Chapter Forty-One | That's All She Wrote
Her statement hanging in the air like the blade of a guillotine, it dropped on both their heads with a weight and fervor that left Catherine stricken, watching the tears well in Hermione's eyes as recognition settled on her shoulders.
"No."
That simple, single word cut through the tension and left a vacuum, an emptiness lingering for but a second before filling up stronger than before.
"Hermione-"
"No!"
Catherine reared back as a finger came flying at her face, jabbing with each and every word that came pouring from Hermione's lips. "How dare you! After everything we've been through, after how far we've come - together - always together, and now you want to throw it all away? You want to run and hide?"
A few faces peeked out to study the sudden commotion, Neville's eyes widening from his seat at the couch as he realized what was going on, his hands waving as he desperately tried to direct everyone's attention away from the looming catastrophe.
"You have no idea what kind of danger you're in!" Catherine insisted, her voice pleading but no less filled with finality. "I- there's people watching, I don't want to-"
"Don't want to do what? Hurt me? Embarrass me? Too late." Teeth bared in a silent snarl, Hermione bore down on her, Djura cackling somewhere behind Catherine. "I know this isn't just a break up, nothing's ever that simple with you. You're going to run away because you think it's safer for me," she sniped, the word dripping with derision. "I don't get to choose? Ron doesn't get to choose? What about Si- what about Padfoot? The rest of the Weasley's? Who are you to decide that you get to leave our lives like that?
"And you do this, this… this stupid, pigheaded act of self-sacrifice because you genuinely think it's the best thing to do, don't you? I've been through everything with you! You think I wouldn't have followed you into that graveyard if I knew what was happening or who was waiting on the other side?"
All Catherine could do was stand still and weather the storm, a great tree planting its roots so as to survive another day, to shield the smaller ones that lay behind it and stop them from being torn out of the earth and crumple against the spines of their brethren.
"I- I love you, you absolute, horrendous git. How dare you do this to me, and yourself."
It was better this way. For Hermione to hate her, to look at her as some damnable fool who played with her heart. She was a fool, that was well and true, but not for loving Hermione. No, she was a fool for thinking it could end in anything but heartbreak.
Hadn't that been an ever present part of her thoughts? That this was temporary? A fleeting bit of happiness before the weight of Yharnam crashed down upon her and left nothing but a spongy paste for the beasts to squabble over?
Catherine knew it would hurt. Hurt more than anything she'd been through so far.
She was right.
It felt like talons were gripping her heart, constricting it, clenching tighter and tighter with each feeble beat as it fought to pump but an ounce of strength through her veins.
Where was that strength now? Where was that resolute and decisive mind that had always been cradled in that little, sloshing mess of meat and bone that was her head?
By speaking, she had destroyed Hermione. But if not, she would have damned her all the same. To watch as her closest friend and one who had, as of late, come to share her bed, wither into a husk who demanded no less than the blood of all and the knowledge trapped deep inside their porcelain skulls.
Even now she could hear the thunderous beat of her heart, see that artery in her neck throb with anger. It very nearly sang to her, Catherine itching and wondering if her blood would taste as sweet and clear as that pallid yellow ichor that ebbed from beasts borne of the stars themselves.
"This is for the best."
The sob that rang out almost stole her breath away, nearly took with it the iron of her ideals and the truth that, were she to not go through with this, Hermione and all that she loved alongside her would come to know nothing but ruin.
"You idiot. You magnanimous twit. Don't be a martyr Catherine. For the love of god-" she choked, tears running down her face. "Don't be a bloody martyr."
Softly, hesitantly, Catherine leaned up and pressed a kiss to her cheek, retreating as slowly as she had approached. "I'm sorry, but things are- they're so much bigger than I ever thought they were. You deserve more than I can ever give you."
"Are you blind? Can't you see that you're what I want? I already- I already thought I lost you." Lip trembling, Hermione pleaded her last. "Don't die on me, please."
"I'm sorry," she repeated, slipping backwards and out the portrait, Hermione, defeated, trembling, and staring at her in horror. "Take care of yourself, okay?"
With that the door shut, the Fat Lady offering her an imperious glance before averting her gaze and huffing out, 'Bloody hormonal teenagers. More dramatic every year.'
