Chapter Nine:
"By now you should all be experts at this spell. I will make the rounds and grade your final product. When I reach you, kindly hand me your essay describing the technical and historical aspects of the spell."
There was a flurry of activity as the students withdrew their pencils-turned-rulers, wands, and homework essays. Professor McGonagall began at the front of the classroom, armed with a length of parchment and a quill, with which she took notes on each student's transfigured pencil.
Calista watched with apprehension as McGonagall frowned over Portia's effort. She craned her neck, but couldn't quite see how well Portia had done in contrast to her own attempt.
She set her own ruler on her desk, and waited anxiously for McGonagall to reach her. When she did, the professor looked impressed – and, Calista noted waspishly, more than a little surprised.
"Well, Miss Snape, I must say, this is a far better effort than I expected from you – in fact, it's nearly flawless. Five points to Slytherin for your marked improvement."
She wasn't sure whether to be proud of herself or ashamed that she had apparently been so abysmal in their previous class practise sessions that McGonagall expected her to fail.
She smirked when she caught sight of Olivia scowling at her.
Once McGonagall had marked everyone's efforts, she returned to the head of the classroom for the lecture, where she announced that they would be practising on live mice next.
Calista groaned inwardly at this news, knowing that the added difficulty of transfiguring a live animal would likely trip her up.
At the end of class, Olivia rushed up to McGonagall as Calista was gathering her things. Calista thought savagely that Olivia was probably going to complain that she hadn't received top marks on this assignment. Transfiguration was her best subject, and it was a sore point whenever any of her classmates did better on an assignment.
Portia and Emily were huddled together whispering in the doorway, and Calista was just shoving past them when she heard McGonagall call her back into the classroom.
"Miss Snape!"
Calista half-turned, looking over her shoulder. McGonagall looked frighteningly angry all of a sudden, her cheeks red and her lips white and pressed together. Beside her, Olivia was gloating for no reason that Calista could discern.
"Come here at once," McGonagall commanded, and Calista adjusted the weight of her schoolbag on her shoulder and slinked to the desk, with the distinct feeling that she was in trouble, though she couldn't imagine for what.
"Miss Avril tells me an alarming story, Miss Snape," the professor said, "She seems to think that you cheated on your homework assignment."
"What—," Calista began, but McGonagall wasn't finished.
"Normally, I wouldn't take such stock in the word of one student against another," she said, "But I must admit that I was surprised in the sudden leap in the quality of your work."
"Hang on," Calista said, feeling heat rise to her face, "Are you saying I'm in trouble because I did well on my homework?"
Olivia smirked, but quickly coughed and hid her mouth behind her hand when McGonagall cut her a look.
"You are excused, Miss Avril," she said pointedly. Olivia left, deliberately brushing her arm against Calista's bag on the way by, jarring the darker-haired girl slightly.
Calista followed Olivia out with her eyes, wishing that she could fell the other girl with the pure malice she was directing into her gaze.
When she looked back at McGonagall, the professor looked deeply disappointed, as well as angry.
"Did you transfigure your pencil yourself, Miss Snape?" she asked solemnly.
"What? I – yes, of course I did!"
"Miss Avril tells me that you have been quite friendly with a group of older students lately. She says she saw one of them transfigure it for you."
"That's a lie! That is, er, yes, I've been talking to them, but I did my own homework."
"Well," the professor said, "There's one way to determine the truth in that." She reached into her desk, and withdrew a pencil. Calista's heart sank.
McGonagall set the pencil on the desk, and looked at Calista.
"Show me how you did your homework," she said evenly, suddenly looking as though she was hopeful that Calista could prove her wrong.
"Right." Calista withdrew her wand, and pointed it at the pencil. She closed her eyes a few seconds, visualising the ruler she wanted to turn it into.
She whispered the incantation, willing the pencil to obey her for once.
Slowly, it flattened, and developed measurement marks.
It stayed, however, more pencil than ruler, and Calista felt her face drain of colour entirely.
"I see," McGonagall said, looking terribly disappointed. She swept Calista's effort away into her desk drawer, and when she looked up again, she was nearly shaking with anger.
