Chimaera of Judgement



CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Black Tomb

Hours passed in silence as Albus waited outside the hospital wing, the elderly Madam Pomfrey resolutely forbidding him entrance. What was happening in there? Would they be able to put her right, or- the possibility too abhorrent to contemplate, he got up to pace again, hands clasped behind his back, the struggling Snitch still within his fist.

"What's going on?"

He looked up to see the rest of his teammates, all five of them, still in their Quidditch robes and faces pale. He shrugged at Olivia, leaning against the wall and bowing his head.

"She's... they're still not saying?"

"No," said Albus bitterly. "Not a damn thing."

"And they won't let us in?" James asked, an obvious lump in his throat. He didn't even bother to answer.

They all lapsed into silence, staring anywhere but each other's faces and shuffling their feet anxiously. Finally, when Albus had nearly fallen asleep standing up, the door cracked open, and many voices sounded at once.

"Our Keeper-"

"How is she?"

"Please, you must-"

"-my cousin-"

"What a horrid-"

"Shush!"

They fell silent, staring up at the wrinkly old matron expectantly. She sighed, smoothed out her robes and began again. "Your teammate should make a full recovery, but she will need to stay in the hospital wing overnight and through tomorrow. No visitors tonight."

"But-"

"No buts!"

"Madam Pomfrey," Albus asked desperately, "Rose- she's our cousin, we-"

She peered down at James and Albus, taking in their colourless faces and heaving chests, before saying, "Only for a few minutes, and you mustn't wake her. The rest of you had better go on back to your dormitories."

There had to have been at least a kilometer between the doors and the privacy screen drawn around the bed at the far end of the bright, clean room. When she drew back the curtain, Albus and James gasped.

"Nearly half of her bones have been broken, and I'm afraid to say one of her lungs has sustained a puncture," Pomfrey whispered. "We've done all we can for her, and I'm sure she'll pull through, but it will look a bit nasty for a time."

Purple bruises and bandages were everywhere. Her Quidditch robes had been cut away and a simple white dressing gown draped over her instead, and her wand lay on the table beside her. There was even a bruise down the side of her face, and her jaw was set at a weird angle.

James cleared his throat, and achieved it on the second try. "What's wrong with-"

"Yes, the mouth," said Madam Pomfrey preemptively. "Hadn't got to that yet - we have been a bit busy with the rest of her, you know."

It was only then Albus noticed someone else in the room, and was startled to find it was Professor Firenze; he'd never seen him above the ground floor, as the stairs were rather difficult for him to navigate. The centaur gave no indication that he had noticed them enter, for all his attention was on Rose and the paste made from various magical herbs he was applying to her.

"Mmm," Madam Pomfrey muttered sniffily, noticing the way they were watching Firenze. "While I do think I am a rather capable mediwitch in my own right, I am appreciative of any help, of course." At that moment she noticed Albus start forward almost instinctively, and she caught him by the back of his robes with surprising speed and strength. "No, no, I'm afraid not - she's much too fragile just now."

"But-"

"No," she repeated firmly. After a moment, she whispered, "Her right hand hasn't been injured, as long as you're very careful not to move the rest of the arm."

Before they could do anything about that, the doors opened again and Professor Longbottom entered, Lily and Hugo being chivvied along in front of him, Gryffindor scarves still around their necks and faces deathly pale. Though he shouldn't have been surprised, he was when he saw Cousin Barty slip in after them.

"Neville, please, she must rest if she's to heal!" Madam Pomfrey objected.

Their Head of House frowned impatiently. "Yes, yes, but these two were going spare in front of the doors and I thought it better to let them in."

She raised her hands to the ceiling and muttered, "Very well," before bustling off to change the linens or do some other busywork, mumbling about unsafe sports and bull-headed teachers.

"How is she?" Hugo demanded immediately.

"Fine," said James. "Knocked about something awful, but she'll live."

"Thank God," breathed Lily, sinking into a nearby chair.

Hugo had eyes only for his sister, dun-coloured eyes that grew wider and wetter with every moment. "Can I - are we allowed to stay?"

"Not for long," Albus choked, patting Rose's hand tentatively as if it were made of glass.

Professor Longbottom stepped forward and placed his hands firmly on James and Albus's shoulders, whispering, "Let's give her brother some time, yeah? And Lily, as well. Come on, then, you too, Barty."

As soon as they were outside the hospital wing, the very last place Albus wanted to be, he said, "What happened out there? I didn't see-"

"Oh, it was absolutely dreadful," Barty said at once. "Those two should be given detentions for a foul like that, so unsportsmanlike!"

