guess who's a vewwy vewy baaaad girl? rave is, rave is! because she's not going to do an extra-long thanks note this time. she would, but she has to put this up NOW so it will stop hanging about on her computer and irritating hell out of her because for some reason she hasn't put it up. [she does want to say sorry to jeremy because she never emailed him that would-be mp3. it would NOT CONVERT which made her very mad. grr.]
i'm so sorry this has taken so long. anyone who's ever taken a set of midterm exams or dealt with the college application process will sympathize with me. the rest of you: YOU LUCKY BASTARDS. get out of the system while you can.
dedicated to stinky and cassie just because.
[DISCLAIMER: Anika has NO BIG SUPERNATURAL POWERS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT. She's *not* going to turn out to be an elemental. She's not going to get pregnant with the Child of Destiny. She's *not* going to go running off on a (successful but oh-so-tragic) suicide mission against Voldie who later turns out to be her true father. This I swear.]
Three Leaves Left--Part Two
Enter the Nightmare
Harry didn't know who he was running from, but he was running--faster than he'd ever gone before, and yet intensely aware that it wasn't fast enough. The trees reached out long, whippy branches towards his limbs and eyes--whether to help or hurt him he couldn't tell, didn't want to know.
[one two three we all were drowned at sea]
It was midnight, and still Sirius sat at Remus's kitchen table, staring straight ahead at the wall. The tic in his cheek was still going, like a reflex, and his fists clenched and unclenched. Two napkins lay in tiny shredded bits around his feet.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked at last, in an even, controlled tone.
Remus, sitting in front of the fire, did not look up.
"Answer me," said Sirius in deceptively expressionless tones. "Answer me now, Remus, or I swear on James's grave I will tear you to rags."
"You couldn't if you tried," said Remus, ripping a tassel from the hearthrug and hurling it into the flames. "Werewolf strength."
"Right now," said Sirius dangerously, "I could."
Remus turned to him, disgusted, and climbed to his feet. "You're such a spoiled brat sometimes, Padfoot."
The raven-haired man laughed suddenly, pushing his chair back from the table and rising in one violent motion to his feet. "Why didn't you trust me enough to tell me you'd found her?" All pretense of calm was gone, and fire crackled in every line of his body, raging and uncontainable.
"Maybe," hissed Remus, throwing himself to his feet and pushing himself face to face with his friend, fists clenched and blood pounding in his ears, "maybe I'll be able to explain it to you after you explain to me why you didn't let me know when you changed Secret-Keepers--"
and now he was so angry he could hardly hear his own voice, and all the sounds in the room were tinny and distant-- "--maybe this isn't about Anika at all, Sirius."
"Maybe it was never about Anika!" Sirius's teeth were bared, his shoulders tightened aggressively like a tiger in a trap--
And then the door opened, and someone's voice, shocked and horrified--"Sirius! What are you doing?!"
His breath was hitching painfully in his throat, and his side ached so badly that whenever his foot hit the ground he saw stars. He couldn't go on, it was too far, and he could hear whatever it was behind him, loping at an easy, relaxed pace twice as fast as his own.
[three four five not one was left alive]
Remus felt an unpleasant drop in his stomach as his head turned of its own accord and he saw her.
Anika stood in the doorway, still wearing the too-big dress shirt and her hair in wild, tangled waves down past her hips; she was glaring at them furiously, her mouth set in an angry, tight line. "What the hell is going on?"
Remus's jaw dropped. "A--A--"
"For god's sake stop gaping, Moony, and answer me!" One foot tapped furiously on the wood of the floor, and one hand curled itself tensely in her hair as she turned dark, burning eyes on a speechless Sirius. "Sirius, I thought you told me you were going out. What are you doing back? Why didn't you wake me up?"
Something splintered in Sirius's face.
There was something around his ankles--mud, he thought in panic, or glue--sucking viscously around his legs until he could only move at a tiny, tiny pace, expending so much effort, fighting and thrashing and finding himself only a step ahead.
[four five six, we rowed across the styx]
Anika's eyes darted from him to Remus, slowly growing into panic. "R-Remus?"
"Don't," said Sirius suddenly, hoarsely, sitting down very suddenly like a puppet with its strings cut and burying his hands in his hair. "Don't do this to me. Please."
"Anika," whispered Remus.
"What is it? Will you two please stop saying 'Anika, Anika?' I know my own name--"
"Anika." He swallowed hard, trying to keep himself under control. "What day is it today? What year?"
