Cursed

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am merely having a lot of fun with the characters.

Chapter 17: Cursed

Lucius and Illi were very Slytherin in asking the reasons for why I had basically locked myself inside my bed curtains via wards. They waited for the proper moment to spring the question on me. They knew eventually that I would need to tell them what had happened. It was positively Gryffindor of me to need it – but I did.

The Great Hall was lit by the usual overhanging candles. The platters were filled with their usual foray of delights. To me, however, it was unusually bleak. The house-elves' crumpets and biscuits tasted like sawdust in my mouth. I glanced across the Hall to see my brother seething between James and Sirius; Peter's back was to me. Remus was a little farther down the table than usual. I swallowed hard – the only outward sign I was distressed. What had he done to be pushed aside by the other Maruaders?

Was it my fault?

"Heck!"

I blinked, my attention back on Lucius.

"Are you back to us? Should I ask Professor Urdritch to read your tea leaves or did you manage to See with that Inner Eye of yours?"

I scowled at him. "I was not trying Divination, I was just thinking."

"Some thoughts rolling 'round in there," Lucius said, grinning. "So what made you come back to the land of the living?"

In all the time I had spent with Lucius and Illi, there was nothing they did not know about. Somehow Severus' visit seemed like it should be something better kept to myself, though. I smiled softly at my best friend, and for the first time lied to him.

"I just realized that I shouldn't let something Scorpius does get to me," I said, which was half-true.

Lucius had taught me well – even he did not sense the lie. "What did your illustrious brother do this time?"

"We had a fight over what happened at the match. Score told me to keep my 'Slytherin sensibilities' out of his business."

Every Slytherin within hearing range – that is, Lucius, Illi, Ali, Regulus, Rabastan, Rodulphus, Narcissa, and Bella – gasped in outrage. So much for private conversation.

"You rarely get angry, Heck, especially with Scorpius..." Lucius shook his head. "I imagine the Gryffindor has decided to not speak with you for a time, then."

"I don't know," I murmured. I hadn't thought of that. "And it looks like Remus has tried reasoning with him, to his own detriment."

"He was sick again just a bit ago, wasn't he?" Illi asked, glancing over at the red-clothed table. "Poor bloke. To be sick like that all the time..."

Without warning, unbidden, I had an answer to a question I had not thought of in quite some time. I knew what was wrong with Remus. The shock must have shown on my face, because Illi misread it.

"What? Just because he's half-blood doesn't mean he's not a good guy in some ways. Even if he is a Gryffindor. Severus is half-blood and he's all right most ways."

I smiled at her, taking this excuse not to tell them what I'd discovered. Now all I had to do was confront Remus to confirm – and find out where to go from here.

_-~*~-_

Scorpius refused to work near me in Potions on Friday. Remus cast me an apologetic smile from across the room. The other Marauders did not even glance my way. And the journal – the precious journal that had been my only connection with Remus and Scorpius – was nowhere in sight.

It was then that the fear Lucius had originally brought forth was realized. Scorpius wasn't speaking to me.

What was odd, however, was that Severus and Lily had moved a bit closer to our table. Not close enough to talk, but not as far away any more.

If Slughorn noticed, he didn't comment.

_-~*~-_

It was early March before I at last was able to corner Remus alone in an empty classroom. As far as I knew, only one person had ever managed to break my wards. The remaining friendly Gryffindor was silent the entire time I was casting them. My shoulders shook with the intensity of my fear that I would soon lose him, too.

"Hecate..." Remus' voice came from behind me. "I'm sorry it's taken so much time to see you. Scorpius is... not happy with you."

"Lucius explained it to me," I said quietly. "I only learned after the fact that it was... quite rude of me." Another lie – I'd found it out in a book.

"That isn't it, not entirely, Hecate," Remus said, his hands finding my shoulders tenderly. "He is frightened he is losing you to your House's sentiments. Afraid you are taking up with the Muggle-hating – afraid you might join He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named... and scared for what that might mean for him."

