Year 3, Chapter 6
The next month or two of term passed easily for Calista, more easily than school had ever been for her. It wasn't necessarily easy academically - Arithmancy was an immense amount of work, and she was still struggling with Transfiguration… and then, there were her draining Occlumency lessons, and she was still stuck in Flying class, along with one Muggle-born Gryffindor first-year; only the two of them hadn't been able to fly well enough to pass by the end of six weeks. The easy part was, for a change, her social life. She finally felt that she had real friends, people who liked her the way she was, and whom she enjoyed spending time with. It hadn't occurred to her, until she'd become friends with Percy, Amelia, Penelope, and even Sofia and Eva, that maintaining a friendship was supposed to feel like a good thing, a worthwhile thing, and not a stressful drain.
In truth, it was still something of a new sensation for her, to feel positively after spending time with her peers. The strangest part was the willingness she found, little by little, to share just another piece of herself with them, and to realise that they still liked her for seeing it. She had grown so used to building walls, in her mind and in her relationships, that she found the process of dismantling them, even one tiny block at a time, to be unnerving; but it was a pleasant sort of unnerving, like winning a gamble - or flying on a broomstick, knowing the boy behind her wouldn't let her fall - but no, she wasn't going to think anything like that, no matter what her rebellious brain thought.
She was surprised at how much she liked spending time with Amelia, especially considering they had instantly disliked each other, that first day in Herbology class. Amelia had explained that, too. She'd just been sorted into Ravenclaw, a house which prized intelligence in its students, and she'd wondered if the hat had made a mistake; she was afraid she wasn't smart enough, and the fear had driven her to lash out, tear someone else down. In her first few days at Hogwarts, Amelia had already overheard another Ravenclaw making snide remarks about the Slytherins. Wondering if she really was smart enough to be in Ravenclaw herself, Amelia had decided the safest route was to mimic the other students, and knock down someone from what she had already gathered was the least popular house. Calista had presented a target, and Amelia had seized onto it, in an effort to impress Penelope and cement their friendship. Once she understood how it had happened, Calista had to admit that it sounded an awful lot like the way she had originally tried to impress Olivia by making fun of Percy - except, it turned out that Penelope was actually okay, and Olivia was a manipulative little snot.
Their friendship, though - hers and Amelia's - if anything, it had begun to deepen rapidly since that day in Hogsmeade, when Calista had stuck up for Amelia, and then Kim Avery had come along and drunkenly defended both of them. (As far as Calista knew, Kim had remarkably gone unpunished. She didn't know if Olivia had decided against antagonising the older girl further, or if whatever teacher she'd gone to had decided that the ensuing vomiting and headache had been punishment enough. Or, perhaps, Kim was right, and Hogwarts wouldn't punish her, since she was of legal age, but Calista doubted that was actually the case. It was still against school rules. after all). But it seemed that, on some level, Amelia had been worried about Calista finding out she was Muggle-born; she didn't know that Olivia had already made it clear to her, and that Calista had already decided she didn't care. It was true that Slytherin had garnered a reputation for having a lot of pureblood fanatics, but to say they all were was to say that all of the Gryffindors were as abysmal at Potions as Oliver Wood was, or as hell-bent on rule breaking as Percy's brothers.
Calisa hoped Amelia would see that, just as she was beginning to see that not all of the Ravenclaws were prissy, and not all of the Gryffindors were stupid. And, as it happened, evidently not all of the Hufflepuffs were dull, because there was nothing dull about Tonks' now lime-green hair. Every time Calista saw her in the stands of the Quidditch pitch, she debated revealing the fact that they were cousins, but when she considered the idea of revealing to the entire student body that her mother was none other than the infamous Bellatrix Lestrange, she felt an uneasy clenching in her stomach; she wasn't ready for them to know, wasn't willing to test whether or not they'd treat her differently if they knew. There were undoubtedly students at Hogwarts whose families her mother had hurt or torture, whose relatives she had killed. How could Calista expect them not to shy away from her, in light of that? So she kept it to herself, and hoped, fervently and anxiously, that Olivia would do the same. She hadn't mentioned it again recently, at least. Calista hoped that was a good sign.
