ELIXIR: A Harry Potter Universe Fanfiction
Twenty Nine. The Apparation Test
"What?" asked Sean.
Evelyn had just shut her paper very quickly.
"Just thought I saw a bug," she said. "Got a bit jumpy." But she gave Sean a significant look when Marlowe wasn't looking.
"Ah," he said, frowning at her in suspicion.
But she needn't have worried. Marlowe was preoccupied, staring down the breakfast table at Caiti who was now refusing to sit with them or with Theo and had instead situated herself all alone. Evelyn had tried to go and sit with her, but Caiti had only said she was nervous about her apparation test that morning and didn't want to speak to anyone.
"D'you really think she doesn't want to talk to anyone or d'you think she just felt bad keeping you away from Sean?" asked Marlowe.
"She really didn't want to talk to anyone," said Evelyn, folding up her paper carefully and placing it inside her bag.
"God, I want to talk to her so bad," he said.
"She'll come around," said Evelyn. She shot Sean a look because he'd been staring at her with a curious frown through this whole exchange and she didn't want Marlowe to pick up on it. He could not know about what she'd just read. Not yet anyway.
A few minutes later, Marlowe sat up a little straighter. Evelyn followed his gaze to where Caiti had been sitting a moment earlier. She was now just beginning to head for the door, following a couple of her fellow sixth years at a distance. Something about the way Marlowe was looking at her made an idea take seed in Evelyn's head.
"Be right back," she said. She grabbed her bag and headed down the aisle after her.
She caught up just outside the door. "Caiti," she said, putting a hand on her shoulder. Caiti stopped and turned around. Her face was ghostly white.
Evelyn dug into her bag for the paper and opened up to the second page which held the article she had been reading when she had shut the paper all of a sudden. "Geminio," she said. The page duplicated and she handed the copy to Caiti. "Read the top article, okay? Whenever you have time."
Caiti hesitated and then, very slowly, she took it, folded it a few times and stuck it in her bag. Evelyn stood there until she'd finished and then she took a deep breath and said, "You'll be fine. Just breathe. Don't worry too much. You can do it, okay?" She pulled Caiti into a tight hug.
"Thanks," said Caiti quietly.
"Alright- I should let you go-"
"Yeah," said Caiti. She didn't move for another few seconds, but when she did, she did so without a word.
Evelyn watched her go before she headed back to the boys.
"What was that about?" asked Sean.
"Just wanted to wish her good luck," said Evelyn.
"With your bag?"
Evelyn waved a hand in dismissal. "Habit," she said.
Marlowe's face had fallen even more.
"I'm gonna go," he said.
When he was safely out the door, Sean turned to her and said. "Show me that article."
Evelyn took it out of her back once again, but when he reached for it, she pulled it back. "Don't you dare tell Marlowe what it says," she said. And then she handed it to him.
The sixth years who had already turned seventeen headed into Hogsmeade for their apparation test early one April Saturday. Theo was somewhere at the front of the group, chatting with his friends noisily, but Caiti had fallen behind to walk on her own, glad for the relative silence and no one taking her attention from herself. The morning was perfect: warm and breezy with a hint of afternoon rain hanging in the air. The clouds shone pink and orange with the sunrise. She watched the sky change and her whole self felt blank. It was refreshing to be that way.
She was almost able to forget that she was walking past the place where she and Marlowe had encountered the werewolf that night. She was almost able to forget that she was feeling more and more guilty every day she did not speak to Marlowe, who had been making every effort to get a minute with her. She was almost able to forget a lot of things.
But the closer they neared town, the more difficult it was to forget her immediate problem: the apparation test.
Caiti did not feel prepared. Her heart pounded as she filled out the form which would, if she passed, serve as the information to go down on her license. Seemed silly to fill it out with the intention of passing though, seeing as she was most certainly not qualified to apparate anywhere. She had managed it twice now, three times if you counted the time she'd splinched the nail on her little toe. (She had known immediately, but had kept the information to herself as it was hidden inside her shoe. In the hospital wing later, she told Raigan that she had only stubbed it.)
Still, she felt those slight successes had been flukes more than any acquired skill.
She signed her name on the top of the form - Caitlyn Eileen O'Connell - and crossed her fingers that she would be able to pull out another fluke today.
The test administrators from the Department of Magical Transportation collected everyone's forms and began calling out names in alphabetical order. Unfortunately, this meant Caiti had a decent amount of time to dwell on her utter lack of confidence, something she knew - though she could not change it - would make it near impossible to apparate.
