Chapter 6: The Letter
The letter stuck for a moment and Calamity tried to take it out again. On her second tug the envelope and letter jumped away from her, floating in the air like a howler. It's envelope lips began to move and the voice that escaped it, reading the letter within, was loud enough to echo around the Great Hall.
"CLARA, I DON'T THINK I CAN DO THIS ANYMORE. HONESTLY I LIKE YOU, BUT WITH YOU IN SCHOOL IT'S TOO DIFFICULT. YESTERDAY I SAW ANOTHER BATCH OF VICTIMS WITH THAT STANGE NEW CURSE. I ALMOST LOST TRACK OF MY DUTIES AND IT MADE ME REALIZE THAT I CAN'T DEAL WITH THESE DAY TO DAY DISASTERS WHILE ALSO TRYING TO THINK ABOUT YOU. IT'S NOT FAIR TO YOU AND IT'S IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME. I JUST DON'T KNOW IF WE WILL LAST AND I DON'T HAVE TIME TO FIND OUT RIGHT NOW. I'D BE HONORED IF WE COULD STAY FRIENDS, BUT I UNDERSTAND IF YOU DON'T WANT TO. I'M SORRY. PLEASE DON'T LET THIS CHANGE YOUR PLANS TO VOLUNTEER OVER SUMMER, WE CAN ARRANGE IT SO YOU DON'T WORK WITH ME. I'M SORRY AGAIN.
BEST WISHES,
CHRISTOPHER."
Having finished reciting the letter, the envelope dropped lifeless to the table.
The hall was silent. Calamity took out the now lifeless letter and reread it to herself. That was exactly what the letter said, word for word. I don't think I can do this anymore. There were snickers from the Slytherin table and like a wave it traveled down the table until the whole side of the room was full of guffaws. Calamity felt shame burning in her cheeks. Christopher had good points, she reasoned. They were in a war zone. She hadn't come all this way to get a boyfriend. She had come to become a healer and help the only way she knew how. If their letters and very short relationship (f you could even call it that) were distracting him from work- she felt water prickling in her eyes despite her reasoning. She could hear a few Ravenclaw and Gryffindor students snickering despite themselves. Other Gryffindors were giving her sympathetic looks. She wasn't sure which was worse. Calamity couldn't cry, not here. Not when Sirius Black had pranked her. Then he'd win.
Calamity tucked the letter into her robes and reached for toast, putting jam across it. She would pretend that this was a normal day, nothing out of the ordinary. She kept her back straight and head down as she scraped the jam across. All she could hear was the letter shouting "I just don't know if we will last and I don't have time to find out right now." She felt hot water dripping down her face.
"Calamity, do you want to eat outside. We can leave these idiots here," muttered Lily putting her hand on Calamity's shoulder.
"I'm fine. You stay," Calamity said shaking her head and standing to go. She left her toast. She wasn't hungry anyways. The laughter had died down and the normal chatter had returned, but Calamity didn't notice. She was concentrating on walking at her usual pace, letting he new white hair fall over her face so no one, especially Sirius Black, would see her tears. Just fifty more steps, Calamity told herself. Thirty more. Twenty More. She reached the doors and pushed them open. Alone in the entrance hall she leaned against the wall and felt a new wave of tears wash over her thinking about the letter again, with you in school it's too difficult.
"Calamity?"
She dried her face quickly and looked up at Remus.
"I'm sorry about you and Christopher," he said softly. He tapped her head and Calamity saw the ends of her hair return to their normal shade. "I know it's hard now, but it will get easier, I promise."
"It wouldn't have been so bad," Calamity said angrily, pushing back more tears that threatened to escape. "If that prat Sirius Black didn't let the whole school know my personal business."
"I'm sorry about that too," Remus said. Calamity looked up confused. "He thought we were dating and was worried you were breaking up his friends. He doesn't have much at home and we're sort of all he has."
"Are you making excuses for him?"
"No, I'm just trying to explain it to you so you understand."
"I don't understand," Calamity snapped. "He's been nothing but rude to me since I stopped you all from bullying Snape. Something you should have stopped as a prefect!"
"He just doesn't think sometimes," Remus began in a tone of an adult explain something to a very slow child.
Calamity stared at Remus. This git was defending Sirius Black? Like a coward he was standing up for his friend when he knew that Sirius was wrong?
"I know you're angry," Remus began "but-"
"I think you ought to go back to your friends," Calamity interrupted coldly. "I'd hate for them to worry."
