In Which Katie Gets Lost, And A Cat Helps Her
His glare got them past the remaining students without comment. She watched him, from the corner of her eye. A faintly worried frown imperceptibly found a home on her face. "Draco?"
"Hush, we can talk in my room." They reached the door, and she waited while he took quite a few wards off it. They stepped inside, and she found a seat while he locked and warded the door again. He turned to face her, and they just looked at each other for a moment. A tall blond man with grey eyes; broad in the shoulders, but wiry from years spent playing Quidditch. A woman with long curls of raven hair, green eyes, equally pale and slender. "Kate-"
She interrupted him, jumping up to throw her arms around him. "Oh, Wesley, what the hell have they done to you?"
The use of her childhood nickname for him, taken from a movie they had watched together, was his undoing. Tears sprang to his eyes. He let his head fall to her shoulder. "Merlin, Katie, I've missed you so much..."
He let loose, sitting next to her, his head on her shoulder. He told her of his father's expectations, of his mother's retreat from them both, of the years spent being shown up and humiliated at school by a group that broke any rule they found inconvenient - and how, far from being punished, that group was rewarded for their actions. He told her of the pain he felt, watching those with friends, when all he had were a group of flunkies; incredibly stupid ones, at that. He told her of his summer spent in solitude, thinking about the results of his father's plans for him, and his refusal to continue cooperating with them. He told her of the inevitable fight, just days before, and of how he'd been so lonely, and how there was no one at school for him to trust, and he told her how very glad he was that she was there.
And he cried, into the shoulder of her robes, as she held him. "I hate them, Kate, I really do. I hate them all."
She finally spoke, at that. "Who, Draco? And why do you hate them?"
"Everyone." He practically hissed. "Father, for what he's done to me, and what he wants me to do. Mother, for shutting herself away, and never trying to stand up to him. Snape - I can't even trust my own Head of House, because according to Fa- no, to hell with that, he doesn't deserve the name. According to /i, Snape is a Death Eater himself. I can't trust Dumbledore, because I'm sure that he believes that I'm one, and then there are those damn /i..." She was fairly certain that her cousin did not know of her friendship with Mina, and knew that it would be unwise for her to reveal it at this time. Indeed, she would need to be very careful around her cousin, if she wished to continue holding his trust. Therefore, she did what was in both his nature and her own, in such a situation - she dissembled. "Which Gryffindors?"
"What, other than all of them? The Weasleys, and Granger, and -" the loathing in his voice grew very pronounced - "/i... I hate him, Kate, I hate him almost worse than I hate Lucius... I can't stand him. He breaks the rules, he nearly gets himself killed, he nearly gets everybody else killed too, and blunders his way through encounters where he barely manages to survive, and everyone acts as though he's a miracle worker, as though he can do no wrong, and they praise him and reward him, and let him skate through his classes, and almost everyone in the school adores him. I hate him..." By now, his voice had faded, until there was little left in it but sorrow, broken sobs, and a weariness that did not belong to a sixteen- year-old.
"Ah, sweet Wesley, such a burden the world has put on you... come here, dearheart," she said, holding him closer, in a position where she could pet him more easily. Katie was a firm believer in the healing powers of physical contact, even without any magic behind it, and more often than not would not bother with the magic at all. She rubbed his back lightly with one hand, combing her fingers through his hair with the other, and started humming lightly under her breath, the words just barely inaudible. She felt him start to relax, his head back on her shoulder, and breathe more easily. She continued her song, wishing that she had her guitar with her. As the song ended, she moved to another one by the same singer, a man whose passing she had mourned mere days after she had first heard his music, as he had died around the time of her birth.
"What are you singing, Katie?" His voice was much quieter now. She almost didn't hear him, but stopped her humming for a moment.
"Hmm? Oh... a song that's made me think of you for a while now, I suppose..." and she sang a little bit of it for him. "Don't be shy, you learn to fly, and see the sun when day is done, if only you'll see... just what you are, beneath a star, that came to stay one rainy day in autumn for free... Yes, be what you'll be..." She slipped back to humming, promising to herself that she would play the song for him in its entirety soon.
"Missed you, Kate..." and with that, he drifted off to sleep. It was all she could do not to cry, herself, as she realized two things. One, how badly he had been hurt by so many people in his life; and two, that even after all that, even though he had not seen her in over five years, he still trusted her enough to fall asleep in the same room with her. She sat with him for a few minutes longer, to be sure that he would not wake when she moved him, as she hummed a different song to herself for a few minutes, until tears sprang to her eyes anyway. IOh, Alex... I miss you.../I
She wiped the tears away then, and reached her hand towards her cousin. "/I," she muttered, and watched as his body slowly floated from the couch to his bed. She quickly pulled the covers down, and let him down gently onto the mattress. She wasn't about to strip her own cousin, and couldn't remember the charm she'd once read that would allow her to undress him magically under the covers, so she left him in the majority of his uniform and covered him with the duvet. She stood over the bed for a few moments, looking down at him, before shaking her head and sighing, and walking over to let herself out the door. Fortunately, the wards were not nearly so hard to get through from the backside, or she might have been in trouble.
She slipped through the door, closing it again, grateful that not she had not had to take down all the wards in order to get out. The hour had grown much later than she would have wished, but at least that meant that the passage to the Slytherin Common Room was completely empty, and mostly dark besides. She thought for a moment, and then placed her hands on the doorframe to her cousin's room, putting up several wards that even her old Charms teacher would have been proud of – as they were attached to the frame, rather than the door itself, they would not be upset by its opening and closing, and should last most of the school year if not taken down specifically. They would also unleash a rather nasty set of hexes on anyone foolish enough to try to enter the room without a specific invitation. She made certain, however, that the new wards would not only recognize her, but would recognize her cousin as well; it would not do for him to be unable to enter his own chambers. On the other hand, she felt protective enough that she honestly did not care if the Head of his House – or the Headmaster himself – tried to force their way in. She had no doubt that they would succeed in doing so, but she was damned if she wasn't going to make their lives damned uncomfortable if they tried.
