ccxxxv. training pains
Elara turned the rock over in her hand, feeling the weight tug at her glove. Over and over she let it revolve beneath her thumb—until her arm lashed forward, and she threw the stone
Harriet's Transfigured wooden sword whistled through the air and swatted the rock, sending it clattering to the ground. Elara succeeded in breaking the other witch's concentration, however, as her Shield Charm wavered and Hermione's Stinging Hex bounced on her thigh.
"Ow—hell!" Harriet cursed, hopping in place.
The trio had spent more than half an hour in the garden, insisting on getting Harriet to do something other than stare at the walls. They'd finally settled on supplementing her recent training. Though Harriet had managed to block half the spells and small stones flying her way, half of the projectiles had still found their mark, leaving Harriet a bit battered in appearance. "This is so much harder than Snape makes it look, the wanker!"
Hermione lowered her wand and nibbled on her lip. The light faded from the sky, but the garden remained warm, now littered with gray stones and scorch marks. Elara smelt burning leaves. "I don't understand why the sword. Why not a shield? A buckler, perhaps?"
Harriet shook her head as she dabbed at the mark left by one of the hexes, her nose wrinkling. "No, it's too big. There's too much—what would you call it? Drag? I asked Snape the same thing and he let me try it out. It pulls on the spell a lot more than the sword does and doesn't have the right momentum, so it's slow. That and it makes big ruddy blind spots if it drifts too close. Snape hit it with a Concussive Blast and almost brained me."
Through an open window, laughter grated against Elara's ear. Hermione could hear it too, because she turned toward the back of the house and frowned.
"Should we ask Longbottom to help?"
Harriet choked, then sputtered. "Are you having a laugh?"
"No. He's a better duelist than me or Elara and would give you better practice."
True or not, Harriet didn't look happy about it. Elara couldn't say it pleased her either, the thought of asking Longbottom for assistance. The thought of him being in her house rankled like claws dragging against her back, and Elara had already had to take a potion for the enamel on her teeth because she'd been grinding them so much in the last weeks. The constant, incessant noise in her home drove her spare.
Whether they liked it or not, it was decided Longbottom should come down to assist—and with him came the twins and the younger Weasleys, the practice session devolving into a spectacle before it even began. Hermione already wore a grimace, regretting having gone upstairs to retrieve them.
Longbottom had a smarmy grin, already holding his wand. From the moment he and the Weasleys learned Grimmauld had the proper wards around it to allow underage magic during the summer, they hadn't stopped whipping out their wands for the smallest of things, much to Elara's frustration. It meant enduring a plethora of odd noises at all hours of the night when she already struggled to find sleep. She almost wished Snape still lived there; he would have put the fear of God into the twins and their damn explosions.
"So, you want to duel me, Potter?" Longbottom asked, propping a fist on his hip. The Slytherins had been mocking his pose for years, but the Boy Wonder kept doing it. "What are the rules?"
"I don't want to duel you," Harriet replied, impatient. "I need to practice."
"All right—then, let's practice." Longbottom stepped forward, already leaning into a dueling stance when Harriet snapped at him.
"You don't even know what I'm practicing!" She went on to describe the exercise, gesturing at the little pile of stones they'd gathered, the stones being fairly small to avoid damage. Elara saw the mulish, impatient look in Neville's eyes and wondered if anything ever penetrated his fat skull.
Fred and George took over the task of throwing the stones. "It's our job," they explained. "As Beaters!"
"Don't aim for my bloody face."
Hermione came to sit by Elara as Harriet and Longbottom moved to their places. Ginny and Ron sat on the stack of firewood nearby. Both looked as uncertain as Hermione and Elara did.
"I already regret this," Hermione muttered.
"You had a point about Longbottom being a better duelist," Elara returned, the words bitter on her tongue. She crossed her arms against her chest, and her fingers dug tightly into her biceps. "But he's also an idiot."
Harriet stood facing Longbottom. She stared at him, her face blank, before turning her head in such a manner to force small pops from the bones in her neck. The hair on Elara's nape stood on end.
Longbottom scowled.
He barely waited before Harriet had the wonky wooden sword in the air again before firing a Disarming Charm. Harriet swatted it aside, the red light curling the long blades of grass. The sword smacked against the first stone, but Harriet stepped aside to avoid the second. Her jaw firmed, green eyes blazing.
