Turning Time

Chapter 5

"What the hell does Callie think she's doing?" Abby was thinking to herself, brushing out her long, black hair. "Damn, Callie, you can be really impulsive sometimes..."

A delightful squeak came from across the sixth-year Slytherin girls' dormitories. "I can't believe Lupin's actually going to do this!" Pansy Parkinson was saying in an irritating voice, braiding Blaise Zabini's hair, dropping small strands in her delight. "For once, we won't have to worry about whether she's too sweet to throw an insult back at us or not!"

She laughed a rather high-pitched laugh, which reminded Abby of a laughing mouse. Abby rolled her eyes. She hated trying to fit in with the other Slytherin girls, as it never really went to much point whatsoever.

Callie was not popular, but she was not infamous either. She was rather a target for insults, as she was usually too kind to snap back at whoever called her a dirty name, and she would from time to time turn around and do just that, surprising whatever Slytherins were having a go at it. There wasn't much point in trying to make friends with the Slytherin girls in her year while being part of Callie's small, but very close, group of friends.

Blaise was rather annoyed by Pansy, but this was probably because Pansy had been laughing about it for two days. Abby had been annoyed from the start of this.

"What if I just walk over to her and punch her nose in? Won't do her much harm. Might hurt a bit, but I'd want to hide something as ugly as that." She smiled at this mental remark, Pansy obviously seeing this reflected in the mirror Abby was sitting before, as she replied in giggles, believing Abby agreed with her:

"So, Abby, you've finally realized what an idiot Lupin is? I mean, if she wanted to please you as a friend, don't you want her alive? But then again, your life matters more than hers. Just think about that." She howled with a hideous laughter.

"God, if she keeps laughing like that, she's going to scare her own kids!" Abby thought.

"Actually, Pansy, no, I haven't. I'm just contemplating the fact that you don't give anyone chances."

Pansy just glared at Abby as if she were a complete idiot. "Oh." She hopped down to the foot of her bed and pulled some new dress robes out of her trunk. They were lacy and a hue of mustard yellow, as well as incredibly ugly. Pansy clearly hadn't seen them yet, as a disgusting look of anger came across her face. Her lips were pursed, she was frowning as if she would never come out of her anger, and the skin around her eyes twitched.

"This is what my mother bought me to wear to the Nieve Ball? This? Why didn't I buy my dress robes myself?!" She clenched the shoulders of the robes in her purple, still-tightening fists.

Abby sucked in her lips, still trying to stifle laughter. She found this situation very amusing.

"Isn't it the ugliest thing you've ever seen, Blaise?" Blaise nodded in agreement, a look of disgust upon her face, as unchanging as if it were a mask. She yanked her long, red, braided hair into her hands, as if disgusted that she'd let someone who owned such an ugly outfit touch her hair.

"Millicent?" Pansy asked, turning to Millicent Bullstrode, wide and ugly, much like the robes. Millicent nodded, rather uninterestedly. She always managed to keep a straight face, as if a mallet had been swung right into her face and wrecked all the muscles.

When she turned to Abby for an opinion, her disgusted look turned into a rude smirk, even though Abby had gotten over her amusement by that time. "Abigail?" she said, as if refusing to ever address Abby by an informal name again.

"It's ugly, alright," Abby said. Then the comment she'd made about Pansy's nose to herself came to her. "That's why your mum bought it for you. It suits you perfectly!"

"Excuse me?" Pansy said, looking at Abby unbelievingly, as if to say, "How can anyone possibly say this to me?" but she didn't mention that.

"Well, I mean, I'd be surprised if she found anything else that went so perfectly well with a nose like that!" Abby pointed at Pansy's pug-nose, which Pansy immediately covered with a hand, though Abby could still see Pansy's enormous gape below that hand.

Abby's lips curled into a clever smile as she lowered her pointing arm. She walked towards her bed. "Oh, Pansy," she added.

Pansy turned to her with a look of hatred upon her face. "Yes, Black?"

Abby took a short break from insulting Pansy, putting a hand over her heart melodramatically. "It touches me to be addressed in that way..." she said in the same mood. "Anyhow," she began again. "I feel I must remind you to keep up having such a horrible attitude, otherwise the dress won't suit you so well when it comes to the time to wear it."

