Chapter Fourteen
Relativity
Llewellyn took Draco for a walk through the melting snow around the lake after dinner that Monday night. She told him nearly everything that had crossed her mind about Sunday's strange occurrences, and now he was offering her his advice.
"We all promised Visilio and Patursa that we would tell them right away if there was anyone out of the ordinary that happened to us," he said, referring to himself, Llewellyn, Rosalind, and Tim. "You should go and tell him as soon as we get inside."
She scrunched her mouth up a side in thought. "You don't think that we should just return the book?" she replied after a while.
'Look, it's not the book's fault," he answered. "Just because you have a dream about something that happens to be the decoration on a cover doesn't mean that the two are related any more than both being in your memory. You only imagined that it had blood in its mouth last night."
"What? So now you don't believe me?" She turned on him angrily.
"I do believe you saw something. But you yourself said the dorm was dimly lit, and it was late at night, after you couldn't sleep. In all reality, what's the chance that it was actually blood?"
Llewellyn looked at him and back at the lake a few times, trying to think of what to say. "Couldn't you just trust me on this?" she pleaded, more begging than she meant it to sound.
Draco put his hands on her shoulders and looked down seriously at her. "Look, Llewellyn, something very strange is going on here. Even if it wasn't blood, and right now I'm not saying if it is or isn't, it's still important that you go to Visilio and tell him everything else."
She signed and looked down, glad that she hadn't brought up her thought that the marks were snakebites. There were a few tense moments where she was afraid that she wouldn't have the courage to go to Visilio and tell him all that she thought was happening, and Draco thought that maybe she was going to get very mad at him. Finally, she looked up at him, and said, very strongly, "Fine. I'll tell. But you're coming with me."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Patursa was just saying "Just a teensy drop of Veritaserum, of course, but Jannis was pretty agitated that he wasn't involved directly" when there came a knock on Visilio's door.
"One second, Jimmy," said Visilio, and he crossed the room. "Who's there?" he asked.
"Draco," the Slytherin said.
"And Llewellyn," she added.
"Come in," said the professor.
The two students entered the office and saw Professor Patursa's head sitting in the fireplace. Llewellyn was glad, as she didn't feel like telling her thoughts for a third time to the American professor. She grabbed a chair in the back of the office and then proceeded to tell Visilio and Patursa everything that she told Draco on the walk around the lake, and nothing more.
When she was done, she looked from Visilio's boyish face, which seemed lost in thought, to Patursa's chubby head, which appeared vaguely confused and worried. Draco and Llewellyn looked at each other nervously, wondering what the adults would do. She reached out for reassurance and he squeezed her hand gently. Finally, Visilio turned to them and told them what he was thinking.
"I did hear that four girls had an unusual sickness yesterday, but I didn't realize who they were. Furthermore, I didn't even begin to consider the possibility that something evil was going on. I'm going to request that you bring that book back to the Restricted Section as soon as you can, before anything else happens. Will you do that for us, Llewellyn?"
She nodded, and after a quick glance shared between Patursa and Visilio, the students knew that the time had come to leave. They left the office hand-in-hand and wondered what they professors were saying.
"Well, what I was going to say before those two came in, was that I found nothing from anybody on any Dark Arts activities. No one said or knew anything, and, along with Professor Szeles, we checked all the dormitories, and found absolutely zip for evidence towards Dark Arts use. Although," Patursa laughed, "we did find more Dungbombs than you can shake a stick at, which Maryann promptly did, and now they're lying at the bottom of the ocean somewhere."
"And the Dark Mark?" pressed Visilio.
"Yes...that." Patursa grimaced. "That was definitely placed there by a spell, at least four months ago. It remains even more an enigma now that I'm nearly certain there is no Dark Arts activity in Columbia."
Visilio said nothing for a long time, finally replying, "Your neck must be getting tired, Jimmy. Same time tomorrow?"
"Yup. Well, I'll talk to you later, Matt." With a slight pop! Patursa's blonde head disappeared.