The glare Catherine shot at the portrait was nothing less than scalding, a turpentine bath made immaterial. "You've heard the whispers and you know war is coming. Tell me, who do you think will have to fight?"
Ashamed, the Fat Lady turned away, clicking her tongue as she did her best to ignore Catherine.
"Hormonal teenagers we might be, but that doesn't change the fact that I might as well already be dead." She lifted a hand and pressed it against the painting, leering at the thing. "You and all your friends keep an eye on mine. Anything happens and you alert Dumbledore or McGonagall. If you don't, I'll come back for you, and priceless bit of art or not I'll leave you nothing but splinters and torn canvas."
"What happened to you?" The portrait asked, aghast.
An awful laugh ripped out of Catherine's belly, startling the other paintings nearby and sending them skittering from their frames. "More than you could ever imagine."
With one place in mind Catherine marched her way from the tower, fury in her heart at both herself and the circumstances that led to her damnation.
To choose to die, or to live on eternally, caught between two worlds that made water and oil seem to have an intimate relationship worth every drop of envy one could muster. That was her fate, one or the other, destroyed from within or from forces beyond.
Rage in her bones and fire on her tongue, she stomped her way towards the second floor, towards that seedy, dripping chamber that was buried deep beneath the castle. She wanted to lay ruin to her history, crumble the foundations that made her her, and what better place than the spot where she almost, truly died for the first time?
Quirrel was nothing but a joke, and if the man hadn't been so stupid as to attempt to strangle her she would be long buried, but the basilisk? That was her first monster, the first great beast she slew, all at the tender age of twelve.
Perhaps she was always meant to be a Hunter? Devourer of snakes and dragons and all things scaled and fierce.
"Oi!" She heard someone call as she went for the bathroom door, turning to see none but Draco Malfoy striding towards her, most likely coming from the library.
Dead eyed, she stared him down as he approached, the boy slowly wilting beneath her gaze and whatever taunts were on his lips dying as he gazed into her eyes and found only one looking back. "What in Merlin's name happened to you now? Try to gouge your own eye out or something?" he jibed, gaping at her new scars.
"Malfoy."
Flinching, the boy tore his eyes away, pointedly staring at a spot in the middle of her forehead. "Off to go cry in the loo?"
"Chamber of Secrets, actually."
He snorted. "Salazar Slytherin's Chamber, here of all places. You let your own rumours muddy that thick skull of yours, didn't you?"
Gesturing towards the door as if to invite him, she pushed it open with one hand. "Come. See."
She went into the bathroom without him, purposeful steps carrying her to the one, serpentine sink, hissing softly at it and smiling as it opened with the grind of stone and a great shudder that shook the room. Catherine could hear Draco wander in after her, a gasp escaping him as he saw the sinks shuffle into place and open into a great, grimy maw, the reek of mildew and rot wafting out of it.
"Draco," she uttered, glancing over her shoulder at him. "I think this would be a good learning experience for you."
He frowned, then shrieked pitifully as she jumped into the hole and latched onto him with a tendril of magic, dragging the boy in after her.
The journey to the bottom was quick, sliding down slick steel piping and skidding gracefully across a bed of mulched bone and long-rotted animal carcasses. Draco's entrance was entirely different, sent down face first and scratching himself something awful along the fragile shards of the tiny, skittering beasts that the basilisk once grazed on.
With a flick of her wrist and a muttered episkey his wounds were healed, a heavy, adrenaline fueled breath pushed out of him as he regained the use of his lungs, pushing himself up on shaking arms and staring at her with no small amount of fear. As an after-thought, she conjured up a small, bobbing light, casting the dilapidated pipes in harsh shades of white, reminding her of the stark, artificial luminescence of a hospital, admitted to one at the tender age of six after she'd broken a bone trying to escape from Dudley and his friends by climbing a tree.
"What is this place?" he asked. "Why- why in Salazar's name have you brought me down into a sewer, you idiot!"
"You came to taunt me, didn't you?" Catherine cocked her head to the side, looking at him questioningly. "Gathered up your courage again and wanted to ask me why I haven't killed myself yet? Maybe you wanted to figure out what pushed me over that ledge? Why I'm not in any of Snape's classes? What was it, Draco? What made you come up to someone so obviously dangerous, someone who threatened you not so long ago, and risk your neck for a bit of schoolboy fun?"
