Year 3, Chapter 7
The letter in Calista's pocket seemed fit to burn, for how acutely aware of it she was. Its discovery had made her late to her father's office, so they had left almost as soon as she'd arrived there. She thought for sure that her anger and shock at having discovered the letter would show plainly on her face, would cause her father to question her before they left, but he appeared not to have noticed her preoccupation.
As soon as they'd been invited inside Malfoy Manor, Draco had led her by the hand to his room, so he could show her the potion he'd brewed that morning. It was one of the ones she'd suggested, last Christmas, the one that would make vegetables taste like chocolate.
"I'm going to try it out tonight," he confided, as he held the little plastic flask up for her inspection. "Mother is making Brussels sprouts. I'd much rather taste chocolate."
Calista wrinkled her nose. "Think you have enough to share with me?"
"I expect so," Draco said, "But we could always make more, just in case."
Calista slipped her hand into the pocket of her robes, fingered the edges of the letter. She had wanted to show it to Narcissa; but she suspected that, by now, the adults were engaged in a boring conversation, probably having tea in the library again, and not only might Lucius be displeased at being interrupted, but she might have to stay and listen to them go on about boring Ministry business, or worse, Lucius might start talking about Calista's mother. She had all week to show the letter to Narcissa, she reasoned, and besides, she actually did like helping her cousin make potions.
"Yeah" she said, withdrawing her hand from her pocket. "Let's make some more."
"Do you hate vegetables too?" Draco asked.
"Most of them," Calista admitted, wrinkling her nose. "Especially the green ones."
"When I'm grown," Draco said, "I shall instruct my wife never to cook vegetables in my house."
Calista chuckled. "You've got your wedding all planned out already, then? Who are you going to marry?"
"Well, I don't know yet," Draco said, setting the flask down carefully on his desk. "She'll be pretty, like Mother. And a pureblood, of course."
Calista raised an eyebrow. "And what if she wants you to cook?"
"That's absurd," Draco said, pawing through a basket on his desk that contained packets of ingredients for his KidKauldron, "The woman always cooks, because house elves aren't as good at it as they are at cleaning."
Calista snorted. "My dad cooks," she said, "And house elves can too cook, they cook everything at Hogwarts."
"Well, our house elf can't cook," Draco said, "And your dad only cooks because you haven't got a mother at home. If she wasn't in Azkaban, she'd do all the cooking, you'd see."
"My… Bellatrix, cook? Now that's absurd. Clearly, you've never met her. She didn't… she wouldn't care-" Calista stopped. She didn't want to talk about her mother.
"Who cooked when you were small, then?" Draco looked puzzled.
"I don't… I don't really remember," Calista admitted. "We… I think our house elf must have. I didn't… I didn't eat much, though. I was never hungry."
Well. She had never been hungry because she had been too busy being afraid.
"See," Draco said triumphantly, "That's because house elves can't cook as well as women can. My mother is the best cook there is. Or she would be, if she'd stop cooking vegetables."
"Mm. Don't forget to rinse your cauldron out, first."
"Why?" Draco asked, "It's the same potion I made earlier."
"Well, what if there are leftover bits gummed up on the bottom? It could throw your ratios off. Besides, it's just a good habit to get into."
Draco rolled his eyes, but brought the cauldron to the nearest washroom, and did as he said. He returned, and set his ingredient packets up in a neat row. He placed the little cauldron back on its heating element, and took out a set of plastic measuring cups that had come with the cauldron.
Calista picked up one of the packets and read the back of it. "Powdered cacao beans," she said, "The oils work better, you know. I wonder if the potion would work differently if we adjusted the recipe to use real ingredients, like you'd buy at the apothecary. Maybe the texture would change, too, instead of just the flavor."
"Do you think so?" Draco carefully measured out another ingredient from one of the packets.
"We can try it sometime," she offered. "I can bring the proper ingredients next time I come over. Unless you think your parents would have them?"
"I can ask Father," Draco said, enthused. "Although I'd better not tell him what I want them for. He says I should get used to the taste of vegetables so I'll learn to like them."
His expression told Calista precisely what he thought of that idea.
"Yeah," Calista mused. "I don't know what it is with fathers and vegetables. It's like someone told them you're not allowed to be a parent if you don't nag your kids to eat them."
"Will you make your children eat vegetables, Calista?"
She snorted again, taking one of his measuring cups, and pouring the powdered cacao from the packet into it. "I'm not going to have any."
She passed the filled measuring cup to him, and he added it to the cauldron.
"Water," Draco said, picking up a cup. He was prepared to carry it to the washroom and fill it from the sink, but Calista reached out and took the cup from him gently. She drew her wand from her pocket, and used it to fill the cup with a jet of water. The instructions didn't specify what temperature the water should be at, but Calista knew the solid ingredients would dissolve better in warmer water, so that was what she filled the cup with. She handed it to Draco.
"Try this," she said, "Warm water will help everything dissolve faster."
"Are you allowed to use magic outside of class?" he asked, keenly.
"Not really," Calista admitted. "Little things like that, though, and practising homework… My dad says no one will really care, as long as it's not a lot, and as long as there are no Muggles around."
"Oh." Draco poured the water into the cauldron, and stirred with the wooden spoon that came with the set. "So how come you're not going to have any children?"
She shrugged. "I just… I don't think I'd be any good as a parent. Besides, I'd have to get married, and I don't know if I want to do that, either."
"That's true," Draco said very seriously, "I don't think I would want to get married either, if I had to marry a boy. I'm lucky I get to marry a girl, they're much prettier. And they cook."
Calista laughed. "I hope that's not your only criteria. I'm a girl, and I don't cook."
