and I’m intoxicated
They decided to all meet in the Entrance Hall: Caroline and Lee, Fred, George, Neville, Angelina, Ginny and Cybele.
Cybele arrived first and waited on the stairs, like many other students.
When Draco arrived in the entrance with Pansy and his friends, he saw her immediately. For the first time of his life, he felt a strong, somewhat Elfish urge to bang his head against a wall in punishment for not inviting her.
She was wearing a Slytherin-green, knee length dress. Half of her rich, dark hair was pulled back and held by a small silver crown. The rest of it was cascading down her bare shoulders. His friends thankfully didn’t notice that he was gapping for several moments while they were queuing in front of the hall. He was inwardly hoping they would wait long enough to see who she was coming with.
Soon enough, after Caroline had joined her, the Gryffindors came. Draco winced as he saw no less than three red hair approaching the heavenly vision in the stairs, but he downright choked when he saw Neville offering his arm to Cybele, who accepted it with a grin.
‘Longbottom?’ Draco laughed out loud, a bitter laugh.
‘Longbottom what?’ Pansy asked.
‘Nothing, let’s go,’ answered Draco and he cut the queue, pushing a couple of younger students aside. Now he felt guilty on the top of everything. Obviously Cybele must have been desperate, to accept Longbottom’s invitation. He was looking forward to a strong drink if he could find one.
‘Let’s go, then,’ Neville invited.
The interior of the hall was magnificent. They all sat down together for dinner, Fred making quite a foolish fuss over the seating at the table so that Cybele ended up between Neville and George.
As they started dancing, Neville allowed Cybele to forget about her disappointment of the previous day. As much as Neville could be clumsy in his everyday life, he was just as precise in movement on the dance floor as he was with his plants in the greenhouses. True, he did spill his drink on her – twice – but the dancing was making up for it.
As the four couples found themselves close to each other during a dance later, Fred enthusiastically declared, ‘Let’s switch partners!’
With that, in one smooth motion he dragged his sister into Neville’s arms while pulling at Cybele whom he simply threw at George. He himself grabbed Caroline, leaving Lee and Angelina to deal with each other and start dancing again.
Cybele gave a small laugh, shrugged her shoulders and started dancing with George. As she saw Neville and Ginny dancing easily and talking a few minutes later, she relaxed and started to enjoy it. George was smiling at her and she felt again the strange little dance over her stomach.
The dance soon finished and a slow one started. Cybele saw Caroline, Lee, Fred and Angelina switch again, but Neville and Ginny left the dance floor as soon as they heard the slow music and were headed to the bar. Cybele started to gesture toward them while taking a step toward George at the same time. And then, not knowing how it happened, she was in his arms, dancing slowly.
It was strange, she thought. It was strange to be in her friend’s arms like that, all of a sudden, and feeling that way. She could never have imagined. However, she thought, it felt just like friendship did, warm and secure. It was weird but, Merlin, it was just good.
As Draco was watching Cybele in George’s arms, he took his tenth cup of punch, which had turned out to be the strongest and only alcohol served in the hall.
He virtually never left the bar and the punch bowl, as the group of friends went on with switching partners and he had to witness Cybele dancing with Fred and Lee next. Draco had stopped counting the punches long before Cybele and Neville resumed dancing in such perfect harmony that people around them pointed in admiration. Draco imitated vomiting in the punch bowl at this point.
Cybele eventually begged for a break moments later. Coming back from the bathrooms, she found herself literally cornered by Draco who dragged her into one of the hall’s large windows’ recess, hidden behind a decorative Slytherin banner.
‘Cybele,’ he started.
‘Draco?’ She sniffed him and laughed. ‘You’re dead drunk. How did you do that? They only serve punch!’
‘Ah, but I luuuv the punch!’
He came close and started to speak almost in her face.
‘You’re beautiful, Shybel!’ he stated fondly. He then stepped to the wall behind her and actually started banging his head to the wall. ‘And I’m shtupid, shtupid, shtupid…’
‘Hey, stop that!’ Cybele cried as she grabbed Draco by the shoulder to make him face her, his back securely resting on the wall.
Draco started at her stupidly for some seconds.
‘Why you are not at the ball with me?’ he asked accusatorily.
‘Because you didn’t invite me, you git!’ Cybele answered truthfully.
‘D’you wanna cometotheballwi’me?’
‘The ball is almost over and I already have a partner, Draco.’
Draco unstuck himself from the wall.
‘You should be with me,’ he declared, resting his hand on Cybele’s hip for support. Cybele felt a shudder crossing her body from head to toe as her heart made an almost painful jolt. She put her hand on Draco’s with the idea of pushing it back but Draco simply came closer and passed his entire arm around her waist, his body fully crushed onto hers.
A flow of violent foreign sensations completely overwhelmed her. She felt panicky.
Draco leaned his head forward and kissed Cybele lengthily on the neck, under her left ear. Cybele heard a weak moan she realized with distress was her own.
