PAPER CONFINES.
10. / Patriarch Unbidden
✶
The pitch was wrong. Just the ghost of Colette's finger told her so. There were alpine winds in the blow of dust as she swept the piano clean, rooftop peaks of a winter manor glittering in sun-dappled snow.
The Chapdelaines had visited late that year, nearing the end of May, and the question of whether or not they should have gone on holiday at all was still hanging overhead like an anvil on a loose rope.
The war left most things uncertain, and Colette's rein on her life at Beauxbatons had been slipping for months. Threats loomed. Haunting, hushed words under bed-covers, brushing hands, stolen glances in the Bellefeuille dormitory, secrets that dotted up her spine and around her neck.
Faustine hadn't spoken to her in weeks.
So they'd be in Megève for eight days, return for the end-of-year exams, and Colette would cling to the normalcy of the trip knowing she might have none left by the time they came back.
"T'es trop vieux pour ça," she'd said to her brother one night in the cabin, her finger caught in knots at his feet.
Luc's blond curls bounced over his eyes. "Et tu es trop vielle pour skier avec moi."
Colette's face had scrunched up in a pout, but she tied the bunny loops on his shoes and Luc took her arm in his, and then they were on the slopes: a labyrinth of white-capped trees leading them downhill; a race, a riddle of twists and upheavals, an inimitable dance. If Colette closed her eyes, there was only the numb in her fingers and the burst of wind, and sometimes it made her feel as if she were the brunt of a shooting star. Nothing could contain her. She was unearthly. She was unbound. But Luc would call her back in, the gravitational pull she orbited, and she was human again. She opened her eyes. The flickering near-dusk was shrouded in snow clouds, the ground crystalline and dappled in moonlight, and the game was on.
Luc had taken the lead. Childish and grinning, a boy with a smile that was missing teeth. He liked to use magic to get his way. Colette resorted to no such cheats. She was always better in the sky than the snow, but this was a case of good sportsmanship, and that applied to broomsticks and skis alike. She would teach her brother to win with dignity, but she would not hold back.
"Allons-y, Col!" he'd shouted, eruptive magic sending bursts of snow in her eyes.
"Oh, tu es si mort, Jean-Luc!" Colette cried back. It was always bad when she started calling him that.
The wind whistled through the tuft of hair loose from her headscarf, arms caught with the chill of her thin coat. Wartime fabrics were scarce and there were hardly any tailors in Megève willing to line up skiwear for a travelling family, but her mother managed what she could. The exhilaration of the sport was often warmth enough, and Colette knew there was woolton pie and a crackling fire waiting for her at the manor.
Her eyes narrowed over the off-piste route.
Luc was a blur in her peripheral, an obstacle in an amateur's course. She surged forward on her skis, leaning with precise weight to her left and right, moving with years of practice. Colette triumphed every slump in the mountainside before she arrived at it, knowing exactly which to swerve aside and which to use for momentum. Luc had none of her litheness. His goal was winning the easy way, not the smart way.
Colette cheered as the slope came to an end. Enchanted lanterns danced with the shadows of wings fluttering by. She liked to think the birds had come to watch, but winter fairies were just as likely on nights like this.
Luc groaned as she passed him. "Chaque fois!"
"Chaque fois." Colette grinned, watching the finish line they'd drawn in the snow get nearer.
Every time.
The wind had settled in the air, the trees stilling, and for a moment, in the cold dark, Colette felt that there was nothing more in the world than the swishing snow under her feet, the muscles tensing in her legs as she moved, the heartbeat easing in her chest as she struck the line with her poles—this place where time was still. Quiet collected and hummed; a woodwind whistle. Luc had laughed. Colette could have grabbed that sound, the childlike wonderment, and pocketed it for later.
Before midnight, they'd returned to the cabin, a plate of that long-awaited pie and a bottle of elf-made wine that Papa had popped open before dinner was even cleared from the table. Maman scolded him for it; such proclivities cost more than they were worth with the threat of a German invasion looming over them; word from Sedan and the Ardennes leaving even the rich to wonder whether they could afford their usual luxuries. But Colette and Luc had laughed it off, wiped the stinging damp from their cheeks and sat. And then they drank, and they cheered, and they were home.
Cold punctured the memory. A bitter resentment; survivor's guilt in tidy champagne flutes. Cold. Colette was almost always cold nowadays.
There was a tear in the seam of her pea coat.
Colette recalled it ripping the night she took Nadya back to her dormitory. (A correction that still suspended her somewhat: the night Ruby died. The night Antonin Dolohov looked her in the eye with that glint of knowing, pointed his wand at Nadya's body on the floor, and tortured her.) She recalled heaving Nadya out of the Room of Requirement on wobbling feet, leaning against the walls for support until she found Claude. She recalled Nadya's rings catching her sleeve as she clawed at her arm—to be closer or to push her away, Colette still didn't know. She never knew with her.