"Oh," Draco said again, "That's why you're not getting married, then. Because you don't want to cook."
"Well," she said, "That's not really the reason. I just… I don't know. I don't think I'd like sharing my room, it's bad enough living in a dormitory while I'm at school. And then, you know, there's all the kissing."
She made a face; but then, unbidden, the image of Marcus came to her mind, and she could feel herself blush. She shoved the image away, behind one of her mental barriers. A masochistic portion of her brain tried to make her think of him as she'd last seen him, whispering with Endria, but she quashed that, too.
"See," Draco said, peering over the rim of the cauldron to check the colour of the potion, "That's the part I'm looking forward to. Father says it's fun to kiss a pretty girl, as long as she's a pureblood."
Calista raised an eyebrow again. "Well, I'm certainly not an expert," she said, "But I don't think someone's blood status affects how they… uhm, how they kiss. That doesn't make any sense."
"Father says it does," Draco said breezily, as if that settled the matter.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
The potion worked out as badly as Calista had initially feared, when she'd talked Draco out of making it last year. It changed the flavour of the vegetables, but they still had a distinct texture, and the combination was bad. So bad, in fact, that when she caught sight of Draco collecting his sprouts in his lap to dispose of later, she decided to follow suit. She didn't want to ruin her fancy robes though, not after Narcissa had gushed over how nice she looked in them, so she gathered her sprouts into her napkin instead.
She thought both of them had gone undetected, but then she felt her father brush lightly at her mind, a wry message hovering just outside of her initial layer of defence.
I take it your potion didn't work out as well as you both hoped.
She glanced at him; he didn't look angry - more amused, if anything. she gave him a tiny half-smile, shook her head slightly.
"How are your sprouts, Draco? You've eaten nearly all of them, you must like them more than you remember." Narcissa asked, looking fondly at her son.
Calista checked her aunt's expression, but it didn't look like she was wise to the cousins' scheme.
"Oh, er, they're… good." Draco said, squirming a little. Something in his expression must not have seemed sincere enough, because now both of Draco's parents were studying him. They hadn't picked up on her father's comment, had they? She hadn't felt Lucius prying in her mind, but then, his comment hadn't been planted far, hadn't even really been behind any of her barriers.
"Are they?" Lucius asked mildly. "Do they taste anything like chocolate?"
Draco squirmed some more. "Er… no?"
Well, it was sort of true. They'd both tried a bite after surreptitiously dosing their sprouts with the potion, but he wasn't tasting them now. Calista bit the insides of her mouth to stop a smile from spreading over her face, and giving herself and her little cousin away.
"You're a terrible liar, Draco," Lucius said, but he didn't sound particularly upset.
"Er… Calista's never going to get married," Draco announced, evidently trying to take the heat off of himself. "Because she doesn't want to learn to cook, or share her room."
Calista choked on something between an outcry of horror and a laugh.
"Really, Draco?" she managed. She'd hadn't told anyone about the sprouts on his lap, and this was how he repaid her?
All of the adults were looking at her now - Lucius with mild curiosity, Narcissa with a sort of motherly concern, and Severus with… with bloody amusement. Calista wished she could scowl at him without looking rude to their hosts.
"Calista, love, I can teach you how to cook if you'd like," Narcissa offered.
"Uhm… that's all right, Aunt Narcissa. Draco's just joking anyway, that's not really what I said."
"Yes it is," Draco piped up. She cut him a pointed glare, motioning to the napkin full of sprouts in her own lap, and hoping he'd get the hint.
"Well, Calista's still young," Lucius said, and it seemed his words were for all of them, though he was directing them at Draco, "There's still plenty of time to get used to the idea. I'm certain her father is pleased that he doesn't need to worry about chasing off unsuitable young men, yet."
"Well," Narcissa said, kindly, "Remember you can always talk to me about things like that, darling." And then, she gave Calista a surreptitious wink. Oh, gods. Could this get any more embarrassing?
"I don't want to talk about anything," she said, "Not… I mean, not like that. Ever."
Great. She was blushing again; she could feel the heat of it on her face. Why did this happen to her so often these days? And why wouldn't Marcus Flint stay out of her head?
"I think I'd prefer to discuss something else, as well," Severus said smoothly. Lucius chuckled, but Calista shot her father a grateful look. He looked nearly as uncomfortable as she felt.
"Very well," Lucius said, "How are your classes this year, Calista?"
"I like most of them," she said, eager to move on to another topic. "It's a bit difficult, taking so many - I take extra Potions with my dad -"
Well, that wasn't actually true, anymore, but she wasn't very well about to tell Lucius Malfoy that she was taking Occlumency lessons, now was she?
"And I have Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, and Care of Magical Creatures for my other electives."
"Ah, yes, I expect Ancient Runes is one of your favourites, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Calista said, slightly puzzled. Had her father said something about it? "It is. How did you know?"
"Your mother was quite fond of it, as I recall," he replied, and Calista felt her heart thud in her chest. She wondered if her face had drained of colour, the way it felt like it had.
"Oh, yes, she was," Narcissa said. Calista marvelled that both of them sounded so casually conversational, when she suddenly felt so wretched. "She turned in extra assignments all the time, and she was always researching this or that, obscure runes from places I'd barely even heard of. I remember her trying to create new spells a few times, though I can't recall if any of them ever worked out."
Calista felt sick. She liked to research runes and charms, and do extra assignments, although she turned them into Flitwick far more often than she did to Professor Babbling. She wanted to create her own spells, or she always had, right up until this very minute.
"I always enjoyed Ancient Runes as well," Severus said, and his tone was light, but when Calista looked at him, his expression was heavy, and it was directed at her; she wasn't certain if it was meant to comfort her, or to warn her not to say anything she shouldn't; it accomplished both. "And as it happens, I did have a fair amount of success with creating new spells."
