Going back home after so much had happened gave me a weird feeling. To see mother sitting in her usual chair by the fire, in our respectable drawing room, after…
I was at a loss, not only for words to describe my feelings but, it seemed, for feelings themselves.
For the thousandth time, I glanced at my left arm – the innocent-looking white shirt I had not dared to roll up was dangerously caressing my skin. The fact was I could feel it so acutely was proof enough for the irritated skin under.
Why had it felt so unreal? I was prepared and willing when I woke up in the morning in the dark lord’s shrink. But as soon as I opened my eyes, everything had appeared far away. I could see it like I was watching through someone else’s eyes: the ridiculous clothes, the would-be grand decorum, the adults playing pretend and everybody scared underneath; I could tell it was all fake.
A small voice was protesting in the back of my head, reminding how much I should be proud today: I was honoured, the only Hogwarts student to have this privilege. But the voice was faint and didn’t prevent me from seeing everything though the stranger’s eyes. I imagined them to be Cybele’s. It felt as if Cybele’s soul was looking through my eyes at a moment of my life when I should have felt the farthest I had been from her in five years.
Frustrated with my lingering feeling of fear, I went up to my room and undressed in front of the mirror.
The sight was a satisfying one. I was no longer a child. I looked dangerous with the sneakily undulating dark mark on my lean arm. I eventually gave a sly smile but it unexpectedly turned into a self-derisive laugh.
The sound of my laugh made other ones echo in my memory: Cybele laughing at my clumsiness in the joke shop, Cybele laughing away my drunkenness at the Yule Ball, her beautiful smile, ready to laugh her problems away. Boiling anger grew in me. She should not laugh at me. Nobody would laugh at me now, for I was a Death Eater.
I looked up and caught the eyes of the boy who had laughed at me seconds ago and shattered his reflection to pieces with my bare fist on the glass.
I wished I could tell others. Those who wouldn’t laugh at me. I wished I could see the fear in Crabbe and Goyle’s eyes. I wish I could see the respect in Zabini’s, the desire in Parkinson’s. But it had to be a secret. I could only see the doubt in my mother’s, the blindness in my father’s, and Cybele’s derisive laugh in mine, sickly echoing the Dark Lord’s own.
***
Mother and Father had invited the Parkinsons and the Goyles over distract me and cut short any even improbable suspicions among our family’s friends that I might have taken part in last night’s ceremonies.
As it turned out, Pansy didn’t need to see any dark mark to be all over me. Now that was an interesting turn of events, and just what I needed at the time.
It was strange to think that none of the boys would follow her to Hogwarts this year.
The twins couldn’t be convinced to return and take their NEWTs, even though the summer had been highlighted by frequent and colourful Howlers for Mrs Weasley. Lee had obtained very good NEWTs, but was planning to work for the twins first, to build some work experience.
After spending two months living and working together with the boys, Cybele was alone in Diagon Alley, shopping for the new term, while the boys were dealing with a shop full of Hogwarts students doing exactly the same thing.
Queuing up in Flourish and Boots with an armful of new books, Cybele’s eyes wandered through the window into a gloomy Diagon Alley.
She could see the corner of Knockturn Alley from where she stood. It felt surreal now that the four of them had slipped in there five years ago. The place so much scarier today, with a smaller crowd moving fast and inconspicuously along Diagon Alley itself.
Cybele paid and exited the shop. She was hesitating in the doorway, having finished all of her shopping. She soon found herself facing Knockturn Alley. Nowadays, it didn’t look any darker or gloomier then the changed Diagon Alley. She made her shopping appear back in Fred and George’s flat as she turn into Knockturn Alley and started walking down.
