Chapter Twenty-Nine: Hello Darkness, My Old Friend...
'Oh, bugger.' There was no stronger word in Julie's vocabulary. 'Bugger, bugger, bugger. Fuck. And damn... a lot!' To say 'shit' would be a complete example of under-kill. And right now, Julie's state of mind was only permitting her to think half-hearted terrible expletives, not because she was angry, but because she had realized something awful beyond awfulness about herself.
The instant she, Uncle Harry and Draco had landed, the only person who knew about the whole Malfoy thing had pulled Julie away for what appeared to be a stern lecture. Come to think of it, Uncle Harry and Draco should not have been surprised by Julie getting yanked off for a lecture upon arrival, and had the yanking been done by the Headmistress, they would not have been.
But when Chloe Davies bodily took a fifth-year by the collar and pulled her away from you, explaining that 'she and Miss Starcatcher had something to talk about,' you were not usually anything less than completely shocked. And given the way Chloe looked angrier than Professor McGonagall the time Snape had made a crack about a scratching post, there was good reason for Julie to be struggling. She had struggled, fought, in fact, as against a capturing enemy or the way she might struggle if her father'd taken her off so. It was only because it was bloody Chloe that neither Malfoy nor Harry did anything. She was easily a head and a half shorter than Julie was and petite for her age; watching her drag Julie was like watching a Jack Russell terrier drag a small collie. And Julie was not playing when she tried to get free of the first-year. Chloe risked a sprained wrist and dislocated shoulder holding Julie by the collar of the worn t-shirt. The first-year was also Julie's only female friend, not counting the girlfriends of her 'Quidditch boys,' and the cruel way she referred to Julie as 'Miss Starcatcher' either implied that the whole thing was either a marvelous joke planned out beforehand by the two of them, as Harry thought, or a half-French and one-eighth veela first-year who was beyond pissed-off, as Malfoy knew.
The lecture was harder than any Julie'd ever had to take:
"What's the matter with you, dragging me, let me go!"
"Let you go! You keep both of them by the neck, why don't you see how it feels for once?"
"What?"
"You know full well, don't play the dog with me! I knew you came up an even draw with the Sorting Hat, but it clearly didn't see what you could do, did it? I wonder why your father put you into Gryffindor, probably trying to protect his house from cheats like you!"
Julie couldn't have been more stunned if Chloe had slapped her face. Was this girl eleven or older than she'd ever be?
"I'm trying to decide which one it is I like," she muttered, trying to convince herself as well as Chloe what she knew wasn't true.
"Je' c'est merde you are," Chloe cursed. "You're breaking both their hearts on a timer, waiting until one finds out. Except you can't break them clean because you're Julie Snape and everyone knows you're the sarcastic almost-Slytherin. Why don't you go there if this is the way you treat the guys you like? I doubt you even like them, it's just fun to mess with people's lives." She took Julie by the lapels of the still-too-big purple Muggle coat, then let them go. "And all of this! Blame all your oddness on the orphanage. All the weird ethics and tricks and little phobias! Do you sleep without your knife, Julie Starcatcher? When's the last time you trusted someone with more than evasion and sarcasm? You make sure you've got one friend in every year, so you know everything. You practice eavesdropping and lying like we practice Charms. Do you even get that you're the most dishonest, two-faced, worthless little arrogant Slytherin I've ever been disgusted to know?"
"Chloe, why are you-?"
"Donaghan would walk into hell for you. You haven't seen the way he looks whenever someone mentions you. When you were in St. Mungo's he never ate, never rested, just paced around. You broke his heart as sweetly as you could last time, well you can't now. Today he caught a rat for you with his bare hands because he knows you're scared of them. You were busy hurting some reporter with your other guy. You didn't go to him when you were angry, you just shut him out. What happens when he finds out you're playing him to sleep with a Death Eater?"
Julie reached out her hand to smack Chloe, but the blond girl dodged.
"You'd hurt your friends, wouldn't you, like you hurt him. I bet you even manage to hurt your cradle-robbing pureblood git and your parents who still love you even if you are the next Dark Lord. Well, I don't need any evil friends, I'm in Gryffindor. What you do with your cheating is your affair. I don't need to read the papers to know that you shouldn't be." With a last, almost pitying glare to her former friend, Chloe turned to leave Julie, then threw one last poniard. "It's no wonder that you can't let your heart decide. I sincerely wonder if you've got one now."