The tear was a fraction of the size of a muggle's dime, but it seemed bigger every time she looked at it.
Plenty of her clothes had begun to rip, stain, snatch on scratchy stone walls and stick-ends of chairs, but this was her favourite. She'd never been apt in tailoring, no matter how many years Maman had wasted trying to teach her. Regardless, Colette had tried to mend it, alone in the alcove behind the Hufflepuff common room after supper. The needle had trembled in her unskilled hands as she tried, once, twice, again and again, and it was then that her eyes started to burn.
Colette had felt the sorrow swell, had panted, something between a gasp and a sob, and tore the sleeve clean off.
A forceful throw landed her sewing needle between the planks of the music room door. And then her gaze lifted, eyes blurry and hot, choking on—what? There were so many things to grieve for she often found it hard to decide which to choose. She gathered her losses and balanced them on each shoulder. The needle rattled in the wood, and Colette thought, foolishly, always foolish, of the piano on the other side of the door. The last time she'd played was years ago.
Colette's ripped sleeve had fluttered to the ground as she stood, no ski poles to usher the wind. She fumbled for the door and opened it with her wand.
The piano was white. And it glared.
It was ornamented in gold like all the things Colette used to know. There was so much dust on the instrument that just from the breeze of the opening door, sunny pinpricks tugged at the surface and scattered them back into the dark.
The final streaks of daylight were drawing shut behind the curtains. Colette took a shuddering breath and hunched forward, sighing into the seat.
For a good while, she sat there in silence, waiting for the dust to collect her too.
And then she pressed a finger to the piano. G sharp. Just a test of the keys, but the sound of it was like a burst of wind through the manor door, snowflakes racing in under her boots. She sighed. Splayed her palms over the keys and tugged the bench closer. For a moment, she pondered a song to play, and mourning was still prickling at her eyes. Her sleeveless arm shivered with cold; bare, but touched, like she could still feel a hand there somehow—still see the look on that wrathful, beautiful face. Nadya. Colette swallowed, and all at once, the music came. A flowery piece, earnestly longing at the crescendo but somber again at its close. Maman had called it the song of fool's errands, a song for hopeless girls to chase after boys who were too polite to admit they did not want them. But Colette had her eye on no such boys.
She fixed her gaze on the keys and began to play.
━━━━━
Nadya was halfway to the hospital wing and rife with venom when Slughorn found her. Trouble, she assumed, by the look on his face. There was almost always something troubled about him.
She plastered on a smile. There was a certain sickly Antonin Dolohov she'd been dying to visit in Colette's absence.
"Professor," she greeted.
Slughorn answered, uncharacteristically, with a smile as forced as hers. Awkward at the corners of his lips. And his receding hair was in a cottony tousle. "Nadya."
"I was just on my way to visit a friend."
"Were you?" He grimaced. "Quidditch accident? Or was it Mr Abuyen's latest Potions disaster?"
"Uh, no, Julian and I don't really talk outside of Potions."
His smile flickered. "Ah. A shame. Nice boy, that one. Not the brightest."
Nadya didn't bother jumping around the obvious. "Is something wrong, sir? You seem tired."
"Ah! Hm, well... smart girl, you are, Nadya. You might bring that acumen to my next class! Top potioneer when you put in an effort!" He chuckled, something between a snort and a long, sputtering exhale. When Nadya only stared, mouth inclined in a falling smile, he cleared his throat. "You ought to go to Headmaster Dippet's office, I'm afraid."
Suspicion craned her head in practiced defence. "What did I do this time?"
"Oh, no, not to worry! Well—hah—nothing you've done, anyway."
Someone else, then. Nadya didn't like the way his eyes wandered. She suspected it was bad for her either way. "Are you meant to accompany me?"
"Yes—yes, of course. And perhaps we can discuss my next dinner as we walk? Unless, of course, you've decided not to come along, but this one will be grand, I assure you. Wouldn't want to miss it if you intend to practise Potions post-graduation—and you really should."
It seemed impossible for Professor Slughorn to go one conversation without mentioning his honourable coterie and their monthly suppers. Nadya was the only muggle-born in attendance, and liked getting drunk on the glares of her pureblood companions while they got drunk on hidden flasks tucked in elastic underwear bands. She needed something to pass the weekends when there were no RRI meetings.
"Truthfully, sir, I nearly forgot," she said. "I'd be without a friend this time and I'm worried I don't have the patience to sit through all that Ministry talk alone."
"Oh dear! Did my last do not satisfy Miss Chapdelaine? I had the house elves make foie gras especially for her."
