Chapter Seven
The night before classes resumed, Calista was in Severus' office, helping him replenish and refill some of his supplies from the additional stores he kept in the workroom beneath his quarters.
"So, " Severus began, unscrewing the top to a jar of pickled newts' eggs, "How are you doing, after this past week?"
"I'm... okay, I think. I mean, it was kind of strange, but... Draco and Aunt Narcissa are nice, I guess."
She fiddled with the gold locket around her neck, twisting it around her finger, as she watched her father for a minute.
"But?" Severus recovered the newts' eggs and reached for another jar.
"I don't like Lucius. Every time he was talking to me about her, he was trying to read my thoughts."
Severus paused, hands stilling for a moment. "How many times?"
"Three."
Severus exhaled, and reached for another jar; to nearly anyone he would seem nonchalant, but Calista knew him well enough to recognize his careful, deliberate movements. He waited for her to elaborate.
"It was really strange, though. He only got through when he was looking right at me, and if I looked away, it was like he... just disappeared. He didn't withdraw, I didn't feel that, but I didn't force him out, either. He was just... gone."
She picked up a half-empty jar of powdered asphodel root, and carefully refilled it from a larger jar. Severus remained quiet.
"He was also... he wasn't subtle about trying to read my thoughts. It was really obvious to me what he was doing. I could feel him just sort of grabbing at the things that were in the front of my mind."
"You must have been angry with him," Severus prompted carefully.
"Oh, I was fuming," she admitted, "Even before he entered my mind. I hated the way he kept talking about her. I had to really concentrate on keeping it hidden behind all the other stuff."
"But you did?" Severus' hands paused as he looked directly at his daughter.
"Yes," she glanced up, but his eyes were unreadable as ever.
Severus nodded, and began working again. He waited a spell to speak, until he could trust himself to moderate his voice. "Why do you think Lucius' intrusions felt the way they did?"
"I thought maybe he was trying to intimidate me, sort of saying he was going through my thoughts without trying to hide it because he could."
Severus turned away from her, under pretense of checking the shelves to be sure all of the jars were now properly stocked, then leaned against the edge of his desk, facing Calista only when he knew he had full control of his emotions. "And yet, after making such a show of arrogance, he didn't attempt to breach any of your other barriers?" he asked silkily.
"Well, no," Calista said, wrinkling her nose in thought. "I don't know that he even realized they were there."
"And why do you think his connection severed when you broke eye contact?"
"I'm not sure. It seemed strange."
"Think carefully," he said, "I'll even let you off your Occlumency lessons this week if you answer correctly."
Calista bit her lip, considering everything he had taught her about Occlumency and Legilimency.
"He wasn't using a wand, so that would weaken him..." she mused, looking at Severus for confirmation.
He remained impassive. "Go on," was all he said.
"Only a couple of things make sense," she said, twirling the locket around her finger again, "I don't think he could hide himself so well that I wouldn't sense him, because he was really obvious at first. So... I guess the only thing, since I didn't feel him withdrawing, is that he couldn't keep the connection without eye contact."
"And based on that assumption, why do you think his presence was so brazenly obvious?"
She set her eyes on the floor, thinking hard, still twirling the necklace chain around her index finger. "I... I guess he didn't think I could tell he was there... which would mean he didn't think I was hiding anything in other layers..."
"Which means?" Severus prompted.
"Which means..." she tilted her head up to meet his gaze. "Which means, he doesn't think I know anything about Occlumency."
"Ah, " Severus said, forcing a small smile, "Then it means I was correct, when I told you that you could handle him."
"Only because he didn't know I was hiding anything," Calista said, releasing the necklace from her fingers.
"Yes. That is correct. You kept your mind safe because you kept a Legilimens from realising that you had anything to hide. Which, coincidentally, is the entire point of Occlumency."
Calista smiled impishly then. "I guess that makes me a prodigy, huh?"
"Well, we knew that already," Severus' half-smile was genuine, though his eyes were still hooded. "You should get some sleep before term starts again tomorrow."
"So I'm off the for hook Saturday, then?"
"I think you've earned a break. This week only though. And you must tell me immediately if -"
"I know, Dad. I will, I promise. I don't want... that... her... anymore than you do."
Severus nodded, and opened the office door for her. "Good night, then."
"'Night."
