CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Hogwarts castle was just as Varya Petrov remembered it, elegant architecture standing amongst rocky edges and guarding a massive body of water. The sense of home, of belonging, enveloped the girl as she walked over the bridge that led to the Middle Courtyard, eager to head back to the Dungeons and throw herself in her bed.
She had taken the Floo Network directly to London, avoiding the Knights as she left the Rosier Manor. After the incident in the forest, she did not think that she could face Tom again, too ashamed to admit how much it had affected her. He had stood over her, so close that she had to stop herself from reaching out to him, and her skin had whirred with his proximity. Although nothing had happened, she knew that it had taken her a fair amount of self-control.
Varya knew that she should have talked to Icarus as well, but it was a conversation that she did not want to have on a night train. Therefore, she left as soon as the sun rose, and while everyone was still fighting their hungover from New Year's Eve, Varya went back to the train station and went straight to the Hogwarts Express.
To make sure that none of her friends or the Knights would come and talk to her, she had sat in a Gryffindor compartment, ignoring the odd looks that the lion-like students sent her way. Was she being a coward? Definitely. Nevertheless, she needed time to herself, something that she had not had in a long time.
So she spent the ride back to the school of witchcraft reading the literature book that Annie Beauchamp had given her as a present— Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. It was a pleasant read, and it made Varya think of the life she could have had if her parents were still alive, which was a thought she liked suppressing.
Now, she was back in the Scottish fields, where the snow had melted, leaving behind a cemetery of nature. The trees had shed their last leaves, and beside the evergreen ones, they resembled sticks of charcoal that had been stuck in dirty mud by whatever deity ruled winter. It was a dry season for Scotland, the kind that even those born in the month of January loathed, where there was more rain than snow, and the violent wind made it almost impossible to promenade the castle's surroundings.
Varya walked into the Dungeons eagerly, embracing the sweet sensation of home, and her eyes adjusted to the emerald glow of the salon. While away, it was easy to forget that she belonged to the Slytherin house, but now, as she walked wearing her forest and silver uniform, she felt more proud than ever.
Her mind went to one boy— the heir of Salazar Slytherin, the epitome of the House's essence. Cunning beyond remorse, perseverent, charismatic with just a hint of darkness that edged over the surface — good boy, Tom Riddle—on his way to becoming Head Boy, and yet with no simple definition of his future, always fueled by an unholy thirst for power. Yes— little serpent slithering through the cracks, undetected, and killing the innocent mouse in its own home.
Tom Riddle always had his own little game, did he not? His apocalyptic nature could have had him pass off as nothing but a maddened individual, and yet he had designed himself a faux personality, a mask to cover the empty vessel that he was.
Her room was just as she had left it, and she could see the ruffled pillows from where she had last slept. Her blanket was halfway off the mattress— she had hurried to avoid her roommates and had not even bothered making her bed. Varya kneeled before the frame and pulled out a box she had been fervid to open.
She let the contents spill on her bed, a bunch of old pictures, a few bracelets that she had outgrown, her first fallen tooth, and a small bag that had seen better days. Her hand stopped over one of the pictures, and she thought back to the odd memory— it was her eleventh birthday, and one of her classmates from school had insisted on taking a picture of the girl as she studied in one of the book-rooms of Scholomance.
The light was dim, and she could barely make out her figure as it stood at a wooden desk. Varya remembered that bench. She had craved her initials with her first knife on one of its legs, a sort of ritual for new apprentices. Her hair was shorter than now, barely hanging over her shoulder, and she looked pestered by the boy that was taking the picture.
Another picture, another year. It was taken in the catacombs as the students stood over the corpse of a strigoi, almost like an anatomy lab. The Dark Priest had explained how the beasts functioned, how they siphoned magic from the blood of their victims. Varya turned the picture and smiled at the small note that one of her peers had made— Do you think he is a strigoi too? Bloodsucking prick. It was not signed, and the statement was so vague it could have belonged to anyone.
There had been good memories.
