Chapter 9 – The nature of poisons

When I was in first year, I was locked up in the Restricted Section as a prank. They didn't find me until after curfew. It's not different from the rest of the library really… that is if you don't count the fact that every possible dark, dangerous spell or potion's name is written in those pages. Books whisper them all the time, and if you concentrate enough, you can hear the screams too. Of course, after a while, you don't need to concentrate to hear them… after 5 hours, I couldn't tell the different between my screams and theirs.

They never mentioned in 'Hogwarts a History' why it is forbidden to linger in the Restricted Section, it just says that people get lost there… But what that means is a bit more obscure. You see, it's not between the rows of books that people get lost, but inside their heads.

Because the Restricted section has some books that contain spells so ominous that the suffering they cause is forever enclosed between the pages. And at night they release it.

All that pain, if heard, an drive a person mad with grief. This is what almost happened to me.

I guess this is one more secret I will never tell.

"Wow! When you said that you cleaned this place up… I thought you were joking!" She was in the living room, with the other kids, trying – and in her opinion failing – to help making the Frankenstein house become more livable. It wasn't worth it much though, no matter how much they dusted and cleaned, Marlene still thought it will forever look like the waiting room of hell. There were many floors to this house apparently. Personally, she thought it was a tremendous waste of space and trying to clean that was a stupid waste of time too. More than just dirt covered the surfaces. She didn't even want to get into the decoration. Who the hell uses elf heads to decor walls?! And snakes everywhere, so tacky! Come on people, get real!

"You guys need to hire a decorator with a strong stomach… or an exorcist." She said in a low voice.

"A what?" The tall redhead near the bushy haired girl turned towards her, confused.

"Nothing. It must be a challenge huh?"

"It is! It actually takes a couple of days to be really done with one room. I swear, this place hates us."

"Can't imagine why…" She turned to look at the twin whose name was apparently Fred and smiled at him in a way she knew he would appreciate. He had a nice body, not too tall, well built but not sturdy, confident in his charm with a boyish smile and eyes that always told a longer story every time he looked at her. He was so easy to read, even for her. No woman needed to be a legimens to know what was going on behind the eyes of a guy that smiled the way Fred was smiling at her.

"I never thought that the word 'house' could ever take such a loose interpretation." She said turning to look around the room. It could have been luxurious in a creepy way, in its best days… but now was just a pile of old furniture and dust, which had rested on them for so long, it would kick your ass if you tried to remove it. And yet, for all its foreignness, this place elicited something familiar in her. As if she'd seen this place before…

Yeah right, in my nightmares perhaps.

"Well, you don't have to be afraid, if you break a nail washing the floors, Miss Weasley can fix it." Marlene looked at the curly haired girl who was empting some drawers in the trashcan. She had been right before: for some reason – and Marlene had a hunch of what that reason might be - this big-haired girl did not like her. Not only did she not like her, but what's worse, she even dared take her for some ordinary bimbo.

I'm not even blond!

Marlene smirked. Why not, she thought, it could be fun…

"Actually, I was more concerned about poisonous bites… like the one you are about to get." Hermione looked down to what she was doing and saw that a large black spider was making its way to her. She barely contained a screech and backed off a few steps. Marlene walked to the drawer and stretched her arm towards the spider slowly, taking it in her hand. She looked up to smile at her public. Fred looked fascinated, like he was four and she was performing a very interesting magic trick. The one that amused her most was the face of the tall, lanky kid. He looked like he was about to faint. She laughed.

"The Black Widow. Very rare. Very harmless… unless provoked, of course." She looked at Hermione, throwing a small smile her way and saw the girl's expression change from shock to understanding and then proud defiance. Marlene looked over to the frightened boy at Bush-hair's side as she played with the spider in her hand.

"Afraid of spiders Ronald?" She asked playfully. He backed away a few more steps until his back was at the wall, his face changing shades of purple every 2 seconds. Marlene smirked.

"You shouldn't be. They are very misunderstood creatures really. And their poison has the most fascinating qualities."

"Like what?" Fred had to admit that this girl was something unusual. Somewhat on the scary side, but in a magnetic way. The feeling she gave him was like the adrenaline rush that always came when he and George had just done a really good prank and barely gotten away with it. The mix of fear and excitement that gets the heart pumping and the nerves on the edge.