"Get me out of here this instant!"
"No."
"Potter! I swear, my family will destroy you if you don't show me the way out right this second."
"Your dad is a dead man walking, Draco."
His nostrils flared, wand out and pointed at her in an instant. "Are you threatening my father?"
"Me? No. Just making a statement of fact. Your father is one of Voldemort's most faithful followers, isn't he?" She took a step forward, grinning as he backed away, slipping and stumbling until he was pressed against the wall. Catherine kept walking until the tip of his wand pressed sharply against her chest, right where her heart lay. "Your father watched, gleefully, as I fought Voldemort atop the grave of his muggle father. But when he showed up? He didn't do anything but plead and beg to avoid the ire of his great lord."
"You're not Potter-"
"I am. This is me, Draco." Her voice dropped, accent shifting. "You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort," she taunted, Draco wincing at the echo of his old words. "See? This is me. Does that scare you? What I've become?"
"You ought to be locked up."
Catherine laughed, harsh and awful, the pipes ringing terribly and carrying the grating sound of it deep into the tainted belly of Hogwarts. "You're right. I should. But, I don't think any prison could hold me at this point. Not unless you bound me, cut out my tongue and forced a tube down my throat to pump me full of blood and pepper-up."
"Blood?" Came his horrified whisper, eyes flickering down to her mouth as if to catch a glimpse of fangs she had yet to bear, lips sealed tight.
"C'mon. Let's go for a walk." She pulled away from him, patting his shoulder and biting her cheek as he winced again. "Unless you want to get lost down here, all alone?"
Frantically, he scrambled after her, Catherine trudging through the pipes with purpose until she came across the pile of rubble that marked the grave of one Gilderoy Lockhart. Not dead, but reduced to something so much worse.
Perhaps she could stick him in a room with Provost Willem and find out if they could unlock the secrets of the universe together.
"I won't hurt you Draco," she stated as she pushed the rocks away with ease. A show of strength, Malfoy watching guardedly as she hefted the great chunks of rubble out of the way without breaking a sweat. "It's not because I care for you," Catherine added, sending a smirk his way. "It's because it'd be far too easy. In fact, I've brought you down here for a purpose. A whim, mostly, but a purpose all the same."
"And- and what purpose would that be?"
Hmm, she wondered. That was the first time he'd ever spoken to her without malice. Oh, his words were thick with fear, self-preservation running wild, but they were devoid of spite regardless. Strange.
"I'm not a fan of children dying. If you keep walking the same path, following in your father's footsteps, well… it will become increasingly more difficult to avoid such a thing."
"You say you're not threatening me, but then you say that. What am I supposed to make of you, Potter?"
Clapping her hands, she picked a bit of debris out of her palm before wiping them off on her robes. "It's not a threat, like I said. Just a prediction. You're on the losing side of this war right now and you know so little about what's actually happening around you. Tell me, do you have it in you to kill? To torture? To rape and murder with abandon?"
Gritting his teeth, Draco's jaw clenched violently, the joint cracking just loud enough for her to hear. "I'll kill if I need to."
"Oh?" Now she grinned, fangs glinting in the harsh, magical light. "Well, if you ever decide you want to try killing, take a jab at me. I won't even fight back, it can be a little game for you."
"What is wrong with her?" Catherine heard him mutter as she turned around to face the pitch black entrance to the Chamber proper, leaving her back wide open.
Flames sprang to life as she stepped inside, nestled in the maw of each statue that lined the marbled walk to Salazar's statue. Most of the Chamber still lay in ruin, rubble strewn about or bobbing silently in the ponds that the statues jutted out of. Laying in the middle of it all was the rotting corpse of the basilisk, mostly bare bone marked with long strips of blackened flesh that hung from its hundreds of ribs. Beneath it was a puddle of grime, buzzing with insects and mold, mushrooms poking out here and there and beyond hardy to grow and feast on the toxic rot that was its blood.
Catherine smiled as she walked up to the carcass, the thing still larger than life, maw hanging open and empty eye sockets staring right back at her as she approached. Trailing the pad of her finger along the bone she shuddered at the memory of the thing. How terribly scared she had been, her entire being locked on a single, impossible thought: kill it.
