Mad North

--"I am but mad north by northwest--when the wind blows southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw"

--William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Chapter 3

A small, squat man, balding and rat-faced, was staring at his arm. It was donned with a glove made of molten sliver. His breathing was ragged and his mouth hung open, his eyes wide. He wiggled the fingers, and brought his hand into a fist and opened it again. Picking up a twig next to him, he crushed it into powder.

"My Lord," he whispered, "Master... it is beautiful...thank you...thank you...."

He scrambled forward on his knees, and kissed the black hem of someone's robes.

"May your loyalty never waver--" the voice hissed like a teakettle coming to boil.

Isolte bolted up in bed, her throat aching with an icy cold. It was a physical sensation, as if she had just swallowed an ice cube. She put her hand to her neck, and had trouble flexing her fingers, as if they, too, had been grasped by the chill. Dreams did not do this to her. In fact, she liked dreams, because she never felt anything in them. She was simply an observer, watching a movie in her head and wondering what would happen next. She never awoke frightened, or happy, or sad or aroused. Merely thoughtful. Tonight, however, some sort of frost had descended upon her, but when she touched her throat with her hands, it was warm.

No, he was too fat to homeless.

Isolte bit her lip. Who calls people "Lord" and "Master" nowadays anyway? Sounds like some sort of historical fantasy novel.

That's great, Iss, she clucked her tongue at herself as she opened the heavy curtains of her bed. Now you're turning into some medieval freak.

She didn't know.

When she opened her chest at the foot of her bed, her dirty clothes from the past two days were still in the small pile where she had left them. She hadn't seen any of the other girls leave their clothes in any particular spot or take them anywhere to be cleaned. They simply appeared at breakfast wearing clean clothes. At least, she assumed they were clean clothes. They looked clean. So how do you get you're clothes washed? she wondered. In four days she would run out of clean knickers. Would she have to clean them on her own in the sink? You can do it after everyone is gone to bed, she told herself, and hang them on the inside of the bed so no one will see. She would get dripped on, but that was better than wearing dirty drawers.

She grabbed her clothes from the chest and closed the curtains. After donning her uniform and robes, she made the bed, and opened the curtains. The other girls did this, so she figured it was the right thing to do. Maybe that's how you air out the bed. She jammed her hand on her head, cast a breath-freshening charm on her mouth, and hopped out of the Gryffindor Tower.

Tristan was waiting by the door to the Great Hall when she got there, leaning casually on the doorjamb with his arms across his chest. He stood up straight when he saw her, and wrapped his fingers around hers when she slipped her hand into his. "You know that ferret yesterday before dinner?"

Isolte nodded "How could I forget?"

Tristan flashed her a sidelong glance. "That was Malfoy."

"No," she stopped walking and looked at him. "That must have hurt!"

"It did," Tristan gave her a little tug to start her walking again. "He was whimpering when he came in at 10 last night. His stomach is all bruised."

Isolte winced. "What was he out after curfew for?"

"Served a detention," Tristan said.

"Even after being pounded against the floor?" Isolte put her hand over her mouth when several of the Ravenclaw students stared at her.

Tristan nodded, raising his eyebrows.

"Did he deserve it?" Isolte asked a little more quietly as she sat down on the bench and poured herself a cup of tea from the pot.

Tristan clicked his tongue. "Yes." He passed the sugar to his sister. "He tried to curse Harry Potter with a teacher staring right at him. Idiot."

She poured some milk into her tea, turning it a pale tan color. She took a sip and made a face. It tasted like dirty milk. Back home she had always been proud of her British heritage, and took her tea drinking seriously. However, making the perfect cup of tea was much more difficult that she had first suspected. The fact that she had never made a cuppa before hadn't crossed her mind the first time she was allowed to do so at her Uncle Patrick's house. She discovered that the variety of teas drunk by the British natives were much more pungent than her mother's home brew. She had at first puckered from the acrid taste, and then gagged when she added too much sweetener. Her Aunt Colleen had laughed that high pitched laugh of hers, and taken the cup away. "I should have known Eleanor wouldn't have let you touch her teakettle." Aunt Colleen had made her a cup of tea, and took a test sip. "Perfect," she said, placing it in front of her. Isolte had not thought it perfect. It was still sweet, but the bitterness of the tea clung to the back of her mouth and made her stomach lurch. She'd drunk the whole thing, and every one she was given after that. Even after a week of tea drinking, they still tasted bitter.

