Chapter 13 - Bad luck

"A-are you really an expert on rituals?" she asked desperately.

Iris frowned. She had never claimed to be an expert on anything. She had a very bad feeling where this was going.

"What happened?" she said sharply.

"I- well... Draco wanted to do a ritual for good luck for his duel tomorrow—which is your fault by the way!" the girl was on the edge of breaking into tears, but continued.

"So, Vince, Greg, Draco and I went to that room, the one he thinks is the one you mentioned," she said in an accusing tone.

"A-and well, we just did what the book said, and... I- I was supposed to be the lookout, b-but... they aren't waking up! I don't know what to do!"

"Where?" Iris asked, then realized something, "Do you mean the large round stone room with all the pillars and the altar?"

"Y-yes, I... there weren't supposed to be any issues like that... We even used the most universal symbol we could find in the book!"

They... no. They couldn't have, could they? Draco wasn't stupid. How could he not know? There was no way.

Iris bolted down the stairs, a distraught Pansy following behind her. She turned right and went down again. Her hands were freezing. She felt like the castle walls were slowly encroaching on her, as her mind ran wild. It had to be something else, anything else.

The feeling of wrongness in the air had grown the deeper she went, and she had a bad feeling she knew exactly where it was coming from. She heard it before she saw it. An ominous humming sound, reverberating through the castle walls, and slowly, ever so slowly, climbing in pitch, as if it was building to something.

At last, she spotted the stone archway. A low pulsating red light was shining from the inside, filling her stomach with dread. She dashed towards the entrance, and the sight made her pause in shock.

The whole room was humming, aglow with an angry red that seemed to emanate from the top of the altar. Around it, on the circular steps, Draco, Vince and Greg, splayed over the ground, unconscious. Pansy came to a halt behind her, panting.

"A-at first it was fine, but then when it started glowing, they suddenly started screaming, and it was like their eyes were glowing, and they just collapsed, a-and I couldn't wake him up... and-"

Iris didn't hear any more of what the girl said. Almost on autopilot, she approached the center of the room, slowly climbing up the steps towards the altar. It felt like the red light was pushing against her, flowing out of the altar, like a storm in her face, blowing in all directions. Finally, when she climbed the last set of steps, she spotted it. On the altar, glowing and pulsing in an angry red, was a symbol, apparently drawn using blood. Iris' mind filled with terror as she glanced upon the jagged symbol. The symbol that was so infamous you were punished just for attempting to draw it in class. She didn't know much about it, but she knew it was bad news.

What in the world had possessed Draco to use a goddamn Swastika of all things?

She remembered it being in the book, as the recommended symbol for luck. The book was from 1923; she guessed the symbol used to have a different meaning back then? But there was no way he wouldn't know, right? Everyone knew that symbol, knew what it meant.

This... wasn't just bad. This was so much worse. She had been worried about what was happening to Draco, but if her intuition was correct here, Draco was the last thing she should be worried about right now. The ritual was still active, still building up to something. This symbol was from the last World War, and from the bad guys at that. The ones who had started it; had caused so much destruction. The location they had chosen seemed to represent power above all else, not to mention it is located within an ancient magical castle. She felt a sinking certainty that if she did nothing, the ritual wouldn't just blow up in her face, it might even take part of the castle with it.

Iris mind warred in desperation, there had to be something she could do, anything. She didn't think trying to remove the symbol would accomplish anything, not while it was still active like that. Nor would removing Draco, Vince or Greg. If they had really used their blood to start this, she suspected distance wouldn't matter much. Maybe, Iris thought, she could try to counter it somehow. You couldn't violate a ritual's intent by trying to control it, but what if you added or changed symbols, in order to introduce a different intent? Could that work? The book hadn't said anything about something like that. But it was the only thing she could think of.

But what symbol should she use to counter the Swastika of all things? There was no symbol for the allied forces that she knew of, and even if there was, that felt like it would just cause even more destruction in bringing it down. She supposed she could draw a heart to try counter the hate, but people have gone to war for love as well, at least according to the stories, so that wouldn't really help the issue. There was only one thing she could think of. It wasn't a perfect counter, but it should at least prevent the whole thing from blowing up... hopefully.

