Chapter 3: Holes
Beni couldn't sleep. She sat up in her bed, and twisted around to look at Pansy's empty bed. Parkinson was still in the hospital wing getting her face fixed. Beni smiled; she didn't think it was possible to fix a face like Pansy's. At least she didn't have to put up with Pansy's constant snores at night; she had actually slept for a few hours over the last few nights.
Her thoughts wondered to Severus. They were pretty good friends now, which was a really weird thing for Beni, who had never had friends before. She liked being alone, ignored and invisible. But somehow she liked Severus' attention. After her parents had died it had become harder for her to make friends. Every time she tried to introduce herself or someone tried to be friendly to her, she would suddenly lash out and say something nasty or intimidating. Afterwards she'd laugh in regret. It was scary, and she hated it. But that had never happened with Severus. Maybe it was because he was a little strange himself, or maybe it was because at first she had found him intimidating, and she knew that to lash out at him would just be...she smiled as she imagined it. He wasn't the type to take shit from anyone. They'd probably end up in a huge screaming match, or maybe not, Severus had a lot of self-control. But it didn't matter. She was glad that they were friends, she always welcomed his company, although she felt she was being deceived, he enjoyed her company too.
The moon was shining on the chains that Beni usually wore around her neck, creating glints of silver across Beni's face. She sat up and wrapped them around her neck, and padlocked them together. She sighed. She felt so much more...protected, just less vulnerable to all the shit that people did and said to her. It was times like these that Beni hated, when she knew that somebody, somewhere, was dreaming of killing her, driving a knife through her fury-filled heart and laughing as her blood poured out over their hands and onto the mouldy, bone-covered floor...
Feeling shaky from her thoughts, Beni climbed out of bed and tip-toed down to the dungeon where she now kept her crystal ball. She unlocked the door, and stepped inside, relocking it as she went. She gazed into the crystal and kept seeing a repeated image. She didn't like the image – Why? What was it about seeing it that really got to her?
She scoffed. The crystal ball was telling her what her feelings were, because she was to blind to look into her heart and realize them herself. It wasn't wrong, but it just seemed so. She kicked the crystal to the other side of the room in utter distaste, and fell to the floor suddenly, where she slept.
* * * * * "Beni. Beni! Wake up!" "ARRGH!!!" Beni screamed, turned around and slapped the person who was shaking her across the face, digging her nails into their skin, tearing at their eyeball. The person echoed her scream, only a scream of pain, not shock. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry! Are you Ok?" she loudly and concernedly asked the man writhing on the floor in pain, suddenly conscious of her black, silk nightgown, her lack of underwear, and her chained and padlocked neck.
The man groaned, Beni scrambled to her feet and discarded the chains around her neck. "Severus?" she asked tentatively. He stopped rolling on the floor and sat up. She crouched down in front of him and moved his hand away. It was difficult; he had it stuck to his face, presumably to numb the pain. She drew in a sharp breath when she saw the damage that she had done. "I'm so sorry." She whispered, biting her lip. He groaned in response. "Severus?"
He seemed to be having trouble breathing. She brought herself to look back at his face. His cheek was streaked with three long gashes, blood pouring from them unceasingly, down his neck and into his robes, staining them repulsively. His eye was what scared her though. Her nails had punctured it in two places, and white goo dribbled from it slowly, mingling with the blood and the tears on his cheek. But it was his iris that scared her the most, it made the eye seem unharmed, and it was blood red, a mirrored image of Beni's own eyes when she got distressed.
Beni didn't think she could take it anymore. The image of her feelings that she had seen in the crystal the night before had consumed her in its truth and taken over her. She began to cry, her eyes changing from lustrous silver to deep red. She drew his bleeding face to her shoulder, her tears cascading over the gashes on his face and pouring into the holes in his eyes. Suddenly he pushed her away, perhaps stronger than he had meant to, and she slammed against the closest wall, her head lolling around helplessly.
She woke from unconsciousness with her face pressed to a bloodstained shoulder. She groaned. The person clutching her nimble shoulder released her from their comforting grip and let her relax against the wall. Her head ached insatiably; she slid down the wall until she was lying down comfortably. She opened her eyes. She was face to face with her crystal ball, which was playing those same images from her heart across its terrorizing surface.
