your selfish self
all your darkness
will change to light
‘Cybele?’
Caroline had been woken up in the middle of the night again. Cybele was thrashing in the bed opposite hers. She was not waking up.
‘Don’t! Please! Don’t hurt her! I’ve changed my mind! Don’t!’ Cybele muttered in her dream.
Caroline got out of her bed and reached for Cybele’s shoulders.
‘Cybele! You’re having a nightmare again!’
Cybele jerked awake and gave a small gasp. She knew she had had a nightmare. She had woken up too many times to find Caroline leaning her in the past months.
She allowed some light. It was the middle of the night. They were sleeping in a cozy room. With Cybele’s magic, their journey was not hard, physically. Cybele made comfy rooms and satisfying food appear at will and they popped in at Caroline’s place almost every weekend.
But the journey was unnerving. Travelling restlessly in the East in search of something they couldn’t be sure existed, or even how to recognize it if they saw it was giving them a feeling close to despair. Cybele was feeling guilty for wasting Caroline’s time and Caroline was feeling tired of having to quiet Cybele’s frequent suggestions that she should go back home.
‘See, that’s the reason why I won’t go home,’ she said, pushing a lock back behind Cybele’s ear.
They had had the discussion again the evening before.
‘I’m sorry,’ Cybele said.
‘Look here, and listen well because I won’t repeat it again. It’s been close to a year that we’ve been searching now and it is worth it. It is worth it because one day we will find what we’ve been looking for and it is worth it because we are together and we are learning and meeting people. I’m here to stay because I chose it. I don’t want to hear any more apologies.’
Cybele didn’t answer anything.
‘Was it the same nightmare?’ Caroline asked gently.
‘Yes,’ Cybele answered simply, looking down.
They had started the night after she had read Severus’ letter, and she was having them more and more. What if what was written in the ancient enchantment was true? What if she had been an evil wizard who had sacrificed his own mother to become what she was now – a limitlessly powerful Magian? In her dreams, at first, Cybele had been on a sort of stage, surrounded by other wizards, and they were bringing her mother for the sacrifice. She was a short woman with brown, wavy hair and very dark eyes like hers. Cybele was yelling to them that it was a mistake, she didn’t want to go through with it anymore. But nobody seemed to hear her and she couldn’t move.
Later, the nightmare had evolved. Some of the crowd had heard her; they had discarded her mother roughly and brought a young girl, a girl with black hair who was crying. As Cybele went on yelling, they would kick her little sister aside and bring on an older girl, a strikingly beautiful young woman who was giving Cybele a piercing and complex stare in which pity and anger could mix. This girl was the worst. Often, Cybele would stop yelling under her powerful stare; she would be slaughtered with her eyes locked with Cybele’s, and Cybele woke up shaking. Sometimes she could yell and an elderly lady with grey hair and, like her mother, a resigned expression would come next. The nightmare, with the months, would stretch on and on as more female family members were brought in front of a hysterical and yelling Cybele, leaving her to wake up shouting pleas and crying.
‘Try to stop thinking about all that, Cybele. As you said, the time for theories and guessing is up. We are going to find where you came from, we will know the truth and you will see all this dread was for nothing,’ Caroline said with conviction.
‘What if parts of my nightmares were memories?’ Cybele asked in a whisper.
‘We’ve had this conversation before, Cybele; your nightmares are reflecting your fear of discovering that parts of Snape’s enchantment are true. I understand that, but as I told you before, I believe the wording is symbolical.’
‘Thank you, Caroline. Don’t worry, I’m fine.’
She made two mugs of tea appear and they drank silently for a while.
‘Sorry for waking you up again. Do you feel sleepy?’
‘It’s not so late, but we’d better get some sleep.’
Caroline looked up at Cybele to say good night and saw her give a gasp.
‘Oh!’ Cybele cried quietly, looking surprised.
She acted in a split of a second, without leaving Caroline time to even think of asking a question. All of a sudden, they had clothes on instead of their night gowns; Cybele reached for her hand and they found themselves in a totally different place, somewhere where the sun had not yet set.
‘George?’
Fred’s brother was standing in the middle of a shattered pile of Patented Day Dreams in the back room, looking at something in his hand. He raised his head at Fred’s entrance, looking serious.
‘This is it, Fred. They’re going to fight.’ He passed him his fake Galleon.
