Chapter Sixty-Seven | Sunday Hols

What a strange thing it was, to find comfort in a Dream.

Calm days spent lying side by side with a book in hand, blood wine, and nothing else but the fine company of a woman far taller than her and far kinder than she could ever hope to be. It was as though Melodie had been plucked from the earth with nothing but cheer in her heart and the wish that all would be well, even through the trials she had weathered. Wore them as if her own skin, not the armour that Catherine had fashioned of her own troubled adventures.

There was a reverence to Catherine that she'd never felt before. A need to stop, stand still, and enjoy the quiet moments she had gained through no more effort than being what she herself had always hoped to be.

Kind.

Not like the graceful woman that now kept her company and she, in turn, did her best to make happy. Each smile a treasure that she captured in her mind's eye and kept under lock and key, not to hide it away but to make sure it would remain safe. Untarnished by the thin puddles of poisonous distaste that, were her mind to be a library, would stain the books along the bottom shelves with each step. Splashes of bubbling venom sinking into the pages and leaving even the gentlest of memories spoiled beyond recognition, with muddied letters and thick splotches of bled ink.

Catherine wanted to be kind in a way that she had hoped she would be treated, if only people took the time to care beyond the things they'd heard of her - tales told by books she had never read. Newspaper clippings and gossip pieces detailing the life of one who'd only ever given a single interview, written by a quill more than the woman who held it, sickly green and glittering with toxic delight.

She wanted to be kind because she knew it was right. Because it was good. Because, selfishly, it made her feel like she could hold onto the last shivering dregs of humanity that had first made her and piece them back together. The cracked bits of pottery strung into shape and sealed with gold. Not whole, but still just as worthwhile.

Most of all, she wanted to be kind because every time Melodie laughed, every time she beamed at her, it felt like she was coming undone.

Her happiness was an addiction that Catherine would gleefully indulge, with no shame nor second guessing.

"So it flies?"

It seemed she always fell to discussing aeroplanes with Yharnamites. Human flight, something so outlandish to them as to be outright fantasy, even in a world of gods and a blood that could cure any illness except the one it itself wrought.

To speak of that she imagined would be to speak of fire to a man who had never known the spark of flint.

"Yeah. I've never been in one but I've seen plenty overhead. You can look up and catch their lights in the evening if there's no clouds, thousands and thousands of feet up." She rested her head against Melodie's shoulder, casting her eyes to the sky as if she'd spot a plane soaring by. "I liked to sometimes wonder where they were going. Who was on board. What they'd see and who they'd meet. So many places to go… I've always had a bit of wanderlust, I guess."

"Where have you always hoped to go?" Melodie asked, slowly carding her fingers through Catherine's hair.

They sat beneath the tree with Catherine cradled in Melodie's arms, leaning back against her and gently trailing her fingers along the length of Melodie's calf as it jutted out next to her folded legs, the other curled around her own and wobbling as Melodie rolled her ankle. She almost laughed, thinking the two of them a strange sort of pretzel. Would have, if not for how content she felt surrounded by the heat of her…

Not a lover, but something close to it.

Every time Melodie spoke she had to repress a shudder, her chin resting on Catherine's shoulder and her breath on her ears. She had to stoop to do so, back twisting as she folded herself on top of Catherine like a rucksack.

Melodie was all touch, stolen brushes of the hand or unashamed grapples as she, now realizing Catherine was comfortable with her gestures, found no shame in all but throwing herself on top of the smaller woman whenever she had the chance, or dragging her excitedly to go see what the Messengers were doing.

So lost Catherine was in that touch that she couldn't for the life of her think of a place she wanted to go.

"Somewhere else. Nowhere in particular, just… I would just buy a ticket for the first flight out of the country and see where it took me. Find a place where I wouldn't be recognized, maybe." She tilted her head back and looked up through her eyelashes at Melodie, one hand raising to fiddle with her hair, a stray lock hanging across her jaw. "I want to talk about you."

"Me?"

Her surprise was painful, that same shocked expression she had worn when Catherine had confessed her fears, the earnestness of her feelings. "You."

"Ah… I don't quite know what to say. I've never talked about myself in such a way."

"Bit awkward, isn't it?"

At that Melodie smiled. "It's a difficult thing. Especially when I feel so… young. As if I've only just begun living. In a way I have, haven't I?"

"I'm glad for it. You deserve all that wonder and more."

"Do I?" Melodie looked askance, lips twisting into a quiet scowl. "I fear this sudden light may become too much. It already has been, in those times I saw you appear within the gardens with blood pouring from your ears, your eyes… never before has my heart seized with such dread." She dropped her head on top of Catherine's, a sigh fluttering her hair. "Is that what it is to live? To love? To be stricken with such hope and so much pain in the very same breath? What suffering must it be to know happiness?"