It was the last picture that caught her attention, though, because it was taken before the Dark Priest had brought her to Scholomance. However, as she looked at it, she noticed something odd. Varya Petrov's eight-year-old self was still in the frame, standing in the backyard of what she had always assumed to be Magdalena's house, and yet where the woman's body was supposed to be, there was nothing.
A knock sounded at the door, and Varya scurried to place everything back in the box and stuff it under her bed. The wooden mass swung open, and Ivy Trouche walked in, followed by Della Beauchamp. They both squealed as they saw Varya, and ran to the girl at full speed, knocking her back into the ground.
"Ah! Get off, you pestering witches," she giggled, although she did not mean her words, and they knew it too as they shared a nimble look before embracing their Slytherin friend once again.
"It feels as if years have passed since I last saw you," sighed Ivy dramatically, getting up from the floor and dusting her dress off. It was of fine silk, a deep marine color, and the patterns of golden and silver threads that spun from the back to the front made it painfully elegant. Ivy looked the same, but her spirit had made fair use of the break, and she seemed to no longer carry the weight that it once had, and Varya wondered what this meant in regards to her plan to destroy Riddle.
Varya sighed, then, as she was about to open her mouth, the door opened again, and Elladora Selwyn walked in. She stopped in her tracks, eyes wide at the other presence in the room, almost as if she had forgotten what she was coming home to. She had been awful over the Christmas retreat, and Varya could not bring herself to care if she felt out of place in her own bedroom.
The girl with hair of blood only went to her bed in silence, briefly nodding in their direction. Once upon a time, Ivy had been the catalyzer to her fury, and Varya was the mediator in most scenarios. Now, she had turned her friend into her foe, and the semester would prove to be painstakingly awkward for the three roommates.
It was the raven-haired girl that moved first, marching out of the room as she paced down the stairs, and her two friends followed swiftly. They made their way to the Great Hall, already eager to feast upon the welcoming banquet.
"Fancy seeing you around," whispered Avery in her ear as she sat down at the table, a menacing grin on his face, "Did not take you for an early bird, but I suppose you would do anything to evade your lover-boy."
Varya let her eyes travel to the cup the boy was raising to his lips, and with a simple flick of the wrist, she sent its contents all over the boy's shirt, too tired to even bother arguing with the notorious tormenter. Her lips pulled in slight amusement at his little screech, and when the eyes of their fellow Slytherins turned towards him, he growled at the girl.
"Ah, you little wretched vixen! When I put my hands on you—"
"Sod off, Avery," came the voice of Icarus Lestrange, as he threw himself in the seat next to Varya, before throwing an arm around the girl and pulling her in for a kiss. Varya stilled for a second— what was he doing?
Then, she remembered that last they talked, it had ended in a match of snogging, and so the boy probably thought them to be some sort of couple, an odd one at that. Varya bit back wince as she felt his lips move against hers, and yet she let him kiss her passionately before detaching herself with a soft blush coating her cheeks. It was not because of him, though, but the way several students were staring at them.
"No way!" gasped Ivy before she bit into her bright green apple, "Varya, Lestrange, that was sickening to the stomach, yeah? A fair warning for the rest of us...I mean, when did this even happen?"
"Trouche, this whole table has endured two years of you exchanging saliva with Black, so you should not be the one to talk," scoffed Avery as he stole her apple and bit from the other side.
"Disgusting, you can keep it," growled the girl, but then waves of sadness crashed against her pupils, and her eyes flickered to Varya, "And you do not have to worry about that any more..."
Varya paled, "No way...the two of you are no longer together?"
"That appears to be the case," the Quidditch chaser's voice cracked, and she threw a glance to the end of the table where Alphard Black was sitting with his friends, throwing around some kind of ball and knocking into a group of first years, "Anyhow, he made the decision, I have to live with it. Said I was holding him back, can you believe it?"
"Love is dead!" imitated Avery, jeering at her high pitched tone, then he threw a glance at the newly-formed couple beside him, snickering at Varya's stiffness and Lestrange's cluelessness, "But fear not! A new couple has risen from your Phoenix ashes."
"You are so infuriating."
