Chapter Five: Trinkets
"You're more interesting than I gave you credit for, Ash." Raoul's voice boomed across the empty staircase outside the Entrance Hall. Tylia was amazed to see that no one was out and about. But then again, it was cold and the dark clouds on the horizon threatened rain.
Raoul was seated with his back to the door, Eileen stood two steps down and a long, velvety tail twitched next to the large man's foot as Tylia came through the enormous oak doors.
You told him I was coming, Tylia accused, smiling to Eileen.
Of course, Petrius replied, climbing to his feet with the boneless grace that only felines seem to achieve and purring as he twined around her feet like a housecat.
"Silly pa'das," Tylia murmured as Raoul, grinning merrily, turned just in time to see her kiss the large feline on the nose.
"I like your kitty-cat," commented the older Ravenclaw, standing and stretching mightily.
"He's not mine, precisely," Tylia objected, glancing at Petrius, who said nothing. He did not mind when humans unknowingly assumed that he was Tylia's pet, but the halfbreed did.
"But if he wasn't Bonded to you," Eileen objected in turn. "He wouldn't be him."
"That doesn't mean I own him, Eileen," Tylia replied with a slight hint of exasperation in her voice. "If anything, it means that I'm a part of him, though the relationship works both ways." She smiled at Petrius, who thrust his whiskers forward in a feline smile. "He's a part of me, as well."
"Still," Raoul interjected easily, tossing an arm around each girl's shoulder. "I like him. A bit unnerving at first—thought I was going mad when I heard a voice in my head, till Eileen told me it was Petrius, here—but a good fellow to have about."
Nice to know that you approve, Petrius drawled wryly before padding off in the direction of the lake as the two-leggers laughed.
"Hagrid wanted us?" Eileen asked as the trio traipsed down the wide stone stairs.
"I've never even met Hagrid," Raoul complained, bringing the two girls up short. "How could he want me?"
"You're in seventh year and you've never met Hagrid?" The two fifth-years chorused, trading a disbelieving look.
"No, I haven't," Raoul replied with an easy shrug. "Why?"
"I thought everyone knew Hagrid," Eileen explained, still looking a little shocked.
"Oh, we must fix this," Tylia announced. Eileen fervently nodded her agreement. "Hagrid might well be the only person at Hogwarts bigger than you, Raoul."
"Is that a bad thing?" Raoul inquired petulantly.
"No, dear," Eileen laughed. "We like you large."
"Hagrid wanted to see me," Tylia said, answering Eileen's question at last. "Wanted to show me something and said I could bring friends 'as I could trust.' You two are the ones that came to mind."
For the first time since she had met him, Raoul looked solemn; he nodded. Eileen smiled and gave Tylia a hug.
"I wonder what he wants to show you," Raoul mused.
"I don't know," admitted Tylia, shrugging out of Eileen's hug with a slight blush mantling her sharp cheekbones. "He's being very mysterious."
Five minutes later, Tylia and Eileen were knocking enthusiastically on Hagrid's door.
"Who's there?" came Hagrid's bass voice. The three friends could hear high-pitched barking and the scrabbling of little claws on the wooden door. Eileen and Tylia exchanged slightly worried glances; there was no telling what Hagrid had in his house, even if it did sound like a puppy.
"Tylia and company," Eileen replied after a moment.
Hagrid pulled the heavy door open and a small, dark streak of fur tumbled out and assaulted Raoul's leg. Tylia was relieved to note that it was, indeed, just a puppy. Raoul, looking amused, caught the puppy and picked it up, which earned him a thorough face licking.
"I'd forgotten that you were getting a new puppy," Tylia commented, reaching up to pet the squirming scrap of fuzz.
"Yep," Hagrid agreed, the slightest flash of sadness flitting across his face. "When Fang died a while back, I decided to find a new friend. 'Er name is Taali, after me dad's mum."
"She's an Irish wolfhound, isn't she?" Raoul asked when Taali finally stopped kissing him. She settled into his arms and sat still.
"Aye, she is," Hagrid replied, eyeing the pup suspiciously. "An' that's the first time I've ever seen 'er still. She must like yeh."
"Hagrid, you know Eileen?" Tylia asked, wanting to get to the reason they were here.
"Aye, and she's a good lass," Hagrid replied. Eileen smiled at him. Tylia had noticed that Eileen smiled at people a lot. It was almost unnerving.
"Well, this is Raoul, a Ravenclaw seventh-year," Tylia continued. "He's sweet."
"Nice teh meet yeh, Raoul," Hagrid said, waving the trio inside. "Taali'n Tylia trust yeh, so yer welcome here. 'Sides, yer a Dupont, aren't yeh?"
"Yes, sir," Raoul agreed, looking slightly surprised that Hagrid had known his name.
"Don't ye call me 'sir!'" Hagrid growled. Raoul nodded. "I knew yer dad, an' he was a fine fellow, an' I trust 'im to've raised ye right. Ye looks just like 'im."
