Asher sobered up only slightly on the long walk back to the castle. She wasn't staggering anymore, at least: she had managed to reduce her pace to a consistent stumble. She hoped she could steady herself by the time she got to the doors, because it wasn't after curfew yet, and she didn't think she could stand to be seen by a student, drunk and wobbling as she was. Asher's mother had possessed superhuman strength and a high metabolism- read: tolerance for alcohol- and had passed on a healthy amount of it to her daughter. However, the beverage Asher so favored was not what anyone could call a "girly drink," and she had had three of them, the last two rather rapidly, as she recalled. The only light at the end of the tunnel was that in a few hours she would be completely sober.
Or perhaps that wasn't such a great thing. Right now Hermione's words were in a tangled, incomprehensible jumble, and that was safer. The moment she could think clearly again she would string them together the way they were supposed to be, no matter how much she tried to stop herself. No, that wouldn't do, and as she waved her wand feebly to call down the ladder to her tower, she struggled to remember if she'd thrown out the bottle of merlot her uncle had sent her for Christmas.
The ladder went up four and a half stories, and after swaying dangerously over the sides on the bottommost rungs, she was glad for the narrow stone passageway it went through once she had reached the stone ceiling of her classroom. The climb had winded her in her inebriated state, and when she had dragged herself from the ladder and retracted it once more, she collapsed on the hard stone.
She closed her eyes, deciding whether or not she ought to just take a nap. Her waffling was interrupted by a tapping on the window, and she groaned. Damn that bird. She hoisted herself from the floor on shaky arms, the left actually falling out from under her for a moment. Finally, she managed to get to her feet, and, tripping on the way to the window, she released the catch and it swung open.
"About damned time." An enormous magpie with brilliant teal plumage flew in, crossing the room with a swoop and landing on his favored perch, the Mirror. "Do you realize how long I was waiting out there?"
Asher closed the window and turned to face the bird, losing her balance and catching herself on the casement. She made a show of rolling her eyes, and said, "There's a little thing called the owlery, Amon." The words may have come out slurred. She hiccuped, scowling at the unwelcome sound. "I do believe you know where it is."
The bird ruffled his feathers in a display of irritation. "And in case you haven't noticed by now, I am not an owl." He tilted his head so that one beady eye was staring right at her. "Or maybe you wouldn't... Merlin's spectacles, are you drunk?"
"No," Asher mumbled, walking a bit unsteadily to her desk and pulling a drawer open, looking for that bottle of wine. Others watching her with the bird might have concluded that she was not only intoxicated, but crazy; however, Amon belonged to a group of magical creatures known only as Adepts. They were exceedingly rare, and could be any species; the general theory was that if they spent enough of their gestational period in a highly magical area, they gained abilities that corresponded to that place. No one knew why one animal in a nest or litter gained an ability and the others didn't. Asher had heard of a snake whose mother had nested in Gringotts, and had an unnerving ability to find its way through traps and mazes. Then there was the case of a puppy born in a Canadian wizard hospital that guided the new arrivals to the proper ward to take care of their problem without any help from humans. Amon had hatched from a nest in the eaves of a wizarding library, and he had the ability to understand human speech, as well as make humans understand what he was saying instead of the call of a magpie. However, he was very choosy about who he let hear his words; Asher thought this was a blessing, because he was also very opinionated.
"You are!" the bird cried, launching himself from the Mirror to circle her head in dizzying swoops, letting out a chattering, scolding sound that Asher knew was laughter. "Don't you know Madame Rosmerta named that particular beverage after a fighting tactic, not a dance?"
Asher blinked a few times, and then she got it. One-Two was the name of the drink; One-Two-Three was the cadence for a waltz. "Funny, Amon. Clever little bird. Polly wanna cracker?" she asked sarcastically. The bird didn't answer, only kept cackling as he continued to spiral around the black-haired woman. She looked up; the Venemous Tentacula was following the magpie's progress with a swaying vine, looking very much like a snake ready to pounce. "Damnit, Amon, quit flitting around and get on my desk before Vlad mistakes you for his dinner."
