Harry wasn't all too sure about doing what his mother said and "putting some boundaries" between himself and Evelyn, but...he knew he had to do it.
And he was honestly - guiltily - relieved that his mother had told him to do this. Her advice had never really steered him wrong before, and even when she could get firm with him, he usually did concede to her about matters. All this to say, Harry tried to have a bit of faith that this would also work out for the best, in the end - for both of them. Him and Evelyn.
Harry found himself alone with Evelyn in the common room, late in the night. They were at a table to themselves, working on today's assignments for various classes (they'd gotten a whole pile of work).
"Hey, Evelyn...I uhm, I need to- tell you some things. Can we talk?"
Evelyn looked at him, then ducked her head and nodded.
That was encouraging enough, Harry thought. For Evelyn, anyway. "I...look, I can't keep- how we've been lately. It's hardly been more than a week and I- I know that you need help with things, and I'm your friend and I'm happy to help you...but I can't anymore. I'm- I'm getting really tired, I'm messing up in class, it's ruining my mood, and I- it's not doing you any good either! And- so- yeah. That's..."
Evelyn was as still as a statue, hiding completely behind her long, straight dark hair.
Not encouraging, that. Harry pressed on anyway. "Look, I'm still going to be your friend - I still care - but I can't keep...caring for you. Okay? You need to- to let the professors and Madam Pomfrey do that, if you need that. But...not me. I'm sorry, Evelyn. But I'm tired, I'm doing awful in a lot of my classes, and even my mum has noticed and I just can't keep it up! Okay? Please?"
Evelyn looked at Harry with just plain hurt. She quickly ducked her head, clasping her hands in her lap. They were shaking and pale.
Harry instantly felt terrible.
"Evelyn...I'm sorry, I am, but-" he tried again, desperate.
Evelyn drew her wand and aimed it straight at him, her head whipping up with a look of both pain and rage. "I knew you didn't care about me!" she hissed. "You're just going to throw me away and ignore me like everyone else!"
Harry could only stare at her, completely taken off guard. He tried to breathe, to find calm in the face of Evelyn's wand. "I'm still sitting here with you, aren't I?" he said evenly.
Evelyn's dark eyes flickered. She gripped her wand more tightly, her lips trembling.
"So are you just going to act like your mother with me?" Harry said furiously. "You're mad, so you're going to just hurt me? Listen, I'm sorry, but you're not going to just go off and treat me like-"
Evelyn dropped her wand on the table and shoved herself back from it. She whirled away in her chair; Harry heard a gasp from her. Her shoulders fell, and then all he heard was her crying.
Harry breathed relief. He stood, cautiously approaching her. Set a hand on her arm. "Evelyn..."
"I- I'm n-not my mother!"
"Of course you're not - look, I didn't mean to say that, okay? I just..." Harry trailed off, sighing.
Evelyn glanced at him, streaming tears and puffy eyes. "I- I'm sorry...don't mean to drag you down...I know I'm worthless, I know I'm a stupid waste..."
"No, you're not - it's fine. We're still friends, things are fine. I still like you, okay? I do. Just...you have to start asking teachers for help, not me - you could even go to my mum for help, since you already know her. She's helped you before, hasn't she? A few times now - at the World Cup, and dealing with...you know...Professor Snape," Harry finished, painfully awkward. And just painful; he'd never liked the man, and he was still angry toward him over how he'd treated people in life, but...but he was dead. If Harry kept on hating a dead man, he would be no better than Snape himself about James Potter, wouldn't he...?
Evelyn stared at him, lost in thought. Surprise crossed her face. Then, she gave a small nod. "I'm sorry..." she repeated in earnest.
Harry just kept telling her it was fine. Then, he told her they should both probably get some sleep. She looked at him with pleading, the words half escaped her mouth already...but then she looked away. Harry told her he'd see her tomorrow, and he went to his dorm, leaving her behind. He stayed up long enough to listen for the sound of the fourth year girls' dormitory door - long enough to know she had actually gone to bed too. All on her own. Harry felt more guilt, but...
He just had to trust his mother, like always, that this was for the better.
Nagini woke at night to a knocking at her door.
She rose from her bed and dressed, took her wand in hand and moved through her private quarters.
It was either Harry, or an emergency - or both.
She still managed to be surprised when she opened the door.
