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 4

Isolte couldn't breath. She tried to intake air, but nothing would happen, hands grasped her throat, tightening their grip so that she could feel lack of blood flow through her jugulars. Her eyes bulged out of her head. She opened them to see a tanned, golden haired beauty of a man, bright blue eyes shining. His full lips were twisted in a sneer of rage, and his nostrils flared as he breathed in. Isolte could see the pores on his nose, when he spoke, each taste bud on his tongue was present in vivid relief, small yellow spires rooted on the dark pink of his tongue. Sparks began to flash at the corners of her vision, she tried to move her mouth, "Daddy," it moved, "daddy stop." But no sound came out, not even a garble or grunt. Her chest was about to burst, her head was about to erupt like a volcano, spewing brains and blood all over her bedroom walls. She raised her hands to her throat again in a desperate attempt to get him to unhand her.

With a gasp she pulled the sheet away from her neck and rolled out of her bed. For a moment she was covered in thick darkness, the smell of must and damp penetrating her oxygen starved brain.

As if the word Hogwarts was itself a charm, the cold of the room blasted at her body, sending her shivering and covering her skin with goosepimples. She struggled to get up, and batted the heavy, velvet curtains away from her, tripping over her sheet that still was wrapped gently around her neck. She threw it off as if it was burning her and took a deep breath, the damp air making it difficult to feel as if she was getting any oxygen. When her breathing returned to normal, she held her breath, suddenly aware that she shared the room with four other girls. She heard only their sleepy breathing, deep and rhythmic like an African drum beating over the savannah.

She wiggled her toes, her feet were beginning to go numb with the cold, and walked toward the Common Room. She didn't go to the fireplace to warm herself, but padded silently through the room, her feet making only the slightest of slaps as she walked. She swung open the portal and exited the Gryffindor Tower. She turned to The Fat Lady, to see her sleeping in the painting, her head lopped onto her shoulder, her brown curls bobbing slightly as she breathed.

No, it wasn't a dream. She never felt anything in dreams, they were numb, tasteless, like lukewarm porridge. It was a memory. She closed her eyes and shoved the thought out of her mind. She put her hands to her neck, surprised at how cold they were, and felt her throat. The sheet must have caught around my neck and began strangling me.

Her head was hurting, and she still had sparks at the edges of her vision. She turned down the hall and began descending the stairs, her soft slap-slap-slap of bare feet echoing slightly in the vastness of the open stairwell of the castle.

It was almost pitch dark, but the slit-like windows let in bits of moonlight. Castles had slit windows, she heard her mother's voice saying, perhaps in the recount of a fairy tale, so that arrows couldn't penetrate them. Did the Founders have to worry about arrows here? Or were they just following convention and made some of the windows slits?

She reached the bottom of the stairs and began breathing heavily. Breath, Dad isn't here. Mum isn't here. You're thousands of miles away, in a magic castle, safe. Was that true? Was she safe? What was keeping her parents from marching right into Hogwarts and taking the three of them back to Africa? Nothing had been said to any of them after their arrival in England. It was if they had lived at the Stands Manor all of their lives. They had each been incorporated into the house and lives of the Stands household, and in the span of a week, they had gone to London to buy their school supplies, they had labeled all of their belongings, they had drunk litres of bitter tea, tried to be made sweet and docile with sugar and cream. They had not asked any questions, lest the fragile peace they experienced shatter. But underneath it all, underneath the excitement of boarding school, underneath the enticement of illicit magic not to be performed during the summer, underneath the kisses of Aunt Colleen and the hugs of Uncle Patrick lied a tension so thick Isolte could taste it. It was what made the tea bitter despite the sugar and cream. She was sure of it. What was preventing her Mum and Dad from retrieving their children?

She reached the hidden door to the Slytherin Common Room, or where she thought the hidden door should be. "Tempest," she whispered. The wall pushed forward slightly, and for a second she thought it might fall on her. But it slid to the side, and revealed the green glow of the fire. She stepped over the threshold and the door slid shut behind her. Her feet were numb now, and she walked so softly that she no longer slapped the floor. Can't wake anyone up. She had the urge to run, to fly down the hall and burst open the door to the boys dorm room. But she crept, her feet not making a sound, the opening of the door not making a sound, the closing of the door not making a sound. Two of the boys in the room were snoring, she couldn't tell which ones in the pitch darkness of the room. "Illuminare digitalis," she whispered. Slowly the tip joints of her fingers and toes began to glow, turning her nails red, as if she was holding them up to a torch. She walked to Tristan's bed, the illumination from her fingertips giving her enough light to see by. Parting the heavy emerald drapes, which were black on black in the unlit dungeon room, she peered at the thin, sleeping boy in the bed. It was her brother. She extinguished her finger and toe lights and climbed into the bed next to him.

