Throughout Great Britain, April 1940
Within a week these portals were put into place. A squadron of uniformed British Aurors and eclectically dressed American specialists—many of whom were of Indian extraction, for portal magic was their specialty—installed them with striking efficiency. There was one in every common room, and two in convenient spots elsewhere on every floor of the castle for good measure. In the Slytherin Dungeon, the portal did not fit with its surroundings; it stood in the middle of everything, a huge black doorframe as wide as the entrance of the Great Hall, incongruously large and intrusive, encasing a sheet of glowing, opaque white mist.
One Friday evening in the Great Hall, Professor Dippet announced their purpose and function. Whoever stepped into them would be "teleported" to one of two places; enrolled Hogwarts students, to a secret safe location deep in the country, and anyone else, to a holding cell in Azkaban, to await interrogation by Aurors. "It is now all but impossible for Grindelwald to harm our ancient castle or her students," pronounced Dippet in his pompous, three-hundred year old voice.
"But in the rare event that he, or any other malicious force, still foolishly chooses to attack us, you will hear the bells quickly ring thrice, then pause for a few seconds, before ringing thrice again. This is the alarm, and if you hear it, you shall immediately retreat to the nearest common room—regardless of your house—and enter the portals."
"These powerful artefacts are not to be trifled with," he continued. "Our friends in the American Wizarding Confederation took great labour in procuring them from their ancient forests, and transporting them here. Do not toss anything into them, not even crumpled pieces of parchment. Certainly do not duel around them—all it would take is a single wayward spell for the Ministry to believe our castle is under attack, and to prepare accordingly."
The very morning after Dippet's warning, Gryffindor lost 400 house points. A broom, an armchair, and a red-haired third year boy had been tossed into the portal of their common room. The great Hourglass that contained the Gryffindor rubies at the back of the Great Hall was almost completely empty. Yet throughout breakfast, during which Mary's eyes returned again and again to scan that leftmost table of red and gold, she found the majority of Gryffindors not only indifferent to the great penalty they had suffered, but even amused, if not proud of it.
When Mary sat with her brother in the library that afternoon, as was customary for them on Saturdays, she noticed that the particular determination which cast his face was at once a little bit more mellow, a little bit more tranquil, yet also somehow more enthused, more passionate, than it usually was. It was the look he made, whenever he contrived a plan.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked him.
"April the eleventh," he returned at once.
They sat down.
"April the eleventh?"
"April the eleventh, at midday." He smiled feverishly. "That's when they'll test the portals."
"Test it in what manner?"
"They'll evacuate all the students from the castle."
Mary looked around. No one was nearby. So she returned to her brother and hissed, "how do you know that? Who told you?"
"No one," he scoffed. "I could've asked Slughorn, but that would've defeated the purpose. I figured it out. Do you know how Professor Beery, though spending hours each day to water his plants, needs enchanted cans to help him maintain the greenhouses? Last night I snuck into the greenhouses and inspected the cans—they're all scheduled for much more watering than usual on Sunday the eleventh. It's because he won't be there."
Though she was impressed by the depth to which her brother contemplated their Herbology Professor's watering cans, Mary was not persuaded. "That's all? The prior incantatio of a few watering cans is enough to convince you that they'll evacuate the castle?"
"In tandem with the fact they'll test the portals at noon, yes." The hardness of Tom's tone told Mary that he was beyond convincing. "I did a little bit of reading, you see. The portals draw their strength from the moon, and lose it under the sun. It follows that they're weakest at midday, which is why Slughorn or the Minister, or whoever is in charge of its planning, will sound the alarm right before lunch—they want to make sure that the portals holds up at their weakest hour."
"Perhaps you're right," said Mary.
Her brother was often right. Mary used to hold this fact in pride, but now, it was an annoyance. The rapid growth of his power only fed, like dampness feeding a great growth of mould in an abandoned cupboard, his compulsion—always, he needed to prove, both to her, himself, Professor Slughorn, and everyone else who knew his name, that he was capable. Mary suspected he would never be truly satisfied. This compulsion manifested not only in outbursts of magic, but rather in everything he did—in fact, it manifested to Mary most often in the way he talked to her.
"You'll spend the day with Abraxas Malfoy," he commanded. "Make sure that, at around a quarter to twelve, the two of you are somewhere far from the Dungeon, if not the castle altogether. Once the bells sound, he'll get scared and faint. You'll save him. You'll levitate him to the portals. You'll refuse to leave him. You'll remain by his side no matter where the portal takes you. You'll stay by his side even when we're all back at Hogwarts, and he's consigned to one of the cots in the Hospital Wing."
"Why me? You're the one obsessed with Malfoy," Mary complained, folding her arms. "You do it."