"And you are too ugly to keep frowning like that. Keep it loose, Trouche! Those witchy creams will not help you forever," The next thing the boy knew, a beef bone was being chucked at him, and he quickly ducked under the table. Ivy started kicking furiously in hopes of knocking the boy's head, hitting a few innocent Slytherins, and earning multiple glares, but Nicholas had resurfaced on the other end. He made an obscene gesture towards the girl, then ran out of the Great Hall.
Varya moved her body slightly, enough so that Icarus' arm fell off her shoulder, and leaned over to talk to her friend, "Ivy, you are a prefect and one of the best Quidditch players Hogwarts had had in years. If anything, he was the one holding you back."
The girl did not seem to fall for Varya's compliment, though, as she continued playing with the peas on her plate, moving them from one side to another. Lestrange politely asked her how her vacation had been, and Ivy gave him a nasty eye roll, almost as if asking— is it not obvious? But she proceeded to answer, telling the two of them that she had visited her parents in York, and that they had been delighted to have her back for a few weeks. She did not share the feeling. Her parents were stringent, and they enjoyed pestering her about her grades.
This semester was when the students of Hogwarts that had begun the second part of their fifth year would take their O.W.L.s, and of course, many parents had begun encouraging their children to focus on their studies. Varya supposed she did not have to worry about that.
When Ivy asked about their own vacation, Varya only talked about her time spent in London, explaining in great detail what had happened, and then switching to Icarus. The boy had made up his own story, or perhaps it was the first part of his vacation, Varya had not bothered asking.
She was still confused as to what the boy thought that they were— boyfriend and girlfriend? That did not quite sit right with the girl, and yet she could not bring herself to shatter his image, some part of it out of selfishness. As horrible as she was for leading him on, Icarus made her temporarily forget about Tom Riddle, and that was not something she could afford to lose right now.
"Have you heard, though?" inquired Ivy in a hushed tone, and when her classmates shared a look of uncertainty, she rolled her eyes and sighed, "About Arthur! He is still petrified, and they have not managed to find out what it was. Dippet wants to give up the investigation, but Dumbledore keeps telling him to continue."
Varya felt Icarus stiffen by her side— curious. "Is that so?" the boy asked nonchalantly, and yet his eyes glossed over with an indescribable blanket of...something.
"Yes," Ivy continued, obviously appalled at the notion as she gesticulated aggressively, almost hitting a Hufflepuff that passed their table, "Is it not ridiculous? Something attacked a child in this school, and our Headmaster wants to call off the search because...why? Because Newt Scamander keeps visiting Dumbledore, and he does not want to give off a bad impression!"
Varya chewed at a broken nail, ignoring the bubbling anxiety that rose when she heard the magizoologist's name, "Why would Scamander visit Dumbledore?"
"Have you not read any wizarding newspaper over the vacation, Varya? God! You people are so uninformed on the current event of this world. Grindelwald has been making more and more advances towards the West. Last I heard, he had already reached Switzerland."
"Why would Grindelwald be moving West?" demanded Varya, although something told her she knew the answer.
"Is it not obvious? He is coming for Hogwarts."
The three students turned to look at Maxwell Nott, who swung his legs over the table bench, taking a seat next to Varya, and placing his books on the table. Varya caught a brief glimpse of it, immediately being able to tell that it was Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, except that version had been covered in corners scribbles and vague illustrations drawn in spluttered ink. Its pages were worn out, and the girl wondered why Nott was revising the book so eagerly. Perhaps, he was studying for his O.W.L., but last she remembered, the boy was not in her class and had preferred taking Arithmancy.
"Why would he be coming here?" asked Varya, and she felt Icarus tug at her sleeve urgently, but she ignored his warning not to probe further.
Maxwell shot her a cold glare, "For Dumbledore, obviously. As much as Riddle hates to admit it, the man in the most powerful sorcerer alive, and while he lives, there is no chance of Grindelwald taking over. Best just root out the problem."
Varya did not know what shocked her more— the fact that Maxwell had been talking to her more and more, or that his theory actually made sense. She had always known Albus Dumbledore was a powerful sorcerer, and yet had not considered this possibility. Of course, if anyone would be able to defeat the Dark Wizard, it would be Albus. So why was he not doing it?
