13.
Now that he had identified the other psychic presence that was woven into the construction of the barrier in the forefront of his daughter's mind, Severus gathered his strength, coiled it into a tight spiral. He had seen Bellatrix's barriers before; they were strong, he recalled, but they were not nuanced, not complicated. She had a great deal of strength, when it came to Occlumency, but not a whole lot of finesse. Thus, he expected that he would not need to solve any complicated puzzles, pick any mental locks. It would be purely a battle of wills, of strength of mind, to pierce through her barrier.
She was a very strong witch, but she had never struck him as particularly clever, and she was arrogant to a fault. She would believe, if she had not changed since he had last known her, that pure magical strength was all she needed to protect herself. And this barrier was built so strongly that he knew it must encompass the bulk of her strength; if he got beyond it, there would be little to no challenge awaiting beyond it.
How she had managed to assert her presence here, in their daughter's mind, he did not know; but he would find out, he thought grimly, as he pulled more and more of his strength into the spiral of thought he was creating. as soon as he broke through her barrier.
When he judged he had amassed enough of his own will together into the tight mental spiral, he aimed it forcefully at the exterior of the great wall, twisting it through like a drill bit; it wasn't subtle or artful, but he knew it would be strong enough, and his primary concern was breaking through it, to find out what had become of his daughter. She was still there, somewhere beyond this barrier. He had seen the spark of her, faintly.
With great strength of will, he pushed through the barrier; he made it through, but it had been more difficult even than he had expected; had protecting herself from dementors in Azkaban given her more strength? But it didn't matter; he was through.
Beyond the barrier, the landscape had changed drastically since he was last in his daughter's mind. Where before, streams of colour had swirled around the outer edges of her consciousness, turning into echoey voices as he drew near them, there was only a thick, dark fog; it was so dense that it felt nearly another solid thing, almost a barrier itself. Alarmingly, none of it felt at all like Calista. It was as if, by breaking through the barrier, he had entered Bellatrix, but that couldn't be possible… he had gotten here by looking into his child's eyes.
He pushed through the fog, feeling already that he had fatigued himself pressing through the barrier; it had taken more strength than it ought to have. As he crossed the dark, cloudlike expanse beyond the barrier, he sensed a great ocean open up beneath him; he floated above its surface like a ghost, but he could feel rushing waves churning and sucking, could feel an eagerness to pull him down, down, into a pool of something dark, foreboding. When he looked down, he could see that he was not floating at all, but gliding along an impossibly fragile surface… it shone, like the silk threads of a spiderweb in bright moonlight… but there, the resemblance to a spider's web ended, for this wasn't silver and gossamer; this was a net, a fine, delicate net made of impossibly thin strands of thought. The strands were of all colours; red and orange, green and yellow, blue and violet.
He crouched, or his spirit-self did, and brushed his finger along one of the junctions, where a green thread and a blue one twisted together. And here, at last, was something that felt familiar, that felt as if it belonged. There was a vibration that could have been music, so welcome was it; it felt warm, it felt known to him. Words wafted up, slow and wispy, from the threads he had plucked. It wouldn't matter to me if you were a witch, or a Squib, or a Hippogriff, his own voice came, smooth and sincere, and then hers, light: If I was a hippogriff, I wouldn't fit inside.
'Calista,' he murmured, looking down at the webby surface; it was the only thing he had seen here that looked or felt remotely like her. He felt the fog press around him, claustrophobic and suddenly a lot more solid; he should have been able to push it away, but he had used more of his strength than he'd expected to getting in. He put his hand flat against the surface of the net; it felt warm, even as the fog rolling in around him was cold and clammy. He sent a thread of himself down through his hand, out into the net. 'Show me where you are', he said, into it.
