1 Chapter Five: Over My Head
"And stay there, you little stinker. At least here you won't have a chance to singe Lavender's new designer dragon scale boots." Lucy put her hands on her hips and smiled with satisfaction at her handiwork. She had cleared away any old books and papers from one corner of the old prefects lounge so that there was no flammable material in a two meter radius. She had stolen the largest cauldron she could find from the OWL prep room up the stairs and filled it with water from the tap in the attached girls toilet. The egg, which she had named Sparky, was lying in a small nest floating in the middle of the cauldron. Her textbook said that mother phoenixes usually douse their nests in water at least once a day, to prevent the heat of the eggs from burning the tree branch. In any case, it meant that should Sparky accidentally fall out and into the cauldron, the water wouldn't affect him, since his heat would make it all boil off so fast it wouldn't be submerge much longer than a natural dunking from its mother. And Lucy had lined the bottom of the cauldron with a towel so he wouldn't crack either. All in all she was quite proud of herself.
"Who are you talking to?"
She turned around quickly to see Bethany Tsepish staring at her, and Rasheph entering through the door from the stairs moments later.
Then it was Bethany's turn to be alarmed.
"How did you get there? There wasn't anyone behind me in the stairs!"
Rashep grinned, "I didn't use the OWL room enterance."
"Well you sure as hell didn't use the toilet, so how did you get there?"
"Come out here for a moment."
It was rather crowded with all of them in the stairs, but they made do, Lucy hopping back and forth from one foot to the other, impatiently.
"Come on then Rasheph, what?"
"Up here." He led them up to where the stairs turned, and in the back of the spiral Lucy saw what he was so excited about. A door.
Bet just shook her head. "How…"
"Found it a few days ago. I left my sister's Rememberall thingamagig in here last time, had it in my pocket, I was trying to fix it. Anyway, Anjali said she wanted it back so she could send it to the manufacturer, so I came back here to find it. And on my way back up the stairs I stubbed my toe on the steps."
"Well…"
"And I swore."
Bet rolled her eyes. "And that is important because…"
"Watch."
They waited as Rasheph closed the door. It disappeared into the brick, and Lucy moved forward to try and find it, but it was gone. She waited expectantly as the Indian boy took a breath and yelled "Rotten Rowena!"
The door opened, and the two girls could see through the frame into a hallway.
"So, another way into the halls, cute." Bet seemed unimpressed. Rasheph shook his head. "You don't understand, that's not a hallway near here. That's the hall that the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room is on. That's clear on the other side of the castle!"
Bet's eyes grew wide and Rasheph grinned. He turned to Lucy, who was staring, not at the door, but at him. Her arms crossed in front of her. She raised an eyebrow.
"Rotten Rowena?"
Rasheph blushed, "I guess you kind of have to be a Ravenclaw to…its really pretty popular…"
"Oh yeah, you really live on the edge there Rasheph."
Bet giggled and patted his head. "Don't worry, its very rough and manly…really."
She and Lucy gave each other a look, and grinned.
Rasheph rolled his eyes. "Veryy funny, well, go ahead, you try."
"Try what?"
"Well, if Rowena will show me the way to my common room…. come you two, Bet, you're supposed to be smart!"
Lucy tossed her head. "And I'm just here as the comic relief. I get it; the names of the other founders should open the doors to the other three rooms. Didn't you try?'
He nodded. "I did, nothing happened, I think it has to be someone from in the house."
The girls looked at each other and shrugged.
"Salazaar."
"Godric."
To the right of the Ravenclaw door and a little further up the stairs, a door in the wall opened to reveal a hallway with the Fat Lady clearly in sight. To the left, and several steps down, a door opened revealing a dark hallway in the dungeons that could only have been the entrance to the Slytherin common room.
"What do these look like on the other side?" Lucy asked warily.
"You can't see 'em. Mine's next to a statue of some old headmaster, but even after you say the password, you can't see anything, you just have to kind of walk through, like the platform at King's Cross."
"HELLO???" Lynx's voice echoed through the staircase, causing all three of them to jump.
"We're coming!" Bet called back, closing her door as the other two did the same and heading back down the stairs to the light of the prefects lounge.
"What's going on?" Lynx reclined in a chair, a pastry in his hand and his feet propped up on the table. "And is something burning in here?" He sniffed the air.
"Oh hell, " Lucy muttered and dashed to the corner where Sparky was burning a hole in his nest. She doused him with a handful of now warm water and sat back on her heels. "I guess I'm going to have to find non-flammable nest material, I can't watch him all the time."
"Pumice," Bet said. "It ought to float, and it you carve out a well for him so he won't roll off."
"Thanks."
They then set about filling in Lynx, who had been late because of a run to the kitchens where he had bribed his usual house elf with some glow in the dark smiley face boxer shorts for the pastry he was now licking off his fingers. A quick dash to the stairway revealed that his door, which appeared between Bet's and Rasheph's, worked in the same manner.
"I wonder how they got there?"
"Someone must have built them."
"Someone smart."
"And someone who used this room before it was a prefects lounge." Lynx said lazily.
"You think?"
"Anyone who knew about it after they added the bathroom entrances wouldn't have gone to all the work. I think this place is older than we think."
"It makes sense, sort of. Whomever it was stopped using it, someone found out it was here, and the school started using it for more legitimate purposes."
"So you're assuming the business done before was illegitimate?" Bet raised an eyebrow at Lucy.
"Of course! I mean, why hide it like that. And, after all, what are WE doing here?"
"Good point."
There was silence for a moment, then Lucy sighed and straightened up. "Speaking of what we ARE here for, I think the best way to start is to give you a better idea of just what exactly this type of magic is, where its studied, basically a crash course in my life before last year. Then we'll move on the shielding in a few days."
"What happened to learning from each other?" Lynx pouted.
"Oh for the love of the gods, there's not gonna be a test on this! But you need to understand that this magic is very different, so you can be safe. And I can't very well learn anything from you until I can be sure you won't blow me up or knock me out. Don't be a baby."
