<06>
Wanda
Harry's hands dug deeper into the back of my hoodie as Buckbeak lurched sideways, the hippogriff's screech piercing the near-silent night.
"Shh! Buckbeak, it's alright!" Hermione whispered.
She was pressed against the wall of the seventh floor, her fingers clutching Flitwick's window frame. Terror was written all over her face, which was crystal clear, her deep brown eyes glistening as absent moonlight reflected in them -
"Alohomora!"
The window clicked open and Hermione shuffled back along the ledge, her feet one slip away from plummeting into the endless black void beneath her. My hands readied to catch her. As the darkness ebbed at our figures, she glanced my way - I knew it was my turn - and Harry, who I knew without looking was behind me watching for Sirius' face, tensed as he realised it too.
My fingers tremble lightly as magic spills over them and I lift Hermione into the air with a gentle blanket of red, lowering her gently onto Buckbeak's back and undoing the tangle that the night's breeze had twisted in her hair. Sirius appears at the window and his face looks back at me, gaunt and azkaban-worn, his hair ragged and dirty - but he is hopeful, he is smiling.
I can save him.
The red glimmer restokes beneath my skin and bubbles over my fingers, an identical scarlet ripple spreading out under his shoulders and circling his undernourished arms. I slowly pull him out of the window frame, my magic rushing to support every part of him-
a beat-
The magic is gone.
His face - there is no longer hope etched across his skin, there is terror, there is pain-
I'm falling backwards, the darkness blurring into another scene I've seen before - my hands are still outstretched as curses fly everywhere, there is chaos leaping from them, swirling and more defined, blistering red and ten times as powerful - but still too slow; the curse hits him anyway. My feet are back out from under me, my screams make no sound. The building is destroyed; a wreck, my living room a sea of rubble; but I'm still reaching, a catastrophic explosion echoing all around me.
Another hand reaches out - a hand wearing my mother's rings.
I lunge to grab it but am plummeting the moment my fingers try to close around it. The war-ridden sky gets smaller as I fall and fall and fall...
I do not hit the ground.
The dorms are completely silent but for the whistling of the September wind outside the windows and the gentle snoring of the other girls. My feet are cold beneath my duvet, my arms and chest still tingling with fear. My uneven breaths slowly return to normal as I bring my knees to my chest, hiding behind the curtain of hair that swings forwards over my eyes -
"SIRIUS! NO, SIRIUS!" I cringe against the ringing shout, squeezing my eyes shut as if it will make the image go away. "NOOOOOOO!"
The shaking of Harry's jaw as the scream splinters through the Death Chamber is as vivid as the raw scream itself, permanently ingrained in my memory and as torturous as the cruciatus curse. I could've stopped that. My best friend - his heart breaking - I could've prevented it if I had only been quick enough.
I know the grief he feels every morning when he wakes up... when the post owls soar above us at breakfast, when every night the fire lies face-less and dormant. I block out his mind but I can feel the pain of losing what he thought he'd gained, of having, just to have it snatched away again; I can feel it because I know what it's like, I know what the grief of losing your most treasured feels like.
A thunderous crash, my scream, darkness -
My hands shake as the memory resurfaces, violent and angry, a furious attack on my mind. The cold - I can actually feel it as though I'm back there, lying amongst the debris and sniffling for help; my gut wrenches and I gasp suddenly, pressing my shaking hands against my temples.
This dream brings back everything I've tried to forget - a tsunami of grief, loss and guilt, hitting me like a wave over and over. All the strength I've built up, all the memories I've made since...
It undoes it all in a moment and I feel it all again.
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The blast missed; quite spectacularly.
"Pathetic." Snape sneered, lifting another target with his wand and throwing it across my vision.
I grit my teeth and flung my hands out, hitting the corner of it and shaking the target off balance.
The noise sounded like cold water on a frying pan and Snape's sneer became more pronounced. "Sloppy."
The anger boiled in my stomach and I hit the next target so hard that it flew across the room and lodged itself in the wall, little pieces of grey brick falling from the spreading crack; my mind twinged and I looked away, feeling my stomach flip.
