Alassea: Not to say that Victoria would *never* seriously lend him – or anybody else, for the matter – her shoes. I guess they wouldn't be too comfortable in high heels… Anyway, after her explanations they will finally trust her. No, this is not a Legomance. It will be a Frodomance after they had destroyed the Ring – that's the main priority, after all.
Mirkwoodleaf101: I'm glad you think so, thank you!
Elrohir lover: down with Gryffindor!
Lightning Rain: Thank you very very much! That was exactly my greatest fear…Thanks again!
Get ready for a lot of explanations….
CHAPTER VIII: TOREY'S SHOES
I was born in Turin on 29th September 19…But it doesn't matter. My father was the head of the Department for International Security seconded there and my mother was a researcher of the International Center of Defense Against Dark Arts…I know that this doesn't mean anything for you, but translated in simple words it means that they were people who had great responsibilities. She sighed.
They didn't spend much time at home. When I was a child, I got angry with them, but then I understood that their jobs were very important. My mother managed to find time for me nonetheless, but my father…well, he didn't. Practically, I grew up alone. I had no friends until I started to go to school. We were very close when we were little girls, but growing up we lost touch a little… Especially because when I was eleven, I started attending the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in another country.
A shudder shook her limbs.
Hogwarts, damned place! I wish I was the water of the lake to submerge it, the ground to swallow it, I wish I was the fire to burn it until there's nothing left but a pile of ashes!
She growled with hatred.
I've never fit in at Hogwarts. Never. With all her dumb rules and her stupid top-of-the-form! Even then, I hated that place, but there was one thing that made it bearable… Draco Malfoy. My best friend. My life at Hogwarts was quite hard, just like it was for every other Slytherin… but for him it was worse. His father was a servant of the Dark Side, a Death Eater…and he wanted that Draco became one as well. Then, on the other hand, our "dear" schoolmates had already decided that he was one of the villains.
She squirmed nervously on the table.
Okay, maybe Draco wasn't one of the easiest people to get along with… But once you started to know him better, you realized he wasn't that bad. He was just a boy who had had a horrible life and did his best to survive. His father never wanted a son…he wanted an heir, a copy of himself. Draco tried to make him proud of him, especially when he was younger… but he never succeeded. There was always something wrong, and I would be very surprised if there hadn't been anything. Because, you see, they might be identical in their faces, but no matter what the others said, Draco wasn't his father….Thank God. Growing up, Draco realized that it wasn't worth the effort, but he was trapped. If he had refused to become a Death Eater, his father would have killed him. Our "dear" schoolmates would have never believed a Malfoy. If he had become a Death Eater, first, he wouldn't have had the courage to look at me in the face or to look at his own face in a mirror; second, sooner or later he would have been killed anyway. Wherever he turned, he was trapped. Since he was the most stubborn person I've ever met, he wanted to find a way out by himself, without involving me.
She took a deep breath.
I would have done anything for him, but staying out of his life and letting him find a way out on his own…unfortunately, this was exactly what he asked me. I told him that I would never do it and he gave up. I've never left him alone, but…even so, I couldn't prevent it from happening. There were some guys who thought that Draco was hoodoo, one who brings bad luck, and when I was a Fourth-Year, those rumors spread in the whole school.
Her eyes flashed alarmingly.
I've never found out who spread that rumor. Everyone avoided Draco, they treated him as a leper. When they played Quidditch no one wanted to fly near him…Boromir, you told them how Draco died, didn't you?
Her eyes fell on the Man of Minas Tirith, who nodded slightly, and then turned back to the floor.
I was there, you know. I was there, on the stand, and I saw everything… I saw the Bludger approaching, I saw Draco falling on the ground, I saw professor Sinistra closing his eyes. I put away his clothes, I didn't bear the thought of some stranger fumbling in his things. I went to the funeral with Marcus, Adrian and professor Snape. I… I stared at the Malfoys for the whole ceremony. They were… bored. Dead or alive, they didn't give a damn about him. Mrs. Malfoy started to fan herself with the prayer book and I sat there watching them, and I was thinking "Now I go there and I'll break a candelabra on their heads. Now I go there and I'll fan them with a bench."
She took a deep breath.
I remember… I remember the silence that fell in the church when the priest asked if there was somebody who wanted to tell something in Draco's memory. I remember that I rose and walked to the lectern, but… When I found myself there, facing that crowd of strangers, I understood that… that whatever I had said, it wouldn't change their thoughts of him. If words existed enough to explain what was Draco, who Draco really was, I didn't know them. So… I just said that I would miss him.