She might have spent most of her life in Kansas, but she had also lived in a few big cities, and had been an actress herself for quite some time – and spending a few years surrounded by actors and the theatre made one quite accomplished at being able to tell when someone was lying to you, or acting in any way. Besides, her cousin was five years younger than she was. She knew that he had been telling her the truth, in all its painful glory, and Katharine LaFontaine had three heritages that insisted on protecting one's family, although some of them were broader in their definitions of "family" than others.
She stepped away from her cousin's door, and carefully walked to the entrance to the Common Room. Relieved to find that there were no students in it at this hour, she quickly crossed the floor and let herself out of the tower, into the main school grounds. And stopped short, as the realization of her predicament struck her – she not only didn't know how to get to her rooms from Slytherin tower, she didn't know how to get to her rooms at all.
"Oh, by the god of pink shag carpeting," she muttered, very cross with herself. She started to walk towards what she hoped would eventually become the Headmaster's office, attempting to stay in the shadows and not tempt Fate too much. After all, Fate was a crabby bastard who cheated at every game he played, and was never a gracious loser – the safest way was to avoid tempting him.
She turned a corner, and paused her steps; in a spot of moonlight – in the exact center of that spot, in fact – a cat was sitting, looking directly at her. She stifled a snort of amusement at the cat's artistic posing, and knelt, still in the shadows. "Hey, there, beautiful one. I don't suppose you know where my rooms are? I certainly don't, and I seem to have lost all my guides this evening. I can, however, promise you that I am well aware of the proper way of petting a cat, if you should like to barter?"
The cat – she couldn't tell what it looked like, in the dark, for even with the moonlight, everything was bleached to gray – continued to look at her for a long moment, then sneezed once, shook its head, stood and turned, looking over its shoulder at her briefly, before walking off. She crossed her fingers, bit her lip, and followed it quietly.
She quickly grew convinced of one of two things: either the cat did, in fact, know exactly where it was taking her, or she was more lost than she would have imagined possible. Despite occasionally passing landmarks that seemed familiar – over there, the entrance to the Great Hall, and on the other side, five minutes later, wasn't that the path to the Library that Fred had pointed out earlier? – she knew that it would have been foolhardy in the extreme for her to attempt to find any of those locations again on her own.
Eventually, the cat slowed, sniffing at the air for a moment or two, and then jumped onto a low banister next to a familiar looking painting of a landscape. She stepped close to the painting, trying to see it in the darkness, and placed a hand on the frame as she leaned in, her face mere inches from the canvas. And she promptly jumped back when the frame slid away from the wall to reveal a rather mundane looking doorknob.
Banishing all thoughts of Lewis Carroll from her mind, she cautiously turned the knob, opened the door, and sighed with relief when she discovered what were surely her rooms. After all, what other room in the castle would be painted the color of a purple M&M, and would have her trunks neatly piled in the corner?
She turned back outside to thank the cat again, but discovered that it had disappeared. She shrugged; it was hardly an unexpected action for a cat, but she hoped that she would find it again so that she could thank it properly. She probably would have ended up spending the night with the squid for company, out by the lake, if it hadn't been for the cat's directions. She sighed, scrubbed at her face with her hands for a moment, and went inside after casting a very similar set of wards on her own doorframe. She put a few more variables into her wards – she wanted to allow both Mina and Draco free access to her rooms, within reason – the wards would not let either of them in if the other were present, but would be much gentler in blocking them than they would be towards anyone she didn't know. She decided to install a doorbell charm in the morning, but for now, she was too tired. Sleep first; she could finish her rooms later, before breakfast.
She checked her watch - ITwo-thirty in the morning, no wonder I'm tired, I've been up since what, yesterday?/I She had spent a full day packing, and spent several hours last night online saying goodbye to most of her friends, and making arrangements to visit a few in Europe, before Apparating to Hogsmeade in what was locally midmorning. So... she had probably managed to break her current record of thirty-three hours with no sleep. At the moment, she was also too tired to do the math required to figure out precisely how long she'd been awake.
She didn't bother undressing herself any more than she had her cousin. She didn't even bother turning down the covers of the bed. Instead, she just collapsed across it, pulled a pillow under her head, and kicked her shoes off; told herself to wake up in six hours, and promptly fell asleep.
hr
Breakfast the next morning was a strange affair.
Nearly everyone Kate had met the day before –at least, of the ones whose names she could remember - was either avoiding all conversation or trying desperately to make eye contact with her. Some people fit into both categories, including Fred, Mina, and Draco. Ginny Weasley seemed to be glancing equally at Draco and Mina while pretending to pay attention to a conversation about Quidditch between Ron and Harry. At least, Kate assumed that they were talking about Quidditch. There were too many swooping gestures for it to safely be about anything else, and if it was, she decided she really didn't want to know about it.
Kate felt like blessing whoever had arranged for her and Fred to sit at the High Table, should they choose. It meant that she had the option of hot coffee for breakfast. She had certainly never been any sort of morning person, and aside from twitching a few pieces of toast onto her plate, she completely ignored all food in favor of strong coffee with cold milk. Although it had always scandalized all her friends who were coffee "purists," that she would not drink coffee with steamed milk, or for that matter milk heated in any way, she strongly felt that the ability to use her taste buds overrode tradition. In short, she liked being able to taste her coffee, and drink it quickly, without scalding her tongue.
Having gulped a large mug's worth of the beverage, she felt slightly more prepared to deal with the day. She raised an eyebrow at what was considered breakfast food there – aside from the toast, and some fresh scones with clotted cream, nothing looked particularly appetizing. She doubted that she would be able to add cold pizza to the breakfast menu, but seriously considered having her parents send her some Corn Bran in their first care package of the year. She had long ago learned the charms required to keep bugs and small animals from being attracted to food in places it didn't belong; it was the only way her mother had ever let her eat in her room. She felt confident that she'd be able to keep some food squirreled away in her rooms here. Quite possibly, the sooner she had some, the better.