"For one, I'll have to distract Antoine Rosier, who's otherwise always by the side of Malfoy," he pointed out. "But it has to be you, because Malfoy's mother died when he was little."
"What?" Mary broke into incredulous laughter—her brother's explanation, at first, struck her as a preposterous non-sequitur—but it took her only a few moments of reflection before she found that there was factuality in what he said. It was intuitive, inexplicable, and perverse, like magic itself.
Thus for the following days, she courted Abraxas Malfoy. Abraxas was, although in a way one of the most boring boys she had ever met, yet one of the most interesting ones, too. Most of the boys who talked to Mary sought to impress her, whether by subtly or overtly alluding to their family's prestige and wealth; by flaunting the little charms and jinxes that they casted with excessive flair; or by trying to make her laugh—the few who didn't were silly sods under the bewitchment of that silly cow, Ilaria Greengrass. Then, there was Abraxas, a type in himself, who welcomed Mary's company, but made no effort to maintain his right to it. He permitted her affection, in the way a flower might permit an enchanted watering can to nourish it, or a sickly son might allow his mother's doting. But Mary was not offended; rather, she was charmed. She liked that Abraxas lacked what was seemingly a defining trait of boys—the need to prove themselves to her. It was peaceful to be with him.
At last, April the eleventh came. Mary spent half an hour in the morning before her dresser; she was to look beautiful for the occasion. She wore an emerald-green skirt-suit ensemble that one of her older admirers presented her for Christmas; it barely covered her knees. A white summer scarf, as thin as paper (the muggle kind) and limpid under the sun like a wedding shawl, accentuated her thin neck.
Under the pretence of gathering flowers for the birthday of Lydia Cotterill, a first year girl (it was truly Lydia's birthday on Monday; but Mary didn't particularly care, and she suspected Abraxas didn't either), Mary brought Abraxas from the castle, to a small clearing in the Forbidden Forest where bluebells blossomed galore. The pair of them brought a basket each; they needed to harvest a great deal, for they would not only give Lydia a bouquet of flowers, but also make her a necklace from their flattened, ever-ripe petals, as Mary insisted.
Mary checked her watch. It was only a few minutes till twelve. If Tom was right, the castle's alarm bells would ring very soon. Abraxas would faint; she would rescue him, and upon waking up, he would become helplessly affectionate for her—forever—and by extension, for Tom. Yet though the plan made sense, and though it did not cost her much more than the larger part of a Sunday, she could not dispel the bitterness that rose in her breast every time Abraxas bent over to uproot a blue flower; every one of his stoops reminded Mary that Tom essentially decided which boys she was allowed mingle with, and which not.
She had not meaningfully talked to Arcanius Fawley since Ilaria discovered, by Tom's machinations, that Mary stole her necklace—which had been over a year ago, by now. A long time. Mary was unsure why she even thought of him, her first 'crush', after so long. Perhaps it was because she saw him that morning, serene and paternal, helping a gaggle of giggling first-year girls with their inane herbology project. Perhaps it was because often, they still exchanged looks when passing in the common room or through the castle—and never was his gaze indignant or indifferent—always was it tender, vaguely desirous, and markedly sad.
Mary gasped. Two successive realisations hit her with wondrous force. Firstly, she needed to see Arcanius Fawley. Needed to talk to him, touch him (or have him touch her, like the way Tom touched her, though that would be too good to be true), see him laugh or smile or cast a little spell to amuse her—anything really, anything at all—immediately. Secondly, she had just the opportunity to do this. It was April the eleventh.
Abraxas noticed that she was standing still, contemplatively looking at a bluebell she held in her hand. "Mary, what's the matter?"
"I've got to go to the bathroom," she blurted, tossing the flower to the floor. "Wait here! Don't move!"
Half out of affected urgence and half out of excitement, she ran back to the castle. Her plan was perfect. She would satiate her overpowering hunger for Arcanius which, (if left unfulfilled, would somehow, she was sure, leave a lasting wound on her), all the while accommodating Tom's stupid little plan. If Tom was right, it would be an extraordinary day; she and Arcanius would be together, and Arcanius would be terrified—and when someone was scared, anything was possible. She would reassure him, or if not, she would distract his fear with pleasure. Elatedly panting for breath, Mary found an empty classroom, sat on a chair, and kept her eyes stuck to her watch. 11:54, 11:55, 11:56, 11:57, 11:58, 11:59 …
The bells rang! Tom was right!
The ringing was orders of magnitudes louder than Mary, who was used to the slow clamour of church-bells in London, expected; she covered both her ears with her hands. But it finished as soon as it came—the two successive sequences of three rings sounded with a quickness that resembled more the beating of drums than, again, the familiar church-bells of London.
