Chapter Forty-Two | End of an Era
The next two weeks passed without much fanfare. Long accustomed to gawking and mocking stares sent to her from the eyes of those unashamed by their interest, Catherine had come to consider her fame and the consequences of such nothing more than an afterthought, something to be forgotten after her suicide attempt. Now they no longer leered at her but the two friends she had left by the wayside, glancing between them at the tables and noting the sheer distance Catherine kept from them in the few classes and meals she bothered to attend.
All her time had been spent with Dumbledore, or simply buried in a book somewhere learning creative ways to kill not just beasts, but wizards - a skill she sorely lacked - muscle memory tainted by the habit of standing face to face with her enemies and simply bludgeoning or stabbing them until they stopped twitching or screaming, blood on her hands and lips. Dueling, fighting with magic, was quite a bit more difficult, practicing ruthlessly against Dumbledore and finding it close to impossible to narrow the distance between the two of them when he managed to simultaneously coat the floor in ice, spikes, and fire, all while sending a barrage of beasts and brightly coloured spells her way, even as she flickered in and out of sight with the blessing of that old hunter's bone.
Hermione and Ron had tried to approach her numerous times. They'd poached the Marauders Map from her trunk and were using it to keep tabs on her, something she found both flattering and infuriating. Catherine had distanced herself from them for good reason, taking herself far away from anyone who already wasn't in too deep, that being… well, Dumbledore.
Although there was another drawn into that mutual suffering, and she did her best to pretend he didn't exist. No longer shielded by the comfort of Ron and Hermione, Catherine had begun to notice how much Snape truly hated her.
Not that she went out of her way to spend any time with the man, vile and dour, spitting curses under his breath whenever they passed each other in the halls or glaring at her over his meal, something he knew full well she could hear as clear as day, even above the chatter of her fellow students.
If she was honest, which she often was these days, she pitied him. Obsessed with a dead man and his daughter, choosing to take out his childhood rage on the one thing that remained of James Potter.
So she distanced herself from everyone, including the D.A., which might as well have been over - unofficially, but over regardless - Catherine refusing to send out any messages on her coin to draw together a meeting. But, sometimes, she found herself fiddling with that false galleon as she wandered about the school, warming it with her touch and hoping silently that they were at the least continuing their studies on their own, now that she'd given them the tools to learn. Not that they didn't have the opportunity to actually teach themselves freely, now of all times, seeing as Umbridge had sequestered herself away from the rest of the castle and hardly ever showed her face.
The thought of that always twisted Catherine's ever present scowl into a grin, full of wicked vindication to know that she'd instilled such fear in the woman to the point that she didn't dare to wander the halls, nor 'teach' her class. Defense had become nothing more than a glorified study hall in which Umbridge may or may not demand they read that same, damnable book, or simply never appear at all.
Newest of all, Catherine had learned something about her curse.
After spending close to six hours battering dummies and trying her best to figure out how to keep her head casting spells while running around like the devil himself was at her heels, a hammer that weighed as much as a bear dragging behind her, she had accidentally blown herself up.
Not that that was an issue. Although, waking up in a puddle of gore after feeling her chest get torn open by an onslaught of wooden shrapnel and the skin of her face being burnt to a crisp wasn't a sensation she'd ever find herself enjoying - something occurred to her as she crawled out of that mess of blood and ragged scraps of flesh, the remnants of her mulched corpse slowly turning to ash.
She no longer felt tired. No longer had that ache in her bones and a throb that worked itself across her entire body as her muscles protested against hours upon hours of unending fighting.
In fact, for a moment, she thought she had woken up in the Dream, catching flickers of the Doll puttering about the gardens in the moment between when the explosion took her and when she opened her eyes. A brief moment, a fracture in time, where she was caught between both worlds - if she wasn't hallucinating that was.
Seeing ghosts in the dark, drawing her wand at even the softest of noises, Catherine was a woman tuned wholly to the fight.
But, those tiny moments, those little bits of escape…
Catherine could seek death for a flash of respite, sneaking into a classroom and cutting her own throat to take away the stutter in her heart, to let it beat faster and faster as it battled desperately to reach her failing mind, only to have its efforts spill out across the floor. Magic knew no enemy, fortunately, and bloodstains only took a whispered word to be dashed away, the only evidence of her pick-me-up a patch of undusted stone, just a touch cleaner than the blocks surrounding it.
So she gasped to life, eyes clouded as they fought for focus and propped herself up on her elbows, trying to remember the millisecond glimpse of the Doll she had caught, surprise on her face as Catherine appeared for but a moment, choking on dirt in the Dream.