She made an attempt at a nervous little laugh; it flopped woodenly in the air and collapsed. "I don't understand."
Sirius suddenly lunged at her and caught her wasted wrist with unexpected strength, pulling her to him. She bit back a gasp, trying to pull away. "What day is it? Answer!"
"N-November," she whispered, her eyes wide and terrified. "November first. Nineteen-eighty-one."
Sirius swore and let go of her, so suddenly and violently that she stumbled against the opposite wall, staring at him with shadowed eyes through her curtain of tangled hair, her breath coming heavy and ragged through her half-open mouth.
But just ahead was the clearing, he thought vaguely, and if he could only reach it--he burst through the last fence of trees and collapsed on his knees in front of the long, flat slab, finally safe...
He looked up. The stone in front of him seemed to glow with a faint, white light that had nothing to do with the full moon overhead; the long, deep-etched trenches in the rock, sloping down towards the pale stone basin at the foot of the stone.
He reached out; the stone was obscenely warm and yielding under his fingers, and a fine damp skin wreathed over it, like sweat.
[five six seven, there was no room in heaven]
Remus found that he could not even look at her, or at Sirius; instead he turned and swept away, collapsing into a chair and turning his head to the wall, closing his eyes so tightly he could see explosions of red behind them.
"I don't understand," said Anika again, her voice despairing. "Please...please, someone explain it to me." There was a silence, and then, tremblingly, "Sirius?"
He did not answer.
"Fine," said Anika, anger edging her tones. "I'm going to Lily and James's , then. Maybe they'll be able to--"
"They're dead," said Sirius tonelessly.
The sound of footsteps toward the door stopped. Remus looked up.
"But..." and her horrified eyes focused on Sirius, seeming to see him for the first time. "They can't...you were their Secret-Keeper...you didn't...oh God, you didn't...Sirius, why do you look so old?"
He jerked away from it, but it was too late; the contact of his fingertips with the stone had caused something--something--the warm skin/stone was rising, bulging, pulling itself into the shape of a person--someone chained to the stone. Something dark dripped down the rivulets and into the bowl...it was filling, slowly, agonizingly slowly...
The person screamed and writhed in agony. The boy dropped to his knees.
[six seven eight, they'd closed and locked the gate]
Sirius laughed. The sound ratcheted down Remus's spine, making him shudder.
"This isn't funny," said Anika, tightening her fists into balls so tight that her knuckles went pale. "Damn it, Sirius, this isn't funny."
"Isn't it?" The laughter stopped as suddenly as it had come. Sirius's fingers were scrabbling with something on the table, and then suddenly he shoved it out towards her. It was a piece of broken glass from a mirror that had used to hang in the hall until Remus, in a fit of early morning pique, had knocked it off the wall. He'd put it on the table, guiltily intending to one day glue it back together, but had never gotten around to it; and now Sirius was clutching a piece of it so tightly that blood oozed from where its edges touched his fingers. Through clenched teeth--"Look at that, Ani. Look at it."
Only now was the person's substance gathering itself into facial features...he bent over, trying to see who it was--horrified eyes stared into his own--
Why did you do this to me? mouthed Hermione, before collapsing into another spasm of anguish.
[eight nine ten, so we fell to earth again]
Anika looked.
You did this to me!
Harry Potter woke up screaming, his breath coming in agonized sobs.
At first, he didn't know where he was. The looming, shadowy figures around him bore no trace of familiarity; they were monoliths, he thought in terror--huge, ancient stones out of prehistory, stained with blood and--
They were beds, he realized with a rush of relief so violent it hurt. He almost laughed, breathing in deeply and forcing himself to relax. Only canopy beds...not giant stones, not trees in some primeval forests, not creatures out of nightmare...only beds, and he was lying in his own bed in the Gryffindor dormitory...nothing was wrong....
On shaking legs, he clambered out of his own bed and tottered into the bathroom.
The tap squeaked when he turned it on. It always did that; it was another comforting familiarity, he thought, splashing cold water on his face and taking another deep breath. It was so strange, being the only sixth-year Gryffindor boy still at school over the holidays. Ron had wanted to stay, but had been sucked into a family vacation to visit Charlie in the Black Forest, and of course Seamus, Dean and Neville always went home for the holidays. Still the dormitory seemed almost alien sometimes...especially late at night, after he had woken from another one of the dreams.
