The Gauntlet by Loralie
Chapter Notes: Thanks so much to my cousin/ Beta, Nikkisue.
The potion ingredients are from The Witches of Eileanan series by Kate Forsyth. Everyone should read them! They are fantastic.
The spell I got from a Latin dictionary website. It is kinda a literal translation of a "mindmeld" but I had to fudge it a bit, because a Vulcan Mindmeld didn't exist when Latin was a spoken language.
Narcissa awoke with a start, her heart beating frantically. She sat up in her bed and put her legs over the edge. Slowly the dream faded, and she realized she was awake, and in her own room. Walking into the bathroom, she splashed cold water on her face and stared at herself in the mirror, trying to chase the last few remnants of the dream away.
Narcissa wasn’t a dreamer in any form. She knew her place in life, knew what was expected of her, and fully planned on fulfilling those expectations. But lately she had been having nightmares - they weren’t even really nightmares. Nothing scary actually happened in them, but she always woke feeling afraid. It unnerved her, this scared feeling. It’s not like she had never been scared before, but she had never been scared like this. And the dream was always the same.
A long corridor lies before her, with nothing on the walls. No pictures, no windows, not even a mark of dirt. At first it seems as if the corridor will go on forever, but slowly a large black door comes into focus. Curious, she opens it, and enters a circular room filled with more black doors. The door behind her closes and the other doors begin to spin around her. When they finally stop she stares at them for a moment. The doors scare her and she doesn’t like to be scared, she wants to leave but can’t remember which door leads out. She takes a deep breath and grabs a handle, and opens the door…
And that’s where she wakes up. Every time. It’s never the same door, but it never matters. She always wakes up.
As she crawled back into bed, all Narcissa could do was hope that once school started again next month she wouldn’t have the dreams any more. She didn’t want her fellow Slytherins to know about her weakness. She was always so calm and collected at school. She was always being told how much of a contrast she was to Bella, and she certainly didn’t want that image to change. She loved her sister dearly, but Bellatrix was much more outspoken and outwardly passionate about things. Being thirteen Narcissa had her passions, but she kept them inside and allowed people to think she was mature but quiet. It was a much better way of getting what she wanted.
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At least this time the dream had changed.
Narcissa was once again staring at her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her pale skin and hair accentuated the dark circles under her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping well because of her nightmare, which was recurring almost nightly.
I guess its nightmares now. She thought sarcastically. As her head cleared, she thought back on the dream.
She looks around the circle room, not able to remember which door was the way out. She takes a deep breath, grabs a handle, and opens the door. She enters a cold, dark room, and she feels all hope start to drain out of her. Scared, she turns to leave, but the door closes and she is trapped. She backs up against the door, trying to think, feeling claustrophobic. She is starting to panic when a soft but high pitched wail comes from afar. She turns to look….
Narcissa sat on her bed and looked back into her own mind, comparing the two nightmares. She kept calling them that, nightmares, but was that what they really were? Nothing scary happened in the old one, she just felt afraid. Even the new one wasn’t scary in a monster sort of way, but that feeling of utter hopelessness was almost more than she could bear. Not to mention she didn’t think she was supposed to feel this much raw emotion in a dream, especially this strongly.
Her father had an extensive library downstairs, so she got up to do some research. She had to know what was going on, and quick. If there was a way to stop these dreams, it had to be taken care of before school started next week.
As she was walking down the hall, she heard voices coming from her sister’s room. She knocked quietly on the door and immediately the voices stopped.
“Andy, its Cissy, let me in.” After a few moments the door opened to reveal Narcissa’s older sister Andromeda, with a dark haired boy sitting on her bed.
“What is he doing here!” she hissed, looking at her sister incredulously. She pulled her off to the side.
“Daddy will not be happy if he finds him here.” Narcissa’s blue eyes glared at the boy. “First, he’s a boy. Second, He’s in your room.” Narcissa lowered her voice “Andy, he’s a Muggle! Just talking to him is enough to have daddy lock you up and throw away the key! Not to mention risking Ted’s life! You know how daddy and his master feel about Muggles.” She looked straight into her big sister’s eyes. “He has to leave, Andy.”
“Oh Cissy, please! We were just talking, and Daddy would not have him killed.” Narcissa looked at her sister in a way that clearly said Andreomeda was in denial. “Ted is leaving now anyway.” They both watched as Ted blew Andromeda a kiss and the left out the window. “I know Daddy would be mad, but I think Ted really cares for me. Look, I’ll make you a deal. I won’t see Ted again until we are back at school. I won’t tell anyone about your nightmares if you don’t tell anyone about Ted.”
“How do you know about my nightmares?”
“I’ve been up late a lot lately. I’ve heard you tossing and turning, I heard you in the bathroom, and it’s quite obvious you’re not sleeping well. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”
“Oh. Ok, I won’t say anything about Ted for now. Though I really don’t understand how you can like him.” Narcissa’s voice was full of disgust. “He’s a Muggle.”