She played with her toast, still yawning behind the back of her hand. Six hours asleep after thirty-six awake simply wasn't enough, even if she still remembered an old boyfriend's trick of "power napping." In short doses, it would increase the rest gained from a period of sleep up to four times as much; unfortunately, when one went to sleep alone, it would only add half as much time as the original. And nine hours' sleep wasn't much better than six.
She jolted out of a doze - Idamn coffee, never kicks in fast enough/I - to a Hall that was nearly empty, and to hear her name being repeated.
"Katharine? Katharine? Are you okay? Katharine? It's time to go, Katharine..."
"Huh? Fred? Oh... what?" She rubbed her hand across her face, shaking her head, trying to wake up again. "Oh! Crap... are we late to meet the Headmaster?" She lapsed into muttering again. "Curse the little green god of fabric remnants, why does this have to happen today?"
Fred looked at her, quite confused by the last thing she'd said. "No, we're not late... well, not yet, but if you don't get a move on, we will be." He grinned at her, to take the sting out of his words. She yawned, leaned back in her chair to stretch her back, gulped a small glass of orange juice, stood, and waved at him to lead the way. Once they left the Great Hall, he paused for a moment to let her catch up, and then offered her his arm.
She took it, gratefully, and used it as an excuse to lean a bit closer to him. "You don't suppose there's a map of this school somewhere, do you? I got so lost last night... I had to follow a cat to my rooms, actually. No idea how it knew where they were."
At the mention of a map, Fred's face lit up for a moment, quickly replaced by suspicion. "I... wait... a /I? I thought Malfoy said he was going to take you to your rooms. What, did he just dump you outside or something? If he did, I'll–"
"No, no, nothing like that, silly. He fell asleep, we were talking till two in the morning, and I didn't want to wake him back up, he's got classes today. So I left his room, and then I realized, down in the dungeons, that I had no idea where my rooms were, and then there was this cat, and I asked it if it knew where my rooms were, and apparently it did. So I followed it, that's all, and I really wish I could find it again, because I didn't get a chance to properly thank it." She took a deep breath, and rolled her eyes. "Gods, and I tease Mina about not being able to tell a story without forgetting to breathe..."
At that point, they had reached the gargoyle at the Headmaster's office, and continued in after a moment. Dumbledore bade them welcome, and to sit, and they did so.
"All right, then, where were we... ah yes, your duties as Head Boy and Girl. Fred, I know that you probably have some familiarity with the concept, as Bill, Charlie, and Percy were all Head Boys in their years, and Miss LaFontaine, you were after all a prefect at El Dorado, were you not?"
"Well, I was really more of an RA, and please, Headmaster, call me Katharine at least."
Fred turned to her, confused. "What's an RA?"
She rubbed the tip of her nose a moment as she thought. "Well, I'm not sure if it's a college thing or an American thing, but an RA – a resident assistant – is a student who takes care of some of the other students. Usually, it's an upperclassman, and if the school has any, they'll have at least two – one for boys, and one for girls. El Dorado Academy had four, because EDA is a very small school – there weren't many more than a hundred students all told, and it took the place of high school really, so there were only four years instead of seven, like here. EDA passed itself off as a fancy private school, so while there were a lot of boarders – it's one of the best schools in the Midwest, but certainly not the only one – and there were quite a few students who lived either in El Dorado itself or in Wichita. I think there were even one or two who lived in Kansas City, but only the seniors. Anyway, as the RAs, my friend Eva and I would arrange activities for the students to get together and get to know each other better, and we'd also help anyone who was having any emotional or mental problems as best we could. We also did some tutoring, along with Joe and Nick, the two male RAs. We split up, and whoever was best in that subject would do the tutoring. Not too many students needed the extra help, since they could either get it from their friends, from the official tutors, or from the teachers. Although, most of the teachers lived in town... the RAs and the school's president were in charge of most of the disciplinary stuff."
Fred looked as though her explanation hadn't helped his confusion much, but Dumbledore was beaming. "Excellent, Katharine, excellent indeed. You will find that your duties shall be much like what they once were. You are certainly welcome to try to arrange any activities you like, although I should advise you not to try to interrupt Quidditch. You will not be in charge of discipline, but you will certainly have a role to play, and you have the ability to take as many as fifty points from each students at any time. You will not be able to directly assign detention, but all of the teachers have been instructed to take your recommendations very seriously. And I ask that you feel free to tutor anyone who you feel needs it, assuming you can get them to agree to it. A few students have already made motions in this direction, most notably Hermione Granger, who is solely responsible for many of her fellow Gryffindors' abilities to pass Potions, and Harry Potter, who has given many of his fellow students a much more thorough grounding in Defense Against the Dark Arts than might have been the case." Dumbledore sobered at that, and sighed. "I also ask that you do what you can as a counselor to the students; there are many who will have found, over the summer, that things are not as they once were, to the detriment of many. And I believe that not all of them will be comfortable discussing such matters with their prefects. There will also, likely, be a few that the prefects are not comfortable discussing such matters with, and the prefects will be instructed to forward such students to you."
Dumbledore paused again, his eyes locked on something behind the two students-who-were-not-students. Kate turned around, and saw a bird in reds and golds, with a tinge of blue at the end of its wings. IIs that... a phoenix? Surely it must be.../I She turned back to look at the Headmaster again. After a minute or two, when he didn't say anything, she glanced at Fred from the corner of her eye, and then addressed Dumbledore. "Sir?"
He shook himself, and the twinkle returned to his eyes. "Ah yes, my apologies. There was one other thing, you see. Fred, you are surely curious why you were asked back to this school?"
"Well, yeah, I was, a bit..."
"I am not unaware of the great popularity of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, you see, and in these dark hours, I think it would be wise to allow a certain level of levity in these halls. Of course, our caretaker, Mr Filch, was most upset when half the outlawed items on his lists found their respectability again, and I ask that you not rub his nose in the matter too much. Also, I must ask that you not test any items on students who do not fully agree to be tested upon, and as such, I recommend that you use this form, or something similar, before doing so." Dumbledore reached into the top of a drawer in his desk and pulled a small scroll from it. He passed it across the top of his desk to Fred, who was trying unsuccessfully to squash an expression of glee.
