makes boredom and hurt disappear
Cybele was able to move back to the Ravenclaw tower before the weekend, abandoning her hope of getting another night time visit from Draco. She felt much stronger now and enjoyed a nice chat with Eslis in the kitchens three times a day. She never suspected that Dumbledore had thoughtfully given a direct order to Eslis not to work when she was visiting for meals.
She woke up early on Sunday and spent a long time in front of her mirror, in an attempt to recapture her old appearance. Deep inside, she still thought her teenage self looked like a potato; but she tried to be reasonable and eventually settled on jeans and a black T-shirt.
She was disappointed, however, when she saw no sign of life by lunch time. She moodily descended to the kitchens for lunch.
‘Hurry up, Miss Cybele!’ Eslis greeted her, ‘it is already late and your friends will be in Ravenclaw Tower by one!’
Cybele beamed and swallowed her lunch happily.
‘Cybele!’ Caroline cried at the Ravenclaw’s door shortly after, as she pressed her friend in a fierce hug.
All three boys gave her a somewhat cautious embrace. Fred escorted her to a comfortable sofa and they all sat down near a corner window, surrounded by wizarding and Muggle chocolates and two huge bouquets of flowers.
For an awkward moment, they just all beamed at each others.
‘It so good to see you back,’ Lee eventually said.
‘And you!’ She was on the verge of tears. ‘So, you saw Dumbledore,’ she asked to cut her emotion.
Her friends simply nodded, apparently still under the double shock of having Cybele back and the strange news about her. They looked uneasy.
‘I am so sorry,’ Caroline said. ‘When I think I confronted you like that, I didn’t even see you were not all right, I was so stupidly angry.’
‘You all had the right to act as you did,’ said Cybele, cutting in with determination. ‘It may turn up now that I had an excuse to act like I did, but I still did act wrongly. If not for the Magi bound, I would have had no excuse refusing to give Draco in.’
‘We should have seen it coming,’ Fred insisted. ‘We were stupid, really. I hope you will forgive us. Lee was the only one to react.’
‘Much too late!’ Lee dismissed. ‘I’ve been very stupid. I saw it all and I could simply not believe my eyes, I didn’t react at all!’
‘Yes, you did,’ George corrected. ‘I didn’t at all. We knew, though, that you were different.’
‘You did?’ Cybele asked curiously.
Fred smiled. ‘Well, it took us time, obviously, but catching some random information through classes, we realized you should not have been able to conjure food out of nowhere the way you did – not that we minded! Besides, Lee had to Apparate along with his father last summer and he realized that that was not what you had done back in Knockturn Alley.’
‘You went to Knockturn Alley?’ Caroline asked in disbelief.
Cybele laughed. ‘Long story!’
‘Anyway,’ George said, ‘Caroline here had much more information to share and by the end of last year, we already knew or guessed most of what Professor Dumbledore just explained us.’
‘Your Ravenclaw friends asked us a lot of questions when they saw us four together,’ Caroline tried cautiously.
Cybele gave her a neutral interrogative look.
‘I didn’t know what to tell them.’
‘But then they seemed sincerely concerned, you know,’ Lee said. ‘We would bump into them every so often in the hospital wing, especially Cho, Archie and Pete.’
‘And Ben would come and talk to you before each Quidditch match!’ Fred laughed.
‘Really?’ Cybele laughed too. She pictured Ben in full Quidditch wear, fidgeting nervously at her bedside like she was some goddess of the airborne sports in her temple. ‘So what did you tell them?’ she asked confidently, trusting her friends to have done the right thing.
‘Well, actually…’ Caroline was hesitating.
‘They sort of cornered us in the hospital wing once, the lot of them,’ Fred said.
‘So, pretty much everything,’ Caroline said very quickly.
‘All in front of you,’ Lee added, as to make clear they were not trying even back then to speak behind her back.
‘I’m sure you did the right thing given the circumstances,’ Cybele assured them. ‘Professor Flitwick wanted to speak to them this term anyway, so I will let him confirm all you said.’
They spent the next hour catching up on the incredibly long period they had spent apart, Cybele having almost as much news to share as her friends, who didn’t know where to start.
‘We’ll write,’ the twins promised when they parted.
