Chapter Eight:
Calista had known that her father was going to give her a detention, from the moment that Portia had gone running to his office to snitch on her.
What she hadn't known was that he would actually make her sort a huge shipment of pickled eyeballs by species, without using any magic to help her.
"This is really disgusting," she complained at one point, when she had accidentally squashed one between her fingers.
Severus glanced up from where he was correcting essays at his desk – homework, in fact from Calista's own class, which had just ended an hour ago.
"Is it? Then perhaps you will think twice about hexing your classmates next time."
"How much longer do I have to do this?"
Severus didn't even look up from the essay he was marking. "Until you are finished."
"Are you having me on? There are thousands of them – I'll be at it until dawn."
"Well then, what a lucky thing for us that you don't have any other classes this afternoon that might interrupt your progress."
"And to think, Portia was worried you might favour me and let me go unpunished." Calista grumbled half-heartedly.
He glanced up at that.
"I might have considered it, if you hadn't announced so brazenly that you'd do it again."
"I didn't," Calista deadpanned, "I said I'd do worse."
Severus arched his brows. "I'm expecting a shipment of flobberworms next week. Shall I write you in to sort those, too?
"Why?" Calista challenged, "It's not going to change anything. I'm not just going to sit there and let her pull my hair, or throw things at me, or whatever she and Olivia want to do next. I've been through that once already, thanks, and I'm done."
Severus couldn't quite stop his temper from rising along with Calista's. He set his marking quill down on the desk, across the stack of essays, and his eyes bored into hers.
"You are not a law unto yourself, Calista," he said, as evenly as he could manage, "You need to stop using your anger as an excuse to flout the rules whenever it suits you. And, furthermore – it might interest you to know that I do not savour arguing with you every single time I tell you something."
"You don't understand," she accused, but Severus didn't even let her finish.
"No, you don't understand," he interrupted, "You seem to think that you can unleash your anger anytime, on anyone, and not suffer the consequences. I have been far too lenient with you, but it appears that your friends have not been."
"Portia's not my friend," she said, carelessly tossing a handful of toads' eyeballs in with newts' eyes. "She never was. I don't have any friends."
"That's rubbish," he said, "You're quarrelling with them, fine. But I've seen you sitting with Boyle and Quinn and the other fifth-years."
"Yeah," she said, wretchedly, and he noticed that her hands were shaking, causing her to squash another eyeball by mistake, "Because I got tired of listening to Portia and Olivia talk about how ugly I am and how much they hate me."
Severus exhaled.
"I still expect you to serve your detention," he said, "But you can put those down for a minute if you need to talk."
Calista shook her head, and kept sorting. "Don't worry. I won't ruin any more of them."
"Has it occurred to you that it's you I'm concerned about, and not the state of those bloody eyeballs?"
Calista glanced at him sidelong. "You wouldn't understand anyway."
"I wouldn't?" he said, so softly that Calista barely heard him over the squelching noises her work was making. "Try me."
"It just doesn't make sense," she said, "How someone can say they're your best friend one minute, and in the next they act like you're a pile of dung."
How, indeed. Severus didn't have an explanation for Calista, any more than he had ever been able to explain it to himself.
"You can't concern yourself too much with the way that other people see you," he said, in a deceptively offhand manner, "As long as you know who you are and what you stand for, that's what counts."
Calista dropped two more eyes into smaller bins.
"Yeah? And what if I don't know what I stand for?"
Severus smirked reflectively. "You're eleven years old. You don't need to know that yet – and I strongly suspect that the first time you do decide that, it won't be the final word."
Calista contemplated while she sorted another handful of squashy little spheres.
"Right. I'm eleven years old. But no one else in my year has ever seen their mum torture someone and then off them after."
"I think," he said darkly, "You'd be surprised."
o-o-o-o
The irony did not escape Severus that of the two people he had ever truly loved in the world, only one of them could be his in any given life.
For, of course, if Lily had returned his love, then he would never have fathered Calista.
They were a very good analogy, really, for the course of his entire life.
Lily was destined to be his Achilles' might-have-been; something truly beautiful and wholly good that he could only have possessed if he had been able to shut down the dark side of his psyche completely.
Almost a perfect foil, Calista was a child born into the darkness, and bred to remain there. It was the darkest part of himself that had led to the circumstances in which he wound up in Bellatrix's bed.
Sometimes, he thought bitterly of the greatest irony of all: That he had lost Lily because he had unwittingly brought evil down upon her, and caused her death; and he had gained Calista because he had rescued from evil.
Which, he supposed, left him solidly in limbo, precisely where he had been before beginning a brief and powerful descent that would Mark him forever.
The cruellest thing he had to live with was the knowledge that even coming full circle would not bring Lily back from the dead.
o-o-o-o
Hexing Portia had done one good thing, at least. Ever since their confrontation, Portia had been very careful not to provoke Calista unless the latter was seriously outnumbered.
