~Chapter Seventeen~
I climbed off Severus and sat at a desk so I could pretend to be a normal student. Not a student who was just sat on her professor's lap.
Severus coughed and smiled at me. "Come in."
Never in a million years would I have expected to see the person who was on the other side of that door. Her hair was a mixture of black and grey but the silver streaks were the only give away of her age. She could have been the poster woman for a pureblood, with her expensive robes and superior stare.
"Zadravei skupi." Her Bulgarian accent was rich as she said hello my darling in her native tongue.
"Baba?" I whispered. It was so easy to sink back into the language I spoke for years.
"Katrina do you know this person?" Severus asked in confusion.
He doesn't speak Bulgarian so he didn't realise that 'baba' means grandmother.
"Professor Snape, meet my grandmother Lady Karkaroff. She died years ago."
She laughed at how I introduced her. When I was younger I adored the way her laugh was calming and it made you want to laugh with her. But that was when she was alive. In this moment her laugh was like nails on a chalk board.
"Kak si tuk?" I asked her how is she here. I went to her funeral and I saw her body.
She gazed at Severus in amusement as he tried to stand in front of me. She switched to English, I'm guessing so that Severus could understand her. "Don't worry yourself over the details my angel. Now the reason I am here is a more enticing conversation. You have been given the gift of the Death Mark and I've come to aid you in this journey."
"Lady Karkaroff." Severus bowed his head in respect towards my grandmother.
"Severus Snape, the Dark Lords right hand man. It's a delight to see you again." As she moved closer to us the room started to get colder.
"We've met before?" Severus asked. It was a shock to me when my grandmother said they had met but off course Severus is older than me. That fact always seems to escape my mind.
"Don't worry I'm not offended as you shouldn't remember me." She raised her hand to touch her cheek but something inside of me made me step in front of Severus and twitch to grab my wand. She may look like my grandmother but I don't trust her.
When I was younger I could see that she had darkness inside of her but right now in this moment, I can feel it. I bet Severus can as well and that's why I don't want her getting any closer to him. His darkness was made over time but I was born with mine. Unlike me he knew a time without it.
"I have Professor Snape to help me. I don't need a dead woman." She rolled her eyes.
"You don't have to call your boyfriend Professor Snape in front of me my angel. You chose well I just don't know if your father will think the same. I love him of course but he's always been weak and you've always been strong." As soon as it became clear she knew about Severus I took his hand in mine.
"My father is not weak." I went to step forward but Severus pulled me back.
"He gave names when questioned because he was too weak to withstand Azkaban. He gave the name of your best friend, your dear Barty." Severus couldn't stop me from stepping forward.
"He wasn't aware we had developed a friendship. He was in Azkaban." I stressed.
I never told my father about my friendship with Barty because I knew it would kill him as it killed me. The cost of my father's release was my best friend's freedom. If he knew he would have told me what he had to do straight away and we would have gotten through it. He wouldn't keep something like this from me.
"I visited him in Azkaban. I told him everything about your life." I didn't want to believe her.
"Don't... you dare lie to me about this." I threatened.
"I didn't teach you to speak to me like that Katrianna." The way she said my name made me flinch.
"You are not my grandmother. When you were alive I could feel a bond, I trusted you with everything. I don't feel that bond anymore so my manners are nonexistent. Now answer me this, did my father give Barty's name knowing I cared for him?"
As she answered my heart broke so I left the potions classroom and walked back to my dorm room. For once I didn't go straight to anger and want to kill the person who hurt me. I couldn't because the person who hurt me I loved with all my heart.
I didn't talk to anyone as I got into my bed. Hermione, Seam and even Neville tried to talk to me but I couldn't find one word to say to them. For the first time in years I cried.
I spelled the room so anyone who wasn't a roommate wouldn't be able to enter. All the girls except Hermione gave up trying to talk to after two days. No one could even get a 'hello' out of me.
"I'm going to stop asking you what's wrong and instead just talk to you and pretend you're replying." You can always rely on Hermione to get on with things even when it's hard.
"So Professor Moody has been asking about you, I understand why he's your worst enemy. There's something very creepy about him. I was just in his class but he sent me to check on you. For once I thought I saw concern in his eye, I must have been seeing things. " I didn't look at her as she spoke but I listened.
When something goes wrong you talk to a family member, your best friend or your partner. My father has been lying to me for years, my best friend was hurt because of him and I wouldn't be able to talk to Severus about it without telling him everything. He would know that I was hiding something and I can't tell him about Barty posing as Mad Eye.
"Something even stranger though is Professor Snape. He's been trying to get into the Gryffindor common room to see you but the fat lady is having none of it." She laughed.
