Disclaimer: Do I even have to keep doing these? LOL I know it's not mine… and so should you all by now!
Updated: Friday 3rd June 2005
A/N: Dedicated to Pickledishkiller, who, without even realising it, inspired me to take this road after sending me a fanfic of my fanfic (!) that explored the illusive 'what if' scenario. A big shout out also to all those who requested more Selina and Lily.
Chapter Eighty Three: Pranks That End BadlyEstella traversed the empty hallways alone; both in her own time and in this, it was her favourite pastime. Growing up in the imposing castle, not much about the place could phase her these days. Knowing her way around so well afforded her the advantage of knowing which hallways were most likely to grant her some peace, and, particularly, which empty classrooms yielded the most privacy.
It was whilst meandering down one of these said hallways that Estella was confronted with a rather unusual sound: the sound of music. Somewhere, nearby, there was a piano in song. Instantly curious, Estella indulged her distinctly Gryffindor tendencies and started searching the rooms around her for the source of the score. She didn't know what she was to expect, but what she found was something she didn't think she'd ever lay eyes on for there, behind door number three, was a modest upright piano, and at the keys, the teenaged form of her mother.
Two heads looked up as she burst into the room.
"What are you doing here?" said Lily, who had been watching Selina play. "What are you doing in this part of the school?"
"I could ask you the same thing." Estella challenged. "Though the answer presents itself. Do you both play?"
"How did you find this room?" asked Selina as she rose from the stool. "Did you follow us?"
"No… I could hear music." Said Estella. "You play beautifully."
"Impossible." Lily shook her head, the girl's tone reminding Estella all too much of Hermione. "We put up silencing charms. Both of us did!"
"Well, I hate to say it, but they must have worn off." Estella shrugged. "But I wouldn't worry too much; the walls are pretty thick and I could only hear it when I was a few doors down."
"Lily." Selina said, looking at the door. "Go check the charms."
Lily was out the door with the door closed before anyone could say another word; then Selina began to play.
"You don't believe I could hear you?" Estella asked with a mix of incredulousness and hurt.
Lily came back inside. "Did you play?"
Selina nodded, and Estella paled.
"I don't know how to explain it, but I could swear I heard music…" Estella sighed. "I'll go if I'm imposing…"
The two girls looked at each other.
"No, it's alright." Selina said finally. "It was just a bit of a shock to be disturbed like that."
"No one comes down this way." Lily added. "We've been here half a day at a time and never gotten interrupted."
"So this is where you disappear to!" said Estella. "Why… why did you never ask me if I wanted to come?"
"Well you're always off helping the boys with their homework; in the subjects we're not in." Lily said. "We didn't think you'd be interested."
"Why, do you play?" Selina asked.
Estella nodded. "I'm not as good as you though, I've only been learning for a few years."
"That's alright," Lily said. "I was learning the Muggle way before Selina started showing me a few things last year."
"Do you have any favourite pieces?" Selina asked.
"Well my teacher was rather into Beethoven, so that's pretty much the extent of what I've learnt so far." Estella said, leaning against the wall by the piano. "Though for what I've been exposed to, I'm also impartial to Brahms and Bach."
"My brother has an affinity for Beethoven." Selina mused.
"Severus plays?" Lily said, surprised.
"We've both been playing since we were small." Selina said. "He's very skilled… though if you valued your health you won't let that get out. Sev plays his cards very close to his chest – it'd be against his image to be known as a pianist."
"Does he ever come down here to play?" Estella asked.
"I don't know." Selina answered honestly. "Personally I can't go the entire school term without playing. Music is a window to…"
"…the soul." Estella recited along with her ascendant, distinctly remembering the line as something her Uncle had confided to her.
Selina began tinkering idly on the keys. "I quite like a bit of Bach myself."
"I would never have guessed they were all wizards!" Lily said.
"How else would their music last the ages?" Both Selina and Estella responded before sharing a bewildered look and laughing at each other's timing.
"We seem to have crossed over into each other's headspace." Selina said, moving over on the stool to make room for the girl she did not know as her daughter. "Sit down, I'll teach you some Bach."
"Really?" Estella said, sitting down without hesitation. "That'd be great!"
"Lily, you sit down too. We can do it together." Selina said, gesturing to the space on her right. "Aries, how are you at reading music?"
"To be honest? Quite lousy." Estella admitted sheepishly. "What I can play I have pretty much had magically committed to memory. Drives my tutor mad, because I'm always after him to spell my hands! I'm not too bad at reading music, but I can't keep up with my hands, if you know what I mean."
"Curious that you have a male teacher." Selina noted absently. "He should not be so giving with the charms. You'll never have the incentive to practice your reading otherwise."