As for her own feelings, if Calista had had any sort of prejudice against Muggle-borns, she was reasonably certain that she was relieved of it now. She liked Amelia, a lot, probably better than she liked any other girls at school - because Amelia was funny, and smart, and she found that working on Arithmancy homework actually wasn't so bad when they could do it together. And there were the curses, too - they still couldn't cast them, but they had fun going through books and reading about them, and Amelia had been absolutely right about how much fun it was to make Penelope squirm by describing them to her. She just wished they were in the same house, that Amelia could transfer into Slytherin somehow, because even though Madam Pince had reluctantly allowed Calista back into the library, she couldn't be there after curfew, and Amelia couldn't come back to the common room with her. They made up for it, though. Amelia had started coming to the Gryffindor Quidditch practises with her (Calista was still going for the hot chocolate, and, secretly, for the other kind of warmth she felt inside when she was there, and no one seemed to want her to go away, or shoot her dirty looks) and they often found time in between classes to stop and chat in the corridors.
She was sitting with the Gryffindors in Potions class now, and although Olivia and Portia liked to hiss rude comments at her in the common room, or when they passed each other in the halls, she hadn't faced any other retaliation from her housemates for it. Actually, Percy had begun to separate from Oliver Wood a little bit, and when another of the Gryffindor boys and Wood had both made the Quidditch team this year and had started to sit together in class, Percy sat with Calista instead, and both of them were able to brew their individual potions efficiently, in relative peace and quiet. At first, a few of the Gryffindors had given her some grief for crossing the chasm in between the two houses and sitting in their section, but either Percy had spoken to them, or they simply got used to her, because after a few weeks, it seemed normal enough that they left her alone. She wasn't quite ready to be overly friendly to most of them, but Percy and she had their easy alliance, and the comforting, steady simmer of their cauldrons, and it was legions preferable to suffering through an hour of Olivia's glares and Portia's sabotages while swimming in George Spratt's body odor.
Percy wasn't taking Care of Magical Creatures, though, and that left Calista with no one in that class that she got along with, so she mostly kept to herself - which was a shame, really, because she found herself coming up with witticisms regarding the aged, half-senile Professor Kettleburn that she could share with no one but herself. She wondered if people in the class thought she was daft, half-smiling to herself all the time. The class wasn't actually as fun as she'd expected it to be - she wondered if it would be worth suffering through for a few more years just so she could see a unicorn. Maybe she could convince her father to let her go into the Forbidden Forest and find one… and that was another thought that made her suppress a snort of amusement, and smile crookedly to herself, because she remembered what he had said, when she'd asked to go into the forest when she was small:
You're not going into that forest today, or tomorrow, or any day in the foreseeable future. That's why it's called 'Forbidden'.
Later on, the same day she had had that thought in Care of Magical Creatures class, she slipped into her father's office while she knew he was teaching another class. She tore off a small square of parchment, and scribbled a note on it:
Dad -
Is this still the forseeable future? I want to go into the forest.
-C
She finished it off with another drawing of a cat, and placed the note in the top drawer of his desk with a smile that, if she had been able to see, she would have described as mischievous, perhaps even a bit spiteful. On second thought, she opened the drawer, retrieved the note, and drew a ridge of fur standing up on the cat's back, and a little cartoon speech bubble that said "hiss". She grinned, and placed it back on top of his quills. Then she gathered her books, and hurried to Charms class.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
A couple of weeks before Christmas, Calista dreamt about the empty house again, the one with all the sitting rooms, and the dimly-lit staircases. She'd wanted to explore, to see if any of the rooms were something other than a sitting room, but, just as before, she'd become aware of someone trailing her through the house.
This time, she knew immediately that it was Bellatrix, though she couldn't say for certain if she knew because she could recognise her mother's psychic signature even at a distance, or if she simply knew from experience. She remembered the room at the top of the house, the circular room with the frosted windows, recalled that Bellatrix hadn't been able to reach her in there, and so she tried to run towards it, but her legs were like jelly. She found that when she slowed to a walk, she could manage, so she did that, feeling an urgent pounding in her chest all the while, urging her to hurry. She barricaded herself in the room again, and this time she remembered to put her cloak up against the window in the door; when Bellatrix reached the other side of it, Calista could hear her scratching and tapping at the door, feel it rattling on its hinges, but she knew that as long as she guarded the door, kept the window covered, she should be safe.
It was tiring, though; and though Calista tried to force herself to wake up several times, each time she thought she had done it, she was still in the little round room; each time she wrenched her eyes open, expecting to see her dorm room ceiling above her, she saw only the black of her cloak in front of her face. The light seeping through the glass in all of the other windows in the room slowly brightened; dawn, then. She hadn't been certain before if it was the beginning or the end of the day beyond the frosted glass, had only known that outside, the light was grey and cool.
