Harry Potter and the Second Prophecy

Chapter 10 - Past

Harry and Camilia missed their morning classes, and when Ron finally came looking for Harry, he found him sound asleep in bed. It seemed, Ron explained to Harry, that everyone in the entire school had noticed not only that Harry was absent from his classes, but that Camilia had been as well, and also that the entire school was now buzzing with rumors about their collective absence from their morning classes.

Harry dropped his head into his hands. "Does everyone include the Slytherins?" he asked Ron through his fingers.

"Everyone means mainly the Slytherins, Harry. Malfoy is livid. I haven't seen him this angry since...since he was turned into a ferret our fourth year! It's brilliant!" Ron paused to savor the moment and Harry looked up at him to see if he had any further information to impart. "He's downright ready to kill you, Harry. I can't wait to see the fight the two of them are going to be on with a little later!"

"Ron, shut up," mumbled Harry into his hands, having again dropped his face into them.

"Seriously, Harry, what have you two been up to? Hermione and Ginny thought perhaps - "

"Hermione's been discussing it with Ginny?" asked Harry, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach.

"Like I said, everyone's been discussing it!" retorted Ron.

"What did Ginny say?" Harry begged him.

"Well, if you'd have let me finish: Hermione thought it might actually have something to do with the lessons Dumbledore's been giving Camilia. Ginny didn't say much of anything, really..."

Harry wasn't sure whether to feel relief or continued dread at Ginny's silence. Instead he decided to put it out of his mind.

"You'd best get dressed and get to Care of Magical Creatures, Harry," said Ron, throwing him some clean robes from the trunk at the end of his bed. Ron began collecting his own books, quills, and parchment for class, and as he was tossing them into his backpack, casually asked Harry without looking at him what he and Camilia had really been up to.

"Nothing!" Harry protested. "I swear! She told me about her lessons with Dumbledore, specifically what he'd told her about Tom Riddle, and did a bit of crying; honestly, the tale was a bit...disconcerting."

"Not going to convince Malfoy that that's all it was, is she?" grinned Ron. He saw the glare Harry gave him and tempered his grin with additional commentary about how he didn't necessarily want Camilia and Malfoy to have a fight; he was only suggesting that anything that mad Malfoy angry was all right with him.

When Ron and Harry arrived at Care of Magical Creatures, Hermione and Camilia were waiting for them. Harry, seeing the dark, puffy circles under Camilia's eyes, immediately went to hug her, but she stopped him with a simple, almost insignificant raise of her right hand. She looked sideways over her shoulder at Malfoy, fuming in a corner, flanked by Crabbe, Goyle, and Nott. Camilia spoke not a word during class to anyone other than Hermione, but all the while pretended, to the best of her exhausted ability, that nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

After class, the trio of friends watched Camilia go after Malfoy. He would neither look at her, nor speak to her. They followed closely enough that by the time they'd reached the entrance to the school and Camilia had stopped with Malfoy and his gang beside her, they had caught up. It was then that Malfoy went too far; unbeknownst to everyone present, he was not only angry that he might lose the girl who was, to all intents and purposes, his girlfriend, to Potter, but suddenly very concerned that everything he'd worked so hard to accomplish the last four months might suddenly crumble, and the consequences of falling short of his objective would be dire.

Camilia was facing him, and he had stepped toward her away from his friends; she asked him if she could speak to him in private, and he responded in a way that no one within earshot could believe. "I have nothing to say to you, you stupid slut."

Hermione had to grab Harry bodily to prevent him from pummeling Malfoy, but, caught up as she was with Harry, she could not prevent Ron from the same. Malfoy immediately found himself on the receiving end of a very determined left hook. It caught him on the jaw and he spun, hitting the floor. Crabbe and Goyle were instantly on Ron, and Hermione was so shocked that she let Harry go. Harry joined the fray, as did Nott and an already-wounded Draco. Wands were drawn, fists were flying, and Neville, Dean, and Seamus, who had begun making their way up the stairs but paused to watch the impending fight, now found themselves racing headlong into the action to defend their fellow Gryffindors from the gigantic forms of Crabbe and Goyle.

