Chapter 13: Reaffirmations
"I would like you to test some theories for me."
"Theories?" Daphne asked after a moment of silence.
"Yes," Cyrna answered. Her eyes shifted to gaze at the still waters of the Black Lake. She seemed think for a while before she murmured quite softly, "there are two things which I suspect are hindering my abilities."
The sky was still a beautiful blue though tendrils of soft pink and yellow had begun to creep in, announcing the imminent arrival of the evening. The wind whistled peacefully around them, stirring the branches of the tall tree they stood under.
Daphne stood silently behind Cyrna who had wandered slightly further ahead, eyes focused on the waters below them. She thought back to what she had seen in the common room:
Cyrna was flipping through a few books while frantically jotting down notes when she had walked towards the study corner. She really hadn't thought much about it at that moment. After all, looking through textbooks was the norm when you were studying.
Then, she had seen those blue eyes. Those startling, uncanny, glowing blue eyes which had distracted her from hearing whatever Cyrna had been saying.
Once she had snapped out of her daze, she had chanced a glance at Cyrna's crowded desk before her companion had quickly gathered her books and notes and had basically ran out of the common room.
A Guide to Advanced Transfigurations… The Theory of Transfigurations…
Those had been surprising to see on Cyrna desk. But what was even more surprising:
Transfigurations: Discussing the Variables for the Formulaic Creation of Spells.
That book was something that Daphne remembered distinctly.
It was just two years prior, when looking through her mentor's tall stack of dusty books, that she had seen this book. Its beautiful leather binding lined sparingly with gold had called to her attention. She had flipped through it curiously and had attempted to decipher the meaning of the first passage for quite a while before she had given up and had ended up just looking through the diagrams and images. Then an hour or so later, her mentor had returned, had chuckled upon seeing her read the book, and had gently explained to her that this book was far too difficult for her young mind to understand.
He promised that he would teach this book to her if she passed her N.E.W.T.S with an O to prove to him that she was ready.
And Daphne, large blue eyes blinking solemnly, had sworn to do so.
How is it possible that Cyrna can understand that book's content? Even now, I can't understand the concepts at all…
Daphne heaved a sigh, causing Cyrna to turn around and look at her inquisitively.
If she can understand that text then she must truly be brilliant, not to mention that she's powerful too.
Daphne warily assessed her companion.
And Slytherins know better than to assume that name means everything. Your name can get you far—very far, but it is power alone that allows you to rise above the law. Take the Headmaster and the Flamels for example, they obey simply out of the goodness of their hearts; if they chose to disobey, who could stop them? Certainly not the ordinary wizards of the Wizengamot.
I've been viewing her as a tool that had the possibility to further the greatness of my household when I should have been viewing her as an ally of equal terms.
And the first step to show her my intentions…
"You want me to help you prove or disprove one of the suspected causes."
Cyrna nodded before her mouth pursed into a slight frown as if she had just realized something. "I'll owe you a favour for this."
She had meant this as a statement, though it came out more as a question.
Daphne readily gave a slight shrug. "No need." She hesitated, before giving a small smile, "After all, we're friends, aren't we? There's no need to play the favour-for-a-favour game amongst friends—though if this complicates things, you could just take this as a payment for your help in class today," she finished nervously.
Friends.
Cyrna frowned slightly at that word.
Friends…
…
"… Of course."
Daphne exhaled a quiet breath of relief.
"I wouldn't have it any other way," Cyrna comforted with a small grin when she saw her new friend's nervousness.
"Great," Daphne cleared her throat awkwardly, regaining her composure, "Let's get on with your little trials then, shall we?"
"Let's," Cyrna agreed before she strolled back to the tree where Daphne had been standing and retrieved a notebook and quill. She flipped the notebook open to the next blank page and carefully inked in "Trial One: Control" as the heading.
"Control?" questioned Daphne who had leaned over to see what Cyrna was writing.
"Hm, yeah. For this one, we'll just have you perform the transfiguration spell on the match. Nothing new or special."
