Chapter 10) Clandestine
Selected Listening: Born to Die- Lana Del Rey
A/N: Sorry it's been so long, guys! I had a lot of thoughts to develop, but don't worry. You'll get another later this week!
On Sunday afternoon, Anastasia ventured to Professor Vector's classroom for the girls' Occlumency Club. She found the normal arithmancy classroom had been cloaked with dark velvet curtains tinged with gleaming, astral embroidery and accented with candles in gold sconces on the edges of the room.
"What's she doing here?" Pansy immediately asked the rest of the Slytherin girls. The Greengrass twins, Millicent Bulstrode, and a Ravenclaw fifth year named Isobel all stood around chatting. Anastasia stood a few feet from them. There were other groups too, all the way down to third year and all the way up to seventh. Mostly Slytherin.
"Calm yourself, Miss Parkinson," Professor Vector suggested. She was a stern, sharp woman with a hooked nose and a formal black witch's cape. "We are all here to practice the same skill, it's highly likely that Miss Dumbledore is here for some of the same reasons you are."
A series of taunting giggles filtered through the classroom. Daphne whispered to her sister at a tone low enough so Vector wouldn't hear.
"Why? Did the headmaster start checking her thoughts to make sure she wasn't sneaking out to date mudbloods?"
While the comment stung, Anastasia also felt a pang of pity. While she was there to learn to protect herself from her enemies, everyone else was there to protect themselves from their families.
"More like, he has to make sure she isn't planning to send him to St. Mungo's," Pansy snarked.
Anastasia wanted to fight her right there. She spent all of the previous afternoon being shouted at from the stands by Pansy, Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle, who decided to be the peanut gallery to the Gryffindor team's rather embarrassing first practice. While she had successfully avoided cursing the girl to a pulp when they were separated by 50 feet of airspace, the intimate proximity of the arithmancy classroom made the idea much more plausible.
Professor Vector skimmed over it and began the lesson. She started by teaching the legillimency spell, a fairly simple task. All one had to do was point one's wand at their partner's head and say "legilimens."
She then had all the girls line up across from a partner in their class. Anastasia, by avoiding Pansy, ended up across from Daphne Greengrass.
"Alright, now every week we're going to pick a theme for the thoughts we're going to explore…or rather try and hide from one another. Today, we will begin with an easy one…happiness. You are welcome to think of your happiest memory, or simply a pleasant memory, then attempt to hide it from your partner with a mental wall."
Sounded simple enough.
"Alright, casters on my left. Three, two, one."
Anastasia raised her wand and shot her spell at Daphne.
Anastasia immediately hit a wrought iron fence and a wall of red stone.
She dropped the spell. Daphne smirked as if she were flicking off a gnat. Professor Vector directed the opposite row to be the caster. She counted down once more.
"Three, two, one."
Anastasia realized she didn't quite know what Professor Vector meant by a "mental wall," and as soon as Daphne cast the spell, the girl was standing on the grassy hill next to the castle, looking down at a nine-year-old Anastasia who was smiling at the feeling of rain for the first time.
When the spell lifted, Anastasia looked at Daphne and looked away. The smug smile on Daphne's face had faded into bitter disappointment. The girl shared the glance with her identical sister.
"Alright, next partner."
Anastasia shifted down the line to Astoria, now suddenly the least confident she'd ever been. She aimed her wand at the girl's head and said the spell.
Astoria's walls of red stone and ivy, similar to Daphne's, blocked her out completely.
Anastasia was thrown out of her head.
She dropped her wand in defeat and waited for Astoria to strike.
"Oh, at least try," Astoria nudged with a similar cheshire grin. "It's no fun otherwise."
Anastasia took a deep breath and tried to put up her own wall, one of cream-colored castle stone.
But Astoria broke through nearly as fast as Daphne did, and though Anastasia had been thinking of the same memory she had before, Astoria was more focused in her search and somehow hit the day Anastasia met Draco in Diagon Alley. She watched him laugh as they ate their ice cream.
Anastasia hadn't thought about that day in quite some time.
Astoria broke the spell and stood staring at her. It was a similar expression to the one Daphne held: disappointment, and now confusion.