Marlene let the spider crawl over the back of her hand and on her palm, and as it was making its way on her arm she caught it with the other hand and trapped in her loose fist, her fingers like living bars. The black spider was restless in its new cage of flesh, attacking the bars with the long thin legs, trying in vain to escape. Marlene brought her fist in level with her eyes and looked at the black spider trapped between her fingers. The she turned her eyes to Fred, looking at him through her lashes like a predator, making him feel a pressure at the base of his spine.

"Two drops of this little baby's poison into a pint of the Draught of Living Death, and you get the fastest, quietest poison ever. It can stop the heart within 0.7 seconds and barely leaves any traces. The perfect assassin." Marlene looked up to at the people in the room and noticed that there was someone in that hadn't been there before. She smiled in a way she hoped he remembered. "Of course, the bright side is that you don't feel a thing..."

oOoOoOo

You are at the door. You open it quietly, wanting to be invisible, curious to see what is happening inside. It's too quiet. You look inside and you see her. She is standing by the old shelves where your mother used to keep the books about the Noble and Ancient family of Black. It was almost a whole wall full of them. You had told the kids to throw them out with the rest of the junk.

You see her, see the gray washed out, baggy pants low on her slim hips and the white T-shirt that hangs on her loosely and that leaves her bellybutton bare, along with the smooth skin of her stomach. She likes showing off her body, she is confident in it, you know that.

Your eyes are drawn on that patch of skin she leaves bare, you memory shoves unwanted images before your eyes, thoughts you are too worn out to feel guilty about. You look at her almost tanned skin again and this time you see something else. You see her the flatness of her stomach and the way her hipbones are a bit more pronounced than 2 days ago. You've known since a long time ago that she suffers from some obscure medical condition, that she takes medicinal potions once every three days regularly. You found this out during the war, when you were in one of those conditions where she had nothing to do but take the potions in front of you because there was nowhere to hide for privacy. Hestia has left potions for her this time as well – Dumbledore was able to get the formulas. And Marlene has been drinking them. You've seen the empty vials. You wonder if that has any effect on her eating habits. Wonder if her medicine is working at all…

Because you know that she is not feeling well even though she would never admit it to you or anyone in that house. She was unconscious for 5 days, and has only eaten a couple of sandwiches since she woke up two days ago. You know her, you say to yourself. You know her well enough to realize that she is not as well with this situation as she pretends to be. That means she is lying when she acts so comfortable. She is hiding something - which could be something dangerous - or maybe she is trying to hide her fear. As you think this you can't decide which one worries you most.

You can see her fear though, her anxiety. She doesn't show it, oh no. But you know her, and you read it in that tiny wrinkle between her proud face-framing eyebrows, in the way her wolfish eyes go over everything twice, in the way she is so alert of everything and so rigid all the time. You read her fear, her pain, in the way her eyes remain closed when she thinks nobody is looking. You see it in the way her eyes go off focus sometimes and become glassy, when there is nobody else but her in the room and she looks up to the ceiling, not really seeing it and fists her hands until they leave marks on her palms.

You watch now the way she plays with something in her hand, you see the black spider trapped in between her fingers. You recognize the amused look in her eyes, the way they are lit from behind like there is a fire burning in her skull. You notice that perpetual mark of irony in her small, one sided smile. She is talking without stopping, in a low voice, reasonable. You have seen her hypnotize a cat like that once… Then you look at the others in the room, and you realize that she has mesmerized them just like with the feline.

But you know her games. She can't play with you the way she plays with those kids. Because you can smell the odor of the poison bruin, taste the pungent toxins in the air. You can feel that strange pull she exercise on people, you recognize it for what it is – the lure of the height, that strange feeling in their chest that people get when they are standing high above the ground. They call it fear of heights, but it's not. Its themselves people fear. They know that the void beneath them tempts them to jump. They are afraid because they don't know if they will… But you never were afraid of heights.

You look at her intensely, trying to draw her gaze and you succeed: her eyes come to meet yours. She is not in the least surprised. In fact she looks satisfied that you are part of her spectacle. You see the half smile stretching one corner of her lips. You know that smile. You stare with hard eyes, giving away no emotion.

