Chapter Seven:
They were supposed to be turning a pencil into a ruler. After much frustration, Calista still had a pencil, albeit one with hatch marks every millimetre.
McGonagall was making her rounds in the classroom. She paused to hold up Emily's ruler as a splendid example, while Olivia looked put out that hers hadn't been chosen.
When she made her way over to Calista, McGonagall shook her head.
"I don't understand how you can do so well in every class but mine, Miss Snape. Professor Flitwick is always trying to tell me you're a brilliant student, and yet you can't even manage a simple Transfiguration. Why is that?"
Calista flushed. "I don't know."
"Here," McGonagall set a fresh pencil on the table before her. "Show me what you're doing."
Feeling her face heat up, and knowing that most of the class had stopped working to watch the scene, Calista wished that she was better at Transfiguration; maybe then she could use a Vanishing Spell on herself.
Calista concentrated, and waved her wand at the pencil. Nothing happened for a moment, and then black marks appeared along one side of the pencil, just like the first one she had tried to transfigure.
"You're thinking about it too hard," McGonagall said, "Instead of trying to think of all the things that differentiate the pencil from the ruler, just think of what they have in common."
McGonagall moved on, leaving Calista to attempt the transfiguration several more times. She got the exact same result twice, and her best attempt for the class period was a flat, ruler-shaped length of wood that had no measurement marks. It did, however, have a rubber on the end of it.
When class ended, McGonagall looked rather disappointed at what Calista had produced.
"Very well then, Miss Snape, if that's the best you can do. Perhaps you should review your notes."
"Yeah, I'll do that," Calista said, anxious to leave class before Olivia did, knowing the other girl would probably say something snide if they left together.
She had already reviewed her notes several times over, and had read all of the first-year chapters in her textbook at least three times, but it hadn't done much good.
She almost collided with Portia in her rush to leave the classroom.
"Watch where you're going – or can't you see around your nose?" she sneered.
"Oh, you're so clever, Portia," Calista shot back, "Did you think of that all by yourself, or did Olivia tell you what to say?"
"Have fun in first-year Transfiguration again next year, Calista!" Olivia called over her shoulder, as she took hold of Portia's elbow and steered her away, presumably towards the Quidditch pitch to watch the team practise.
Livid, Calista made her lonely way to the Slytherin common room. She sat down and resigned herself to going over the Transfiguration text yet again.
She felt uneasy beneath the gaze of the skulls that lined the common room. She had never really paid them any mind before, but in light of the most recent instalment of her nightmare, they were suddenly decidedly creepy.
She swept around the room, picking pillows up off of armchairs, and stuffing them in front of the skulls that she could reach.
She sat down to work again, and was still taking notes from the text on anything that she thought might help her improve her class performance, hours later when Olivia and her cronies swept into the common room.
Calista did her best to pretend they weren't there, but then Olivia noticed the cushions in front of the skulls.
"Aw, did ickle Calista get scared?"
She hadn't been the only student in the common room during the time that the three girls had been gone, and wondered how Olivia knew that she had put them there. Or was it just a guess?
Calista bent further over her schoolwork, determined for once not to rise to Olivia's bait.
"She's afraid of the dark too," Portia volunteered, "The other night, I heard her wake up, and then she went to the common room and lit all the lamps."
That would have been the night she had dreamt of the talking skull. She hadn't known anyone else was awake.
Calista ignored her, ignored the temptation to ask how she had managed to hear anything over her own constant sniffling, because she knew if she said anything to either of the girls, she was going to lose it.
Olivia laughed.
"I'm not surprised. Come on, Portia, I want to try something with your hair."
Of course, Calista thought to herself, Olivia couldn't have a friend without trying to change her into another version of herself.
She noticed something strange, though. When Portia made to follow Olivia, Emily sat down at a study table instead – and she set three lengths of parchment down on the table along with her book and quill.
So that's why Olivia wasn't missing Calista's friendship; she had found someone else to do her homework for her. Even Calista had never actually written Olivia's homework up for her, she'd only let the other girl copy.
The incident had nearly blown over, when Marcus Flint and the rest of the Quidditch team entered the common room.
They were laughing and jeering each other over something that had happened on the pitch, and then Marcus looked at Olivia and smiled.
And that was all it took.
Olivia was full of contradictions; she had boasted about her pureblood pride, but was frightened of Calista because her mother had acted on her pride. She always said that Marcus Flint was daft, and yet she always seemed to be trying to catch his eye.
Until this point, she had never done more than jeer at Calista, or exclude her. But something happened when she caught Marcus' eye, and she thought she had the chance to impress him.
Olivia snatched one of the pillows from in front of the skulls and threw it square at Calista's head.
Calista, seeing an object hurtling at her from the edges of her vision, but not knowing what it was yet, involuntarily started, and began clawing at whatever had been thrown at her. When she saw that it was only a pillow, her face flushed.
Olivia and Portia enjoyed a great laugh over this, and a few of the Quidditch team members sniggered, too.
