Chapter 7 – Vedma

Two days passed with great tension between Lizzie and Remus. She didn't know how to approach him or what to say, and he didn't seem to want to look at her. Lizzie had forgotten in the commotion about preparing the mandrake leaf and slipped it under her tongue so she could plant it with the potion when they eventually got to school.

News broke that Vernon died and Remus and Tonks kept quiet about Lizzie being involved in it, but this only seemed to increase the tension between them.

Lizzie had seen the doppelganger not just the once but every time she looked out into the woods for the days that followed. Making up for lost time, are you? Lizzie thought to herself every time she stared back at the milky white eyes. Why are you here? She whispered to herself nervously.

The answer came the following night in a dream she had about her uncle and the man he had illegitimately married her to a couple of years prior.

Cold sweat was breaking out around her hairline as she watched like a spectator what he had done all those years, her unconscious past self-laying there in her bedroom at Privet Drive, lifeless and limp while her uncle locked the door behind him as he left Damien alone with her. Lizzie's heart raced in anger; it was like a film with no pause button. 'Wake up!' She screamed at herself, 'God damn it you pathetic little bitch, just wake up!' She screamed shamefully; an irrational amount of anger was directed at herself instead of him. But she didn't look back at herself in the mirror across from her on the wall, she looked back at her doppelganger. When Lizzie turned around, they were suddenly at the hospital Vernon was in and Damien had followed her up to the room, his white doctors coat hanging down to his knees. He hovered in the hall and left abruptly in quick stride when he realized what she'd just done.

Looking out the window of the room and down at the parking lot, Lizzie watched herself follow him to his car. Heart hammering and not consciously knowing what her doppelganger was planning to do, Lizzie rushed out to the parking lot to head them off. By the time her feet hit the asphalt, they were both gone.

Lizzie startled awake to a quick glimpse of the man standing over her bed but turned on the table light to see the girl looking back at her instead with a menacing grin. Very real, very solid, very much just a few feet away from her.

Lizzie nearly screamed but no sound left her throat when the girl in front of her covered her own mouth her pale hand.

Lizzie backed herself as far as she could into the wall behind her and curled up in an upright fetal position on the bed as the white-eyed menace crawled forward toward her. She reached out a hand to touch Lizzie's face and everything felt as though it moved in slow motion, time weighed down with the apprehension of not knowing what would happen when after all these years she finally touched her.

As soon as the cold hand pressed against the side of her face, Lizzie apparated. Looking up all she registered was that she was in the passenger's side seat of a car, it was pitch black with no streetlights, and the car was going far too fast down the road.

Looking to her right she saw Damien driving, who startled out his skin by her sudden presence in the car and jerked it violently to side. Lizzie reached for the wheel to straighten it but the car launched itself off the road and down a steep tree embankment. Before colliding, Lizzie closed her eyes tightly, much like the freight train incident, she opened them just feet away on the outside of the vehicle.

Shaking violently in complete panic and confusion, she peered in through the window of the demolished car to see him staring back blankly, his skull cracked open over the steering wheel. Lizzie screamed and fell backward in reverse stride. She'd killed him, but she hadn't. There was a snapping sound from behind her and her doppelganger smiled wide victoriously. Getting to her feet quickly, Lizzie bolted toward her, running barefoot through the foliage and dense array trees until cracking sounds could be heard around her, as though a gaggle of people had just apparated to those woods. Without a second thought, Lizzie apparated back to woods surrounding Viktor's home in Bulgaria before she was spotted.

None of what just happened made the slightest bit of sense to her, the only proof she had that it happened at all were the cuts on the soles of her feet from running. Nobody had stirred or woken this time, she was gone no more than ten minutes. Instinct told her to wake Remus, but a voice told her that this particular incident needed to stay in the tight confines of her obviously still extremely fragmented mind.

The following morning, Remus noticed Lizzie's changed demeanor. She wasn't just tense and awkward, she was jumpy and easily frightened. There was a mist outside from a low bearing cloud that hung over the trees leaving a thick blanket of fog that nearly touched the forest floor surrounding the house. It looked impossibly cold and foreboding for a summer day.

"Lizzie?" Remus asked, touching her shoulder as she heated up water for coffee on the stove. She startled hard and flinched at his touch not having heard him. The boiling water splashed up on her arm and she let out a harsh quick shriek of pain.

Remus grabbed her arm to run it under cold water. "You alright?" He asked nervously but she was staring up out of the window above the sink.