She raised her face to look at them.
What else could I have said?
Nervously, Aragorn spoke up. You were in love with him, weren't you?
I must congratulate you. It took me years to realize it… but speaking of those days… She hesitated for a moment, almost gathering all her thoughts. You don't know how much people can be hypocritical. At the end of the school year, I remember the sad faces, the black ribbons, the speech of the Headmaster in memory of another lost student… All lies! They were too coward to admit that they were happy that Draco was dead!
Her breathing became heavy, a flame of hatred and rage lit up her eyes.
Damned bastards! In that moment, I swear I felt ready to kill them all. But obviously I couldn't, so… I ran away. I couldn't bear to stay in that room for a minute more.
She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was little more than a whisper.
Draco's death was only the beginning of the end. After that, I received a letter from Adrian, who was older than us and by now was out of Hogwarts. He wrote me that he had become a Death Eater and that was the last time I heard from him. He was found dead last March… I still wonder if he was killed by his companions, by the Ministry or by Dumbledore's partisans. During the summer between my Fifth and my Sixth year, my mother and I fell apart. My father had had to leave long before to go fighting the Dark Lord. In September, I came back to school. My schoolmates, who had ignored me during the previous years, finally noticed me… Especially because I didn't let them forget what had happened to Draco.
Legolas was about to speak, but Victoria didn't let him. Oh, I know what you're going to say, that it had been an accident… but I don't think so. I don't know if what happened to Draco can be called homicide or suicide… or rather both. But there's something I know: it wouldn't have happened if they had let him be… or if I had managed to stop him. And don't tell me I couldn't do anything! One can always do something.
She sighed and shook her head.
About Hogwarts… I wasn't welcomed there. I bothered them. I reminded them what I had done, I accused them… And they don't like to be reminded of the evil deeds that they have done. We are the bad ones, they are the good ones, the untouchables, the saints…I hope they'll burn in Hell!
She shivered.
That year, at Hogwarts… something happened. Something that changed my life and worsened my fear of heights…
Victoria Cross walked alone in one of her school's corridors, holding her books to her chest. It was a cold January afternoon. An icy wind coming from the mountains had been howling restlessly around the ancient castle for days.
Suddenly, two older boys appeared behind a corner. Before Victoria had time to turn around, they threw a blanket on her head and immobilized her, carrying her away in spite of her struggling and kicking. They had to Body-Bind her totally to carry her to the Northern Tower.
While one of them held her, the other opened a door that lead on a big stone balcony. They threw her out in the cold, like a sack of rags, and annulled the spell as they closed the door.
Victoria laid unmoving in the snow for some seconds, then she rose slowly. At first she was confused, but it didn't take her a long time to figure out where she was. Shaking with cold, her feet soaked with snow, she came back to the door and tried to open it. The door didn't move. It had been blocked from the inside. She kind of expected it. She looked around and a vague fear started creeping inside of her, she couldn't see anything else but the towers, the roof and the park covered in snow. At that sight, she was attacked by the irrational fear that the earth could slide from under her feet, but she managed to drive it back…more or less. She started pacing back and forth, trying to keep up her circulation of blood, always avoiding carefully the edge of the balcony.
She stayed there for more than an hour before she gave up. If she didn't do something soon, she would have frozen to death. She could count only on herself, as always. She slowly came near the crenellated parapet and looked downward. The ground covered in snow looked farther away than the moon herself. She knew that she couldn't reach the ground unharmed…but she also knew that there was a window twenty meters under the balcony. And that it was her only chance. She let out a sigh and watched the puff of her own breath as she bit down her lower lip.
I can do this.
She climbed on the parapet, turned around and began climbing down slowly, placing her numb feet on the protruding stones, slipping her icy hands in the clefts between the disjointed blocks. The wind blew everywhere around her, working its way under her uniform, though heavy it wasn't enough for the iciness, chilling her to the bone. Little by little, step by step, Victoria kept on climbing down. Suddenly she stopped to find a secure hook, flatting herself against that cold wall, seeking safety from the wind that felt like it wanted to tear her away from there.
She looked down and clung tighter to the wall with her cold hands.
Oh my goodness…
For a moment she contemplated the possibility of going back up, but she dismissed it immediately. When a Slytherin starts something, he never stops until he arrives to the end. She went on.
The disaster happened about five meters lower. As she moved her foot to another hook, the stone angle she was leaning on crumbled under her. Her hands, with the blood frozen in her veins, couldn't keep their hold and slipped on the cold and wet stones. She whispered a word as she fell backwards.