The sheets smelled of the dampness of the dungeon, and Tristan took up all of the twin bed. She pushed him gently, when he didn't move, she slid her feet under the blanket and put them on his legs.

He gasped, his eyes flying open, she could almost hear them in the darkness. "Your feet are frigging freezing," Tristan ground out, moving over in his bed to give her room to lie down.

She made herself comfortable, putting her head on the spare half of his pillow. She felt his breath as he exhaled, and the warmth of his body began seeping into her numb feet.

Both of them lay on their sides, the twin bed barely big enough for two bodies to fit in. He wrapped his arms around her, and she heard his breathing become regular once again. "I had a nightmare," she said, before he could fall back asleep.

"What about?" he asked, his voice slurred.

"Back home," she whispered.

"Don't worry," he told her, "not there."

"I know," she answered. She heard him breathing deeply and steadily, and let him stay asleep. His smell was comforting. When she breathed in, it was like she was taking in a little bit of him each time, and it made her stronger, less hurt. She closed her eyes and listened to his breathing for a long while, before finally falling back asleep.

"I can't see it," said Neville, standing up and sighing. "They all look the same.

"You're facing the wrong direction, Neville," said Hermione, leaning over and moving his telescope to a different part of the sky. She looked in his spylens and then said, "Now try."

When Isolte opened her eyes again, she felt the room was warmer, and crawled out of the bed. Parting the curtains, she got a blast of colder air as she yawned. She left the boys dorm and exited the Slytherin Common Room. When she had reached the ground floor, she saw through the windows that the sun had risen. Woke up just in time, she yawned again.

She wasn't quite as cold when she got back to Gryffindor Tower. She got ready for the day, and sat in the Common Room until the bell on the large grandfather clock tolled seven am. Curfew was over.

She roamed around the 4th floor trying to find the library and stumbled upon it just as she had decided she was going to find the stairs and go down them. The double doors that led to the library were open, and she could see several bookshelves and tables. When she poked her head in, the only person she saw was a thin, shriveled faced woman who reminded Isolte of an underfed vulture. "Up early, aren't you?" she said.

Isolte hesitated before answering. Was she being sarcastic? "Yes, Madam..." her voice trailed off.

"Pince," the librarian answered for her. "Madam Pince." She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "And what would you be doing here at this early hour?"

Isolte blinked, "I would like a book on Hilda the Insane."

Madam Pince gave her sidelong look, as if she didn't believe her. "Hilda the Insane?" she repeated, "why do you want a book on Hilda the Insane? She was insane."

"She will be under Hilda or Mushroom," Madam Pince said.

Isolte looked around the huge room, with rows and rows of bookshelves, so close together she doubted two students could walk abreast through them. "Hilda...?" she asked, she saw no letters on any of the bookshelves to indicate what went where.

Madam Pince stood up quickly, causing Isolte to take a step back. "This way," she said. She led Isolte down several isles of books, and passed a doorway barred with a rope entitled, "Restricted Section". She stopped and pulled a book out of the shelf. Isolte read the title Hilda of Cymru: Insane or Ingenious? Madam Pince then turned on her heel and began walking the way they had come. "Name?" she asked, going behind her desk.

"Isolte Stands-Rike."

Madam Pince stamped the book with a giant stamp and then handed it to Isolte. "Due back September 17th."

"Thank you, Madam Pince," Isolte said. The book was thick with dust, Madam Pince had left finger imprints on the cover from it.

Madam Pince merely nodded and then began writing on a piece of parchment on her desk.

As Isolte walked out, she passed Hermione on the way in. She smiled, but Hermione did not smile back. She simply walked in through the door and then smiled broadly at Madam Pince.

Looking down at the book in her hands, Isolte's chest lurched and took a deep breath. During her walk back down to the ground floor, the castle seemed to expand around her, stretching out in every direction for as far as she could see. There was no privacy, there was nowhere to run where she couldn't been seen, couldn't be caught. There was no where to be alone. She was transparent, each painting and student that she met in the halls could see through her exterior, could see that there was a black pit that gurgled out ugliness and filth. If Aunt Colleen and Uncle Patrick had known, they wouldn't have sent her to Hogwarts. They would have locked her up in their attic, sent Tristan and Galahad to school, and told them to forget that she had ever existed.

