Accidents of Circumstance

Chapter 5: The Weird Sisters

Regina was climbing a staircase leading to the Gryffindor common room. Hermione had asked her to speak to the Gryffindors about her idea of a field trip. It was February now, and class had steadily grown more and more demanding without seeming so. Regina had already dealt with the Slytherins, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs in her class, going into their common rooms to speak to them. The field trip would be in March, and was purely optional. She was speaking to each of the students in her class to determine what they would like out of a field trip, and it would most likely occur following their midterm, before she began the part of the course dedicated to blood magic. Regina had managed to conquer most of her restless impulses by retreating to the Slytherin exercise room. Most of the students were used to her by now. Initially, those that had wandered into the room had been shocked. The overly friendly and mothering teacher had a wicked right hook and could kick higher than her head. She worked herself pretty hard, and there was a grudging respect even in those that weren't in her class.

Draco adored her, and had even tried copying her movements when he caught her practicing her katas. He later borrowed one of her books on karate.

It had become a regular parade in her quarters after hours. Some days Draco would arrive, full of questions and boyish charm. Whenever he brought up questions regarding some of her other magic knowledge, Regina deftly sidestepped the questions and answered others in such a roundabout form that it seemed as though she had answered him when she hadn't.

Other days, Hermione would arrive. Sometimes she was alone, sometimes accompanied by Harry or Ron. She was studious, and would debate philosophy, theory and magic. Sometimes she seemed on the verge of saying something more personal, but it never spilled out. Since Hermione was fairly silent on the state of her personal life, Regina also kept her guesses to herself. Things would reveal themselves in time.

Ron was easy to figure out. He tried to puzzle things out for himself, but often couldn't quite make the last logical leap. He was even worse in his personal life.

And then there was Harry. He was the everpresent hero, but the poor kid needed a break. She carefully kept away some of the more violent RPG's she had for her gaming systems, and he never seemed to question why her belongings seemed just a little too foreign to him. But he felt safe there, and didn't question why there were only peaceful and fluffy games for him to play, everything innocuous and nothing dark. There are only so many times you can save the universe before it begins to wear on you, after all. It was a welcome release for him.

She had started telling him about runes two weeks after he had drank her Circle of One potion and incanted himself to some level of safety. The runes in question she had begun discussing just so happened to be very, very old, and very, very unknown. It took Harry three days to realize where he'd seen them before, carved into the body of the poor boy spelled to look like him, and suddenly he began to devour her books whole. He hadn't been willfully slow, the carvings had been crude and her books were elegant. Regina had been glad that she didn't need to use any more obvious prodding. That usually wasn't the way to go.

Regina had been surprised by Neville. He waited until frightfully late, long after every other student had left her room, when she was in her pajamas and getting ready for bed. And of course, she never turned him away. He was always nervous, chattering about nightmares and the problems he had in his classes that were only now starting to solve themselves, and the fear he had of Potions. Regina let him talk, and would slowly have him talk about himself, the fact that his famous Auror parents had nearly been killed when he was a child, and it had scarred him for life. She would squeeze his hand reassuringly or give him a hug when he needed it, and then would offer to walk him back to the Gryffindor tower. He always refused.

And now here she was, inside Gryffindor tower, climbing the different staircases until she got to the common room level. McGonagall had warned her that the staircases liked to trick the non-Gryffindors by changing themselves, and that most of the time they responded to a polite query to be shown the way.

Regina's knee buckled halfway up one stairway, and she grabbed the stone railing to break her fall. The stairs began to move, swinging away from the landing leading to the common room, leading somewhere else in the castle.

There was the smell of blood in her nose, rotten somehow, arterial blood left too long in one spot. It smelled like a clot.

As long as my finger, as dark as my hair. I feel like a fairy tale...

You can't stay near the Weird Sisters without giving up something of yourself. You know the stories, you know how they work. They take from you. You can't escape them unscathed, you give them more than they give you.

I only gave what I was willing to give.

