A/N: Apologies for the delay - I've found it difficult to rustle up the motivation for this lately, as a lot of other things have cropped up. Hopefully now we will be back on track. Merry Christmas to all, and a Happy New Year.
'So, let me get this straight – you just dove on in there?'
'Well, sort of, yea.'
'Into a woman's fireplace.'
'Well, not all the way in.'
'To save a cat.'
'A Kneazle, actually.'
'Oh, sure,' Fred said, throwing his hands in the air. 'That makes it all totally less insane, why didn't you say that sooner?'
James gave Fred a shove. It was mostly friendly, but a small part of him did hope it would be enough to accidentally send him tumbling back down the staircase that they were currently climbing. No such luck, and instead Fred joined in with Cat, Cassie and Clip in showering James with an array of looks ranging all the way from disbelieving, to impressed, to incredulous and back again.
'Did you at least water her hydrangeas?' Cat asked, with a serious expression. Thankfully, her eyebrows had grown back. Although, they were now an odd shade of purple.
'There were no hydrangeas!' James said with exasperation.
'This woman sounds a touch batty,' Cassie added. 'Are you sure you can believe anything she says?'
'I told you, what she described sounded just like what happened to the Sorting Hat. And what is happening at the Ministry could be happening right here at the castle, too! If Rain was here, she'd back me up. By the way, where is Rain?'
'Hello!'
'Argh-! Merlin, Rain, I told you not to do that!'
'I was practising sneaking,' she explained brightly, falling into step at James' elbow, where she had seemed to appear from thin air. 'I got lost again on my way up here. I swear the castle changes when I'm not looking.'
'Yea,' James mumbled. 'It does. One day, I'll draw you a map.'
'Er… will that be on the map?'
All five of them had stopped outside the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom to which they had been travelling. Rain's outstretched arm was pointing directly at the entranceway to the classroom.
Or, where the entranceway had been, the last time James had checked. Where it had been for the entire four-and-a-bit years that he had attended Hogwarts.
Now, all that remained was a stretch of bricks in the wall looking markedly fresher than those surrounding. A door-shaped spot conspicuously without adornment, looking so fresh that it could have been erected earlier that day. As far as James knew, it probably had.
'Uh-oh,' Fred mumbled. 'You jinxed it, Rain. Get ready for another trip on James' crazy train.'
'Ooh, I love trains. Where are we going?'
'Do you think it's a puzzle?' Clip asked, taking a tentative step towards the blank stretch of wall. A few of their classmates who had arrived earlier, and were milling about in confusion, parted to let him past. None seemed eager to approach. 'Double Defence with Ravenclaw is usually a practical class. Perhaps it's a trick. We were practising Blasting Hexes just last week.'
James shrugged, drew his wand and levelled it at the fresh spot of wall. 'Stand back,' he suggested. Clip didn't need telling twice, and hurried back out of harm's way.
'Bombarda Max-'
'Expelliarmus!'
Something with the force of a rampaging troll punched James in the small of his back. The blow sent him flying forwards, sprawling across the floor. His want leapt traitorously from his scrabbling fingers and flew back over his head and up the corridor behind him.
Slow to push himself pack up to his feet, James had one hand wrapped around his aching midriff. 'What kind of a cowardly, spineless, goblin-kissing, troll-faced, son of a – oh hello Professor Meadows. That was you?'
'Sorry Potter,' she growled. She was out of breath, and had clearly been running – at least insofar as her wooden leg would let her run. 'But I couldn't let you cast a spell on that door. I'm not much of an architect, but I think the castle works better with this fifth-floor corridor still intact, don't you?'
James looked around, wide-eyed. 'Er, yea. I guess. What would–'
'Enough questions. Class is down on the second floor today. The old Charms classroom that nobody uses anymore.'
'Not the one with the singing chairs,' someone groaned from the back of the group.
'The very one,' ceded Professor Meadows. 'But they're all quiet at the moment. I think they might be… sleeping? Whatever it is, when you lot get to the classroom, keep a lid on it. Potter, because I'm absolutely positive you won't be able to keep that yappy, chatty mouth of yours shut, you'll spend the lesson standing at the back of the room.'
