I just wanted to thank all my lovely readers for waiting for this mammoth chapter!

KrazyAdy: You're addictive Ady! Sorry was that weird? But seriously your comment was so nice! I'm crying.

Uzurunner: First session but not with Aberforth lol. I'm sorry.

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Guest: Thank you! I always try to not just regurgitate the original plot so that means so much. Sorry, it took so long!

zaneri0t: Hope you like the new chapter!

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Federici: Full adoration for you T.T

Princess Aurora Bunny: I just released two chapters for that story too lol!

Chapter 25: The Creeping Koi

A week passed, and Aberforth came every single morning at precisely the same time and left at precisely the same time. There was an order to his visits that seemed at complete odds with his way of trying to teach Clara.

"Have you thought much on the color of your room yet?" A puff of smoke burst from the raggedly dressed man's lips, his bushy brows furrowing in concentration as he watched it drift away. "I was meditating on the notion and…green. You feel like a green kind of witch, Miss Deschamp."

The curly-haired witch sitting just beside him on the rickety chair that she had inhabited for the last week stared at him in utter perplexion. She didn't entirely know how to take that. And why was he even discussing this with her? In the last week, they had talked about a variety of things that had absolutely nothing to do with the problem that was currently simmering inside of her body.

In the fields where her parent's house rested, she supposed that such heavy subjects could be dismissed. Maybe even forgotten. She would have probably fallen prey to that exact thing if it hadn't been for the rolling, beating pressure inside of her ribcage. The ways that sometimes her lunges expanded on a breath and felt like fire and brimstone were the only things she could draw in. She felt like she was burning, smoldering softly from the inside out, her ribs and organs delicious kindling for the beast inside of her.

"Mister Aberforth."

The older man didn't so much as glance at her, the curved pipe pressed between his mouth, quivering slightly as he gnawed at it. "Or perhaps yellow? A nice mustard? You're a Hufflepuff, aren't you?"

An edge of frustration crawled along her spine, digging into the muscles of her shoulders until she had to grit down on the uncomfortable press. "Aberforth."

His eyes finally darted to her, crinkling slightly as he caught sight of the rigid set of her shoulders. Slowly, he withdrew the smoking pipe from his lips, rubbing a thumb along its curves. "Yes, Miss Deschamp?"

He damn well knew what. Her eyes narrowed on him, a tick going off in her jaw. "It's been a week and there's been no forward progress. We haven't even begun - I can feel… I need to know that this is going somewhere."

That familiar bubble of terror started to claw its way up her throat, tightening at her until she could feel her magic rise up to meet it, lashing out desperately. Part of the fence to their left cracked, splintering and sending the horses nearby scattering away in alarm. Clara's teeth ground together, her skin going clammy as she tried desperately to drag in that errant thread of magic.

It was becoming so much harder to drag it back in. Breath sawed unevenly from her, the feeling of that magic fighting against her like a child that was screaming for help. It sucked at her, drained her just a little bit more every single day. And then there were the nightmares. Clara squeezed her eyes shut. Those horrible, wretched nightmares.

"My son-" There was a rawness in his voice that made Clara force her eyes open, wincing against the glare of sun just beyond, the world wavering into grays like her very body was shifting. Aberforth didn't seem to mind the encroaching doom, her face still tipped toward the ever-rolling fields. "In those last months together, he told me about how it felt. How it felt to turn - to let all that hatred and despair finally spill out and eat away at everything. Like dying, he said. Dying but in a way that spewed darkness and destruction all around you. Like an explosion, he said. Like you were moments away from bursting apart at the seams."

Clara couldn't breathe, her skin graying as she kept her eyes on the man just in front of her. She could suddenly see that dark hall again - the way all those months of getting shoved around and cursed at and mocked had finally bubbled over. She had wanted them to pay - she had wanted it all to end in destruction and screaming and horrible, hateful silence.

Gods, she was so ashamed.

She tore her eyes away, shame burning at her nape as she stared hard at the grass slowly swaying beneath their feet.

"I thought that was sad," Aberforth whispered, and Clara flinched. "Hating who you were so much that you churned it into something so dark."