Rasheph raised an eyebrow, Bet snorted, and Lynx crossed his arms around his head and leaned back, grinning. "A prefect who's not in charge anymore… this is going to be fun to watch. Let the games begin!"
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Lucy stopped by the room briefly to grab her unfinished star chart and intended to go back to the common room to work on it when she noticed Hermione, face down on the bed, again. She sighed and sat down next to her.
"Hermione? Chica, are you alright?"
"Argh." Came the voice from in the mattress.
"Is that yes or no?"
"Its neither," the voice came out clearer as Hermione sighed, turned over, and sat up. "I'm just emotionally and physically exhausted."
"Does this have something to do with Harry and Ron?"
"Oh, in a way, but that's not what's bothering me right now. I'm just tired."
"Class?"
"That, and well, you know prefects are in charge of watching the firsties and making sure they get on all right?"
"Uh huh."
"Well, I just spent three hours with Belle Bedford."
"The one with the twin in Slytherin?
"And therein lies the problem. She's never been apart from him for more than three hours in her entire life. Parents are divorced so they are each the only constant thing in each other's lives, what with moving between houses and such. And now, well, you know how Slytherin and Gryffindor are. He's made friends, she's made friends, and the two sets don't get on at all. When Brady isn't around, Belle gets teased and taunted by the Slytherin girls, when Belle isn't around, the Gryffindor boys do the same to Brady. And to top it off, he's always been the protective one, so Belle isn't used to fending for herself, which isn't good. She can't always fall back on her brother because she can't get near him anymore. They see each other, but it isn't long before someone interrupts them, and they don't want to lose their new friends either, you know, have them think that they prefer people from a rival house. If they were in anything but Slytherin and Gryffindor, if one was a Ravenclaw like Parvati and Padma, this wouldn't be an issue. Anyway, three hours of crying and anger venting on that over and over…ugh, my head hurts."
"Is she all right?"
"For the moment. No telling when it will break again though."
"Have you tried talking to the first year boys?"
"What, scold them? It won't work."
"No, don't go about it that way. You know the types that get sorted in here, you might try playing up on their protective instincts. I mean, Belle is a nice, pretty, tiny little thing, if you told them they were making it very hard for her, don't mention the crying or she'll kill you, and that the best way to earn her trust and gratitude was to leave her brother alone, to help her out, they might respond."
"I see what you mean."
"The way Ron and Harry stick up for you."
"They're going to be together for seven years, we might as well have them working together now. I might just do that…tomorrow when my head stops throbbing."
"Do you want any tea?"
"Lavender went to get some, I'll be fine. Could you close the curtains though? The light hurts my head."
"Sure." Lucy got up softly and drew the curtains around the bed before picking up her books and supplies and heading down to the common room.
She found Seamus sitting on a couch by the window, his feet propped up on the table, reading his Transfiguration book, she dropped down next to him and began to unroll the unfinished chart, carefully placing weights at the corners, setting out her book, and her quills, with several different colored bottles of ink needed for labeling things.
"What is that horrible mess?"
"Advanced Astronomy V, and please move your feet, I need the space."
"You're cracked."
"No, taking Arithmancy is cracked. Besides, I'm good at this."
"Whatever, so how is Barbarians Anonymous coming along?"
Barbarians Anonymous, or the BA, was Seamus' nickname for what she was doing with Bet, Rasheph, and Lynx. They had agreed that he could know that the club existed, but she couldn't tell him the names of the members.
"Fine. I think they understand about the energy lines and stuff, we started a little shielding, but by then it was time for dinner and shielding is something that requires more attention than can be got when the kitchens are that active and so nearby, we're going to have to start stocking food."
"There must be guys in it then."
Lucy grinned, "So you know how fruitless it is to try and compete with an empty stomach, although theirs are far from empty."
Seamus grinned, nodded, and turned back to his book as Lucy became absorbed in her chart. She didn't look up thirty minutes later when Harry and Ron entered the room, annoyed looks on their faces. They made for the stairs, up to the girls dorms.
"I wouldn't do that guys," she heard Lavender's voice, and then glanced up to see her sitting casually on the bottom step, effectively blocking the way.
"Come off it Lavender, you don't know what's going on."
"You're right, I don't. But I'm pretty sure Hermione does, and she's the one who asked me to come down here and keep you out. She's not in the mood to see you right now."
The boys looked at Lavender, up the stairs, and back to each other. As it was, leaving things alone for a night won out over forcing their way past, and they headed towards their own room.
It was only after they left and she turned to ask Seamus if he knew what was going on did she notice the tall boy rubbing his forehead.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing, they were angry, nervous, upset, it made my head hurt."
"It shouldn't…." Without another word Lucy placed a hand on Seamus' forehead and probed down the familiar channel into his subconscious, where his new abilities lay. She sighed with relief, nothing had changed, his channels were stable. She broke the contact, and let her eyes unfocus, looking at him keenly with the Sight. There was the problem.
"You're shields are full of holes Seamus, I thought you said you'd been practicing."
"I had, its just, Quidditch, its exhausting, you have no idea, and, well, it just takes too much energy…"
Lucy groaned, "Damn Quidditch, so you'd rather win than preserve your sanity is that it?"
He looked at her and cocked an eyebrow, "You have to ask?"
She shook her head. "Fine. Listen, I'll put shields on you tonight, but tomorrow, Quidditch or no, we are going over all the basics again. Got it?"
He looked at her warily, "Isn't that going to drain you? Teaching all day and then shielding yourself and me?"
She shrugged, "You haven't left me with much choice, have you? People did used to go mad with full gifts that were untrained and un-damped, and I don't intended to see that happen to you."
The look of guilt and shame on Seamus' face made her heart pang, she'd forgotten with his chivalrous streak that knowing he was responsible for making her rapidly use up her already depleted resources wasn't going to sit well. And knowing him he might get stupid and stubborn and not let her do it, and then where would they be?
She grinned at him and crossed her eyes. "Oh don't go get all mopey on me, I'll be fine. Just, here, move your foot to the left."
He looked at her strangely, but complied, and Lucy maneuvered her sitting position onto the floor, so when she sat crossed legged her right leg was in contact with Seamus' left foot.