He felt, then, something hook gently around his wrist, pull him forward. He was hit by a sudden, powerful flash of memory: a sidewalk, a low building behind him and a quiet street ahead. A tiny, dark-haired child at his side. 'I don't suppose you've ever been Apparated before', and then small fingers firmly around his wrist. He rose again, stepped carefully across the net - the fog pressed but it didn't quite suffocate. He walked, and even though he couldn't see Calista, he could feel her, leading him along. Gradually, the fog thinned, cleared, and he left it behind him. The tugging on his wrist stopped, and he looked around at where he was now.
Impossible, was his first thought, because he was standing in front of a great, strong wall again, an expanse of solid blankness. How had he gotten back outside of her mind again? He pressed his palms against the wall - ah, but it wasn't the same. This one glimmered, faintly, with a sense of the familiar. His eyes roved over it, and he could see, like fine netting, over the surface of the hulking grey wall, a delicate diamond-shaped lace woven into the surface of the barrier. It glimmered, green and blue and yellow, all the colors that the main wall lacked; it felt like his daughter, here and there, in tiny, thready pulses along its surface. But the bulk of it, the solidness of it: they were still Bellatrix.
But how? How could se have built another wall, as strong as the first? He knew she wasn't that strong, couldn't possibly have constructed these defences even in her own mind, let alone in the mind of someone who was hundreds of miles away in the physical world.
And then, there was a ripple in the wall, and a tiny, ghostlike form spilled out of it. It was his daughter, at last, her psychic representation of her self; but she was pale and transparent, threatened to flicker away even as she stood in front of him, feet planted on the same tenuous net that supported him. Below them, a dark sea still raged; he felt splashes of it come up through the gaps in the web, freezing and burning his ankles at the same time.
'Calista', he said to her, 'What is happening?' He reached for her shoulders, wanted to look into the eyes of her avatar, if for no other reason than to reassure himself that she was still there, but his hands went right through her, and he felt dread coil up in the pit of his stomach. This vision of her represented the core of her self, her identity… and it was faded nearly to nothing, insubstantial. If it faded away entirely, she might very well be gone for good; it was what the dementors took, when they Kissed their victims, and she seemed, somehow, to be losing it without their help.
She pointed down, at the webby net beneath them, and the raging sea not far below. 'That's madness,' she said, and even her voice was little more than a whisper. 'I… don't want to go down… so I do this...' and she crouched down, put her hand on the net, as he had done, and pushed at the surface. A shiny braid of thoughts shimmered against the skin of her forearm, pulled itself out of her, and twisted into the fabric of the net below them. It bound, tightly, at a junction of other coloured strands, shone bright and strong for a moment. But as he watched, a spray of cold sea lashed up from below, bit at the thread she had just laid; and it began, slowly, to disintegrate. She put her hand down in another spot, and another thread came from somewhere beneath her skin; this one was green, and it wound itself rapidly along a junction that was close to failing; but when he looked, there were fraying, thinning spots all over the net, and the sea was lashing up furiously - it was only a matter of time before the threads were eaten away. And worse, as she expelled these threads to reinforce the net beneath them, he could see her fading, becoming more and more transparent; for an instant, she shimmered away, and he thought that he was already too late…
She became visible again, but only just. She floated back, towards the wall she had materialised from, and he thought she was going to disappear behind it again.
'Wait,' he called, but she didn't go behind it; she curled her fingers into it, fiercely, and pulled on the lacy, multicoloured pattern that was set into its surface; some of the net along the wall broke free, and he saw the glittering strings wind themselves around her arms, her legs; they melted into her skin, and she became a little bit brighter.
'It's hard,' she said, 'To take myself out of the wall. I don't know if I should… but it's how I can stay, and fix the holes...' And when he looked back at the wall behind him, he saw that there was a sizeable expanse now that was nothing but cold, hard, grey blankness. When he reached past Calista to press his hand against the wall again, the section he touched felt nothing like his daughter anymore. He looked down the length of the wall; if she kept taking herself from it, soon none of it would belong to her, anymore.