Hence all the half-hearted expletives. Julie would have doubted Chloe's words if she had stopped without mentioning Voldemort or the way her parents had stuck by her even when it seemed near obvious that she was permanently connected to pure evil.
Evil. Chloe had said she was evil. Her. Julie had never looked at herself in that light before. It was as harsh as the fluorescent tubes that lit the orphanage corridors. Evil. Did her parents really believe that she could be that way? Because she suspected dimly that she maybe could. There was something wrong with the little voice in her head that told her what was right and wrong. It had been outshouted by another voice that told her she could do what she wanted. How long had she had that little evil voice? When was the first time she had succumbed to it?
And when was the last time she resisted it?
She thought back to the last not-good thing she did, going off to fire Rita Skeeter in her Muggle clothes. The reason she had worn them was because they could fit Draco, and she couldn't make the advanced potion without asking her mother for help. Stealing the ingredients was no problem. She hadn't needed to since Defense Against the Dark Arts now involved the Polyjuice, but, she realized with a sting, she could steal easily. Not the friendly almost joking theft like sleight of hand, but she could honestly go out and rob someone. It also occured to her that if she had not had one of Draco's hairs to merely fire Skeeter, she might have duelled her with magic, or even worse, fought her Muggle-style. Julie knew she did not fight clean at all. Would she have waited in an ambush with that knife of hers? Donaghan and her uncles worried when they found out she carried one...
The eyepatch. She had heard the evil voice the first time after her eye injury. Was that something?
She looked in the mirror and was horrified. The little voice told her how frightening she might be to other people, true, just as it had in her father's room, and for a second she reveled in that kind of pure power.
Her eyes flickered red.
Good God, did she do that? Julie saw her good eye snap back into cinnamon brown. The red had scared her. For a sick moment the voice thought 'imagine how it must look to somebody else.' Red again. Was that little voice Voldemort? No, it also made her try to seduce her two guys. Two! Crimeny, the moment she'd decided to carry on with them both, she'd been listening to the record, was it tampered with? And who had left it?
Donaghan had caught a rat.
Her mother's story of why rats were now banned at the school echoed like a fearsome Wagner overture. Her own servant as the next Dark Lord. She felt nauseous. For a second, she wanted to make sure her bad eye was still brown, and despite Madam Pomfrey's warnings not to do so, she lifted the patch. Her eyelid was still very bruised. Tentatively, fearfully, she opened it and was repulsed by what she saw. Light sent a knife of pain into her head through the hurt eye's lens, but she held it open long enough to make sure the iris was still her mother's shade.
It was. Julie found herself still dizzy from the pain. She replaced the patch and looked in the mirror once again. The self-assured and intimidating witch dressed in Muggle clothes had turned into a Broughton kid who couldn't afford a coat that fit decently, only tired and in pain, like a worse train-wreck. The white streak now made her look as if she had aged prematurely from something awful and gave her an air of being barely alive, and the eyepatch looked like a half-asked effort to hide an eye really lost by some hurt. She winced. And then, against the rule she'd made for herself long ago, Miss Starcatcher burst into childish tears and slunk to lie on her bed.
Before she knew she didn't have an identity back in her orphan days, she had assumed she was, like some others, the last remaining member of some family all taken by fate. One or two kids liked to assert that their last name-family always did this, or never did that, as a matter of clan custom. Until the age of six, Julie had assumed she was the last remaining scion of the Starcatchers, but she never made any assertions about her family, as she knew they would not like her to be a braggart while she lived in this orphanage. Back then she still clung to the idea of being adopted, or the really impossible hope that her relatives might come back and claim her from there. 'She was only six,' as she would say now.
Then came the awful day when she had been called to the head matron's office to have her scar explained. She had actually thought it really was a birthmark once. That particular matron told the story to her blunt, she had no known family, no given name besides the one chosen at random, and had most likely been abandoned by whichever parents she might have had. And then, after these awful and cold revelations, this inept dared to ask her if she was okay, trembling on a chair from which her feet dangled.
Quietly and with six-year-old dignity, Julie told her that Starcatchers didn't cry. And until she came to Hogwarts, she never had.
