Casting Shadows

Chapter 9

An Escape

For a supposedly intelligent woman, Hermione Lupin could be a complete moron at times, thought Persephone as she sat at the top of the stairs. When they had arrived home, Persephone had gone to her room to read, and Hermione had taken Celsus into the kitchen where he was set on showing her his collection of Wicked Warlock comics. It had not been long, however, until Persephone had heard Hermione's footsteps clip along the hall to the front door, which had opened and not closed again. Her curiosity piqued, she had stolen from her room to her favourite spot on the top step of the second turn of the staircase, out of sight of anyone downstairs but sufficiently close to hear any conversation.

Sure enough, after a few minutes she heard her parents approach along the front path, and Hermione's urgent tones as she greeted them. As they came back through the door, Persephone could hear their conversation quite clearly. Hermione was talking in a stage whisper and it was totally indiscreet. Persephone was amazed that her father hadn't seen fit to silence her with his rapier tongue, because she was wittering on about how Persephone kept getting a strange look in her eyes, and how she had smirked behind her hand when Mr Dearborn had succumbed to a coughing fit in the café, and so on ad nauseam...No, for a know-it-all like her honorary aunt, Hermione was a thoughtless fool. Then they had gone into the study and closed the door, so Persephone had been able to hear nothing more.

Irked, she crept down the stairs and positioned herself at the keyhole. They hadn't even bothered to cast a simple Silencing charm on the room, which was lucky for her but made her roll her eyes in disgust. She had heard all about their work for the Order and quite frankly, sometimes she was amazed they hadn't got themselves killed several times over. A sharp stab of eldritch anger heated her blood for an instant as she thought about the now defunct Order of the Phoenix, and then was gone. All of the grown-ups in her life were so lax these days!

Celsus was sitting at the kitchen table but he could not see her, since the door was half shut. A pity it was not closed all the way, for he was singing to himself as he flipped through the pages of his comic and occasionally punctuating the action on the page with exclamations of his own.

"Kazam! Whizz! Pow!"

His noisiness meant that she was only able to catch snatches of the conversation from the study, but what she heard was more than enough.

Dumbledore has no answers...St Mungo's...What else can we do?... Becoming dangerous...Must think of Celsus too...

Persephone's crimson-limned eyes narrowed and the part of her that was no longer an eleven year old girl began to plan her escape.

***

Dawn had not yet broken over the Forbidden Forest and the stars still glimmered against the slowly lightening blue sky. Three figures stood in a clearing, staring up into the heavens.

"He is coming."

"He? It is a girl child, isn't it?"

"It matters not. It is he that comes. Thus is it written."

"The meaning is unclear..."

"No."

"Yet we are the stronger. We could overcome him."

"No, Firenze. You tarried too long at the castle and it has clouded your Sight. The ways of men are not our concern."

"He is a man no longer..."

"But he will be again."

***

The sun seemed reluctant to rise the following morning. It lingered shyly behind the high peaks and crags of the mountains, only emerging when sufficient clouds had gathered to cloak it from view. When, finally, it showed itself, it was through a veil of grey that colour-washed the landscape, muting the green fields and purple heathers with a whispering drizzle that sheened the cobbled streets and quickly swallowed up a furtive, cloaked figure as it made its way out of the village.

No-one had heard her leave. She had stolen down the stairs more than an hour before, when darkness still cradled the house and had only just begun to retreat from the quiet hillsides. Upon reaching the front door she had hesitated, and crept to the kitchen to fill a bag with food from her mother's larder, lingering a while until she was certain that the creaking she had heard from an upstairs room was simply her brother turning in his sleep. A few more moments spent listening by the front door, still more in the storm porch after she had engaged the latch, waiting to ensure that no early risers in the village would witness her escape, and then she was on her way, walking rapidly into the embracing shadows.

Now she sat under the branches of an oak tree, sheltering from the pervasive drizzle that had dogged her footsteps between her home and the Forbidden Forest, and breakfasting on soft rolls and cream cheese. She would venture in to the Forest as far as she dared and then he would take her further, and she would learn all that he had to teach her.

