13 The girl with the Everlasting Boils
Aren't pubs supposed to have chairs up on the tables when the sun is still up?
I am greeted again by the cozy warm candlelight that is neither dark nor bright, and the huddled figures with their manes shrouding their impenetrable faces are as vague and indiscernible as ever. Trying to see who it is beneath the shadows gives me a headache. The bar tender is the cowled woman from the night before, and she seems surprised that I have entered unannounced.
She is more corporeal than the others, the dozen or so with their faces hidden, though her face, too, is masked in shadow. The difference is that she draws over her face a normal darkness, borne from the simple nature of deflected light. She looks at me through her shaded eyes, and her face seems somewhat familiar but all the while illusory.
My wand hand is fidgeting like a convulsing baby, and I try to calm my heart that is already pulsating so loud that I can hear my own heart beat.
She glides over to me like a wraith.
I suddenly find myself seated before her in one of the dingy alcoves, a beer and an ashtray before me. There is a headache threatening to burst an aneurysm in my head, and the disorienting shift of my position has left me gasping for air. I'm hyperventilating. I know this from my frequent bouts of anxiety.
"Yesterday," the woman speaks, "you came unannounced. I forgave you for your intrusion, because you were lost. It seemed you sought me, in a way that I would allow. Today is different, Parvati Patil."
*crack*
With a bare scraping of will at the bottom of my reserves, I bring myself back to control. The intoxication is leaving, and I feel a little bit fresher, as though I am waking from a severe addiction. Sweat trickles down thick and profuse. I curse a little, knowing that it was probably mottling my foundation makeup.
"I need to know," I try to say something, but nausea spreads about me again, and I find myself huffing and puffing like before.
*crack*
Before me I notice a few cigarette stubs have been put out. Time lapse?
No! My mind jolts into a frenzy. Memory charms. The woman has somehow put a memory charm on me, so deftly and precisely that it had taken out a chunk of my time. I look around and the windows no longer shine with sunlight.
I steel myself for another onslaught, silently casting defenses. But my mind is sluggish and it is difficult to find a coherent thought.
"I..."
*crack*
"You don't need to know that," she interrupts, testily.
Somehow, in the back of my mind, I feel that I have convinced myself partially that I really didn't need to know that. I am no slob. I am a practiced Occlumens. She couldn't have tampered with my mind without setting off a million alarms in my head. No, the chunk of lost time. During that time she somehow impregnated my mind with her idea. During that lost time she had partially convinced me away from what I was seeking.
What am I seeking? Damn! I see that the beer has already been half emptied. I had not only lost time, been convinced astray from my purpose, but she's also intoxicated me. Was this what had happened last night? Had I really become so drunk?
The realization hits me. If that is the case, it may be easier... less complicated. If the intoxication was merely my own doing, then all I have to do is defend myself against the assault on my memory.
I take a deep breath. Calling forth the deep reserves of my Will.
"Where is Katie Bell?" I begin.
This time I am able to fend off the assault. She shifts disconnected in her seat, as though someone had spliced my existence for a few seconds, but no more. I feel my conscious strain slightly unhinged, but nevertheless on course.
"Katie Bell's affair is her own," she replies evenly. At the end of her words, I notice that eyes about the room have turned to look at me. There are a dozen of them, scattered around the bar.
*crack*
And suddenly they are all rising from their seats. Momentary fear clutches my heart. They are terrifying.
Ghostly girls with fuzzy faces that seem to shift whenever I try to look at them. They are all skinny to the bone, as if the flesh is barely clinging to their bodies, dehydrated and brown.
*crack*
*crack*
There are now two empty pints before me, and my intoxication is heavy. The girls are now all gathered by my side, barely out of reach. I can't discern their faces, but I can sense one thing: Teeth. Sharp razor jaws that cover half their faces; I cannot see them but I know that they are there.
"Where is Cho Chang's husband?"
"Dead." the woman replies simply. "You are wasting out time asking all the wrong questions."
The darkness is what hits me, first, but the intoxication is the most notable assault.
It is dizzying, and immediately, before my eyes even attempt to get accustomed to the darkness, I am assaulted with drowsiness and stupor, as though I were filled to my cups.