The door rattled insistently. Calista felt her arms tiring from holding the cloak up, leaned her weight against the door as she held it in place, but Bellatrix didn't seem to be tiring at all. It felt like hours passed, with Calista holding her cloak up to the window, her body pressed against the door to keep it from being forced open, and the door shivering and bucking beneath her like it was a sentient entity. And then, at last, when Calista tried, again, to wake herself up, it must have worked, because she opened her eyes to the cool, grey light of a real dawn, and the ceiling of her dormitory room. She had never been so grateful to see a blank expanse of masonry in her life.
She sat up, throwing the covers off, before sleep could change its mind and pull her back under its dominion. She checked the time; she possibly had enough time to go see her father before Remedial Transfiguration, but it would be pushing it. And in the aftermath of her dream, her mind felt heavy, sluggish. Actually, she felt rather as if she had been holding a door closed all night, rather than simply dreaming of doing it. When she imagined the prospect of going to her father's quarters, possibly waking him up, and having to discuss her dream in detail, so shortly after experiencing it, it made her feel even more tired. And then, after that, it wasn't like she could slip into her old bedroom, crawl into bed, and sleep again. She still had a day full of classes. She decided to eat a good breakfast, including a very large cup of coffee, instead. She could talk to her father after dinner, or perhaps after Potions class the next day. Or… well, Bellatrix hadn't reached her in the dream, had she? Now that she considered, she could probably wait until her Occlumency lesson on Saturday to tell him about it.
That decided, she dressed and combed her hair, pinned the shorter layer of it back with a clip that Narcissa had sent her. She put her snake earrings and her locket on, too. Perhaps if she looked as though she weren't nearly falling asleep on her feet, she'd feel livelier too. She gathered her notes, and the books she'd need for the morning, Transfiguration and History of Magic, and then she went to the Great Hall for breakfast.
It was a difficult day. The coffee she'd filled up on at breakfast had done little to really wake her up, had only made her fidgety and anxious, and she made no progress to speak of in Transfiguration, in either her remedial lesson or her study session with Percy. It was tempting to fall asleep in History of Magic, but how embarrassing would it have been if she'd started snoring, or drooling, or something? Besides, she had found that as long as she took notes during the lecture, she remembered the material well enough to not need to study it much before exams. To neglect taking notes now would only make her position more difficult later, so she slogged through that class as well.
That night, she had the same dream again; and again, she had a hard time forcing herself to wake up. This time, when she finally did wake, it was much lighter out, and she barely had time to get ready before she had to run down the hall to Potions. She didn't have time to eat. She thought scathingly of the Ministry's letter to her then, the one in which they'd refused to give her a Time Turner. If she had one of those, she could have found time to eat… but she didn't, and that was that, evidently. She supposed the Calista of previous years would have still found time to eat, but this year she found that she couldn't make herself start the day without having washed, at least her face, and she had to comb and style her hair as well, and make sure her robes weren't fastened crookedly or anything. She told herself that this new habit had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she might run into Marcus in the common room, absolutely nothing at all. In fact, she supposed that she was only taking a bit of influence from her Aunt Narcissa, and this made enough sense that she decided to accept that as her reason, and stop thinking of who she might run into on her way out.
She had meant to tell her father about her dream after Potions class, but then Oliver Wood had melted another cauldron, and her father was supervising its cleanup. She had Ancient Runes next, and it was quickly becoming one of her favourite classes, so she didn't want to be late. She reassured herself that she would tell him about her dream - dreams, now, since it had been two nights in a row - on Saturday, after her Occlumency lesson.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
Something happened that Friday, though, something which completely wiped Bellatrix from her mind. She'd just suffered through another terrible flying lesson - during which she had to suffer the full attention of Madam Hooch's displeasure, because she was now the only one left in the class. Even the clumsy Gryffindor had managed to do well enough, last time, to pass the course. The only upside was that there was no one left to laugh at her. When the tortuous hour was completed, she practically ran towards the castle - for a few paces, anyway. Then she heard someone calling her name.
"Calista! Wait!"
She turned; Marcus Flint was jogging towards her, broomstick over his shoulder. She waited, found herself twirling a lock of her hair around her index finger… she scowled, and dropped her hair. What the hell was she doing?
"Thought I'd miss you," Marcus said, slightly winded, as he caught up to her. His hair was wet, and he was carrying Quidditch robes over his arm. "Practise ran over a bit… I was hoping you'd come by when you were done again, but…" he shrugged.
"Why would I do that?" she said, because it was the only thing she could think of.
"Well, you did before. And I said I would show you some more stuff about flying, remember?"
"Oh," Calista said, and she could feel herself blushing; winter was close now, though, the days shorter, and she hoped the glow of the late afternoon sun would be blamed for any colour on her cheeks, if he noticed it. "Uhm, I don't remember agreeing to that."
