Chapter 40) Hexes and Histories

Selected Listening: The Ceremony- James Newton Howard

Anastasia slept horribly the night before the hex-deflection test. She kept having nightmares full of all sorts of dreadful things—blood and dead infants and Voldemort and being trapped and being chased and being separated from Draco and not being able to get to her loved ones in time.

She sat at the breakfast table, listing slowly from side to side unable to shake the residuals from the day before or flashbacks of her nightmares. Although sitting beside her, Fred wasn't speaking to her. Upon her return, they had immediately gotten into a fight about how she spent her time with Narcissa. Molly had taught her children that healing alchemy, specifically the way Narcissa used it, was illegal and immoral.

"You can't go into Moody's test like this," Hermione warned. Anastasia held her head up with both hands, having barely touched her French toast.

"No," Anastasia waved it off. "I want to get the stupid thing over with. I'm not playing ill."

"Do you realize what you're putting at risk if you mess up?" Hermione demanded. "Everyone in class will see."

She shook her head.

"I can do it."

"Malfoy doesn't look good either," Harry said, peeking over at the other table.

Anastasia looked up briefly but could only see the back of Draco's head, slumped over like she was. She hadn't gotten to speak to him after the dreadful lunch the day before. She wondered if he had found out about what she asked Narcissa for, or if he had nightmares of his own to worry about.

"Skip, Anastasia," George told her. "It's not worth everyone else finding out. Take the fail."

Fred, although still saying nothing, slipped his hand beneath the table, unfolded her hand, and placed a candy in it. She folded her hand over it and tucked it in her pocket, not bothering to read the label.

"Thank you," she said, "but I can do it."

Once they had assembled into class, it was clear that she could not do it. Lavender Brown, Millicent Bulstrode, and Crabbe had been hit at least twice by Moody with the confusion hex or a horn tongue hex and had started wandering around the room while garbling awfully.

Anastasia caught Draco's gaze and read the same dread in his own expression.

"Dumbledore!" Moody grinned connivingly as he called the next name on his list. "Ah yes, the maggot, what should I throw at you first?"

Anastasia stepped up, swallowed, and raised her wand. She swayed on her feet feeling not even a bit more prepared compared to when she met him the previous summer.

Moody opened his mouth to speak, and the door of the classroom opened.

"Professor Moody," Snape called. "I need Dumbledore and Malfoy. They have detention."

"Detention? At 10 AM?" Moody demanded.

"The headmaster was very clear. It seems they violated curfew yesterday by not returning before eight last evening."

Draco looked at Anastasia. They had both returned before that.

"We're in the middle of an exam," Moody argued.

"It's an urgent assignment," Snape drawled boredly. "The game keeper has lost his keys to the nifflers. Someone must help pry all the bits out of their grubby little paws before the Beauxbatons Pegasi have to be let out to graze. If you don't like it, take it up with Professor Dumbledore."

Moody stared at him warily.

"Right…maybe I will…Granger then."

Anastasia, who had zoned out in all that, didn't move until Hermione tapped her shoulder, and she saw Snape still waiting at the door.

"Right…" and she ran off behind Draco.

Snape began striding quickly to another part of the castle as soon as they were in the hall. Anastasia and Draco did their best to keep up behind.

"I would say I cannot believe the two of you are daft enough to walk into that room unprepared, but here. we. are."

"Did you really just spring us from a test?" Anastasia had enough clarity to ask. Draco was still clearly dumbfounded.

"Albus and I realized yesterday that you wouldn't be able to pull it off being so out of sorts. It's obviously worse than either of us could have imagined."

Albus had pulled her aside for a talk after overhearing her fight with Fred. She wondered what Draco could have been so upset about to appear as bad as he did.

"Are you really going to make us fight the nifflers?" Draco asked.

"Merlin, help us," Snape exclaimed and opened the door to an empty classroom, ushering the two of them in.

