Chapter 16
"Could It Be"
~
What would you say if all your questions could be answered
No mysteries anymore
No alleys left unexplored
Would that angel be a saviour
To be adored
Would that demon be a traitor
To be warded away
Would you say yes
To eternal bliss
A happy state
A godly kiss
Would you say no
To forever stood still
A place that never exists
A way ignoring all else
She awaits the question
Eyes fatefully cast down
Wanting to accept
What is hers from the years
Gone by, idly passing time
Why does no one ask her
Why does no help come
When she ever asks them
Crying out for justice,
A revenge upon herself
Why does no one ask her
Is it
Could it
Be
Not truly,
A question
That she is denied
That life is how it is
Because life is how it is
That there's no one else to it
~~
##Elianne##
The ceiling twisted and turned, raging like the storm that it mirrored.
Elianne pulled her head down from staring mesmerized at it and paid some attention to the sumptuous feast that the house elves had prepared.
The meal was fabulous and the hall was decorated with carved pumpkin lanterns. At the start real bats had flown over their heads spelling out happy Halloween.
Lucretia was still debating with Greg Chelmsfod about how they'd managed to get the bat to do that. She never gave up when she thought she was right. Even being a first year. She had a will of iron. That didn't earn her many favours from most people.
But Elianne knew she had a tender heart inside and a loyalty that could be compared to none.
She'd noticed all evening so far and over the past few weeks that they'd got to know one another, that Lucretia was fast building a reputation and didn't know it.
Up and down their own table people were giving her looks, unexplainable except for one thing.
She went against the grain, of the crowd, the way things were. And no one liked change. Sad that the wizarding world itself was caught in a nostalgic era where all was golden as before, because Lucretia had missed that and had no idea what dreams she shattered by attempting such things.
They looked at her with contempt. For even being a friend to her.
Elianne didn't like what that meant. But she knew what it was.
She might have said something if not for Flora's antics.
Flora got up from the table and walked over to the other side, sitting between an unimpressed Damien and a Leander who eagerly moved aside to make way for her.
She carried two cups of pumpkin juice.
"I thought you might like some juice, so I brought some over."
Damien scowled.
"We already have pumpkin juice over here. Everybody does."
"Sure, I'd like some." Leander smiled graciously accepting the glass.
Flora handed it over roughly, with a fake cheery smile back at him for all of two seconds.
He smiled less sincerely to her after that.
But never the less he carried on being curtious. He answered her questions. All her questions. All of them about Damien.
"So, how come you're on our, Damien's table? Aren't you Slytherin or something?"
He smiled at her politely this time. Losing his cool bit by bit.
"Yes, I'm in Slytherin but I wanted to sit with my brother. Why not?"
She made a small facial contortion at that, unsure what to do or say in answer.
"So, what does Damien like to do?"
His eyes grew colder.
"Why don't you ask Damien?"
She answered in a flash, the obvious reason of course.
"Oh, he's far too busy to talk to me. But I know he'd love for you to tell me."
Eyebrow went up.
"Right. Okay. He's into sports mainly. Quidditch is his passion, same as any boy our age. I like Quidditch too. I'm hoping to get on the Slytherin team next year as keeper."
Leander signed wistfully at that dream, that hope.
Flora burst his bubble.
"Really? Thought you'd be bit scrawny for anything like that. What about Damien? What else does he like? Is he going to be on the Gryffindor team next year do you think? Is he good?"
Her never ending florrent of questions was stopped abruptly by a hand that yanked her out of her seat.
Anastis glared at her standing straight next to her.
Flora glared back. Thinking for a moment.
"I'll be right back Damien."
That was it.
Something snapped in the head of the principle watcher of this pained conversation.
She ignored the clear look from her sister across the table. Flora had done it.
All eyes from the table where on Anastis.
The quiet Ravenclaw who had for the rest of the time been sitting next to her Gryffindor twin. The girl who spoke up once a lesson if lucky. Who had barely any friends not related to her. The girl who was meek and mild and tolerated all of life's negative little nuances.
"Why don't you leave my cousin alone"
Flora completely missed the statement and it seemed the point to it.
"I don't have to leave him alone. I can sit next to Damien if I want to.