Damn it. Why was her finger in her hair again? She tried to let it go, but it was a bit tangled up; she scowled, and had to use her other hand to unwind it.
Marcus grinned boyishly. "Well, you didn't, exactly. But you didn't make your oh-hell-no face when I asked you, either."
She blinked. "I… what? I have a 'hell no' face?"
He stepped forward, linked his arm through hers as if he was Amelia, and the two of them were walking to Hogsmeade together; except, the direction he began guiding her in was that of the Quidditch pitch. And, no matter how much she wanted to pretend it was just Amelia walking next to her, he was taller and broader and… well, boy-er. She had to get over this nonsense, and fast, or he was definitely going to notice.
"Oh, yeah," he said easily. "You have a lot of faces. The one you made when I said I'd take you flying again was the same one you make at your Transfiguration homework all the time. You know, like it annoys you, but you're going to wind up doing it. So I just figured… probably flying was the same. And look, you're walking with me, so I guess I was right."
She scowled at him. "I'm not sure if I like the idea of you sitting around and deciding what all my expressions mean."
He laughed. "That's one of my favourites, right there! The one that makes me think you'd be a hell of a Beater, if you could stop thinking of a broomstick like it's a dragon - come on, Calista, I'm just taking the piss, you don't have to keep looking at me like that."
"A dragon would be an improvement," she muttered. "At least I know it wants to kill me."
They reached the pitch, and Marcus took his broomstick off his shoulder. "D'you want me to go with you again, or d'you want to try by yourself this time?"
"No."
"Er… that wasn't really a yes or no question."
"I'm just being honest," Calista said, "I don't want to fly on that damn thing at all."
"Right," Marcus said, "But you have to, right? Unless you like spending every Friday afternoon with Madam Hooch?"
"Of course I don't."
"Well, then." He motioned towards the broomstick that hovered in front of them. "Go on."
Grudgingly, she climbed on the broomstick, trying to sit more-or-less the way Marcus had shown her last time, and the way Madam Hooch was always trying to tell her.
Marcus stepped up, right beside her, and she felt herself tense. Was he going to climb on behind her, again? Did she want him to?
He didn't, though. Instead, he put his hands on her shoulders, pulled her up to sit a little straighter, then adjusted her grip on the handle.
"Okay," he said, "Lean forward - just a bit - and tilt the handle up slowly."
"I don't want to do this."
"Really?" Marcus remarked calmly, "Because it's the first time you've told me so."
She scowled. "You're being snide."
"No, I'm not. I'm being sarcastic. You, of all people, should know the difference, since it's, like, your specialty."
She tried to follow his instructions, and the broom lifted a little. Immediately, she panicked, and hunched her shoulders. Only sheer force of will kept her from trying to get her entire body in contact with the broomstick again; that, and the fact that she didn't want to be embarrassed any further than she already had been in front of Marcus.
"Sit up straight," Marcus reminded her, "Relax, you're way too tense."
"What if I fall?" she called down, hating the way she knew her voice sounded, thin and weak.
"You won't," he said, "Just keep holding on normally, and take it slow."
"You can't possibly know that I won't fall."
"Okay," Marcus said, "Have it your way, then. If you fall, I promise I'll stand here laughing at you instead of trying to help you. Especially if you break a bunch of bones and bleed all over the place."
She glared at him over her shoulder. "Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Marcus."
"Who's being sarcastic?" He shook his head. "C'mon, I learned it from you. See, we're teaching each other things. Straighter, lift up a bit more. And you'll do a lot better if you keep your eyes in front of you, instead of giving me dirty looks."
For the better part of an hour, he coached her, and by the end of it, Calista was amazed to have made more progress than she had in weeks and weeks of lessons with Madam Hooch. At first, it had annoyed her when he tried to poke fun at her, but actually, the familiar style of banter helped her feel more comfortable, and allowed her to relax a bit; not enough to loosen her white-knuckled grip on the broom's handle, for certain, but at least enough to make a few slow loops around the Quidditch pitch without having a heart attack.
When she was ready to land, Marcus guided her through that part too, and she managed not to hurtle too quickly towards the ground. She couldn't deny the immense relief she felt to be back on solid ground, however. She fairly leaped off the broomstick once her feet had touched grass again.
And none of that, terrifying, exhilarating, and unexpected as it was, was the part that made her forget all about her nightmare and her mother. That came at the very end, when she had gratefully dismounted, was reveling in the solid earth beneath her.
Marcus stepped up to her, and she thought he was just going to take his broom. Instead, his arms came around her shoulders in a hug. "You did it!" he said, more excited than she felt about it. His breath was warm near her ear; actually, he was warm, a welcome shield against the chill evening air.