'But Professor–'
'Zip it. Consider it your punishment for nearly destroying half of the castle and killing a dozen of your classmates.'
'Oh. Right. Well, I guess that's fair.'
The professor handed James' wand back to him, grip first. 'And you can help me down to the second floor as well, Potter. I've been up and down like a whore's drawers all morning. Which is not much fun when you've only got one leg.'
'I can only imagine.'
'Keep being a nuisance in my class and you won't have to. I'll give you some first-hand experience.'
A few of his classmates chuckled. Fred shot James an apologetic look as the rest of the group turned away to head on to the lesson, leaving James behind, feeling rather sorry for himself, with a scowling Professor Meadows at his side.
'Good,' the professor said, when the last of the students had disappeared around the corner. 'I really just wanted to get you alone, Potter.'
Sensing the prickly mood dissipating, James smirked.
'Professor, that's most inappropriate.'
He earned a swift cuff around the ears for his trouble.
'Idiot. You know, I'd be only too happy to carry out that threat and remove one of those gangly legs of yours, and jam it so far up your backside your breath would smell like feet.'
'No fair. I talked to Teddy for you, I thought we were good.'
Professor Meadows sighed. 'We are, Potter. I'm just having fun. You young kids are so sensitive these days.'
Shrugging off the dig, James waggled his eyebrows suggestively. 'So then. How is Teddy doing?'
The elbow to the ribs he received by way of answer left him coughing and gasping for breath. 'I don't– don't know what he sees in you.'
'How's Odette?' Professor Meadows countered with a knowing smile.
'Is it my turn to elbow you now?'
'Try it, Potter. I dare you.'
Just this once, James chose the better part of valour, and instead proffered his arm to help Professor Meadows as they arrived at the top of the staircase.
'You know,' she said, accepting James' help. 'Holly Brooks takes a five-a.m. swim every morning in the shallows of the Black Lake. If... you know… somebody wanted to bump into her for a private conversation…'
'Please, do not tell me that this is what you wanted to talk about.'
James recalled only too well, just how Professor Meadows' "helping" had gone last time around, when she'd tried none-too-subtly to get he and Holly to make nice.
'You're right, it's not. Listen, Potter. I need you to tell me exactly what happened last weekend in Hogsmeade. As much as you can remember, don't leave out any detail.'
And so James did, relieved that he had found somebody who believed him at last. They made their slow, measured way down the staircase, with Professor Meadows leaning heavily on James and holding him close, ostensibly for support, but more than likely it was so she could ask short, sharp questions in a hushed whisper without any danger of being overheard.
The story lasted an entire flight of stairs. On the next landing, the professor doubled over, pretending to massage what remained of her left thigh. The motion pulled James in so that their cheeks touched. In the close proximity, James noted a dangerous glimmer in Professor Meadows' eye.
'And what do you make of it all, then? About this "Unmaking"?'
'It scares me,' James replied, honestly. 'I feel like nobody is taking it seriously.'
'Us Hufflepuffs know, Potter, that sometimes, being afraid is the best response. I think this is one of those times.'
'What do we do?'
But instead of answering, Professor Meadows pulled back a little, and spoke in a much louder voice. 'Potter, my ankle has popped out. Could you shove it back in for me?'
James looked on in confusion, as Professor Meadows hiked up one side of her robe, revealing the delicately carvings on her wooden leg.
'It looks fine to–'
Professor Meadows shoved his head down, and then bent over to join him.
'Honestly, boy, you're more dense than a Thickening Solution, and twice as slow. You should thank Merlin you weren't in Slytherin.'
Up close, Professor Meadows voice barely broke above a whisper. She grabbed James by the hand and made as if showing him how to mend the delicate joint where the foot of her wooden leg met the calf.
'I've still got a few old contacts at the Ministry, Potter,' she hissed in a hurried voice. 'Ex-Aurors who refused induction into the cult that became the Steelhearts. They were none-too-happy when they shut down the Auror division, and were forced to take up other jobs. But they've a knack for listening in where they're not wanted, and finding out things they oughtn't to know. They say that the Ministry is succumbing to just what you described to me. They validated the crazy old witch's stories. Almost to the letter. Something is happening in the Ministry, James. Something they are trying desperately to cover up.'