"Acting out of rage." Snape stated, his voice cold and his face irritated.
I hissed, my fists clenching as scarlet throbbed over them. I was so focused on hitting the next target even harder that I didn't notice the iron wrought across the surface of it and unwillingly yelped as my magic collided with it, my head thrumming so violently that it knocked me off my feet.
The room rotated like a hurricane, bile rising in my throat as I panted against the sickening pain - my heart was thundering.
Snape appeared in my spinning, blurry vision looking faintly amused as his black eyes glared down at me. "Due to your lack of concentration," he began, the amusement dissolving at once, "you just killed an old lady who was out walking her dog."
I exhaled roughly, tiredness impressing on my eyes; if only I could give in to the exhaustion saturating my entire being and curl up against the wall.
"This isn't good enough, Maximoff," he added, and I clutched my head, feeling my hands tremble. "Get up and demonstrate sweep and destroy - preferably today, I'd quite like to sleep tonight."
My jaw tenses as I attempt to push up from my knees and strain to force out the injured magic, knowing that for at least a few days it was now going to be even less willing to cooperate. My head is still throbbing as I think this, tiredness drawing my mind into last night's dream as I stare unseeingly at the wall - the rubble of my ruined apartment looked so like the chunks of rock on the floor, scattered with a sand-like texture and shadowed by the target still embedded in it.
I force the image away, my arms giving out, and I fall back onto my knees; why that colour?
As I think this, the room suddenly panels itself with dark-oak; Snape side-eyes it, his lip curling.
"Wanda!" It's Pietro calling, and I wonder why I'm remembering it - that brown, I've seen it before... "Wanda, we're waiting to watch the TV!"
I gasp as my mind remembers the deathly resemblance between the walls and my brother's hair; of our hair. The walls change again, switching between colours as my subconscious yells at it to change from all of those clawing memories to the forefront of my mind.
Snape shifts and a phantom breeze nudges the tips of his bat-like cloak, his large nose and glaring eyes appearing as he steps pertinently in front of my watery gaze. "Get up."
I glare back, surprised at how ready my magic feels to leap out and pound him as it rushes to the barrier of my skin. I turn my head away from him and almost impale my nose on an old-fashioned, spiked shield, shuddering away from the cool vibes radiating from the steel and scrambling backwards at the flash of vibrant orange scintillating across its shining surface.
Without thinking, I wrestle my wand from my pocket and gasp, "Reducto!"
The shield propels away, spinning on one edge and colliding with an idle pile of targets a few feet away; the echoing noise of the pile tumbling down quivering through the tense silence - there was nothing that could've made it worse other than that stupid reflection. My eyes were shut tight against the image burning on the inside of my eyelids as I listened to my heavy breathing - wishing upon every star that I was somewhere else right now, somewhere else where I could make these thoughts go away.
"What on earth was that?" Snape demanded, cutting through my prayers with his icy snarl and crouching down to grab me roughly by the shoulders. "Open your mind."
The chill of another mind poking at my mental barrier had me shivering, my eyes opening a crack and then quickly squeezing shut again; there was no way in hell that I wanted Snape to know about the guilt eating away at me right now, the heart-aching grief that had resurfaced since last night.
I began shaking my head and tried to pull away. "N-"
His grip tightened and froze me in place. "Think carefully, Maximoff." he murmured in a low and terrifying growl, his command unwavering.
There was no way out of this- how to stop him- how to stop-
"It's the reflection!" I spluttered, turning my head away to avoid his stare. I needed him to focus on something else, anything else, if he had a chance to use legilimency- "My hair is bright orange." I mumbled, allowing it to fall into my face.
Snape did not immediately answer. I felt him stand up and heard the rifle of his cloak as he paced across the room - the noise soon followed by that of small clinking. I glanced over there without thinking, my eyes immediately landing upon the rings that he had picked up and was holding between his thin hands.
The man paused, his head twitching as his dark eyes narrowed. "I was about to call you out for such ridiculous lies - but, it appears that that is the case." His face creased into a thoughtful scowl and he regarded the rings in his hands. "Take them."
