Now that he saw her properly, he saw that energy poured off of her. It could've been her excitement at seeing him, or simply the magic she was working with. He didn't know. He wasn't used to looking at people's auras, but something flared around her. He felt it more than he saw it. She had the kind of thick swirls of black hair that crackled as her vitality raced along each follicle, almost sparking at broken ends. He could tell that she knew exactly what she looked like and enjoyed a subtle chaotic, disheveled illusion. He focused on this, recalling Snape's bone-straight hair when seeing him for the first time, and how it formed in clusters that were too heavy to curl proper over the next seven years, and so brushed his shoulders buoyantly until he cut it. He remembered enjoying that about Professor Snape, but lost sight of it through their animosity. His teacher's hair must've been a compromise between muggle and wizard blood. What had Draco told him about blood-magic and physical traits? The Half-Blood Prince, indeed.
The baby looked up at him, his head going back against his mother's breast as his eyes grew wider as Harry loomed over him.
Harry smiled. There was no telling what he looked like to the child. Something about the way Sev's thin lips crinkled in alarm, perhaps confusion, ripped Harry's heart from his chest. He recognized what would one day be a very off-putting sneer, on such innocent lips. He bent down, unable to stop himself. "Don't worry," he said to the baby, "I'm more afraid of you than you are of me."
Baby Sev's brow dimpled where his eyebrows had not yet fully grown in. Definitely perplexed at the sight of Harry. He twisted away until Eileen clasped him.
Harry could've stared a lot longer, but Eileen snapped him out of it.
"Let's get down to business, Harry. My son needs you, and you need him."
"Um, okay… how do you know me?"
She paused. It was her turn to look perplexed, but she looked more like she was trying to figure out how to handle answering him. She put her finger to her chin. "I'm a witch, Harry. We know what we need to know."
She could've said more, and her tone was not without humor. But she let it sink in that she absolutely had faith in his intelligence.
Great. She's a bully.
Nope. He was not gonna start off like this. She had to be teasing him. He braced himself to try again. "I know that. But pictures don't usually come after me, or insist that I enter them. You're a whole nother level of magic to me. How can you possibly interact with me this way? You're dead. No offense. You're memory is quite alive still. Obviously."
She looked at him in mock alarm, but her playfulness only lasted a second before her luminous eyes got sharp. "The picture of me is a memory frozen in your time, but it's my bridge to your world when you look at it. When you look at it, you stir tremendous desire, Harry. Your magic gives you what you want, or tries to, when you trust it. You younguns can't seem to do shit without a handy spell to help you. Magic is still magic, raw and earthen, whether you know the recipe for talking to a spirit or whether you just do it. When you look at my picture, what looks back at you, is very much alive and uses the image to get through to you. I'm speaking to you through the only thing I have to represent me."
The tone of her words practically forced him to take a step back. He was sorry he'd played with the baby without asking. If that was her conversational voice, she talked like a woman twice her age, with just as many challenges keeping her diligent and guarded. She didn't have time for slow-witted people.
"Be sharp, boy. I'm not mean spirited, I come to help you. I need you to use that noggin of yours to listen. Of course I know who you are. The same way everyone knows you. People talk. Pictures don't always mind their own business, just like you don't always mind your own business. Think very carefully about what you want to know from me, because our time is limited. My chores aren't going to do themselves and I'm losing daylight."
"But you just said…" Didn't she just say that she was more than a memory? Was the Eileen in the picture still living out her old life? Had her spirit moved on, or hadn't it?
She saw his confusion and put it a different way. "My magic and your magic are creating a place for us to meet. Take a good look around you and notice how your world differs from mine. Before you enter Severus's portrait, you'll have to learn some ground rules to stay safe."
He did as he was told and saw that he was indeed inside the picture, in the room. It was a studio with bare wood floors and small rugs. Furniture sat like props. Behind Eileen, was only a backdrop of a painted parlor. The rest of the room looked more like a storage warehouse, with crates and photography equipment off to one side. There were people, but they seemed to move in a slow and blurred way. He took a moment to try to figure out what they were doing and it dawned on him that they were interacting with each other normally, but couldn't see him. There were at least four other people in the room and one of them was not human. It was an elf. An elf with bobs and hair berets fastened to her ears. And she stood next to an elegant woman wearing an indigo blue stole, who waved out towards Eileen. He tried to make out what the woman was saying, but her speech, like her movements seemed largely out of sync with him. Slower, lower, and indecipherable.
He knew that this was Eileen's mother, Ladoria Prince, and Jipsy.
Before he could assess anything more, Eileen told him, "This picture exists because my mother arranged it. She went behind my father's back to set it up. She even bought the dress. It isn't to my taste exactly, but she begged me. That was the last time I gave in."
He looked from her back to Ladoria . The older woman looked like any mother doting on her child. He supposed her puckering kisses were attempts to make baby Sev smile. He didn't know what she was saying, but she appeared very lively and talkative, in slow motion. She seemed thrilled to have coaxed her daughter into silk and make-up. He got vibes that the day had been a tremendous win for her.
"She can't see me," he said. "None of them do."