James' eyes bulged. 'Then we need to tell Renshaw! It's happening here, too!'
He'd almost leapt to his feet in excitement at Professor Meadows' words. She grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him back down, covering the action by slapping his hands back onto a series of grooves in the wood of her ankle.
'She already knows James. Why do you think I'm trying so hard to keep this conversation quiet?'
'You don't trust her?' the revelation was like a body blow, punching the wind from James' lungs.
'I don't know, yet. What I do know, is that she's actively discouraging us from asking about it. Even me, the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. This should me my jurisdiction. And she's asking a lot of questions, Potter. About you, and about Miss Rain.'
James swallowed. He had to fight the urge to straighten and look up and down the staircase for prying eyes. He let Professor Meadows guide his hands into a small groove in the polished wood, where he pretended to press the socket back into place.
'What do we do?' he asked, as Professor Meadows grabbed him by the arm and brought him back to his feet.
'I'm not sure how it happened,' she said loudly. Were some of the portraits appearing to listen in more keenly than usual? 'But I should definitely be more careful. And make sure I don't go where I'm not supposed to.'
James played along, nodding and returning their conversation to idle chatter as they descended the last staircase together, but the chill sweat that was beading on the nape of his neck was an uncomfortable companion all the way down.
'Say, Professor,' he said as they arrived at the classroom. 'Those carvings on your wooden leg, did you do them yourself?'
'Sure did,' she replied. 'Spent weeks cooped up in my room after the accident, moping about how miserable my new life would be. Had nothing better to do, so I carved them in.'
James opened the door and gestured the professor through.
'They're exquisite. I especially like the birds–'
'Zip it, Potter. I'm not letting you off your punishment. To the back of the class with you, and keep that brown nose facing the wall for the duration of the lesson.'
James sighed. It had been worth a shot. And despite her stern tone, there was the shadow of a smile of Professor Meadows features, as James traipsed slowly to the back of the room, allowing his mind to wander, and get lost among disappearing corridors and sealed, secret rooms.
His musings followed him all the way into his dreams that night, where they hounded him in the form of visions of locked doors, and dead-end corridors contorting into twisted mazes. The faces of his friends swam through the dreamscape, coalescing only fleetingly until Cassie's face became real, her voice panicked as she urged him, shook him bodily…
'-wake up! James, please wake up!'
'What- how- Cassie?' James scrambled into an upright position, scrubbing sleep from his eyes and blinking stupidly at the glaring wandlight Cassie had lowered in his face. 'What are you doing here?'
Cassie's face was distraught, her features twisted in a mask of worry, her eyes red and her usually immaculate hair a bird's nest tousled around her face. 'It's Rain, James. She's missing.'
'No. She can't be.'
'I'm telling you, she is!'
'Are you sure she hasn't just… gone to the bathroom, or something?'
'She's been gone forty minutes.'
'Well, we did have curry for dinner…'
Cassie clipped him around the ear.
'Fine, I'm up. I'm coming. Just let me get dressed first?'
'We don't have time, James, just wear your pyjamas, let's go.'
'Er, I don't really wear pyjamas, Cassie.'
'Wha- ew! Gross, James.' Cassie leapt back from the bed as if it were a thing Cursed. She hastily stalked from the door without looking back, leaving James to stumble his way into a shirt and shorts and stagger from the room, still shaking off sleep's last clutches as he arrived in the deserted common room.
'What time is it?' he said, stifling a yawn.
'Just after four. Hurry, James.'
James sheepishly withdrew his hand from a jar of Every Flavour Beans left out on a table and scurried after Cassie.
'So, where do we start?' James asked, as they arrived out on the landing together.
'I don't know! Cassie wailed. 'She's been gone so long; she could be anywhere!'