"Blatching," said James simply, frowning from the effort of keeping his anger in check. "Those two meatloaf Slytherin Beaters, Bulstrode and Goyle - flew right into her at top speed. It wasn't pretty, as both of them are of a heavy sort."

"I'll kill 'em," Albus growled.

"Now now, don't start talking like that," Professor Longbottom laughed nervously. "It is to be sure their actions were inexcuseable, but the last thing we need is a student swearing out vengeance."

"Yes, do buck up, Albus," said Barty in the kindest voice he could manage, which remained a tad persnickety. "We've just seen Rose is going to be fine. Besides, we did win the game despite their revolting tactics, didn't we? That'll show those ruffians cheaters never prosper!"

He saw the Professor trying not to laugh at Barty's rather insensitive logic, but he had to admit he made a certain kind of sense - they'd done this awful thing to Rose to distract him, to keep him from getting the Snitch, and it backfired on them. It was Yaxley who lost focus, not he.

"I didn't turn around. My- I was trying so hard to win us the game that- that I didn't even turn around to check if everyone was all right."

"Al, er..." James acted like he wanted to say something comforting, but was too "manly" to do so. Finally, he settled on, "You did what you had to do. Wood probably would've throttled you if Rose had to endure this and you didn't get the Snitch. You played like a Gryffindor."

And that small thing made Albus's heart swell with pride. Though he'd never admit it to anyone else, even under threat of the Cruciatus Curse, on those rare, once-in-a-blue-moon moments when his brother wasn't giving him a hard time or prancing about like a show pony, it was usually because of something important, and he was usually right. Nodding vaguely, he allowed James to grab him about the head as he'd done to Lily ages ago at home and drag him off toward their common room.

o o o

Sweat beading on his forehead, Albus woke with a start. He'd been having a deeply unsettling dream in which he was a Beater and began chasing down every player on the pitch, who were all ghosts in Quidditch uniforms, waving his club and screaming, "I'll kill you!" Rose had flown up to stop him, wearing a white dressing gown and shouting, "Please, stop! Don't you want to be the boyfriend of a banshee?" Just as he knocked the broom out from under her and watched her hurtle toward the ground, he heard Martin Finnigan say, "Don't you hurt her, Potter - we're to be married this afternoon!"

Wiping his face, he strode to the window for a sip of water, watching the moonlit trees sway and the lawns ripple in the chilly breeze, heaving a sigh as he thought about the dream. So much was going on lately, so many thoughts careening through his mind - the ghosts, Peeves, odd presents from his father, the Slytherins (a constant thorn), a pretend banshee, floors that weren't real, two suspicious new teachers... and the Headmistress, Logan, and now his cousin, all injured severely in the school he had thought to be safe. The worst part of it all was that even before he could sort any of these out, a new enigma would be thrown into the mix and all his hopes of understanding life again would be dashed.

James and Albus had returned to the common room to tumultuous applause, everyone pounding them on the back and offering them bottles of butterbeer they'd procured from God-knows-where. They had especially wanted Albus to retell the tale of him catching his first game-winning Snitch, which began zooming around the common room once he finally let it go, but he hadn't been very enthused with that proposition, opting instead to retrieve his broom and schoolrobes from the Quidditch pitch before heading up to bed. The rest of the day had felt long and pointless with Rose in the hospital wing.

Then, just as the cold, painful sorrow connected to Rose began to set in, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Curiosity piqued, he leaned a bit farther out the window and swept the grounds, but nothing was out there. Why would it be? Consulting his watch, he saw it was almost one in the morning. Just when he had decided it was his imagination, there it was again - an unknown moving very near the Forbidden Forest, atop the dark object on the edge of the lake. Something stirred from the depths of his memory - a break between classes, over two months ago. And more recent events connected with that one, and it made a certain kind of sense.

Albus decided he'd had enough of mysteries. He wanted to know what this thing was, even though it bothered him much less than the other things he couldn't explain - the main reason being he knew exactly where to go to receive answers. Immediately, he thought of the Invisibility Cloak, but Rose had it - she'd probably lend it to him gladly, but he hadn't asked her what she'd done with it, and she was getting much-needed rest at the moment. Even so, he found himself feeling more and more restless, and with restlessness comes recklessness.