"It was the image again. She had not yet watched it all the way through, and still had no desire to do so, but being in the helpless situation that she was...she saw herself with Severus. She was laughing, they both were, and she was feeling something that she had never felt before...something that she couldn't identify, but at the same time she knew what it was. They were spinning around in the snow, and then they fell together, landing in the soft, puffy snowflakes, warm in each others arms..."
She pushed it away, dried blood flaking off onto it from underneath her nails. She felt dizzy, overcome with a feeling of frustration. She shut her eyes, willing her sanity to come back. She didn't know where she was or who was sitting in front of her.
She gulped down the boiling cold liquid that was being forced down her throat. Something told her that it would help; maybe it was a voice in her head, maybe someone real. She sat up; she was still in the dungeon, although it had changed slightly. The floor was flooded with blood, her crystal ball was also smeared with blood, lying neglected near the door, it's stand still prestigiously the tallest thing in the room. Her chains were lying in a corner and Severus was sitting in front of her, looking concerned, his face completely healed.
"D...don't you have a class?" she asked him. He shook his head, hair falling into his black eyes. "It's the weekend." He whispered. Beni sat up, remembering everything that had happened since he had tried to wake her. "What time is it?" she asked him. "Ten. Are you hungry?" he pulled out his wand when she nodded. A small banquet appeared on a table between them, the delicious looking brunch set out on it's top. "Are you ok?" she asked him, her voice coarse and raspy. He smiled, shaking his head at her in disbelief. "I'm fine. Shouldn't you be asking me if you're the one that's ok?" he eyed her observantly. She was a mess, covered with blood, her hair knotted and her eyes big, red and puffy. "Am I ok?" she groaned, managing a small smile. He grinned. "You need to eat." He told her. They sat down at the table, eating furiously. Beni still felt sickened by the sight of his mangled face, and the thought of what she had done with just her bare hands.
"People say you hate your job." She said, trying to move her thoughts forwards. It was an issue she'd overheard many times, and she wanted to clarify it with him. "What? Oh...the Potions Master thing. I thought you knew." He looked at her, surprised. She shook her head. "It's not my real job." He smiled at her reaction. "Oh. Then what is? I mean, what are you doing teaching?" she asked, millions of questions building up inside of her. "I work for Dumbledore, as a spy. Just like you will when you leave school. This is my 'undercover' job, if you like. I hate it, but what can you do?" he laughed a little. "It gets a bit much sometimes...trying to do two jobs at once, I'd rather teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, I know it back-to- front, but Dumbledore says it's too dangerous." He scowled, evidently pissed off. Beni still didn't understand, and she wanted to know more. She was also a little surprised that he knew her plans for becoming a spy herself. "How did you know I'm going to be a spy? What's wrong with teaching potions? What exactly do you do?" She asked, question spilling out fluently. He smiled. "I knew because they've already signed you up. Your job's guaranteed. Thought you'd like to hear that." He grinned at the expression of happiness on her face. "Potions...it's hard to teach...like I said, I have other preferences but because of my NEWT score in potions...I landed here. And you'll find out what I do when you leave here, I can't really tell you now." "Why not?" "It's classified." He answered sarcastically. "You'll know one day. Put it out of your mind for now." She gave him a dirty look, but took his advice. They sat in silence for a few minutes, Severus fretting about his work and Beni dreaming of leaving school and finally achieving her dream.
"I'm sorry." She said quietly after a few moments, avoiding meeting his eyes. "For what?" he asked. Did he not remember or was he just slow, she wondered? "For what I did to you when you tried to wake me up." She said, avoiding eye contact. His face did not show any comprehension. "Oh." He said, as if he was trying very hard to remember something so that she wouldn't look so...stupid. "I kind of remember waking up and...you gave me a bit of a shock..." Beni rolled her eyes, he sounded really lame. "No, before that, you know, the whole nails and the eye and the cheek thing –"she said, making clawing motions at her own cheek to get the message across. She was beginning to feel stupid. What could she do to explain herself? Maybe she should just drop it.