'Calista, where did this wall come from?' He felt Bellatrix, and, in the shimmery, lacy patterns, he felt his daughter; but how had they woven together like this? And how was it so strong?
She was crouched down again, feeding the net beneath them, but she paused at his question, looked up at him. 'She made it. She… she made it, but not all by herself. She steals from me, takes my magic and puts it in the wall. I don't know how.'
She locked her eyes onto his, but he couldn't see them well enough to read anything in them. 'Please don't let her steal the rest of me,' she said, and even though he couldn't see her very clearly, he could feel the desperation in her voice. And then, 'I'm running out of words'.
He looked down, as she returned to her task; a gaping hole opened up, just in front of her, and the sea frothed threateningly below them; She pushed another thread out at it, and when he concentrated on it, he could hear his own voice pulsing from the bright green strand: Despite all of your best efforts to ensure otherwise, I actually like you.
There was a distant rumble, like thunder. Calista's eyes went wide with fear. 'She's coming,' she whispered, frantically, 'She must have felt that I took some back from the wall… she'll take it again!'
And he could feel her coming, too; could feel a familiar presence, one that had some of the iron from the wall, and huge quantities of madness, like the sea below. But he had used more strength than he had known he'd need to get here, and he knew he didn't have enough left to battle her, now; if she discovered him here, it might only make things worse for Calista. He leaned forward, tried to grab her shoulders again; this time, she was neither fully solid or totally insubstantial, but something in between. 'I'm going to come back,' he said, and then he wrapped his arms around her, around the shadow-girl that flickered in and out of reality. 'But in the meantime… you need words?'
She nodded; he felt the point of her chin tap lightly on his shoulder. He kept his arms around her, pressed his mouth to her ear. 'I love you, Calista. My strong, clever daughter,' he said, and he could feel a burst of power flow between them; it felt like a bomb had gone off in his chest, but curiously, he did not feel any weaker, even though his daughter was rapidly materialising in his arms; she grew solid, opaque, and he could see, at last, into the depths of her eyes. He had chosen his words carefully, and it seemed that he had chosen the right ones, because he could see her spark, fierce and true, now. She would fight, she would hold the net strong; he could only hope, now, that she could do it long enough for him to regain his own strength, could keep enough of herself alive, until he could come back and rout Bellatrix from the iron-and-sea lair she had created inside of their daughter.
The thunder was rumbling closer, and a flash of lightning rent the space between them and the wall; reluctantly, Severus let go of Calista, and then, because he had spent too much time holding her, he had to leave quickly, before Bellatrix saw him there; he called himself back into his own mind, propelled rapidly back through the hole he had made in the outermost barrier, slammed back into himself with a force that left him shaken, and nursing a severe headache.
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Severus felt indescribably drained; he knew that before he could possibly hope to re-enter his daughter's mind and confront Bellatrix, he badly needed to rest. While there were potions that could energise and rejuvenate the body, even potions to improve his focus and sharpen his mind, there was no potion or spell in existence that could replenish psychic energy, that could refill the pool of magic that occlumency and legilimency drew from; for that, the only cure was good, old-fashioned sleep.
But he couldn't sleep just yet; he had more than his own safety and his daughter's to ensure. There was a whole castle of sleeping students to worry about, and the fact of the matter was that a convicted Death Eater was, in a manner of speaking, inside its walls. The hostile presence that was/wasn't his daughter glared at him from his own desk chair; he reached for her, experimentally, and he saw her hands tense, her fingers curl like small claws. Her eyes glittered coldly, and he knew that Bellatrix had more control than Calista did, at this moment. He knew he could probably coax Calista out again, find the light in her eyes, if he called to her, but there was no point just now; he couldn't do anything until he had restored himself.
He cast a Stunning Spell on her, and she slumped unconsciously in the chair, eyes closing. He gathered her limp form in his arms, and was startled to realise that she barely fit anymore; she was still small for her age, but small for ten and small for six were not the same thing. Her limbs were getting lankier, too: they nearly spilled out of his arms as he carried her out of his office and through the corridors of the castle.
