cxc. intention
"He said what?"
Elara's voice echoed in the Aerie's portrait room, seeming to bounce upon the solid walls with the strength of her incredulity.
"Which part didn't you hear?" Harriet replied, her tone fairly tart. She sat sprawled in her chair across the table, her face set in a moody frown, back-lit by the low fire built into the belly of the hearth. Her equally moody familiar partially curled in her lap, the rest of his long body limp upon the floor, threaded through the chair's legs.
Elara would never say anything to her, but Harriet appeared particularly sinister in that lighting.
"The part where Viktor Krum might've asked me on some kind of date, or the part where Dumbledore assigned me extra lessons?"
Elara said, "The former," just as Hermione said, "The latter." They turned to glare at one another.
"Don't be ridiculous," Hermione told her. She had her sleeves rolled up past her elbows, using a folded flannel to rub prepared unguent on the inside of Nicolas Flamel's Embolized Cauldron. Two books lay open to the side, the pages thick with bookmarks. "Professor Dumbledore's lessons are a much more pressing issue! Honestly, Elara, I'm surprised you disagree."
Elara arched an unimpressed brow. Truly, she assumed Dumbledore's proposed lessons were an inevitability; she'd wondered a few times over the years when he'd decide Harriet needed private tutoring suited to her skill set. Her Defense ability far out-stripped anyone in their year, and—with training—Elara thought she could be the best in the school.
No, Elara did not think Dumbledore's decision was particularly noteworthy. What Viktor Krum said was.
"What did Viktor say to you?" she asked, lacing her hands against her middle. She ignored Hermione's betrayed look.
"He asked if I would go to Hogsmeade with him. I didn't realize what he meant at first—reckoned he needed a guide or something, I don't know."
"What did you say?"
"Well, even though I thought it'd be wicked to spend time with the Viktor Krum, I told him I'm not allowed in the village. It's not a lie, but I'm not gonna sneak out of the castle just to show him around."
"You're not going to sneak out of the castle at all," Elara corrected her, the words sharp.
Harriet grumbled. "Anyway, he asked if I'd walk around the grounds with him instead, and I said sure. He doesn't mean like a—a date. That's rubbish."
"Of course he means like a date, Harriet. You're being silly. You'll have a lovely time with him, I'm sure." Hermione cracked the seal on a potions-grade gallon of purified water and dumped the contents into the cauldron. "But never mind that. Did Dumbledore say what you would be learning?"
"I dunno," Harriet said, her attention torn as Livius lifted his head and hissed something, Harriet tracing her fingertip along his nose and the upper crest of his gem. "McGonagall said Transfiguration because I'm rubbish at it, and I didn't understand what Dumbledore meant by 'situational magic.'" She paused. "Snape's going to duel with me."
Elara doubted that would play out well. Snape and Harriet's relationship was less than amicable still, what with Harriet often back chatting the man in Potions while Snape did his utmost to ignore her. Elara didn't envy her having to cross wands with him.
Hermione stoked the flame beneath the cauldron, fire curling over the phosphorous dish. "When?"
"Dunno."
"Did you think to ask any questions? You're being very vexing."
"I was a tiny bit distracted by the overwhelming dread of having to be Slytherin's bloody apprentice."
Hermione huffed. "I'm still certain he won't be able to hurt you. Not as his apprentice. It would break the rules of the Defense association, the C-triple-M."
"You place far too much trust in their authority," Elara interjected. "And in Slytherin's restraint."
"I'm trying to help her nerves, not exacerbate them," Hermione quipped. The water began to boil, a fine spray of bubbles curling against the sides, and Hermione turned her attention to it. "It's ready."
"Are you sure you're not going to melt something this time?"
"Fairly certain." She retrieved the metal tongs from her potions kit and her own Atlas from her pocket. Before Elara could remind her that failure would result in a rather embarrassing letter to Flamel asking him to buy another lens from L'allée Du Jardin, Hermione dunked the Atlas into the water. After a moment, she withdrew it, and it seemed none the worse aside from the water dripping from the glass.
"Is that it?" Harriet asked.
"Now we have to see if it worked. Can I have one of your Atlases?"
Elara eased hers from her robe pocket and unclipped it from its silver fob chain, sliding it across the table to Hermione. She set it by her own, leaving space between the two, and retrieved her wand.
"Appare Vestigium."