"Ah, there it is," she announced, poking her head into the open mouth and looking down to admire her work. A clean hole punctured through the top of its skull, goblin-steel carving through it with as much ease as a Yharnam blade would shear through flesh. "Come, see. This is where I stabbed it. Got it right in the brain."
"What the fuck," Draco uttered, and she couldn't help but laugh, nearly impaling herself on one of its teeth as she pulled her head out, laughter ringing louder as she saw him with a bubble-head charm safely ensconscing his nose and mouth.
"Language, Draco."
"What the fuck." He looked on unblinkingly, the whites of his eyes showing as he tried to tear his gaze away from the basilisk's corpse. "You did this?"
"Twelve years old and already a Hunter. Something to be proud of, don't you think?"
"I- I thought it was all a lie. Some stupid tale you and your friends spread, that nattering mudblood-"
The crack of her hand against his cheek echoed loudly across the Chamber, Draco nearly thrown backwards at the force of it and cursing as he tentatively pressed at the already bruising flesh.
"Say that word again and I take your tongue."
Nodding meekly, he trailed his wand along his jaw and sighed with relief. "You… you really killed it, didn't you?"
Working down her sleeve, Catherine showed him the bottle-sized mark of white on the inside of her forearm, pinked over with trails of lightning. "Almost died. Only lived because of Fawkes."
Draco was silent as he studied the scar, throat flexing and bobbing as he strained to contain whatever emotion was tearing through his psyche.
Was it horror? Fear? Enjoyment? Catherine didn't know. Didn't really want to know, but she found herself curious all the same.
"You said- you said this is supposed to be a learning experience. What exactly am I supposed to learn?"
"That you and your friends are sorely unprepared for the cost of war, and it'd be best if you went running for the hills before the year is out. Take your loved ones, those who don't subscribe to Voldemort's views, and find your way to the mainland. Go to Beauxbatons, hell, Ilvermony - simply anywhere away from him, because this?" she pointed at the corpse. "This is what he will reduce you to. This is the life that waits for you. Even a relic of the founders, now nothing but rot because of him, killed at the hands of a child. And if I did that at twelve, what do you think I'm capable of now?"
Though she was shorter than Draco, far shorter, she felt in that moment as if she was standing tall above him and carrying with her a message from god, fashioned to tear his world asunder. "Make no mistake about it, Draco. I have killed and I will continue to kill to see him put down. I, nor anyone else, will flinch if they see you and your family standing behind him. Voldemort doesn't stand for a revival of your traditions, he stands for genocide, the systemic murder of all he sees as lesser, the irony of which is that he himself - your vaunted Dark Lord - is a halfblood.
"Not that that means anything, really, but… I'd like you to tell me something. Are you willing to kill and torture your way through the hundreds of thousands - the millions that he would doom for nothing else but the circumstances of their birth? Does that sit well with you? The idea of people like me or Hermione lined up against a wall? Graves full to the brim with men, women, and children, all of them staring slack-eyed at the skies above as the rest of their families' bodies are dumped atop them?"
Wand pointing at the great carving of Salazar, she conjured up an image torn from her mind. The pits of Hemwick, bodies broken and torn to pieces. Eyes missing, tongues pulled through slit throats, ribs splayed and guts spilling across legs and arms and other limbs that poked out of the mass of gore.
Draco bent over, hands on his knees as he spewed his breakfast all over the floor, the softly lapping water that crept over the sides of the platform carrying dregs of bacon and half-digested bread into the pools below.
"This is the future he wishes for, this is the future he will demand of you. Are you ready to pay that price? Is this what you want to see Britain, and if he has his way, the rest of the world become?"
"No," he weakly protested.
"Louder."
"No."
"Louder!"
"No! No, damnit, no!" Shaking, Draco pointed his wand at her, tears in his eyes. "Why would you show me that? Why would you do all this? Why?"
"Because you're just a kid, Draco, and even you deserve to enjoy that."
"That doesn't make any sense! You're the same age as me!"
"I've never had a childhood. Never had a moment to stop and simply be. My whole life has been one mess after another, and you know what? I'm doomed, inevitably, to fight that madman your parents worship. I don't plan to lose that fight, Malfoy. I don't ever want to see that, what I just showed you, come to be. So, me? I never had the chance, but you? You and your friends? All these children, here, in Hogwarts, have the opportunity to get away from it all. To save themselves the fear and pain that will come when he finally shows his face and starts tearing through our world. And don't pretend as if your family will be safe from him. I saw the man crucio two of your father's friends and leave Peter Pettigrew, as much as he deserved it, cradling his bleeding, stump arm."