Cyrna gave the match to Daphne and watched as it unsurprisingly turned into a perfect needle. Cyrna jotted down the results before labelling the next page with, "Trial Two: Wand."
Daphne curiously watched as Cyrna wrote the next heading and wondered what "wand" had meant until she watched in shock as Cyrna casually pulled out her wand and offered it to her.
Daphne stared at it blankly before she switched her gaze back to Cyrna's. She laughed nervously.
"You can't be serious!" Daphne exclaimed, eyes widening. Dear Merlin, my friend must be mad.
Cyrna tilted her head in confusion until she remembered that it was only rarely a wizard or witch offered their wand for another to use. It was a part of you, usually only separated at death, and even then, some wands chose to die along with its masters.
One of the highest acts of trust and faith. That was what she had given Daphne.
Cyrna paled, not having meant this. Though, she supposed, while trying very hard not to jerk her wand away, this action would only benefit her relationship with Daphne. If nothing, it would at least guilt Daphne into reciprocating the action to some degree.
"Just take it and use it to transfigure the match using the same steps you did in the previous trial," Cyrna instructed calmly without betraying any of the regrets and nervousness she felt, "This is the second experiment."
Daphne assessed Cyrna one last time, and having seen no changes in her friend's intent, gave a short bark of nervous laughter before carefully plucking the offered wand from the outstretched hand and dutifully attempted to perform the transfiguration spell on the match.
The match rolled around and trembled before it began to narrow. She felt a greater draw on her magic, but no matter how much she gave, she was unable to transfigure the property of wood to metal.
"Hm, good enough," Cyrna muttered as she wrote down the results.
Daphne instantly let the spell go.
"That was harder, wasn't it?" Cyrna asked, glancing once at Daphne before resting her sight on her wand which was now grasped in someone else's hand. Her eyes lingered there for longer until Daphne spoke again.
"Yes," Daphne released a tired puff of air. "Much more tiring than if I had used my own—but that's normal. My father told me that some wands are more agreeable to various witches, and the one that chooses you at Ollivanders will allow you to perform to your fullest potential."
"True," agreed Cyrna, eyes nervously darting back to her wand, "and for the last trial, I'll instruct you on the precise steps that I want you to perform with my wand to transfigure the match. It will be slightly different from the wand motion that Professor McGonagall taught us in class… but it should work…"
Daphne watched quietly as Cyrna quickly scribbled out several calculations. She watched as she flipped open the book and scanned through several symbols before choosing one and writing it down on her notebook. 'She's reformulating the hand motions to accommodate for the changes in using her wand.' Daphne thought with wonder.
Cyrna made of few more changes to the symbols—a larger curve, a more prominent slash—before she stretched, seemingly content with her work.
"Alright," Cyrna murmured. She reviewed the calculations she had made to adjust the compatibility between her wand and Daphne for this particular spell one last time before she handed the page to Daphne.
She took a step back and watched attentively.
Friends.
A weighted word that came with the connotations of faked gestures and caring words in her old world.
A role that was mentally tiring to her. To always be there for someone. To go out of your way to help this person. To support… to act as if you care when you really don't.
It was stressful. A necessary evil she had put up with in one of her attempts to learn sympathy and later, something she had kept in order to simply blend in with the rest of society.
Initially, she had been tempted to turn down the offer from Daphne, but even she was not delusional enough to think that she would be able to get through this world, or the next few years in Slytherin, unscathed by herself.
She tapped on her empty plate, signifying to whatever magic was in place, that she was finished her dinner and was ready for desserts. She watched dispassionately, lost in thought, as several slices of apples along with a small jar of chocolate sauce appeared.
'Besides,' she mused as she picked up a slice of apple to dip into the sauce, 'what Daphne terms as 'friends' may not be the same as what my old world termed as 'friends.' To Slytherins perhaps friends is simply another word to call an ally… Perhaps no personal connection or care is required to give to the other party…
"… I was so surprised that I was able to transfigure the match into a fairly decent needle with your wand," Daphne chattered on excitedly during dinner.