"What did he say when he came in last night?" Isolte looked toward the Slytherin table for the platinum blonde Tristan had identified as Malfoy yesterday. He wasn't there.

"Nothing, only that he served detention. And he hated McGonagall. He hated Potter and now he hates Moody." Tristan took a sip of his own tea. He didn't make any kind of face, and had seemed to have no ill effects from the strong brew. "I told him he was thoughtless."

Isolte raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. "What did he say?"

"He asked if I was threatening him. I told him that would be a poor excuse for a threat, and that he was merely thoughtless for striking when a teacher was watching and then not being willing to pay the consequences."

"What did he say then?" Isolte asked.

"He said I was right." Tristan turned away from her to Galahad and Jolie who had just sat down. "What else was he going to say?"

Isolte tried to engage her twin in conversation with her, he ignored her for his younger brother and cousin. She finished her breakfast in silence, listening half-heartedly to Jolie and Galahad go on about The Grey Lady. According to the two of them, they were all becoming quite good friends. Next thing you know, Isolte thought sourly, she'll invite them to tea. She took another sip of hers and felt her chest tighten with jealously. They're you're kin, her voice in her head was harsh and grating. What have you got to be jealous of?

The bell sounded, the deep "THONG" booming through the Hall. She swigged down the rest of her tea, and her stomach lurched again., You've been drinking tea all of your life, you'll make a fool out of yourself--whoever heard of a tummy getting upset with tea? She was surprised that the voice in her head was her mother's South England lilt.

"Bye!" Isolte felt a thump on her shoulder. She turned to Tristan, who was staring at her with that empty look of his. "Cat got your tongue?"

"Bye," she said quietly.

"See you at lunch," he smiled his artificial smile.

She nodded and took out her timesheet. "History of Magic," she read. The stairs shifted as she climbed them, and she found herself on the wrong side of the floor. She wandered around for several minutes, entering the classroom just as the teacher began lecturing.

Her jaw dropped when she saw him.

He was see-through. She could clearly view the blackboard behind him. He shimmered, like the ghosts she had seen in the Great Hall during meal times. He can't be a ghost, she blinked hard, and looked at him again.

He was still translucent, and still droning on. "Hilda the Insane," he was saying, "thoroughly convinced she could storm the castle with her army of walking mushrooms, went forth in her dressing gown and purple witch's hat." His voice was like a hypnotists, monotonous and non-expectant. His voice told Isolte that he knew Hilda the Insane, inside and out, and he was bored telling a group of students about her. There was much more about her than any of them knew, or could know, in this one, insignificant lecture. More than they could know in any length of lectures. Isolte's heart lurched with the sudden need to know about Hilda the Insane, as if the ghost-teacher had cast some sort of focusing charm on her. She sank into the seat at her right in the very back of the room, not noticing who it was she was sitting by. Dreamily taking out her parchment and quill, she didn't look up from her notes for the rest of the class.

Hilda the Insane apparently charmed a field of mushrooms in order to storm a castle in Wales. The mushrooms, she believed, would be impervious to magic. And they were. However, the citizens began throwing rocks at the mushrooms' large heads, which fell apart on impact. Hilda then changed herself into a mushroom to evade capture, only to be squished by a catapult boulder. When the bell rang to signal the end of class, Isolte had barely noticed that the time had passed at all. She gathered up her pages of notes on Hilda, and her hand brushed someone else's.

She look to her right to one of the girl's from her dorm room. Parvati? Isolte wasn't sure of her name. She was dark skinned with a long, black plait slung over her shoulder. "You took a lot of notes." Isolte took from her tone it was not a compliment.

"I like History," she said.

She stood up, and nodded. "Yes," she said, giggling, walking past her toward the door, "that's obvious." Lavender, it was easy for Isolte to remember her name, it was her favorite scent, followed the dark haired girl out of the room, giving Isolte a sideways glance as she walked by.

Isolte clicked her tongue to herself, and finished gathering her notes. The classroom was empty, save for the ghostly teacher at the head of the room, his back turned toward the unused blackboard. She glanced down at her timetable to get his name. "Goodbye Professor Binns!" she called.

The ghost turned around and blinked at her. He pushed his thick glasses onto his nose.

