64. O Children
Bela was tapping his nose against her face. She had woken up the previous night, brought the creature from his cage to her bed to cuddle up with him, and downed a second dose of the sleeping potion. She'd then slept through breakfast and first period, which she had free, but Charms was to begin in twenty minutes.
She was dreading it, as half the D.A. was going to be there. Never in her life had she felt lower than she did now. After what had happened the previous afternoon, how was she supposed to carry on, walk into class and sit amongst her former comrades like everything was normal? Would they even allow her near them?
With a miserable expression on her face, she told the bat, "I was supposed to be their leader, and I failed." He stretched out on his back and looked up at her with that puppy dog face, and she seriously felt like there was sympathy in his eyes. "I fucked up everything," she went on. "I should've just... kept quiet and let them do whatever they wanted to do."
And perhaps then she'd be lying dead right now, but the others could've gone on, Puffy still could've brought them in and out of headquarters. Scoffing, she said, "Die a hero or live as a coward." And then, after a pause, "Turns out I'm a coward."
She returned the bat to his cage with some melon pieces before trudging off to Charms. When she came to the third floor, Neville was waiting for her. "You've gotta talk to me, you have to tell me what's going on," he said desperately.
With a sigh, she replied, "I told you everything yesterday. I'm out."
"You weren't out on Wednesday when you stood up with the rest of us."
"Yes, well, that was Wednesday. I've come to my senses."
He looked away from her, shaking his head to himself, and then gestured towards an empty classroom. "Come on," he said, and she followed him in. He shut the door behind them and stood hunched over a chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Something happened, I know it did," he insisted. "Pansy and her clique attacked you the last time, when Umbridge caught us. Did they do it again? Or was it the Carrows?" He paused, before adding, "Or was it Snape?"
"Nobody did anything, Neville. You know how I've felt about the stuff Seamus and the others have been doing. We've all been outed, and it's not safe anymore. I felt all right about it when nobody knew anything, but..." She shrugged, trailing off.
"Callie, you're fearless, you've always been," he argued. "You can't tell me something didn't happen to make you want to quit the D.A."
"Something did happen, they found us out."
"And the other teachers know, too. The bloke told McGonagall and Flitwick and Sprout to punish us, but they didn't. We told McGonagall about how he'd Cruciated you and me during the first class, and she was furious. We all had to stop her from going after the bastard right then and there. We've got them on our side now. They can help us. They can protect us."
A bitter expression came over Callie's face. Of course their heads of house wouldn't have sided with Carrow and punished them. And maybe Slughorn wouldn't have punished her either - certainly not the way the Carrows had. But if Neville and the others had had to go through what she'd gone through, perhaps they too would be rethinking whether it was all worth it.
She wanted to tell him what they'd done, and how the sister had threatened her with more of the same. But she wouldn't put it past him to try and kill the Carrows. And if McGonagall had been that enraged over the relatively mild treatment Amycus had given her and Neville in class, what would she do if she heard about this?
Just keep quiet, she thought. Don't stir up trouble for everyone.
"I'm sorry," she said in a despondent voice, "but I can't do this anymore."
He stared at her in disbelief. "So you're just... giving up? Callie, that isn't you."
No, it wasn't. And she hated herself for letting the Carrows get to her, but she was afraid. Lying in that dungeon all night, all she could think was, I don't want to die. After all her talk about fighting for what she believed in and dying a hero, she couldn't deny that she wasn't so fearless. And it hadn't only been the physical torture, but the agony of being locked up alone in the dark and praying that somebody would come for her. Wondering how many days she could survive without food or water or fresh air. Imagining her own decaying body lying in that room for who knew how long.
She kept her eyes on the ground, trembling at the memory of it all as he approached her. "They did do something, didn't they?" he asked. "Callie, please, just tell me-"
But he cut himself off. He had brought his hand up to her cheek in what would've been a comforting manner, but she'd flinched. Whether it was because he had come from her blind side, or because she was oversensitive after all the pain and the beating, she didn't know. But he was taken aback by her reaction to him touching her.