Nagini dipped her head, looking down on Professor Leila Thorn. That blonde hair in messy curls, that pale face of freckles and light blue eyes - a sheer, matching blue nightgown of silk that hardly went a few inches down her thighs, with exposing cups of lace and transparent mesh.
The woman clasped her hands at her waist, twisting at her hips as she gazed up at Nagini.
"Can I help you with something?" Nagini said evenly, keeping her posture and facial expression as neutral as possible.
"Could I come in?" Thorn spoke softly but confidently.
Nagini gripped the door frame - and her wand at her side. "Why?"
Thorn rocked back and forth on her heels, rolling her neck to gaze wildly about. "I'd love to get to know you."
"At this hour?" said Nagini steadily.
"This is the hour my kind are active..." A hint of a bush in those pale cheeks.
Nagini held back a sigh; she wished she were still the girl of her youth, at times like this, rather than the woman of today. "All right," she replied. She stepped back and aside, letting the woman pass. She turned as she shut the door, and gazed upon the Thorn's backside; it was an exposed backside, bared flesh down to her rear, crossed by two thin straps alone from her shoulder blades.
Nagini took a breath and directed the woman to her small sofa. She joined Thorn there, seating herself delicately beside the woman. Her co-worker - co-educator - she reminded herself, with another breath drawn and released. She set her hands in her lap, wand clasped between them, and turned toward Thorn, looking her in the face.
"Whenever you want to start," Nagini told the woman.
"Why don't we start with you?" Thorn spoke, shifting and eyeing Nagini right back. A look, up and down. A little smile, a glint in those blue eyes. "Last week, when he showed up here, you did things I haven't seen before - some, I'd only ever heard about. But you fought him off and-"
"No!" Nagini interrupted firmly, shaking her head. Her hands quivered in her lap. "I know that half the school - staff included - thinks that I'm some old, powerful, amazing heroine, but the truth of it is that I was barely holding on, and I had to pull out every trick I knew just to do it. Most of them, tricks I never wanted to have to use again. And now he knows it; he knows he could beat me, if it came to it. A few minutes longer, less of an enclosed space...and he would have taken my life, in the end. If you and the other professors hadn't arrived, I would have been killed. I had no escape, and while I was holding my own, it was by my fingertips!"
Nagini had not even intended to say nearly this much on the matter - to voice these fears - not to anyone. But, somehow, it had come bursting out of her into the world. Thoughts made tangible, for others to perceive.
Thorn gazed at her, looking just as taken aback by the outburst. "You still lasted a few minutes against him - that's more than most of his victims can say," she said lightly, leaning back on the sofa and gazing up at the ceiling, her legs opening in a careless sprawl. She stretched her arms high, pale, and covered in just as many little freckles as her face was.
Nagini sighed. "I suppose," she conceded. "But people shouldn't have this...this false image of me. I couldn't have won against him - not without luck, distractions, and some very clever tricks."
"But you are old - and powerful - and you fought in a war before, for two decades, wasn't it?" Thorn inquired, with a sidelong look and a half smile. "Against Grindelwald?"
"Yes, but that doesn't make me some legendary war hero," Nagini replied quietly. She shook her head, ran a hand through her hair. She set her gaze on the fireplace, giving her wand a flick to bring it to an instant roar. Heat was felt immediately within the room. On her face, her arms and legs. "Believe it or not, I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Other people were involved, other people were fighting that war, and I happened to stumble into things. Met people who would become my best friends, and stayed with them for decades to do my part. For them, and because it was right and good. And I..." She stopped herself. She gazed harder into the flames; she clasped her hands together tightly, fingers interlaced.
The flames before her changed from orange to blue in her vision...and a white-haired figure stood behind it...
"He knows who I am."
"He knows what you were born, not who you are."
"Credence!"
People crossing the flames, and people burning in them...
She tried to advance, to get through them - but she couldn't. She wasn't strong enough, wasn't knowledgeable enough...not in face of him...
"I was only twenty-one," she said softly. "I was...lost, and scared, and..."
An eighteen year old girl, ventured out from her village in the jungles of Indonesia, hoping to see the world...
Well, she had, hadn't she?
The wizards who had "come across" her out there, offered her refuge, spoken to her so nicely - learned of her curse. And after they had...
Three years of slavery. Three years of travel, and being abused and neglected, and paraded to the world as a freak of nature.
A time when sentiments against Maledictus were similar to the current ones against werewolves - still against werewolves. It had changed for Maledictus, and it had even changed for vampires. But for werewolves, and for non-humans, it was still so...so...disgusting.