Snape forced them to practice for over an hour. Not only deflecting but taking hexes of various effects to see how the lifeline would pan out. When Snape hit Draco with an impediment hex, Draco began moving as if he were walking on the moon, but Anastasia could move normally, and only her thoughts sounded like they were echoing from far away. When Snape hit Anastasia with a twitchy-ears hex, her ears danced wildly on either side of her head. Draco clamped down on his ears with both hands, though they stayed physically immobile. Finally, Snape threw a stinging hex at Draco. The boy clutched his arms and began yelping at the pain, but Anastasia felt an army of insects climb up and around her entire body. She fell onto the floor, shouting as Draco was until Snape cast the counter curse.

Exhausted and flabbergasted at the professor's persistence, the two stared at him dully. The man only tucked away his wand after they had both blocked his final hex at each of them.

"Practice with your housemates until you can block every spell," he instructed sternly.

Anastasia analyzed his gaze, remembering the panic in Karkaroff's eyes as he entered their potions class a month ago, the odd behavior of Lucius and Dolohov at lunch the previous day, and the uproar at the World Cup in September.

"It's happening, isn't it?" Anastasia asked Professor Snape directly. His dark eyes made contact with hers and they shared a moment of understanding, the understanding that they were both prepping for the unimaginable.

And then his shield of cruelty and indifference slammed back down.

"I have no clue what you're blabbering on about, Miss Dumbledore."

Draco looked rather confused.

When the two intertwined students stepped back into the hallway, they bothered to face each other. The halls were empty. Class still in session.

"I'm going back to the common room to get some sleep." Draco's eyelids drooped heavily over his irises.

Anastasia nodded. Her arms hung limply at her sides.

"You look bad off too," Draco remarked, "whatever mum had you do yesterday must have been really awful."

"It was…" she admitted, "but there were other things…"

A silence hung between them. She wasn't ready to tell him about her conversation with Narcissa, or that she had asked for the lifeline to be severed. And she definitely wasn't going to tell him about the fight she had with Fred.

"What about you?" she asked. "Why were you up all night? Pansy keeping you busy—?"

Draco let out an annoyed groan. Anastasia waited patiently.

"I was avoiding her, Anastasia. After the clear favoritism mum showed you yesterday, she's feeling insecure."

"Oh…" Anastasia felt a bit bad. "I'm sorry."

Draco pulled on his collar. "I couldn't let myself be cornered with her without being pressured to participate in certain activities."

Anastasia flushed. She knew what that meant, remembering her own time snogging with him in the broom closet.

"You mean, you didn't want to?" she asked carefully.

"Why?" Draco asked. "Jealous?"

"No," Anastasia shot down. "It must be hard for her…"

Draco scoffed.

"I don't really care if it's hard for her. Not after her mother's little performance…or the fact that I found her going through your extra clothes in our guest room, attempting to rip them to shreds."

Anastasia's anger flared. She tried to give Pansy the benefit of the doubt, but it always backfired.

"Yesterday, my father asked if we were engaged."

"What?" Anastasia demanded, but then she realized by his look that he wasn't referring to Pansy. "Why would he think that?"

"The elf, Anastasia. You gave the elf an order right in front of him. He babbled on like an idiot trying to figure out how that could have possibly happened."

"Oh my god," she said, pulling one hand through her hair.

"You're lucky mum was able to cover it up this time. She owled me this morning to let me know she had convinced him it was a trick of the light," he said. Anastasia turned to him.

"Why would he ask if we're engaged?"

"It's the only legitimate reason the wards would have worked for you." Draco said shrewdly. "He still hasn't caught on that it's something outside our regular magical purview. He thinks I'm…wasting my time thinking about you. Really, it's that I can't stop…"

Draco hadn't meant to say that last part. His lack of sleep had brought down his carefully constructed walls, and when Anastasia gazed at his profile, she could only see the solemn beauty of his face. Although, that might have been from her lack of sleep.

"Anyway, what were you asking Snape earlier?" Draco asked. Anastasia shook her head, having already forgotten about her short interaction with the professor.