Her crystal ball began to flash. She slid off her seat and picked it up, placing it on its stand next to the table. It began to replay what happened while she was sleeping, and then it showed Severus coming in the door and trying to wake her. It was like watching a horror movie; the chilling thing was it had already happened.
Beni looked away, at Severus. His eyes were wide opened as he watched the ball, evidently he could see the image being played across the screen too. It wasn't often that things like that happened. Beni wondered why the crystal was showing itself to Severus, when he said he could never see anything in it. He gasped and grimaced. Her eyes flew back to the ball, which was showing her nails digging into his eyeballs. "I get it now." He whispered quietly, one hand lifting involuntarily to his cheek. "But then how did it heal? What ha..." Beni shook her head. She had no idea how he had been miraculously healed. "Oh. Shit." She looked at him. "I know." He said in surprise. He looked at her, and nodded to the crystal. She looked at the vision it was showing of her tears rolling into his eyes and the gashes in his face. She still didn't get it; actually it was all a little embarrassing. "What is it?" she asked him. He was staring at the crystal, and then at her in a look of absolute awe. "Your tears...look." He said, nodding at the crystal, which was now showing her being thrust to the other side of the room. "Err..." what exactly was she meant to be seeing? How did that have anything to do with his face healing without a trace of a scratch or a scar? "Your tears. They must have healing properties. Don't you see?" he said in one big sighing, gasping, ingenious rhetorical question that Beni had no idea how to answer, so she just stayed quiet. He shook his head, and went back to his food.
Beni stared at him. She suddenly felt strong gushes of attraction, watching the way he ate messily, his black hair falling into his eyes. She tried to shake the thoughts out of her head. He was her teacher, and her friend – this was wrong. Even if he was only a few years older than her, she still couldn't let these feelings in. She didn't dare think of the destruction they would do not only to her relationship with him but to her entire life.
"I have to go." She said breathlessly, standing up quickly and moving towards the door. "Oh. Ok then but wait...hang on." A little surprised, he stood up and offered her his cloak. "What's that for?" she asked suspiciously. "Are you going to walk through the school like that?" he asked, nodding at her clingy nightgown. She flushed, and looked down at the ground. He held out his cloak again. "Thank you." She said, taking it and draping it over her shoulders.
She walked quickly along the corridor. She was grateful that he didn't ask where she was going or why she had to leave so suddenly, but then it wasn't like him to pry. "Beni!" Beni turned around quickly. A group of people were walking towards her. She recognized Draco Malfoy with three other Slytherins, two Ravenclaws and four Hufflepuffs from her class.
She heard one of the Ravenclaw students ask his friend, "What are we doing?" "Getting her for what she did to Parkinson. Look at this..." he showed his friend a bottle of purple liquid, which she assumed, obviously, was not good. "Where did you get that?" the first boy asked him, smirking. "Potter and Granger. They didn't want in on this personally, to scared of getting into trouble, but considerate enough to offer some help." The other boy said.
"Beni Montano." Draco Malfoy said maliciously. He was at the head of the group and was now standing less than a meter away in front of her. Beni stayed quiet. This was not good, and the thought of the bottle was lurking in front of her thoughts too. Maybe she should run, but then she might be able to handle it. She thought of what she could do with her bare hands, what would the effects of a wand be?
"Is that Professor Snape's cloak that you're wearing?" asked a girl from Hufflepuff. Beni instantly decided that to tell the truth would be like murder. "No." she said dully, looking bored and impatient. "Of course it's his." Said Draco. "Where else have you seen one like it?" He asked the group behind him like they were stupid, and at the same time putting a relieving finish to the topic. "We're not scared of you, Montano." Draco said, walking in slow, menacing circles around her. "That's nice." She said, wishing they would all just disappear.
"We don't like you...in fact we hate you." He whispered, his eyes flashing. Her eyes turned red, she felt a kind of resistance kick in, and in an instant she had matched Draco's hate. "Really?" she asked sarcastically, her voice rising only a little.