"S- Sorry," he whispered, and then studied her a moment. "Bloody hell, you didn't want to talk to me yesterday, and now you won't even look at me." Cautiously, he took her hand in his and added, "Christ, you're shaking. Callie, for God's sake, please tell me what happened."
"Nothing happened," she insisted. "Now can we please just drop it? We've gotta get to class."
"Forget about class!" he nearly shouted, throwing his hand up in frustration. Once again, she flinched at the movement.
Sighing, she said, "Neville, I don't wanna talk about this anymore," and turned to leave. But he grabbed her by the arm to try and stop her, and she barked, "Don't touch me!" jerking herself out of his grip.
"Why are you acting like you hate me all of a sudden?" he demanded.
"Because I want you to leave me alone!" she shot back. "Just... stop, please." She still couldn't look at him; the desperation and hurt in his voice was bad enough. But the more he badgered her about what had happened, the more distressed she was becoming. In fact, she started to feel as if the walls were closing in on her, and her heart was pounding loudly in her chest. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered if she might be having a panic attack.
"I've gotta get out of here," she said, pulling the door open and running out. If he'd attempted to follow her, she didn't notice. She just had to get somewhere where she could be alone. Without really making the conscious decision to go there, she ended up on the second floor and barged into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, leaning over the sink and struggling to catch her breath.
"Who's there?" the ghost called out.
Why had she chosen this place? She had wanted to be alone. Shutting her eyes and sighing to herself, she said, "It's Callie. Callie Warbeck."
Myrtle floated out from her stall at the back of the room and repeated, "Callie Warbeck? Well, well, long time, no see." She appeared to be quite miffed as she scowled down at Callie. "What has it been, three years? And no visit?"
Rolling her eyes, the living girl replied sardonically, "I'm sorry, Myrtle, I've sort of had a lot going on lately."
"And I suppose you couldn't waste a moment of your precious time on weeping, wailing, miserable Moaning Myrtle," the ghost said bitterly.
"Damn it, Myrtle, fuck off down the toilet, why don't you? I don't need this right now!"
She'd gasped at Callie's use of such an offensive word, then burst into tears, flying off and splashing down her toilet. Callie brought her hands to her face, feeling bad about the way she had spoken to the sorrowful dead girl. Bloody hell, what's happening to me? She could feel herself approaching a breaking point; this had been the longest God damn week of her life, and it was all too much. I can't handle this, for Christ's sake!
Still struggling to breathe, she looked into the mirror and saw somebody sneaking towards the exit behind her. With a start, she whipped around and drew her wand, but the skinny blond boy immediately disarmed her.
"What are you doing in here?" Malfoy demanded.
"What are you doing in here?" she shot back. She had to hold onto the sink behind her, as her legs were shaking so badly that she thought she might collapse.
Holding his wand on her, he explained, "I came here to get away from everyone. But apparently there's no good place to get some bloody privacy in a seven-story castle!"
"I'll leave then," she said with a sneer. Eyeing his wand, she added, "Lower that thing."
"The hell I will. Now get out!"
Her own wand was laying on the floor ten feet away. Gesturing towards it, she said, "If I summon it, you're going to hex me, aren't you?"
He scoffed and replied, "Like you're not going to hex me if I let you pick it up?"
"Why would I do that?" she asked. "So I could have a little more of what your precious Death Eater buddies gave me the other night?"
The corner of his mouth twitched, and she saw that his own outstretched hand was trembling slightly.
"I'm not going to do anything," she went on. "I can't. They made sure of that." He didn't look entirely convinced, so she reminded him, "I had the chance to Cruciate you and I didn't. Do you remember that? I took it myself instead of doing it to you."
They stared at each other in silence, but after a moment he moved towards the spot where her wand lay, never lowering his own. Bending down to grab it up, he warned, "I'll kill you if you try anything. I mean it." He approached her very slowly and held it out, but when she went to take it, she overshot completely and her hand ended up about two inches from where the wand was held. The lack of vision on her left side had thrown her off.