"Better than a cuppa'," she rasped, cleaning up her mess and jumping to her feet, arms working back and forth as she reminded herself to attend supper.
Dumbledore had expressed his disappointment at her actions. Not explicitly, but in the tell-tale signs of a weathered sigh, or a look out of the corner of his eye as they walked through the halls together, Catherine blurring out of sight as soon as she heard two sets of footsteps creeping around the corner ahead.
He knew what she had done and had found fault in it.
"Friendship, Catherine is a beautiful thing. Love, most of all, is one of the greatest forces in our world," he had told her, Catherine sucking greedily at the air as she lay on her back in the Room of Requirement, having just been knocked on her ass for the dozenth time that evening. "You should speak with them. If not for your sake, then for theirs."
Scoffing to herself, Catherine exited the room. Who in the hell do you think I'm doing it for? Certainly not me.
Not that she'd voiced that. Instead, she grunted noncommittally and picked herself up, wand at the ready and hammer hoisted over her shoulder, ready for another round. All that earned her was a set of narrowed eyes peeking out at her from beneath a surly brow.
That man always saw right through her.
But, promises had been made and Catherine was one to honour them, if she could. Not that she'd ever accept something she knew was impossible, no, the hat had considered her for Slytherin for a reason, schemer that she was.
That was something she'd learned from the Dursley's. Do not speak unless spoken to, and above all else, say yes, but never promise anything. Too easily could they be used against her. Too quickly could it all come tumbling down, one offer of aid conflicting with another, Catherine's idiotic hero complex ripping her in two, caught between bucking horses as ropes pulled her arms from their cozy little homes.
Free of bloodstains she cleared her mind and treaded lightly, eyes peeled and ears twitching along her journey to the Great Hall.
Thankfully, she made it there unmolested, pointedly ignoring the curious or disappointed glares she earned from the staff (of whom Flitwick had demanded her suspension for so brazenly skipping every class of his, and every detention assigned) as she walked over to the emptiest section of the Gryffindor table, not bothering to scan for her… old friends.
She told herself it was for them, but really, she just couldn't take the look in their eyes, how it plucked her heart strings like a toddler with a harp, clumsy and violent as they jumped about, banging against her rib cage with a vicious twang.
Gaze set stubbornly forward, she took her seat and piled an unsuspicious amount of food on the empty plate before her. A slice of buttered bread, some mash, a tiny meat pie and mixed veg. Inconspicuous, and painfully British.
Just as she took her second bite, she felt as someone planted their hands on the wood of the table next to her, dread roiling in her gut as she turned to see Hermione.
She blinked once, before turning back to her meal. "Please don't bother me."
"Don't bother you?" Hermione's voice was less spoken word and more a guttural hiss, dripping with sadness and building resentment. "Don't bother you? Really, Cat? That's what you have to say?"
"Please, just… I told you, this is for the best."
"Fuck that."
Catherine barely contained a wince, chewing methodically, her teeth gummy with bread. The butter was too rich, too salty as it clung to the roof of her mouth, clumps of it trapped between her teeth. She poked the mess with her tongue, focusing on the motion of unsticking her jaw.
"So that's it? Five years of friendship and it all boils down to this? I know how you feel. I felt it myself, barely a second in your mind and it burned me, Catherine. It burned me from the inside out, how strong your love is."
Biting her cheek, her eyes clenched shut of their own volition, shuddering against the feeling of hot breath on her ear. "You have no idea what you're asking for, and… it's final. I'm sorry. I can't explain it, I won't explain it, but you have to believe me when I say this is the best possible decision I can make."
"Why does it have to be? We don't-" Hermione sat down, trying to reach for Catherine's hand and grimacing when she pulled away. "We don't need to be together. I- I want- we want you back in our lives. Don't you see that?" The corners of her mouth drew down, pinched with the strain of something implacable. "Whether you like it or not, we're a part of your life, and after thinking… after wondering if you were dead or alive? That day you threw yourself off the tower? Ron and I learned how dark our world looks without you."
Fighting back the growing urge to slam her cutlery, Catherine's head turned on a swivel, lips just barely pulled back to reveal her teeth. "Enough. I told you I can't do this. Whether you agree with it or not, it doesn't change what I have done and will do. You want to try and cling to a dead woman? Have at it, but I'm not going to convince myself to encourage you when I'll only end up destroying your life." She snorted. "Already have, and I'm not going to make it worse."
"That's what I'm talking about! It's always self-sacrifice with you! 'Go on without me!'" Hermione mocked, putting on an abysmal American accent. "You're not some American hero from the cinema. You're a girl in way over her head, and I'm your friend, who loves you and wants to help you. Yeah? I want to help you, for God's sake. Just let me do that! Stop running away from things because you think it's best for me!"