"I do not appreciate being misled," she said, "Twenty points from Slytherin, Miss Snape, and I will see you in detention on Saturday."
"But—," Calista began, and McGonagall interrupted her again.
"I strongly suggest that you take yourself out of my sight now, and I hope for your own sake that you truly improve your skills in time for your exams."
o-o-o-o
Calista wished she'd just written the truth in her essay for McGonagall's class. Perhaps if she'd just admitted that she couldn't transfigure an object unless she was staring at an example of what it should be transfigured into, the professor wouldn't have been so livid.
McGonagall hadn't even let her explain, but she supposed it didn't matter much anyway, because she'd probably still be in trouble for not disclosing her method in her essay. She hadn't wanted to admit that she just wasn't any good at Transfiguration, but now she had to bear the double shame of not being any good, and being considered a cheater.
It had taken every ounce of self-control that Calista possessed not to jinx Olivia the next moment that she laid eyes on her, but Calista thought darkly of her father's threat of sorting flobberworms.
Thinking of her father made Calista's heart sink even further, because she'd have to tell him that she couldn't make their Occlumency lesson on Saturday morning, since she'd be serving McGonagall's detention instead. It made her wonder if she'd ever have a weekend where she was simply free to do whatever she wished.
Then again, whenever she thought of Bellatrix, whatever-she-wished quickly turned into further defensive lessons, anyway.
Calista spent the next several days avoiding her father to prolong the amount of time she had before she had to tell him she had gotten another detention, and desperately trying to correctly transfigure a pencil without looking at an instance of the object she was trying to turn it into.
By Friday morning, when the former was inevitable and the latter was proving fruitless, Calista was in a foul temper. She arrived in the dungeon Potions classroom only seconds before the bell signalled the beginning of class, and rolled her eyes when she saw that the only empty seat was next to Portia, and Olivia after her.
Professor Snape announced that they would be brewing a Preservation Potion for use in pickling ingredients for future use. The ingredients list was simple, but the process could be tricky, because specific temperatures needed to be maintained at different stages of brewing.
While she worked, Calista heard hushed whispers being exchanged between Portia and Olivia, and glanced in their direction suspiciously. Olivia noticed, and giggled softly, an action which left Calista distinctly on edge.
She was stirring her own mixture in precise counter-clockwise strokes when she heard another giggle.
"Silence!" Professor Snape called, and Calista used their brief distraction to send a jet of flame flaring up underneath Portia's cauldron.
She knew she shouldn't have done it, but she was still angry about the incident in Transfiguration. She didn't think she could reach Olivia's cauldron without being noticed, and she felt that Portia had been priggish enough to deserve it, too.
Mere seconds later, Portia's cauldron turned muddy-brown and was eliciting a sharp, sour stench. Professor Snape came over to investigate, and Calista had to bite the inside of her cheeks to keep from smirking as he used his wand to clear the contents of Portia's potion and bade her to begin again.
"And this time, you'd do well to pay attention to the contents of your cauldron rather than the conversation of your friends, no matter how enlightening I'm sure it is."
Calista smirked as soon as his back was turned, and Portia cut her a look.
"You heard him," Calista whispered viciously, "Pay attention to your cauldron."
"At least I don't cheat in Transfiguration," Portia said back, far louder than was necessary. Half the class looked over, including the professor, who had quirked a brow, either in disapproval of the noise or at the accusation Portia had levelled at Calista.
Calista looked steadfastly down at her cauldron, adjusting the flame beneath it. She waited until she no longer felt the eyes of half of her classmates on her to look up and see if her father was still looking in her direction. He was inspecting Oliver Wood's cauldron and denouncing its contents in much the same way he had Portia's sabotaged attempt.
"So," Calista whispered, "I didn't know that having Emily do your homework for you was allowed. It must be though, since you say you don't cheat."
"Liar," Portia hissed back, "You're just jealous because you're failing, Olivia says s—,"
"I do believe I asked for silence," Snape said, looking pointedly in their direction. "At least one of you really can't afford to make any further mistakes."