You feel someone moving behind you. Harry is climbing the stairs. He is right behind you in 2 seconds.

"Stop trying to scare the kids McKinnon." You say letting Harry go in and slamming the door hard behind you. You can be her public, but never her victim, much less her accomplice. You see how you caught everyone off guard. Everyone but her. Even they seem to realize they were in some kind of trance. It had been so quiet in the room, you could hear the beating of the wings of a fly.

"Oh but it's fun." She says with one of her ironic smirks. "Easy, but fun… Anyway, betanol can also be used to numb nerves… no pain." It was a different tone now. Her game was over. However, someone in the room didn't think it that way.

"Betanol has not been used for years now. It was too difficult to extract and caused more damage than it fixed."

You can almost laugh at Hermione's reaction, at her ingenuity. Even her pure intelligence can't see past the appearance of cruelty. Hermione is too whole, her soul too intact, too pure, to understand the way Marlene McKinnon's mind works, to unravel her games, her schemes.

"I'm sure it does." You hear Marlene say, brushing Hermione off quietly as if she was the most unimportant thing in the world. Even Hermione feels the condescending tone of the response, but you know that Hermione won't be able to fully understand Marlene's game. Because Hermione doesn't know her like you do. She does not know that Marlene bothers to exercise control only on the things she really wants to have.

oOoOoOo

Hermione glared at the girl, not caring who she was or where she was from. Unless she was wrong – and Hermione was sure she wasn't – that… person had just threatened her in the in the most subdue of ways. She'd looked like she had been playing, but by that look Marlene had given her, Hermione was sure that girl knew exactly what she was doing. The first impression of this girl had not been good, and the second had been worse… now Hermione was certain that Marlene McKinnon could not be trusted. She liked to play with people, induce fear in them, she had understood that much from her little show with the spider… Besides, who did she think she was to brush her off like that!

Fred walked over to where Marlene was standing and reached for the spider trapped between her fingers. She stopped him, grabbing his wrist with her free hand. Her skin was cool on his.

"Don't." She wasn't smiling anymore, her intense wolfish eyes serious on his face. It was obvious that whatever game she had been playing was over. "Didn't you hear me? Their poison is lethal." She let the spider go and it ran away from them quickly, as if it was suddenly free of a prison it didn't think it would survive. Fred arched one of his eyebrows.

"And they are not lethal to you?" he asked, his voice dripping of sarcasm. Then he saw the tiniest smile on her lips, an undecipherable look on her face. It was only today that he had really seen her face, the way it was carved. There was no denying she was attractive, those marks on her skin couldn't exactly change that. But they added a little something sinister to her appearance, they made her look as if she could eat him alive… And every time he thought that, a little thrill went down his spine.

"No. I'm immune to their venom." And before he could ask: "Long story." She said and brushed by him intentionally as she moved away.

"Can you get the poison out?" George had approached her, and there was this curious, exited look on his face, like he was about to receive a gift he had wanted for the longest time.

"I can… but I want a little something in return." She said with the ghost of a smile.

"What?"

"I'll think about it and let you know." Marlene said with a smirk as she looked at Fred with an intensity that make him isle. Her slightly open lips curved into the most sensuous of smiles.

"Done." Fred said smiling back.

"Lets shake on that." Marlene offered, making him smile wider. Fred stretched his hand for her to shake. She put her in his and locked her cornflower eyes with his deep-blue ones. He smiled at her and she ran her short nails on the back of his hand, her eyes sparkling. He had big hands, warm. She felt the warmth radiating from him, it spread in her whole arm. She liked it.

oOoOoOo

You see the way he gravitates around her, the way he is trying to impress her with his laid back, effortless charm. He tells jokes, makes her smile. Her smiles aren't fake, you can see the appreciation in her eyes. She likes him well enough to fuck him, you can see that. There is a strange calculativness about the way she looks at him, as if she is measuring him up. But it doesn't last. It's like a fleeing shadow over her eyes.