"Um…it's not a big deal…I mean, remember how I told you before. Grandad is always going on about how Voldemort will come back one day, and things seem tohave gotten…" Anastasia couldn't explain it with anything legitimate. Her whole year had felt like a sunset, with the weight of a black thunderstorm leering in the distance. "…darker."

Draco turned to her sympathetically.

"You know your father's always been a little off his rocker." He brushed her hair back and kissed her forehead. "Stop worrying so much. We'll be fine."

Anastasia's heart fluttered in her chest, and tears rushed to her eyes. She stared back at him, frightened. She pulled away from his comforting touch. It felt like someone pulled her heart out.

"I-I'm sorry," he said, looking away. "I shouldn't have done that."

What Draco did was entirely muscle-memory. An accident. She should have pulled away. Instead, she hit him in a full-force embrace.

"You're so stupid," she muttered into his chest, letting her tears stain his robe. She loved him, and she hated it.

"Anastasia," he whispered in shock. He traced a loose lock of her hair down her back. "Please, stay."

At his words, Anastasia tore away fearfully, shook her head, and ran as fast as she could to the abandoned wing of the castle.

In the courtyard, Anastasia sat on the bench as she had in winter, head down, arms around her torso. She leaned over as she breathed heavily into her knees. The bushes and shrubs in the small garden now bloomed with the warmth of spring.

"You're still fighting it, aren't you?" Helena asked as she drifted out from the corridor.

Anastasia hugged herself tighter and nodded.

"It hurts," she admitted, looking down at her shoes in the grass. She had been so furious with Draco after the Yule ball. It made sense to tell him off and break up. But after Fred's cold commentary the previous day and Draco's gentleness with her that morning, she wasn't sure if her choices made sense anymore.

"Tread carefully. Keep it up, and it may get you killed," the phantom said vaguely.

Anastasia's eyes fluttered to the dark mark on Helena's dress.

"Is that how you died?" she asked. "You had a lifeline?"

"Wondered when you'd figure it out," Helena said boredly. She floated down to lounge on the grass in front of Anastasia, picking at dandelions without disrupting them. "I suppose I might as well tell you…"

Anastasia found the strength to sit up and listen to the ghost's story.

"When I was a little girl, my mother raised me here. The founders had only started the school a few years before I was born, and it was more a guild than an institution. There were only around fifty students by the time I was eleven. Of course, having been taught the value of knowledge and wisdom by my mother, I had been chosen for Ravenclaw.

"Things weren't always easy between me and my mother. The other founders always compared my intelligence to hers, and it felt as if I could never live up to their expectations, no matter how hard I tried.

"By the time I reached seventh year, I planned to leave after graduation, but my mother wanted me to stay close. Being the time it was, women were not respected the way they are now. She feared that if I went off on my own, I would be harmed, and she may not be able to protect me."

Anastasia was uncomfortably reminded of her time imprisoned in the castle as a child. She pulled at the cuffs of her shirt sleeves. Helena kept going.

"At the time, there was a noble boy, in Slytherin, who was infatuated with me. He wanted to spend all his time around me, and obviously wanted something more than I did out of our acquaintanceship. He invited me to all sorts of balls and events, most of which I politely declined.

"My mother, seeing an opportunity, schemed with him and cast a lifeline between us when I had fallen asleep in this very garden. When I woke up, I was as enamored with him as he was me, but I didn't understand why. I decided to stay for a few more weeks following graduation, and during that time we fell greatly in love."

"Wait," Anastasia interrupted. "Your mother forcibly cast a lifeline spell on you? When you were nearly an adult?"

Helena scoffed. "Things have changed, deary. In my time, lifelines were well understood and used often by women's birth families to keep them loyal to arranged unions, no matter how horrible."

Anastasia's jaw dropped. Although she was frustrated by her lifeline, she never felt

"One day he went out to hunt and was struck by a fellow hunter's stray spell. He received a terrible gash to the shoulder, and the pain instantly overcame me. When he returned, I knew my mother had deceived me.

