The Necromancer Amulet

Author's Notes: Thanks so much to my excellent and very thorough beta readers Lady Revenant and Amelie, and thanks to my proof-reading beta Aly (both Amelie and Aly are from perfectimagination.co.uk)!

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Chapter Fourteen - A Christmas Cracker And a Leave-Taking

Dumbledore arrived a little while later, and found her seated upright in her bed, watching the stars outside, a pillow supporting her back. The gentle light flowing in through the window gave the room a soft, nightly shine. He smiled at her as he approached.

"I am glad to see that you are finally feeling better, Secessa. Poppy insisted that you needed more professional care, at St. Mungo's, but as you were under threat from further attacks, and as Poppy is an excellent medi-witch, I was against it."

Something in his words caught her attention. "How long have I been here?" she asked, her brow furrowing.

"A week and a half. We were beginning to worry, actually."

She looked at him, stunned. "That long?"

Gazing at her through his half-moon glasses, he nodded gravely. "Poppy treated you for several nasty curses. It appears the effect of having them cast on you simultaneously created a poison in your blood, slowing your healing and rendering you unconscious. You were lucky that you had your shield up when they hit; if you hadn't, things might have taken an even nastier turn. You were lucky, my dear: to my knowledge few people have survived facing so many Death Eaters at the same time."

He seemed somewhat sad as he spoke, as if he was reliving some old, painful memory. She realised that he had probably lost many friends during the last war.

"We delayed sending you to St. Mungo's, however," he continued calmly after a brief pause, "as we feared it might compromise your safety. Luckily, Severus managed to find an antidote in time. It was quite a close call; you did not seem to fight the poison very much yourself."

Noticing the small reproach in his voice, she looked away.

"I am not sure whether I consider my life to be very valuable at this point," she said softly. "I seem only to cause pain and suffering to those close to me."

"You have done the best that you could," Dumbledore replied gently, "and in the end, that is all that anyone can expect. We all make mistakes and suffer from moments of bad judgement. The amulet, at least, is safe now."

"At the cost of my friend's life."

"This war that we are fighting has ended many lives, all of them precious. It will continue to happen, I am afraid, until we win. But the losses are not our fault, and never will be. Only the Death Eaters that killed them are to blame."

Looking up, she saw a fierceness in his gaze that she had not seen before. He seemed to pause for thought, his eyes lingering on a star outside the window. However, the moment soon passed, and there was kindness in his eyes when he looked at her again.

"I was wondering," he said quietly, "if you could perhaps tell me the details of what happened in Moscow."

There it was, the inevitable question. Secessa took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and nodded. The Headmaster conjured up a chintz-covered chair, and gave her all of his attention.

She told of Elena's and Ursus' deaths, in a dispassionate, quiet voice that made her memories slightly less vivid. Nevertheless, echoes of a scream cut short intermingled with the sound of spells blasting clouded her mind as she spoke, making her nauseated. Dumbledore was a good listener, however, and somehow the brightness in his eyes numbed her pain. When she finished, he was silent for a while, his face grave.

"To protect you from any further attacks," he said finally, "I think we will have to insist that if you are to partake in any inquiry, they will have to come to Hogwarts to question you. Yes, I know all about that," he added. "Vladimir told me. I will help you in any way possible, of course. And I am very glad that you have your old friend here with you, for support."

Not a word about my guilt, but then, what can he say?

"He is a good friend." My only friend now, she thought, grief almost overtaking her again.

Dumbledore's expression became mild. "He seems to be a very nice man. He has found our library already, it seems; Madam Pince is raging over the large quantity of books he checked out to himself."

She smiled at him, amidst her sorrow. "Yes, he is very fond of literature." She noticed that the Headmaster had not mentioned the fact that her former colleague's very obvious genetic handicap, and she was thankful. "He has a talent for disappearing, and uses it mostly to read his books in peace."

Dumbledore smiled back at her. "That is very wise of him. I would do the same thing myself, had I the time. One rarely gets enough peace to do a good book justice nowadays."

"Can he stay here?" Secessa asked, glad to see the Headmaster's acceptance of her friend's peculiarities.

"He will of course stay as our guest, for as long as he wishes. But, when you see him next, perhaps you can persuade him to return some of the books he has borrowed, and maybe convince him to take only a few at a time? Madam Pince would be relieved."

Secessa grinned, in spite of everything. "I will do my best."

Dumbledore rose and waved his comfy chair out of existence. "I shall leave you to rest now or Poppy will have my head. Oh, and since you missed out on Christmas..."

Out of his robes, he extracted a huge silver cracker. She looked at it dubiously.

"You pull it, at the end," he explained. His eyes glinted through his glasses.

"What's inside?" she asked, dumbfounded.

"A present, a joke, or a spectacle, magically suited for the receiver, of course. You will not know what it is until you open it," he added enthusiastically.

Secessa reached out her hand and pulled the cracker, albeit reluctantly; it exploded with a bang. Amongst a rain of glittering stars, a small porcelain tea set in green and silver appeared and landed gently in her lap. After settling, it jumped off to her nightstand, clattering slightly. She looked at it curiously.

"Ah, yes," said Dumbledore gently, as if confirming something to himself, "I thought so." And without explaining his curious pronouncement, he smiled, turned and walked towards the infirmary exit.

