Year 3, Chapter 4
When Calista headed reluctantly into the Great Hall for breakfast the morning after Olivia had slipped her the article about her mother, Sofia and Eva waved her over, instructing the other first years near them to make room. She hesitated, glanced at the section of the table that Kim and her friends usually sat. Marcus was sitting with them, he and Conor talking Quidditch with their heads bent low. Calista walked past them, and sat down with the first years.
"Morning, Calista," Sofia said, shifting over. "I had my first Potions class yesterday. You were right about your dad - all of it. He really knows what he's talking about."
"I know that."
"And," Eva added, "He really doesn't like people messing around in class. Tell her about the twins, Sof."
Sofia nodded, "Oh my gosh, Calista, you won't believe it. There's a pair of twins in our class - they're Gryffindors - and they kept trying to put something in another boy's cauldron. I don't know what it was, but whatever it was, it was something dangerous, because Professor Snape was really angry. He called them dunderheads, asked if they were trying to blow up the whole classroom - and one of them, he says yes, they are trying to blow up the classroom, just to see what would happen. I couldn't believe it. He gave them both detention for a month, and he took twenty points from Gryffindor."
"So we're in the lead now, for House Cup," Eva added slyly.
Calista was suddenly glad she had resigned herself to sitting with Sofia and Eva, because they'd hit on something that was sufficient to distract her from thinking about the article she'd torn to bits in her dormitory room.
"Great." she said, flatly. "This was yesterday? I have a lesson with my dad this morning. I hope he's not still in a rotten mood from those idiots - hang on,"
She looked at Sofia, suspicion beginning to dawn. Something someone had told her before was niggling at the back of her mind. "You said they were twins? Did they… did they have red hair?"
Both girls nodded. "Yeah," Sofia said, "How'd you know? Have you seen them around? Oh - I know, you must have seen them in Flying class, right? They were kind of, uhm, laughing at you."
"Er, no," Calista said, "I was too busy wondering if I could get away with setting my broom on fire to pay attention to them. But now I'm thinking those twins must be my friend's younger brothers. He said they were always causing trouble."
Eva laughed. "You really don't like flying, do you? How come you're in class with us, anyway? Did you fail it before?"
"No," Calista said, crossly, "I didn't fail. I just never took it before. I… my dad let me wait to take it."
"Who's your friend?" Sofia asked, "Is she in Slytherin?"
"He's a he. His name's Percy, and no, he's not. He's in Gryffindor, too."
Sofia and Eva both raised their eyebrows.
"Really," Eva said slowly, and she and Sofia exchanged a look. "That's odd, isn't it?"
"What's odd?" Calista challenged, hoping she was giving them a sufficiently dangerous glare.
"Easy," Sofia said, inching away just a bit, "It's just… well, another girl in your year - Portia Macnair, you know her? Well, she told us that… that Slytherins and Gryffindors aren't supposed to, you know, socialise."
"Portia Macnair," Calista said, firmly, "Is a daft cow who doesn't know how to think for herself. She probably had to get someone else to write that down for her before she said it. You can socialise with whoever you want."
"Well, we're all in competition, aren't we?" Eva pressed, "The House Cup, Quidditch, all that?"
"So? Are you going to stop being friends with everyone you ever play Gobstones against?"
Sofia snickered.
"What?" Calista asked, annoyed.
"Sorry - it's just, no one plays Gobstones anymore, Calista, that's for babies."
"Okay," Calista said, testily, "Wizard chess, then. It doesn't matter, you get the point. Don't listen to anything Portia says, she's full of shit - mostly Olivia Avril's."
Both girls laughed, then. "Yeah," Sofia said, "She seems like kind of a snob, doesn't she? Eva and I ran into her - we were lost, trying to get to History of Magic - and we asked her for help and she just kind of turned her nose up at us, told us to ask a Prefect."
"Really?" Calista asked, pushing her plate away, "I'm surprised she didn't try to recruit you to her fan club. I guess Portia and the second-years are enough for her." She shrugged. "I have to go. 'Elective' studies again, what a joke."
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
When Calista entered Severus' office, he stood up, and waved her back out. "We're going into my quarters again. I've had an idea."
