Chapter Sixteen | As Sculptured Marble Saint
For the rest of the evening she sat in her cell, eyes closed and waiting for Snape's next visit.
She had tried to hang herself against the bars at some point in the night, only to wake, back pressed to cold iron and her bed sheet noose unraveled across her shoulders.
It was worth the effort, she told herself.
Catherine didn't know how much time had passed between the moment her heart had stopped and her eyes had reopened, coughing painfully and her throat sore beyond belief. It didn't feel like much, if any time at all - nor could she tell so far below ground
So all Catherine could do was exercise patience - what little she had - and think without the haze of Yharnam clouding her mind.
She could feel it twitching somewhere just below the surface, a rabid beast waiting to be uncaged. It was both terrifying and of some comfort to know what she was now capable of, and Catherine didn't know which feeling would win out in the end. The taste of blood still held faint on her lips, a memory, the screams of beastmen as she cut them down like a farmer through a field - scythe swinging with wild abandon.
What Catherine worried over was what Dumbledore and Snape were capable of.
The fear the Headmaster must feel to think her possessed, to go so far as to have her locked up here - she couldn't imagine it.
To heal her, he said.
High hopes and promises from a man who had already promised her so much in life. Words too weighty for him to lift, not without crushing his own spine in the effort.
Catherine almost pitied him. An almost detached sense of fascination as she considered what he would feel, how he would react once it all clicked and he realized that this was really her. That somehow, some way, Catherine's life had taken another step towards insanity.
More like it leapt right in, she snorted, the cosmic comedy of it all too much to handle. How could I even begin to explain?
Because that's what she would have to do, mind now settled (as best as it could be) and the pressures of returning to the waking world becoming just a touch more palatable. Explain herself.
A manic, suicidal, time hopping teenager having to explain why exactly she threw herself off a building and somehow lived, only to threaten the professors who had come to her aid.
"I'm done for."
Surely, Dumbledore would believe her.
Catherine wouldn't take her chances with Snape, even if she let the man rummage through her mind, but Dumbledore?
Perhaps he could help her? Find a way to break whatever tether bound her to Yharnam?
Her heart stuttered at the thought.
It could work. He's old. Powerful. Probably the most knowledgeable wizard in Europe, now that the Flamel's are dead. He'd have to know something.
Maybe he'd even heard of Yharnam? Read about it somewhere? Catherine grinned, never having thought she'd be so happy to be locked in a cage.
But she didn't want to get her hopes up.
A small part of her wondered if she would have to find a way to break out. To ferry the Messengers over, or perhaps… even stay in Yharnam indefinitely.
To choose between a life of endless nights and beastblood rivers, or one left caged in the only place she'd ever called home?
Well, the choice seemed a bit too easy to her. Better to live free and frightened than locked away to rot, alone, the rest of her mind slowly dripping from her ears until nothing remained but hurried whispers and the cackles of a broken woman.
Perhaps that was what Bellatrix Lestrange felt like? Or the rest of the Death Eaters tucked away in Azkaban? Or-
Sirius.
She hadn't even thought of the man, her godfather, uncle in all but name. All Catherine had thought over the last two years was if she would ever have the chance to live with him, to get away from the Dursleys and finally find some semblance of a loving home.
Or did she just want to get away from the Dursleys? Was her focus not on Sirius, but them? A need to escape?
"Oh."
Maybe now, with the corpse of her sanity left to rot in some stinking gutter her thoughts had changed. Perhaps back then, before… this, she had truly wanted to spend her time with Sirius. To get to know him, to learn about the man who could have raised her, who she could have called her father if the cosmos had not decided otherwise. Once upon a time, she did. But now?
Catherine just wanted to be alone.
Speaking seemed far too difficult. The very thought of having to strike up conversation with one of her classmates, one of her friends, stood indomitable before her. She would rather fight the Cleric once more, spill its blood on that narrow bridge and feel her mind splinter at the very sight of the thing, than be forced to sit down and speak with Ron about how his weekend had gone.
Because how could she speak with him, hold a conversation with him when all she could see when she looked in his eyes was his pale, rotting corpse, broken by her own hands?
How could Catherine even think to love Hermione when she had done so much wrong in so little time, and would have to continue in her rabid search to find Paleblood, whatever and wherever the ichor could be?