The truth of things was that I had already joined in my mind. That I already hated Muggles. That Score's fears had true basis. I was quiet, facing the door, Remus' rough hands more soothing on my shoulders than the pounding waterfall in the Slytherin baths.

"Most of all, though, Heck, he's tired of hiding his true relationship with you."

"I can't not hide it," I murmured. "It's as much for his protection – for your protection – as it is my own."

"I know that, Heck," Remus whispered. "But your brother – and you for that matter – have not had the social contact required to know that completely. That you do know is amazing."

"I've figured out some things," I said vaguely. "Remus... do the others know that you are a werewolf?"

His hands tightened on my shoulders, almost painfully so. "How did you figure it out?"

"You just confirmed it, actually." I smiled wryly over my shoulder at him. "Don't worry. I won't tell on you. I love you too much to get you kicked out of school."

Remus smiled sadly. "So my being a werewolf doesn't scare you?"

"Not at all. I just wish I could be with you when you transform... not as a werewolf or potential, though."

"The others have been trying to become Animagi," Remus said. "Not quite done it yet, but apparently it's safe. I don't... attack animals."

"Then I'll become one, too," I said matter-of-factly. "Will you bring the journal?"

"I don't know how I could possibly get it to you," Remus confessed. "And besides, Scorpius has destroyed the quill."

I sighed. "I had actually thought as much. Can you agree to meet me half an hour before curfew on Monday in dungeon eight?"

"Yes. I'll do some research, see if I can't figure something out for communications."

"I'll just find something to cast a Protean Charm on in the meantime," I said. I stood on the tips of my toes – Remus was so tall! – and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you... for being a good friend."

He smiled softly. "Thank you for understanding."

So began my forays into magical communication, Animagus Transfiguration, and werewolf research. If there was ever a thing I was good at, it's research. If there was one thing being a Slytherin had taught me, it was how to hide what I was researching. Slytherin had taught me that if I had an advantage – any at all – then I should keep it secret.

So that's what I did.

Even Lucius would not know that I was an Animagus – soon to be, anyway. That Remus was a werewolf? Please! Have some faith in a Slytherin girl. Magical communication? Well... that I didn't really have to hide. After all, what else would I hide everything under?

Transfiguring one's body into an animal was risky business. Each book I pulled from the shelves warned that one should have someone else nearby to Transfigure you back should you make a mistake. I couldn't ask any of my friends – I didn't want even them to know that I still had contact with Remus. Somehow, I thought, it would get back to Score and the other Marauders.

And I couldn't have that.

So I decided to ask the one person who would not care, who would not tell.

I would ask Severus Snape.

Oh, I wouldn't tell him why, of course. That was just as well. And I had something to offer him, something that only I (and Lucius or Illi) could teach him.

Occlumency.

I planned it for weeks. Approaching Severus was risky business. He could decide to tell the whole of Slytherin – and in turn the Gryffindors via Lily – of my plans. No, I needed him to understand. I needed him alone. So as I had watched before, I observed closer yet. I had notes written on a paper that Vanished without my password. Where he went after class, before class, his schedule.

By the time I was ready to approach him, Lucius and Rabastan were frantically studying for their O.W.L.s. Illi and I were helping them and helping Ali and Regulus study for their first end-of-term exams. All of my Legilimency and Occlumency lessons were at a stand still. I had found several ways to write short messages to Remus, but none the likes of which we'd been able to do with the journal.

All the while, Scorpius had not once spoken to me. The other three Marauders snubbed me just the same.

In my daily observances of Severus Snape, I could not help but see all of the horrid attacks. Illi assured me that they had originally been quite benign. No longer. Often times, I saw Lily tugging Severus up the stairs to Madam Pomfrey. Sometimes he stayed overnight.

An hour before curfew the eve before Lucius' O.W.L.s, I slipped away from Illi and Lucius for a supposed quick snack from the evening tea in the Great Hall. They were so engrossed in their studies they didn't even notice that I took a book on Occlumency with me. If my observations held, Severus would be escorting Lily Evans to Gryffindor Tower now, via the staircase by the statue of Barbados the Brawler.

