A Scattered Fire of Stars

A Scattered Fire of Stars

Prologue: Dreams of Slytherin Past

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me. - Tennyson, Break, Break, Break

"Wouldn't it be fun," Barty Crouch said to Maristella Sinistra one evening after the two of them had watched Maristella's older sister Fiorenza exit the Slytherin Common Room, leaving a trail of off-key humming and strong perfume in her wake, "to sneak out and follow her and see what she's up to?" Barty held out something that fell in silvery, fluid folds. "We could use my Invisibility Cloak."

"Barty, you know exactly where my sister is going and what she is going to do and who she is going to do it with. She's going to go to some empty classroom down in the dungeons and meet that chubby boyfriend of hers, Peter Pettigrew, and he is going to recite some really bad poetry to her and tell her how utterly gorgeous she is and how much he loves her, and then they are going to snog. Boring, boring, bor-ing!" Maristella shot her friend a dirty look, and shook her head, her black curls dancing about.

"Please, Maristella, please? We could blackmail your sister into buying us some sugar quills!" Barty grinned. "Come on, I'll let you have three-quarters of them if you go with me."

Maristella laughed. "Oh Barty, you are a true Slytherin! You know we'll get in big trouble, Fiorenza will throw a fit and owl Mother, not to mention Peter's good friend is Potter the Head Boy..."

But Barty was already pulling her to her feet and smothering her protests under the watery folds of the Invisibility Cloak. "Come on, Maristella - if we hurry, we can still catch her - and if we pull this off, we'll eat like kings..."

Concealed under the Invisibility Cloak, Maristella and Barty raced through the stone door leading out of the Slytherin Common Room and down the corridor. It was easier than Maristella thought to track Fiorenza; her perfume was so potent that it lingered in the air long after she was gone.

"Peeyew!" Maristella whispered to Barty under cover of the cloak. "Not very Slytherin of Fiorenza, is it, to leave a trail like this! Anyone could catch her. I'm surprised Professor Swynford hasn't come sniffing around already!" Professor Katherine Swynford was Potions Mistress and Head of Slytherin House. She was not mean or unfair, but she was strict and held high standards for her Slytherins, forever chivvying them into "giving Slytherin a good name" and "upholding the fine tradition of the noble House of Slytherin."

Maristella and Barty had moved so fast they now had Fiorenza in their sight, and now Maristella saw her turn and disappear into one of the side rooms. "There she went - up ahead, two doors down to the left..." Maristella hissed in Barty's ear, no mean feat as he was much taller than she was.

They tiptoed to the entrance of the room where Fiorenza had gone, peering through the front of the Invisibility Cloak, not making a sound. There was Fiorenza in the middle of the deserted classroom, simpering at her boyfriend Peter Pettigrew, as he whispered sweet nothings into her shell-like ear.

And sweet nothings they really were. Maristella and Barty edged noiselessly into the deserted classroom, straining their ears to catch what Peter was saying.

"...eyes like limpid pools of onyx," Maristella heard Peter saying as he clasped Fiorenza's hands and gazed adoringly into her eyes. "You have lips like rubies, and ears like...um...like rare seashells."

"Oooh, Peter, you're so..."

Corny and sappy, thought Maristella. I'd throw up if some boy spouted off treacly stuff like that to me.

"...romantic, just like an Italian boy!" said Fiorenza who sighed, fluttering her eyelashes.

"I'd better be getting a lot of sugar quills out of this," Maristella whispered through clenched teeth. The deserted classroom was freezing, watching Peter and Fiorenza carry on was nauseating, and Maristella was getting a cramp in her leg. Barty was staring open-mouthed at the blissful couple.

"I bet he's found some Muggle poet and is passing off his stuff as his own love poems," Barty whispered back. "Oh look, Maristella, she's going to kiss him - watch carefully so we can tell them exactly what we saw them doing" -

"Watch what you're doing!" Maristella hissed. Barty had stepped on the hem of the Invisibility Cloak and it slipped, uncovering their heads. Fiorenza caught sight of what must have looked like two heads, one of them her sister's, suspended in midair, and let out a piercing scream.

Maristella grabbed Barty's hand and they ran for it down the corridor, Fiorenza's shrieks echoing after them. She screamed so loud that Maristella was sure Filch, or, even worse, Swynford or McGonagall, would be after them any minute...

Maristella sat up in bed, sweat pouring down her brow, her heart pounding. For a moment she wasn't sure where she was - she half expected Filch or a professor to grab her by the scruff of her neck and haul her off to one of Filch's rumored torture chambers. Then as the fog of sleep dispersed from her brain, she recognized the green velvet hangings of her childhood bed, the one she still slept in when she stayed with her parents in Italy for the summer.

