One Day at a Time
Curses and Coming Clean
By the time I got back to Hogwarts it was dinner time and I was absolutely famished; a few crackers and half a can of soup barely counted as a lunch, as far as I was concerned. The first thing I did when I sat down to dinner in the Great Hall was start piling food onto my plate, only nodding to acknowledge Sprout and Severus to my left and right. About ten minutes into the meal, Severus turned to me with a mildly surprised look on his face. I thought he was going to start a conversation, but when he kept looking without saying a word I turned to him and said "Yes?"
He looked at me a moment longer before stating in a matter-of-fact tone, "You're bleeding." My eyes opened wide with shock and I quickly clapped my hand to my left cheek. My fingertips came away moist and red, and I immediately leapt up from my seat at the table. The spell Matar hit me with must have been more than just a simple slashing curse if the cut it gave me had reopened suddenly. I quickly strode towards my quarters while trying to keep my hand over my cheek as casually as I could and mentally going through a list of possible hexes it could have been. I heard another set of footsteps echoing in the hall a mere second before Severus's long strides had caught up with me. "Something tells me you did not accidently trip and fall face first onto a knife," he said in an annoyed tone, eyeing my cheek.
"No," I mumbled, not looking at him. I didn't particularly want to admit that I had been fighting Seginus and Matar again.
"Let me heal your cheek. Move your hand," he near ordered.
"I can heal it just fine myself," I replied impertinently, not wanting him to think I was weak or helpless.
He let out an exasperated sigh, before adding angrily adding, "Let me at least see it. What are you doing, getting yourself injured?" It was lost on me why he was angry with me for being wounded, but I finally grudgingly moved my hand to reveal my bleeding cheek. "It looks like a delayed version of the balafre curse," his eyes scoured the single, long cut on my face. I had also reached the conclusion that it was a variation of the balafre curse, a version of the slashing curse designed for human flesh. Before I could say anything, he had his wand up to his face and was muttering an incantation. As soon as he finished speaking though, his eyes opened wide with shock and it sounded like he had said something along the lines of "Bloody hell" underneath his breath. I traced my cheek with my fingertips and realized with a jolt that the first half of his curse had been rather accurate, at least—it seemed as though I was now bleeding profusely, instead of the slow and steady drip it had been previously.
I practically ran in the direction of my quarters; I didn't want somebody to see me bleeding in the hallway, because then I might have to reveal that I had had another encounter with my Death Eater brothers. Sev quickly walked besides me. "The curse must contain guards against some versions of the counter curses," he sounded caught off guard. "How long ago was it used on you?"
"I don't know. Five hours?" I replied, swinging open the painting to my quarters.
He followed me without skipping a beat and pressed for further symptoms. "And the gash hadn't opened or started bleeding until just now?"
"No, I felt it immediately. I don't know if it started bleeding immediately, but it started within twenty minutes, at least. I thought it was the standard version of the balafre curse, since its light had that distinctive violet color, so I used the standard healing curse," I explained, pressing a towel up to my cheek to keep any more blood from dripping onto my robes.
"So it's not merely a delayed version, because it already cut you," he was exasperatedly rubbing his temples.
"I'm thinking that it must be a cyclic version, designed to reopen after a certain period of time, or after certain requirements have been met," I replied thoughtfully.
He stared intently at the empty air in front of him, holding his chin in his hand while I, likewise, pondered potential counter curses. Every few moments he would open his mouth as though he was about to say something, before clamping his jaw shut again and frowning. I finally broke the silence by pointing my wand at my cheek and saying, "Nicht Mehr Plaie."
He looked up at my words and cautiously eyed my cheek. "I think you're not bleeding anymore. I can't tell for sure, though; there's too much blood already on your face. Scourgify," he added.
I flinched and bit my lip. Whether or not I was still bleeding I wasn't sure, but it felt as though the cleaning spell had hit my open wound, and it stung a good deal. "The cut's still open," I told him pointedly.
He took the towel I was holding and, to my surprise, leaned forward and gently cleaned the rest of the dry blood off my left cheek. "You're right. It's a very thin cut," he frowned, his face close to mine and his eyes locked onto the portion of my face where the slash was. I muttered the incantation again and he gave the tiniest of nods. "It's gone now. No scar." Neither of us moved for a split second; it took Sev about that long to realize that, as he had yet to move away from me, he was still rather close. He quickly withdrew to outside the socially-accepted personal space bubble and continued talking as though nothing had happened. "Who cursed you?" he coldly asked, his eyes flashing dangerously.
I hesitated. The stalling words "What's it to you?" were reflexively on the tip of my tongue, and I paused before eventually replying. "Matar did," I grudgingly revealed, looking at the ceiling.
"He and another one of your brothers were the ones who put you in the Hospital Wing in January, weren't they?" his eyes narrowed.