The notion of suicide grew yet more tempting at the thought, and Catherine did her best to quash the futile urges.
She couldn't die, no matter how much she wanted.
Exhausted by it all, she was tempted by the idea to simply do nothing. To sit and rest and watch the world pass by, hoping that her mind would go with it. Perhaps she could even dose herself with a Draught of Living Death, and then be placed in some sort of stasis?
Would that not be death, in a way? Thoughts locked away, her body frozen to the steadily gnawing fangs of time?
It was certainly a thought.
So Catherine did her best to whittle away the hours, minute by minute thinking and planning on what it was she could do to get herself out of this mess. The longer she spent in the cell, the more sober she became.
The mania still hadn't left her, not in its entirety, but enough so that the familiar roil of embarrassment and horror sent pangs through her gut and made her throat thick with a tangible sense of regret.
She almost laughed, thinking herself to be more embarrassed about breaking into suicidal hysterics than she was ashamed.
Catherine didn't know if shame was the right feeling, not with what she'd been through.
"Probably the sanest thing for me to do," she muttered, tapping her fingers against the wall in a staccato lurch.
"And what would that be?"
Her head raised slowly, unamused. Must have used a silencing charm to sneak up on her. "Kill myself."
Snape stared back unflinchingly. "Why?"
Catherine ignored him, eyes tracking across the ceiling and following each ridge in the ancient stone. Her lips were pursed, one brow hardly raised. "Like I said before, you wouldn't believe me."
She looked back to Snape, the man sat comfortably atop a conjured chair, spartan yet plush, a notebook and quill in his lap. "Why do you think I'm possessed?"
"Your magic has changed. Dumbledore and myself noticed it is eerily alike the Dark Lord's. Almost identical."
A hum of acknowledgement. More tapping.
"You haven't slept at all."
Not a question. A statement.
"I don't really do that anymore. What day is it, exactly?"
"You don't know?"
She smiled, waving her fingers over her temple. "S'all a bit muddled up."
"The twenty first of February."
"Huh. Thought it was almost March."
"You said you don't sleep anymore." Snape tapped his quill against the page. "How long has that been going on?"
"Dunno. A month, maybe longer."
"And you never once thought to go to Madam Pomfrey, McGonagall, or the Headmaster?"
"Knew they couldn't fix it. Knew they'd probably put me down here."
"Fix what, exactly?"
She grinned. "Not human anymore. Haven't been for a while now."
Snape froze, the scratching of his quill going silent. "...not human? You idiot girl, if you were bitten by a vampire or werewolf the first thing you should have done is go to a professor!"
"I'm neither of those things. Don't really know what you could call me to be honest." She picked at her nails. "Bit similar to a vampire though. Only live off blood now."
"You've been- what… excuse me, Potter, but did you just say you've been living off of nothing but blood for the last month and you don't believe you're a vampire?"
"Nope." Catherine sighed, two fingers pinched at her forehead. "Look, I know I hate you. I know you hate me. Let's get past that and focus on what needs to be done here."
She turned to face him properly, elbows on her knees and leaning forward. "I have no fucking idea why these things have happened to me, but I know what they are and what they're being caused by. It isn't Voldemort, and-" she choked, shaking her head. "I really wish it was. Truly. Because with him? It would make sense. But this- this is beyond me, this is beyond you, and I think it's beyond Professor Dumbledore."
"What, pray tell, is beyond the Headmaster and myself."
"I- I honestly don't even know how to describe it without seeming more insane than I already am."
Snapes brow raised imperiously. "You call yourself insane?"
"Yeah." Catherine barked out a laugh. "Yeah, I do. You- you remember what you saw in my head, right? Wolves? That weird city? I lied to you, lied to Dumbledore when you asked what it was."
"You told us that they were visions, nightmares sent to you by the Dark Lord."
"I really, really wish they were."
Oh god.
Catherine took a deep, shuddering breath, fingers shaking as she tried desperately to calm herself.