Of course, since Calista had exactly zero friends, it was not the rarest of circumstances.
She was still sitting near the fifth-years at mealtimes, who had evidently realised that she wasn't going to go away no matter how perverted their conversations were made. They had switched tactics, and were now openly discussing, in great detail, the horrific effects of spells gone gruesomely wrong.
Calista supposed they meant to frighten her into leaving, but she was already extremely desensitised to such things. On the second night, when the boys were describing a curse that would cause entrails to be ejected forcefully from the body, Calista actually took out her quill and a scrap of parchment and wrote down what they were saying.
The boy sitting directly to Calista's left craned his neck, peering over her shoulder to see what she was writing.
"Aw, is the little first-year going to tattle on us for scaring her?" the boy jeered. It was the first time that any of them had actually spoken to her directly, and Calista was slow in meeting his gaze.
A couple of the other boys chortled, and even one of the girls. They didn't really seem to be expecting an answer, but she decided to give them one anyway.
"I'm not scared," she said, her eyes narrowing, "I just haven't heard of that one before."
"Heard what one before?" another boy, one with shoulder-length blond hair and a face full of spots asked, eyeing her with something between suspicion and contempt.
"The curse. The one that you said caused someone's entrails to fly out of them like –,"she paused, consulting her notes, "—'Like a bat out of hell'.
The first boy guffawed. He was broad and dark-haired, and Calista was fairly certain he was on the Quidditch team. "Yeah, they don't teach you that one in first year."
The rest of the group laughed as if he'd told a brilliant joke.
Calista blanched. "I know that," she said, hunching her shoulders tightly, "They don't teach us the Fiendfyre Curse or the Levicorpus hex either, but I've heard of those."
They weren't laughing anymore; a few of them exchanged looks, and then the lone girl that seemed to be a part of their group snapped her fingers, and smirked.
"You know who she is, right? She's Snape's brat. Bet you anything that's where she learnt the names of those curses."
"Yeah?" the Quidditch player said, looking at Calista again. "That the truth?"
Calista nodded, although she was only agreeing to the first part of the girl's statement.
"So," the spotty-faced blond boy leaned across the table, "Why aren't you sitting with the other first years like a good little girl?"
Her eyes flashed. "I'm not a 'little girl'."
They all laughed again.
"You're a little girl, all right" the older girl said, smirking at Calista, "Although maybe not a good one. Matter of fact, I think I'm gonna call you Little Snape. I'm Kimberly Avery, and this here's Ethan Briggs –," she gestured to the blond boy, "And that's Conor Quinn and Peter Boyle."
She indicated the dark-haired likely-Quidditch-player on Calista's left and a ginger-haired slip of a lad on her right, respectively.
"My given name is Calista, not Little," she said, through clenched teeth.
"Sure it is, Little Snape," Peter quipped.
Kimberly had been contemplating the staff table, and now she regarded Calista. "Kind of creepy how much she looks like him, eh?"
"Yeah," Conor said, "You gonna give us extra homework, Little Snape?"
Calista crumpled up the scrap of parchment she'd written her notes about the entrails-expelling curse on, and stood up to leave. She hadn't given up being teased by first-years so she could be teased by fifth-years instead.
"Hey, where are you going, Little Snape?" Kimberly asked, reaching across the table in an attempt to snag Calista's sleeve. She missed, but Calista paused anyway, not sure exactly why she was doing so.
"Here," Ethan said, shoving a plate with a piece of fruit cake on it towards the place Calista had just vacated at the table, "Have your sweet and tell us more of those hexes you learned."
Conor and Peter both moved over a little, obviously making room for Calista to rejoin them. Hardly daring to believe they were serious, she did.
"So," she said, lifting her fork to attack the fruit cake, "There's Serpensortia…"
o-o-o-o
Calista didn't bother to mention to the fifth-years that she hadn't actually ever cast any of the curses she'd mentioned herself, and mercifully, they didn't ask.
It seemed to be enough that she had heard of them, and hadn't been squeamish when they'd shared their own tales of hexes and jinxes gone bad and magical mishaps in general that were probably meant to shock her.
They had started quizzing her occasionally, tossing out the names of Potions ingredients they were studying, or naming an incantation and asking her what the spell did. Some of the spells Calista knew, and some she didn't – but she was also fairly certain they'd made some of them up.
She knew a lot of the Potions ingredients, although when they asked her to name all the ingredients in a Draught of Living Death, she'd only come up with two of them.
She'd already learned a lot from talking to them – not only the rest of the ingredients list for a Draught of Living Death, but a lot of useful little jinxes and hexes that she hadn't known about.
