stone that granted him and her grandmother immortality. From there, she was able to piece together why her grandparents were so old but looked so young. Through eavesdropping, she had been made privy to the highly restorative powers of the Elixir that was made from the Stone. She understood the importance of secrecy in these matters and had never told another soul after her grandparents sat her down and explained that this was terribly privileged information, but she enjoyed having the knowledge nonetheless. She found eavesdropping to yield too many positive results to refrain from listening in. And she certainly wasn't going to respect the privacy of this man who had ruined her afternoon.
"Nicolas, you must think about how badly he wants it," the stranger was saying. "He nearly killed Harry Potter, again, to get it. He's desperate for a way, any way, to rise back to his former power. Right now, your creation is his only hope. He will stop at nothing to get ahold of that Stone." The newcomer ended his speech with a heavy sigh. Attica was able to discern that they were talking about You Know Who. The rumors had been running rampant around the school during the last few days of term and she knew that Harry had narrowly escaped his clutches.
"I cannot. We cannot. I know what we told you before, but we have our own priorities to consider. We cannot let this happen. At least not right now. Our Attica is only going to be a second year, Albus." Attica recognized her grandfather's voice, seemingly tinged with irritation. There was an underlying emotion that she couldn't identify in her grandfather's usually strong, unwavering voice. It was an emotion that she hadn't witnessed in him in the nine years that she had been living with her grandparents. It was also an emotion that she didn't care to consider.
"Dear," her grandmother said. "We cannot deny that we see his point. We did give him our word." There was a tense lull in the conversation, and through the crack in the door she could see her grandmother walk over to stand behind her husband's chair and place a comforting hand on his shoulder. "But Albus, we can't leave her on her own. That's out of the question." With her grandmother entering the conversation, there was no danger of her being caught listening in and she moved closer to the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man who had elicited a slight panic in her usually composed grandparents.
"I'm not saying that, precisely, Peri―" continued the stranger, who was clearly the Hogwarts Headmaster. She silently chastised herself for not being able to recognize the voice of the Headmaster at her own school. But, she realized, she had only heard the man's voice on three occasions – briefly, during the welcome ceremony, during the Halloween ceremony when he had taken action when the troll had entered the castle, and again when he had awarded an obscene number of house points to the Boy Who Lived at the end of the year.
"I can't protect all three of you, Nick. If we allow the Stone to remain intact, he will come after you. He will come after all three of you," Dumbledore whispered.
"Enough. We'll end up talking in circles and we can endure that later. What about this item you wanted to discuss?" Perenelle said with a finality that made Attica suspect that the older woman knew she was listening.
"Ah yes, the scepter." Dumbledore seemed eager to move on from that particular wrinkle in the conversation. "As I've told you before, I think I have uncovered the secret behind the Dark Lord's inability to die. I can't be absolutely certain, but I believe it has something to do with Salazar Slytherin's scepter. You get my meaning, I hope."
Attica's grandmother gasped. "You can't mean that he created a… That can't be possible!"
"Yes. I'm afraid it's very possible." Dumbledore's voice seemed to grow weary.
"The magic behind creating one of these is surely far above his skill level," her grandfather countered.
"There was someone working at the school when Tom was a student that was able to help him acquire the knowledge necessary. I haven't been able to discover who it was or what resources they were able to offer to him, but I have reason to believe that Tom would have been able to create one eventually."
"You have the scepter with you, let's take care of this now, once and for all." Her grandfather's voice was filled with hope. He had been examining the scepter in question and slammed its tip on the ground to emphasize his newfound optimism. As he did so, something dropped from the scepter and rolled under her grandfather's desk. She made a mental note to hunt for the shiny object later.
"That would get us one step closer, but Tom Riddle was one of the most determined students that has ever passed under my guidance. My deepest fear is that had he gained the ability to create one, he would not have stopped there."
"You mean… there could be more?" There was a pregnant pause after her grandmother's exclamation and Attica envisioned their visitor nodding his head solemnly in response.
"That would make him virtually indestructible," Nicolas said slowly. Through the crack in the door, she saw the man reach up and pat the hand that still rested on his shoulder before he said in a voice that was barely a whisper, "Then it must be done."
Now, as she held the vial in her hands six years later, she realized how much had changed since she had received it. It pained her to picture the sorrow in her grandfather's eyes when he had pressed it firmly into her palm. There were tears in his eyes as he told her to guard the little vial fervently, because one day she would have great need of it.
"There will come a day when you will need to use this. I had hoped to protect you from what's coming, but a good friend of mine has shown me that the only way to protect you is to destroy the Stone. There will be no more Elixir for us, Attica. This is the last of it," he told her.
"But can't you drink it now and last for a few more years?" She had abandoned all hope of preventing the tears but she couldn't hold on any longer and a barrage of tears streamed down her face.
He swallowed back his own tears as he explained that the amount of Elixir he had siphoned into her vial was only enough to heal. They knew what was coming in the future and wanted to leave the rest of the Elixir with her. If given to a person who had died only moments before, the Elixir could restore that person to life. They knew that she would have need of it in the midst of the dangers that were coming. In the last moments of their lives, all they had been able to think of was protecting her.
A few days later, she was sitting at her grandfather's desk in the study when Dumbledore arrived to settle her grandparents' affairs. She felt closest to her grandfather in that room, but it felt wrong that the Headmaster was invading the place she had staked as her sanctuary after she had lost them. She could hear Professors McGonagall and Snape speaking in hushed tones in the hallway. She wished it were the Transfiguration professor who was sitting with her now. The severe Deputy Headmistress had been there with her when she had been orphaned for the second time in her young life.
She looked down in order to hide the tears that were threatening to once again brim over in a deluge down her cheeks. The Headmaster must have sensed her discomfort and dismissed himself to give her a few moments alone. Through her tears, she noticed something twinkling beneath the large cherry desk. She slipped from her chair and retrieved the item, which she recognized as the object that had fallen from the scepter the night her life had started crumbling down around her.
She sat back up in the chair and studied her newfound treasure – a round-cut emerald that beautifully reflected the light from the candlesticks mounted on the wall behind her.
Years later, when rumors of Voldemort's return had surfaced, she used a simple attachment charm to adhere the emerald to the stopper of the vial that contained the last Elixir on earth. She then placed the vial around her neck and hadn't removed it since.
In this rare moment of nostalgia, Attica was reminded of a time when her life had appeared to promise her so much happiness. She was taken back to the moment when that happiness was no longer promised to her, the moment that her hatred for Harry Potter had been born.