"Hm. I'm not sure how I feel about that."
"Ah," Severus said, aiming for a light tone, but missing slightly. Calista knew him well enough to hear the teasing note in his voice, all the same. "Then you know precisely how I felt when I opened my desk the other day."
The cat picture. She had nearly forgotten about that. She turned her head, something between a smirk and a grin playing at her lips. "You're welcome."
"I do wish you'd learn to draw something besides cats," he said, almost petulantly.
"I can," she said, "I just choose not to."
"Insufferable."
"I know."
They were in the small corridor that connected all the rooms of his quarters now. Severus tapped his wand to the door that led to his private workroom down another flight of stairs, and she heard the click of the lock releasing.
"Oh, am I having a Potions lesson instead of Occlumency?" she asked, a bit hopefully. She liked Occlumency, in theory, but it was very draining; and besides, there were things on her mind today that she wasn't ready to share with him.
"No, not instead of." He motioned her down the stairs. "Concurrently with."
When she had reached the bottom landing, she waited for him to follow, and greeted him with raised eyebrows. "You're going to trust me to brew a potion without giving it my full attention?"
"I still expect you to give it your full attention," he said, "But just in case, I think we'll do something that's difficult to start a fire with. We'll make a Sleeping Draught."
It was a potion she'd perfected before they'd even studied it officially in class, since it was one of the ones they'd practised with when she was younger. There were a lot of ways to ruin it, if one wasn't careful, but none of them was likely to present a particular danger to the brewer.
"We?"
"Well," Severus clarified, "You'll make it, and I'll harass you if you make a mistake."
"Excellent," Calista said darkly, "Is it my birthday, or something? I don't know if I can handle all this fun."
He flicked a tendril of thought at her outermost barrier, and she scowled. She scanned the shelves behind where he had a cauldron set up; everything she needed for the potion looked like it was there. She didn't need to follow a recipe anymore, for this particular potion, so she began measuring and lining up her ingredients, instead.
Immediately, she sensed pressure against her outer barrier, and she kept part of her mind attuned to it, so she would know when it was time to redirect the energy from that barrier towards her innermost one.
Severus slipped through her first barrier while she was still measuring. She counted out four sprigs of valerian, and then began recovering all of the jars, placing them back where they belonged.
He was at her second barrier before she had finished redirecting the energy from the first to strengthen her remaining defences. It was significantly harder to do when she was focusing on something else, and she allowed herself a few seconds of pause, under guise of putting the jars away, to swiftly gather the remains of the first barrier, and weave it into her third one.
"Nice try; keep working on the potion."
"Seriously? Three seconds and you're on my case?"
In reply, she felt him break through her second barrier, and advance towards the third.
Calista took a small, sharp knife, and began to chop her lavender sprigs into even chunks - the recipe didn't call for chopping them, but her father had told her it improved the potion's duration to do so. She resisted the strong urge to pause, while internally, she frantically tried to reinforce her third barrier.
She felt him inspecting the wall, either looking for weak spots or assessing its strength, she judged. She tried to ignore that, and concentrate on building up her defences, but it was hard.
She came quite close to nicking her finger with the blade, and she paused, shutting her eyes while she hurriedly added strength to the wall.
"You've stopped working," he reminded her.
"Yeah, I did, because I'm working with a knife," she said, acidly. What was wrong with him today? There was an edge to his voice that she didn't like. It was one that she had heard many times before, often enough even directed at her, but not when she hadn't done anything wrong. She hadn't, had she?
And then, unbidden, she could feel the memory of her flying lesson the day before beginning to surface; and the memory of flying with with Marcus following it, too, and she definitely didn't want him to come across that, so she forced it down, hiding it beneath and behind the substance of other memories.
Severus pushed relentlessly through her third barrier, and of course, as the brain is wont to do, once it had realised there were things she didn't want to remember in that moment, it started dredging them up. Just as her father broke through her final layer of defence, the image of the newspaper article Olivia had slipped her was swimming in her brain; she tried to hide that, too, but she knew she hadn't quite managed it.
