Rowena felt like she was falling. When the dizzying fall stopped, however, and her surroundings came into focus, she felt like nothing had happened. She still stood by the shelving unit in her parents' bedroom. Nothing at all seemed to have changed; then she noticed her father standing beside her. "Papa! Sorry, I didn't know you'd be coming home."
He took no notice of her, but she realized his clothes looked about ten years out of date. Maybe she had fallen into a memory after all; maybe it was his. As he finished getting ready and walked out into the hallway, Rowena followed. She studied her father as they walked - he seemed to have less gray in his hair, to stand taller and less wearily than he had at Christmastime. Her attention completely diverted from walking itself, she suddenly found herself tripping over a toy left carelessly in the hallway. Her father got ahead of her as she bent down to examine it - an old doll she once had, but had forgotten about. It had been her favorite. She went to pick it up and take it with her, but though she was solid, she wasn't able to move it. I can't change the past, she realized. I can walk and trip and be solid, but I can't move anything because it has already happened. The thought saddened her. She picked up her pace as she heard voices coming from the kitchen. "-not exactly what I'd have you be doing, but I know by now I can't stop you."
"Why aren't you more interested in this?! We could be immortal! We wouldn't have to worry about anything anymore!"
"You are giving up your chance to know our daughter over a reckless theory, Morgana. How am I supposed to be okay with that? I know what you plan to do with her before you leave for France."
"It's better that way," Rowena's mother said, turning away from her husband. "You know it's better if she never knew me. You know I was never keen on-"
But Rowena never heard what it was her mother wasn't keen on, because she was distracted by a young black-haired child playing in the next room. She recognized her own pudgy figure - she must have been about six - and the smushed face of their half-Kneazle, Tiffany. Forgetting her parents' conversation, she rushed over to the other room, and sat down across from herself.
"Tiffany, come back! I'm trying to pet you!" her younger self was saying, rushing to get her arms around the Kneazle's middle. A growl from her otherwise friendly pet didn't detract her. "Tiffany! You are my best friend!" But the animal wasn't acting like it. She arched her back and hissed, and began swatting at the child with claws out. The elder of the Rowenas impulsively reached out to pull back the cat, but withdrew her hands, remembering there was nothing she could do about it. As she pulled back, not able or willing to watch herself be mauled, she looked down, suddenly paying attention to the faint scars along her hands and arms. She had written them off as the kind of childhood accidents that you never remember having, but she noticed the younger Rowena was bleeding from the very places she was scarred.
In a moment, she recollected that this incident was why she hated and feared animals so much. The knowledge that the event playing out in front of her had happened came to her from the deepest part of her mind, and it seemed to be struggling to make itself known. Part of her mind was holding back the memory, like it was drowning and the rest of her brain was trying to keep it from surfacing. All she had remembered before falling into the Pensieve was that she and Tiffany kept their distance from each other, never paying the other any heed. But those memories all came after the age of seven.
The young girl had escaped the half-Kneazle's attacks and wound her way toward the kitchen. "Mummy! Papa! Tiffany hurt me!"
Morgana looked down at her daughter, scraped and slightly bleeding on her hands and arms, crying unashamedly as only a child can do. "You'll be just fine, Rowie. Go wash up."
"Morgana! No, come here, Ro, it'll be okay." Her father crouched down to her level and pulled her into a hug, stroking her hair and shushing her. He pulled back and wiped away the blood, trying his best to heal the cuts with his wand. Healing magic had never been his forte, but the cuts faded until all that was left were the scars she still carried.
Her younger self plodded out of the room and over to an easy chair, book in hand, apparently unconcerned by her mother's presence and the events with the Kneazle, but the Rowena watching the memory was gobsmacked. Her mother, her mother, was there in the kitchen, talking with the family as if she had been there all along. Was there more she hadn't told her that day when she appeared as not-quite-ghost?
Their daughter out of the way, her parents went back to arguing about France and the Elder Wand, their voices raising. The louder they got, the more times Rowena glanced over her shoulder at her younger self, but the girl remained absorbed in her book. She wasn't sure if it was a Silencing Charm placed around the kitchen, her own ability to live uninterrupted inside a story, or - and this is what scared her - familiarity with the sound of her parents arguing that kept her so unconcerned.
"I'm gone, Aquila. I'll come back when I find the Wand. All this noble talk you have about not wanting the power - we'll see if you really mean it then." She all but spat the words at him. Then, a breath later, her voice oozed with sweetness. "Rowena, sweetie, come here a moment." Obediently, the young girl set down her book and walked up to her mother. "Okay, now stand still please," she said, taking out her wand.
"Morgana, are you sure you need to -"
"We talked about this. I may not come back. It will be easier this way and you know it."