Blood thundered in my ears as I slowly got to my feet and held out my hands, a cold, near-calm spreading from my fingertips down my arm as my magic was forced away.
The scrutinising look that followed almost made me drop them and I winced away from his stare. "Dumbledore mentioned that this might happen." Snape said, "Put them on."
"That what might happen? Sir?" I added when he glared at me.
"That you may begin using your magic without realising - that these rings may not be as effective as they seem," he replied, turning his back on me and, with a sharp wave of his wand, restoring the targets scattered about the room to their usual places.
"I- I'm not using it- I swear-"
"Didn't I just say 'without realising'?" he sneered.
"But-"
He interrupted me again, sounding impatient and nasty. "You're casting an illusion, Maximoff - you're trying to hide the monster you are inside and the rings are not stopping you."
"Monster?" I questioned, a little stunned.
Ignoring me, he continued on. "It would appear that, other than the rings, all forms of steel or iron are blocking it - which is why only a few can see it-"
"How do you-?" I gaped, my voice getting quieter with each sentence that this man spoke.
"Legilimency, Maximoff, legilimency." he replied, having strode across the room to the door and pausing only to sneer again. "Doesn't the monster know how to defend itself?"
My stomach dropped like a brick as he disappeared without another backward glance. Monster. My lip trembled and my rings dropped one by one to the floor, my heart the fastest moving thing in me as I sunk to my knees and felt my mind grow cold.
I'm not... a monster... I'm...
The lights in the room were dimming as the word sunk in, flickering red as the 'monster' riled in outrage. Iron and steel disappeared from the piles of junk around me, in preparation it seemed, for the howl of rage about to erupt. But I grit my teeth harder, seeing his callous face as he sneered and called me that name, insulted my ability, insulted the monster inside - he was wrong; wrong.
I got up from the floor, shoving my rings into the pocket of my robes and tugging at my tie, barely even giving the door a chance to appear before I shoved it open and stormed out. There was a strange mixture of both closure and chaos in me as I strode towards the staircase that would take me to the seventh floor; I was relieved that I knew what was going on with my hair - but so torn and stung by what Snape had said to me.
My fists clenched, but not trembling, I reached the first step, catching a glimpse of something silvery-white dashing into the shadows just a few metres away.
I paused, my hand on the banister as I squinted into the dark corridor, "Hello?"
To someone who wasn't a telepath, the darkness would seem normal. Simply an empty corridor where someone had forgotten to light the torches. But to me, I could feel another consciousness lurking within it, another mind humming in barely detectable anxiety. I touched my power against it, barely thinking twice as the fortress of occlumency pushed back - there was something else riddled amongst this protection, something that caused a light shudder to ripple back to my own mind - steel? It felt right, and after the latest eureka, it seemed the most likely.
"Someone there?" I asked, in an attempt to beckon whoever it was out of hiding.
There was no answer at all except silence.
My teeth sunk into my bottom lip and, taking one last glance into the night-darkened corridor, I turned and dashed up the stairs.
The common room was empty when I climbed through the portrait hole, except for a fast asleep Hermione on the couch closest to the fire. I guess Harry was either not back from Dumbledore's lesson, or had already gone up to bed with Ron.
I perched next to Hermione on the sofa, her mouth slightly ajar and face hidden mostly by her curly hair as she slept. I jogged her gently. "Hermione!"
Her quiet snores faltered and her eyes fluttered open, the feeble light of the dying flames in the hearth flickering in their reflection. "Oh - oh, wanda," she yawned, sitting up and suddenly remembering the open book in her lap. "I was just doing Snape's homework, but - oh - I've forgotten the parchment..." she muttered, and I smiled as she rubbed her eyes. "How was the lesson?"
My stomach clenched and the smile froze in place, my heart galloping into an angry race.
"That bad?" she said, sympathetically.
I swallowed hard and glanced down at my hands. They were knitted together as I tried to hold in my emotion, but I realised that that was all I was trying to hold in - my magic was slumbering obediently throughout my veins and was barely even throbbing. That, at least, was one good thing.