‘We’ll really write,’ Caroline said with a wink, speaking on hers and Lee’s behalf
The boys tried to convince Cybele to have their parents invite her to the Quidditch World Cup at the end of the month but even though she pretended to be optimistic, she didn’t think that Madam Pomfrey, the Weasleys’ parents or even Snape and Dumbledore would be happy to have her first day out in a hysteric crowd of supporters.
Sunday evening, Severus Snape reached back his apartments and was about to magically close the shutters of his large windows when he caught a move on the West Tower’s roof. Cybele was standing airily on the sharply sloping roof, her arms opened, breathing deeply. Severus stopped by the window as the young girl fall graciously from the tower to rise with speed up in the Hogwarts sky. She danced around the turrets relatively slowly a short while and then headed full speed toward the lake. Severus stayed at the window until she was an undistinguishable point over the mountains. He was smiling.
By dinner time, Cybele landed in front of the main door, recalling her arrival in Hogwarts. She made the door open wide as she had done that day. How things had changed since, she reflected as the huge double doors closed back behind her. There were still many mysteries to unfold, but she was closer to understand what she really was now. She was looking up at the top of the monumental staircase where Professors Dumbledore, Snape, McGonagall and the Auror had appeared years back when she spotted Madam Pomfrey going down for her dinner.
‘Taking some fresh air, dear? Very good, but you should come back in earlier, the evening can be cool,’ she warned kindly.
The matron proceeded into the Great Hall, where a handful of Hogwarts staff was having their dinner together. Without thinking, Cybele ran up to the hospital wing. The door was open. Draco was standing in the middle of the wide room, looking at Cybele’s old bed.
‘I’m here,’ she called.
‘Cybele!’ He ran to her and hugged her, ending up twirling her round happily. Cybele laughed. Draco was so tall! He was making her fly effortlessly.
‘If Madam Pomfrey would see you do that, she would change you into a hospital bedpan,’ she said.
Draco let her down, still holding to her like to a dream which could escape. He touched absent-mindedly her hair.
‘When did you wake up?
‘Last week. You visited me,’ she added truthfully, ‘the day I woke up, I heard you but I was half-sleeping,’ she lied. ‘That’s why I came back tonight; you said you were always coming during Snape and Pomfrey’s dinner time.’
Draco looked embarrassed. He let go of her and step back.
‘Ah, yeah, I did.’
‘Thanks,’ Cybele said simply.
Draco smiled. He didn’t want to have to admit that he had come in the evenings because he had not wanted to come across her friends, or that he had snaked in during the two summers because he couldn’t stay away so long without knowing…
‘And I accept you apology,’ she added.
Draco looked nervous.
‘What apology?’ he asked a bit defiantly.
‘About my accident. I understand. You just wanted me to cover up for you. It wouldn’t have been a big deal in other circumstances, but with all my friends around …’ She trailed off. Then she remembered that Draco had indeed taken part in tormenting the House-Elf. She felt tired all of a sudden and sat on the bed’s edge.
Draco supported her, passing his arm around her shoulders. He understood what she must have thought about. Now that she could speak back, how was he going to manage to be Cybele’s friend again?
‘What happened to you, that day?’ he asked cautiously. According to what he had seen, a curse had taken effect on Cybele that evening, a powerful one.
‘I don’t really know,’ she answered vaguely, remembering her promise to Dumbledore. ‘You’d better go,’ she suggested, unwilling to dwell on this topic, ‘before Madam Pomfrey is back.’
Draco accepted gladly the excuse. They both had realized that their chance to be happily friends again was not much higher than it had been back before Cybele’s accident. Draco felt deflated. He had come almost every day during term, up to twice a week during holidays to see Cybele and now only realized that all this was pointless. Why even couldn’t he help not giving up on her?
Cybele hugged him gently goodbye at this point and he knew why. His heart missed a bit as he closed his arms around her.
‘Thanks for being here,’ she said, still in his arms. Then she had an idea. ‘Would you write to me? It’s more than a month before term starts, and you’d better not sneak in here or you will get caught.’
Draco took the hint; they couldn’t yell at each others through letters. ‘I will.’
‘Wizarding mythology,’ Snape started to expose on the morrow, ‘refers to Magi as the inventors and creators of magic as used by wizards, therefore as the creators of wizards themselves.’ He paused to search Cybele’s face. As she was listening calmly, he continued.