"To suffer is to hope, I think. To know the depths and heights of what one can feel. It's human," Catherine uttered. "How can you know what pain is, if you haven't felt joy? And how can you know joy if you've never felt pain?"

Huffing once, Melodie then hummed in agreement. "A conundrum to be sure." She threw her arms over Catherine's shoulders and let them hang there, perched on her belly. "I think I'd like to learn of the worlds out there that I may never visit, unless through the pages of a book, or through the stories you and future hunters may tell me. I'd like to pass them on, give them life and share in the wonder that each new tale brings me."

"Then I'll bring you books. Enough to build a house out of. As many as I can pack. I could take a bag and make it bottomless, fill it with a thousand stories and a thousand more, enough to last a century."

"Would you?" she asked, breathless.

"Of course. It's a promise." Catherine took Melodie's hand and locked their little fingers together, childish, but there was something sacrosanct to a pinky promise with someone who had never heard of such a thing. "Better than a blood oath, that."

"What?" Melodie questioned, now peering over Catherine's shoulder to look at their interlocked fingers. "Is that like a handshake?"

"A magical promise, this is," she answered, raising their hands and squeezing gently. "Something we sometimes do back in my… old home. Trust me, can't break one of these."

"How marvelous. I don't think magic will ever cease to amaze me. How does it work?"

Tongue poking out from between her teeth, Catherine did her best to stifle a laugh. "Couldn't tell you. It just does. Magic doesn't have to make sense, does it? I actually think it's better when it doesn't. There's some rules, things you can't do no matter how hard you try, but for the most part the only thing stopping someone is creativity and power."

"What can't you do?"

"Raise the dead. Not properly, you can't return their minds, only bring back a shell - a walking corpse. You can't create food out of nothing… and that's it, I think. I would say that magic can't teach you anything, but your magic has given me knowledge unbound."

"My magic?"

"Would you not call it that?" Catherine frowned, running the pad of her thumb across Melodie's palm. "You take the blood in me, the echoes of those who I've slain, and give it life in return. You give me strength, give me speed, give me knowledge of the arcane that I've not once read nor heard, yet it sings inside me all the same. What would you call that, if not magic?"

"I… suppose."

Melodie sounded curious, almost frightened by the thought. "I've never given it any mind. It just… was. But magic, what a wondrous thing. Do you believe I could do what you do?" She queried, voice light but to Catherine, still full of an undeniable tension. "If I could, would you teach me?"

"I don't know." Her gaze turned up to the branches above, and on reflex Catherine reached her hand out and summoned one into her waiting palm. The branch creaked, bowing as the whole of it was brought down until the section she wanted snapped away and hurled itself towards her. She took it, rich, gnarled wood, pitted with age and ran her fingers across its bark.

"I could try making a wand for you. Maybe. There's enough up here," she tapped her head, "to make one that might work. But… wandlore isn't something I, or Albus in this case, knew enough about to be comfortable with."

"Would you try?"

Catherine pulled her head away from Melodie's so she could look at her, nodding once before leaning in and pressing a kiss against her cheek. "I will."

She started by transfiguring it, fingers dancing above the stick as she moulded the wood into shape, stripping the outside bark with lazy waves of her wrist and watching as the shavings curled away, fluttering down to settle on her lap.

It was rough, but slowly she whittled it into something proper. Something that felt right, the Truth tingling in the back of her head and nudging her along with each and every swipe. The grip, moulded for hands larger than hers, the wand longer than most - more suited to someone of Hagrid's stature than any other witch or wizard she had met. It was halfway through smoothing over the handle that she realized she didn't know what to make of its core.

A blood stone, perhaps?

Magic enough in those latticed crystals, but somehow it didn't suit Melodie.

Of the blood she was, able to encourage it, mould it to the needs of the hunters she blessed - but she was not held by it the same as Catherine or the others who had come here.

Blood gems too, the tools of enchantment used by the Church, also unsuitable to her needs.

What then?

The heartstring of a werewolf? The hair of a God? What about the stripped flesh of the phantasm she wore around her wrist?

None felt right.

All of them were magical, yes, but they just didn't… click. She hummed in confusion, gaze flickering over the half-finished wand as she mulled over what could possibly work.

Melodie's fingers still carded through her hair, and Catherine's eyes shuttered closed, another hum escaping her, this one of contentment. She let her mind go, focusing on the calming back and forth as Melodie's nails just barely scraped across her scalp.