"You did?" Calista was honestly surprised; she hadn't known this. It also did a little to lift the weight that had started to gather somewhere in her gut. She didn't want to have anything in common with Bellatrix, but she liked finding things she had in common with her father.
"Ah yes," Lucius interjected. "Levicorpus, I believe, was one of yours, Severus?"
"It was." There was a peculiar strain in his voice when he said it, a seemingly undue stress on the word 'was'. Calista wondered if anyone else had picked up on it.
Narcissa smiled, still reminiscing.
"Bella liked Ancient Runes and Astronomy best," she recalled, "She… well, she was always fascinated by the stars, since they were her namesake. All of the Blacks were named after stars, except for you and I."
She chewed a mouthful of food delicately, thoughtfully. "Although I suppose you were, in a way. 'Calista' is another form of 'Callisto'. Do you know which constellation she's associated with?"
"Uhm," Calista said, wary again. She wished the Malfoys would stop bringing Bellatrix up, as if Calista were supposed to find the mention of her mother tolerable, even pleasant. Did they suppose that Calista still managed to have love for her, after everything? Even not knowing all that had happened, how could they possibly suppose that Calista would think of her with anything but fear, and revulsion? "No… not really. I… uhm, I don't really pay much attention in Astronomy, most of the time. It's late, and I'm usually tired."
Well, and now that she knew the class was one of Bellatrix's favourites, she resolved to pay even less attention to it. As it was this year, she really was only retaining things that were crossover material with Arithmancy.
"Callisto was a nymph, I believe, in Greek mythology. I can't recall why, but the lore is that she was turned into Ursa Major, the Great Bear. Knowing what I do of mythology, my suspicions are that she was romantically involved with Zeus, but we can look it up later, if you'd like."
"That's okay," she said quickly, "It doesn't really matter."
She didn't want to talk about anything that was at all connected to her mother, couldn't they see that? She liked her name well enough, because it was something that had always seemed to be hers, and hers alone. It was the basis of her first idea of identity, the thing she had clung to on long, terrifying nights where it seemed as if she existed only as an extension of her mother - because as long as she had a name, she knew she was real. Now, Narcissa was ruining it.
"Are you certain?" Narcissa pressed, and Calista knew she meant well, but she was feeling a fluttery, uncomfortable pressure in her gut, in her head, again. "It's good for you to know your heritage, darling."
"I don't care what my name meant before," Calista said, surprising herself both with having spoken, and with the quiet force with which she did so. "It's mine now, and it means whatever I make it mean."
There was a brief silence around the table, during which Calista was afraid she had offended their hosts; but then, Narcissa was smiling kindly at her, and when she glanced at her father, he looked, for some inexplicable reason, proud. Even Lucius wore the ghost of a smile, and he was the one who spoke, breaking the silence.
"I must say, that is a commendable philosophy," he said. "You're raising quite a daughter, Severus."
"Yes," her father said, "There are times when I become acutely aware of that."
"I ate all my vegetables," said Draco, whose lap was full of sprouts, "May I please have sweets now, Mother?"
Calista felt the coil of tension in her belly unwind.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
Christmas Day at Malfoy Manor was every bit as lavish as it had been the year before. There were courses upon courses of delicious food, and no matter what Draco insisted, Calista suspected that the house elf, Dobby, must have had a hand in preparing a good deal of it.
Calista was pleased that Draco seemed to like the sweets she'd picked out for him at Honeydukes. She'd picked up Fizzing Whizbees, Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, and a few other things that sounded like a nine-year-old boy would be amused by them. It had been a bit harder to save her allowance to buy gifts this year, since she had Hogsmeade weekends to spend the money during, but she managed. She supposed her father probably would have given her more money to buy Draco's gifts if she'd asked, but she liked picking them out independently, liked the feeling of giving gifts all by herself to people that she liked.
She was most excited to give her father his gift, precisely for this reason… well, that, and the fact that she'd invested hours in it, here and there, since the summer. She didn't think he'd ever be able to top the first gift she had gotten him, two years ago, but she hoped this one would come close.
Calista and Draco were both thoroughly spoiled by Lucius and Narcissa; they'd given her more this year than they had last year, and Calista wondered what she would do with everything. There wasn't much space in her wardrobe anymore, after all the clothes that Narcissa had bought her over the summer, but Narcissa had given her even more - a set of lacy dark green dress robes that were nearly identical, except for the color, to the blue ones she'd worn the day they arrived, and more skirts, elegantly cut trousers, and prettily cut blouses than Calista thought she'd ever wear.
She had been right about the ornaments, too. There were hair ornaments, clips and ribbons and a hairband, and jewelry - a delicate silver chain with a snake on it that matched the earrings Narcissa had sent her, and two more pairs of earrings, long silver ones made of multiple short chains that would dangle prettily, and small silver hoops, too. Calista had been overwhelmed, and Narcissa must have noticed, because she hurried to remind Calista that she did not have a daughter of her own to buy pretty things for, that it made her happy to see Calista wear them.
Narcissa had even given her a small, delicate bottle of perfume, which brought a distinct look of alarm to Severus' face. Narcissa laid a hand on his forearm, and reassured him quietly.
"It's a very light scent," she told him, "Apple and gardenia, a hint of citrus. It's quite girlish, Severus, it's not the sort of thing a grown woman would wear."
Well, it wasn't the sort of thing Calista thought she'd wear, either, but she knew better than to tell Narcissa that.
She was relieved when she opened the gifts from her father, a book of potions and a book of Egyptian runes, things she knew precisely what to do with. There was another book, as well, one that Calista had not expected. When she saw the title, she double-checked the tag, thinking it must have been from Lucius; but it wasn't, it was definitely Severus' writing.