James leaned out over the balustrade before him, looking down betwixt and between the maze-like array of staircases slowly shifting and grinding below them. A handful of corridors became dozens, and then scores. And each one with its own little series of side-passages and doorways. It was hard not to feel daunted by the task. The castle had seemed so… finite ever since James had learned it's layout. But in the face of the task before them, it appeared to be endless.
'Well lets… lets approach it logically,' James suggested. This perked Cassie up somewhat.
'Logically is the most effective method way, after all.'
'We can start in the Ravenclaw tower, and go from there. We can work out a system.'
'Oh, I do like systems.'
'That's my girl. Let's start outside your common room. We can work down the tower from there, and then floor by floor.'
Cassie nodded, and fell in step behind James as he strode purposefully towards the Ravenclaw common room.
'What if a staircase has moved, and she's fallen off a landing, James? What if she slips through a missing stair?'
'She'll be fine, Cassie.'
'Oh, James I knew I should have kept a closer eye on her. I knew something was up. She's been screaming in her sleep all week. Having the worst night-terrors. "She can't find me," she keeps saying. "Don't let her find me." What if they found her, James?'
'She'll be fine,' James repeated. But this time, even he could hear the uncertainty in his voice. Images flashed through his mind: a broken body, laying upon the floor among shattered glass and twisted metal. The skin writhing as if alive. Waves of power radiating off of her.
Impossible! The witch died. She'd given up her life protecting Rain, in the end – ironic though that was. James still couldn't find it in his heart to offer much sympathy.
The twisting passage of the Ravenclaw tower offered up no answers to their search. They checked every side-passage and broom closet, behind every portrait and in every hidden niche known to the pair of them. As the search wore on, James' heart began to beat faster. He held his breath as he threw open each door, dreading to see a pool of red-gold hair splayed upon the floor. Or another broken, twisted body–
'James, over here!'
James sprinted up the corridor a short way to where Cassie was crouched with her head in what James knew to be a false fireplace. She slowly stood upright, and glinting moonlight winked off a shiny, metallic object held suspended in one hand. Rain's locket.
'Bloody hell,' James breathed. An icy grip of fear wrapped its fingers around his heart as he studied the locket. The clasp was broken, apparently torn free as Rain had entered the hidden slide behind the false back of the fireplace. A slide which led all the way down to the ground floor.
'Do we follow?' Cassie asked, her voice a breathless whisper.
'Of course.'
'I'm scared, James.'
James thought back to Professor Meadows' words. Sometimes being afraid was wise. He took Cassie's hand in his and led the way down the tight, compressed spirals of the slide. The wind that rushed by his ears hammered akin to the racing heartbeat in his chest.
The passage spat them out into a crawl space above an empty classroom. The trapdoor ahead of them that led down into the room proper was open. A silvery rope ladder spilling forth spoke to its recent use.
The pair scurried down it. Cassie clutched tightly to James' left arm. He drew his wand with the other, holding it forth before them both. The classroom they'd entered was poorly lit through a row of grimy windows. Moonlight was blocked out by a tangle of thorny bushes crowding the glass. They hurried through the sentinel rows of empty desks. Cassie squealed as her hip brushed past one and the scrape of its legs upon stone ground through the stillness of the night. Up ahead, the door was ajar, and a faint tapping sound could be heard coming through it, and a puddle of warm, buttery lamp-light was spilling into the room.
They advanced together slowly. As they approached, a soft, rhythmic tune could be heard beneath the tapping. Words. A chant of some kind, perhaps. The voice was soft and feminine and familiar. Neither James nor Cassie needed to speak to communicate that they'd found Rain. James felt Cassie tense. Her grip on his arm tightened, and she drew her own wand. Her breathing reached a fever pitch at his shoulder as they stepped through the door together.
They were in another, adjoining classroom. Smaller, and neater. Obviously regularly used. A few scraps of parchment littered the floor, and a pile of scrolls were balanced precariously on the teachers' desk.
The light, however, did not come from lamps, as James had surmised, but instead from over a hundred little glass spheres, roughly the size of his fist, that Rain was in the process of arranging throughout the room in a series of spiralling vortices, centred on a small, cleared area in which she stood.