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Professor McGonagall put her fingers to her temples as she looked down at Calista's latest attempt to transfigure a pencil into a ruler. This time, it actually did look more or less like a ruler, but it still had a rubber on the end.
"Perhaps this spell just isn't your forte," she said, trying unsuccessfully to keep exasperation out of her voice. "Let's just call this one a wash and move on to something else - the snuffbox, from the exams last year. Here,"
She reached into a small cage behind her desk and placed a white mouse on the table in front of Calista. The mouse squeaked in terror and scrabbled for the edge of the table. Without thinking, Calista aimed her wand and cast a Freezing Charm, stopping the mouse in its tracks.
"See what you can accomplish here. I'm going to check in with Mr. Flint."
Calista shot a look across the classroom at Marcus. He was already on second-year spells; at this rate, he would catch up to his third year peers, and leave Calista as the only student left in Remedial Transfiguration.
Frowning, she waved her wand at the mouse, muttering the incantation. The mouse was replaced with a silver snuffbox - sort of. Just like it had during her end-of-year exams, her snuffbox had whiskers and a tail. Even worse, this one still had a little pink nose that wiggled tauntingly at Calista.
After yet another fruitless hour, Calista was in a rush to put the Transfiguration classroom far behind her. She was halfway down the corridor when Marcus caught up with her, grabbing her elbow. Calista started slightly, covering it with irritation.
"What d'you want?"
"Check it out," Marcus said, holding out a handful of shiny black buttons, "I can't believe these used to be beetles."
Now Calista's feigned irritation turned genuine. "Good for you," she snarled, "Did you chase me all the way down the hall so you could gloat?"
Marcus' brow furrowed in confusion. "N-no, of course not. I'm just really happy I got it is all. And I followed you because I thought you wanted to study together."
She glanced down to the buttons in his fist, then back up at his face, tamping down her foul mood. "Yeah, okay," she said, exhaling. "Let's go to the library. It's never quiet in the common room lately."
"I just need to grab my Potions stuff," Marcus said. "Meet you there?"
Calista nodded, and they parted ways, her changing course to head for the library. When she entered, the library was silent and empty, save for the ubiquitous Madam Pince, who looked exceedingly disappointed to have anyone actually using the library.
She selected a table near the back of the library, and tossed her Transfiguration book onto it as she sat down. A few minutes later, Marcus rejoined her, thumping his Potions book down onto the table, and earning him a glare from Madam Pince.
"We can work on your Potions stuff first," Calista offered, rubbing her eyes, "I don't know if I can handle any more Transfiguration right this minute."
Marcus flipped open his textbook. "Thanks," he said, sounding relieved, "My dad found out over Christmas break that I'm in danger of being pulled from the Quidditch team if my grades don't pick up, and..." he shook his head, "Dad wants me to play professionally. It wasn't pretty."
Calista looked over at him curiously. "Don't you want to play?"
"Well, yeah, of course," he answered, "I just hate fighting with my dad, y'know?"
"Yeah," she agreed, thinking of her own father. "I know what you mean. Okay, so... what are you having trouble with?"
Marcus laughed ruefully. "Everything. We were doing Shrinking Solutions before the break, and mine turned orange and burned holes through my cauldron."
Calista winced. "That sounds vaguely poisonous, among other things." She reached over his arm to flip the pages in the textbook to the recipe for Shrinking Solution, and ran her finger down the list. "So, it sounds like you used too many rat spleens, or too much leech juice. How much did you use?"
Marcus scratched his head, looking over the page. "I know I only used one rat spleen. I was going to add a second one, just in case, you know? And Professor Snape -" he paused, and his cheeks flushed "Er, sorry, I mean your dad-"
Calista shook her head. "It's fine, you can call him Professor to me. Mostly everyone does anyway."
"Right. So... so I know I didn't put an extra rat spleen in, because I was about to, and Professor Snape was so peeved I thought for sure he was about to hex me for it. Sorry," he added again.
Calista snorted. "Believe me, I know exactly what you mean. The extra rat spleen makes it poisonous though... even the fumes can make you ill. That's sort of why potions have instructions, you know."
"Yeah," Marcus said sheepishly, "I know that now. So... so that means it was the leech juice, then?"
"How much did you add?"
"I dunno, a dash I guess, like it says."
"So, how much is a dash, then?" Calista challenged.