"Magic isn't who I am," Clara snapped, her words soft and sharp. She refused to look at him. "It's a wretched part of me, but I'll be damned if it's everything. If this thing living inside of me that scares and terrorizes everyone around it - if that is the sum of my parts, then I'd rather jump off the nearest cliff and be done with it."

She had never said that before - never even allowed herself to think those words. But that was the bare truth, wasn't it? Deep in the back of her mind, she had thought about ending it. Would it be bravery? Would it be a good thing for everyone - for her parents, who would have to watch her slowly burn away into a monster? For her sister, her brilliant sister, who had been trying and failing to ask the gods for assistance. It would be sad, wouldn't it? But what was that sadness in compassion to the longer, more drawn-out route? The one that made her into a bully? The one that leeched her of every single human thought and feeling that had graced her small, insignificant life?

"This," Aberforth said softly after a long silence filled with the wind and the distant sound of the farm. "Like many other things is a way to protect you." His eyes were a striking, frightening blue as they turned slowly to Clara. "I don't know when your body - your mind - decided that your magic was the enemy, but I assume that it's a horrible feeling for a part of you to be so utterly rejected. I assume you have some familiarity with the subject, Clara."

"I-" Clara struggled to find some sort of retaliation, mind spinning as Aberforth let out a deep sigh and flicked his finger to the picnic basket in his customary way of ending their meetings. It was the first time that Clara felt as if their sessions shouldn't have come to end. She scrambled up as her chair disappeared. "I never rejected my magic. It's been bad from-"

"From birth?" His eyes were too kind as they slid to her, a small, sympathetic smile touching his lips as he buttoned his coat and picked up the now fully packed basket. "Nothing is bad from birth, Miss Deschamp. Not you. Not me. And certainly not your own magic."

And with that he was gone in a breeze of winter air.

Clara didn't eat much that night. She didn't say much either, her stomach knotting in an unfamiliar mix of emotions. Annabelle was missing from the table, her condition only underlined by their mother's drawn face and the tight set of her father's lips as he kissed her goodnight.

Later she would hear them trying and failing to shush her sister's screaming, a third voice quickly joining them as he sister's voice boomed down the hallways.

"Four will go in the maze, and two will live in the world of the dead while only one will come back to living-" Clara stared at the wavering light just beneath her door, her back rigid as she sat on the hard, bare wood of her floor. "Nnnnnnoooooo! No! NO! Make it stop - please, mama-"

She made herself stay up until the screaming stopped. She made herself stare at that light just beyond her door until it, too, eventually darkened.

How could Aberforth tell her that magic was good? How when she had to listen to the darkness of it on nights like these? There was a wretchedness in magic that was sordid and vile - that made little girls beg for their mothers and little boys afraid to step foot from their beds for fear of the darkness beneath their mattresses.

"Who are you?"

The tall, impressively built wizard stood just a few feet from her normal meeting place with Aberforth, his lips pressed into a friendly smile even as she stayed a cautious step back. She glanced around the clearing again, unsure of how to proceed. How did one react to a strange new wizard on their doorstep in place of another?

"Ah," the wizard murmured, looking a bit abashed. He had wide eyes that seemed to be prone to silent disapproval but were currently looking at her a bit in awkward mortification. "Aberforth didn't tell you I would be taking this lesson."

The warm plum purples and blues of his robes contrasted nicely with the rich brown of his skin, the folds of his clothes pressed in a way that made Clara think that perhaps he was about to go to an office job somewhere. The deep purple loafers on his feet gleamed as if freshly polished. It was all very confusing - his presence such a marked contrast from the usual messiness of Aberforth.

"I'm Kingsley Shacklebolt." He paused for a moment as if expecting Clara to recognize him and then sighed when she didn't budge. As if remembering something suddenly, he dug around in his robes until he drew out a confection bag and gave her a charmingly fuddled smile. "He said you liked pastries?"

Clara blinked. "Are you trying to bribe me?"

His eyes widened almost comically. "I… If you don't want them, I can take them back. I'll even eat them myself."