"Now then. I doubt that the students will know about your roles yet, so feel free to explain them to whomever you like. Most likely, within the week, your duties will start taking a decent amount of time to complete, but for now, you should have some free time. I shall see you at lunch, I am sure." And he dismissed them.
At the bottom of the stairs, Kate turned to Fred. "Listen, could you do me a favor? Take me to my rooms, and then give me about a half hour, before you disappear off to Gryffindor all day?" She smiled at him.
Having not been on the receiving end of one of her smiles before, Fred blinked several times, swallowed hard, and stammered weakly "Er... sure..." as she took his arm. He led her back to her rooms, unable to think of much to say, as she kept smiling at him. "I'll... see you in a little while, then...?" and he backed out of her rooms, still stammering.
She smirked a little as the door closed behind him. She had a little bit of a weakness for redheads, and thought that her new cohort was quite... something. On the other hand, she needed to finish preparing her rooms, and she could at least start on them now.
First things first – she would need a better version of her doorbell charm if she could expect students at odd hours. She decided to change the charm to something more like an intercom system. She started rooting through her bags, and found what she was looking for five minutes later – a nearly- empty Altoids can. There were only about a dozen mints left inside, so she ate two, and placed the rest on her desk for the moment. She knocked some of the powder out of the case, considered it for a moment, and then closed her eyes as she began to visualize what she wanted to Transfigure it to. In the end, it was a small not-quite electronic device, one that looked very similar to Alex's phone – she bit her lip and willed herself not to cry as she thought of him again – with a small screen and a few buttons, along with the cover. She thought a moment more, and then made it into something even closer to a replica of the phone – it had been a PDA, too, and she was itching to play Bejeweled again. She then took one of the mints, and Transfigured it as well, into a push button for the outside of her door. She ate another mint, and then took a third – or perhaps a fifth – and Transfigured it into a small speaker/microphone/camera set. She took the two ex-mints to her doorway, used a sticking charm to attach them to the wall, and persuaded the wall to create a small sign that said "Push Button For Entrance." Satisfied with its placement, she pushed the button. She smiled that her charm worked, as her new intercom beeper went off, and she lifted it to see her face looking down on the screen. IGood, the camera's working at least. I'll wait to test the rest of it later./I She closed the screen, which shut it off, and looked back at the painting.
And then she looked again at the painting, much more closely. She laughed aloud. "Well, well, well... little god of sheep who eat lead paint, I can't believe it. That sly bastard actually got one of Grandma's paintings."
"Your grandmother is a painter?"
She turned around with a gasp and a hex on her lips, finding herself pointing her right hand at Fred. She bit of her curse and took a deep breath. "You really ought to be careful about sneaking up on people, Fred, you could get hurt."
He laughed, a little. "How're you going to hurt me? You don't even have your wand out."
She looked down for a moment before meeting his eyes. "There are more ways to hurt people than with a wand, Fred. Haven't you learned that by now?" Her voice was very soft.
He frowned for half a moment before offering her his arm once again. "Didn't you want me to take you to Gryffindor today? I know that Hermione looked like she wanted a longer chance to talk to you today." It was hardly a smooth change of subject, but it did what it was required to do. She half- smiled at him, and took his arm.
"Lead on, oh sneaky one!" And he took her invitation, and led her to Gryffindor Tower.
hr IAuthor's Note: Okay, so I was hoping to get this chapter out on Friday, but even though I managed to write two scenes at work no less, it just wasn't really cooperating. On the other hand, I got to see the movie on Saturday, so yay!
Credits: "Wesley" is of course from uThe Princess Bride/u by William Goldman – "his eyes were the color of the sea after a storm," plus he's blond, plus it's a kickass movie.
The song is called "Things Behind The Sun," and it's by a folk singer from the seventies with a beautiful voice named Nick Drake. If my sources are correct, he died in his twenties, and it's a terrible thing that that happened to him. His currently-most-famous song is called "Pink Moon," and was featured in a recent car commercial – four people driving in a car with the top down under the moonlight, reach the party, decide "to hell with the party, let's go back to driving around."
Lewis Carroll wrote "Alice in Wonderland," and the scene that flashed into my mind when the painting revealed the doorknob was the one with the talking door that wouldn't let her through, because she didn't have the key.
For the record, my bedroom in my parents' house – the room I'm writing this in – is in fact the color of purple M&Ms, which are one of my favorite candies, and I take my coffee with either way too much sugar or cold milk. Either way, I won't drink it if I think it's too hot. And "too hot" means that nobody tries to steal my coffee once it's drinkable, which suits me fine.
One of my ex-boyfriends taught me the trick of powernapping, after a five- minute scene in one of the dorm lobbies at 5 in the morning after an anime club party. Apparently it equated a twenty-minute nap. I can't do them to myself for the life of me, though.
My RA my freshman year was named Eva. And, although I highly doubt she'll ever read this, just so she knows who this is if she does – EVA ROCKS!!!
And my grandmother is in fact a painter, quite a good one, although she mostly does landscapes – there's a small paint sketch of me at about age five on the wall, in a purple shirt, with a purple balloon, in her driveway, near some purple flowers. I inherited my love of purple from my other grandmother, though.
I'm going to try to put up at least one or two chapters this week, especially since I'll be gone most of next week up to Lilies War in Kansas City. However, if I get any chance, I'll do some writing while everyone else is recovering from their hangovers on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. grins
Oh, and shame on me, I suppose, that this chapter didn't have any HG or SS in it. They will have their time, don't worry, but I felt it necessary to give a little more backstory on Kate, since after all, she's the only character we don't know. Besides, this story won't be only a HG/SS ship by any means.
Enjoy the story, please R&R, and let me know if I screwed up any – I wrote this thing from about five in the morning till a quarter till ten. And even though I'm used to working night shifts, it's now bedtime.