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Andy kept true to her word and didn’t see Ted again until they got back, but even then she hid it well, for fear of Bella finding out. In her seventh year, Bellatrix knew her path, and embraced it. Plans were already underway for her to receive her Mark after graduation, and their father couldn’t be happier. Bella’s early devotion to the Dark Lord greatly assuaged Cygnus’ disappointment at never fathering a son.
Upon her own return to Hogwarts, Narcissa pushed herself hard, collapsing into her bed each night in hopes of being exhausted enough not to dream. For a while it actually worked.
About a month in, the nightmares started again. The two played back and forth in her mind, sometimes just one, other times they played back to back. After about a week, Andromeda cornered her in the common room.
“You’re still having nightmares. “ It was not a question.
Sighing, Narcissa looked into the fire. “What am I going to do? This isn’t something that’s going to go away.”
“What do you mean?”
“I read about it in one of Daddy’s books. Dreamers are like seers, only they do their “seeing” in dreams, and they are really rare. If that’s what I am, Madame Pomfrey can’t help; Bella will simply turn me over to her new master and so will Daddy.” She looked up from the fire, and turned toward her sister. Narcissa whispered urgently “But if I don’t get some sleep soon, I’m going to go crazy. People cannot see me lose my mind.”
“Oh, Cissy! Why didn’t you tell me?” Andromeda thought for a moment. “I have an idea- go to Slughorn! Don’t mention the dreams; just tell him you’re not sleeping well, and you are afraid for your grades. With Daddy’s ministry contacts, I’m sure he’d be happy to help!”
True to Andy’s prediction, Slughorn was happy to help and had a small bottle of sleeping potion waiting for her after dinner. She went back to the common room to try and do some homework, but couldn’t concentrate. She went upstairs and took a small swig, falling quickly to sleep.
The first thing she noticed was that her dreams were becoming much more detailed. Second was that she knew she was dreaming. She found herself upside down and unafraid.
Narcissa looked around her and noticed that while she was upside down, the room was not. Her feet were firmly planted on the ceiling, and the door was on the other side of the room, and not easily accessible. The rest of the room looked like a courtroom, but it was very dusty from lack of use. The door she had come in from closed and the upside down door opened. A small man stood in the doorway. She heard him mutter something about a charm and then she watched as his wand flicked and the room righted itself and Narcissa came crashing to the floor. The little man was startled by the noise, and even more startled at the sight of a young girl picking herself up from the floor.
“Are you alright Miss?” he asked, as he rushed across the room to help her up. “What are you doing here? This isn’t part of the test! We could both get into a lot of trouble if you were caught! You need to get out of here quick! Go through that door, and walk straight through two more doors. That should get you back to the circle room- take the third door on the left. It’s always the third door on the left. Now go! Quick!”
Narcissa was confused, and a little dazed from her fall, but she did as the man said. But as soon as she walked through the door, she woke up in her bed at Hogwarts.
She had an awful headache.
Other than the headache, Narcissa felt better than she had all week. She was more alert, and did much better on her homework. She hated that she’d still had a dream. The dreams scared her and she hated being scared. Narcissa was a Black, and how many times had father told them that their blood meant they were better than everyone and everything. She was sure fear counted as part of ‘everything’. That night she took a little more potion than she was supposed to in the hopes that it would deprive her of the dream. She felt the effects of the potion almost immediately as her eyelids started to droop.
“Now go, quick!” There was that little man again, and she again followed his advice and went through the door. This time, instead of waking up, she found herself in a plain room where all the walls were the exact same shade of purple. A door was directly across the room, so she started toward it. In doing so she let go of the door she had come in by, and it slammed shut behind her. Both doors disappeared and she heard a low rumbling. Looking around she realized the walls were moving in on her!
Narcissa froze, not knowing what to do. She knew she was dreaming, but she didn’t know how to wake herself up. One of the other things she had found in one of her father’s books was that if she died in a dream, she died outside the dream as well. She frantically looked around, trying to figure what to do, (and) how to get out, when she heard a small voice in the back of her mind. “Walk straight through two more doors.”
Walk straight? Had the little man given her a clue? Narcissa straightened herself and dried her tears. Focusing on the spot where the door had been she walked in a straight line toward it. Every step she took the rumbling got louder so that eventually she couldn’t even hear her own thoughts, but she kept her focus on that one spot. She was finally able to place her hand on the spot where the door had been earlier, and miraculously a door appeared. She noticed that the rumbling had stopped as well. With a sigh of relief she opened it to a beautiful Hogwarts afternoon.
As Narcissa opened her eyes, she saw Professor McGonagall sitting in a chair beside her bed.
“Well, glad to see you have finally woken! Lunch has just started. How much of that potion did you take?”
Narcissa had the decency to look like she was ashamed, though both she and the professor knew it was an act.