Shadow Charms: Exploring the Dark Arts Through Charmwork
She looked up at Severus, a question in her eyes. This was the sort of book she and Amelia might sneak a look through in the bookstore at Hogsmeade, the sort of thing she might expect to see in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library. It was the sort of book she knew she wasn't allowed to read from hr father's shelf, although that didn't always stop her. It was not the sort of book she expected to even be allowed to own, let alone be given to her by her father.
"You can't learn proper defence if you don't understand what you're fighting," Severus said, quietly. This, at least, was a part of his philosophy that she had heard before. Was she only meant to read about the charms in the book, then, and not try to cast any of them? If that was the case, then he had a higher opinion of her self-control than she did.
She opened the front cover of the book. There was a note inside, in her father's handwriting. It was quite short, but reading it made her smile crookedly.
C -
Perhaps the foreseeable future will cease to exist in the present once you've learned a few of these spells to protect yourself with. Of course, you will still need a willing guardian, and yours is not easily swayed by drawings of mangy cats.
- Dad
"They're not mangy," was all she said, but she hoped she managed to convey with her expression how pleased she was, with the book as well as the note.
She gave her gift to her father last, because she wanted to be able to see his reaction without the distractions of her own gifts. She hoped he liked it; there was a chance he wouldn't, but she had tried not to consider that. She handed him the flat, heavy package carefully, watched him tear it open.
It was a picture, and the only part she'd had to pay for was the frame, and she'd picked one of solid dark wood. The picture itself, she'd drawn - she'd drawn it more than twenty times, trying to get it just right, discarding her previous attempts if she felt she'd gotten even one detail wrong. She stood at his elbow, looked at the picture with him, trying to reassure herself that it was perfect, or as perfect as she could make it.
She'd drawn the two of them, in black ink, in his workroom beneath his quarters. She was younger, smaller, standing on a chair he'd brought down from the kitchen, and stirring a cauldron with a wooden spoon. She hadn't wanted to draw her own face, partly because it felt weird, and partly because she didn't want to stare into a mirror for all the time it would take to get her features correct, so she'd drawn the image as though the viewer was standing behind her, so she was distinguishable only by her slight form and the tangle of long, black hair.
She'd drawn Severus in profile, because she had spent so many hours eye to eye with him in Occlumency lessons that she knew his face by heart. She wondered if he knew hers just as well. In her drawing, he was leaning over her, one hand on her shoulder in a gesture that she hoped she had managed to capture as protective and supportive at the same time; his other hand was pointing to the cauldron, and she'd imagined, while she drew him, that he was saying something about the colour of the potion. Behind them, she'd painstakingly drawn and labelled all the jars of ingredients that she could recall being there, had tried to draw and shadow the stone walls of the dungeon realistically.
She thought she'd done a very good job; she glanced up at her father's face again to see if he agreed.
Severus shifted the drawing to one hand, and slid his other arm around her shoulders, leaning down to speak to her quietly.
"I had no idea you could draw this well," he said. "You must have been practising a lot."
He didn't say anything about the subject of the drawing, but he didn't have to. She could hear the delicate trace of emotion in his voice, and she smiled to herself. He liked it, she could tell.
"I told you I could draw something besides cats," she said, and then she cast a sly little look across at him. "Although, if you look carefully…"
She lifted her hand, and pointed to the bottom right corner of the picture, where a small kitten was peering out from behind the leg of the worktable. "It's Yellow."
"Well," Severus said, affecting a long-suffering tone. "The rest of the picture is very good."
"Is that a photograph?" Narcissa was looking at them now, curiosity on her features. "May I see it?"
"It's not a photograph," Calista said, as Severus lowered the picture, turned it so she could see it.
Narcissa's blue eyes widened, and her mouth set up into a soft, pretty smile. "Oh, that's such a sweet picture. Did you really draw that yourself, Calista?"
Calista nodded.
"I wonder, have you ever tried painting?"
"No, not really. I mean, I painted a few really bad cats when I was small, but that's it."
"I used to like to paint, when I was younger," Narcissa said, and this surprised Calista, who couldn't imagine her sophisticated aunt doing anything that might get her robes dirty. It was difficult enough to imagine her cooking, actually. She seemed like the sort of woman who simply waved her delicate hands, ordering servants to do everything for her. But then, Calista was learning that most people were not precisely what they seemed.
"You did?" Calista asked, "What sorts of things did you paint?"
"Flowers, mostly," she said, a dreamy reminiscence filtering its way into her face. "And landscapes. Pretty things… my mother wanted me to paint portraits of the family, but I never was very good at painting faces. I tried, but they always seemed flat, somehow."
"Why did you stop? Did you get tired of it?"
Narcissa waved her hand dismissively. "Not tired, exactly. I suppose I simply grew up, and once I had married Lucius… well, we can purchase any sort of art we want, there's no need to display my amateur work."
That seemed a bit sad, to Calista, but she thought it would be rude to say so. She couldn't imagine giving up something she truly liked doing, just because it had no practical value. She wanted to leave little cat sketches for her father to find until the day she died, even if every single one of them was more likely than not ending up in the dustbin. And the essays she wrote for Flitwick… she supposed there was probably a lot of research she'd done that she'd never wind up using for anything, but she enjoyed gathering the knowledge, anyway.
Besides, as far as Calista could tell, Narcissa had replaced her painting hobby with a shopping one, and in Calista's own opinion, painting was far more purposeful and productive.
One thing was for certain; if getting married meant giving up the things she enjoyed doing, and cooking, and sharing her room, there was no way she was ever going to do it. Besides, even Calista knew you didn't have to marry someone to kiss them…
And damn it, she was thinking of Marcus again, as easily as that.
