Chapter 9. Single Combat.

In the dark room, terror could be felt distinctly – almost palpably. Not a single ray of light peeked through the drawn curtains; no one dared to throw open the door – only crack it enough to slip through, before returning the room to its gloomy peace.

Xenia took her time standing next to the wall, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness and listening to Priscilla's loud breathing. She could still hear the quiet, anxious voices of Zabini's parents, her brother, and Tobias Parkinson, who had not walked away from that door in two days, according to the ailing girl's mother. Priscilla, however, refused to see him, almost flying into a rage at each mentioning of this unwavering devotion of her old school friend.

Two large, inhuman eyes flashed out of the corner of the room. This was odd, since there was no light for the large yellow irises to reflect. Yet, they seemed to be glowing on their own.

"Why did you come?" Priscilla's voice was low, hoarse, with subtle notes of the pain. "You can do nothing to help."

"I can at least try to relieve your condition," Xenia said calmly, taking two steps forward. Her eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, and she could now see Priscilla, sitting in the corner, dressed in a white dress, where the dark stains of manifested physical suffering stood out in sharp relief.

Uncontrolled animagy syndrome. This was the verdict Xenia saw in the chart she'd scanned before heading to this house. Indeed, a verdict, not subject to appeal. It was akin to cancer or most horrible Muggle diseases Xenia had read about during her time at the Academy… When a healer can do nothing but watch the illness, ever increasingly, suck the life out of the patient… It is the worst – helplessness in the face of impending demise… And at such a moment, Xenia knew, the only thing she was able to do was to be near, to impart hope for, if not healing, forgiveness and… salvation.

"I asked to be left alone," Priscilla was not moving; apparently, her condition progressed to the point where the animal form only advanced, not letting the human body function properly.

"I can take away the pain."

"What for?" there was bitter smirk in the voice. "Only if you can speed things up?"

"No," Xenia whispered, almost in horror, sitting down two paces from the wretched girl.

"You can't or you won't?"

"I have no right; I am not an executioner," Xenia said firmly.

"And who is worse: an executioner or a master of torture, unwilling to put an end to it?"

"I can take away the pain," the healer repeated.

"Will the torture stop at that?" Priscilla breathed, slowly raising her arm, which had lost distinct outline. "Even without pain, I will be able to see everything that is happening."

"Your parents still have no idea what is going on, have they?" Xenia noticed it as soon as she arrived. Mrs. Zabini's face showed worry, concern, but not dismay and terror, which Xenia was used to seeing on the faces of those whose loved ones were on the brink of death, agonizing and frightening.

"They will see everything soon enough, won't they?" Priscilla must have closed her eyes, for Xenia could no longer see two huge, inhuman pupils. An owl… Only a short time remained before Priscilla's heart would stop, turning into that of a nocturnal bird. And it will never start beating again, for the transformation would not be completed.

After a half-minute of silence, Priscilla looked at Xenia again and spoke:

"I shall die looking like this, won't I?"

Xenia knew what the girl was asking: what will become with her body after death. The healer was facing a dilemma, but perhaps in it also lay a solution: a way to cheat death, to not surrender to it the one who was so tired of living? A trickery, monstrous, comparable to death, but one that gave a chance – of life, in whatever form…

Xenia had never thought she would make such an offer. Knowing Priscilla, she was sure the girl would refuse. Few of those who'd gone through this – the most brutal penalty after toying with animagy – agreed to this pseudo-salvation.

"That's right, your body will not take its original shape," the healer whispered, taking stock of Priscilla's outline in the gloom. Yes, her shoulders and chest shrank as they got rounder, legs were taking on a more crooked form, head pushed into the neck, arms… The arms were no longer human arms, about to turn into wings. There were still fingers, there were still elbows, but everything was now covered with feathers, smeared with blood that was flowing, unchecked, from the human body.

Animagy in slow motion was death itself. Not a mere instant, that wouldn't allow even a drop of blood to escape the transforming body – eternity, that took away all chances of survival.

"When shall I die?" Priscilla's voice was humble, quiet, as though she was already seeing it – her personal eternity.

"The changes in your body are now mostly external; on the inside, the transformation has only just started," the healer replied sadly, slowly probing the girl's arm to check the pulse and trying to understand the changes at a very different, purely human level. Yes, here the spiritual was giving way to the animal. For animagi, the true ones, this came and went in a spit second – during the moment of transformation, after which the soul was once again human, as though rejecting the animal essence. For Priscilla, this would never happen. "As soon as the changes inside begin in earnest, it will be fast…"

"And painful."