Severus withdrew his presence from her mind, and she expected him to comment on it. She turned back to her potion, began chopping the lavender again, rebuilding her mental walls and waiting for him to say something, ask her why that article was on her mind after all this time. Instead, she felt his mind pushing against the outer edge of hers again; but this wasn't how their lessons went, he always said something in between attempts, offered some advice or explained a problem he'd noticed.
"Dad?" she said, pausing her knife again. "Are you…" She could feel him slicing through the first wall in her mind, and now she was upset, and couldn't redirect her mental energy as smoothly into another layer of defence. "Are you cross with me?"
"No; should I be?" He was advancing towards her second defence again. At least he was not looking at any of her thoughts; she could feel him bypassing all of them, focused only on testing her defences.
"I haven't done anything." She set the knife down, closed her eyes again, and tried to funnel all of her mental strength into her final defence; she felt slightly shaken by his manner today, but she managed to reinforce the final barrier just before he reached it.
"No one said you have. Your eyes are closed again." It took only a handful of seconds for him to break through again; she wasn't sure if his intrusions were particularly strong that day, or if her defences were particularly weak. She felt, now, that if it wasn't the latter, it was about to be. He withdrew, and she opened her eyes again.
She studied him carefully, trying to see if there was anything outwardly visible that would clue her in as to why he seemed so cross.
She felt his mind brush against her first barrier, again, still without having offered any critiques or suggestions. She furrowed her brow, bit the insides of her mouth, not understanding - and then, she crossed the four or six paces that separated them, and looked up at him.
"Dad," she said again, and she felt him pause, as he met her gaze. There was something; he was angry, she could see a particular glint in her eyes that told her so. "What's wrong?"
Severus met her gaze, briefly, and then his eyes flicked upwards, over her head, towards the worktop where the cauldron still waited, empty, ingredients lined up neatly. "What gives you the impression that something's wrong?" he asked, silkily.
"Uhm, everything," she said, and her voice came out a bit more forcefully than she had meant it to, because he was being evasive in a way that he normally wasn't, not with her, and it unnerved her. "You look angry, and this whole thing -" she gestured to the cauldron set up behind them, and then passed her hand a few inches in front of her face, back and forth, indicating his presence in her mind, "This isn't a lesson, you're just attacking me. So if I did something wrong, can you at least tell me what it is? And if I didn't… well, then I wish you'd stop treating me like I did."
Severus met her gaze again, locked onto the dark eyes that really were quite like his own, although at the moment, hers were far more openly expressive than his were. He read a measure of fear in them, and bewilderment, and an impatient sort of concern that he knew she had learned from him.
"You haven't done anything wrong - that I know of - and I'm not angry with you," he repeated, and then he closed his eyes briefly, and shook his head slightly. She felt him withdraw entirely from her mind. "But perhaps we should end your lesson early today. I'm not in a particularly good mood."
"Well, that's blindingly obvious."
He gestured towards the stairs. "I'm sorry I seemed cross with you. I'll put everything away down here, you go on and do what you like with the rest of the day."
She frowned at him. "What I like? You're telling me to do what I like, and you're not reminding me that 'what I like' can't involve anything dangerous, illegal, or flammable?"
"Well, as it seems you have a handle on that already, I don't suppose I need to."
She went upstairs, shaking her head, and he waited until she had closed the door to the workroom stairs before he walked over to the worktop, and started clearing away the remnants from the potion she hadn't even truly started. Most of the ingredients were untouched, and he put those ones away in their proper jars before disposing of those that were not.
He climbed the stairs, and spell-locked the workroom door behind him - then, he glimpsed a flash of motion in the kitchen just ahead of him. He stepped into it, and saw that Calista hadn't left his quarters after all, was now setting two mugs down at the table. The aroma of coffee called to him, and he sat down, accepting the mug that was at his place.
She climbed into the chair across from his, picked up her own mug. She may have been thirteen now, and growing taller by the day, but Severus noted she still pulled her feet up under her on the chair, curling up on the seat, just as she had when she was six years old.
"I told you to go do whatever you like," he said, taking a sip of coffee; it was good. She hadn't watered it down, like he had done the last few times he'd let her have it.