Catherine let out a defeated sigh as Ron sidled along the other end of the table, dropping himself down in front of her. "She's right, you know."
"What is this, an intervention?"
"Might as well be, you tit," Ron spoke, though his words held no venom, only concern. "Running off on us? Really? How long's it been, Hermione? 'Bout two weeks?"
"Two weeks and three days."
"Get your head out of your arse and realize that we care about you, and stop being an idiot. Stop trying to hide from us and let us help you. You did it once and I'd never seen you so happy before, even with everything hanging over your head."
"I can't." This time she did strike the table, the shudder that ran down the length of it traveling far further than any normal slap, a few people even a dozen feet away jumping as their cutlery rattled. As an afterthought, she put up her hundredth silencing charm of the last few months, expecting confetti to rain down from the ceiling and announce to all what a secretive, maddeningly insane nightmare of a woman she was. "Listen to me when I say this. What is happening in Yharnam is beyond your comprehension. If you so much as glanced at what I've come across, it would shatter your mind. That isn't a joke, that isn't an insult, it's fact. The only reason I've been able to deal with this without being left in a padded room, bound head to toe, is because of this bloody scar," she growled, thumbing at her fringe and revealing the hunters mark atop her brow.
"You look at that scar and you see a lightning bolt, don't you? These things are so wrong, so horrific that you can't even see them without your mind making up tricks, telling you that what you're looking at isn't really there. They're so immense that they hid the Truth from an entire nation, a world walking blind while a moon shone red above them, and they never even noticed."
"What are you talking about?" Ron asked, tilting his head as if that would reveal the secret etched into her flesh. "It's a bloody lightning bolt. Always has been."
Catherine's chest thrummed with a spiteful laugh, reverberating deep inside her and echoing out into their little bubble, leaving her two friends pale at the sound of it. "It's not. Never has been, and you're too blind to see it. This is why I have to do this, because you can't even look at me and see what stares back at you. Do you know how much blood I've spilled? How many I've killed? How much does it hurt, I wonder, to realize that I enjoy it? Running around in that little, medieval hell, I've felt more free than I ever have in my entire life."
A gasp slipped out of Hermione, horrified. "You don't- you don't mean that."
"Don't I? Or are you just trying to tell yourself that? I find it more comfortable to rest on the corpse of a man that I've just butchered than a soft bed, and you still can't see how dangerous I am to you."
"You wouldn't ever hurt us-"
"Wouldn't I?" She reached over and gripped Hermione's wrist, just tight enough for her to let out a squeak of fright. "Look into my eyes and say that again. Say it, and pretend you believe your own lies."
"Catherine, let go of her hand."
"What?" She turned her head, glaring at Ron. "Am I hurting her? I thought I'd never do that?"
Letting go, Hermione nearly fell over herself as she pulled her arm away, looking at Catherine as if she'd seen a ghost.
Good. If that was what it took for them to stay far, far away from her and in turn, stay safe, that's what she would do. Catherine could easily be a villain, as simply as breathing, and as of now she'd taken her first few steps to becoming something the two of them they would hopefully come to revile.
She tried to pretend that her blood didn't curdle at her own actions, every fibre of her being screaming at her to stop, godammit, stop! Can't you see they're hurting?
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
"A lot, Ron. So stop trying, yeah? Leave it alone, leave me alone, and enjoy the rest of your life."
His face was slowly turning red, worry turning to anger, his fists clenched dramatically on top of the table, trembling slightly. "Sounds an awful lot like a suicide letter."
"Might as well be."
"Fucks sake, Catherine. How do we drive it into your thick skull that- what the fu-"
A hand suddenly slapped onto her shoulder, and Catherine was ready to whirl around and shout at Hermione when she realized that said hand didn't belong to her, Hermione knocked onto the ground and the entire Great Hall silent as they gawped at the looming figure of Umbridge.
"What the hell did you do to me?" The woman shrieked, pulling Catherine to her feet and squeezing her shoulder so tight she could feel her bones creak.
Her face was twisted, thick patches of hair dotting her neck and cheeks, crooked fangs poking out from between her lips and turning her words into a slurring mess, just barely legible through the mangled remnants of her mouth.
Oh no.
"I know you did this! Turning me into a beast! How did you do it? Make it stop!" Umbridge started to shake Catherine, spit flying from her lips in thick strings. "I'll kill you, you hear me? I'll kill you, you bitch! Change me back or I'll-"
A hideous wail ripped out of the woman as she hunched over, spine cracking hideously and her arms jerking every which way as her bones shifted. Thinking quickly, Catherine banished the nearby students away, sending them towards the far walls of the Great Hall. A few scrapes and bruises would be the least of their worries in a second.