It might've been the barrage of questions about her dead siblings that did the trick, Nadya thought.
They turned a corner.
"I'm sure the meal was just fine, sir," she said. "Colette just... prefers to be among friends. Most of the Slug Club are Slytherins, as you know."
Slughorn hummed. "Ah, House rivalries. Who would've thought, from a Beauxbatons of all people? So curious."
Nadya didn't find anything curious about it. She knew the infamy of her House wasn't without reason.
"Well," he continued, "Claude Ozanich never brings anyone; you might find him to be good company."
"Claude and I aren't friends either."
"Hm. Then I won't push."
You've already pushed, sir, she wanted to say. In fact, you have a knack for pushing so far I imagine I could backstep and tumble off the astronomy tower into the courtyard, but it would be bad etiquette to say such a thing to my Head of House.
"You never do, sir," she said instead.
Slughorn smiled and they walked the rest of the way in a strange, single-file quiet. Nadya watched the back of his brunet-grey head while her hands fiddled with the hem of her skirt.
The Headmaster's rusting statue greeted them, a gargoyle encircled by his private stairwell. She touched a ring to the folded copper wing, and the rich brass thrummed.
"Are you coming in?" she asked.
Slughorn swallowed. "Hm—No, no, I shouldn't. Thank you for the conversation, Nadya, and best of luck to you! Do get back to me about that dinner! It'll be grand, truly!"
He scurried off.
From any other professor, she might have found it odd.
She just carried on up the unveiled staircase and knocked twice on the door. It opened with urgency.
Dippet spun to face her from before his desk, and Nadya tried not to laugh upon looking him up and down. His hat was laying—not placed, wrapped, proper, like usual, no—laying halfhazardly on the side of his head, which was a stringy eyesore of white hair. His robes were wrinkled, the tinselly swirls of gold on his blue sleeves damp and flat like they'd been thrown on in a rush from a muggle's washing machine. His black eyes flashed over Nadya's surroundings before they reached her, and then he pulled her in with a hand to her back.
"Afternoon to you too, Headmaster," she grumbled.
"Just—sit down, Miss Sidhu. I haven't the time for your facetiousness today."
"What the hell is going on?"
"Language! Sit down!"
Nadya sucked her teeth and hoped it would keep all the things she'd like to say from spilling out. And there were more than a few.
Dippet paced the room.
His office was too grand for him. It reminded her of her father's back home, but there were too many things gleaming here, too many meandering portraits, too many incantations to be a muggle man's study. Far too grand. It was an octogonal chamber, gold casings lining the walls, littered with potions and relics of old Headmasters. Nadya knew from past visits (too many to count) that one of the glass cupboards opened to a pensieve chock-full of tear vials and brain residue she'd love to pocket one day. Memories from ancient witches and wizards, from Nicholas Flammel to Beatrix Bloxam to Rowena Ravenclaw herself. If Nadya hadn't gotten caught rummaging through them once last year, she could have nicked one and sold it to the highest bidder in Hogsmeade. Then again, she already had enough pocket money to make a material dent in her favourite coat.
She tore her gaze away. Back to Dippet. "With all due respect, Sir," she started, "I have Defense Against the Dark Arts in twenty m—"
"Amoret is missing."
Nadya stopped.
Dippet nodded grimly. "I told you to sit down."
She did. Not in obeisance, but because she was worried her legs might have given out otherwise.
"The girl's lavatory on the first floor was found flooded late last night," Dippet continued. "The stalls were blown to pieces, the sinks shattered, the door in fragments—all of it in fragments. Myrtle Warren was found dead. Floating in the ruin left behind."
Nadya stared at the wall. Still nothing. Maybe the wires weren't connecting. One thought wouldn't reach the other, wouldn't find a conclusion to the jumble of words in her ear.
What did Banks have to do with this?
"And Tom—Tom is missing too. They were our primary suspects—our only suspects in..."
She could hear Dippet say more but nothing that mattered. It was Riddle. All Riddle, all along.
Nadya was going to fucking kill him.
Her voice came back to her in a seethe. "What do you mean she's missing? Missing is what you say when someone disappears without a trace. If they're both gone it's because Riddle took her!"
Dippet's eyes narrowed. He abandoned his sorry excuse for a hat and carded his old, wrinkled fingers through his hair. "Miss Sidhu, you will lower your voice when you're in my office. I am not looking for accusations. At present they are both equally suspicious and we have no reason to presume one's guilt more than the other."
"And they're gone." Nadya bit hard on the inside of her cheek. There was silence for a while and she wanted to scream to fill it with something. What had Dippet done? Where had he been? If Banks was there in the lavatory, casting enough spells to burn it to its barest husk, where was he to hear her? Where was I? she thought suddenly. What have I done?