"Good. It's easier to keep the connection going if there's physical contact. Then I can just spread my shield out farther, pretending you are an extension of me rather than setting up two shield systems."
He raised an eyebrow, "So, I'm just a giant leg tumor?"
"More or less, now quiet please, I have work to do."
Seamus rolled his eyes and readjusted his lounging position so his foot didn't fall asleep, and went back to his transfig. Lucy bent over her chart.
But it had been a very long time since she had reinforced someone else's shielding in addition to her own, let alone created another shield from scratch, and she had forgotten how fast it would drain her resources. She began to lean farther and farther over her chart, her eyes straining more and more to makes out the tiny writing necessary to label every detail accurately. Lucy was a fanatic about her charts, she had seen a set that her mentor had made when he was only in intermediate, and they were the most beautiful things she had ever seen. She had one of them framed and on her wall at Espiritu, although now it looked slightly less elegant since the glass was all cracked and the delicate frame snapped. Nevertheless, she was determined to make one just as good.
When Seamus looked up, it was past midnight. The candles had burned down and the common room was empty. He shook his head, he must have dozed off somewhere in the middle of that last paragraph. He looked down to see Lucy's head lying on top of her folded arms, her left elbow dangerously close to spilling deep red ink over her chart. He reached over and carefully moved the bottle out of harms way. Lucy was out cold. It wasn't like her though, normally she shifted in her sleep, it must have been a miracle she didn't spill ink everywhere.
Then, as he stood up and stretched, he felt a rush back into his mind, like popping his ears. That's when he looked down and saw his foot was no longer in contact with Lucy. She had been shielding him the whole time, she must have worn herself out.
He carefully pulled her from under her arms to draw her up on the couch. She didn't wake up, and he ended up with Lucy in a sitting position next to him, rather like a large doll. And it was as he was pulling her back to get her legs up that he realized he had effectively trapped himself behind her. He sighed, well, she had to wake up sometime. Besides, he thought, it's the least he could do. They made a good team, the pair of them, he watched her back, and she watched his. He smiled to himself as he settled her dark head into a more comfortable position against his shoulder. If she woke up she'd be furious for all this patronizing, she was invincible as far as she was concerned. But she wasn't, and the sooner she learned that, the better.
Seamus thought a great deal as he lay back, imprisoned by Lucy's body weight, but even the chivalrous need their sleep, and when Lucy woke at just past two in the morning, she found herself carefully cushioned on the sofa, with Seamus's head on her right, his hair in his eyes.
She shook her head, the damned chivalry was going to kill his back some day. She carefully disentangled herself and got to her feet without waking the slumbering Irishman. Softly she collected her materials and placed them on the trunk at the foot of her bed and returned downstairs.
She crouched down so her head was on the same level as Seamus'.
"Hey, Seamus, can you wake up a bit?"
"Uhhrgh? Wasssit?"
"It's late, do you want to sleep here, or go to your bed?"
"MmmmissscoldIdonwannamove."
"All right." She hurried back upstairs and grabbed a quilt off the end of her bed, trotted back down, and carefully covered the boy up.
"Buenas noches," she patted his head and went up the stairs.
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Lucy had just about come to the end of her patience with Diego when an owl dropped something on her plate at breakfast about a week later. She frowned, removed the envelope from her scrambled eggs, wiped off the grease, and opened it suspiciously, there was no return address. She recognized Deigo's scrawl immediately, and as she unfolded the paper, a newpaper clipping fell into her lap. She set it aside and read:
"I know, I know, I should have talked to you sooner, but really, you don't know what it like down here, they've got me working all the time. Plus I have to help take care of the camels, I hate camels Luce and you know it. They smell, they spit, sit down for no reasoin whatsoever…. Anyway, the thing I thought was a big deal, really isn't such a big deal, I mean, it is, but really for us. That clipping pretty much tells what happened. It looks like a visiting group from Cairo got caught in the middle of all that, two dead, and a dozen injured, but, well, you know, at that time no one knew who was responsible. It sounds horrible, but I'm kind of relieved, aren't you? That IT isn't happening all over again? So that's the story, sorry to worry you, hope everything is all right and that you are staying out of trouble. I'll talk to you as soon as I get some decent hours around here. Love you and miss you ~Diego"
She picked up the clipping and scanned the headline, "Suicide bomber kills fifteen in Jerusalem café." She read it over, stumbling a bit in her rusty Egyptian, and smiled when she saw Diego had translated certain difficult passages for her in the margin. There was a list of names on the back, all unfamiliar, two with little asterisks, they must have been the ones killed. She felt horrible, but she agreed with Diego, it was nice to know that this wasn't designed to target people from the Circle, that they had just been bystanders. She didn't want to be stuck here while Voldemort raided schools again like he did last year.
She folded the clipping back into the letter and placed them inside the envelope. One mystery solved, she thought to herself as she gazed down the table to where Hermione was sitting with Harry and Ron, but saying precious little. Those three were becoming more and more perplexing by the day. She had finally tried to get Hermione to spill a little on the big secret, but she just told Lucy she was crazy, there was nothing wrong, and could she borrow another quill please? Lucy had given up the direct approach, and was content as long as Hermione didn't fall into anymore fits of depression that she, Lavender, and Parvati would have to pull her out of.
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"You're not grounded."
"I am so."
"No, you're not."
"Luce, I've been doing this for months, I think I know when I'm-HEY! What was that?" All of a sudden Lucy's mental shove knocked Seamus backwards flat on his back.
Lucy shook her head and got to her feet for a stretch. "If you'd been grounded I couldn't have knocked you over."
Her head started to hurt and she felt angry, far more angry than she should…. "For pity's sake Seamus, clamp it down! I know you're mad at me well enough without feeling it!"
Seamus' face remained expressionless, but at once she felt his shields clamp down and the emotional leak stopped. She sighed. Part of this was her fault, she'd let him go off for the summer half trained, if she'd done a better job last year he wouldn't have slipped back with a more powerful gift than when he had left.
"Sorry," he muttered.
"It's fine, we'll try another way tomorrow, but I have to go now, I'm late for the B.A."