"See you, Jimmy," the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher murmured to the suddenly darkened fireplace. He stood there in thought for what felt like an eternity, quiet as a stone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Llewellyn began to become more and more introverted over the following weeks, but considering everyone was beginning to freak out about the ever- closer O.W.L.'s, her growing silence was not noticed. Roz and Hermione became the study partner they both never had, prone to sitting in corners and whispering verbal quizzes at a lightening speed to each other. Ron and Harry tried to immerse themselves in their notes from the past four and a half years, but more often than not the facts they attempted to re-absorb turned to mush. Harry could practically see each word he read slam against a grey wall in his mind, crumbling onto the ground in incomprehensible pieces.
The O.W.L.'s, which had previously seemed so distant as to be almost mythical, now loomed agonizingly near. Even though they were less than four months away, Quidditch was still being played and the vivacity of the team shone through the habitual drizzle. One Saturday evening, about five weeks after the whole strange pox incident, Gryffindor had just won a game against Ravenclaw.
It had been a dreary day outside, the grey, swollen rain clouds reminding Harry of his futile studying efforts. He was sunk deep into an armchair for most of the night, still slightly wet from his post-match shower. During his attempts to pound lists of potion ingredients into his skull, occasionally literally, he looked up and saw a perpetually clement face on the verge of tears.
Lawrence was hunched in the darkest corner, curled up into a ball, and staring without seeing at the wall. At first, Harry paid his observation no attention - he didn't feel up to talking to the Quidditch star, since he had to practically glue his face into a smile and think about Cho and other happy things to control his urge to choke Lawrence. But it was somewhere between boar bristles and boomslang skin that it dawned on Harry why Lawrence was so upset. It made no difference, since Harry had caught the Snitch and the Chasers had done a great job anyway, but Lawrence didn't miss one goal shot that day.
He missed six.
Feeling suddenly closer to the mortalized Lawrence, Harry put down his papers and went over to the corner. "Hey, Lawrence," he said softly. "Don't feel so bad. Even the best Keepers can't get every pass."
"Thank you, Harry," he answered in a monotone that told Harry he wasn't being thanked at all.
"What's wrong?" continued Harry, feeling genuinely concerned. Now that he thought about it, the darkest he had ever seen Lawrence was slightly miffed over a tricky charm he couldn't get right.
"I'm just all over the place," he replied unusually, frowning.
"What do you mean?"
Lawrence thought for a minute. "I can't concentrate on anything. Not just in the Quidditch game, when I was completely out of it...I'm just...well...I'm kind of...."
Harry saw right away that Lawrence was avoiding the subject, instead of casting about for the correct word to say, but didn't comment on his observance.
"Can I tell you something, if you promise not to tell anyone?" said Lawrence suddenly.
"Um...sure," Harry replied, hoping that it would be easy not to leak.
Lawrence sighed.
"I'm really...er...lonely."
Harry looked at him for a minute.
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean, Harry." The younger looked at the older with a disapproving glare, as if Harry was trying to taunt him.
"You're...alone?" Now Harry was the one casting around for words.
"I-I-I don't have a girlfriend!" he stammered, raising his hands.
"Is that it?" asked Harry, feeling relieved that it wasn't anything more serious. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Never mind. I knew you wouldn't understand," he replied darkly, standing up and moving out of the corner.
"Wait a minute. Get back here. What's going on?"
Lawrence shook his head and looked around the common room furtively, as if someone was listening in on them. "It just seems like everyone's going out with everyone else. My best guy friends are with my best girl friends. It's like, everywhere I go, everyone seems so damn happy and perfect together, and I'm just there for decoration or whatever. Tomorrow's Valentine's Day, and I think I'm going to go crazy with all the relationships that are going on! I try not to think about it; I try to think of Quidditch as some kind of substitute, but when I was thinking about that during the game, I kept screwing up. And now, it's like, what do I have left?"
Harry sighed, reminding himself to spend extra time with Cho tomorrow to make up for their competition during the Quidditch game. "Not everybody's together, and not everybody's happy, even if they are. Don't think about stuff like that all the time, even if tomorrow is Valentine's. Just think about...." He thought about things to think about, and the only things that came up were potion ingredients and broomsticks, which were definitely not good replacements for relationships. "Don't think about anything," he concluded, rather stupidly. "I mean," he corrected himself, "someone will be perfect for you. You just have to give them some time to find out about yourself. In the meantime, you aren't going to be stealing any girl's hearts by sulking in a corner, will you?" Harry grinned, and Lawrence broke through his mask and mimicked him.
