Things truly went back to normal in Cybele’s House. She was feeling, more than ever, a sweet feeling of belonging as the Ravenclaw second-years were proving their loyalty and their forgiveness. They had treated her a bit like someone recovering from a strange disease for a while, but everything was comfortably back to normal now.
Caroline came crashing onto the library sofa opposite Cybele.
‘Here! This must be the one and only book in the library in which the word Magi appears!’ She dropped a heavy old book on the coffee table. Cybele gave a double take.
‘What?’
‘Haven’t you searched?’
‘Searched what?’
‘About what Eslis said last week! I mean, he seemed to know something. That would explain a lot, no?’
‘A lot of what? What do you mean?’ Cybele defended clumsily.
Caroline gave one of her quizzical looks.
‘Have you searched or not?’
‘I have; but I haven’t found anything. Look, I think Eslis was just trying to be nice…’
Caroline opened her mouth to say something and seemed to change her mind.
‘Care to hear what I found?’ she said.
‘Sure.’
‘This book comes from the restricted section. Don’t ask,’ she added warningly. Cybele chuckled.
‘Anyway… In the sixteenth century, Ms Mafalda Winbury had the good idea to compile what she called Lost Antic Enchantments, extremely complex pieces of magic with tortuous outcomes. Long story short, hear what she put in her intro: “At the origins of Magic, when Magi were It, before they hit the curse and liberated It from within…” then it talks about something else.’
‘What? That’s it?’ Cybele snatched the book and read on, “…before parchment and quills, is it true what they say? Magic was wordless, Magic was wandless.”’ Cybele checked the next paragraph; the author was less lyrically attempting to date back the enchantments she had compiled.
Wandless. Cybele was thunderstruck. She had to find something to say, least Caroline would suspect something.
‘How did you even come across this?’ she asked.
Caroline grinned.
‘I used a spell, Carta Revelo “Magi,” it browses all the books for the word and as I can cast it on large amounts, I can tell you we are handling the sole Hogwarts book bearing the word.’
‘Well, it seems quite meaningless.’ Cybele attempted to dismiss the theory.
‘Elves don’t lie, Cybele.’
‘But they can be mistaken, can’t they?’
‘But you do have special powers, don’t you?’
‘What are we talking about, here?’
‘Cybele, you told me you were amnesiac, right? Well, there are some things you may not know that you should not be able to do.’
‘Like?’
‘When we work together, you keep making water appear; where does it come from?’
‘Nowhere. I just, you know “ how you call it “ draw it.’
‘Yes, you are concentrating on your books and you make glasses of water appear and disappear without a spell or a wand. I never saw a second-year doing magic without wand or spells. Actually, I’ve never seen any sorcerer do it, even though I’ve heard about it. But one thing is certain: the day I witness it, they won’t be making water or any type of food or drinks appearing, because that’s impossible in the magical world, Cybele. Flitwick mentioned it. And last Sunday, I think I just saw you disappear in the ground floor corridor when Malfoy came the other way, didn’t I?’
They locked eyes.
‘All right, so you think I have special abilities and that it is linked with what Eslis has said?’ Cybele gave in.
‘Well, we could ask him,’ Caroline suggested.
‘He was not talking about magic, actually, remember? He was talking about loyalty and friendship bounds…’
‘Well, that doesn’t stop us from asking him more.’
‘Right, but let’s just wait, would you? After what I did, I don’t want Eslis to think I’m seeking his company only to decipher the Magi thing. I’ll try to do some research over the summer in the mean time.’
‘All right, then. I wish I could help but I’ll be back in the Muggle world. Where do you spend the summer?’
‘Not sure yet.’
The last Quidditch match of the season put bit of cheerfulness into the still-cool summer. Ravenclaw remained in the third place but made up for it in a spectacular last match. Celebrations were in order and Eslis himself came from the kitchen with Cybele to bring some goodies and was applauded by the entire House.
Cybele had been too anxious, though, to pop any questions to Eslis about the Magi. She just enjoyed going down for tea in the kitchens and making selfless small talk.
The twins, on the other hand, were still refusing to hear Cybele out. She had tried “ with and without Lee’s loyal help “ to approach them, unsuccessfully. They were still angry after Cybele for allowing Malfoy to bully her Elf friend. Until one of the last evening of the term, when Lee gestured to her from the Gryffindors’ table and Fred and George allowed her to sit nearby without the slightest reaction. The three boys looked very sad.
‘Phil?’ she asked softly.
‘Yes, it looks like he’s dying,’ George answered kindly after Lee had tried to produce a sound and failed. Lee had the box on his lap.
Moments passed in total silence. Then Lee seemed to shake up from an awaken dream and gulped.
‘I am going to hand him over to McGonagall. She may find a way to save him! Never mind the circumstances now.’
‘Or I can bring him to Dumbledore. He could still save him if anyone can!’ Fred said, half rising from his chair.