First, she heard screams. Most of the student body had taken Dippet's speech on 'the sounding of the bells' with a sort of excited disbelief; it was a what if proposition that ought to have been impossible, like a scary story one told to one's friends huddled around a fireplace at night—its chief purpose was entertainment. But horror became reality. However, quickly, that primal vital instinct common alike to wizards and men and mandrakes and fleas—the will to survive—woke from its sempiternal slumber to possess the students of Hogwarts, who now no longer screamed (at least most of them did not), but acted with a sudden decisiveness that impressed even Mary, who knew that there was no invasion. "Everyone, wands out!" "Walk in groups!" "Let people from other houses in your common rooms!"
She joined a large procession of students, all of whom had their wands drawn and pointed towards whichever corridor they were to cross next, and all of whose hands trembled. By the time they got to the Entrance Hall, Mary disembarked down the staircase to the Slytherin common room, running with feigned fright. There around the white portal stood a small group of Prefects who hurriedly ushered some younger students into it, while pulling others back to ask about their peers who had yet to arrive, all the while an enchanted quill rapidly scribbled on a large floating sheet of parchment who had left, who might have left, and who had yet to leave.
Among these Prefects, of course, was her dear Arcanius. Mary's eyes lit up. Her heart trembled as though she had just drank three vials of pepper-up potion. Arcanius spoke in rapid but reassuring tones to a third-year girl who claimed her friend had evacuated with the Hufflepuffs; judging that the girl, from her exasperation, must have been telling the truth, he snapped his fingers at the quill and permitted her to leave. Before the next student could bother him, Mary ran to Arcanius and tapped his shoulder. He spun on his heel and, upon seeing her, made a strangled noise—they had not talked to each other in over a year.
"Mary," Arcanius intoned her name cautiously, not knowing what to make of it. "What a relief—you're the last second-year girl who's not—"
"Abraxas Malfoy's in the Forbidden Forest," she blurted.
"What?!"
"I-I left him there." She made an impression of a guilty voice. "We were picking flowers, but I had to go to the bathroom a-and then … the bells!"
"Bloody hell!" Arcanius deeply exhaled. "The bells would've knocked him out! You know of his condition, yes?"
"I do," Mary said with a sad look. "We were in a clearing full of bluebells. It's not far from the edge of the forest."
For a moment, Arcanius said nothing. A stern, desperate look evolved on his face—he exchanged a glance with an older boy Prefect, who returned him a stare of mixed pity and contempt, as though to recognise the abject difficulty of his situation, while also denying to offer any advice or consolation.
Mary looked up at Arcanius with hopeful supplication. "Caney," she said coyly. "Help me save him. Please. I'll come with you."
"Damn it all!" Arcanius exclaimed more to himself than anyone. "Let's go."
He decisively strode towards the exit of the common room; Mary had to jog to keep up with him. Fortunately, someone had discarded, conceivably in fear both of the castle's nonexistent invaders and of the portal's capacity to move it, their new racing broom, finished with a white varnish that shined like silver. Arcanius grabbed it, commanded Mary to "hop on", and they took off.
She wrapped her arms tightly around his waist and laid her head against his back. He flew poorly; whether this was because he was terrified (where she trembled in pleasure, he trembled in fear) or simply unathletic (though he had a handsome figure, anyone who could fly well also walked and generally moved fast; he was always slow and leisurely), she did not know. She panted in delight, which thankfully he either did not hear or construed as the suscitations of a terrified little girl. They had never nearly been this intimate, not even a year ago in her first year, where on some sleepless nights she sat in his lap, which she understood was permitted by the ordinary sibling-like affection—contrary to the extraordinary one she had with Tom—that their relationship at the time approximated, owing equally to the facts that she was at the time but a first-year girl, and that he already had the stupid slag, Ilaria. Now, she was nearing the end of her second year, and had a figure that drew much more intently and intensely the eyes, minds, and loins of boys; now, she would challenge Ilaria.
"Where do we fly?" Arcanius asked. The surface of his voice was assured; the depths of it were anything but.
"Follow my finger." Mary protruded her thin arm beneath his the Prefect's strong, tense one. "Go slowly."
They quickly found Abraxas. The first-year boy had, contrary to Mary's expectations, not immediately fainted. It appeared that upon hearing the bell, he must have sought to run to the castle, for he had managed not only to find his way out of the forest, but progressed even forty or so yards on the uphill gravel path that lead to gate of the Entrance Hall—only to collapse—leaving in his wake two baskets on either side of his dormant body—both his and Mary's—whose flowers had been scattered about by the wind.
