My skin began to crawl above my flesh as pins and needles assaulted every surface of my body. Time seemed to move slower, like congealed blood dripping from the side of a girls face... Pausing I began to fear the thoughts going through my head, trembling at the darker layers of my psyche that were coming in to play.
Falling to my knees beside her I began to spew out every healing spell that could possibly come to mind. Niamh retrieved her wand and similarly began to chant, but the work was slow. Too slow, she's gone, or at least; going. Tears threatened to cascade from my eyes.
"Voldemort gave me a message for you..." the girl croaked, milky blue eyes finding mine with the calmness of one who had accepted death.
"What did he say?" I whispered, stunned by her mention of Voldemort; this attack had a purpose?
"That if you want to know the meaning of your future... that little prophecy thing... you need to talk to your true father." she continued, blood gargling slightly in the back of her throat as she spoke.
She was beautiful, this little bag of broken bones. Her features were delicate once, that was clear, but now they were as shattered as broken china. I reached out for her hand and offered the strongest smile that I could, her eyes were so glassy I could see myself and understood the smile to be as weak as I felt.
"My father is dead." I breathed, wishing to redeem myself as Dumbledore's daughter, not Voldemort's. Not the child of a killer, not the offspring of the man that had you killed, my dear.
"Day will changes its colour,
from bright evening to black night,
two must live without the others,
only they will survive the fight." She recited in a fading voice, lips losing the ability to annunciate as clearly as mere minutes ago.
My face fell as I understood the message, sending my thumb to the corner of her mouth to wipe away the blood in a warm gesture. In the face of death it felt like she had known me forever and I her, we would have liked each other, I was certain.
As her slight frame began to convulse I forced myself to making soothing 'shhh' noises, calming myself more than her. This girl knew where she was going, and she wasn't afraid. Leaning closer I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing really came.
"I'm sorry that that message caused this,” I offered, rubbing her hands more aggressively in my earnest apology.
"It's alright, I suppose I owe my life to you anyway, you’re the only reason I made it through this year.” I could see her losing function, her arms no longer moved and her legs were long gone.
"Don't be silly..." I replied, desperate not to be the cause for this.
"I'll tell Dumbledore you said 'Hello'." she coughed with the last of her breath, the words connecting our eyes as she began to gasp and choke slightly.
I resigned to stroking her arm gently, tears now falling from my face freely. Why couldn’t this have been some cruel, twisted child who was terrified and deserving of death? Realising that this was where my vision entered, I had to say the words that allowed me to realise who this girl was.
"What's her name?" I spoke allowed, tortured because this girl would think I didn't even know her name.
A solemn voice replied, "Idony Jones, Gryffindor house."
"Goodnight, Idony." I whimpered, collapsing against the wall behind me.
~
Harry came at last, at long last. His entrance into the dorm through Ariana's portrait hailed war with him. Searching the faces around me I saw that this would happen soon, sooner than I had at first believed it would.
"Elysia, please talk to me." he begged, pacing the room again and again.
Blinking out of my trance I turned to face Neville, scared of what I had to say and do.
"May is coming, Neville. The final month of this school year." I said through numbed lips.
"Well, we can look forward to the summer holidays trapped in here still." Neville said in a dry voice.
"No, Harry is coming soon, the Battle will begin soon." I whispered, walking over to the fireplace, striking a flame with my wand and waiting for the connection to be made.
Scanning the calendar in the corner of the room I saw that it was the 28th of April, Harry's arrival would come in May. The fire drew Viperous's face, a hesitant one at that, with a look of worry on it making the fire turned white with her paleness.
"Viperous what's happened?" I said, hoping that a development had been made.
"What do you mean? Nothing has happened since we last spoke." she replied almost irritably.
"Where's Harry? Has he returned to you all yet?" I continued, exasperated.
"You'd have better luck listening to Potterwatch than questioning me." she said with a sigh.
"Potterwatch? What's that?" I questioned, pulling out a notebook and pencil.
"A silly radio station that tracks him, Fred is a presenter on it. Here, just tap your wireless with your wand and say 'Viperous', it's this broadcasts password." she said with something of a blush.
"Harry is coming soon, be prepared. I think, I think we should use those fake galleons that we used in Dumbledore's Army." I continued, the idea dawning on me.
"Why would we need that?" she said, her dullness at this present moment making me want to scream.