Cybele looked at them in turn, not finding anyone’s eyes to catch. She stood up.
‘There’s only one person here who needs to know about Phil.’ She grabbed the box.
‘Hey!’ the boys cried.
‘I’m the one who got to speak to him. He has every right to get me in trouble if he sees fit. Just let me do it and don’t you come share the blame with me!’ she demanded fiercely.
With that she stormed out of the Great Hall, letting the three boys stare at each other and back at their laps in silence.
‘Any clue what she’s doing?’ Fred asked after a while.
Then it hit Lee.
‘Hagrid!’ he cried. ‘If our last choice is to turn ourselves in, Hagrid is the one, no?’ he looked in the direction of the Great Hall door. ‘Well, she’s right. She does owe him an apology, after her behaviour in his detention, doesn’t she?’ he asked the boys feebly.
‘Let’s go, we can’t let her take all the blame,’ was Fred’s answer.
Cybele had stormed out the castle and was soon banging at the gamekeeper’s door.
‘What is it?’ If Hagrid had looked crossed, framing his opened door, it was nothing to his expression when he saw Cybele standing on his doorstep.
‘You,’ he said with distaste. ‘What is it you want? Missing detention in the Forbidden Forest, are you?’ he growled.
‘Not exactly,’ Cybele came on automatic mode, immediately regretting the sarcasm. ‘I came to apologize; I was not always respectful during our detentions. I’m sorry about that. And I broke several other school rules, so I figured you should know about that. And I need your help; it’s a matter of life or death. Can I come in for a second?’
Hagrid rolled his eyes and turned his back on her, walking straight back in and sitting at a giant table.
‘Leaving or coming? Close the bloody door, any side of you!’ he growled.
Cybele, holding Phil’s box, slowly pushed the door closed with her back, feeling trapped. She stepped toward the table, put Phil’s box on it and talked before the impulse of the moment would pass.
‘Sir, I really am, sorry, to have let my friend speak like this in front of me, to have laughed with him. It was really bad.’
‘Your friend, hm?’
‘Yes, Sir, my friend Draco Malfoy,’ Cybele could not help herself but confirm, ‘I should never have laughed with him. I should have tried to shut him up.’
‘So now yer saying all that because you need my help?’
‘No. I really want to apologize. And I’ve been keeping and hiding an Acromantula that I obtained illegally, since the beginning of the term, in Hogwarts. There. And now it’s dying. So yes, I need your help.’ Hagrid was frowning murderously. She opened the box and extracted a feeble Phil who immediately reached for her. She sat to allow Phil to stay stable on her lap.
Hagrid forgot to frown at the sight of the weakened monster and the tender care it was receiving from the Ravenclaw girl.
‘How old is he?’
‘Nine and a half months?’ Cybele guessed.
‘He’s badly under grown.’
‘He’s been living off of owl treats. I had no idea how big of a creature it was. I was afraid to let him go just like that.’
‘Nah, woulda died. What’s his name?’
‘Phil. You said there were Acromantula in the forest. Can you save him?’ she asked with tears in her eyes.
‘They can. I’ll take ‘im right now. You wait here,’ he warned, not unkindly.
She helped put back Phil in his box, trying to lock a last time her eyes with some of his. Hagrid put his coat on and opened wide the front door to find Lee, Fred and George about to knock.
‘It was me!’ yelled Lee at the same time as Fred and George.
Hagrid shoved them impatiently in.
‘Yeh wait here too. Till I get back.’
Hagrid came back over two hours later to find four silent children sitting around his table looking at their knees. Lee had made four mugs of tea which had remained untouched on the table.
‘Where’s Phil?’ they all blurted together when the door opened. Hagrid took the time to take his cloak off and pour a fifth mug of tea. He sat at the table with them.
‘You guys won’t see Phil anymore, and she was a girl, by the way.’
‘Was?’ George asked with anguish.
‘She’s all righ’. I brought her to the Acromantula nest. They’ll take care of her. But I don’t want any of you to go try to visit her in there, understood?’
‘Yes,’ they sighted with relief.
‘I stole the Acromantula from my parents’ laboratory,’ Lee stated softly, looking intently at his knees.
‘Hem, no,’ Hagrid answered. ‘Phil was obtained illegally by Miss Cybele before she joined Hogwarts.’
At this the three boys simultaneously busted in ill-coordinated protests, which Hagrid simply covered by raising his loud voice.
‘Miss Cybele was not aware of the British laws and Hogwarts’ rules when she brought Phil in to our grounds and she did the right thing, er, eventually, by bringing it to the game keeper. There will be no punishment.’
The four kids burst in ill-coordinated expression of gratitude at that, which Hagrid pretended not to understand.
‘I’ll walk yeh back to the castle.’
They walked up the castle, Hagrid shooing their thanks away. He let them at the main door and winked to the boys. Cybele looked up at him and opened her mouth to speak but the gamekeeper did not let her.