Colored lights bloomed, foggy like blood in water, swirling along the table's surface and cascading over the three of them. White veiled Hermione, shot through with blue stains, and Harriet had an odd, gray cowl over her head and a pool of green that circled and writhed above her chest. Livius glowed a brilliant indigo. Only Elara's hands fell within the range of Hermione's spell, and they had been gloved by a nacreous black haze.
Elara moved her hands and dropped them into her lap.
Considering they sat in a room comprised of magic and were, tangentially, under the effects of a Shrinking Charm, everything in the spell's path lit up with color. Elara's Atlas burned brightest of all. Next to it, however, Hermione's Atlas remained untouched. In fact, it resembled a lump of coal in a bouquet of gemstones.
A wide smile split Hermione's face. "It worked!"
"What does that do?" Harriet asked, sounding a touch impatient. "I'm not seeing the point."
"Well, Embolized things aren't detected by magic, because the process contains their magic within their own vessel. They appear Muggle, for lack of a better word. Here, try Summoning mine."
Harriet did try, to no success. Hermione nodded.
"It's easier to hide, and it'll help the magic contain itself. It can't be Summoned, cursed, or otherwise touched by magic—though there is an enchantment I've researched called Thief's Downfall that will temporarily nullify the effect."
"But will it affect the sharing aspect between the three? And the magic connecting them to the hydra vellum in the Aerie?" Elara asked.
"No. Those spells are written into the Atlas. We could think of it as a roadway leading to and from the lens, and the Embolization covers both the Atlas and the roadways."
Elara watched as Hermione repeated the process with her Atlas, then came around the table, opening it to demonstrate how the adjustment hadn't changed anything. "I still need to figure out the probability ward Terry told me about," she said, tucking her curly hair behind her ear. "Theoretically, it should work as we proposed. The Arthimancy equations should chain to the second circumdo ward just fine. However, something in it seems to…I'm not sure how to describe it. The Atlas resists the ward."
Frowning, Elara crossed her arms, tilting her head back to consider Hermione. "How so? It's an inanimate object; it should not resist anything."
"To tell the truth, I'm not entirely certain." Sighing, Hermione leaned her hip against the table. "I can only guess it's because the idea's diametrically opposed to the Atlas' purpose, and the…blood magic has given it a touch of will. The Atlas records facts, and the probability ward isn't generating real information, rather information that might be real based on logical likelihoods. That said, statistical probabilities still aren't reality, and if the magic resists being paired—Harriet, what are you doing?!"
While Elara and Hermione had been talking, Harriet had unseated Livius and went to the cauldron. She'd taken the tongs in hand—and instead of dipping her Atlas inside, she'd dunked her wand.
Elara and Hermione stared in open-mouthed horror, waiting for the explosion—the explosion that never came. Harriet pulled her wand back out and shook the excess droplets from it.
"It'll be nice not having to deal with that buggering Trace during the summer," she said, giving the wand a swish, sending a small hex at the floor. She realized they hadn't said a word aside from their initial outburst and paused, looking up. "What?"
Hermione sputtered. "That—you didn't know it would work!"
"I just watched you dunk the Atlas twice over like a bloody biscuit! A wand is less complicated than that! It's a bit of wood!"
Elara didn't know what annoyed Hermione more, the fact that Harriet had a point, or the fact Hermione hadn't thought of it first.
"It was still dangerous!" Hermione came over to study the cauldron, then Harriet's wand, her lip close to teetering into a full pout. "Though, you are brilliant. I can't believe I didn't consider applying the same treatment to our wands…."
Smug, Harriet proceeded to repeat the process with her Atlas, and Hermione dipped their wands. By then, Harriet went off to hop on the ottoman by the hearth and have a discussion with Salazar Slytherin's portrait, Livius draped over her shoulders, and Hermione pronounced that their cauldron had reached the end of its life.
"That's why they cost so much and why we couldn't get our hands on one," Hermione lamented as she gave the cooling liquid a final stir. The motion brought up blackened emulsion from the cauldron's sides, rife with thick bits of metal shavings. "The tempering agent rapidly begins to eat through the cauldron once it reaches a certain temperature, and the liquid needs to remain at that temperature in order to work. Damned if you do, damned if you don't…."
She started to clean up the mess, and as she did so, Elara pulled one of the loose sheets of parchment off the pile they left on the rather messy table. She began to write a note in her sharp, exacting script, and didn't finish until the wall clock they'd dragged in from another room in the Aerie warned them that curfew was approaching. Elara folded the parchment in half and didn't bother with sealing it.