I dashed up stairs that thankfully did not change. At the top of the stairs that spilled out onto the seventh floor, I was just in time to see Severus bid Lily good night. The portrait of the Fat Lady swung shut.

Satisfied that we weren't going to be interrupted by the appearance of any nosy Gryffindors, I stepped out from behind Barbados the Brawler.

And promptly into a completely different situation.

My body moved of its own accord, none of my limbs or mouth even remotely able to respond to my own thoughts. As though from a different life, a different person... as though my very mind was being run by someone else. A voice drifted around me – my own voice.

Oh, God!

A black-haired boy raced in front of me, his hand wrapped tightly around my wrist, so tense his knuckles were white and my left hand purple. Another boy, chubby and short, ran behind me. We ran pell-mell down a black hallway, not even slowing to check where we were going.

In front of us, in another darkened room, two masked, black-clothed men ran toward the door. The black-haired boy ducked into a tiny room, an office by the immediate looks of it, and slammed the door behind the three of us. My wand rose of its own volition in my hand – my mouth formed a spell.

"Collo-"

But the words never finished forming. Both masked men flew into the room, crying out in utter jubilation. They raised their wands and as one cried, "Impedimenta!"

As if from a dream, my body flew back against the wall. The pain seemed far away, detached, but real. Books fell from the shelf atop my head.

"We've got him!" shouted the nearest masked man. "In an office off-"

Again, up came my wand, and out through my own lips flew a spell. "Silencio!"

The man was instantly silent.

The boy who'd been buried with me spat his own spell. "Petrificus Totalus!"

The other man fell to the ground stiff as a board.

"Well done, Ha-"

But the first man – the man I'd merely Silenced – made a complicated series of movements, in a spell I knew only too well – the Violet Cleave Hex – Vis Adhaero. A slicing hex that aims straight for the inner organs, straight for the heart. My body flew back, the pain leaving almost as quickly as my vision.

I heard two completely separate shouts, but they were both in alarm.

One was "Hermione."

The other was "Hecate."

I couldn't tell the voices apart.

_-~*~-_

Antonin Dolohov. I shouldn't know that name. But I did. I knew his face – the color of the robes he wore to the Malfoy ball. Deep sage with black trim. A kind smile, a joking gait. He hadn't danced with me. I hadn't been introduced. But now there he was, slightly older, but he was nonetheless the same man.

He had tried to kill me. In the future, I reminded myself. He tried to kill me in the future. Actually, Antonin hadn't looked so good. He'd looked... mad. Barking, to be honest. What had happened to him?

And the boys I'd run through the halls with... Harry Potter. James' son. My best friend, a Gryffindor. He'd obviously cared about me. And I him.

My body felt detached from my mind. Floating in open ocean with nothing to ground it but the deep blue water of Davy Jones. I sank into it, embraced by the warmth of sun-heated silk. So, with nothing better to do, I allowed my mind to wander back to examining the events leading up to the... vision? That word was as good as any.

The boy in the vision was not Severus. That much I knew. Nothing about being up near the Gryffindor Tower reminded me of that cold, dank, dark place in the vision. The office? Nothing. Thus far none of my sporadic feelings of déjà vu had hit on anything quite like this before.

Was I really injured?

Had I really been hit by the Violet Cleave Hex?

Was I... dead?

Somehow that didn't panic me half as much as it had months ago. As then, colors blended and roiled beneath my closed eyes, various shades of dark blue, puce, burgundy, and emerald. This was dissimilar in ways, though. I could not feel anything. No pain, no pleasure, no limbs. Nothing. Just the floating motion that did not match up with my last truly cognizant thought. The ocean of nothing.

If I was dead... it wasn't all that bad.

The pain started.

Not all at once. More like a slow awareness, a tiny root sticking out from a bean just before it sprouts fully. Just like that, just as I pictured the bean, the floating came back, drowning me. Slowly I swam toward the surface of an ocean that I couldn't see, an ocean of nothingness.

