Chapter Seven | Hand of Stone

Supper was a quiet affair, Catherine picking at her food so lazily that even Ron found himself worried for her.

It was delicious, roast chicken seasoned to perfection and a mash so creamy it seemed as if it would disappear upon gracing her tongue. Yet, Catherine found it somehow bland. Food didn't excite her the way it once did, something precious to be hoarded, squirreled away so that the Dursleys wouldn't leave her to waste locked behind chains and shutters in a barren room.

She humoured them, smiling and humming as she took miniscule bites from her sparse plate, barely chipping away at the feast set before them.

Was there always so much food? She wondered at it, how much this school alone consumed.

There were plates stacked high as far as the eye could see, an almost blinding number of meals arrayed across the tables in fantastical arrangements. They weren't just delicious, they were a visual delight as well.

Every piece of food had been placed so as to be beautiful, shining in the bright candlelight. There was corn on the cob, cast in that sweet orange glow. Suckled pig, crackling skin dusted in salt and pepper, flecked with the deep green of thyme.

It made her nauseous.

The smell of it all was overwhelming, the racket of chattering students crashing against her like waves upon the shore. Her stomach churned, aching for a sip of blood. It called to her from her dorm, swaddled in cloth and chill to the touch.

Yharnam blood was never warm. Not the way she knew it to be. It seemed too thick, too stale as it slid over her fingers. The blood was almost recalcitrant, stubbornly clinging to the body of its host. But when drank it was eager, happy to work its way into the veins of this new strange being that hummed with a power it had never tasted.

Umbridge would be waiting for her. Catherine could see her peeking down at the Gryffindor table every so often, face pinched and a glimmer behind her eyes that spoke of some deep-seated deranged satisfaction.

That woman adored the pain she inflicted, loved it as a mother loved her child. The irony of that notion didn't escape Catherine. Umbridge was bigotry personified, packed tightly behind the thin veneer of civility. Just like many at the Ministry she deemed muggleborn and anyone with a fleck of creature blood to be her own magical definition of untermensch.

"Fucking nazi," Catherine uttered, pushing her meal away.

"Cat."

"What? She is."

Hermione set her fork down, thumb brushing over the utensil nervously. "I know, I just- do you need to curse?"

"No, but does it matter? It is what she is."

"Nazi?" Ron interjected. "Like, Grindelwald?"

"Exactly like Grindelwald."

He grew quiet, prodding at his meal. "Think that's a bit much?"

"You've seen the way she treats Hermione. You've heard how she talks about Lupin and Fleur. It wouldn't surprise me if she wholeheartedly supported Voldemort."

Ron twitched at the name, cheek tugging awkwardly. "I guess."

"We need her out of this school."

"How?"

"I dunno'." Catherine stared at Umbridge, doing nothing to hide the ire in her gaze.

She could kill her. That was an option.

Just as suddenly as the thought came to her, Catherine was sick, forgetting her reluctant meal entirely.

Did she really just… to kill her? That was her first reaction?

You do not abide by her notions. Her morals are twisted, like the Church so long ago. Though, their horrors are unmatched even by the monsters of thine world.

Catherine practically hissed inside her mind. That doesn't mean I should kill her.

Art thou not a hunter? Is she not seen as prey? A skittering mouse jeweled in bright colours and bearing an appetite far beyond its needs?

And Catherine fumed, because she did see Umbridge as prey. The blood had wormed into her mind, rewriting it and painting her world in crimson hues. It pulsed in her skull and beat at her ribs with clawed fists, eager and urging in its incessant cry.

Hunt, hunt! Taste of her blood!

She stamped it down, tongue flicking over now pointed teeth (because the urges weren't enough) as Catherine turned away from Umbridge, lip curled in disgust.

Catherine had changed so much in that week. She was functionally immortal, had a growing obsession with blood, and frightful urges to attack anything that looked at her wrong to boot.

Might as well call herself a Vampire and get it over with.

"I've got detention," Catherine said, getting to her feet. "Gotta' go."

