Fourteen
I sat in my silent Arithmancy class watching Helena Vane study away. She was only the next row in front of me, to my right. She was a short girl, thin, yet curvy. Her hair was brown and straight, her skin fair with freckles lining the bridge of her nose. Dev had ached for her ever since our first year, openly admitting to her that he wished to marry her at the end of our second year. He never seemed to live it down.
The bell rang and everyone sprang from their seats as if they had been counting down the seconds since the dreadful class started. Helena hurried out of the classroom and possibly back to her dormitory as it was the last class of the day. I followed her up the crowded staircases, shoving people aside so I didn't lose her.
She turned down a near empty hallway, then down another and before entering a bathroom stopped, looking down the hallway to see me.
"Yes?" She asked. I searched deeply for the words but couldn't find them. "Oh come on, Malfoy, you didn't just chase me all this way to not say anything."
"Well…don't you know?" She blinked. "About the prophecy."
"Of course I know. The whole damn school knows. I expected it was only a matter of time before you came and spoke to me." She was hinting at something, but I didn't understand. "Come here…" I looked back, making sure no one had followed me. I then followed her into the bathroom which had become abandoned over the years, much like the one on the second floor.
It was cold, almost too frigid to bear and the windows weren't open, though they had a frost on them. We walked past the stalls and towards the sink where she turned around and looked at me, her brown eyes growing icy.
"I can turn back the days, Scorpius."
"I can do that with a time turner. Or even a pensieve." I said.
"No it's not the same. Let me show you." She took my arm and I was overcome with a feeling of sickness in my stomach, as if all my organs were tangling around each other and pulling in different ways-
We were in the upstairs hallway of my home. My father was on the opposite end of the hallway and I remembered by the look of him that my mother had gone to her parents for the weekend. My father was drunk, holding a bottle in his hand, slurring his words and pointing at me with his free hand. Drool or some other clear liquid ran from his mouth down to his chin and onto the floor.
You can stop him if you please. Helena's whisper boomed in my mind as my father came barreling at me on this familiar occasion. He dropped the bottle before reaching for me neck, shards of glass flying out around us and alcohol staining the carpet with its strong aroma. Draco wrapped his hands around my neck and I pushed him away, fear infesting itself in my head. I could feel his cold hands on my skin, telling me this was not just the memory I had tried so hard to remove from my mind. And this was not the vision of a time turner; I was in the same body, not watching the act happen. Where was Helena though?
I reached at my father's hands, though my own slipped against his ones which were wet with alcohol. He pushed me up against the wall and sneered in my face, inches from my face. I ached to breathe.
"You won't be going anywhere tonight, my son!" He said in a snake-like tone, elongating the 's' in 'son.' He tore me from the wall and sent me flying down the stairs. I could feel every one of my ribs cracking, my neck becoming bruised, my face becoming cut up by the edges of the marble stairs. I reached the bottom and got to my feet, racing for the door.
"But we've just begun having fun, Scorpius!" He roared. I put my hand on the door handle and then felt an excruciating pain in my left shoulder, then the fabric of my shirt becoming pasted to my body with some kind of heavy dampness. My knees buckled beneath me and I fell to them, feeling the pain stretching to the center my back and further down to my hip.
I closed my eyes, my head shaking. When I opened them back up, I was standing in the girls bathroom once more, opposite Helena Vane.
"What's wrong with you?" I bellowed.
"You could have changed the way it happen, Scorpius. You could have taken out your wand once you reached the bottom of the staircase, turned it on him." She told me, no feeling in her tone. "You reliving that is just a dream to him, but had you changed it, perhaps he would have the scar, not you." I could feel my wound throb beneath my clothes.
She turned and walked towards the window, removing some of the frost with the side of her fist.
"Can you imagine what it would do to someone to make them relive their worst memory over and over again?" She craned her neck to look at me. "Like…Sam Finnigan perhaps. It would simply drive one crazy." She looked back out the window.
"You…you can pick which memories a person relives?" I asked her.
"No. Your mind does that; your mind will always choose the darkest memory. Well, not always the darkest. Just the strongest, but most of the time it's going to be an unresolved conflict and that usually involves something dark."
"And you…what have you done with this sort of power?"
"I've redone tests-"
"Tests? Those are your strongest memories?"
"No, but I have more control over this than you do. I've yet to experience anything in my life that would lead me down a path of darkness, Malfoy."
"Can you do anything else?" She turned around, her eyes going back to their normal warmth.
"I've been trying but I haven't been able to control how it works yet."
"What is it?" She hesitated and crossed her arms over her chest, finally feeling how cold it was in the bathroom. We could now see our breath.
"Every time I enter the water, I can feel myself…" Again she hesitated, afraid of sounding crazy but I knew what she was trying to say.
"Split." I said. Her eyes widened.
"Well, yes, I guess you could call it that."
"The Pisces, Helena; two fish swimming in opposite directions."
"But I'm hardly a fish."
"No; you're reincarnated into human form." I said, having the relevation that none of us would really change into any sort of beast.
"But I'm hardly a human either. I can't breathe above water when this happens." I nodded.
"I need you to do something for me, before the winter comes."
I sent Helena to meet with Caine that afternoon to discuss exactly what his stones looked like. They sat in the library many afternoons that week, Caine testing Helena to see if she remembered which rock was which, how it may make her feel if she were to pick it up.