Clara caught the tantalizing scent of fresh, fried dough smothered in sugar. Her mouth watered as she inched a bit closer. He had to be sent my Aberforth - the fact that he was waiting here for her at the exact spot and time made that apparent. "I never said that. I like pastries."

"Good." He smiled warmly down at her as she took the bag warily and opened it to find beignets dusted in delicious powdered sugar. Her fingers dove in immediately, pulling one after the other out as she tried to stuff as many as possible into her mouth. "I already had a dozen, so I'm actually quite happy that you didn't make me eat another dozen."

As Clara ate, she took in the confident way that he stood, his head tipped back a little bit as he looked around at the farm and their house. There was an unflappable assuredness to him that Clara couldn't help but be slightly befuddled by. He reminded her a bit of her father… The way his eyes scanned around like he was looking for something amiss. Like…

"Are you an Auror?" She blurted and he blinked down at her, giving her the same small smile.

His eyes twinkled. "Now, how did you know that?"

"My father," she murmured, coming to the end of the bag and folding it up neatly. Her brows crinkled as she tried to correct herself. "He was, that is."

"Ah, yes," he murmured thoughtfully. "Alicio Deschamp. The ministry was quite happy to have scouted him. Though I think they've been trying rather hard to get him out of the office and back into the field."

Her heart skipped a beat at the words, the thought of those endless nights when her father wasn't home, the sound of her mother's tired voice as she spoke to him through the fire once more. And then those days with He Who Must Not be Named. The thought sent a cold wash of fear through her, one that she wasn't entirely able to hide from the wizard in front of her if his sympathetic glance was any indication.

"He's flatly denied us at every offer," Kingsley murmured softly, taking pity on her. "He won't be persuaded."

It was a nice thought. She forced a smile. But Clara knew her father too well. If he felt like his family would be best served if he was an Auror once more, then that was the route he would take. And things… things had seemed so much darker lately. Not just with the unsettling developments of her own powers but also with Sirius Black's escape and the dementors…

Clara forced away the thoughts, her stomach tightening in sickening tugs as she forced herself to look up at Kingsley once more. "What are the plans for today? I have to admit that we haven't really done anything with my wand."

His lips curled into a secretive smile. "Really? Well, lucky me."

"My mom's going to kill me." Clara frowned at the beautiful tea set in front of her. "No. First she's going to kill you and then she's going to kill me for letting you take me across the world-"

"For an hour," Kingsley waved her concerns off with a nonchalant glance, grinning amiably up at the petite witch, her ebony hair tied up with ornate sticks made up of twisted metal and jewels. Her robes were absolutely breathtaking, the material a deep emerald that drifted into the glow of a setting sun, cranes cradled in a lake embroidered into the bottom in loving detail. Her hands moved gracefully over the steaming pot of boiling water, taking out pouches of herbs and placing them methodically here and there. "And for your information, I let your mother know that our lesson would be outside of the area…"

Clara highly doubted that Willa would think that that area would be all the way in China. When the purple-robed wizard had apparated them here, she had been absolutely bewildered at the regal, two-storied building that was set right in the middle of a glowing, iridescent pond. The Creeping Koi, a sign just outside of the circle of the pond, on the cobblestone beyond read.

There had been absolutely no way for them to get across, Clara's spinning mind taking in the depthless look to the water with mounting terror as shimmering fish that were most certainly not of the mundane variety cut effortlessly through the water.

"Come on, Miss Deschamp," Kingsley had said with a small chuckle, stepping unworriedly over the edge of the stone walkway and right into the pond. His feet sank for a moment, water licking at his heel before he walked across the surface of the pond as if he were on solid ground. His eyes twinkled back at her. "Do you want to continue with your lesson or go back to the safety of your farm?"

The pond beneath Clara's feet glowed, lighting to an almost whimsical golden blue - as if the sun were setting just beneath the water's edge. Sparkling, shimmering fish of dazzling pink and midnight blue swam just beneath, their fins leaving behind a trail of shimmering stardust in their wake. It was… Clara gulped back a breath of wonder. It was the closest Clara had come to the beauty of magic in a long, long time.