A second later her eyes flew open, and Catherine reached up to pluck a hair from her own head. She held it tight, at the same time reaching up with the fingers that held it and pricking her thumb on one fang. A bead of red welled up against her pale skin and with a single thought it ran across the length of the hair, thin as blown sugar, and solidified.

She looked down at the shining crimson needle before placing it at the tip of the wand and twisting it down like a drill. Laboriously, she worked her own blood and body into the wand until it had been nestled deep, before collecting the sawdust with another lazy wave and funneling it back into the open hole. Her thumb brushed across it, sealing it with more blood, a tiny glittering dot embedded in the wood.

From there it was treated, the wand polished to a shine, the wood protected with her own magic and the same held within.

It was not a pretty thing she held once she had finished. Nothing that Ollivander would deign to respect, but even he would admit that it was functional. Chagrined to say such a thing of course, but he would say it all the same, albeit through gritted teeth.

Catherine moved to hand the wand to Melodie, squirming away from her hold so she could turn around to properly face her.

"Go on. Give it a swish."

All Melodie did was stare at the wand with a tight frown, brow pinched and her eyes squinted.

"Hey."

She looked back over to Catherine, a nervous smile on her face.

"A bit scary, right?"

"Yes…" Melodie let out a laugh, not her usual sort. More airy, strained, caught in the back of her throat.

"Did you know I went through two dozen wands before I found my own?"

"They didn't make it for you?"

"Nope. See, the way you get yours back home is you go to this old shop, Ollivanders, run by one of the oldest men I've ever seen, and Gehrman isn't the first person I've met who's over a hundred."

"Really?"

"Magicals live a long time. A very long time. But, no, I must have gone through half the room before I found this one," she said, twirling her wand. "Nearly set the room on fire, actually. Some of the wands did nothing, the others practically screamed, like they wanted to be anywhere but in my hand.

"But when I held mine… I could feel it. It sang. Never felt anything like it, and I don't think I ever will again. I don't use it as much as I'd like to anymore, in fact, I don't think I can remember when I started casting without one more often than with. Feels like a disservice, almost."

"I don't understand," Melodie whispered, canting her head. "It is… a wand. A tool."

"It's not just a wand. It's my first step into a world that I actually loved. It's been with me every day over the last five years, and I can't imagine myself without it. It's my magic, and this one-" she raised the other, a wand of her own blood, "-if this works for you, it'll be yours."

"What if it doesn't?"

"Then I'll make another. And another. I'll make enough to drown in, until one of them works."

"I'm afraid I don't…" she looked as if she'd throw her hands up in frustration. "I don't understand. Why?"

"Because I care for you. Because you care about this, or you wouldn't have asked me. Because… people are strange, and we find sentiment in strange things. A bit of wood packed full of magic and I and people like me have tied our lives to it. I think it's almost mad, don't you?"

"People are odd, aren't they?" Melodie smiled again, no twitch to her lips nor furrowed brow. "May I?"

"Of course."

There was a moment of hesitation before Melodie reached out and took the wand, snatching it away from Catherine as if it would grow legs and run off.

But when a spark shot into the air, glittering red, the smile that broke across her face shattered the heavy tension that had fallen over the two. Her gaze tracked the solitary light as it spiraled away before dissipating, winking out of existence with a near silent crackle.

"Would you look at that?"

"I'm magic!" Melodie shouted, waving the wand again and giggling loudly when another array of sparks shone out over their heads, myriad in their colours and all glittering fiercely. Her grin widened, brighter than even the lights that still glowed above them, and the laughter that poured from her lips marched in chorus.

"You really are," came Catherine's muttered words, unable to tear her own gaze away from the resplendent look on Melodie's face. Rapturous joy, amazement, the same she knew she wore at eleven years of age as the whole of Ollivander's shop broke into a whirlwind upon taking up her wand.

Another squeal and Melodie all but dove into Catherine, throwing her arms around her shoulders and hugging her tight enough for her ribs to creak in protest. She let out a quiet noise of surprise before returning the gesture, sharing in her laughter as she burrowed her face into Melodie's shoulder.

Melodie's breath tickled on her ear. "I'm magic," she echoed, her accent lilting as it traced across the words. "I can't believe it."

"You should."

A hum, the brush of hair against her cheek, and then lips, Melodie's thanks pressed to Catherine's skin as a gentle brand. "You have changed my world once again."

"In a good way?"

"That, I do not know," she admitted, letting out a quiet sigh as she pulled back to look at Catherine. "I have always been fearful of magic. The powers the Gods wield… that one strange man who had named himself Half-blood wore, stained with violence that would turn even a blood-drunk hunter pale with shame."