Furrowing his brow, he muttered, "What the hell was that?"
She bit her lip, tears threatening to fall at the harsh reminder of her ruined eye. How am I ever supposed to fight like this? she thought. Everything was so disorienting now. "My eye," she said in a quiet voice. "Alecto kicked me in the face and I can't see out of it now."
He leaned in to inspect her eyes closer, and asked, "Are- Are you blind?"
"Only in the left one," she replied.
To her surprise, he actually showed a bit of concern when he asked, "Can it be healed? What did Madam Pomfrey say?"
"I didn't go to her."
"Why not?"
"Because Alecto pretty much said that she'd kill me if I told anyone. And Pomfrey would wanna know what happened. How could I explain it?"
He had no answer for that, not that she'd expected one. He got quiet and seemed to be deep in thought, a sorrowful expression slowly coming over him. After a moment he shook his head to himself and said, "I'm sorry," grabbing her hand and shoving her wand into it. And then he surprised her again by actually turning his back on her, standing hunched over the sink just as she had.
She could see his spine poking out under his shirt, and he still had the dark circles and that pasty, greyish look about him. As she took all that in, his shoulders began to shake, and she asked, "Are you crying?"
"Didn't I tell you to get out?" he shot back. "Go on, Warbeck, leave me alone."
But she didn't move. "What are you crying?" There was resentment in her voice as she said, "You ought to be happy. The Dark Lord has taken over, there are three of your people running the castle-"
"They're not my people," he cut in, raising his head to look at her through the mirror. "That bastard Snape is a no-good, bloody traitor." He banged his fist against the sink and said, "Damn it, my father brought him into the Dark Lord's circle and now he's getting all the favor while my family's been kicked aside like dogs! My father used to be in Snape's position - he used to be second-in-command."
"Well, I'm very sorry for him," she replied sarcastically. "Must be tough, not being Head Muggle-Hunter anymore."
"You don't understand. I don't give a damn about muggles or muggle-borns."
"Oh, I know you don't."
"I don't care about blood. I just want this to be over, I can't take it anymore!" He paused for a second, then slammed his fist into the mirror, shattering it and making Callie jump. "I can't take it anymore, I want out!" he screamed. "I want everything back the way it was, I want my life back!" He buried his face in his hands and slid down to the floor, sobbing.
Callie studied his pathetic form. His right hand was covered in blood from the mirror, and a bit of it dribbled onto his white shirt. She conjured a rag, soaked it with water, and said, "Here. Clean yourself up."
He took the rag but simply held it in his hands. A bit of blood had been left on his cheek, and it mingled with the tears, forming a wet, red streak down to his chin. "You ought to just kill me if you want to, Warbeck," he said. "Go ahead, I won't fight. It may be my only way out."
Rolling her eyes, she said, "Don't be so dramatic. If you want out so badly, then why not just run?"
With a slight shake of his head, he replied, "There's no running from the Dark Lord. Sooner or later he'd find me. No one's ever betrayed him and gotten away with it." He paused, before adding, "And I can't leave Mum and Dad."
Callie was torn. Though she'd never abandon her parents, they were good people. But Malfoy's were shit. If she'd had to grow up with supremacist trash for a mum and dad, she'd have taken off and never looked back the moment she could walk. "Draco," she said, "look what they've done to you. They got you into this."
"It wasn't supposed to be this way," he whispered. She didn't know if he was speaking to himself or to her. Rubbing his head and smearing more blood on his face, he breathed, "Christ, Warbeck, I can't handle this. I can't sleep. I lie in bed all night thinking about..." He trailed off and shook his head. "I can still hear the screaming. They've brought people to my house and killed them. I've seen it." Another pause. "Professor Burbage? She's dead."