Starcatchers didn't. She was not one now. What she was, she didn't know, perhaps an evil Snape?
Whether she would keep that name long once they knew, she had no idea.
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"Chloe did that?" Severus asked in profound surprise. It was the first time he'd used her given name and not 'Miss Davies.' "What did Julie do?"
"She got dragged away."
"But Chloe's- well, smaller," Hermione observed in as much surprise as he. "Did she get dragged willingly?"
"No, she fought like a wild dragon with a collar on. It was really funny," Harry said obtusely. But for the dire expression on Draco's face, everyone might have shrugged it off as a little bit of Gryffindor student theatrics.
"Chloe and Julie have a complicated relationship," Draco said tensely. "For all the French girl really is younger, today she had the upper hand with a vengeance. If she were a Slytherin, I'd say there was some blackmailing there."
He also had a grim suspicion as to what the first-year had on Julie, but he did not mention that out loud.
"Three to one Julie and Chloe planned that to keep her from getting sent straight to McGonagall's. Didn't Chloe show you the news clipping Julie'd read?"
The Granger-Snapes were inclined to agree with Harry. Draco sighed. Maybe it was just as well. To give them the idea he concurred to that line of reasoning, he made a joke to the effect that a Hogwarts drama club might be a good idea.
He was to regret that joke for a long, long time.
Ron and Judy entered Snape's office just at that second, hearing Herry's last comment and Draco's jesting remark as well. For some awful reason, Draco realized, Weasley had a surprised, clever look just then. It turned out to be just as bad as he thought it was.
"Why not?" the redheaded Auror asked. "It would sure beat Lockhart's dueling club. And I know exactly who might be able to handle that."
"That's right!" Hermione agreed with him, turning to Judy. "Didn't you run the drama club at your and Julie's old orphanage?"
"Yes, I had been thinking about doing that for awhile here…I don't have tenure where I was, and I'd sort of like to work within the wizarding world. Do wizards really have such things like Muggles do?"
"Why shouldn't they?" Harry asked. "It sounds like lots of fun. There was one at Smeltings that cast Dudley as the rear end of a horse for three plays in a row. Brilliant casting, if you ask me."
"And think of the special effects you can do!" Hermione seemed really keen on this idea. "I bet you could have some serious fun with 'Peter Pan' and the Bubble-Float Potion."
"I was thinking more along the lines of classics, like Shakespeare and Shaw, although musical theater does have it's tempting side."
Draco slapped his forehead unobtrusively. Mention Shakespeare and Severus was on your side without a thought. Sure enough, the next person to speak was him:
"I don't suppose you're thinking of age-appropriate casting?"
"What do you mean?" Judy couldn't think how that would apply to a school situation.
"Well, let's say you're doing 'Romeo and Juliet,' you put McPhersen, Howard, and Shannon as the Montagues, wouldn't it be logical to cast a faculty member as the Prince of Verona or Montague himself, you know? I think your Ron would make a fairly good Oberon if you're desperate to do a play with magic in it."
"You're hoping to play Shylock again, aren't you?" Hermione understood her husband's theatrical tendencies.
"Only if you're Portia, dear, there's no other way that it could be believable. Actually, I'd rather fancy being Egeus if Weasley'd be Oberon. It might be fun to play a glorified plot device."
"I think 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' would be heavenly," Judy exclaimed rapturously. "Actually partial-Transfiguring some kid to have a real donkey's head and having Puck dart about the audience Apparating, that could be so realistic."
"And so dangerous!" Malfoy tried to turn this bad idea around before Nearly-Headless Nick wound up playing Hamlet's father's ghost. "What about those Muggle swordfights, that could get somebody killed."
"Wouldn't you like a chance to be Tybalt, though? If ever there was an incident of type-casting…"
"Excuse me, but then Potter'd be Mercutio."
"No, make me Benvolio, the coward. Ron'd be funnier."
Malfoy realized he'd dug himself a bigger hole.
"And I suppose Poppy Pomfrey could be the Nurse?" he asked sarcastically.
"Actually, that's a really good idea, Draco. Why don't you help me with the magic parts?" Judy gave him a luminous smile as if to say 'you're beaten, don't try to get out of it.' "I don't think you have to teach until Christmastime, it'd be a good way to pass the time and get some teaching practice."