No teachers were present; most were still in their classrooms preparing for the next hour, and Hermione saw no recourse but to end the fight herself, or at least have Camilia end it. She raced to Camilia's side, whispered into her ear, and Camilia nodded, then straight away threw her arms forward, her fingers outstretched. The entire group was suddenly motionless. She raised her arms, concentrating with all her might, and the lot of them raised four feet into the air. Those who were facing her were staring at her in shock, and those who were not were desperately trying to turn toward her or look in her direction out of the corners of their eyes. They had seen her lift Malfoy from the ground over a month ago, but none of the boys had experienced it themselves.

"ENOUGH!" she ordered, secretly exhilarated by her power over the group, and all at once, she relaxed her arms and brought them back down to her sides. All nine boys fell to the ground in a heap, a giant ebbing mess of tangled arms and legs. Camilia strode purposefully over to Malfoy, grabbed him by the front of his robes, and pulled him up and away from the group, her signature blue energy being emitted to allow her such strength. "A word with you, Draco - in private." She then turned to the boys still on the ground and looked specifically at Harry and Ron in turn. "I do appreciate your leaping to my defense, but in the future, gentlemen, you might do well to remember that I can take care of myself. 'Stupid slut' offends me far less than my friends getting themselves expelled." She turned to go, but turned back on an impulse. "Nice punch, though, Ron." With that, she took Malfoy by the arm and led him back down the front steps of the entrance.

The boys quickly got to their feet and went their separate ways, each realizing that being dropped four feet onto a hard stone floor was far more appealing than expulsion, and each a bit embarrassed that they'd had no way to prevent Camilia's attack, or rather, anti-attack on the group. Hermione joined Harry and Ron as they climbed the steps toward Divination, and could not conceal the smile on her face.

"What are you so happy about?" grumped Ron.

"That, my dear friends, was masterful," she proclaimed.

"You call humiliating us in front of Malfoy masterful?" demanded Ron, horribly offended.

"No, I call preventing detentions...or expulsions, and still managing to compliment the groups' manliness masterful."

"What are you talking about?" asked Ron.

"What she's saying, Ron, is that Camilia didn't embarrass any of us because we were all embarrassed together," Harry interrupted.

"Precisely," agreed Hermione.

"Well, if we were all embarrassed, then we were all embarrassed, right? I don't understand how that negates the embarrassment, Harry," Ron protested, refusing to discuss the issue with Hermione.

"Look," said Hermione, "she stopped the fight, true, but none of you came out a loser, did you? You didn't get walloped by Nott, Crabbe wasn't humiliated because Neville gave him a black eye, and none of you could do anything about her ending the fight, so no one had to walk away defeated! If anyone came out of that looking the loser, it was Malfoy. Didn't you hear her let everyone know that it didn't bother her that he said...what he said? It just made him look like the pig he is. And, Ron Weasley, if anyone came out of that looking good, it was you! She actually complemented you for hitting Malfoy in the face!"

"I suppose she did do that, didn't she?" surmised Ron, thinking mostly of how he'd been the one to come out of the scuffle with his proverbial nose clean. "You're right, Hermione...she's brilliant."

"Perhaps," added Harry bitterly, "but we'll know for sure just how brilliant she is when she dumps that stupid wanker."

Trelawney's class was, as usual, uneventful, with the exception of her predicting not Harry's death this time, but Ron's. As Ron and Harry left her classroom, Ron leaned over to Harry when they were out of earshot and decreed that Trelawney had obviously been making one too many trips to the castle's wine cellar of late. "Didn't you smell it on her?" he mused. "Why else would she predict my death when you were there?"

When Harry and Ron entered the Gryffindor Common Room, they found Camilia seated at a studying table with Ginny, both deep in conversation. Ron flopped down next to Ginny, startling her, and began, "Ah, Ginevra, what a lovely day for a walk, don't you think?" He looked her in the eye and said, "My dear sister...perhaps you'd like to leave Camilia to Harry and me? We'd like to have a chat with her."

Camilia piped up, "We're having a chat, Ron, so if you'd like to leave, you're more than welcome." Before Ron could protest, she added, "If, however, you'd like to join our conversation, you're welcome to do that, too."

Ginny chimed in. "You might not like it, though; I'm telling Camilia about the diary."

Ron shuddered. "Why would you want to go and do a thing like that?"

"Because I asked," answered Camilia.

"I'd like to hear," said Harry, pulling up a chair.

Ginny turned back to Camilia. "It was so strange, Camilia; sort of like being under Imperius, but...the floaty feeling wasn't there, like I just plain didn't have control."