The nothingness opened into something, but that something was all-encompassing agony. Like the heat twin suns hovering over a desert with no cover, it was there, all around. The pressure of water on all sides. Suddenly, the ocean of nothingness was something again, the pressure building and building like an underwater volcano.

Tremors flowed through me like earthquakes. A sound like a broken clock's ticking reverberated in my mouth, a mouth I could only just now feel.

Cool glass pressed to my lips.

I sank again into the water, the pain buried under the ocean once again.

_-~*~-_

Numbness more than pain greeted me the next time I woke. I could hear speech somewhere off to my right – Madam Pomfrey.

"...No magical residue to be had! It is as if she simply dropped to the ground with a gash in her chest!"

A gash?

"We understand, Poppy, don't get yourself up in a dither." Dumbledore. "We are quite lucky Mr. Snape was there to alert us. If he had not been..."

"If she hadn't been found, she would be quite dead by now," Madam Pomfrey said tartly. "Scorpius and Hecate were my last two patients at St. Mungo's, Headmaster. I feel very protective of them. I think... I think that Hecate may be receiving memories from another person."

Not quite right, but near enough. I sighed, trying to will myself the rest of the way awake. Another phial of potion touched my lips – and I was out again.

_-~*~-_

The third time consciousness deemed to grace me with her presence, I woke to shouting.

"I'm her brother!" Scorpius.

"You haven't acted like one!" snarled Lucius.

"That doesn't matter! She's hurt, she needs me to be here for her!"

"She needs you like she needs another hole in her chest!"

Two voices shouted in unison – Remus and, surprisingly, Severus. "Shut up!"

Silence.

"Who are you to tell me what to do, Snivellus?" Scorpius snarled.

A shuffling sound. "Leave or bite your tongue, Taylor."

Nothingness.

_-~*~-_

The next time, I woke suddenly. There didn't seem to be a cause. The room was quiet. Slowly, I cracked my eyes open, fighting the potion-induced haze. Pink and orange light cast through the windows – sunset or sunrise. Being unconscious doesn't lend much to time keeping, after all.

Although I knew, somehow, in the back of my mind, that I had been hurt, it was still a bit of a shock to find myself in the hospital wing. My school robes were nowhere within sight. A stack of parchment lay on a small table next to my bed. The subtle scent of cleaning charms hovered in the air. I could not see beyond my bed because there was a white curtain surrounding the immediate area around me.

With a sharp rack-tack-tack sound, the curtains swung back. Madam Pomfrey bustled into the bed area, nonchalantly humming what sounded like Aretha Franklin's Respect under her breath. The curtain closed and she turned around. The moment she realized I was awake was immediately apparent – she sucked in a breath, her wand clattered to the floor, and she rushed the remaining two steps to my side.

"Hecate! Do you hurt anywhere?"

I blinked at her abrupt change. Slowly, I wiggled my toes, my legs. I flexed my arms, squeezed my fingers into a fist and released them. I rolled my neck. Aside from the occasional crick of bone-to-bone, I felt nothing. Then I tried to sit up. A dull ache in my chest, as though I had taken a blow to my ribs.

"My chest hurts little, but other than that, I'm fine," I said.

"Oh, thank goodness! Gods and spirits, girl, Macmillan's broom tumble was nothing compared to that horrid slash." Madam Pomfrey sniffed. I realized with a start that her eyes were glassy. "You're going to have to tell the Headmaster what happened, dear, but not until you're ready to see him."

"I'm fine," I repeated, more for her sake than the sake of getting out of the hospital wing. "But I am curious what you did to heal me up – that curse wasn't a passing fancy."

"It was obviously an experimental one, indeed," Madam Pomfrey nodded. "Wherever did you find such a thing?"

It was in that moment that I figured out precisely what she thought had happened. Madam Pomfrey thought I'd tried to commit suicide.

"I didn't do it to myself," I said, a little more sharply than I meant to.

The tension in Madam Pomfrey's shoulders seemed to dissipate with a long, relieved breath. With a flick of her wand, a rather stiff-backed wooden chair appeared by my bed. "Then could you satiate my curiosity and tell me exactly how you managed to be cursed whilst alone in an empty classroom?"