The good thing was, Harry was pretty sure Lawrence meant it, and was going to take his advice. And another good thing was, Lawrence was suddenly a pretty cool guy to talk to.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Ron!" whispered George, early that Sunday morning.
"Mmwpf?" replied Ron groggily.
"Do you want to buy a rose?" asked Fred, clutching a bouquet of luminous red flowers. Ron looked at him in confusion.
"For Hermione, you doof! Did you get her anything for Valentine's?"
Ron sat up straight, replying with a loud, "Oh no!"
"Shh!" hissed the twins. "We're trying to give you a family discount on our invention. If you wake everybody up, it wouldn't be fair, now, would it?"
Ron saw now that it was very early, at five or six in the morning, and the other boys in the dormitory. He looked suspiciously at the roses.
"This won't turn her hair green or explode into a rubber chicken or something, will it?" he whispered.
"We promise," said George, and Ron knew that he meant it.
"How much?"
"Free." Fred grinned, plucked a long-stem rose from the bunch, and handed it to Ron. "We're just looking out for the welfare of our favorite little brother. People like Hermione are pretty rare and we want to keep you two together."
"Yeah, people that actually want to date Ron are few and far between," joked George. More seriously, he added, "If anybody asks, though, we're charging a sickle."
"We have to get back to the dorm now," said Fred. "See you at breakfast."
"Happy Valentine's Day!" added George, and then they were gone.
Ron smiled and put Hermione's rose on his dresser, hoping she would like it. He also hoped that it wouldn't turn her into an octopus or something, but that was an ingrown instinct learned from previous experiences with the twins' inventions.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The invention of the glowing rose, however, was practically as big a hit as the Canary Creams from the previous year. Harry, Ron, and Neville were the only ones in their dorm who were able to get one before they were sold out - more to Lavender and Parvati's dismay than Seamus or Dean's.
Since it was a Sunday, the professors were letting the students have a sort of impromtu Valentine's Day get-together in the Great Hall.
"Great Snitch catch yesterday, Harry," said Cho offhandedly.
"I'm sorry," he replied, feeling guilty.
Cho twirled the rose in her hand. "Don't be. It's fun to be competing with you. I feel like we're two birds flying together in the sky."
"But, I practically shoved you out of the way!" he confessed.
"Oh, come one. Stop worrying about it. We knew this would happen."
"All right," Harry resigned, "But only if you're sure you're fine with always losing to Hogwarts's numero uno Seeker!" He laughed, and was very glad to see Cho was laughing too, without a hint of resentment. He cast his attention around him and basked in Cho's and the rose's glow.
"I'm so sorry, Ron," Hermione was saying. "You know what the O. W. L.'s mean to me."
"I do, and I understand," he replied. "We have the rest of our lives to be together if we want to be. A few weeks when I don't see your face because it's behind a book all the time doesn't mean a thing to me."
"What are we going to do over the summer?" she asked.
"I thought you would be at your Bulgarian lover's house again," teased Ron, and Hermione blushed.
"Oh, come on. You know that week at his place was about the most boring I ever spent. I was actually making up homework assignments to do just to avoid seeing his broody face. He gets annoying pretty easily if you aren't that big into Quidditch."
Viktor Krum, Hermione's love interest of last year, was a constant tease of Ron's, almost to the point of being cute.
Harry put his arm around Cho and looked around the Great Hall to see if anyone new was going out. He spied Lawrence in a corner, with a rose in his hand and a dejected look on his face. Harry felt bad, but not bad enough to move from his place with Cho. He looked at the people around him, and saw Hermione and Ron, Neville and Ginny, Llewellyn and Draco, and...Rosalind, sitting alone, immersed in her studying of a book entitled "Theory of Charms".
Wasn't Rosalind "Rose" in another language?
He got an idea worth getting up for, and excused himself from Cho.
"Hey, Lawrence, there's someone I think would really like that rose of yours...."