"How are they coming?"
"Fine. You ought to come sometime you know."
"No thanks Luce. I told you, I'd just as rather fail in private thank you."
Lucy didn't mention that teaching one session a day instead of two would be a big help, she didn't think Seamus was really in a mood to hear it, again, right now. She sighed, rolled her eyes, and grabbed her satchel from the sofa on her way out of the empty common room.
She made for the wall facing the portrait hole, farther down, near the corner, and just before the last painting, took a breath, muttered the word 'Godric',and walked through. She'd been doing this for several weeks, but it didn't feel any less strange as she found herself in the stairway. She quickly sprinted down and burst through the door, to find the rest of Barbarians Anonymous already there.
Rasheph was sitting in a chair near the fire, his feet on the table, while Lynx and Bet were standing in the middle, with the rest of the furniture pushed back, with Bet repeatedly tossing what appeared to be the oldest, most ragged Quaffle in the world into the air. Lynx would screw up his face and try to stop it before it hit the ground. He was averaging two out of every five tosses. They stopped when Lucy came in.
"You're late."
"And I'm hungry."
"And I have to go to the bathroom."
Lucy still hadn't got a word in edgewise before Bet went through the bookcase to the toilet and Lynx trotted out to the kitchens.
Rasheph shrugged as Lucy sat crossed legged on the table.
"I wasn't that late."
"I think Lynx was just sore because he had been doing better before you got here."
"Where'd the Quaffle come from?"
"Bet brought it. Apparently some members of the Slytherin Quidditch team like to use them as teddy bears."
"She said that?"
"Can you think of any other reason for hanging on to a piece of junk like that?"
Lucy shrugged, "Maybe it's the real Slytherin practice Quaffle, and Bet has decided to take out her anger at the sexist team recruiting practices by destroying it?"
Rasheph grinned, "You know, I wouldn't put it past her. In a way I'm glad she's not on the Slytherin team, I wouldn't want to share the sky with her."
That reminded Lucy that the first Quidditch match of the season was coming up, Gryffindor against Ravenclaw.
She chuckled, "You might want to worry about getting through Gryffindor first, the beaters this year are particularly, enthusiastic."
Rasheph the Chaser shrugged, "I've been dodging bludgers since forever, I'll be fine, and our beaters are pretty damn good too you know."
"Yeah, about that, you might want to tell them to take it easy on the little red headed chaser."
"If she can't handle the heat she should get off the broomstick Lucy…"
"Oh, she can handle it, that's one position you know how much being small can be an asset. No, I'm just saying that the first person to send a bludger her way might get a very unpleasant surprise."
Rasheph raised an eyebrow, Lucy shook her head. "Its all I'm saying, but, well, think about what you might do if Anjali were older and up there, hmmm?"
He nodded and thought about that as Bet and Lynx returned, the bleached haired boy carrying an enormous sandwich. Bet was looking at him in disgust.
"I don't know how you can eat that…"
"Its good!"
The dark haired girl didn't say a thing, but took a seat as far from Lynx as possible. Lucy slid off the table and into a chair.
"Any new business?"
Rasheph raised his hand, but his face had that tight, serious expression that told Lucy he didn't want to say exactly what.
"Another dream?"
He nodded.
"Did any of your roommates wake up?"
He shook his head, and a little smile appeared on his face. "Not a one."
"Good, um, we'll work on that more later. Anything else?"
Lynx looked up guiltily.
"What?"
"I got really angry after potions today, Snape was being a complete twit…"
"And?"
"And I knocked some first year's books out of his hands?"
Bet stared at him, "Why did you do that?"
Lynx rolled his eyes. "I didn't hit him! He was at the other side of the hall, I just…"
"Lost control." Lucy sighed, Lynx was one of the more dangerous of the four, especially since he had the same control problem that Lucy struggled with.
"Don't worry, we'll fix it soon." She hoped she sounded more confidant than she felt.
"Well," Bet shrugged, "I've been fine." She grinned, Bet really did have it easy. Her position was exactly reversed from the one she would have been in had she been in a Western Circle school. There it was usually the thought sensing and projecting gifts that gave the most trouble since the students were in the middle of a concentrated group of people communicating mind to mind. But here, since Lucy was the only one with telepathy, and she was shielded so tightly it gave her headaches, Bet's gift had little interference in her daily life.
"Well la-de-da," Lynx rolled his eyes.
Lucy gave him a look. "All right, why don't you two work on the exercises I showed you last time and I'll work with Lynx."
"Take cover!" Rasheph shouted merrily, Lynx scowled.
"Not funny."
"Come on." Lucy led Lynx over to the cleared out space in the middle of the room, while Rasheph and Bet calmed their minds and worked on breathing exercises in front of the fire.
Lucy set a pillow down on the floor, and sat across from Lynx with it in between.
"Pick it up."
Lynx wrinkled his forehead, screwed his face up tight, staring intently at the pillow. Nothing.
"You're trying too hard. Stop trying to make it do anything and concentrate on picking it up."
When his face began to turn red Lucy realized he still didn't understand.
"Stop. All right, hands on mine, I'm going to show you again."
They were crossed legged, facing each other, Lucy's hands resting palm up on her knees, Lynx lightly grasped her wrists and carefully opened his mind up to watch Lucy. It had taken two weeks to get him to do that without hurting her.
She tried to show him clearly how she focused her energy on the telekinesis channel, her bright red aura of energy flowing through it, and how she commanded that power to reach out to the pillow, lifting it three feet above the floor before she shut off the flow and the pillow dropped.
"Try it."
They were still working in tandem, and Lynx fumbled his way through as Lucy showed him wordlessly where he needed to lift from. Forty-five minutes later, a light sheen of sweat on their foreheads, Lynx was doing it flawlessly.
"Ok, come out of it." Lynx carefully retreated out of Lucy's head and they opened their eyes. Lynx was breathing a little heavier than normal, but looked happy and proud.
"Tomorrow you'll do it on your own without my eyes." Lynx nodded and headed toward the fire. Lucy groaned, flopped back on her back and spread out her arms. "Next!"