That got me interested. "Harry told me he even heard him ask Dumbledore to let him in but he said no." I'm hurting someone I care about deeply. None of this is his fault but yet I'm shutting him out.
"Can you believe that Barty Crouch was murdered? Nothing seems to sit right anymore." Hermione was going to start talking again but I bolted upright in bed.
"Welcome back." She smiled.
I didn't say anything I just ran to Mad Eyes classroom. I was using my wand to make myself look more presentable. Two days in bed doesn't do much for the hair or skin for that matter. I think people at this school had gotten used to me sprinting through these halls because they didn't even bat an eye.
I barged into the classroom and it should have crossed my mind that he'd be in the middle of teaching a class full of teenagers. Hermione did tell me that he sent her out of his lesson to check on me.
"Rena." If he's using his personnel nickname for me that means whatever he's here and using Mad Eye's body for must be coming to an end soon.
"We need to talk." I pleaded.
He nodded and dismissed the class. I got funny looks from my fellow classmates especially from Potter and for some reason Malfoy. Oh Merlin he's going to tell Severus where I am. I won't have much time with Barty at all before Severus comes.
I cast a silencing charm on the room so no one could hear us. "You killed your father?" I asked. I never thought he would actually do it.
He laughed that crazy laugh of his. It sounded weird coming from Mad Eye's body but then again Bart was always weird and crazy. "No I didn't Rena. I wanted to but he wasn't mine to kill."
"But if you let him go after we spoke to him at the tournament for someone else to kill he would have told someone about your identity. You can't go back to Azkaban." I was confusing myself.
"Your grandmother really did a number on you. The Rena that I knew wouldn't have easily given up her memories to me or if she did she would have worked it out the minute she woke up." He went behind his desk and took out a book from the draw.
When he handed it to me a feeling of familiarity washed over me. The cover was my family crest my father always hated it but I always admired it. The way one simple thing could represent a powerful wizarding family. I was almost too scared to open it.
"What do you mean my grandmother did a number on me?" I asked. Yet again my grandmother is the cause of something.
He gestured for me to take a seat. "You couldn't have been more than four years old but you were showing great dark power. You would be playing in the garden and the flowers around you would die. It made you laugh."
I remember a day similar to what he was talking about. It was before I could read so I'd play in the garden to amuse myself. It was hard growing up having no one to talk to so I liked being outside. I used to look up to the sky and think 'this world is so huge one day I'll have a friend'. But day after day it got harder so every so often I'd scream and as a result all the flowers would die. Grandmother fixed them as soon as she noticed.
"The Dark Lord could feel it but you were too young for him to use you as a weapon. He had your grandmother take away your knowledge. You see knowledge Rena is power. Without it we're nothing. It's why you have always struggled at school." Is it family members destroy me week?
"She made it so whenever you learned something you'd only remember half of it. You'd still have the power inside of you but you wouldn't understand how to use it. It's why you have these bursts of darkness you can't control." His tone was soft and caring.
As he spoke images kept flashing through my brain. They were of my grandmother casting spells on me and even images of me feeling excited to have learned a lot in class only to forget it soon after. She took it all away from me.
"How do I reverse it?" I whispered.
"The spell that she used is in this book. The language is a mixture between Bulgarian and Latin so I could never understand it but you will." He gave me his flask which I quickly found out was firewhisky.
I opened the book and started to read. I've read a lot of books in my life but this book felt like it was a book about me. I wouldn't admit it to anyone but I didn't need to read it because I could hear it whispering to me. If I admitted that people would think I'm crazy.
The ink from the book started to seep into my fingertips. Barty whacked the book out of my hands when it caught fire. I didn't need it anymore though because the magic had already made its way up my arms and into my brain. I closed my eyes and I could feel it uncovering parts of my memory. It started to make me angry at how much my grandmother had taken from me.
I felt like I had a much better hold on my darkness because I understood it more. I taught myself how to manage most my darkness I just couldn't remember. That woman could have kept me from so much emotional pain. I can't believe I shed a single tear over her death.
When I opened my eyes again I could see everything clearly for the first time in years. "Barty." He bowed his head in respect which I thought was strange but I liked it.
I placed my fingers on his temples. "I would like my memories back please."
That night played in my head as if I was watching a film and as Severus barged through the doors of Mad Eye's classroom, I uttered the words that scared me because they showed Severus what I was capable of.
"I murdered Barty Crouch Senior."
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Hi everyone sorry about the wait this one was just hard for me to write because I recently lost my grandmother and I was bringing Katrina's back.
I hope you all had an amazing Christmas!!
Anyone get anything Harry Potter??
What do you think about Katrina in this chapter and how is her relationship with Severus going to work with these new developments???
Cannot thank you guys enough for the amount of reads, comments and votes!!
Love you all
Kisses- K