"See, you'll be on the Quidditch team before you know it." he said, pulling back. His hands were still at either shoulder, and he was smiling warmly at her. She knew she was blushing again, damn it, and there was nothing she could do about it. She concentrated on keeping at least her expression, her eyes, neutral.
"I… wouldn't go that far," she managed to say, in a voice she hope sounded normal.
"It's fun, right?" She wished he'd take his hands off her; no, she wished he'd go back to hugging her… damn it, who the hell was she? If this was what liking a boy was like, Calista wanted no part of it. Except, did she even have a choice? It seemed that her brain had already decided for her, no matter how often she tried to reason with it.
"Uhm," she said, and she couldn't figure out which words were supposed to come out of her mouth next.
"Yes," Marcus supplied helpfully, in an exaggerated falsetto. "Yes, flying is loads of fun, and we're going to do it all the time."
She scowled, but she was grateful he'd given her something she knew precisely how to respond to. "I do not sound like that."
"Nah, you don't," Marcus agreed, and he dropped his hands from her shoulders. He did stay quite close to her, though. She wondered if that meant anything, and then wondered why she cared if it did. "So… I think we can still make dinner, if we run back to the castle. Or we could wait a bit, try and nick stuff from the kitchens again."
Oh, gods. What would be worse? Sitting alone with Marcus, and this strange new set of feelings she had about him, or sitting at the crowded Slytherin table, hoping no one else could tell that her brain was revolting against her?
"I guess we should try to make it to dinner," she said. Maybe being around other people would distract her, or maybe there wouldn't even be two seats left together, and she'd have to sit away from him, where she couldn't say or do anything stupid.
"Okay. If that's what you want." Marcus did go for his broomstick now, and slung it easily over his shoulder, before falling into pace beside Calista.
They chatted easily on the way back to the castle. The setting sun, the fact that he probably couldn't easily see her face any more, put her at ease, and for a few moments, everything felt normal, the way it always had with him. He had always been easy to talk to, and when she could stop having ridiculous frazzly snips of emotion about him, he still was.
There must have been something, though, some hint she had forgotten to wipe clear from her eyes, some trace of a blush still on her cheeks, because when they entered the Great Hall, and sat down at the Slytherin table - there were two seats together, and Marcus slipped his broomstick under the table and gestured to her to sit in one of them - Kim Avery caught her eye, and grinned at her, knowingly.
Calista tried her best to ignore Kim, reached for the nearest dish of food and began filling her plate, but when she looked up a minute later, Kim was nudging Conor. She whispered something to him, and they both looked at her, and grinned. Kim even winked, just as Marcus was sitting down next to her. Marcus thought they were trying to catch his eye, though, and waved cluelessly at Conor. Calista caught Kim's eye again, and shook her head, urgently.
Kim leaned towards them. "So," she said, breezily, "What were you two doing? Enjoying a nice moonlit stroll?"
Calista felt horror dawn on her face. Shut up, she mouthed at Kim, who only grinned maddeningly.
Marcus snorted, filling his own plate. "Yeah, I always go for walks with my broomstick," he said, trying out more of that sarcasm. "Nah, I was teaching Calista to fly… hey, maybe she'll replace you on the Quidditch team when you graduate."
Kim raised an eyebrow at that. "Yeah? You think?" She glanced at Calista for confirmation.
"Definitely not," Calista said, quickly and firmly.
Conor cocked his head. "I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss your chances," he spoke up. "I'm tapping Marcus to take over the Captain spot next year."
Calista made a face. "And… how does that make me a better flyer?"
"Well, I guess it doesn't," Conor said, with a slow grin. "But if Marcus wants you on the team, something tells me you'll make the cut."
She rolled her eyes, and opened her mouth to retort, to tell them that there was no way she was even going to go out for the team, ever, but then she noticed who was sitting on the other side of Marcus, leaning close and saying something in his ear. It was Endria Folland, widely considered the prettiest girl in Slytherin, maybe even in the whole school.
Marcus flushed slightly, and wiped his hand across his mouth nervously. He glanced over at Calista, but she looked quickly away. She remembered what Marcus had said about Endria, a few months ago.
She's a right stunner, yeah?
Suddenly, Calista wasn't hungry anymore. She muttered an excuse, and got up from the table. On her way out of the Great Hall, she felt a light pressure against the outermost part of her mental defences. Her father. When she met his invading tendril of thought with one of her own, she encountered a mild concern; she understood the nuances of his thought well enough at this point to interpret his question without any words. He had seen her get up from the table near the beginning of dinner, and wanted to know if anything was wrong. It might have seemed touching, were she not bothered by something she had zero intentions of ever sharing with him.