She wanted to walk back in her childhood’s footsteps, hoping it would help her come to terms with the end of an era; not being the boys’ girl anymore, going to Hogwarts alone, and soon running out of excuses to coming back again, to researching some more with Professor Snape, to finding…
***
She found herself in front of the magical creature shop they had visited back in her first year. She recognized it immediately but was disappointed not to feel the same way she had back then. It didn’t look as colourful, or as crazy. Was it that she was not seeing it through the eyes of a child anymore? Or had it taken in the general gloom of the war?
Well, I cannot have come all the way here and not pay a visit.
Liking the way her stroll was unexpectedly turning social, Cybele stepped into the shop. She didn’t hear any chime this time, but the owner appeared nonetheless.
He did not appear to have changed, but he wasn’t as bubbly as she remembered.
He looked surprised to see her. Cybele hadn’t expected him to recognize her, but it seemed like he had.
‘How can I help you, Miss?’
Cybele was unsettled. She could have sworn he had known her by the way he reacted when he saw her.
‘I was doing my shopping for Hogwarts. It’s my last term… then I remembered coming here in my first year and I thought I’d come and see if the place had changed.
Cybele could hear a throaty chuckle roll after that. She didn’t know what to make of it. It eventually stopped.
‘And has it?’ the shopkeeper asked in an amused tone.
‘What?’
‘The shop,’ he illustrated by a vague circular motion. ‘Has it changed?’
Cybele took a good look around. The creatures were not colour-coded anymore, the creatures were generally bigger and darker and a continuous low growl was coming from the four corners.
‘Yes,’ she concluded simply.
‘So have you, I gather.’
‘I guess I see things differently, now,’ Cybele answered, thinking along the lines of children’s eyes and experience making things look less colourful.
‘Good, very good. I’m happy to know my intervention has been profitable.’
‘Er, yes, thank you again,’ Cybele answered lamely. So he did remember lending them that book.
‘I have to say I was a bit worried,’ he trailed.
Cybele half smiled. Of course they hadn’t been looking for information about Acromantula for a school project back then. But she never would have thought that the man had seen through them. He seemed so naïve. He didn’t seem so now, though. But maybe Hagrid had talked to him, yes, that would be it.
‘Did Hagrid tell you, then?’ she checked.
The man frowned. He seemed to think and assumed a poker face.
‘I don’t think Hagrid would know,’ he offered.
‘Oh, yes, that Acromantula, we told him about it in the end. But let’s keep this between us.’
Cybele was starting to regret having brought Hagrid up. She now had disclosed to a near stranger something illegal Hagrid had done. And if Hagrid had not come and boasted about it himself earlier, it meant the two men were not as close friends as she had thought.
The shop owner looked annoyed now. Was it a coincidence that could Cybele hear the growling sounds getting louder?
‘Why have you come here today, Cybele Philius?’
A cold shiver ran Cybele’s back. Something was wrong. He could have recognized the student who had borrowed a book five years ago, but her full name?
‘I told you,’ she answered bravely.
‘Then, as you see; things have changed around here.’
‘I see. And why so?’
‘A good businessman must adapt to the laws of the market. Nobody was coming down here to buy my inventions. But with the rise in power of the Dark Lord, I found other branches of my trade could give me business.’
All of Cybele’s internal alarms rang at the words Dark Lord. She tried to gather her dignity while thinking of literally flying away, and managed to summon a steady voice.
‘I’m sorry to hear that. I liked your shop better before.’
‘But you also have changed, or you wouldn’t be here today.’
‘Not this way, no, I haven’t. I’ve just grown up, Sir. I think I should go now.’
‘She let you go?’
To Cybele’s distress, the man was stepping closer now, looking at her with a scientific interest which did nothing to calm her down.
‘So I was right… You must have overpowered them.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Cybele eventually declared, half curious to know what was happening in the young man’s mind, half ready to disappear away.
‘I only did my duty as a citizen, you know.’
Cybele was at a loss to understand. She had started to step back toward the door. And even though the man prudently kept the same distance with a fearful respect in his eye that Cybele couldn’t comprehend, he was following her nevertheless.