"Exactly. You've made it past one barrier. Now you have to make it past another. Your mind is inside the picture, but you're not of the picture world and the stuff you're made of, knows it. These realities are supposed to be separate for a good reason. This world can't sustain your life, and your world can't sustain ours. Therefore, you're naturally prevented from merging with us. If you want to find Severus, as he is in your lifetime, you'll need my help before you can enter his portrait."
"And how do you know my intention to do that? That's not something I've gone public about." Was he going to have to remove all pictures and paintings in his home then?
She sighed, appearing exasperated before rethinking her approach. The baby played on her lap, smacking her clasped hands.
"What you see of me, is partly Eileen from my past and all that I can bring of my real self into this little frozen image. It can't hold all of who I've become. I'm here, playing dress up with my mother. Wearing these fancy rags, is the only way I could get her to stop nagging me and crying herself sick. Just because she can spend the day shopping and eating fancy desserts, doesn't mean I have time for that, or that I even want to. I don't miss it. I love my family, but I love my work more. I saw a way to get through to Sev today, through you."
His interest intensified.
"My mother sent the elf for me, after I told her not to. The version of me that you see, is happy that she can make mother smile again, but she knows she's not here to stay. The front of the picture shows mother's joy. She captured it. But now that you're inside, you're seeing how I got other things on my mind. You're getting a full cup of what's really going on in the image, not just the surface.
"If my tone is harsh, I'm not trying to be. I'm actually helping you, by sharing my thoughts. Things we don't have time to put into words. You call it legilimancy. I'm just saving time. That's how you know some things about me. I'm feeding you, spoon by spoon, and hoping it's not too much for you. I didn't raise you, so I don't know how well this is gonna go over. Don't get tore up about me not smiling and fussing over you. People called me sad and mean all my life, 'cause they wanted a prettier face over honesty. Well, I claim you, or I wouldn't be talking to you right now. Use that handsome head of yours to figure out if I'm helping you or hurting you, before you judge me. I know my boy wasn't always nice to you, but he prepared you the best he could. And from where I sit, he did a fine job. I'd like to see anyone do better."
She kind of overwhelmed him. He understood that he wasn't getting a clear recording of her, and neither was he getting a clear communication. The past interfered with the present, as she indicated, and she talked to him like she could lose his attention at any moment.
"Remember, I'm speaking through a memory, and that memory has work to do at home and a husband who'll be wanting supper. When I clean up the kitchen, I'll be brewing in my basement all night and hoping Sev sleeps through it. This Eileen is very impatient, and I ask that you not be put off by that. She's the only version of me that I have to speak through at the moment. When Mother sent the dress and made the arrangements, I was going to refuse again. But I saw the dress and I caught a vision of you. Pretty things do that. They charm and open visions in my head. Severus was squalling in his cradle and my roast was burning. The dress made me stop when I saw it. So clean and fancy. What's a few hours with Mother gonna hurt? I can't stay mad at her forever. It's been years, and I'm doing just fine.
"As soon as I thought that, I went years ahead of my time. I saw my son standing in our garden. Only he was much older. Seventeen. He was kneeling, holding a tiny thing, a babe. I knew it belonged to him, wrapped in a blanket. All this was just a flash, but I knew the child was his. He sat at my feet and told me that he couldn't keep it. He begged me to take it. To take care of it. It was you. I didn't understand at the time, but I kept tuning into him and to you, until I understood how you both fit into my work. I knew from the vision that it was important that I give into mother this one time. Let her dress me up. Let her play with her grandson. I didn't know that taking this picture would lead me directly to you, when the day came that you'd need me."
A pin could've pushed Harry over as he listened. Snape was holding him in a vision? Holding him as a baby? "Did you say, I belonged to Snape?"
"I did."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"It will. But first you must enter the portrait."
"My blood-parents are James and Lilly Potter," he insisted.
She looked cautious. "I don't deny it. But magic doesn't have to obey any rules, Harry. My son was more influential in your parent's life than you realize. I will let him be the one to share that little sweetheart with you."
She leaned in, clinging to the baby. "You asked how do I know you. Let's just say, in the magical world, you are known. Those who can read magic, know all they need to. Don't ever ask anyone else how they know you. Stop acting like you ain't walking around with all that magic. That's what makes people think they can take it from you. You seem so aloof. It's a good decoy. A disguise. But master something. Anything. It puts a shield up. Voldemort got to you because you were undisciplined, chasing after that rich boy and playing romantic games."
Did she mean Draco? Romantic games? At Hogwarts?
Sev began to fuss. She bounced him on her knee. "No matter, you signed up for it, though I can't convince you of that. Sev made the same mistake. Hell, it runs in the family. We're not happy unless we're scared shitless. But we're made for it."
She suddenly put her hand to her throat. "Look at this."
As soon as she ordered him, dark bands of broken blood vessels appeared. They changed to purple and for just a second, she showed him the instant of her death. Her color returned and she smiled, more to soothe him than anything else. "I knew my husband couldn't handle my work. I knew he'd kill me. But he was the one I could make Sev with. No other."
Baby Sev kept playing. The marks shocked and repulsed Harry, but he forced himself to look at her. Just because he wasn't comfortable right now, didn't mean that he didn't value every confusing sentence out of her mouth. He noticed how she caused the bruises to appear and disappear at will.