Without thinking about it, Iris reached for the ritual knife that Draco had apparently dropped, sliced open her palm without hesitation, winced slightly at the sting of pain as she let the blood pool in her hand, and stepped up to the altar.

She placed her hand on the edge of the altar, and drew a large circle using her blood, enclosing the symbol of hate. The humming noise turned angry, and the ground started shaking. Then, she lifted her hand, and drew a straight line, bisecting the circle and the Swastika through the middle, top to bottom, causing the symbol to crackle and the red pulsing to quicken. Finally, she drew two diagonal lines from the center towards the bottom right and the bottom left.

There was a surge of magic, and suddenly her own symbol flashed blue. The currents of air reversed, and suddenly it felt like everything was being drawn inward, while the humming noise quickly climbed higher and higher. Red clashed against blue, and Iris gripped onto the edge of the altar for her dear life, her hair whipping over her face in the storm. She could hear Pansy screaming across the room. Slowly, blue started to overtake red, as the symbol of peace asserted its dominance over war.

Suddenly there was a flash of purple, and a bang. Iris felt herself flung backwards, and she tumbled to the ground. The oppressive feeling was gone, the silence finally comforting. Iris groaned and got to her feet. Slowly, she made her way to the altar, climbing step by step, until she finally spotted the result of her desperate attempt.

The top of the altar was empty, as devoid of any symbols as it had been when she had first discovered this room. The ritual had run its course. It was over; she had done it.

Iris guessed she should check on Draco, but first things first. She turned to look at Pansy, adrenaline still running high in her system, and gave her an unyielding look.

"Our little deal is over. Here's the new deal. You tell anyone about my rituals, I'll tell everyone about yours," she slowly said, as she walked into Pansy's personal space, gazing down at her the same way Tracey had done on the train, despite being almost an entire head shorter. "Do we understand each other?"

Pansy just gave a single, terrified nod. Iris turned on her heel, leaving the scared Slytherin girl to her thoughts, and went to check up on Draco. Only now, she realized that she had never checked if he was even still alive, she had just accepted Pansy's statement as fact.

Before she could even start to worry about that, Draco stirred. Her heart jumped into her throat. He was okay! Iris stumbled over to him, as he groaned and tried to heave himself off the stairs.

"Merlin... what happened? It... it shouldn't have..." he said weakly.

She bent down and offered him a hand. He took the offered appendage, pulled himself upright, turned to look into her eyes, and froze.

Eyes widening in recognition, his face twisted into an ugly scowl.

"You! This is your fault!" he snarled.

Iris took a step back in shock at the sudden outburst.

"I should never have trusted you! I knew free ritual was a bad idea... but you... you're just... Why?" he turned and buried his face in his hands.

"Why did I think a stupid half-blood would know anything about rituals? You grew up with muggles, for Merlin's sake! You're basically a Mudblood!" he screamed in frustration.

There was a gasp from Pansy at that statement. Iris caught his eyes and her stomach dropped at the expression of pure loathing that was glaring back at her. That kind of emotion on Draco's face, especially directed at her, felt wrong on so many levels. What had she done?

Had... Had Draco always been like this under the surface, and she had just refused to see it? Had the ritual done something? Or... was it both?

She didn't even know which possibility was worse.

"And on top of that, I'm still stuck having to duel Warrington because of you!" Draco's face was almost turning red from the anger in his voice.

"Actually, you know what? No! That's the last straw. Have fun dealing with Warrington on your own. I'll give him his bloody pass back and tell him where he can stuff his little duel."

At this point, Vince and Greg had managed to get to their feet. They were just glaring at her, looming behind Draco, not saying anything.

Iris was fighting a desperate war against the tears that threatened to well up in her eyes. The situation seemed hopeless. Even if this was just a result of the ritual, there was nothing she could do about it. The book had been adamant in stating that any effects of a ritual were permanent, once the ritual had concluded. Her own experience corroborated that, given that her physics book was still floating after all this time. It also claimed that any attempt to try to change the outcome after the fact would inevitably be met with failure. Something about Magic having made up its mind.