‘Let’s Floo Angelina, Alicia and Lee; we need to be sure they get the message. Then the Galleon says to Apparate to the Hogshead.’
‘Call Cybele.’
Fred did not answer and went to the fireplace where he kneeled down to Floo Lee. He turned his head back seconds later.
‘Lee will check on Alicia and join us here. Why don’t you pop at Angelina’s, to check with her?’
‘Call Cybele,’ repeated George, bending to the fire. He stepped aside seconds later and a tall, dark, handsome girl stepped out of the fireplace.
‘Fred, you’re the one who can do it. Now would be great, we’re sort of in a hurry…’
‘She has made it plain that she doesn’t want to mix with our little wizarding problems, didn’t she? She chose her side.’
‘She had also made it plain that she wanted to be there if we were going to battle, Fred. Just do it.’
Fred was looking at the fireplace, hoping Lee and Alicia could just pop now and the urgent course of action would put all Cybelish matters out of the way. He had not spoken the girl’s name since a year earlier in Hogwarts, when she had bestowed upon him the power to make her appear at his side by doing just that: speaking her name aloud.
George studied his brother’s face and could see the mixture or annoyance, anger… and perhaps something else.
‘I am afraid too, Fred.’ Fred looked up curiously at that. ‘I’m afraid that she won’t come after all,’ explained George. ‘But there’s only one way to know it. Say the name.’
Lee and Alicia stepped out smoothly of the fire at this moment.
‘Cybele’ said Fred, still looking at the fire as if two of his friends had not just come out of it.
And in a spit second she was here, Caroline at her side, looking astonished. Fred released a breath he had not realized he was holding and gave them a silent hug. So did George and Lee, and then they were gone. There was no time to talk.
They Apparated in the Hogshead, where the bartender rushed them up and they ran to the Room of Requirement.
Cybele soon followed Lee out of the room, leaving the twins behind with their other siblings. Battle had not started; witches and wizards were putting all the protective spells they knew around them. Cybele was feeling extremely uneasy. She took out her wand but was unable to bring herself to pretending to cast spells. School days were over and these were no time for pretences. School days were over and maybe she should not be there at all. She felt like her friends had blackmailed her into coming a year ago and she had known all along that she would be awkward and useless. A battle was coming involving weapons which belonged to another dimension.
They were now all gathered in the Great Hall. Cybele’s eye automatically searched the Slytherin table but could not see Draco. Then a glitter of bright blond hair caught the side of her eye; Draco and his two cronies were reaching the door of the hall, sneaking out. Draco had obviously stopped by the door to look at her and as their eyes locked, she felt her wand drop from her hand. It rolled to someone’s feet.
‘You’re going to need that.’
‘Neville!’ She gave her friend a brief hug and her wand a distasteful glance. ‘No, I won’t,’ she said with determination. ‘But you keep it, someone may need a spare.’
Neville looked at her strangely.
‘Well, then you’ll give them yourself, won’t you?’ And she had to pick the loather wand back up. When she looked back to the door, nobody was to be seen.
As Voldemort spelled out his ultimatum, Professor Sprout grabbed her hand. She could handle magical plants with her team. Cybele felt grateful. If she placed just one mandrake in a strategic spot, it would have been worth returning. Plus, she was starting to think that she could be useful in passing through the deadly spells to give her ‘spare’ wand to a fighter, or maybe to retrieve people’s wands. She had a vision of a kid running picking up tennis balls on a Muggle court while adults were playing. It did not make her feel better at all.
Too soon, Professor Sprout’s team had to abandon their mission and join the general battle. Cybele was standing in the middle of the castle-wide battle field, insensitive to killing spells which were passing right through her, but also unable to do anything. The six years of pretence and magical education, the research with Professor Snape, all felt like a sweet dream one wakes up from to realize that was all it had been. Everything today showed the essence of her foreignness. The magic she could not feel, the magic she could not grab. Then she felt a hand on each of her shoulders.
‘Do something, anything!’ said Neville, who let go of her to cast a violent stunning spell at a Death Eater.
‘Thanks for coming,’ said Fred and he too, flew back in the action, letting her wonder if the warmness on her shoulders had been for real.
Anything, Neville had said. He was right, even picking up the wands would be worthwhile.
