Chapter 16 – Trustworthy

Later that day at lunch, Lizzie received her first owl since term started and noticed Dumbledore's handwriting on the outside of the envelope.

"Lizzie,

Please meet me in my office tonight at 6:30.

Yours truly,
Professor Dumbledore'

"First lesson with Dumbledore," Lizzie said apprehensively.

"That's good, isn't it?" Hermione asked, watching Lizzie rub her face.

"Yeah, I suppose. I mean...I can't say I trust him," she said quietly.

"Why?" Ron asked with a mouthful of his sandwich. Hermione glared at him incredulously.

"He... you know... had us compete in the tournament suspecting it was a trap, withheld information from me all last year, not to mention information about the prophecy from me from the start… then got everyone who cares about me to do what they could to hurt me to bring out the raging death force... then I got kidnapped right after he fled - almost like he knew only Voldemort would be able to surface that parasite and successfully split it... Sirius gets killed in the whole ordeal... I just don't know. I know everyone trusts him and I wouldn't dream of not taking his advice, but it makes me uneasy still," she explained quietly. Hermione nodded in understanding.

"He knows you, knows your potential. It freed you of it, right? I mean is there even a good way of going about this situation? Maybe you-know-who was the only one who could split it..." Ron said.

"Sure... and yes of course he was. It mistook him for me. But I think there's a reason for that... I just don't exactly think I'm better off," Lizzie explained.

"You're not better off without an obscurial?" Ron asked, confused.

Lizzie gestured with her head for them to head out to a more private area. They wandered out onto the far end of the bridge and sat at the rock formation that separated the castle and the grounds.

"Alright. Time to deep dive. From what I was told in Switzerland, the obscurial wasn't even part of me per se, I wasn't the host, hence why it never really surfaced. Dumbledore explained it to me as though I was the host, but that because part of my body died when I took the death curse, it fed off of the part that wasn't alive - and that was why I could suppress it..." Lizzie started to explain.

"He also explained that along with the sedatives I took for so long, I had developed a trauma response that split my mind from the part that was making me unable to cope or function..." she continued. "Muggles refer to this as multiple personality disorder, that's essentially exactly what it is, but it's a slightly different physiology for us...in short, the obscurial was there but was neither affecting my body or conscious mind to begin with," she added.

"In Switzerland, the host we had explained how his father studied obscurials extensively, and based on his research, he didn't believe that it could live or feed off of something that was dead. He insisted that part must have been animated by something with magical power for an obscurial to latch onto it. Like an internal variation of inferious..." she continued, and Hermione frowned looking extremely calculating.

"In Bulgaria, Viktor explained that when a witch kills someone, she could create something called a vedma. It's what muggles there think are witches. He brought it up because mine was looking at us from outside the kitchen window just a couple of days after I poisoned my uncle... I think Vedma and doppelganger are interchangeable, and I've seen her for years... I think… all speculation... but I think I had seen her for so long because she originated from people Voldemort killed. Vedmas or Vedmaks... dopplegangers, whatever they are, they supposedly stalk you," she continued.

"Prior to this summer I hadn't seen her since the maze. I remember... in the maze we were running from a force like an obscurus, it burst out of her when I touched her. Cedric saw her too, it wasn't just me, and Hermione saw her in the woods that night we saved Sirius…. In the maze, I remember stopping to try to shield it to give Cedric more time to get ahead of it, and it funneled itself back into my body. At least I think it did. I had marks and I didn't see her again for more than a year," Lizzie continued. "Then the obscurial suddenly became a threat to me," she concluded.

"So, you're saying you lived with it outside of you?" Hermione asked.

"Remember in the boggart lesson, the first one was what looked like an inferious and it was me the night my family died? Then it became an older version of me that turned into an obscurial?" Lizzie asked. Hermione and Ron nodded.

