Vendetta

Vendetta

Chapter 2 - Late Night Revelations

Ciaran didn't sleep well. She tossed and she turned and when she finally tossed and turned right onto the floor she declared to herself that sleep was not going to happen. She straightened her pajama top and made her way down to the Common Room, which, when she first saw it, she'd decided was her favorite room so far.

When her cold feet hit the bottom stair she noticed that she wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep. Harry was sitting on one of the couches in front of the fire, and he was rubbing his forehead, where there was a lightning shaped scar that Ciaran hadn't noticed until they were walking to the tower after the feast.

She took a seat in the chair next to the couch, but didn't say anything. Harry didn't look up. Upon further inspection Ciaran decided that he was so far lost in thought that he hadn't even heard her walk in. She tucked her arms under her knees and brought them up to her chin. Her long brown hair fell across her face as she gazed at the fire, getting lost in the dancing flames.

"Ciaran?"

She looked up, startled. Harry looked tired in good light, he also looked wary. Of what she wasn't sure, but she knew she felt the same way herself. "You couldn't sleep either?"

He shook his head and his hair fell in front of his scar, which he rubbed again, as if it hurt. "Headache."

Ciaran nodded as if she understood and rested her chin on her knees. It was quiet, and she had some time to think. Staring at the fire made it easy to get lost in thought, when lying in the dark, cold and achy, as she usually was, she couldn't keep her mind in a state where reasonable thinking could be done.

Images of her foster parents kept running through her head. Bianca Thompson always got home first and would start dinner. Roger Thompson was usually an hour behind her. The three of them would eat a quiet dinner and then go their separate ways. Ciaran usually to her room or to Jaelyn's.

It wouldn't be like that tonight.

Bianca would get home first, she'd start supper without a care in the world about her foster daughter not coming home. Then Roger would arrive and they would call for Ciaran, and, well, she wouldn't come. They'd think she was disobeying and go upstairs to her room, where they'd find that she'd packed her stuff, and left.

* * *

Harry was aware of Ciaran's presence in an unsettling way. His scar burned slightly, and he found that it was worse when she was closer. There was, now, no doubt in his mind that she was the daughter of the worst, and most hated wizard that had ever lived. Lord Voldemort. And the fact that she was sitting right there, less than a foot away from him and she wasn't trying to kill him, it was an odd thought He'd never thought that anyone would give Voldemort a child, actually love him like that, but Harry had learned over the years that you should never say never.

He looked at Ciaran again, and saw that she didn't look like Voldemort. She must have a lot of her mother in her. She had blue eyes, Voldemort had red, snake-like slits for eyes. She had long, wavy brown hair, Voldemort, well, as many times as Harry had faced him he'd never had any hair. Now that he was getting his power back, Harry couldn't be sure if he was bald or not.

Very suddenly, Ciaran looked up and met his eyes. "Can I ask you a question?"

Startled, Harry nodded. "Sure."

"How'd you get your scar? The one on your forehead?"

Harry didn't respond immediately. There was no way around it, he'd have to say that it was nearly killing Tom Riddle. Even if he said Voldemort. She didn't know who he was, only having learned that wizards and witches existed that morning, she hadn't had time to read up on the last decade, and he'd have to spell it out for her. He'd nearly, on several occasions, killed her father. "Well, uh -"

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. If it's a hard thing to recall."

He gave her a small smile, and sat foreword on the couch. "Well, when I was a baby an evil wizard, named Lord Voldemort, you've never heard of him, came to my house and killed my parents. He tried to kill me too, but for some reason couldn't. His killing curse bounce off me and hit him, nearly killing him. The only thing I got was this scar, and some of his power but that's really hard to explain." He finished and looked back at Ciaran. For the first time he noticed the necklace around her neck, and was startled when he got a good look at it. It was a outline of a triangle, that was simple enough, but it was the silver serpent that was wrapped around it that made him do the smallest of double takes. The emeralds that were it's eyes reminded him of the snakes carved on the door in the Chamber of Secrets, and although he hadn't seen them in 3 years he knew, somewhere in him, that they were the same. "Uh, can I ask you a question?"

"It's the least I could do," she said distractedly, fingering the pendant absently.

"Where'd you get your necklace?"

She looked surprised that he'd mention it. "Well, when my mom died I had to go through her stuff, see if I wanted any of it. I only found two things that I wanted. This necklace was one of them. I found it folded into a note from my father, as far as I know, she never wore it."

Harry felt an involuntary shiver run down his spine. It wasn't hard to figure out why she never wore it. Who would want a gift from that man? Harry did have to admit that the necklace was beautiful, but at the same time ugly in it's own, haunting way. "You're father gave it to her?"

"I'm guessing."

Harry scratched behind his ear. And she wore the thing around her neck. She doesn't know her father's an evil bastard who killed your parents, he reminded himself harshly, looking back at the fire. It was an automatic thing, that his temper rose to dangerous levels when he thought about Voldemort. Seeing his daughter their, a Gryffindor nonetheless, so innocent and oblivious to what he was, that didn't help get him on Harry's good side either. He decided that a change of subject was in order, if neither of them were going back up to bed. "So, um, why didn't you go to an American school?" He asked, assuming they had them. He'd never met another American in Hogwarts.