She turned before he could respond and stomped up the stairs to get her things for class. In her dormitory, she lost her nerve and lay down pulling out Christopher's letter again. She reread it and threw it onto her bedside table. She dug in her trunk and pulled out his other letters, one from every week they had dated. She flipped through them. Four weeks and a half.
"That's nothing," scoffed Calamity to the empty room.
Another wave of tears came over her and she put the letters back in her trunk. She grabbed her books and quills, shoving them into her bag. She marched out of the dormitory and into the commonroom. A few students looked up at her entrance and fell silent. Calamity felt heat rise in her cheeks. They had been talking about her. She pretended to dig in her bag and spotted her Confronting the Faceless textbook for Defense Against the Dark Arts. She opened it hurriedly, burying her nose in it as she moved through the commonroom and out of the portrait hole.
"An Inferius (plural Inferi) is a dead body that is reanimated through the use of Necromancy, similar to (though intrinsically different than) a zombie (see page 213). Due to their origin as Human corpses, they have individual appearances based on the human they were created from. While the subtle differences may look like the deceased human, all Inferi are gaunt, skeletal beings. Inferi have no free will and cannot think for themselves. As no spell can bring the dead back alive, Inferi function as puppets of the wizard who reanimated them. It has been reported in some rare cases that Inferi have been able to speak, though the sightings of such creatures are rare."
"And the letter read it outloud. It was so sad to see."
"What a day to miss breakfast!"
Calamity looked up quickly to see that a Slytherin third year was talking to his troll like friend, both looking at her. She spotted the Defense Against the Dark Arts door and peaked in shyly. She was early. She moved quickly to the front of the room and sat down, putting her bag on the seat next to her and moving the extra chair away. She turned back to her book, keeping her head down as the rest of the class began to file in, some silently, some laughing and joking around. Calamity focused on being invisible.
"Due to their status as being unfeeling dead, the Inferi are immune to bodily damages such as slashing. They have great physical strength and have been reported to kill a human with their bare hands and drag them away. Due to this strength, and their surprising speed, they are especially dangerous en masse. So how does one defend against such a seemingly impossible force?"
"Mind if I sit," asked Margaret. Calamity silently moved the bag from the seat and Margaret sat down. She nodded at Lily and Susan who sat behind them.
"You feeling a tad better," asked Lily kindly.
Just as Calamity was about to answer the Marauders walked in. James, Remus, and Peter seemed to know better than to attempt any sort of interaction based on the glares Susan, Margaret, and Lily were sending them. They hurriedly made their way to the back of the room, as far as they could get from the girls. For a moment Sirius paused as if he were about to come over, but Remus grabbed his arm and tugged him as Calamity turned back to her book determinedly. She felt the prickle of new tears. Blimey, why couldn't she stop?
"Inferi are creatures of the dark and they dislike light and heat, especially because there is no spell known to wizards that can render dead flesh impervious to burning. Therefore, the most effective spell against them is a fire-summoning spell, such as firestorm. Other spells might work against a few Inferi, but might not be useful against a whole army of them."
Margaret nudged Calamity and she looked up, seeing that the Professor was writing on the board. Calamity quickly took out her quill and began copying down the notes. Her mind slowly turning from the letter to class as she focused on the untidy writing on the board.
Her brief stint as a social butterfly over, Calamity returned to her old focus of books and studying. She found solace in the fact that Christopher was right. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the war raging outside of the school's walls. Students grew paler and more worried looking as exams approached and news came in day after day of more deaths and missing people. A few muggle-borns had to leave to attend funerals for their family or villages. Some returned looking shaken. Others did not return to Hogwarts, their parents deciding the wizarding world was too dangerous.
"They're sitting ducks now," said Lily biting her nail nervously as she looked over at Sharon Smith's empty seat in Potions.
"You can't think like that," hissed Susan.
"Especially when I'm struggling with this Wit- Sharpening potion," said Margaret. "it's not turning yellow."
"Did you put in more armadillo bile," asked Calamity.
"More," asked Margaret. Calamity added some and Margaret continued stirring, the potion turning yellow.
"Thank Merlin you're here," she said with a sigh. "I don't know what I'd do here without you."
"I want you to remember that when you help me with my Transfiguration homework tonight," Calamity teased.
There was a PSSST sound behind them, as if someone were trying to get their attention.