She entered the Great Hall, leaned against the wall and watched as students slowly filed in the Hall for breakfast. There were so many people, so many new faces, different faces, that she didn't know. She couldn't remember all of their names, she didn't want to remember all of their names. She wanted her little class back, just the twelve of them. Mrs. Tatti's classroom was small, it had at one time been a storage closet. The black woman smelled of hair relaxer and cocoa butter. She took the twelve magical students into her "Talented and Gifted" classroom with no fuss at all. At year six at school, she would send an invitation if the student was to be in her room, and their official magical education began. They all knew each other, they knew each other's names, they knew each other's brothers and sisters, they knew...

"When did you leave?" Tristan brought Isolte out of her wanderings. "I didn't even feel you get out of bed."

She wanted to wrap her arms around her twin, hold him to her and feel his arms around her, reassuring her that this place, this huge place, wouldn't consume her, wouldn't make her a speck so small that no one and nothing could see her. She stepped closer to him and laid her head on her his shoulder. "I had a nightmare," she said.

"Another one?" he put an arm around her, and leaned his head on hers.

"No," she said, "just the one."

He took a step back and looked at her hard. "Are you alright?"

Tears welled up in her eyes, as if his asking her unleashed the loneliness she had been fighting back since the library.

"Did someone hurt you?" he asked, his voice monotonous despite the question.

She laughed and sniffed. "No," she said, "I miss you."

"You saw me this morning," he took her arm and led her to the Ravenclaw table. "And you can see me any night you want." For a moment, she thought she saw his eyebrows lower in pain, as if he had hurt himself. "You know I'll always tell you the password."

Isolte laughed again and hugged him with her free arm. Her satchel bumped up against his hip, and he pushed her away.

"What are you reading?" he asked. She showed him the book. "Count on you to do extra research on a topic from history class."

"She sounds really cool."

"She sounds really crazy to me," Tristan said. Isolte scrunched up her face and took a deep breath to calm her fast beating heart. Tristan licked his lips and looked away from her. "Sorry," he muttered.

Jolie and Galahad came in the Great Hall then, and the four of them took seats on the bench. "You're here early," Jolie said to Isolte. "Hungry?"

She wasn't, but reached for a soft boiled egg all the same. "I went to the library," she said. "Needed something else to read."

When the deep THONG of the morning bell sounded, she reluctantly parted ways from her brothers and cousin in hall. She fought panic as it rose in her throat. The hallway of the school seemed to open up again and try to swallow her. She glanced down at the map and sprinted up the stairs to her Charms class.

Professor Flitwick, she found, was a small, very nice man. He smiled the entire class, telling them in a squeaky voice that they would be learning more advanced Charms this year, and that all of their hard work in the years past was about to pay off. He reminded Isolte of a drawing of a leprechaun she had seen in a book once, only he was wearing pale blue robes and pointed hat. Perhaps he is a leprechaun, she mused, if one of your teachers is a ghost, then why can't one be a leprechaun?

At the end of class, as they all filed out, she heard the very tall black boy that was in her year say, "So when are we going to learn all these cool new Charms? All he did today was talk."

His words seemed to knock the walls of the hallway back into place. In an instant, they were no longer gaping at her, trying to erase her existence. She was opaque again, the transparent feeling that the school had cast upon her this morning was gone. We didn't do any charms today, that's good. She smiled and sighed before she could stop herself.

She spent most of the day in the library, except when she knew Tristan was free. She met him for short periods several times in The Great Hall, and they had a cup of tea together in the late afternoon. It tasted as bad as all the others had.

"Take a nap before you go to Astronomy tonight," he advised her, "or it'll be a lot harder than it should be."

So after dinner she went to bed and slept. The other girls in the dorm room were already asleep, none of them had drawn the curtains to her bed. Just a nap, Isolte told herself, they're just taking a nap. She felt as if she were spying on them, seeing something she shouldn't in their still, resting forms. All of them had peaceful looks on their faces, and their bodies rose and fell with their easy breathing. Is that what she looked like when she slept? She slipped into her own bed, keeping the curtains open, and closed her eyes.

A moment later she was being shaken, "Get up Isolte," said a voice, "we're going to be late for class."

Isolte opened her eyes to find the room dark, lit only with a torch on the wall. Parvati was standing over her, her hand still on Isolte's shoulder. Isolte sat up and looked around. Hermione and Lavender were at the door to the room, books in their arms, school robes on, looking not fully awake.

"Come on," Hermoine said in a quick, bossy voice, "we can't be late on our first day." She didn't wait for Isolte to get out of bed, but strode out of the door, the other two girls following her. Isolte rolled out of bed, grabbed her satchel and followed them down the hallway, as they converged with the rest of the girls from their year.

A tall witch was waiting for them on the other side of it. "Good evening," she said in a sing-song voice

"Good evening, Professor Sinistra," the group of Gryffindors sang back.

