Chapter 7 - Familiar Sensation
Katia met Mr. Filch on her way back from the Hospital Wing. He was cleaning the floor from some muddy spots.
"Need some help?" she asked in a casual tone. Filch jumped startled and dropped his mop. She quickly picked up a white envelope that fell from his pocket in the process and put it into hers.
"You want to give me a heart attack, don't you?" the tone of his voice wasn't its usual grumble. There was a hint of anger to it.
"I am terribly sorry, sir, I didn't mean to. Can I help you?" she leaned down and picked up the mop.
"You can."
He went for another mop and Katia read the letter: Kwikspell, A Correspondence Course in Beginner's Magic. She read the whole rubbish promising that everyone can be Dumbledore's match after it.
Rubbish!
She helped with cleaning the floor and went with Mrs. Norris and Mr. Filch to his office.
He took a seat in the chair and Katia closed the door. The room was dingy and windowless, lit by a single oil lamp dangling from the low ceiling. Wooden filing cabinets stood around the walls. A highly polished collection of chains and manacles hung on the wall behind the desk.
He checked his pockets, then the drawer. "It must be here, somewhere," he said to himself.
Katia put the letter in from of him. "You are looking for this?"
Filch's eyes widened and suddenly the throbbing vein on his forehead was quite visible.
"You- you've read it?" he asked disbelievingly.
"Yes and I would advise you to-"
He slammed his fist onto the desk. "You had no right to! No right! How dare you!"
Katia, who was standing across his desk leaned forward to him and hit the desk with two, opened hands. Her voice was low and accusing. "You were talking about hitting the bottom? This," she pointed at the letter "is dragging you down. You can't accept who you are, after all those years-"
"OUT!" he roared, pointing at the door.
"Fine! I'll go out and will never make the mistake of caring about an old fart like you!" she shouted and marched out of his office, slamming the door loudly behind her.
"What are you staring at, girl? I told you to get out!"
Katia blinked. Her overactive imagination had kicked in. She could lose the only person in the castle who was the closest thing to a friend.
She shook her head, walked out of his office and shut the door quietly behind her.
She realized that there was something wet on her face, so she wiped it with her sleeve. Her cheeks were covered with tears.
Katia leaned her back against the wall.
"Damn it," she hit the wall with her fist.
The following days she spent in her 'potions lab' located in the lower level of the Gryffindor tower. She recreated the unique formulas of Kashpirovsky's potions and tried more complicated potions from her Hogwarts program. She borrowed a book for the third and fourth year, because she already knew the material from her present school year.
Minerva McGonagall came to her a few days after her quarrel with Filch. They set Katia's tutoring for seven every Thursday.
The Professor was patient and polite, but Katia have seen tiny hints that it wasn't entirely honest.
Logic also reminded her that this woman voted for her to be expelled, so Katia was very polite, as she always was towards professors, though reserved.
Katia planned to do her own research in Potions. She had a few years of learning ahead her already, but it wasn't enough to rival her Professor or her previous teacher. She still lacked the knowledge and abilities but if she could do something, like altering an existing formula in any way, it would be enough. It would prove that she was a witch indeed.
She needed the large skin that she had encountered in the lower pipes. Whatever had left it, it was definitely not an ordinary snake and using it instead of traditional ingredient could make the difference. She was afraid to go into the lower levels where the thing could move freely and catch her, but with every passing day, her need to prove herself grew.
She stopped her practice of Graceful Movements, because every unused place was too small, to stuffed or not adequate somehow. Maybe because it lacked a certain person who could encourage her? She never imagined she would miss the old Squib.
Halloween came very quickly. She heard one day that not only the students were going to have a party, but ghosts too. She wasn't interested in either. It just provide the right distraction for everyone so she could accomplish her task.
Her anxiety made her restless. She wasn't afraid that she could die as much as she should have been. Rather that there would be no one who would notice her absence, and that it might not make a difference.