"Draco! I-I'm so glad you're okay!"

Apparently, Pansy had finally snapped out of her stupor, and was rushing towards Draco to wrap him in a hug. He pulled a face and pushed her off of him.

"Get off. Yes, we're all very happy that I'm still alive. No thanks to you," he added and glared at Iris.

"Don't talk to me again. We're done. Next time you plan on getting someone killed, I'm going to be as far away from your stupidity as I can."

He turned, and started to strut towards the entrance, Vince and Greg in tow, with Pansy stumbling behind them.

Iris was already a hair's breadth away from breaking down when she overheard one last muttered comment from him.

"...as if I could ever be friends with a squib."

~V~

Her bed was still empty. The girl worried her lip and shuffled around on her bed. Tracey had gotten up to visit the bathroom and had noticed that Iris was absent. With every minute that her roommate was missing, she grew more and more worried. It had now been over an hour, and she still hadn't shown up. She was probably on one of her adventures again. But for her to be gone, that long, in the middle of the night, and without saying anything, Tracey couldn't help but worry.

She kept playing with the thought of going looking for her, or maybe even telling a professor. The problem with the former was she would have no idea where to start, and the latter was that if there wasn't an issue, she would unnecessarily bring attention to the fact that she was out after curfew. Again.

"Iris... Where in Morgana's name are you?" she muttered to herself.

Tracey frowned. Was her lamp running low? No, it was still going. But somehow, the room seemed darker than it had a moment ago. No, scratch that, the brightness was still the same, but the shadows seemed a lot more... significant... Oh.

Tracey looked around frantically, and spotted a shadow on the far wall, next to Iris bed. It was the shadow of a human, more specifically the shadow of one very familiar troublemaker, if her guess was correct. Despite the instinctual fear that shadows which moved on their own stirred inside Tracey, she couldn't help but feel relief.

But what had happened? Why was she back in the shadow realm? Did she do that on purpose to sneak about after curfew?

Iris' shadow grew darker and deeper, causing Tracey to swallow, and suddenly, the girl herself emerged from it, and stumbled onto her bed. Tracey didn't have much time to feel relief, as the moment she caught Iris' expression, all that went out of the window.

Tracey wasted no time and scrambled over to her side to wrap the girl into a hug. Iris immediately broke down and started crying.

Tracey was awful with crying. It was bad enough when it happened to herself, she had no idea how to handle it with others, and if it went for long enough, she would start crying herself. But the girl had done her best to comfort her after her fall-out with Daphne, so she would do her very best to do the same for her. She held tightly onto Iris as the girl cried into her shoulder, and her sleeve got stained with her tears. Gently, Tracey started to rub her back.

"Y-you were right..." Iris croaked.

Tracey paused. "What do you mean?" she asked carefully.

"About D-Draco... I... I never should have made f-friends with him..."

Tracey froze. What the fuck had that little shit done to her? Her mind was racing with possible scenarios, each worse than the last.

"What? What happened? What did he do?" Tracey asked intently.

Iris however just shook her head and broke down into sobs again. Tracey felt her guts freeze over slowly, as her mind went wild. If he had hurt her, then she would... She'd... she didn't know what.

"I..." Iris began and broke off again.

Tracey took her hand and wrapped it in her own, squeezing it reassuringly.

"...I'm not a squib..." she said in a very small voice.

No. He hadn't.

"You're not a squib, Iris," Tracey repeated firmly. "Don't believe anyone who says otherwise."

The girl shivered in her arms, silently weeping tears of regret.

"I- I know... I just... He just..."

"I know."

Iris took a while to catch her breath, then looked up at her with a pained expression.

"I messed up, Tracey."

Tracey's eyebrows rose. Was she about to blame herself for whatever Malfoy had done? Or was she talking about making friends with him in the first place?

"It's alright..." was the only reply Tracey could come up with.

