38. Change
Neville was glad he had decided to wear a sweater over his turtleneck. Even sitting on the rug right beside the common room fireplace he was still shivering in the late November chill. He turned back to June, who was currently holding a piece of soap. "So those caves aren't really doorways, they're just portals?"
She nodded, bringing the soap closer to sniff it. "Yeah."
He shook his head. "This is so wicked."
"Well it's nothing unusual. How do you think that the common wizard apparates? They open a tiny portal. It's actually a very unnatural process, but it seems to work well. Have you ever seen brown soap before?"
"Er, no."
"Llian swore it would help clear up my complexion, but I wonder if he's pulling my leg."
"That doesn't sound like something Llian would do." He snuggled closer to her. The weekend had flown by; they only had thirty minutes left until their Monday classes started.
"I know. But it's kinda weird." She examined the soap carefully, inspecting its surface for the minutest detail.
"Will you stop that? Are you going eat it or something?"
She raised an eyebrow, Snape-like, and careful nipped the side of the bar. She chewed it slowly, rolling her tongue over it, and then made a face and spat it into the fire where it simmered and burned away. "It tastes poisonous. I bet it'll make me break out more. Soon you won't even be able to see my face at all because it will be covered in zits." Clutching his sweater in her cold hands, she buried her face under his arm in mock agony.
"Stop your whining!" he admonished. "This is the first time you've ever had zits and all you can do is complain. I've had zits for a whole year and you don't hear me make such a big deal every time my face breaks out. Tell me more about the portals."
She shrugged. "What about them? Harry and I can both open portals to other dimensions. That's how he lived fourteen years ago when Voldemort tried to kill him." Neville flinched, but she ignored him. "He opened a portal from the world of the dead back into his body."
"Could he do it again?"
She shook her head in frustration. "How can you ask that? The only way we'll ever find out is if he's put in the same situation. And it's happened to other people before too, people who were assumed dead and then suddenly were able to pull through. People who have had near-death experiences." She juggled the soap with one of the donut holes she had brought back from breakfast. June liked to bring a couple of donuts and bagels back to her room. Apparently she hoarded them in a cookie jar. The soap flew one way and the donut hole the other. "Damn!" She scurried after the donut hole, blew the dust off, and popped it into her mouth.
"That's gross! You don't know what's on the floor."
She rolled her eyes. "The house elves clean it."
"Can't you sit still for two second today? You've been moody all this morning, and yesterday too. What's up with you? You keep on blowing up and then ignoring me and then trying to convince me that your wings can hold my weight and I can fly with you."
"They can!" she exclaimed enthusiastically.
"Get a life," he huffed. "Tell me more about the portals, dammit!"
She jumped up. "I'm gonna try out my new soap. Maybe it will make my zits disappear!" She spun around in circles as she made her way to the girl's bathroom, knocking over several chairs in the process.
Harry, who had been sitting on the couch staring absentmindedly into the fire, stood up and walked over to Neville. "June can't tell you very much about the portals, Neville. I'm sorry. She's not trying to hurt your feelings on purpose."
"What's been up with her?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. She's just being. . . June."
Neville shifted uncomfortably. "Is she freaking out because of the marathon?" June had been trying to convince her father to let her run the marathon she had been obsessed with for months. She had even offered to accept being allowed to run the marathon as a Birthday present. Snape, however, was adamant in insisting that it was too dangerous for her to leave the safety of Hogwarts.
"I don't know. I find it best to not try to delve too deeply into the deranged mind of June." Suddenly June ran out of the bathroom. There was a deep frown etched on her face, one of the rare ones reserved for especially taxing situations.
"Hey June! Did the soap not work?" Neville called. But June looked through him as if he were a fly. She jerked her head from side to side, scanning the common room, though Neville had no idea what for. Ginny choose that moment to bound down the stairs to the common room. June sprinted straight for her and started talking excitedly, flinging her arms everywhere as she talked, her voice even higher than usual. Neville couldn't hear what she was saying. Maybe she was asking to borrow zit medicine. Girls!
He blinked. Both and Ginny and June had disappeared. "Where did they go?" But Harry, who had been watching Ginny intently out the corner of his eye, didn't know either. They were still watching the stairs when Hermione entered next. Harry waved her over, but Ginny appeared again and motioned her back up the stairs. "What is with everyone today?"