"Oh, by the way," he said, standing in the doorway, his hand on the doorknob, "I thought you might like to know that I have warded the amulet, disrupting its link to you. I am also trying to find a way to destroy it, but that may take some time, of course. Yes, I thought that might cheer you up," he said with another twinkle in his eyes when he saw her relieved face. "Sweet dreams, Secessa."

She stared at the door for a while after it closed, and when she looked at her present, the penny finally dropped. The tea set is in Slytherin colours. Does this mean that I am a part of the school now? And ... does that mean I will have to attend the Quidditch matches? How awful!

She suddenly realised that Dumbledore had quite cleverly managed to take her mind off her troubles for a while, and was grateful.

*

Secessa was up from her sickbed in two days time, now healing quickly, and Madam Pomfrey allowed her to continue her recovery in her own quarters. She saw Vladimir regularly, but evaded the company of everyone else. It seemed that the Headmaster had told the staff that she was recovering from a nasty Russian flu, so people positively fled at the sight of her, which was for the best; solitude suited her well.

One night when they were sitting in the reading chairs by the fireplace in Vladimir's room, flicking through piles of restless books (since he had checked them out himself, Madam Pince's returning charm had started acting on them earlier than expected) on medieval curses and remedies, she finally decided to tell him what had happened in Moscow. Reliving the events was painful, but Vladimir had cared for Elena too; he really deserved to know how she had died. His eyes thinned dangerously at the mention of the Viper's Blade, and he was quiet for a long time after she had finished.

"How come I cause so much pain, Volodya?" she whispered in the end, having stared into his fireplace for a long time, waiting for him to say something.

"You are not evil; you do not cause unnecessary pain," he answered matter-of-factly; "and neither do I; at least, that's how I choose to see it. Other people can force us to cause pain, as you say, but our intentions are never cruel or malicious. You seem to regret what happened to Ursus as well, but even if it had been your own doing, his death was hardly a loss. Grieve for Elena by all means, but do not carry other people's sins on your shoulders."

"I should never have involved either of you," she persisted. "I thought the sacrifice was worth it. Now, I am not so sure."

"We did what we thought was best, and we knew that the price we might have to pay would be high," he concluded in a final sort of tone. And she did not dare to say anything more on the subject.

He sat quietly for some while, his dusky face sober and his dark-blue eyes lost in thought. "I have decided to travel to the Far East," he said eventually. "I am growing restless doing nothing, and I heard a rumour of a cure for my condition. It's a slim hope, of course, but it might be worth looking into. Perhaps they will accept me into their society: as a scholar, I might do quite well for myself. After all, there is nothing for me in Russia now, and I cannot continue on Dumbledore's charity."

Gazing at him, she saw a flicker of yearning in his eyes, and she realised that her hopes of keeping him at Hogwarts had been foolish. After all, she had already kept him locked up for four months in a small hunting lodge, in the company of some books and a house-elf.

"I will be sad to see you go," she said to him lightly, "but I have found my haven, and you certainly deserve to find yours. Just remember that if you ever go back to Russia, you can continue to stay at my estate. Mizil will give you whatever you need."

"Maybe I will," he said, but she could see on his face that he probably wouldn't, and she quickly looked away to hide her sadness. I am losing him, she thought desperately, and things will never go back to what they were before.

"When will you leave?" she asked calmly, though it was hard for her to say the words.

"Tonight. You hardly need me here anymore. Oh, you will be fine," he added when he saw her stricken face. "You have people who care for you here. Even the Potions master, who by the way has shot me very nasty looks whenever he has caught a glimpse of me, went far out of his way to help you when you were ill. There is plenty of human comfort for you at Hogwarts, if you wish for it."

She snorted in surprise at his insinuation. "That man? We have never once had a pleasant conversation, and he is hardly about to start being nice just because it is the festive season. Actually, he drives me up the wall, constantly."

"He must be gifted," replied Vladimir with a sly smile. "But on the other hand you have been unusually emotional lately. Are the two connected, I wonder?"

"Absolutely not!" she said, giving him a very dirty look. "Just because I haven't seen a man in a while doesn't mean I'm that desperate! Now you should start packing, before I curse you into oblivion for presumption!"

His eyes were amused as he packed, and when he had finished, he flicked his wand at the books lying on the floor and opened the door. They immediately flapped open, jumped up, and fluttered out of the room, some of them aiming for his head as they went. He gracefully avoided them and turned to her, looking a bit more solemn.

"Please come and see me, if you get a spare moment," he said. "You know how to find me and you will always be welcome wherever I am."

She nodded. "I will come, maybe later in the year. Take care until then."

"Don't I always?" he said with a small smile and flicked his wand. Suddenly the image of him started to swirl and he took on the features and colouring of the stone wall behind him. Quietly, he opened the door and slipped out, not giving her a chance to reply.

She sat on his bed for a long time after he had left, staring at the remnants of his stay at Hogwarts: a used pillow, a rumpled blanket, and ash in the fireplace. He was right, of course, about her being unusually emotional, but then he knew her better than anyone else did. All autumn, she had felt something stir inside her chest, and after Elena's death, the feeling had intensified. It was a funny sensation of...warmth. Was she beginning to develop a capacity for feelings she had not before possessed?

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Author notes: Please review! All comments are welcome!