She wasn't afraid. What was there to fear, for one who had faced the encroaching nothingness of the plateau? What violation could possibly be worse than the contamination she had already suffered? What could she learn from the Forest that he could not teach her?

She finished her meal, and looked around impassively. There was little sound. Small animals lived here, and birds nested in the high branches, but they were still and watchful now, sensing an interloper in their midst. Now and then she heard rustling in the undergrowth, and then a pregnant silence. The forest seemed to breathe again only when she turned her attention from the source of the noise, and she smiled grimly to herself. She would not be caught out. Let the forest and its denizens wait and wonder. She would venture further, and she would capture what animals she could. As her powers grew, as she was sure that they would, with practice, she would become a fine huntress. She would rival Artemis herself! She would crown herself queen of the forest in a coronet of holly and ivy, fashion an oaken staff and make a bed of soft moss, drink water from a babbling spring and sleep under the stars.

***

Severus Snape woke to a silent household later that morning. For a few blissful seconds he luxuriated in the warmth of the silken body pressed to his, his breath catching in his chest as the swell of love he felt each time he awoke broke over him. Then it all washed away as he remembered his daughter, and the battle they appeared to be losing. A chill stole across his flesh, goosebumps standing the fine black hairs of his arms on end. He shivered and drew the blanket across, pulling it to his chin as Ella moaned a sleepy protest and sighed in her sleep.

He was awake now, and would sleep no more that morning. How easy it had always been, with Ella, to lie languorously abed each morning, cursing the encroaching day and the demands on their time, wanting to wrap his limbs around her and take his time waking her, and loving her, and making love with her. How long ago it all seemed. Had it really been less than three weeks? Somehow he had the feeling that things had begun to fray at the edges quite some time before...but he had blinded himself to the signs because they were too much for him to bear.

There was no happily ever after. For a cynic such as Snape that should have been a given, but eleven years of loving Ella had mellowed him and made him realise there was happiness to be had in the world. And he had, indeed, been happy. So happy that he had ignored Ella's anxiety and over-protectiveness, dismissing it as a sign of how devoted a wife and mother she was, and congratulating himself on his good fortune. This was a fine and a healthy attitude to take, and insofar as it went, was an accurate summation of their marriage; however, Ella was, and always had been, an open book to him, and he had neglected to read between the lines to find the secret subtext of her psyche.

He had thought to understand her so well. He had been an inconsiderate fool, taking for granted her happiness simply because he loved her so, and she loved him. Love was enough; but only most of the time.

He dressed quickly and silently, and Ella was still asleep as he closed the door behind him and went downstairs. Making himself a cup of hot, strong coffee he sat at the kitchen table nursing it in his hands as he stared into space, deep in thought.

Minutes passed, minutes he spent going over and over the same old ground in his head, casting about for a new twist on an old potion, anything that would help him bring his daughter back. He wanted her innocent again, not despoiled by a monster's blood, corrupted by his depravity.

Eventually, he realised that he had been gazing at the kitchen door and the cloaks that hung neatly from four pegs that were screwed in to the wood around three inches from the top of the door. There were four pegs, one for each of their cloaks. There were only three cloaks hanging on the back of the door. Persephone's had gone.

Persephone had gone

.

"ELLA!"

***

She had never been the sort of girl who talked to herself. It was a silly, childish thing to do, and Celsus did it all the time. She wondered what he would say if he could see her now, walking through the sun-dappled undergrowth between aged trees with gnarled branches and boles like all-seeing eyes.