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
She was in the house again, but it was different this time. Thin sunlight streamed through half-shuttered windows; most of the doors in the hallway were ajar, spilling diluted light even out into the hall, but Calista wasn't in the hall.
She was in one of the sitting rooms, standing in the very centre of it. There was a table in front of her, just the right height for her to write at while she stood. She was writing a letter, but she couldn't read the words on the parchment. How would she address it, though, if she didn't know who it was for? She tried to read the name at the top, but the letters blurred as soon as she tried to focus on them. Perhaps if she could recall why she had set out to write the letter, she could remember who it was to…
But she couldn't recall, couldn't even recall beginning the letter. Her earliest memory was of this very moment, standing in front of this odd little table, and signing her name to a sheet of parchment filled with writing she could not read.
How could that be, though? She knew who she was, knew her own past and her family, knew the names of all of her friends, but it was as if the knowledge was part of her body, or held in the blood that ran through her veins; something she had always had, but had no memory of actually experiencing first-hand.
She looked around the room for inspiration, as if some object within it would jog her memory, but everything in the room was meaningless. An ivory sofa, an oriental-looking rug over a polished medium-wood floor, the little table she wrote at, and a smaller version of it that held a plant, in the corner. She turned back to her letter, at a loss…
Except, the letter was gone, and so was the table she'd been writing it at. Impossible… she checked the pockets of her robes, but they were empty. She looked under the rug, underneath and behind the sofa, but the letter seemed to have vanished as suddenly as she had begun writing it. Frowning, she approached the only other object in the room she had not yet closely examined for clues: the plant stand.
When she approached it, she wa surprised that she had not recognised the small blue flowers from a distance. They were forget-me-nots, of course. She reached out, fingered a delicate stem -
- a prick of pain, and she looked at her finger in surprise; a bead of bright blood welled up from her fingertip; but forget-me-nots didn't have thorns -
They weren't forget-me-nots anymore, though. The plant had transformed, or been replaced, with something else, something that Calista was familiar enough with that it sent an instant tremor of alarm along all of her nerves. Aconite. The mother of poisons… but aconite shouldn't have thorns, either. She separated the leaves carefully, peered at the stems. She didn't see any thorns, so what had pricked her? She looked at her finger again, as if for proof that the injury had even occurred, but already the skin had healed, leaving nothing but a whispery-pale white line behind, the memory of a scar.
The door to the sitting room slammed; Calista started, whirling to face the sound, and then her heart sank, heavy like lead, even though she could still feel it, beating wildly in her throat, against her skin. She was here, in the room, and Calista had no idea how or when she'd arrived.
Bellatrix smiled, fixing cold eyes on Calista, who suddenly found that she was rooted to the spot, couldn't move her legs no matter how badly she wanted to run; but where would she run, anyway? There was only the one door, and Bellatrix was between her and it.
'Hello again, my child,' Bellatrix crooned softly, and Calista felt a shiver trail its way from the back of her neck to the center of her spine, where it transformed into a searing heat, and an icy chill at the same time. Oh gods, there was something… something awful, Calista could feel it lingering, hungry, at the edges of her memory. Something she almost remembered, a memory that had once embedded itself in a pain very much like this…
'You've grown,' Bellatrix continued, advancing slowly towards her. 'I wonder if… perhaps you are not so useless, after all. It's been very difficult to reach you; you've learned a few tricks, haven't you, pet?'
'Leave me alone,' Calista whispered, but her lips didn't move. Still, Bellatrix must have heard her somehow, because she laughed, a low, throaty sound that managed to appeal and revulse simultaneously. She stepped closer to Calista, closing the distance between them.
'I didn't name you for a Greek nymph,' she said conversationally. 'I named you for precisely what you are: a beautiful vessel. Beautiful, because you were mine alone, once…'
She placed her hand, cold as the grave, on Calista's cheek, and Calista recoiled, twisting her face away from her mother's, trying to summon the will to snap her eyes shut, but finding it immensely difficult.
'You're stronger than you were before,' Bellatrix whispered, caressing her daughter's cheek in as close to a loving gesture as she had ever offered the child. 'You'll shut me out again, I think. But know this, daughter. You can't truly leave me behind, not tonight and not ever, because a vessel is what you are. How can you escape the very blood of your veins?'
'My blood is my own,' Calista said, but again, the words were only between them, because she could not make her mouth move, could not make her voice fill the space between them. A burning, hot-and-cold pain continued to mount, searing at the skin of her back, but she pressed on, trying to ignore it. 'And so is my name, and everything else.'
'Oh, yes,' Bellatrix mused mirthfully, 'It's all your own; that's why you can't even direct your own voice, in your own dream. That's why I'm here, even though you profess to wish so desperately that I weren't.'
Something that had been flirting with the edges of Calista's mind, licking its way through the physical pain she felt, was unearthed, then. If it was as Bellatrix was implying, if some part of Calista's psyche, something in her blood, was allowing her mother to be here, then surely that meant… if it was still truly Calista's dream, then couldn't she summon the person who had given her the other half of her blood here, as well?
She called out, with her mind, the same way she'd spoken into Bellatrix's, but instead of looking into her mother's cold grey eyes, she imagined the jet depths of her father's instead, imagined looking at him and asking him to come, guiding him down the narrow hallway of this strange, maze-like house, imagined pointing out which door she and Bellatrix were behind. And it must have worked, somehow, because the pain was dissolving, and here he was -
He was in the room, but it wasn't an impersonal sitting room in a vacant house at all. It was a plushly appointed bedroom, with her clothes in the bureau and her own body on the bed, and she was squinting as she sat up quickly, because the room was brightly lit by an overhead chandelier. She was wearing her nightdress, not her robes, and there was no sign of Bellatrix at all, no sign that her dream had even happened…
Except for the frantic look in her father's eyes, the solid grip of his hands on her shoulders, the hoarse, sleep-roughened fear in his voice as he asked her a question, again and again.