Then Olivia and Portia swept past, on their way to the dormitories. As she passed, Portia grabbed a handful of Calista's hair and yanked on it, hard.
Calista didn't think. Her wand was in her pocket, and when Portia pulled on her hair, she whipped it out and performed the first hex that came into her mind, covering Portia's pudgy face with boils.
Portia shrieked, and put her hands to her face; then she saw that her hands were covered too.
"What did you do to me?" she screeched, and everyone in the common room was looking at them. A few people laughed.
Calista kept her wand pointed at Portia, but her hand was shaking.
"Don't you ever touch me again, Portia MacNair, or I swear I'll do worse."
"I'm telling Snape!" Portia cried, making a blind dash for the exit of the common room, "And if he won't punish you then I'll go right to the Headmaster next!"
Calista thought that Portia was overreacting, and judging by the way Marcus Flint was sniggering, she wasn't the only one.
However, now that her heartbeat was returning to a normal rate, worry began to set in. Portia might think that Snape would be lenient in disciplining her because of their relationship, but Calista was fairly certain he would lean the opposite way.
She was about to find out, at any rate.
o-o-o-o
Severus was correcting papers in his office when someone started battering at his door. He distinctly heard someone crying, and leapt up, opening the door to see a very ugly first-year girl.
"S-she hexed me!" the girl cried, sounding as though she had just been through a far more severe trauma than suffering a Furnunculus spell, "It hurts."
It took him a moment to recognise Portia with all the boils on her face, but when he did, he took a vial of boil-cure potion off a shelf and handed it to her. The girl was blubbering so much that she had a hard time getting the stopper out, so Severus had to take the vial from her, pull the stopper out, and then give it back.
After a few moments, Portia's face and hands returned to normal, and she handed the vial back to him. She wiped the back of her hand across her nose as she sniffed loudly, trying to stop crying.
"Who hexed you?" Severus asked, when the girl's sobs had subsided.
"C-Calista did, sir. She hexed me for no reason at all."
Severus was surprised to hear who the culprit was, but he had observed enough of the new dynamic between the Slytherin girls to doubt that the attack had truly been unprovoked.
"Did anyone else see the attack?"
Portia flushed, perhaps picking up on the fact that he didn't quite believe her.
"Yeah," she said, "Olivia Avril was there. And…"
She had been about to name Emily and the Quidditch players, but then it occurred to her that one of them might volunteer that Portia had pulled Calista's hair before Calista hexed her. Calista would still be in trouble, but Portia might be, too.
"And?" Severus prompted.
"And… ah, no one. Just Olivia."
"I see," he said, "Return to your dormitory, and kindly send Calista and Miss Avril to my office when you get there."
Portia nodded, and left his office, heading in the general direction of the Slytherin quarters.
Olivia arrived in his office before Calista did, so Severus took the opportunity to question her.
"You saw the attack on Miss MacNair?" he asked, watching her face.
Olivia nodded. "It was completely unprovoked, sir. We were all just working on our homework, when Calista got angry at something and hexed Portia. I think it was Furnunculus."
She was lying. He could see it in her face, the way her eyes darted around when she spoke.
"Very well," he said, just as Calista had entered the office, her shoulders hunched. "You may go, Miss Avril."
Olivia smiled politely at him, and turned her back. On the way past, she flashed a smirk at Calista, but Calista's gaze was squarely on the floor.
"Calista," Severus said, sounding a bit tired, "What happened?"
"Portia pulled my hair and I hexed her," she said shortly, almost defiantly, as if she was already resigned to being punished for it and simply wanted to get it over with.
He had known there must have been more to the story than he had gotten from the other two girls.
"You know full well that you are not allowed to hex your classmates."
"I know," she conceded, looking up slightly.
"I know you were provoked, but nevertheless, that kind of behaviour cannot be excused."
"I know," Calista repeated, "And I know you have to give me detention or something. But if she ever touches me again, I'm going to do something worse to her than give her boils."
She said it plainly, and Severus knew she meant it. He also could not condone it.
"No," he said, "If she touches you again, then you come to me and I will punish her accordingly. Then it will be she who gets a detention, instead of you. Which you will serve, by the way, Friday after class."
"It's kind of ironic, isn't it?" Calista said after a spell, "That you're the first teacher to give me a detention."
"It is surprising," Severus admitted, "Especially given that I hear you're quite cheeky in Charms class."
Calista flushed slightly.
"Incidentally," he said, "You probably could successfully use a Tickling Charm to fight a vampire, if you ever found yourself in that dubious situation."
Calista bit back a grin.
"Perhaps I should write an essay about it for Professor Flitwick."
"Perhaps," he said, and then looked at her a bit sternly. "Now, go back to your dormitory, and try not to hex anyone else."
o-o-o-o
Damn it. She kept reaching out, but it was only into emptiness. There was nothing.
She ran her fingers through her matted, greasy hair, until they caught on knots and stopped. Then she pulled at the knots ferociously, howling in frustration.
