Erebus came down for breakfast in the common room. He wondered for the first time why they didn't all eat in a Great Hall like at Hogwarts. In many ways, the quieter environment was more congenial for him. He helped himself to some lingonberry jam on toast, laid out on a sumptuous side table. He took his plate and sat on one of the long couches by the enchanted flame of the fireplace. As he was sitting, Zornitsa appeared beside him.
"You're not dead!" they both said to each other at the same time.
After they both spoke over each other for a moment, Erebus went first. "I managed to fob Professor Kjerring off with some Nargles. I wish I thought of it before trudging around the forest half the night. What happened to you?"
Zornitsa spoke quickly and quietly, "It was the strangest thing. She just spent an hour teaching me a new spell. I don't know if it's normal for teachers to do that here. Just give you lessons in the middle of the night." Erebus reflected that Zornitsa was the only person he knew at Durmstrang who was about as new as he was to it all.
"What was the spell?" Erebus asked.
"Just a Gripping Charm, I don't know why she thought I needed to know it," Zornitsa said.
Erebus vaguely recalled such a spell being used in Quidditch matches to help the Chasers keep hold of the Quaffles one handed. As he hadn't excelled at the sport, and it wasn't on the Charms syllabus, the charm wasn't something he had ever had cause to learn.
"Do you cast it on yourself or on things?" he asked. By this point he had finished his breakfast and was just picking at the crumbs.
"Can you imagine having always sticky hands?" she asked. "No you cast it on objects. She got me to try it on a ball."
There was something much more important he wanted to ask of her. The secrets they were going to divulge to one another in the basement the other night. The thing they had in common. But he didn't want to broach such a thing in the common room in front of everyone else. So they chatted about inconsequential things until it was time for classes.
Ditte Blodmane met them in the corridors on the way to the first class of the day. She had just returned from a morning run around the grounds.
"Ugh, Aladár jumped out at me near the lake and made a challenge," said Ditte when she caught up with the pair. "I beat him in a duel this time last year and he's been itching for a rematch. Maybe I should try one of your transmogrifying tricks, Erebus!"
"He'd look good as a hamster," Zornitsa joked. "Or a teapot!"
Aladár stepped around the corner with swishing robes. "You would be more foolish than I took you for Miss Blodmane if you think I will fall for that trick twice!"
He was carrying an elongated horn, which Erebus guessed had been enchanted to listen for people speaking about behind Aladár's back. Erebus had tried doing a similar enchantment a number of times back at Hogwarts but was always disappointed that nobody was ever talking about him. At least until the incident in the hall, after which he actively tried to avoid gossip about himself.
The four of them arrived along with a few other Tin students at the Legilimency classroom. From the opposite direction they were joined by a handful of Mercury students. They had four bands on their sleeves and kept to themselves, sometimes peering over at Ditte and talking quietly to each other. Erebus also noticed that one of the three boys who had challenged him was in this class too, the tall lanky one.
Erebus looked at the boy carefully for the first time. The boy was about 14, a little younger than himself. He was wearing the same red robed school uniform as everyone else, but his had some custom fur trimmings and ornate needlework on the sleeves.
As they filed into the classroom, Erebus worked up the courage to admit to the boy that he'd forgotten his name if he ever knew it to begin with. He supposed he must have been told it when he met everyone on the first night here, but there were so many people most of the names didn't stick.
"I know yours, Mr Fire Stone," said the boy. Erebus wondered if his translation enchantment was misfiring, before realising that his surname Flint was literally Feuerstein, or Firestone in German. "I am Tobias Meyer. You may call me Lord Meyer."
Ditte rolled her eyes. "Erebus, don't use people's titles here, it shows servility."
By this point they had all made their way as a group to stand just inside the entrance of the Legilimency classroom. It was circular room in the middle of the Mercury Tower. In the centre, Professor Zmeysyn paced about a high podium overlooking the whole room. Professor Zmeysyn was a heavy set man with a great forked beard which was black flecked with white streaks. His face was pocked with battle scars and he wore a jerkin that left his muscular arms bare. Ornate snake tattoos seemed to slowly sliver across the skin of his bared arms.
"Today is the day you begin upon each other!" the Professor bellowed with a distinct Russian accent. "You will put these last weeks of occlumency practise to use. I know you are all secretly itching to use practise time to gain an edge in your Challenges. This is all very well. Let it be an incentive to keep your thoughts closed and your inquiries sharp. Pair up!"
Arranged around the room were pairs of hard wooden chairs facing each other. Each pair of chairs was set in a circle enchanted to keep sound inside. Immediately, Tobias, Ditte and Zornitsa turned to Erebus to ask him to be their partner. Erebus didn't know whether to feel flattered or threatened.
"You, English boy, come here!" the teacher barked from his podium. Erebus left the others and walked up the small steps to the centre of the room. Up close, he felt a little intimidated by the commanding presence of Professor Zmeysyn. The teacher continued, "I am to believe you have not studied the path of the Legilimens before, correct?"