Anastis's jaw jarred together. Teeth set against each other agonizingly.
"I meant Leander."
Flora missed the point by a mile.
"I wasn't doing anything to Leander. Why would I bother with him?"
"YES, why would you bother with him? I mean, he's the one who acts kind and talks to you and actually seems to recognise your presence in the room, why on earth would you think about him when you want the wonderfully unattainable couldn't care less about you in a million years DAMIEN. They're identical twins but NO. You choose the one who hates you and then you go on and treat the other who adores you, like a little pawn in a game to attract the other. A game that if you had two eyes and a brain you'd see isn't funny in the least and is never going to work."
Flora drew breath in sharply at the incensed Anastis.
"You had no right to insult me. I didn't do anything wrong. It's not my fault Leander's a boring toad and Damien's……….nice. I don't care about what Leander thinks and it's nothing to do with you."
"Hah! Nice! You really are a complete airhead or delusional at best. I hate you. It's my right because it's my family and you are the one who has no right. No right to be at Hogwarts. No one wants you here. You a dumb flirt who might as well have been a squib!"
At the end of her rant, Flora was speechless. An event in itself. Her mouth open in pure shock.
Anastis's anger seethed, and as the final affront she slapped Flora bang in the middle of her daintily blushed cheek before running out of the hall in tears.
+++++
##Hermione##
She curled up on the floor infront of the fire. Letters in hand.
The flames flickered this way and that. Uncertain where to go, what to do next.
Out in the distance the storm raged, ruining the sky til ragged. The horizon full only of dark black and grey clouds making the air fizzle with electricity. With power.
She leafed through the letters. All written by the same hand. No particular message. Symbols. Signs. That was what they were.
She knew them. Every one. They meant what they'd been intended to.
The coming of what was so long in coming she'd by now hoped it away. Far away, far from her desire. Long gone unlike it was supposed to be.
She threw the letters in the hearth hastily and sank into the quilt she had wrapped herself in further. Wishing away the storm. Wanting the situation to be gone. Anything but what was going on. Anything but what she could feel happening.
She drew up all the emotion in her and forced it to the front. She couldn't be plain and clear. She needed her anger to see her through. Needed it to dissuade herself from being foolish. Can't trust the heart. But she knew ignoring it couldn't be done. Which was why she thought of all went wrong, all that could inspire that shred of hate.
She could not forget when it happened. In the presence she would feel that hate because in this day it was all she could be sure of, all that he'd left. It was his legacy, something to return.
+++++
##Elianne##
Lucretia walked over to the table, to their little group.
"I saw Anastis heading towards the lake."
Dido immediately spoke up, ever concerned for her friends.
"What? But there's a storm and then there's that thing, that prophecy. It's dangerous out."
Lucretia sat down among them.
"I know, but we can't let her go off and get hurt. It's not good out there with the storm. None of the teachers saw the fight, they're all rather very merry and if we tell them then she'll get punished."
Cassy didn't look like she liked the prospect of either of those alternatives.
"We can't let her stay out there. There's that thing out there, whatever it is that Trelawney said is happening. And you said Snape was worried. We can't leave her out there BUT I don't think we should go either."
"Cassy… "
Elianne toned out of the topic, into her own thoughts. She noticed Flora was ignoring them because they still considered Anastis a friend. Dido, Cassy and Lucretia were debating whether or not to follow Anastis whilst she pondered over the note.
It had predicted something. Something she'd been warned to stay out of.
Question was whether it was for her own safety, to make sure she doesn't save anyone, for the successfulness of whatever it was to happen. And whatever it was, Anastis was out there too. If it was bad and Anastis didn't know, that was a far greater danger for her than any of them. They'd be prepared at least.
"I think we should go."
Lucretia and Dido looked at Cassy.
"That's that then, we have you outnumbered. I think we should split up to look for her but I guess you two at least are too worried to go alone, so why don't you three go to the lake whilst I check her favourite spot, that bench. She could be either, so we out to check both. I'll meet you all up at the lake. Come on. Here we go. Let's sneak out."
Lucretia headed finished talking and they all nodded, resolute in the plan, heading to the doors and on to find their friend.