"Either way, I do not know why Professor Dumbledore keeps fishing for whatever...monster he desires to have petrified Arthur. We all know it was merely some intruder who thought it was funny to scare a muggle-born," scoffed Maxwell as he started scribbling something on his parchment. Ivy leaned over to look, but the boy just flicked her over the forehead, then growled.
However, Varya had caught onto something quite peculiar in Maxwell's sentence, "But Nott...whoever said anything about a monster?"
The boy raised his head at once, and the panic that flashed in his eyes was almost comical, "I was— I mean, it was only a theory, Petrov. Do not dwell on it."
But dwell on it, I shall, thought Varya as her eyes drifted to Icarus, who was now gulping on his water rather rapidly, obviously avoiding the conversation. They knew more than they were letting on, and the girl had a hunch that the students' petrification had something to do with the infamous Tom Riddle.
Some sort of anxiety overcame her, and she felt her mind bubble with uncertainty like a boiling pot of dread. Varya was starting to face problems that she did not know how to deal with, and at that moment, she felt overwhelmed. Her hands started shaking, and her pulse accelerated.
A loud noise sounded through the room, and Varya curved her head to assess the sound, expecting it to be a student who had flipped over a platter of food, and yet, as she perceived the room, she saw it had been something else. Typically, each Hall wall was lined with winged representations of the four animals that characterized each house— a snake, an eagle, a lion, and a badger. However, on the wall to her right, the winged snake statue had plummeted to the ground.
Students had begun gathering around it, and Professor Dippet walked away from the teacher's table to analyze the damage. Varya's eyes clinked in a frown, and as she looked around, she noticed other students were just as perplexed.
Not at any point in Hogwarts' history had a House statue crashed into pieces.
"That is no good," whispered Ivy as she turned to face the rest of the Slytherins, "That is a bad omen."
"You believe in that?" scoffed Icarus, and Varya met his eyes for the first time in forever. There was a painful awkwardness in their stare, and yet the boy gave her a reassuring smile, grabbing her hand and bringing it to his lips to softly kiss her knuckles. It was odd to see such a mischievous boy be so gentle. She did not like it.
"If it were not real, they would not be teaching Divination at Hogwarts, you arse," answered Ivy smugly. Icarus only scrunched his nose at the girl, and that was a reminder of the odd tension between Trouche and the Knights that had been going on ever since September.
Varya watched as Albus Dumbledore got up from his table and started making his way out of the Great Hall, and she quickly excused herself as she ran to catch up with the Transfiguration Professor. She followed him all the way to his office, and when he stopped in front of the door and turned to wait for her, she realized the man truly knew everything that moved around him.
"Varya," he nodded in acknowledgment as he opened the door to his office, and the Slavic student followed him inside, realizing how long it had been since she had last been in this chamber. Although she was supposed to keep him updated on Tom, she had not had any time to visit him after class. "I have been waiting for you to visit me."
"I am not here for the reason you think I am, Professor," the girl stated as she took a seat across from his desk, promptly refusing his lemon drops.
"Is that so?" he asked, eyes twinkling with some sort of understanding. He always knew more than he let on, and that was utterly infuriating. "Go on, then, what has brought you here?"
Varya did not know where to start— there was so much to say. The situation with Riddle had developed unexpectedly, and she had found information on his ancestry that she could surely tell Dumbledore, and yet when she opened her mouth to reveal the secret, no words came out. She shut it closed, and with a painful push, she knew that if she let Albus know of anything that was going on, she would be betraying Tom.
"I have been...keeping a close eye on Riddle," she began, although she had something else that was bugging her mind, "And while doing so, I was invited to attend a gala at the Rosier Manor, where two Grindelwald supporters rudely approached me."
There was some truth to her statement, and while the girl could not tell the whole story, she knew it would be enough to get her the information and help that she needed.
"And they said something remarkably odd, that Grindelwald has known of my existence. As a matter of fact, it was he who sent me to Scholomace."
Varya did not know what she had expected from the older wizard, but it was definitely not a blank stare.
