Ok, Author's note.
The chapters are going to get longer from here on out, I've been trying to do this in bite-sized pieces, but there is too much to cram in. So, longer chapters and longer wait times should be expected. I'm sorry.
BUT, this does not mean that I have stopped working on the book. Although I do have other works in progress, plus all the extra schoolwork, (thanks a lot, grade 10) I am still picking away at this when I have the time.
And again, Thank you for sticking with this. It is going to get intense soon! Wish me luck!
All the best,
JMSpy49
Elizabeth woke with a start and her hands flew over her body like probes, searching for the wounds inflicted on her in her dream. The nightmares had come a week before, and every night she witnessed herself hunching over a desk while a masked figure of malice brought down the whip across her shoulders. Blood would pour onto her paper, soaking through the answers to the thousands of questions.
O.W.Ls. The source of all the dreams. Elizabeth was woefully unprepared and terrified of failing even one exam. She wanted to pass every subject because she had not decided what she wanted to do with her life. Maria wanted to teach Transfiguration, but was also willing to go into the department of accidental magical reversal. She had been hooked on that idea since the ministry team had come to do a demonstration. Elizabeth had thought them nice, but it was not her type of job.
She had spoken to Nathan about it and he had told her not to worry, he was experiencing similar troubles. He had described one dream to her in detail. He was in the greenhouse, doing his practical exam; and the plant he was pruning had suddenly sprouted long green tentacles and risen from it's pot. It had glided toward him, tentacles wriggling and then turned into his mother and force-fed him peas.
She couldn't stop laughing after that. Even after Nathan had insisted that he had woken up terrified out of his wits.
When she told Francis he had told her not to worry, something would come to her. She had seen a strange look in his eyes, one that she couldn't place, but she dismissed it. It was probably the fact that they had stopped hanging out so much.
Maria often commented on this. How Nathan had swept her off her feet and left Francis in the dust. She found it strange that a Gryffindor and a Slytherin were going out together. Elizabeth countered by saying that she and Martin struck off rather suddenly as well and that had made her stop.
One day, as the exams drew ever nearer, Elizabeth and Maria went out to the woods by the lake so that Maria could show off her newest transformation. A sparrow. She was tiny, with a brown head and brown wings with small black flecks all over it. Her chest feathers were white and her tail feathers were white and brown. Her eyes were the same though, just like in her hawk and her doe. "Very nice!" Elizabeth cheered, "I wish I could do that."
Maria turned back into herself and said, "you could, you know. It would just take..."
"Time and practice and good hard work." They finished together, it had become a joke.
"No, seriously," Maria persisted, "You could. I can teach you and help you through the difficult bits. It's not actually that hard."
"Which is why you were confined to the hospital wing for a month after tha-"
"That didn't count! I was being foolish, and I know you well enough to trust that you will not be!"
"Besides, I could never decide what to turn into. I don't think I can manage three like you can, and there must be at least a hundred animals that I want!"
"You could make it the same as your patronus?"
"A fox? No way."
"Why not?"
"Because.... Because I don't even know why my patronus is a fox to begin with! Foxes are sly and violent! I've never even killed one of those cabbage parasites in Herbology! At least your's makes sense! A wild rabbit suits you!"
"Did you know that Martin's is a hummingbird?"
"No, really?"
"Yes," Maria giggled, "He threatened to break up with me if I told anyone, but I don't think you count as anyone."
"Then you shouldn't have told me that!" A pause. "Is it really?"
"Yes!" Maria was shaking with mirth. "A little hummingbird about the size of my fist. It's really cute!" Maria turned into the sparrow and flitted around Elizabeth's head all while chirping and twittering in a dizzying fashion.
"Stop! Stop! You're making me dizzy!"
Maria the sparrow stopped flying and perched on a nearby branch, looking at her and twittering with what would have been laughter. Elizabeth fixed it with a glare and said, "I promised to meet Nathan at four. It's four thirty now, well done, you kept me distracted for half an hour."
Maria turned back into herself, "Sorry. I didn't know."
"That's ok, Nathan will understand."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That night, Elizabeth went into the case. She wasn't sure what drove her down there, it might have been the O.W.L s, or it might have been the concern that was beginning to fester in a corner of her mind.
The bowl of memories was still lying on the table, and Elizabeth was drawn to it like a moth to a lamp. She watched as the shining stuff swirled around, showing tiny snippets of memories and hiding them again. Elizabeth held her hand over the bowl and the swirling stopped.
She was looking into a room with white walls and a few chairs along the wall. In a basket were some newspapers and books and there was a clock on the wall with its hands at three thirty. She knew this place. It was the waiting room of St Ronda's hospital. She had been there once before, when Martin was born. She leaned into the memory, falling into the room and onto one of the chairs. She watched as a the door opened and a nurse came in with her father and... her heart gave a leap, her mother.
Tina was pregnant, she could tell that, and it brought tears to her eyes. She knew that her mother had died after she was born, but she didn't know why. But when she looked into her mother's face, she saw that tears also sparkled in her eyes. The nurse was talking, but Elizabeth couldn't hear her, she was focused on her mother, trying, and failing to read her expression and find out what was the matter.
She turned her attention to the nurse, and then wished she hadn't when she said, "I'm very sorry, Mrs Scamander. I'm afraid that it's cancer."
The memory shifted, and Elizabeth was standing in a different hospital room. She watched helplessly as her mother made a decision. Since treatment could hurt the baby, the cancer would remain until the baby was born.
A doctor that Elizabeth hadn't noticed told her mother again about the risks, and that she might not survive, but Tina had made up her mind. "She will come first."
Elizabeth knew what the next memory would be, and she knew that she did not want to see her mother's death. A death, she realized, was her fault. Her mother had put her above herself, and had died because of it. Elizabeth watched as the memory changed, and quickly pulled her head out of the bowl of memory.
It was her fault.
She had killed her mother.
And she cried.
Sorry about how long that took, I had a hard time visualizing the hospital memories and they seem rushed. Not too proud of that.
I'm looking forward to writing the next chapter! Stay tuned!