That she would be rotting in the slimy drain pipes with the rest of the filth, alone and forgotten didn't trouble her thoughts. She had seen the end of her parents from such a close perspective that death wasn't terrifying anymore.
She dressed in comfortable clothes, took a torch, a lighter, her wand and a dagger, and packed everything in a waterproof backpack.
"Happy Halloween," She said to herself and lowered into the black, gaping hole at the fifth floor.
She was two levels down when the noise reached her ears.
Think of the skin, and don't stop.
She moved quickly and as quiet as she could, her trainers splashing from time to time. Finally she was a fork away from it. The sound of a massive body was horribly close. She took a few careful steps. There it was! The skin!
The sound was even closer.
Now or never.
She run towards the skin, cut a piece in a few fluid movements and turned back. She ran, heading up, putting her trophy into the backpack at the same time.
But judging from the sound, the thing was able to move faster than her, not slipping on the slimy ground at every turn.
"Harry, what're you-?"
"It's that voice again – shut up a minute – "
"…so hungry…for so long…"
"Listen!" said Harry urgently, and Ron and Hermione froze, watching him.
"…kill…time to kill…"
The voice was growing fainter. Harry was sure it was moving away – moving upward. A mixture of fear and excitement gripped him as he stared at the dark ceiling; how could it be moving upward? Was it a phantom, to whom ceilings didn't matter?
"This way," he shouted and began to run, up the stairs, into the entrance hall. It was no good hoping to hear anything in here, the babble of talk from the Halloween feast was echoing out of the Great Hall. Harry sprinted up the marble staircase to the first floor, Ron and Hermione clattering behind him.
"Harry, what're we –"
"SHH!"
Harry strained his ears. Distantly from the floor above and growing fainter still, he heard a voice: "…I smell blood…I SMELL BLOOD!"
Katia quickened her pace. She felt hot blood oozing from the top of her head. Taking a turn, she had hit something sharp with her scalp. Evidently the creature's sense of smell was very good, because it started to hiss loudly.
She moved upwards and turned right. There was a faint light somewhere ahead of her. She wasn't sure that she could reach it fast enough, but the thing was right behind her and there was no turning back.
Adrenaline was making her run faster, especially now when there was little hope to survive it. She hit the hatch, pushing it with force, but it remained in place. A hot pain erupted in her fingers. She caught it with both hands and turned to the left. It moved so she pushed it up again. The hatch gave way and she broke out to freedom. In one swift move she was up, but the thing got her shoe.
She put the metal cover back into place fast and turned it to block the creature's pass.
Katia fell on her back, exhausted. The bathroom she was in was flooded and unkempt.
She lie there in three inch - deep water, tears of relief streaming down her cheeks mixing with the liquid.
Finally she left the bathroom, careful to not be seen. Something glowed on the wall; she turned to see it better.
THE CHAMBER OF SERCETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.
'What the hell is this?' she thought.
She felt weak on her knees so she sat against the wall, facing the writing. Something trickled down her face, so she wiped it with her dirty hands, all covered in a slimy, unidentified substance. They were soon red with blood. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
Argus Filch went back to the scene of the crime. There was a figure in the shadow, crouching against the wall.
"Who are you and what are you doing here? Came to admire your work?" he spat and stepped closer.
"I didn't do it Mr. Filch," a weak, familiar voice replied.
"Ivanov?" he asked, surprised.
Since their quarrel he did his best to avoid the girl. He knew that he shouldn't be so harsh, but then again, she shouldn't be so nosy. Were it any other student, he would tell her this and that, especially now, when someone hurt his cat, but her absence left an unpleasant sinking feeling. He missed her company and couldn't tell why.
"You should go back to bed. It's past midnight."
"Just….Just let me be, all right?" she said with a small voice. He needed to strain his ears to understand her.
"Go, Ivanov, or I'll fetch your head of house."
She lifted her head and a light from the torch fell on her face and shoulders. Filch gasped.