"Calista, what happened? What happened?"
"I-" she started to speak, but it was just like her dream - no words came out of her mouth, though her lips did move. She lost the image of her father, the pretty room, in a blur of tears, saw only the vague impression of light for an instant, until the tears rolled down her cheeks, hot and real, and her vision swam back into focus.
"A dream," she managed, in a whisper; she realised that her throat hurt, and she was very thirsty.
"Severus?" Lucius' voice, nearly as tired-sounding as Severus', cut across the room; Calista's eyes darted to the doorway, and she saw Narcissa there, worried eyes fixed on her face. Lucius hovered behind her, just visible over her shoulder, though he wasn't looking directly into the room.
Severus exhaled, looked towards the doorway. "Everything's all right," he said, and he sounded a good deal calmer than his eyes had looked to Calista, only a fraction of a moment ago. "She had a nightmare… it hasn't happened in quite some time, but she'll be fine. I'm sorry she woke you."
"Don't worry about that," Narcissa said, dipping her head forward, into the room. "Is there anything I can get you, darling? A glass of water, perhaps?"
She wanted to send her aunt and uncle away, immediately; she hadn't decided yet if their presence made her afraid or only embarrassed, but she didn't welcome it either way. Severus nodded, though.
"I think water would be helpful," he said, and Narcissa retreated. She returned a moment later, with an ornate pitcher and two glasses.
"May I come in?" she asked, and Severus nodded again. Calista pulled the blankets around her, suddenly cold. She still didn't think she could speak.
Narcissa filled one of the glasses, and set the pitcher and the other glass down on the nightstand, next to the snake hairclip and earrings that Calista had set there before she went to sleep. She supposed that must have been only hours ago, but it felt like a lifetime. Narcissa handed the full glass to Calista; the pitcher must have been charmed to keep it cold, because it was like ice. She drained half the glass in one sip, and it relieved some of the burning in her throat.
"Anything else, love?" Narcissa asked her softly, kindly.
Calista felt herself blush, and shook her head. "Th-thank you," she managed.
"I'll leave you two, then," her aunt said, "I hope you feel yourself again in the morning, Calista. Good night."
"'Night," Calista replied, locking her jaw so it wouldn't chatter; the ice water had certainly not made her feel any warmer.
"Sleep well," came Lucius' voice from the doorway again, and it sounded almost kind. Then both of them left, Narcissa easing the door closed behind her, leaving Calista and her father alone in the well-lit room.
"I woke everyone up?" Calista said, in quiet horror. Her voice came out hoarse, but she was finally able to speak a full sentence.
"You were screaming," Severus said quietly. He sat on the edge of her bed, regarding her face solemnly. "What were you dreaming about, Calista?"
She shivered. What did he think she'd been dreaming about? She didn't want to say it, not here, in this house where her mother was spoken of with affection, reverence even.
"Her," she said, her voice barely audible even to herself.
He kept his eyes on her, waiting for her to say more. She hugged her blanket tighter around herself. "Is it… is it safe to say, here?"
Severus reached into the pocket of his robes, which he had thrown on quickly over his nightshirt, withdrew his wand, and flicked it in a practised motion, casting a Silencing Spell in a bubble around the two of them.
"Things seem different this year," he said, "I don't believe you need to fear Lucius anymore, though that doesn't necessarily mean you should trust him, either. Be that as it it may, no one will hear beyond the boundaries of this spell, so that should set you at ease. Now, tell me: what were you dreaming about?"
"The house again, the one from my other dreams. Only… this time, I was alone, and all the doors were open… at least, I could have sworn I was alone… there was a plant…"
She closed her eyes briefly, trying to recall the precise timeline of the dream, but it was hard, when her mind kept showing her the cold grey of her mother's eyes, letting her taste the ghost of the pain that had burned halfway down her back. What had come before that?
"A letter," she said, "I was writing a letter."
"To whom?"
"I don't know," Calista said, "I can't remember. I don't think I could remember in the dream, either."
"Do you know what it was about?"
She shook her head. "I couldn't read the words. It… I think it disappeared, after a minute. It was gone, and I couldn't find it. There was… there was a plant in the room, so I went to go look at it…"
She remembered, suddenly, the prick of pain on her index finger. She withdrew her hand from the confines of her blanket, examined it closely. There was nothing at all unusual about it, no scar and certainly no blood.
"It looked like forget-me-nots," she said, "But it had thorns… then when I looked again, it had turned into aconite."
She chanced a glance up at him, hoping for reassurance; but what she saw in his expression had the opposite effect. He looked pale, and alarm sparked behind his eyes.
"It doesn't make sense," she said, "Aconite doesn't have thorns, either, I know that…" she shivered. "I was trying to figure out if the plant meant anything important, and then - and then she was there, in the room. I didn't… I didn't even know she was in the house. She… she closed the door, and she came towards me…"
"This was the same room as before?" he asked, tensely, "With the windows? She got through the door?"
"No," she said, "I mean, yes, she got through, but it wasn't the same room. I never went upstairs, this time. I was just in a sitting room, on the ground level. I didn't know anyone was coming."
"But you must have had something between you," he said, "If not a door, then what - your cloak, again?"
"No," she said, quietly. "There was nothing. She came right up to me, touched my face…"
Severus cursed, then reached over and poured himself a glass of water with hands that shook, just slightly. That terrified Calista more than the dream itself had.