Her company also isn't bad…
"Mm, yeah," replied Cyrna distractedly. Hopefully I made the right decision regarding her… but as for my wand…
That feeling when she had given Daphne her wand… Cyrna shivered… it had felt so wrong. No wonder it's a rare occurrence to part with your wand. 'No,' she thought, subtly tightening her grip on her wand, 'I'm not doing that again.'
She continued to make her way slowly through her dessert. 'So it's not an issue with my wand…'
"Say, Daphne, what core is your wand made of?"
Daphne paused in her monologue to scrunch her eyebrows. She seemed to think for a while before saying, "If I remember correctly, I believe it was a dragon heartstring. It's been a long time since I've received my wand though, so I'm not perfectly certain about my answer." She shrugged. "Why? What's yours?"
'As predicted. That wand core, if I remember correctly is powerful and can easily change loyalties or turn to the dark—highly similar to the Thestral core in its instability, thus, a user of dragon heartstring will have a better result with my wand than say a user of unicorn tail hair.'
"Thestral tail hair," Cyrna replied.
'My understanding of the concepts and my calculations were right…'
"Hm, interesting—oh, but Cyrna, did you see the shudder before the wooden brown colour of the match faded so easily to the metallic silver of the needle? Then one of the ends started to thin into a tip—it might not have been terribly sharp, and there might have been a few rough parts on the body of the needle; but dear Merlin, it was damn close to perfection—and I achieved this result with not my own wand but someone else's! I've never realized that…"
Cyrna watched with amusement and slight bit of disbelief as Daphne went right back into continuing her monologue, gushing about the little experiment she had performed, as if Cyrna had never asked a question.
"Unexpected, right?"
Darting a glance to her right, she nearly dropped her glass of water when she saw the expression in Theodore's eyes when he gazed at Daphne.
Is that—
"She gets like this once it's about transfigurations," he smirked, meeting Cyrna's surprised gaze steadily. Whatever expression Cyrna thought she had seen was once again replaced by the usual cold, distant eyes that gave nothing away. "A bit annoying the way she'll prattle," he yawned, averting his gaze as he picked at his cake, "but this is one of the only moments that she'll drop the heiress attitude and simply be Daphne."
Cyrna watched as Theodore seemed to lose interest as sudden as when he had initiated the conversation. "I see," she said slowly, chewing on her piece of chocolate-covered apple. Together, at the end of the Slytherin table, they both sat in silence, watching as Daphne's eyes lit up in rarely seen childish excitement as she chattered on endlessly, each distracted by different thoughts.
'Neither my theory, my calculations, nor my wand are the issue…'
'That leaves…'
'That leaves the caster.'
'Me.'
She lay down, restlessly shifting positions as she tossed and turned in her attempts to sleep. The darkness enveloped her, and silence reigned if not for the quiet sounds of steady breathing from the beds beside her and the quiet gurgle of the lake-water outside the window of their dormitory.
The warm ball of fur snuggled deeper into her side at the strange sound of a creature, probably a grindylow, rapping on the glass windows. Without much thought, the girl reached out her hand to soothe her cat and once again, shifted positions so that she was now facing upwards, gazing blankly at the blackness that filled the room.
The quiet drips of water in the dungeons and the strange sounds that could at times be heard outside the window had kept her awake. She had always been a light sleeper, but every time sleep seemed to finally have overwhelmed her tired mind, a sudden drip would just wake her right back up. It was frustrating for her to say the least.
A side of her, the part of her that had prided herself in her intellect, had been pleased with the results from the experiment, but the other side of her, which now knew the results, was simply stressed. For the issue to be her. If it had been a problem with the wand or her calculations, it would have been easily fixable. But since the issue was herself, she really had no idea what to do about it now.
She was sure she was performing the actions right—she even had Professor McGonagall check it for her once the lessons had ended. Still, nothing—not even a shiver in the match, had happened.
Cyrna sighed, ashamed and frustrated of her inability to perform such a simple spell.