Dressing quietly, he thought about his only possible course of action. It was a desperate, stupid idea, really - nobody in their right mind would attempt it. Then again, Albus wasn't exactly in his right mind at the moment. Stowing his wand and the map in his cloak pockets, he reached under his bed for the tool that would make his ridiculous plan possible: the Firebolt. Madam Chang had said he could store his broom in the shed with the rest, that this was normal practise, but he couldn't bring himself to do it; it was his dad's, and he wanted to make sure it was always safe. Besides, Rose didn't leave her Nimbus to rot in some smelly shed.

When he checked the map to see if the coast was clear, it seemed he wouldn't have to worry about much; only Mr Urran was patrolling the corridors as usual, though he noticed Professor Dryden pacing in his chambers, and that Dorika Dunsmore was in her common room, more likely than not having nodded while studying again. Making sure Peeves was on the other side of the castle (near the Owlery), he moved to the open window, stuck the broomstick through ahead of himself, took a deep breath, and leapt out onto it.

Everything felt dangerous and alive - here he was in the wee hours of the morning, not only out of bed, but hovering miles above the ground! Trying not to laugh out loud lest he wake all of Gryffindor Tower, he pointed his broomstick toward the grounds, swooping away from his dorm and toward the lake, watching the light reflected in its surface as he passed over it. Then, as he drew closer to the spot where he knew the monolith to be, he slowed considerably, straining to catch view of it before it could catch view of him... assuming it was what he thought it was.

Was it the banshee? It did have long hair, and it was humanoid. Ryan had a valid point when he said it could be something else, for being that neither of them had been zooming around the Great Hall with the other ghosts, it was either not a banshee or else feeling particularly forgiving on the night of their detentions. What if it was feeling more bloodthirsty tonight? Thinking quickly, he set down out of sight behind some trees, withdrew his wand, aimed for the greenhouses and whispered, "Accio Earmuffs!"

Albus tried not to feel too badly about the small crash he heard as something erupted from what he thought to be Greenhouse Three and hurtled toward him, landing in his outstretched hand. With a grimace, he realised it was the fluffy pink pair everyone avoided using if possible. Glancing at Hagrid's cabin to make sure the noise hadn't woken him, he shoved the ugly muffs onto his head, blocking out all sound, and began skimming the lakeshore toward the cause of his curiosity.

As the creature came into view, he realised he was lucky in that it seemed to be turned in exactly the opposite direction, seated on its perch of stone. Alas, this also meant he was still going into this blind. Steeling himself for the worst, he drew his wand and landed deftly on the ground behind it.

The sound he'd made must have been nominal - he couldn't hear a thing at the moment - though audible enough to reach the thing's ears, and it whirled to face him, scrabbling backward and falling to the dirt, mouth stretched in silent screams. It took three full seconds for him to connect the dots in his brain, which shocked his larynx into speaking.

"Jezabel!" he gasped, ripping the earmuffs off and running over to her. "But- but- you're the banshee?!"

"St-stay back!" the waifish Slytherin gasped, sliding away from him across the ground, the white slivers of eyeball visible through her matted, wavy hair wide and fearful, shivering as she panted. "I- I've got a wand!"

But as she drew it, Albus stowed his. "Relax, will you? It's just me, Albus."

Freezing on the spot, she turned her head this way and that, then finally whispered, "Lumos!", pointing her wand directly at his face. Though she had almost blinded him, the light casting back down on her rapidly-pinkening features confirmed his opinion.

"That was you we saw in the Forest last month, wasn't it? You screamed!"

"I d-don't know what-" Understanding reached her as well. "Wait... you thought I was a banshee, didn't you? Oh, I didn't realise it was you, Albus, I'm s-sorry, that must have been frightening. But... but why were you in the woods, and who was that with you?"

"Detentions." Albus walked over to help her to her feet, but she merely stared at his hand as if afraid it would bite her, so he backed up to let her rise on her own. "Me and Rose and that Ryan Macmillan kid got ourselves in a spot of bother, that's all. We were supposed to help Hagrid - well, nevermind."

"Oh, I see." Nodding as she moved meekly around the stone, putting it between them, she said, "And... why are you here now? That is, I mean, if you don't mind me asking."

"Er, actually... I did think you were a banshee. Well, only because Macmillan keeps talking about them; we've been trying to figure out why the banshee's scream didn't kill us, and- er, I couldn't sleep, and I saw you down here, and..."

"And you wanted to find out for sure," she said softly. "Yes... yes, it would be strange to meet a banshee and not die."

There was silence for several moments; what he could see of her eyes were taking in his broom and the earmuffs, flitting to his face between. Had Rose been right about Jezabel liking him? Almost as if she were following his train of thought, she whispered, "So, I- I'm sorry about your cousin."