Draco…
But that name was immediately drowned by the icy wind.
She started falling. The air passed over her like a swollen river. Apart from the whistle of the wind, the only sound she heard was the loud beating of her heart. She saw the gray sky above her and the dark form of the Northern Tower sliding away without any hook. She felt like she had been falling for years, for ages.
She kept on thinking "Here, now I reach the ground…now comes the pain…" But one nor the other ever came.
…And when you start fearing you're falling toward the very center of the Earth and maybe you'll never reach the bottom, but you'll keep on falling down 'till Doom's Day and beyond… right when you start thinking that you'll never touch the ground…then it happens…
Her fall ended on the ground covered in soft snow. The sky and the tower became red as blood and then a black veil covered her eyes. She lay on the ground in her school uniform, her dark hair around her head like a halo, contrasting deeply with the whiteness of the snow and of her skin.
I remember a terrible pain in my back and in my head…and then nothing. She ended, bringing a hand to the back of her head.
No one could talk. Frodo felt like crying and hugging the young witch and protecting her. The same question ran through his and his eight companion s' mind: how could they have done such a thing? He stared at Victoria's white hands that clenched painfully the edge of the table, as if she was afraid that it could disappear suddenly and she would fall again.
How… Gandalf asked, his voice low and unbelieving How could you survive such a fall?
And you ask it? Victoria replied in a blank voice, finally raising her eyes from the floor. I'm not a witch for nothing. I must have used my magic unconsciously…and then there was the snow, it should have softened my fall somehow. And then I was on the Northern Tower.
The Northern Tower? Merry asked, confused.
They say that when it had been built for the first time, Hogwarts' castle had only four towers, one for every founder…like the Houses. For every House, a Tower to seek refuge in case of extreme danger. Nothing can harm you inside the Tower of your House, they're protected by a magic too strong and too ancient. A flame of pride lit up in her eyes. The Northern Tower is Salazar Slytherin's tower and I am the Slytherin.
The Slytherin? Legolas asked, not failing to notice the strange way she had pronounced that sentence.
You know what happened on April 30th. I thought you understood… She murmured. I am the last one. There won't be any other Slytherins in Hogwarts. She shrugged her shoulders. And maybe it's better this way.
Nobody knew what to say to her. For long minutes, the only sound that filled the room was the cracking of the fire in the fireplace.
Victoria stared at the floor, but Frodo knew that she didn't really see it. She was far away again, locked in her own thoughts.
Suddenly, she spoke again in a low voice.
I told you about April 30th…Now I'll talk about August 31st.
She took a deep breath, as to gather up courage. Boromir, who sat on a chair near her, leaned over and laid a hand on her arm. Victoria squeezed his hand and raised her face to meet his eyes in a silent thank, just to let her gaze drop back on the floor.
I know that to you my fear of heights is a weakness… and yet there was a day when my fear saved my own life. In my family, we usually spent my last day of holiday all together, and even if my father was God-only-knows-where, my mother wanted to live up the tradition. She ran her hands through her hair. Things hadn't been working between us since the previous year, mainly because of me. We had fallen apart. So I went out with an excuse and I hung around for the whole afternoon. She turned toward a window to look at the sky. When I came back home, the sun was setting…
Hi, mum. I'm home.
The only sound was the closing door.
Mamma?Victoria looked around, puzzled, and went to check the phone. There wasn't any post-it.
Mamma? she called, walking into the kitchen, then in the bathroom.Mamma!
She checked her study and then headed to the sitting-room. On the threshold, she stopped dead in her tracks.
MAMMA! She shouted, spotting a unmoved figure laying on the floor.
She threw herself by her mother's side and turned her on her back. Her dark hair, similar to her daughter's one, was messy and some locks fell in front of her hazel eyes, wide open on nowhere.
Mamma… Victoria moaned, holding the body close and letting a few salty tears fall on her mother's breast.
Suddenly, she raised her head. She had heard a noise… like there was somebody else. She got on her feet slowly and started walking backwards, clutching her wand in her right hand – she never parted with it, it was a habit she had picked up after the aggressions at school, especially after the "joke" in January.
Her violet eyes searched the room frantically, she reached the threshold and turned around suddenly. She took but two fast steps. A ray of gray light hit her between her shoulder blades and Victoria dropped on the ground, unmoved.