"We hate you enough to kill you, Montano." He said, still in deathly, chilling whispers. Beni would normally have been terrified, she knew what Draco could do to her, he could probably kill her with his own bare hands, but she felt a burning kind of power inside her, a kind of invincibility. "Potter get boring?" she asked him, her voice at normal volume, mockery weaving through her words. The group had formed a circle around her now, and Malfoy was still pacing circles around her. "Don't be a smart-ass Montano!" he yelled suddenly, thumping her over the head. His hand felt like a ball of steel, and she flew to the floor, landing on all fours, picking herself up quickly.
She turned to face him, her feeling of immortality still not relenquishing. They looked at each other for three seconds, then flew at each other, both intending to tear the other into as many mall pieces as possible. Beni clawed at his face, but somehow he kept her away, receiving only a few nicks and cuts from her deadly nails. He tried to punch her, but she ducked and avoided them quickly, her reflexes were sharp.
Beni, being a former student of a school that specialized in the dark arts, had a particular distaste and also distrust for muggle fighting, and reached for her wand. In her one second of distraction, Draco planted another heavy punch in her gut, sending her flying into the wall, the crowd parting to let her frail body smash against it. She opened her eyes, he was walking towards he, shoulder set and squared, but she stood up to face him, her pale, shaking hands clutching her wand. Blood poured from her mouth onto Severus' cloak, and more blood tricked from her forehead.
She pointed her wand at him. She would make him pay, he would be so sorry. She would show him what she could really do. She screamed a curse at him, but she was too late, caught up in her thought of fury. The curse hit and onlooker, the friend of the boy with the bottle. The boy burst into flames for a few seconds, and then the flames disappeared, leaving his skin burnt black, dripping off his bones, mutilated, his face absolutely distorted, unrecognizable.
But Draco had grabbed Beni by the scruff of the cloak and hurled her around to the opposite wall, the cloak tearing from her shoulders, her thrashing against the wall, naked but for her skimpy silk nightdress. Malevolent, pernicious laughter echoed off the walls and consumed her. Tears clouded her vision and each person there felt her shield of perpetuity disintegrate. Draco put his hands around her neck, and bought her body close to his. "Do you know what this is, Montano?" he turned her face towards the remaining Ravenclaw boy, who was holding out the bottle of purple liquid. The boys face was twisted with hate and pain, clearly he had taken the sour treatment of his friend harshly and personally. Beni tried to speak, but her lips only released a small, high-pitched moan. Draco's hands were not tight around her neck, but she couldn't move, she was completely under his control.
"It is a poison, designed to work in similar ways to the Cruciatus curse. Only differences are, it lasts for exactly one hundred years. Imagine that Montano." He smirked and continued into the deadly silence. "Eternal pain, never death, because the Cruciatus curse won't kill you, just pain. That's all you are going to know for a hundred years. When the time is finished, you'll be old and twisted, you will die immediately, but it is said that even in death the drinker is tormented. The other difference is that because it isn't actually a curse, being cast by a particular person...there's no way to lift the poison; no one can even kill you to put you out of your misery! There is one way...a counter potion. There is one particularly difficult ingredient that one needs to obtain to make it, which is why the maker of this potion," he nodded t the purple bottle, " did not make the counter potion to accompany it, which is illegal but, seeing as it's Granger and Potter, these things slip the minds of the people who...matter. So! Are you ready?" he asked her.
Beni squirmed. Draco took the potion. Beni twisted her small body, trying desperately to get away. Draco was having trouble restraining her and poisoning her at the same time. He nodded at an onlooker to help him. A girl came forward, and grabbed Beni's wrists. The girl screamed and backed away, the skin dissolved from her hands and blood poured from them, her insides emptying themselves through her hands. She ran screaming down the corridor, towards the hospital wing.
Draco grabbed a knife being held out to him from a Slytherin boy and plunged it into Beni's side, she shrieked, her writhing ceased and Draco poured the freezing purple liquid down her throat. The knife clattered to the floor. Beni swallowed the last of the liquid and Draco pushed her away from him. She felt nothing but the pain in her side. She shuffled backwards, away from the anxious, anticipating group, all of whom had their eyes glued to her, waiting for some kind of reaction.