This close, they could make out the words that she intoned, over and over without surcease: 'Rivers flow into the sea; hearts pump blood we cannot see; magic veins linked at the core; see this spell opens the door.'
'Rain!' Cassie cried, but she received no response.
Rain's eyes were open, though they were wide and unfocused, trancelike in their vacant staring state. She stood amidst a whirlpool of tiny glass spheres, spinning and whirling lazily around her, while every few seconds, she'd raise her arm and one would break off from the group, affixing itself to the wall, or floor, or ceiling, adding to the vortex pattern of warm, winking like that was unfolding all across the room.
'It's kind of… beautiful,' Cassie breathed, taking it all in.
Although James was inclined to agree, he also had a bad feeling about letting Rain finish whatever ritual she was invoking.
He made his way forward, taking great care to not touch any of the spheres. When he neared Rain, he had to duck and weave his way through the orbs that surrounded her, using every one of his Quidditch reflexes to avoid behind hit. Cassie gasped as he made it through, and dove towards Rain.
The moment he touched her, a wave of soft tinkling sounds filled the room, as the levitating spheres crashed to the ground. Her body went limp at his touch, and he nearly buckled as her entire weight fell upon him. Cassie hurried in to help, and helped lay her gently on the floor, bundling up a stack of scrolls to use as a makeshift pillow.
Her eyes remained glazed and unseeing. James would have worried, were not her lips still moving with the ghost of that ominous rhyme. Cassie, thinking quickly, reached forward and gently fastened the locket around Rain's neck. The moment she gave a whispered 'Reparo,' to fix the clasp, Rain's body jerked, and her eyes snapped into focus.
'J-James? Cassandra? Wh-where am I? What's happening?'
'We were hoping you might be able to tell us that,' James replied, gesturing about the room as Rain slowly levered herself upright.
She took it all in, clutching tightly to Cassie's hand, and her face grew more uncertain and afraid the longer she looked.
'I don't know James. I don't like it.'
'Neither do I.'
'Did- did I do it?'
The plaintive tone in Rain's voice broke James' heart, but he nodded softly. Rain raised a hand to her lips, and Cassie increased her soothing efforts, gently stroking Rain's hair and whispering softly into her ear.
'I don't like it, James,' Rain repeated. 'We should leave.'
'Agreed. So, you don't remember anything, then?' Cassie helped Rain to her feet. The latter shook her head softly, her hair falling in a curtain across her face as she did so.
'The last thing I recall is going to bed. No- wait, there were dreams. Nightmares… I–'
'Cassie told me about them,' James said, holding up a hand to prevent Rain the agony of reliving them.
'I'm sorry James,' Rain whispered. 'Have I– is this wrong? Have I done evil?'
James smiled sadly. 'No, Rain. We know you're not evil.'
Her return smile was weak and watery.
'You two head on up to bed,' James continued. 'I'll meet you down at breakfast later. I've got one last errand to run.'
Cassie nodded, leading a flagging Rain up the staircase with ample use of the balustrade for support. Outside, the pale grey of false dawn was beginning to kiss the distant horizon. The soft receding of nights dark clutches, and the fading of all but the brightest of stars low in the eastern sky.
James found a spot hidden from view, after closing and locking the door to the classroom they'd just vacated. He didn't need to wait long to hear footsteps ascending from the dungeons below.
He hastily flicked through and discarded several opening lines. Fancy seeing you here, seemed too cliché. I thought cold-blooded creatures only got up with the sun, seemed a little confrontational. He wanted something snappy, something to give him the upper hand, something–
'Potter, stop squatting behind that statue. It looks as if you're using that niche for a toilet.'
So much for that.
'Holly Brooks, fancy seeing you here–'
Dammit.
'Quit the crap, Potter. I know Meadows told you I swim in the mornings. Though I'm surprised you were so desperate to see me that you couldn't even wait a couple days.'
He should have known that the pair of them were in on it together.
'How did you know Meadows told me, if you didn't suggest it to her in the first place?' James shot back, thrilled with himself for his quick thinking, confirmed by the flicker of astonishment that scampered across Holly's face, her eyes darting away to a shadowy corner of the Entrance Hall and failing to meet his own.