Relativity
Llewellyn took Draco for a walk through the melting snow around the lake after dinner that Monday night. She told him nearly everything that had crossed her mind about Sunday's strange occurrences, and now he was offering her his advice.
"We all promised Visilio and Patursa that we would tell them right away if there was anyone out of the ordinary that happened to us," he said, referring to himself, Llewellyn, Rosalind, and Tim. "You should go and tell him as soon as we get inside."
She scrunched her mouth up a side in thought. "You don't think that we should just return the book?" she replied after a while.
'Look, it's not the book's fault," he answered. "Just because you have a dream about something that happens to be the decoration on a cover doesn't mean that the two are related any more than both being in your memory. You only imagined that it had blood in its mouth last night."
"What? So now you don't believe me?" She turned on him angrily.
"I do believe you saw something. But you yourself said the dorm was dimly lit, and it was late at night, after you couldn't sleep. In all reality, what's the chance that it was actually blood?"
Llewellyn looked at him and back at the lake a few times, trying to think of what to say. "Couldn't you just trust me on this?" she pleaded, more begging than she meant it to sound.
Draco put his hands on her shoulders and looked down seriously at her. "Look, Llewellyn, something very strange is going on here. Even if it wasn't blood, and right now I'm not saying if it is or isn't, it's still important that you go to Visilio and tell him everything else."
She signed and looked down, glad that she hadn't brought up her thought that the marks were snakebites. There were a few tense moments where she was afraid that she wouldn't have the courage to go to Visilio and tell him all that she thought was happening, and Draco thought that maybe she was going to get very mad at him. Finally, she looked up at him, and said, very strongly, "Fine. I'll tell. But you're coming with me."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Patursa was just saying "Just a teensy drop of Veritaserum, of course, but Jannis was pretty agitated that he wasn't involved directly" when there came a knock on Visilio's door.
"One second, Jimmy," said Visilio, and he crossed the room. "Who's there?" he asked.
"Draco," the Slytherin said.
"And Llewellyn," she added.
"Come in," said the professor.
The two students entered the office and saw Professor Patursa's head sitting in the fireplace. Llewellyn was glad, as she didn't feel like telling her thoughts for a third time to the American professor. She grabbed a chair in the back of the office and then proceeded to tell Visilio and Patursa everything that she told Draco on the walk around the lake, and nothing more.
When she was done, she looked from Visilio's boyish face, which seemed lost in thought, to Patursa's chubby head, which appeared vaguely confused and worried. Draco and Llewellyn looked at each other nervously, wondering what the adults would do. She reached out for reassurance and he squeezed her hand gently. Finally, Visilio turned to them and told them what he was thinking.
"I did hear that four girls had an unusual sickness yesterday, but I didn't realize who they were. Furthermore, I didn't even begin to consider the possibility that something evil was going on. I'm going to request that you bring that book back to the Restricted Section as soon as you can, before anything else happens. Will you do that for us, Llewellyn?"
She nodded, and after a quick glance shared between Patursa and Visilio, the students knew that the time had come to leave. They left the office hand-in-hand and wondered what they professors were saying.
"Well, what I was going to say before those two came in, was that I found nothing from anybody on any Dark Arts activities. No one said or knew anything, and, along with Professor Szeles, we checked all the dormitories, and found absolutely zip for evidence towards Dark Arts use. Although," Patursa laughed, "we did find more Dungbombs than you can shake a stick at, which Maryann promptly did, and now they're lying at the bottom of the ocean somewhere."
"And the Dark Mark?" pressed Visilio.
"Yes...that." Patursa grimaced. "That was definitely placed there by a spell, at least four months ago. It remains even more an enigma now that I'm nearly certain there is no Dark Arts activity in Columbia."
Visilio said nothing for a long time, finally replying, "Your neck must be getting tired, Jimmy. Same time tomorrow?"
"Yup. Well, I'll talk to you later, Matt." With a slight pop! Patursa's blonde head disappeared.