"That's right, sir," said Erebus.
"Every man has secrets," said Professor Zmeysyn, "but as you will be gone from here by the year's end, I see no reason not to drop you in the deep end. The best way to learn Occlumency is in the struggle."
Erebus looked over to where Tobias, Ditte and Zornitsa were waiting for him. Professor Zmeysyn wearied of them loitering still while everyone else had found a partner and moved to a chair. "Skinny boy, you pair with small girl. Blondie, you pair with English boy. Now go!"
Tobias and Zornitsa reluctantly moved to a free pair of chairs together, leaving Ditte to pair with Erebus. The two of them sat on the hard wooden chairs. All around the students were talking to one another, but the sound of their conversations didn't move beyond their individual circles.
"You're lucky," said Ditte. "I'm sure Tobias would have read you like an open scroll."
"Uh thanks," said Erebus. Then something occurred to him. "You were in a higher division before, right? You must have done this class before. I'm surprised the professor doesn't remember your name."
Ditte sat up straight in her chair. "Oh this is the first year I've done this class. I wasted time on Ghoul Studies the first time I was in Tin."
"And we begin!" Professor Zmeysyn bellowed. He wielded a long mottled-brown wand. Erebus had never seen a wand of that wood before. "Copy me. Legilimens!"
"You go first," said Ditte. "I've had weeks to prepare my mind."
"Legilimens!" Erebus said, while trying to copy the professor's wand motions. He touched the tip of his pine wand to Ditte's forehead and focused his mind. He felt a slight feeling of mental resistance, like the start of a headache. But nothing happened.
"The first application of Legilimency is to read surface thoughts," Professor Zmeysyn said to the room. "But in time you will learn to dive deeper."
Erebus tried again. Twice more he said the command and made the motions, focusing on Ditte. He looked at her clear pale skin and remembered that it was an illusion. That she had in truth a large livid burn mark across her cheek that she covered up. On the third attempt, he dived into Ditte's mind.
My mind is clear. My mind is clear.
She was meditating, banishing idle thoughts with a repeated phrase. Although her thoughts were in Danish, as he became aware of them he knew their sense even as he struggled to recognise their form. He caught a glimpse of a stray image, a flash of fire, and he focused on it. Before he knew it, he had lost himself in a memory.
There was the battle-marked walls of the Uncallow Hall. An older teenager, with a cold imperious sneer was standing before Ditte. The pair of them had their wands raised. Their robes were torn and there were grazes up Ditte's arms. The duel had been going for some time. The stands were packed but neither of the pair noticed the audience, there was a shared moment of focus between them.
All around them were littered huge slabs from the floor, enchanted to raise up crush one another, but now lying as stone shards.
Kaz flicked an unspoken curse towards her in a vibrant yellow but it dissipated as it hit her shield charms.
"Is that all you have, Kaz?" Ditte rasped.
"You've come far enough, Half-Blood!" Kaz cried. "Time to go back down where you belong!"
The boy summoned out of his wand a great rope of fire that he lashed as Ditte. She dove behind one of the slabs. The whip of fire flicked around and lashed her face. The intense pain, shared, brought Erebus suddenly out of the memory.
He was back, sitting on a hard chair across from Ditte in the enchanted circle. Beyond them there were other students practising and the Professor was calling out pointers, but Erebus didn't hear any of it. He was still recovering from the memory of pain.
Ditte is thoroughly dejected. "I can't even keep you out of my head! What hope is there!"
"Sorry, I didn't think I'd get through like that," said Erebus.
"Oh you didn't think!" said Ditte, her voice rising. "Let's see how little you think!"
She stood up and brandished her brilliant red wand directly at Erebus's temple. He flinched as she made the incantation.
"Legilimens!"
Erebus felt a presence in his mind. It was an unsettling invasion. He tried to focus. He started to think about the things he mustn't let her see. The incident in Hogwarts hall! No, no not that. He felt a pull from within. Random memories flashed in his mind before he suppressed the. Mucking out a troll stable. Listening at a wall with a glass to the Muggle's television in the bedroom at his mother's house. His father's trophies on a dusty mantlepiece among the firewhiskey bottles. The erkling in the cage cursing him.
So you went to the Lead basement after all...
He tried not to think about what he almost talked to Zornistsa about or Urg the goblin painting. But it was getting harder to clear the thoughts. At least he hadn't heard Zornitsa's secret, so he couldn't give it away. That was one less worry.
You made a pact with Zornitsa?
The touching of bloody palms, the spiralling red droplets that turned into a vial that Zornitsa took. A promise made. Erebus thrashed backwards, his chair falling back. He hit the ground hard.
Ditte stood above him. "Not even here a week and already making blood pacts," she said sourly. "I thought you were someone I might be able to trust in this place but you're just like the rest."
With that she walked out of the classroom, leaving Erebus to pick himself off the floor and sit awkwardly through the rest of the class alone.