+++++
##Anastis##
Anastis ran, fists clenched, towards the lake. The rain beat down fast onto her and halfway there she changed direction. Gathering speed she sprinted, cloak over head covering her to the potting sheds. No one would look in there. She didn't want to be found.
She'd ruined any chance of friendship with any of the Gryffindors, she knew she had. Insult one and you insult them all.
But Flora had been such an arrogant self-assured blackthorn.
She'd humiliated her cousin Leander too.
He'd never asked her to say anything. Couldn't help it though, Flora thought she could treat him like dirt to get to Damien. Damien who she knew for a fact would never date Flora and had no intention of even giving her the time of day.
Flora used them.
And if she'd left it down to Aryan, she would have gotten her comeuppance in a far more discreet and importantly untraceable way.
Now she'd spoilt it all.
Blown up what could have been a little tiff into an inter-house feud.
She resigned at that last conclusion and wrapped her soaked robes around her.
Suddenly the castle was very appealing.
Not the great hall perhaps.
The common room or the library maybe. Somewhere out of the way where no one would find her.
+++++
##Elianne##
Outside they regretted the decision.
The rain pounded down on them like icy bullets tohugh only water.
They peered, searching the misty horizon for any sign of the lost girl as they walked closer and closer to the lake.
They stopped automatically half way there, no sign of her anywhere.
Elianne turned around to face the other two friends
"What should we do now?"
Cassandra caught her tight around the arms, shaking her slowly. Eyes wide open at her.
"There's a snake in the grass, there's a snake in grass"
"Ahhhh!"
Dido screamed. Jumping around on the spot she danced and jigged avoiding the imaginary serpent.
Elianne stood on the spot. Ignoring any idea that there could be a snake
"No. Stop it. DIDO! There isn't any snake. Not really."
"What?" thoroughly annoyed she grabbed hold of Cassandra and shouted at them "Why would she say that. Cassy, you trelch, how could …"
Dido didn't see it. Too absorbed in her own horror and anger.
"Its not her, she's in a vision."
Dido affronted Elianne, brow creased in puzzlement.
"But she talked to you?"
Elianne walked away from them, a step further from the lake.
"I doubt she meant it for me"
Cassy came out of her incoherent mumbling and looked right at her, into the depths of her mind, with a chilling ease.
"She's here, she's in here, can't see because she's in the grass. Eliza, Eliza, the little girl, outside to see, playing in the rain."
Elianne stepped back further. Whilst dido ever ready to nurse, tried to egg Cassandra out of her state.
"Cassy, you don't make any sense, if you can hear me and you know something please tell me."
Nothing.
Elianne thought, walking around in a circle. Thinking upon the situation.
"She won't come out of it til its finished. She doesn't have any choice."
Dido took one moment to look up from Cassandra, worry evident on her face.
"What about Anastis, do you think she'll find her?"
Elianne thought for a split second. Better to tell her the best. Or she'll panic.
"Yeah, probably. Lucretia'll be fine." She tried to deflect reflection off of that detail
"We can't help anyway. We have to stay with Cassy, we can't take her back in there like this. They'll all see. She'd be devastated if everyone knew."
She ignored her own fears, concentrating on Cassy. That mattered. They could help that. Besides that Anastis could look after herself fine. Not as well as Aryan but good enough. She knew how to use her wand and how to do some simple defensive spells. It wasn't like she was completely unguarded.
It wasn't enough for Dido, she didn't give up on the argument.
"I don't like it. We can't just leave them out here. It's not right"
"Don't worry"
Too late for that though, Elianne thought. It's Dido's life occupation after all.
"I mean its not right, something isn't right here. You heard what Cassy was saying. There's danger around. Otherwise she'd be fine and not going crazy. Remember!"
"Yeah, I do. But we can't leave her. There's no choice."
It wasn't like she could forget. There was a lot she couldn't forget.
The prophecy, the note, the ominous atmosphere.
The tiresome rain that hit her head constantly out here.
Through the rain they saw a light figure emerging.
Lucretia wet and anxious returned, initially scanning them, seeing nothing wrong.