"I'm not sure she'll think so when she's old enough -"
"Well, if everything doesn't go as planned, she'll never know the difference. And if it does - she'll have her Mummy back in her life. Why wouldn't that make her happy? Goodbye, Aquila." The seventeen-year-old Rowena could her the finality in her voice, and without further protest, her father left the room to wait.
As soon as he left, Morgana reached into the cupboard for a vial, then placed her wand at her daughter's temple. A silver stream came out, and she directed it into the vial. "That's a good girl. We'll just save this day for when you're older okay?"
"Okay, Mummy. When are you coming back, Mummy?"
"Well, I don't know. Maybe next week. But maybe I'll be gone forever. But it won't matter. You won't remember that I was ever here. Obliviate." The girl's eyes became fuzzy, her balance unstable, as the spell took effect. But by the time she came to, her mother was out the door.
"Mum? Mum? Where are you?" she asked.
At her voice, her father came back into the room. "Rowena, what are you talking about, dear? Your mummy died during childbirth, remember? We've talked about this before. It's always been just you and me." To the child, he sounded self-confident and condescending, but the older girl could hear the resignation in his voice.
"Oh. Yeah. I just miss her, Daddy. I wish she were here with us."
"Me too, sweetie. Me too."
And suddenly, Rowena found herself back on her father's bedroom floor.
She had no desire to process her emotions just then. She catalogued the facts in the back of her mind as she decided on the next memory to enter into. Her mother was not only alive well after her sixth birthday, she had been an everyday part of her world. She had stolen her memories, Obliviated days at a time from her mind. The moment her mother left - presumably for France - her father began to lie to her about her entire childhood. Just breathe, Ro. Stick to the facts. You don't have bloody time to be angry about this right now,she told herself. But her ability to stay rational under the most trying of situations was being tested.
Some of the memories were labeled. She found a vial with "Memoires du Monsieur DuPont" written neatly along the outside, and though she didn't understand French, she recognized the language. If it was in French, it must have been from her mother's time there, she reasoned, and poured it into the Pensieve. The liquid-gas spread out evenly, and for a moment, Rowena hesitated, seemingly hypnotized by its movement. Did she really want to know more about what her childhood was really like? Did she want to see the fate of her mother - regardless how different it was from what she had believed a week ago?
Rowena wasn't certain of the answers. Part of her just wanted to crawl back in time and forget about everything. She had come to terms with growing up without her mother. She loved her father and respected him. They got along wonderfully. All she had worried about was what creature might attack her in Care of Magical Creatures, and whether she would get an O or only an E on her mock N.E.W.T.s in Transfiguration.
But she couldn't leave herself hanging. She felt separated from the Rowena she faced in the memory - a Rowena who seemed to have a completely different understanding of childhood than she recalled now at seventeen. She wanted to know what really happened to her - what shaped her as a person - even if all that now remained of her childhood memories were Obliviated fragments and the personalized fairy stories her father told her to fill in the gaps.
Even if she wanted to, Rowena couldn't imagine being able to let go now. There was the possibility that her mother had lied about her vanishing after she used the stone - that she was still out in the world somewhere, an apparition that could come back to literally haunt her. She had no choice. She had to find the wand and do what she could to become the Master of Death - whatever that might mean for her relationship with her mother. And if she was going to embark on that particular quest, she would have to know as much as possible. She plunged into the memory.
When her world stopped spinning, she found herself in a quaint countryside along a river. Though she had never been there, she could only assume this was France. A pair walking by speaking the ancient language confirmed her she moved closer to them, she realized that one of the figures was her mother. She was talking in a harsh voice with a tall young man with dark hair and dark eyes. Her French sounded forced and imperfect, and Rowena found herself wishing she had studied French more in Ancient Runes. "Où est la Baguette du Sureau? Je sais que vous sait!"
"Non, je ne sais pas! C'est vrai! C'est vrai!" The man sounded desperate, and whatever he was saying, Rowena believed it was the truth. Something about his intonation, or the look in his eyes, or the way he held onto the loose fabric of her mother's shirt at the collar.
All of a sudden, the memory changed. It wasn't that she had gone anywhere or the scenery was different - the man still stood pleading with her mother over something, they still walked along a quiet river in the countryside - but the quality had worsened. The man's voice sounded hollow and in a different baritone as he shouted something angrily in French. Her mother's voice, also hollow, took on a sweet tone as she seemed to plead innocence.
The image was blurry, but the man appeared to throw her in the river. "Help!" her mother called. "Help, I can't swim! Aidez-moi! Je ne peux pas nager!"
It was the last Rowena heard before the blurry image of her mother vanished in the water , as quickly as she noted that her mother was dead, she found herself back in her parents' room, Rhys standing there beside her.
"Ro? What in the world just happened? One minute you weren't here at all, and then the next, there you are on the floor. That is probably one of the strangest things I've ever seen. And you have to admit I have seen a lot of really strange things."