"I think he just likes to hear me play." Estella shrugged, inwardly sighing as she thought of how lonely and quiet her Uncle's quarters must be like at that moment. "He'd feel redundant if I didn't have to come to him to practice."
"Relative, is he? Don't worry, my Aunt was the same." Selina smiled. "They all like feeling needed, don't they?"
"I think it's a two-way thing." Estella admitted, meeting her mother's eyes.
Grabbing the shorter girl's hand in her own and inspecting her fingers, Selina examined them carefully. "You have the right hands for playing… though you should stop biting your nails; it's rather unbecoming."
"Yes, Mum." Estella rolled her eyes, all the while savouring the instance of getting away with calling the girl that.
Selina scowled in response before settling her posture to play. "Remind me to teach you a manicure charm later." She said offhandedly as she began to play.
Estella was in heaven. The rest of the world could have caved in at that moment and she would not have seen past the fact that she was sitting there, with her mother and godmother no less, and she was happy.
It was some time after dinner that same day, and Estella was still reeling from the afternoon she'd spent with her future mother and godmother. Schedules, houses and subject choices had respectively prevented her from really getting to know the two girls and she'd all but given up hope of truly connecting with them on anything other than the generic bond afforded between amiable students. Now they had fully acknowledged each other's appreciation for the piano, Estella was assured more afternoons like the one she'd just had. While she still wasn't at terms with them to share in their secrets and all the trappings of 'best friends', they did value her for her intellect and welcome her company; and knowing that they did so without knowing whom she really was to them made Estella feel overjoyed. She was still in this state of euphoria as she busied herself in the library, working independently on a Care of Magical Creatures essay.
"Ollerton." The silky voice of Severus Snape loomed over her suddenly as the young Slytherin came across her in his path. "Nice work on the potion last week. It is almost tolerable having you as my partner."
Rolling her eyes, Estella smiled at the closest thing to a compliment the aloof Slytherin was capable of giving, though inwardly she just knew her Uncle was up to something. "Why thank you, Severus. What more can I say? I was taught by the best."
Predictably, the subtle compliment aimed at the talented Potions student – well rather his future self – went completely unchecked.
"Though why you insist on associating yourself with such a rag tag bunch of blood traitors and Mudbloods is beyond me." Severus sneered.
'Ah, so this is what he truly wants to talk about!' Estella thought to herself. 'He's here to talk politics.'
"Need I remind you that your sister is amongst that group?" Estella bit back, inwardly reflecting on how his almost congenial greeting had been shot to dust by his follow through. Not that it surprised her, though, for twenty years in the future and he still needed to work on his people skills.
"Don't you concern yourself with my sister. She will come to her senses sooner or later." Severus looked down his abnormally long nose at the girl before him, and Estella knew he was referring to his father's plans to palm Selina off in an arranged marriage. "Would you care to share with me, however, why you didn't see fit to request those imbeciles be expelled after they almost killed you out on the Quidditch pitch?"
"It was an accident." Estella stated honestly. "Though for your information, they were merely teaching me how to fly. I'm sorry if your experiences of the game are not pleasant, but I assure you that, conventionally, Keep Away can be quite fun."
Severus gave her a unreadable look, his face moving so it was inches from her own. "For your information, Miss Ollerton." He spat, with a candour that was eerily reminiscent of his future self "that curse was aimed at me. It was an accident that it hit you instead."
"I won't deny that." Estella sighed. "But whoever the target, the result was unintended."
"Oh so that makes it excusable then, does it?" Severus growled. "I thought you were supposed to be a Ravenclaw?"
"I am, what is your point?" Estella retorted testily.
His rouse failed, Severus grunted in acknowledgement before stalking off, slightly put out by his intended victim's candour. No matter what he did, the girl was just not intimidated by him. It was almost as though she knew something he didn't, and it unnerved him. He was still mulling over his encounter with the mysterious Ravenclaw when his mind started to shift to other matters… the four Gryffindors he despised with every fibre of his being.
For the past several months, Severus Snape had been watching the four Gryffindors closely. To an observant eye, a pattern of their behaviour was readily discernable. Certain times of the month where their pranking would be at its peak, contrasted with several days each month where the four would appear excessively fatigued or altogether absent from classes. The teachers, it seemed, didn't think there was anything wrong with this consistent lapse of attentiveness, but Severus smelt a rat.
Then, just before he had been inspired to confront the new girl about the continued presence at the school of his tormentors, Severus had, from his vantage point at a window in the library that overlooked the school grounds, witnessed the most bearable of the quartet, Lupin, being escorted by the school's nurse into the direction of the Forbidden Forest. Did the strange boy have family who lived in the Forest? Was someone meeting them at the apparation point to address a family emergency? If that as the case, why didn't they use the Floo or arrange to meet at the gates of the school?