"Him and Seginus," I nodded.
"How did they find you again?"
"I was at my apartment. They must have cast a charm on it so they can tell when I'm there," I mused, exasperatedly rubbing my temples. Determining which charm and the counter charm was going to be a pain, but until I did I wouldn't be able to safely return.
"It was two on one?" his question shook with righteous anger.
"Two on two. Tarazet was with me," I explained, distractedly running a finger down my cheek to make sure the cut was fully healed.
"And you haven't determined the charm on your apartment yet?"
I shook my head, "I haven't started trying to figure it out yet."
Sev looked at me thoughtfully before letting the word "Okay" slip from his lips. It looked as though he was about to leave, before he suddenly turned towards me again and said, "Why are your Death Eater brothers attacking you if you yourself are a Death Eater?"
"They don't know I'm a Death Eater," I simply stated.
"Ah. Right," his cleanly separated words came. After a pause he gave me a curious look and continued in his distinctive style of enunciation, "I do believe you are one of the most unenthusiastic Death Eaters I have ever met."
I blinked at him. Was that supposed to be a compliment or an insult? Made unsure by the ambiguity, I playfully replied, "Well if we're speaking about people with a lack of enthusiasm, then I'm at a loss as to how you ever became a member of the Inner Circle."
A flash of a scrutinizing glance crossed his face before he replied in that utterly uninterpretable tone of his, "You seem to assume that I'm actually working for the Dark Lord. How do you know I'm not using my position to sabotage Him?"
There was that complete ambiguity of his again! After a second of dead silence I nervously let out a snort of a laugh. "You wouldn't tell me if you were doing that. It'd be your head on a silver platter."
He raised a single eyebrow. "Pray tell, even if you did convey this information to someone else, who would believe you?" I indignantly opened my and shut my mouth, searching for words, before I meekly admitted to myself that he had a point: nobody listened to Death Eaters who were at the bottom of the hierarchy. "Besides," he continued in his ambiguous drawl, "Would you actually report me if I were a spy?"
"Well, no, of course not." The words flew out of me before I could even consider how to answer, "I wouldn't care if you were a spy." His eyes flashed towards mine and I felt rather exposed until he went back to examining the cuffs of his robes in a rather forced casual manner.
The corners of his lips twitched upwards, "That's good to know. You know, when I first met you, I thought you might be a spy, too. After all, a Death Eater working for Dumbledore is a rather rare occurrence."
Annoyed by his misconstruing of my actions, I near-interrupted him, "I'm not defined by being a Death Eater. I wanted a job, so I applied, simple as that." I paused to gather my thoughts, while Sev awaited my words in an almost expectant manner. "Besides," I continued, "I may not like the Death Eaters, but I don't care enough about either side to take on the extra dangers associated with becoming a spy. My most valuable asset is my life, and if I lose it to this war, then the war will have been failure for me, no matter which side ends up winning."
With a neutral look on his face, he replied, "No one would mistake you for a Gryffindor. They practically clamor to die for their ideals. They picture themselves as martyrs of some sort, I imagine. I suppose, though, that I wouldn't die for ideals either. People, maybe. Not ideals." He made a brief gesture with his hand, as though to wave away that topic of conversation, before continuing his drawl, "But as I was saying before you interrupted me"—here I gave him a quick glare—"Now I know better than to think you're a spy. You don't hide your emotions well enough to be one. You'd be dead in a week." I felt a surge of annoyance at the insult and was about to snap back at him when he abruptly continued, "Perhaps it's for the best. I rather prefer you alive." Without a single further word, he turned on his heel and strode out of the room, leaving me to stare after him, bewildered at our entire conversation.
The next day after dinner Sev approached me and, without prelude, stated, "I think I know which charm Seginus and Matar used. I need to cast a revealing charm on your apartment to be sure, though."
I blinked at him. It almost sounded as though he was inviting himself to my flat. "Uh, alright. I can apparate you," I stated, hoping I wasn't misinterpreting his sentence. He nodded, and we started walking towards Hogsmeade. Cursed anti-apparation barrier, I thought. Once we arrived, he started casting spells, alternately on the door, the door handle, the walls and the ceiling.
"They didn't come immediately once you had opened your door, so it's not a charm with Portkey-like properties," he drawled aloud. "And it's not an alarm charm, or else you would have heard something. My guess is that a human presence triggers the charm, and the charm is actually a charm on some object that they have, i.e. it'll cause their object to make a noise or change color. I doubt we can remove the part of the charm on their end, but removing the activation part of the charm will be enough." I nodded, and he silently waved his wand over the door again. Frowning slightly, he added, "Actually, it seems that it's not even a human presence that it reacts to, it's just the presence of a warm-blooded creature that triggers the charm. A house elf would activate it."