Are they really glasses, or are they simply renditions of glasses? ran through Isolte's head.

"Goodbye Miss..." his voice trailed off.

She smiled, the ghosts didn't seem to be too bad. "Isolte Stands-Rike."

Professor Binns nodded to her, and then turned around again and disappeared through the blackboard.

She stared for a moment, blinking hard. "Sweet as!" she exclaimed, almost skipping to The Great Hall, images of mushrooms dancing in her head.

As usual, Tristan was waiting for her. He took a few steps forward and gave a small, imperceptible smile. She beamed at him in return, stopping when she got to him. "Did you know," she said, "that one of our teachers is a ghost?"

He slipped his hand in hers and shook his head. "No, I didn't." He led her to the Ravenclaw table where Galahad and Jolie had saved them seats. Phillip was at the other end of the table, obviously feeling that his role as caretaker was duly completed. Now he could get on with his own life.

She told him about Professor Binns. Galahad was more than happy to join them in the conversation; he and Jolie had had History of Magic the day before. Once Galahad got started, no one else got a word in edgewise until lunch was over. Tristan and Isolte had to pry him away so they could go. "Whatcha got now?" he asked, Jolie trying to pull him up the marble staircase.

"Potions," Isolte said, not turning around as Tristan and she headed toward the stair to the dungeons.

They took their seats at an empty desk in the middle of the Potions classroom, the clinking and thumping of cauldrons being set up echoing against the walls.

"It's bloody cold down here," Isolte said rubbing her hands together.

"They say it gets worse in the winter," Tristan raised his eyebrows plaintively.

Isolte shivered. "It isn't winter yet?" she muttered.

Professor Snape stood up behind his desk.

Isolte bit her lip. In that brief instant of observation, she had felt something from him.

No, not fear. She was an expert on fear and this wasn't it. It was colder, less metallic than fear, like the difference in feel between copper and quartz. She couldn't place it, and it nibbled at the back of her brain.

She didn't have time to dwell on it, though, because he got right down to business and began reciting ingredients from the potion they were making. She scrambled for her quill and began writing. "He doesn't waste any time, does he?"

Tristan clicked his tongue. "I don't think he wastes anything."

When the Professor spoke the words, they all flowed together, like the feel of satin on hot skin. His voice was middle timbre, and as she was looking at her paper and not his face, she could admit that his voice was quite mesmerizing. It reminded her of someone chanting, a gentle up and down cadence that never veered too far from the flatline but far enough that it was pleasant to listen to. "You will be making The Knitting Potion. No, it doesn't knit yarn," there were several snickers from the Slytherin side of the room, "it knits skin together that's been cut. Like those made with a very--sharp--knife." He emphasized the words, and smiled at Harry Potter, showing yellow, uneven teeth. "It works exceptionally well on jagged wounds if used correctly," he raised his ebony eyebrows and smiled at one of the Gryffindors, "we will be sure to test it when it's done." The boy under his gaze shivered.

They're ingredients were already set out in front of them, and Professor Snape instructed them to started their little flames beneath their cauldrons.

"Incendio," Tristan touched his wand tip first to his own cauldron bottom and then to his sister's.

"Ah," she said disappointed. "You should've let me do my own. God knows we need a bigger fire in here."

Tristan's eyes moved to look at her, his head still facing his ingredients. "That'd make you popular," he said, "burn down the dungeon on your first visit down here."

"I wouldn't burn it down," she assured him, "only given it a good scorching."

"The temperature needs to be between 92 and 93 degrees before adding the calendula petals," Professor Snape's voice rose above the chatter of the students. "Each of you has a thermometer at your seat. It is imperative that you use the therometer," he drug out his words and gave the entire room a sweeping look. He glared at a dark-haired Gryffindor boy. The boy hurriedly looked away.

"Who's that?" Tristan whispered, handing her a thermometer.

Her brows knitted in concentration. She shook her head, "I don't know." She glanced down at the thermometer in her hand. "What's this for?"

"To get you to tell me when my potion is between 92 and 93," he replied. His own cauldron was thermometer-less.

She put the thermometer on the desk and placed her hand over his cauldron. "Not yet," she assured him.

"Can't you follow directions?"

Isolte looked behind her, to see Malfoy smiling derisively at her. "Or have you no thermometers in the Outback?"