She was a little afraid now, she wasn't ashamed to admit it. Her confidence had drained away and she thought that his influence was on the wane, for now. She wanted to allow herself to feel relieved and being given a respite from the drive of his ambition, but she didn't dare. She didn't want to face the repercussions, for repercussions would surely follow. She concentrated hard and began to construct the wall again. Several bricks had crumbled during his last onslaught, while she had been on her way to the forest, and she needed to repair the damage. It was becoming frighteningly easy to wish her brother ill, for no matter how she tried to rationalise it, her desire to practise dark magic on him wasn't healthy, not really, and she suspected that her thirst for power wasn't actually her own to quench. Building a mental wall in her head was as effective a way as she knew for keeping him out of the innermost reaches of her mind, difficult though it was when he made her crave the knowledge he offered. She wondered whether her father would be proud of her efforts. He was a superb Occlumens, or so he often told her. With practice, she would best him. She knew it. And with the power that surged through her veins she would be unstoppable...No! No...not yet...Persephone replaced a few more bricks until the edifice stretched unbroken from one side of her mind to the other, and when she closed her eyes she could see it, tall and grey and impregnable, at least for a little while.

She trudged on, deeper into the forest where the shadows darkened and the treetops huddled together, whispering fretfully of the interloper that dared presume so far. The susurrations disturbed her and she tensed, jumping at every snapping twig and rustling bracken until she became quite cross with her lack of fortitude.

The sun had reached its zenith by the time she decided to stop again. Her feet were sore and she had gone over on her ankle at least three times on half hidden tree roots that seemed determined to wrong-foot her. She came across a fallen tree whose largest bough was at the right height for a tall girl to find a comfortable seat in a dip along its length, and she rummaged in her backpack for her flask and some pork pies.

While she was eating, she had the uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched, although she looked all around her and could see nothing untoward. She had always found the description of a person being so taken by surprise that they jumped out of their skin to be a ridiculous exaggeration, but when she heard a low voice behind her, she knew that she had been wrong.

"You have ventured far into our forest, teacher's daughter."

Eyes wide with fear, Persephone turned around very slowly and found herself staring at the legs and torso of a dun and white centaur. Swallowing hard, she raised her head and looked bravely up into his eyes. They were impassive, she decided, neither friendly nor hostile.

"I didn't know the forest belonged to you, sir," she said pertly. "May I have your permission to continue my journey?"

The centaur stared at her inscrutably for several moments, during which she fought an urge to fidget, before raising his eyes to the canopy of leaves far above them and saying, "Where is your journey's end, child of darkness?"

She was not sure that she liked the sobriquet he gave her, but it thrilled her anyway and filled her with sufficient self-importance to speak her mind without fear.

"I think that's my concern, if you please. I'll travel as far as I need to."

"Or as far as you are allowed..." His hooves scraped the dirt and he looked down to see the patterns they had made in the earth before fixing her with his gaze again. "You know that our kind care little for the concerns of men, and less still for their young. Your welfare is not my concern. However, it is written in the sky that one will come whose power walks a fine line between well and ill..."

"Power doesn't know whether it's good or bad, it just is. It's its application that can be good or bad."

"And the one who wields it; on which side of the line will she fall?"

Persephone gave the centaur her best withering look.

"Why, on her own side, of course!"

The centaur threw back his head and laughed. "Take care, little girl, for not all of my kin are as indulgent of such arrogance! If I had not spent so long in the company of men and their young, I would have rather trampled you into the ground than enjoy such discourse!"

Persephone shrugged. She had heard of Firenze the centaur, and she doubted very much that he would leave her to the mercy of his fellow centaurs. And as for them, well, she saw little reason to fear them. Confidence was surging through her veins again and she knew that in a very short time she would wield her magic over all the denizens of the forest, not just the smallest animals. She would control them all.

For now, though, she needed to penetrate deeper into the forest, where she could vanish into the shadows and the dense undergrowth would muffle the squeaks and cries of her test subjects.

She packed the remains of her luncheon into her bag, and stood. "I'll keep an eye out for them, then," she said. "Goodbye, sir."

The centaur's brown eyes lingered on her face for a moment, and then he inclined his head before turning and picking his way back through the undergrowth. She watched until she was sure that he had disappeared from plain sight and then she took the opposite path, heading deeper.

Her senses were heightened now and there was an urgency deep within her that she knew could only be assuaged by surrendering to his will. Unable to be anything other than acquiescent, she pressed on, faster and faster, unerring as she ducked low branches and skipped over exposed roots, searching more for a feeling than a place, for a rightness that would tell her she had reached her goal.