"Er," Marcus said, his cheeks flushing again. "You know, a dash. Like... like this," and he mimed unscrewing a bottle and shaking it upside down several times. "Dash, dash, dash," he explained.
"Oh boy," Calista couldn't help but put her hand to her forehead. "That's... no. A dash is a tiny bit. Tiny. And you should never just pour it out of the bottle."
"But," Marcus said, repeating the gesture."Dash," he said, as he shook the imaginary bottle once. "Dash, dash." he shook it twice more.
"Are you having me on?"
Marcus replied, but Calista didn't hear what he said, because someone else had just walked into the library. A tall, handsome, dark-haired someone in Slytherin robes, and he looked right at Calista and smiled, dazzlingly.
He started walking towards their table, and Calista felt her face grow hot. The wide, bright smile never left his face.
"Clarissa, right?" he said, as he drew close.
"Calista," she said, pushing her hair behind her ears, "Uhm... h-hi, Colin."
"You're Olivia's friend. I remember. I'm looking for Olivia. Would you happen to know where she is?" He sounded strange, maybe a little out of breath. Had he been running?
"Oh," Calista said, flatly, "No, I haven't seen her in hours. Try the common room."
"Right," Colin said, his smile growing even brighter. "Of course. The common room. That's brilliant. I'll go now. Thank you, Clarissa."
"Calista," she corrected again, but he was already halfway across the room.
"That was weird," Marcus said, and Calista started. She had forgotten she was sitting next to him.
"Huh? Oh, it's just... I only met him once before. I guess that's why he didn't remember my name."
"He's a Reserve Chaser, you know. I've talked to him a couple of times at practice, and he's never been that weird before."
"I just... uhm. You know what? I think I - I have to go. Can we... can we finish this another time?"
A look of disappointment flitted across Marcus' face. "Oh. Sure, I guess so. We didn't get to Transfiguration yet, though."
"Another time," Calista said, rushing past him.
"NO RUNNING IN THE LIBRARY!" Madam Pince shrieked, but Calista ignored her and kept going.
Dumbfounded, Marcus looked down at the table, wondering what exactly had just happened. He realized with a jolt that Calista had left her Transfiguration book, and he gathered it up with his own things and left the library.
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Days after he and Calista had returned from Malfoy Manor, Severus was still in a foul mood. He had managed, with great effort, to keep it from Calista, but he was positively fuming with Lucius Malfoy.
He had half-expected his school friend to try to read Calista, but being prepared didn't make him any less angry.
Three bloody times, he thought, for the umpteenth time, as he paced through his Potions classroom during the first-year Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw class.
"This is atrocious," he snarled at a Ravenclaw boy whose potion had turned into a thick, sickly green goo, "I stated very clearly that four horned slugs would suffice. Start over."
And what could he do about it? Precious little, since he couldn't very well reveal to Lucius that Calista could detect and counter Legilimency without raising too many questions he did not want to answer yet.
Twelve. She's twelve years old, you prick. He was running out of names to call Lucius in his head.
And why had he felt the need to search her thoughts so many times? Did he distrust Severus suddenly? Or was it just the old Malfoy sense of entitlement that made him 'forget' how deplorable it would be to invade a child's mind?
The bell rang, signalling the end of class, before Severus had assigned any homework. The students practically stampeded to be out of the classroom before he corrected the oversight.
When the classroom was empty, he retreated into his office. He was meant to have office hours after this class, but he magically locked the door behind him anyway.
The worst thing was, he was nearly as angry with himself as he was with Lucius. Severus had brought her there, knowing that exactly what had happened was a possibility, albeit a remote one, he had thought.
The issue wasn't whether she could handle his intrusion, because Severus had correctly believed her strong enough, but it was the fact that she shouldn't have had to.
He could lay blame for her need for secrets and even for vigilance on Bellatrix, but without his shared acquaintances, she wouldn't have to fear Legilimency attacks from anyone but Bellatrix herself.
This might be the first time that anyone besides himself or Bellatrix had tried to invade her mind, but he knew it would be far from the last time, if the Dark Lord ever returned to power.
In the darkness and isolation of his office, Severus admitted to himself precisely what his worst fear was.
If the Dark Lord ever did return, there was more than enough evidence for him or his followers to question Severus' loyalties. And if they did, they were sure to view his daughter as a rich source of information.