Lunzie
His glare got them past the remaining students without comment. She watched him, from the corner of her eye. A faintly worried frown imperceptibly found a home on her face. "Draco?"
"Hush, we can talk in my room." They reached the door, and she waited while he took quite a few wards off it. They stepped inside, and she found a seat while he locked and warded the door again. He turned to face her, and they just looked at each other for a moment. A tall blond man with grey eyes; broad in the shoulders, but wiry from years spent playing Quidditch. A woman with long curls of raven hair, green eyes, equally pale and slender. "Kate-"
She interrupted him, jumping up to throw her arms around him. "Oh, Wesley, what the hell have they done to you?"
The use of her childhood nickname for him, taken from a movie they had watched together, was his undoing. Tears sprang to his eyes. He let his head fall to her shoulder. "Merlin, Katie, I've missed you so much..."
He let loose, sitting next to her, his head on her shoulder. He told her of his father's expectations, of his mother's retreat from them both, of the years spent being shown up and humiliated at school by a group that broke any rule they found inconvenient - and how, far from being punished, that group was rewarded for their actions. He told her of the pain he felt, watching those with friends, when all he had were a group of flunkies; incredibly stupid ones, at that. He told her of his summer spent in solitude, thinking about the results of his father's plans for him, and his refusal to continue cooperating with them. He told her of the inevitable fight, just days before, and of how he'd been so lonely, and how there was no one at school for him to trust, and he told her how very glad he was that she was there.
And he cried, into the shoulder of her robes, as she held him. "I hate them, Kate, I really do. I hate them all."
She finally spoke, at that. "Who, Draco? And why do you hate them?"
"Everyone." He practically hissed. "Father, for what he's done to me, and what he wants me to do. Mother, for shutting herself away, and never trying to stand up to him. Snape - I can't even trust my own Head of House, because according to Fa- no, to hell with that, he doesn't deserve the name. According to /i, Snape is a Death Eater himself. I can't trust Dumbledore, because I'm sure that he believes that I'm one, and then there are those damn /i..." She was fairly certain that her cousin did not know of her friendship with Mina, and knew that it would be unwise for her to reveal it at this time. Indeed, she would need to be very careful around her cousin, if she wished to continue holding his trust. Therefore, she did what was in both his nature and her own, in such a situation - she dissembled. "Which Gryffindors?"
"What, other than all of them? The Weasleys, and Granger, and -" the loathing in his voice grew very pronounced - "/i... I hate him, Kate, I hate him almost worse than I hate Lucius... I can't stand him. He breaks the rules, he nearly gets himself killed, he nearly gets everybody else killed too, and blunders his way through encounters where he barely manages to survive, and everyone acts as though he's a miracle worker, as though he can do no wrong, and they praise him and reward him, and let him skate through his classes, and almost everyone in the school adores him. I hate him..." By now, his voice had faded, until there was little left in it but sorrow, broken sobs, and a weariness that did not belong to a sixteen- year-old.
"Ah, sweet Wesley, such a burden the world has put on you... come here, dearheart," she said, holding him closer, in a position where she could pet him more easily. Katie was a firm believer in the healing powers of physical contact, even without any magic behind it, and more often than not would not bother with the magic at all. She rubbed his back lightly with one hand, combing her fingers through his hair with the other, and started humming lightly under her breath, the words just barely inaudible. She felt him start to relax, his head back on her shoulder, and breathe more easily. She continued her song, wishing that she had her guitar with her. As the song ended, she moved to another one by the same singer, a man whose passing she had mourned mere days after she had first heard his music, as he had died around the time of her birth.
"What are you singing, Katie?" His voice was much quieter now. She almost didn't hear him, but stopped her humming for a moment.
"Hmm? Oh... a song that's made me think of you for a while now, I suppose..." and she sang a little bit of it for him. "Don't be shy, you learn to fly, and see the sun when day is done, if only you'll see... just what you are, beneath a star, that came to stay one rainy day in autumn for free... Yes, be what you'll be..." She slipped back to humming, promising to herself that she would play the song for him in its entirety soon.
"Missed you, Kate..." and with that, he drifted off to sleep. It was all she could do not to cry, herself, as she realized two things. One, how badly he had been hurt by so many people in his life; and two, that even after all that, even though he had not seen her in over five years, he still trusted her enough to fall asleep in the same room with her. She sat with him for a few minutes longer, to be sure that he would not wake when she moved him, as she hummed a different song to herself for a few minutes, until tears sprang to her eyes anyway. IOh, Alex... I miss you.../I
She wiped the tears away then, and reached her hand towards her cousin. "/I," she muttered, and watched as his body slowly floated from the couch to his bed. She quickly pulled the covers down, and let him down gently onto the mattress. She wasn't about to strip her own cousin, and couldn't remember the charm she'd once read that would allow her to undress him magically under the covers, so she left him in the majority of his uniform and covered him with the duvet. She stood over the bed for a few moments, looking down at him, before shaking her head and sighing, and walking over to let herself out the door. Fortunately, the wards were not nearly so hard to get through from the backside, or she might have been in trouble.
She slipped through the door, closing it again, grateful that not she had not had to take down all the wards in order to get out. The hour had grown much later than she would have wished, but at least that meant that the passage to the Slytherin Common Room was completely empty, and mostly dark besides. She thought for a moment, and then placed her hands on the doorframe to her cousin's room, putting up several wards that even her old Charms teacher would have been proud of – as they were attached to the frame, rather than the door itself, they would not be upset by its opening and closing, and should last most of the school year if not taken down specifically. They would also unleash a rather nasty set of hexes on anyone foolish enough to try to enter the room without a specific invitation. She made certain, however, that the new wards would not only recognize her, but would recognize her cousin as well; it would not do for him to be unable to enter his own chambers. On the other hand, she felt protective enough that she honestly did not care if the Head of his House – or the Headmaster himself – tried to force their way in. She had no doubt that they would succeed in doing so, but she was damned if she wasn't going to make their lives damned uncomfortable if they tried.