"Oh, quite right," the bird said, alighting quickly on the miniature cauldron she used to hold quills and turning an eye to watch the plant.
Asher absentmindedly tossed a toad from a small habitat in the bottom desk drawer into the air, and when it didn't come back down, she said, "You should be safe for now." She closed the drawer, propping an arm on her waist and surveying the room. Where had she put that damned wine?
"Whatcha dooooin'?" the bird asked in a sing-song voice, following her gaze around the room.
"Fending off the dragon that is sobriety," Asher replied dryly, her eyes falling on something poking out from under the couch. She hurried over and closed a hand on it, sliding it out to see.. "Yes! Wine!" She raised a fist in the air and grabbed the bottle, pulling her wand from her robes and pointing it at the cork.
Amon hid his head under a wing. His voice came from behind it sounding rather muffled. "If you hit me with that I will sic your own plant on you."
She popped the cork with a sharp jab of her wand, ignoring him as it sailed out of view and taking a swig of the wine straight from the bottle. Dropping onto the couch, she stretched out with the bottle braced in the crook of her arm, resting her slightly aching head and taking occasional sips of wine.
"You know," came the irritating voice of the magpie, "you're going to have to drink faster than that to forget about Harriet."
"Hermione," Asher corrected automatically.
"Whatever her name is. She's really gotten to you, you know. I've never seen someone look so heartsick when reading a book about Transfiguration."
Asher felt a wave of irritation rise in her, and looked for something to throw at the bird, but had nothing but her wand and the wine bottle, neither of which she was eager to part with. "I don't want to talk about it."
"You never want to talk about anything when it has to do with feelings," the bird observed. "Other people do, I've heard them. Want to give it a go?"
"No," Asher said sulkily. He carries my letters and packages when owls won't, and he trusts me, she thought. No murder. Bad Ash. She closed her eyes, but was overwhelmed with images of Hermione and a case of the spins and quickly opened them again. Amon was now perched on the back of the couch, staring at her with one black eye. "What?" she asked with exasperation.
"I was only going to suggest that you tighten your hold on that bottle before the whole thing spills out, but I'll just hush up."
Asher looked down. The bottle had fallen into a horizontal position and a trickle of wine was pouring onto the floor. She cursed and righted the bottle, but the damage was done: there was less than a goblet's-worth left in it. She lifted it to her lips and drained the rest, then let the bottle slip to the floor. "Shards," she cursed.
"You'd have to throw it for that, I think," Amon quipped.
"You were born in a library, don't you read? McCaffrey was the first woman inducted into the science fiction hall of fame."
"A proper library, not those clumsy Muggle collections." He made the bird version of a sniff. "Friendly dragons, indeed!" the magpie scolded.
Asher, who had spent a lot of her childhood in the local Muggle library and enjoyed herself immensely, did not dignify this with a reply. The bird also fell silent, and she was left with room to think. Hermione's voice, so soft. I'm trying to help you. The hesitant, almost loving look she had had on her face when she'd said it made Asher's chest hurt. Hermione had been so convinced that she was right, that Asher was fine when she kept up with the Suppression Draught. What she didn't know was how good it had felt when Asher hadn't taken it. It had been as if everyone's base emotions were hovering in the air around them; they each had their own smell and taste, and to Asher, it had been like a hot meal. The hard part was resisting the urge to eat.
Asher knew from experience that if she fed on one person, just one, her magic and strength would increase temporarily. Once, in the time before she was a professor, she had gotten rather drunk and forgotten to take her potion. A man had approached her in the bar, and more out of curiosity than anything, she had gone to bed with him, unable to stop her power from feeding on his lust. When she woke, sober and completely naked, she had panicked and felt his neck for a pulse. It was there, slow but steady, and she had Apparated back to her hidey-hole on the spot. The spells she had worked for the next two days had been especially powerful: she'd Summoned a book with so much unintentional force that it had knocked her unconscious.