"You mean Rose?"

"Yes... she's in the hospital wing, isn't she? Terrible accident like that..." When Albus didn't respond after a minute, she said, "I could leave."

He blinked. "What?"

A pink tongue wet her thin, pale lips as she swallowed nervously. "If you wanted to stay - stay here, be alone. I could leave if you wanted."

"No, of course not. You're as welcome to this, er, spot as I am." Then something else occurred to him. "Hang on - I know why I'm here, but why are you? It's late, and it's so cold out here."

"Oh..." It was plain by her nervous twitchings that she didn't want to answer. "It's just... there's no real... it doesn't matter."

Some part of him broke free of the rest, straining to reach out to this weird being. "You can tell me. If it's a secret, I swear I won't tell."

"Th- that- it's not a secret," she almost spat, clutching her hands to her chest. "That is... well, you know now, and it won't be the same anyway."

"Er, I'm sorry." He wasn't even sure what he was apologising for.

"This was my place." With a vague kind of warmth, she gazed around as if this grassy stretch bordered by trees and water were her childhood home, or the spot where her beau had proposed. "Nobody could touch me here, because nobody comes here. Safe, quiet... even the people who saw me across the lake wouldn't come, they don't want to go into the Forest, or the lake. I could be alone, and not worry."

"Worry about what?"

Thin shoulders shrugged, and a delicate hand idly caressed the cold, black thing she had been sitting on. "Other students. Students see me, and they back away, or hurt me. But when I'm here, it's only me and this tomb, and of course the tomb won't do either of those things."

"Tomb?"

Nodding, she leaned across and pointed her lit wandtip to the very base of the black marble tomb. Albus was sure that nobody but Jezabel would have noticed the words there, for even if they came here, they wouldn't have spent enough time in the clearing to memorise every inch of its surface. Squinting, he could barely make it out, even now:

"SEVERUS SNAPE: 1959 - 1998. The Light Of His Heart Shone Amid Darkness."

Albus stumbled backward, landing hard on his tailbone as he drew away from this ghastly slab, heart threatening to burst from his chest. "No... n-no way!"

"Wh-what's wrong?" Jezabel squeaked.

"You... don't you know who this is?"

"I do," she said mildly, so intrigued by his actions that she apparently forgot she was somewhat intimidated by him. "He was Headmaster the year of the Battle of Hogwarts... I've heard he wasn't terribly popular, that's why no one ever comes to pay their respects like they do for Headmaster Dumbledore's tomb across the lake." A minute passed in silence before she added, "I-it seems he had something important to do with the Dark Lord's downfall, didn't he?"

"He was a double-agent," Albus choked, eyes still on the tomb. "Pretending to do Voldemort's bidding while really helping keep his students safe... and..." When she only stared at him, wondering why he was acting like this, he felt compelled to spill the rest, though he definitely would rather have left this small lakeside clearing and put the memory behind him. "And he helped my father take him down. Though no one knew it, he was helping to manipulate things in the background, not showing anybody his true face until the very end... when he told Dad what he needed to do to make sure Voldemort was finished for good."

"Oh," she breathed. "I'm sorry, I hadn't realised your father knew him."

"They didn't get on well." Grunting, he pushed to his feet and backed yet further away. "Professor Snape gave my dad up as a bad job in school, he says, but... but he sacrificed himself to take down the greatest Dark wizard of all time."

"I don't understand," she said softly, edging around the stone to close the distance he had hastily put between them. "I- I'm sorry, please don't be angry, b-but if he helped your father, why are you so..." She didn't seem to want to insinuate that he was behaving strangely, so she fell silent.

"That's... well... my middle name is Severus," he finished in a rush.

Her eyes widened. "It is? Then... then you were..."

Nothing seemed to move for a time save the tree branches and the waves on the water, Jezabel's hair trailing behind her, making the fluttering that had drawn his eyes to this tomb on two occasions. Unbidden, his lips formed the words, "How can you stand coming here, knowing there's a dead body rotting away right under you? That's so... so strange!"

The outburst made Jezabel catch her breath, looking down at her tatty old shoes. "W-well, like I said... no one b-bothers me here. I don't mind the tomb, he can't hurt me... and it sounds like he wouldn't have done, even when Mr Snape was alive."

"There must be other places, somewhere in the castle where you can have a little peace! Why not the Owlrey, or the library?"