Her silencing charm fell away and Catherine let out a shout. "Dumbledore! Get the students out of the Hall, now!"
"Catherine, what-?"
Umbridge exploded, the tatters of her dress flung across the room. The beast she had been turned into - god damnit, I did this. I did this! - roaring as it threw its arms wide, the sound of it ear-splitting, shaking the room. It was hideous, a massive thing, its head an open maw dripping poison, dotted all over with eyes large and small, cluttered around each other like blisters waiting to be popped.
Limbs jutted out of its elongated torso, five of them, long, spindly things that ended in hands with too many fingers, each tipped with wicked claws that shone dull in the torchlight. Beneath its body was a long tail, forked like a crup, and surrounded by a knotted mess of legs, each of which was bowed at the knees and either reduced to a stump or heavy, cloven hooves, scuffing angrily at the floor.
"Kill, kill, kill her, kill her, eat her, drink her, kill- kill her," the beast screeched, a hundred eyes latched onto her as it began to shuffle forward.
"Dumbledore, now! Go, damnit!" She screamed, grabbing her hammer from the mist and kicking through the table behind her, smashing it to bits and giving her room to retreat, to direct the massive thing away from the students now howling with fear.
The man acted quickly, levitating every student in the room - good god - and directing them out the open doors of the Great Hall, a few teachers following his lead and vanishing the tables, food and cutlery dropping to the floor in a cacophony of crystalline rattles, smashing glass, and the wet squelch of so many pounds of meat splattering against the stone before that too disappeared.
Slowly backing away, she kept her eyes locked on the beast, wand flickering as she knocked a startled McGonagall out of the way. "Step back! You can't go near her! If she bleeds on you, you'll turn too!"
"Catherine-"
She snapped her teeth and glared at McGonagall. "Just fucking listen to me! Get away from her!" Catherine banged her hammer against the stone for good measure, both to scare McGonagall and keep the beast's attention on her.
It took a tentative swipe at her, Catherine batting the feeble attempt out of the way with her hammer, a shriek tearing through her as the arm splintered where it had been struck, bone and flesh hanging off it in a bloody mess, the limb bending in on itself.
That seemed to spur it into action, rushing towards her with a furious hiss.
Magic flooding her limbs, she jumped out of the way, barely avoiding the twisted amalgamation of Umbridge as it smashed into the wall, screeching pitifully as the stone cratered against it.
Catherine took that chance to reduce one of its many legs to a pulp, crushing it at the ankle and smiling grimly as meat sprayed out across the floor in viscous chunks. "C'mon!" She shouted, jumping back where the staff table had just sat before the teachers' quick thinking, sweeping the hammer in front of her in wide circles, letting it crack against the flagstones at each end of the swing.
The doors still stood wide, Dumbledore planted in front of a shimmering barrier, holding it up against the mess of students and teachers that tried to peek inside.
"Get out there!" Catherine roared, jabbing her wand at the entryway. "I'm not risking you changing, Albus!"
Stubbornly, the man's jaw clenched before he stepped through his barrier onto the other side, not once taking his eyes off her even as the teachers nearby swatted and shouted at him, presumably demanding he go in and help.
Not that he could, no. Only a Dreamer could safely kill this beast, one that towered so high that as it threw its arms in the air, they scraped at the buttresses, sending rubble flying to the ground below. Only one safe from the chance of turning could slay it, as Catherine had long ago conquered her own beast, one that lay deep in her blood upon that starry night in a clinic far from home.
Furious at her own folly, the absolute maniacal stupidity it took for her to spatter Umbridge with her blood so many weeks ago, she roared as she leapt at the thing, hammer raised high above her head and practically singing as it whistled through the air. It smashed against her shoulder, the shock of it running through the weapon and down Catherine's arm, sending her squealing with joy as the stone buried itself in meaty flesh, offering her a grip on the beast.
Feet firmly planted and hands held tight to the haft of the hammer, she ducked beneath a swing, the creature bellowing in pain as its own claws tore through its body, Catherine quickly reducing the hand to a tentacle-like mess of twisted muscle and bone with a jab of her wand.
She let off another few spells, spikes and daggers and all manner of blade spearing through the stalks and clusters of its eyes, making the things burst, a rain of viscous gore pouring on her from above. It stained her robes and smeared across her face, Catherine spitting the bitter-sweet fluid out of her mouth and cursing loudly, tongue hanging from her lips and teeth scraping along it as if to clean it of that filth.