She fidgeted in her place, watching as each of her classmates successfully turned on the spot and disapparated from the corner they stood on, reappearing with a second loud crack down at the other end of the street. It went too quickly. Her hands were shaking by the time the names they called neared the O's. There were just two people ahead of her now. And then, as quickly as she had registered this, there were none.
"Caitlyn O'Connell," called the administrator nearest the dwindling group of still-to-go's. Caiti stumbled forward. She clasped her hands together and her skin felt like ice. Ahead of her, the sky was darkening with clouds.
"Now if you'll just stand right here, and then you can disapparate to that far corner down the way. You see the others," directed the ministry official. Caiti had lost the capacity to notice anything about the woman. She was like a blank body and a voice that only delivered instructions.
Caiti stood on the place that had been indicated and tried to focus on breathing. Her head had started up a steady anthem of discouragement. You can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this.
"Whenever you're ready," the woman prompted. But Caiti stayed frozen still. She tried to visualize the place she wanted to end up the way she had been taught. She tried to tell herself she was wrong, that she could do this. That she had done it before. She tried to convince herself that the corner she was supposed to be apparating to was the place she most wanted to be in the entire world, which was maybe the only thing that was true in that moment, because she did want to find herself on that corner. She did not want to stand there any longer staring at it and hoping that she would somehow make her body dissipate and rematerialize. She had never felt so solid in all her life.
She could feel the ministry woman readying herself to say something else, to prompt her again, but Caiti did not want to hear it. She gripped her wand tightly, turned on the spot and willed herself with all her might to apparate.
But nothing happened. No squeezing sensation. No pull from under her navel. She remained standing right where she was.
"A second try, if you wish," said the woman kindly, but Caiti could not and would not try again. Her cheeks burned. She took a step back, eyes on the ground and then she began to walk away very quickly, arms over her chest.
She had not even moved. It could not have gone any worse. The first drop of rain hit her square on the nose and sent a shiver all the way up her spine.
By the time Caiti arrived back at school, she was soaked through and starving. Lunch had to be nearly over now, but she hoped she could grab something quickly before the plates cleared themselves, and better yet - perhaps the great hall would be nearly empty. She really didn't want to see anyone, especially not the people who had been there. She did her best to siphon the water from her clothes with the tip of her wand, but she was worried to wait much longer or lunch would really be over.
She hurried to the great hall and opened the heavy door. Just inside, she spotted Theo and his friends, as well as Amelia and Miriam, gathered together at the end of the Ravenclaw table comparing notes on the apparation test experience. Caiti stopped walking at once. They had not seen her yet. And anyway, the food was already gone. She turned to go, but her shoes were wet and they squeaked loudly when she turned.
"There she is!" said Amelia excitedly. "Caiti! Do you have to take the test again or what?" Miriam giggled shrilly and the boys laughed along with her.
Caiti stood there with her back to them, hair dripping all over the floor.
"You really couldn't move at all?" said another voice. Caiti recognized it as Theo's friend Roger, who she had never gotten on with. He was a little pretentious and said whatever was on his mind.
She heard footsteps heading towards the door and she knew she was going to have to move to let them pass, but then Miriam spoke and she couldn't: "Oh, look! Here comes your werewolf boyfriend to defend you! Oh wait- didn't you two break up anyway? Too good for him now aren't you?"
"Or maybe not good enough," said Roger. "Can't even apparate from one end of the sidewalk to the other. Even Wolfy can do that."
Then she felt Marlowe's hand on her back, just fingertips at first and then his whole palm. His hand felt hot, almost burning, but then, she was still very cold.
"Come on, Caiti," he said in a low voice. "Don't listen to them."
Caiti willed herself not to cry. She was not going to cry in front of him.
He led her out the door and around the corner and then he stopped and just looked at her, dead in the eye and he said, "Are you okay?" She hovered there for a few seconds taking very short, shaky breaths and then she just walked away. She took one glance back, but she could not bring herself to say anything.
Caiti stared at the row of books nearest her with blank eyes. It had been so humiliating. And worse, so public.
For once, she wished she was in a different house, because in Ravenclaw, where constantly excelling and always striving to be, not just your best, but the best were almost universal traits, her blatant failure made almost certain she'd be mocked. Her fellow housemates were not unkind, but they could be blindly cruel. She knew herself to be as capable of this as the rest of them, though she was usually able to keep it in check. It came from a dangerous, blind pride, an ever-burning desire to be right.