"Thank you, s-Titan." Hagrid gave him a quizzical look, but quickly turned to the topic that Tylia brought up next.
"What did you want to show me, Hagrid?" Tylia asked gently, steering the conversation back to what she wanted to know.
"I found sommat in the forest," Hagrid answered evasively. "A ball clear as crystal an' twice as hard."
"And why would that interest me?" the halfbreed asked reasonably. Eileen and Raoul—with Taali still in his arms—looked intensely curious.
"T'wouldn't," Hagrid admitted, rummaging through a trunk and pulling out a clear ball slightly larger than a Muggle baseball. "'Cept for what's inside it. Sometimes, anyway."
Tylia accepted the sphere when it was offered to her. Eileen and Raoul leaned over her shoulders to see it.
"There's nothing inside," Tylia said, the slightest hint of an accusation in her voice.
"There was," Hagrid insisted. "Twice. Both times the same, or similar."
"What was in it, Hagrid?" Eileen asked before Tylia got the chance.
"A picture, only moving," Hagrid replied, his eyes going wide. "Like them 'movies' that Muggles go to see. A group of young lads an' lasses it was—lasses, mostly—with black skin an' white hair. Not teh mention that they had red eyes."
Tylia looked up from the ball immediately.
"Pasaelaer?" she demanded, alarmed. Most Aelaer1 were immune to magical scrying.
"I dunno if they were or not," Hagrid replied uneasily. "But I didn't like what they was doin'. There was another lass in the picture. Them as looked like they might be Dark Elves were beating her fair badly. The second time it was the same group, or near enough, but they was beating a lad this time, not more'n eight, he was. Them as was bein' beaten looked a lot like yer dad, Tylia."
Tylia swore colorfully in Undercommon until she ran out of curses. Raoul looked suitably impressed, but slightly confused.
"I take it that's not good?" he said, but it was more of a question than a statement. Eileen rolled her eyes.
"What's wrong, Tyl?" Tylia had given her permission to call her by her nickname.
"This is a powerful magical item, if it can spy on Aelaer," Tylia replied, running one hand through her long, silver hair as the other held the clear orb up to her eye level. "And I think it was made for the specific purpose of spying on the Trantzvlos."
"Huh?" Raoul asked eloquently. Eileen rolled her eyes again and elbowed him gently.
"What the big lug means is: 'what's the Trantzvlos?'"
"A secret group of Pasaelaer," Tylia replied grimly, and then she gave them a brief explanation of the cult.
"Well, if this was made to watch 'em," Hagrid commented, sounding slightly green; Tylia had described some of the Trantzvlos' travesties in grotesque detail. "It seems no bad thing to me."
"Yeah, just give it to the Light Elves so that they can do something with it," Raoul suggested with a broad shrug.
"Except that I don't know how it works," Tylia reminded them. "The images that Hagrid saw could be in the far past, the near past, the present, or even the future."
"Besides, if she gives it to her father's people," Eileen added, looking at the Orondralas for confirmation. "The Pasaelaer would get…"
"'Pissed,'" Tylia finished flatly. "The word you're looking for is 'pissed.' and I don't mean 'challenge-your-best-friend-to-a-duel-because-he-insulted-your-girlfriend' pissed. I mean 'kill-your-best-friend-because-he-murdered-your-sister' pissed. Pasaelaer do nothing in half-measures."
"So give it to them," Raoul suggested instead.
"I'm barely accepted in the Jhondraelael society as it is," Tylia replied uneasily, thinking of maybe never being able to see her grandfather again, if she gave the orb to her uncle. "My father and I would be outcasts if I gave the Pasaelaer such a powerful item. Especially one made to spy on the Jhondraelaer's most hated enemies."
"Yeh have to do sommat with it," Hagrid commented.
"I know," the halfbreed replied sharply. "I'll decide what that 'sommat' is when I figure out how to use the xsa'us2 thing."
"What's this?" His sister's voice was full of curiosity, but it held a note of iron that told him that he had bettered give her a straight answer. Her thin hand had come out of nowhere to touch his new pendant as he worked on his Alchemy essay. "Scorpius?"
At the sound of his name, the Slytherin fourth year glanced up at his sister. She looked so much like him that they might have been twins. The only differences in their appearances were a few inches (on his sister, not him, much to his chagrin), the blue on her robes that marked her a Ravenclaw to his Slytherin and the pale blue tinge to her Malfoy-gray eyes. They were both thin and pale, with characteristic white-blonde hair.
"A talisman," Scorpius replied uneasily; he wasn't sure how much he wanted the over-protective Pyra to know about his new artifacts. "Against bad luck."
Not the whole truth, and Pyra seemed to know it. She raised nearly invisible brows, looking skeptical, but left it at that for now.