Arcanius descended and rushed to the fallen boy, drew his wand, and with a crisp "Rennervate!" brought him back to life. Mary had hoped that the Prefect would have simply contented himself with levitating the younger boy back to the castle, so that the two of them could talk with intimacy and privacy, as she had planned, which she now realised was a ridiculous plan. But she refused to forfeit; there must be something she could do.
"Abraxas!" Mary exclaimed, pulling him into a hug. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
The younger boy, though he said nothing, returned Mary's hug with an arduous strength that she did not expect him to have.
"We've got to fly back," said Arcanius, hoisting himself back on his broom.
"Caney, give me a moment," Mary implored.
She waved her wand to render upright the baskets Abraxas had dropped, and returned to them, in a motion resembling teacups recuperating spilled tea, the bluebells scattered about. Then, with a motion of her hands, she brought the baskets upon each other to form an enclosure, and weaved the rims of each into each other, so that it resembled an inflated potato-sag. Finally, she transfigured straps from the wicker, so that it could be worn like a backpack, a prerogative which she took herself.
To her dismay, Arcanius insisted that Abraxas, sickly as he was, was to sit in the middle position of the broom. Thus on their return to Hogwarts, Mary hugged not the firm, strong physique of the older boy, but the soft, frail body of the younger one. She no longer trembled in pleasure. While Arcanius was, despite his effort not to show it, afraid of the spectre of the Grindelwaldians, Abraxas was utterly terrified. Indeed, the younger boy held his wand in a shaking, perfunctory grip which could not, had there truly been invaders, have been able to cast even the feeblest courtyard hex.
As they flew, she every now and then whispered something consoling to Abraxas. "It will be alright." "We're almost there, Arcanius and I won't let you get hurt."
By the time they got back to the castle, the bells had ceased. It was utterly quiet, unnaturally so. While the imperious sun flooded the corridors with daylight through its many arched windows, it was even more peaceful than the dead of night, where at least crickets sounded their ambient chorus.
"Hominem revelio," Arcanius scrupulously whispered before turning every corner.
It did not take long to return to the common room. But once they did, terror came across the face of the boys—the portal was gone. So, of course, were the students—but the opaque sheet of white mist that was the portal had simply vanished. All that stood there was a doorframe without the door.
"No, no …" Malfoy managed.
"Not to worry," assured Arcanius, though his face had gone very pale. "I have a portkey to my estate, in my dormitory. Let me fetch it."
Mary waited in the common room with Abraxas, who trembled as he tightly clutched her arm with both of his. She indulgently ran her fingers through his long, sleek blonde hair. Where he seemed on the verge of tears as she consoled him, she felt ecstatic; she wanted to leap with joy. She would get to see Arcanius' house—she had never been inside a magical home, let alone one as grand as she knew the Fawley one to be. She wondered, for a moment, whether there were any other students in the school who knew that the whole ordeal they had just endured was nothing more than an experiment by their very own Professors and the British Ministry of Magic. Surely, she thought, there must have been a Prefect or two involved in its planning—but not even Arcanius was in the know.
Arcanius returned. In his hand was a straw boater hat with a blue ribbon—something that looked like part of the uniform of a prestigious public school in London.
"Hold it," he instructed.
Mary and Abraxas did as they were told.
"You'll feel dizzy, but no matter what, don't let go," Arcanius warned.
The Prefect pressed his wand on the cap of the boater and, for a moment, Mary indeed felt dizzy—terribly dizzy, as though the entire world had rotated on its side—before the three of them simply fell to the ground, the portkey dropping unceremoniously back on the ground.
"Anti-portkey wards," Arcanius remarked in a shaky voice. "I suppose it makes sense that Hogwarts has those … but I never knew. Perhaps it's the Grindelwaldians who put it up …"
"We have to fly," Mary pointed out. "Beyond the range of the wards."
"Yes." Arcanius nodded grimly. "Hop on."
Thus, they departed the direction from whence they came. After exiting the castle and flying South—that was the direction the sun went during summer, Mary recalled from first-year Astronomy—both the boys considerably relaxed; Mary felt Abraxas' muscles loosen, and Arcanius' breaths went from short and jittery to long and measured.
They landed on the side of a small grassy mountain; the natural scenery before them, of which the distant castle was only a small part, was beautiful. Mary wondered whether older students would sometimes fly far from the castle to find themselves little patches of nature as the one they presently discovered; these would be ideal for picnics, especially at night. She thought to ask Arcanius but, given the gravity of their 'situation', refrained from doing so.
"Hold it," Arcanius said the second time that afternoon, but in a much lighter tone, as he extended his boater. "Make sure not to let go."