"And stay there, you little stinker. At least here you won't have a chance to singe Lavender's new designer dragon scale boots." Lucy put her hands on her hips and smiled with satisfaction at her handiwork. She had cleared away any old books and papers from one corner of the old prefects lounge so that there was no flammable material in a two meter radius. She had stolen the largest cauldron she could find from the OWL prep room up the stairs and filled it with water from the tap in the attached girls toilet. The egg, which she had named Sparky, was lying in a small nest floating in the middle of the cauldron. Her textbook said that mother phoenixes usually douse their nests in water at least once a day, to prevent the heat of the eggs from burning the tree branch. In any case, it meant that should Sparky accidentally fall out and into the cauldron, the water wouldn't affect him, since his heat would make it all boil off so fast it wouldn't be submerge much longer than a natural dunking from its mother. And Lucy had lined the bottom of the cauldron with a towel so he wouldn't crack either. All in all she was quite proud of herself.
"Who are you talking to?"
She turned around quickly to see Bethany Tsepish staring at her, and Rasheph entering through the door from the stairs moments later.
Then it was Bethany's turn to be alarmed.
"How did you get there? There wasn't anyone behind me in the stairs!"
Rashep grinned, "I didn't use the OWL room enterance."
"Well you sure as hell didn't use the toilet, so how did you get there?"
"Come out here for a moment."
It was rather crowded with all of them in the stairs, but they made do, Lucy hopping back and forth from one foot to the other, impatiently.
"Come on then Rasheph, what?"
"Up here." He led them up to where the stairs turned, and in the back of the spiral Lucy saw what he was so excited about. A door.
Bet just shook her head. "How…"
"Found it a few days ago. I left my sister's Rememberall thingamagig in here last time, had it in my pocket, I was trying to fix it. Anyway, Anjali said she wanted it back so she could send it to the manufacturer, so I came back here to find it. And on my way back up the stairs I stubbed my toe on the steps."
"Well…"
"And I swore."
Bet rolled her eyes. "And that is important because…"
"Watch."
They waited as Rasheph closed the door. It disappeared into the brick, and Lucy moved forward to try and find it, but it was gone. She waited expectantly as the Indian boy took a breath and yelled "Rotten Rowena!"
The door opened, and the two girls could see through the frame into a hallway.
"So, another way into the halls, cute." Bet seemed unimpressed. Rasheph shook his head. "You don't understand, that's not a hallway near here. That's the hall that the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room is on. That's clear on the other side of the castle!"
Bet's eyes grew wide and Rasheph grinned. He turned to Lucy, who was staring, not at the door, but at him. Her arms crossed in front of her. She raised an eyebrow.
"Rotten Rowena?"
Rasheph blushed, "I guess you kind of have to be a Ravenclaw to…its really pretty popular…"
"Oh yeah, you really live on the edge there Rasheph."
Bet giggled and patted his head. "Don't worry, its very rough and manly…really."
She and Lucy gave each other a look, and grinned.
Rasheph rolled his eyes. "Veryy funny, well, go ahead, you try."
"Try what?"
"Well, if Rowena will show me the way to my common room…. come you two, Bet, you're supposed to be smart!"
Lucy tossed her head. "And I'm just here as the comic relief. I get it; the names of the other founders should open the doors to the other three rooms. Didn't you try?'
He nodded. "I did, nothing happened, I think it has to be someone from in the house."
The girls looked at each other and shrugged.
"Salazaar."
"Godric."
To the right of the Ravenclaw door and a little further up the stairs, a door in the wall opened to reveal a hallway with the Fat Lady clearly in sight. To the left, and several steps down, a door opened revealing a dark hallway in the dungeons that could only have been the entrance to the Slytherin common room.
"What do these look like on the other side?" Lucy asked warily.
"You can't see 'em. Mine's next to a statue of some old headmaster, but even after you say the password, you can't see anything, you just have to kind of walk through, like the platform at King's Cross."
"HELLO???" Lynx's voice echoed through the staircase, causing all three of them to jump.
"We're coming!" Bet called back, closing her door as the other two did the same and heading back down the stairs to the light of the prefects lounge.
"What's going on?" Lynx reclined in a chair, a pastry in his hand and his feet propped up on the table. "And is something burning in here?" He sniffed the air.
"Oh hell, " Lucy muttered and dashed to the corner where Sparky was burning a hole in his nest. She doused him with a handful of now warm water and sat back on her heels. "I guess I'm going to have to find non-flammable nest material, I can't watch him all the time."
"Pumice," Bet said. "It ought to float, and it you carve out a well for him so he won't roll off."
"Thanks."
They then set about filling in Lynx, who had been late because of a run to the kitchens where he had bribed his usual house elf with some glow in the dark smiley face boxer shorts for the pastry he was now licking off his fingers. A quick dash to the stairway revealed that his door, which appeared between Bet's and Rasheph's, worked in the same manner.
"I wonder how they got there?"
"Someone must have built them."
"Someone smart."
"And someone who used this room before it was a prefects lounge." Lynx said lazily.
"You think?"
"Anyone who knew about it after they added the bathroom entrances wouldn't have gone to all the work. I think this place is older than we think."
"It makes sense, sort of. Whomever it was stopped using it, someone found out it was here, and the school started using it for more legitimate purposes."
"So you're assuming the business done before was illegitimate?" Bet raised an eyebrow at Lucy.
"Of course! I mean, why hide it like that. And, after all, what are WE doing here?"
"Good point."
There was silence for a moment, then Lucy sighed and straightened up. "Speaking of what we ARE here for, I think the best way to start is to give you a better idea of just what exactly this type of magic is, where its studied, basically a crash course in my life before last year. Then we'll move on the shielding in a few days."
"What happened to learning from each other?" Lynx pouted.
"Oh for the love of the gods, there's not gonna be a test on this! But you need to understand that this magic is very different, so you can be safe. And I can't very well learn anything from you until I can be sure you won't blow me up or knock me out. Don't be a baby."