He slipped into the hospital wing; moonlight streamed through the windows, casting an otherworldly light on the stark white curtains that divided the beds, giving them a luminescence that was at once eerie and beautiful. Something shuffled in the darkness, and Poppy Pomfrey appeared, bustling, to meet him at the door.
"Severus?" she asked, quietly, even though, as far as he could tell, all of the beds were empty, "What's wrong - who's this?" She glanced up at the ceiling sconces, and the room was faintly lit, one candle in each fixture flickering. She took a good look at the child's face, recognising it as one that she had seen more than once, trailing behind Snape as they walked through the castle, across the grounds. "Your daughter," she murmured, surprised. He usually kept such a close watch on her that it had seemed next to impossible that she would ever wind up here, in need of Poppy's ministrations. "What happened, then?"
"She's only Stunned right now," Severus said quietly; he glanced at the row of beds now that there was some light in the room. They were all unoccupied. "But I need to go and get the Headmaster. She's - here, can I put her down?"
Poppy nodded, stepped over to one of the empty beds, and pulled the covers down. Severus deposited Calista's deadweight form into the bed, and the two of them pulled the covers back over her. "Don't get close, or say anything to her, if she wakes," Severus warned, "If she tries to run away, you can Stun her again - I don't have time to explain, but she may be a danger."
Poppy patted the covers, looked down at the little girl. It was difficult to imagine that the skinny little thing could pose any sort of risk at all, but Severus wasn't given to falsehoods, as far as she knew. "Go on, then," Poppy said, "I'll keep a careful eye on her."
Severus nodded, and left the hospital wing in a rush, his robes fairly whipping around the corner, as he cut a path to the Headmaster's office. He knew that if he tapped his wand at the right place on the gargoyle statue outside the office, that a chime would sound in Dumbledore's private chambers, alerting him to the fact that someone was at his office door; it was something only the professors knew, and, in the wee morning hours like this, it was used very sparingly.
He tapped the gargoyle, waited what felt like an eternity; then, the office door opened, and Albus Dumbledore was looking at him over the rim of his trademark half-moon spectacles, clad in magenta dressing robes. "What's wrong, Severus?" he asked, because something had to be wrong, for Severus to be standing outside his office at three in the morning, wearing a look of distress.
"A matter of school security," he said, stepping back to let the Headmaster out into the corridor, "And a great deal of danger, for my daughter. She's in the hospital wing now; I'll explain on the way there."
And he did, in a low, urgent voice as the two of them walked quickly through the corridors. He described the cold, hostile flashes of emotion that he had felt, now and then over the past couple of weeks, when he touched her skin, the way that she had gone nearly catatonic again, the way her eyes were blank and empty. He explained how he had entered her mind, the near-impenetrable set of barriers he had found there.
"It's Bellatrix, Albus, I'm certain of it. I don't know how she managed to lodge herself in Calista's mind, but she's there, and she's nearly in complete control."
"Thank you for bringing this to my attention immediately," Albus said, "It is no minor thing to have one of Voldemort's most loyal servants infiltrating Hogwarts, no matter how it's being done." They reached the door to the hospital wing now, and Albus pushed it open.
Poppy met them at the door, again. "She came to, and tried to dash out of here," she said, "Severus, I'm sorry, but I had to Stun her again."
"It's all right, Poppy," he said, glancing at the bed where his daughter lay; she was still, again.
"I can give her a sleeping draught," Poppy offered, but Severus shook his head. He looked like he wanted to say more, but he glanced at the mediwitch warily.
"Poppy, would you be so kind as to brew us a spot of tea?" Dumbledore asked, and she nodded, leaving the two men alone.