"Viperous. Get your galleon and if we summon you, bring the Order and anyone with hands! It will mean danger in Hogwarts; war." I said, flicking the fire into dying embers and leaving the mantle.
From my bedside table I rummaged through various pieces of sentimentality before finding my own galleon, and Neville's too. Pocketing these, I decided to take a few precautionary measures in the face of a possible war, or escape.
Tossing Neville's galleon to him with the same explanation I provided Viperous, I took a step from the Room, waiting for it to melt into the room for Lost Things. Re-opening the door I rifled through the junk that had congested the old room for what felt like hours before finding a massive wireless radio, big enough to fill the entire Dorm with noise.
"Wingardium leviosa." I called, using my wand for a change, levitating the radio back into the Dorm.
Planting it in the corner of the room, I tapped it and muttered 'Viperous', hearing the voice of Lee Jordan clearly and crisply, declaring the news that the Daily Prophet, apparently, wouldn't. Turning to the portrait of Ariana I entered the tunnel connecting Hogwarts to the Hogs Head.
"Who's there? We're closed, so bugger off!" boomed a voice in the distance, crouched behind the heavy bar counter.
"That's no way to speak to your beloved niece." I chuckled in response, the looming exit from Hogwart's lightening my mood already.
"I don't know so much about 'beloved'." he teased, tossing a butterbeer across to me.
Again he glanced furtively from me to the portrait of Ariana, obviously heart-wrenched by the resemblance. Warning him as I had warned Viperous, I informed Aberforth of Harry's looming arrival. Giving me two crates of butterbeers for celebration, I returned to the dorm with the heavy crates floating before me.
The students, not expecting such an unprecedented celebration, jumped upon the chance for fresh butterbeers (grubby as Aberforth's bottles were). Nonchalantly I informed Neville that we would be getting more supplies from Aberforth in the next few days, hoping to make us a whole lot scarcer in the coming days.
Somehow, through no spoken word, the Dorm was ready for Harry's arrival, we were ready to leave. All at once I felt almost nostalgic between these walls, the castle that tormented me so was also my saviour. Bed time was pushed to 11pm that night and when I returned to my room I watched as the mahogany bedframe and lush, red walls were replaced with plain white walls and a small, single metal frame.
Upon the bed was a black quilt, one I knew all too well, and apart from that the room held no other embellishments; my former bedroom illustrated before me. I knew suddenly that once this year ended I would never return to Hogwarts alive, I would never step foot through those doors once Harry saved us; if Harry saves us.
Vaguely I began to wonder what Severus Snape was truly like. My whole life he'd been a paradox, interchanging between the cold man wasting away in the shadow of the mysterious Lily, and other days he was filled with such warmth he was propelled to read me bedtime tales and make potions of the sweetest tastes and colours.
Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, it was difficult to believe that he was letting Hogwarts rot under his leadership, or rather Voldemort's. I couldn't even convince Neville that he was a good man, and soon I lost my conviction. Sitting at the foot of the bed, I scrunched the tattered quilt beneath my grip and, for a moment, could almost see Leon's bushy tail.
Lifting myself from the room, with more effort than I thought I would need, I left the Dorm like a shadow and traversed the halls like I once did. Peeling my shoes from my feet in the warmth of late April, I passed beneath the streaming moonlight of the numerous arches of Hogwarts.
There were no death eaters on patrol, it seemed. Maybe with the dorm closed they didn't need to patrol so much, or perhaps the warmth of the air tricked me into thinking that things were more beautiful than they really were. Hogwarts was a cold shell, wasn't it?
I was carried to the teacher’s wing by some warm breeze of memories, opening the door as easily as I would have seven years ago. I half expected to find a blackboard with Trelawney's (often wrong) prediction for tomorrow's weather. Snape used to glance at this and, I swear, grin at the ludicrous predictions.
I had supposed that he had left his old quarters and moved to Dumbledore's former residence, but when I swung the door open to my old home it was him sitting there. I supposed we both should have jumped and had a few seconds of awkwardness, but it was just as natural as anything.
Suddenly my skin melted off of me in sleets to reveal a ten year old Elysia, obsessed with muggle technology and getting herself clever enough to face her counterparts in school. I was home, really. Sitting opposite him at the table, I watched him silently serve two plates of dinner.
"Why'd you cook for two?" I said casually, accepting the spaghetti happily.
"Because, 1. It’s a hard habit to rid myself of, and 2. I have always expected you to join me for dinner, as you remember I detest the nightly feasts." he said, his grimace a ghost of a smile.