"It's real. It's all real. I don't know- I can't- I have no idea how to even begin to describe what's going on, but every time I fall asleep - no stunning, no magic - just me closing my eyes, I go there. I go to this… this city - Yharnam, it's called - and I can't even begin to explain… I can't-"
She stood, pointing to her face, at the scar that wrapped around her head in one unbroken line. "See this? I got it when I got my head chopped off. Whap." She slammed her hand into her open palm. "Two swings of an axe. This? This right here?" Catherine ran her finger across the burns on her neck. "Had a... cannon, or something like it go off next to my throat, could hardly even breathe. I'm covered in scars now, covered in them, because for some reason I'm brought to that place and I just can't die. But scars? They stay with me."
Catherine giggled, the sound sharp, fragile as it echoed across the dungeon. "Can't even die here, too. I tried, you saw me, it's why I'm here. Tried to do it again, hung myself against the bars. Just woke up with a sore throat. So, whatever you think, whatever Dumbledore thinks, it's not that simple."
She sat back down, letting out another deep breath, this one spitting out the pressure she had felt bubbling up inside her. Her shoulders fell, relaxed, and it felt for the first time in weeks like she could let her guard down without having her throat ripped out a second later.
"...experiencing delusions and hallucinations," Snape mumbled, quill dancing across the page. "Has possibly scarred herself intentionally, only to be resurrected by the combination of blood and soul magics. Her condition is wholly uni-"
Catherine could only gape at him, interrupting his ramblings. "Excuse me? You think I'm… hallucinating? That this is all in my head? You think I did this to myself?"
Placing his quill back down, Snape only offered her a quiet sigh, the contempt in his voice palpable as he spoke. "I think a lot of things, Potter, but it is not I who is in charge of your… tenure. All I am is an observer, unwilling of course, but an observer nonetheless. But… it would not be beyond you to act in such an attention seeking manner, even impaired as you obviously are."
All she could do was blink stupidly, before the hatred crashed down upon her.
Fury was what Catherine felt, looking at the man in front of her. Fury at the unfairness of it all, fury to be judged - to be consigned to be little more than an insect in his eyes - all because of the actions of her teenage father.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you, seeing me in here." Her lip curled, teeth - fangs - bared. "You're loving every second of this, knowing that something has finally broken me. Do you really hate who my father was that much? That this? This?" she snarled, nails dragging at her scars. "Is what I've become? You're what, mid thirties? Bit past? Don't you think it's a bit sad, Snivellus, don't you think it's a touch… I don't know, sadistic to enjoy this?"
She wrapped her fingers around the bars, pressing her face between them. "I always knew you were scum, before I even saw that mark on your arm. But this? This is by far the lowest you have - could ever stoop. Getting off on seeing me locked in a cage… do you feel like you've won, Snape? Like my dad is looking down on this and feeling anything but pity for the sad, conniving little prick I see in front of me?"
"How dare you."
Catherine sneered.
"What? Does that hurt to hear? Because it's true, that's all he could ever feel for you. All I can ever feel for you." Catherine smiled, face twisted into something terrible, for it caused even Snape to flinch. "All you are is a bitter, lonely man who has never known love. Never known a friend. Do the staff here even get along with you, or are you just tolerated in every circle you're involved in? Dumbledore's bitch. Voldemort's potions whore. Hogwarts most hated." She laughed in his face, revelling in the way his skin paled. Loving how he pulled away from her, pressing himself further into his chair. "The only thing anyone could ever feel for you is pity."
"Enough!" Snape roared, jumping to his feet. "You vile, hideous child!"
"Oh! Did I hit a nerve? Did you feel that one, Severus?" Catherine gnashed her teeth. "Not that fun when I bite back, is it? You think I care one bit about what goes on at Hogwarts anymore? You think you scare me? That I'll just sit here and let you take pleasure in my confinement? I've seen inside your head. I know what makes those little gears in your head tick, tick, tick away."
He didn't respond, wand flickering as he vanished the chair and hurried out of the dungeons, footsteps echoing loudly as he stomped away.
"See you tomorrow!" she called, sticking her arm out beyond the bars and waving.
Catherine would chip away at the man until he believed her. She would worry away at his mind like water against stone until he could do nothing but see what she had seen, know what she now knows, and convince Dumbledore to set her free of her cage.
It was that, or find a way to leave, but Catherine now thought it better to be here and live with a known danger than to escape and have the Ministry on her tail.
Because Umbridge would find a way, having the Minister's ear and all.