She closed the curtains around her bed, confirming she didn't want to talk to Pansy anymore. "All the times I've wanted to get back at her, and I finally did it!" she thought joyfully, giggling in her private little area.

"Callie's going to be alright," she told herself.

"Dumbledore's had me take charge of everything, kind of like baby-sitting for those four, not that I actually was willing to." Callie laughed with her friends. "But anyway, I am going to be seventeen, you know, of age, sooner than they are." Callie had sucked her lips in and spat out something rather harsh for what everyone besides her three close friends ever heard. "Besides, girls are more responsible than boys."

"You're just saying that because you've got something against them," Chira Wilder had said, in a "not again!" voice. "I don't know why you do, but you just have." She shook her head as if no one would ever be able to knock any sense into Callie.

"Yeah, they're stupid dunderheads that don't know what's best for them," Callie was saying, then stopping to think over what she'd just said. "Well, most." She blushed.

Elizabeth Harper laughed. "Are not!"

"Are too!" Abby said.

"That's why you like them so much, then?" Chira said within Abby's head.

"Yeah. I love boys. They're stupid." Abby bit her tongue while smiling.

"Thank you, Abby!" Callie said.

Abby smiled at her friends' behavior in this memory. Callie had never really seemed to take much of a liking to boys ever since the Slytherin boys had taken a liking to her--but not in a kind way. They loved her as an insult-absorbing being. She'd also always thought boys rambunctious and impulsive.

Chira didn't really seem to like boys in the typical girlish way by discussing which ones looked the best, but she was always one to stick up for them. Liz, even though she was among loyal, kind, Hufflepuffs, enjoyed laughing about how stupid they could be, but she never seemed to admit that she thought they were all-around morons, but everyone had their own opinions. Abby, however, loved boys simply because she considered them to be stupid, thus making them hilarious jokes of nature.

Her friends may not have been in the same house as she, but she knew that they were all inseparable, and that was why nothing bad was going to happen to Callie. "I just hope she's not being suicidal..." Abby said.

Callie would probably have good reason to be suicidal, but there weren't ever any signs of it. She wasn't strikingly beautiful, not necessarily appearing an ultimate beauty to the boys at Hogwarts, it wasn't very often that anyone outside of her house besides her three best friends spoke to her in a kind fashion, she didn't show off the talents she had, she didn't raise her hand in class even when she did know the answer to something, which was unusually often, for fear of ruining Hermione Granger's fun of answering every question, and she didn't exactly have a pleasant life. After their third year, finding out what Professor Lupin was, a werewolf, the students who were in Hogwarts to learn from his Defense Against the Dark Arts classes looked at Callie with fear or distrust, in wonder of what dangerous abilities she had as compared to a werewolf.

"Just watch your step, Callie," Abby prayed under her breath. "Everything's going to be okay," she said, as if comforting the invisible Callista Lupin sitting at the foot of her bed, as she did at home as they gossiped and discussed certain issues they had. "Those are great times," Abby thought, still imagining Callie at the foot of her bed, laughing uncontrollably about how Blaise Zabini had reacted to a prankish trap Callie had set up as a bit of revenge. Blaise had been sent to the hospital wing with her mouth and lips turned completely upside-down. This was the summer before their fifth year.

***

"God, God, God, God, God!" Kevin was saying to himself, pacing around the astronomy tower in circles for no particular reason. "Why the hell did I do that?" He brought himself to a wall, rocking back and forth, letting his head bang into the wall whenever he could see it was about to.

He finally pulled himself away from the wall and looked out of the tower at the deep blue sky, lit with shining stars and a waning gibbous for a moon. "Now she probably thinks I don't love her at all... She's pretty damn right," he told himself. "Boys are stupid. Especially me."

He didn't even know for sure that she was even good friends with Robert Lewis. He had just jumped to conclusions out of pure jealousy that had came out of nowhere, and there probably wasn't even any reason to be jealous in the first place. Remembering that jealousy made a chill of it run through his blood.