Rasheph raised an eyebrow, Bet snorted, and Lynx crossed his arms around his head and leaned back, grinning. "A prefect who's not in charge anymore… this is going to be fun to watch. Let the games begin!"
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Lucy stopped by the room briefly to grab her unfinished star chart and intended to go back to the common room to work on it when she noticed Hermione, face down on the bed, again. She sighed and sat down next to her.
"Hermione? Chica, are you alright?"
"Argh." Came the voice from in the mattress.
"Is that yes or no?"
"Its neither," the voice came out clearer as Hermione sighed, turned over, and sat up. "I'm just emotionally and physically exhausted."
"Does this have something to do with Harry and Ron?"
"Oh, in a way, but that's not what's bothering me right now. I'm just tired."
"Class?"
"That, and well, you know prefects are in charge of watching the firsties and making sure they get on all right?"
"Uh huh."
"Well, I just spent three hours with Belle Bedford."
"The one with the twin in Slytherin?
"And therein lies the problem. She's never been apart from him for more than three hours in her entire life. Parents are divorced so they are each the only constant thing in each other's lives, what with moving between houses and such. And now, well, you know how Slytherin and Gryffindor are. He's made friends, she's made friends, and the two sets don't get on at all. When Brady isn't around, Belle gets teased and taunted by the Slytherin girls, when Belle isn't around, the Gryffindor boys do the same to Brady. And to top it off, he's always been the protective one, so Belle isn't used to fending for herself, which isn't good. She can't always fall back on her brother because she can't get near him anymore. They see each other, but it isn't long before someone interrupts them, and they don't want to lose their new friends either, you know, have them think that they prefer people from a rival house. If they were in anything but Slytherin and Gryffindor, if one was a Ravenclaw like Parvati and Padma, this wouldn't be an issue. Anyway, three hours of crying and anger venting on that over and over…ugh, my head hurts."
"Is she all right?"
"For the moment. No telling when it will break again though."
"Have you tried talking to the first year boys?"
"What, scold them? It won't work."
"No, don't go about it that way. You know the types that get sorted in here, you might try playing up on their protective instincts. I mean, Belle is a nice, pretty, tiny little thing, if you told them they were making it very hard for her, don't mention the crying or she'll kill you, and that the best way to earn her trust and gratitude was to leave her brother alone, to help her out, they might respond."
"I see what you mean."
"The way Ron and Harry stick up for you."
"They're going to be together for seven years, we might as well have them working together now. I might just do that…tomorrow when my head stops throbbing."
"Do you want any tea?"
"Lavender went to get some, I'll be fine. Could you close the curtains though? The light hurts my head."
"Sure." Lucy got up softly and drew the curtains around the bed before picking up her books and supplies and heading down to the common room.
She found Seamus sitting on a couch by the window, his feet propped up on the table, reading his Transfiguration book, she dropped down next to him and began to unroll the unfinished chart, carefully placing weights at the corners, setting out her book, and her quills, with several different colored bottles of ink needed for labeling things.
"What is that horrible mess?"
"Advanced Astronomy V, and please move your feet, I need the space."
"You're cracked."
"No, taking Arithmancy is cracked. Besides, I'm good at this."
"Whatever, so how is Barbarians Anonymous coming along?"
Barbarians Anonymous, or the BA, was Seamus' nickname for what she was doing with Bet, Rasheph, and Lynx. They had agreed that he could know that the club existed, but she couldn't tell him the names of the members.
"Fine. I think they understand about the energy lines and stuff, we started a little shielding, but by then it was time for dinner and shielding is something that requires more attention than can be got when the kitchens are that active and so nearby, we're going to have to start stocking food."
"There must be guys in it then."
Lucy grinned, "So you know how fruitless it is to try and compete with an empty stomach, although theirs are far from empty."
Seamus grinned, nodded, and turned back to his book as Lucy became absorbed in her chart. She didn't look up thirty minutes later when Harry and Ron entered the room, annoyed looks on their faces. They made for the stairs, up to the girls dorms.
"I wouldn't do that guys," she heard Lavender's voice, and then glanced up to see her sitting casually on the bottom step, effectively blocking the way.
"Come off it Lavender, you don't know what's going on."
"You're right, I don't. But I'm pretty sure Hermione does, and she's the one who asked me to come down here and keep you out. She's not in the mood to see you right now."
The boys looked at Lavender, up the stairs, and back to each other. As it was, leaving things alone for a night won out over forcing their way past, and they headed towards their own room.
It was only after they left and she turned to ask Seamus if he knew what was going on did she notice the tall boy rubbing his forehead.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing, they were angry, nervous, upset, it made my head hurt."
"It shouldn't…." Without another word Lucy placed a hand on Seamus' forehead and probed down the familiar channel into his subconscious, where his new abilities lay. She sighed with relief, nothing had changed, his channels were stable. She broke the contact, and let her eyes unfocus, looking at him keenly with the Sight. There was the problem.
"You're shields are full of holes Seamus, I thought you said you'd been practicing."
"I had, its just, Quidditch, its exhausting, you have no idea, and, well, it just takes too much energy…"
Lucy groaned, "Damn Quidditch, so you'd rather win than preserve your sanity is that it?"
He looked at her and cocked an eyebrow, "You have to ask?"
She shook her head. "Fine. Listen, I'll put shields on you tonight, but tomorrow, Quidditch or no, we are going over all the basics again. Got it?"
He looked at her warily, "Isn't that going to drain you? Teaching all day and then shielding yourself and me?"
She shrugged, "You haven't left me with much choice, have you? People did used to go mad with full gifts that were untrained and un-damped, and I don't intended to see that happen to you."
The look of guilt and shame on Seamus' face made her heart pang, she'd forgotten with his chivalrous streak that knowing he was responsible for making her rapidly use up her already depleted resources wasn't going to sit well. And knowing him he might get stupid and stubborn and not let her do it, and then where would they be?
She grinned at him and crossed her eyes. "Oh don't go get all mopey on me, I'll be fine. Just, here, move your foot to the left."
He looked at her strangely, but complied, and Lucy maneuvered her sitting position onto the floor, so when she sat crossed legged her right leg was in contact with Seamus' left foot.
