Patronum Lacrima

CHAPTER 6

The first day after the holidays was always one of the hardest for Ron. He had gotten so used to the castle being deserted, going to bed late and getting up late that it was hard for him to get back to his normal school routine.

Hermione was annoyingly cheerful in the mornings, and the thought of his timetable made him even grumpier. He had Charms first, then Potions before lunch. Damn! By the time he got to Care of Magical Creatures, he was in a foul mood. Snape had given them an enormous amount of homework, and had vanished Harry's and his potion because it wasn't fluid enough. Ron was still seething inwardly.

His mood improved slightly when he saw Hagrid. It usually did. It was hard to be angry at Hagrid, with his strangely innocent and slightly clumsy manner, and Ron usually felt more cheerful after encounters with the shaggy man.

"Look what I've got for yeh today," Hagrid announced. "They're really shy an' all, so don' scare 'em if yeh can help it." A lot of people would have thought this statement ridiculous, since the creatures had already been handled by Hagrid, and so, obviously, been scared more than they were ever to be again. But they were wrong. Hagrid could be surprisingly gentle, and most creatures trusted him instinctively.

Hagrid led them around to the back of the cabin, where ten or so greenish-black, bedraggled-looking birds were sitting on the fence surrounding his vegetable-patch. All of them were looking down, as if scared to meet anyone's eye.

"Can anyone tell me what they are?"

No one could. "Well, they're Augurys. Very shy, like I said. They're native ter Britain an' Ireland. Uh, the feathers repel ink. So yeh can' use 'em as quills. These 'uns aren' gonna be flyin' 'cause they only fly in rain. In real' heavy rain. Uh, questions?"

"Are they sick?" Ron asked. "They look kind of, uh, battered, to be honest."

"Uh, no, they're always like this. I'm goin' ter show yeh a nest that I found in a thorn bush in the forest. They're shaped like tears." Hagrid quickly walked to the door of his cabin, and emerged carrying a nest that was, indeed, tear-shaped, and quite pretty. They took out parchment and started copying it, and making notes about the Augurys. Ron was sitting right next to the tethering-post, and jumped as one of the birds gave a low, mournful cry.

"Sure they aren't sick, Hagrid?" he called. "This one sounded like it was going to be sick."

Hagrid came over just as another bird gave the same mournful, throbbing cry.

"That's what they always soun' like. But that means it's gonna rain tomorrow. They only cry when it's about ter rain. An' the cries used ter be thought of as bad omens 'cause wizards thought it ter bring death. But that's been cleared up - all it really brings is rain."

~*~

Rain was pummeling the windows when Ron woke up. Figures, he thought grimly. Augury cries bring rain, great, just great. He wondered for a moment if spell-o-taping a bird's beak shut would solve the problem in any way, but decided that he probably wasn't the first one to have idea like that.

He looked out of the window at the bleak landscape that spread before him: the grounds were obscured by dismal gray fog, and he could only just make out the perimeter of the forest, its bulk silhouetted against the dreary sky. The water of the lake was choppy, its surface heaving from rain and wind.

Getting up was cumbersome; he would have preferred to stay in bed and seriously considered simply skiving off classes; he could just say he was sick. But then again, it was probably not a good idea to miss lessons if he could help it; he was going to need all the help he could get this year; especially Potions was proving extremely difficult, and they had Potions right after lunch. Also, Hermione would immeadiately know he was not sick, and hold him of her terribly long lectures, in which case he preferred going to class anyway. Getting up it is, he told himself wearily.

By the time he had come to this decision, Dean and Neville were getting dressed, and Seamus had already gone. Ron found him in the common room, bent over his Charms homework. He himself had thankfully managed to finish his last night, but just barely; he had been on the verge of falling asleep where he sat. The Seventh Years had an abominable amount of homework, and Ron took pity on Seamus.

"I'll bring you back some toast if you want," he told him.

"Thanks," said Seamus. He looked extremely grateful, and Ron could tell why. There was no way Seamus would have been able to go down to breakfast if he intended to finish the entire pile of homework next to him.

"No problem," Ron told him, and climbed out through the portrait hole.