She heard the soft rustle of an Invisibility Cloak falling on the ground and footsteps getting nearer. Somebody turned her on her back with a foot, as with a filthy thing one doesn't want to touch, fearing to get dirty. She couldn't move a single muscle, but her eyes were enough to express her burning anger. The black-cloaked man grinned under his mask and aimed his wand at her, hissing one simple word.
Imperio.
If the girl had been able to move, she would have tried to struggle, she would have taken her head in her hands, as to shield it from that persuasive, dangerous voice… but she couldn't.
The Death Eater watched the reflection of that internal battle in her eyes and finally he saw them getting slightly cloudy. He undid the spell he had blocked her with and her body relaxed against the marble floor, as she had been lying on a lawn in a spring morning. Obeying to the voice in her head, Victoria sat up and raised her eyes to the Death Eater, looking at him with a calm and relaxed – if not vaguely stupid – face. The man smiled cruelly.
Good girl…
Victoria got to her feet and started walking, following that voice inside her head that told her that it was all over now, that there was nothing left worth fighting for. Draco was dead, Adrian was dead, Mark was dead, Elisa, Lara, Betta and Very were far away and they didn't give a damn about her, the Slytherins were dead, mamma was dead… her father was surely dead as well.
A part of her protested weakly that she couldn't know for sure, but the voice replied that even if he had been alive, he wouldn't have come back home, because her father didn't really love her, he didn't care for her. He had never been there for her. He didn't care about Victoria. And if she hadn't done it, she would have had to come back to Hogwarts and would have never come back home, in Torino… She should have stayed at Hogwarts forever. That was the only way to stop everything, not to be hurt anymore.
And following that voice, Victoria climbed the stairs, step by step, until she reached the roof. She passed through a skylight and kept on walking on the tiles. She stopped on the edge of the roof. The wind blew her dark hair, her violet eyes looked far away, at the mountains that stood out against the blue sky, and inside her head that voice kept on talking.
She had almost done it, soon all would have been over. No one would ever bother her, no one would ever hurt her. The Gryffindors and the other would never catch her, they would never hurt her again. She was going to see Draco again, and Adrian and mamma and everyone else. She'd never be alone again. She'd be at peace… She just had to take a step forward. Just one and she'd reach Draco.
Behind her back, the Death Eater watched her with a cruel grin upon his lips, foretasting what was going to happen next.
Victoria was about to take that last step when suddenly, forced by an instinct stronger that the Imperius Curse, she looked down. Her sight clouded, her head started spinning… She was seized with vertigo and her heart started pounding in her chest. She stepped back with a cry, frightened.
What the hell… the Death Eater cursed, coming near her and seizing her by a shoulder. Go!
Victoria cried loudly and shook her head. No, no, no… She was too scared, too scared. The man tried to push her over the edge, but she kept on struggling, fighting and kicking desperately. During the fight, she fell on the roof and she clung to the tiles with a moan, waiting for the man to attack again…but nothing happened. The girl stayed still for long minutes, then, slowly, she raised her head, still trembling. No one. She was alone and her mind was clear, she didn't felt like her brain was drowned in almond-milk anymore.
Shaking, she managed to crawl to the edge of the roof and forced herself to look down. In front of her mother's vases of geraniums and petunias there was a kind of bundle wrapped up in a black cloak. Victoria backed away, her breath ragged. She stayed still, maybe waiting to wake up from a bad dream, and then rubbed her eyes with a hand. How many times, how many times she had wished that everything that was happening to her was just a dream, a nightmare destined to fade… But everything was real. That was her life.
She rose on her trembling legs and came back inside through the same skylight she had went out from. She stumbled to the telephone in her parents' bedroom and dialed the Security Department emergency number. She was answered by a voice blank and indifferent, typical of who treats cases like that one a hundred times a day and often has to deal with hysterical people.
Victoria managed to explain what had happened and after hanging up the phone, she went out in the garden, holding tightly in her hand the wand she had picked up form the parlor's floor. She stopped a meter away from the black bundle she had seen from the roof. She hadn't been wrong. She stared at the Death Eater's corpse with a blank face, then she came back, turned around the corner of the house and sat down on the doorsteps, waiting. Summer was over. The sun was setting at the horizon.
She was still there when the Ministry's employer arrived. The garden was full of cars, of unknown men who came and went, plotted the ground, placed nylon-threads and transenna and kept the crowd in check. Somebody put a jacket around her shoulders. The blinkers and lights made that scene look unreal. Victoria didn't move away from those doorsteps. She sat there and watched all that bustling like a spectator at the movies watches a film she doesn't like much, watching everything that happens without feeling involved but she doesn't go away because she has already bought the ticket, so she stays even if she wants to leave.