She talks to him, setting him apart from the others and you can see how that affects him. You can read his skin like a paper, he is that transparent. You can see how he is relieved that she is always the one to touch first, the one to make the first move. He likes that, he doesn't understand the nature of poisons, doesn't feel the slow burn. He mistakes Marlene McKinnon for an exotic creature, something out of the fantasy of a seventeen year old boy that carries around dark seductive scents and promises. This is what she wants to appear to him, the image she cloaks herself with to lure him.

But you know better. Marlene McKinnon is a creature of the night, something out of nightmares. She is to be feared not coveted. She is the poison at the tip of the blade.

You watch him talk to her, her lids heavy on her pale aquamarine eyes, her black hair long on her back, satiny around her face, her lips full, barely opened and seemingly reaching to him. It's clear what she wants even thought you don't understand why she wants him. He is not her usual type, not the kind of man she lied to fuck up. But you don't really care why she is hunting for Fred, it doesn't matter. You'll never let her hurt him.

You see Fred give a toothy grin at her and you have the urge to wrap him in a thick blanket and roll him on the ground, to save him from the tongues of fire he doesn't seem to notice enveloping him.

oOoOoOo

"I'm telling you, that girl is a lunatic. She was holding that gigantic spider in her hand like it was a bloody firefly!" Ron was still shocked, he looked it too. He was so careful, always looking twice before picking up something. Hermione rolled her eyes at him.

"She was just showing off. Most of her show was a threat to me, but she did enjoy the way you squirmed Ron." Hermione paused and then turned to her friends with furrowed eyebrows.

"Did you two notice her…" Hermione started hesitantly. Ron turned to her, looking completely lost. Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Come on, Ronald! You haven't noticed?" Suddenly she was really angry at something… and that something seemed to be Ronald, who realized this and stepped back a couple of feet, his face alarmed. Hermione glared at him, slapped the cloth on the table and crossed her arms over her chest. Ron turned to Harry, his eyes screaming for help.

"The scars on her face." Harry said in a whisper trying to hold back Hermione's blow up by giving Ron a clue. However the redhead frowned, looking confused.

"What scars?"

"Oh, of course he doesn't know. The girl looks like she had her face mauled by a tiger but mister Neanderthal over here is too concentrated on more interesting parts of her anatomy to notice." Hermione talked thought her teeth, it was barely audible, but Ron felt as if she had screamed it aloud. Harry sighed and continued cleaning the dust off the shelves. They weren't that visible really, but they had been kinda hard to miss when her face was a breath away from his the other day.

He turned to his friends again, after a few more hysterical hisses that he was sure came from Hermione and saw that she was in the process of turning red. Their eyes met as she glanced at Harry and all her anger seem to freeze and then melt away. Her face blanked for a second, her eyes out of focus, like she did every time she realized something important. A moment after she looked back at Harry, terrified and holding her breath. In the space of that moment, Hermione understood why he had been silent all day yesterday and why he hadn't said a word even when they were alone.

"Harry no. I know what you are thinking, but don't!" Ron focused his attention back on his two friends, happy to be off the hook… not that he understood why he had been in it or why he was off. Harry though, had the most concentrated look on his face, like he had a headache or some other pain of the sort wile Hermione looked a bit maniacal with her eyes almost popping out of their orbs her skin suddenly pale.

"How can you know what I'm thinking Hermione?" He watched as her initial excitement downed a little, taken aback by the sharp stab in Harry's voice, but she was still very determined when she spoke. It was her fear that added her determination. She sounded almost in panic.

"You can't tell her about your parent, about anything. Don't you remember third year?! Besides, you heard what Remus said…"

"I don't care what Remus said, I don't care what anyone says! Nobody has the right to tell me what I can and cannot do!" Harry could feel that his control was slipping away. This topic was too exposing for him. Even when he was thinking about it, he ended up being mad at nothing in particular… actually no, he knew who he was mad at. At everyone… for always telling him what to do as if he was supposed to be a child that couldn't make decisions of his own.

"This is not just about you! Do you have any idea how much of a risk would be if someone went back to the past knowing the future? Didn't you understand anything about what Sirius said about the war back then?" Hermione was holding on to that glass so hard, she would break it soon if she didn't let go.