"Sure, there could've been other children, and there were, but conditions had to be right. I came to give my life, and I gave it. It allowed Severus to protect all those children, when he could hardly protect his own. There were so many sisters in that generation. But he knew you were coming, and his part of the fight would soon be over. The thing is, he's so good at what he does, he doesn't know when to stop fighting. He thinks he's still the same person as before. He thinks he's fooled the world. He doesn't realize that he really did die on the floor of that boathouse. He just didn't let go. He finished his commitment to you. Then he made that body get up for another run. He's done what he came here to do. But when you cried over him… when you showed him what you felt, he willed himself back into your world. He healed himself. He decided that he wanted to be close to you.
"He doesn't know all of that, but that's what happened. Now he's simply following what he knows. Corruption and danger. He will keep himself busy with that until you help him see that he doesn't have to fight anymore."
He wanted to hear more about Snape's influence in his parent's lives, but every word out of her mouth, started a new winding path, filled with unanswered possibilities. The minute a question formed in Harry's mind, something else out of her mouth would sweep him off his feet. It was almost as if his yearning to know about his family had somehow crossed wires with this woman, and all kinds of family history was coming at him in the most congested and indecipherable way. Her words spun a web around his thinking and he felt incoherent just taking it all in. If he didn't stop her, he wasn't sure he was going to get anywhere.
"He's still fighting?"
"He doesn't know any other way. I taught him well. He came to put himself between all those children and the harm that wants them. So did you. The way you've yearned to find Severus, you pulled at him so strongly, your distress signaled anyone and anything who could help you. I know, the little elf knows, Severus knows. You have no secrets. Your intentions are felt so heavily, they advertise themselves. You have never learned to control that, in spite of my son's best efforts."
Okay, so his Gryffindor traits made him something of an open book. That was nothing to be embarrassed about. He told her, "I don't have anything to hide, it doesn't matter what anyone thinks they know." Wait. Did that even make sense in response to her? His mind clouded as she talked in spirals around him.
Now her smile was earnest. "Oh, yes you do."
The way she said it reminded him of what he didn't want to come out in a trial. He looked down, but she brought his attention back to her.
"You're tormented by the crimes against your body. It's understandable. But as old as I am, with everything I've seen and done, to me, that's like listening to a muggle lady wail over a stain on her gown. Her life is shattered over a flaw. She won't fit in with all the other elites anymore. Oh dear. Ask Thella about fitting in, and how precious that ability is to wizards and muggles alike. She ruined her chances in the womb, and still has found the source of all peace. Stop relying on what others think of you. They don't know what you've come to do. They don't know your work."
"Thella? What's she got to do with any of this?"
"I sent you to her for more than one reason. She's proof that it isn't your pretty human costume that makes a good life. It's knowing how capable you are and getting on with it. She's well positioned also."
"Positioned for what?"
"She's part of the family. The sisters all stay together. That's how we circulate the magic of our coven and keep it available for those who come back into the living world. We see what needs to be done on that side, and we make the proper arrangements on this one. We watch over the movements of the ages, the way old ones read waves on the sea, to detect the coming changes. We oversea nations from our inconspicuous, domestic little roles, and insert ourselves at key moments. Thella is part of our sisterhood, and always has been. So have you. Lily. Severus. And so many more. How do you think people survive being herded like cattle and raised just to provide labor to the machinations of civilizations and wars? We try to help them, till they can stand on their own. Till they know how valuable and powerful they are. We raise agents to fight the good fight.
"Hundreds of lives ago, you joined us. You were a woman then. We all initiate as women, before going on to male lives. It would only distract you to know about that. So I'm telling you, stop grieving yourself to death over what was taken from you as a man. As a woman, you've been through so much more, and that's what your ordeal really means.
"You fear the loss of dignity that you once thought it was okay for women to live without. Don't worry, we've all made that mistake and worse. That's why the initiation starts with females. You can't carry the magic unless being one has prepared you. I don't care how many Elder Wands you manage to break. You've had to rise above all of that. And you've done so well, that we handed all of our magic to you, to deliver the deadliest blow to the enemy. He would've slaughtered your children. Our children. Now you're worried about some cosmetics between your legs? Your daughter's? All that worry, is a waste of magic. It's nothing." She shook her head. "It's nothing. Are you going to live for what people think, or for yourself?"
She sat back and lifted her shoulders. "It's a change of plans for you. An inconvenience."
Her hand went to her chest. "I love a pretty dick, but the prettiest one in the world, is revolting when you're not in the mood. Same can be said of any twat."
He didn't know what to say. Should Snape's mother be talking like this? In front of baby Snape? In front of him?" The infant blinked at him.
She tapped her temple. "Who you are. What you are, it's all up here, not down there. When you want it it's divine, when you don't, it's disgusting, no matter the package. Don't get distracted from who you are, just 'cause you don't quite fit in the Old Boy's club anymore. You need to know that before you find my son. He's done with that and you'll only repel him if you bring that into his world."
He tried to keep his frustration at manageable levels. "What does that have to do with Snape?"
"He's very sensitive to you. We handed all the magic to you for a reason. Our coven did. When this was done, we were all sisters. Severus is a carrier of stored magic. I made it so. During your life, he removed obstacles for you while you positioned yourself into place. You defeated an entity who would've set the world back hundreds of years. I came before you both, to help set it all up. Thella came later. And your baby girl comes for the next phase. Don't underestimate her. She's well prepared to shoulder her burden. She's not going to let anyone pity her or take it away."