Mary and Abraxas did as they were told. With his wand, Arcanius activated the portkey and, at once, Mary was sucked into the sky. Like a small bird in a cyclone, she helplessly spun with such a rapidity that all her muscles, beaten by the 'wind', became terribly sore—it did not help that her breakfast began to suddenly rise up her stomach—all the while she screamed and grasped the boater for her life. Then, as quickly as she was pulled into the sky, she was thrown from it.
She fell bottom-first on the grass, and looked up at the blue sky and what appeared to be the overhanging arch of a deep red ceiling, which span and span and span and span. She rubbed her eyes.
"Your first time portkeying, I take," Arcanius said with a hint of amusement, extending a hand.
As he pulled her up, she immediately took advantage of the symptoms of her 'first time portkeying' to lean with all her weight against him, grazing her butt against his leg. "Pardon me," she said tenderly. She saw that Abraxas, who she momentarily feared had collapsed through the vertiginous journey, stood upright and wore his usual expression of slight fatigue.
Then, she rubbed her eyes and finally gave her surroundings a proper look. She could not believe what she saw.
"Your home is … beautiful, Caney!"
"It is."
Indeed it was. A grand, glaringly pureblood mansion that stylistically fused ancient Greece and Victorian England, it at once sported doric columns and Palladian windows; was made of marble but covered in sprawling growths of glowing pink ivy; and wore a stark, overhanging cherry-red ceiling atop three stories that measured sixty yards lengthwise each. It rested on a wide plain, just by the side of the Thames which looked like molten silver under the afternoon sun—and rather than a lawn or a front yard, it was surrounded on all sides by the most beautiful and biggest garden Mary had ever seen. It extended over a hundred yards in every direction. It was overwhelming in its variety—everywhere Mary looked, a dozen different kinds of trees, impossibly huge flowers, and exotic fruits that she had never seen before (not even in books), attacked her field of vision. In the midst of all this were fountains pouring glimmering blue, green, orange and purple water, some of which contained small, colourful crystalline fish that poured with them; and charming little wooden outhouses, which hosted the gardening elves uniformed in green towels.
However, Arcanius, to whom all this was familiar, wore a face of resignation rather than wonder. Rather than unlocking the large oak door, he knocked on it. The three Slytherins waited only for a moment. It was opened, and there before them was a bespectacled old elf wearing what looked like a miniature white robe, by the side of a pretty, round-faced girl who Mary immediately recognised as Arcanius' little sister.
"Hi, Helen," Arcanius greeted the little girl.
"Caney!" she squealed, tackling her brother in a hug, before releasing him only to barrage him with questions. "Why're you here? It's April! Did something happen at Hogwarts? Daddy said not to use the portkey unless something very bad happens. Who're they?"
Arcanius answered only the last of these questions. "Mary, Abraxas, allow me to introduce you to my sister, Héloïse, whom we all call Helen. Helen, this is Mary Riddle, of whom I've written to you before, and Abraxas Malfoy, whom you've met before."
"Mary Riddle!" Héloïse squawked, jumping before Mary and looking up at her as though to intently examine her chin. "Is it true you're a genius? Is your brother one too? Did you really steal Ilaria's necklace?"
"That's enough, Helen," Arcanius warned with an edge to his tone Mary had not heard before. "Go show Abraxas to a guest-rooms, will you? He needs rest."
"You don't look like your dad at all!" Héloïse now examined Abraxas, who stood at the same height as her. "Except your hair."
"We've met before, Héloïse," pointed out Abraxas, a little incredulous.
"When? I don't remember."
"When we visited Malfoy manor in 1936," came Arcanius' impatient voice. "Go on, now."
"Hm!" the little girl huffed. "You've still not told me why you're home!"
"The alarm bells at Hogwarts sounded. We were to go through the portals, but unforeseen circumstances obliged us to take the portkey instead, so here we are. That's the long and short of it," said Arcanius. "Now go!"
"C'mon then Malfoy. Don't mind my brother—he's a twit."
The girl, as though pulling a rope, dragged Abraxas by the hand to disappear into the hallway.
"Master Arcanius," the bespectacled elf reverently addressed. "Shall Fabian inform Master Hector of your return?"
"No, leave father alone … he's busy," Arcanius told the elf apparently named Fabian. "But check on Malfoy; he's a rather sickly boy, and the day's surely taken a toll on him. Restore him with whatever potions we have in stock. Then, send an owl to secretary Wilhelmina's, saying that Mary Riddle, Abraxas Malfoy, and myself are safe at the Fawley estate—she'll relay this to the Hogwarts staff."
"Yes, Master Arcanius," the elf gave a deep bow, and disappeared with a crack.