"I am." she said, playing with the handle of her mug, and looking at him across the table.
"I'm not good company today, Calista."
"Again, that's blindingly obvious," she said, lifting her mug and blowing across the top of it to cool the coffee some. "What's bothering you, anyway?"
He blinked. "I told you, it's nothing you've done. It's nothing to do with you at all."
She took a sip of coffee, and closed her eyes briefly. "Sorry, but I definitely make this much better than you do," she said, setting her mug back down carefully. "I know it's nothing to do with me, but… I just thought… maybe you would, you know, feel better if you talked to me about whatever it is."
"That's not necessary."
"I know it's not necessary," she said, "But it might help."
"I don't think so."
Calista frowned, and tried again. "Is it… is it those twins, Percy's brothers? A couple of the first years told me they were acting up in your class-"
"'Acting up'? They were trying to burn my entire classroom down."
"So that's why you're angry, then?"
"Calista, it's not your concern."
"Yes, it is."
He raised his eyebrows. "I don't see how."
"It's my concern," she said, with a touch of irritation, leaning forward a bit to speak to him more directly, "Because I care about you just as much as you care about me, and you always - it doesn't matter if it's three in the morning, if something's upset me, you always make time to talk to me about it, and it nearly always makes me feel loads better - and today, you're upset, and it's my turn to try and make you feel better."
Severus regarded her across the table; he hardly dared to believe she was sincere. He had long since accepted that his daughter was, at her core, a distant child - one who would only confide in him when she felt there was no other coping mechanism available to her, no other way she could sleep peacefully. He accepted his lot in her life as a last resort, knowing she would always try and choose independence over his help, and he had resigned himself to the fact that she expected the same from him. Truthfully, she had never seemed interested in his feelings before, except as they related to her own life.
She did appear to be sincere, though. She was curled up comfortably in her chair, and her eyes were on him, expectant. Her shoes were even sitting on the floor, underneath her chair. It certainly didn't look as though she were prepared to go anywhere. Was this an opportunity to become closer with her, to create some sort of reciprocity between them, at last?
Of course, she was a child - he refused to use the word teenager yet, even to himself - so it was highly doubtful that confiding in her would yield any insight he had not already thought of himself, but even so… hadn't it always made him slightly sad, to realise that the one living person he was closest to would never ask him how he was feeling? Hadn't he wanted, in some hidden away part of himself, to tell someone how he felt, once in awhile?
"You… you really want to know?"
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't." That was probably true; she had never asked before.
"Well," he said, taking another swallow of coffee, and setting the half-empty mug down firmly. "It's not just the Weasley brats, it's the whole damn lot of first year Gryffindors, and I suppose it's a significant portion of all of the students, in all four houses. They have no respect for the art of potion making, and certainly none for me."
"Some of them do, though," Calista said, "I do, of course, and Emily and Percy, in my class. And a couple of the first years, Sofia Lima and Evangeline Selwyn - they think you're brilliant. And I know Kim Avery likes you, and probably most of her friends, too."
"I don't care if they like me," he said, "I want them to respect me, of course, but more importantly, I want them to give a damn about the safety of other students. In more than half my classes, there's someone I need to watch constantly to be sure they don't kill someone by mistake, and now these two are evidently trying to do it in purpose, and yet the Headmaster says I'm not allowed to refuse to teach them until after they take their O.W.L.'s."
Calista frowned. "What exactly were they doing?"
"They were attempting to slip Fizzing Whizbee candies into a classmate's Boil Cure Potion."
She furrowed her brow. "What would that do?"
"Fizzing Whizbees have billywig stings in them," he said, "Which cause levitation in mammals, and explosions in cauldrons, when not treated with proper caution. And if they had managed to blow their classmate up, who do you suppose would have been held responsible?"
Calista reached for her coffee again. "Percy told me his little brothers are loads of trouble," she said, "I guess he wasn't exaggerating."
Severus exhaled. "It's part of the job; I know that. It's just an exceptionally nerve wracking part of the job with those two heathens."
"Maybe Percy can talk to them," Calista suggested, but Severus shook his head.