Harry stretched out on the floor, practically putting his head in the fire. "Girls!" he exclaimed. He turned back to Neville. "Anyway, it's not that we're not allowed to tell you about the portals - it's just that we don't know much about them. I mean, I can describe what it feels like to open one and how my energy flows along its lines and bends them, but I can't exactly explain how to do it. I think it's one of the things the Ministry studies in the Department of Mysteries."
Ginny ran back downstairs and sat next to Harry and launched into a description of the report on the Tornadoes, her favorite Quidditch team, which had just played Ethiopia that weekend. Neville caught Harry looking at her out the corner of his eye several times. When she finally took a breath, Neville interjected, "Hey Ginny, do you know what's wrong with June today?"
Ginny barely suppressed a fit of giggles. She looked a bit embarrassed when she finally regained control enough to talk. "I'm sorry, it's really not that funny; I shouldn't be laughing. It's just - well, the way she's acting. . ." Ginny started snickering again. "I can't help it!" she declared, throwing up her hands. "It's hilarious. But poor June."
"What are you talking about?" Neville asked. Was she speaking in a different language? But Ginny wasn't interested in continuing the topic, as she soon engaged Harry with several questions about Defense Against the Dark Arts, since Harry was always at the top in that class.
Accompanied by Hermione, June finally came back out less than ten minutes before class started. She had changed her outfit to her favorite black jeans and a different t-shirt. "You know you're going to get into trouble again for not wearing the Hogwarts uniform?" Neville admonished. She shrugged. They waited for Ron to join them before heading out for their first class of the day. Ginny left them for the front entrance to go to Herbology as the rest of them descended the stairs to the dungeon. They were halfway down to the first level when June stopped in mid-stair, bringing her hands to her mouth with a small squeak.
"I have to use the bathroom!" she shouted unnecessarily.
"Ju-une!" Neville groaned. "You're always late for class. Why didn't you go earlier?"
"I did," she snapped, looking positively murderous. She sprinted back up the stairs.
"Geez, forgot to take her sanity pills this morning, that one," Ron muttered. "Why is every girl I know completely insane?"
Hermione made a small sound of disapproval, but was too busy concentrating on making it to class on time to stop to argue, once again, with Ron. They made it into the potions dungeons just as the bell rang for class to start. It didn't stop Snape from taking off points for their late entrance, however. "But we were in the door before the bell rang!" Neville protested, but he only lost even more points for talking back.
"You were not seated and ready to start class, therefore you are late. If any of you doubt this, you are welcome to stay after class to - discuss this with me." With a final menacing glare, he strode back to the front of the room and began giving directions in his silky voice for the day's potion.
While making rounds later, he leaned down next to Neville and asked, "And where is June this morning? Is it really so much trouble for the poor Gryffindors to lower themselves to tromp all the way down to the dungeons?"
Neville rolled his eyes. "Why don't you ask your daughter yourself," he said nastily.
Snape stared at him. "That will be ten points for your impertinence, and another ten for not answering my question." He glanced at Neville's potion. "Ah, but I see the gesture is wasted because your potion is already so dismal that I will no doubt to forced to take a full fifty points off of Gryffindor by the time I'm through with you." He smiled nastily and flew on to the next table.
"Slimy git," Neville whispered under his breath, causing his partner, Ron, to chortle and drop a handful of dead beetles onto the floor. They were almost halfway done when a hurried June finally ran into the classroom. She swept by Snape as if he weren't even there and dropped heavily and rather melodramatically into her seat next to Neville.
"And where, may I ask, were you Miss Snape? I trust you have a good reason for striding into class not only late but unprepared."
Neville saw the stubborn fury on her face and shut his eyes. This wasn't going to be pretty. "I was in the bathroom!" she screamed so loudly that half the class jumped and turned to stare at her. She glared at Snape defiantly, practically begging him to push her further.
Snape, however, was bewildered enough at her sudden outburst to think twice before pressing her. He must have decided, on second thought, that he really didn't want to know, so he satisfied himself with taking a full twenty points off of Gryffindor and then leaving for the front of the room before the wrath of little June could disrupt the class further. Neville and Ron glanced uncomfortably at each other. "She's off her rocker," Ron whispered.
Neville snorted. "When isn't she?"