Beni couldn't sleep. She sat up in her bed, and twisted around to look at Pansy's empty bed. Parkinson was still in the hospital wing getting her face fixed. Beni smiled; she didn't think it was possible to fix a face like Pansy's. At least she didn't have to put up with Pansy's constant snores at night; she had actually slept for a few hours over the last few nights.
Her thoughts wondered to Severus. They were pretty good friends now, which was a really weird thing for Beni, who had never had friends before. She liked being alone, ignored and invisible. But somehow she liked Severus' attention. After her parents had died it had become harder for her to make friends. Every time she tried to introduce herself or someone tried to be friendly to her, she would suddenly lash out and say something nasty or intimidating. Afterwards she'd laugh in regret. It was scary, and she hated it. But that had never happened with Severus. Maybe it was because he was a little strange himself, or maybe it was because at first she had found him intimidating, and she knew that to lash out at him would just be...she smiled as she imagined it. He wasn't the type to take shit from anyone. They'd probably end up in a huge screaming match, or maybe not, Severus had a lot of self-control. But it didn't matter. She was glad that they were friends, she always welcomed his company, although she felt she was being deceived, he enjoyed her company too.
The moon was shining on the chains that Beni usually wore around her neck, creating glints of silver across Beni's face. She sat up and wrapped them around her neck, and padlocked them together. She sighed. She felt so much more...protected, just less vulnerable to all the shit that people did and said to her. It was times like these that Beni hated, when she knew that somebody, somewhere, was dreaming of killing her, driving a knife through her fury-filled heart and laughing as her blood poured out over their hands and onto the mouldy, bone-covered floor...
Feeling shaky from her thoughts, Beni climbed out of bed and tip-toed down to the dungeon where she now kept her crystal ball. She unlocked the door, and stepped inside, relocking it as she went. She gazed into the crystal and kept seeing a repeated image. She didn't like the image – Why? What was it about seeing it that really got to her?
She scoffed. The crystal ball was telling her what her feelings were, because she was to blind to look into her heart and realize them herself. It wasn't wrong, but it just seemed so. She kicked the crystal to the other side of the room in utter distaste, and fell to the floor suddenly, where she slept.
* * * * * "Beni. Beni! Wake up!" "ARRGH!!!" Beni screamed, turned around and slapped the person who was shaking her across the face, digging her nails into their skin, tearing at their eyeball. The person echoed her scream, only a scream of pain, not shock. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry! Are you Ok?" she loudly and concernedly asked the man writhing on the floor in pain, suddenly conscious of her black, silk nightgown, her lack of underwear, and her chained and padlocked neck.
The man groaned, Beni scrambled to her feet and discarded the chains around her neck. "Severus?" she asked tentatively. He stopped rolling on the floor and sat up. She crouched down in front of him and moved his hand away. It was difficult; he had it stuck to his face, presumably to numb the pain. She drew in a sharp breath when she saw the damage that she had done. "I'm so sorry." She whispered, biting her lip. He groaned in response. "Severus?"
He seemed to be having trouble breathing. She brought herself to look back at his face. His cheek was streaked with three long gashes, blood pouring from them unceasingly, down his neck and into his robes, staining them repulsively. His eye was what scared her though. Her nails had punctured it in two places, and white goo dribbled from it slowly, mingling with the blood and the tears on his cheek. But it was his iris that scared her the most, it made the eye seem unharmed, and it was blood red, a mirrored image of Beni's own eyes when she got distressed.
Beni didn't think she could take it anymore. The image of her feelings that she had seen in the crystal the night before had consumed her in its truth and taken over her. She began to cry, her eyes changing from lustrous silver to deep red. She drew his bleeding face to her shoulder, her tears cascading over the gashes on his face and pouring into the holes in his eyes. Suddenly he pushed her away, perhaps stronger than he had meant to, and she slammed against the closest wall, her head lolling around helplessly.
She woke from unconsciousness with her face pressed to a bloodstained shoulder. She groaned. The person clutching her nimble shoulder released her from their comforting grip and let her relax against the wall. Her head ached insatiably; she slid down the wall until she was lying down comfortably. She opened her eyes. She was face to face with her crystal ball, which was playing those same images from her heart across its terrorizing surface.