The girl was wet, covered in some greenish-brown slime, her hair was a complete mess with bloody dreadlocks. Blood also covered the right side of her face. It was smeared over her nose and her chin. There were two streaks across her face, from eye to temple on either side in a twisted parody of crows feet. Her eyes were distant and her lips partially opened.
"What happened to you?" he asked, disturbed by her appearance.
She smiled weakly. The smile on her dirty, bloody face made her look like a nutter.
"I was…sight-seeing and, and I had a little accident. Doesn't matter."
"You will go to Madam Pomfrey or I'll drag you there," said Filch stubbornly.
Her features changed. There was defiance now.
"There is no way I will go there. I don't need half of the school gossiping about me tomorrow morning!"
He should keep his word, but after today he felt defeated. "All right. Come with me. Move, girl!"
She was soon resting in a comfortable armchair, facing the fireplace, wrapped in a large towel, which fell to her ankles. Her scalp was itching from some healing salve that Filch smeared on clumsily. She pushed wet, dark strand of hair from her face.
Argus Filch put his glass of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey on the table.
"Care to explain what happened to you, now?" he asked, tired. It was the middle of the night, and the girl hadn't said a word since he found her in that horrible corridor.
"I said that I had an accident. I hit something sharp, I fell, I went to the bathroom, now I'm here."
"And all this time you haven't seen who could have petrified my cat, right?"
"Mr. Filch, I appreciate your concern, even if it is only because you want to find out what happened, but I cannot tell you because I wasn't there when it happened. As you may have guessed, I am physically incapable of performing a 'complicated dark magic spell' on anyone."
She took a sip of tea, her eyes never leaving the dancing flames in the fireplace.
"We had a misunderstanding," she continued, "you told me to get out and I obeyed, the end."
He poured himself a generous amount of Firewhiskey and looked at her again. "I believe you, girl. Not in this horse dung about the accident of course, but I don't think that you would do such a thing to Mrs. Norris. You wanted to say something, before- you, before I- told you to leave."
Katia laughed and shook her head.
"Yes, you politely told me to leave your office. Does it matter anymore?"
Filch rubbed his forehead.
"You don't have guts to tell me now, huh?"
"Don't play on my ambition, sir. It's highly inappropriate," she mocked, but her tone was friendly.
"Well?"
Katia looked him in the eyes.
"So?" he asked, but she was silent still.
"WHAT?" he lost his patience finally.
She took a deep breath.
"I wanted to tell you that we must accept who we are, Mr. Filch. There are things we can change and the others that we cannot. Trying to change the impossible- that leads to frustration and self-destruction."
She faced him and swung her legs on the back of the armchair.
"Kwikspell is bullshit. You thought that they would give you the abilities you are lacking? There is no way. If you don't have wings, you won't fly. If I suck with spells, I will never receive an outstanding. But there are other things, sir. From what I've heard, you are the master of stalking in the shadows, your hearing is sharp and you share some kind of connection to Mrs. Norris." Her features softened somehow.
"You have a heart, a good one, no matter how much you want to hide it, I can see it. You are bitter, driven by anger, lonely, but you can be caring and have a good sense of humor. I like these things in you. I respect you and I don't want to see you making your life miserable. That's why I was so nosy and that's why you were so angry. You know that I'm telling the truth."
Her eyes were glistering with unshed tears, but she didn't feel like crying. Quite the opposite, in fact. She felt that a huge weight was lifted off her shoulders when he was finally ready to hear her.
"You have no idea how I hate to admit that you were right about that stupid course."
"I understand that you want to be something more. I wish I were talented, I dream of it with all my heart. To be someone, to mean something in the Wizarding World. That's why I looked like I fought a hippogriff when you found me."
She paused, shocked with her sincerity. Why she made such a confession to someone she knows barely two months baffled her.
"Can you tell me what exactly happened to Mrs. Norris?" she changed subject quickly, to avoid his questions.
Filch's face twisted into an ugly grimace. His eyes became glassy and his lips trembled.
"Someone petrified her. I- I thought, I was afraid, that she, that she- was dead."
No, bad move.
She was sure that he wouldn't want her to see him in this condition.