"Hey. Can't find her. Can barely see in this storm, the rains thick and hard…"
"…And odd" Dido added, glancing with a now fully conscious Cassandra to the field
"What?" Elianne and Lucretia both lacking the understanding of what the others where getting at, what they where looking at.
Cassy spoke up croakily, for the first time they saw she'd recovered
"The rain's moving in rivulets, and it's like its silver, mercury. Is that normal for Halloween rain?"
Elianne swallowed hard. This was what wasn't right.
"I don't think Halloween changes the properties of rain." Lucretia's sarcasm pierced the shattering rhythm of the falling rain.
Only Dido dared to hazard a faint answer
"Maybe the rains always been like that but we never noticed. I mean it's never been quite like this before, like the storm. And usually we avoid it." her voice edged optimistically upwards as she said so.
Elianne glanced down to her clothes, which sheened with an almost translucent layer
"Then why is it running in streams up towards the castle?"
They all looked at her. None worried anymore. None concerned. All staring like she was dumb.
"Water usually runs in little rivers. Duh."
They didn't understand. That wasn't the point.
Silver, metallic liquid.
Liquid, not water.
Not water, not rain.
Not running down. Running somewhere and in a suspicious way, one not becoming of water, more suitable of what she dreaded she'd find out here tonight. Trouble.
She looked at it and explained the strangeness she saw in fewer words.
"Not when the grounds sloped to drain into the lake it doesn't."
+++++
##Anastis##
Anastis slunk through the cold corridors shivering. She needed to find a fire fast, she'd catch pneumonia otherwise.
Her ears were alert. She was aware of some one following her. Not footsteps. But there was a dripping, much like the noise she had been making when she'd first entered the castle wet.
The ghosts did like to frequent this corridor though. Especially some of the more bizarre ghosts. Thankfully not the duke. Nor Peeves.
She felt a sudden draft of warmth and turned into a room that looked like a quiet study area, possibly a former professors office.
It had a glorious fire, she grinned in delight at the heat on her fingers as she stood in front of it.
Certainly she'd found a good room for hiding.
When she could feel her hands once more, she looked around the room, happy at its mere warm ambience.
She gazed over to a desk, and to her great surprise saw upon it a silver grey butterfly.
A beautiful creature, basking in the light from the lamp near the tabletop.
She reached out and it walked onto her hand.
She was amazed at its colour, it had a magical sheen to it. Not unlike that of the pictures of fairies she'd seen in books.
Maybe it was a magical creature.
Maybe it wasn't a good idea to have picked it up.
But it looked harmless enough.
Her amazement quickly turned to terror as it dissolved on her into a shiny fluid, with streams of the same substance arriving to her body from all over the area she stood in. in a few moments it had covered her in a silky fine web that masked her whole body, freezing it and all it might have given away. No sound escaped the net.
The net which was carried off by the dark lights the rest of the material had transformed into.
The window blew open, the force of the wind that strong.
And out the window went the whole package. The trap now covered in the fairies glow and looking not too unlike another ominous storm cloud. A cloud that flew out into the distance
+++++
##Elianne##
"Where's it going?"
"As if I know any better. We just have to follow it."
"But it's going too fast."
Dido panted, out of breath from their constant pace since that instant they'd known what was wrong.
"Run faster. We have to get to it, Anastis might be in trouble."
Lucretia frowned
"We don't even know where she is. She could be outside still. And we don't know what this is, it could be fine."
Elianne couldn't believe they didn't get it. she could feel it. this was what was wrong.
She knew it.
"It's not normal at least. Doesn't that convince you?"
"No."
Elianne was the first to stop at the door.
"Then maybe this will."
The others caught up with them and entered the room, rushing to the window.
"What is that?"
Their question answered as soon as they asked it.
The last of the metal like rain formed into what they saw quite clearly for a while as a fairy. Silvery-grey, tiny and fragile. It flashed with a dark glow that matched that of those in the distant cloud.
"They took Anastis."
"How do you know?"
Dido turned her back a minute from the scene in the sky to ask her, curious and hoping it was flawed, that Elianne was wrong. She could see that hope in Dido's eyes, like so many she'd seem it in before. In Hermione, every year, every day, for just an instant.
A tear crept from her eye. It wasn't flawed. She had that feeling.
And then there was proof.