Callie's heart sank. Though she'd suspected it when the Muggle Studies teacher was reported missing, having it confirmed left her feeling cold and empty. She'd been such a nice woman, and now she was gone.
"I can't get it out of my head," Malfoy continued. "She was terrified, she was crying out for Snape to help her..."
"Snape did it?"
"No, the Dark Lord did. But Snape was there, we all were. And then he... fed her to the snake." There was horror in his eyes as he said, "I watched the whole thing. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't."
"He... What?" She was praying that she hadn't heard that right.
"He's got a snake. A huge snake, maybe ten or twelve feet long. After he killed her, he let the thing eat her."
She felt as if she were going to throw up. "Mother of God..." she breathed.
Sniffling and wringing the wet rag between his hands, he said, "My father always talked about the Dark Lord's first reign like it was... glorious. The power, the prestige..."
When he didn't go on, Callie added, "The killings?"
He got a shameful look on his face, and he couldn't meet her eye. "All the stuff that Carrow says in Muggle Studies, I've been hearing that my whole life. That muggles are like animals, and breeding with them is an abomination. It weakened our magic. That they tried to worm their way in and steal our powers, and we had to subjugate them. Father once said that killing a muggle was no different than squashing a bug."
With a disgusted expression, Callie asked, "And you believe that?"
He hesitated, then whispered, "I don't know what to believe anymore."
She thought about what she had told Neville and the others about the mandatory Muggle Studies lessons. They're trying to sway people... It's brainwashing. After a year of this, they're not going to know what they believe.
And Malfoy had grown up listening to the same kind of rubbish that Carrow spouted - from his own parents, who he was supposed to be able to love and trust. How could he not take their words as gospel? Perhaps he had to believe it, in order to justify his father's wrongdoings and still be able to look at the man.
"I hate them sometimes," he admitted. "I love them, but I hate them. I wish they'd never joined the Dark Lord."
He suddenly looked so small and vulnerable, like a young child instead of a seventeen-year-old. But then it hit her - he was a child. They all were. Though they were legally of age, they were mere teenagers, not even out of school yet. But they'd been shoved into this very adult situation and left to figure it out for themselves. They should've been worrying about N.E.W.T.s and graduation and their careers after Hogwarts. Not if the Carrows were going to torture them, or if their families were safe, or if they were going to be forced to watch the Dark Lord feed one of their teachers to a snake.
With a sigh, Callie knelt down in front of Malfoy and cleaned up the blood and tears from his face. As she did so, he said, "As long as the Dark Lord is in power, it's all going to keep going on. He doesn't care who he murders, and my father has become his whipping boy." After a moment of silence, he went on, "And if he's defeated, we're all going to end up in Azkaban."
She eyed his left arm, where the Dark Mark was hidden by his shirt sleeve.
"God!" he choked out, fresh tears falling down his cheeks. "I can't handle this!"
Again, he buried his face in his hands, his whole body shaking as he sobbed unabashedly. Perhaps it was the fact that he was the only person who looked as miserable and hopeless as she felt, but for some reason, she was compelled to sit beside him and take him in her arms, letting him cry on her shoulder.
"I'm scared, Warbeck," he said.
"I know. I am too."
"I want this to be over."
"So do I." She would've loved to have had some words of comfort to offer, but anything she could've said would've been empty and meaningless. Dumbledore's promise from the previous year flashed in her mind - No matter what happens, just remember... everything's going to be all right.
She almost felt resentful towards the man for selling her such a lie.
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The only good thing she could say about the next few weeks was that she hadn't been viciously tortured or beaten. But every time she walked into Muggle Studies or Dark Arts - as it was now referred to - she started to shake again. In the latter class, they'd started learning to perform the Imperius Curse. Before everything had gone to hell, Callie had been hoping to use this as an opportunity to practice Occlumency. But now she was so rattled by Amycus Carrow's presence that she couldn't get control of her mind, and found herself completely under the influence of her classmates.
Thank God he isn't doing it himself, she thought. If the bloke had turned his wand on her, she may have had a nervous breakdown.