Iris stared at her desperately, it was clear she wanted to say something else, but no words came out.

Finally, her head dropped back in another sob, and she mumbled into her shoulder, "I'm a horrible friend..."

"That's not true!" said Tracey reflexively, not knowing what else to reply to this statement.

"I mean sure, you've gotten us into our fair share of trouble, but you always managed to fix things..."

Iris slowly lifted her head to look at her, with a smile that seemed so very wrong in combination with those empty eyes.

"Not this time."

~V~

Iris had tried, oh she had tried, but she couldn't gather up the courage to tell Tracey the whole story. How she may have irreversibly broken her first friend. True, it hadn't been her who had done the ritual, if it had, this wouldn't have happened. She had convinced him it was safe, she had even given him the book, and pointed out the room. She had all but led him to his doom, and he had all too willingly followed into the abyss, and now he was gone.

She had successfully countered the destructive aspect of the symbol, but it looked like the hate had remained. Maybe, she thought, the ritual had just brought out qualities in Draco that had always been there under the surface. But that wasn't much comfort to her at the moment, also she had no way of knowing for sure. To her, it still felt like she had all but sacrificed her first friend on that altar.

She was glad for Tracey's presence, if nothing else, but her words of comfort didn't do much to relieve the sheer feeling of guilt. And this time, there was absolutely nothing she could do to fix it. And that was the worst part about it.

Had she really warped him into a hateful shadow of his former self? A caricature of the first friend she ever had? Or had it been her perception that had been warped all along? A small, tiny part of her wondered if it was better to put him out of his misery; to spare him the path his life would now lead him down towards. This immediately made her feel ten times worse about herself.

Was it really worth it to keep doing all this? Learn magic, make friends, if that was what it led to? Her getting hurt, her friends getting hurt, everything ending up worse... Before her thoughts could fall any deeper into that pit of despair, one singular image came to her mind. Harry. Yes, if there was any chance she could help Harry, make his life better, make him happy, for him she would gladly continue. He would do the same for her.

Iris slowly dragged her arms around Tracey and gave the girl one final firm hug. At last, she extracted herself from her grip, and started to make her way towards the bathroom to clean up. She was probably a complete mess.

~V~

After a long night of tossing and turning, a bedraggled girl emerged from the sheets, not having gotten a wink of sleep. She made her way down to the great hall, and mechanically nibbled at some breakfast at the Gryffindor table. Harry had asked her several times if she was alright, but she had just nodded it off. Finally, she got up to leave, in order to do... even she didn't know. It was Saturday, there was nothing to do. Originally, she had planned to either prepare or help Draco prepare for the duel tonight, but that was no longer happening. When she reached the door, Harry caught up with her, and under halfhearted protests, got her to agree to take a walk around the lake.

Harry had walked next to her silently for over ten minutes, when he finally spoke up.

"I know something's wrong. You're hurting."

Iris kept walking in silence.

"You don't have to talk about it, but I can't help if I don't know what's going on," he tried.

Iris shook her head. He wouldn't be able to help anyway. Nobody would.

"Iris, let me help you," he said in an almost pleading voice. "I can't bear to see you like this."

Iris came to a stop and looked at her feet. He was hurting. He was hurting, because she was. But she couldn't tell him, that would make him hurt even more. But... what if she...

"Did someone do anything to you?"

She carefully tried to remain impassive, but apparently failed. Her brother knew her too well.

"...Was it Malfoy?"

She flinched. How was this his first guess?

Harry's eyes narrowed, and he growled. "If he hurt you, Iris, I swear-"

"He didn't- I... It wasn't his fault!"

She couldn't let Harry get hurt, and worse, she wasn't even sure if she wanted Draco to pay for what he said, it had been her fault just as much, hadn't it?

"What. Did. He. Do?" Harry was undeterred.

"Don't, Harry! I- Well, I fucked up, okay? I almost got him killed, and then he said something, and I-" she broke off to clamp down on that train of thought. There was no way she was crying again over that name.

"We... we aren't friends anymore," she concluded in a small voice.