It had come out when she'd shouted at Theo, it had come out on every occasion she had seen Marlowe since their argument, when she had shoved away his apologies and refused to hear him out - something she always regretted as soon as he was gone though she would hardly let herself feel it.
The only person she had never seen this side from was Evelyn, who, in her opinion, was nearly perfect except that, in giving so much to others she left too little time for herself.
Why had she even taken the stupid test? She had known she wasn't ready. And now Marlowe knew too, which was even worse. He'd made it perfectly clear he thought her a silly and entertaining way to pass the time, but nothing more. She had taken him far too seriously and she never should have, because he hadn't taken her seriously at all. He was too much of a jokester and she'd just presented him with one more laugh.
She didn't believe herself, though, really. She wanted to. She wanted to just be angry and hurt and think of him as the bad guy because that was easier. It was harder to think about forgiving him. She was so sick of crying over him
Caiti could still feel, so clearly, the place where each of his fingers had pressed into her low back, the first time he had touched her since before the last full moon. How he had been there so quickly the moment people began to taunt her. And when her classmates had begun to tease the both of them, how he'd increased the pressure on his hand and guided her away and then, around the corner, he'd stopped and just looked at her, really looked at her. She hadn't been able to look away, but she'd wanted to so badly. And he just asked if she was okay, like he really wanted to know. Then when she walked away without answering, without thanking him, his face had looked so lined and tired, so much older than she had ever seen him.
If it had not been for all this, Caiti might not have noticed the title of the book she'd been staring at without really processing.
She'd seated herself at a small table with a couple of rickety chairs in a very dull section of the library that students browsed most infrequently. It held an extensive and comprehensive history of every case that had appeared before the Wizengamot since it's induction. Many of the books, though very old and dusty, looked as though their spines had never been cracked. The book that Caiti had just so happened to be staring at was titled Quidditch: A Sport for all Wizards (Except Most).
At any other moment, Caiti probably would not have picked the book up, but she was feeling so torn apart by her own rude behavior and by the undeniable fact that she really missed Marlowe, that a small pang of guilt wracked her stomach. She thought again about what he had given up to save her and then she reached out her index finger, tipped the book towards herself and caught it in her palm. She opened it up on the table in front of her. It smelled of dust, but otherwise, seemed brand new. The spine cracked satisfyingly when she flattened the first page.
With a quick glance at the contents, she found that each chapter explored a case of discrimination in professional quidditch. The subjects varied greatly by the year in which the trial took place, from a team which refused to allow a female player, to a team which insisted all its players be proved pureblood. None were so specific as Marlowe's case, but, still, she was intrigued.
Caiti glanced up, wanting, for some reason, to keep this bit of personal research a secret, and then, when she saw the coast was clear, she rolled up her untouched parchment, shut her textbook, and began to read.
Almost three hours later, Caiti finally began to pack up her things, including the library book. It was then that she spotted again the article Evelyn had given her, which she had successfully forgotten about in all the drama of the morning. She unfolded it and smoothed it out on the table to read.
FIRST ARREST FOLLOWING LINKED MUGGLE BAITING CRIMES
On Thursday evening, Mr. Robert Fenwick - formerly of the Department of International Magical Cooperation at the Ministry of Magic - was arrested at his home based on significant evidence of his involvement with a terrorist group of masked wizards whom aurors haves been tracking for months now with very few leads.
It was not aurors, but a secretary in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement who finally tracked Fenwick down. "It'll certainly be a low blow for the people who were supposed to have done it," said Laverne Montgomery's very proud supervisor, Mr. Spencer Carrow. "All this time, they've been searching and he was right here under there nose the whole time. And all the evidence. Crystal clear."
It is no secret to the public that Fenwick, a well-known registered werewolf, who was indeed instrumental in the institution of laws protecting his kind in the workplace, was recently charged with the unprovoked attack of an eighteen year old Hogwarts student. This appears to be another strike against his proclamation that the se very laws remain intact despite his own failings.
Caiti had to stop reading. She felt sick to her stomach. The article had gone on long enough without naming a shred of the evidence it claimed had been found. She was stuck on the word "unprovoked." Unprovoked. As though he had had a choice. As though he had wanted to hurt Marlowe. Or her, for that matter. As though he had wanted to hurt anyone.
She could see now, for the first time, how far werewolves had yet to go in gaining a proper place in wizarding society. So much easier to blame a werewolf when no one wanted to trust them anyway. It couldn't be true. She refused to believe it, and she had very little good to say about Mr. Fenwick, under the circumstances. Still, she hated to think that it ever could be true, because if it was, her newest project had just become a whole lot more difficult.