Hermione seemed to have taken June under her wing, helping her through the majority of the potion, making sure she didn't add fairy wings before beetles, which would make the cauldron explode. Both Lavender and Pavarti were conversing intensely in whispers while taking frequent glances at June. "What is with everyone today?" Neville softly asked. Ron shrugged his shoulders, scrunching up his nose as their potion started emitting a smell that strongly resembled rotten eggs, which was definitely not something the book said was supposed to happen.
Five minutes before the end of class, June suddenly gathered her things and started out the door. Snape, who was putting the jar of beetles back onto its place on the wall, deftly shot out a hand to stop her. "Where do you think you are going, Miss Snape? Did you hear the bell ring for the end of class, because I heard no such thing and would be extremely interested how you did."
She shrugged him off. "Let go of me you jerk! I have to use the bathroom!" Without further explanation, she took off down the hall.
There was complete silence in the classroom after June had left. Gryffindors and Slytherins alike cringed at the look of anger and disapproval stamped onto Snape's face. No one would dare talk to him like that - it was uncharacteristic of June to speak to him so harshly even in private. "She's going to be in so much trouble," Neville moaned to himself.
Hermione heard him and smiled. "She'll be fine," she assured him. "He'll understand."
"Understand what?"
Hermione glanced around nervously to make sure no one was listening before continuing. "June started her period this morning."
Ron, who had heard the exchange, turned beet red. "That's disgusting! I didn't want to know that!" he squawked. Everyone in the classroom turned their heads towards him. Snape looked like he was about to sever Ron's head from his shoulders out of pure spite when, thankfully, the bell rang and the entire class ran out into the hall before he could capture and kill anyone.
"I mean, really," Ron continued his diatribe on their way to DADA. "It doesn't give her any right to go around acting like a complete maniac. Why should it be fair that girls have the right to go completely berserk every month?"
"Why should it be fair that girls have to have periods?" Hermione countered. "It's damned annoying and inconvenient. I'd like to see you try it!"
"This is so disgusting - I can't believe you're trying to talk to me about periods!" He said the word as if it were bitter clay. A group of first year girls passing gave Ron a look of pure bewilderment. "I don't want to hear anymore!" He sped up to catch Harry, who was walking farther down the corridor from them.
"I'm glad to see that Ginny is being so supportive," Neville said sarcastically, remembering how she was cracking up in the common room. "She couldn't stop laughing this morning."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Well, June was being a bit silly."
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure."
"Whatever happened to the soap?"
Hermione gave him an indecipherable look and disappeared into Professor Delacour's classroom without answering.
"Girls," Neville muttered under his breath, following a second behind her. It was going to be a long day.
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Eliza looked into the mirror. There were orange swirls in the upper right- hand corner and a pattern of black dots around the middle that resembled a dragon. She watched the dragon fly around in slow, lazy circles, around her parents' faces. She blinked. What were her parents doing in the mirror? They were supposed to be dead. Were they really trapped in a mirror? Were they asking her to save them?
As suddenly as they had appeared, they were gone. Of course, they're not real, she told herself firmly. They were dead - she knew because she had seen their bodies, or at least what was left of them, which was a small consolation at best but better than nothing. She turned her attention to herself. She had heard Harry describe his experiences at coming into his Seeing powers, his stories of how the world fragmented so that he was constantly seeing the world as if through a broken mirror. Was the same thing happening to her? She stared intently at the blond girl in front of her. She watched her blond hair grow long and dark and fall out and then become normal again.
A toilet flushed behind her and she turned to see June come out of the stall. She looked at Eliza uncertainly. "Are you okay? You've been standing there ever since I came in. Is everything alright?"
"I don't know," Eliza said honestly. "Everything's changing."
June hesitated before saying, "You know you've been - I don't know, just different lately. You've lost a lot of weight, and you don't look like you've been sleeping much. All you do all day is study and read. You never go outside or talk to anybody anymore. Why do you read so much?"
"Maybe I found a really good book." She turned and began to re-examine her image again. Her mirror self smiled and slowly turned green. "Do you see that too?" she asked June.
"See what?"
"Nothing." She continued to look into the mirror.
June made a small noise, clearing her throat. "Are you still - I mean, is this about your parents? You could get help. . ."