She laughed, a very modest, fearful laugh. "Oh, when I go to the library the other Slytherins whisper nasty things in my ear; they know if I cry out or do anything rash, I'll be the one Madam Pince asks to leave. They- well, it's the same with most places I try to hide. They find me... or the other students stare at me until I can't stand it, and I go. But they don't come here."

With a great wrench somewhere in his gut, the day he first met her came back to him. "On the Express... when Rose and I found out you were a Slytherin... I'm sorry, we kind of-"

"I expected that," she cut him off, but she sounded vaguely distraught all the same, pulling at the neck of her robes. "Nobody wants me around, you know. It's true - the Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws won't have anything to do with me because I'm a Slytherin, and the Slytherins despise me because I'm Muggle-born. So I- I keep to myself, do my homework... watch from afar."

Something in there didn't sound right; forgetting his wariness of the old Headmaster's final resting place, he moved closer. "Wait, you're... you're Muggle-born? And a Slytherin? Blimey..."

"It's very unusual," she agreed. "But... you'll want to ditch me now, don't you? Don't feel bad, everybody does. I'm not very interesting, I just do my schoolwork and visit the tomb... eat, sleep. At least you're not going to hurt me... are you?"

Albus sincerely hoped he'd never have to see that fear in her eyes again, especially not with regards to himself. "Don't be- wait... do the Gryffindors gang up on you a lot? Y'know, like on the train?"

"No, no," she said hurriedly, as if accusing them would suddenly bring them down on her in droves. "Well, sometimes, because I've done something they don't like, or interrupted them, or something. No, it's the other Slytherins, mostly - they like to try out hexes and jinxes on me."

He blinked. "They what?!"

"When I was in third year," she went on, and Albus was sickened to hear her tone change as if this were an amusing anecdote, "Patricia Montague tried to do a Permanent Sticking Charm on me - she wanted to see if she could fix me to the ceiling of the girls' dormitories. Of course, it didn't quite work, I fell down after a few hours."

"Merlin's pants, that's awful," Albus gasped. Then his mind went back to Madam Puddifoot's, and it seemed more like par for the course.

"She left school two years ago," she added quietly as an aside.

"B-but that's- you're in their House!"

Jezabel shrugged, sitting back on the tomb and drawing up her knees. "Slytherins don't really care for Muggle-born witches and wizards. The ones that don't hurt me, they ignore me as if I'm invisible. It doesn't matter, it's the way they are; the same way my mother likes my sister better, the way the other Houses avoid me on principle. I'm... unwanted, that's all."

In the face of what he was hearing, Albus found it almost shameful that he'd been unsettled by seeing his namesake's coffin. More than that, he was ashamed for thinking she was a banshee, and more still that he'd somehow contributed to her feeling of worthlessness twice before. And he'd seen them mistreat her, heard them call her things like "The Great Mistake"... all because she didn't fit their template for what they thought a Slytherin had to be. Then it came back to him, and he was sure he'd be sick - Wendelyne Moore had called her "Scurvy". Someone from his own house, his teammate...

And she took it all in stride. Her matter-of-fact tone as she explained her situation at the bottom of the Hogwarts pecking order turned his stomach. Disgusting as her classmates' actions seemed to be, things like that happened so frequently that her mind saw it as normal, and saw things like kindness and compassion as abnormal - worse yet, frightening and threatening. How could her family, the Hogwarts faculty and all her peers have allowed one girl to become this warped?

"I- I think I'll go on up to the castle." Albus started, looking around at where Jezabel was standing near the trees, preparing to reenter the wood. He'd been so lost in thought he hadn't noticed her move. "The other Slytherins are asleep by now. G-goodnight, Albus Potter."

"Jezabel..."

She seemed startled to hear her own name. "Y-yes?"

Nothing was good enough to make up for the understanding that had just unfolded in his head - for the five years she'd been putting up with it herself. "I... I could give you a ride, you know. On my broom, so you don't have to walk through the Forest."

"No, no, that's okay," she whispered. "You... that's very kind of you, and I appreciate it, but I'll be fine. The Forest... I've been through it so often, it's like it knows me. You should head in, too, it's quite late."

"But-"

"I'm fine," she insisted, trying not to look at him as though she wasn't allowed. "Goodnight."

Albus lingered just long enough to watch her disappear between the trees before picking up his Firebolt and the earmuffs he had dropped. Then, with a last, pained glance into the Forest, he mounted his broom and flew back up to his dormitory, hoping he would wake tomorrow feeling at least less guilty than he did then for having done so well in life.

END Chapter Thirteen