"She shouldn't have any burdens, she's just a child."
"That's what you say now. That's not what you said at the gathering. You said, 'I appoint this assignment to you. You'll have the most fun with it.' You chose your successor, I chose mine. That's how it is."
He refused to believe it, which messed with his ability to trust her. "If you want me to trust you, please say something that makes sense. Can Snape help my daughter? Am I going in the right direction?"
"If you're looking for answers to help her with, then yes. You're in the right place. But just as Thella armed you with love, I'm telling you to lose that self-pity you're clinging to. Before you can find my son, leave that right here. You're about to enter his private world and that will get you killed."
She drove that statement into him. It hit its mark. He got it. He had to see the curse for what it was. A war wound, not being denounced by the human race. Not having made such a terrible move, that life was never going to forgive him, or let up on him for being something so horrible that the average person could not fail to that extent. The average person could not get themselves cursed that badly.
He had to forgive himself for being so disgusting as to have a baby. So shameful, as to lose his masculinity in a room full of people and made to submit like a… like a woman. In front of his friends.
The curse was just a battle lost, out of many more that were won. If he'd gotten his arm cut off, he wouldn't have had any problem holding his head high afterwords. But because he attached so much self-worth to being perceived as a proper man that no one could deny…
Why did that wound have to go so deep?
"Fear," she read his mind. "You've seen war heroes missing their limbs and still they're loved and respected. You've never seen a man survive the kind of injury put to you. You've never seen the world stand up and cheer for that. Anything that can't be spoken of in polite conversation, is seen as a perversion. The great, upstanding Harry Potter cannot be associated with perversions that the whole world would rather turn their back on, than take a fair look at. It's your repulsion, and the curse has made you judge yourself by it. A real man doesn't need the world to love him. That's the popular belief anyway.
"But you know in your heart, it's being accepted by those you love, that make life worth living. You can't bear to repulse anyone. You need their love. Your friends. Your family. You can't bear for them to know the weakness and filth you were reduced to, all in your mind. So you hide your secret exactly the same way that a fourteen year old child hides hers. Voldemort used a mere puppet to convince you of an illusion. The rape and the curse were only blows meant to stun you, so that the real weapon could be used to infect you forever. The real weapon was shame. Let me take it from you."
"What?" He barely heard himself, he couldn't lift his voice behind her exposure of him.
"I have the means to take it from you. Severus tried, and he got the physical parts, but he couldn't dig into your soul. It's exactly because of my relationship to you, and the fact that I'm already on this side, that I can help you. I can't cure the curse, mind you. But I can help you cure the shame. I see exactly where it sits and I can dislodge it, but you won't let anyone near it. Give me permission, and let me take it from you."
"I don't see how you can," he said cautiously. He didn't want to offend her. Her words rang true, but it was all a bit much to start with, and he was losing his way. "Is this why I'm here? Why you asked me into the picture? I thought you had vital information about Snape. This isn't really about me. I'm trying to help my daughter."
She lifted her hand and pulled a long object from the depths of her black hair. A wand. He watched hypnotically, and couldn't be sure that it wasn't manifesting from her hair fibers themselves. She's dead, after all. What did she need with a wooden stick? She might even be showing off. But she looked at him as if willing him not to get startled and run. She stood up and placed her baby in the chair. She faced him.
"And your daughter is trying to help you," she told him. "Listen. This is very important. Every life is planned. It's written in the formation of a wheel. That wheel spins and stays with you. Even if a child never leaves the womb, that is a planned experience. Intentions are stored in Wheels of Life, and you're the primary author of that life."
Now where was she going?
She rushed to keep him from interrupting her. "The spin itself is what breathes life into your body. It's a generator. A power supply. It's like a loom, where instructions weave the foundation of your body and life. These can't be corrupted. Even if someone were powerful enough to tamper with the written language of life-casting, this original record is never undone. But it can be written over with added casting, and those new changes are reversible. A man who loses his arm can get it back if he knows how to go directly to his written blueprint, where his body remains whole and perfect as the day he was born."
So she was still reading his mind?
"By that same coin, I could write an equation that cancels any appearance of an arm and make a healthy one disappear. Your body still has its perfect state. It's all written upon your wheel. I can see it."
In one hand, she held her wand. With the other, she extended her arm and raised a palm. It came across as a plea to be patient with her rushed explanations.
"I can also see the curse, which is filled with spells that rewrite themselves and perpetuate your condition. Your magic fights it the way muggles fight viruses. Learning, and redirecting itself. Your powerful desire to be healed has written new equations for you, to let you live without having to look at your affliction. But you still believe in your pain more than you believe in your freedom from it, and so you cannot heal yourself. Your magic resists allowing anyone else more power over you, so you won't let anyone else heal you as well. You're stuck. Your magic and your life has never recovered from that night."
By now, her wand looked like twisted plaits of hair hardened into a crooked stick. It splintered where raised, matted fibers clumped and stuck out of it. Otherwise, it looked like she'd dipped it into black lacquer and it gleamed faintly to his investigative eyes. Her magic was definitely unique, taking forms that were more interesting than aesthetically appealing.