Tonight had been the worst in a long while. Always the person on the stone had a different face...sometimes they were strangers, but more often they were friends. Cedric Diggory. Cho Chang, once. Ginny Weasley several times, and her brother Ron at least twice. Even Draco Malfoy, once--and as much as Harry hated him, it was worse to see him in such pain, to know that it was his, Harry's, fault.
And a few times the face was Hermione Granger's.
There was always a sense that somehow, if he hadn't been so anxious to save himself by running into the grove, if he hadn't touched the stone, the person would not be in such torment--they would be happy...if it wasn't for Harry Potter, they would never have ended up there.
Damnit, he thought furiously, shoving his entire head under the tap, feeling the frigid water course in icy rivulets through his hair. With a gasp, he threw his head back, shaking his head furiously so that water spattered through the room. Feeling very awake, he peered at the corners of the bathroom, checking for strange movements, for skitterings in the shadows.
There was a yawn from just above his head. Harry looked up in surprise, into his own bright green eyes and tousled, pillow-abused hair. "What are you doing up so early?" asked the mirror, angrily. "You woke me up."
"Sorry," mumbled Harry. His eyes flicked to the clock on the wall; Far too early, read the longest hand, and 3:48 the other two.
He let out a long sigh and tiptoed out of the bathroom, freezing water still dripping down his ears. The December drafts made his head feel like it had been bathed in liquid nitrogen; he snatched the comforter off his bed and wrapped it around himself like a cloak, shivering violently. There was no point in going back to bed. Harry didn't feel like dreaming again.
He yanked the curtains open and peered outside. The night was stark and bleak; unusual for this time of year in that it had not snowed, but the wind was strong, and licked the barren, wintry hills threateningly. Stars shone coldly above, ringed about a pallid half-moon. Trees, gnarled and withered, grasped up towards the shadowed sky like drowning hands.
Harry shuddered and pulled the curtains close again, muffling the room in darkness.
God, he hated this room when he was all alone. So dark, it was, with so many strange shapes. The ceiling was so high...there was a constant fear of something...lurking...up in that peaked witch's hat of a ceiling, something dark and shadowy and misshapen--
He pulled the curtains open again, gasping aloud. The icy light of the moon was less than comforting. What was wrong with him? What was he so afraid of? I've got to talk to someone before I go mad. I'm going mad and I'm only sixteen. Get me out of here, get me out...
Fumbling for his wand on the nightstand, he muttered, "Lumos totallus."
The torches flickered in their sconces and finally lit, illuminating every crevice of the room. Harry sat down hard on his bed, hating himself, and stared at his shaking hands for a few moments. These midnight fits had never been as bad as this...usually, after the nightmares, he could just wake up and get back to sleep, but tonight...
He closed his eyes, and then opened them again. He couldn't be alone, he just couldn't...Maybe...
It was almost too embarrassing to consider, but not quite.
Hermione would understand.
He got up, padded soundlessly to the door, and tiptoed out into the suddenly cavernous stairway...down into the common room, intending to cross to the girls' dormitories. It was mortifying, but he just had to know that someone else in the tower was alive.
Someone called out, "Harry?"
He jumped and whipped around; a small figure, clad in a shroud of blanket similar to his own, stepped forward into the faint slant of light from the window, swaying slightly. "Not asleep?"
"Hermione." His insides sagged in relief. "God, it's creepy here at night, isn't it?"
She nodded silently, and turned towards the window, her masses of exuberantly curly hair silver in the moonlight. "I hate being alone in this tower. It's all right when Lavender stays on, but I just..."
"I know," he said simply, sitting down hard in one of the squashy armchairs. "I couldn't sleep either."
Hermione groaned and collapsed next to him. "Harry, this is ghastly. I usually love the holidays."
He made a horrible face at her. "You're telling me. I'm the one who has to unwrap my present from you over a course of about an hour because I don't want to rip the hand-made tissue made out of dried maple leaves and fragrant pine needles, or the spellotape made of squirrel spit and boiled walnuts--"
Hermione whacked him playfully with a pillow. "Just because I don't wrap presents in Kleenex, like some people I could mention--"
"I only did that once, and it was the patterned kind anyway--"
"Ooh yes, the sort with little candy canes on it. I suppose you think that makes you a proper Martha Stewart."
Harry grinned at her. "I love it when you flatter me."
She stared up at him, and a faint smile lit her own features, just barely visible in the moonlight. "Mm."