Somehow, Severus Snape just knew that wherever Madame Pomfrey was taking Remus Lupin it had something to do with the distracted behaviour of his classmates. Whatever it was, Severus Snape was committed to getting to the bottom of it.
"Oi, Snivellus! What you doing snooping around out here?" Sirius Black's voice drawled from behind him suddenly as Severus found himself out on the school grounds in pursuit of his answers.
"I know what you're up to, Black!" Severus snapped, spinning around, his wand levelled. "I intend to get some answers."
Holding his hands up in mock surrender, Sirius edged backwards. "Whoa! I'm sure whatever you need assistance with I could perhaps be of some help."
"Right, like you would tell me where Lupin just went and why Pomfrey returned without him!" Severus sneered, his eyes looking past Sirius towards the Forbidden Forest.
Sirius smirked. Evidently his future brother-in-law spent far too much of his time inhaling potion fumes to pay much attention to the lunar cycle. "He went through the tunnel under the Whomping Willow. It leads to the Shrieking Shack." Sirius said, shrugging nonchalantly. "There's a rose-shaped knot at the base of the tree that you can press with a stick that stops the Willow from, er, whomping you. The tunnel's directly below it, under the roots. See for yourself."
"I suppose you're going to tell me Lupin's indigent family lives in that ramshackle excuse of a house and he visits them?" Severus narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
"No, I'm not." Sirius shook his head. "It's really none of your business why he goes there, Snivellus. Though I suppose I can't stop you from indulging your own intrusive search for knowledge."
With that, Sirius stalked off, barely able to conceal his smirk. Chancing a glance over his shoulder to see the predictable Slytherin walking towards the young Willow tree, he acknowledged that his spontaneously wrought plan was in motion. Morphing into his newly acquainted animagus form he bounded off through the forest, taking the short cut to the shack so as to intercept the indulgent snake before he got himself killed.
Meanwhile, Estella was following hot on Severus' heels. He had left one of his textbooks in the library and she felt obliged to return it to him. Since she wasn't sure which direction he had headed off in, but once she, quite by chance, saw from a window her Uncle headed towards the Whomping Willow and recognised by her knowledge of the lunar cycle that the full moon would be rising that night, it didn't take Estella long to realise what was happening.
Running now from her place on the Castle's first floor, she barrelled out of the Castle's main doors, headed down the hill towards the Willow in the distance that her Uncle had disappeared beneath. Estella's lungs were burning. Was she doing the right thing by interfering with this historical turn of events? Based on what her Uncle had told her, James Potter had not appreciated her father's 'sense of humour' and pulled Severus out of harm's way… but what if her presence changed all of that? What if James didn't know, and it was up to her to do something? What would happen if her Uncle was bitten or killed? Who would have been there to raise her?
Her breathy gasps of warning drowned out by the driving wind of the night sky, Estella tumbled into the tunnel behind her Uncle with such force that the air was knocked from her lungs. It was no use. He was so far ahead of her in the tunnel she couldn't even hear the echo of his footsteps. All she could do was run after him and hope.
Heaving the trapdoor open at the end of the tunnel, Estella hauled herself into the familiar hallway of the Shrieking Shack.
"Severus?" She whispered, he breath coming in ragged gasps as she struggled to catch her breath. There was no answer.
Suddenly, the sounds of two sets of feet thundering down the stairs above her alerted her to her Uncle's location.
"Get the hell out of here, Severus! Go!" Remus Lupin screamed uncharacteristically at the defiant Slytherin, hauling him unresponsively down the stairs towards the trapdoor from whence he came. "You don't have anymore time!"
Fatefully, Severus resisted, wasting the precious time he'd unknowingly need to escape in just a few moments time. The moon had just risen, and it was calling the wolf to the surface. With one last burst of humanity, Remus managed to shove Severus down the remaining flight of stairs forcefully, giving the emerging werewolf some distance between himself and his soon to be prey.
Unfortunately for Severus, his ankle snapped in the fall. Dazed and affronted by the show of force, Severus' first concern was to preserve his pride; the selectively dim Slytherin yet to fully appreciate the dangers he was subjecting himself to the longer he dawdled.
"Now look here, Lupin!" Severus shouted in annoyance, letting out a hiss of pain as he tried to stand and face his foe. By the time he saw with his own eyes what was happening to the unassuming Gryffindor, Estella had reached him, and was wasting no time in hauling the shocked, unresponsive form of her uncle towards the trapdoor.
"Werewolf!" Severus said weakly, his voice an uncharacteristic squeak. "What? You…"
"No time for questions, Sev." Estella panted, her face flush with exertion, her body going rigid when she heard the completely transformed wolf howl. "Must hurry."