No one had looked at her and seen a person. Or, if they had, they hadn't cared enough to risk their lives to save her from her fate.
Except for one, kind, equally as lost young man...
"It was only over time that I learned and grew, becoming the woman I am today," Nagini said. "But that woman still isn't a legend. A veteran, maybe a heroine, but nothing more than that. Certainly not someone who could take on Voldemort alone and win."
"It was still impressive. And you saved everyone in that room."
"Thank you - but not everyone," Nagini refuted.
A real solemnity came over Thorn's face. "Right - I'm sorry."
"Tell me about you," Nagini spoke, in hopes of finding something to focus on besides the pain in her heart - her very soul.
Thorn nodded. "There isn't too much to tell, honestly." She shifted again, and it somehow ended up with her leg touching Nagini's. "I grew up with my mums, I came here at eleven. If you're fishing for my 'bite' origin story-"
"No - I just want to get to know you, too. Whatever you want to share," Nagini said swiftly.
"I was going to say I'm happy to share it with you," Thorn grinned. "I try not to be too embarrassed about what I am - though I'm not always successful at it. If I take pride in it, then people looking to shame and harass me for it tend to have a harder time of it."
Nagini smiled, nodding. "True enough."
"It's no big thing: I was fifteen and on my summer holidays, and the worst luck of my life struck." Thorn waved an airy hand, gave a small laugh. "I was in my village, walking back from school, when suddenly this woman came stumbling into my path. Really pale, really skinny, and just shaking all over. She was lucky it was cloudy that day, or she wouldn't have lasted half as long as she did out in the open - there was a storm coming in, at the time. Dark, cold. I think she took the chance because she never would have gotten another one if she didn't."
Thorn straightened, closing her legs and placing her hands together in her lap, turning entirely serious. And more than a little distressed. She tried, still, to keep up a quavering smile of sorts as she spoke on.
"I thought she was ill, or on some kind of drug - maybe the bad effects of a potion or a spell. I asked her if she needed help, and the next thing I know she's jumping at me. Grabbing at me with these claws, pulling me back between this little shop and a bakery. And then there was this pain that exploded right in my neck, and I felt like I was burning inside. And the whole time she just kept telling me, 'I'm sorry.' That wasn't too much of a comfort to me while I was writhing around in the dirt feeling like my insides were melting." Thorn gave another laugh, a shake of her head.
"Annnnd that's how I became what I am," Thorn concluded glibly. "Exciting, right?"
Nagini touched Thorn's leg, gazing into her eyes. "I'm sorry..."
Thorn met her gaze, then looked down at her leg. At Nagini's hand there. "You know that feeling you're supposed to get in a situation like this - a tingle, a shooting up your spine, goosebumps on your arms? - I don't have it." Thorn laughed, soft and light. "I don't get it."
Nagini withdrew her hand, scooting away as she internally berated herself - what was wrong with her? "You don't?" she said awkwardly.
Thorn didn't seem to have minded it, but still... "Nope. Being a vampire is being deprived of all humanity. Food doesn't taste like anything to me except ash and garbage...the heat of the sun burns me...and the touch of others - I'm numb to any of it. I'm just cold. And don't get me started on garlic; that shite can ruin my whole day! Contact, pleasure, affection - vampires don't get that. Except...from blood. Blood is sweet, warm, it fills me up with that warmth for a while." Thorn put a finger to her mouth. "There are special foods made for us that can give us taste again, and there are potions that let us feel our skin again...but it's all different, and it's all temporary. A fleeting illusion of the real thing - of what I have in my memories. It just doesn't compare."
Thorn suddenly stood, stretching again. She flashed another grin. "I don't sleep at night, either - but you do, so I'll let you get to it. Sometimes it's hard to remember that everyone else doesn't need to drink dozens of cups of blood to get through the daylight," she said casually - but with a certain glance at Nagini, a look in her eyes of...
Nagini smiled at her, and laughed politely. "Alright. I'll see you in the morning, then."
Relief shone in Thorn's eyes. "Another day of teaching," she nodded. She paused. "Two new teachers, a vampire and a maledictus? We should stick together - we can compare notes. I'm still getting the hang of managing a full classroom."
"I wouldn't mind that - so am I," Nagini replied honestly.
"Great. See you around!" Thorn strode out of Nagini's quarters with a bounce to her step and a swing to her hips.