It seemed to Harry that Hermione had...changed, in strange and vaguely threatening female ways, over the past year. It was inexplicable, indescribable, and he was not entirely comfortable with it. Sometimes they, who'd used to be so comfortable with each other, were so awkward, the way he'd once been with Cho, or...well, like Hermione was a girl all of a sudden.
Maybe it had started when she and Ron had started going out, at the beginning of fifth year. That had made her femininity a subject rather difficult to ignore, especially when Ron started prattling on about her in the library or the dormitory, or in the middle of class, about her hair, or her eyes, or her smile. But Harry hadn't really paid much attention. They were still both his friends, after all, even if they were more than friends with each other.
After they'd broken up--perfectly amicably, but with a very deep understanding that they were better off not trying to push the relationship beyond friendship--it was then that Harry had started to notice this change, this abrupt girl-ness. It was making things very complicated.
"Mmf," said Harry uncomfortably, edging away from her.
She looked surprised, and somehow hurt, but sat up very quickly and smoothed her hair uncomfortably. "Sorry."
"'Salright, you didn't do anything." He turned away, staring out the window again.
"Why were you up?" Hermione's voice was almost a whisper.
"I...had a bad dream." The words came out childish, scared.
"So did I," said Hermione tonelessly. "I hate this. Let's go down and get breakfast."
"It's too early..."
"I know." There was a catch in her voice.
He looked over at her in surprise. She looked like she was about to cry: her bottom lip was shaking just slightly, and her nose was faintly pink. "Hermione, what--"
"I don't want to talk about it." Hermione stood up, passing a hand absently over her eyes. "We should eat. They won't care; it's the hols anyway, things aren't normal."
Harry scratched the back of his head confusedly, looking up at her. "You don't suppose it'll be a problem that we're wearing blankets? I--couldn't find my robe." You mean you were too scared to open the closet, you baby...
"No one's awake, you dumb git, that's what I was just saying. " A grin, or at least an attempt at one that twisted up one side of her mouth and didn't even get near her eyes. "Come on." The blanket dropped from her shoulders like liquid, slinking onto the sofa. Her pajamas were too big, and pooled around her slippered feet in blue cotton puddles. Harry glanced at his own bare feet and shivered slightly; Hermione followed his gaze. "Harry! You ought to at least put on some socks--"
"I'm all right," mumbled Harry, going slightly red. "Don't worry about it."
Hermione looked back up, met his eyes with her own worried brown ones. "Please put on some."
I don't want to go back up there! "I'd rather not," he said, forcing as much sincerity into his voice as he could.
She shook her head in disbelief. "You have to put something on your feet! Go on, just run back to your dorm and grab some socks or something, I'll wait..."
"I'm not going back up there!" It was so vehement that she stumbled away from him, tripping over the too-big pajama pants and falling into a chair. He gasped. "Hermione, I'm so sorry--I didn't mean to--"
"What kind of dream did you have?" she whispered in horror.
"I--" He buried his face in his hands, running his fingers over his skin so hard it hurt. "God, Hermione, I can't even...I can't even talk about it..."
Hermione tilted her head to one side, climbing slowly to her feet. "How's..." She motioned vaguely at her forehead.
"Nothing." He shook his head. "Doesn't hurt."
She frowned and sat back down, staring worriedly at him, and rested her chin in one hand. "But...you haven't had this dream more than once, have you?"
He laughed softly, and shifted position so that his shoulder muscles--aching from a particularly violent wrestling match with a roll of wrapping paper the day before--were better cushioned by the pillows. "If I say yes, that's bad, isn't it?"
Hermione wrinkled her forehead. "If you say 'I'll take care of it, Hermione,' in really, really manly tones, I bet it will turn out fine in the end."
"Manly is good," agreed Harry. "But then I have to strap on my sword and gird my loins and all that, and then you have to weep and wring your hands and hang all over me. I just don't have the energy for that kind of thing, I don't think. Loin-girding, I mean."
"Sounds demanding," agreed Hermione.
They looked at each other for a moment, and then burst out laughing, harder maybe than the exchange demanded--as though the laughter could expel the cold that seemed to have come over the room.
Harry took a deep breath and flopped backward on the couch, grinning up into Hermione's teasing eyes. "Well? Should we go downstairs?"
She shrugged--"I see no good reason why not--" And offered him a hand, hoisting him into a standing position. There was a little pause, where they stood grinning at each other like idiots, and then she made a little shuffle with her feet and kicked something at him. Harry glanced down at it. It was a white, fluffy slipper--only one. He looked back up at her, uncomprehending.