"Dad, how did she reach me?" she asked, nervously.
"Let me ask you something," he countered, "Was there anything else… unusual about the dream? Any… any images, or sensations, that seemed different from previous nightmares?"
"There was… there was this pain," she said, and she could feel her jaw wanting to tremble again. She swallowed forcefully, tensed her muscles to try and prevent her teeth from chattering. "Right in the middle of my back, where… where I have the scars… It felt real."
Severus set his water down on the nightstand, not having taken even a single sip. A bit of it sloshed over the edge of the glass when it made contact with the surface of the table.
"Anything… anything else?"
"No," she said, "Except… except she was talking to me. And I couldn't talk back… I mean, I could think things, and she would understand them, but I couldn't make my voice work."
"What was she saying?"
"I don't know… lots of things. The… the kind of stuff she always does, I guess."
His nostrils flared. "Give me specifics, Calista."
"She said… she said…" She frowned, furrowed her brow, trying to find the scene in her mind again. She searched her own mind for the memory of it, gathered it to the forefront of her mind, and looked at her father. "Here, I'll show you. It's in the first layer of my mind."
She felt him tap her outermost barrier almost immediately, sensed him easing his way through it. She felt him breach it, knew when he had landed on the correct memory, saw him turning it over and over, examining it. The memory replayed itself for him; Calista bit down on her tongue, afraid she would cry out again.
"It doesn't make sense," he said, gently withdrawing from her mind. "An attack like that… she shouldn't have been able to reach you, not all of a sudden, not with your barriers in place."
"Does it have something to do with the plant?" she ventured.
"Of course it does," he snapped, but she knew his irritation wasn't directed at her. "But even that - she shouldn't have been able to manage all that, not unless she'd been in your dreams before, laying some sort of groundwork - but you haven't had any others recently…"
Calista shifted uneasily, darted a glance at his face, and then fixed her stare on the floral pattern of the blanket she had wrapped around herself.
"I… I did dream about her recently," she admitted in a small voice.
"When?" he said, "While we were here? Last night? You should have come to me, even if you were nervous about Lucius or Narcissa overhearing."
"It… it wasn't while we were here," she said, "It was… a few weeks ago. A Monday, after Astronomy. And then… and then, the next night, too. It was just… just the old house dream again, the one with the windowed room, and the door she was trying to get in."
There was a short silence, and then Severus was glaring at her, teeth bared.
"What?" he breathed, and if she hadn't already seen it in his face when she chanced a glance at him, she would have heard in his voice that he was furious, and this time it was with her.
"I meant to tell you," she said defensively, "But I had classes, and homework, and… and other things… and I thought I'd just tell you later, but then more time had gone by, and I… I just forgot."
"You know very well," he said, forcefully, "You've always known, you must come to me straightaway when you dream about her, especially when it seems as though she's trying to infiltrate your mind, and yet you have two dreams in a row where she's trying to open a door in your mind, and you 'forget' to tell me?"
"It didn't seem that important," she said, hating the fact that she could hear tears threatening to choke her voice again. "It was just like before, I kept her out by holding my cloak up to the window."
"How soon after that did you wake up?"
"I don't know," Calista said, "A… a little while, I guess. It… it felt like I was holding the door shut for ages -"
Catching sight of his expression, she hastened to add - "But it was fine, it was easy enough to hold her back. I did it; it's like she said, I'm getting stronger."
"Yes," Severus said, not quite suppressing a hiss, "Yes, you are getting stronger, but evidently not any wiser. Since you weren't looking at her while you guarded the door you really have no way of knowing if she was there the whole time, do you?"
"Of course she was, the door kept rattling-"
"A parlour trick, in the realm of legilimency," he said scornfully, "All she had to do was keep rattling at that door, and you thought you were safe - I'd bet you Galleons to grassweed she was roaming through the rest of the house at will, anchoring herself to rooms that were suddenly unlocked when you directed all of your energy to guarding a single door."
Calista felt herself pale, and a shiver ran through her body. "How could I possibly know that?" she whispered.
"You couldn't," Severus snarled, "Which is precisely why you're supposed to come to me, immediately, when you have a dream like that."
"I meant to," she said again, "I just… I got busy, and then I forgot. It wasn't on purpose."
"I'm not certain if you truly understand," he said, "It's not only your own safety you jeopardised by not coming to me; it's the safety of everyone in the entire school. If Bellatrix succeeded in taking control of your mind again -"
"She can't, can she?"
"I don't know. But if she can, if she did, she could start murdering students…"
"What do I do now, then?" she asked, her voice small, defeated. "If she… if she did that thing you said, if she anchored herself…"
"Anchor points," he said, "It's something like a bookmark you create in someone else's mind, so you can find your place again quickly. They create something of an access point for the infiltrator that leaves them, but they can be removed. If they're found."
"So… is that what you're going to do? Find them, and get rid of them?"
Severus considered his daughter for a moment. Calista felt as though he were reading her face, assessing her by whatever he found there.
"No, I'm not," he said, quietly. "You seem to think you are strong enough to hold her back, all on your own."
"But I didn't mean -"
"So I'm going to teach you how to find them," he continued, and there was a finality in his words that told Calista there was no point in arguing, "And you are going to remove them."
"But you said… isn't that legilimency?"
"It is," he said, "And I need you to understand how difficult it is to perform, so perhaps you won't take it so lightly the next time Bellatrix threatens to infiltrate your mind."
"That's…" Calista felt her throat tighten again, sensed the warning pinpricks of impending tears and forced them down. "Dad, that's not fair. I don't take it lightly, it's the most terrifying thing… how can you even say that?"