*Crack!*
I feel an aura of protection fade from me. I came prepared, of course, but the magic here is thick. There is magic, and then there is Magic, and of course, there is MAGIC in the world. The kiddy sort of magic begins with tricks and manipulations. But as the magic grows and grows, spells require sacrifice. Quid Pro Quo, is the crux of all magic. And when that goes to far, people begin to sacrifice things that are not normally sacrificed for the sake of sanity, things like Blood, Essence, Sight, Love, Years of Life are given and taken away in return for supernatural power.
Right now, I had drawn upon every flimsy little trick in my book, as well as into a deep reservoir of my life force. The adept of Charms and the novice are leagues apart with a burden of immense knowledge and experience. Some of this I have tried to make up to in my apprenticeship under the Slug. But the Adept and the Master of Charms are separated by one single value, and that is the Will. It is the energy deep and hidden within the soul of the wielder, and believe me, I can be frightening when the moment calls for it.
I steel myself, for a moment. I feel shadows enclosing me, claustrophobic and obscuring the meager light that I have. I sip deep into my heart, feeling the throbbing of my soul, the sense of my sadness, years of heartbreak, until, in my mind, I grasp a broken heart bleeding tears, or crying blood. It pulsates, a potent little form of me, caustic and burning, and it smells like dew mist on the rain. For a brief moment my surroundings darken. I feel cold clammy hands grasp me, corporeal and biting. They dig into my flesh, and I feel that they are rending my new robes. I feel sharp fingernails press into mt skin, breaking and bleeding. Pain shoots from everywhere. The hands that grasp me are cold, bony, with long wooden fingers, numbering in the hundreds from a dozen set of hands.
*Crack!*
I scream, and my scream rings only in my ears like a drowning woman, submerged.
I feel the darkness, akin to last night, envelop me.
The woman is scornful.
What is the right Question?
The right question to ask a person who's weapon is memory. The woman who will make people disappear. Why did they disappear? My mind races.
The other night she told me that I had sought her out. Today she tells me that the manner I sought her today was different. What happened yesterday? I had been shamed. I had been shamed beyond everything, and I had lost myself.
I wanted to disappear, I wanted to be forgotten. Not today. Today I came to settle a score.
She is a woman who can let people disappear. That is her power, and somehow she had made Katie Bell disappear. I have no idea what Katie has to do with anything, but I am sure there was a person named Katie Bell who was erased from everyone's memory.
*Cra-
No!
I momentarily disrupt the wave of nausea that threatens to envelop me. I reach in, deep inside to my inner most power. I touch upon the symbols of my being, images that make the most potent and rawest part of me.
The Tiger! The Nandi! The Lion! The three eyes of the Goddess, Parvati. The left hand of Contempt, Tarjani, the enchantment, Kataka. My hand gestures bring me strength.
It has been a long time since I touched upon that part of my soul. Buried deep within the heart and heartbreak, I find the potent thing that distinguished me from Padma, the thing the Sorting hat smelled and thought was bravery. Something I had tempered over the years, wanting to become a socialite, wanting to become a scholar. Something that is central to my character, yet never graced upon because of my somewhat timid appearance. It is an anger, of boiling fury. I am Devi Durga, destroyer of all fear.
"Om Bhagawateh Parvate Namah!" I hear myself scream my most potent defensive mantra, though what I hear is a near inhuman voice, it booms from my throat yet sounds otherwordly, demonic and powerful.
My incantation brings forth a well of sustenance, and I find myself regaining my strength; my mind is snapped forcibly into clarity as though a bent piece of metal is straightened, rust falling from its damaged surfaces to shed away and show a sheen of brilliance.
I am the fury, I tell myself. The animus of discontent, the ever drifting soul that never rests. That is the curse to which I have shied away from all attachments. No, I do not forget, nor wish to be forgotten. If there is one thing that I am, it is the terrible scorn of the woman forgotten.
The fury of my being lights the room, and I feel my head reeling back into reality, as though I had shot up from the water to gasp a breath of air.
In a flash of a moment I have spurned the clawing hands from my body, whipped out my wand.
"Protego!"
The shield charm is simply, and I could have easily shrouded myself with simply a thought. But enhanced with my wand, and resonated with my voice, it blasts those that surround me far across the room. The power of my charm blasts the hood off the woman, as well.
She is a complete stranger. Her face is covered in blots and pustules. Half her face is clawed and burnt, half her face is scaly like a serpent, with the color of ash. Her eyes, though, are blistering green and bright, she glares at me with something of deep hatred that drips like poisoned honey.