Bellatrix redoubled her efforts, concentrating on that night, the night that she had forged a special connection with her daughter.
She envisioned it clearly, the beautiful silver of the blade, the creamy-pale canvas of the child's skin.
When she made the first cut, the girl screamed and tried to break free, but Bellatrix held her in place by magic. She would be in pain now, but some day the girl would come to see that this was for a greater good.
She would be one of His now, just like her mother was.
Bellatrix had been fascinated by the beads of blood that rose up, stark against the white of her skin. This blood was her Daughter's blood, and by extension, it was her own blood, too.
Each incision would bring Daughter, and Bellatrix, one step closer to the Dark Lord.
Surely he would see, then, would understand that even though he had not fathered the child, she was his. She could only grow up to be an extraordinary witch, given her parentage, an excellent addition to the Dark Lord's side.
Or, if Voldemort was impatient, he could use her as a freely given sacrifice, to improve his power. Blood magic was a powerful thing, a beautiful thing, that Bellatrix had always wanted to see.
It was so hard to find a willing sacrifice, and a subject under the Imperius curse wasn't the same; the blood would never be as magically rich, as deliciously potent.
The fact that it was a form of Blood magic that had caused the Dark Lord's apparent downfall was an irony that wasn't lost on Bellatrix.
If only she could have arranged to have that sort of power on the Dark Lord's side. Next time, she vowed she would.
She only needed to reach him, first. A feat that was easier said than done, as she languished in her cell.
She had almost managed it before, to take control of Daughter, her extension. Then that damn half-blooded fool had taken the prize from her, had even stolen her plans on how to use the girl to help the Dark Lord.
She needed to get into the girl's mind again, needed to brush away thoroughly the rubbish that was her own consciousness, the bundle of fear and hesitation. She had not wanted to do what Bellatrix had asked, so Bellatrix needed to force her.
She blamed her cousin, for stealing the girl and ferreting her away. If she had only had more time with her, she would have broken her, would have made her come to see the way things had to be.
She still could do it, if she could only find her again.
It was only a matter of time, of course. Bellatrix smiled to herself when she was reminded of it. The girl was Marked; she would not be able to hide for long.
o-o-o-o
Calista moaned in her sleep, reaching blindly for her wand. She had to defend herself, before –
Before what?
Calista jolted awake, breathing hard. She had been having a nightmare again, but this time she had woken up for a different reason.
There was a sharp, stabbing pain right in the middle of her back.
She slipped out of bed, one hand curled around her wand and the other pressing against her spine.
She let go of her back and grabbed the little hand-mirror that Portia had given her for Christmas out of the drawer of her bedside table, still half in its wrappings, and carried it out to the common room.
She lit the lamp nearest her, refraining from lighting them all in the hopes that she could avoid having any of the others wake up.
Huddled in the corner, her back still radiating pain, Calista pushed her nightshirt up, angling the mirror and twisting her neck to an unlikely angle so she could see her back.
The marks were there, raised and white, difficult to see against her pallor, but still undeniable.
She had felt them and seen them before, but she couldn't remember them hurting, at least not this badly.
What she had not noticed before was the shape that they formed, and it glared at her now from within the neat frame of the circular mirror.
It was – oh, no. It was a skull with a snake coming out of it, very similar to the tattoo she had seen on her mother's forearm often enough to memorize.
She concentrated on trying to remember how the scars had gotten there, but it was no use. She didn't remember, didn't even really remember being aware of them any earlier than the previous summer, when she had seen them in a mirror on the back of her wardrobe door.
But they were old scars, obviously as healed as they would ever be, and she must have had them for a lot longer than she could remember having them.
Had Bellatrix somehow done this to her while she was inside of her mind last year?
It was a terrifying prospect, one that made Calista shiver from head to toe. If Bellatrix could harm her on the outside when she was inside, and Bellatrix had already proved that she could reach Calista from the confines of Azkaban, then there was no part of Calista that was safe from her mother's torture, even now – not her body, and certainly not her mind.
She hadn't felt Bellatrix in her mind since her father had forced her out of it, but what if her attack was simply more subtle now? After all, Calista couldn't remember Bellatrix giving her the scars, and yet they were there. Maybe she hadn't felt that attack, either, until it was too late.
Calista slumped into the corner of the common room, and pulled her legs to her chest. She abandoned the mirror on the floor next to her, but kept one hand clutched tightly on her wand.
Then she dropped her face to her knees, and started to cry. She didn't make a sound, but her entire body shook and bucked with the force of the sobs.
Would she ever feel safe? The answer was, she thought miserably, not while Bellatrix lived.
That moment was perhaps the first one where Calista truly realised what the implications of her position were. As she saw it, she would have to murder Bellatrix, or she could never live in peace.
Getting past the idea that she would someday have to kill someone would be hard enough; but she was only eleven years old, and she had no idea when or how Bellatrix would strike at her again. How on earth was she supposed to defend herself against a grown woman, who was one of the Dark Lord's most trusted agents?