Detaching the sword, she tried to use it as an icepick to climb the massive body when a startled gasp was squeezed out of her by a massive hand wrapped around her torso. She was lifted in front of the beast, ribs cracking beneath its grip before being tossed across the room.
Sailing, it took her a moment to realize what was happening before every scrap of air was stolen from her lungs, the back of her skull shattering upon impact and leaking her brains out across an empty portrait.
The world flickered in and out of vision, her heart stilling as it lost contact and the cloying grip of death sweeping her from the castle for a fraction of a second before she reappeared, sitting on the lump of meat that was her mind and cloaked in her Yharnam garb.
As her thoughts stuttered back into motion Catherine sent a silent thanks to Kos, for it must have been her who kept her rooted in this world and threw her back into the reassuring hold of her armour and not the bloodstained robes she had been wearing before.
Rising to her feet, a spectre given life, she could hear the frantic screams behind Dumbledore's shield from here - muddied as though whispered through a mirror - each and every one of them wondering if it was her who had risen from the dead or simply another beast draped in her flesh.
Tearing down her mask, she answered their questions with the baring of her teeth, a feral grin, a challenge for the geist of Umbridge, swaddled in so much meat and a thousand blinking eyes.
Wand waving, she summoned the head of her hammer back towards her, the block of stone thundering forward and skidding to a halt at her feet. Jabbing her blade back into its home with a resounding click, she raised her weapon, muscles flexing against its weight and straining at their prison of leather woven through with thin, sturdy sheets of steel, blessed with Yharnam blood.
She held it there for a second, finger on the trigger, before once more unlatching the sword and firing a blasting curse at the back of the hammer, the stone rocketing towards the beast like the shot of cannon, disappearing into its chest and spraying heaps of blood across the floor, a veritable torrent of it spurting and streaming in thick ribbons as the hammer-head bulged against the flesh of its back before inevitably dropping, contained within the warm hold of splintered ribs and ropes of intestine.
Umbridge - what remained of her - hunched over, the screams that burst forth shattering Catherine's eardrums and leaving her deaf.
She appeared before the crippled beast in a fraction of a second, wand tucked into her breast pocket so that she may hoist herself up its body, sword jabbing into it for purchase and her free hand gripping tight to the slick, crimson stained fur that hung from it in clumps. She climbed up its body, stabbing viciously and praying that whatever she was skewering beneath was vital as she grew closer to its throat.
Hands the size of tables weakly grasped at her body, Catherine throwing them off with bursts of magic that exploded from her like shockwaves, shimmering light scattering across the room with each and every blast as the waves of it echoed off her like an aura.
To those looking in, Catherine seemed for everything a figure cloaked in flame, the magic streaming off of her bright orange and trailing up into the air as it dissipated, swallowed up by the wards of Hogwarts like a lightning rod robbing the light from the sky itself. Ferocious, brutal in her intentions, she clawed her way up the length of the beast, chest heaving as she hoisted herself onto its shoulder and planted her sword at Umbridge's nape, barely as tall as the bobbing, weaving head she aimed for, pained screeches ripping past the hundred fangs that lined its maw.
With an animalistic scream, she dragged her blade along the length of Umbridge's throat, the sword cleaving through flesh, fur, and bone like an oar through water, buckets of blood pouring from the clean line she had opened along with a wet, burbling screech as the beast realized its demise.
Catherine leapt off and fell to the ground with a smile on her lips and a laugh in her throat, the blood raining down as if a waterfall. Her back thudded against the stone and she looked up through the waves of red, grinning to see Umbridge clutching at her chest and throat, unable to stop the tide that jetted from her open veins, the arterial spray a firehose that lurched and stuttered with the slowly weakening beat of her heart.
The entire hall had been painted from top to bottom in crimson, splashed everywhere as if a mad giant had lumbered into the room and thrown livestock at the walls until nothing but paste and bone remained. From head to toe she was soaked, not a spot of pale flesh to be found, bar the whites of her eyes glued to the ceiling and spinning with joy.
Turning on her side, Catherine stared out at the now silent throng as they looked onto the chaos of the Great Hall, the room hardly recognizable if it wasn't for the glitter of stars above, the enchantments holding strong.
As Catherine locked eyes with Dumbledore, the mans face grim and Fawkes hunkered against the side of his head, feathers bristling, she noticed the flourish of red robes next to him - Aurors - and realized that her time at Hogwarts was very rapidly coming to a close.
Her only thought as she registered her impending damnation was quiet relief, the cold wash of comfort to realize that no one had died, comfort of which was punctuated by an earth-shaking thud as Umbridge crashed to the ground, a river of blood gushing from the ruins of her body.
Yes, Catherine knows she's being an asshole.