"Good, now, next partner," Professor Vector announced.
They switched again. This time Anastasia stood in front of Pansy. She thought of excusing herself to the loo.
"What, Dumblebrat? Scared I'll find something you don't want me to see?"
Anastasia growled, "no."
Anastasia aimed the spell at Pansy's head, expecting to be thrown out as she had been with the twins. Immediately, she was in the Slytherin dorm, in Pansy's head, watching her traipse down the stone stairs to the common room. The garlands were strung about their marble fireplace with fairy lights. Christmas break, last year.
"What's wrong with you?" Pansy demanded as Draco stormed up, anger in his eyes.
He kissed her madly.
Anastasia backed out of the spell, doing her best to feign composure. Pansy smiled with an evil gleam.
"Something wrong?" Parkinson asked sweetly.
Anastasia glared. Pansy had shown her on purpose. She was trying to make her angry.
But if anything, she felt pity.
Pansy turned the spell on her, and even though Anastasia tried to think of something happy, her thoughts drifted to what must have happened moments before on that very same day…
Draco appeared on the frosted balcony the moment Fred kissed her. His stunned and hurt expression echoed back to her from the far away memory. The image of the magazine's pages flipping in the wind on the snow.
Pansy backed out of the spell, glaring through emerald eyes, processing as the pieces fell together.
Serves her right. Anastasia thought. The pain of someone breaking into her mind stabbed her as sharp as the first time, three times over. Her head throbbed. She buckled over, holding her temples. She wanted to vomit.
Pansy fled before Vector could finish the lesson.
Anastasia spent the rest of the day in bed with a migraine. The red velvet curtains closed around her. She lay with her eyes shut and traced the scab on her knuckles with her fingertips, all the way down to the scars on her wrist screaming for help.
She wished she could call for him again.
By the end of occlumency lessons, Draco, the usual star student, sat in his chair leaning over his knees, head in his hands.
"What's wrong, Malfoy? Out of practice this summer?" Pershore, another blonde Slytherin, asked. "Is daddy dearest finally off your case?"
"Shut it," Draco shot in his direction as the others left the room. Pershore wasn't wrong. Since he had started dating Pansy, his father hadn't been checking his thoughts as often…if his father was ever home at all.
But Draco also knew his headache wasn't his own affliction.
Severus shut the door to his office behind the boys.
"The headmaster's using occlumency on her…" Draco muttered. "It's been like this since the summer. I know she's lying."
"Is that what you think?" Snape asked with a small sneer.
"Of course! What else could it be? He's mental—"
"The headmaster is not using legilimency on Miss Dumbledore."
"Then who is?" Draco demanded, lifting his head to look him in the eyes.
"She attended her first occlumency club this afternoon," Snape corrected.
Draco froze. His blood boiled in his veins at the thought of her standing alone amongst his female peers. The Slytherin girls looked like porcelain dolls, but most were out to gut whoever strayed into their path.
He jolted up.
"Did you put her up to this? You must've! She's not going to be able to hide anything from Parkinson…she hasn't had enough training."
"Do you really have so little faith in your counterpart, Malfoy?" Snape asked, pacing back to his desk, unbothered.
Draco squeezed his eyes closed. The light from the small lamp on Snape's desk hurt too badly. And his counterpart? If she were his counterpart, she'd actually want to see him.
"This is worse than my first day," Draco concluded. "Anastasia must have let something slip. I have to find Pansy and make sure—"
He tried to get up but fell onto the stone floor on his knees.
"No matter what Parkinson found, you should rest until Miss Dumbledore's headache subsides," Snape said as he took Draco's arm and helped him stand.
"But that could take hours! I have studying—" Draco broke away, holding his head in one hand.
"I would not plan on using Sunday for studying for a long time, Mr. Malfoy. At least not after occlumency," Snape scolded.
"Ugh!" Draco yelled and stormed off to the common room himself. He slipped by a waspish Pansy and into his dormitory, falling into bed with the emerald curtains closed, and the glass window revealing the depths of the Black Lake in front of him.
Draco closed his eyes, his hand tracing over the new scars. Her new scars.
He wished he could hold her.