"Is that why you flinched? When I first got here and I said I was a witch?"

"Yes. I feared him terribly, so young yet so angry. He was scared, that I knew, but he relished in the power of his magic. Tom was his name, yes?"

"Aye."

"Tom… a frightening boy to say the least. I could not help myself from comparing the two of you."

"We call him Voldemort back home."

At that she could hear the ghost of Umbridge finally speak up, catatonic since the moment Gascoigne had scared her off in the living room of Grimmauld place.

Catherine knew she had been watching. Could feel when the spectres tied to her surveyed the world around them. She'd been there, silent, most likely horrified at the madness she had witnessed since that day not so long ago. When her beastly throat had been torn open and used to paint the walls of the Great Hall in her ghastly blood.

Yet never had she commented.

"Madness," Umbridge whispered, a faint flicker of pink shimmering in the corner of Catherine's eye.

'Not at all. Do you think this is all a hallucination, Dolores?' Came Catherine's mental reply, flicking her gaze to the right to catch the spectre's own. 'This has been my life for the last year. Their blood. My blood, was your undoing. How mad would it be for Voldemort to have come here as well?'

"This is hell."

'The Nightmare is, with beastly things that bleed gravity and wrap it round their axes. But that doesn't mean it isn't real.'

"I was pure!" She roared, ethereal spit flying from her lips only to disappear. "I deserve better!"

"You deserve exactly this," Catherine said aloud, teeth bared. "Child torturer, maniac, so full of hatred you'd make even my cousins squirm. If there is a hell for us, another Nightmare, I can guarantee you that once I am dead and gone that what little of you remains - trapped in my blood - will not find freedom in my demise."

With that Gascoigne appeared, whirling into shape and snarling at Dolores, sending the woman shrieking as she disappeared once more.

Beside her Melodie squirmed, and Catherine looked back to her with an apology already spilling from her lips. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Their ghosts still speak to you?"

"Not often. I think they may be fading, or…" Maybe they're beginning to lose themselves.

Catherine didn't know what made them tick. Where they went when they weren't speaking to her, or studying the melted planes of the Nightmare.

The most talkative and friendly of them was Gascoigne, and he had yet to comment on what went on behind that veil. She didn't much want to ask what did, fearing that the prison that had been made of her veins was a refuge to them.

"...I don't know."

She clapped her hands together and smiled at Melodie, shaking her head at the question she could see already written in her eyes.

"What would you like to do now? Well, now that you've learned you're as magical as I said you are."

A stuttered refute, and Melodie waved her compliment away. "I'm not sure."

"Would you like me to teach you anything? We can start with the basics. Levitation, or maybe turning a matchstick into a needle?"

"...Whyever would you need to turn a matchstick into a needle?"

"To poke someone with it?"

Melodie laughed. "What a frightening weapon I will wield. Not this wand, but the needles I can create with it. Only if I have a matchbox at hand, of course."

"Oh, but that's just the beginning of magic. Watch."

Getting to her feet, Catherine twirled her wrist as she fashioned a series of lights, flinging them out into the air. With a grin, she jabbed her wand once. Twice. Thrice, each time accompanied by a needle made of the very same light plunging through the centres of the orbs and rocketing out the other side.

They shone with all the colours of the rainbow, exploding outward into a kaleidoscope of glittering wonder. Fireworks that she could twist with the curl of a finger, make dance with a thought.

Melodie looked on with wide eyed wonder as she made the lights hop and skip, twist and whirl into yet more complicated shapes. She whooped when Catherine spat fire from her lips, fingers splayed out beneath her chin as she recreated the magic she had witnessed on Durmstrang's arrival to Hogwarts.

Thinking on her feet, she let the lights wink out, the fire scattering, before twirling her wand again and spitting out a shower of sparrows - each one tweeting and whistling as they flew through the air.

"Are those…?"

"Birds?"

"I've never seen one before," Melodie gasped, one hand pressed to her mouth. "They're beautiful."

Her heart stung at Melodie's words, and Catherine directed one of the birds to her shoulder, the magical construct hopping and chirping as it nudged at her cheek.

"I could enchant things. Objects. Breathe life into this place. It wouldn't be real, per se, but it would be close to it."

Melodie turned her attention away from the little bird, squinting her eyes. "These won't stay?"

"I can find a way to make them stay. Make fish. Birds. Deer. Etch runes into the rocks of this place and hopefully turn it into something that isn't so gloomy."

"Would you?"

"Of course."

"Books and birds. What else will you bring me?"

The grass shuffled around Catherine's boot as she toed at it, mashing the flowers against their earthly bed. "Whatever I can."