And with that, the heir of the ancient Malfoy family was rooked bag and baggage by a Muggle. Ron snorted under his breath and squeezed his fiancee's hand as Draco reluctantly gave in to this damnable theatre idea. It would be a cold day in hell before he made another joke to look agreeable.
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Severus had not seen his daughter yet since she'd stormed out in Muggle rags to go get Skeeter back. And considering the wonderful news he had, waiting was making him impatient. According to some third-years he almost tripped over in the hall, she had been seen going up to her room earlier. He was going to get in there and make her come with him to her mother's office, if only he could remember the password.
"Look, it's obvious who I am. Why don't you let me in?" The Fat Lady shook her head.
"With all the Polyjuice Potion the kids have been using, I have to have a password." He swore. "No, that isn't it."
Hermione appeared.
"Rabbit's hairs. Come on, Sev."
"Dear, I realize this is Gryffindor, but do you have to have such bloody cute passwords?"
"As opposed to 'snake tongue' and 'basilisk glasses'?"
"Come on, 'basilisk glasses' is a funny one."
"So's ours."
He got it.
"Puns do not become this place," he remarked wryly. The entire common room had developed a sudden case of good posture in his presence, straightening as if electricity had just shocked the fat red chairs. "As you were," he told them, but they still did not calm down.
"They aren't as afraid as the Slytherins," his wife whispered. "If you want to break the ice with a Gryffindor, you have to make them laugh. I've told you once or twice, haven't I?"
"Oh, yes, I had forgotten." He kissed her full on the mouth. "Was that appropriate?"
The students looked petrified, except for one of Julie's Quidditch friends who grinned and told her parents she was in her room.
"Thank you, Mr. Howard," Snape replied, heading up the stairs with his wife, who was giggling a little bit. "Well, it worked, didn't it?"
"Only on Aldous!"
"Is that his first name? He's not bad in class."
Hermione knocked on her daughter's door. There was no answer, so Severus knocked, a good bit louder. Still no answer. It was unlocked, so they went in and saw the ferret cage.
"Wow. Did she do this herself?"
"Probably had Hagrid's help. Where is- oh, look."
The trace of a sentimental tone in Severus's voice was unusual, but not when Hermione saw Julie was stretched out asleep in full Muggle regalia. Evidently she had not meant to nap that way, as the worn sneakers were still on her feet, as was her purple coat. In spite of white streak and eyepatch she looked innocent, and the resemblances to both of them showed up nicely. Severus patted her gently on the shoulder to wake her up. It took a few minutes before she stirred, as she slept like a stone.
"Wha-?"she asked, squinting and trying to turn her entire neck around to see who had patted her. "Oh, 'ello." Her squinting left eye was as red-rimmed as if she'd spent days awake or merely minutes crying.
"Did you intend to fall asleep this way?" her father asked.
"I do't thi'k so," Julie yawned. "I just sort of did. What's going on?"
"We have a bit of news we thought you might like to hear."
"Really? Good or bad?"
"Well, we think that it's good."
Julie sat up and shook out her wild black hair like a bizarre dog. It was as bushy as ever and very tangled from sleeping, so she did not protest when her father handed her the brush from her nighttable post-haste.
"Has England qualified for the World Cup then?"
"Uh... no."
"I didn't expect they would have that determined in fall, Julie." Hermione was usually intolerably sensible.
"Besides, I think Ireland's got a better shot, or the Scots perhaps."
"Really? Aldous thinks Latvia's got a better chance than Ireland."
"Latvia? They haven't won the Cup since-" Hermione was giving both of them looks. "I'm getting off the subject."
"I do it, too, Dad."
"See, that's the problem. Why couldn't you inherit something useful, like-"
"Ahem."
"Well, to the point of why we came here, -aren't you telling her?"
"You can if you want to, Sev."
"But how should I? I can't very well just drop it on her-"
"Well, you could lead up to it with a conversation that doesn't involve any Bludgers, dear."
"But she could guess it and not like it, what would you do then?"
"You could also try to make her guess, it could be rather obvious."
Julie smiled. Her mum and dad had again apparently forgotten she was even there. The decision whether to stop them or just watch and wait for them to notice it on their own was tricky, but she finally gave in to temptation and waited with a chipper little smile for them to be done.