"One cold foot is better than two," Hermione said faintly. "Put it on."
He almost laughed again. "My foot'll never fit..."
"You'd be surprised," she said dryly, poking it at him. "Go on."
Sighing heavily, he slid his toes into the slipper. "You see, I told you..." And then, to his own great surprise, the rest of his foot followed.
"Why, you're the girl from the ball, Harryrella!" cried Hermione, clasping her hands together dramatically. "And this whole time I thought you were just a little cinder-girl."
Harry glared at her.
"One size fits all," she said helpfully, smirking a bit. "You needn't have worried. I got them at Zonko's. Shall we go?"
"Why'd they carry these at Zo...." Harry began worriedly, but she grabbed his arm and dragged him downstairs before he could finish. As they turned into the corridor leading to the kitchen, the slipper on his foot suddenly bit him, hard, and he yelped and kicked it against a wall. Hermione burst out laughing and then, seeing the expression on his face, screamed with sudden apprehension and giggles and fled down the hall as he chased after her, shaking his fist furiously.
*
She didn't do anything dramatic, like scream or fall into a faint; the only sign that she had seen the face that stared back at her was the slightest twinge of a finger, an involuntary blink. "That can't be me."
"You have to believe it," said Remus in tones as gentle as he could force through his painfully tight throat. "I know you don't want to."
"That doesn't happen to people," said Anika hoarsely, as though she had not heard him. "That doesn't happen. You can't fall asleep and wake up like this--that isn't me--it can't possibly be." Her voice was rising to an almost hysterical pitch. "It's a trick mirror--I don't believe it, I don't believe you!"
Sirius said, thickly, "Then what are you so afraid of?"
"Shut up," hissed Remus, furious. "For God's sake don't make it worse."
Anika shoved a fist into her mouth, biting down hard on one white knuckle. When she looked up again, her eyes--huge in the skeletal face--were rimmed with white, like a panicked cat's. She moved so fast it was almost a blur, sinking down to stare intently at Sirius, who held her burning gaze with his own. "If you're lying to me--"
"Can't you tell I'm not?" The tone was dulled, almost numb. "Can't you tell I couldn't?"
There was a long, thick pause. Two pairs of blazing eyes, one grey-black and one purple-black, ripped into one another.
And then Anika swallowed, and turned away, breaking the silence with the ripple of cloth. She set the mirror fragment down on the table--each movement so fierce it trembled, even as it fought against fear. "What happened to me? To--to you?"
"Azkaban," said Sirius simply, and it was that single word that did what the mirror could not. Anika stood absolutely motionless for a moment, shaking just the tiniest bit, before giving out a little gasp of cold air and crumpling on legs that seemed too frail to have held her up in the first place.
*
"I suppose you know I've felt her." The voice was somewhere between a rasp of metal, a hiss of triumph and a murmur of thought.
The man on the floor nodded silently, not looking up.
"It does not please you?" There seemed to be an almost delighted edge to the voice now, like a knife wrapped in silk.
The man clenched his fist. A gleam of silver mirrored on the walls for a single moment, and then flickered away. "Of course it does, Lord."
"You're lying," and the delight was plain now. "I thought I had trained you beyond this sentimental nonsense."
When the man spoke again, his voice was flat and unemotional, the finality of the words underscored by the sudden movement that brought him to his feet. The possessor of the metallic voice followed him with glinting, half-closed eyes, making no other motion. "I told you I was beyond it. I told the truth." He made a curt motion with his head. "I do as you command."
"And yet you do not kneel."
"I have kneeled," said the man softly, "for a very long time." It was not a statement of defiance; it was a simple truth, a resigned, soft breath of something that was almost sorrow and not quite dignity. "You know where my loyalties lie."
The voice did not acknowledge the words except in a long, exhaled hiss, the heavy-lidded eyes gleaming, searching out the truth of the statement. A moment later: "We were expecting this. You shall do what we discussed."
Peter Pettigrew nodded shortly and turned away, and the air exploded into the space where he had been.
The first speaker moved for the first time, reaching out a long-fingered white hand for the glass of deep red liquid on the side of his chair. It raised the goblet to the torches that were the room's only source of light, swirling the liquid slowly, burning it with a supernatural red-orange gaze. Flames seemed to flicker like oil across the surface of the wine, swirling into patterns, pulling into the shape of a face and then--
"Ophelia," and the dagger in the tones sheathed itself in silk again as a pale hand crushed the glass into glittering splinters, like sharp-edged tears.