"I never really thought you had an ongoing interest in me. You know, you did Dumbledore and Voldemort's dirty work and left." I mumbled with a shrug, disbelieving the fact that I would ever utter that deep, dark thought.
"Raising you was hardly dirty work... Dumbledore would have done it happily, in fact." he said, before taking a deliberate mouthful and gazing at the book in front of him as if I were boring him.
My interest peaked, "Why didn't he?"
"Because I requested you stay with me. Voldemort and Dumbledore had made you... tactically. I did not think that an appropriate mentality for raising a child." he said, his eyes shifting from black to the brown I knew they were, or perhaps I had imagined it.
The fork paused halfway to my mouth as I realised, it was true. Dumbledore hadn't any desire for a child, otherwise he'd of had one far before me. I couldn't fantasize about him raising me with any credibility, because he didn't love me from the start, not really.
"Tell me about Lily." I said finally, gingerly avoiding his gaze.
"She-" he paused, his face contorting in some unknown agony.
My face fell as I realised he would never share that with me. The fcat that he admitted that he raised me was a gift enough, I supposed. Then, all of the sudden he opened his mouth again and continued to talk.
"She was the light. She radiated something and it made the world better. She was muggle-born, but no person on this Earth was quite as magical. Not Harry Potter, not Dumbledore and certainly not Voldemort." as his sentence closed, he seemed to have lifted a weight so heavy that he was visibly taller.
The very mention of this woman made him bigger, inside and out. I wondered vaguely if I looked anything close to that when I spoke of Neville, wondering if it was even possible to radiate such a love with words alone, no; it was his eyes as he spoke that punctuated the emotion.
"Longbottom may be a drooling, drabbling baboon who can handle a wand just about as decisively as a rabbit; but he does care for you Elysia." Snape whispered, staring into the depths of this book in which he hadn’t turned a page in thirty minutes.
"What happened to you and her? She must have loved you back, surely." I continued, carefully prodding the topic.
"I was an outcast, perhaps I still am. I let anger and jealousy deplete the best friendship I ever possessed. Every single person is full of darkness, but I believe that I was always too dark for Lily Evans.
She found someone who was light, too. I'd like nothing better than to turn to clock and impale that arrogant... bastard upon his own cruelty... But the look she gave him was one I had only seen once before; when I looked at her. In that way, I will never hate James Potter fully. He made her happy."
The dawning realisation had come in the past-tense reference, and my thought was only concreted at the mention of Harry's father. Severus Snape had loved and lost Lily Evans to the father of the child that would, undoubtedly, bring his downfall.
I'd never really considered what would happen to the death eater’s shortly, but now I realised that even if Snape could convince anyone that he was in league with Dumbledore, his role as Headmaster of Hogwarts in its darkest years would condemn him.
"Is that why you hate Harry?" I said curiously, pushing the half-eaten plate away from me.
"I don't hate the child, rather I care for him almost as much as I care for you. Lily made more light out of her own beacon." he said in a subdued voice, conflicted between his hatred for James and love for the beautiful Lily.
I hadn't loved this father-figure more than I ever did right then and there, eating dinner in a subdued fashion at his subdued table, speaking about our emotions. Somehow I got a sense of foreboding from this openness, entirely unlike Severus Snape.
This man who had suffered and fought in silence for so longer wanted to impart the fact that he had loved, and loved well, in his time. He finally wanted something back, some love shown in return for his sacrifices, yet despite all of this new openness he would never simply ask for it.
"In many ways you're my truest father, and I love you, I really do. I don't mind that you weren't perhaps a model father, in fact I forgive it. I hope you forgive me, too. I left and didn't appear to ever look back. How many years have you been making two meals? How many years have they been wasted because I've not come to see you?" I burst into tears, rushing to kneel beside him and melt into a warm embrace.
"Come, you're being foolish. Mop those ridiculous tears up." he replied, forcing a harsh voice but failing.
"You know what?" I whimpered, retrieving my face from his arms to look at him squarely, "I didn't need Dumbledore's blood to be good, I could have left Voldemort just as well with yours; you're a good man, and a good father." I finished with certainty.
"I love you, Elysia." he breathed quietly, so quietly I could never be quite sure whether I had invented it within my own head, but leaping on the chance that he had in fact declared fatherly love, I buried my face again in his arms.
~
The end is near.