There was blood on her hands, thick and almost black, clots as thick and long as her fingers, the smell sharp in her nose. I only gave what I was willing to give, no more and no less, you don't understand.

They hadn't understood.

The Three had taken her in when she wanted to cut her throat, they had shushed her tears and patted her head and placed her down in their midst. They gave her gifts they knew she would like - they somehow chose the games she wanted to play just when she needed to play them, and chose the best electronics to play them on - and they kept her.

They hadn't understood. The Three had wanted her. They gave her things, they gave her affection, they kept her when she didn't want to keep herself.

She belonged.

And then they had sent her back, because they couldn't keep her any longer.

My dear, we give you the time to complete it. We give you what you need to finish this, we begin the process to the reckoning. You called on us, and we answered.

I want him dead.

When he's spilled the blood of kin, no more and no less.

Hasn't he?

Oh no, dear, she was none of his. And as for him, oh no, there was no blood. It's always about the blood. You know the stories.

We'll give you a place in it, to help. You need to understand. He knew enough not to spill the blood, not to call us down on his head.

You can finish this on your own, without us, the young one had said, curling up next to her, you can finish this if you've the will to.

Take our gifts.

And what about yours? They say you have to take something back.

We take the gift of the blood. You won't mind it, will you?

And she had known what they meant. And she had accepted. They saved her, it was only fair. They saved her, sent her back, made sure she kept up with the learning.

Clots as long as her fingers.

And in their eyes, they had known something was different, they had known something happened in her missing weekend - only one? Only one weekend? - and had felt it in the change within her. Something was sealed tight. Spells, they whispered. Dark spells, tight spells, something strange, even for her.

And she had learned more than she dreamed possible, more worlds open before her, magic like putty in her hands, magic visible to her eyes, not the fictional octarine but something more vivid in her mind, something pulling at her chest, drawing her closer, pushing into her, into the hollow spaces within her. They replaced what she missed, dear tendrils and threads of magic, beloved untold magicks. She became magic personified, she could bend and twist and rend and build. Magic, all around and within and yet something was missing -

"Regina? Regina dear, are you all right?"

Regina took in a shaky gasp of air. Seconds. Only seconds. McGonagall had heard her cry of pain, had rushed to the empty landing. Regina stood on unsteady legs and shot McGonagall a weak, thready smile. "My knee just buckled. I'm all right."

"Are you sure? Do you need to go to see Madam Pomfrey?"

The staircase began swinging back towards the landing. "Oh no, it's happened before. I just twisted it a bit much when I turned to see where the staircase was going."

An easy lie. What did it hurt? She could feel her heart too close to her skin, the tips of her fingers ready to split apart. No one needed to know about odd visions in the staircases, time stretching in odd directions. It was all a matter of perception, after all. She knew all about that in terms of physics and psychology.

McGonagall held an arm out for her when she reached the top of the landing, gingerly putting very little weight into her left knee. "I'd feel better if you saw Poppy... It might be serious, and I don't want to see you hurt."

"I'll be fine," Regina lied. McGonagall looked relieved that she was apparently walking just fine towards the common room with her. "Would you like to come on the trip with us?"

"Oh, thank you for the offer, but with Transfiguration..."

"I was thinking of a weekend, actually. I've made the same offer to all the House Heads," Regina said truthfully. She had done it on impulse when she had seen Snape brooding in a corner during her trip discussion. He had of course turned it down.

"Did any agree?"

"Filius already did."

"Hm... We'll see how things go. I'd love to see Stonehenge again, I loved going there as a child," McGonagall confided. "Or there's the Invisible Circle Stones."

And then they were at the portrait entrance. Time to become teachers again.

***

There was another killing. Another Muggle boy, another message carved into his skin. It was more disturbing than the previous wholesale slaughter, more intimate somehow.

Harry had gone to Regina and cried. He had been brave for his classmates, and had lied to them when he said he was going to the library. Hermione had offered to help, Ron had jumped up without asking. But he waved them both aside, saying he had some research to do alone. He had brought the book of runes with him. The cover had been old and faded, faint wisps of gold tone lettering on a leather cover. Hermione hadn't been able to tell what language it was, but had guessed that Regina had always known what the messages had been and wanted Harry to discover it for himself. Lessons were learned hardest and best on your own.