"Why don't you just tell her? It's so bloody difficult."
"It's not like it's bad news, or at least I don't think that she'll think it is."
Julie shook her head.
"Naw, if you're having this much trouble deciding how to tell me, it's probably good enough news I'm bound to like it. Continue."
For a moment they were quiet, realizing how funny the three of them were, then the entire small family spent several minutes just laughing. Julie loved it when that happened, which was quite often. At last the mirth subsided and her dad asked her the question he'd been planning to:
"Julie, what would you say to a new sibling?"
"Probably 'hello' to start, and who I am and stuff-" The implications of that question finally sank into her. "Are we going to pick one out at the orphanage?"
"We don't have to. There's one already picked out, sort of."
Finally what they were trying to say got through Julie's head. Her reaction was really somewhat predictable.
"Seriously? A real brother-or-sister? This is so great!" She hugged both parents and began to talk at hyperspeed. "When's it due? Can you find out what sort it's going to be?"
"I'm thinking early to mid-summer."
"And I think a darkhaired sort's quite likely, considering we both are."
"I mean a brother or a sister."
"Oh, yeah, there's a test. I'm not sure I want to know quite yet, but we will probably find out eventually."
"Most likely. Cripes! He-or-she is going to need a stuffed animal, a shirt or two, shoes, definitely...where would wizards go about finding fabric and needles and stuff? And a stereo, definitely, I can find that, plus some little robes, I guess, he is a wizard-born. How big exactly is a baby, just a rough idea? And books! I'm going to have to teach them how to read!"
"Uh...may I suggest the reading possibly wait until he learns to talk?"
"Talking! I'd better get rid of this ooky accent then. Wait!" Julie froze dead in the middle of a hyper little planning rant. "Babies are really little, aren't they?"
"Generally speaking."
"So I guess it'll be at least a year before he learns to read."
"At least, though with this background nothing's certain."
"And six months to talk. I guess flying lessons are kind of in the distant, then."
"Probably."
"I"m still going to make a couple of shirts for...him-or-her."
"Earlier we were referring to the baby as 'whoever.' I can't really see using the word 'it' about a baby."
"Neither can I. Whoever's probably going to to get to hang around with me a lot. I don't like the cart-type things...what are they?"
"Perambulators?"
"Yeah, they look like shopping carts. I'd rather get ahold of one of the other things, sort of a reverse-knapsack with legholes for Whoever. Fancy Dad wearing my little sibling into class!"
"That, while the prospect of shocking my students is tempting, would not be a very safe idea."
"I think a playpen in the corner of the classroom could be a nice touch. You've already got that one-"
"It's meant for subjects, dear. Hagrid brought it up to keep the rabbits in when I taught the Enlarging Spell for use on live organisms."
"So that explains the giant rabbit wandering throughout the halls."
"One got away last year and Hagrid sort of likes the thing. It would have been Hasenpfeffer long ago but for him."
"And a pet! I think that Whoever should pick their own out, though, later on."
"So you really like the idea of a new baby?" Hermione asked, brushing a few errant hairs away from the right side of Julie's face.
"I've always wanted real blood family, and I love babies. I haven't seen any of the really little kind, but the medium sort were lovely, and the toddler kind is my favorite sort of all. I'm going to have a real little sibling who looks like me and follows me around and wants to play games always when I need to work. There's going to be another little kid I can teach to be sarcastic, or quiet, or studious or anything. I've got no idea what the baby will be like." Julie thought a second, scratching the back of her hand meditatively. "Sure there's a few givens; Whoever's bound to look like some combination of you two, which means a little bit like me at least, and he or she is probably going to be bright at school and love to read, just like we all do now. The only thing I'm even remotely scared of is messing this baby up."
Julie told them about her eyes going red and the anti-conscience she had started to hear, as well as Donaghan's rat and the forty-five; she only left out all the details that involved Malfoy or incriminated Donaghan. At some point during all of this, she started to cry.
"Aw, sweetie," her mother comforted, putting an arm around her reassuringly. "You aren't evil. We'll find out what's making your eyes red. It's okay."
"There's no way someone so caring could be evil," her father said.
And it was odd, but Julie felt completely better having them around.