"And painful," Xenia nodded, itching to grab her wand and remove this pain.

"And my family will see not me, but a piece of meat covered with feathers and blood," Priscilla muttered coldly, almost indifferently. Xenia did not respond – she didn't want to even think about it, the girl's former perfect beauty fresh in her mind. "And nothing can be done?"

"No," the healer bit her lip, realizing what was really bothering her patient. Not pain, not death – but what would come after. She was not even worried about her lost beauty – but her family that would never get to see her again. They wouldn't be bidding farewell to her – the one they remembered and loved. Xenia had only seen this once: a locked room, hysterical shrieks of the woman, uncontrollable vomiting of the man, a closed casket, eyes full of terror… "But you don't have to die."

"Xenia, don't give me false hope," Priscilla said coldly, motionless, huddled in the corner. "If there was one, I would be in Azkaban. My parents may buy all that rubbish about madness and remorse. But not the healers from the world of the great Harry Potter, this idol. In that world – your world – there is no forgiveness even for those who put too much salt in his soup…"

"I didn't say that I can save you," Xenia almost physically felt her words hurting her. Helplessness was so horrible… "But you really don't have to die."

"Living with Potter didn't do you much good," Priscilla snorted, and the healer suddenly felt as though they were back in Hogwarts, in her first days there, when she met her classmates. She remembered Ms. Zabini then, remembered the cold, mocking tone of her voice; the voice of a person who knew her worth and that of others around her; this young girl, deprived of something essential, of a certain light in her too grown-up soul. A soul cast in marble, cut by a master sculptor, but forever remaining a stone. No human hands could ever warm the stone heart. "You lost the ability to speak clearly."

Priscilla's voice lacked the usual disdain, with which she'd once spoken about James. As though all things earthly that used to torture her were departing, leaving behind only the important, wiping away the petty stuff…

"You are dying because your body cannot complete the transformation. I can help it with that," the words came out with difficulty, for Xenia was not certain that this way was better than what awaited the ailing girl in a few hours. Still, she had to show Priscilla this way out. "I can complete the transformation. But it is all I can do."

They fell silent. Xenia did not explain further. She was sure that the girl would figure out on her own what the healer was trying to tell her.

"I shall remain an owl, forever," Priscilla whispered, large eyes blinking now and then.

"Your mind will remain your own," Xenia rushed to explain. "This has long been proven."

"But I shall never turn back into a human."

"I don't know. There is no proof that anyone managed to do that," Xenia smiled sadly. Almost everyone who accepted this lifestyle, vanished forever. And no one ever learned whether these eternal animagi ever gained control over their bodies – whether they even tried to at all; whether they managed to retain their human consciousness over decades…

"And I shall die an owl, in any case…," Priscilla said with disgust.

"No," the healer shook her head, certain that her patient could now see in the dark as well as Xenia in the daylight. "We know of two cases of such… animagi's death. They are known precisely because their bodies were recovered… human bodies." Xenia studied animagy in her fifth year at the Academy, but she still remembered in detail the photographs shown at the bottom of the article about the irreversible animagi. "When the animal's heart stops and all muscles relax, the body will revert to its original form. Healers call this the Syndrome of Return to the Source. The body becomes what it was before the final transformation."

Xenia waited for Priscilla's reply, but was absolutely unprepared when she heard:

"Do it then."

"You, are you sure?"

"Well, isn't this hope?" the ailing girl replied, almost mockingly, raising her feather-covered arm.

"Priscilla…"

"I want you to do it," the girl reiterated firmly, her movements stilted.

"And what about your family?"

"I will simply vanish, won't I? The Aurors will register two living beings in here. When you leave, I shall still be here. And then I'll run away, through the window," the oddly shaped lips formed a smirk.

"Don't you want to say goodbye to them?"

"Are you joking? By pecking them?" Priscilla replied scornfully. "Do it. But first…"

In her hand, clutched to her breast, was an object. The girl struggled to hand it to Xenia.

It was a cravat, black, silk. In one corner, there appeared to be a monogram or an emblem, but Priscilla's eyes did not lend sufficient illumination to make it out.

"Give this to Malfoy," Priscilla said quietly. "It is his…"

"Shall I give him a message? Or do you want to see him?"

