All disclaimers are in place. Refer to the Prologue section for details.
PART FOUR: TENSIONSnape didn't show up in the Great Hall for breakfast.
That's real nice. I have to go two days straight without sleep, but he can just take off whenever he feels like it. That's just great. Halo rubbed her eyes sleepily, trying not to fall face first into her oatmeal. She glanced over to the Gryffindor table, where Oliver was sitting with the rest of his Quidditch team, talking and laughing about something. It must be great to have more than just one friend, she thought to herself, looking longingly at the group. In one swift motion, despite her exhaustion, she dumped the bowl of sticky, lukewarm cereal upside down on the table and strode sulkily out of the hall.
Oliver saw her leave… but then who didn't when she kicked the door of the Great Hall open with a loud BANG! "Be back in a sec…" he excused himself from the group and jogged to catch up with her. "Halo!" he called in the hallway.
She was at the bottom of the stairs and turned to wait up for him. Heaving a sigh, she turned off her pitiful expression and exchanged it for the tired one she'd worn earlier.
"Not going to finish breakfast?"
She shook her head.
"Halo, tell me what's wrong." He stepped closer, but made no move to touch her, even though all he wanted to do was hug his friend and tell her that everything would be all right. He watched as she lowered herself to sit on the bottom step, and he sat down beside her. He decided to voice his earlier need. "I know you hate to be touched, and I respect it… but I have to tell you, all I want to do right now is hold you. You have no idea how a simple touch can dramatically alter a person's disposition. And you're my friend, so I want to help you."
Halo sniffled. "Why are you so nice to me? All I ever do is hurt people."
"Because I know you can be so much more than that. You make me laugh. And… I feel safe when I'm around you, as strange as that sounds."
"You don't pity me? The miserable little outcast who has no friends?" Tears were beginning to drip down her cheeks and her voice was unsteady. She was trembling.
"You have me," he murmured, barely a whisper. "And no, I don't pity you, not in the slightest. But I do feel for you, though I wonder what goes through your head when you get into one of your moods."
"I don't want to be me anymore."
"Then who do you want to be?"
"I don't know. Someone else. Someone with a clean slate." She ran her arm back and forth across her nose to cease the tingling she felt from all the sniffling.
"I'll tell you this much… I don't want you to change who you are, because I like you that way. And everyone else could like you the way I see you as well. I think perhaps you just need to change some of your less… desirable behaviors."
"Like hurting people."
"For starters."
"I won't let them hurt me."
"You don't have to. But then, even in the off-chance that someone does hurt you, and I don't mean physically, you should consider being the stronger person and accept the challenge of fixing the problem instead of hurting them back." He bent forward to bring her lowered face into view. "Am I making sense?"
Halo let out a small giggle between her tears. "If my…" she unexpectedly gulped and sneezed at the same time, not only producing a very odd sound but also forcing a few hiccups before she was able to speak again. "If Professor Snape had a friend like you, he'd probably be a lot different, don't you think?"
"Snape? No way. The man is unchangeable," he laughed.
"You're probably right… if he ever stopped being bitterly irritated he'd probably drop dead. So would most of the student body, from shock."
Oliver burst out laughing. He remembered just then why she was his friend.
Halo allowed herself to recover from the giggling episode before reverting to the earlier matter. "If you help me, I will try," she admitted bravely.
"Of course I will." His heart leapt, as it often did at the end of a Quidditch game ending in victory. He gently took her hand and squeezed it, knowing that if she was ever going to accept his touch, this was the time.
Halo was startled, to say the least. She started to pull away, but something stopped her. If the whole being-the-stronger-person thing was going to work, she would have to learn to trust him. No one else at first, but at least to trust him. She struggled not to hyperventilate. It was an unpredictable sensation, but felt in no way unsafe.
His hand was warm and soft. The ball of his thumb ran slowly across her skin, pulling the tension and anxiety away from her. His eyes met hers and held her gaze unwaveringly.
"Tell me if you want me to stop."
"I don't want you to stop," she admitted bravely.
He gave her a reassuring smile. "Do you think you can get through the day all right, or should we give Madam Pomfrey some excuse for why she should keep you locked up for a few hours?"
"No… I have to get through today. I can't go over his head again… like I did with the situation yesterday."