But while the Carrows had apparently decided that they'd had enough fun with her, she now had an entirely new problem to deal with. Her former comrades - and friends - were anything but forgiving after she had turned her back on them. Most of them refused to speak to her, and one morning she had walked into Charms to find the word "traitor" scrawled across her desk. Professor Flitwick had vanished it, while Neville demanded to know who was responsible, but Callie simply kept quiet and told herself that it was better this way. Being shunned by the rest of those who'd belonged to the D.A. would only reinforce the idea that she was no longer one of them. And so far, that had kept her safe from another night with the Carrows.
But Neville, of course, wouldn't let up. He would try to talk to her in class, or pull her aside as she was heading into the Great Hall, and beg her to stop avoiding him. "I don't care about the D.A.," he said one day after Herbology. "You don't have to come back. But what about us?"
"What do you mean, 'come back'?" she asked, ignoring the question. "You're not still keeping it going, are you?"
"Of course we are," he said, as though that should've been obvious. "We've sort of made Seamus's and my dormitory our new headquarters. It's not completely secure but..." He trailed off with a shrug.
Callie gaped at him. "And what are you all doing?" she asked.
"Same stuff we did before - practicing curses, Occlumency. We've still got the notes that you gave us. And Katie's dad is Greek, she knows a little bit of the language. She's been helping us figure out some more of the curses from your Dark Arts book."
Callie sighed and shook her head to herself. They were playing with fire. If they only knew what the Carrows might do to them...
"Well," she said in a quiet voice, "I suppose you all are getting along just fine without me."
"I'm not," he replied. "Callie, why won't you talk to me? Why are you avoiding me?"
She didn't know how to explain it. The truth was that everything between them felt so oddly different now. Her attempts to distance herself from the rest of the D.A. had had the unintended effect of hindering their relationship. She kept to her own table during meals, and stayed as far away from the others as she could during class. She couldn't even bring herself to sit next to him in Herbology or Charms or Dark Arts, even though he was still as devoted to her as he'd always been. Maybe she was just too ashamed to be around him after deserting the D.A.
Or maybe being in a relationship with him was too much of a risk. If they were still going to try and resist the Carrows, and her boyfriend was going to be a part of that, then the siblings might assume that she was still in on it, too. She felt so God damn selfish as she seriously considered the idea of breaking up with him to protect herself. He would never do that to me, she thought. He would die before he'd abandon me.
But he wouldn't give up the D.A., apparently, and she learned from Katie - one of the only ones who would still talk to her - that they weren't only practicing curses and conjuring banners in the Great Hall anymore. The girl had brought Callie into an empty bathroom one day so they could talk in private, and informed her that Neville, Ginny, and Luna had broken into the headmaster's office and tried to steal the Sword of Gryffindor.
"What?!" Callie shouted.
"Shh! Keep it down, somebody will hear," Katie warned.
"Are you playing with me?" the Slytherin asked. "Why would they do that?"
"Ginny said that Dumbledore left it to Harry after he died, but the Ministry confiscated it. She reckons he might need it to defeat You Know Who."
"Bloody hell," Callie exclaimed. She was utterly shocked and horrified at the audacity they'd had to do something like that. "You said they tried to steal it? What happened, did they get caught?"
With a dejected expression, Katie replied, "Yeah. By Snape."
Callie's eyes widened, and she felt like she had just been plunged into a tub of ice water.
"Don't worry, it's all right," the Gryffindor said with a dismissive wave of the hand. "All he did was send them to detention with Hagrid, and take away their Hogsmeade privileges."
The other girl gaped at her. Detention with Hagrid and no Hogsmeade? That was what they'd gotten for breaking into Snape's office and attempting to steal a priceless, thousand-year-old object? No curses, no beatings, no locked up in a dungeon all night long?
"You have got to be joking with me," she replied. She sounded almost resentful that they hadn't gotten worse.