Eliza shook her head firmly. People like June would probably benefit from therapy, but she couldn't see herself ever taking the same route. "It's not that at all, just. . . I have these horrible dreams all the time, and everyone in them is dying and bloody, and sometimes I see things."
"See things?"
"I'll just be walking down the hall and talking to someone and suddenly I'll see different colors or blank spaces where I can't see anything at all. . ." She suddenly felt relieved. She had been holding this growing horror inside herself for a few weeks now and could no longer ignore it. June was the perfect person to tell. She would understand. She would know what to do.
June indeed nodded her head and immediately decided, "Let's go see Florean."
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Florean rubbed his chin thoughfully. Eliza's large hazel-green eyes followed his every movement. He had listened to her story, the entirety of it, first with fascination, then with a growing uncertainty, and now with concern. He couldn't comprehend how she had been through so much at such a young age. What ever happened to normal childhoods, he wondered. Did they ever really exist or were they a figment of society's imagination? Life had not been nice to any of the students he had come to care about: Harry, June, Neville, and now Eliza. Of course, when Florean was a teenager there were the beginnings of the looming threat of Lord Voldemort. I suppose no one lies unscathed by life, he decided. He wished it could be otherwise.
Eliza broke the silence following her story first. "Do you think I'm - do you think these things I'm seeing might be visions?" She tried to keep her voice calm and objective, but Florean could see the yearning in her eyes. It was her dream to become proficient in Divination, to be a Seer, but she was convinced it wasn't in her nature and that she was therefore unworthy. He hated to have this happen to her.
"No, Eliza." He took a deep breath and rubbed his temples with his long, thin fingers. He couldn't help thinking he was missing something from the equation, something vital. There was something linking all of these strange events at Hogwarts - and that something had to do with what Eliza was experiencing. Florean was as sure of it as he was sure as anything - the feeling was instinctually buried deep in his gut. But he couldn't make heads or tails of it. He wondered if Eliza was leaving something out. There had to be a reason. There was always a reason. "Those were hallucinations."
Eliza was silent for almost two minutes before responding quietly. "Oh."
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June was, if possible, even more preoccupied during dinner than she had been all morning and afternoon. She had spent the afternoon inside, claiming that her stomach hurt too much to run. Neville had no idea what she was talking about, but Hermione and Ginny had made sympathetic noises and hurried her up to their room, so he decided not to ask. He was a bit preoccupied himself over what Llian had said to him that afternoon.
Neville had gone dressed and ready to run with Llian, Harry, Cho, Dennis, Collin, and a few others who had been coerced into running with the Snapes, only to have Llian pull him aside as everyone was stretching.
"You're going to have to sit this one out," Llian had told him.
Neville was confused. "Why?" Then he realized why, and the betrayal spread through him so violently he felt nauseous. "You mean you'll be going too fast for slow, fat Neville to keep up, so you'd rather I stayed here?"
Neville instantly regretted his words when he saw the hurt on Llian's face. But Llian continued, determined. "No, Neville, you're going to sit this one out because you have to learn from the beginning to take care of yourself so that it becomes habit."
Neville was at a loss. "But - but I'm ready for this! I only ran four miles yesterday. It's time for another long run."
Llian shook his head. "I'm not going to let you run again until you start eating correctly."
Neville felt his stomach drop to his knees. Spurred on by his drastic weight loss from healthier eating and running combined, Neville had restricted his diet even more. He had eaten one piece of toast for breakfast, and a roll during lunch. He felt that after a few weeks on this diet he'd be down to a weight in a "normal" range in no time. "Look, I'm not running competitively like you guys are - I'm just jogging to loose weight, and I'm not going to loose weight by eating three full meals a day."
Llian narrowed his eyes. "Neville, you can't run and be on a diet this strict. It's one or the other, but you can't have it both ways. You're simply not eating enough calories to keep on running anymore. You're going to have to decide which is more important to you."
Neville had thought all afternoon and during dinner, where he allowed himself no more than a small serving of corn just out of spite. He was so busy thinking that he didn't notice that June was also quite reserved. It was later in the common room, when June burst into tears while translating out of her Ancient Runes textbook, that Neville noticed something was wrong. "June, are you PMSing again?" Ginny looked up from her own Ancient Runes text to hear June's reply.
