Chapter Sixteen

They circled each other as wary predators would over a succulent morsel. One seemed alive with malice while the other seemed oddly detached from the terrible drama growing between them. They were mirror images, both tall and slender, both dark-haired and pale-skinned, both emanating a sense of power. They wanted the same thing: control. They had a lifetime of suffering to hone their skills and refine their want; they had no intention of surrendering or squandering their advantage. It seemed that Ophelia had the most to gain, which meant that Veronica had the most to lose.

You cannot win against me! Her voice was so confident and strong that her words seemed no less than prophecy. Veronica felt a flutter of panic; never had they met in such a fashion, for the deeper, darker, part of her had always been a whisper in her mind, a subtle pressure on her intentions. Now, Ophelia stood before her, eager and hungry.

"I don't have to win; I just have to hold onto you."

Hold onto me! She laughed, the sound reverberating and gathering strength until it became a vibration deep within their bones. You wouldn't know how to, my dear; you have neither the strength nor wit.

But she knew the truth of it; she had been held down and smothered for decades. Veronica's will and mind had kept her at bay, and not her long-lost protector's charm. Struggling and fighting had only strengthened the bonds; now she needed to be free, things were changing, things were no longer the same; she was needed in a way that Veronica could only nightmare about. Ophelia wondered if her host knew of it, sensed the world shifting; wondered if that could be the leverage that she had been denied while they had been safe and sound in the Muggle world.

"I have managed it for years," she said firmly, a soft smile curving her lips. "This disease has battered at me for decades, and I have kept it deep inside where it could do no harm."

Ophelia stopped pacing and stared blankly at the woman before her, noting the calm serenity that suffused her and the subtle strength in her stance. Could it be that Veronica had confused her for some bizarre and hateful manifestation of dark desires and fancies? Ophelia felt her eyes widen as the thought thundered along its track, reaching the terminus in an explosion of realisation and ironic ramification. Ignorance and fear were her true judges and guards; Veronica had condemned her on a few tragic and disjointed memories; Veronica had no idea that Ophelia was disparate, had no idea that there were two distinct minds within the same brain.

You don't know who I am, do you? You think me an illness?

Veronica frowned at the sudden change of tack; she saw the wide-eyed confusion and the remarkable and unexpected innocence in the other woman's dark eyes. "You would hurt and kill. You would maim and destroy, lie and cheat. That is not healthy, not right."

All very true; I cannot lie to you. The voice was small and emotionless, as if the admission had stolen the will to feel. Ophelia took a deep breath and tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear, tugging on the ends, and Veronica felt almost more afraid of this weaker aspect of her demon than the one who had stood so proud and menacing moments before.I have done things that would and should make you cringe, conspired and worked to bring about death. I set myself the task of killing a man, a traitor to all that I had grown to stand for. I lied and destroyed; all the things that you deem me capable of, I have done. May not have been healthy, but it was most certainly right.

Veronica's frown deepened; was that remorse flickering across Ophelia's features? Was it pain? Could she risk trusting this facet of herself; did this creature hold the answers? Was knowing worth the risk of losing herself? Of being the one held behind bars, watching the horrors committed while trapped behind uncaring eyes? She swallowed nervously; would knowing change her? Would she become the woman she had spent twenty years hating and fearing?

I had no choice, Ophelia finally whispered, her eyes staring into memories that were locked to Veronica. I tried, her voice trembled, but I didn't have the strength. And that is my sin, my shame, my sorrow. It is the constant pain that has distracted me from claiming what is mine by birthright! Her posture suddenly shifted, and she seemed more feral; her dark eyes glittered dangerously as they fixed, pinned, Veronica with a hungry, greedy glare. Who do you think was here before? You know that there was a before; wouldn't you like to know what I know? she asked while tapping her temple. Know what it is that terrifies you? Why those things were needed? Know why we did them? She stepped forward until she was nose to nose with her naive and dedicated gaoler. Veronica was caught in her gaze and senseless on her words; she was unable to prevent it.

"Is there a reasonable excuse?" Veronica asked more bravely than she felt. "Can you give me an excusable reason?"

We had to! she shouted out, breathing fast, her eyes flashing with fury. If you let go of your selfish and stifling fears, then you'd know! You'd understand! Her face twisted in disgust as she studied Veronica. But you will never do that, will you? Your life is comfortable and sweet, and you know that mine was far from it. You are a coward! You stand there spouting ethics and morals to me, using them as a defence, as a convenient shield. Using half-truths and doubts as the backbone of your arguments! Her voice rose in volume until she was screaming in Veronica's face, her eyes blazing and her teeth bared. As quickly as her wrath had struck, it dissipated, and her voice dropped to an icy whisper. Your spine is weak! It will snap! Already, you feel it quake and tremble under the strain.