'If you just came here to argue, Potter…'
'I didn't.'
James stepped forward out of the shadows, placing himself in Holly's path. She mirrored his step into the light, and the pale, ashen glow of the pre-dawn allowed him to see her fully. Moonlight gave ivory skin a translucent shimmer. Long, dark hair tied back in a tail fell over her shoulder like a wreath of shadow. Pale grey eyes shone, almost colourless. The centrepiece of her monochromatic figure.
But more than that, James looked for signs of the Holly Brooks he knew. The wide-eyed innocence. The playful cunning smile. The cheeky grin, and the sudden, blushing shyness.
All were gone. Eroded away by the harshness of the path she had trod. Leaving a raw, exposed core of angles and hard edges. A guarded, calculating gaze. Hunched, defensive shoulders. Full lips drawn taught into a half-sneer.
He tried to block out the hard edges. Tried to push aside the rumours he had heard. The things she had done. What she had dragged her body through. It hurt even more because James had to live with the truth that he had been the one to set her on this path.
'Anyone home, Potter? if I wanted to be ogled, I'd walk through the common room wearing my towel.'
James shook his head. 'Sorry, I was just…'
'Yes?'
'Just thinking about an old friend.'
'Don't get sentimental on me, Potter. I assume you're stalking me because you wanted to talk about something?'
'I wanted to talk about Rain–'
'Good. She's why I had Professor Meadows tell you where to find me.'
'You what?'
'Follow me.'
Without another word, Holly spun and marched back across the Entrance Hall towards what James knew to be a rather roomy broom closet. Better that than the classroom James had just left. He followed along in her wake, and received a scoff and a roll of the eyes when he tried to shoot her a playful look as they stepped into the closet together.
'Lumos,' Holly muttered, and a pair of glowing globes beaded at the tip of her wand and pinched off to float above their heads. They provided the only light to the small, windowless space, and bathed everything in a warm golden glow. Holly chose an upturned bucket to sit upon, while James dragged out a dusty old chest and perched himself on the edge.
'I think Rain is in danger,' James blurted out. He studied Holly's face for any sense of alarm.
But the shock was all his own as she crossed her arms and leaned forwards.
'James, you are so damnably naïve when it comes to this. To her. Rain isn't in danger. She is the danger. How can you not see that?'
'I– what?'
'Don't you see? Did you never think it was a little suspicious that she was always at the centre of what was going wrong, each year?'
'You could have said the same thing about my father when he was at school, but that doesn't make him evil!'
They'd started the conversation in a whisper, but James was already bordering on a shout. He'd leaned over on his perch and was glaring at Holly, whose resolute, hard-eyed stare showed no hint of being worn down.
'It's not that simple, James,' Holly said, shaking her head.
James paused. He'd raised a finger to point accusingly at Holly, but it hung, frozen, in mid-air as an understanding stole over him.
'You know something,' he breathed tentatively. Cautiously, as if by his utterance alone he was making real some of his darkest fears.
'I saw… things, James.'
'Tell me. Now.' His level tone had become dangerously quiet once more.
Even so, Holly appeared unfazed by it. Her only indication of nerves was to pick up a strand of her hair and place it in her mouth, sucking thoughtfully on the tip. It was a gesture so achingly familiar to the "old" Holly, that James almost forgot the gravity of the moment they shared.
'Do you recall at the end of third year, when Rain and I duelled?'
'Well enough.' This was a half-truth. James hadn't been there to witness, having been instead engaged in fighting what had been the Maleficent Malady trying to breach Hogwarts walls. But others had filled him in. Powerful magic beyond what either ought to have been capable of. The birth of the legend and the fame – or rather infamy – of Holly Brooks, and the attendant worshipping that came with it.
'I used magic I shouldn't have, James. I used a combination of spells that Professor– that I had been taught but told to keep secret. That I wasn't ready for. I disagreed. But I was wrong. It was the only reason I was able to beat her, but it almost cost me everything. Before I stepped out of her shadow, I became so hopelessly lost within her, that I couldn't tell where her consciousness ended and mine began. I almost didn't make it.