"Don't concern yourself with it, Calista. I can handle it. I only told you because you wanted to know why I was cross, and that's a significant part of the reason."
Well, and he did feel just a bit less burdened, didn't he? She couldn't help him, but he was honestly slightly touched that she wanted to try.
"So what's the rest of the reason? The insignificant part?" A playful smile teased its way onto her face.
Severus studied her face for a moment before he spoke.
"Let me ask you something," he said at last, "What do you think of your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher?"
"Professor Mulhorn? She's all right, I guess."
"Do you suppose she knows her subject matter well?"
Calista shrugged. "I guess so. I mean, it's a bit early to say."
"Mm." Severus tapped on the handle of his mug, focused his eyes on his working fingers, and held his silence again.
"So it's something to do with her, then?"
Severus looked up. He probably shouldn't tell her this; no, he definitely shouldn't tell her this. But she was asking, and he was pissed off.
"I've looked up her exam scores," Severus said, "She only passed her O.W.L. with an 'Acceptable' in Defence Against the Dark Arts. She didn't even take the exam at the N.E.W.T. level."
"Seriously?" Calista reached for her mug again; it was only warm, now, so she drained the majority of it in one long sip. "I'm pretty sure I could get an 'Acceptable' O.W.L. if I took it now. Don't you have to have something better than that to teach?"
"I certainly always had that impression."
"What did you get in Defence?"
"Outstanding," Severus said, "On my O.W.L. and my N.E.W.T."
"You should teach it, then."
He glanced sharply at her. Did she know, somehow, that he had applied, had been applying every year since he'd been given the Potions post? He couldn't tell for certain from her expression.
"I applied," he said shortly, sharply.
She furrowed her brow. "But… if you applied, why'd they hire someone inferior?"
"The Headmaster thought," Severus said, and he couldn't quite keep his voice level, "That my taking the post would somehow tempt me to return to practising the Dark Arts."
Silence hung between them. Severus felt his breath pause, and a dim, hollow fear begin to open in his chest. As a habit, he did not typically reference his past to his daughter; she had seen, firsthand, the worst of what the Dark Lord's Death Eaters were capable of, and he did not like to remind her that he had once been one of them. Was still one, in the most technical of terms, because the Dark Mark still marked his skin; and he knew how much she hated Bellatrix, didn't like to remind Calista to associate him with her mother.
She was still quiet. Was she wondering, perhaps, if the Headmaster was right? If there was some part of him, some sliver of darkness still, that was capable of returning to his old ways? Well, of course that sliver was there; but the entire point of who he was now was that he was strong enough to resist it. He dared, at last, to look into her face again. He was already prepared to dismiss her curtly, to resolve not to try opening up to her again, at least not until she was older - but as it turned out, he needn't have been.
She was regarding him incredulously; he could see outrage clouding her features. "But that's… that's ridiculous," she said, at last, shaking her head. "Doesn't he know you better than that?"
"Evidently not." But he was warmed, anyway, to know that she at least did.
"Besides," Calista said, pushing the now-cold remnants of her coffee away from her. The playful half-smile returned to her lips. "If putting up with me for seven years hasn't driven you to return to the Dark Arts, then nothing will."
"Perhaps I'll mention that the next time I apply," he said wryly.
She slipped off her chair, picked up her mug, and checked his; it was empty, so she picked it up as well, and brought them both over to the small sink. Watching her wash them out, he was reminded powerfully of the way a very similar scene had played out, when he had still been trying to earn her trust.
It was the same, in many ways: the coffee, her taking their cups and washing them out, the way she sat on her chair. And yet, in so many beautiful ways, it was different: their conversation, the fact that, for once, she had allowed him to open up to her. And there was, of course, the fact that she no longer needed to stand on the seat of the kitchen chair to reach the sink.
"I love you."
The words were out of his mouth before he realised it; he hadn't meant to say it, now, on a perfectly ordinary Saturday morning - or was it afternoon, now? It was against their unspoken rules, the ones that kept tender moments confined to the aftermath of a traumatic event, or, once, an extended absence from each other's company. But the water in the sink was running; perhaps she hadn't even heard him.