Hermione grabbed her wrist as she went to leave, heart pounding at her touch. "We'll find a way to stop this. To stop her hurting you."

"It's not me I'm worried about." She inclined her head towards the Creevey brothers. "If she gets her hands on people like them they're never going to come out of it the same."

"But what about you."

Catherine laughed. "She can't hurt me. Not really."

"Cat."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not," Ron interrupted, startling the both of them. "You've been off all day. Shite, it's worrying me. Me." He jabbed his thumb into his chest. "Just… you can talk to us, you know? I'm probably a shite listener, but I'll try my best, okay?"

"Like I said, I'll be alright. But… thanks for worrying about me."

"'Kay, just… you know, don't bottle it up." Ron leaned forward. "Don't tell anyone I said this, but my Dad does that. He doesn't show it, but he's just no good at talking about things. Mum has to drag it out of him, make him talk, and it does a world of good."

Arthur, huh?

"I'll… thanks. I'll keep that in mind."

"S'alright. We'll stay up for you, that sound good?"

Catherine found herself smiling. "Yeah." She looked at Hermione. "I mean, I've got my own personal healer here, murtlap always at the ready. I could do with a bit of relaxation after today."

The smile she received was blinding, and even though Hermione waved her off as soon as she realized her own expression, Catherine had already taken that image and locked it away in her heart.

Maybe she could survive this.

First, she needed blood.

Ducking out of the Great Hall, Catherine walked the castle until she took the stairs up Gryffindor Tower, shuffling delicately through her trunk and fastening a blood vial to the lining of her robes with a sticking charm.

But not before considering a sip, or at least admiring the way the liquid shifted inside its translucent container.

Feeling more comfortable than she had in months, she set off to Umbridge's office, only the faintest twinge of anxiety tainting her steps.

What Catherine feared the most was reacting as she had been taught to, with unrepentant violence. She could already feel the hunters call, so quiet as it sang to her its fury.

Her footsteps were loud and measured, a far cry from the muffled, tentative crawl of the city, creeping round corners with sweaty palms and an aching heart. The Catherine of Hogwarts was brazen, snappish and quick to retort to any slight. This seemed a return to form for her, forcing herself to walk noisily and without a constant reminder of danger peeking out of every shadow.

It made her feel almost normal for a moment.

Hope brimmed in Catherine's chest as she opened Umbridge's door, something she almost found herself laughing at. The absurdity of feeling hope upon the doorstep of one's torturer was unique, to her, almost laughable.

Thankfully, she quelled that laughter, offering Umbridge a smile as she shut the door quietly.

"Hello."

"Hello, Professor."

"If you say so," she replied, taking a seat and extending her hand, stifling her cackles at Umbridge's pinched expression. "My quill, please?"

Umbridge instead crossed her arms. "You seem to have developed some cheek as of late. I'd thought my lessons were sinking in. I said, hello Professor."

"Oh, hello professor, and very much so." Catherine tilted her fist, scars shining. "I will not tell lies. I've not told you a single lie."

"Your incessant need to seek attention is a slight on your houses name, Blood Traitors that they were - you've managed to find ways to sink the title Potter to new depths."

"Really? How so."

"You burned my book."

"I burned my book. Purchased with my own money."

Umbridge seethed, lips smashed together in thinly veiled anger. She tossed the blood quill at Catherine who snatched it with ease. "Thank you. By the way, where would I find a quill with an end like this?" she asked, flicking the metal tip. "It's a dip pen more than anything. I can't seem to find something like it whenever I go to the shops."

"Enough. Now write."

Raising her hands in surrender, Catherine set to dashing lines across the page, hardly worried as the quill worked its magic - those same lines upon her knuckles growing deeper, bloodied and swollen with each and every swipe.

She almost felt tempted to draw, her blood making such a fine ink. It didn't bleed (she thought with laughter) through the parchment, thin veins splaying out across the page as it worked through the very fibres of the goatskin.

