Disclaimer: No I don't own Harry Potter etc. J K Rowling does. Elianne is my own character though. And the poetry is definitely mine, and only mine.
Author's Note: Like I said in chapter 17, hadn't meant to write it this soon but I have. I finished my work sooner than expected. This should explains things more and cloud things more. Last chapter answered a lot more than any other chapter and this one opens up more questions.
As always feedback is great to receive. Hope you all like this.
Chapter 18
"Anything and Everything"
Don't have to do anything really
To do your worst
Only needs to be theory
Needs one little chance
One small glance
One wrong look in the right direction
Don't need to shove it in my face
For me to find out
Because
I can see
And if I do
What will it be
Doesn't need much
One touch
A few friendly talks
More time than necessary spent
Less time on me
Then I could see;
There was something else
Of importance
Over the days I'd find
That
I was drowning in insignificance
It became greater for you
And I further into the deep
Sinking away from your life
Whilst still in it
Right next to you
With no right
Don't have to do anything really
Lack of love's enough
To break my heart
~
She got up, pushing her arms out to her sides to support her body.
The sun shone down into the room, indicating what the quietness had already told her. Everyone else was already up.
She'd slept in.
That never happened.
Usually the dreams would wake her in the early hours of the morning and she'd spend the rest of the witching time til dawn holding herself tight trying to forget what she'd seen.
She always saw things in the night. In the day it came and went depending on events. But the night, the darkness had always found its way to her unconscious mind. Telling her all of the horrid delights life held for others. That was the inescapable.
And now it had gone. Suddenly.
What plagued her vanished as quick as the curse had come. A cure. Growing out of it? The world starting to be a better place? Who knew. She was only grateful. And hopeful the next time she slept that it would be as peaceful.
###
Flora sighted the black haired boy from entering the hall. It was light, barely any Slytherins were up right this time. Only the cheerful hufflepuff's cherished a premature morning start. As she approached the table she saw he sat there on his own, picking over porridge. Rather unappetising but she could see why. He was punishing himself. He felt guilty. Just like her.
"Leander?" her voice quivered with uncertainty about whether he'd reply
"Flora"
It didn't sound like he hated her. It was more despondent than anything else.
"I'm sorry. I was stupid. It was so silly and I shouldn't have said that about you. I know you are better than him. Anastis was probably right. The unattainable desire."
She made a face indicating she couldn't have been any more ignorant of that delectable matter.
"I regret it. If I hadn't done anything then… she'd… probably… still be here."
Her eyes set downcast in shame. There wasn't anything worse that she'd done in her life. This one thing that was so incredibly silly and flippant of her and it could have cost a dear friend her existence, pain at best.
He looked up at her mortified.
"It's not your fault."
"What? Of course it is. I caused all that trouble." She flapped her hands around trying to demonstrate her anxiety at what he was saying. "You didn't condem her. You didn't make her run away. You didn't do anything except be yourself and kind and nice to me. Despite me being the worst kind of witch imaginable."
"I guess" he returned to his porridge dejectedly.
She couldn't stand the way he thought about this, she had to persuade him. She grabbed him arm yanking him around to face her "No. It was never your fault if it was even anybodies. I don't care what you think you did. You didn't. if there was someone to blame, blame me."
He stared at her and stated it like the obvious "I can't. I can't blame you. I think I love you."
She let go of his arm, not having expected that and meanwhile he apologised
"I'm….sorry. …I didn't mean to say that. It just came out… I only want to be friends…but please….don't blame yourself."
She studied his face, thinking it over, wondering why he let his emotions stumble out openly.
"Okay. I think we can manage that" she said cheerfully, she took his arm once more as she sat down with him so he was no longer alone "… as long as neither of us try to place the blame. Then maybe we'll be ok. All of us. Somehow. And you and me."
###
They sat frigidly at the table. The dinner on the plates picked through. The atmosphere between them frosty, no words uttered hostile or not.
They looked at anything but themselves.
Hermione got up and Harry immediately rushed out of his chair to her, meeting by the window where she gave him a challenging look, "What?" she didn't care for the answer he knew but he replied anyway
"We need to talk."