‘See,’ he said, as if he had just proven his point – he probably had – and with that he was gone, zigzagging toward a group of Slytherins.
After that, Cybele stood several minutes shaking by the window before she could regain enough self-control to go and say a quick goodnight to her friends. Reaching her dormitory before any of the other girls, she crashed on her bed and let herself cry.
In her dreams, Draco would have invited her to the ball. In her dreams, maybe, he would have held her hand. Maybe, in her wildest dreams, he would have put a kiss on her check again, like he had once in the library in their second year. It would have been the same kiss, but it would have been different, too, in Cybele’s dreams.
She looked at her reflection in the window against the dark night. Woken up by her roommates’ return and unable to sleep again, she had sat, after everybody was gone to sleep, on the same window edge where she had gone through her Diagon Alley shopping more than four years ago. The girl looking back at her now, crying silently, was not the child who had been sitting there anymore.
Cybele held her own gaze for a moment, wondering how she could feel all what she was feeling. She would have been so happy with a simple dance with Draco. She would have gone to bed with a smile, if he had just held her hand.
She remembered how it felt, back before her accident; holding on Draco on his broom; his hand around hers when he pulled her to the Quidditch pitch; his kiss in the library. It felt sweet and a bit dangerous at the same time, a new sensation but not too overwhelming, like the perfume of a foreign flower in Neville’s lab. But what she had felt this evening, it was a storm; an ocean washing her away, daggers into her flesh, thunder splitting her into shatters, all at once. She didn’t know one could feel like this. Nobody had ever told her. Maybe only a Magian could feel that way?
It was not good, she decided, looking back at her own face for support. She looked determined. Draco’s body against hers had felt like a poison, sweeping her of her feet into a deadly storm. George, she thought, and the pleasant joyful dance of her heart encouraged her to think ahead. She recalled the pleasant warmth of being in her friend’s arm; the delicious elation when she felt his fingers playing with her hair; the delicious sensation of having a sweet secret deep inside, dancing around like a butterfly. This was good, she decided. It didn’t take too much reflection after all.
How could she have even been distressed hours ago? Draco was a selfish friend. He had ignored her all that time then tried to drunkenly tear her world apart. She would tell him what she thought. George was sweet and thoughtful. She thought of Caroline and Lee. Yes, this was good. She eventually went to bed with a smile, not lingering on how Draco ever had the power break her world in the first place.
Dumbledore was fiddling with the small brass watch delicately for a while. He eventually let it hang from his long finger, turning slowly over his desk.
‘Extraordinary,’ he repeated again.
He looked up from the watch to Cybele.
‘You say the inscription was not there before your accident?’
‘I can’t be sure, Sir, I seldom look at the watch.’
Dumbledore seemed to ponder that. The corners of his lips twisted slightly.
‘You never check the time?’
‘No. I know the time,’ Cybele explained.
‘Why have this beautiful watch, then?’ he asked next.
‘I don’t know, Professor, I just have it.’
‘You didn’t choose it?’
‘No, it’s just around. It appears whenever I’m ready. When I’m finished making clothes appear, that is, if I really feel ready, I noticed.’
Dumbledore raised a curious eyebrow at that but didn’t comment.
‘For how long have you had it?’
‘As long as I can remember,’ she answered, knowing that this was also as far as the headmaster could remember her.
‘Fascinating,’ the old man repeated. ‘You know what is so fascinating?’ he asked Cybele casually.
‘The fact that it says Arta Magush, confirms your theory?’ she tried.
‘You are right, this is mysterious to me,’ Dumbledore admitted. ‘But what fascinates me is that this object doesn’t have any perceivable magical property.
‘Professor Snape asked you to bring it to me,’ he explained, ‘because as one the most experienced living wizards, I am the one who has the most developed ability to feel and detect the presence of magic. I pride myself in being able to tell if any spell has been performed on an object even decades or centuries ago. I look at this watch, and even though I have proof that it is magical, I cannot feel anything.’
‘Eslis has said the same thing about me,’ Cybele remembered. ‘He said only Magian have unperceivable magic.’
‘Which is not an accurate description,’ Dumbledore corrected. ‘It is not that the magic cannot be perceived. It is that there is no magic.’
‘So this is a Muggle artifact,’ Cybele stated half-jokingly.
‘This, Miss Philius, is exactly like you,’ Dumbledore answered seriously. ‘It is your perfect counterpart. It performs magic, powerful magic, but it doesn’t contain any. It also doesn’t react at all to magic. Not any of the spells I have tried on it had any effect. Just like you,’ he repeated.
Cybele stared at the watch silently.
‘Knowing you, I understand the old legend,’ Dumbledore resumed. ‘At the origins of Magic, when Magi were It, before they hit the curse and liberated It from within, before parchment and quills, is it true what they say? Magic was wordless, Magic was wandless,’ he quoted. ‘Magi were it. You are magic. You do not contain it. This is why it is unperceivable.’