Inside the tea house, there was just as much wonder. The ceilings were tall, the main area so big and bustling that Clara felt like she had stepped from the quiet of a private room into the bustling streets of the city. There were two stories to the building, the second one mainly made up of open sliding doors that let its guest sit on balconies overlooking the tranquility of the pond beyond.

But inside, there was nothing but noise - roaring laughter and pops of magic going off here and there as people started games of dice and bones. Steam rolled in thick waves from the back area where she could hear the bustle of the kitchen and with it, the strong scent of herbs. Clara had heard about the tea shops in China but never really put much thought into it. It was a distant dream - a fantasy from a place that was completely outside of her reach.

Now she and Kingsley were sat at a round little table with short little wooden stools circling on one of those quiet balconies.

"You've been here before, Mister Shacklebolt, but I still need to give you a warning," the petite witch said as she finished pouring the last bit of tea into the sixth cup. With a flicker of the elderberry wand in her hand, they divided equally between Clara and Kingsley, and the white-haired witch caught a strange variety of scents as the steam rolled to her nose. "The first tea is for youth. The second is for loss. And your third will be for magic."

Clara's brow furrowed, her body leaning forward as she spoke quickly to stop the waitress from leaving. "Magic? Isn't… well, that seems a bit broad…"

A single, fine brow arched. "Does it?"

And with that, she was gone, leaving Clara to turn a confused glance to the last cup, a delicately painted stack of cobblestone buildings running across her series of teacups. Running along as if stuck in a drawing was a newsboy, his hat slung low over his brow as he tried to catch up to a girl running wildly in front of him.

Kingsley's brows rose as he tipped his first cup in her direction. "Bottoms up."

The taste of the first tea scalded across her tongue, bitter and sharp, even though the scent had made Clara think of the rich floral scent of a bed of wildflowers. She closed her eyes, gulping down the rest of the cup with barely any thought but to get it down.

There was a second where Clara felt a burst of stubbornness run through her. She wanted to be doing something to quill her problems and this hardly felt like that. Sitting in a tea shop halfway across the world? How very little she had done to help herself-

"Little lavender bud~" Clara blinked dazedly up into sun-dappled leaves, the dirt beneath her warm and solid. She could hear the footfalls of her mother just beyond her hiding space and even though she wanted to be found to felt a thrill at the secret of being hidden.

She had always wanted to fade away - found more pleasure in the art of going unseen than the glare of a spotlight.

"Where did my little duck go?" Her mother was closer now - she could smell her familiar scent of lavender and honey and - oh, she was sure that she had made lemon cakes. She was so sure that she let out a gasp of joy, the sound morphing into pure delight as her father's big, work-roughened hands scooped her up.

Her heart burst, insides lighting at the flash of teeth, the echoing laughter as they yelled at finally finding her.

"You dirty little thing!" her mother gasped, looking at the dirt caking her new dress.

Her father let out a laugh, picking at the mud thickening her curls, drawing her mother's disapproving stare. "Oh, you can laugh, Alicio. Both of you dirty as potatoes fresh from the ground! You won't be stomping that mess into the house, young lady. You'll be hosed down in the back yard if I have anything to say about it!"

Alicio's thick brows rose, his eyes comically impressed as he stared down at his daughter and then leaned over to whisper in her ears, making her giggle. "It's been a minute since I've been to a water fair, little duck. Grand job."

Before Annabelle. Before everything. Clara gasped, choking as she crashed back into the short little stool in The Creeping Koi. Across the table, Kingsley was watching her with a decidedly guarded expression. His head tipped to the side as she drew in one unsteady breath after another. She tried and failed to push away the dizzying sadness, the crushing confusion after so much happiness.

"I have brothers, you know," he said softly, his finger sliding along the rim of the second cup. "When I come here, I always see them - us. Playing. Getting into some sort of trouble or another. They were with me all through school." His eyes went distant. "They died in the First Wizarding War."

"I-" Clara tried and failed to find more words than she had, her eyes falling as she felt the air tighten in her lunges at his words. "I'm so sorry, Mister Shacklebolt."