"I think Bellatrix invaded her mind while Calista was sleeping," Severus said, once Poppy was out of earshot. It wasn't that he didn't trust the mediwitch; he did, more or less, but, as always, most of the secrets he was sharing were not his, and he didn't want to divulge Calista's past to anyone he didn't need to. It was hers to share, if and when she ever chose to. "I think it has something to do with the nightmares that she's been having."
"Severus, my first concern must always be to the other students; Is Bellatrix contained safely, or does she have control of Calista's body? That is to say, will she try and steal someone's wand and begin casting curses?"
"I don't think so," Severus said, "But I am not completely certain."
"You entered her mind; tell me, Severus, do you feel that you can eliminate the threat, using legilimency?"
"She's managed, somehow, to take control of most of Calista's magic, and added it to her own strength. But it's still Calista's magic, and if it's being used against her will, there will be chinks in the armour. As long as I can still reach Calista, I believe that I can get through both barriers with enough energy to spare to handle Bellatrix; but I can't do it now, Albus. I'm exhausted, my energy's drained."
"Then we need to keep Calista under lock and key while you recover. How long do you need?"
Severus calculated, judged how much he had been depleted. "Eight hours," he said, "Maybe ten."
"You said a sleeping draught would be harmful," Albus said, "But I would prefer not to have to use any sort of force on a child. Do you have any other ideas to keep her from posing a threat to the castle while you recover?"
Severus hesitated. "I could… I could dose her with a Draught of Living Death," he said, "It's… it's something of a risk, but it won't allow her to dream, and I think that will sufficiently protect her from further intrusion."
"In this, I will abide by your decision," Albus said, and Severus nodded.
"I don't like it, but I think it's our best option," he finally said. He swept back to the dungeons, collected the vial of the potent sleeping draught from the same locked drawer in his desk where he had kept the Veritaserum, and returned to the hospital wing with it.
Poppy had returned with Albus' tea, and the older man sipped at it, even as he kept a watchful eye on the bed where the child lay. She woke again, as Severus entered the room, and flailed out when he drew close, vial in hand. He took her wrists in one hand, used the other to pour half the contents of the vial onto her tongue. Almost immediately, she stopped struggling. Her eyelids drifted shut, and she fell into a deep sleep.
"I'll be back here as soon as I have recovered enough of my strength," Severus said, and Albus nodded.
"I will meet you here, in case I am needed," Albus said, and he looked down at his wristwatch. "It is nearly four o'clock now; shall we meet at two o'clock in the afternoon?"
"The potion should keep her sleeping through then," Severus said, "I'll be here sooner, if I'm able."
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Severus fell into an exhausted, but restorative sleep. When he rose, slightly past one o'clock, he could feel the core of strength in himself, replenished. Still, he knew that it was likely that, by now, the hole he'd cut in Bellatrix's barrier would likely have been repaired; and he knew now that there were at least two of these to contend with before he could reach her proper, and battle with her.
However, he had woken with a plan. If Bellatrix could harness Calista's magical potential and use it to construct the barriers, there was no reason that he couldn't use his daughter as well, although in an entirely different way. He had seen that Calista could, with effort, pull pieces of herself away from Bellatrix, reclaim threads of her own magic, her own memories. As much as he would have liked to believe that the strength of Calista's will alone was enabling her to fight Bellatrix's control, she was only a child, and Bellatrix was a full-grown, and very willful witch, with powers that the child could not hope to contend with, yet.
No, the reason that Bellatrix was having trouble fully controlling Calista's magic was because magic, by nature, was deeply rooted in the soul; not only did it want to be back inside of the soul it belonged to, but to wield magic successfully required a certain degree of inner harmony; if Bellatrix could not control Calista's magic fully, it was because the magic didn't want to be wielded by Bellatrix.
No matter how much she wanted to, Bellatrix would not be able to bend Calista's very soul to her will, not if the child didn't want to be controlled - but Bellatrix already knew that; that was why she had torn the foundations out of the child's mind, had opened the way to the icy, raging sea of madness right beneath Calista's feet. She was trying to drain as much as she possibly could out of the girl, before she tossed her aside to drown.