Anastis's silver bracelet slept on the cold stone floor. Her horoscope sign pointing up on the mantle of it. The bracelet unique to her. Her name engraved on it. Given by her preciously treasured mother; the bracelet that never left her sight.
+++++
##Hermione##
She'd resigned to sitting out on the patio.
In the storm.
She liked the feeling of being in the rain.
It helped her feel passionate.
It helped the anger she craved to be.
The lighting was getting closer.
It some how warned of what was.
The danger of the night.
Just like the power in the air.
It was a night that would change things.
She'd been expecting it for weeks.
It had seemed almost tangible when she'd met Ron again.
Like it was a condition of this.
The happy reunion.
Now it seemed further from her than ever.
The build-up being so great, so long.
Now she'd given up and it was coming still.
Not dependant on her. He'd come anyway.
As if it was fated. In the stars. In the sky.
She'd watched the sky, watched it intensely.
If it was in the sky then where was it?
Why?
Why now and why generally, did all this have to happen?
Life was never normal, never uneventful. Nothing lay settled.
Everything got disturbed at some stage.
He stood in front of her.
No expression on his face.
She stared at him coldly, standing at a distance.
It was pouring down. This didn't make her move.
He stood a fair distance away not daring to move any closer.
It would be a shock, he knew. Best not to expect much from her.
He pointed to the necklace that she held draped on her hand
"I thought that would be a good indicator. That I was coming back. Giving it back, I hoped you might have made the connection."
"I didn't know you had found it" was her only reply
"You don't believe I'm real, do you?"
She replied curtly "I don't believe you're in my imagination."
"So you think I'm an imposter?"
"It wouldn't be that hard to believe. A lot of things have happened before"
Never was that any truer. This itself was in the realm of the impossible. She couldn't assume it was him, that he was the same or sane; that he was anything of what he used to be.
"I found it a few months after you first lost it. I got up early every morning before lessons and searched for it." He answered her unasked question plainly, then his voice turned bitter "Not that you would have noticed. You were too busy avoiding me."
She said nothing.
This provoked him to continue.
"And in seventh year we were the perfect best friends. Weren't we?" it wasn't a question he said, the words were forced to make a statement out of it, that sounded every bit as cruel as one of Malfoys old insults.
"And everyone knew we were great friends. Because we were both subconsciously trying our hardest to prove it, that we were great friends." His voice curled at the end of the sentence, creating a gaping silence.
"And when we graduated we were still those wonderful, fantastic friends that we always were. We sent rather formal owls every few weeks just to be nice and you even attended my wedding and smiled politely at everything that went on. And as far as anyone else was concerned we were those best friends. We were the only ones who knew something was wrong, that it had been for years. We were stubborn, denied it. Never tried to fix it."
At last she seemed disturbed enough o say something, raising her volume and tone she asked in that politely demanding way.
"Are you trying to prove something to me or are you just trying to hurt me?"
He walked forward, as to reach out around her arms though he thought better of it and stopped before that.
"I'm trying to say. We've changed. I've changed. I'm Harry Potter. Not the one you recognise. You still know me. But……I'm different now. For one I'm less trusting."
"The years have that effect on everyone" the way she said it meant it
"I suppose. Glad to see it's not confined to just me."
He smiled just a little, a few seconds before that glint in his eye died.
"My point is things happened. Back then. And whilst I've been gone. That changed us. The whole wizard world;"
There was a pause in his speech, a hint of hesitation. Like he was unsure whether to say something.
His eyes flickered and flicked back up to focus on her.
"Things happened then. Things have happened. Things are going to happen."
~
We are one
A chain of two
What you do I do
You broke my heart
And in the consequence
I'll break yours
No point destroying the things you love
You already did a good job
I can't forgive you
For you can't forgive yourself
You deny
It wasn't your fault
But we are you
Even my blame is yours
Even my sin yours
And yours mine
Mine to see
Mine to stop
My fault I did not
Supposed to be strong
But the link is weak
Tenuous
Two halves apart
Somehow
Still better off
Than whole and cast away
Better than together
With our lives set to the stone
The rules we broke
Once
And bound never to do again
Once a victim
Twice a fool
Twice, we get you
~