Isolte returned his sneer, and cocked her hip to the side, "Have you never left Britain," she asked, "that you can't tell the difference between an accent from Australia and one from South Africa?" She laughed and shook her head.

"Oooh!"

Isolte and Tristan whipped their heads around in unison. The dark haired Gryffindor that Professor Snape seemed to like to glare at jumped slightly. "You're from South Africa?" he asked.

Isolte nodded. "Yeah."

"Do you speak South African?" he asked.

"Don't be stupid Longbottom," Malfoy said, "they speak English in South Africa."

Ignoring Malfoy, Isolte smiled and nodded, "Yes," she said to Longbottom. "I speak a little Africaans."

Suddenly there was a loud hissing noise, followed by a burbling. Longbottom began backing away from his cauldron. Only, his cauldron wasn't there. Not entirely, anyway. The bottom was melting into the table, as if it were made of dark chocolate and had been placed on a warm car seat. A bubble appeared on the side of it, and as it popped it let out a hiss, and disintegrated the metal underneath it.

Professor Snape swooped down like a bat on the boy, "Mr. Longbottom," he said through clenched teeth, though his voice still had that calm, smooth tone to it. "It is the first day of class, and you have destroyed another cauldron? I had hoped you had learned some sense over the holiday, but obviously I was premature in such a hope. 50 points from Gryffindor for your ineptitude, and detention tonight for sullying my table." He then turned on the ball of his black-booted foot and strode away to peer at someone else's potion on the other side of the room.

Isolte's mouth hung open as she turned to her brother. "He got detention for messing up on his potion?"

Tristan shrugged.

"That's not fair," she said.

Tristan lowered his head, looking at Isolte through his long, brown eyelashes. "He doesn't like Gryffindor."

"So?" Isolte demanded. "He's a teacher."

"Who gives detentions."

"For making a mistake?"

"Maybe he," Tristan threw a look at the quivering Gryffindor boy whose cauldron was now gone, "makes lots of mistakes."

"Then he needs help, not detention!" Isolte whispered, her voice harsh and her lips in a tight pinch.

"Maybe he's going to help him in detention," Tristan said nonplussed.

"Then it's tutoring, not detention." Isolte poked her brother, as if trying to get a reaction out of him. "That's not fair. Why would he do that?"

"Because he doesn't like Gryffindor," Tristan whispered.

"I don't like him," she said.

Draco looked up at that, glancing toward Professor Snape. If he heard her comment, he made no appearance of it. Draco stirred his potion, his eyes going back to the twins. They were sitting together, in the middle of the room, each on the other's side of the imaginary line that demarcated the Slytherin side from the side on which the Gryffindor sat. They blended two sides together, like a purple made from a bleeding red and blue. Since he'd been watching them the past three days, he'd noticed that they weren't so identical as he had thought. Tristan's face was a tad more square, his nose straighter than his sister's. Isolte's face came more to a point at her chin, and her nose rose upward at the end slightly, giving it a more rounded look. She rubbed her hands together and scrunched her shoulders, Tristan took his hands and rubbed her arms vigorously for a moment before returning his attention back to his cauldron. Draco noticed that neither of them used the thermometer to determine the temperature of their potions. Only he and Granger did that. Now they did it too. Isolte put her hand over Tristan's cauldron, and she nodded at him. He added an ingredient, and Draco pursed his lips together. So he needs the thermometer; she does the temperature for him. A quick feeling of heat waved through his body, Charlaton, he wanted to scream out. Making yourself look better than everyone else. Someone hit him in the arm.

"Your potion's going burn," Pansy said, casing a glance at the twins. "You need to be watching it, not him."

Draco didn't answer her, and turned his attention to his potion.

He hadn't really had any kind of conversation with Tristan since he'd arrived. They always sat at the Ravenclaw table to eat, and none of the teachers said anything. Are they just going to eat there the whole year? If the teachers said nothing to them, why shouldn't they? Draco had surmised that Tristan was not stupid by any stretch of the imagination, and if his sister's ability to detect the potion temperature was any indication, neither was she. Tristan didn't say much of anything to anybody, though he answered questions when asked, usually in such a way that it was difficult to come up with a follow up question. It was if his voice made it known that questions weren't welcomed, that conversation was not something he would engage in. Now, however, he had been throwing banter back with his twin, even bringing some expression to his face. He didn't smile, though, except that same painted on thing that didn't reach any part of his face save his lips. His sister, on the other hand, seemed to do a great deal of both smiling and talking. Even when conversing with her brother, she did most of the talking, accompanying it hand movements and vivid expressions that left no doubt as to what she was saying, even if the eavesdropper didn't hear her. As she placed her ingredients into her cauldron, she did it with a graceful flourish, her long fingers never seeming to stop and start, but rather giving a continued motion of scooping up ingredients, bringing her hand to the cauldron's mouth, and then dropping it in.