"Good. It's easier to keep the connection going if there's physical contact. Then I can just spread my shield out farther, pretending you are an extension of me rather than setting up two shield systems."
He raised an eyebrow, "So, I'm just a giant leg tumor?"
"More or less, now quiet please, I have work to do."
Seamus rolled his eyes and readjusted his lounging position so his foot didn't fall asleep, and went back to his transfig. Lucy bent over her chart.
But it had been a very long time since she had reinforced someone else's shielding in addition to her own, let alone created another shield from scratch, and she had forgotten how fast it would drain her resources. She began to lean farther and farther over her chart, her eyes straining more and more to makes out the tiny writing necessary to label every detail accurately. Lucy was a fanatic about her charts, she had seen a set that her mentor had made when he was only in intermediate, and they were the most beautiful things she had ever seen. She had one of them framed and on her wall at Espiritu, although now it looked slightly less elegant since the glass was all cracked and the delicate frame snapped. Nevertheless, she was determined to make one just as good.
When Seamus looked up, it was past midnight. The candles had burned down and the common room was empty. He shook his head, he must have dozed off somewhere in the middle of that last paragraph. He looked down to see Lucy's head lying on top of her folded arms, her left elbow dangerously close to spilling deep red ink over her chart. He reached over and carefully moved the bottle out of harms way. Lucy was out cold. It wasn't like her though, normally she shifted in her sleep, it must have been a miracle she didn't spill ink everywhere.
Then, as he stood up and stretched, he felt a rush back into his mind, like popping his ears. That's when he looked down and saw his foot was no longer in contact with Lucy. She had been shielding him the whole time, she must have worn herself out.
He carefully pulled her from under her arms to draw her up on the couch. She didn't wake up, and he ended up with Lucy in a sitting position next to him, rather like a large doll. And it was as he was pulling her back to get her legs up that he realized he had effectively trapped himself behind her. He sighed, well, she had to wake up sometime. Besides, he thought, it's the least he could do. They made a good team, the pair of them, he watched her back, and she watched his. He smiled to himself as he settled her dark head into a more comfortable position against his shoulder. If she woke up she'd be furious for all this patronizing, she was invincible as far as she was concerned. But she wasn't, and the sooner she learned that, the better.
Seamus thought a great deal as he lay back, imprisoned by Lucy's body weight, but even the chivalrous need their sleep, and when Lucy woke at just past two in the morning, she found herself carefully cushioned on the sofa, with Seamus's head on her right, his hair in his eyes.
She shook her head, the damned chivalry was going to kill his back some day. She carefully disentangled herself and got to her feet without waking the slumbering Irishman. Softly she collected her materials and placed them on the trunk at the foot of her bed and returned downstairs.
She crouched down so her head was on the same level as Seamus'.
"Hey, Seamus, can you wake up a bit?"
"Uhhrgh? Wasssit?"
"It's late, do you want to sleep here, or go to your bed?"
"MmmmissscoldIdonwannamove."
"All right." She hurried back upstairs and grabbed a quilt off the end of her bed, trotted back down, and carefully covered the boy up.
"Buenas noches," she patted his head and went up the stairs.
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Lucy had just about come to the end of her patience with Diego when an owl dropped something on her plate at breakfast about a week later. She frowned, removed the envelope from her scrambled eggs, wiped off the grease, and opened it suspiciously, there was no return address. She recognized Deigo's scrawl immediately, and as she unfolded the paper, a newpaper clipping fell into her lap. She set it aside and read:
"I know, I know, I should have talked to you sooner, but really, you don't know what it like down here, they've got me working all the time. Plus I have to help take care of the camels, I hate camels Luce and you know it. They smell, they spit, sit down for no reasoin whatsoever…. Anyway, the thing I thought was a big deal, really isn't such a big deal, I mean, it is, but really for us. That clipping pretty much tells what happened. It looks like a visiting group from Cairo got caught in the middle of all that, two dead, and a dozen injured, but, well, you know, at that time no one knew who was responsible. It sounds horrible, but I'm kind of relieved, aren't you? That IT isn't happening all over again? So that's the story, sorry to worry you, hope everything is all right and that you are staying out of trouble. I'll talk to you as soon as I get some decent hours around here. Love you and miss you ~Diego"
She picked up the clipping and scanned the headline, "Suicide bomber kills fifteen in Jerusalem café." She read it over, stumbling a bit in her rusty Egyptian, and smiled when she saw Diego had translated certain difficult passages for her in the margin. There was a list of names on the back, all unfamiliar, two with little asterisks, they must have been the ones killed. She felt horrible, but she agreed with Diego, it was nice to know that this wasn't designed to target people from the Circle, that they had just been bystanders. She didn't want to be stuck here while Voldemort raided schools again like he did last year.
She folded the clipping back into the letter and placed them inside the envelope. One mystery solved, she thought to herself as she gazed down the table to where Hermione was sitting with Harry and Ron, but saying precious little. Those three were becoming more and more perplexing by the day. She had finally tried to get Hermione to spill a little on the big secret, but she just told Lucy she was crazy, there was nothing wrong, and could she borrow another quill please? Lucy had given up the direct approach, and was content as long as Hermione didn't fall into anymore fits of depression that she, Lavender, and Parvati would have to pull her out of.
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"You're not grounded."
"I am so."
"No, you're not."
"Luce, I've been doing this for months, I think I know when I'm-HEY! What was that?" All of a sudden Lucy's mental shove knocked Seamus backwards flat on his back.
Lucy shook her head and got to her feet for a stretch. "If you'd been grounded I couldn't have knocked you over."
Her head started to hurt and she felt angry, far more angry than she should…. "For pity's sake Seamus, clamp it down! I know you're mad at me well enough without feeling it!"
Seamus' face remained expressionless, but at once she felt his shields clamp down and the emotional leak stopped. She sighed. Part of this was her fault, she'd let him go off for the summer half trained, if she'd done a better job last year he wouldn't have slipped back with a more powerful gift than when he had left.
"Sorry," he muttered.
"It's fine, we'll try another way tomorrow, but I have to go now, I'm late for the B.A."