‘I had to, once I discovered it. Your headmistress had to know.’
They had now stepped outside, Cybele walking slowly backward and the man following her. The street was deserted and their conversation quite as private as it had been inside. Umbridge. Cybele was starting to connect it all, but… and then she saw it. The shop’s name over the windows.
The card, in that book, in that library, so it meant…
‘I know what you are,’ confirmed Philiocornus, looking half greedy, half scared.
‘What are you talking about?’ she tried.
‘I’m an inventor, Cybele. I had been studying a spell, a spell to gain limitless powers, powers like yours! Yes, Hagrid did talk to me. Before, he used to come here and share some drinks, and talk… He likes talking, this Hagrid of yours, doesn’t he?’
‘So do you. I don’t understand what you’re talking about and you’re scaring me. I’m going to leave.’
‘I recognized you. Through Hagrid’s story, I recognized what I wanted to become. Where do you come from, Cybele Philius?
Scared and disturbed, Cybele made a disheartened fake turn on the spot as she disappeared and appeared back directly in the twin’s flat.
‘Cybele, you’re back!’ George was entering the flat at the same time with an ecstatic smile on his face.
He hugged Cybele and made her twirl happily in his arm.
‘Best sale ever! This is crazy,’ he explained as he went for a box of products hidden under the couch.
‘We’re all accompanying you to King’s Cross tomorrow!’ he shouted from the stairs.
This made Cybele smile. They would be on the platform with here after all. Not all of the past would be forgotten already. And then she would still have Caroline, and Neville, and… Draco. Cybele’s heart felt as light as a balloon. Draco didn’t betray her. That Knockturn Alley maniac did! All fears of the creepy shop keeper and wonders on his knowledge fled away from her mind as it lingered on Draco. Maybe she’d talk to him in the train…
It was merry on the first of September on Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Cybele had feared emptiness and melancholy, but it had been all the opposite.
First the boys sent her, Ginny and Ron off grandly and none too discreetly, then she was able to see and hug Caroline, and Neville too, as soon as she was in the Hogwarts Express’s corridor. And as soon as Caroline left her to join her House mates, she felt someone grab her wrist and was pulled by Ben in a carriage full of merry Ravenclaw Quidditch players.
Still rejoicing secretly at the news that Draco hadn’t betrayed her to his Squad last term, Cybele was in a mood to celebrate and had a lot of fun. After a while, though, she made excuses to go and find Charlie and Pete, whom she hadn’t seen yet.
The corridors were crowed and everybody seemed to be in a celebratory mood. Cybele reflected that with last year’s events and Voldemort’s return, many students must have been relieved that no war was actually taking place yet, that Hogwarts was still open and that their parents had let them and their friends go. Everybody was unusually excited and happy to see each other.
As a result, the corridors were hard to navigate. Cybele was peering into each of the carriages, looking for the Gryffindor boys and greeting everybody she knew.
Two carriages down she found the Gryffindor girls, but Pete and Charlie weren’t with them. She sat for a while and went on. According to Cho, the boys were in the next carriage.
She was making her way down the corridor, peering into each compartment, when she found Malfoy. It would have been difficult to miss him, as from his lying position he was looking right into her eyes. His head was resting on the Parkinson girl’s lap. Cybele felt a cold grip her heart. Why was Draco lying on her lap? She saw her white hand running through his blond hair.
I have never done that, she thought weirdly.
Nothing was blocking Cybele’s way ahead but she was paralyzed in front of the compartment’s open door. The Slytherins started looking at her strangely and she looked for Draco’s eyes.
She found a strong cold face. Then she knew. She let her eyes go down his left arm and watch through the fabric the coal black snake twisting under her gaze. Feeling it move, Draco retracted his arms and checked that his sleeves were still down. Cybele went back to his face to find an angry look.
‘What are you staring at?’
‘At a snake,’ she answered truthfully.
She went ahead and never looked back.