The water stopped. She stayed where she was, across the kitchen, her back to him. "I-"
She started to speak, and then stopped. She opened the cupboard, put both of their mugs away. Slowly, she turned to face him.
"I love you too, Dad."
He waited, for her to make the inevitable joke or wisecrack, for her to lift away the sudden weight of the moment, the way she always did; the way, perhaps, she had learned from him. He prepared himself to chuckle at whatever she said next, whether he actually found it amusing or not, so they could return to their customary bantering style of interaction, to safe ground.
But the half-smile, half-smirk he expected didn't come to her face, and the emotion didn't slide out of her eyes. She opened her mouth; here it was, then, a few seconds late, the sardonic comment - except, it wasn't.
"I really do," she said, her voice low. "I mean, I hope you know, that's all. I… I know I'm not very good at saying it, but…" she exhaled. "I just… something reminded me recently, of just what it was you saved me from… and it's just too lucky, you know? Because if you weren't exactly you, if you never came to find me, if you weren't brilliant at legilimency, if you didn't - for some reason I still don't completely understand, by the way - care about me enough to keep trying to help me, even when… when nobody else saw the point…"
Her eyes glittered, but she did not shed a tear. Severus wanted to leap up from his chair and hug her, but he was afraid she would stop talking if he did, and this seemed important for her to say; so he stayed where he was, and kept his eyes on her, listening attentively.
She took a deep breath, and then continued, "If you weren't - if you didn't do - all those things, I know I'd probably be dead. She… she would have done what she wanted to, and…"
He could see her jaw working, as she fought to keep control over her emotions. "And the thing is, before you came to find me, she could've done it, and I don't think anyone would've even known… or cared, if they did… and now, it's like… I just… I can't say this," she swallowed, inhaled, raised her gaze resolutely to the ceiling; and when she had lowered it, she had managed to school her expression. Most of the emotion was gone now, wiped away from her features.
But when she spoke again, he could tell where it had all gone; she'd forced it out of her face, but not out of her voice. "When you're a person who… who just always knew that no one loved them, and no one was ever going to… and you convince yourself you don't need it, you know?"
Severus did know. It didn't matter if she was finished talking or not - he was out of his chair now, and he had wrapped his arms around her. He was startled to realise that the top of her head came to his shoulder already.
"I'm just… really happy that I was wrong," she said, with finality. They stood like that for several seconds, and then she retreated just enough to tilt her face up to look at him.
"I don't know if I'll ever be able to say any of that again," she said, with a breathy not-quite-laugh, "So I hope you were listening."
There were a hundred things he could say, but he settled on what he felt was the most important one.
"I want you to know," Severus said, removing his arms from around her, and placing his hands at the sides of her face, "That you were absolutely worth saving."
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
The next day, Sunday, Calista received a letter at breakfast time. It was from Narcissa, and once Calista realised that, she remembered, too late, that she had promised to write to her. A small packet was attached to the letter, too, but Calista reached for the letter first, unfurling it to read.
Dear Calista,
I hope your school year is off to a good start. I know the beginning of term can be quite busy, but I hope you find the time to write to me soon. I would love to hear about your classes, and your friends.
I know it must seem strange to you, to discover that you have family you didn't know about, until this past Christmas. It is strange for Lucius and I too, but it is a pleasant sort of strange. Lucius asked me to tell you that he regrets treating you somewhat distantly, when we met you. I hope you can understand the way that he was afraid to get his hopes up, when your father told us you were the same child that we all thought was lost. We both want you to know that you are part of our family, now.
Draco asked me to tell you that he has managed to brew Bubble-Breath potion by himself. He had a wonderful time showing the results off to his friend, Vincent.
I don't know if you like to wear earrings or not, but I found a pair while I was shopping the other day that match the buttons on your robes, so I'm sending them to you. I hope you like them.
We'll talk more at the holidays, but I wanted to make sure that you knew that I meant it when I invited you to write to me. There are some things that a young girl cannot speak to her father about, and I want you to feel that you can speak with me, in such cases. If you find the time, please write me back soon.