"He's doing it again," said Lily looking at her book. "When it turns purple we need to let it simmer for ten minutes."
"You'd think he'd figure out that you don't want to talk," Susan said stirring as the potion's color slowly began to change.
"At least Remus figured it out," Margaret said looking over her shoulder and glaring at the table with the Marauders.
"I still can't believe he tried to stand up for that git," agreed Lily, glaring at the table as well. The second glare made Remus look up from his potions book. He nudged Sirius and hissed something. Sirius looked annoyed and turned back to crushing his beetles.
"They're really behind," noted Lily turning back to her friends. Calamity shrugged. Lily and Susan sat down to let their potion simmer, Susan looking at her watch.
"So," Margaret said slowly as their potion began to turn a light purple. "Did I see you had another volunteer application for St. Mungo's this summer?"
"Did you see it on my dresser, perhaps? Because, yes, you are not crazy, it was there," replied Calamity. The potion turned a deep purple. "That's good." She checked her watch. "Ten minutes."
"Are you going to apply," asked PSSST noise started again from Sirius. Calamity continued to ignore him, not an easy feat considering he was so loud.
"I am," replied Calamity. "Christopher was right, it was too difficult to do the long distance thing. I came here to become a Healer. I need to do what is necessary to get there."
"What if you work with him," asked Susan delicately. They had been avoiding the topic of Christopher since the letter incident.
"That was months ago," Calamity reminded them. "It will be fine."
"And maybe you'll have a little summer romance," Margaret said wiggling her eyebrows. Calamity nudged her friend.
The acceptance to St. Mungo's summer volunteer program came just as her homework was piling up faster than she could keep up. So Calamity stayed behind on the next Hogsmeade trip to finish the paperwork necessary for her volunteering. Everything was going well and she was almost done with her emergency contact page when she felt someone standing at the end of her table. Calamity looked up slowly, her eyes tracing the mess on the table: books for homework and pleasure, some spare quills, her wand, a few unused parchments. Then they moved to the tall boy with his roguish smile, which looked surprisingly timid in the library afternoon light.
"Mind if I sit," asked Sirius motioning to a seat. Calamity mentally kicked herself for not moving them away when Lily, Susan, and Margaret left.
"I DO mind, actually," she replied looking back at her application and dipping her quill for more ink. The chair pulled out and he sat down across from her as she signed her name.
"Calamity, look, it's been months, even you have to admit that," said Sirius.
"That's how time works," Calamity replied putting her St. Mungo's paperwork to the side to dry and pulling her Standard Book of Spells Year Six towards her.
"Don't you think you're overreacting at this point," asked Sirius. "I mean, at the very least you could forgive Remus. He was only-"
Calamity moved her wand and other books closer. She stacked her books around her like a wall, wand close to her hand just in case Sirius tried anything.
"He was only trying to explain how I'm a git," Sirius said a little louder and making Madam Pince release a SHH noise.
"He didn't do a good job," Calamity said. She turned to the page she needed to reread from earlier. There was silence and for a moment Calamity thought that Sirius had left. She peaked around her wall of books. No, he was still sitting there, but now he had his own charms book out and was jotting something down.
"What are you doing," snapped Calamity. "Can't you just let me alone? You've made it very clear how you feel about me being friends with your friends."
A pained expression passed Sirius' face, but he covered it quickly with a neutral one. "I'm allowed to study where ever I like," he said. He went back to jotting down a note from the book.
"I saw Hannah in here earlier. She's probably still here," said Calamity glaring at the stupid git. "Isn't she your girlfriend? Go study with her."
He made an annoyed sound. "She's not my girlfriend."
"Lucky her," retorted Calamity. Sirius glared back but didn't move.
"Fine," Calamity said cooly. "Stay here, I don't care." She turned back to her review.
"Performing spells non-verbally is very difficult and requires a good deal of practice, as it requires concentration and mental discipline alone. Some spells, such as levicorpus, are easier to perform non-verbally than others. Most spells, however, will become less effective when the normal incantation is not said. This is often for lack of concentration on the casters part. To practice such spells-"
"Bloody Hell!"
Calamity looked up to see Sirius with ink all over him.
"Did you-" he began but then there was a trollish laugh and a Slytherin stepped form behind a bookshelf, wand still held out. Calamity was pretty sure his name was Avery, she'd seen him with Snape.