That was the reason, truthfully, that he had let Calista off her Saturday lessons this week. It was easier for someone to pick up thoughts that were about themselves, and he couldn't trust himself to keep these thoughts hidden yet, not from her, and not during an Occlumency lesson.
Damn you, Lucius, he growled inwardly, I was not ready to worry about this for a few more years, at least.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
Calista nearly flew into the common room, scanning for a familiar blonde head. There she was, sitting with Portia in front of the fireplace. Their heads were bent together, and when Calista drew close she heard giggling.
"Olivia," she said, blocking their view of the flames, "Have you talked to that fifth-year boy, Colin, today?"
"What? No, I haven't. Why?" Her blue eyes were wide, innocent. Calista's own eyes narrowed.
"I just saw him in the library. He was acting really odd."
Olivia waved her hand and laughed derisively. "Oh, really? You, who've only spoken to him once, believe you're qualified to call his behaviour odd, now?"
Calista scowled. "Yeah, I do. It was odd for anyone."
"Well, I know nothing about it. Why were you talking to him, anyway?"
"He came up to me. He was looking for you, which was why I asked if you'd-"
Just then, the door to the common room opened, and Colin stumbled in, blinking several times and looking rather lost.
"I must have gotten lost on my way here," he announced to no one in particular, "I nearly wound up in the Potions classroom. Isn't that strange?"
He looked around the common room, and his expression was almost... vacant. Then, his eyes found Olivia and they positively lit up. He broke into another of his overwhelming grins.
"Olivia! Oh, my beautiful darling, I thought I'd never find you."
"Shhhh, Colin, hush!" Olivia shook her head frantically as she rushed to his side. "It's all right, I'm here now. Let's... let's go somewhere else."
"I'll go anywhere," Colin declared, not lowering his voice at all, "As long as it's with you. Can I - can I smell your hair before we go?"
Oh, shit. Calista's already pale face completely drained of color, and her head felt suddenly light. Ohshitohshitohshit.
"Calista?" Portia sniffed, "Are you all right?"
By the time Calista felt she could move again, Olivia had already hustled Colin out of the common room. She tore after them, slamming the common room door shut behind her, instantly blocking out the rising hum of voices behind her.
"Olivia!" she shouted, catching up to the pair, and grabbed the blonde girl's arm roughly. "Are you bloody mental?" she hissed, eyes wide. "Do you have any idea what you've done?!"
"Shh!" Olivia's eyes darted toward each end of the corridor Calista had stopped them in.
"You told me that potion was for your parents!"
"Shhh!" Olivia matched Calista's hiss, "Are you trying to get us found out?"
"Olivia," Colin remarked dreamily, "You look so lovely when you're angry."
"I have to fix this," Calista said frantically, "I need to make the antidote, before anyone finds out. Olivia, you have to hide him until I can figure it out."
"Hide him? Are you mental? I didn't go through all this trouble to hide him."
Calista's jaw dropped. "Trouble? You think you've gone to trouble?"
Olivia glanced sidelong and Colin, who was reaching reverently for a lock of her hair.
"Calista, calm down," she whispered, "You won't tell anyone, and I won't tell anyone. I'll just say Colin and I got together over the holidays and really hit it off. No one will ever know. Our secret."
"Secret?" Colin interrupted again, "I can't keep you a secret. I need to tell everyone that I'm madly in love with you." He tilted his head back, and shouted to the ceiling. "I'm in love with Olivia Avril!"
"I'm not letting you ruin this, Calista. If you try to, I'll tell everyone you made it to try and make him fall in love with you, only it didn't work. They'll expel you for sure."
"No one will believe you."
"I think they might," Olivia smiled smugly. "Didn't I ever mention that I purchased the ingredients in your name? Oh - and I took another look at that Potions book you filched from your father's class. It seems you've written 'Mrs. Calista Greengrass' all over the page about Amortentia. That was rather careless of you, don't you think?"
Calista's hand slipped into the pocket of her robes, and her fingers curled around her wand.
"I don't want you to be expelled, Calista," Olivia said quietly, "If no one ever finds out about the potion in the first place, they won't find out who made it."
"Olivia," Calista said desperately, "Look at him. There's no way someone won't figure it out. You've got to get me the ingredients for the antidote before they do."
"Not a chance, Snapelet." She took Colin's arm, sauntering down the corridor with him in tow.
At that moment, Calista knew only one thing, knew it deep down to her core, with every fibre of her being.
I am so screwed.