Around me, the faceless mass briefly flash a face of some semblance of girls before they rapidly resume their shrouded identity. But at least they are wary of me and stay away. I find that my new robes had again become clawed and torn. So, that's what happened. They literally shredded me last night!
"F***!" I scream at them. "Do you know how much designer robes cost?"
My anger is livid and my charm pulsates madly as I take my pocket mirror out of my purse to check my make up. My mascara is running! It will be the end of me if I show up back at Hogwarts, or even the Leaky, like this!
"Alright, sister." I snap my mirror back into my purse. "Who the hell are you?"
"Try to guess my name." the woman spits back at me, unimpressed.
"I've never seen you before in my life!" I am up to my neck with this bitch. "Stop playing games. What is gong on?"
"Don't you see?" the woman sneers, and the sneer cracks a pustule on her face as it oozes down her side.
"You really should see a dermatologist," I wince.
"You really don't know me, do you?" she snorts. "Do you know that I was once a member of Dumbledore's Army?"
I smack my lips. Damn Dumbledore's Army. It's brought me more pain than anything else. It's constantly nipping at my heels, like a stigma. Dumbledore's Army, my ass.
"If you're upset about your missing invitation to the VIP box, you'll have to take it up with someone important. I dunno, Ginny Weasley or Hermione Granger. FYI, I didn't find my invite yet, either."
One of the faceless girls try to approach me and I fling her across the room.
"Don't temp me, ladies." I snap at them. "I am a f***ing Hogwarts Professor of Charms. Do not F*** with me."
"Proud are you?" the ugly bitch sneers.
"Not as proud as when I'll call in the Aurors to your little creep fest."
"Oh, I swear you won't be able to call in anyone, Parvati Patil," the woman laughs - you know, wickedly. It takes every fiber of my being to stop myself from rolling my eyes. I barely have enough Willpower to fend off another attack, and bravado will only help me so far.
"Who are you?" I start to feel the desperation creep in again.
"Do you know all these girls came to me of their own free will?" She asks. "I have committed no crime, but merely allowed them their relief. These girls asked me to have themselves forgotten. Forgotten from the likes of Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore. Forgotten from the minds and the records. It takes a lot of gold for my services, but gold is not the entrance fee. I thought you might need my services, and I would have let you in on a discount."
These girls. These faces that I still can't seem to penetrate. They came here, asking to be released of the world. And this woman, this nameless woman had somehow achieved that in such a penetrating and pervasive manner that I am only led to one conclusion of this situation.
I have to flee. She is too powerful, and I am barely hanging on to my most inner power, draining fast.
"Even if you remember anything, which I doubt you will, I have done nothing wrong." Her voice is without play, sincere and from the heart. "It is the World that betrayed us. It is the World that thought it could discard us like so many used rags. It raised its champions to their high perches, and it steam rolled over the lot of us. Tell me, you don't know what I'm talking about. I dare you."
*Crack!*
I am backing out the door. The girls are slowly gathering their strength again. They walk towards me warily. For a moment I glimpse Katie Bell's face before she dissolves into an unrecognizable mess.
My wand is drawn and pointing at them.
"I will remember." I call out. "And I'm going to end this."
"You are one of us, Parvati Patil," the woman calls out. "You cannot win. Everyone is against you. The World is against you. The System is against you. You will drift back into obscurity. And I will be waiting for you. We will all be waiting for you."
*Crack!*
"I am going to find out who you are," I cry out as I reach the door. My hands are fumbling to open it. There is a latch holding the door in place.
"Oh, I can tell you who I am," the woman laughs. Is she trying to stall me?
*Crack!*
The faceless girls are already upon me again. But at least I'm not getting any more intoxicated.
"Protego!"
The bitch is trying to stall me.
My hands fumble and I've opened the locks. I feel too weak to cast another shield spell. The nearest faceless girl has a knife out and is stabbing at me. Huh? Yes, she stabbed at my robe, and I feel the blade pierce my skin. Not deep , but it hurts like hell.
"What is your problem?" I shriek. I kick her in the face and she goes sprawling.
"I can tell you my name," the woman is still at the far end of the room, in a sing song voice.
"F*** you, bitch!" I shriek back. I punch a couple of more faceless women in their faceless-ness. I am able to swing the door open, knocking a few others back. Despite their numbers and their viciousness, they are scrawny little things, and they fall away.
Before the door closes behind me, I hear her cackling madly. Crazy ass Bitch.