Ciaran shrugged, no easy feat where she had a death grip on her legs. "Dumbledore brought me here."

Harry was both surprised and not surprised by this. He'd known that Dumbledore had been late to the feast, and now he knew why. Though it struck him as odd that Dumbledore would've gone himself, and not just sent McGonagall, or another teacher. Maybe he thought that she was in need of assistance, and he felt that she wouldn't get that from a teacher.

Or maybe he wanted to get to her before Voldemort.

* * *

Ciaran was awoken sometime later when something hard and heavy landed on her lap. She opened her eyes to find that she was in bed, and Calypso was very close to her nose. Scratching the dog behind the ears as she sat up, Ciaran wondered what time it was. The sun wasn't terribly bright as it shown through the only window in the dorm, so it couldn't be that late, but Ciaran noticed that Hermione was already up and elsewhere.

"I thought we couldn't have dogs?"

Ciaran glanced at the girl in the bed closest to the bathroom, Lavender she thought her name was, and shrugged. "Dumbledore made an acceptation. Besides, I couldn't leave him back home...no, that'd been to hard."

Lavender smiled as Calypso followed Ciaran to the bathroom, and whimpered when the door was shut before he could get in. "I can see why, he's a cutie."

"Isn't he though?" Ciaran called from the bathroom. She turned to face the mirror and wasn't surprised that her eyes were a little more than slightly puffy. She'd been up half the night, and didn't even remember getting back into bed. She combed her hair and washed her face. Happy that she looked less like a junkie and more like a student, she left the bathroom and Lavender went in. Ciaran pulled on a pair of flannel shorts and a t-shirt under her robes. The covered her completely, but she still liked to wear something underneath them. "Bye Calypso, be good," she said, grabbing her bag and shutting the dorm door behind her.

"Good morning Ciaran," Hermione said when Ciaran collapsed next to her at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. "Did you find your way alright?"

"No," said a disgruntled Ciaran, filling her goblet with what she hoped was a juice of some sort. "I think I took a wrong turn, right after leaving the tower."

"What makes you say that?"

"Did you know that there's a poltergeist who likes to write discriminating things about the teachers on chalkboards when they're not around?"

Hermione tried not to laugh, but didn't succeed and a grin found it's way to her face. "Peeves."

Ciaran nodded. "Oh, well, it's fitting."

"Did you see Harry or Ron before you left?"

"No, I think they're still asleep," Ciaran said distractedly as McGonagall handed her her schedule. "Potions. Is that fun?"

"Not in any sense of the word," Hermione said, going over her own schedule. "Snape's the worst. He's head of Slytherin, and favors them. We have class with them."

Ciaran looked across the hall at the table full of very mean looking people, ones who looked like they my just pounce if you turned your back on them. "You mean that angry looking bunch over there?"

Hermione nodded. "Unfortunately we have to spend our lives in their presence."

"They can't be that bad."

Hermione laughed, but it wasn't a nice 'I'm enjoying myself' laugh. It was an unhappy 'you don't know what you're talking about' laugh. "Oh yes they can. Especially Draco Malfoy, he's a mean bastard."

Ciaran looked at Hermione, who had turned slightly pink. She wasn't someone who looked like she said mean things about people. Never judge a book by it's cover, Ciaran chided herself as Harry and Ron sat across from them. She couldn't help but notice Ron study her necklace briefly, before digging into his breakfast. "G'morning."

"Ron, he's doing it again."

Ciaran looked up as a red-haired girl plopped down next to Ron. He looked at her and around a mouthful of breakfast said, "Who's doing what?"

The girl looked frustrated. "Colin, he's looking at me funny."

Ron put his fork down and turned so he was looking at her fully. "Ginny, you're gonna have to face it, he likes you."

Ginny groaned and swung around to look at Hermione, when she noticed Ciaran. "Oh hello, I'm Ginny."

She stuck her hand across the table and Ciaran shook it. "Hi, I'm Ciaran."

"Well that's a cool name," Ginny said, having momentarily forgotten about her Colin problem.

"I like it, once people figure out how to pronounce it."

"Well, it is kind of confusing looking," Ron said absently, going back to his breakfast.

Ciaran nodded. "I get a lot of people calling me Ki-aran, when that's not right. Kee-aran. My friend Jaelyn used just call me Ci."

"Like that better," Ron mumbled.

Ginny sent a sideways glare Ron's way and looked back at Ciaran. "Do you know what it means?"

"I know that as a boy's name it's Irish, but I think that in Greece it was a girl's name as well, but no, I don't know what it means."

Harry looked at Hermione, as if she might know. Hermione rolled her eyes. "I'm not sure what Ciaran means, but Ciara means 'black and mysterious', maybe your name was taken from that."

Ciaran nodded. "Sounds about right." He didn't say anything, but Ciaran thought Harry looked like he agreed. About which part she wasn't sure.