How Asher knew that it would be different with Hermione was an instinctual thing. She did not truly desire men, so what she took from them was small. It would not be so with the Transfiguration professor: even when she was determined to avoid her, Asher felt drawn to her when they were in the same room. If she didn't take the potion and touched Hermione again, if Hermione was in the least bit willing.. It would be bad.
A chime went off, stopping that line of thought. "Time to take your medicine," sang the magpie, who had once again settled on the Mirror.
Asher scowled at him, easing up from her prone position on the couch with a groan. She crossed to the mantle, then stared at it. There were no phials of potion there. Where had she put them? She patted her robe pockets, and then the pockets of her jeans, but there was no telltale bump. Hurrying to her desk, stumbling only once, she opened the top right drawer, her other usual place to put them. It held only stacks of clean parchment and an ink bottle. "Damnit."
"Over heeeere," Amon said.
Ah, yes. She had gone to straighten the sheet over the Mirror the other day and set the phials on the bookshelf to free her hands, she recalled. She went there now, reaching for one of the phials. Suddenly, the magpie took off from the top of the mirror, the sheet clenched in his talons as he pulled it from the glass.
Asher was standing in just the right place to trigger the Mirror's effects. Before she had finished her schooling, the Mirror had always shown her standing between her parents, both very much alive and unimprisoned. But now she saw herself smiling with genuine warmth. There were no bags under her eyes and no sign of sleepiness on her face; there was no hint of a potion bottle waiting to be drunk, no cauldron emitting a silver glow. Her hands were unscarred. Tucked under her arm was Hermione, appearing utterly content to simply be close to Asher. As she watched, the two of them kissed, one of the brunette's hands reaching up to entangle itself in wavy black hair. When they broke apart, they looked just as anyone would after an embrace with their loved one: happy and slightly out of breath. Hermione did not drop dead; Asher did not change into a predator. They were normal.
Her heart filled with longing as she gazed at her reflection, the fake Hermione looking at the imitation of herself tenderly. But she was just that, fake, and so was the version of Asher; she would never be completely human. She would have scars on her hands for the rest of her life from supplying the blood needed for the Suppression Draught, and as long as she took it, she would always look weary. And Hermione will never look at me like that. Her throat constricted at she stared at the Mirror and its unattainable reflection.
Tears staining her cheeks, she wrenched herself from the Mirror and yanked the sheet over it once more. "Damn meddling bird!" she snapped at Amon over her shoulder as she stared at the now-shrouded figure, her voice coming out high-pitched and thready. "What the hell is wrong with you? You knew perfectly well what it would show me. Are you trying to torture me?" She unstoppered one of the phials and drank, the chalky consistency of the potion making her struggle to get it past the lump in her throat.
"Consider it a reality check. Half of what you see is impossible, true, but I think you're closing yourself to the other possibilities before you simply out of habit, instead of reason," the magpie said, sounding annoyingly logical.
Asher scowled, leaning her head against the bookshelf in response to the sudden fatigue the potion brought on. "She obviously likes men, Amon. She dated that Weasley idiot for years."
"Unfortunately," came a voice that definitely was not Amon's, "it took me far too long to realize that idiots are not at all my type."
Asher whirled around, pointing her wand out of reflex, even though she would recognize that voice anywhere. She did manage to note that she was now only slightly buzzed, instead of drunk. She stared at Hermione for a long moment, wondering how much she had heard and just how crazy she had judged Asher to be, talking to a bird. "How did you get in?" she asked instead.
"The password was too easy. Perhaps you should dig a little deeper than your favorite color," Hermione said, though not unkindly. "Now would you please point that elsewhere?"
Asher lowered her wand, embarrassed. "Sorry," she mumbled. How had she not heard the other woman climbing up the ladder? "What do you want?"