He spoke up. "I don't know how you know that, and I don't care. That's my problem, and I'm dealing with it. With all due respect, I didn't come here to talk about me. Can you help me find Snape?" He looked at the baby. "The adult version. The Snape I know."
"Yes. But first you have to give me permission to alter your Wheels of Life. I can't touch them if you don't. Your magic will not allow it."
"My daughter needs help more than I do. And if my magic is so strong, why didn't it stop the curse? Or protect me?"
"Maybe it did. It all depends on how you look at it. Did you succumb to a curse or did you merely catch it in your web and mistake ownership for affliction? How much does a teenager know about all that she will become? All that he already is, and all that she can do, before it's shown to her? You don't know how many lives you've had, you only know your seventeen years have left you unprepared for the attack when it happened. Magic invents answers, Harry, it doesn't ask the intellect for a handy little cheat sheet. Now let me inside that noggin of yours so that I can help you find Severus."
She made a pinching motion with her thumb and first two fingers. "Just a tweak. I see it right there. Let me fix it. Then you can talk to Severus all you want."
He thought about it. "What are you going to do?"
"Change the formula written upon your wheels. Both of them. You have two wheels because you were conceived twice before you entered this life. One didn't take. Your parent miscarried, but you came back. Those plans are still spinning over your head like a Ferris Wheel. Like I said, I can't remove the curse. Nothing that goes onto the wheel ever comes off. But I can change it. Give you better control of it."
He wanted to understand her, but he was afraid that asking her anything else would start another round of incomprehensible information that he couldn't do anything with but gawk at. So he asked, "Will it help Iece? Since my curse affected her?"
"Anything that helps you, helps her." She held her wand raised. "You must give me your permission now. I can't hold this window open forever. You don't belong in this memory. Do you give it to me, Harry?"
"Okay, but… "
He really wasn't one hundred percent sure, he simply knew he had to go forward. She was a bit high strung, like she was trying too hard. Like she wasn't used to making friends, but needed him to trust her quickly. Then, when he least expected it, she could go calculatingly quiet, rerouting her angle. She was a little scattered, but maybe that was because the memory of Eileen wasn't purely that of a deceased girl, but of a real and current spirit trying to tell him more than they had time for. He really didn't know what the hell she was talking about. But this was Snape's mother, after all. And Snape had done so much for him.
She didn't wait. She threw her wand. A flash of sharp black somersaulted through the air, speeding through dimensions. It vaulted in one long arch, causing time to distort as he saw it coming towards him. He had time to fear it, to be alarmed, but not time to duck. It seemed magnetized to meet its destination and he felt a moment of dread as it speared, with razor precision, between his eyebrows.
He remembered praying, please let it be safe to trust her, before falling backwards and landing on the floor of Malfoy Manor. He hit the back of his head. The smell of dust and perfume filled his nostrils. He knew where he was because of that smell. It came from the carpet. It came from hard-soled boots, filthy from the pavement, and crushed into expensive lamb wool fibers. The carpet smelled of many scrubbings with lavender preservatives that kept it fragrant and soft. It made for a unique scent and he hadn't realized how much of it he remembered until that moment. In the seconds that it took for his eyes to adjust, he already heard the rush of cruel laughter around him. Guests in Death Eater masks hovered in the background, while Lucius prepared to put on a show and bent low.
It happened like a sped up dream. He was back there, helpless against them all, but events raced out of pace and out of sequence. His glasses were gone, so he squinted. He couldn't breathe beneath Lucius, but he forced himself not to panic. This couldn't be real. There was no way he'd suffer this twice. He wasn't in as much pain and he looked around to quell his disorientation.
He saw banners draping the second landing, depicting the skull and snake emblem so integral to Voldemort's fear campaign. Guests with hidden faces and formal clothes, side-stepped Ron and Hermione, who were tied on the floor and made to keep their eyes forward and open. Voldemort's temporary throne had been arranged at the head of the table, with Draco by is side. Laughter poured with champagne, as glasses were refilled. But this background was blurred and muted compared to Lucius's barking insults, and hands like meat hooks, that tore at Harry's clothes.
In the memory, the curse burned and rendered him incapable of coherent thought, let alone the ability to fight back. But in this event, something separated him from the emotion. It gave him psychological space to watch instead of react. As he lay there, the background of people, and the foreground of assault, did not mesh. They were not in sync with one another. Something tore the memory as if it were paper, and Eileen stepped through.
When she did, she brought a storm of magic with her. An atmosphere that clouded the room, blotting out most of the light. Through this film, Harry saw magic coming off of her like the aura around a candle flame. She pushed her way through the crowd. At her approach, the mist around her revealed the magic surrounding others. It was like looking at overlapping realities in lightning flashes, and not in the normal sequence of time at all. She cursed and called them all kinds of names. She enjoyed shoving at them with her slender arms. Catching them off guard, she pushed them over using the force of her spirit energy. Judging by the looks on their faces, they couldn't even see her.
