A Gift of Sky

A/N: Thanks as always to RedSkyAtNight for her help and support, and, in this chapter, for the coffin nails.

Incidentally, the detail regarding loss of hair pigment among indigenous Central and South Americans due to malnutrition is accurate. Sadly, I have seen it manifested many times, including in my own sister.

They moved Rawa to the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, where she stayed for another three weeks, gaining weight and strength. By the second week, she was restive and impatient to be back in the classroom, although she still tired quickly if she was out of bed for longer than an hour or so. Madam Pomfrey was strict about visiting hours, especially with students, whom she would allow at the bedside only one at a time, and for a maximum of ten minutes. She made an exception for Hermione, who was helping Rawa transcribe the spells and potions recorded on the kipu onto ink and parchment: she was allowed to stay for up to half an hour, as long as it did not fatigue Rawa too much.

Harry, Ron, and Neville visited, as did many others—most, she suspected, more out of curiosity than compassion—but Draco Malfoy was conspicuously absent.

Snape visited every day, always at odd hours. It was from him that she learned that the trial of Narcissa Malfoy had proceeded without her, and that Narcissa had been summarily sentenced to a lengthy term in Azkaban.

Another bit of news he brought surprised her, although on reflection it should not have. Voldemort, it would seem, was furious with Lucius Malfoy for provoking the duel with her, and had punished him severely; he was seen only rarely outside his home, and then always in the company of Fenrir Greyback or another of Voldemort’s frightening associates.

“He had no idea, you see,” said Snape, “that you had ever had any contact with Voldemort, much less that the Dark Lord had some interest in your well-being.”

She shuddered. “At least now I have some excuse for postponing any return visit.”

“Yes,” Snape agreed. “To that end, I have knocked as many nails into your coffin as I thought plausible.”

She gave him a puzzled look.

“Exaggerated the severity of your condition,” he explained. “Made you likely to die any second now.”

“Oh. Thank you. I think.”

“Not that it has needed much exaggeration.” He leaned forward and looked at the top of her head. “What has happened to your hair?”

“It was burned off,” she said, surprised that he would not have surmised this on his own. Her hair, which had formerly reached to below her hips, was now cut bluntly off at a point about halfway down her upper back.

“No, I don’t mean that,” he said. “I mean the color.”

“What!?” She had looked in the mirror only a few times since waking, and then only perfunctorily, and never in strong light.

“Just here,” he said, reaching forward and running a finger along her center parting. “It’s red.”

She snatched up a hand mirror from the bedside table and peered at her hairline, where about a centimeter of growth was indeed showing a dull red. For a moment she was alarmed, but then realized what it must be, and relaxed again.

“Malnutrition,” she said. “It’s because I didn’t eat for so long. That happens to us, to the indígenas, if we don’t get enough protein. The new hair will grow out black again.”

His gaze had dropped fleetingly to her chest, and she said dryly, “Yes, they are sadly reduced, aren’t they?”

He had the grace to look embarrassed, and she went on, enjoying his chagrin. “Madam Pomfrey says they will never be as resplandecientes as they were before.”

She should have known better: his discomfiture (or at least the outward expression of it) lasted only a second, and then the familiar half-smirk was on his face and he said, “It should save you some expenditure on underwear, at least.”

“Descarado,” she said, but could not help smiling. She wished he would touch her again, and wondered why it was that she enjoyed this sort of suggestive teasing from him, but found Sirius’s more persistent and sophisticated flirtation simply irritating.

“Thank you for teaching my lessons for me,” she said. “I hope my students are behaving themselves.”

He snorted. “I can’t promise you that they are learning anything. They make it clear every day that they can’t wait for you to return, and they all expect to be taught impenetrable Shield Charms the very first day you do.”

She sighed. “We will see how that goes. I will do my best, but that spell is done without a wand, and is very difficult to teach.”

“Could you teach it to me?”

“I will try,” she said, “but it seems to be harder to learn the older you are. Much easier to teach to very young children; they seem to pick it up more naturally.”

“When you are well, then,” he said seriously.

“Yes.” She smiled. “Some private lessons.” And her heart gave a little leap.

Christmas came and went before she was able to resume a full teaching schedule. A handful of students stayed at Hogwarts over the holidays, and there was a modest exchange of gifts among the staff. Rawa had brought fat pairs of the brightly-colored alpaca-wool oversocks that could be found in any Andean street market; in fact, the floors of the castle were so relentlessly frigid in December that she often padded around in a pair of them herself.

To Snape alone she gave something different, justifying it to herself on the grounds that it was simply impossible to imagine him wearing those gaudy socks: a flat disc-shaped amulet with a hole in the middle, painted with an Inca design in red and black. They were alone in the staff room when she presented it to him, the others having gone into Hogsmeade in search of entertainment.

He looked at it curiously, turning it over in his hands. “What is this symbol?” he asked.

“Apu Kuntur,” she said. “The Lord Condor. A protector against the powers of Darkness.”

The black eyes looked at her speculatively for a moment. “Thank you.”

He slipped the amulet into his pocket, and when he brought his hand out again, it was holding a tiny black marble, which he placed into Rawa’s open palm. A wave of his wand extinguished the room lights, and the two of them were plunged abruptly into inky blackness.

“Say a place name,” said Snape’s voice in the darkness.

“Cotopaxi,” she said immediately.

Instantly the ceiling was filled with tiny points of light, and she caught her breath: there, low on the horizon, was the Southern Cross, and just to the left of it, the Phoenix.

“It’s an Astrocaster,” he said, bringing up the room lights again. “It lets you—”

He stopped, looking at her. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. How to explain to him that the night sky, more than any other thing, let her know how far she was from home? The first night after arriving at Hogwarts, she had walked out onto the grounds and looked up at the cloudless August sky. It had hit her like a punch to the stomach: a totally different firmament. She felt literally disoriented: the familiar backdrop of her whole life gone, and in its place this sparse carpet of unknown stars.

And now here was home again, in the palm of her hand.