She might have spent most of her life in Kansas, but she had also lived in a few big cities, and had been an actress herself for quite some time – and spending a few years surrounded by actors and the theatre made one quite accomplished at being able to tell when someone was lying to you, or acting in any way. Besides, her cousin was five years younger than she was. She knew that he had been telling her the truth, in all its painful glory, and Katharine LaFontaine had three heritages that insisted on protecting one's family, although some of them were broader in their definitions of "family" than others.
She stepped away from her cousin's door, and carefully walked to the entrance to the Common Room. Relieved to find that there were no students in it at this hour, she quickly crossed the floor and let herself out of the tower, into the main school grounds. And stopped short, as the realization of her predicament struck her – she not only didn't know how to get to her rooms from Slytherin tower, she didn't know how to get to her rooms at all.
"Oh, by the god of pink shag carpeting," she muttered, very cross with herself. She started to walk towards what she hoped would eventually become the Headmaster's office, attempting to stay in the shadows and not tempt Fate too much. After all, Fate was a crabby bastard who cheated at every game he played, and was never a gracious loser – the safest way was to avoid tempting him.
She turned a corner, and paused her steps; in a spot of moonlight – in the exact center of that spot, in fact – a cat was sitting, looking directly at her. She stifled a snort of amusement at the cat's artistic posing, and knelt, still in the shadows. "Hey, there, beautiful one. I don't suppose you know where my rooms are? I certainly don't, and I seem to have lost all my guides this evening. I can, however, promise you that I am well aware of the proper way of petting a cat, if you should like to barter?"
The cat – she couldn't tell what it looked like, in the dark, for even with the moonlight, everything was bleached to gray – continued to look at her for a long moment, then sneezed once, shook its head, stood and turned, looking over its shoulder at her briefly, before walking off. She crossed her fingers, bit her lip, and followed it quietly.
She quickly grew convinced of one of two things: either the cat did, in fact, know exactly where it was taking her, or she was more lost than she would have imagined possible. Despite occasionally passing landmarks that seemed familiar – over there, the entrance to the Great Hall, and on the other side, five minutes later, wasn't that the path to the Library that Fred had pointed out earlier? – she knew that it would have been foolhardy in the extreme for her to attempt to find any of those locations again on her own.
Eventually, the cat slowed, sniffing at the air for a moment or two, and then jumped onto a low banister next to a familiar looking painting of a landscape. She stepped close to the painting, trying to see it in the darkness, and placed a hand on the frame as she leaned in, her face mere inches from the canvas. And she promptly jumped back when the frame slid away from the wall to reveal a rather mundane looking doorknob.
Banishing all thoughts of Lewis Carroll from her mind, she cautiously turned the knob, opened the door, and sighed with relief when she discovered what were surely her rooms. After all, what other room in the castle would be painted the color of a purple M&M, and would have her trunks neatly piled in the corner?
She turned back outside to thank the cat again, but discovered that it had disappeared. She shrugged; it was hardly an unexpected action for a cat, but she hoped that she would find it again so that she could thank it properly. She probably would have ended up spending the night with the squid for company, out by the lake, if it hadn't been for the cat's directions. She sighed, scrubbed at her face with her hands for a moment, and went inside after casting a very similar set of wards on her own doorframe. She put a few more variables into her wards – she wanted to allow both Mina and Draco free access to her rooms, within reason – the wards would not let either of them in if the other were present, but would be much gentler in blocking them than they would be towards anyone she didn't know. She decided to install a doorbell charm in the morning, but for now, she was too tired. Sleep first; she could finish her rooms later, before breakfast.
She checked her watch - ITwo-thirty in the morning, no wonder I'm tired, I've been up since what, yesterday?/I She had spent a full day packing, and spent several hours last night online saying goodbye to most of her friends, and making arrangements to visit a few in Europe, before Apparating to Hogsmeade in what was locally midmorning. So... she had probably managed to break her current record of thirty-three hours with no sleep. At the moment, she was also too tired to do the math required to figure out precisely how long she'd been awake.
She didn't bother undressing herself any more than she had her cousin. She didn't even bother turning down the covers of the bed. Instead, she just collapsed across it, pulled a pillow under her head, and kicked her shoes off; told herself to wake up in six hours, and promptly fell asleep.
hr
Breakfast the next morning was a strange affair.
Nearly everyone Kate had met the day before –at least, of the ones whose names she could remember - was either avoiding all conversation or trying desperately to make eye contact with her. Some people fit into both categories, including Fred, Mina, and Draco. Ginny Weasley seemed to be glancing equally at Draco and Mina while pretending to pay attention to a conversation about Quidditch between Ron and Harry. At least, Kate assumed that they were talking about Quidditch. There were too many swooping gestures for it to safely be about anything else, and if it was, she decided she really didn't want to know about it.
Kate felt like blessing whoever had arranged for her and Fred to sit at the High Table, should they choose. It meant that she had the option of hot coffee for breakfast. She had certainly never been any sort of morning person, and aside from twitching a few pieces of toast onto her plate, she completely ignored all food in favor of strong coffee with cold milk. Although it had always scandalized all her friends who were coffee "purists," that she would not drink coffee with steamed milk, or for that matter milk heated in any way, she strongly felt that the ability to use her taste buds overrode tradition. In short, she liked being able to taste her coffee, and drink it quickly, without scalding her tongue.
Having gulped a large mug's worth of the beverage, she felt slightly more prepared to deal with the day. She raised an eyebrow at what was considered breakfast food there – aside from the toast, and some fresh scones with clotted cream, nothing looked particularly appetizing. She doubted that she would be able to add cold pizza to the breakfast menu, but seriously considered having her parents send her some Corn Bran in their first care package of the year. She had long ago learned the charms required to keep bugs and small animals from being attracted to food in places it didn't belong; it was the only way her mother had ever let her eat in her room. She felt confident that she'd be able to keep some food squirreled away in her rooms here. Quite possibly, the sooner she had some, the better.