She shook her head. "PMS means pre-menstrual syndrome, or something like that. Note the prefix -pre, meaning before. I am not currently pre- menstruating, since I'm in the process of menstruation." June knew how much talk like this grossed Neville out, so she delighted in torturing him. "I'm worried about Eliza. She's been having psychotic symptoms: hallucinations, hearing voices, having large blank spaces of time where she can't remember what she was doing."
Neville leaned forward concerned. "That sounds really serious. I never would have known anything was wrong - I see her reading all the time in the library, usually that favorite book of hers."
"What favorite?" June asked distractedly, trying to translate runes, worry about Eliza, and talk with Neville at the same time.
"That black one with the purple band. She's always reading it. Do you think she's gone nuts from reading so much?"
June gave Neville a look. "In normal circumstances it would make a great horror novel, but right now that's not very funny Neville."
"Sorry." He fidgeted with his wristwatch. "Has Eliza talked to anyone?"
"We went to see Florean together. He deals with a lot of these kinds of symptoms that come with visions and prophecies. I think they've gone to see Professor Dumbledore to see what the best course of action is." She paused to scratch her knee. "I think it's a good sign that she was able to tell us. Some never tell anyone. . ." She trailed off.
Llian choose that moment to enter the Gryffindor common room with Harry. "Hey you Hufflepuff traitor!" Dean called out good-naturedly. "Enemies aren't allowed on home turf!" Half of the people in the common room smiled. Llian was well-known for his blatant disregard of house customs. It wasn't uncommon to see him sitting with the Slytherins at dinner or hanging out with the Ravenclaws after class was over or walking through the Gryffindor common room to study with June and Neville. He plopped down between Neville and June. Harry brought a chair over from the fireplace. Llian jumped straight to the point. "Have you seen Eliza after you talked with her this afternoon?" June shook her head. "I feel really horrible," Llian admitted. "I mean, she's in my house, I see her practically everyday - I should have noticed that something was wrong with her. She's been having these things bug here ever since Halloween. I should have been there for her." He looked extremely down-hearted. If Neville didn't already know that Llian was involved with Cho he would have thought that he was falling for Eliza.
June didn't respond, but Harry did. "You can't blame yourself for the past. All we can do now is try to help her through this."
"She'll be staying at Hogwarts, won't she?" Llian asked anxiously.
"If that's what's best for her," said June, her lips pursed. "Of course, you all know what I recommend." They nodded. Having been institutionalized several times, June would never recommend the same for someone like Eliza. "At least if her face breaks out she can use some of your soap." Neville jerked his head up. "Sorry, random thought."
"While we're on that random thought," interjected Ginny, who was Eliza's best friend and not especially pleased to be discussing the Hufflepuff behind her back, "maybe you can tell me where you got it. I only used it twice today and my skin's already improved! That's some hard-core facial cleanser!"
Llian shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Well, I didn't really get it anywhere. I made it."
Ginny clapped her hands and leaned across the couch to hug Llian. Harry looked a bit annoyed at this. "That is so cool - you should see about opening up a joke shop with Fred and George."
"Nah," he said, embarrassed. "They're already partners. They don't need a third leg."
"How much do you charge for the soap?" Ginny asked.
"Charge? Oh, no - I wasn't going to sell them. I have some extra if you want it. It's just one of my side projects; I like to experiment with potions, so I decided to try to make something useful."
"You could make a living at it. Not just soap, whatever you want. I mean, geez, if you're good enough to make your own potions, you could probably do whatever you want."
Llian leaned back and settled his arm on June's shoulder. "Yeah, well, I'll think about it after I become a professional Quidditch player." They all laughed. As Llian was already pretty good, it wouldn't be much of a reach for him.
"Gosh, life is so tough when you're good at everything," June said ruefully. "Quidditch, history, potions. . .Llian!" She sat straight up, flinging his arm off.
"What?"
"You make up your own potions?"
"Uh-huh."
"From scratch?"
"Pretty much."
She looked at him appraisingly. "You're a Maker," she accused him. "All this time you've been holding out on me."
Llian's face softened thoughtfully. "I guess I am," he said finally.
"What's more, you have Volari blood. You could be a Haran, too!"
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A/N: Ok, there was a bit of insanity and despair, but all in all it was cheerful. BTW, feel free to ask me any questions you may have about the last three chapters - I know they were a bit confusing even to me.