Parvati watched as a prisoner in her own mind as Bellatrix took control of her body, standing her up and walking out of the great hall and out onto the grounds. Terrified that she would harm one of her friends, she pleaded with her spectral captor. "Please!" She screamed mentally, "Do what you will with my body. Just don't hurt anyone else!"
Bellatrix just laughed and laughed and laughed as Parvati watched the ground moving under her feet, her arms swinging in the wrong way, and felt her hips swaying in a most seductive manner. Admittedly, she was known to give her hips a bit of a swish when she wanted to catch some attention, but it was so profoundly wrong to have this other presence using her body that way—especially one so repulsive as Bellatrix Lestrange. "Now, now honey. You'll soon see, I'm not as repulsive as you believe," Bellatrix sang into her consciousness. The sudden realization that her thoughts were being shared as well as her body caused Parvati to shrink as far into her mind as she could go. "There we go," Bellatrix purred, "Nice and compliant. All Gryffindors are cowards when confronted in an arena where they have no idea how to fight back."
Several people attempted to talk to Parvati as her body was steered across the grounds towards the Forbidden Forest. Bellatrix simply had her smile and keep on walking. Whether it was due to emotional strain everyone present was under, or the emotional strain they all thought she must be under, no one attempted to stop her or inquire as to why she was smiling such an unsettling smile. They went on their way and Parvatrix kept on hers.
"I like the sound of that, don't you?" Bellatrix proposed to her inner captive, "Parvatrix. Parvatrix! Parvatrix!" Parvati didn't respond, she was too worried that her captor would somehow gain more access to her thoughts. She couldn't suppress the mental shudder, however, which was apparent to both of them. Bellatrix was elated, "Yes! That's the precise reaction I want!" Parvati felt her smile grow impossibly wide, her cheek muscles straining with the effort. "You and I, we shall become the new terror of this world. They thought the Dark Lord was horrible, we shall rule together as the Dark Queen!" This time the evil laugh emanated out around the area, causing Parvati to have another shudder.
"I don't want to be a Dark Queen with you…" she meekly thought towards her captor.
"Then it's a good thing you don't currently have a choice in the matter, isn't it? Trust me, you'll come around soon enough." Bellatrix was quiet for a moment, and Parvati could almost feel her evil mind working. "I'll make you a deal. You don't fight me, and I won't use your body to kill any of your family. Agreed?"
Parvati had never been daft, had been an expert at not only Divination, but also Defense Against the Dark Arts and Transfiguration-considered to be one of the hardest forms magic. She heard the underlying threat, she just didn't see any way around it. She also took a little hope in the new-found knowledge that she might be able to fight this perverse possession. "Okay," she whimpered, playing the required part, "just don't hurt them, please!"
Professor Trelawny had declared that Parvati had the makings of a true Seer, which had excited her to no end at the time. But the centaur Firenze had revealed to her on his last day at the post that she had been wrong. While Parvati was certainly strong in the area of Divination, it was not because she was to be a Seer. It was because she was susceptible to the influences of spirits. He had taught her what he knew of the spirit arts, but he did so with a warning. "You can, if you so choose, commune with spirits to find out all sorts of hidden information from the present and the past," he had begun, "but the future is just as concealed to spirits as it is to us. So, unless you find the spirit of a true Seer, then you will not be able to divine the future. Even so, the hidden knowledge you can obtain can be tremendously helpful. You could, for instance, find out the location of a missing child or solve a murder. You could even find out the location of a powerful artifact, if you were so inclined. But be warned, every time you make contact with a spirit, you make yourself more vulnerable to possession."
And so she studied into it on her own, reading volumes and volumes on the subject in the restricted section of the library. She still attended her normal classes, still hung out with her normal friends, still studied with ever increasing intensity, but she also lost sleep studying this new ability she wanted to master. Finally, in her seventh year, whilst under the duress of the Death Eater regime at school, Parvati tried it for the first time. She was waiting in the Room of Requirement by the picture of Dumbledore's sister. It was her turn to wait for any messages that might come from the outside world, and she was quite bored with just sitting there. So she focused her thoughts, centralizing her focus. She meditated this way for some time before she felt it.
Summoning a spirit isn't like one might expect: she says some arcane chant and a spirit materializes out of thin air. No, the spirit, called by the summoner's inborn ability, is pulled temporarily from where ever it currently is in this world, and is drawn out through a portal opened in the summoner's own spirit. It is not something that can be taught, one must be born with the talent. And it is most certainly not pleasant for either the summoner or the summoned. Most such interactions are quick and to the point, so as to not prolong the suffering of either party.
The pain Parvati started to experience almost immediately made her lose her concentration. But she had read about this and fully expected it. She refocused her thoughts in just the nick of time to hold on to the spirit who tried to use the opportunity to escape back whence he came. Regretting his bad luck, the spirit floated the remaining way out of the portal now open in Parvati's chest.
"Quickly, young one. Ask of me but one question, as a reward for your first summoning, and I will answer it to the best of my ability," the spirit said, slowly. Not because that's how spirits talk. Indeed, the stereo-typical long drawn out rattling speech of most any ghost in the movies couldn't be further from the truth. Most any spirit generally communicates just as well as any human being. No, a summoned spirit must contend with its own spectral pain caused by the summoning.
Parvati was ecstatic! Most texts had said that the first attempt rarely resulted in a successful summoning, and it was far more exceedingly rare for the summoner to get to actually ask a question. It was said that only one Talented, as they were called in the books, in a thousand years had enough raw talent to make this achievement. Her excitement, however, was tempered by the constant paid of her spirit being ripped open to maintain the portal. She thought quickly, as she had not prepared a question in the expectation of failing, and decided almost immediately.
"Instead of a direct question," she began, "I want to learn a new spell."
"Very well. Raise your wand like so," the spirit lifted a spectral wand of his own, "and slash at your target. This movement, combined with the proper word, will most certainly cause grievous harm to your target. Careful, as very few know this spell, and even fewer people know the counter curse. I, myself, only know it due to having been killed with it by its creator."
As the spirit began to fade back into the portal Parvati exclaimed, "Wait! What is the word to complete the spell?!"
The ghost still faded, away his face somber, sad, and, for some reason unknown to the talented girl, disappointed. "The word is, 'Sectumsempra'." And with that the spirit vanished, the pain in her chest going with it.
"So," Bellatrix purred, "There is a little dark to you, isn't there?"
Parvati was deeply ashamed, she had not realized that Bellatrix had accompanied her down memory lane. She would have to more careful in the future. She checked her surroundings and noticed that they were well and good into the forest at this point. It was densely wooded here, so much so that none of the light from the rising sun illuminated anything. It was as though it was still night, only darker as though the foul mood of the forest deepened the shadows.
"Now what?" Parvati asked timidly.
"Now," her captor cooed, "We begin our ascent." And with that, Bellatrix twirled in place, popping out of space and time and reappearing somewhere quite different.