Calista watched her father, but by now he was keeping a close watch on their section of the classroom, and she didn't have the chance to say anything until the bell rang at the end of class.
"So what were you saying earlier, Portia?" Calista affected her best deliberately offhand tone, "Something that Olivia told you? You two sure are close friends these days."
Portia sniffed. "Jealous much, Snape?"
"What reason could I possibly have to be jealous of you?"
"Very funny. You need a list?" Portia tipped her nose into the air and took hold of Olivia's elbow, making for the classroom exit.
Calista wasn't sure what impulse made her call after the pair, despite the very real possibility that her father was still watching her, and she was essentially asking for trouble.
"D'you know she called you 'an ugly little misfit' too, Portia?"
Olivia steered Portia away, glaring over her shoulder at Calista. She didn't care. She had seen the wounded look of betrayal on Portia's face, and knew her comment had caused exactly the reaction she'd been hoping for.
She was still hovering near the classroom doorway, wavering between delaying speaking to her father about her detention the following day or simply getting it over with. Why couldn't McGonagall have given her a detention any other day? Why Saturday, when she had no choice but to tell her father? None of the other students' parents were informed of every single infraction.
Just as she had decided to slink back to the common room and delay the telling, she heard a swish of robes, a swift step, and then a familiar hand was on her shoulder, steering her out of the classroom, and then a short way down the hall to an office she was very familiar with.
"Professor McGonagall advised me to ask you about your latest Transfiguration assignment," Severus said, "I can't imagine why she wouldn't tell me herself what was amiss, if she deemed it so important, but I shall humour her anyway."
He looked expectantly at his daughter, who hunched her shoulders, clutching her Potions book to her chest.
"She… she thinks I cheated on the homework."
"Ah – and did you?"
"No," she said forcefully, and then added, speaking quickly, "It's just because I didn't explain in my essay exactly how I did it – and then I couldn't do it again, in front of her, because I didn't have a ruler in front of me to concentrate on, and—,"
"Enough. I think I have the gist of it."
Calista sucked in her breath, and then let it all out at once. "Shegavemedetentiononsaturday."
"What?"
"Detention. She gave me detention, for tomorrow."
"I see. Did you tell her that you had other – ah, lessons, that would interfere?"
Calista tilted her head up to look him in the eye, her shoulders still hunched tightly. "If she'd given me a chance to explain anything, I probably would've started with the fact that I didn't actually cheat."
"A pity you can't seem to argue with your other teachers as effectively as you always seem to with me," he said dryly, and then realising to whom he was speaking, added, "Not that I am suggesting you try. I can hardly enter the staff room as it is, without hearing about something you've done."
"Or haven't done, in this case," Calista reminded him, "Because I didn't actually cheat."
Severus gave her a measuring glance. "You also weren't completely honest in your essay, by your own admission. Perhaps this will inspire you to improve you skills by exam time."
"Oh, I'm supposed to do better? Why didn't I ever think of trying that? Oh yeah, I have been trying – and I can't."
"Very well then," Severus said smoothly, "After your detention, and then your Occlumency lesson, we will work on your Transfiguration again."
Calista left his office wondering whether to be frustrated with the workload, or grateful that he was willing to help her.
Severus watched her go, wondering if he had ever been as prickly a child as she was. He suspected he must have been, or he wouldn't have smirked at the thought of Minerva McGonagall having to spend an entire Saturday with the little brat.
o-o-o-o
Calista scowled when McGonagall revealed the nature of her detention. She was meant to polish all of the trophies in the trophy room without magic.
She had decided that if McGonagall thought she was so hopeless that she couldn't even do her own homework, she might as well use it to her advantage. For the entire course of her detention, Calista brought every single thing she was polishing to McGonagall's office, to ask her if she was doing it correctly.
By the third trip, the professor looked like she wanted to scream at her student, but Calista adopted such a contrite expression on each visit that McGonagall only repeated, exasperated, that she didn't need to personally inspect every single piece.
After the twentieth or so trip from the trophy room to McGonagall's office, the teacher finally gave up.