Breakfast at Hogwarts was served from 6:30am - 8:45am, with lessons beginning at 9:00am, and Ron was caught in the rush hour. He was nearly knocked down as he descended the stairs leading to the Great Hall. He stumbled, and caught hold of the banister just in time. Someone took hold of the back of his shirt to support him.

"Lucky that I'm always there to save your life," his younger sister teased him.

"Thanks, Ginny." They went down to breakfast together, and sat next to each other. Ron started buttering pieces of toast.

"Ron, don't you think that's a bit much - even for you?"

"Nah," said Ron, who was buttering his fifth piece. "It's for Seamus, too. Lovely weather today, mmh? It's coming down like a bitch."

~*~

Harry and Hermione were waiting for him in front of the DaDA classroom, having come to breakfast a lot later than Ron, and choosing not to go back to the common room before lessons. Ron had kept his word to bring Seamus some toast.

"Hey," Ron said as he caught up with them in the hallway. They all enjoyed DaDA, which was taught by Professor Lupin, who had been re-employed, despite initial complaints of some parents. No other applicant had been found, and Mad-eye Moody had not been keen on making up for the year of teaching he had missed due to being locked in his own magical trunk. Lupin was on his second year of teaching after starting the second time round, and protests about his position as a teacher at Hogwarts had died down in the meantime.

DaDA was the most interesting class by far, Lupin being a fan of hands-on experience. He believed they learned most by actually seeing and handling dark creatures and curses, as far as that was possible. He wasn't quite as drastic as the fake Moody had been, performing the Unforgivable curses on them, but their lessons were never dull. Somehow, knowing that whenever they did a theoretical lesson they had to pay attention or else they would be caught off-guard when they had to put the information to use was a very good way to motivate them.

Lupin walked through the crowd of students milling around in front of the classroom and unlocked the door. He waited patiently while they got settled, putting their books on their desks, and generally being noisy.

"Quiet! I have an announcement to make!" The class quietened slowly. "You will be doing assignments this term. You will be working with a partner whom you will be able to choose yourselves, if numbers permit. The essence of the assignment is, of course, the Dark Arts, but you'll be able to largely choose the topic yourselves. I'll hand out sheets of parchment on which are written some ideas and guidelines. You can choose to research a specific poison, curse or dark creature. How you put together your assignment is also largely up to you, although all assignments will be marked using the same principle."

An excited murmur went through the class; Lupin's assignments were always something special because people could research things that actually interested them.

On the parchment there were several proposals as to what could be done. There were lists of poisons, curses and creatures, as well as books that referred to them.

"Now pair up, and decide what you're going to be doing. You can also start work - there are rudiments to most of these topics in your books. I want a piece of parchment from each group at the end of the lesson, with your names and topic on it."

"Look, Ron!" Hermione exclaimed almost as soon as she received a piece of parchment. "There's so much interesting stuff here!" The two had immediately decided to pair up. Harry had moved his chair next to

Neville's, and Parvati was hunched over the same piece of parchment as Lavender. Dean, Seamus and Terry Boot were a group of three, as it didn't work out even.

The most interesting topics, according to Hermione, were Lacrima Cruororis, Triacorporis and Adamare Libido.

Ron looked expectantly at her.

"Explain," he said, and grinned sheepishly. "The names sound cool, but I have got no idea what they're all about."

"Okay," she said. "Lacrima Cruororis is a potion. Better said, it's a poison. Practically one of the most evil ones there is, because it's really hard to trace. It's basically made up of tears and blood - that's really old magic. The tears and the blood have to come from two different people - they're not allowed to be related - two different blood-lines, you know?"

Ron nodded.

"Good. There's also something about pearls, but I don't know anymore. Uh, Triacorporis is, uh, well it's not a spell. It's like a state you're in. Three people put themselves in this state - there's rumors that it really hurts, I don't know, though - and if all three of them then perform a spell together, you basically can't countermand it, because they're too powerful. It's really old magic, too, all of this is, something about the power of three, because it's a magic number."

"What's Adamare Libido?" Ron wanted to know.

"It's a love potion. The oldest, most powerful and so on. The most illegal. It makes a person want you, not only admire you and stuff. It's like the Imperious Curse." she added as an afterthought. "They go insane if they resist. Or they die. It's not pretty, not the way love should be."