"Then you're a lot braver than I am. I'd be running to Madam with a fake bludger-induced headache." He stood and used the hand that was still holding hers to pull her to her feet. "Shall we be off to Advanced Potions, then?"
Oliver dropped her hand as the students began filtering out of the Great Hall and heading for their first classes of the day. Not because he was ashamed to be seen holding her hand, quite the contrary actually. But he knew she had an image to uphold, and he didn't want to disrupt her reputation. After all, it was up to her to decide, when she was ready, whether it would be appropriate to show affection, if she even did, and how she would go about showing it.
"Ugh. I suppose, I just have to stop by my room before class."
They walked side by side down to the dungeons, pausing to collect her books from her room. The corridor was unusually humid, and a slight odor hung in the air, becoming more evident as they came closer to the Potions classroom. It hadn't been there last night, so it must have been some delayed reaction from the massive spill on the stone floor. At least an even stronger fragrance of abrasive cleanser was present; the house elves must have taken over where they had left off that morning.
"I wonder if he'll even be teaching this morning," she muttered to herself.
"Why wouldn't he be teaching?" He had obviously heard her.
"He wasn't at breakfast. I bet he's taking the liberty of sleeping in. I wonder if we'll have a substitute or if he'll cancel class altogether?"
"I hadn't noticed he wasn't there. But I guess you would, having spent all night in detention with him." A sudden theory washed over him, his stomach plummeted to his feet and he turned chalk-white. He stopped in the corridor and placed a hand on her arm to stop her. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"
"Oh no, nothing like that."
Oliver took a moment to catch his breath; his stomach regained its proper altitude in his body and his face returned slowly to its normal color. He brushed his short hair back with his fingers and heaved a sigh. "I'm sorry for the reaction. It just hit me, and now I'm feeling like a bad friend for not coming up with that earlier. I imagine you must think I'm crazy."
Halo cocked an eyebrow. "Sometimes. But then I'm sure you think the same of me."
"Indeed."
"It may not matter to you what I think, but in the interest of being on time for class I believe it should be of significant importance to you both to get into the classroom before I start deducting points." This came from a low, bitterly gleeful voice just behind them.
Neither of them had to guess who it was. Oliver froze and Halo sighed in exasperation.
The low voice spoke again. "If you're not planning on attending my class then you'd best be out of my way. You're blocking the door."
Halo took Oliver by the sleeve of his robes and pulled him into the classroom and to their seats in the back row.
"I guess he's not sleeping in," Halo whispered sarcastically.
"Do you have something you'd like to share with the class, Miss Mandelor?" Snape announced from the podium at the front of the classroom.
"No, Sir."
"Then I suggest you keep your personal commentary out of my classroom."
Halo made a face, but Snape made no move to challenge her for it, and that's assuming he'd even seen it. He went on lecturing as usual.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
There was no lab work to be done that morning, due to the lack of supplies, so there was sure to be a quiz the next day based on the fourteen pages of notes Halo had gathered that day. Oliver had written twenty-six, but then his script was considerably more detailed and less orderly, as he had to write quickly to keep up with Snape's instructions.
Halo, on the other hand, had a better sense of Snape's underlying messages. She had also devised a shorthand code which made the formulas simpler. Snape would be overjoyed to take house points if he saw her notes, as he would never understand them and think she was passing coded notes in his class without his knowledge. But did she care?
Not really.
The class let out five minutes late.
"If I don't see you later, good luck with detention tonight and I want to hear all about it tomorrow." Oliver waved her off after class and headed up to some advanced charms class, where the students utilized the power within them to learn such abilities as Apparation. Halo, on the other hand, was off to her History of Magic class.
She had to struggle to stay awake during Professor Binn's lecture. He brought in Sir Nicholas to help reenact some valiant fight to the death in which the champion beheaded his victim, and Nearly Headless Nick was just ecstatic playing out the fatality. The class clapped in delight at the performance, startling Halo back to consciousness, but just barely.
In Transfiguration, Professor McGonagall took Halo aside after she nodded off for the third time in a quarter-hour period.
"I was informed of your… activities of last night, are you quite all right?" The old witch seemed genuinely concerned.
Halo nodded bravely.
Professor McGonagall raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "I understand that Professor Snape had you up all night cleaning. I can send you up to the hospital wing for some rest…"
"No, he'll think I went over his head. Thank you, Professor. I appreciate it, but I have to get through today on my own."