She played with her toast, still yawning behind the back of her hand. Six hours asleep after thirty-six awake simply wasn't enough, even if she still remembered an old boyfriend's trick of "power napping." In short doses, it would increase the rest gained from a period of sleep up to four times as much; unfortunately, when one went to sleep alone, it would only add half as much time as the original. And nine hours' sleep wasn't much better than six.
She jolted out of a doze - Idamn coffee, never kicks in fast enough/I - to a Hall that was nearly empty, and to hear her name being repeated.
"Katharine? Katharine? Are you okay? Katharine? It's time to go, Katharine..."
"Huh? Fred? Oh... what?" She rubbed her hand across her face, shaking her head, trying to wake up again. "Oh! Crap... are we late to meet the Headmaster?" She lapsed into muttering again. "Curse the little green god of fabric remnants, why does this have to happen today?"
Fred looked at her, quite confused by the last thing she'd said. "No, we're not late... well, not yet, but if you don't get a move on, we will be." He grinned at her, to take the sting out of his words. She yawned, leaned back in her chair to stretch her back, gulped a small glass of orange juice, stood, and waved at him to lead the way. Once they left the Great Hall, he paused for a moment to let her catch up, and then offered her his arm.
She took it, gratefully, and used it as an excuse to lean a bit closer to him. "You don't suppose there's a map of this school somewhere, do you? I got so lost last night... I had to follow a cat to my rooms, actually. No idea how it knew where they were."
At the mention of a map, Fred's face lit up for a moment, quickly replaced by suspicion. "I... wait... a /I? I thought Malfoy said he was going to take you to your rooms. What, did he just dump you outside or something? If he did, I'll–"
"No, no, nothing like that, silly. He fell asleep, we were talking till two in the morning, and I didn't want to wake him back up, he's got classes today. So I left his room, and then I realized, down in the dungeons, that I had no idea where my rooms were, and then there was this cat, and I asked it if it knew where my rooms were, and apparently it did. So I followed it, that's all, and I really wish I could find it again, because I didn't get a chance to properly thank it." She took a deep breath, and rolled her eyes. "Gods, and I tease Mina about not being able to tell a story without forgetting to breathe..."
At that point, they had reached the gargoyle at the Headmaster's office, and continued in after a moment. Dumbledore bade them welcome, and to sit, and they did so.
"All right, then, where were we... ah yes, your duties as Head Boy and Girl. Fred, I know that you probably have some familiarity with the concept, as Bill, Charlie, and Percy were all Head Boys in their years, and Miss LaFontaine, you were after all a prefect at El Dorado, were you not?"
"Well, I was really more of an RA, and please, Headmaster, call me Katharine at least."
Fred turned to her, confused. "What's an RA?"
She rubbed the tip of her nose a moment as she thought. "Well, I'm not sure if it's a college thing or an American thing, but an RA – a resident assistant – is a student who takes care of some of the other students. Usually, it's an upperclassman, and if the school has any, they'll have at least two – one for boys, and one for girls. El Dorado Academy had four, because EDA is a very small school – there weren't many more than a hundred students all told, and it took the place of high school really, so there were only four years instead of seven, like here. EDA passed itself off as a fancy private school, so while there were a lot of boarders – it's one of the best schools in the Midwest, but certainly not the only one – and there were quite a few students who lived either in El Dorado itself or in Wichita. I think there were even one or two who lived in Kansas City, but only the seniors. Anyway, as the RAs, my friend Eva and I would arrange activities for the students to get together and get to know each other better, and we'd also help anyone who was having any emotional or mental problems as best we could. We also did some tutoring, along with Joe and Nick, the two male RAs. We split up, and whoever was best in that subject would do the tutoring. Not too many students needed the extra help, since they could either get it from their friends, from the official tutors, or from the teachers. Although, most of the teachers lived in town... the RAs and the school's president were in charge of most of the disciplinary stuff."
Fred looked as though her explanation hadn't helped his confusion much, but Dumbledore was beaming. "Excellent, Katharine, excellent indeed. You will find that your duties shall be much like what they once were. You are certainly welcome to try to arrange any activities you like, although I should advise you not to try to interrupt Quidditch. You will not be in charge of discipline, but you will certainly have a role to play, and you have the ability to take as many as fifty points from each students at any time. You will not be able to directly assign detention, but all of the teachers have been instructed to take your recommendations very seriously. And I ask that you feel free to tutor anyone who you feel needs it, assuming you can get them to agree to it. A few students have already made motions in this direction, most notably Hermione Granger, who is solely responsible for many of her fellow Gryffindors' abilities to pass Potions, and Harry Potter, who has given many of his fellow students a much more thorough grounding in Defense Against the Dark Arts than might have been the case." Dumbledore sobered at that, and sighed. "I also ask that you do what you can as a counselor to the students; there are many who will have found, over the summer, that things are not as they once were, to the detriment of many. And I believe that not all of them will be comfortable discussing such matters with their prefects. There will also, likely, be a few that the prefects are not comfortable discussing such matters with, and the prefects will be instructed to forward such students to you."
Dumbledore paused again, his eyes locked on something behind the two students-who-were-not-students. Kate turned around, and saw a bird in reds and golds, with a tinge of blue at the end of its wings. IIs that... a phoenix? Surely it must be.../I She turned back to look at the Headmaster again. After a minute or two, when he didn't say anything, she glanced at Fred from the corner of her eye, and then addressed Dumbledore. "Sir?"
He shook himself, and the twinkle returned to his eyes. "Ah yes, my apologies. There was one other thing, you see. Fred, you are surely curious why you were asked back to this school?"
"Well, yeah, I was, a bit..."
"I am not unaware of the great popularity of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, you see, and in these dark hours, I think it would be wise to allow a certain level of levity in these halls. Of course, our caretaker, Mr Filch, was most upset when half the outlawed items on his lists found their respectability again, and I ask that you not rub his nose in the matter too much. Also, I must ask that you not test any items on students who do not fully agree to be tested upon, and as such, I recommend that you use this form, or something similar, before doing so." Dumbledore reached into the top of a drawer in his desk and pulled a small scroll from it. He passed it across the top of his desk to Fred, who was trying unsuccessfully to squash an expression of glee.