"It was the image again. She had not yet watched it all the way through, and still had no desire to do so, but being in the helpless situation that she was...she saw herself with Severus. She was laughing, they both were, and she was feeling something that she had never felt before...something that she couldn't identify, but at the same time she knew what it was. They were spinning around in the snow, and then they fell together, landing in the soft, puffy snowflakes, warm in each others arms..."
She pushed it away, dried blood flaking off onto it from underneath her nails. She felt dizzy, overcome with a feeling of frustration. She shut her eyes, willing her sanity to come back. She didn't know where she was or who was sitting in front of her.
She gulped down the boiling cold liquid that was being forced down her throat. Something told her that it would help; maybe it was a voice in her head, maybe someone real. She sat up; she was still in the dungeon, although it had changed slightly. The floor was flooded with blood, her crystal ball was also smeared with blood, lying neglected near the door, it's stand still prestigiously the tallest thing in the room. Her chains were lying in a corner and Severus was sitting in front of her, looking concerned, his face completely healed.
"D...don't you have a class?" she asked him. He shook his head, hair falling into his black eyes. "It's the weekend." He whispered. Beni sat up, remembering everything that had happened since he had tried to wake her. "What time is it?" she asked him. "Ten. Are you hungry?" he pulled out his wand when she nodded. A small banquet appeared on a table between them, the delicious looking brunch set out on it's top. "Are you ok?" she asked him, her voice coarse and raspy. He smiled, shaking his head at her in disbelief. "I'm fine. Shouldn't you be asking me if you're the one that's ok?" he eyed her observantly. She was a mess, covered with blood, her hair knotted and her eyes big, red and puffy. "Am I ok?" she groaned, managing a small smile. He grinned. "You need to eat." He told her. They sat down at the table, eating furiously. Beni still felt sickened by the sight of his mangled face, and the thought of what she had done with just her bare hands.
"People say you hate your job." She said, trying to move her thoughts forwards. It was an issue she'd overheard many times, and she wanted to clarify it with him. "What? Oh...the Potions Master thing. I thought you knew." He looked at her, surprised. She shook her head. "It's not my real job." He smiled at her reaction. "Oh. Then what is? I mean, what are you doing teaching?" she asked, millions of questions building up inside of her. "I work for Dumbledore, as a spy. Just like you will when you leave school. This is my 'undercover' job, if you like. I hate it, but what can you do?" he laughed a little. "It gets a bit much sometimes...trying to do two jobs at once, I'd rather teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, I know it back-to- front, but Dumbledore says it's too dangerous." He scowled, evidently pissed off. Beni still didn't understand, and she wanted to know more. She was also a little surprised that he knew her plans for becoming a spy herself. "How did you know I'm going to be a spy? What's wrong with teaching potions? What exactly do you do?" She asked, question spilling out fluently. He smiled. "I knew because they've already signed you up. Your job's guaranteed. Thought you'd like to hear that." He grinned at the expression of happiness on her face. "Potions...it's hard to teach...like I said, I have other preferences but because of my NEWT score in potions...I landed here. And you'll find out what I do when you leave here, I can't really tell you now." "Why not?" "It's classified." He answered sarcastically. "You'll know one day. Put it out of your mind for now." She gave him a dirty look, but took his advice. They sat in silence for a few minutes, Severus fretting about his work and Beni dreaming of leaving school and finally achieving her dream.
"I'm sorry." She said quietly after a few moments, avoiding meeting his eyes. "For what?" he asked. Did he not remember or was he just slow, she wondered? "For what I did to you when you tried to wake me up." She said, avoiding eye contact. His face did not show any comprehension. "Oh." He said, as if he was trying very hard to remember something so that she wouldn't look so...stupid. "I kind of remember waking up and...you gave me a bit of a shock..." Beni rolled her eyes, he sounded really lame. "No, before that, you know, the whole nails and the eye and the cheek thing –"she said, making clawing motions at her own cheek to get the message across. She was beginning to feel stupid. What could she do to explain herself? Maybe she should just drop it.