"You knew," she breathed solemnly, and the rage started to bubble against her skin, "All this time, you knew what was going on, and you lied to me!"
Her scream resonated through the small room, so much so that she feared students in the hallway could have heard it, and yet Varya had no care for it. She had trusted Dumbledore; she had let him uproot her life and send her on a suicide mission. Was that a charade as well? Another way to play with her mind?
"Varya, you must understand—"
"No, I must do nothing for the likes of you! You manipulator...you...you absolute traitor!"
The candles in the room flickered, and the shadows in the corners danced as they started swirling and moving, almost like an extension to the Eastern witch. Her eyes watered at the betrayal, and she felt herself break in a way that she had not before. There was no wind in the room, and yet her voluminous curls agitated around her face. Magic sizzles underneath the thin epidermis and the office grew darker. Her soul twisted, or whatever was left of it, and some sort of darkness gripped out from beneath, and her rage grew...and it grew...and it grew.
White, then onyx. White, then onyx. She was losing herself.
Hands clasped at her shoulders, and they shook her out of a disturbed state of unawareness, and Dumbledore's lagoon eyes swirled with worry as he sat her down in her seat again, "Varya, you must control yourself and listen to me. If I have ever hidden something from you, it was not only for your good, but for those around you."
Soft pearls of saltiness pooled in her ducts, and then overflowed like a raucous river in the early spring days as she grasped at his robes and regulated her breath.
"He toyed with my memories," she winced, and it pained her when she realized just how clueless she was to her own life. There was something so painfully twisting in not being able to remember her childhood, almost like forgetting half of who you are, and Varya feared that she was not the girl she thought she was. No, she was only a manufactured version of herself, "I want them back."
"You see, that could be extremely dangerous—"
"I do not care," she thundered, not worrying if she was defying the most powerful wizard that walked the Earth. If there was something that he feared in her enough to keep her in the dark, she held no remorse for her defiance. "If you do not help me, I will find someone that will."
Albus looked at the girl before him, the one he had heard about for years prior to her selection for his task, and wondered what to make of this moment. He had brought her here under the pretense of needing someone to change Tom Riddle, and while there was some truth to that, there were multiple reasons for Varya Petrov's appearance at Hogwarts, some greater than others. One thing was certain— the girl could not leave his cautious watch.
"Very well, then," he conceded, making his way back to his desk as he took out a piece of parchment and a quill. He began scribbling feverishly, his cursive writing imagery of his character, and when he had finished locking his words on a piece of paper, he handed it over to her, "Those are the times you will visit my office for the following months, and we will carefully work on extracting and untangling each memory. I must warn you, Varya, that it is not a pleasant process, and that there is a reason for which you have lost those moments in time. I fear that once you face the truth, it might be too much of a burden to handle."
Varya blinked at the schedule, quickly wiping the tears that had begun drying on her face, and nodded tiredly. She did not care; all she wanted to know was who she actually was, what her past had been, and what Grindelwald had done to her.
She got up from her seat, but right before she left, she remembered something, "Professor, you remember the night Tom Riddle found me in the forest?" she asked, feeling the shame creep at her slowly, and when he nodded, she continued reluctantly, "It was him that had been poisoning me for months, trying to break my mind, and he inevitably succeeded. He blindsided me, and he used Legilimency on me. He knows it was you who brought me here."
Albus sighed, frustrated at having to deal with another problem, "And what has he done since he has found out?"
"Initially, I told a lie— that you were indebted to my family, and so you brought me to Hogwarts after tracking me down, and he might have believed it for a second, but his acolytes eventually found out it was a fabrication, and they now know I lied. The oddity of it all is that I expected him to react violently, to reprimand me for deceiving him, and yet...he has said nothing," the girl explained.
Dumbledore nodded, scratching his chin while deep in thought, "There is only one reason that I can think of that would make Riddle not reach out to you about this."
"What is it, Professor?" she breathed, not appreciating the somber tonality of his voice.
"I fear that Tom Riddle has fashioned his own version of the truth behind your story, and that if he has managed to figure out everything, that boy might be well past the point of redemption."