They decided on Lacrima Cruororis as their topic and, after checking with Lupin that no one else had chosen it yet, they put their names down on a piece of parchment and handed it to him.

~*~

He looked at the young woman standing before him. He had known she would come. Her fiery red hair whipped around her face, and her green eyes shone as bright and as cold as her star.

The skies had been watched on her behalf for a while now, and the movement of the stars was disquietening. She was young, but her past was a dark one. Her former lover's passion for the dark arts would plunge the world into temporary chaos. She knew of the importance of the gift he had given her, even though she hadn't seen the Third Star burn brighter than it had for over a hundred years.

Now she carried her one-year-old son in her arms, and a much heavier burden around her neck, as she looked into the centaur's large, brown eyes.

The clear spring day did not match her mood, but here, deep in the forest, it was bleak and dismal. Hardly a ray of the weak sun penetrated the canopy, and the moist earth was cold beneath her bare feet.

"I see great peril ahead. Blood will be shed. You will not be safe - with or without the burden you bear," he told her.

She knew that already. She had made her decision before she came here. She shifted her son's weight onto her hip, and with one hand carefully lifted the pendant over her head. She winced as a strand of her flaming hair was caught in the clasp, and ripped from her scalp.

"Thank you," she whispered, as the pendant was taken from her.

~*~

Harry had been watching Ginny ever since she had told him she had confessed her feelings, or rather, lack thereof, to him. He started noticing subtle changes in her that he never perceived before: she was not a little girl anymore. Changes in her appearance he had noticed in passing, but had never given thought to the fact that she was not the same person who had sent him a Valentine's card in Second Year, and who had not been able to talk to him without turning red.

She was not unusual for her age, preoccupied with boys and clothes, but she was slightly precocious. Harry had not noticed before, but he did now, and it surprised him somewhat. She was nothing like Ron, a fact he had always taken for granted.

He kept thinking about what she had said. I don't need an apology from you. I want to put this behind me. I think it's best this way. Each word had been like a slap in his face. Somehow, he had been sure she would always love him, another thing he had taken for granted. He had never known it to be any other way. Now the tables had turned, and he was the one left feeling stupid. Why did she kiss me if she knows she doesn't love me anymore, he thought angrily. Because you got her drunk, that's why, Harry, you great big prat, he answered himself.

Ginny was not unperceptive, she never had been. But she was more brooding than he remembered; was that another gradual change in her he had not noticed, or had she really become quieter since the Christmas holidays?

Harry wondered if she knew how much she had hurt him. Maybe that was the reason she was avoiding his eyes. Maybe she was sorry, and too embarrassed to apologize. Maybe he should try and talk to her again, and show her that he wasn't angry.

Maybe, just maybe, she would tell him it had all been a big mistake.

~*~

Millicent was walking down to the dungeons from the Great Hall, lost in thought, when she bumped into Blaise heading in the opposite direction.

"Oh. Sorry!" Millicent said. Blaise didn't seem to hear her. Millicent's brows knitted together.

Where's she off to, she wondered. She's in an awful hurry.

She had always feigned friendship with Blaise as much to keep the Slytherin integrity upright as to avoid a feud with her. Millicent had always been just a little bit scared of the other girl. She knew that Blaise was smart and ambidextrous, and didn't want to get on her bad side. She was also jealous of her friendship with Draco Malfoy, and had always suspected that there might be more to it then met the eye. After all, the two of them had been the only ones who didn't go home for Christmas.

I wonder if she's off to meet Draco, Millicent continued her line of thought. She turned around to follow Blaise as soon as she was sure the other girl had kept walking, and wasn't paying attention to her.

Millicent followed her openly, but tried not to make too much noise. As long as she was walking in the direction of the Great Hall, Millicent could always tell her that she'd been going back to get something. After that she would follow more stealthily. She wasn't exactly sure why she was following Blaise, maybe it was because she had nothing better to do. Or maybe it was her Slytherin curiosity getting better of her. But something about the way the smaller girl hurried towards the Entrance Hall, which, Millicent had now realized, was where she was heading, made her curious.