I frowned deeply – I could feel the downward curl of my lips, the tension above my eyes that much more fiercely than usual. "An empty classroom?"

"Yes. That's where Mr. Snape and Scorpius found you after you ran past him like the very hound-fiends of Hades himself were nipping at your heels. It was quite odd how they brought you here – amiably, together, carrying you in a sling between their arms. Minute I had you in the bed, though, the whole truce seemed to fall apart!"

I filed this information away for future reference. I couldn't tell her that I was from the future, though. So I played it Slytherin – vagueness. Acting weak where I was not. I stuttered and stammered, and told a partial truth.

"I think I had... I don't know, really. A vision? A memory that manifested itself in my present?"

She bought it, puppydog tails and all. Her hand flew to her mouth. "You remembered the attack on your parents and you, didn't you?"

Perfect. "I think so."

Madam Pomfrey leaned forward so far that her elbows rested on my bed. "Did you see who hurt you?"

"It wasn't... wasn't Death Eaters," I murmured, suddenly embarrassed. "But I still don't know who they were."

Madam Pomfrey sighed, a tired smile crossing her thin lips. "Gideon always did say that it wasn't Death Eaters."

I could have told her that he hadn't died in vain. I could have said that Voldemort hadn't meant to kill her husband. I could have done something to ease the clear pain that shimmered in Poppy Pomfrey's beautiful liquid brown eyes.

But I told her nothing, said nothing, and did nothing but stare at my hands. As I was about to ask something else, a soft knock came at the hospital wing door. Madam Pomfrey jumped up and headed for a cabinet near her office door.

"That'll be Mr. Snape, right on time."

I'm fairly certain that Madam Pomfrey does not get out of the hospital wing very often. She seemed to be of the opinion that Severus and I were friends. But...

"How long have I been out?" I asked.

"You've missed exams," Severus answered instead. He took the uncomfortable wooden chair that Madam Pomfrey had vacated. "It's the sixth. Trolled out of school by a scar – how utterly ridiculous."

I sat up abruptly, ignoring the searing pain that sliced through my chest at the move. "What? Trolled out?" I'd been kicked out of school?

Madam Pomfrey chuckled as she poured at least ten vials of potion into a steaming goblet. "Mr. Snape is joking, Hecate. Professor Dumbledore is going to allow your grades to stand as they were. You've passed with flying colors."

Severus wasn't laughing, or smiling. But there was a tiny curl of one side of his mouth, and his black eyes were shimmering with light.

"But... what happened?" I murmured.

"I could ask you the same," Severus said. His thick eyebrows rose expressively – in disdain. "You started running, screeching. The whole of Gryffindor Tower thought a banshee had appeared in the castle."

"Obviously they were mistaken," I snapped. In my fury, I sat up straighter on the bed – bringing on a sharp, stabbing pain that sliced into my chest. Like a stone cast in a pond, the pain rippled, ebbed. I clutched at it; only to have small but strong arms push me bodily back onto the soft sheets and pillows.

"Don't get her excited, Mr. Snape," Madam Pomfrey said sharply. She glanced down at me again. "The Headmaster wants to speak with you while you're conscious, Hecate. I'm going to go and get him."

"Can you get my ooh-does and ooh-luhs, too?" I asked.

Both the school matron and Severus stared at me; her eyes were wide and his narrowed to thin slits.

"Lucius, Scorpius, Remus, Alioth, Regulus, and Illiad," I clarified.

Severus remained seated as the young mediwitch released my hands. "Of course, dear. I'll be but a moment."

We sat in surprisingly comfortable silence, alone, just Severus in his chair and I in my bed. I took the opportunity to study him. Even though I'd watched his goings-on for months on end now, I really hadn't gotten this close to him since... well, since that day in Diagon Alley.

Since then, the hollows in his cheeks had filled out some. He was still thin as a rose stem, just as prickly, just as tight as the bud that would not open. From up close, his greasy hair appeared soft and frayed. The nose that every Slytherin secretly snickered at, the nose that made Gryffindors goad and guffaw openly, wasn't nearly so bad as people said – not up close.