She ran at Lucius and threw a sharp booted kick to his jaw. On her feet were weathered old boots now, no longer the dainty slippers from the portrait. Harry stared, amazed at his recoil and his shock. Lucius reacted like an alarmed muggle. Wide eyes searched for the source of his pain. He scrambled back. Alert magic stuck out around him in weaponized spikes, ready to detect the invisible threat like antennae. But Eileen had moved on, running up to Voldemort's chair. He sat beside Draco, blue veins visible on his pasty scalp and red eyes aglow with excitement as his hand dallied into the folds of Draco's lap. Drugged with sedative charms, Draco was doing his best to vacate his body and all of his senses under circumstances that he had no control over. The both of them seemed to detect an approaching magical assault, a split second before it came.
Eileen brought both arms around her, like a self-hug, but when she spread them, Voldemort's chair, exploded, throwing him out of it. It ruptured, inverting itself along the split, and ejected him six feet. He landed, robe over rear, on the floor, displaying the sight of boney legs, splayed apart, up to the shadowy crack of his wrinkled ass. Skin hung off of his thighs like fallen souffles, lacking the muscle to support them. She raced to grab the Elder Wand that had slipped from his hand. She picked it up, expressed a smile of utter thrill, before stabbing it into his back. What happened next was like a science experiment between incompatible substances. Voldemort convulsed as his body limply ignored the laws of Physics and became a liquid while still holding his form. He sloshed, rippling from head to toe. Magic sparked off of him in explosive shortages until his aura burst into flame-like projections. His facial structure could not maintain its integrity and features warped and migrated as his skin sloshed into a humanoid mass. Harry couldn't tell where his eyes ended and where his mouth began, so deformed did the magical reaction make him.
Eileen jumped, childlike, and ran to Harry. She held her hand out and her wand manifested itself into it. She pointed it at Harry, who could feel his body recover more rapidly than he knew to be possible. He didn't feel like the part of him on the floor, he wasn't completely lost in that victimization. But he sensed that part of him was better off for her help. That part of him now had another way of viewing that awful night, whether it was fiction or not. That somehow made a difference. Told a different story. It was like giving his mind another route to take, instead of the one in which he'd lost everything. If he could see all of this happening and react to it, be amazed by it, then he wasn't being overwhelmed by it. His mind was just as convinced of what it was seeing now, as it had been that night, and so had new choices. New paths to grow on, instead of that dead end. The way his heart was racing, he knew that the core of his beliefs must've been convinced that this was real in its own way.
Eileen wasn't done. She raised her hands and said an incantation. Rising magic felt as if the entire floor was lifting around Harry. He had the distinct impression of sitting up, no longer in pain. No longer trapped beneath Lucius, and leagues more coherent. Lucius, along with Voldemort and everyone else, disappeared into the shadowy film of magic, and were blotted out by that dense storm that Eileen had brought with her. They were no longer relevant. When Harry looked around, trying to see the disturbance in the air that he could feel, his line of sight followed the movement of a wheel. It rose like a circular girder on his right, straight out of the floor. The entire thing was an optical illusion that appeared only a meter away from him one minute, then many more the next, as if it could not be pinpointed in time and space. It broke through the floor, lifted without a visible beginning or end, and traveled over his head.
He lost sight of it at one point, but regained it when the wheel came back down on his left side. It was like a spell circle, symbols glowing, outline on fire, turning in a heavy rotation that might've been synchronized with eternity instead of gravity. It moved with iron heaviness, but it wasn't physical at all. He got the sense that it could speed up if it needed to. It felt imposing, immense and critical. Looking at it unnerved him. It had the effect of seeing raw red guts, which are never supposed to be seen outside the body. He knew that he was looking at something he wasn't supposed to be seeing. If that weren't enough, the thing pivoted like a skyscraper threatening to fall. Only it didn't. Another structure appeared behind it, until both appeared connected in a timeless symbioses that kept them in the same grid and rotation. The magic coming off of them did indeed feel like a generator's build up, release, and build up again. The energy was cyclical and released every time a cycle was completed.
Eileen explained, "Your body is alive because of this. This is your contract with your life. Let's rewrite it."
He kept silent, unable to form words as she kept her arms raised and began directing her magic the way a conductor directs an orchestra. She threw spells from her wand. Incandescent strings shot high above her head, as bright as a welder's torch, and began interacting with the symbols and numbers on the wheel. Harry thought that the wheels were already active, but both mammoth structures lit up with what looked like equations and archaic handwriting that were many times overlapped. She ignited writings that had gone dark, and ignited places on them that appeared empty. Suddenly they were dense with encapsulated data and instructions. They went from looking like cave painting hieroglyphics, to looking far too complicated and advanced for current technology. She obviously understood the language and modified the symbols with ease.
She looked like a tiny woman standing on bricks to make herself taller. Her arms worked fast, as if she were playing an instrument and needed to coordinate her intentions with the timing. In all honesty, her frantic movements reminded him of a spider hastily arranging its web. The wheels sparked, making Harry wonder if they were rejecting her changes. An element of force seemed to be involved. He heard a whoosh that screeched like train wheels. Resistance knotted in his chest. He didn't need for this to feel anymore real, it was real enough, though he couldn't say if it was a vision or a dream. He clutched his chest as she forced her magic into the mammoth structures.
"Don't worry," she reassured him. "They just need some convincing." She grinned as she said it.