Harry stared at her inscrutably, emotions warring on his face. Iris started to shift under his gaze.

After an indeterminable period of time, he finally responded. "If you ever want to talk about it, I'll always be there, Iris."

She had her back turned to him, refusing to look at him, and was instead looking at her feet.

Suddenly, she felt his arms wrap around her from behind her, and she froze up. Harry kept holding her in a protective embrace, saying nothing. Her body involuntarily started shivering, slightly shaking, almost crying but not quite.

"Are you gonna be okay?" was the only thing he asked.

Iris took some time to think about that. Draco was gone. Well, he wasn't but he might as well be. But well, it was her fault. How could she fix that?

Well, she couldn't fix Draco, but... would anyone even know? The only people who knew couldn't tell without incriminating themselves... She paused. That shouldn't matter. It was still her fault!

Yet, that little thought was the only path to closure her mind could come up with.

"I-"

She thought about Harry again. No matter what she said, he would inevitably come to blows with Draco at some point, especially after what had happened. If she couldn't fix Draco, she could at least try and keep the damage to a minimum, and make sure Harry didn't have to pay for her mistake as well. There. A path forward.

"I think so..." she finally said. Now that she had said it, it felt like her spiraling thoughts had finally taken a break. She took a breath, and for the first time, her lungs felt a little less constricted.

She turned her head to the side to glance at Harry, and said, "Thanks... Harry."

~V~

Iris had returned to the great hall for lunch. She found Tracey sitting on the far end of the Slytherin table and made her way over to her. One of the older Slytherins gave her a strange look as she passed by, but she didn't give it any further thought. Iris sat down and started piling food on her plate. She had lots on her To-Do list, and her hungry stomach was just one of the many things she needed to get sorted.

Tracey glanced up at her, and carefully asked, "You okay?"

"Mh," replied Iris with her mouth full, finished chewing, then continued. "I had a talk with Harry. It... helped, I guess. At least, I figured out what to do now."

That, she had. Even if she wasn't sure how useful it would be. She had made plans on anything she could think of how to keep Draco from causing anyone harm, especially Harry. Most of them had boiled down to 'Figure out how to properly do magic', for now. Still, that reasoning had helped; the sinking hole of despair had slowly been filled with purpose instead. Even if she hadn't really done anything besides eating yet. It still hurt, of course, but she could ignore it, if she focused on her goal.

Yet another upper year shot her a dirty look as he passed their table, and Iris paused. She looked around and noticed that everyone had suspiciously kept their distance from her and Tracey, and it seemed even the girl was slightly uncomfortable. What in the world had happened? Sure, the Slytherins had been colder and more distant than the other houses from the start, but never like this.

"What's with everyone?" Iris asked Tracey in a hushed tone.

The girl flinched. That wasn't a good sign. Tracey shifted nervously in her seat, and then replied, "People have been saying how you and Malfoy had a huge falling out, and that you're no longer friends..."

They already knew? Had Draco told them? Or maybe Pansy...

"Oh, uhm well, okay? But why is everyone acting so... hostile?"

"Well..." the girl shrank, but Iris kept looking at her intently. "S-some of it might have to do with the rumors going around about what happened..."

Iris couldn't help but feel like there was something that Tracey wasn't telling her.

"Or...?" she further prompted.

"Or... it might be the fact that... well... you're no longer Draco's friend."

Iris frowned. "Wasn't that what you said?"

"What I mean is, you are no longer... under his protection."

Iris paused. "...Oh."

Was that what this had been about? She had wondered on the first few days why everyone had kept saying such bad things about Slytherins, everyone had been nice to her for the most part, well, except for Warrington and Pansy, she guessed. Or, at least, they had been neutral, mostly ignoring her, except for those few hours when everyone had thought she was a squib. This felt much more like the vipers' den that Ron had been talking about.

Iris glanced down the table. The longer she looked, the more she felt that people were looking at her, and the looks weren't of the good sort. She had a bad feeling about this.

Iris took a breath and finished up her meal. The universe just wasn't giving her a break, was it?

It was looking like she would have to adjust her plans.