Regina let him cry, and curled up next to him on the floor. She ran her fingers through the fluffy carpeting, letting Harry pull himself together in his own time. Finally, the sobs lessened and the sniffling became few and far between. "Feeling better?"

"Yeah. It's just... I can't let them see... I can't... just cry."

"I know. Not manly or heroic, is it?" Harry shook his head miserably, still curled on his side on her floor. "Still... every once in a while, it's not so bad. You just have to make sure you don't stop everything else."

"Do you get like this?" Harry asked quietly.

"I'm not a crier, usually, but sometimes... it's a total breakdown. It's not pretty." Regina shrugged and rolled over onto her back. "But it's a relief when it's done. As if once I've gotten the tears out, I can do something about it."

"But what can I do about this?" Harry growled in frustration. "There's nothing I can do."

"Not so."

Harry looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "So what can I do?"

"You translated the last few messages that I rewrote for you?" Harry nodded. "And what do they all say?"

"It doesn't make sense, though..."

"What does it say?"

"The triumph of the blood will be undone," Harry said. "But I have no idea what that means. How is that supposed to help?"

"Have you ever heard of the Weird Sisters?"

"Is that some sort of band?"

"No. The Weird Sisters are also the Furies, the Erinyes, the Kindly Ones, the Three-In-One. They're from myth, but it's not just a mythological concept. There's all sorts of realities, and some of them intersect ours. The Sisters are one of them."

"They're a reality on their own?"

"It's an easy way to think of it. They exist. And one of their functions, the one that frightens the hell out of whoever knows of them, is the one of retribution. They don't do revenge, but they avenge those that spill family blood."

"But I don't-"

"Voldemort is the Heir of Slytherin. You are the Heir of Gryffindor. Now, Salazar and Godric were cousins, did you know?"

"No, I didn't."

"It's in Hogwarts: A History," Regina teased. "Never read it, huh?"

"Hermione did."

"Ah, well, there are some interesting things in it, but it's hardly complete. Anyway, they were cousins. Because of that, you and Voldemort are relatives. And besides that, he was resurrected with your blood." Harry's mouth tightened slightly, and Regina rushed on. "So if he hurts you, the Sisters hunt him down. He'd never survive killing you."

"Small consolation."

"He thinks he's getting around it by putting a glamour on those boys. But they're no fools. They know what he's really done, who he's really killed. They see past the glamour. They know what he's done. And that's the key to his undoing. All he had to do is scratch you, if you say the appropriate incantation, you summon the Weird Sisters without your death."

Harry sat up suddenly. "You're serious."

"This language is old. It's derived from Pictish, and there's only a handful who can read it, let alone understand it. He thinks he's found the key to surviving you. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't understand the nuance to the language. It's not just the symbols carved to make the incantation. Blood can be a very powerful thing. And the Sisters know the child by the blood. He can't get around it."

"So what do I do?" Harry asked quietly. "I've been looking this up by the rune, I don't know how to speak it."

"I do."

Harry looked at her, still sprawled across her sitting room floor. "And you can teach me?"

"It's not easy. I meant it when I said only a handful of people know this language. You see the condition of that book. I've saved it into another format to preserve it, but it's still old. And the pronunciation is strange, given that the runes are mostly straight lines..."

"But do you think I can do it?"

"If you really want to. It's going to be rough. You have all your classes, Quidditch practice and being the savior of the entire Wizarding World." Regina grinned, then rolled to her side and sat up. "But we can start right now if you want."

"We can?"

"This is what you'll have to say when he cuts you. This is what you have to say perfectly, or else it will only take your death to bring the Kindly Ones on his head." Regina looked into Harry's frightened eyes. "Tezata rie lingana mis. Hae gourat siem uranis."