"Furious with my mother and with him, I stole her diadem and ran away to the forests of Albania. For another month, I thought I was free, but she sent him after me.

"He finally reached me and begged me to return, saying that my mother had fallen ill with grief and worry, but I refused. In his rage, he stabbed me, mortally injuring himself in the process…and we bled out in the forest."

When Helena finished her story, Anastasia had tears on her cheeks. She couldn't imagine being connected by a lifeline out of betrayal by one's own blood. And although she imagined how horrible it could have been if someone else were to try and kill either her or Draco, she never imagined that the lifeline could drive them to hurt each other.

"But wait, I thought ghosts were connected to the place they died. How did you end up here if you died in the forest in Albania?" Anastasia asked.

"It's not necessarily the place you died," Helena explained, "but rather the place your pain was the most intense." She stared around at the small garden where her mother betrayed her.

"Of course, my plan to run backfired horribly. Now he and I are both chained to this god-forsaken castle. It's why I stay on this side of it…far away from his awful dungeon. Now I only have to see him at deathday parties and feasts."

"The baron?" Anastasia asked. "The bloody baron is your lifeline partner?"

Helena glared fiercely. "His name is Barclay."

Days later, Harry was called down to the quidditch pitch to learn more about the third task. The Gryffindors stayed in the common room after class, studying for finals. Hermione and Ron had already helped her practice her hex deflection, and she now stared over the text of her arithmancy book, but her thoughts kept wandering off to what Draco was up to.

"Hey Anastasia." A familiar ginger sat down beside her. Fred hadn't initiated casual conversation in days. Anastasia wasn't sure what she'd consider them anymore. Hesitancy lingered in his gaze as he checked hers. "What's up lately?"

She looked back at her text and tried to ignore him.

"I'm sorry," Fred offered, "about what I said the other day. It was just that I'd been worried about you, and when you told me about what you had been doing with Narcissa…it shocked me."

Anastasia sighed.

"Right. I'm sorry for getting on your case as well. I was still sort of charged up from everything that happened that day, and I took it out on you."

But she wasn't entirely sorry. She truly believed what she said. Despite the trauma of witnessing the stillbirth, if Narcissa had offered her the opportunity again, she would still help her.

"Ron told me about what happened with the hex-deflection test. Do you need more practice? Maybe I could help," Fred offered.

"Um, no it's fine," she tried to recover. She didn't want to ask for his help or make him feel like he had to do something to make things up to her.

"How about a fly instead?" Fred mused with a smile.

Anastasia returned it, him having hit her weak spot, "Okay."

But when Anastasia and Fred reached the front entrance, they were greeted by Harry stumbling back into the castle with Hagrid. Harry looked as if he'd been hit with a boulder.

"Harry, are you alright?" Anastasia tried to match pace with them. Hagrid spoke gruffly, complaining about foreigners and how Harry shouldn't trust any of them.

"I didn't think the third task had started yet," Fred joked, but the half-giant and Harry were long gone up to the infirmary.

Albus barreled past next, followed by a cursing Karkaroff, levitating Krum, and Moody, tromping behind the three of them.

"What are you two doing going out at this hour?" Albus barked at them. The old man's sapphire eyes had been overshadowed by the cloud Anastasia had been fearing. Karkaroff continued levitating Krum up the stairs to the infirmary while Moody stayed in the entry hall, leering.

"We're going for a fly," Anastasia tried.

"Curfew's not until eight," Fred reminded.

"Back to your house this instant," Albus shot, "there are dark forces at work. Make haste."

Anastasia and Fred looked at each other in alarm and started back up the stairs. Fred got ahead of her and rounded the corner first, Albus half-skipped to catch up to Karkaroff.

The heavy weight of Moody's walking stick landed on Anastasia's shoulder. The stench of leather and sweat loomed over her as he rasped in her ear.

"Sniveling Snape might have gotten you out of it this time," Moody warned. "But be ready, your test is coming."

Moody pulled her back and walked ahead, his one metal leg clunking on every other step.