‘Magi are, by the common wizarding legends, considered the ones who hold the magic within them and transmitted it to other humans by inventing tools like the spells and the wands, hence creating wizards. But as to which extend the mythological tradition may hold truth is highly controversial. Of course, conservative Purebloods reject a hypothesis in which wizard have originally learnt their craft from scrap. More objective research also rejects the story as we know by experience that wizards are born and not made.
‘The myth has it that after training the wizards, Magi traveled and within the ages, their different tribes were lost and they disappeared. Legend adds that one last tribe remained and is still wandering. It makes little sense and it is generally understood that what myth presents this way is simply the first wizarding tribes. Historical studies show that the first wizarding activities were indeed registered in Persia. Muggles too, have started to refer to magical activities and folks at the same time and place.’ Snape paused there and caught Cybele’s eyes.
‘That is,’ he concluded, ‘until you came in the picture.’
‘I have brought the Muggle sources that my friend Caroline compiled for me,’ Cybele offered.
They compared both sources and that opened new perspectives.
Muggle documentation could very well be interpreted in a magical point of view. Muggles used to speak about rituals and religion instead of magic, and pinned down the magi tribe as heretics. But the facts were very striking.
‘Heraclitus threatens (the Magians) with tortures after death, he threatens them with fire, for what they believe to be initiations in the mysteries are in fact impious rites,’ read an old Muggle text.
The study sessions were very productive, even if the outcomes were a lot of speculations.
In the second half of August, they moved to the Potions classroom, where Cybele performed the third and fourth year potions, learning about new ingredients. It made a nice change to have her Potions Master actually talking to her and watching her work during class, unlike he did during term.
She had been to Diagon Alley with Eslis once again, buying two years worth of books and spent afterward a great deal of time reading Charms, Transfiguration and History without much enthusiasm. She visited Professor Hagrid too, mainly to figure out how to open her Care of Magical Creatures book. He had enthusiastically showed her a variety of slimy creatures he was saving for his fifth-years and Cybele had carefully avoided coming any near the hut for the rest of the summer.
The thing she enjoyed most was corresponding with Caroline and Lee. The latest had proven to be a serious correspondent, too. Fred and George had signed one common, frustratingly short but very entertaining letter to her.
Draco had written soon, mainly boasting about his cool summer activities (lots of Quidditch) and his going to the word cup (more Quidditch.)
Cybele had put down in writing her feelings of sadness and disappointment at seeing her friend involved in tormenting a House-Elf. She had tried to write most mildly, accepting that he may despise the creature and questioning only the pointless cruelty. To her delight, Draco had admitted it had been a stupid idea and not much fun, but had put all the blame on his fellow Slytherins.
She also had mention the attack on the Hermione girl, asking Draco if he had felt at least relieved that his silly wish had not been fulfilled. Draco, however, had simply ignored this part of Cybele’s letter and went on instead for pages about a coming Triwizard Tournament in Hogwarts. He boasted that most students didn’t know about it and his father being well-introduced at the Ministry, blah blah blah. Cybele’s interest was nevertheless picked and as she found a book about the history of the Tournament in the library, she started to anticipate eagerly the beginning of the term.
All in all, Cybele had time to wonder why neither she nor Draco had ever let go of what objectively looked like a totally unfit friendship.
On her side, she could consider the Magi bind. She had accepted Draco’s friendship offer and then, as Snape had put it, had never been able to go back. But then, even when Draco was proving utterly incompatible, was it the Magi bind which made her feel like she would lose something priceless if she turned her back on him?
To be honest, there were a lot of things she really liked about Draco; maybe not as many as the things she hated, but still a lot. She liked the Slytherin traits in him, they were, in his good days, nobly incarnated in him: the sharp cunningness, the sensible self-interest, the refreshing disregard for rules. She liked his boyish conversation, too, and his physical presence: his voice, his hair, the way he flew, his laugh when he rose in the sky with her at the back of his broom. And then there was the influence she had on him. He was less of a coward when he was with her: he had flown over the Forbidden Forest, stood up to Flint, sneak in Hogwarts during term breaks. He spoke more mildly with her. He could actually have a spontaneous and long conversation without bringing up any of his stupid topics of predilection; didn’t that mean something good about him?
Moreover, there was the fact that he wouldn’t give up on her. And he didn’t have a Magi bind to explain that.
It seemed like yesterday that she had opened her eyes weakly to find Professor Snape at her bedside, Cybele thought as she woke up on the 1st of September.