"Couldn't resist, Black," Avery said "So rare to see you without your wand and unprepared." His friend Wilkes joined him, leaning haughtily against the book shelf. Sirius began to reach for his wand but Wilkes drew his first, making Sirius pause with his hand in the air. Two against one wasn't good odds.
"Careful, Black," Wilkes snarled.
"Do you mind," asked Calamity looking over the two boys with a disgusted look on her face. "Some of us are trying to study."
"Who the hell do you think you're talking to like that," hissed Avery turning his wand on Calamity. "Your friends with that filthy mudblood Lily Evans, right?"
Calamity could see Sirius itching to reach for his wand, but Wilkes still had his eyes on Sirius, even as he chuckled appreciatively at Avery's comments. It seemed as good a time as any to practice, Calamity thought. She moved her hand slightly to the right and held onto her wand.
"Who do you think you are," asked Calamity narrowing her eyes. "insulting anyone when you look and smell like a troll."
Avery raised his wand, but Calamity was faster. She waved her wand and a red light shot from it, hitting Avery and disarming him. The wand flew into Calamity's hand. Sirius used the distraction to grab his wand from his pocket and say "Petrificus Totalus."
Wilkes fell over backwards in a body bind as Madam Pince came rushing over.
"No magic in the library! No fighting," She said pushing Calamity and Sirius from the Library, almost making Calamity leave her books behind.
"I'll be reporting this to your head of house," Madam Pince snapped. " Stay out until you can behave."
She closed the library doors behind her, leaving Calamity still holding her wall of books. Advanced Potion Making fell to the ground, starting an avalanche. Soon, Calamity was only holding her Standard Book of Spells Year Six.
"Brilliant non-verbal," Sirus said letting out a bark like laugh. "You alright?"
Calamity stared at the closed doors. "I've never been kicked out of a library before," said Calamity. She looked down at her books as if in a daze and began to pick them up. Sirius leaned down and helped as Calamity pushed them into her bag. She stood and her bag made a ripping sound. The bottom fell out, spilling the content on the floor again.
"Sorry about that," Sirius said ducking down and picking up the books again. Calamity held two books and motioned for him to stack the others. Sirius shrugged and held onto the four he'd picked up. "I owe you. I'll help you to the commonroom."
They walked in silence to the portrait of the fat lady. Just as they had arrived they heard Sirius' name called from the bottom of the staircase. Turning Calamity spotted Hannah- Sirius' not girlfriend.
"Sirius," Hanah snapped. "I've been waiting for you for twenty minutes."
"I thought you were in the library," said Sirius cheerfully. Hannah did not smile.
"And what's this," she asked pointing to Sirius and his books, then to Calamity. She looked angry to find her not boyfriend carrying books for Calamity.
"Oh," Sirius said looking at his books and then Calamity. "It was too much for her to carry."
Hannah pointed her wand at the four books Sirius was holding and said, "Wingardium Leviosa." The books slowly rose from Sirius' arms.
"Nicely done," he said still in his cheery tone, a guilty smile breaking across his face.
"If you just put them down I can manage," said Calamity. Hannah dropped the books roughly on the ground and they scattered.
"Come off it, Hannah," snapped Sirius leaning over to pick up the books.
"It's fine," Calamity said waving him away. "It's fine. Go. Thank you for helping me."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure. Your girlfriend clearly want to talk to you.
"She's not my-" Sirius began, but Hannah made an impatient noise and Sirius looked over his shoulder. "Okay," he agreed standing and handing her the book he had managed to grab.
Calamity watched him jump down the stairs two at a time and greet Hannah as if nothing out of the ordinary happened- despite the splotch of ink still on his front. Hannah gave Calamity one more glance before turning on Sirius and whining about his tardiness. Calamity rolled her eyes. Even when he was trying to be nice he caused her trouble. She muttered "Wingardium Leviosa" and levitated her books into the commonroom.
It was fairly empty considering that it was only eight o'clock. Lily sat surrounded by papers, Remus sitting next to her looking through his potions notes. Calamity levitated her books next to their table. They looked up.
"Why are you levitating your books," asked Lily curiously. Remus began to put his notes away.
"I got banished from the library," said Calamity looking at Remus. He paused in his packing. Lily glanced over at him as if unsure what Calamity would do.
"Can I join your study party," Calamity asked him.
"Sure," said Remus, a smile breaking across his face. He unpacked his notes again. "But I have to warn you that it's the worse party I've ever been to."