As she looked around, she spotted a Death Eater aiming at Caroline’s back. At that moment, it happened again; but it felt different from the time before, very different. As she felt her own magic within her, she slowly put her wand back in her pocket. She barely had to think and a blinding white flash of light burst out of her and hit the Death Eater with the strength of a small bomb. As she was defending her friends and allies, it seemed that the full destructive strength of the Magian was revealed. Cybele could not only feel but see and hear her magic at this level of power.
Around her the battle was raging and nobody pondered what exactly had happen. Cybele couldn’t see the Death Eater she had hit anywhere. She knew he was not there anymore; not dead: some things are worse than death. She shook the thought. She came to the front door when numerous Acromantula broke in and, in a mere breathe, she repelled them to the depths of the Forbidden Forest in a hurl of white light.
The battle came to a break after another one of Voldemort’s announcement. Cybele stood in a deserted corridor where she had, in a blink of an eye, vanished a group of Death-Eaters. She made to head back to the main Hall when a hand grabbed her and firmly pulled her in semi-darkness. She was face to face with Draco. He looked frantic and frightened, which were not the expressions which could have softened Cybele.
‘You’re hiding in a broom cupboard?’ she asked in disbelief.
‘Stay here with me. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.’ He looked down.
Cybele exploded in cold anger.
‘You don’t, do you? Guess what? A couple of evil things have already happened to me! I have fought my way through six years of researching my origins to discover that I was a Magian, one of an extinct kind! I have spent the last year out there looking for people which may not exist! The closest person I have to a family is on the run because of you! And you, Draco, my friend, my- You have abandoned me! And you are hiding in a broom cupboard! WHAT – EXACTLY – DON’T YOU WANT TO HAPPEN TO ME?’
Cybele was glowing slightly in the dark out of anger. Draco looked lost.
‘You are what?’
‘Leave it.’ Cybele tried to go but Draco pulled her back.
‘Did you say-? You meant I am your what?’
‘Yes, maybe. It doesn’t mean much, does it? When one’s love doesn’t meet their lowest expectations,’ she spat with disdain.
‘Do you have any idea, Cybele, of what it would take; to make a girl like you impressed or even satisfied?’ asked Draco desperately.
‘Oh yes, I have a pretty good idea, Malfoy; it would take guts!’
‘Just tell me what to do!’
‘Fine! Get your ass out of this cupboard, stand, and fight! And if there is a tomorrow after this battle, show thousand times more courage than you could ever display on a battle field to become the person I know you deserve to be!’
‘That’s all?’ Draco managed to comment with sarcasm.
‘Yes, and we both know you have it in you. Tell you what, I’ll give you five years. If you are a man when I see you again, I’ll come back to you. But if you are still a spoiled child living up to the family tradition, married one of your pureblood childhood friends, there will be no need to contact me, deal?’
She walked out of the cupboard and quickly down the corridor.
‘Where will you be?’
Cybele did not answer that and was almost reaching the end of the corridor when she heard ‘Deal!’ and the cupboard doors slamming. She did not turn back to see on which side of the cupboard door Draco had understood the deal should make him stand.
As she was reaching the main hall, she spotted Harry Potter heading toward the staircases. She caught his eyes only a second and the warm word of encouragement she had on her lips faded. The Potter boy’s eyes were full of Severus Snape’s death.
Cybele stood frozen on the spot and never made it to the Great Hall. It was the battle itself which reached her where she stood, later. She fought fiercely, relishing in her newly revealed powers, expelling anger and sadness from her lost soul.
It was only when they walked back victorious to the main Hall again that she spotted Fred’s body, surrounded by his family.
Cybele felt a great depression fall all over her. Because Snape was dead, because Draco was a coward, because Fred was lying there and she could not just hug him one last time.
On an impulse, she let her wand fly across the hall and take its place with Fred’s one in his clasped hand. Nobody noticed.
With Fred will be buried all pretences. He will keep me safe from pretending to be a witch ever again, she vowed to herself.
She decided to leave again. She would find at all cost what she had left to find, she would come back in five years and if, as she thought, Draco was still what he had been raised to become, she would disappear again forever.
She would go alone this time. She wouldn’t allow Caroline to lose more of her time wandering aimlessly in desolated lands. She had better disappear simply before Caroline could spot her. She turned round and she spotted Caroline. Lying of the floor. Dead.
Wandlessly, soundlessly, Cybele’s shaking body disappeared from Hogwarts castle once again.