Chapter 8:
It has only been twenty minutes since I was in Remus' office…it has only been twenty minutes since I felt mortal again…only twenty minutes. I left Remus with a promise that I will return tomorrow night.
My journal has been returned to me, whole and unsullied. I remember the first time I saw it-it was in the window of an antique store, its green cloth covers bidding me to touch them. I wanted it…I wanted to record the happy moments of my life in its perfect white pages…I wanted happy moments. A part of me had always known that someday I would escape my father's scornful glare, that someday I would be free…that someday I would be happy. This journal was to log that momentous day, and the happy days that would surely come after. I bought it the day I got my Hogwarts letter. I remember running home with it, eager to record my feelings. Its pristine pages wanted to be smeared with ink, to feel the scratch of my quill; but I resisted its allure, it was to be saved-squirreled away until my day of liberation. And so it went for 7 years. It never left my side-it was a constant reminder for me that there were better days to come…a promise of a brighter future. But before those promises could be fulfilled it was taken from me.
It had been a week before graduation. The days were sunny and free of the burdens of exams. I had planned to spend the rest of my last few evenings at Hogwarts immortalizing the memory of the one place I had known happiness and safety. It was a place where I could live vicariously through someone by means of words; beautiful words strung out in ink and paper.
I only had to endure one more class before I could revel in the freedom that comes with the closing of another school year: Potions. I had despised Potions class-you would think that odd, as I was quite capable in this class. I only started to loathe it a few weeks earlier. My Professor was a brilliant woman, who had dreams of grandeur. She wanted to break off from Hogwarts and start her own school of potions. But Gringotts has a very tight grip on their purse strings; they weren't about to invest thousands of galleons on a failure. They wanted Professor Acacia to develop a potion that would secure her school's fame and prestige. She worked tirelessly on a potion that would cure Lycanthropy (Lycanthropy being the ailment which causes a human to turn into an animal during the night, only to revert to human form upon sunrise; werewolves being an example of lycanthropy). She presented her findings to our class; beaming with pride over her ingenuity, it was only my great misfortune that I would be the on to find a fatal error in her concoction.
It was a complex potion, with many steps; her list of ingredients was a menagerie of rarities. Two of which included the tears of a Veela and a lock of Gorgon hair; although these two ingredients, separately, are the basis of only the most powerful medicinal potions, when combined they form a most deadly poison.
It is the hatred of the Gorgons that makes it deadly. You see, Gorgons have the bodies of beautiful women, perfect in every imaginable way; their only flaw is their tress of snakes-which have the power to turn people to stone. As a result, the wizarding community avoided Gorgons; Veelas, on the other hand, are one of the most beautiful magical creatures, and are adored and admired. That is why Gorgons will forever envy the Veela and it is this envy that fills her with hatred. The two should never meet, even in the bottom of a cauldron.
I asked her if this was true. Being that it was, she told me I was correct. It was then that she realized her folly. She had to withdraw her proposal to Gringotts and once again allow her dreams to slip from her grasp. It was then that she began to loath me. It had suddenly become her life's mission to, as she said, "Return the favor". She would try to torment me at every turn. It was unfortunate for her that I was quite used to this sort of treatment; after all, my home had built on a foundation of abuse. It became the bane of her existence that she could not make me suffer. This would be her last chance to hurt me, for it was my last year at Hogwarts. She strolled down between the rows of tables like she normally would and upon a fluke, picked up my journal. She inspected it and noticing the look of alarm on my face, realized just what she had in her hand. Finally, she had discovered my weakness, my Achilles' heel. She confiscated it with a smug look of satisfaction across her face, telling me that I could retrieve it that night.
I foolishly thought that she would return it to me. Such stupidity. That evening I stopped in the library to gaze upon it one last time. Remus was there-as always. He smiled weakly at me and asked me how my day went, as was the routine. Upon hearing what Professor had done, he excused himself from my presence. I had assumed that he had business elsewhere; without giving it another thought I proceeded to Professor Acacia's dungeon office. She was sitting at her desk when I arrived. My journal was nowhere to be found-little did I know that it was sitting in the mouth of her fireplace. She smiled and rose to meet me at the doorway of her office but as she passed her fireplace she asked me if it felt cold in the dungeons. Not thinking anything of it, I replied that it was-it was always cold in the dungeons. With a sinister smile she asked me to start a fire for her. Not wanting to be rude, I obliged. I ask her for my journal and with a cruel curl of her lips she told me in a voice reeking with mock-concern, that she must have misplaced it in the fireplace. I had unwittingly set my dreams aflame. I could feel my tears well, my eyes stung with a feeling of foolishness and loss. I couldn't stand being there any longer…I ran…her laughter filling the halls as I did.
But fate has an odd sense of humour; who would have known that my journal would some day be returned to me and that I would be the one to find a potion that would alleviate the pains of Lycanthropy. I had only created the Wolfsbane Potion recently but according to Dumbledore, it had proven quite successful. The irony of it all. It makes me wonder what else fate has in store for me…
Ah, I can see the door to my chambers. Soon I will feel the blissful numbing of sleep. A man haunts my door; what is he up to? Could it be? It looks like…