"All right, Miss Snape, you may go. I understand you have some extra lessons to attend today."
Calista smirked on the way out, until she remembered that she really did have extra lessons to attend.
She thought darkly that polishing trophies would probably me more fun than her father's rigorous Occlumency training.
Four hours later, when her mind and body were exhausted from the lessons, and she still hadn't made any progress in Transfiguration, Calista returned to the common room and collapsed in her bed.
o-o-o-o
Calista flew high above a sea of fire, clinging tightly to the handle of a broomstick. She wasn't sure how or why she had wound up there, but she knew that there was something she had to do.
A flash of silver to her left caught her attention, and she turned her broomstick towards it, her heart dropping into her stomach as the broom obeyed with jerky, jarring movements.
Another flash, this time to her right. Calista swerved, clinging to the broomstick for her life. Whatever that silvery object was, she knew it was desperately important.
Beneath her, the fire rose, hotter and fiercer. Calista felt a bead of sweat run down her face, ice cold against the heat of her skin.
An ember caught the tail of her broom, and Calista shrieked, tilting the handle wildly upward, urging the broom to rise higher.
It was obeying, but at an agonizingly slow pace. The flames licked at her broom hungrily.
And then she saw, far below her, in the heart of the deadly fire, a bright, promising flash of silver. It shone like a beacon, beckoning her forward.
The flames were higher than she was now, and the broom didn't seem to want to rise any higher. She would never outrun the flames now. She had only one option left, only one hope for salvation.
Trembling so hard she nearly lost her grip on the handle, Calista tipped her broom forward, preparing to dive towards the glimmering silver promise below her.
Faster, faster, she dove into the searing heat. Her eyes burned and an acrid smoke tore her throat apart. She knew as she fell that she could never survive the heat of the flames.
She could barely see anything between the fierce bright light of the fire and the tears stinging her eyes.
Then it was before her, the bright silver light. Calista took one hand off her broomstick, feeling a silent sob being wrenched from her chest as she placed her life in the one hand that remained wrapped, white-knuckled around the handle.
She stretched her fingers out, felt them brush something. It was a cool mist more than it was an object, but it was a relief on her red-hot fingers. She groped towards it, and felt it growing.
The silvery fog encapsulated her, blocking out her awareness of the flames.
And then, suddenly, she was lying on her back, feeling an equally agonizing chill all along her body. Her broom was gone.
She couldn't see anything, but she felt as though she was lying on a block of ice.
She blinked rapidly, as if the reason she couldn't see was something that only needed to be cleared from her vision.
Slowly, she became aware of things just outside of her body. The cold surface she was lying on was a marble floor, veined black and green.
There were footsteps somewhere to her right. She hoped they belonged to someone that would help her, would tell her where she was and how she had gotten there.
She felt a cold hand on her forehead, the soft skin and narrow fingers definitely belonging to a woman.
The hand moved to cup her cheeks, and then a single finger was pressed over her lips, as if she had the energy to cry out anyway.
"There you are" a whisper reached her from the same vicinity the hand had come from. "I've been looking for you."
Calista intended to suck in a cool breath of air, to open her mouth, but she found that the gentle pressure of the woman's finger over her lips held her quite effectively silent.
"Shh, now. There's no need to call your father just yet. Let's have a chat, just you and I."
Calista lifted her hand, surprised at the effort it took to do so. It was as if each of her limbs was filled with lead. She brushed at the hand on her face, trying to push it away.
"There's no need to be afraid. We have been apart for so long, pet. I want to show you how I've missed you, and what we can be together."
The voice was familiar, but the reason it had taken Calista so long to place the voice was because it was carrying a soft, warm tone that she had never heard before. She allowed herself to wonder if it could possibly be true; if her mother was going to apologize to her, to draw her into an embrace and promise never to hurt her again.
It had never occurred to Calista, before this very instant, that it was a possibility which appealed to her, calling out to the deepest recesses of her heart, where she had never understood why her mother hated her so much. Why she always had to hurt her.
"Come, let us begin again. Everything will be better, this time. I promise."