Professor Snape came by his desk and peered into his cauldron. He nodded, making eye contact with Draco, his black eyes giving him an approved look. He made his way around the room again, and when he got to the twins, he looked at each of their potions, and at each of them in turn. The girl looked up at him expectantly and the boy looked as if he could care less if the potion was a Knitting Potion or a cup of tea. Snape then nodded his head, making eye contact with only Tristan, before moving on.

He watched them ladle their potions into small phials, to be put aside to use at a later date. "He didn't even look at me," he heard Isolte complain.

"Perhaps he didn't like your potion," Tristan said slowly.

Isolte laughed, did the boy mean it as a joke? His voice had given no indication that it was. "I made your potion," she clicked her tongue at her brother.

"Then I guess you didn't pay enough attention to your own." Tristan, as if to prove his point the opposite, dipped his ladle in her cauldron and mixed a spoonful of her potion with his in a vial. Isolte giggled.

Draco ladled his own with less than his usual enthusiasm. He washed his equipment at the little sink in the back of the room. "Oh how cute," he heard Tristan's sister pipe when she came to it, before she gasped at putting her hands to the frigid water.

The bell rang and students rushed out toward the Great Hall for dinner. Draco walked slowly out of the room, aware that the twins were behind him.

"We pass it every day on our way to our breakfast," Tristan was saying. "So it was easy to find."

"Still bloody cold," Isolte muttered, her voice sounding farther away.

Draco glanced back to see Tristan and Isolte going the opposite way of the stream of students. He couldn't be...Draco blinked, and looked behind him. Crabbe and Goyle had already began walking again, eager for food. He looked back toward the twins as they turned down another corridor. He is! He hurried after them, cutting down another corridor that he knew led to the Slytherin Common Room.

When he got there, he found that the twins had beat him to it. He felt his face go pink as Tristan said to Isolte, "The girl's dorms are that way, and ours are over there."

"I still think the green fire is cool. You've got to find out how they do that."

"You aren't allowed in here!" Draco's voice sounded unusually high to his own ears. Both twins turned to him. "You're supposed to be at supper!" He lowered his voice to a hiss and watched Tristan lead Isolte to the Boy's Hallway.

"So are you," Isolte shot back, disappearing through the door Draco stood still for a moment, not believing what he was seeing. A Gryffindor was in their Common Room. And Tristan had just led her toward the boys dorm. He blinked, and rushed to the door, flinging the heavy wooden thing open with a thud. Down the corridor he saw that the door to their dorm room was open.

"This one is mine," he heard Tristan say. "That's Greg's, Vincent's, Draco's and Blaise's."

Draco entered the room as Isolte repeated it, pointing to each bed in turn. "Our room has five people in it too!"

"What are you doing?" Draco's hands were in fists at his sides.

"He's showing me his bedroom," Isolte said.

"You can't bring her in the boy's dorm," Draco strode toward them, ignoring Isolte, his eyes on Tristan.

Tristan turned to face Draco, and tilted his head to the side, and blinked slowly. "She can't take me to her room," he said, "It's for girls."

Draco stopped walking and blinked. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," he drawled.

"Obviously," Isolte said, letting Tristan lead her passed Draco and out of the room, "You've never been in a girl's dorm."

She liked the way the Common Room glowed with a green twinge because of the fire in the grate. The Gryffindor tower hadn't had a fire in it, but then, it wasn't as cold down there. And by the time you get up there, you're blood is pumping so hot, you don't need to have a fire. She chuckled to herself. Tristan looked back at her, and she smiled at him. I'll be in better shape than he will at the end of the school year.

She could hear Draco following them as they silently made their way back into the Dungeon corridor. She wasn't about to tell him that, before three days ago, she'd never been in a girl's dorm either.