Rowena sat up, then slowly made her way to where Rhys had perched on her father's bed. "Have you ever heard of a Pensieve?"
"I've heard of being pensive... but not a Pensieve."
"Come here, I'll show you." They walked over to the great stone basin, still swirling with the memory of Monsieur DuPont, whoever that was. "Basically, you can extract memories and save them, then re-live them later. When you weren't sure where I was, I was inside the memory."
"How did you know that's what this basin was for?"
Rowena paused. "I'm - I'm not sure, actually. I think, though, it has to do with something my mother would do to me when I was a kid."
Rhys looked more baffled than he had in second year when they were learning the basics of dueling. He and Rowena were partnered, but when he yelled "Expelliarmus," his own wand jumped out of his hand and landed five feet away. In his current state of bewilderment, though, Rowena had a bit of an explanation. "Remember I told you how my mother said she didn't actually die until I was seven? Well... it turns out she was around a lot more than she let on." She began to explain the first memory she witnessed, how her mother's presence had seemed normal to herself as a child, and how before she left, she Obliviated her daughter. "My guess is that she selectively deleted the parts of my memory that she was present for. During the memory, Tiffany started clawing me and attacking me. I don't remember that ever happening, but I also never knew why animals scared me so much. At the end of the memory, I asked Papa where Mum went. And, well, he told me she had never been around, that she died in childbirth."
"Wow. I mean, just, wow." After a few more attempts at a coherent sentence, Rhys managed to say, "But why would she have kept these memories?"
"When she left for France, she was hoping she would be able to find the Elder Wand and return. If that happened, she planned to show me the memories I had been walking around without, so I could have a memory of the memory. At least, that's what my best guess is. I'm not really sure what to think anymore. How can I, when I'm not even sure how much of my memory is real?"
Rhys awkwardly placed his arm around her shoulder. "Let's go back. It's getting late; people might start to wonder where we're at, soon. You can tell me the rest when we're at Hogwarts again."
"Okay," Rowena said, but she was reluctant to leave this place. As they walked around the corner of her house to Apparate, she asked him, "Did you find anything interesting?"
"Yes, but I'll tell you about it when we get back," he said, reaching out for her hand.
Rowena was glad Apparation only took a few moments. She wasn't sure she could wait much longer than that to find out what Rhys now knew. Suddenly they were pulled into blackness, but it didn't last long. Soon, they were at the far end of Hogsmeade, a few students still mingling about as the sun got lower in the sky. Gray clouds were piling in, and by the heaviness in the air, she was sure that rain would come soon.
No one was around them. Just as Rowena was getting ready to note that they were safe, Genevieve Scamander walked up beside them. At their confused looks, she said, "I heard the pop. I was listening for it though. I knew you two had disappeared somewhere. Were you off doing something romantic, or trying to find the Wand?"
"We weren't off-" Rowena said, at the same time as Rhys said, "Trying to find the Wand, but what's it matter to you?"
"I'm curious. I've always wanted an adventure."
Rowena and Rhys exchanged a look. She shrugged and said, "Okay, I'll tell you what we know."
As the trio walked through Hogsmeade, Rowena realized that as far as the search for the Elder Wand was concerned, they didn't know much. Everything she tried so far had been in vain. Even the lead that Genevieve gave them, to go to Godric's Hollow - well, they hadn't done much looking around after Rowena was distracted by the memories in her parents' room. Except that Rhys said he knew something. They had been walking with Genevieve in the middle, and Rowena had been doing much of the explaining. When she looked up to catch Rhys's attention, she realized he was walking far enough away from them that he could be considered on his own. "Rhys? What did you find at my house?"
"What? Oh, sorry. I was distracted. Looks like rain, doesn't it?"
"Yes, finally. But seriously - you said you would tell me when we were back. What is it that you found?"
"I was just looking at a handmade family tree. You really have been the only child of an only child for awhile now. That interested me."
"How long ago is the first Weasley on there? Did you find out if I'm related to Leila at all?"
"I don't remember exactly, probably 150 years or so. Leila wasn't on there."
It was unlike Rhys, these calculated sentences, the lack of rambling. Usually he spit out whatever words were in his head and made sense of them afterward. But they were nearly back to Hogwarts now; Rowena could ask him about it when Genevieve wasn't around. Maybe it was her presence, after all, that was making him uncomfortable. "That's too bad. After all this, we could have used an easy lead."
Genevieve said, "Yes, but if it was your mother who made that family tree, surely she would have gotten closer to finding it if Leila was on the tree. Was that really all you found, Rhys?"
"Well... yeah. Sorry, Ro."
"We're going to have to try something else, then. Meet me in the library tonight?"
"Sure thing, Gen. See you then." Back inside the castle, they split up to head to their separate common rooms, and on the long walk up to Gryffindor Tower, Rhys didn't say a word.