Just a few feet from the window was an outline of the girl from the night before, eyes fixed on Lizzie with a curious expression. Lizzie's body went rigid and trembled in Remus's grip. "R-rem-us, can you see her?" She asked just above a mumble. Breaking her stare with the girl through the window and looking up Remus, she didn't need him to answer. He had frozen in place too, clenching his jaw so tight the vein in his neck twitched.

Viktor walked up beside Lizzie on the other side of her at the sink, a presence she didn't notice until he spoke.

"How long have you had a Vedma, Lizzee?" He asked, also looking back at the girl who was now walking away from them into the fog.

"a... what?" She asked with a dry throat.

"A Vedma," he repeated looking both frightened and sympathetic. "I thought you might when I met you," he admitted. She stared back confused.

"The doppleganger?" She asked. "Most all my life," she admitted.

"I don't know vat a doppelganger is," he said simply.

"What is a Vedma then?" She asked, Remus listened closely, remembering her boggart.

"Vedmas are what muggles here in Bulgaria have always thought were vitches. Real vitches were like you and Tonks, Vedmas were created by vitches who killed people and are feared amongst us as much as they are amongst muggles. They're evil. They stalk their maker, they make them do unspeakable things, then they become her when she dies. Evil doers killed people and then kept them when they presented themselves. They tried to control them. Vitches who killed knew they had to kill their vedma. But it was like killing themselves. The soul splits. It is sad to be possible to get rid of it through pure remorse but that was often extremely difficult considering these vitches often killed the people who had persecuted them. If they did not kill or otherwise get rid of the Vedma, the Vedma would kill them. It is called a Vedmak for men, but manifests slightly differently," he explained.

"I've seen her most all my life," Lizzie whispered, looking back out of the window nervously. "I thought she was a doppelganger."

"I thought it was an inferius," Remus said, ironing his face.

"Doppleganger is probably what brits use to describe the same phenomena," Krum said. "It is like an inferius though, an inferius that is animated by a split soul," he said to Remus.

Sudden dawning washed over Lizzie. She paced momentarily around the kitchen with a calculating expression her face. With the slightest movement sensed from outside, which could just as well have been an animal, she bolted out the back door and disappeared into the thick fog.

"Liz, WAIT!" Remus roared and followed her, moving his wand through the fog to clear some of the path.

Lizzie was running to the sound of a separate pair of feet in the distance but could barely see around her.

"LIZZIE!" She heard Remus yell from afar.

The girl in the dirt, the maze, the cupboard, everywhere she had ever seen her raced through her mind like wildfire as she ran. Of course she had to kill the menace, but why hadn't it killed her by now? She thought.

Several yards into the fog, Lizzie made out an outline and pointed her wand in front of her. The girl now looked three years old and tears streamed down Lizzie's face as she hesitated. She looked down at her feet and focused. Looking back up, the girl was now eleven and with another moment of hesitation an exact mirror of herself less the eyes stood ahead of her. Lizzie couldn't say the spell, she didn't know what would happen if she did. Would it kill her too? Would it rebound? She knew nothing. As though the girl sensed her hesitation, she approached slowly, stopping just a foot from her face, eyes completely level. Sweat was pooling profusely on Lizzie's face and she trembled with trepidation. It was too close to use magic and she was too scared to back away. The yelling of her name in the surroundings sounded muffled as though they were both now underwater.

With a quick, sharp, tight jerk of her arm, Lizzie flicked her lock knife she had quietly pulled from her pocket across the neck of the girl and backed away as she keeled forward and fell face down into the forest floor, but instinctively touching her own neck, her hand was covered in blood. Frantically using her wand, she sealed the wound before it spilled forward and staggered over to a tree for support. Lizzie's breathing was heavy and uneven, mind in a shock as a low hum rang through her ears. She felt like something severed deep in the base of her chest and then the pain subsided slowly, and she felt like she'd been robbed of something essential but couldn't place what.

"LIZZIE?!" She heard Remus yell again. He was close but neither of them could see through the fog.

"NOOO!" She heard him yell and it startled her back into full awareness. The only thought passing through her was desperate hope that she would never hear that particular sound leave his body again. It was the vocal embodiment of pure agony.

Moving forward toward where the girl was lying face down, she heard Remus fall to his knees, but his uneven breath stopped abruptly when he rolled her over and Lily's green eyes were not the ones staring back.

"Remus?" Lizzie asked in a small voice, reaching out in front of her knowing he was close as his outline came into view. Before she reached him, she felt arms around her shoulders.

"Careful," she whispered, and he looked down at her neck. "I'm ok," she added, and he buried her face in his shoulder.

"You stopped my heart, kid," he whispered into her head.

"I just killed myself," she whispered into his shoulder trembling.