Vindication cloaked her in its embrace as Draco grunted out a sobbing, solemn, "Yes."
"You understand?"
"Yes!" He screamed, raw and afraid. "Yes, I see! I get it, damnit! I get it!"
"Good."
Pitiful and shrunken, no semblance of the superiority or braggadocio zeal that normally set his back straight - leaving him standing tall and proud - Draco scowled at her, before letting out a breath of defeat. "So that's why? That's why you… you know." He mimed a figure diving, hand swooping up and then down, to a sudden stop.
"That, among other things."
Shoulders pulling towards his neck, he nodded a few times, his world crumbling around him. "I'll… I'll try and talk to my mother. My father is… he- I don't think there's any way I can turn him around. But her… maybe I can convince her."
"Is he staying with you?"
"My father?"
"Voldemort."
Another flinch. "Yeah. He is."
"Write her a letter. Ask her to lunch, at Hogsmeade."
"I will."
A puff of laughter, scornful, suddenly broke out of him, and Draco shook his head. "Are they all stories? What the other students say about you?"
"Depends. Did I kill Quirrel? Yes. The basilisk?" She spread her arms. "Look at it with your own eyes. A host of Dementors? True as well. And Voldemort? Cedric? I watched him die in front of me, thrown away like a bit of rubbish. Just like that-" she snapped her fingers. "Gone in an instant. Kill the spare, he said, like my friend wasn't worth the air he breathed. Pureblood, wasn't he? Might be blood-traitors according to high society, but that's your 'movement' for you. Lies and delusions, appealing to a mythos that never existed."
"You- you killed Quirrel?"
"Voldemort was living in the back of his head."
"Oh my- that's disgusting. He was possessed? How did no one… no one noticed?"
"Dumbledore. A mistake he's since apologized for."
"I- that doesn't… he possessed Quirrel? Quirrel?"
"Poor choice, I'd say. Man tried to strangle me and got burned alive for it."
"Merlin, you were eleven when that happened," Draco spoke, appalled. He then snorted, as if he suddenly realized where they were standing, who he was talking with. "Why all this, then? Why now? We've always been at each other's throats, and now you care if I live or die?"
"I've never wanted you to die, Draco. I detested you, yes. Couldn't stand the sight of you, but it was because of your hatred, the views you held… still hold. But, you're young, and you don't deserve to die because of your upbringing, not when you can still change. And me? Why now?" Catherine breathed in, taking in the rot and the sweet stench of mildew that lingered on the edges. "I've not got much time left. Thought I'd do some good while I have the chance."
"Are you… sick?"
"Yeah. I am." Biting her cheek, she looked back at him, seeing the small, scared boy that he was. "Terminal."
And that was the truth of it, wasn't it? No way she was coming out of this anywhere close to kind or human. No chance she could ingratiate herself with society and relearn how to live, to go through life without feeling the sprinkle of blood on her skin, the richness of it as it clung to her throat.
No. Catherine died that night, early February, taken away in her sleep. The thing that woke up wearing her like an ill-fitted suit was only a pretender, nothing but the walking dead.
"Try to enjoy your life, and make sure your friends and whoever else you care for knows to stay far, far away from me." Her gaze was steely as it met his, unapologetic. "I can't promise they'll be safe otherwise."
"Understood," he agreed in a faltering voice. "Can I… can I go now?"
"Come with me." She beckoned him. "I'll get you out of here, safe and sound."
Still shaken, but no longer fearing for his life (at least, not in that moment) Draco followed behind her, quietly muttering, "The bloody Chamber of Secrets?" as they left.
"Not as great as it's made out to be."
He chuckled quietly, a noise that sounded more genuine than any haughty thing he had passed off as joy before. "Nightmare, this place is."
"Hidden well. Girl's baths?"
"Never would have imagined," he said, wrinkling his nose.
They kept walking, trudging through the rubble and slop until they eventually came to the entrance, Catherine hissing for stairs to appear and carry them back up. As Draco took the first step he turned to her, quizzical, and asked, "So... what now?"
Catherine laughed.