Her crystal ball began to flash. She slid off her seat and picked it up, placing it on its stand next to the table. It began to replay what happened while she was sleeping, and then it showed Severus coming in the door and trying to wake her. It was like watching a horror movie; the chilling thing was it had already happened.
Beni looked away, at Severus. His eyes were wide opened as he watched the ball, evidently he could see the image being played across the screen too. It wasn't often that things like that happened. Beni wondered why the crystal was showing itself to Severus, when he said he could never see anything in it. He gasped and grimaced. Her eyes flew back to the ball, which was showing her nails digging into his eyeballs. "I get it now." He whispered quietly, one hand lifting involuntarily to his cheek. "But then how did it heal? What ha..." Beni shook her head. She had no idea how he had been miraculously healed. "Oh. Shit." She looked at him. "I know." He said in surprise. He looked at her, and nodded to the crystal. She looked at the vision it was showing of her tears rolling into his eyes and the gashes in his face. She still didn't get it; actually it was all a little embarrassing. "What is it?" she asked him. He was staring at the crystal, and then at her in a look of absolute awe. "Your tears...look." He said, nodding at the crystal, which was now showing her being thrust to the other side of the room. "Err..." what exactly was she meant to be seeing? How did that have anything to do with his face healing without a trace of a scratch or a scar? "Your tears. They must have healing properties. Don't you see?" he said in one big sighing, gasping, ingenious rhetorical question that Beni had no idea how to answer, so she just stayed quiet. He shook his head, and went back to his food.
Beni stared at him. She suddenly felt strong gushes of attraction, watching the way he ate messily, his black hair falling into his eyes. She tried to shake the thoughts out of her head. He was her teacher, and her friend – this was wrong. Even if he was only a few years older than her, she still couldn't let these feelings in. She didn't dare think of the destruction they would do not only to her relationship with him but to her entire life.
"I have to go." She said breathlessly, standing up quickly and moving towards the door. "Oh. Ok then but wait...hang on." A little surprised, he stood up and offered her his cloak. "What's that for?" she asked suspiciously. "Are you going to walk through the school like that?" he asked, nodding at her clingy nightgown. She flushed, and looked down at the ground. He held out his cloak again. "Thank you." She said, taking it and draping it over her shoulders.
She walked quickly along the corridor. She was grateful that he didn't ask where she was going or why she had to leave so suddenly, but then it wasn't like him to pry. "Beni!" Beni turned around quickly. A group of people were walking towards her. She recognized Draco Malfoy with three other Slytherins, two Ravenclaws and four Hufflepuffs from her class.
She heard one of the Ravenclaw students ask his friend, "What are we doing?" "Getting her for what she did to Parkinson. Look at this..." he showed his friend a bottle of purple liquid, which she assumed, obviously, was not good. "Where did you get that?" the first boy asked him, smirking. "Potter and Granger. They didn't want in on this personally, to scared of getting into trouble, but considerate enough to offer some help." The other boy said.
"Beni Montano." Draco Malfoy said maliciously. He was at the head of the group and was now standing less than a meter away in front of her. Beni stayed quiet. This was not good, and the thought of the bottle was lurking in front of her thoughts too. Maybe she should run, but then she might be able to handle it. She thought of what she could do with her bare hands, what would the effects of a wand be?
"Is that Professor Snape's cloak that you're wearing?" asked a girl from Hufflepuff. Beni instantly decided that to tell the truth would be like murder. "No." she said dully, looking bored and impatient. "Of course it's his." Said Draco. "Where else have you seen one like it?" He asked the group behind him like they were stupid, and at the same time putting a relieving finish to the topic. "We're not scared of you, Montano." Draco said, walking in slow, menacing circles around her. "That's nice." She said, wishing they would all just disappear.
"We don't like you...in fact we hate you." He whispered, his eyes flashing. Her eyes turned red, she felt a kind of resistance kick in, and in an instant she had matched Draco's hate. "Really?" she asked sarcastically, her voice rising only a little.