Calista saw the room gradually come into focus, saw the curve of her mother's cheek above her, began to be comforted by the light pressure of Bellatrix's finger on her lips. She didn't have to figure out what to say, her mother would say it all for her, would know the words that would take years of torment away.
"Let me show you. Let me show you, how we can change the past."
Bellatrix leaned closer, a lock of her wild black hair falling softly onto Calista's cheek. She jerked in surprise, not prepared for the way her mother's hair burned her like a brand. Why was her hair so hot, while her skin was so cold?
Only, Calista realised belatedly, her mother's skin wasn't so cold anymore. Her lips, beneath Bella's finger, stung as if they had been burned.
Bellatrix pressed her forehead against her daughter's. Calista felt possessed by the bright silver-grey glare of her mother's gaze, burned by the pressure of their foreheads touching.
"All you need to do is remember," Bellatrix whispered, her lips separated from Calista's only by the span of her own finger. "Just remember, and then I can do the rest for you, my child."
Calista felt dizzy, and her head began to hurt badly. She felt blisters rising on her skin wherever her mother was touching her. And then a vision swam into her mind, the wavering image of a knife juxtaposed by the deceptively soft-looking hands of her mother.
Calista felt as if a great wave was towering over her body, prepared to crash down on her at any second. And she knew, as surely as she had known to follow the silver light to escape the flames earlier, that if the wave broke over her, something terrible would be begun that could not be undone.
Calista struggled, but she couldn't move anymore. She was so tired, and she knew she couldn't outrun the terrible, terrifying wave anyway.
She felt Bellatrix's triumph, every bit as sharp as the edge of the knife that was still forcing itself into Calista's inner vision.
And then, with the greatest effort she had ever expelled, Calista wrenched her eyelids down over her eyes, shutting out the glow of her mother's gaze.
Within a fraction of an instant, the cold marble of the floor fell away, and Calista felt herself falling. She fell away from the hot press of her mother's forehead and fingers, fell away from the towering wave, and landed with a jarring thump on her own bed, in the Slytherin first-year girls' dormitory.
Calista opened her mouth, sucked in a great gulp of air, and wondered why, if she had escaped the wave, her face was wet.
Then she realized that she was crying. She hated herself for it, not only because she felt it made her weak, but also because of the reason the tears had come to her eyes.
She had wanted so badly for her mother to be telling the truth when she'd said they could start over, and knowing that her words were empty hurt as badly as if she'd had to suffer her early childhood all over again.
At that moment, being strong and infallible fell to a distant priority. What she needed, more than anything, was simply not to be alone. She slipped out of bed, and through the common room, into the hallway.
As Calista traversed the dungeon corridors, she tried her best to force everything but her destination from her mind. She felt that if she didn't concentrate on simply putting one foot forward at a time, she would collapse into a wretched, trembling heap on the cold stone floor.
She didn't know what she would do once she reached her father's office; she simply knew that she wanted to be somewhere familiar and safe, to know that he was nearby, even if he was sleeping and had no idea that she was just across a narrow corridor from him.
And if her father was surprised to find her in the morning, curled up in his desk chair, then she would cross that bridge when she came to it, hopefully in the relative safety of daylight.
She was almost there when something brushed roughly against her ankles, causing her to stop short and stumble. She lost her balance and landed on the cold floor after all, and then an ear-splitting, howling mrrroow rent the stillness of the corridor.
She barely had time to register with a sinking heart that she had stumbled right into Argus Filch's dreadful cat, Mrs. Norris, when the man himself materialised in the hallway.
Calista, like all first-years, had by now been regaled with all manner of terrifying stories about the castle's grim caretaker, so that she was properly petrified when he appeared, snarling threats at her.
"Who do we have, Mrs. Norris? Which one of the snot-nosed little brats have you caught out of bed?"
Calista felt herself wrenched upward by a vice-like grip on her arm, and then her face was inches from the caretaker's. She could smell that he had eaten something with onions at dinner, and it made her feel sick to stomach – although maybe that had more to do with the fact that Kimberly Avery had just told her last week that Filch still kept manacles in his office.