Clean and crisp, every scrape of the nib a clear line struck upon the page. Catherine hummed as she wrote her lines, happy tunes leaking from her throat and ebbing across the room - deathly quiet with the only other noises being the scratching of her quill and the audible twitching of Umbridge's right eyelid.

"Quiet."

Catherine ceased her humming, not looking up from the page as she continued to write, appending her words with happy loops and handy twirls as the letters rolled into one another. She admired her newly improved script, finding herself thankful for once of whatever magic the Doll had cursed her with.

If insanity weren't the trade off, she would happily tell Ron of the opportunity to improve his handwriting.

"Only a drop!" she imagined herself saying, offering him a vial tied to the inside of her coat as if she were a noir film smuggler. "That's all it takes!"

Oh, he'd be horrified, no doubt. "Cat, real happy you figured out your handwriting, but I'm not really a vampire am I? And… you aren't either… right?"

Her mind continued on that path, imagining her attempts to convince Ron that no, she wasn't a vampire, because in all honesty that would be so much simpler than her current affair.

Never let it be said that I'm not a daydreamer, she mused. Gryffindor's Slytherin my arse.

Catherine's classmates had always considered her dour, struck with an occasional sense of very dry humour that tended to lean toward mean than funny. Really, it was the Dursley's fault. They'd taught her to taunt rather than confront, to choose your battles via the last word rather than total victory.

They hadn't necessarily taught her so explicitly, more behaviour learned from years of biting back with quiet, snide comments at their constant stream of derision. But learn she did, taking her impromptu lessons and keeping them close to the heart, knowing that if they served her at home they could serve her anywhere.

It did make it difficult to find friends, but once Hermione and Ron had broken through whatever shell Catherine had fashioned she embraced that friendship with an eagerness that startled them and herself.

Catherine loved her friends, she loved them so much it hurt. Her sitting in Umbridge's office carving words into her flesh... that, to her, was an offering. Blood offered for friendship given, a form of atonement for the trouble she had put them through over all these years.

Ron and Hermione had nearly died on their many adventures, something that made her heart clench so fiercely she feared it would be her own death. A heart attack in her teens seemed feasible with the stress they put her through, placing themselves in harm's way just to support her constant trawl into the dark.

If push came to shove and this war she thought was coming happened, she would lay her life down for them without hesitation.

Because what else could prophecy call for but war? Not a single one of the stories she had ever read ended in the hero triumphing over evil. Not with nary a scratch upon their skin nor a scar to their psyche.

Beowulf walked eagerly to his death, Arthur was fatally wounded by Mordred, Gawain - his friend - was struck down by Lancelot after his bitterness drove him to terrible lengths, splitting the round-table in his anger.

Not the stories children commonly read, but the librarian - Janice - in that sleepy little building in Surrey took a pity to her.

Catherine had asked her of her favourite stories. Janice provided.

Tales of kings and knights, magic and war. They were incredible, so far and away from the churning boredom that hung over Surrey like a curse. Suburbia refined into a poison.

Janice was her first real friend. Of a sort, at least. An aging spinster with not a penny to her name, but that library was her labour and love all wrapped up in a package smelling of mothballs and stale dust.

She humoured Catherine, occasionally reading to her when the building was empty - which it often was. Catherine was a demanding child, begging for stories along the line of Tolkien, even written history describing the escapades of empires long lost to the annals of time.

The excitement she displayed upon being told Hadrian's wall still stood made her so excited that Janice had to carry her out by her arms, chiding Catherine and telling her to come back another day when she could control herself.

Catherine didn't think she'd ever learned self control.

She chuckled to herself, ignoring Umbridge's pointed gaze.

If she were to be like those fabled wanderers, which would she resemble? Was she truly a hero? Of what story, she wondered, if any?

The petulant child raised by a family who couldn't deign to love her, cast into a world fanciful to the point of insanity and immediately gifted with the burden of her rotting parentage. A hero she was called by those fools in the pub. Adults caught up in a fantasy of their own creation. But didn't every hero think themselves common?