No, that was a slippery slope Catherine had no interest in falling down. Not unless it was her only option.
She could always try and sleep, go back to Yharnam and stretch her legs. Perhaps she could see how the Doll was, speak with Gehrman and learn more about his tools, or-
Oh no.
Gascoigne's daughter.
How long had Catherine spent lost in Old Yharnam and the Cathedral Ward looking for secrets? A week? Longer?
She couldn't tell the passing of time, not with a perpetual night. Not with sleep never knocking on the doors of her mind.
Catherine could guess, yes, but that's all she could do. It felt like weeks. It could have been longer, but she'd never know unless she happened across a Yharnamite who'd bothered to keep time through the nightmare their city had birthed.
Oh no, oh no no no no no no no-
Catherine grabbed at her hair, fingers looping through the ragged strands and stumbling backwards, landing against the ground with a thud as her eyes opened wide with the realization of what she had done.
"I've killed her."
She had as good as murdered that little girl. Left her to die in the cold and dark through her negligence.
Because there was no chance the girl had stayed inside with incense lit, right? That the likelihood of her having enough food, enough water, to last through however long Catherine had left her alone and scared, was slim to none? That a beast hadn't found its way into her home and torn her to shreds?
Catherine felt as though she would be sick, the glassy eyes of Djura long passed from her thoughts and instead the fragile, miniature form of a girl too pure for a city so tainted, standing in her mind's eye.
All she could do was hope - pray to a god she didn't believe in that the girl was still safe.
She'd never even gotten her name. Maybe she never would.
Her ears almost swiveled at the sound of more footsteps, these ones more quiet. Reserved.
It must be Dumbledore.
"Headmaster."
Catherine pulled her hands away from her head, blood and ragged scraps of skin clinging to the underside of her fingernails. She wiped them off on her trousers, ignoring the pooling warmth in her scalp. Not the first time she'd accidentally hurt herself.
"Catherine."
Dumbledore looked awful, unkempt. His robes were the same ones he had worn the other day, wrinkled, and the collar stained with food. But his eyes showed his true distress, heavy with bags and looking more tired than she'd ever seen them before.
He hadn't slept.
"Snape seems to be enjoying himself a bit too much, seeing me locked up in here."
"I am aware, and beyond disappointed," he stated, voice even. Catherine didn't know if he was speaking about her, or Snape, but she didn't find herself caring. "I found myself privy to your conversation with him just now. Sound carries quite far down here."
"Eavesdropping? I'd never thought you the type, sir."
He sighed. "Only when it comes to the safety of my students."
Catherine studied him, biting at her lip. "My safety, or that of the others?"
Dumbledore ignored her question, settling down on the cold stone crossing his legs, hands resting comfortably in his lap. "Tell me Catherine, why you do not believe yourself to be possessed?"
"Scars gone, isn't it?" she asked, tapping her forehead. "Didn't notice until now, but it must have happened the first time I'd died. I thought Voldemort could only get in from there, so - no scar, no problem. At least- no problems from him. Yharnam, on the other hand, is an entirely different story."
"Yes, Yharnam. It's a city, you say, one you appear in when you dream?"
"Not quite. I… I'm sort of drawn between here and there. I close my eyes to rest, I open them in Yharnam. Fall asleep there, and I wake up back home."
Dumbledore only nodded, motioning for her to continue.
"I know Snape thinks I've lost it, that I'm mad. He's right, though, but not exactly. The things I've seen, Professor, the things I've done… it's only been a bit over a month I think, maybe more spent over there, but it feels like so much longer." Her brow furrowed. "You could check my age, couldn't you? See if I'm older than I'm supposed to be?"
"Something that could easily be accomplished using an aging potion. I'm sure you remember the Weasley Twins' attempt to bypass my age line last year."
She shook her head. "I don't know what to do then, to show you this is really me. You can look into my head, but that can be faked too, can't it? Truth potion?"
"Correct. None of those options are infallible, not when it comes to Tom."
"Then what am I supposed to do? Sit here and rot until you decide I'm a danger or if I'm not?"
Dumbledore froze at that, throat bobbing. "I'm afraid, Catherine, that regardless of whether or not my theory stands you are very much a dangerous individual. To just yourself or others, I do not know, but you are dangerous all the same."