"Here," Elara muttered to Hermione, tugging on her sleeve before she could follow Harriet from the lounge. She handed Hermione the folded letter. "Give this to Narcissa when you see her at Hogsmeade."
"What? What is it?"
"My measurements and what items I won't tolerate. I trust her opinion beyond that."
Hermione's brow furrowed. "But I don't understand why you're giving it to me. Why not hand it to her yourself?"
"Because I'm not going to Hogsmeade. I'm going to stay with Harriet."
"Are you still on that? Don't be silly!"
"I'm not being silly." Elara met her eyes, her mouth pressed into a firm line. "Am I ever anything close to silly?"
For that, Hermione had no answer.
xXx
Harriet was surprised to see Elara waiting for her in the common room that weekend long after the others had departed for the village. The shorter witch wore her best uniform—meaning it lacked stubborn grass stains or the spots where the house elves had repaired spell damage and potions accidents. Over it, she'd thrown one of the cloaks she'd gotten from the Flamels with real gold clasps and her favorite Slytherin scarf.
Elara had noticed Harriet had been paying a lot more attention to her appearance of late, and not because she seemed to care overly much. More like she felt embarrassed over creases in her shirt or a bit of dirt on her cheek. Elara suspected one of those wretched Hufflepuff cows had said something off-putting, and if she found out which one, she'd curse their makeup to give them hives.
Pausing, Harriet blinked and asked, "What're you doing here?"
Elara stood, brushing the front of her fur-lined robes so they laid flat. "I thought I'd join you on your walk today."
Harriet still looked surprised—her brows drawn together in a puzzled little furrow—but she smiled and nodded. "Brilliant. We're supposed to meet him down by the lake. Oh, bloody hell, I've got a snake in my pocket—." She started to hiss imprecations at the slithering creature poking its head from her cloak, and Elara coughed to cover the sound lest the portrait above the hearth overhear. Harriet retreated to the dorms and returned a moment later. "Let's go!"
They departed through the mostly empty corridors, and Elara grimaced at the first frigid breath of wind that hit her face as they opened the castle doors. Without a word, she shifted into her Animagus form, and the change immediately cut the harsh cold in her lungs. Elara shook her fur out, and steam curled from her nose.
"Should I pop by a shop and buy you a collar?" Harriet teased, wiggling her fingers as if threatening to pet her. "A nice pink one with a big bow—."
Elara nipped her leg—but not before Harriet's gloved hand closed around her ear and gave it a good scratch. It embarrassed her to admit how nice that felt as a dog.
They tromped through the fresh layer of snow, neither girl nor dog heavy enough to break through the top crust more than a few inches, leaving faint impressions in their wake. Elara could smell Krum before they found him—a whiff of male and sparse cologne intermingling with the harsher scent of the frozen water and distant trees. He stood at the water's edge, shoulders hunched, scowling across the lake toward the moored ship.
"Hey, Viktor!" Harriet greeted with a wave, and Krum turned.
"Harriet," he replied, mimicking her wave, his gaze dipping to the large black dog standing by her side. Elara had reached her full height over the summer, and the size of her Animagus reflected that growth. Her head cleared Harriet's hip. "I did not know Hogwarts allowed dogs."
Harriet side-eyed her, the corner of her mouth twitching. "Don't mind Snuffles. She's a special case."
Elara considered biting Harriet in the backside.
"I see…." Krum looked her over again as he straightened his posture, smiling at Harriet. "You look very nice."
"Thanks! You look nice too. I like your cloak."
It was a large cloak edged in fur, complemented by heavy straps across the Bulgarian's chest to keep the weight well-distributed. Elara imagined they needed them in the bitter winter winds up north.
They shared a few words of small talk concerning school uniforms and the weather as Krum gestured for them to start walking along the shore. With a sniff, Elara followed.
Hermione had asked her that morning why she was intent on coming with Harriet, and Elara hadn't had a good answer for her, not one she wanted to voice aloud for fear of her sentiment being misconstrued. It was not an answer she wanted to utter within ten yards of Harriet's hearing.
Viktor Krum was an international Quidditch legend, a celebrity, and now a Triwizard Tournament champion who'd dominated in the first task. He was eighteen, fit, foreign, and trailed by enthralled, twittering witches every single day he stomped about the school. It was not an exaggeration to say he could have his pick of any woman he wished.
In contrast, Harriet was fourteen and skinny, her hair a wild mess when left to its own devices, and to the world at large, she was a nobody. Her identity as the real Girl Who Lived was a closely kept secret. For all that Elara loved her, she was not blind to how others perceived her god-sister.