They came back to my dorm that weekend, near midnight, wearing heavy cloaks. Avery stood next to me, covered up in a blanket. She kissed me goodbye and reminded me that I could be expelled for leaving that late. I reminded her that this had to be done before the first snow came and before the lake froze over.
Quietly, we went down to the entrance doors of Hogwarts, slipping out into the brisk night air and hurrying down to the lake. Caine and I stood by as Helena shed her warm clothes only leaving on the bathing suit she had put on underneath.
"How long have you stayed under before?" I asked.
"I told you there were some things I had yet to work out, Scorpius." She told me. "I haven't actually let this run its course before; I've always been scared. It's not normal to be able to split into two people."
"Right," Caine said with a hint of worry in his voice. "We'll be here when you come back up."
"Well what if someone comes outside, like Filch?" She asked us. I looked back and forth between the two who were both focused on me. "It could be hours. Blimey, I could die down there!" She exclaimed in a whisper tone.
"No you couldn't. Unless Sam Finnigan is down there waiting for you, which I really doubt is the case. None of the Zodiac can be killed by an outside force."
"We'll have to leave you if someone comes." Caine said. "You'll be fine, though. They won't want to wait out here; it's too cold."
"You would know." Helena said bitterly. She turned and began her descent into the lake, at first only going in until her knees were covered. We watched and waited for ten minutes until finally a twin stepped forward from her back. Then, in an instant, the two dove into the water and sped off in opposite directions. I looked at Caine.
"I've never seen anything like it in my life." He said. We sat down and shivered for what seemed like hours. The wind howled at us, telling us to go back inside, but we had to wait. We had to see what she uncovered. The dark sky seemed to lift at some point, and it got lighter. I looked at Caine, his face pale and his lips a shade of blue.
Then, only one of Helena Vane sprung from the water, fistfuls of stones in her hand. She coughed, dropping the stones at Caine's feet. I stood and put my own cloak around her soaking body. Caine picked up his stones and put them all in his pockets. Helena managed to dress herself and we went back into the school, back to my dorm, where Avery gave up her bed to Helena and Caine took a seat on the couch, spreading out all thirteen of his stones on the coffee table.
"They're all there then?" I asked.
"All of them. Even the Resurrection Stone."
"You'll keep them in here." I told him. "Avery has a music box you can put them in."
"A music box?" He asked, making the idea seem ridiculous. "Does she put her jewelry in there as well, and her perfume?"
"No. You're mind is so narrow, Caine. It's an enchanted music box, only opens to Avery's voice."
"And what if the two of you break up?" Caine whispered.
"She'd still be my friend."
"Oh right, like on Halloween when she told the whole world-" Avery came out from my room and threw a glass vase in Caine's direction. It flew past his head and into one of the bookcases, shattering and only to repair itself a moment later.
"I should have you know, Caine, that if I wasn't an Elf, it would be me sitting there. Either way, I'd be by Scorpius until the end so get off my case." Avery slammed my bedroom door shut and went back to bed. The vase hovered in the air, waiting to be placed. I walked over to it and placed it upon the mantelpiece. Caine looked terrified.
"Maybe you should go and get some rest." I told him. He stood and headed for the door.
"And what about you, aren't you going to get some rest for yourself." I shook my head.
"I need to find de Marche."
"Right, well I expect he would be helping Hagrid on a morning like this. De Marche loves the beasts." He walked away.
"As do I," I whispered to myself.
I found Francis de Marche down near Hagrid's just as Caine had said. He was tending to what appeared to be a young planted tree, three inches in diameter at most. I studied it, perplexed.
"It's a dryad, you know." Francis said as I took my place standing next to him. "A common tree nymph. She'll be ready to come out in spring; she'll still be quite small, though."
"Fascinating." Francis looked up at me as finished watering the plant.
"I know why you're here, Scorpius." He said in his Irish accent. His mother had been from France originally and his father was said to sweep her off her feet when she fled from her rich Muggle family in Paris and traveled to Ireland for the summer. Most of the girls went crazy over him, finding his love of magical beasts incredibly attractive yet in a sensitive manner. Avery often told me that Lily always grew quiet around him. His hair was black, his eyes blue, freckles often coloring his face after summer. "I'm not sure there's much I can help you with, though. I haven't got anything special to give to you."
"Not yet at least." He shook his head and looked up into the nymph's small branches, touching them as if to find some kind of pulse a human would have.
"No. I've got nothing to show." My mind fled back to my first conversation with Sinistra. There had been another with Francis' birthday. Perhaps she had made a mistake…
"But, you're in the prophecy." He looked at me, still reaching up in the branches of the tree.
"I know. But I really have never had any kind of secret, no dark magic. I'm a simpleton, Scorpius. Perhaps you should invest your time with Albus Potter. We have the same birthday, you know."
"No it's not possible; Sinistra was sure you were the Leo-"
"Well what would be the difference between Potter and I? His father was a famous Gryffindor; hell, he saved the world. Me, I'm not anything special."
"Sinistra wouldn't have made the mistake. She was sure-"
"Look I wanted to believe as bad as you do that I was part of this, but I wouldn't be any help in trying to save the world. It's in Potter's blood, not mine. Now if you don't mind, I have more nymphs to attend to." He walked away and left me standing there. I sighed and turned back towards the school.