"And he will rush over here? Tear himself from his Lily for my sake?" Priscilla asked with contempt.

"You know that she's been found?"

"It is Malfoy we are talking about, is it not?" Zabini sneered. "I'd be surprised if it didn't happen…"

"And you don't want to know who…?"

"No. And I… I don't want to see him. Other than… perhaps he'd like to know where I got this cravat. The story is worth him knowing it," Priscilla's voice turned strange, almost soundless, but filled with a feeling that was hard even for Xenia to identify. "I ran into this girl at a friends' house. It was in the summer, my last summer of freedom. (A weak smile). She seemed interesting to me. A kindred spirit… (Scorn and disappointment momentarily flashed in her eyes). We hung out for a time. I can't say we were friends – I never had any," with a bitter smirk. "And once I visited her at her home, in her room, where I happened to see this cravat – among other items unexpected in a girl's room. A cufflink, a tie, a calling card… Scorpius Malfoy's cravat… These were her trophies, mementoes, evidence of her breaking her strict guardian's rules… I asked her, and she told me, laughing. About the silver boy, too. She didn't know his name, who or what he was. And she didn't want to know.

"I knew all about him; I was near him all my life and she… She got to have him…" silence in the room was broken only by Priscilla's heavy and fast breathing. "Was it jealousy? No, it was revenge. Don't ask what for and why. Not everyone can be golden and kind like you… I spiked her tea with a house-elf's blood mixed with mine – …" she must have seen Xenia frown, "my brother's invention. He experimented quite a lot with house elves' blood that summer. My blood lets me set a directive; the house elf's blood does not allow to disobey it. And the main advantage is that the victim neither remembers nor realizes that an order has been given, only that an action is to be performed."

Xenia remembered another experiment with elves' blood – the Potion of Arachne – that Priscilla and Fritz gave to Lily four years ago. Then the poor girl was unable to disobey the order of her whose appearance she'd assumed under the Polyjuice potion. How many such experiments had Drake Zabini performed, and where and when were they yet to turn up in the future?

"I don't even know if she carried it out… I did not set any time limits," Priscilla laughed, but the laughter came out almost frightening, making chills run down Xenia's spine. "I directed for her to fall in love with the dullest bloke she'd have ever met."

"Can you order someone to fall in love?"

"No, but to give a directive for it – absolutely. I don't know, maybe it didn't work. But besides that, I told her to do something else. I told her that at the moment when she was well and truly in love, she had to ask this guy to change the colour of his hair and eyes – something a Hogwarts' Seven Year would have no problem doing. To ask that dunce to become Malfoy. For her to try to experience with him what Scorpius had given her. For her to understand what she'd lost. For her to suffer at the thought that she would never have him again. For her to suffer like I have suffered… Or even more, because she would know the depth of her loss. Envy. Revenge. Call it what you will…"

Xenia clutched Malfoy's cravat in her hand and her lips struggled open, to ask the question to which she knew the answer already:

"What was that girl's name?"

"Helene…"

The Healer sighed heavily, but said no more.

"And now you must do it," Priscilla almost ordered her, gritting her teeth in pain, "before it is too late."

"Are you sure? Afterwards, nothing…"

"Do it, Xenia. I think the Aurors will not object to a couple of healing spells…"

"All right," Xenia took out her wand and resolutely approached the significantly altered body. "Priscilla…"

"Do it!"

…She walked out of the room on the verge of fainting, trying not to think of what she'd left behind. Not to think of whether she'd had a right to decide who should live and who should die. She didn't even think of using the fireplace – she needed fresh air. She did not respond to a single question by Priscilla's family – it was beyond her bearing.

Xenia stopped in the garden, sweeping hair out of her eyes and looking down at the ground, trying to distance herself from what she'd just seen. She looked up sharply when a window above opened and a dark bird dashed out. Like a black shadow, it soared into the blue sky, illuminated by the rising sun; then, in a moment, two black wings seized to move, and the bird fell like a stone onto the rocky shore of the river that ran near the manor.

Xenia couldn't even scream. She slowly walked up to the fence that circled the top of the hill, sloping towards the water. The girl froze, gripping the fence with cold hands, and looked down at the naked body sprawled on the rocks.

Her beauty was perfection itself; water caressed her black hair, before rushing down to sea. Sunlight danced across the marble skin, and bright red lips smiled at the blue sky. Wide-open eyes were already seeing the eternity that she did not turn down.

16.11.2009