She'd even almost begun to tolerate the fact that none of them ever used her given name, but always called her "Little Snape," or some variation on it, which the lot of them seemed to feel was the epitome of cleverness.
One day at dinner, while Calista was furiously scribbling a list of jinxes that Kimberly, Conor, Ethan, and Peter were rattling off, someone snatched the list out of her hands.
"What—," Calista began, looking up to meet the gaze of a fifth-year girl in Ravenclaw robes. This one had limp blonde hair and a spotty complexion, was wearing a Prefect badge, and was looking at the group with obvious distaste. She scanned the parchment she'd stolen, and then laughed.
"Really?" she said, but she didn't even look at Calista as she spoke; she seemed to see right over her head, as if she wasn't there at all, and spoke instead to the Slytherin fifth-years.
"What d'you want now, Elyse?" Ethan sounded wary.
"Can't I just check up on my twin brother?" the girl, Elyse, replied. "I can see you're still up to no good."
"That's right," Kimberly interjected, "We are. So why don't you shove off and find something better to do?"
Elyse looked at Kimberly scathingly. "I don't recall asking you anything, Avery."
"And I don't recall inviting you to our table," Kimberly shot back, "So if you'll kindly do us the pleasure of leaving, I'd be most obliged."
Elyse looked over Kimberly's head, at Ethan. "Mum wants to know if you're coming home for Easter break," she said, and cast a withering glance over Ethan's friends again, "I must say I think you could use a change in company."
Ethan tucked his longish hair behind his ears, and Calista noticed the tips of his ears were slowly reddening.
"Er, yeah," he said slowly, "I'm coming home. Kimberly's coming too, to spend the week with us."
His entire face was red now, and Elyse sneered. "You tell her about your little friend yourself. Mum only asked me to find out if you were coming."
"Come off it, Elyse, Kimberly's never done anything to you…"
"Except turn my twin brother into a rule-breaking Slytherin who apparently compiles lists of malicious, dangerous spells for fun – and isn't that a first year?" She seemed to have noticed Calista for the first time since snatching the parchment from her.
"Honestly," Elyse said, not giving Ethan a chance to answer, "You should know better than to corrupt a first-year with all this rubbish."
"You've said your bit, now bugger off, you daft cow," Kimberly said.
"I'll speak to your Head of House about that lack of respect for a Prefect," Elyse warned.
Kimberly grinned. "You go ahead and do that."
Elyse crumpled the parchment up and tossed it into Kimberly's lap before storming away.
"I don't understand how you can live with her, mate," Kimberly said to Ethan, while she smoothed out the parchment Elyse had ruined.
"She means well," Ethan managed, the curtain of his hair falling forward to hide his still-red ears again.
"Right," Kimberly sounded anything but convinced, but then her gaze shifted to Calista, and her expression lifted into a smile.
"So, Snapelet," she said brightly, "Mind putting in a good word for me with your dad? If I have to waste an afternoon in a bloody detention instead of studying for my O.W.L. I'll be in bad shape."
"Yeah," Calista said, "Yeah, I can do that."
o-o-o-o
Calista's mental defences were quailing. She fought with everything she had to keep her protective barriers in place, but it was no use.
The first of her mental walls was torn down as if it were no more than a curtain of cobwebs. She felt a push against her second barrier, and then it too was wrenched open.
"No," she said aloud, going first red and then white with the strain of trying to control what was happening in her mind.
She felt an attack on the third and final layer of her defence, as ruthless as it had been with the other two.
Drawing on whatever meagre reserves she possessed, she threw absolutely everything she could behind this most important of barriers, her last stronghold in her own mind.
It was no use – she wasn't strong enough. But she had to keep her secrets, at all costs.
Then, just as suddenly as the assault had begun, it stopped. Calista let out a breath she hadn't even been aware of holding, and reached a tentative tendril of thought beyond her barriers, seeking signs of the intruder.
Too late, she realized she had no reason to be relieved.
The intruder slipped through her final mental barrier as easily as a fish cut through the water of a still pond.
"Layering your defences will do you no good if you cannot sustain it," Severus said, radiating disapproval. "Let's try again, shall we?"
"Wait," Calista said, closing her eyes and letting out another shaky breath, trying to gather her resolve after it had so neatly been shattered.
"If someone were actually casting Legilimens on you with the intent to invade your mind, they would not allow you a break to compose yourself," he said, adding silkily: "Of course, they'd hardly need to cast the spell if you showed them your distress as plainly as you just showed me."
"I'm trying," Calista snapped, her eyes opening again, "I'm doing the best I can."
"If that's true, then it only illustrates how sorely you need further practise."
Severus could see the irritation and anger flash briefly across his daughter's face, and then her eyes went carefully blank, her expression placid.
"Better," he murmured, lifting his wand. Strictly speaking, he didn't need it to enter Calista's mind, but using it increased his ability, and the stronger the foe Calista learned to defend against, the safer she would be.