"We hate you enough to kill you, Montano." He said, still in deathly, chilling whispers. Beni would normally have been terrified, she knew what Draco could do to her, he could probably kill her with his own bare hands, but she felt a burning kind of power inside her, a kind of invincibility. "Potter get boring?" she asked him, her voice at normal volume, mockery weaving through her words. The group had formed a circle around her now, and Malfoy was still pacing circles around her. "Don't be a smart-ass Montano!" he yelled suddenly, thumping her over the head. His hand felt like a ball of steel, and she flew to the floor, landing on all fours, picking herself up quickly.
She turned to face him, her feeling of immortality still not relenquishing. They looked at each other for three seconds, then flew at each other, both intending to tear the other into as many mall pieces as possible. Beni clawed at his face, but somehow he kept her away, receiving only a few nicks and cuts from her deadly nails. He tried to punch her, but she ducked and avoided them quickly, her reflexes were sharp.
Beni, being a former student of a school that specialized in the dark arts, had a particular distaste and also distrust for muggle fighting, and reached for her wand. In her one second of distraction, Draco planted another heavy punch in her gut, sending her flying into the wall, the crowd parting to let her frail body smash against it. She opened her eyes, he was walking towards he, shoulder set and squared, but she stood up to face him, her pale, shaking hands clutching her wand. Blood poured from her mouth onto Severus' cloak, and more blood tricked from her forehead.
She pointed her wand at him. She would make him pay, he would be so sorry. She would show him what she could really do. She screamed a curse at him, but she was too late, caught up in her thought of fury. The curse hit and onlooker, the friend of the boy with the bottle. The boy burst into flames for a few seconds, and then the flames disappeared, leaving his skin burnt black, dripping off his bones, mutilated, his face absolutely distorted, unrecognizable.
But Draco had grabbed Beni by the scruff of the cloak and hurled her around to the opposite wall, the cloak tearing from her shoulders, her thrashing against the wall, naked but for her skimpy silk nightdress. Malevolent, pernicious laughter echoed off the walls and consumed her. Tears clouded her vision and each person there felt her shield of perpetuity disintegrate. Draco put his hands around her neck, and bought her body close to his. "Do you know what this is, Montano?" he turned her face towards the remaining Ravenclaw boy, who was holding out the bottle of purple liquid. The boys face was twisted with hate and pain, clearly he had taken the sour treatment of his friend harshly and personally. Beni tried to speak, but her lips only released a small, high-pitched moan. Draco's hands were not tight around her neck, but she couldn't move, she was completely under his control.
"It is a poison, designed to work in similar ways to the Cruciatus curse. Only differences are, it lasts for exactly one hundred years. Imagine that Montano." He smirked and continued into the deadly silence. "Eternal pain, never death, because the Cruciatus curse won't kill you, just pain. That's all you are going to know for a hundred years. When the time is finished, you'll be old and twisted, you will die immediately, but it is said that even in death the drinker is tormented. The other difference is that because it isn't actually a curse, being cast by a particular person...there's no way to lift the poison; no one can even kill you to put you out of your misery! There is one way...a counter potion. There is one particularly difficult ingredient that one needs to obtain to make it, which is why the maker of this potion," he nodded t the purple bottle, " did not make the counter potion to accompany it, which is illegal but, seeing as it's Granger and Potter, these things slip the minds of the people who...matter. So! Are you ready?" he asked her.
Beni squirmed. Draco took the potion. Beni twisted her small body, trying desperately to get away. Draco was having trouble restraining her and poisoning her at the same time. He nodded at an onlooker to help him. A girl came forward, and grabbed Beni's wrists. The girl screamed and backed away, the skin dissolved from her hands and blood poured from them, her insides emptying themselves through her hands. She ran screaming down the corridor, towards the hospital wing.
Draco grabbed a knife being held out to him from a Slytherin boy and plunged it into Beni's side, she shrieked, her writhing ceased and Draco poured the freezing purple liquid down her throat. The knife clattered to the floor. Beni swallowed the last of the liquid and Draco pushed her away from him. She felt nothing but the pain in her side. She shuffled backwards, away from the anxious, anticipating group, all of whom had their eyes glued to her, waiting for some kind of reaction.