'But when I did finally step forth, I'd seen things. Lived her life, through her eyes. As if I was there when it was happening. As if I'd done it all in that very moment, a lifetime of memories crashing down all at once–'
'And you've only decided to tell me all of this now?'
'Please, James, don't interrupt. And besides, I thought she was gone forever when she was taken last year. It rendered the point moot, as far as I was concerned.'
James could tell Holly was mulling over what to say next. The way she chewed nervously on her lower lip, her fingers fidgeting with the baggy sleeve of her jumper. Even the mask of distaste she wrapped around herself whenever she was near James had melted away.
'I saw – no, I didn't just see. It was as if I did – I shot you down from the sky and stole your Invisibility Cloak in first year, James. In Rain's body. During the final task of F.A.R.T club. At eleven years old, I cast the Imperius curse on Teddy Lupin. I stole something from the depths of the ocean. From Atlantis itself… something into which I could funnel the wasting illness that had befallen me. A sickness that was eating me from within. I held the rotting skull of a dead child, once worshipped as a god, in the palm of my hand. And I laughed as the curse that she had held at bay Infected hundreds, channelling their magical energy into me. I could feel them… dying. Each one. Their memories, they fed me. Made me stronger…'
Finally, it was too much for Holly to take. And she broke down before James' eyes, visibly crumpling, folding around herself as if each word she had just spoken had torn free a hole in her breast, leaving a gaping, raw wound that whistled and rattled with the sound of her sobs.
Instinctively, James moved forward to wrap his arms around Holly. She didn't resist, didn't move at all, save for the gentle shake of the occasional racking sob, the only sound in the room that interspersed James' own hushed litany of, 'No, it can't be. No,' over and over again.
They stayed that way for a long time. Until light from outside began to leak in through the crack under the door. James tried again and again to process what Holly had told him, but his brain rejected it each time.
Eventually, Holly straightened, and gently lifted James' arms from her shoulders. Tears still stained her cheeks, glistening softly in the gentle light. The frosty ice of her pale grey eyes had melted, leaving them swimming with tears.
'All this time, James,' she whispered. 'You– we have been fighting on the wrong side.'
'It can't be,' James breathed, and he noted the brittle, fragile quality of his quivering voice.
'There's more,' Holly said, wiping her cheeks with the heel of her palm. 'I saw the end of first year, when I lived it through her. It was hazy, because she was so incapacitated, but it was… different from how I remember it. I'm not entirely sure how, but nothing I remember makes sense.'
James perked up. 'Do you think it means that everything else you saw was a lie, too?'
'No, James. I think it means somebody altered our memories.'
'Who– not Rain, surely?'
'It would make sense. What if we saw what she did? If we saw her Imperius Teddy into doing… whatever it was he did to her? What if we knew the truth.'
There had to be some other explanation. There must be. James couldn't believe what he was hearing. Would Holly lie to him? Almost certainly, but this… This was too raw, too real to be faked.
'It's why I tried to stop you at the end of last year,' Holly continued. 'Even though what you were going to do seemed an impossible task, somehow, a part of me knew you'd succeed. You always do. And I… I couldn't let that happen. I figured you already hated me anyway, so burning the bridge wasn't much of a loss. I guess, at least, now you know the truth.'
James reached out towards Holly once more, sensing an opportunity, a moment that hung on the edge of a knife.
'Holly, you must know, I don't – I've never hated you.'
'Stop, James. Please.' And with those words, and her pushing back to stand up before him, James felt the moment crumbling to a thousand pieces all around him. Holly took a step past James and lay a hand on the rough wood of the door. She turned back to look at James with sad eyes. 'Don't say it, James. I'm not ready to hear it. I don't think I'm ready– I don't think I'm strong enough, to stop hating you just yet.'
And with that, Holly Brooks turned and walked out of his life once more, the departure all the more bitter for how desperately close he had felt to bringing her back.
And her leaving, coupled with the knowledge she'd imparted about Rain's duplicity left James more alone and confused than he'd ever been in his life.