He noticed that her face lit up beneath the glow of fireworks. She worked like a woman in her element. Like she was made to move masses amount of energy, the kind that formed worlds. He suddenly got that she wasn't what she appeared to be. No one was. Her gift, hidden behind the guise of a mortal woman, really was someone who specialized in rearranging energy the way engineers plan cities. This was fun to her.
Her thin shoulders met with difficulty and he could see her body tremble like a woman lifting too much weight. He grew concerned, but she yelled at the wheels, "I have his consent!"
She pushed the last of her energy into the symbols and there appeared a band of writing that lit up the entire circumference of each wheel. Then she drew back her arms and jumped, little witch that she was, propelling herself onto an invisible current that lifted her closer to the structures. From there, she took off at a run. Harry watched her step on air and use her hands to remotely grab the neon lines she'd just created. With the pull of her hands, the lines tied themselves. She pulled her arm back, and the writing flew to her in strings that kept it attached to the wheels. She turned and bounded back to the ground, ran past Harry and found Lucius's cowering body on the floor. His was the only one Harry could clearly see, and it only became visible because Eileen parted the darkness. Lucius was shaking, but couldn't seem to identify the source of his torment. Eileen put her boot on his chest, threw her arms back, and a matrix of spells exploded around them.
Without anyone explaining to him, Harry knew what she was going to do. She manipulated the markings around him, added new ones, remotely rubbed out old ones, and added her own writing. When she was satisfied, she tied the awaiting strings of magic to very strategic spots over his heart, and tightened them. She used her wand to reinforce them, spoke a few words, then turned to the lines that bound Lucius and Harry, and severed all visibility.
Just then, the room went bright, super bright, with plasmic lightning cutting through the air. Before thrusting them in darkness again, it pulled their attention to the wheels. For a second, the walls of the ballroom disappeared and were over taken by a cascade of nighttime clouds. Clouds spiraling in formation. They layered the heavens. And while Harry assured himself that it was just an illusion, gusts of wind blew down from the spiral. He smelled rain that hadn't fallen yet, and tasted moisture thick in his throat. Like the wheels, those clouds were churning, winding on each other, from layer to layer. They were so structurally contoured, they could've been climbed like stairs. The higher they went, the stronger their depths pulled his sight upwards, into the eye of a dark vortex. Vague alchemy lessons told him that it was a portal, an energetic gateway. A common way for matter to transfer from one dimension to another, like a quantum transport system. This is what a black hole really was, just portions of the vortex that were not visible to the muggle eye. Humans could easily spot light emitted from the center of spinning configurations, if it appeared far away enough to allow their visual field to detect it. They were less able to spot the same effects when they stood right up close. They couldn't even see their own auras most of the time, which were nothing more than the biological form of what he was seeing now.
If Thella had given him her theory and philosophy, Eileen was giving him fact and experience.
He recalled an impressive muggle invention. The Hubble Space Telescope. It revealed what the most powerful wizards could already see. Entire galaxies churning like generators, spewing pre-matter out of their centers while bending into torus contortions at their edges. It happened from the smallest cell to the Milky Way, to beyond. Nature kept repeating the pattern in everything malleable enough to be shaped by it. The human eye doesn't see the full shape because it can't follow the bend of space and time. Earth, and all planets, were spun into density this way. That footprint of creation could be seen in the poles of the planet, where giant holes are kept hidden from the public, and the true nature of the planet's structure is hidden by satellite manipulation.
He thought of Admiral Bicksby telling him, "Too much inaccurate history has been taught. It's too late to get everyone on the same page concerning what's possible, so we police what we can."
Invisible, subatomic forces that created vortices, wanted to twist everything in existence, into the replica of the DNA shape. From tornadoes on land, to tornadoes of water sloshing at the bottoms of drinking glasses and disappearing down sink drains. To the cowlick swirls of an infant's newborn head, nature spun life into being violently. Decisively. Thrusting it from idea into form, using the same basic shape. Harry figured that shape, must be a recipe for life. What if you could spin an idea in such a way, that it became living, real, and physical. Was this what Thella meant by traveling through dimensions, from idea to reality?
He had no idea that he was holding his breath as he watched the eye of the storm open to reveal a tunnel of light. It didn't even occur to him, how he could see that clearly up into clouds so far away. A heaven away. But he saw it. An aperture. It opened like the lens of a camera and blinded him. He had to close his eyes against the explosion that shot forth. He couldn't look at it, but he felt it. He was the target and it came for him. Even if he could've ran, he knew he couldn't outrun magic and this thing soaring into this world, was assigned to him. As it rushed down, momentum caused him to vacate his senses momentarily.
He didn't want to be there for the impact. He thought he'd die, like something crushed beneath a meteor. But the stronger it descended through the nebulae of his magic, his field of life, the more he felt himself expand in spirit, to accommodate it. He lost consciousness, but gained a sense of freedom from his body as he surpassed the boundaries of flesh and took on a greater form. It only lasted an instant. One minute he was a part of those wind clouds because the impact had shattered the veil between life and death, and another he was back in his body, in shock at the various sensations racing around him.
He feared the pain that he remembered, and passed out before it could return.
When he opened his eyes, the Malfoy Manor was gone. So was the storm, the vortex, the wheels, and all the rest. He lay on the floor of the photography studio and Eileen knelt over him. Her skinny fingers tickled as they brushed his hair away from his scar.