She half-turned, to look over her shoulder, and spotted him at the high table. She narrowed a glare at him at the same time she pushed against his intrusion with her mind. She knew her efforts wouldn't have stopped him if he was really trying to penetrate her mind, but she felt him withdraw, saw him redirect his gaze away from her, and knew she'd gotten her point across.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
Despite everything else that was going on - or maybe because of it, Calista was looking forward to Christmas break. They were staying the week at the Malfoys' again, and Calista was looking forward to seeing Draco and Narcissa. There was a Hogsmeade weekend a few days before the break started, and she and her other third-year friends had arranged to meet at the Three Broomsticks for one last round of Butterbeer before the holidays, and exchange their gifts there.
She gave books to each of her friends: a history book for Percy, an Arithmancy book for Penelope, and Horrifying Hexes for the Hardly Human for Amelia, the one they'd been looking at in the bookstore. She hasn't even touched her own presents until after she'd watched Amelia tear the one from her open. Her face had lit up in a grin, and Calista determined that it had been worth the trouble of giving Kim the money to buy it for her. The bookstore had some agreement, apparently, not to sell certain books to underage students. Calista doubted she was the first to circumvent that rule by finding a student who was of age to make the purchase for her.
She'd expected books from them in return, but they'd surprised her. Instead of three individual presents, Penelope had taken a single large package from her bag, and set it on the table in front of her. "It's from all of us," she'd said, "Percy and Amelia and I. We all pitched in for it."
It was a wizarding chess set, the first one Calista had ever owned. She thought it was the nicest thing that she'd ever gotten from any of her friends, and Amelia had promptly teased that she had no excuse not to play with them now. Calista just wished she had someone in her own House to practise with… perhaps someday, she and Emily would be on good enough terms… or perhaps she could goad Eva or Sofia into playing.
She'd gotten presents for the two of them, as well, and she was glad she had thought to do so, because they each gave her one as well. That final Hogsmeade weekend before break, she and Amelia had gone into a little shop, where she'd found a display of hair clips with the Hogwarts house animals on them. She'd gotten herself one of the snake clips, the very first hair accessory that she'd ever picked out for herself, and then, after a moment's thought, she'd picked up two extras, for Sofia and Eva.
She'd thought she would wake up to precisely nothing at the foot of her bed on the day Christmas break started, since she'd already exchanged presents with most of her friends, and she knew her father would be waiting until Christmas Day, when they were staying with the Malfoys, but she'd woken up to a small pile. There was a pretty green hairband from Sofia, perhaps a bit more shiny than anything Calista would have picked for herself, and a small blank book with a miniature quill from Eva. Calista supposed it was meant to be a diary, but as soon as she saw it, she knew she'd use it to leave little cat drawings in her father's office. She had gotten a very nice bookmark from Emily, which made her feel a twinge of guilt, because she hadn't gotten Emily anything, didn't think she was on good enough terms with any of the girls in her dormitory to buy them presents.
Emily wasn't the only one to give her gifts that she hadn't reciprocated, either. There was a book of common Quidditch drills from Marcus, which she supposed was a nice gesture, but which she had no intention of ever reading, let alone following. Kim gave her a small book, too, and Calista thought at first that it was a diary, as well, because it did look a lot like the one from Eva. When she opened it, though, she grinned widely. It had been a blank book once, but now it was filled with pages of writing, in several different hands. She knew at a glance what was written all over the pages, but she read the note inside the front cover anyway.
Snapelet -
Our time to corrupt you is coming to an end. In a couple more years, maybe you'll be doing corrupting. Conor's older brother started this book when he was in school, and we've added to it quite a bit. It's yours now - don't waste it! If you learn a new curse, poison, or anything else a Prefect would throw a nutty over, write it down in the book, but don't let a teacher get hold of it, not even your dad. All the pages go blank if anyone over twenty years of age opens it, and it's a bitch to get them back. Ethan's mum found it three years ago and it took us months to fix, so don't wreck it and come bugging me for help. That's the only rule - that, and you've got to find someone to pass it on to before you graduate. Enjoy, and happy Christmas!
Love,
Kim (and Ethan, and Conor, and Peter)
Well, that had been an excellent present for sure. She couldn't wait to show it to Amelia. It was too bad she was leaving right after breakfast, and didn't have time to show her that day. She flipped through, giving it more careful attention. Most of the spells and such in there, she had already heard of - and most of them, from the four very people that had bequeathed the book to her. There were a handful, here and there, that she didn't know, though. She grinned. She definitely had some reading to do over the break.