"Kevin, you impulsive, idiotic, moronic--"

He heard footsteps coming up the stairs. "Filch!" He backed against a wall so that the caretaker would be less likely to see him. "I'll slip out behind him when he walks towards the front of the tower."

He closed his eyes and hoped for the best. He stared toward the threshold of the door, and suddenly a head of golden-brown hair with bright eyes searched the room, setting an inquisitive gaze upon Kevin. "Chira!" he said. "What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" she asked him, a tone of hurt in her voice that confused him.

"Do you really want to know?" he said.

"As a matter of fact, yes, I do," she glared at him in a way that made him think she was going to pull out her wand and hex him.

"You might say I'm pondering why I upset your friend," he said in a voice that was trying to cover how upset he was about his act, but Chira could tell he was upset about something. She could tell when people were upset.

"Oh, that. Well, I have to say, you really upset Callie! Great job! I think she's taking this grand expedition as a form of suicide for her!" Chira snapped.

"Not to be rude, but what's gotten into you?" he asked her confusedly.

"Same reason I'm here," she said.

"To tell me to go to Callie as soon as possible and apologize?" he said. "That was a stupid reply!" he thought. "Of course not!"

Chira sighed, saying rather unwillingly, "If you want to know, I undergo depressions, and this is my only escape. Callie trusts you as much as she trusts me, so I'd have expected her to tell you, but not that I wanted her to, of course." Chira walked to the edge of the tower, looking down curiously, yet expectantly. "That's odd..."

"What?" Kevin asked.

Chira pointed a hand in the direction of the ground almost directly below. It was Callie walking towards the Hogsmeade train station, only she was walking not too many steps behind Robert.

"Perfect evidence," said Kevin. He bit his lip out of a mix of dark emotion. He felt jealousy flow like green flames in his blood, trickling out through his arteries and back through his veins, growing every time it returned to his heart. If he tried to analyze his emotions, he felt complete nothingness where his heart should have been. And yet, when he stopped the analysis, he felt an extreme pain, as if the flames had burned his heart.

"Oh, be quiet." Chira glared at him. She looked down even more expectantly, as if waiting for something to happen between the two. "You don't know anything," she said more calmly. "I do. And just because she coincidentally sits beside Seamus Finnigan at breakfast every day, does that mean anything to you?"

"Yeah, I've noticed, but I hardly pay that any attention," Kevin said.

"My point exactly," Chira said. "Just because they're walking and talking together, it shouldn't mean much."

***

Remus noticed that Callie was upset about something. She was staying perfectly silent, in refusal to begin a conversation. He tried to take her mind off of everything with a rather plain topic. "So you've just finished your O.W.L.'s at the end of last year?"

"Yes," she replied, not really giving any details.

"How many did you get?" he asked her.

"Nine," she replied, another short answer.

"Same here," he replied.

"What?" she asked.

"Well, we have similar exams back home."

"Oh," she replied. "Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," he said kindly. "Which ones?" "God, is she always short on details?"

"All of the subjects I take," she said, "All of the standard subjects with Arithmancy and Care of Magical Creatures." She paused, giving her trunk a good heave forwards.

"You want some he--" Remus said, about to ask if she wanted help.

"No, I'm alright. Thanks, though." Callie was suddenly aware of Remus's sudden longing to help her out, partly because Kevin had brought it so painfully and dramatically to her attention. Callie dropped her trunk, and pulled out her wand. "Transformo follicolus!" The trunk suddenly became a sort of large book-bag that she slung over her shoulder, making it much easier to carry. "If you really study, it pays off."

Remus was still busy staring at the bag. "Where did you learn that?" he asked.

"Two years ago in Transfigurations class," she said. "I didn't think it would come as a great surprise..."

He was speaking, but no sound was coming out of his mouth, silently saying, "What?" in disbelief.

"You do know," Callie said rather bossily, "the other three are going to arrive at the train station in carriages. Not that I'm complaining or anything. I enjoy walking long distances."

Remus stopped in his path. "What?!" he said.

"Well, if you want to, you can start back to the castle," she suggested rather hopefully. She was hopeful he'd hark her word, but he replied:

"No, it's alright. I got myself into it; I deserve punishment."