She laughed manically for a short second
"Do we? Really. REALLY. I hadn't noticed. Not one bit."
Her face was contorted in a callous sarcasm that she'd responded in.
"Hermione…"
A tawny owl bearing the Hogwarts crest entered the open top window and hovered over them waiting for instructions.
Her face lit up in that same fantastic heartlessness.
"A letter. Might as well be for you. After all it is from your daughter."
Hermione stampeded out the room heatedly, taking with her any warmth Harry had felt. A door slammed in the distance.
Leaving Harry with a letter in his hand.
~
When all is right
Do you ever ask
Why
Or do you accept
This how it ought to be
When all is right
Does anyone ever ask
Who made it so
~
They sat in the library, Cassy happily writing her potions essay.
"What's up with you?" Lucretia asked slyly
"Nothing" she'd answered in a short sparky way
"Of course not. Should have known"
Lucretia had been like this for the last week. Anything that came out of her mouth was the joyous prize of trouble. She'd lost 70 house points already. That hadn't won her any praise.
None of this week's comings and going had either.
No news on the research into Cassy's gift, no help from Cassy herself and no better response from the student population.
Elianne felt worried about Cassy's sudden brightness, it meant she hadn't had any visions but she didn't know if that was a good thing yet.
And none of the books in the ordinary library had helped. All the divination books were being used by the new third years and it was doubtful they'd contain what was needed.
She chanced a whisper to Lucretia
"It's no good, I think we need to look in the restricted section."
Behind them a hearty malevolent laugh echoed inot their ears.
They both turned to the regrettable façade of Ian Trickett, 2nd year Ravenclaw and bully galore.
"What's that Malfoy? Planning on exploring the dark books, taking up your family legacy. Rid the world of mudbloods, honour the dark master and pass this years exams, huh?"
his dumb face leered over them both smugly.
Lucretia shocked them, most of all Ian, by talking back
"no actually. I thought I might rid the world of you, for the sake of every students sanity."
A few people faintly laughed at her joke, wondering what Ian would do next. He didn't do anything.
"What is it with you Trickett? Can't take a joke. A simple little harmless joke. What is it I hear? Oh gasp she's a Malfoy, she'll curse you to hell's bound and chains. Oh no. What a shame for you. But luckily…" she spat the words out one by one "I'm not a Malfoy in spirit. Maybe I have their blood in me, but I wish it was anything but, anything you hear me, anything. Anything at all. I'm not my fathers daughter. I hate them. I despise them, Malfoys. And I despise you. I pity you."
Ian trembled slightly in front of them and turned and walked stunned to his own table of friends.
Lucretia glared at the whole library with menace.
"Is that enough for you? Is it a good enough show? Is it? Want any more of the famed Malfoy wrath?"
She spun out not waiting for any non-existent answers.
~
Sorry doesn't cover
Everything you did
Because you can't know
What everything is
~
Harry and Hermione stood opposite each other.
"Did you read it?"
He'd have been genuinely scared if he hadn't
"Yes." He tried to sound solid in the manner he said it.
"And?"
What now, what did she mean.
"And…?"
"Don't you get it? Its everything. Where have you been for the last decade, what were you doing, why now, why not before, why did you leave us alone, why didn't you say anything. All I needed was one word from you, one word, just one word…"
He watched as she spirally out of control with questions.
Questions he couldn't answer
"WHERE?" she screamed at him.
Had it meant so much to her? To know where he was. Would she be satisfied with his answer. It wasn't what she'd be thinking of, not what anyone could realistically expect. None of it made sense.
"WHERE for Merlin's sake?!" tears ran down her face, its shape twisted out of recognition in living grief.
She wanted to know. She needed to know. He had to say.
"I …don't…… know"
His eyes met hers and she saw he wasn't lying.
Her tone softened as she spoke in a queer wonder "How?"
"I…don't.. know, …either"
Her face scrunched up in the sheer strangeness of what couldn't be.
His face stayed placid and pale. A small panic in his features, barely noticeable.
"How could this be? You're alive but you don't know what you did or where you were for the last ten eleven years. You should have been dead."
His face shifted slightly at what she said
"I think I was."
///flashback////one month after graduation
She leant on the bar waiting for them.