"I didn't develop an obscurial until I was older, that was a byproduct of abuse and suppressing magic, not the death curse. The inferious looking thing was a byproduct of the death curse. An obscurial is going to feed on what hosts the most magical ability, right? That's only logical if given the choice, because it's a parasite. We already know I retained his powers when he lost his body. So, if Voldemort's powers were animating the only part of me that he could in order to keep them preserved and intact, it couldn't be the part protected by my mother, it would have to be the portion of my body that took the curse. That's what the obscurial latched itself onto, because the power once hosted by one of the most powerful wizards of all time would obviously trump that of a little girl," she explained, and they both seemed to understand. "I think that's why I've always felt a degree of separation from those powers. Explains why I'm awful at occlumency, and only now starting to hone in on legilimemcy, parseltounge sounds like plain English…"

"But then how did it live outside of you?" Ron asked

"I don't think it really did. I severed it mentally. The dementor attacks and the occlumency lessons brought up so many real memories I had of constantly hiding from this thing. I was terrified of her, she stalked me, she showed up everywhere, convinced me I was already dead. I trained myself to live in a different headspace to escape her, and I think I managed to separate her from my mind into something more real and tangible in the process…but strange things happened that I feel connected to even though I couldn't have been there. All those girls at Sacred Heart for example, I've always felt eerily drawn to what happened even though it's been proven I was not there."

"She came back to me when he regained his body though. He used my blood, and we became more entangled. It gave him his powers back, but the obscurial then had a route to me when my mother's protection broke down and he could touch me again..."

"Then when he possessed me at the Ministry, like fully possessed my body, it confused itself. It left with him because it knew his power better. But he can't just absorb it, it's useless without a host, so it dissolved. If I hadn't been protected by my mother's sacrifice all those years, it wouldn't have stayed separate for so long. I think I probably would have been able to live with and control it, considering it was split essentially between two hosts, and one of them was already dead... but I would not have survived the abatement if he wasn't the one to have done it. It went willingly," Lizzie concluded.

"So you're free of the obscurial and the doppelganger thing then?" Ron asked.

"I don't know. The obscurial yes. But I don't think I'm free of the doppelganger... or well the inferious, or whatever this is. We still have a connection, see? It's not going to manifest as a doppelganger anymore though, it's no longer separate," she reasoned.

"But you saw it, in Bulgaria, no?" Hermione asked.

"No, I saw my doppelganger, my vedma, the one I created because I had just murdered my uncle, that was mine, and I killed it. Viktor explained that witches had to kill their own Vedma because only they were able to. Otherwise, they would terrorize them. So I did. But I can't kill his," Lizzie explained.

"But what if it was just yours all along? I mean you killed Quirrell, that priest you think right? Pettigrew?" Ron asked.

"But I started seeing it way before any of that, and I didn't kill my parents. Father Matthew... I didn't feel particularly present in that, had he been dying of a heart attack I wouldn't have helped him either way, but that's not the same as murdering someone with malice. There's no reason to believe he would have survived if someone had interfered. If I caused it to happen though, it would have been inadvertent like with Marge. Satisfying... but inadvertent. I don't think that constitutes pure malice. Quirrell was self-defense. Pettigrew... was revenge, but I was not in mindset to make any rational decisions at that point. I'd been tortured for days, the obscurial was just under the surface, you all were being held hostage, it was malicious but only so because of the extreme circumstances. Something tells me this Vedma thing results from something more premeditated. I killed Vernon and he was helpless; I went there to do it. I was in sound mind. It was vengeful but still malicious," Lizzie reasoned.

"Have you talked to Dumbledore about this?" Hermione asked.

"Not yet. I talked to Remus when the light bulb went off though. If I'm right... he's possessed me my entire life. Never mind the blood protection or the blood wards... it gives me goosebumps to think that every time I was staring back at this version of myself, I was looking at him...all of this protection to keep him out and he's standing right here with me all the time," Lizzie said grimly.

"You're more powerful than you realize just on your own... if you've been internally fighting him your entire life and it hasn't killed you... well you are definitely the chosen one," Ron said with a weak smile.

"But can I even kill him then?" Lizzie asked, and they all went quiet and somber at the thought.