Hermione ignored this question, walking over to the palm tree and examining the dirt it was rooted in. "You transfigured the stone into its base elements?" she questioned, looking up to where Asher stood.
Asher blinked. This was what Hermione wanted to talk about? But considering the alternative, she would take it. "Yes, with a Semicircular Perimiter Charm to limit its spread so I could determine the area without going stone by stone or worrying about it dropping through the floor."
Hermione nodded appreciatively. "Most people wouldn't have thought of that. How long did it take you?"
"Just a few moments," Asher said slowly, wondering at the line of questioning.
"A few moments?" Hermione asked incredulously. Noticing Asher's nonplussed expression, she explained, "Most people would have to work at it for an hour, if they could manage it at all!"
"Oh," Asher said hesitantly. "I wasn't aware."
"Wasn't awa- oh, for pete's sake, Asher, that's an incredibly complex transfiguration coupled with a fine-tuned charm!" She sounded almost angry.
Asher held up her hands. "Alright, alright, if you say so. Geez."
"I- oh, just give me your wand," Hermione said with obvious frustration.
Asher handed it over, supplying weakly, "Pine, eleven inches, unicorn hair."
Hermione looked at her with lifted eyebrows. "Pine? A very adaptive wand wood, I've read. It likes to make new magic. That would explain it." She scrutinized it carefully for a moment, then held it out for Asher to take back.
The black-haired woman only stared at Hermione, her hand outstretched for her wand absentmindedly. She was always amazed at the tidbits of information the Transfiguration professor could recall. She felt the wand touch her palm and closed her fingers automatically, brushing Hermione's as she did. Blushing furiously- wasn't the alcohol out of her system yet?- she stuffed the wand in the pocket of her robes, looking away and missing the pink color of the other woman's cheeks.
Hermione asked suddenly, "I thought you said animals didn't like you?"
Asher yawned, not understanding for a moment, then followed Hermione's gaze to Amon, who was sitting innocently on her desk, preening his feathers. "Oh. Well, he's the exception. When I was a kid, I tried to get the animals to come to me, but they wouldn't. I'd bring bread and seeds with me on hikes into the forest near where I lived. He's the only one who took to me, and he's been following me around ever since. He's a bit of a pest."
"Hey!" Amon protested, flapping his wings in indignation. "I give excellent counsel!"
Hermione, of course, heard only the chattering caw that magpies made. "I see. He's rather large for his kind, isn't he?"
"Yep. Huge," Asher said, enjoying the miffed reaction she received from the bird. "Positively enormous. He could probably stand to lose a bit of weight."
"That is really enough!" the bird said. "I am a magnificent specimen! One of a kind! Other birds would give their left tailfeathers to be like me!"
"Otherwise, he's pretty unremarkable," Asher continued, stifling a giggle at the sight of the magpie's puffed out chest feathers deflating.
"Well, he seems to understand you, at least," Hermione said, eying the bird's reactions.
"One of the few so privileged," the bird muttered. "Would you just kiss the girl already? This is sickening."
Asher gave a strained smile. "Excuse me a moment." She snatched the bird up in her hands, carried him over to the window, opened it, and dumped him unceremoniously into the air. "He gets restless if he stays inside for too long, poor thing." Outside she heard him raging at her, but she closed the window firmly behind him.
When she turned back around, Hermione was standing with her back to Asher, looking at the covered mirror. "I never looked into it," she said quietly. "Harry and Ron did, in our first year."
"You don't want to," Asher said hurriedly, striding over and placing herself where she could stop Hermione if she tried. She recalled her own reflection with a pang. "When it shows you what you want most, it doesn't take into account things like reality."
"But just to see it," Hermione said, "just for a moment, would be nice." She reached a hand out to the sheet.