Your Loving Aunt,
Narcissa
Calista opened the packet that had come with the letter. Inside, a pair of small silver-coloured snake earrings shone brightly. Knowing Narcissa, Calista suspected they actually were made of silver. They were perhaps an inch long, and attached to silver hooks so they would dangle off of her earlobes. She put them in the pocket of her robes, and once she had finished her breakfast, she went to the lavatory off of the Slytherin common room to try them on, using the looking glass hung over the sinks.
She still had the small silver studs she had gotten her ears pierced with, two Christmases ago. The only other earrings she had owned, until this point, were the ones from Olivia, and though she hadn't thrown them away, she refused to wear them. She took the studs out of her earlobes, and threaded the small silver hooks of the snake earrings in their place.
She turned her head from side to side to look at them; she thought, actually, that they looked quite cool. Then she looked at herself dead on in the glass, and realised that she had forgotten to scowl at herself, to avert her eyes as quickly as possible from her reflection.
Experimentally, she twisted her face into her customary scowl. There, now she looked like someone she wanted to look quickly away from. She relaxed her features again. Well. She wasn't pretty, not like Olivia or that blasted Endria, but she supposed she wasn't repulsive, either, not with her face clean, and her hair cut in the stylish way Narcissa had ordered, and with the pretty silver earrings dangling; they did compliment the coiled-up snake buttons on her robes, Narcissa had been right about that.
The door opened, and Calista looked hastily away from the mirror, looking to see who had come in. She prepared herself to sneer, in case it was Olivia.
But it was only Emily. The other girl met her gaze, and smiled tentatively. "Hi, Calista."
"Hey," Calista responded, unsure of her status with Emily these days. They hadn't spoken much since the beginning of term.
"I like your earrings."
"Oh. Thanks. My aunt just sent them."
"So…" Emily glanced around the lavatory, as if to reassure herself that Calista was the only other occupant. "I heard you're taking Arithmancy. How… how is it?"
"It's a lot of work," Calista said, "But it's very interesting. I'm surprised you're not taking it… I mean, it seems like something you'd really like."
"I wanted to," Emily said, "But Olivia convinced me to take Divination, instead, and they're at the same time."
"Divination?" Calista wrinkled her nose. "I heard that Trelawny's a hack. Marcus said she just wants people to predict their own deaths all the time."
"Yeah," Emily admitted, with a small laugh, "I guess that's pretty much true. Olivia likes it, though. She keeps saying she sees things, you know, in tea leaves and such. I don't know if she really does or not."
"Oh." Calista could feel herself scowling. Just Olivia's name did that to her, lately.
"I… I wish you and she could be friends again," Emily ventured, "I… I miss you."
"I miss you, too," Calista said.
"We could… we could still be friends at summer break," Emily suggested, "And just pretend we're not when we're at school."
Calista frowned. "I guess I'm not good at that kind of thing," she said, "I think… well, I think if you're my friend, then you're my friend, and if you're not, then…" she trailed off, and shrugged. "You're not."
She slipped past Emily, reached for the doorknob.
"It's just not fair," Emily said, behind her. "I want to be friends with both of you."
Calista paused, the door partway open, and looked back at her sometimes-friend. "Em… I don't care if you're friends with her, or not. I just can't be."
"But I can't be friends with you, unless you're friends with her, don't you see that?"
"No," Calista said, firmly. "I don't see that. I'm not the one telling you you have to choose."
She waited, but Emily didn't say anything else. Calista pushed the door open and left.
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Dear Aunt Narcissa,
Thank you for the earrings. I really like them, and they do match my robes. You were right about those, too. Girls at school always ask me where I got them.
I'm sorry I forgot to write to you sooner. I have a lot of classes this year, but I like most of them, so it's not so bad. The only one I really hate is Flying, I guess. I'm just no good at it. I can't wait until I learn to Apparate, then no one will bother me about it anymore.
Tell Draco I'm really happy he got the potion right all by himself. I'll tell my dad, I bet he'll be happy, too. I think Draco will really like it once he gets to Hogwarts, I can show him around the castle and introduce him to people that I know. I hope he's in Slytherin with me.
I'll try to remember to write to you more.
Calista