The letter had been a shock.
For her.
What would Ron think?
Mind you that was different, he was Harry's best friend but he wasn't stupidly infatuated with him.
What it had said wouldn't have made Ron afraid.
Because Ron didn't live in fear of what might or might not happen.
Ron had a healthy friendship.
Harry and Hermione had something else.
That no one noticed. That neither questioned openly. That was always, but never resolved.
And now it looked like Harry had resolved it, in his mind.
The parchment had been crisp, his handwriting flourished, him happy and excited in the way he wrote.
And then he mentioned it.
I met someone. A girl named May, she's French-English. Black hair, violet eyes, beautiful, lovely, kind. I know you'll love her
Just as much as I do
A whirlwind romance, it seemed.
Something out of the blue.
Nothing really made sense it that.
All the years they'd not been together and he hadn't ever been out with anyone much, nothing serious.
But he spoke of marrying her, a girl he'd only known for a month, since he'd left to explore the world starting fatefully in France.
###
Ron hadn't taken it well.
The words rung around Harry's head.
"You don't know her. What about her family, her history, her background? It's too soon." He'd protested.
Love didn't care about that
Ron tried evermore.
All the way to his house to sway him from his announcement of marriage.
"It's not right. I don't like it. You can't be naïve in times like this. You can't trust her. I don't want you hurt."
Yet he'd hurt him. By not being his best man – he'd said he'd hated her and would rather Avada Kedavra himself than willingly help Harry bind himself to her –, by not being at the wedding.
Hermione never said anything about her. She was the constant. His one reliable…person…friend. She'd sat at the bar and said goodbye quietly while he and Ron had stormed off arguing.
She trusted him.
And he trusted May.
//end flashback///
###
"I did die, somehow I know that. And Sirius found me in august, thinking I was dead at first. I was weak, incredibly weak. I was on the brink of life and death, barely there. Siruis waited til Halloween, and did a strength spell, it needed that date, that's why I never came back til Halloween. I haven't been alive, I couldn't have seen you or Elianne. My memory isn't all there so I don't know what happened to me that night or anywhere after. But I know I did die. I know it was Voldemort and what killed me killed him too. But he wasn't alone."
Hermione looked up tenderly at her friend. Life never stopped taking on twists for him. His days had always been tired and drawn out, with pain and problems.
"I'm sorry."
"So am I."
One way or another they knew it wasn't just the shouting and the anger that they were apologising for. Everything had led to this point. Everything was what it was about.
###
The black waters swirled into a vortex, mirroring a picture.
"It works" one of the figures exclaimed
"Of course it works. It had to." Eliza lifted her head to meet the eyes of the high priestess who smiled in approval.
Eliza moved to the side whilst her crooked friend helped the decrepit old witch join them, standing in over the basin to interpret the signs.
She grinned toothlessly
"It's pain my lady. Exquisite mad pain." She said it mirthfully dancing slightly
Eliza nodded reassuringly to her friend, who lifted his dark scarlet eyes to hers worried.
She relieved him with a knowing look and her words. "She's a little mad but she knows what she speaks of."
The tainted old woman gasped and giggled at the dark pit of images.
She curved to Eliza saying calculatingly "you took her pain away, you gave it to me, thank you, thank you. So pleased. I'm so pleased."
Eliza sneered, the witch took too long, it was only hers as long as she said so.
"Hurry up. We need to know what it says." Eliza did not want to incur the vengeance that had befallen Micah. In this order, those who failed where no more. They ceased to be anything. Their cause was everything.
The lady smiled unhappily and set to the task.
"She lies in the past. So sweetly put in her despair. Our lady fine in grace is here. It is time. The moon is risen to its place in the stars, he our god is in them, ready to be."
The priestess jumped out of the chair and walked to the witch as fast as possible without disgracing herself.
"She's here? Now? It is for real this time?"
The witch looked around at their wide eyes and beamed in her insanity gone wrong.
"The Cwendendia is upon us. khadeorc dei gratia. The victory in hand. Bless the child's mind, it is our gift from the hells. The prophecy proper."
The priestess smiled back at the gypsy bitingly
"A feast to the rising of what must come. That we shall bring and we shall be rewarded duly."