He flinched, but she said, "It's okay. It's over, sweetie. He'll never put his goddamn hands on you again."
He pushed himself up, trying to detect what was different. What felt different? He checked for pain, and couldn't figure out why he wasn't in any. Looking around the room, he saw that the other people in the photo were still holding their poses, having moved very little since he'd entered. Behind Eileen, baby Snape was left under a blanket, curled in the chair.
She handed him his glasses. He put them on, ready to confront her with questions, but found it annoying and confusing as to why he couldn't see anything clearly.
"Um, what was that? What did you do?" He tried wiping them with the hem of his shirt.
"I fixed it. I made it even. And I did some house cleaning while I was in there. Once the shock wears off, you'll feel better."
"Even?" He tried again with his glasses. "Dammit, what's wrong with these?"
"It's not your glasses. It's your eyes. You don't need them anymore."
His mouth hung open.
"I hope that's okay. If it's not, just go back to being afraid of seeing painful things. The nearsightedness will return."
"What?"
"You were a baby when you saw your mother die. The part of you that controls your eyes, lived in fear of seeing things that are too frightening to handle. The larger part of you went looking for things that frighten you, to try to gain control of it. That was your personal battle, I didn't mean to take it away from you. You'll just create another one if you're not done learning from it."
She shrugged. "I got carried away. But the most important thing is, you're ready to go see my son. All that bile cluttering up those beautiful formulas, is all gone. I gave Lucius all that shit. Let him deal with it. That proud fucker'll go blind before he asks for glasses."
Harry felt his eyes. A gasp escaped him. He looked at his old glasses as if he didn't know what to do with them.
"Keep them as a souvenir," she said, and stood straight.
He picked himself up, unable to suppress a crooked grin, yet feeling utterly disoriented. He had to know. "How did you do all of that? Did you really go back into the past and hurt them? Did you affect their reality? Voldemort and Lucius?"
"Time isn't real Harry. That's just the game you living people have to play. It's all part of the obstacle course. It doesn't work the way it used to for me. I can't change your past. I just got me a little satisfaction, that's all. Wherever they are, those two, they'll feel it from their present. They did what they did and that won't change."
"But did you hurt Lucius? You did something."
"I had to make it fun for me." She smiled like a secretive little girl.
"What did you do?"
"The curse will now affect him. Mind you, you're not cured, I just rerouted it into him. He should know what he's done. Because he attacked you, he left himself vulnerable to attack from you. He created the attachment with his magic and with your emotion. Never intentionally hurt someone that you don't want hanging around you. That ties them to you. I'll look forward to breaking that blue-blooded heifer when I get her in my coven. You gave me permission to fight on your behalf. Lucius forfeited his soul's protection. His invasion only left a trail back to himself. Others were involved, but they'll get what they deserve, to be sure. You're not to think about that. He was already tied to you through his magic and the conception of your child, so I didn't make things any worse."
He appreciated that. "But what was that light? It shot down to me." He couldn't help but think that's what being beamed aboard a spaceship was like, according to many muggle accounts.
"Shhhhh…" Eileen waved him to stop talking. "When you find him, you'll learn everything from Severus. I can only give you a teaspoon at a time. Speaking of, I have one last thing for you."
She turned, went back to her chair and picked up the baby. Shifting him in her arms, she reached out and a cabinet face came into view where there had not been one before. She opened it to an array of small bottles. They looked like little tinctures of every color, each one 4 to 8 ounces. She took one and handed it to him.
"You're ready for this. You'll need it."
"What is it?"
"Brewed life. A few more dangers await you. If you make a mistake, if you find yourself in mortal trouble, drink it. It will save your life under the most dire of circumstances."
That horrified him. So when was he going to need such a thing?
She read his expression. "That time and place is still up in the air for you. You're powerful, but you lack a sorcerer's mastery. At school, they only teach you enough to keep you under control. They don't want you to know how to truly get anything you want."
She spoke wistfully, and he knew her statement was more about her past than his.
"That's why you need a proper coven. Thella gave the talisman for a reason. I'm glad she'll be alerted when you need it. I'll be there to help also. You'll be walking around in my son's mind. You'll see pictures of me that he remembers. Call on me if you need my help."
He nodded, awed by this.
She shifted her baby again, hoisting him higher in her arms. Her stare lingered on Harry as she kissed Sev's head.
Thanking her seemed inadequate, but he did it. He wasn't sure what the changes she'd spoken of entailed, but he felt changed. Lighter. Not as fearful of that night or the secrets that kept him defensive and tormented. She'd made it look ridiculously inconsequential. By making fools of them, she'd shown him how fallible and unimportant they were, reducing his anxiety over it all. Maybe that was the benefit of the equation changes or the wheel thing, he didn't know. But he felt transformed by it.
He bent to the baby, and used one finger to stroke Snape's soft, dimpled hand, which gripped Eileen's dress.
"Severus Snape. I will never see you or your mother the same way again. When I enter your portrait, be nice to me."
He knew the drooling baby couldn't understand. Yet Eileen's secretive smile gave him hope that his message would travel to the master this infant had become.
Definition: Heifer; a female cow that has never given birth. (Heh, after all the shit females go through, that don't sit right with Eileen.)