Catherine couldn't place herself in the shoes of others and look upon herself as they would. She found it impossible to set sight on the mystique that surrounded the events in Godric's Hollow so long ago.

"I'm just Catherine," she had told Hagrid on that cold, stormswept rock near Cokeworth, staring up at a man larger than life and kinder than anything she could have possibly imagined.

"Aye," he replied. "And a lot more'n that too."

Her hand stung as she neared the bottom of the page, the slight pain bringing Catherine back to earth.

Blood seeped over her knuckles, tracking down the cracks in her fingers and welling up in shallow pools, captured by untainted flesh. It glimmered beautifully and Catherine found herself tempted to lap at it as if a dog.

Perhaps it was the magic in it, but her own blood was more exquisite than anything she had ever tasted. The taint of Yharnam had changed her so thoroughly that the dredge of sharp copper no longer stung her tongue, replaced by a flowery sweet so painfully subtle that she often found herself chasing after it for more.

A bit cheek was now to her a treat, an explosion of ambrosia to be released at a moment's notice.

"I think I'm done."

Umbridge glanced up from her reading only to shriek, having found herself bored by Catherine's silence.

Not much of a kick out of torture if they don't squeal.

"You've got blood everywhere! I- " she heaved, nauseous. "I can see your knuckles!"

Inspecting her hand, Catherine agreed with her observation. The quill had cut so deep as to etch its magic into the bone beneath, hardly visible through the blood bubbling out of her skin.

"Squeamish?"

Batting at the air, Umbridge pulled away. "Clean that up this instant!"

Happy to oblige after having been shown the depravity of blood magic firsthand, Catherine vanished her blood along with the parchment, wrapping her fist in cloth to make sure none of it dripped onto the floor.

"Alright. Is that everything?"

"Yes!" Umbridge screamed, pointing at the door. "Now go!"

Catherine was out the door in a flash, barely glancing down the hall before she had unstoppered the vial in her pocket and raised it to her lips.

Her chest heaved as she drank half of it in one go, sighing in relief as the sharp pain in her hand dulled to the point of nonexistence. She unwrapped it, smiling at the newly knitted flesh.

It looked a touch cleaner than her previous sessions, just a hint of blood and the edges of the wound swollen.

Any more blood and Hermione would question her relentlessly, pushing to the centre of things and (too easily, she knew) learning of Catherine's newfound secrets.

No. The half a vial would have to do. No more, no less.

The only sign that she had lost so much blood were the rich stains painting the bandages that hung from her pocket, leaving a thin grime upon her robes.

Catherine was glad for Umbridge's office being at least a few floors up. Walking from the dungeons back to the Gryffindor common room was arduous even with her heightened physicality. Seven tall floors, each higher than any that would be found in a skyscraper or modern building.

The ceilings were tall no matter where you were in the castle, even the dungeons seeming expansive with vaulted ceilings and fine carvings dotting the stone every so often - just enough to break the monotony of cold walls and the quiet stench of mildew.

Gryffindor's common room was warm and welcoming as she stepped into it, shirking off her robe and collapsing noisily into the seat next to Hermione, who shouted in fright.

"God! You're so quiet lately," Hermione fussed, looking her over. "She wasn't too awful today?"

"Not especially," she said, offering her hand. Catherine reached over with the other, making sure the blood vial nestled in her robes didn't sleep free, hidden from sight. "Hey Ron."

He nodded at her, quietly working over a bit of parchment that was surely the charms paper they had due tomorrow. "Feeling better?"

"A lot, yeah. Thanks for earlier by the way. Really helped."

Ron grinned. "Good. Can't have ya' wandering around all death and gloom all the time. That's Snape's job."

Laughing, Catherine didn't wince as Hermione spread murtlap essence over her wound, the balm soothing and just barely cool as it was smeared over her skin. "I can be proper frightful if I want to."

"Yeah, but you can have a good laugh as well. I mean, all we've got is Umbridge this year, right? Honestly not that bad all things considered."