Calista tried to yank her arm out of his grip, but he was holding fast. Now that he had discovered her rule-breaking, he wasn't about to let her walk away. He peered into her face, trying to identify her.
"Little thing, aren't you? First-year, I'd reckon – what a pity I'm not allowed to carry out whippings anymore, the firsties always scream the best."
Calista registered the threat before she registered the fact that he'd said he wasn't allowed to carry it out, and she wished suddenly that she had thought to bring her wand with her – she lashed out physically instead, felt her foot hit something soft, and Filch snarled, tightening his grip on her arm.
"You little beast!" he growled, dragging her along the corridor towards his office, "I'll have you banished from the castle, I will, for assaulting a staff member. Of course the best way to teach you a lesson would be to string you up by your ankles – but Dumbledore's gone soft on you miserable little—,"
And then a silky, sleep-roughened voice cut neatly across the corridor.
"I can handle it from here, Argus."
The caretaker released her from his iron-like grip, and the joint relief of circulation returning to her arm and being rescued from whatever dreadful fate Filch had planned for her nearly made Calista dizzy.
"Father," Calista said gratefully, not quite realising she was speaking until it had already been done. She didn't care if he gave her a hundred detentions for being out of bed, she was so relieved to see him after the joint terrors of her nightmare and the Hogwarts caretaker.
"Oh, the sneaky little beast is yours, is she, Severus?" Filch spoke, not quite willing to let his prey alone yet, "She attacked me, you know. Thanks to her, there will never be a Filch Junior, if you know what I mean – you know what would keep her in line? A good whipping. I still have a decent selection of implements, if you've the stomach for it."
Severus' voice was remarkably calm, as Calista sidled towards him by virtue of moving away from Filch.
"As generous an offer I'm certain that is, I told you I can handle it from here."
Filch wrung his hands together, glancing down as Mrs. Norris wound herself between his ankles.
"Yes, yes, very well." He glared at Calista, shaking his finger at her. "If I catch you in the corridors in the middle of the night again –,"
"Enough, Argus."
Filch and his cat finally went down another corridor, no doubt to catch some other unfortunate student.
Calista finally allowed herself to look up into her father's face, expecting to see ire written across it.
Instead, as his attention shifted from the retreating caretaker to his daughter's face, he looked concerned.
"Are you all right?"
Calista nodded, but was ashamed to feel hot tears springing to her eyes again. She reached one hand to her face to dash them away, and then she saw her father's hand held out between them, an offer.
Suddenly an image came to her that she hadn't even known she remembered; her father reaching his hand out to her, offering her his help when she was six years old and terrified by her dreams. Back then, she had refused to take it, willing to place her trust in no one but herself.
This time, she took his hand.
He led her down the path she had been intending to take when she snuck out of her bed, towards the perceived safety of his office.
He let go of her hand only once they were in his office, the door closed behind them. He moved a few bottles around on his shelves, and then took a small vial and handed to her. She unstoppered it, and recognised the soapy, relaxing scent of sopophorous beans, and knew it was a sleeping potion.
Calista downed the potion, handing the empty vial back to Severus, who collected it in a small bin on an upper shelf, and then sat down at his desk, shuffling through a sheaf of parchment.
Calista sat in the chair opposite the desk, pulling her feet underneath the hem of her nightdress, curling up as small as she could. She felt the tears on her cheeks drying, and they went unreplenished as she was comforted by the mundane sound of her father sorting papers.
She had never even realised that she found it so comforting, but she had grown very used to sitting in his office over the years as he pored over his students' essays. Somehow, it had always seemed easier to talk to him when one or both of them were busy with a normal, everyday task.
She was lulled into comfort when he lifted a quill and began to mark the top essay, as though this was what he had been planning on doing at two in the morning all along. Only his grey nightshirt and half-askew robes belied the notion, in fact.
As if he had sensed the moment when she began to feel calm and comfortable, he glanced up from marking.
"What were you dreaming about?"
Calista didn't even bother to ask him how he had known why she was out of bed.