I thoughtfully tapped my finger on my chin before striding over to the door frame and making a sharp movement with my wand. "Okay, I just cast a permanent cooling charm, so now when somebody walks through there shouldn't be enough additional heat to trigger the charm." I sheepishly thanked him before we apparated back to Hogsmeade, and started the trudge back to the humongous castle.
A hesitant look crossed Sev's face, and after a moment he spoke in an almost curious tone, "You have a very odd relationship with your brothers."
I blinked and questioningly cocked my head, "What's that supposed to mean?"
He seemed to be thinking how to phrase his thoughts, and he slowly started, "The first time I saw you and your brother Tarazet you both looked about ready to hex each other to hell, and yet you said that yesterday you were dueling on the same side. Perhaps this is one of the joys I've missed not having a sibling," he said sarcastically, "But most relationships between people don't change that quickly."
"Tarazet and I were…abnormally mad at each other the time you saw us," the words struggled to come out. He looked at me, as though wondering what I meant, and I felt compelled to continue. "He felt betrayed that I was fraternizing with the enemy, so to speak. Dumbledore played a small role in his sentence, and I think—I'm sure—he felt stabbed in the back that I was working at Hogwarts," I offered an explanation, feeling terribly guilty for concealing the role I had played in the conflict. The words rushed out of me like a dam had broken, "I—I also wasn't very polite to him, considering we hadn't seen each other in a decade and a half. Do you remember what I told you my worst memory was? That time we were walking in Hogsmeade a few weeks ago?" my thoughts came out jumbled, looking for some coherent explanation.
Severus regarded me and slowly nodded. "I remember I told you that my memory also involved being rather rude to a friend, and that she never forgave me."
Pushed by his revelation, the words continued to spill out of me. "I told Tarazet I would come and say goodbye directly before he left for the start of his prison sentence. I did come to his holding cell, but I came in disguise, because I was ashamed and afraid of being identified with a criminal and—and I was mad at him. All of my friends had died or stopped talking with me and he was the only one I had left and now he was leaving me, too," my voice cracked and the words poured out, an unstoppable flood. "I watched as the guards dragged him away to go to Azkaban. He was absolutely hysterical—he hated Dementors with a passion, and was terrified of Azkaban. And while they were taking him he kept crying out, 'No, don't take me yet! Liseli said she'd come and say goodbye—'"
"But the guards didn't care what he pleaded and dragged him away to the dock while I stayed rooted to the spot where I stood. I felt absolutely horrible," I swallowed and stared intently at my feet while we continued walking. "When Tarazet suddenly came to my classroom after his release from prison, I didn't want to see him because I felt so ashamed and guilty for my behavior towards him the last time I had seen him. I was furious at being reminded and near terrified that he might mention it because, really, I have absolutely no legitimate explanation for it except my own petty, foolish, inexcusable reasons. So I wasn't exactly polite to him, and that combined with the fact that I was working for Dumbledore led to a quickly escalating argument between us," I let out a long sigh, feeling a weight lifted from my chest.
"What has changed since your first encounter in this decade? The past has not changed, and you still work for Dumbledore," Sev questioningly turned towards me, while I continued staring at my feet.
"He hasn't brought up the last time I saw him before he left for Azkaban. I still feel guilty but—he doesn't seem to be actively offended by it, and I think he might have forgiven me, even if not in those words. Now that we're friends again, I suppose the fact that I work at Hogwarts doesn't aggravate him as much, because he knows it's not a sign of me back-stabbing him, that it's just a job," I was finally able to tear my gaze away from my feet once I had reached the relatively cheerful conclusion. "We still snap at each other sometimes, because I disagree with his beliefs, and he's disappointed in mine, but for the most part we're friends."
Speak of the devil: when I got back to my quarters my owl was patiently waiting for me with a letter from Tarazet attached to its leg.
Liseli! it excitedly started.
I just finished another interview and I've finally been granted a job. It's at a small store in Knockturn Alley called Dunkel and Finster's. They specialize in taking objects and adding properties to them depending on what the customer wants; they also sell pre-cursed versions of these items which have been changed to have additional properties, these properties often having to do with Dark Magic. Unfortunately, the only job opening they had is as a cashier, but at this point I'm desperate for a paying job. They say that I'll be promoted when there's an opening for one of the spell casters. Anyways, you should come and visit; I'm working standard hours and my lunch break starts at noon.
Tarazet
…
A/N: So do you think my explanation of what happened the last time she saw Tarazet fifteen years ago was too long, right length, too short? Anyways, a huge thank you to Mark Darcy, angelofire, toasty 1, tibys, PollyWantCookie and Mywaychan for reviewing! I really appreciate every single review. And Happy Halloween to those of you who celebrate it :)