Harry tried to mimic the harsh pronunciation. "Tez-ah-tah ree lin-gah-nah miss. Hay goo-raht see-ehm ooh-rah-niss."

"Repeat."

Harry repeated the wording at least a dozen times until she was satisfied.

Then suddenly, Regina took a switchblade from her pocket, grabbed Harry's hand and sliced into the palm. Harry yelled, and Regina's face was inscrutable. "Repeat."

"Tezata rie lingana mis. Hae gourat siem uranis."

Regina closed Harry's hand into a fist. "You have to say it as soon as blood is drawn, Harry. No yelling, no pause in shock. I can do whatever it takes to make him draw a blade and not a wand. There are ways to make wand magic null, and I'll have to research some more inventive ways. But nothing will make any difference if you can't do the incantation as soon as blood is drawn. Once he takes first blood, he will do his best to go in for the kill."

Harry swallowed nervously, and looked at his palm. It was sealed now, no sign of any cut or blood loss. "And the learning?"

"We can start that, too, if you're up to it. I'm sorry I have to teach you this way, but there's no time to start with the basics and build up to the heavy stuff. You have to say that like it's instinct. I can't tell you how important that is. You need to call the Weird Sisters as soon as possible, make them take him."

Harry looked up from his palm into Regina's face. "How do you know all this? These books are old, no one else knows this..."

"I can't tell you everything. I can't, because it's not my secret to tell. But I can tell you this: I've met the Weird Sisters. They can be the Furies, they can be the Fates, they can be the Kindly Ones. They simply are. And I've learned a lot of things from them, not everything that can be explained. You just... become more than you are if you happen to meet them."

"But how? They're just stories to everyone else."

"Because someone intervened for me, to keep me protected. And it was done in a very old tongue. Not this one, but old. I was in a Bad Place, and things were generally Not Good." Harry could almost hear the capitals in her words. "And so they just kind of plucked me out of this reality, brought me sideways into their reality, gave me a talking to, did a little coddling, and sent me on my way. Just by being there, it infused something into me."

"You seem normal enough to me."

"Harry, I'm weird on so many levels it's not funny." Regina sighed. "They can give gifts, but no gift goes unpunished, nothing comes for free."

"What did you give?" he asked gently.

"Nothing I wouldn't miss. It was something I didn't want anyway."

Harry got the feeling he wasn't going to get more than that. "Was it hard to give up?"

"No. They don't take out of meanness. They take because it's the rules. Everyone lives by certain rules. Some can bend, but most can't. None can break."

"And you?"

"I'm one big bendy rule," she said with a small smile.

There was a knock at the door. "Another needy kid. Do you want to start rune work tomorrow? We'll just start with pronunciation, so it won't be heavy until later."

"Sure, that's good," Harry said, wiping his glasses on his shirt as Regina went to her doorway. "I should probably get back to Gryffindor tower anyway. Ron and Hermione will probably be worried about me." He looked up and saw Draco in the doorway, more white-faced than usual. "Uh... I'll just leave now."

"I'll see you tomorrow, Harry."

Draco waited until Harry had gone. "You counsel everybody, don't you?"

"What can I say? I'm a social worker at heart," Regina said flippantly. She steered him to her floor after shutting the door. "Sit, let's see what I can do for you."

"My father... You won't repeat any of this will you?"

"Of course not!" Regina seemed mildly insulted by the insinuation.

"Because you might want to after I tell you... and I don't know..."

"Draco."

"My birthday passed. I'm sixteen now..." Draco gulped. "I thought maybe he forgot about me, but I just got an owl from my father..."

"Is it your mom? I know you're close to her..."

"No, not that close... It's about me..." Draco took a deep breath. "He said it's time I got my Mark and became a full Death Eater."

"Oh dear," Regina said, leaning back on her haunches. Draco curled his hands into fists. "I hope you'd talk about it with Dumbledore or Snape, but I can't make you."

"I want to." Draco seemed almost surprised by his statement. "I mean, I don't want to do it. I knew that's what he wanted from me, but I don't want to. I don't... the kids... Harry was here because of the kid this morning, wasn't he?"