Asher grabbed her wrist in concern, stepping in front of her. "That's what they all say at first," she said gently. "And the next thing they know, all their spare time is spent in front of this mirror, wanting what is unattainable, hoping that one day it will step from the other side of the glass into their world." She shook her head. "It's better not to look."
"You did," Hermione murmured, her eyes straying to the Mirror, "and you looked away."
"I did," Asher said, her voice lowering to match Hermione's. "And do you know what I saw? A me that was completely human, unburdened by my heritage." She lowered her eyes to the floor between them, not willing to share the rest. "That's not possible. I knew it could never be real, and that's how I stopped."
Her revelation seemed to have shaken Hermione, and she felt a hand in hers, and then a squeeze. "That must have been hard to see," the other woman said softly.
Asher's heart sped up at the contact. She had never realized before how tiny Hermione's hands were compared to her own; the Transfiguration professor had always been a force to be reckoned with, and it seemed wrong how small her fingers were in contrast with Asher's. Looking at her hand now, nestled in Asher's own thick fingers, she discovered that it appeared almost dainty. Her eyes traveled up Hermione's arm, marveling at the pale skin stretched taut over a delicate bone structure. Her neck was thin but muscular, her shoulders narrow yet perfectly suited to her build. And her face, features perfectly proportioned, the thin lips setting perfectly under a pert nose.. Asher realized that she was staring, and she had done it too purposely and for too long to pass it off as something else. When she met Hermione's eyes, there was a strange look in them she couldn't identify.
Hermione pulled her hand from Asher's, then said briskly, "Anyway, I just came up here to check on you. You were rather drunk and I know I upset you. I wanted to make sure you were alright."
Asher nearly smacked herself, disgusted at how quickly she had let down her guard. A compliment, a moment where you feel like the white knight, and some hand-holding is all it takes for you to roll over and beg for treats. Pathetic. "Thanks, but I'm fine," was all she said.
Hermione looked at her skeptically for a moment. "I assume those were tears of happiness, then?" she asked pointedly.
To that Asher had no response, but Hermione didn't press the point and backed down the ladder without another word, leaving her alone with her thoughts. Well, for a moment, anyway; as soon as the ladder slid back into place, indicating that the trapdoor in the dungeon ceiling had closed and Hermione had gone, a beak tapped on the windowpane. Asher rolled her eyes and went to open the window, readying herself for the scolding she was going to get.
"Dumping me out a window! That's a new low," Amon said furiously as he darted back into the warm tower. "It's freezing out there and the wind has picked up. I fell fifteen feet before I got my wings under me! Were you trying to kill me?"
"No," Asher said listlessly, knowing the bird wouldn't be calmed until he ran out of steam. In the next few minutes, she caught phrases like "reckless endangerment" and "animal cruelty," but on the whole, she wasn't listening; the magpie brought out the same speech every time he felt he had been wronged, with minor tweaks for the current situation.
When he could think of no more handy accusations to throw at Asher, he came to a rest on her desk, where she had sat for the tirade. "Now that you've been properly informed of your wrongdoings, I must bring up the most curious interaction between you and Ms. Granger."
He had been spying. Of course. "Oh, do go on," Asher said sarcastically, "I have been waiting with bated breath."
Amon gave her a quelling glance, then continued haughtily, "Well, if you are certain you do not want to hear of my unbiased and objective observations, then I shall bid you good night." And he turned his tail and flew up into the rafters- well away from the Venemous Tentacula, Asher noted.
She couldn't stop herself from yawning again, and realizing how late it was, padded in bare feet to her bedroom. She didn't bother to light any candles, simply slipping off her robes and other clothes, tossing them in a corner, and sliding under the covers. She was ignoring the magpie out of stubbornness, but she did want to know what he thought of what had occurred. Perhaps he could interpret the odd expression on Hermione's face. She closed her eyes, her mind casting back to Hermione's opening comment. But she was too sleepy to make sense of it, and she fell asleep moments later with the memory of the other woman's hand in hers coloring her dreams.