He softened, slightly, put his hand to her back. "What am I meant to think, when you neglect to tell me of her attempts to infiltrate your mind?"
She was reminded, suddenly and powerfully, of similar nights, when she was quite small. Back then, he had offered comfort even when she thought she didn't want it. She imagined, for a moment, wiggling closer to him, laying her head on his shoulder, letting him comfort her again. She thought he probably would, even if he was a bit cross with her.
But there was something in her, something left over, perhaps, from her early childhood, when she'd been determined not to get close to anyone; something that made her want to take two steps back for every forward step she took, even now. That something had been slithering through her mind ever since the heartfelt conversation she'd shared with her father in his quarters, weeks ago, making her feel like she had to affect a distance between them again.
So she couldn't seek comfort, not one smidgen more than he was already giving her. She stood up, telling herself that she was getting up for a reason that had nothing to do with the ghost of the jaded, feral child that still lived somewhere inside her. "It's not… the dreams aren't my only problem," she said, because there was a larger part of her that had already overcome that ghost.
She crossed the room, opened the wardrobe, and reached into the pocket of the blue robes she'd worn the first day of Christmas break. She withdrew the letter she'd stolen from Olivia.
She wasn't within the boundary of the Silencing Spell anymore, but it didn't seem to matter. Severus himself didn't seem particularly concerned with being overheard, and she had nearly shown the letter to Narcissa, anyway.
"Olivia knows who my mother is," she said, "And I'm worried she's going to tell everyone. She… she slipped a copy of that article, the one from when she was arrested, into one of my schoolbooks. And then I found this…"
She passed the letter to him. "I found this in Olivia's things, the morning before we came here."
His eyes scanned the parchment. "The last two paragraphs," Calista said, and she saw his eyes skip to that part, and narrow. He folded the letter back up, and held it out to her, holding her gaze.
"What do you plan to do?"
"I was going to show this letter to Aunt Narcissa," Calista said, "I thought… well, if she wants her family to be noticed, I might as well give her what she wants, but on my terms."
He considered her, and nodded. "That seems reasonable."
"It… it does?"
"As long as you are prepared to face whatever comes of it. Perhaps it will lead to the disgrace of your classmate's family; or perhaps it will turn out that Miss Avril's mother is indeed a connection that Lucius will consider valuable, and if that's the case, you must expect that he'll pardon whatever your classmate's done to you in favour of his own interests."
"What do you think I should do?"
He kept his eyes fixed on her face, steady and, unfortunately, unreadable. "I think you've made it quite clear that you're eager to make your own decisions."
"That sounds like you're cross with me," she said, suspiciously.
"Well, if you're speaking in regards to failing to inform me that you'd been dreaming about Bellatrix again, then yes, I'm quite cross with you. Concerning this letter, though…" he sighed. "Sometime in the last year, you've started growing up. It's Christmas Break already and you haven't earned a single detention. You've chosen to make friends that influence you positively rather than negatively, you're managing a full courseload quite well, and even Professor McGonagall has only encouraging things to say about you this year. I almost can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually believe you'll handle this appropriately."
"My friends," Calista said, "That's one of the things I'm afraid of… I don't want them to find out who my mother is, but I feel like there's nothing I can do to prevent them from finding out, now that Olivia knows."
"Calista," he said, and he tried to sound gentle, "You must realise that people are going to find out eventually."
"Why? They never will, if Olivia keeps her mouth shut."
"Think about this for a moment," he said, "What will you do when Draco starts at Hogwarts? Pretend not to know him?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "Maybe."
"What is it about your friends finding out that frightens you?"
"Isn't that obvious?" she said, climbing back onto the bed, and pulling the blankets around her again. "Some of my friends are Muggle-born. I doubt they'd want to be friends with someone whose mother is known for torturing and murdering their kind."
"I would think they'd know you well enough by now to realise you aren't like her."
"Aren't I though?" she asked bitterly, "Ancient Runes, and extra essays? I had no idea."
"That hardly indicates that you share her character," Severus said. "I think your friends will understand the difference."
"What if they don't?"
"Well," Severus said, bluntly, "There's not a whole lot you can do, in that case, except find new friends, but I don't think that will be necessary. As I see it, it's in your best interests to reveal the truth to your friends, in your own way, before your classmate Miss Avril does it for you. Do it 'on your terms', as you said earlier."
"I don't think I can," she said, solemnly. "I'm too afraid of what they'll think."
"I know it seems difficult," he said, "But consider how it might feel to know that Miss Avril holds nothing, absolutely nothing, over you anymore."
She frowned, considering his words. It would be nice, freeing, to not have to fear Olivia's next move, but the price she'd pay might be more dear than Calista was comfortable with. If only Olivia didn't know, then Calista wouldn't need to worry.
"You should try to get some more sleep," Severus said, standing. "Tomorrow, I'll tell Lucius and Narcissa that we're going back to the castle a few days early, and we'll work on detecting and removing any of Bellatrix's influence in your mind. In the meantime, consider your options, in regard to the other matter. You can come and talk to me if you need to work anything out. Or… you can always write to your aunt, if you don't want to talk to me."
He sounded as though he were resigned to the latter condition, and Calista thought she could hear a measure of sadness in his voice.
"We can talk tomorrow," she said, "While you're teaching me legilimency."
He cut a path to the door, paused before opening it to go out. He turned his head back towards her, and nodded. "Tomorrow, then. Good night."
"'Night, Dad."
He opened the door, and just as he stepped over the threshold, Calista said one more thing.
"Thank you for coming when I called."
She thought for a moment that he hadn't heard, but when he tipped his wand towards the chandelier on his way out, dimming the lights again, he answered her, quietly but sincerely.
"I always will, Calista."