"See you, Jimmy," the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher murmured to the suddenly darkened fireplace. He stood there in thought for what felt like an eternity, quiet as a stone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Llewellyn began to become more and more introverted over the following weeks, but considering everyone was beginning to freak out about the ever- closer O.W.L.'s, her growing silence was not noticed. Roz and Hermione became the study partner they both never had, prone to sitting in corners and whispering verbal quizzes at a lightening speed to each other. Ron and Harry tried to immerse themselves in their notes from the past four and a half years, but more often than not the facts they attempted to re-absorb turned to mush. Harry could practically see each word he read slam against a grey wall in his mind, crumbling onto the ground in incomprehensible pieces.
The O.W.L.'s, which had previously seemed so distant as to be almost mythical, now loomed agonizingly near. Even though they were less than four months away, Quidditch was still being played and the vivacity of the team shone through the habitual drizzle. One Saturday evening, about five weeks after the whole strange pox incident, Gryffindor had just won a game against Ravenclaw.
It had been a dreary day outside, the grey, swollen rain clouds reminding Harry of his futile studying efforts. He was sunk deep into an armchair for most of the night, still slightly wet from his post-match shower. During his attempts to pound lists of potion ingredients into his skull, occasionally literally, he looked up and saw a perpetually clement face on the verge of tears.
Lawrence was hunched in the darkest corner, curled up into a ball, and staring without seeing at the wall. At first, Harry paid his observation no attention - he didn't feel up to talking to the Quidditch star, since he had to practically glue his face into a smile and think about Cho and other happy things to control his urge to choke Lawrence. But it was somewhere between boar bristles and boomslang skin that it dawned on Harry why Lawrence was so upset. It made no difference, since Harry had caught the Snitch and the Chasers had done a great job anyway, but Lawrence didn't miss one goal shot that day.
He missed six.
Feeling suddenly closer to the mortalized Lawrence, Harry put down his papers and went over to the corner. "Hey, Lawrence," he said softly. "Don't feel so bad. Even the best Keepers can't get every pass."
"Thank you, Harry," he answered in a monotone that told Harry he wasn't being thanked at all.
"What's wrong?" continued Harry, feeling genuinely concerned. Now that he thought about it, the darkest he had ever seen Lawrence was slightly miffed over a tricky charm he couldn't get right.
"I'm just all over the place," he replied unusually, frowning.
"What do you mean?"
Lawrence thought for a minute. "I can't concentrate on anything. Not just in the Quidditch game, when I was completely out of it...I'm just...well...I'm kind of...."
Harry saw right away that Lawrence was avoiding the subject, instead of casting about for the correct word to say, but didn't comment on his observance.
"Can I tell you something, if you promise not to tell anyone?" said Lawrence suddenly.
"Um...sure," Harry replied, hoping that it would be easy not to leak.
Lawrence sighed.
"I'm really...er...lonely."
Harry looked at him for a minute.
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean, Harry." The younger looked at the older with a disapproving glare, as if Harry was trying to taunt him.
"You're...alone?" Now Harry was the one casting around for words.
"I-I-I don't have a girlfriend!" he stammered, raising his hands.
"Is that it?" asked Harry, feeling relieved that it wasn't anything more serious. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Never mind. I knew you wouldn't understand," he replied darkly, standing up and moving out of the corner.
"Wait a minute. Get back here. What's going on?"
Lawrence shook his head and looked around the common room furtively, as if someone was listening in on them. "It just seems like everyone's going out with everyone else. My best guy friends are with my best girl friends. It's like, everywhere I go, everyone seems so damn happy and perfect together, and I'm just there for decoration or whatever. Tomorrow's Valentine's Day, and I think I'm going to go crazy with all the relationships that are going on! I try not to think about it; I try to think of Quidditch as some kind of substitute, but when I was thinking about that during the game, I kept screwing up. And now, it's like, what do I have left?"
Harry sighed, reminding himself to spend extra time with Cho tomorrow to make up for their competition during the Quidditch game. "Not everybody's together, and not everybody's happy, even if they are. Don't think about stuff like that all the time, even if tomorrow is Valentine's. Just think about...." He thought about things to think about, and the only things that came up were potion ingredients and broomsticks, which were definitely not good replacements for relationships. "Don't think about anything," he concluded, rather stupidly. "I mean," he corrected himself, "someone will be perfect for you. You just have to give them some time to find out about yourself. In the meantime, you aren't going to be stealing any girl's hearts by sulking in a corner, will you?" Harry grinned, and Lawrence broke through his mask and mimicked him.