…I went to Hogwarts, but I didn't stay long. Little more than a month later, on October 3rd, I received a letter from Torino. They had found a man who resembled Jeremy Cross, gone missing in July. They needed somebody to formally identify the body, so, on October 4th, I came back in Italy. Had the first identification been wrong, I would have come back to school the following the day…But it didn't went exactly like that.
Was he your father? Aragorn asked.
Victoria looked at him in the eyes and nodded. Yeah. He was my father. At least what was left of him. He had died three or four months before and he wasn't exactly a pleasant sight.
Did somebody come with when you went to… Frodo trailed off and Victoria shook her head.
No. I was alone, as always. I had no one to come with me. A brief silence followed those words. I stayed in Turin for eleven days… 'cause of the funeral and to arrange the other things. Then I used the Floo Powder – it's a special magic powder, it allow us to travel through the chimneys – as I was saying, I used the Floo Powder to come back to Hogwarts and I ended up here. You know what happened then. Victoria took a deep breath. Now that you know my story, I wish you'd answer a little question… She raised her gaze toward them, watching them. Am I crazy?
What caught them off guard, apart from the question itself, was the tone she asked it with. She wasn't being polemic as usual and as they expected… In that moment, she sounded like a lost girl who didn't know where to turn.
Frodo sprang to his feet. You aren't crazy.
Victoria turned to him and their eyes met. Still keeping his gaze on her eyes, Frodo came near and climbed on the table by her side.
You aren't crazy, He repeated tenderly, caressing her face with a hand.
The young witch let out a strangled moan and leaned against him, hiding her face against his shoulder.
The Hobbit held her close, caressing her hair and breathing her perfume. He felt his heart beating faster and he hoped that that moment would never end… Suddenly, he remembered that they weren't alone in the room and he felt himself blushing.
Maybe Victoria felt his sudden embarrassment, because she broke their embrace, wiping away uncried tears.
It's better if you don't stay too close to me, Frodo, she murmured, pushing him away gently.
He was just being kind, Sam remarked, annoyed by the witch's lack of manners.
I know. Victoria said quietly But it's better if everyone stays on his own, especially out of my way.
Madam is too arrogant to consort with us? Gimli asked disputatiously.
All the people I care for have developed the sorry tendency to disappear! she said back Sorry if I don't want to have you on my conscience. Suddenly, her features darkened. Maybe the hoodoo wasn't Draco…Maybe it was me.
Don't think so! Boromir cried out.
Lady Victoria, no one can govern fate. Luck and bad luck don't fix on a man only… Gandalf explained, trying to reassure her.
Yeah…probably it's true, the girl murmured I'm sorry. She jumped down from the table. I hope you're satisfied, now.
She started walking to the door when Aragorn's voice stopped her.
Victoria…are you sure you want to come? Don't you think you've had enough?
The girl turned around to look at him. The others hadn't said a word, but he was clear that they agreed with him. She looked at them, one by one.
Let me tell you one thing…We Slytherins aren't like the "heroic" Gryffindors, who rush headfirst into every undertaking. We stay in the rear, they say to see who's winning and maybe for some of us it's true…But when the Slytherins come into battle, God help their enemy. During the Crusades, it had been the Knights of the Snake to lead the decisive attack in the battle of Cordova. If it hadn't been for them, the Gryffindors would have been defeated. We were in Mons in 1914, in the Ardennes in 1944, down in the Falklands in 1898, Byelorussia in 1730, Chorea in 1950, Japan in 1979, Lancaster shire and Yorkshire in 1285, Scotland in 1359 and Wales in 1467… we defended Hogwarts the only time it had been directly menaced, in 1666! We shed our blood for what we believed in… and surely we won't stop now.
But you're the last one, Vicky. Legolas whispered.
As an answer, Victoria started signing a strange refrain with a ragged rhythm, closer to normal speech than to a song.
I'm a soldier
These shoulders hold up so much
They won't budge, I'll never fall or fold up
I'm a soldier
Even if my collarbone crush or crumble
I will never slip or stumble
I'm a soldier
These shoulders hold up so much
They won't budge, I'll never fall or fold up
I'm a soldier
Even if my collarbone crush or crumble
I will never stumble1
Is it enough for you? she asked in a tired and firm voice at the same time.
She turned and went away, walking down the dark passage without looking back, her head proudly high…like a soldier.
"The last Slytherin soldier." Boromir thought.
1: The lyrics of the song "Soldier" belong to Eminem.
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