The elder witch gave Halo an understanding smile and sent her back to her seat. Halo tried even harder to stay awake.
At lunch, she put her head down on the table next to her bowl of vegetable soup and didn't wake up until the students were filing out of the Great Hall for their afternoon classes.
She was dragging her feet by the time she arrived in the doorway of the Potions classroom that evening.
Snape was behind his desk, scribbling viciously on a scroll of parchment. Probably some innocent First-Year's homework, Halo pondered.
"Are you going to stand there all evening until you pass out from exhaustion or are you going to come in here and take some Pepper-Up so we can once and for all finish your detention." This was not a request, nor was it even a question.
Halo closed the door behind her and went to the bottle of Pepper-Up sitting on the edge of the Professor's desk.
"Don't break it before you drink it, it's the last of my stock and I don't feel like going to the hospital wing to retrieve more for you."
Halo let that one go. There was no way she was going to pass up the only chance she would have at being awake to get through the night and avoid coming back for further detentions later in the week. Removing the stopper, she drank what little was left in the vial.
The effect was immediate. Her eyelids regained their elasticity and the heavy, drugged feeling that had been weighing her down since that morning faded to nothingness. She had only taken enough to last an hour, but it was a start.
"Sit down," the dark man said as he replaced his quill in its proper place and rolled up the parchment.
Halo sat. She vowed not to become angry, to sit still and be a good little girl. Even for him. She didn't know how long she could tolerate this self-inflicted code of conduct, but she was damned if she was going to let this stop her from being the better person.
Snape folded his hands in front of him on the hard wood of his desk.
"I suppose now would be a practical moment to inform you what the Headmaster and I determined not to disclose to you long ago. Now that you've discovered what you can do, you must decide whether to learn to wield it properly or to abandon it altogether. It is entirely up to you how you choose to deal with it." He paused.
"I… think I understand, well, some of it… you think I have some power that I don't know how to use. But what it is, I have not yet figured out. I assume you know, but you want me to think about it first." She spoke softly, carefully, as not to provoke a damaging turn in the dialogue.
"Very good assessment," Snape said, raising a pleased eyebrow. I didn't think you would be able to identify the case, but then it is quite rare. He moved around his desk to stand in front of her, picking up a book from the shelf to his right. He brought a stool to the other side of the table and seated himself, set the volume down in front of her and began to flip through the pages.
"Do you know what a Siren is, Halo?"
A wave of shock overtook her. She tried to mask it. "Uh… I think so… Professor Binns covered them briefly at the end of last year, but they weren't on the final. Aren't they half-human birds, sort of like a Centaur is a half-human horse? The ones who lure men to them and then kill them…" Halo hoped this guess would prove adequate to Snape.
It did not.
He simply rolled his eyes, and rubbed his forehead. Clearly he hadn't saved any Pepper-Up for himself.
"Some… less informed people… believe them to be half bird, others, half fish. The truth has been systematically covered up for centuries. This book has been kept safely hidden by a small group of dark witches who would prefer that our world not know of them. A group of Siren witches, not to put too fine a point on it. They are not half animal, but fully human, which means they could be anyone." He turned the book around, open to the appropriate page and pointed to a paragraph. "Read it."
"How did you get this?"
"That is none of your concern. Read it." For a man with roughly the social aptitude of the Bubonic Plague, he was being moderately pleasant.
Halo fixed her eyes on the paragraph's beginning. "Her voice was of the darkness, but the sound She made was of pure light," she began.
"Go on."
Halo took a deep breath and began a translation of the Latin text. "She calls unto him, luring him with her sweetness and then tearing down the order of his rational mind. She possesses his soul, sings away his spirit and leaves his ego slain." She looked up. "What does all this mean?"
"Read the next part."
"I…"
"Read it!"
Halo began to shake. She did as she was told.
"She, the Creator of Death, releases the soul to blend into the consciousness of the universe… She is the bearer of a message to which he is… afraid to listen."
"It is the lost book of the Siren." He took the book from beneath her hands and closed it. Moving toward his shelf, he replaced it with his collection of restricted literature and locked it behind a ward.
"What does this have to do with me?"
He turned around, walked back to desk and sat opposite her. "You broke every piece of glass in this classroom simultaneously with one sound. The sound you created was none other than the raw, unfinished voice… of a Siren."