The smile that graced Catherine's face was cold this time. A withered thing that seemed to creep over her like a disease. "Yeah. It's a lot better."

"What was that look?" Hermione interrupted, hair bobbing as she tilted her head.

"What look?"

"That one." She pointed, finger nearly brushing Catherine's nose. "Like you're keeping something from us."

If you only knew.

"Really, please, it's nothing. I've just been talking with Dumbledore again- "

"What? I thought he was ignoring you?"

"Yeah, I mean, I just kinda' walked up to him the other day and asked him what was going on."

"You didn't."

Another chuckle. "I really did."

Ron pointed at her with his quill, brow furrowed. "What'd you say?"

"Like I said, I just asked him what was going on. He… he kind of told me what was happening, but that I really need to be aware that he can't tell me right this second."

"Occlu-whatever stuff, right?"

"Yup." Catherine took a fresh bandage from Hermione, thanking her quietly as she wrapped it around her hand. "I need to get better at that as fast as I can. That way I can know what the hell is going on."

"Did he give you a hint, or anything?"

She sighed heavily, fiddling with the bandage as she tied it snug against her wrist. The next word Catherine spoke was whispered. "Prophecy."

"What!" they both shouted, a passed out seventh year in the corner snorting loudly and rolling over in his chair.

"Seriously?" Hermione added, taking her hand and squeezing it. "An honest, real prophecy?"

"Yeah, the real deal. At least, Dumbledore thinks it is, from what I can tell. If anyone knows about magic like that, it's him."

"Mans ancient, makes sense."

"Ron."

"What? It's true. He's almost one hundred and twenty. That's ancient."

"I know, but you don't just say it like that. Have a little respect."

"See!" Ron cackled, essay forgotten as he collapsed onto his back, arms splayed out above his head. "You admitted it!"

"I didn't- I wouldn't- I… alright Ronald. You got me to badmouth a teacher."

"Well, he's not really a teacher, is he? More just runs the place, and I've heard you curse at Snape plenty o' times."

"I have not."

"You really have," Catherine interrupted. "I've heard you. It's not as colourful as Ron or I, but it's still impressive."

Hermione scowled, yanking her hand out of Catherine's and crossing her arms. "You two are awful."

"Ah, but you know you love us."

"Really, you do."

"Isn't that right, Ron?"

"Absolutely, Cat. The two most loveable kids in Hogwarts."

"Enough!" Hermione slapped her legs with both hands, unable to hide her smile. "Just awful, absolutely awful."

Catherine slung her arm over Hermione's shoulder, hugging her tight. "But you really do love us."

"Yes, I do. You got me, happy? Gosh, it's like you two love to drive me mad."

Her heart pounded heavily at those words, the quietest voice in the back of her head whispering 'Maybe, just maybe.'

Ron grinned, looking at Catherine and snapping her out of whatever lovesick daydream she was about to conjure. "I mean, isn't that the point?"

"I think so."

Huffing good naturedly, Hermione threw off Catherine's arm. "I'm off to bed. You coming?"

"Yup."

"Hey, what about my paper?"

"That looks like your problem, right Hermione?"

She laughed quietly. "Catherine and I already had ours done days ago."

"Then you can give me a hand, right?"

Catherine waved toward the stairs, knowing that sleep wouldn't come to her even if she went looking for it. "Go on ahead, I'll give Ron a hand with this."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm still feeling pretty awake. Adrenaline and all," she explained, gesturing toward her hand.

Hermione's expression grew frosty, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. "If you say so. Just don't stay up too late, okay?"

Her unspoken message was clear. You don't sleep enough already, I'm worried for you.

"Hey, I'll be fine. Trust me, I've got Rons paper all well in hand."

With a final wave Hermione left to bed, Catherine leaning over to look at Ron's essay with the hope that it would keep her busy long enough to keep the memories out. She stamped down images of matted fur and gnashing teeth, of an antlered giant howling atop a bridge, taking the paper and propping it lazily on the table.

Catherine turned to Ron, smoothing out the parchment. "Charms, right?"