‘Yes,’ Cybele cut in. ‘Professor Snape has established that I was a Magian. As they are supposed to be legendary beings, we are now left with discovering how I… happened,’ she stated, at lose for a better wording.
Dumbledore looked at her seriously.
‘It is a very hard task you are setting for,’ he admitted. He gave her one of his piercing looks. ‘You may or may not discover where you come from,’ he stated calmly. ‘However, you remain a Magian, a being with extraordinary, virtually limitless powers at your service,’ he reminded. ‘Have you ever thought of what you will do in the future, Miss Philius?’
Cybele looked at him puzzled. ‘You mean after we will have discovered where I came from, Sir?’
‘I mean after Hogwarts, in two years,’ the headmaster corrected.
Cybele had never thought of it this way. She had always assumed she would stay at Hogwarts until Professor Snape had answered all her questions, somehow always imagining this would conveniently occur at the same time as she would complete her NEWTs. Dumbledore was forcing her to face other possibilities now.
‘I assume if there is still research to do after my NEWTs,’ she tried, ‘Professor Snape will go on helping me to find my origins, while I’ll be able to travel and expend our research field.’
Dumbledore nodded gently. That was not what he had meant, but he wouldn’t press the point – for now.
Draco knew he had lost her at first sight.
Cybele was not very gifted at ignoring her friends. On the seldom occasions on which she had pathetically attempted to ignore him after a row, she had looked all fussy and had eventually beamed at him by accident after a few minutes.
They would always, always Draco marveled, catch each other’s eyes in the Great Hall at breakfast and exchange a smile. The morning after the Yule Ball, she had come into the hall genuinely oblivious of his existence, happily sitting next to George at the Gryffindor’s table.
This is it, he thought furiously, I’ve done it!
He knew, somewhere near his consciousness, that he had bullied Cybele all those years, bossing and ordering her around, burying her under his Quidditch monologues, provoking her with aggressive ideas he didn’t himself fully understand, ignoring her feelings. It had seemed like he could do whatever he pleased. And the only time he had ever apologized for anything, it was when he had thought she was unconscious!
Draco didn’t like to feel apologetic; he didn’t like to feel sorry, he couldn’t admit feeling furious at himself. But he couldn’t ignore the urge, for the third time in a very short while, to bang his head against the wall, because he knew, even if he would deny it to himself as fast as could, that he was stupid!
Disrespect.
He savored the texture of the word in his mind. That’s what had done it in the end. The bullying, the intolerance, all the selfishness and the nastiness he had made her witness, she had brushed aside like nothing more substantial than an annoying hair tickling her face, fiercely committed to their friendship from the first day.
Disrespect had done it. Draco knew. Not inviting her to the ball, letting her go with the pathetic Longbottom, getting drunk and aggravating her physically, leaving without a word. If he could go back in time, he would invite her. Then maybe the same kiss would have meant something completely different.
Draco felt a foreign sensation in his throat at this last thought. He tried to swallow. Something hard and heavy had settled there, something swallowed and surprisingly painful. Something Draco had never felt before. Slightly panicky, he stood up briskly from the Slytherin’s table and before anybody could speak to him, ran out of the hall.
He entered a bathroom in a rush and rested his hand on a sink’s rim, catching his breath painfully. The lump in his throat was blocking his breath.
His mind still dwelling on about Cybele, his heart made a painful squeeze as he imagined her back in the hall with her friends.
He regretted it. How much he regretted it. As the admission of this fact made his way in his mind, the lump in his throat melted suddenly. Instead, something hot was now running down his checks. Draco looked up from the sink and gasped as he caught his reflection on he mirror. His face was wet with tears.
For the first time in his life, Draco considered apologizing – to someone who was not unconscious.
Still under the chock of both the unfamiliar urge and the foreign sensation of the tears on his skin, Draco wiped his face hurryingly. Looking around, he realized he was in a girl’s bathroom. He rushed out and ran to his dormitory.
He managed to corner Cybele out of the Great Hall one Sunday after lunch.
‘Cybele,’ he said, conscious that he had rather apologized quickly but unable to do so.
Cybele was staring right back at his grey eyes, emotionless, looking dispassionately annoyed. She didn’t answer.
Draco took a deep breath and said it, or tried to.
‘Cybele I’m really-’
He breathed again. Cybele now wore a cynical half smile; that didn’t help.
‘I really am,’ he resumed, ‘Cybele I am so s-’
‘Malfoy.’
George had joined Cybele and put a casual arm around her shoulders.
‘What do you want?’ he asked with calm authority.
Draco tried to catch Cybele’s eyes but she was now looking tenderly at George, all cynicism gone from her sweet smile.
Draco simply turned on his heals and disappeared. With all the Weasleys, Mudbloods and worse always around Cybele, he knew he was left with only one solution.