"Floaty feeling?" asked Camilia. "The Imperius curse makes you feel...floaty?"

Ginny nodded. "It's almost as though your will to resist is gone. You'll do anything, say anything, think anything, and you don't really care that you don't have any control over it." Ginny noticed that Camilia's complexion had paled. "You've felt that before, haven't you?"

"At the train station. I couldn't focus, couldn't shake it, and then...I...I know this sounds batty, but I suddenly had to pee really badly. Of course, I didn't have to go before that, and once I was in the bathroom, I didn't have to go then, either. But that was when I found the purse, the one that brought me here."

"Sounds to me like someone really wanted you in that bathroom, Camilia, because they knew that once you did, the purse would be waiting for you. The question, then, is who?" mused Ginny.

"Whoever it was that wrote me that note on the parchment. In other words, I don't know who," concluded Camilia.

"Well," interrupted Harry, "whoever it was wasn't a friend. Only a Death Eater or some equally unfriendly type would use an unforgivable curse."

The four sat silently, pondering this revelation. Camilia spoke first.

"I don't want to get into what that might mean, so Ginny, if you'd be willing to continue..."

"Sure thing. Like I said, I didn't have control. It felt as though...when I would write in the diary...I could somehow feel him creep up through the pen into my hand. My hands weren't my own. And then he would attack my mind. I could feel him in there, seducing me, promising me, I don't know...glory. I wouldn't even have to think about it. I wouldn't have to think at all, if I didn't want to. And I was so in love with Harry back then," she blushed, "and I was having the hardest time making friends, it just seemed...it made me feel...like I was wanted." She realized what that had inferred, that she had insinuated her own brother had made her feel unwanted, and decided she'd better explain herself. "Not necessarily wanted by people in general, but by someone special. And not only wanted as a friend, but as...well...he wanted me physically, didn't he? Not for anything like that, you know, but he didn't have his body then. He couldn't do anything for himself, so he wanted me, he needed me. He needed my body. And it made me feel...beautiful. I think it also made me feel a bit sexy, but I didn't know at eleven that that's what it was."

Ron looked from Camilia to Ginny, and then to Harry, horrified that his little sister had ever had cause to feel sexy, but saw that Harry was busy contemplating Ginny, and for just a moment, Ron wondered if Harry was thinking of his little sister as something other than his little sister. He dismissed the thought as quickly as it had come to him.

Ginny looked at her brother for a moment, and then continued. "The boys aren't going to like hearing this, so I'm sorry, but you wanted to know; I felt wanted at first, but after a few instances, times I couldn't remember what I'd done or who I'd done it to, I became scared. It was like an abusive boyfriend; you don't want to go back to him, but you're just as scared to leave as you are to stay." Camilia looked pointedly at Harry, and he nodded ever-so-slightly. Ginny and Ron never noticed.

"It was in the Chamber of Secrets that it was worst, of course. I felt like an addict, coming back for Tom's abuse and manipulations, but there I was, descending into this dark world of snake skins and hideous statues beneath Myrtle's bathroom, and I couldn't stop myself. I really couldn't stop myself. I had to keep going. I fought it...I mean, I was terrified!...but I kept going, holding that damned diary. And then I was face to face with Slytherin, and I was looking the basilisk in the eye; it was emerging from Slytherin's mouth. I waited to see what would happen to me, staring at it the way I was, thinking surely I'd die or at least be petrified, something, but nothing happened. And I heard Tom's voice, but it wasn't inside my head as it always was. It was beside me. He was standing next to me, and he was beautiful. So handsome, so powerful...and he started to laugh. I couldn't tear my eyes away from his, but he was laughing at me. My body seemed to be giving way beneath me, and he just kept laughing. I was so weak, I fell to my knees, and the world started to grow dark, and the weaker I became, the stronger was his laugh. I know this makes no sense, but I felt...I felt like I was being raped. I was so powerless, and he was enjoying himself so much..." Harry could see, looking at Ginny, that she had actively left her emotions behind when she began this story. It was as though part of her was missing in the telling of it; he knew that had she retained her emotions, she'd never have been able to get through it all.

"You never told me he raped you, Ginny," said Ron quietly.