"I don't tell anything I wasn't cleared to tell."

"Which is yes, isn't it?" Draco sounded close to hysterical. "I don't want to do that! It's one thing to push around Potter and his friends and know all the spells. That's fun! But I don't... the kid was scared, Regina, and all cut up!"

Regina's gaze sharpened. "You could see through the glamour?"

"Sort of. Father wrote me about it. He said he was proud of his Lord... that I should be proud, too, and that I'll help within the month. That I'll learn to do the same thing, cast the glamour and cut the runes. But I don't... this isn't what I wanted."

"Cutting up someone isn't the same as shouting the killing curse."

Draco looked miserable. "I always thought it was going to be fun, just running out and being important and making them proud of me and doing whatever it takes... but... but..."

"Reality isn't the same as fantasy," Regina said gently.

"Yeah. It's different. He wants me to do that, like it's fun. But I've never... it's not fun, it's not what I thought it was going to be."

Regina plopped herself down on the floor. "Give me that yellow box, the beat up one behind you... That one."

"Tarot cards?" Draco sneered.

Regina took her trusty pack of Rider-Waite tarot cards and pulled out the cards. "Here, shuffle." Draco gingerly took the worn cards and began to shuffle them. "You'd be surprised what they say sometimes."

"My father says this is stupid, our fates are already planned."

Regina's smile was bittersweet. "I've already had one conversation about fate."

"With Potter?"

"Those that plan the future of our lives aren't necessarily heartless, you know. They just follow a specific set of rules."

"The rules suck," Draco said acidly, handing her the pack of cards.

"Some can bend," Regina said absently, beginning to lay out the cards. It was the traditional Celtic Cross spread. She spread out the cards, then began to flip them over. She didn't explain them one at a time, but waited until the end.

"What does it say?"

"Well, you don't have all the terror-inspiring cards, I can tell you that much," Regina said. She frowned at the cards. "For someone raised to be a Death Eater, it doesn't look like that's what's in store for you."

"I told you, I don't want to do it."

"But I mean, it's not going to happen. Not ever."

Draco blinked in surprise. "Really? Then how do I get out of this?"

Regina made a snap decision. "Simple. What day did he want you to leave Hogwarts?"

"Er... Day after tomorrow."

"Do something stupid in my class tomorrow. Really stupid."

"Should I tell you first?"

"Oh god no. It should be a surprise."

Draco pursed his lips, and Regina could see the spoiled brat that was still just beneath the surface. "I can arrange something."

"I'll do the rest, then. Don't tell anyone why you're doing it, of course."

"I'm not that stupid."

"Not Crabbe or Goyle or anyone. No one. They won't understand. They still think it's the greatest opportunity known to man."

Draco gulped. "I've painted myself into a corner, haven't I?"

Regina tapped the Death card. "This is your hopes and fears." Draco looked at her blankly. "And what this says, in relation to the rest of the spread, is that you're afraid of, but hope for change at the same time. It's not literal death, after all, just the ending of whatever position you're in. Things always change, but this in particular is what you're afraid of. And this card," Regina tapped the Judgement card in the final position. "This card is the final result, you know that from Divinations. Taking a stand, being honest, making the tough choices, discovering everything new, atoning for past sins and being reborn. So what the end result will be is that your choice, however hard it will be, is going to be the best for you."

"So I don't become a Death Eater."

"That is for you to decide, not me."

"But... but..." Draco sputtered helplessly.

"You have to think on it carefully. Not just the disgust at what you'd have to do, but everything else it entails. If you back out just because of the fear or the disgust, you're merely a childish brat. That's not how you take control of your life and make decisions."

"I don't know if I can," Draco said softly. "Everything's always been decided for me."

"You can sit here as long as you need to."

"But I know I don't want it."

"But are you prepared to face the consequences?"

Draco was silent.

"You have to think carefully, Draco. I'll help you as much as I can, but the final decision is up to you. Please think carefully."

Draco sat there, still and silent. Thinking.

***

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