"So… what? What am I supposed to- am I expected to just wait patiently? Just pretend that nothing is wrong?" Her mouth opened and closed, eyes shut tight. "I don't know what to do, Professor. I'm… I'm losing my mind, and I'm forced to watch as it slips away. I thought, maybe, I could die and everything would just stop, but I'm not even allowed that much. So, you tell me, what am I supposed to do? What do you think is the reason why I'm still here, sitting in front of you? Because Snape seemed to have a lot of ideas as to why, and all of them end in me being locked away for the rest of my life."
"To be honest, I do not know. You are... unique. The aftereffects of your having survived the killing curse so many years ago and the protections your mother weaved... I believe them to have collided, quite spectacularly, and resulted in something never before seen in the history of our kind. A form of immortality, or something very close to it." He tilted his head, both sadness and curiosity in his eyes. "You must know how deeply it pains me to see you like this, to be the one hurting you so terribly, but I hope you understand that- that you were erratic beyond belief. You have been for the last few weeks, I assume since your episodes began. Hurting yourself, hurting others, throwing yourself off the tower… and you say you died even before that. That wasn't your first suicide attempt, was it?"
"Episodes," Catherine muttered. "So you don't believe me either."
"I don't know what to believe. All I have to work on is the information presented to me. This is why I am sitting here speaking with you." He sighed deeply, running his fingers through his scraggly beard. "I need to know what has happened to know what can be done to fix it."
"I thought you cared for me."
Dumbledore inhaled sharply, eyes glimmering. "Very much so. More than you can imagine. If I could take this from you, take it unto myself… I would do so without hesitation."
"I promise you, you don't." She shuddered. "You couldn't even dream up the things I've seen. Yharnam makes no sense, none." Catherine almost felt tempted to tell him of the god in her head, whispering sweet poison in her ear and pushing her to lengths unknown.
That, he could never believe.
"It's a city that was built on top of a city, put together by the hands of a madman. It just grows up, up, up, and never seems to stop. But the beasts that live there, beasts that used to be people, Professor, they kill everything in sight. Some of them still look human, huge, hideous things. I saw one jumping inside of another's chest as if it was a puddle, giggling as the blood splashed over its ankles.
"I've seen broken down doors and swam in the stink of their rotting owners, reduced to a pile of meat and left to fester on the porch, their bones splintered and the marrow sucked clean through." Catherine stared into his eyes, imploring him to understand, to look. "My mind is an open book, Professor. All you have to do is turn the page."
She felt no knock at her skull, gut lurching as Dumbledore turned away, refusing to make eye contact. "Thank you for speaking with me. I will have the house elves bring you breakfast soon."
Catherine waved him off. "No need for that Professor. I'm sure you heard, I don't need much for sustenance anymore."
"Blood, then."
"And where would you get that?"
"We have had vampire students in the past. It would be of no trouble, I assure you," he explained, hands clasped behind his back.
While his body language kept calm, Catherine could smell the fear on him. Could taste the worry on the air.
"I'll survive. Although, it doesn't really change much if I don't, does it?"
Dumbledore's heart fluttered. She could hear the stutter, how it hiccoughed for a moment before springing back to life. "You may be… confined, at the moment, but you will not be treated as though you were a common prisoner."
A nod and he was off, gliding away as if he had never been there in the first place.
What was it, in every police show or book? Catherine asked herself, sitting down on the cot. Good cop, bad cop?
She'd never really been given the chance to watch anything, only catching snippets of different dramas and the occasional episode of Coronation Street that Petunia was so fond of, but that was a phrase constant from screen to novel.
It seemed apt, here.
The distress Dumbledore and Snape had shown was very much real, but the motive was all the same: learn how deep Voldemort's claws had sunk, and tear them out root and stem. Catherine was just collateral.
If things changed for the worse… well- there were only so many options.
Curious, Catherine snapped her fingers, forcing down the smile that threatened to creep over her face at the appearance of a familiar bluish-white mist and the murmured crooning of the Messengers as their heads poked out of the ground.
Escaping was always an option. Or… it looked like she could bring a bit of Yharnam here, the pieces locked away in her trunk.
If that didn't convince them, she didn't know what could.