"I'm sorry for what happened, Mr. Filch, but I think it's time for me to go."
During Potions she swore inwardly. Her hands and nails were covered in tubeworms body parts. She was not in the mood to grub in disgusting things so early. She felt furious, but somehow, the silky timbre of Snape's voice calmed her.
When he checked her cauldron, it was the first time when her eyes locked with those black orbs of his. Snape's eyes reminded her of endless black tunnels, and she felt that she could become lost in them.
"This," he broke the contact, "is the required consistence, color and smell. The bubbling green slime of your Potion Potter can be vanished, and you will stay after lesson, to scrub the tables."
When the bell rang, Katia left with the other students, though reluctantly. She couldn't explain why, but she wanted to stay a little longer. While others despised him, something in her reacted differently in his presence.
Like as if awakening from a long dream.
She ignored Professor Binn's lecture. She tried to understand herself but couldn't and it frustrated and infuriated her.
She heard something about the Chamber of Secrets and the monster. Her eyes widened for a moment. Could the thing in the sewer be the infamous Slytherin beast?
She needed to take the skin for analysis. Kashpirovsky was qualified enough and he was too rich to fool her and keep it for himself. He would tell her what kind of creature could have left it.
During the following weeks, Katia's anxiety grew. There were new attacks and two students were petrified.
There were suspicions flying around Draco, and he himself was rather proud that others thought of him as being the Heir of Slytherin. Nevertheless Katia was sure that it wasn't him. He himself asked her who could be the Heir and nothing gave her a hint that he could be acting.
Potions were peculiar. Every time she was in Snape presence she felt somehow better inside, though the inexplicable feeling returned. It wasn't strong, just a tiny sense of something different.
She was often looking at him, but not openly and sometimes their gazes met for a second.
Severus Snape felt comfortable and angry at the same time. The girl was good in potions, he could even tell that she really had the passion for the subject, but something, a tiny thing was wrong somehow. He looked at her from time to time and the feeling of a strange familiarity washed over him.
Like he had met her before.
He shrugged it off. Maybe he met someone from her family who possessed a striking resemblance to her. The uncertainty infuriated him, but eventually he chose to ignore it.
The weather was awful. It was the middle of November and Severus Snape was in a foul mood. Years ago he mourned Lily at Godrick's Hollow and every Fall he felt depressed. The weather reminded him of his loss. He was extra nasty to his students, even to Ivanov.
Katia slept under two extra blankets. She couldn't understand how the others could stand this freezing cold. She was used too much warmer temperatures. She missed her servants, who would bring her clothes while she was shivering under thick covers.
She definitely hated December in England. And it was barely the beginning of the month.
"At least my teeth are not clattering anymore."
She took another sip of rum tea. "And?" she asked, noticing, that Filch's eyes grew distant, again.
"I'm telling you that they are up to something," Filch emptied his glass of Firewhiskey and wiped his mouth.
"Walking in the corridor doesn't make them guilty."
"Maybe we should go there and check, it won't do any harm."
Katia shook her head.
"If you have this feeling, I can go and see if you're right. You smell of fags and whiskey, they'll know that you are stalking there. I'll go alone."
Katia wasn't sure if Filch was getting paranoid or if he really had the sixth sense, like most of the staff who worked with children for so long. Like he said, it wouldn't do any harm to spy on them.
Argus Filch always had trouble with sleeping. Usually he patrolled the dark hallways, sometimes even all night. The only time when school was relatively quiet and uneventful, was the afternoon. Students were after dinner and the professors kept a watchful eye over them. He would use this time to take a nap. This time however he was woke by a loud banging on his private room's door.
"I'm coming," he said sleepily, angry with the intruder.
"It's me, Katia," she said when Filch opened the door.
"Merlin, girl, I told once that you should come here later. I was sleeping."
"So maybe I should let you go to bed and tell you what they were up to later," she smiled in a very Wulfrick-ish manner and turned to leave.
"Wait, damn you!"
"It's Katia, not damn you, sir."