Mary turned to the elder boy, and furtively brushed her hand against his. Seeing that he was unbothered by this overture, she daringly snatched his hand entirely, and raised it to her face to apply it against her cheek. This, too, he accepted—with pleasure even—for he applied pressure on his fingers to imprint on the softness of her face. She gave a gentle laugh, trembling again, imagining how it would feel, if his fingers could imprint themselves on other parts of her body. His expression, though no longer anxious from the imagined cruelties of imagined Grindelwaldians, nor impatient at his gregarious little sister, was nonetheless still impenetrable to Mary—he was thinking about something.
"You saved us, Caney," Mary said softly. "I hope you're not cross with me."
"No, Mary, of course not. Why would I be?" he asked in an absent tone.
"I pulled you into this mess," she said ruefully. "I could've taken care of Abraxas—if only I weren't so frightened."
This brought Arcanius out of his thoughts. "No, you did correctly. I'm a Prefect after all."
The desire that had lingered in Mary's stomach for the past hour mutated into something else. On the one hand, Arcanius' assurance that he bore her no resentment made her very glad—it made the day, the hour, the very minute, in which she currently floated through—perfect. On the other hand, she suddenly wanted to deride him; to laugh at himself for taking himself so seriously. It was she who was in charge; not him. And who cares about Prefects? She wanted, almost, to attack him—Tom had taught her a few nasty curses. Yet when her senses turned to the firmness of the long, handsome fingers of his hand that held her cheek, nothing but adoration, devotion, and tenderness for Arcanius, as though he were God, overcame every nerve of Mary's body.
"It's not your fault at all," he continued, his voice now much more present, and indulgent. "One can hardly expect Hogwarts students to go about their days, worrying at all times that Grindelwald might attack them …"
"What do you think was their goal? Could they have been after you?" she asked.
"Me?" Arcanius gave a hearty laugh, and removed his hand from Mary's face. "No, though I see where you're coming from. They were probably after Dominic."
"Dominic?"
"Dominic Spencer-Moon," the older boy clarified. "My successor, as son-of-Minister-for-Magic. He's a nice fellow, a Gryffindor in the year below me. But nevermind all that, we're safe now. Let me show you my house."
Hand-in-hand, Mary was slowly led by her beloved Prefect through his home. He had another elf bring her a tall mug of guava juice, from which she sipped intermittently as he gave his halfhearted tour. The house itself, albeit three centuries old, was only acquired by the Fawleys seventy years ago, whereby Hermes Fawley, Arcanius' great-grandfather, renovated what was a "gloomy gothic abbey" into the small palace that Mary admired with his great-grandson today. Mary was then shown Arcanius and Héloïse's bedrooms, both of which left her with an eclectic sense of desire, jealousy, and indignation. It was wrong, that when she had been Héloïse's age, she had known nothing but squalor. Yet she knew if she got the opportunity to lie on either of their huge beds, huddled together with Arcanius, as Ilaria might have huddled with him, she would be cleansed of all her ingratitude at once.
Then, the 'gardens'. The gardens of the Fawley estate were larger, it seemed to Mary, than even the largest public park in London, and undoubtedly more botanically diverse, too. Though there were several little outhouses of garden-elves who devoted all their time to caring for the garden, Mary still could not comprehend how it was all maintained so neatly and so beautifully.
"My mother loves horticulture," Arcanius told her. "The elves do most of the work, but mother and her many friends—whom she's taken to calling the 'Order of Antheia'—attend to it every Friday to issue orders on what's to be added, removed, or rearranged. They're not a real magical Order; one has to get those registered by both the International Confederation of Wizards and our own Wizengamot."
The pair of them then arrived before a most elaborate oeuvre of magi-horticulture; a bower, the size of a large veranda, made entirely of intertwining magical ivies that drooped with purple flowers whose petals glowed and moved in the shade, like seaweed. Suddenly, eerily and delightfully, Mary heard soft singing—a little like the church choirs of London, except that the lyrics were utterly incomprehensible, neither in English nor Latin, though it was clear that they celebrated the world and all its revelries, rather than condemn it for killing Jesus Christ.
Mary had never heard sweeter music.
"Saffron sirens, or singing saffron, depending on who you ask," explained Arcanius, observing Mary's smile. "Strictly speaking, they're not allowed in Britain."
"It's—it's the flowers making the music?" Mary asked incredulously.
Arcanius nodded.
"Well, they're lovely." Mary sat on a smoothed log, conceivably made to serve as a bench, in the bower's shade. She patted the spot next to her for Arcanius to sit down. "Why're they not allowed in Britain?"
"You'll notice that it's not really making music," he explained as he sat down. "It makes you think that you hear music."