"The lesson was terrible," I told her honestly, sinking back into the sofa and pulling my knees to my chest. "I couldn't hit the targets and when I did - I hit it too hard and cracked the wall-" A gasp. "-plus Snape was in an extra foul mood and decided to throw in an iron one - which hurt - but I've got closure about something else - well, sort of."
Hermione frowned, sitting up fully and placing the D.A.D.A book onto the arm of the sofa. "What do you mean?"
"I-" I stopped, digging my hands into my pocket. "It's better to show you - here, put these on."
She took them, looking thoroughly confused, sliding a ring onto each finger and still frowning as she looked up. She gasped again, clapping her hands to her mouth, "Your hair! I thought- well, I thought Slughorn was a bit senile!" her cheeks flushed and she looked slightly ashamed of herself. "But- but, how?"
"Apparently the steel is blocking an illusion," I said quietly, absently lifting another log onto the fire with the raise of a finger. "An illusion I had no idea I was casting - and still don't." I added, and she frowned skeptically.
"Can you... stop it?" she asked, equally as quiet.
I shook my head, "I don't even know how I'm doing it, let alone how to stop it." She was quiet as I paused for a shaky breath. "All I do know is that I'm using magic to conceal my 'true self' as Snape puts it, and almost every reflection shows me who I really am - whatever that means."
"But..." she said, taking the rings off one by one, examining my hair, and then replacing them back on her fingers. "There isn't steel in every surface."
I could practically hear the cogs working in her brain, and to be honest, I'd been wondering about the same thing.
"So, where have you seen this reflection?" she asked, stroking a hand distractedly along the metal of my rings.
"Er... on the Hogwarts Express was when I saw it first," I answered, searching my memory for the rest and chewing the inside of my mouth as I thought. "-and then the window of the compartment... that suit of armour... the mirrors... and today was a shield."
She made a thoughtful noise and didn't say anything for several moments... and then she straightened, her eyes going wide. My brows raised - I could sense a Hermione lightbulb moment coming.
"Magic!" she cried, and I pursed my lips in confusion.
"What?"
"The Hogwarts Express is enchanted with very ancient magic," she said, nodding her head as several things obviously fell into place in her mind. "...I suppose it could be made from steel or iron, but if the reflection was the same in the window - yes, that's probably it, and I bet it's the same for the castle windows." she drew in a breath. "And Slughorn wears that atrocious old-fashioned goblin ring, doesn't he? It's obviously going to be made of steel or iron if it's goblin made!"
"Malfoy and Luna could see it, too," I added.
She hummed, her lips pressed together in concentration as she gazed into the roaring flames across from us. "I don't know - do they wear jewellery?"
"Malfoy does." I said, suddenly remembering the ring he always wears. "A ring with a serpent on it."
"That explains that, it's probably steel," Hermione agreed. She pulled her eyes away from the fire and faced me once again, her brows pulling together as a look of concern creased her face, "What is it? What's wrong?" she asked.
"It's just..." I started, frowning as I tried to make sense of it. "Well, Luna could see it when she was wearing her cardboard glasses from The Quibbler magazine, but not when she took them off."
Hermione frowned too. "She could only see it whilst wearing the glasses?"
I nodded. "And as far as I know, they're just cardboard."
She was quiet again as she searched for an answer. After a minute, she said, "Well, I must admit - that's stumped me." I smiled as she slid the rings off and handed them to me, stifling a yawn as she stretched her arms. Crookshanks appeared on the arm of the sofa, knocking off Hermione's book as the puff of ginger fur clambered into her lap and mewed for attention, "Oh, Crookshanks - that's not very helpful, is it?"
She shook her head lovingly, and that's when I noticed my eyelids were beginning to droop. My arms ached from training but my mind was still buzzing. I couldn't unhear Snape's nasty words. This, I opted not to tell Hermione as we traipsed up the staircase to the dorms.
It wasn't important.
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aou wanda gif <3