Calista placed only two layers of protection this time. The first was brushed aside just as easily as last time, and behind it Calista had allowed some unimportant memories to seep through.
She felt Severus poring over inconsequential things, like the topic of her latest essay in Charms class, the ingredients in the last potion they had done in his class.
Then he approached her second barrier, and Calista braced herself. She had made this one as strong as her second and third barriers combined from her previous attempt.
There was perhaps a ten second pause before he tore it apart.
Calista howled in frustration. "How do you do that?"
"A combination of factors," Severus said dryly, "Years of experience, a constant pressing need for secrecy, and of course, the fact that you make yourself as easy to read as an open spellbook."
"I do not!"
Severus lifted his wand again, an indication that he wasn't going to give her a rest this time, either. "Yes you do," he said, "Unless you truly expect your attacker to believe that all you have to hide are your homework assignments."
Calista hastily reformed her primary barrier. It was weak, even for her, as her energy was rapidly draining.
She gathered the last dregs of her strength into creating another barrier behind it, and she filled the space in between the two with any memories she could grope for that weren't particularly important.
On a sudden impulse, she added another scene – the recent verbal match between Kimberly Avery and Ethan's sister Elyse. She reversed the roles in the slice of it that she revealed, so that Elyse was the one calling Kimberly a daft cow.
And then she placed a brief scene from one of her nightmares among the rest – just a flash where one could see that Calista was running, but not what she was running from
She felt Severus brush against this memory almost immediately after he had swept aside the curtain of her first layer of defence. He didn't rush past it though; this time, he examined the piece of memory from the dream, looking for clues in it.
It gave Calista precious seconds to enhance the support of her second barrier.
He still broke through it as if it were mere play for him, but when he withdrew from her mind, his expression was somewhat softened.
"That was a bit better," he said, "Now, do you know why it worked better that time?"
"Because I placed something between the barriers that would attract your attention?"
"Ah, not entirely," he answered, "It worked because it was something with real emotion attached to it, which appears genuine; that is to say, if there were enough of those sorts of memory behind your first barrier, then I might not have assumed you were hiding more behind another layer."
"Oh." She waited for him to comment on the false memory she had added, the one where she had made Elyse Briggs look like a troublemaker.
He didn't.
"So," Calista prompted, "What if I created a false memory, too? Couldn't I put anything I wanted, and make the person believe it was true?"
"Like portraying that you were running towards Bellatrix instead of away from her? Yes, you could do that – but it would be difficult, because you'd have to make it fit seamlessly with whatever things are contained within that part of your mind. For example, you can't place a false happy memory into a part of yourself that is seething with anger."
"So it's… it's rather difficult then, isn't it?"
"In a word, yes. But not impossible."
Calista suppressed a grin. It seemed that he hadn't noticed that one of the memories he had viewed was altered.
Of course, it hadn't been a particularly complex memory. Still, she wished she could tell him what she'd done, because she thought he'd be rather proud of her.
Then again, taking credit for the false memory would also defeat its purpose.
"I see," Calista said, "D'you think we could practise Transfiguration now?"
Severus nodded. "I've had an idea about that," he said, "Tell me one of the assignments you've had trouble with."
"We had to turn a pencil into a ruler," Calista said, recalling one of her least favourite lessons, "I couldn't get any better than a pencil that looked like it had been run over by a herd of hippogriffs."
Severus chuckled, and opened his desk drawer, rooting around a bit.
He placed a pencil on his desk, in front of Calista. "Go on," he said, "Show me."
Calista drew her wand from her pocket, and aimed it at the pencil, practising the spell she had learned in class.
The pencil wiggled, and then sort of flattened, and finally little black marks, each the width of a human hair, appeared on it, marking measurements. It still definitely resembled a pencil, though.
Severus waved his own wand, returning the pencil to its original state.
"Now," he said, placing a ruler on the desk, to the right of the pencil as Calista viewed it, "Try it again."
Calista looked at him blankly, "Why bother?" she said, "There's already a ruler here, why would I need to make a new one out of a pencil?"
"I asked you to try the spell again, not to be a flippant little toad," he said, lacking any real malice.
Calista flashed a scowl, and repeated the spell, with the same results as before.
"Look at the ruler this time, while you're casting on the pencil," Severus commanded.
Calista rolled her eyes, and then aimed her wand at the pencil, repeating the spell. She kept her eyes locked on the ruler.
When she looked back, prepared to issue another sarcastic complaint, her jaw dropped. There were two identical rulers on the desk.
"I did it," Calista said faintly.
"So you did. Between that and your improvements today in Occlumency, I think you've earned your freedom for the rest of the weekend. Run along and eat flies, you tiresome child, before I change my mind."