He sat in the armchair and poured himself a generous amount of Firewhiskey to cure the remnants of hangover from yesterday. "So, tell me."
"I will if you promise me to keep it for yourself only."
"They could be doing…ah, whatever. You've got my word."
"We had double Potions today and we were making a Swelling Solution. I finished it first along with Daphne Greengrass, my partner. I had a lot of time to look around. The Potter boy threw a firework into Goyle's cauldron and it exploded, showering most of the class. We were lucky that it was too far to reach us. It's a shame you didn't seen those who had been splashed. Various parts of their body swelled to enormous size. I thought that I would burst into laughter, but it wouldn't do with Professor Snape in the classroom. He was angry as hell. Hermione Granger used the chaos to slip into the Professor's office. She stole from there; I saw the bulge under her robes. I was first to leave the classroom and run as fast as I could to that horrible toilet. You were right, Mr. Filch, they went in there seconds after me. I saw the bomslang skin, and the consistency of the potion. They are making Polyjuice Potion. Probably they want to impersonate someone."
"Impersonate?"
"They need someone's hair to put into the potion to turn into that person. It usually wears off after an hour."
"They could be trying to impersonate anyone. Even the Headmaster. We must go and tell him." Katia stopped him.
"We're not going anywhere and you promised, you promised, that you keep it to yourself. Besides, the voice remains unchanged so they can only prank each other."
Filch slammed his fist against the table, spilling some Firewhiskey and Katia's tea in the process.
"They committed a crime, they've robbed from Professor Snape!" he shouted.
Her temper was as short as his and she was on the edge already. Filch was smoking a cigarette, he was red from anger. Katia took a deep breath to calm herself.
"Mr. Filch, it would be most unwise to interrupt them. I think they are looking for who is responsible for petrifying your cat and the students in this castle. Let them do it. You can always punish them later, right?" she said with forced calm.
"Maybe," he said, taking a sip from his glass and grimacing at the burning taste. "But if you say they are looking for the one who is responsible for this mess, watch them."
"I need your help, sir"
"You got it."
The days which stood between Katia and her trip back home dragged by endlessly. She practiced Graceful Movements, spent afternoons in the library with Hermione discussing homework and the Wizarding World, and tried to figure out why the Golden Trio made Polyjuice Potion. She couldn't ask about it openly, but got a tiny hint when Hermione asked about the Heir of Slytherin.
Finally, the 21st came and she was sitting on her bags, waiting for her father.
She missed him very much and he, instead of picking her at King Cross, arrived to Hogwarts and was talking with the Headmaster. She waited for two hours, before Dumbledore and her Father appeared in the fireplace in the Slytherin Common room.
Dumbledore made a few swishes with his wand and smiled.
"Merry Christmas, Katia," he said cheerfully, but his eyes were locked with her fathers.
"The same, sir," she replied politely.
"You may now Apparate, Wulfrick."
"It was a pleasure, Albus," her father replied, and took Katia's arm.
She wondered about this weird exchange. They were polite towards each other, but she knew that her father was very tense. His accent was worse than usual and he smiled too wide.
Seconds later she was standing in the entrance hall in Ivanov Manor in Bulgaria. Her luggage shot out from the large fireplace.
A/N:
I am terribly sorry for the lack of updates, but sometimes life is unpredictable.
As you may notice, I took quotes from J.K.R.'s work, but I needed it to synchronize the action; timeline in the book with Katia's doing.
I don't want to repeat the whole plot from the books and add Katia there, I'm trying to go with the plotline but write something new. As I wrote in the summary- my story is canon compliant, and I'll try to make it as canon as possible.
Some problematic words:
Kurva, written originally as kurwa is a Polish word. It can be translated as "fuck!" but the true meaning is "whore". Interesting fact: In Great Britain you can recognize Poles because of this word. They go to a foreign country, so they swear, because they think that no one understands them. I have never been abroad yet, but a lot of people confirm it.
There will be no Katia in the next chapter, just canon characters.