Portia, Emily, and Olivia were up now, and had started tearing into their own gifts while Calista was flipping through her new book. Portia had evidently given Olivia and Emily some kind of jewelry, which Olivia was gushing over far louder than was strictly necessary. Calista rolled her eyes. If they were trying to make her jealous, it wouldn't work. Firstly, she suspected that she would get some kind of girlish ornament from Narcissa, and secondly, it so happened that she preferred to get things like chess sets and handwritten lists of curses anyway. She resisted the urge to make a face at Olivia, who might misinterpret as actual jealousy, and started to get ready, gathering her clothes on her bed and pulling the curtains all the way around it.
The other girls mostly changed in the room, not caring if they were in front of each other, but… well, the rest of the girls didn't have waxy-pale skin and skinny limbs, a stupid, uncomfortable pale yellow training bra, and they definitely didn't have a pattern of scars across their spines. So Calista always got dressed in her bed, with the curtains pulled closed. It wasn't always the most convenient way, but it kept her from feeling self-conscious, and from having Olivia make some comment about the marks on her back.
She wiggled and shimmied her way into the dark blue robes Narcissa had asked her to wear for Christmas, and then waited until she heard the other girls' chatter fade as they made their way to breakfast. When she was sure they were gone, she opened her curtains and slipped off the bed, to examine herself in the mirror in the door of her wardrobe. She straightened the robes where they were crooked, and frowned, tilting her head. She looked different in these robes, taller and maybe even a little older. She pulled her hair back in her fist experimentally, and she thought it looked okay, but… she actually had no idea how she was supposed to make it stay that way. It was embarrassing, but she didn't know how girls actually put their hair up like that, in a ponytail or a twist. She'd tried one day, and it hadn't looked right. There'd been little bumps of hair standing up everywhere. She shrugged, and let her hair go, clipped just the shorter part of it back like she usually did, with the snake clip she'd bought in Hogsmeade, put her earrings and her locket on, and went to the Great Hall.
Sofia and Eva were both wearing the same clips, the ones she'd gotten them for Christmas. She sat next to them, glancing up the table. Marcus wasn't there; perhaps he'd already gone home, or perhaps he was sleeping in. Olivia and her posse were a bit further along the table, but she ignored them, and chatted with the first years. Kim and her friends weren't here, either. She would have liked to thank them for passing the book on to her. Her father wasn't at the high table either, but he came into the Great Hall when she was nearly finished eating, and caught her eye, striding over to the Slytherin table.
"Meet me at my office with your things when you're finished," he said, and left as quickly as he had come. Was he cross with her? She didn't think he had much reason to be, but then, he got tense when they were going to visit the Malfoys sometimes. She recalled what had happened last Christmas, when Lucius had tried to invade her thoughts, wondered if he was fearful of a second offence. But he hadn't tried anything like that when they visited over the summer, and there was Narcissa's letter… perhaps he wouldn't try again. Calista hoped not.
She finished her breakfast, said a quick goodbye to the few friends she had that were still at the table, and went back to her room. She didn't need to take her whole trunk for only a week, so she emptied her schoolbooks out of the bag she sometimes used to carry them between classes, and haphazardly threw her robes and some regular clothes in there, along with the new book from Kim and her friends. Lastly, she went into her wardrobe, where she had a carefully-wrapped package set aside, and she put it on top of everything else in her bag. It was her father's present, and she'd worked on it for a long time, so she didn't want anything to happen to it. She had picked out presents for Draco, too, little things, but her father was keeping them in his office for her, and he was adding her name to the gifts he had for Lucius and Narcissa, so that was nearly everything. The last thing she had to pack was, unfortunately, the most difficult.
Calista set her bag down near the door, and then set about looking underneath all of the beds in the room. She didn't bother to call out for her cat; Yellow always knew when it was time to go in her cage, and she hated it. Calista had learned that calling for the cat when its cage was sitting open on her bed was as good as announcing her intentions to stuff her into it, and she tried to pretend like today was only an ordinary day, that she was just looking to pet the cat a bit before she went off to class.
She found him, hunched against the wall under Olivia's bed. She couldn't quite reach him from where she was; she lay on her belly on the floor, and reached her hand towards him. He eyed her reproachfully, as if he knew full well what she planned to do with him, and didn't like it one bit.
"Come on, Yellow," she murmured, "It's only a short trip, and then we can ask Aunt Narcissa for some fish. Wouldn't you like that?"