His smile was infinitely older than his years. "Losses are necessary in life. Even the ones that hurt so much that you want never to get up again." He raised his second cup and gulped it down.

Clara, for her part, stared at it in trepidation for a moment longer. She didn't know if she wanted to go back to that world - didn't know if she would be able to recover if the first one had been so consuming. But something bordering on morbid curiosity moved her hand forward, and before she knew it, she was gulping down the musky taste of rosemary.

"Such a fucking freak." Clara's body yanked back, the hand grasping her backpack, making her bounce back like a toy being pulled back by a string. Tile, hard and unforgiving, met her body as she went crashing to the ground.

A week ago, she had sent a love letter to Pierre. He was the cutest boy she had ever seen, with wide, brown eyes and slick, raven black hair that curled around his ears. He had even smiled at her once.

Things had changed so quickly, though. It had only been three days since her sister had been taken out of school for having screaming fits, but no one was kind. Kids, it turned out, were unerringly mean. They didn't like things that were different. And the Deschamps were very, very different.

"You thought I'd like this?" Pierre sneered, shoving the lavender letter in her face. She couldn't help the bubble of a sob starting to work its way up her throat. He tore it open and read a line, quickly brutally as his two friends laughed. "You seem kind. You seem nice. And I like how you always know the answer to Miss Bonfaire's questions." Those brown eyes that she had liked so much turned a cruel black when he was talking to her like this. It was the first time that she realized that pretty people sometimes weren't all that pretty after you got to know them. Sometimes pretty people were very, very ugly. "You think I'd like some weirdo troll with some kind of freaky, dark magic family? If anyone's worth my time, it's that sister of yours - and even then you're all a pox on us."

Pierre's dingbat of a friend snickered. "She can barely do a proper cleanup spell. She always gets down on her hands and knees like a dog to wipe up."

She felt the words of defense bubble up and die on her tongue, popping at the hatred that burned in all of their faces. She cowered back further into the ground as if the tile would eat her up. Her eyes slipped to that piece of paper in his hands, the one she had ripped up and re-wrote so many times. Oh, how she wanted it to burn.

"They probably made a pact with the devil - I mean, look at you!" Burn, burn, burn, burn - His voice droned on, but suddenly, all her focus was on that single piece of paper. She could see it - the flames slowly seeping out from within those clumsily written pages and lick - "You - AH!"

Blue flames licked away just above Pierre's fingers, diving so close that he let out a horrid shriek, clutching at his hand as he dropped the letter with a wail. Their screams stuck with her, drifting behind them as they scrambled away in utter terror, screaming about the wickedness in her blood. And maybe they were right. Maybe there was darkness in her magic that made her unable to control herself, that made her abilities lash out so violently.

Later her mother would come in screaming, taking up the principal's office in a way that was completely against the quiet consideration of her figure. In all honesty, Clara didn't remember what was said - some more slurs thrown at her ancestors, her parents, her father's arrest. She didn't know the outcome and, to this day, didn't know where or what Pierre was doing.

"What were you thinking?" Her mother never cried. She never let her voice shake for more than a syllable. Later Clara would find out that her mother thought that it was her duty to stay this way. Never let your children see you weak. You need to be their pillar - calm in the middle of the storm, a solid structure for them to cling to in the worst of weather. So Clara did the only thing that a child could do - she blamed herself. She twisted her mother's fear and anxiety into hatred for herself. This was her fault.

Her mother's fingers dug into Clara's slender shoulders, shaking her a bit. Or maybe it was Willa who was shaking. "What did you think that this would do? Where did you even learn such a hateful, vile spell? What would your father say?"

"I don't know," Clara answered dumbly. "He's not here to tell me."

Willa recoiled like Clara had physically struck her, yanking her hands away from her daughter. And there it was - that horrible expression. Willa stared at Clara like she was the most hideous thing that she had ever seen. At least, that was what her eyes saw.

"Go to your room, Clara," Willa finally whispered, still not touching her, still barely able to meet her eyes. Her lips quivered - and even this Clara thought, meant that she was shaking from her own hatred. "Don't bring your wand. That stays with me."