"A lot of things," she said quietly, her voice falling flat as it failed to reach the far corners of the stone-walled room, "Fire. Flying on a broomstick that was hexed, or something. And her."
He gave no indication that he had heard her, instead setting quill to parchment again. Calista slowly felt warmth spread throughout her limbs, as if she'd just had a hot drink on a cold night. She loved the sound of the nib scratching across the paper; it was a promise of normalcy, of nights that would turn into mornings, and days that would in turn become restful, dreamless nights.
"At first, I was just flying on a broomstick," she continued, softly enough that she could still make out the scratching of his quill over the sound of her own voice, "But there was… a lot of fire, beneath me. I tried flying away from it, but the broom – it wasn't very good. Or maybe I wasn't very good. Then I saw… I dunno, really, something silvery, though, and I thought I should catch it."
She closed her eyes briefly, and saw the bright red flash of the fire branded across the insides of her eyelids. The sleeping potion she'd drunk made a weak grab at her, but she wasn't ready yet; she hadn't managed to wipe the images of her nightmare out of the forefront of her mind.
"The fire kept rising, and the broom caught, but then I saw the silver whatever-it-was again, and I dived for it."
She opened her eyes, suppressing a shiver. "Then it was different, and I was lying on something really cold – I guess it was a marble floor. And there was someone there, but at first I didn't know who it was."
Calista slipped off the chair, suddenly unable to keep still. She crossed the small room to a set of shelves which housed many jars of pickled things. The scratching sound of her father's marking-quill paused, and Calista reached for the nearest set of shelves, obsessively straightening and lining up all the jars.
The quill began scratching again.
"She touched my face, and covered my mouth so I couldn't talk. She… she felt cold, and then hot, and then she said a bunch of stuff… about how she was sorry, only she never actually said that, I just sort of felt it. Then she put her face right next to mine, and her eyes were staring into mine, and… and then I knew that she was lying."
Calista moved a jar with something pale and slimy-looking in it, so that it was exactly the same distance from all of its neighbouring jars.
"She… she said I had to remember something, and I started to, but then I felt like… like something really bad was going to happen, if I listened to her anymore. So I closed my eyes, even though it was hard, and she just kind of disappeared."
Calista heard only silence behind her, and turned. Her father was looking at her, his arm holding the quill suspended before him.
"I – It wasn't like my other dreams," Calista whispered, aware that a shiver had traversed her spine, and that her fingers were trembling uncontrollably. "I didn't just see her. I felt her."
Severus set his quill down slowly, deliberately, and stared at the child with his glittering dark eyes.
"I wanted to believe her," Calista said, almost inaudibly now, "I w – wanted her to be sorry, to say that she really cared about me. I wanted her to be my mother."
Feeling positively wretched now that she had confessed this, Calista put her hands to her face, as if she could stuff the words back into her mouth.
"I know," Severus said quietly, and Calista was surprised to feel his hands come to rest on her shoulders, and even more surprised to notice that it was a more comforting thing, even, than the scratching of his quill had been. She hadn't even heard him rising from his chair. "It hurts, even when you think you've gotten beyond it, that she will never be what she should have been to you."
Calista had a strange but distinct impression that he wasn't really speaking about Bellatrix, not solely.
"I'm sorry I'm such a – a toad all the time," she said suddenly, on impulse, pausing as her face was split by a mighty yawn, "I shouldn't – you don't deserve that, you've always been good to me – I'll try not to be, anymore."
To her surprise, Severus laughed dryly. "If you weren't, I'm not sure I'd recognise you anymore."
"Yeah," Calista murmured tiredly, feeling her eyelids droop again, and this time lacking the energy or inclination to fight them, "I love you, too."
She didn't hear his sudden indrawn breath, in fact was barely aware of him leading her out of his office and into his quarters, letting her into the room that had been hers before she'd started at Hogwarts and been given a dormitory among the other Slytherins. She climbed into the bed and slipped under the covers autonomously.
Severus left the room, but he waited outside the doorway until he was completely sure that she was under the effects of the potion, would sleep dreamlessly for several hours.
He closed the door to her room, and whispered something inaudible into the solid wood of the door.