‘I heard you, Cybele; apology accepted. But I want to tell you; don’t let friendship blind you. You’re young, you don’t know; it can lead to dramatic consequences, I mean, in adulthood or… in war time. Be careful.’
Cybele was reminded for a split second of the mysterious speech of Eslis and wondered if Hagrid knew more than he was saying. But the boys did not notice the peculiar parting words and when she turned back to them in the Entrance Hall, she found herself hugged tight by the twins. She could have cried with joy. They broke apart to see Lee looking at them half-exasperated.
‘Took you time!’
Fred and George had the decency to look sheepish.
Lee, Cybele and the twins took a long Sunday morning breakfast to talk happily over Phil’s rescue on the morrow.
‘We should have expected Hagrid to be lenient!’ Fred was joking. ‘After all, I bet he had snaked countless illegal monsters in the castle in his time.’
‘Still does, you mean!’ George added with a chuckle.
‘Values friendship, too,’ Lee suggested more seriously, ‘must have been touched by Cybele’s gesture.’
‘Don’t,’ Cybele started but Fred cut enthusiastically.
‘Speaking of what, is it true that you tried to manhandle Malfoy down the dungeons’ corridor?’ he asked with respect in his voice.
Cybele half-smiled.
‘Did you hurt him?’ George pursued with relish.
Cybele raised an eyebrow. ‘Not really, he’s stronger than me. And he didn’t even try to hurt me back. Anyway, that was before the door in front of which we were Muggle-duelling opened “ and that was Professor Snape’s door.’
‘No way!’ George cried
‘How comes you weren’t in detention all this time?’
‘I was; I had an hour.’
‘One hour? For trying to beat up his filthy godson to pulp at his feet? What did he do to you?’
‘Nothing special, we are always having these tutorials, you know, it was just kind of an extra one, that’s it. Draco got one too.’
The boys were speechless for a short while.
‘I don’t know what you did to the man.’
Cybele looked sideway at the twins.
‘I enjoy Potions and working with him. Maybe that helps?’
‘Well,’ George pursued cheerfully, ‘you sure are still a sort of a social oddity to us even without being Malfoy’s friend anymore!’
Cybele looked back at Fred and Lee at that and took a calming breath in.
‘Speaking of which, well, Eslis sort of reckons... he thinks I should not give up on the Malfoy boy. I’ll see,’ she added quickly.
The boys exchanged a look.
‘Let’s not talk about that,’ Lee and George suggested together.
‘Right,’ Fred and Cybele answered at the same time.
Exams were an uncomfortable experience for Cybele. She felt like a fraud in most subjects and like a downright cheat in History, as she could remember anything she had read but once. However, Herbology and Potions went well and she felt proud of that.
She was sitting at the Ravenclaws’ table for the last breakfast before the train left when her owl appeared with a letter, for the first time of the term. She had never seen him in the breakfast hall before and felt proud to show it to her classmates.
‘Archie!’ she cried as the owl landed on her plate.
‘What?’ Archie jumped a seat away from her.
‘How cute!’ Lucia exclaimed at the tiny auburn owl.
‘What?’ came Archie again, more puzzled.
‘Oh, no…’ Cybele realized. ‘Archimedes! My owl’s name is Archimedes.’
‘Your owl’s name’s Archie…’ said Archie with a poker face.
‘Yeah, well, Archimedes, actually, not Archibald, obviously…’
‘You’re lucky he’s cute,’ he said in a mock-annoyed tone.
‘I need to pack!’ Cybele exclaimed as she went through the letter.
‘And about time, too, train’s living in an hour!’ Ben cried after her.
Cybele happily climbed up to the Ravenclaw tower and magicked up her possessions in a blink. She was still holding the letter when she found a compartment with Lee, Fred, George and some of their Quidditch friends. She passed it to Lee.
‘Did you know?’
‘Oh Merlin! Yes - no - it’s my fault! I… well my parents asked me if they should invite you over the summer after the Christmas holidays and I told them not to, because, well, at that time the twins intended to have you at the Burrow,’
‘The what?’
‘Their house, in the countryside. Well, I always expected they would, but then you guys weren’t speaking to each others. We just realised yesterday with the boys that neither of us invited you at the end, so I owled my parents and I can tell you I also received a letter in my room this morning “ a Howler to be specific.’
Cybele smiled sympathetically; she had heard several Howlers in the Great Hall during the term and she felt sorry for Lee.
‘Deserved it anyway, we should have thought of that way long ago. So you’re coming?’
‘Sure, I did love Cambridge!’
‘Oh, Cambridge is our winter residence. We’ll spend the beginning and the end of the holidays in London, that’s what we always do, and the middle month in the estate in Derbyshire.’
‘Lee, how many residences do you have, if I can ask?’
‘No idea…’
‘Right…’ Cybele chuckled.
They happily played exploding cards all the way back to King’s Cross.