Dippet coughed, forcing himself to impassiveness. "It's essential, if we're to find Tom and Amoret, that you answer my questions before the Ministry arrives. They are going to push to make a story out of this and I cannot have that. I'm sure you understand how much I care for her safety."
"Right," Nadya said, "you mean how much you care about your school's grade average. Your prefect meetings. Your event organization. Keeping students in line while muggle-borns are found inches from death at every corner. You can't run this place without her, can you?"
"Miss Sidhu, I understand you're upset—"
"Oh, good, at least you understand something."
He clenched his jaw. "When did you see Amoret last?"
"I want a lawyer."
"Miss Sidhu!"
"I may not have been to a Ministry hearing but I know how these things work in my world, and I'm not going to tell you anything if it implicates Banks. I know she's innocent, I don't care about the details."
"I have no desire to implicate Amoret any more than she is already implicated," Dippet said sharply, "but she is a homicide suspect gone missing after the death of another muggle-born girl, with the same person she was found with last time—I am looking for answers!"
Nadya wondered at all the trinkets in this room hard and heavy enough to take his teeth out. "Then look somewhere else."
"Do you care about this at all?"
"I care about finding my best friend, not making her life worse when I do."
"Fine. If not Amoret, what do you know about Tom Riddle?"
Nadya shrugged, but her feet were tapping and her hand was clammy on her stockings and she knew she was forcing nonchalance. "He's strange. Too perfect. It's completely bizarre that a supposed muggle-born would have somehow gained the respect of the entirety of Slytherin, and apparently no one sees through it but me."
He rubbed at the wrinkles in his forehead. Nadya was willing to bet at least half were caused by her. "I will not do this with you."
"Do what?!"
"Entertain petty judgements in a case of murder as if they're genuine contributions!"
"Why the hell am I here, then? Is my opinion not worth anything to you?"
"Your objectivity is worth something to me. And yet you seem incapable of answering anything without bordering on conspiracy. Nadya, I brought you here not just to answer my questions, but because by tomorrow every student in this castle will have their own story for what happened in that lavatory and I did not want that to be how this news found you."
Nadya snorted. "You brought me here to keep me in line. At least let us be honest with each other, sir."
"That is not—"
"What?! Not true, really? You want information and you don't want me running off pointing my wand in anyone's faces!"
"I want accurate information."
"And you don't suppose it might be important to know that Tom Riddle isn't the perfectly tragic Head Boy you think he is? Some poor child you had plucked from an orphanage and taken under your wing? That instead, him and his deranged little cult might actually be dangerous?"
"I won't ask again, Miss Sidhu. I don't need your personal biases to get in the way of this investigation."
Nadya laughed in disbelief. "Personal biases like not supporting the blood purists that strut about this school like they own the place? Or, sorry, maybe I forgot—they do." She leaned forward. "How much money does Antonin Dolohov's father pay you, anyway? Or the Malfoys? Or the Mulcibers? Last I checked, half of your Potions funding came from Nott's father, and you haven't once thought to check what sorts of recipes his son and his friends have tucked under their beds. I hope you can keep enough objectivity, as our esteemed Headmaster, to leave your biases out of this investigation."
Dippet's face was plum-red.
"If that isn't too personal for you, sir," she added with a tight-lipped smile.
"Fine," he said, scowl etched on his face. "You're dismissed."
"Wonderful."
Dippet moved to his desk and sat down with a slam, making a fuss far too childish for a man likely in his hundreds. Nadya turned her head to get a final word in—something to really rile him—and instead her brutal gaze landed on his fingers at the edge of the desk. They narrowed. They moved an inch. Beside his rapping nails was a black leather book, thick with drying parchment and embossed with some silver text. She couldn't read it from where she stood.
"What is that?"
Dippet traced her glare to the book before him, stumbling over his words before stopping himself. "No business of yours."
"The pages are wet," Nadya persisted.
"That's enough."
"You said that the lavatory was flooded, that—"
"Miss Sidhu! You'd be wise to leave my office at once!"
Nadya gave no final glance as she marched out of his office with her fingers digging into her palms.
Only when she met the alcove at the end of the corridor did her chest finally weigh in on itself. Her breath staggered. Banks was gone. The truth of it made her want to rip her hair out or set the castle on fire or drag Zenith Mulciber or Augusta Rosier by the scalp to the courtyard and leave them in threads of flesh for the birds. But because Nadya had bided her time for this long, because she was the viper that countermanded her nature, she did none of those things. Not yet. The paths blurred, and they all looked like bloodshed. Where else could she go? Without Banks, what else was there? There had only ever been one answer.
She needed to find Colette.
[ . . . ] we need to normalize ageism in the wizarding world this is getting out of hand / word count. 3854
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