Trying to push a young man who was more or less twice her size towards a opening no more than three feet square in a dark room, was no easy feat – especially when said individual was succumbing to shock; had an immobilising injury and you were physically exhausted from running close to a mile as though your life depended on it. With the wolf closing in on them, Estella realised that there would not be enough time to get them both through the trapdoor. Giving her silent Uncle one last desperate shove towards the trapdoor, hoping his eyes had adjusted enough in the dim light and he had enough wits about him to find the rest of the way down the hole unaided, Estella pulled away, mind set on drawing the werewolf's attention away from her injured and disorientated Uncle.
Drawing her wand and taking a deep breath, Estella threw a hex at the werewolf, succeeding in incensing the animal enough to abandon its stalking of what he could undoubtedly smell to be the weaker prey. Suddenly finding herself face to face with the imposing beast, Estella felt her bravado slipping away.
'Damn it, Black, you got through this once.' She tried to soothe herself with a pep talk, even though she knew she was pushing her luck. Backing into a all-too-familiar room, memories plagued her mind, the re-emergent fear catching her off guard as it began to dawn in her heart.
"No." She said forcefully, throwing another destabilising hex at the wolf, keeping it wary of her. In the hallway, she heard the trapdoor slam. Her uncle had gotten away – now all she had to do was find a way out herself. The sound of a dog barking and pounding hooves hitting turf in the distance was a welcome sound in her ears.
Sirius and James.
All she had to do was hold out until they got here. Everything would be alright just as soon as they got here.
What on earth was taking them so long?
To calm her nerves as she darted this way and that, throwing harmless, yet distracting hexes at the increasingly maddened werewolf; Estella concentrated on recalling the notes of one of her favoured piano pieces, Moonlight Sonata. The soothing tones washing over her mind like a warm hug as the offending moonlight seeped through the cracks in the drapes, bathing her in light, Estella felt at peace. Everything slowed down, and she began to see what was in front of her with renewed clarity.
It surprised her, then, when the wolf lunged at her, swiping her wand from her hand with a meaty paw and drawing blood. Whether it was because the wolf was just too quick for her, or if it was because she was distracted by the pacifying music in her mind and the approaching sound of her cavalry, Estella didn't have time to consider.
All hell was breaking loose.
Scared now - bleeding and broken without her wand - Estella's mindset regressed to that of the frightened six year old who had once defied the odds all those years ago. Backing into the very same wall of tapestries, Estella tried to edge away in the direction she knew the trapdoor to be. Between the melodic hum of the sonata reaching its peak in her head and the familiarity of the situation and its conclusion reassuring her, Estella had not given up hope.
'You can do this!' She repeated to herself over and over. 'You've done it once, you can do it again!'
What she wasn't counting on, however, was the change in the wolf's demeanour. Younger, and a little more ticked off than their previous meeting, Moony was not in the mood for toying with his prey this time round. The precious time she had all but borrowed when she tempted fate was running short, for no sooner had she allowed herself a sigh of relief after having seen Padfoot and Prongs storm into the far side of the room behind Moony did her luck run out.
Moony attacked.
Reeling back as though stung, Sirius and James, in their animagus forms, could barely bring themselves to look upon the heartbreaking sight of the girl lying there in a pool of her own blood. Mortified grey and hazel eyes then taking in the sight of Moony's bloodstained jaw, the pair were overcome with a tirade of conflicting emotions. Remus was one of their closest friends. Anger, hatred, fear, love, sadness… Neither knew what to think. Though they couldn't bring themselves to look at the victorious form of the werewolf as it stood defiantly between himself and the now cursed Ravenclaw, or reconcile the creature with the friend they knew; Sirius, for one, could do one thing. He blamed himself. There was little question in his mind that Aries had followed Severus into his trap and rescued him from a fate he had unwittingly prescribed the irritable Slytherin to. How could he be so stupid as to misjudge the time he would take to get to the Shack when not using the tunnel? The damn Slytherin must have ran all the bloody way.
Exchanging a dismayed look at Prongs, who was softly keening to himself, Sirius moved to approach the unmoving girl, tears flowing freely from his doggy eyes, the room filled with his pained whines. As predicted, Moony raised himself on his haunches, snarling viciously in his attempt to defend the fallen girl, his instincts as alpha of his pack preceding all else.
She was Moony's now.
Admitting defeat, Sirius and James kept silent vigil from a distance Moony seemed to accept. They could then only watch on in a mix of silent awe and revulsion as the wolf cleaned the unconscious child's wounds and, finally sated, curled up around the girl protectively, keeping her traumatised body warm with his fur for the rest of the enduring night.
At peace for the moment, the of-mind parties in the room could only hope to keep the moment frozen in time.
The morning would not be as forgiving.
End Chapter: Pranks That End Badly