But he reflected, as he forced himself to eat a quick breakfast, that, of the threads of remembered words that Calista was using to shield herself from Bellatrix's insane ocean, a proportionally large number of them were the green ones, that reverberated with his own voice, the things he had said to her over the past few years. Perhaps her soul, her core of being that was represented in the little avatar of her he had seen in her mind, could be convinced to work for him, instead. He didn't need the bulk of her raw, untrained power; he had plenty of his own. What he needed was for her to hide him, to help him slip behind the barriers without using all of his strength up right from the start.
But he had to get to her somehow, to communicate his plan and see if she was willing, if she was able, to help him sneak past Bellatrix's defences.
He went into his office, opened the cover of her journal. It looked blank, but he hoped that she would still be able to see what he wrote in it, if he could reach the real Calista. He set his quill to the first page in the book, wrote out what he needed to.
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He explained to Albus, briefly, what his plan was, and then, together, they waited for the child to wake from the heavy slumber provided by the potion. At last, her eyelids fluttered open; Severus leaned over the bed.
"Calista," he said softly, watching her eyes; they were hard, dark, blank - but no, there was a tiny pinprick of light. "Calista," he called again, and he saw it glow, just a tiny bit brighter. He took her journal from his pocket, opened it to the first page. "See if you can read what I've written," he said. She sat up, eyes going from her father to Dumbledore and back again.
She took the book from him, flipped through the pages; he couldn't tell if it looked blank to her, if it was Bellatrix that was seeing through her eyes, or if she was looking through pages and pages of her own writing. Maybe what he'd written hadn't stayed, once he'd given it to her. He took her hand, gently, and helped her turned back to the first page.
She narrowed her eyes; he felt a flash of the -
- hatred and power and fire, red-hot -
"Calista," he said keenly, and the flash of seething rage softened to the warmth of regular skin. Her eyes moved over the page, and she held out her hand, weakly, for a quill. He took the one from his pocket, the one he had written with, and pressed it into her hand.
In stuttering, jagged motions, she wrote; he could tell that it was a struggle to keep control of her own hand, to keep her eyes on the page. After a few minutes, she handed the book back.
Albus watched from a few paces away, ready to intervene if Severus could not do this thing, if he could not successfully slip past Bellatrix's barriers and rout the Dark witch from the child's mind.
Severus looked down; he could see what both of them had written, plain on the first page:
Calista - I am going to enter your mind, again, but I need your help. I need you to find me, when I am outside the barrier, and show me the way through it, just like I showed you the way to push your own thoughts into my mind, long ago. I know you are strong enough - just guide me through, in a spot where your own power guards the wall, and I will save you from her.
Ok she had written, and then, underneath it: please help me i am scared
She had not bothered with punctuation, and the writing was unbelievably messy, worse even than her usual writing, but he made the message out. There was one more thing he had to know, before he began. He took the quill.
How did she get in?
This, he had to know, because the only way out of another person's mind was the way you had come in; if he was going to clear Bellatrix from her mind, he had to force her out the same way she had come.
He handed the book and quill back to Calista. He could see her read the words, knew that she understood, but she was struggling to bring the quill to the page. He reached out, put his arms around her shoulders, steadied the book with one hand, and the hand that held the quill with his other. He pressed his mouth to her ear, whispered something in it that was only for the two of them.
Her fingers tightened on the quill, and he watched over her shoulder, as she drew its tip, hard, purposefully, across the page.
she made me have the knife dream she was real she looked in my eyes and climbed in
She handed the journal to him, even though he had already been able to read it. He tucked it back into his pocket, drew his wand out instead.
He locked his own black eyes onto hers. He focused on that distant pinprick of light, that told him she wasn't defeated, yet.
"Ready, Calista?" he murmured, and, for the second time, lifted his wand.
"Legilimens."