She began ducking behind statues and such as soon as Blaise passed the Great Hall and walked into the Entrance Hall, then out of the great double-doors leading out onto the grounds. She watched her walk over the grounds, then followed quickly when Blaise was halfway to the lake.

Millicent was, in fact, not a very good tracker or stalker, and knew it. Blaise would have seen her, had she turned around, but she was obviously preoccuppied.

Someone else had spotted her, though, and from behind one of the larger trees at the fringe of the forest, a pair of eyes never left the two girls, one red-headed, the other brunette.

~*~

Blaise kept walking towards the forest, obviously planning to walk along its perimeter, never having entered the forest alone before. Millicent knew that because Blaise had told her about her fear of the forest, about how she'd hated the Care of Magical Creatures classes with visits to the forest even more than the regular classes, and how Draco had told her about his adventures in the forest. She'd told Millicent that she wouldn't ever enter the forest of her own free will. Ever.

"Stupefy!"

Blaise stumbled from an invisible blow to her side and swayed, like some kind of reed in the wind, before overbalancing and landing in a crumpled heap on the ground.

Millicent was rooted to the spot, petrified with horror. She couldn't believe what she had just witnessed; did Blaise know there was someone waiting for her here? Was that the reason she had come outside after dinner? But then why had she been stunned? And by whom? Millicent couldn't see anyone.

"Mobilcorpus!"

Millicent jumped. She saw Blaise's limp body move towards the woods of it's own accord. She ran from her cover, too surprised to even be careful - and was blasted on the spot.

The man had been waiting for her:

"Imperio!" And suddenly he was in her mind, controlling her thoughts and body. "Come here!" she heard him say.

It felt good to do what he said, but there was a nagging in the back of her head. She had been learning how to resist the Imperius Curse, her parents had insisted upon it, but she had never been good at it. She had never been able to act upon the voice in her head arguing with the commands she was given. So she listened to it curiously, half pondering what it was telling her while her legs never even hesitated, walking towards the spot where the voice had come from.

Blaise's body floated eerily next to her at knee-height. Her legs stopped in front of a tree at the fringe of the forest, and even though she could see no-one, it felt right to be standing there. Sure enough, only moments later a head appeared, followed by a stocky body. A man. A short, unattractive one, with a silver hand.

The voice in her head grew more persistent, telling her to run away, but she couldn't. She didn't want to. The Voice told her that the man had a maniacal gleam in his eye. The Voice also told her that silver hands were unnatural, but she didn't care. It told her to be scared, but she wasn't.

He told her to stay where she was, leveling his gaze at Blaise. His eyes were undressing her, and The Voice wanted to scream and slap him, but Millicent couldn't move. All she could do was watch with a kind of detatched interest. She watched as the man started unbuttoning the white blouse that was Blaise's school uniform, and slipped it off her shoulders. The Voice was sure something horrible was about to happen, and told Millicent to cover her eyes as he drew a dagger from a pearl-encrusted sheath at his waist with his metal hand.

The man punctured Blaise's creamy skin with the acuminate blade, and watched as the red blood welled up to the surface of the shallow cut. He watched hungrily as it ran over her shoulder in a thin rivulet.

Pervert, The Voice said.

He pulled a phial from the depths of his robe and let the blood run into the clear tube. He let it run until the phial was half-full, then produced a stopper and corked the small vessel. He redressed Blaise, not bothering to stop the flow of blood. It quickly seeped through her blouse, a red stain blossoming on the thin white fabric. He didn't seem to care, or even notice. He rounded on Millicent:

"You," he hissed. "Go back to your school. Go to your room. Don't tell anyone what you've seen. Behave normally. And walk here each night - wait for me. Wait for ten minutes, if I do not appear by then, you may leave. Your time will come soon enough - you will be of great use to me." He smirked. "Go!"

She went. She didn't turn around, didn't falter or hesitate.

Back in the common room, she didn't stop to look around, talk to anyone, or even greet them. She went straight to her dormitory and lay on her bed. She was still trying to ignore The Voice but she couldn't silence it and it tired her. She undressed while fighting to keep down her nausea, but a whirling vertigo overwhelmed her; she fell into her bed and succumbed to her exhaustion.