Callie took a couple of steps away from Remus, and he looked at her confusedly. Everything Kevin had told her was beginning to sink in. When she returned, if she returned, she was going to prove to him that she'd never lie to him about whether she loved him.

***

Further on along the way to the station, Remus was becoming tired from walking so much. "Are you alright, Rob?" she asked him.

"Yeah, fine. Just swell," he breathed, panting from the long way between the castle gates and Hogsmeade village.

Remus began to breathe regularly again. He felt emotion toward Callie. She was a very kind, modest girl who didn't delight in bragging. If any of her fellow Gryffindors had known about her outstanding amount of O.W.L.'s received, they would treat her as an ingenious being of worship. As well as her appearance of being sweet as sugar, he was able to sense an aura of suffering about her, and it made him feel strangely attracted to her.

Next thing he realized, he was about to clasp Callie's hand in his, but that was when she noticed this and yanked her arm away. "Oh!" he said. "Sorry."

This was too much for Callie. Half of what Kevin had said was probably right. Rob probably felt for her. She wasn't about to let the other half come true by letting him treat her so kindly. She shifted her bag on her shoulder and walked off at a fast pace.

"What?" Remus was left to ask himself.

***

"Just what does he think he's doing? Letting people like me get wound up in his emotions?" Callie asked herself. "Hmph, I'm just being silly. I don't even know that he feels anything toward me."

She realized she was very close to Hogsmeade village and made a fast run towards the lit area in the middle of the near-blackness that surrounded her in all directions in the late-autumn night. She began to speed up, wondering exactly how far behind her Rob was.

She was taking the Hogwarts Express back to King's Cross Station, from where she would take transport to get on a boat and to the first destination for a check for a ministry of magic's withholding of the certain Time Turner: France.

She got to the station and boarded the train ahead of the other four. It wasn't long before she saw them arrive in one of the carriages through the window, Rob obviously having been picked up along his way, which she had discovered were pulled by thestrals after she had seen death, and they got onto the train as well. She closed her compartment and heard them pass, going to the other end of that car of the train. She wanted to be alone.

When she turned towards a corner of the compartment, there was a short note in Kevin's handwriting to her, over which lay a long-stemmed, pink rosebud with thorns that had been clipped.

Callie--

I still love you. I wish you the best of luck. I want you to know that I know you are feeling impossible emotions right now, and I wish that you weren't. May you forever be blessed, like I know you haven't recently been.

All my heart,

Kevin

She was only upset further by this note, curling up against the train's window to cry as quietly as she could.

"On my own... Pretending he's beside me..." she sang under her breath. "All alone... I walk with him... till morning..." She had always been fascinated by theatrical songs, and this particular one she had never dreamed would come into comparison with her own life. "Without him... I feel his arms around me... And when I lose my way... I close my eyes... and he has found me."

"On your own, indeed. Just give up. There's no escape," said Darkness's voice within her head, but she managed to ignore it. "It's your own fault, letting yourself love. People should hate more!" That angered Callie.

"Shut up!" she thought, and the voice, thankfully, did just that.

This song actually made Callie feel better. It made her imagine Kevin there, listening to whatever she had to say, or dancing with one hand clasping hers and the other around her waist, or1 on a walk with her to talk about the times they spent together as small children.

She felt the same chill that seemed to come over her whenever an emotion within her changed. Instead of dreadful sorrow, she felt joy... peace and joy. And love.

She picked up the rose and held it to her heart, praying for it never to wilt. Underneath the note, she saw a note from Chira.

Dear Callie,

Kevin really does care about you--trust me on this one. He's the only one besides me, Abby, or Liz who notice that you always seem to sit beside Seamus Finnigan at breakfast. You probably didn't even notice. I ran into Kevin coincidentally, and he spilled. He feels a lot of emotion right now; it's pretty hard on him. Don't let what he told you bring you down; he really means it when he says he loves you. You've got yourself a great guy, Callie.

Best,

Chira

Chira was right. She didn't notice that she always sat by Seamus for breakfast. She didn't ever get too irritated about it, but she began to wonder if Kevin took this the wrong way as well.