“Only a little more than Professor Slughorn said. It made me feel so much better that I thought a little more would make me feel even better.”
“Alright, you may keep the potion for the weekend in order to catch up on your sleep, but I want you to turn it back into your Head of House first thing Monday morning. You don’t want to become dependant on it. Now get up and get dressed. You have a lot of homework to start as well.”
“Yes ma’am.”
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She opened the door, rushing through as relief over came her. Narcissa couldn’t believe she’d made it out of there alive! She looked around this new room, wondering what was in store for her now. She saw large black leather chair sitting in the middle of the room. It looked just like the comfy chairs in her father’s library, the ones she would crawl into and read for hours.
It’s where she first realized what she was. Narcissa enjoyed knowing there was something other than her blood that made her better than everything else. She remembered being afraid, because she hadn’t yet decided if her path in life would take her to her father and sister’s master, or on a new road. She was only thirteen, she thought she had years before she had to make these decisions, but her new power would change all that.
All these thoughts were running through her mind, plus she was tired out from the last room and her feet were killing her. The chair looked very inviting. It couldn’t hurt to rest for just a minute, could it?
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“She didn’t come to breakfast, again, and I was worried.” Andromeda looked around at Professors Slughorn and Dumbledore, and Madame Pomfrey. “When I couldn’t wake her, I went to get help. I ran into Professor McGonagall, she levitated her here, and sent me to find you.”
“What exactly did you give her, Horace?”
“Just a simple sleeping drought of Nightshade and poppy syrup, nothing more.”
Andy looked up at the headmaster. “Sir, I’m not sure if this means anything, but Cissy was having nightmares all summer. She was reading in my father’s library, and she thinks she’s a Dreamer. I guess it’s a really rare form of seer?”
“Yes my dear, I am fully aware of what Dreamers are, though from the look on Professor Slughorn’s face, your sister did not share this information with him. I fear that without drastic measures, Narcissa may be lost to us.”
Andromeda’s hands flew to her mouth. “Lost? You mean she could die? I have to get Bella.” Andy ran out of the Hospital Wing in search of her older sister.
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Narcissa was very comfortable in her chair. She knew she should get up; she was so close to being back in the circle room and going home. But the chair was comfortable, and any motivation to get going was lost.
Why should she get up? Who would care? Who would know? After all, this is just a dream.
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Andromeda and Bellatrix sat next to Narcissa’s bed, watching fearfully as Dumbledore set charms in place. Then he sat next the bed also.
“Nightshade is never to be used on those with powers like your sister’s. I will attempt to go into her mind and wake her. I have no idea what effect this will have on her. Hopefully she will make it in one piece. Unfortunately this is the only way.”
He placed his wand to Narcissa’s temple, and held her hand in his. “Presentia Fervefacio!”
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Suddenly Professor Dumbledore appeared and offered to help Narcissa get up from her chair, though a lack of motivation, and her pride, kept her from accepting it. She looked up at Dumbledore, confused.
“Professor, what are you doing here? I am still dreaming aren’t I?”
“Yes, Narcissa, you are still dreaming, though it is time to wake up now. Your sisters are very worried about you. “
“But can’t I stay here? It’s so comfortable.”
“No, Narcissa, you cannot. This is not truly your dream. From what I can see, you are having a vision you were not meant to have. You need to come back now.”
He held is hand out to her again, and she reluctantly took it. As soon as she stood up, the chair disappeared, and they started walking to the door. Professor Dumbledore stopped when they reached it.
“This is where I must leave you. To come back from this, you will have to fight and you will have to truly want it.” Then he disappeared, leaving a stunned Narcissa behind.
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When Professor Dumbledore regained consciousness, Andy was asleep in the chair, with her head resting on Narcissa’s bed, and Bella was pacing. Narcissa was tossing and turning, looking agitated but clearly still asleep.
Professor McGonagall and Professor Slughorn were sitting nearby.
“Albus! What happened, is she going to be alright?”
“Yes, Minerva, she will be fine, though I fear she will come out of this no longer having her new power. If only she had told someone, we might have been able to train her before she fell into this.” He looked at the two teachers. “She fell into the Gauntlet.”
Minerva gasped, and Horace just looked stunned. “She will survive? She survived a Gauntlet? Only the strongest candidates can handle the Gauntlet, and they become Unspeakables.”
“I believe Narcissa was having a premonition of a test yet to come, and if she is then someone will be caught by the chair. I must contact the Ministry. “
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A few days later, Andromeda came into Narcissa’s room. “How are you feeling?”
“Alright. I’m still a little angry at him though.”
“Cissy, you could have died.”
“I’m a Black. I would have come out of it. And now I’ve lost my ability. The one thing that made me better then even being a Black. At least I’m not tired anymore.”
Narcissa turned and left the room, confident in the fact that she truly was better. She would just have to find another way of proving that.