"How are they coming?"
"Fine. You ought to come sometime you know."
"No thanks Luce. I told you, I'd just as rather fail in private thank you."
Lucy didn't mention that teaching one session a day instead of two would be a big help, she didn't think Seamus was really in a mood to hear it, again, right now. She sighed, rolled her eyes, and grabbed her satchel from the sofa on her way out of the empty common room.
She made for the wall facing the portrait hole, farther down, near the corner, and just before the last painting, took a breath, muttered the word 'Godric',and walked through. She'd been doing this for several weeks, but it didn't feel any less strange as she found herself in the stairway. She quickly sprinted down and burst through the door, to find the rest of Barbarians Anonymous already there.
Rasheph was sitting in a chair near the fire, his feet on the table, while Lynx and Bet were standing in the middle, with the rest of the furniture pushed back, with Bet repeatedly tossing what appeared to be the oldest, most ragged Quaffle in the world into the air. Lynx would screw up his face and try to stop it before it hit the ground. He was averaging two out of every five tosses. They stopped when Lucy came in.
"You're late."
"And I'm hungry."
"And I have to go to the bathroom."
Lucy still hadn't got a word in edgewise before Bet went through the bookcase to the toilet and Lynx trotted out to the kitchens.
Rasheph shrugged as Lucy sat crossed legged on the table.
"I wasn't that late."
"I think Lynx was just sore because he had been doing better before you got here."
"Where'd the Quaffle come from?"
"Bet brought it. Apparently some members of the Slytherin Quidditch team like to use them as teddy bears."
"She said that?"
"Can you think of any other reason for hanging on to a piece of junk like that?"
Lucy shrugged, "Maybe it's the real Slytherin practice Quaffle, and Bet has decided to take out her anger at the sexist team recruiting practices by destroying it?"
Rasheph grinned, "You know, I wouldn't put it past her. In a way I'm glad she's not on the Slytherin team, I wouldn't want to share the sky with her."
That reminded Lucy that the first Quidditch match of the season was coming up, Gryffindor against Ravenclaw.
She chuckled, "You might want to worry about getting through Gryffindor first, the beaters this year are particularly, enthusiastic."
Rasheph the Chaser shrugged, "I've been dodging bludgers since forever, I'll be fine, and our beaters are pretty damn good too you know."
"Yeah, about that, you might want to tell them to take it easy on the little red headed chaser."
"If she can't handle the heat she should get off the broomstick Lucy…"
"Oh, she can handle it, that's one position you know how much being small can be an asset. No, I'm just saying that the first person to send a bludger her way might get a very unpleasant surprise."
Rasheph raised an eyebrow, Lucy shook her head. "Its all I'm saying, but, well, think about what you might do if Anjali were older and up there, hmmm?"
He nodded and thought about that as Bet and Lynx returned, the bleached haired boy carrying an enormous sandwich. Bet was looking at him in disgust.
"I don't know how you can eat that…"
"Its good!"
The dark haired girl didn't say a thing, but took a seat as far from Lynx as possible. Lucy slid off the table and into a chair.
"Any new business?"
Rasheph raised his hand, but his face had that tight, serious expression that told Lucy he didn't want to say exactly what.
"Another dream?"
He nodded.
"Did any of your roommates wake up?"
He shook his head, and a little smile appeared on his face. "Not a one."
"Good, um, we'll work on that more later. Anything else?"
Lynx looked up guiltily.
"What?"
"I got really angry after potions today, Snape was being a complete twit…"
"And?"
"And I knocked some first year's books out of his hands?"
Bet stared at him, "Why did you do that?"
Lynx rolled his eyes. "I didn't hit him! He was at the other side of the hall, I just…"
"Lost control." Lucy sighed, Lynx was one of the more dangerous of the four, especially since he had the same control problem that Lucy struggled with.
"Don't worry, we'll fix it soon." She hoped she sounded more confidant than she felt.
"Well," Bet shrugged, "I've been fine." She grinned, Bet really did have it easy. Her position was exactly reversed from the one she would have been in had she been in a Western Circle school. There it was usually the thought sensing and projecting gifts that gave the most trouble since the students were in the middle of a concentrated group of people communicating mind to mind. But here, since Lucy was the only one with telepathy, and she was shielded so tightly it gave her headaches, Bet's gift had little interference in her daily life.
"Well la-de-da," Lynx rolled his eyes.
Lucy gave him a look. "All right, why don't you two work on the exercises I showed you last time and I'll work with Lynx."
"Take cover!" Rasheph shouted merrily, Lynx scowled.
"Not funny."
"Come on." Lucy led Lynx over to the cleared out space in the middle of the room, while Rasheph and Bet calmed their minds and worked on breathing exercises in front of the fire.
Lucy set a pillow down on the floor, and sat across from Lynx with it in between.
"Pick it up."
Lynx wrinkled his forehead, screwed his face up tight, staring intently at the pillow. Nothing.
"You're trying too hard. Stop trying to make it do anything and concentrate on picking it up."
When his face began to turn red Lucy realized he still didn't understand.
"Stop. All right, hands on mine, I'm going to show you again."
They were crossed legged, facing each other, Lucy's hands resting palm up on her knees, Lynx lightly grasped her wrists and carefully opened his mind up to watch Lucy. It had taken two weeks to get him to do that without hurting her.
She tried to show him clearly how she focused her energy on the telekinesis channel, her bright red aura of energy flowing through it, and how she commanded that power to reach out to the pillow, lifting it three feet above the floor before she shut off the flow and the pillow dropped.
"Try it."
They were still working in tandem, and Lynx fumbled his way through as Lucy showed him wordlessly where he needed to lift from. Forty-five minutes later, a light sheen of sweat on their foreheads, Lynx was doing it flawlessly.
"Ok, come out of it." Lynx carefully retreated out of Lucy's head and they opened their eyes. Lynx was breathing a little heavier than normal, but looked happy and proud.
"Tomorrow you'll do it on your own without my eyes." Lynx nodded and headed toward the fire. Lucy groaned, flopped back on her back and spread out her arms. "Next!"