She began walking down the hallway, holding a lantern above her head to light the way. "I hope you all had a wonderful summer," she sang.

The professor got several replies, and she nodded, as if each one was a question whose answer was yes. "And we have a new addition," she looked back, her dark eyes searching the throng of children for a face she didn't recognize. Her eyes caught Isolte's and she smiled. "You must be Miss Stands-Rike," she said, "you're an only this year."

"Last year there were two transfer students in your year," Sinistra said, looking at all the bobbing heads that followed her. "Isn't that right?"

"Yes, Professor Sinistra," the throng sang.

She led them up to a tower, with the pinnacle being a room filled with telescopes. They were all different colors and shapes and faced all different directions, as if a mad party of students had left them moments before each looking at a different part of the sky. The group of students flooded into the room, each of them scuttling to get to a telescope. Isolte found an unoccupied one, pink with pale blue stars painted on it, by the boy who had melted his cauldron in Potions. Mr. Longbottom, she heard Professor Snape's smooth voice in her head. She looked in the spyglass, and saw only blackness. She turned the telescope to face her, and took off the cap that someone had smugly pressed on the end. She felt a tap on her shoulder.

"Be careful," said the tall black boy, who stood at the telescope on her other side. "Neville can get vicious with that scope."

Isolte glanced back over at Neville and then back Dean and nodded. Oh, came a proud voice from the base of her head, you remembered his name!

They followed Professor Sinistra's instructions, doing a short review of the end of the last year. Isolte was grateful for it, she'd never used a telescope in front of other people before. Back home, Astronomy had always been homework; the theory was taught at school, the practice was done at home. Isolte had never been very good at it, but from the looks of the people around her, neither was anyone else.

"It looks like the aurora will be heavy this winter," Sinistra sang, "so I want everyone to look at Jupiter in the western part of the sky. Once the cold comes, we won't be able to see it anymore."

"I can't see it," said Neville, standing up and sighing. "They all look the same.

"You're facing the wrong direction, Neville," said Hermione. Isolte turned slowly toward Neville beside her, and saw Hermione leaning over and moving his telescope to a different part of the sky. She looked in his spylens and then said, "Now try."

Isolte tried to breath in, but no air would come into her mouth.

Neville looked into the spylens. "That one?" he said, "I remember Jupiter looking different than that." He stood up, and as he did so, caught sight of Isolte staring at him. His eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. "Professor Sinistra!" he shrieked, pointing at Isolte.

The teacher was there in a heartbeat, she looked down at Neville, and then followed his outstretched arm with her eyes. They widened when they caught sight of the girl beside him. "Oh goodness," she swept down on Isolte, her dark hair swaying slightly at her movement. She grabbed Isolte's shoulders, "Miss Stands-Rike."

Isolte tried to answer her, but her chest wouldn't take in any air. Her heart pounded in her head, "No, no, no, no," and her mind chattered, It's only been three days. Please God, it's only been three days, this can't be happening.

"Breathe," Sinistra commanded. Isolte stared at her, her muddy green eyes wide and her pale cheeks turning blue. Sinistra shook her hard, causing her head to bounce forward, "Breathe!"

As if breaking a spell, Isolte's chest obeyed and took in a wheezy breath. She let it out, and the next one came regular. The pounding in her head slowly receded.

"Miss Stands-Rike," Professor Sinistra said, "are you alright?"

Isolte's mouth still hung open from her first breath, but she nodded. "I can't find Jupiter," she said. Oh, what a lame excuse, you stupid girl!

Sinistra eyebrows drew together as she looked at her, and then bent down and studied the eyepiece. "You're pointed right at it, dear," she said gently.

Isolte wracked her brain for a reply, but all that came was, It's only been three days, this can't be happening. Not here, not now.

Sinistra's face softened and she moved her hands from Isolte's shoulders to her back and began to rub it. "It must be a very hard week for you," she said, "why don't you go back to the Gryffindor Tower. You probably know all this anyway."

Isolte nodded and picked up her satchel. She glanced at Neville, who looked relieved, his hand on his chest. Behind him, Hermione looked at her with raised eyebrows, and when she turned to go, she caught Dean whispering something the curly haired boy he always hung out with.

She went down the stairs of the Astronomy Tower, and kept going down, until she couldn't find any stairs anymore. Cold began to seep through her robes, and she followed the twists and turns of the corridors finally coming to the wall that hid the Slytherin Common Room. "Tempest," she whispered, and dragged her feet through the green-hued room to the boy's dorm. She dumped her satchel by Tristan's bed, and climbed into his bed without even taking off her shoes.