Longbottom incanted another spell—then quickly added another. Harriet didn't bother to block the first; she drove the sword downward into it, used a shield formed against earth to ricochet off the rocks, and ducked the second spell. Suddenly, her hand flicked, lobbing a hex of her own. Longbottom jerked out of the way with a yelp.
"What the hell, Potter! You didn't say you'd be attacking!"
"What's the matter, Longbottom?" Harriet taunted. "Aren't you the one with all the fancy training? You're always banging on about all the masters you spend your holidays with, and you've complained non-bloody-stop about what a waste this summer is. Can't handle when someone fights back?"
Bitterness leaked around the edges of Harriet's words like sludge around cobblestones, and the amusement in Longbottom's expression faded. It was replaced by a bruise when Harriet ignored the next two stones thrown her way to layer two spells against Neville, hurling him to the ground with a hard Knockback Jinx.
"Oi, Potter. Take it easy," Fred complained. Harriet didn't answer him. She turned her face, and in the sunlight, Elara thought her eyes flickered strangely, a gleam slanting across the surface through the lenses of her spectacles—.
"What's the point of all your privilege if you're this weak—?"
Longbottom fired a curse from the grass, rolling to his feet, and Harriet blocked it with a dramatic sweep of her wand. Her other hand twisted, fingers held out, and the sword knocked another thrown stone back toward George.
They started to fight in earnest. Harriet pulled none of her spells, not as she did when she practiced with Hermione or Elara, and Longbottom volleyed as best as he could. The growing berth between their skillsets had never been so prevalent in class as it was now, with Longbottom crashing into the ground or the woodpile more often than not, dazed and roughed up while Harriet sneered. She gripped her wand so tightly it looked ready to break.
Something is wrong.
Elara couldn't rightly say what that something was, but it pricked anxiety in her heart. The longer she watched, the faster her heart beat, lurching inside her chest like a bird trapped in a too-small cage—and one look at Hermione showed her expression to be similar.
"The Boy Who Lived," Harriet snarled, wand twisting. "Don't make me laugh—."
Elara jumped to her feet. "That's enough," she commanded. No one listened. "I said that's enough! Harriet. Harriet—!"
CRACK!
Elara smacked into the grass on her back, the air punching from her lungs in a burst. It took a moment for what had happened to catch up with her—the final swing of the sword, the stone connecting with the wooden blade, then with her head.
For God's sake—!
She struggled to sit up, and the garden swam in a blur of murky colors before settling into stark reality.
"Elara!"
Her brow throbbed with heat. The others crowded around her, and Elara threw out her hand, warding them away. "Just—stop," she growled. The garden swayed again as she got her feet under her and stood. For an instant, her vision darkened, and Elara feared she might collapse into the dirt again, but then it firmed, and she took a deep breath.
"Black, you need—."
"Don't tell me what I need!" she yelled. She'd reached her limit for people today—in fact, she'd say she'd far surpassed it. "Just shut up."
Elara didn't look for her friends as she turned and stormed toward the house. Idiots, all of them. Including Hermione and Harriet, the former for suggesting Longbottom had any other use aside from wasting oxygen, and the latter for letting herself get so carried away—.
She wanted silence. She wanted to be left alone—.
She probed at her aching face, the place near her left temple stinging. Blood welled warm and slick, trickling through the hair of her brow and threatening to leak into her eye before she angrily swiped it away.
Elara retreated to the conservatory rather than her bedroom, knowing the others would look for her there first. Besides, the temperature stayed cooler in the lower levels of the house, heat rising into the living quarters, and Elara was too frustrated to cast more Cooling Charms. She was too frustrated to cast anything; she threw herself onto a wooden bench by the inner wall and pointed her own wand at her face, trying to cast Episkey, but her hands shook too hard.
Jaw clenched, Elara set her wand aside and yanked off her ruined gloves. She balled them up and pressed them to the wound, closing her eyes. An annoyed exhale escaped her.