The note was very reassuring, however confusing that one part was. She found herself stroking the soft, velveteen petals of the rose gently, twirling the stem slowly in her fingers, brushing her lips against the bud.

Her eyes fell upon her violin case, so she set down the rose and got the violin out. She began to play a final song before she had the instrument sent back to her home.

***

"Yeah, that one was funny!" Sirius was saying, as he laughed with his friends. "But didn't you notice that--" Music was coming from the other end of the car. Violin music.

"What's that?" Remus asked aloud.

"Doesn't matter," Sirius said. "Anyway--" Remus stood up and poked his head to look down the hall that ran the entire length of the car. "Remus?"

"I'll be back," Remus replied.

***

Callie rested her bow for a moment. She then knew what she wanted to play. "Lord, I'm obsessed with theatrical music." She wanted to play the song All I Ask of You from The Phantom of the Opera. It sounded beautiful when played on a violin, and she loved to hear her own bow and violin make the music that came from within her mind.

As she played out the notes, the compartment door was knocked on. "Yes?" she asked, tucking the rose and notes into the violin case, so that whoever it was wouldn't see them. "How'd those notes get into the compartment, anyway?" she asked herself.

Remus came in. He smiled kindly at her, and she still didn't know how to respond. "Just heard the music," he said, spotting the violin across her lap, the bow in her right hand. "Thought I'd investigate."

Callie stared down at her violin, biting her lip. "Uh-oh... Talent discovered..." she thought guiltily. "Geeze, why'm I so shy of showing off talents in front of so many people?"

He sat down opposite her, and she raised her gaze toward him, smiling back. "That was really beautiful," he said.

She smiled, shook her head, and stared out the window as the train began to move. "Thanks, but I doubt you mean it. You're just trying to make me feel better. Easier said than meant."

"I'm not joking you," he responded, and Callie looked him in the eye the way he did not know Callie had looked at him as he told her a fascinating story when she was very little. "I'm serious. You have some of the best musical talent I've ever heard."

"Thank you," she said, staring at him sweetly. She suddenly didn't feel shy of him. Maybe her talents as a violinist weren't completely useless. All of the sorrow and darkness within her were suddenly gone. She felt that she had someone to tell her that she was worth something, her mind taken off of Kevin, and the Darkness banished within her mind.

"Where'd you get a violin as beautiful as that? Beautiful music comes out of a beautiful instrument," Remus said, making her smile. He had discovered through talk that she wasn't very rich.

"I've had it forever--ever since I can remember," Callie replied, examining it as she propped it up, holding the scroll in one hand. "It's an embarrassing story. You'd laugh."

"Come on, you can tell me," Remus said. "Besides, I have ways of finding out."

"Such as?" Callie asked him, but he just shrugged as he watched her, expecting the story with a sly smile on his face. She sighed and gave in, speaking while staring out the window.

"One of my parents' good friends got it for me when I turned one and was telling the one-year-old me to grow up and become a great violinist. There. You know." She put one hand on her forehead.

Remus laughed.

"I told you!" she said. "What did I say?"

"No, I just can't believe you thought that would be so embarrassing or funny. That's what's funny."

Callie just stared at him as if he were speaking a foreign language.

"Besides, what is there to be embarrassed about? You're a wonderful violinist."

"Thanks," she replied.

"I'm going to get back to the other three. Excuse me," he said, leaving the compartment, giving Callie a last smile before leaving her to her peace and quiet.

She removed the rose and notes from the violin case, laying the violin down opposite her, where Remus had been sitting moments before. She took the rose, smiled at it, and laid it across the violin. "El Violin Bonito," she said out of the blue, reminded of some sort of flamenco dance to a violin in Spain. She smiled at her little thought. She suddenly realized, though she had decided that her joke was childish, that she couldn't go without laughing at it.

Putting the violin away, finally over her joke, she scratched a spot on her neck, then realizing the thin strip of leather she wore around it regularly, its ornament tucked underneath her shirt. She tugged on the string until she could see the dark blue, smooth-yet-misshapen crystal inside of which flickered blue flames.