"Now then. I doubt that the students will know about your roles yet, so feel free to explain them to whomever you like. Most likely, within the week, your duties will start taking a decent amount of time to complete, but for now, you should have some free time. I shall see you at lunch, I am sure." And he dismissed them.
At the bottom of the stairs, Kate turned to Fred. "Listen, could you do me a favor? Take me to my rooms, and then give me about a half hour, before you disappear off to Gryffindor all day?" She smiled at him.
Having not been on the receiving end of one of her smiles before, Fred blinked several times, swallowed hard, and stammered weakly "Er... sure..." as she took his arm. He led her back to her rooms, unable to think of much to say, as she kept smiling at him. "I'll... see you in a little while, then...?" and he backed out of her rooms, still stammering.
She smirked a little as the door closed behind him. She had a little bit of a weakness for redheads, and thought that her new cohort was quite... something. On the other hand, she needed to finish preparing her rooms, and she could at least start on them now.
First things first – she would need a better version of her doorbell charm if she could expect students at odd hours. She decided to change the charm to something more like an intercom system. She started rooting through her bags, and found what she was looking for five minutes later – a nearly- empty Altoids can. There were only about a dozen mints left inside, so she ate two, and placed the rest on her desk for the moment. She knocked some of the powder out of the case, considered it for a moment, and then closed her eyes as she began to visualize what she wanted to Transfigure it to. In the end, it was a small not-quite electronic device, one that looked very similar to Alex's phone – she bit her lip and willed herself not to cry as she thought of him again – with a small screen and a few buttons, along with the cover. She thought a moment more, and then made it into something even closer to a replica of the phone – it had been a PDA, too, and she was itching to play Bejeweled again. She then took one of the mints, and Transfigured it as well, into a push button for the outside of her door. She ate another mint, and then took a third – or perhaps a fifth – and Transfigured it into a small speaker/microphone/camera set. She took the two ex-mints to her doorway, used a sticking charm to attach them to the wall, and persuaded the wall to create a small sign that said "Push Button For Entrance." Satisfied with its placement, she pushed the button. She smiled that her charm worked, as her new intercom beeper went off, and she lifted it to see her face looking down on the screen. IGood, the camera's working at least. I'll wait to test the rest of it later./I She closed the screen, which shut it off, and looked back at the painting.
And then she looked again at the painting, much more closely. She laughed aloud. "Well, well, well... little god of sheep who eat lead paint, I can't believe it. That sly bastard actually got one of Grandma's paintings."
"Your grandmother is a painter?"
She turned around with a gasp and a hex on her lips, finding herself pointing her right hand at Fred. She bit of her curse and took a deep breath. "You really ought to be careful about sneaking up on people, Fred, you could get hurt."
He laughed, a little. "How're you going to hurt me? You don't even have your wand out."
She looked down for a moment before meeting his eyes. "There are more ways to hurt people than with a wand, Fred. Haven't you learned that by now?" Her voice was very soft.
He frowned for half a moment before offering her his arm once again. "Didn't you want me to take you to Gryffindor today? I know that Hermione looked like she wanted a longer chance to talk to you today." It was hardly a smooth change of subject, but it did what it was required to do. She half- smiled at him, and took his arm.
"Lead on, oh sneaky one!" And he took her invitation, and led her to Gryffindor Tower.
hr IAuthor's Note: Okay, so I was hoping to get this chapter out on Friday, but even though I managed to write two scenes at work no less, it just wasn't really cooperating. On the other hand, I got to see the movie on Saturday, so yay!
Credits: "Wesley" is of course from uThe Princess Bride/u by William Goldman – "his eyes were the color of the sea after a storm," plus he's blond, plus it's a kickass movie.
The song is called "Things Behind The Sun," and it's by a folk singer from the seventies with a beautiful voice named Nick Drake. If my sources are correct, he died in his twenties, and it's a terrible thing that that happened to him. His currently-most-famous song is called "Pink Moon," and was featured in a recent car commercial – four people driving in a car with the top down under the moonlight, reach the party, decide "to hell with the party, let's go back to driving around."
Lewis Carroll wrote "Alice in Wonderland," and the scene that flashed into my mind when the painting revealed the doorknob was the one with the talking door that wouldn't let her through, because she didn't have the key.
For the record, my bedroom in my parents' house – the room I'm writing this in – is in fact the color of purple M&Ms, which are one of my favorite candies, and I take my coffee with either way too much sugar or cold milk. Either way, I won't drink it if I think it's too hot. And "too hot" means that nobody tries to steal my coffee once it's drinkable, which suits me fine.
One of my ex-boyfriends taught me the trick of powernapping, after a five- minute scene in one of the dorm lobbies at 5 in the morning after an anime club party. Apparently it equated a twenty-minute nap. I can't do them to myself for the life of me, though.
My RA my freshman year was named Eva. And, although I highly doubt she'll ever read this, just so she knows who this is if she does – EVA ROCKS!!!
And my grandmother is in fact a painter, quite a good one, although she mostly does landscapes – there's a small paint sketch of me at about age five on the wall, in a purple shirt, with a purple balloon, in her driveway, near some purple flowers. I inherited my love of purple from my other grandmother, though.
I'm going to try to put up at least one or two chapters this week, especially since I'll be gone most of next week up to Lilies War in Kansas City. However, if I get any chance, I'll do some writing while everyone else is recovering from their hangovers on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. grins
Oh, and shame on me, I suppose, that this chapter didn't have any HG or SS in it. They will have their time, don't worry, but I felt it necessary to give a little more backstory on Kate, since after all, she's the only character we don't know. Besides, this story won't be only a HG/SS ship by any means.
Enjoy the story, please R&R, and let me know if I screwed up any – I wrote this thing from about five in the morning till a quarter till ten. And even though I'm used to working night shifts, it's now bedtime.
Lunzie