What Arcanius said was right and for a moment, Mary felt nauseated. She received the music not through her ears; it was produced within her mind, in the same way that she might imagine eating an apple, rather than actually eat an apple—except that the flavour and savour was actually there, as imaginatively tangible as if produced by whichever part of the brain or soul generated the phantom sensations that made up what one called 'dream' or 'nightmare'.
"We must hear different things, then," said Mary. "
"Very astute, Miss Riddle, ten points to Slytherin." Arcanius laughed. "For me, it's the harp. It's soft yet elaborate, but without a single note too heavy or too light. What about you?"
"People singing," said Mary, not wanting to elaborate on the notion of a muggle church choir, nor on the tension between nature and Christ in the muggle religion. "It's quite lovely. I don't see why they should be forbidden."
"The ones we have are neutered—"
"Neutered?"
"Saffron sirens are naturally rhizomatous plants, meaning they're supposed to grow from a network of roots below the ground. The ones which we presently enjoy have no roots—in fact they wouldn't even be able to survive, were it not for the various replenishing potions that the elves feed them every day."
"How dangerous can they be, in the wild?" Mary asked coyly, inching towards him so that their hips touched.
"Morgana let a colony of them run wild on Avalon," said Arcanius, who appeared to welcome Mary leaning her entire body against him. "Many of the wizards and muggle knights who sought to slay her were entranced by the music of the flowers—they starved to death, happily, I suppose, and their rotting flesh fed the colony's roots. It was Merlin who finally destroyed the colony, with fiendfyre."
To her shame, the name Morgana immediately provoked in Mary's mind the silly facsimile portrait that one found on her chocolate frog card. Chocolate frog Morgana, with her impassive gray stare, long brown hair, and dark, elegant robe, looked an awful lot like Ilaria Greengrass. Mary suddenly felt insecure; both the collectable card and the sixth-year girls' Prefect were pretty—she wondered whether Arcanius felt any special affection for the Morgana card over, say, that of Bowman Wright, the bearded medieval metal charmer who invented the golden snitch.
Feeling her heart rapidly sinking, Mary had to do something, and so she blurted the question which she had been aching to unshackle itself from her heart for the past two hours. "How's Ilaria?"
"What?" Arcanius asked in a low, somewhat accusatory tone. "What do you mean?"
"Are you happy together?" Mary pressed. "When you're together neither of you smile very much. I suppose Aria hardly smiles anyway—don't you find her very dour? But you smile a lot, Caney. You've smiled more at me today than you have at Aria in the past week, haven't you?"
Arcanius gave an uncertain laugh. "What are you trying to ask me, Mary?"
"Are you happy?"
He paused for a moment, his deep blue eyes resting intensely on her own, before he answered with artificial resolution, "I suppose I am."
"Love is not without its difficulties," he continued. "This year's been very rough on Ilaria. Her family's endured a lot. But we're there for each other."
Mary leaned further into him, and turned her head so they were truly face-to-face. "Love doesn't have to be difficult."
"And since when have you been an expert of love?" asked Arcanius, with a sarcasm so gentle that it seemed to dissipate into sincerity.
Mary responded to his question with another of her own. "Don't you enjoy our time together?"
"Yes, very much," he confessed.
For a moment, silence reigned.
Then, Mary kissed him on the lips.
It was a small, bashful peck that went as soon as it came. But it was enough to awaken something in Mary which had, until that moment, only motivated her actions unconsciously; it removed the blindfold that hid her true gaze, a gaze more intent on devouring than on merely observing the world and its beings, and with it she saw the same primal hunger aflame in Arcanius' own eyes. Caney likes me back. Caney likes me back! Caney likes me back—
As though her first kiss was but a scourgify to clean the cauldron before using it, her second kiss, so arduous and forceful that she unconsciously tackled Arcanius to the ground, was every ingredient at once, for twenty servings of amortentia. Her breasts pressed against his hard chest. Their tongues collided clouds to form thunder, and each tried to outdo the other in both giving and taking love. His mouth tasted like toast and jam—it suddenly endeared her terribly that he liked sweet breakfasts—while his hands were coal pokers, hard and decisive as they trailed down her back to the underside of her thighs, to squeeze here and there, leaving blistering tingles everywhere they greedily snatched.
Then, he shoved her off him with all his force, jumped up, and straightened his robe.
"What the hell?! What've you done?! Get away, go—" Arcanius backed off, horrified, as though Mary had suddenly transformed into an ugly monster.
And indeed at this moment Mary wished she could transform into something, preferably a small and quick creature, to scurry away—the look on Arcanius' face terrified her, she imagined, as much as the bells earlier in the day must have terrified Abraxas. But the terror was not one of fear; it was one of disappointment so piercing that it threatened to void all the meaning of her life, for the rest of her life, were it not immediately dispelled.