She rolled around restlessly for a few more moments as she tried to sleep. She forced her mind to think of something else as she shoved the whole Transfiguration issue in a box in her mind and shut the lid with a snap, promising to herself that she would figure this out later.
Still, perhaps due to the strange noises in the dungeons that she had yet to become accustomed to, she could not sleep. Bored and restless, her mind wandered aimlessly, shifting and grabbing at random memories that she had tucked away neatly during the day.
'Really,' she thought as she cast a downward gaze to the approximate area of where Prince was resting, 'why were you bothering Professor Snape?... ugh…' Cyrna closed her eyes in shame and covered her face with her arm. 'Remind me as to why I thought it was a good idea to name him after the one Professor in Hogwarts who is most prone to suspicion.'
'Because you thought that the cat reminded you of him,' said the logical part of her mind.
She thought back to her first few moments with Prince. 'But he did remind me of him.' A smile crept onto her face when she thought of his, overall, arrogant along with the prickly and almost violent attitude he had to strangers—especially to Pansy when she had been making awful cooing noises before she had confidently attempted to carelessly pick him up. 'He still reminds me of him.'
'Well, You knew this would have happened eventually. It's not like this encounter was unexpected.'
'Yes… but still…' The black fathomless eyes had been tinged with suspicion as they had studied her. They had looked upon her coldly, seeing her as insignificant before they had turned away to direct its gaze at her cat.
Despite what she knew about Severus Snape from the books, seeing one of her favourite characters, one whose story that had dug a little place into her heart, look at her as if she was nothing—as if she wasn't special, had hurt, more than she would like to admit.
'But you aren't special,' her voice echoed in her mind.
'I know…' she thought wistfully, 'but somehow, I guess I had wished to be seen differently in front of him.'
'But isn't it better that he disregards you? Isn't that your aim, Cyrna? To attract as little attention as possible?'
Cyrna released a quiet sigh into the night.
His undying love and devotion to Lily Evans to the point where he had ironically dedicated the rest of his life to a child whose father had earned the sort of hatred that not even the man's death had lessened.
Blindingly vicious consuming hatred. Blindingly loyal consuming love.
It was a wonder to Cyrna that the man could even function normally whenever he saw Harry Potter. When she had finished reading his story, she was struck with curiosity as to how a man who could hate like none other could care for another so deeply. With this in mind, she had slowly over a couple of years became engrossed in his character… a bond between a man and a woman that not even death could part…
The complete opposite of what I am.
To have a character who had countless of times been occupying her ponderings, only to have him look at her as if he could not be bothered to spare a single thought of her. It was not fair. It was humiliating. And it had hurt.
'He doesn't owe you anything. In this world, he is not simply a thing for you to think about when you're bored, and tuck away into your mind once you're done. He's human, no longer a figment of your imagination,' her rationale scolded, 'you don't own any part of him in this world, and he certainly doesn't owe you his thoughts.'
…
'… I know, but that doesn't make it less humiliating or painful.'
Cyrna turned sideways and detached herself away from Prince whose claws had been poking her as he had snuggled in.
'You'll get over it soon,' her rationale soothed, just as it had always done for her in the past, 'You're just feeling a slight bit off because you're experiencing the transition of your favourite character becoming a real human being.'
The dripping stopped, and the grindylow which had been swimming around in the night-waters seemed to have finally gone away. Cyrna's breath evened out as sleep pulled at her consciousness.
'It's better this way. Don't try to attract his attention. Unlike Harry Potter, he is an integral key player of the storyline that is highly, highly intelligent—he might be able to figure your secret, then where would you be?'
…
'Drawn into the war,' she answered her rationale.
…
'Is forming some sort of relationship with this character worth the increased risk of your involvement?'
…
'no.'
'Why?'
Cyrna shifted, turning away from Prince as she snuggled into her pillow. Fatigue finally winning, her breathing deepened and she fell, finally, into a restful sleep.
'Because there is nothing more important to me than my life.'