The cat sniffed her hand, but made no move towards her. She sighed, and shimmied herself partway under the bed so she could grab him. She got her hands around him, and when she did, her fingers knocked against something else that was under there with him. It was a wooden box of some kind, about the size of a book. It was probably full of stupid jewelry or something, Calista supposed. But then, she had seen where Olivia kept her jewelry, in an ornate box on the top shelf of her wardrobe. Well, whatever it was, it really wasn't any of her business, and she didn't care, anyway, right? She pulled her cat out from under the bed, rose to her feet, and ignored him when he hissed at her. She pushed him into his cage, and latched the door quickly behind him, and tried not to feel guilty at the look he gave her.
Her eyes immediately swept back to Olivia's bed. She definitely shouldn't snoop… probably it was nothing interesting anyway, and even if it was, she'd prefer to just pretend her roommate didn't exist most of the time, anyway. Except… well, she knew damn well that Olivia would go snooping through her things, it was the reason why she still kept her diaries, her old one from when she was small, and the newer ones her father had bought her since, in her old room in her father's quarters. And, she reasoned, snooping was probably precisely how Olivia had learned who Calista's mother was, she must have left something with Bellatrix's name on it where Olivia could see it. Maybe… maybe whatever was in that box under Olivia's bed would finally give Calista some ammo to threaten Olivia with, the next time she decided to try and bully Calista. She promised herself that, no matter what she found, she wouldn't use it against Olivia unless she was backed into a corner, and had to.
Having sufficiently justified it to herself, she crept back across the room, and before she could change her mind, she crouched down and snatched the box out from under the bed. It was a simple enough looking box, with a latched lid that was charm-locked; but Calista was excellent at Charms, that wasn't a problem. She took her wand from her pocket, and tapped it to the latch. It popped open, and Calista stuffed her wand back in her robes, and pushed the lid of the box open, her heart racing. What would she find…?
Paper, as it turned out. The box was full of paper and parchment, letters, it looked like, from home. A quick glance revealed that all, or nearly all of them, were from Olivia's mother. Well. That was boring, and Calista thought it served her right for snooping. She knew she shouldn't have done it, and now she was rewarded with a heavy, slimy feeling of guilt, and all so she could read about Swiss ski resorts, or expensive perfumes, or whatever else it was that Olivia and her mother simpered on about. She scowled, and snapped the lid closed - but wait, what was that? She opened it again, snatched a letter out. She had seen something, a flash of a name, one that snatched at her heart with icy, sharp-nailed fingers.
Bellatrix
She scanned the letter, trying to reassure herself that she probably hadn't seen what she thought she had. It was probably something else, the name of some fancy French perfume, or something, and her guilty conscience had tried to punish her by substituting some letters, because why would Olivia's mother be writing to her daughter about Bellatrix?
She found it, her mother's first and last name, staring back at her in an unfamiliar, flowery script. She scanned the paragraph it was in, dread mounting inside her.
I must tell you something very important now, Olivia, and be sure to mind what I say carefully. Your classmate, the professor's daughter, just as I thought seems to be quite well-connected. I'm certain that her mother must be none other than Bellatrix Lestrange - you must know who that is, but I'm enclosing an article from the Daily Prophet concerning her arrest, in case you don't recall. Of course, we must condemn criminals like Ms. Lestrange, and others who followed He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but we can't rule out an entire family for the crimes of one of its members, can we, my love?
Calista kept reading, her eyes keeping time with her racing heart. What the hell was going on here?
I'm sure I don't have to tell you what this means - your classmate is part of no less than three of the oldest and most influential wizarding families in Britain, Olivia. The Blacks, the Lestranges, and the Malfoys, by marriage. You know that Father has strived in vain to cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship with Lucius Malfoy at work, but perhaps you can succeed where he has failed. Befriend that girl, Olivia, invite her to our home, and see if she will invite you to hers. You are at a stage in your life where you can forge friendships that influence the course of the rest of your life; be certain you do not let these opportunities pass you by.
Write me soon, and remember everything I said.
Your loving
Mother
Calista felt a nearly overpowering urge to rip the letter up, to throw it all over Olivia's bed, so Olivia would know that Calista knew what her plan was, and precisely what she thought of it. But then, she had a better idea. Olivia wanted to use Calista to make the Malfoys notice her family? So be it, then. Instead of tearing the letter up, Calista folded it carefully, and put it in her bag, on top of the present for her father. Then she closed the lid on the wooden box, and put it back where she had found it. She fastened her bag closed, hefted it on her shoulder, and picked up Yellow's cage with her other hand. Then she left the dormitory room behind, and went to her father's office.