"Hermione's right Harry. People have tried stuff like this before and it has never ended up well." Ron was getting the spin of the situation. The fact that even he was against his idea made Harry even more angry. Not even his best friends could understand him at this point…

Of course they could not understand… both Ron and Hermione had their parents right there. They had never felt the hole in their chests, the constant emptiness that was a human condition to him. They had never had to make a home of their school, just because there was no place else for them to go, no other place where they belonged.

It wasn't fair… as much as he loved Hogwarts, it wasn't fair that he had to call it home. He wanted a home to be his home. He wanted his real parents to make him feel his tie to this world, he wanted to stop being the loving surrogate of his best friends family. Why else would this girl have appeared? To leave things the way they were? No, she was here because she was supposed to be here, she was the one that would help him save his parents.

"We don't even know if she is going back! She came more than 20 year forward. It could be another 20 years before she can go back to her own time!"

"Come on Hermione! Do you think they would be so secretive about everything if she was not going back? Why do you think she is being kept in here?" He tried to keep his voice steady as he looked at his friends and saw the doubt in their eyes grow, so he went on.

"Nobody out there wants to harm her! So she is from the past, big deal! Who would need someone from the past? No, she is being kept in here, because nothing gets in and nothing gets out of this house that they can't control. That way she has no contact with the outside world, so that she can't learn anything about anything. Because she is going back to her own time."

After he stopped speaking silence fell. Hermione was considering this theory, and its holes, but it was quite believable. It didn't assure them of anything, but it was a plausible hypothesis.

Ron on the other hand, was much more practical than the other two. He did not know, nor could he assume he knew the reason why the girl was being kept there. Whether she was going to get back where she belonged was not his problem and he sure as hell would not make it his problem. What he cared about was the fact that his best friend was thinking about changing his life as he knew it… Ron was aware that he didn't know much and that he wasn't exactly the brightest candle in the chandelier, but of one thing he was absolutely certain: he knew enough about this kind of magic to know that this was dangerous and he couldn't just stand there and pretend this was a good idea. He didn't like to contradict either Hermione or Harry, but this time it didn't feel right to shut up for the sake of diplomacy.

"Harry, mate… this kind of magic is very dangerous, because it isn't really magic. Nobody can guarantee that it will work. This is not some spell you do in class that if you get wrong the first time, you can fix the next. You of all people should know the difference between theory and real life… People die trying to change their future, they have even killed other people by accident." Ron's voice was trying to sound reasonable, trying to persuade his friend.

"People die either way, Ron." Harry's voice was very even as he spoke. Cedric Digory's face flashed before his eyes.

"You can't tell her anything that might effect her future anyway. Dumbledore cast that tongue-tying spell on us himself." Hermione pointed out, a little too satisfied with that obvious obstacle. As if Harry hadn't been thinking of how to get around that since the very first moment he knew. As if he didn't resent with all his heart the fact that Dumbledore hadn't even talked to him before tying him with that spell.

Harry looked into Hermione's eyes with the kind of seriousness that had Hermione still her movements and lose the momentum of her emotions. "I need your help Hermione. And your Ron. I have never really asked you guys to risk anything for me but you always have anyway…"

"Harry, we're your friends…" Ron started but one look into his friends eyes and he couldn't let another word out. He couldn't say anything. He lacked arguments. The choice was between what he knew was dangerous and something Harry needed from him. It wasn't that much of a choice really.

"Yes. And now I'm asking, as a friend. I'm asking for help. I have to at least try to talk with this girl, because if I don't, I'm the one that is going to have to live the rest of my life knowing that I had the chance to do something about my parents deaths and didn't do it because someone told me not to."

Hermione stared at Harry a little out of breath as he talked. She hated herself sometimes. Because she knew that she would help him, damn it, but she also knew that it was wrong and so very dangerous. From any angle Hermione decided to look at this, she saw nothing but very bad things happening. If he was unable to talk to Marlene, he would be so disappointed. If he did talk to her… oh, Hermione couldn't even imagine what would be the consequences of that.

And here she'd been feeling so bad that they'd left Harry out of their summer in Griamuld place until he came here. The bites Hedwig had given her still stung but now they felt like nothing in comparison to the noise going on inside her head. Hermione took a deep breath and looked back into Harry's eyes and then in Ron's.

"We're going to have to think this through carefully."