What in God's name was wrong with Harriet? It'd taken considerable coaxing to get her out of her own head and outside in the sunlight, and she'd been reticent to do anything aside from practice. Elara knew her god-sister harbored certain resentments against Longbottom—well-founded resentments, in her opinion—but she'd never acted so brazenly about them. Normally she'd call him an arsehole and be done with it, not sparing him the thought or effort.
"The Boy Who Lived. Don't make me laugh."
That intonation. The lilt and deeper tenor. Who did that remind Elara of—?
The sound of the door creaking had her opening her eyes a sliver, already glaring at whoever dared break her solitude. She forced the contempt from her expression when she saw it was Andromeda. The older Black witch was one of the adults set to watch them that evening.
"The girls said you were hurt, and I saw you come in here." The door closed with a quiet breath of displaced air, Andromeda's heels clacking on the solid floor as she approached. She stood in front of Elara and sighed. "Let me see, love."
Reluctant, Elara pulled her hand and gloves away from her face. Andromeda made a sympathetic noise and probed the injured area while Elara gripped the bench's armrest, trying not to flinch.
"We'll need to send for Bruise Balm from the apothecary, but the cut itself won't scar. The area will be tender; the bone is bruised."
Elara said nothing as Andromeda retrieved her wand and started to heal the injury. The uncomfortable tugging of skin coming together had tears welling in the corners of her eyes.
She almost didn't notice when Andromeda stiffened and the tugging paused. Elara opened her eyes again to peer at her, and saw how Andromeda's gaze had flicked to the side toward Elara's right. Elara looked down—and yanked her hand away from the rotted, crumbling arm of the bench, curling her trembling fingers into a fist.
Andromeda continued healing, and Elara kept her hands pinned to her chest, shaking. Despair welled as quickly as the blood had, though it dripped cold and sluggish and left an irrevocable stain. The silence hurt worse than any wound.
"I know a witch," Andromeda said, her voice barely louder than the quiet. "One who could help with that."
Elara ceased glowering at the floor and glanced up, peering through her lashes.
"The family has always…struggled. Not with your precise problem, but with addiction to Dark magic—or simply addiction in general. Don't ask me why; I've long since stopped demanding Merlin explain why the Blacks are afflicted with such troubles. You've undoubtedly heard others call it the Madness, and maybe there's a measure of truth to it, and maybe not. Maybe it is only the cyclical nature of abuse and negligence manifesting through the ages."
Elara didn't respond. Andromeda closed the last of the wound and siphoned away the blood, inspecting her handiwork.
"The woman I know can help. But I won't take you to her unless you agree to see a mind healer."
The answering grimace came at once. "I'm not mad."
"I never said you were." Andromeda tucked the loose hair that had come free from its tie behind Elara's ear. "You don't have to be mad to see a mind healer. It's their job to help—."
"I don't want their help!"
"Then I won't take you to the witch." Andromeda's sharp retort silenced Elara's protests. Oh, the older woman already knew how badly Elara wanted this. She would do anything to quiet the insidious impulse coiling in her veins and to understand her curse. She lived in fear it wouldn't be an armrest next time. She'd thoughtlessly touch someone and—.
"Do we have an agreement?"
Frowning, Elara nodded.
Andromeda cleaned the rest of the blood, and Elara shoved her hands back into her stained gloves. Without another word, she rose and left the other witch standing there, leaving the conservatory. The stairs creaked under her weight as she climbed them, her mood still black but strangely hopeful, her thoughts so muddled she almost slammed into the person standing in front of her bedroom door.
"Elara," Harriet said, reaching out to clasp her sleeve. "Are you all right? I'm so sorry. I didn't—I dunno what came over me."
Elara stared at her—stared and studied her eyes, finding them clear and green and slightly damp with distress. "I'm fine," she said, voice soft. Relief eased through her, and Elara needed time to examine why that was. Relief? Relief for what? What was she not realizing? "I'd just like to be alone until dinner."
Harriet didn't move at first, but then she did, sliding her feet against the landing as she got out of the way. "Sorry," she mumbled again, bowing her head. She darted back into her own room, and Elara almost called her back—but she didn't. Instead, she opened the door to her bedroom, and as she stepped inside, all she could think about was that peculiar glimmer she'd seen in the garden.
"What's the point of all your privilege if you're this weak—."
The door clicked shut.