"He didn't, Ron...not that way. Please don't think he did. It was all mental, all emotional, but the way he was using my body to make himself, well, human again...it felt like he'd...had his way with me, on a whole different level. The only way I can think to explain it is to relate it to rape. But he didn't actually touch me, Ron, I promise." Ron took his sister in his arms, finally understanding what it was she must have been through in the bowels of the school far below, and he held her.

"Ron," asked Camilia, "would you like some time alone with your sister? I think Harry and I have probably heard enough to last a lifetime."

"Thanks," said Ron, accepting her offer without thought or argument.

"Come on, Harry," Camilia said as she stood from her chair and made her way to the couch in front of the fire. Harry stood and followed, and he sat in the chair opposite her.

"I realize Ron needs some time with her right now, but I just want to go over there and hold her myself, tell her everything's going to be all right, and make sure she's protected, you know?" mused Harry. "Oh, and I'd like to kill Tom Riddle all over again. Just find me another diary...I can think of a million ways to destroy it."

Camilia was only half paying attention. "Mm," she said in response.

"Are you all right?"

"Fine, Harry. Just thinking. Adds a whole new depth of perspective to Dumbledore's lesson...the Polyjuice Potion thing, as it were. Best not to think about it right now, I guess. I still feel a bit drained from last night."

"Speaking of last night," Harry began, "did you work things out with Malfoy? Because if he was a git about it, I swear I'll - "

"Aww, Harry, you'd get expelled for me?" prodded Camilia. She smiled. "He was, shall we say, reluctant to hear me out, but I persuaded him to let me tell my side of the story, and he eventually understood."

"Did you tell him about your lesson with Dumbledore?" asked Harry.

"I did. I mean, I had to, didn't I? He is my boyfriend, Harry, like it or not. He's just a fiercely jealous boyfriend who needs to learn to better control his temper, especially around other people." She chuckled, but when she noticed Harry looked far from convinced, she changed tactics: "I think Ron knocked some sense into him, though..."

"That was a damn fine hit, wasn't it?" laughed Harry.

"The finest," admitted Camilia. "Honestly, I think it was his pride that was hurt worst, but it was nothing that making out couldn't fix." Harry grimaced and Camilia laughed harder. "He's really not a bad kisser, Harry!"

"Dear God!" Harry said, shuddering. Camilia was hysterical. "Now, hold on, Camilia. You must tell me one thing." He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Who's the better of the two of us? It's me, right?"

"I never kiss and tell, Harry, sorry." She smiled warmly, and then added, "But you're right. Just don't tell Draco that."

Harry thought for a moment before speaking, then asked, very sincerely, "Camilia...what are you doing with him? Honestly? Why Draco Malfoy?"

Camilia considered her answer fully before voicing it, and then, knowing that Harry would never be able to accept it, offered it anyway, even as it was. "I see something in him that is beautiful, and it makes me love him."

"What?" asked Harry, not expecting that to be her answer. "What is it that you see? Can't you tell me?"

"It's...humanity. His parents haven't managed to steal it all away yet, and by now, they should have been able to. For heaven's sake, he wears that Dark Mark on his arm all day, every day, and - "

"He's a Death Eater?!" exclaimed Harry in a very loud, hissing sort of whisper, leaping from his chair as he said it.

"Would you sit down, Harry?" begged Camilia. "Yes, he's a Death Eater, and don't act so surprised! You knew it'd happen eventually. He's a Malfoy! Now do you want me to finish answering your question, or not?" Harry sat down again, petulant. "He wears the Mark, belongs to the Malfoy's, lives in Salazar Slytherin's House and spends all his time with a bunch of idiot goons, and still, he looks at me tenderly when he thinks I'm not paying attention. He asks about my day, how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking. He's not always a gentleman, but he's always...always a friend."

"Camilia...he called you a stupid slut in public today. How is he always a friend?" demanded Harry.

Camilia had nothing to say in Malfoy's defense. Instead she continued, "He's human, Harry...and I love him for it."

"You're telling me you're in love with Draco Malfoy."

"Yes, I think I am."

"I don't like it, Camilia. At all."

"You don't have to like it, do you? And I'm not asking you to. What I'm asking is for you to accept it," she concluded.

"Fine, but remember, I don't like it. Do me a favor, Camilia? Watch your back. I think he has something up his sleeve, and it's not just the Dark Mark."

"I'll consider myself warned, but do me a favor and try giving Draco the benefit of the doubt for once, Harry."

"You don't know him like I do," said Harry simply, and with that, excused himself to his dormitory.