Clara didn't want it anyway. It was a dirty, hateful thing that only caused trouble. She wished in that moment that she could dig into her own chest and rip out all of the magic inside her as well to offer to her mother. Anything to get her to stop looking at her like that. Anything to make her happy again.

Clara came back to the balcony with a start, drawing in a long steadying breath as she blinked across the table at Kingsley whose head was turned a bit to the side, his brows furrowed in distant concentration as he stared out over the distant city. His eyes slipped back to her as she took another deep breath in, shivering off the last traces of magic from the tea.

"You look confused," he observed, taking in the drawn tilt to her face.

Clara's mind turned over the memory once more. She had a few others like that one and none of them felt like so much of a loss as her last week in Hogwarts. Still, something about the memory rubbed a raw hole in her chest. Her mother's wide, watery eyes flashed in her eyes once more, the pain there so fresh that it hurt her.

Clara didn't answer, her fingers closing on the last cup and tipping it up before she could think anymore. She almost spit it right back out, the chalky bitter taste of ashwagandha coating her tongue and sliding thickly down her throat. She grimaced, choking the last bit down with effort.

This one wasn't like the rest. It was different like -

Like winter wind whipping her hair on the very tops of a snowy mountain.

Like pressing her lips against another, their body warm against hers, the taste of whisky and honey spilling onto her tongue before she was being spun away-

The taste of a laugh on her lips.

The feel of a campfire blazing in front of her, friends on all sides talking quietly-

Her magic - fresh and clean - roaring to life. The sureness of it at her fingertips, bending and twisting, and her heart beating in time with every beautiful pulse of it, knowing without a doubt that it would protect her. That it would always protect her.

Her father's laugh. The gentle sound of her mother's nagging as she set cookies in front of her. Annabelle's groan, her blandly articulate responses.

Firelight dancing along amber strands of hair, George's voice soft and deep in her ear as he told her about all the mischief he was up to.

Keela and Archie bickering. Molly listening intently as Cedric droned on about his latest romantic endeavor.

The bitter taste of herbs was still in her mouth as she blinked out of the spell, Kingsley already smiling softly across the table at her, his chin propped on his fist. He gave her a moment, waiting for her to gather her wits.

"Why-why did you bring me here, Professor?"

Kingsley wagged a finger. "Not Professor. Just Kingsley." His brows dipped as he scanned over her once more and she tried to tuck how unnerved she was deep inside. "The Creeping Koi offers its patrons a… fleeting gift. It's for people who want to relive their past or travel to a distant reality - only for a minute, sure, but a minute is infinitely longer than some get." His brows dipped further as some distant memory flitted through his mind. "The old, the lonely… the lost - that's who this place truly caters to. And I think, Miss Deschamp, if I'm not too mistaken, that you're a little lost."

She gulped down a breath, not daring to respond. Now that she was looking, she could see that. Could see the man in the corner silently weeping as he sipped at his own tea. Or the two women holding hands as she laughed, their tea half drunk before them. Like a little picture book, this place sat quietly, the roar of the games inside a stark contrast.

A little lost. Clara thought about that as they left, as Kingsley apparated them back to her parent's farm and said a fleeting goodbye before he was gone. She thought about it as she made her way upstairs; as she paused outside her sister's dark room. A little lost seemed too small and too vast all at once. Her emotions felt so much larger than that - like there was too much inside her waiting to get out.

But wasn't that how everyone felt? Wasn't there always a world trapped inside everyone that they felt like couldn't be contained?

Clara stared at the darkness outside her window, at the moon that seemed to glow too brightly down upon her in her plain, bland room. And she thought about how it had felt - the sureness of the magic. The feeling as it had wrapped around her. The safety. The certainty behind it.

She wanted that.

"I want to use my wand."

Aberforth blinked down at the drawn, determined expression on the little witch's face, her hands clenched tightly around the wand in her hands. Her eyes were still circled with dark rings of sleeplessness, but there was a feverish glow behind the odd color of her eyes.

A slow smile curled his lips. He would have to thank Kingsley tomorrow. "I'd like that very much, Miss Deschamp."

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