Cocking a brow, Katie said, "I didn't think that was so bad. Hagrid's a good bloke, he wouldn't subject them to anything too terrible."
Shaking her head, Callie said, "No, I mean... I can't believe how easy he went on them."
"Yeah, we were all pretty surprised, too. But I gotta say, even though they didn't get the Sword, the fact that they made it back alive was rather emboldening. Michael Corner and Anthony Goldstein snuck out last night and wrote 'Severus Snake' on the wall next to the gargoyle."
Callie rolled her eyes and said sarcastically, "How clever."
Katie could see that she wasn't so amused, and got quiet for a moment. But then she said, apprehensively, "Ya know, a few of us were wondering if-" she shrugged "-seeing as how nothing really bad happened when they got caught... if maybe you'd consider coming back? I mean, you were so afraid that it was too dangerous, but..."
The Slytherin didn't know how to respond. She was too confused at how the trio had managed to get off scot-free while she had been brutalized. For Christ's sake, she'd lost an eye, and they'd only lost their Hogsmeade privileges?
None of it made any sense, and she was ready to crawl back into bed with her sleeping potion and Bela and sleep the afternoon away. But when she walked into the dormitory, Pansy and Daphne looked up at her, and the former had a rather terrified look on her face as she said, "I didn't do it."
"What?" Callie asked, furrowing her brow.
But Daphne said, "She really didn't. I've been with her all morning and when we came back from lunch we found him together."
She stared at them in confusion, and then Daphne inclined her head toward Bela's cage. Callie glanced over at it and her heart skipped a beat. He wasn't hanging upside down from his branch or fluttering around like he normally did. As she slowly stepped closer and looked in, she found him lying on his back, his eyes open, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, completely still and silent.
He was dead.
Callie's mouth dropped open, and she turned her eyes on Pansy.
"I didn't do it!" the girl repeated emphatically.
"She's telling the truth, Callie," Daphne said. "Don't try anything."
It was as though the wind had been knocked out of her. Suddenly she felt completely numb, and it somehow didn't matter whether her roommate had been responsible. She had absolutely no inclination to take revenge, even if she had done it. The only thing that mattered at the moment was that her good little vampire boy was gone, half of a chewed up slice of mango laying close by his puppy dog face. Beside the cage was of baggie of grapes that he would never share with her again. She would have to go to bed that night without being able to cuddle the creature in her hands like he was a security blanket. She'd never hide him in her robes and bring him with her to the hospital wing or sneak him into class. Never feel his nose tapping against her face, or see that curious look in his eye that he always got when she confided in him.
Never mind the Carrows, never mind the D.A., never mind the God damn war. None of it mattered. Only Bela mattered right now. She reached into the cage and pulled him out, holding him as carefully as if he was a newborn baby. And then, without another look at her roommates, she turned and made her way out of the dormitory, through the common room, and down the corridor to her dungeon. For the longest time she simply sat with him, though she had closed his eyes and put his tongue back in his mouth.
She couldn't go outside and bury him. Nobody was allowed out without a chaperone, and she had no desire to see or speak to anyone at the moment. She also didn't care to have her baby resting beneath the Dementors that drifted about the grounds. She kissed his head and whispered, "I'm so sorry." Why in God's name had she brought him with her this year? She could've let her mum take him or left him with Neville's gran. The words "exceedingly stupid" echoed in her mind.
"I love you," she cooed, rubbing his belly and giving him one more kiss. Then she set him on the table where she normally worked on her potions, and held her wand over him. Her hand shook at the horrifying idea of what she was about to do, but it had to be done. Silently, she incanted, Incendio, and the bat was engulfed in flames.
What can I put him in? she thought, tears rolling down her cheeks as she watched the cremation. It came to her after a moment, and she summoned the box that held Dumbledore's phoenix pin. When all that was left of Bela was a pile of ashes, she placed them inside of it and prayed.
No matter what happens, just remember... everything's going to be all right.
As she wept over the remains of her pet, she thought, No, Professor. Nothing is all right.