The dream was dissipating, but the "eee, eee" sound continued on. "What is that noise?" mumbled Maristella, rubbing her eyes and pushing aside the bed curtains. Better to think of the mysterious noise than her companion in the dreamworld - Barty Crouch Junior, Maristella's good friend, then her first true love, then fiancé...turned Death Eater...imprisoned...and now doomed to wander the world a shambling corporeal hulk devoid of a soul. No. Too painful.

"Oh, Orpheus, it's only you. A fine time for the Silencing Charm to start wearing off." Maristella waved her wand at the lime-green Fwooper sitting on his perch. "Tacitum Avis!" Orpheus fell silent, stretched his wings, and fell to eating his thistle seed. "Let's hope this Silencing Charm doesn't wear off in the middle of the night," Maristella mumbled.

Meanwhile Beatice, Maristella's kneazle, had been attracted by the Fwooper's song and was staring at Orpheus wide-eyed and prick-eared, seemingly intent on making him her midnight snack. Maristella had ignored the warnings of those who told her that one couldn't keep a pet kneazle and a pet Fwooper at the same time, and had gotten Beatrice to mostly leave Orpheus alone, but it took constant vigilance.

Constant vigilance...another reminder of Barty Crouch, this time in his disguise as retired ex-Auror Alastor Moody, sometime Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts. Maristella had danced with him at the Yule Ball. Just as Maristella and Barty had danced together at the Yule Ball held when they were students...

Maristella picked up Beatrice and took her back to the bed. She plopped the brown-and-white spotted kneazle onto the counterpane, and Beatrice, after giving Maristella an indignant glare through yellow eyes, settled down at the foot of the bed to wash herself. Maristella scratched Beatrice behind the ear, sat down on the edge of the bed, and put her head in her hands.

The Dark Lord has risen once again, and there will be no going back to the days when all you had to worry about were your studies, and plaguing your sister, and playing Quidditch, and hoping Slytherin would win the House Cup each year...Slytherin House wasn't a bad place to be then, Maristella thought. Even if a few Slytherins were looked upon with suspicion, we weren't the school pariahs, shunned in the corridors; we had friends in the other Houses. I was Head Girl in my seventh year - what Slytherin would stand a chance of being Head Boy or Girl these days? Our Head of House was strict, but she was a good teacher and she was fair, not at all like the current Head of Slytherin, who has his reasons for being the way he is but all the students, except for the Slytherins, hate him. And speaking of Snape...I'd better drink my Sleeping Draught before Father realizes I'm awake, and gets worried.

And worry Giordano Sinistra would, Maristella reflected as she unstoppered the silver flask full of a strong sleeping draught which she always kept by her bedside now, ever since the events at Hogwarts earlier in the year. The senseless death of poor Cedric Diggory, the shock when "Professor Moody" was revealed to be none other than Barty Crouch Jr. in disguise, Barty's being handed over to the Dementors to be Kissed - Maristella shuddered at the memory - and worse, even worse than the fate of her former fiancé, knowing that He Who Must Not Be Named had risen again, and the world would never be the same. This was war. There was no escape for anyone, nowhere to hide, no light that would banish this darkness. And Maristella, for one, was none too sure that Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, who had accomplished a miracle fourteen years ago, would be able to vanquish the Dark Lord a second time.

Maristella made a face as she drank the ill-tasting sleeping draught, a powerful combination of asphodel, wormwood and valerian. Maristella thought it tasted like distilled toe jam, but it was effective. These days she couldn't sleep without it. And she had to sleep or her father would be fussing and clucking over her, or enquiring anxiously about her health and state of mind the next day over the breakfast table, asking over and over if there wasn't anything he could buy or do for his younger and favorite daughter. And it wasn't like when Maristella was a child, when her father could tuck her into bed and read her a bedtime story and kiss her on the forehead and tell her that she was safe, there were no monsters under the bed - see? And if therewere, he, her father, would give them a thorough cursing and make sure those mean old monsters stayed far, far away from his little Maristella.

It wasn't like that anymore. The monsters were real, and Giordano and Maristella and her mother and sister together couldn't banish them. A Time-Turner would be the only thing that would right things gone wrong, now. And Time-Turners were not handed out like Chocolate Frogs, even to powerful and experienced wizards like Maristella's father. They were rare, their use so strictly monitored by the Ministries that hardly anyone was allowed to use them at all.

No, she would just have to live with her memories. And the knowledge of turbulent times to come. What was that ancient curse - May you live in interesting times? Maristella lay on her bed, stared up at the jade-green canopy, and thought that she had already lived through more than her share of "interesting times."

Maristella had no chance to think anything more as the sleeping draught took hold. She closed her eyes, and this time her sleep was deep, dreamless, and untroubled.