"Where'd you get it?" Pyra prodded, sitting down across from her little brother. After his talk with the interesting Tylandraes, he had retreated to another area of the Library to think and to work on his own homework.
"From-from a new friend," Scorpius stumbled over the words. It always flustered him when his sister—or anyone else—got nosey. "She's in your House, actually."
"Uh-huh," Pyra nodded, instantly interested. "Would I know her?"
"Dunno." Scorpius shrugged, knowing that Pyra would do a background check as soon as he let a name slip. She had ruined more than one seemingly promising friendship that way; granted, most of those he ended up being glad he wasn't associated with.
"Come one, Scor," Pyra laughed. "You know the drill. What's her name?"
"Tylandraes Sholel-Zauval," Scorpius replied with a sigh, his pronunciation perfect. Pyra was right, as usual. There was no point in trying to hide something like that from her; she always found out.
"I saw her on my way up," Pyra mused, thinking back. "She looked like she was headed for the Grounds."
"Pyra…don't do anything crazy when you talk to her, OK?" Scorpius requested, trying to sound casual with his eyes on his papers and his slender fingers tracing the runes on his copper pendant.
"Hmm, what's this?" Pyra inquired, focusing her gray-blue eyes back on her brother, who blushed slightly, but brought his eyes up to meet hers with a defiance that Pyra had rarely seen there before. She was both proud that her brother had developed such determination while under their father's influence and unsure that she liked having it leveled at her.
"It's just—she seems nice, that's all," Scorpius replied, his flush deepening slightly. "Don't scare her off, OK?"
"From what I've heard, she's hard to scare," Pyra replied with a grin that was anything but reassuring. "I'll catch her after dinner, I think."
Furious that his sibling was joking when he was trying to be serious, Scorpius threw all of his papers into his bag and stormed out of the Library.
Pyra watched him go, her eyes worried. Love wasn't something she wanted for her brother, or, at least, not unrequited love. She knew about that, and it was not a thing her brother would survive intact. From what Pyra had heard about Tylandraes, the strange young woman would have little enough interest in Scorpius.
Tylia was curled up in one of the many recliners scattered about the Ravenclaw Common Room, Hagrid's orb in her lap. Her particular chair was mostly in shadows, but she knew that her silvery hair would be visible in the firelight.
Tylia had been watching the crystalline ball for hours—since dinner—hoping an image would come. She was just starting to think that she was going about it the wrong way when someone slid gracefully out of the shadows and into a chair across from hers.
"Good evening," the halfbreed murmured without looking up. Tylia could see her guest out of the corner of her eye; she looked like a ghost in the shadows of the Common Room.
"What do you think of Scorpius Malfoy?" asked the newcomer. That got Tylia's attention. Her deep green eyes snapped up and caught the stranger's blue-gray ones.
"Who wants to know?" she asked in turn, suspicious of this girl and miffed that the newcomer had not even had the courtesy to introduce herself.
"His sister." The reply was flat, tinged by only a hint of incredulity, as if she couldn't believe that Tylia hadn't caught on to that fact on her own.
So this was Pyra Malfoy, the first of that clan in living memory to be in any House but Slytherin. She certainly had the Malfoy phenotype, except for her eyes. Most Malfoys, Scorpius included, had eyes the color of storm clouds. Pyra's eyes were different, the gray-blue of the ocean just before a storm.
"Scorpius is…interesting," Tylia replied hesitantly. She had heard interesting things about Pyra, too. "He's a culture-lover, like me, so we get along."
"He told me you gave him a present," Pyra continued easily, leaning forward with a hint of a smile, which was replaced by a grimace. "But he didn't want to tell me much about it. Would you care to clear that up?"
"No," Tylia replied promptly, twitching her cloak over the ball in her lap so that Pyra's sharp blue eyes wouldn't see it. Pyra looked surprised and Tylia smiled now. "The way I see it, Miss Malfoy, my gifts to him are between him and myself. If you want to know and he won't tell you, you'll have to be happy with that."
Pyra nodded slightly, but looked disgruntled and distinctly unhappy. Tylia got the impression that she was used to getting her way, or at least having people give her the information she wanted.
"You're interesting yourself, Tylandraes," Pyra commented, changing the topic.
"My friends call me Tylia," the halfbreed commented in turn.
"And are we friends?" Pyra inquired. Tylia had to give her credit; the sixth year didn't even flinch as Petrius stood up from his place at Tylia's feet and yawned, showing four-inch fangs.
Tylia rose after him, keeping the orb under her cloak.
"You tell me, Pyra," she replied with an easy shrug. "I wouldn't mind."
Before Pyra could respond, feline and companion were ascending the nearby stairs to the girl's dorms.
That was interesting, Tylia yawned wearily, running her fingers absent-mindedly over the smooth ball.
I think she likes you, Petrius replied, padding up the stairs in front of her.
Good, Tylia yawned again as she slid into bed. I'd hate to have made another enemy today.
1Elves
2Damned