Yet she managed to suppress the storm in her heart, and asked in a musical voice, "Caney, don't you love me?"
"No, of course not!" he exclaimed at once, but then, upon seeing the immediate impact of his words upon her face, at once mellowed his voice. "Oh, Mary! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound so cruel—"
"But I love you!" she yelled, with no pretension this time, tears streaming down her face. She swiped her hand at the bower and tore from it a handful of the musical flowers, whose song in her mind remained pleasant, and was thus absurdly incongruent with her emotions.
"I'm sorry," he repeated.
Arcanius, whose aspect was now so caring and so concerned, like the father Mary never had, returned to her, squatted down by her, and held her in a hug with what was surely consolation, but what she felt as cold formality.
"You don't love me," he said, as though pointing out an obvious fact to a child. "You're obsessed with me. It's not the same thing. If you loved me, you wouldn't have kissed me."
"But you kissed me back!" Mary exclaimed, sniffling. "You kissed me back!"
"I did," he confessed, his voice charged with a shame that Mary despised. "I find you very lovely, Mary Riddle, very lovely—but there's already a girl who I love. One mustn't act on their every desire."
"You want me," said Mary, "but you're afraid to have me. Where's your gall? A Slytherin takes what he wants."
"A Slytherin has ambition," Arcanius retorted, permitting her to lean her head on his shoulder. "Part of that is to restrain your appetite. You can't have everything you want. The ideals of pureblood culture are worth living for; there is nothing greater than to aspire for them."
Mary ignored his platitude, and wiped the last tears from her eyes. "Tell me I'm beautiful again, Arcanius."
"You are beautiful, Mary Riddle."
"Do you mean it?" she asked severely.
"With all my heart," he said, his deep blue eyes focusing on her with sad reverence again.
She could not help herself. She grabbed his head with both her hands as though wrestling a cauldron from the grasp of a troll, and kissed him on the lips a third time, now with more wrath than abandon.
Then, she ran. She ran as quickly as she could through the garden, as though fleeing a shopkeeper whose prize wares she had just smashed. Arcanius would not be able to catch up with her; she grew up a creeping, crawling guttersnipe in London, and he, a wingless cherub in Eden. But the garden now disgusted her. It contained all the trees in the world, but had no particular character—no life. The multitude of colours was as garish as paint mixed with vomit. What had been the perfume of a thousand flowers now struck her as venomous; she longed, out of everything, for the scent of Abney Park cemetery in London—wet bark, moist soil, and the smoke of the fires she and Tom lit at night. In Abney Park wild cats crawled, rats and shrews scurried, skylarks sang, and pigeons cooed. At the Fawley estate, there was nothing but castrated flowers and humiliation.
Mary felt an odd sense of relief once she barged back into the mansion; the scent of the flowers had become unbearable. But the relief came as soon as it went; it was replaced by an overwhelming numbness. She felt defeated, dejected, unworthy, unhappy. Without knowing why, she ran up the stairs and broke into Arcanius' bedroom. For a moment, she wanted to draw her wand and destroy everything, but she suddenly realised, in a moment of clairvoyance, that her situation was anything but hopeless.
She was better off than Ilaria. She was superior to Ilaria. Given the frigid comportment of the couple, and that Arcanius' answer to Are you happy together? was dry and explanatory, like the opening of a potions essay, rather than impassioned and indignant, made Mary realise with certainty that their relationship was in a terminal stage of deterioration. Yet it was also true that there were marriages, Mary learned from the older Slytherin girls, that were nothing but one long deterioration of love that culminated in death. But it meant the seduction was not over. She had plied Arcanius' lips and heart open so easily, if only for thirty seconds. She excited him, then infuriated him—when had Ilaria done either?
As she contemplated this, she noticed that she still heard the choir in her head singing soft praises of life and love, and thought for a moment that perhaps the utter love and despondence she had endured one to the next in the span of a minute had empowered the song of the singing saffrons to permanently blotch her mind—before she realised that she had, in her fist, a dozen of the flowers which she had torn off the bower in a fit of anger. They still moved. She put them in her pocket.
She unwrapped the glassy white scarf from her neck and put it on Arcanius' bed. She drew her wand, pointed it at the scarf, and whispered "geminio." The duplicate scarf, which looked slightly less transparent (though no boy would be able to tell, Mary thought), and which would probably disappear sometime within a week, she wrapped back around her neck. Her real scarf, she took, pressed to her mouth to give it a long, sultry lick, before planting it under Arcanius' pillow.
Let him miss me, she thought. She had already gotten a kiss from him, and that her first kiss came from him—he, the former Minister's son and fifth-year Slytherin boys' Prefect—meant she could get a kiss from anyone, perhaps even the new Minister's son.