"You shouldn't cry so easily. It makes you vulnerable," Severus said, so quietly I barely heard him. He paused long enough to contemplate his next words, but not long enough for me to retort. "Why did you follow me?"

I drew back from him in surprise.

"Don't act like you didn't – I'm surprised Lucius hasn't taught you the subtle art of seeing without being seen," Severus scowled. "Now why have you been following me?" His tone brooked no argument.

"I wanted to ask you to do something for me," I murmured. "I can't ask any of my brothers or sisters for various reasons."

"Do what for you?"

"Help me become an Animagus."

Severus' answer was swallowed by the arrival of Headmaster Dumbledore, Molly, Lucius, Ali, and Scorpius. Remus and Illi raced into the room side by side almost unnoticed amidst the shouting of Score, Ali, and Molly.

"You're all right!"

"Sis! Sis!"

"Heck!"

Madam Pomfrey stormed back into the room in full Healer mode. "I will not have you tiring her out!"

All noise ceased. It was only because it was quiet that I noticed Severus had left – only to come back in the room beside a smirking Regulus Black. Severus, on the other hand, didn't look too thrilled to be back in the infirmary.

I made a split-second decision, one that might ruin me – or sustain me.

I cleared my throat softly. "I asked that you all be here so that I can set the record straight on my... injuries." Before anyone could protest, before any of my friends and family could argue with the thought of sharing any of this with any of the others present, I went on. "I believe I had a momentary lapse into a memory... that happened to me in another time."

The silence was palpable. I had here in the same room four separate sets of people. My lawful family – Score and Molly; my school family – Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey; my closest friends, who were more family than my family was – Lucius, Illi, Ali, Regulus, and Remus, and I could possibly consider Remus by himself as well; and the person who teetered on a fine line between friend and foe, Severus Snape. I had no doubt from my brief snatches of consciousness that many of these people had fought over me while I was unconscious.

I was not deluded in thinking that they would ever stay in the same place for very long. I knew, in my heart, that I would have to make a decision soon. What that decision entailed, I did not know.

Instead, I waited patiently for their responses. It was Remus who spoke first.

"From another time?"

"I had two memories, one I think of my parents' deaths, and one when I was older," I said, continuing with the lie that I'd told Madam Pomfrey. "I was in a place completely different from here. With different people. A man tried to kill me. I Silenced him. The curse would have killed me otherwise."

Madam Pomfrey gawped. "Then you knew the curse?"

I blinked at her. "Yes... why?"

"I don't know what it is! I've never seen anything like it before," she said. "Was it... a killing curse?"

"No," I said, surprised. "It is called the Violet Cleave Curse. Its purpose is to cleave all major organs in two – that I Silenced him prior to his casting it meant that it acted more like a slicing hex."

Dumbledore spoke next. "Where did you hear of such a curse?"

I blinked, considering his words. "I don't remember. It's one of the things I knew before... well, before. I don't even remember what book it came from." I wasn't about to go into my Obliviate-that-wasn't. I wasn't quite that stupid.

My Slytherin friends seemed to understand the need for silence. Remus, Scorpius, and Molly all looked between the Headmaster and me. Madam Pomfrey seemed to teeter between wanting to know more and wanting to throw everyone out so I could rest.

To alleviate the stress on everyone's shoulders – my own included – I faked a yawn. Madam Pomfrey made her choice.

"Everyone out! She needs rest!"

And before I could think about it, she'd shoved another flask to my lips – and out I went like I'd cast Nox on a sconce.

_-~*~-_

Violet Cleave Hex, or Vis Adhaero, is the name of the curse that I made up to match Dolohov's curse. Vis means violence, a great deal of it. Adhaero is basically to "hang on" or "adhere." Hermione's explanation of it isn't entirely accurate. The magic basically adheres itself to the vital organs of the person it's cast on, slowly cleaving away at them. Silenced, it does so a lot more slowly.