No one recognized Harriet's intelligence until she quoted a spot of literature out of the blue, until she helped you solve a problem you'd been stuck on for hours, or until they saw her marks rivaled Hermione's and Boot's and any of the Ravenclaws.
Strangers knew nothing of her compassion before she offered a helping hand, or before they stopped judging her for her House and her jagged, narrow-eyed stare.
Because she didn't brag, no one realized how talented Harriet was in any school of magic she set her mind to. They didn't value her curiosity or her excitement. They didn't see the goodness in her heart that flickered like a new sun, shedding warmth on those who got close to her.
Frankly, those who did not know Harriet assumed she was unexceptional because she did not allow herself to shine—and Elara wanted to know what an eighteen-year-old professional athlete about to graduate saw in an orphan girl who, on the surface, did not seem like much.
As she paced behind the pair, grimacing at the feeling of wet sand smooshing under her paws, Elara pondered if her assessment was overly harsh, if she wasn't giving Krum credit for being more insightful than his grim, flat expression and brusque manners alluded. Harriet seemed happy; the cold gave her cheeks a healthy pink tinge as she chatted, and Krum smiled as he listened.
A painful prickle went through Elara's chest, the image of silvery blonde hair and pale, pretty eyes flickering in her mind. A French voice lilted in her ear.
It's not the same, she told herself. She would be fifteen next month—fifteen, emancipated, tall, and rich. And a witch, she added, wilting. A witch, unfriendly, cold.
Elara ignored the pain and physically shook herself, knocking snowflakes from her pelt. Harriet glanced over her shoulder and smirked.
No, Elara hadn't been able to answer Hermione this morning—and she would never dare say any of her thoughts for fear Harriet would think she was disparaging her. She wasn't. Elara loved Harriet, and she had seen her hurt more times than she could count, had woken in the dead of night remembering how she screamed under the Cruciatus, scared by the ghost in her eyes after she'd seen Fenrir Greyback die. So Elara would stay, even if it proved a silly endeavor, because if Viktor Krum touched one unmanageable hair on Harriet's head without the best of intentions, then Elara would sink her teeth into his hand.
"I am still sad ve could not go to the village," he said to Harriet as they continued through the shrouded wood at the edge of the forest. The silhouette of Gagwilde Tower could be seen over the treetops, its edges blurred by roving mist. "I am told there are many nice places to have lunch."
"Mhm! My friends always bring me back a Butterbeer from the pub, and it's my favorite! And Honeydukes has amazing sweets." Harriet rubbed at her neck, a tell-tale sign of her nervousness. "Sorry about that. You should be able to go the next visit, yeah?"
"But I vill not be able to go with you."
Harriet rubbed at her neck again and Elara rolled her eyes. As a dog, the look went unappreciated.
Krum paused as they neared the limits of the trail, getting nearer the Sunweather Courtyard and the shadow of the Gagwilde. Snow had gathered on Harriet's shoulders, and Krum brushed it off. Harriet didn't seem to know what to do with her hands. "I vanted to ask if you would go to the Yule Ball with me?"
Harriet blinked like an owl who'd flown into one too many windows and remained silent for far too long. Elara thumped her hard in the thigh with her tail.
"Oh! Um, yeah? Err—sure? I mean yes, that would be lovely. Thanks."
Krum rested his hands on her shoulders. His palms dwarfed her, his dark eyes intense below his thick, black brow. Elara made a sound louder than a growl but not quite a bark, and Krum's gaze flicked to her. His hands slid from Harriet's shoulders to her elbows.
In the distance, the bells tolled from the clock tower and echoed across the grounds, though the snow deadened the sound. It startled Harriet into moving, her face redder than before, her eyes wide behind her snow-flecked spectacles. She stepped back, and the ice crunched under her boots.
"We should get back to the school," she said, swallowing. "Professor Dumbledore doesn't like when students wander out this far."
"Ah, all right."
They turned to walk back the way they came, arms almost brushing, and Krum's hand came out to catch Harriet's own. Following behind the pair, Elara saw how Harriet stiffened, and her shoulders crawled up toward her reddening ears.
Idiots, the pair of them, Elara thought with a snort. She bounded to Harriet's other side and let the embarrassed girl touch her head, nervous fingers fidgeting with her ears.
"Thanks," Harriet whispered. Krum glanced at her, then away.
The bells tolled again, and the snow fell in earnest.