The good thing was, Harry was pretty sure Lawrence meant it, and was going to take his advice. And another good thing was, Lawrence was suddenly a pretty cool guy to talk to.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Ron!" whispered George, early that Sunday morning.
"Mmwpf?" replied Ron groggily.
"Do you want to buy a rose?" asked Fred, clutching a bouquet of luminous red flowers. Ron looked at him in confusion.
"For Hermione, you doof! Did you get her anything for Valentine's?"
Ron sat up straight, replying with a loud, "Oh no!"
"Shh!" hissed the twins. "We're trying to give you a family discount on our invention. If you wake everybody up, it wouldn't be fair, now, would it?"
Ron saw now that it was very early, at five or six in the morning, and the other boys in the dormitory. He looked suspiciously at the roses.
"This won't turn her hair green or explode into a rubber chicken or something, will it?" he whispered.
"We promise," said George, and Ron knew that he meant it.
"How much?"
"Free." Fred grinned, plucked a long-stem rose from the bunch, and handed it to Ron. "We're just looking out for the welfare of our favorite little brother. People like Hermione are pretty rare and we want to keep you two together."
"Yeah, people that actually want to date Ron are few and far between," joked George. More seriously, he added, "If anybody asks, though, we're charging a sickle."
"We have to get back to the dorm now," said Fred. "See you at breakfast."
"Happy Valentine's Day!" added George, and then they were gone.
Ron smiled and put Hermione's rose on his dresser, hoping she would like it. He also hoped that it wouldn't turn her into an octopus or something, but that was an ingrown instinct learned from previous experiences with the twins' inventions.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The invention of the glowing rose, however, was practically as big a hit as the Canary Creams from the previous year. Harry, Ron, and Neville were the only ones in their dorm who were able to get one before they were sold out - more to Lavender and Parvati's dismay than Seamus or Dean's.
Since it was a Sunday, the professors were letting the students have a sort of impromtu Valentine's Day get-together in the Great Hall.
"Great Snitch catch yesterday, Harry," said Cho offhandedly.
"I'm sorry," he replied, feeling guilty.
Cho twirled the rose in her hand. "Don't be. It's fun to be competing with you. I feel like we're two birds flying together in the sky."
"But, I practically shoved you out of the way!" he confessed.
"Oh, come one. Stop worrying about it. We knew this would happen."
"All right," Harry resigned, "But only if you're sure you're fine with always losing to Hogwarts's numero uno Seeker!" He laughed, and was very glad to see Cho was laughing too, without a hint of resentment. He cast his attention around him and basked in Cho's and the rose's glow.
"I'm so sorry, Ron," Hermione was saying. "You know what the O. W. L.'s mean to me."
"I do, and I understand," he replied. "We have the rest of our lives to be together if we want to be. A few weeks when I don't see your face because it's behind a book all the time doesn't mean a thing to me."
"What are we going to do over the summer?" she asked.
"I thought you would be at your Bulgarian lover's house again," teased Ron, and Hermione blushed.
"Oh, come on. You know that week at his place was about the most boring I ever spent. I was actually making up homework assignments to do just to avoid seeing his broody face. He gets annoying pretty easily if you aren't that big into Quidditch."
Viktor Krum, Hermione's love interest of last year, was a constant tease of Ron's, almost to the point of being cute.
Harry put his arm around Cho and looked around the Great Hall to see if anyone new was going out. He spied Lawrence in a corner, with a rose in his hand and a dejected look on his face. Harry felt bad, but not bad enough to move from his place with Cho. He looked at the people around him, and saw Hermione and Ron, Neville and Ginny, Llewellyn and Draco, and...Rosalind, sitting alone, immersed in her studying of a book entitled "Theory of Charms".
Wasn't Rosalind "Rose" in another language?
He got an idea worth getting up for, and excused himself from Cho.
"Hey, Lawrence, there's someone I think would really like that rose of yours...."