"I don't want you!" Veronica snapped out, her own anger flaring, her temper breaking. "You want to do more than just defend; you take the power that I have and want to twist it, to make it hurt people rather than protect me."

Protect! She hissed out bitterly. You call the meagre defences that you created a protection? Out there at this very moment are people, wizards, who will do unspeakable things to you, to us, and you will be unable to stop them. Ophelia looked mad with fear, anger and desperation. The demons in the hospital are nothing compared to what you're being dragged back into. Listen to me, she pleaded, her dark eyes wide, you need me!

--X--

Lupin watched Sirius serenely slice through the egg and scoop out the white from the severed top. His friend had adopted this unaffected air and had kept to himself since they had carried Ophelia into the house and placed her in the spare bedroom. He had tried to talk, but everything seemed so obvious or futile that the words had withered on his tongue. Lupin had contented himself to cook a simple breakfast before returning to his watch. Only the clatter of spoons against crockery and the sound of rain slamming into the windows filled the uncomfortable silence. Sighing softly, Lupin cracked his own egg and peeled away the shell one fractured piece at a time.

For his part, Sirius kept glancing across at his friend with an urge to say something, the need to shatter the barrier that had fallen between them, but not knowing what could be said that would be enough. He knew that it was his own stubbornness that had caused it, he knew...had always known...that Lupin was the voice of reason, the reasonable one and the conscience; without Lupin, Sirius would have done far worse and suffered worse.

Several times, he thought that Lupin was going to start talking, and his heart had leapt at the prospect, but his friend had merely looked pained and then moved on to another task. The rain battering at the window and the wind rattling the back door only accentuated his sense of gloom, loneliness and feelings of enforced isolation. In this sombre mood, he caught sight of Lupin fastidiously removing tiny pieces of shell from his boiled egg; for a moment, he was fascinated by the delicate movement, and then his temper snapped.

"For Merlin's sake, Moony!"

Lupin started, his chair legs scraping against the tile floor and his spoon clattering against the plate as it fell from his fingers.

"Just slice the blasted top off!"

They stared at each other, and then, just as the tension threatened to thunder down, they both felt utterly ridiculous; it was so reminiscent of their school days: Sirius frustrated by a prank gone wrong and Lupin feeling awkward because he couldn't sympathise. It was Sirius's snigger that prompted a laugh to bubble up from Lupin's chest, and over shattered shells, they laughed.

"So, what is she like?" Sirius asked nonchalantly as they tidied away the breakfast dishes.

Lupin sighed and dropped the plates and eggcups into the sink. "We don't really know. That potion is still affecting her," he said, his voice thick with disgust. "Three days of it," he whispered, looking nauseous and extremely exhausted. "We've had to tie her down," he said angrily, his hand trembling as he reached out to turn the tap. "Merlin knows what she's going through."

"Well," interrupted Sirius coolly. "We'll know soon enough."

Lupin felt as though he had been hit in the stomach, and he gaped for a moment at the calm man before him. A surge of fury rushed through him as his efforts, the efforts of everyone, were belittled so neatly. He bit his tongue and turned the tap with more force than was warranted. Where was the Sirius that had told him stories of a little girl sitting on his back and laughing with glee as she clung to his fur? Where was the Sirius that had clung to him and wept on his shoulder after her death?

And that was it! He knew where the man was. He was hiding... hiding from his pain and anger, from the life that was crumbling and falling around him. He peered into the depths of Sirius' eyes and saw a flicker of sorrow...or guilt...and that quenched the fire of his wrath. Lupin sighed softly and felt his heart clench. The drinking and the seeking of solitude, the smooth apathy; they were escapes. Why hadn't he seen it earlier?

"It must be rather bad though," Sirius conceded quietly. "You look like you've just gone through a transformation."

Lupin chuckled grimly; glad of the concession. "Feel like it too."

"When will it be over?" Sirius asked as he picked up a tea-towel.

"According to what we know, today should be the last day, and given what she's gone through then I think that she'll sleep for a while. I know I shall," he said with a smile.

"And then we wait to find out what she is."

Lupin smiled inwardly. He knew that Sirius couldn't be that dispassionate; he had suspected that behind the façade, he was as curious as everyone else. He just hoped that she would be a light in the darkness for him, just as she had been as a child.

"Moody has been trying to find out more; some evidence supports that she's a vicious, devout Death Eater, and other reports indicate that she's a sensitive and caring woman. She has him baffled."

Sirius nodded thoughtfully. "You mean that since the memory loss, she's different?"

Lupin laughed mirthlessly and then shrugged his shoulders. "It would be so neat to say so, wouldn't it, but it isn't quite the case." He turned to look at Sirius, his face animated with wonder. "She uses magic, Sirius, and complicated magic at that. She knew that she was a witch, which seems to suggest that if she did suffer a memory loss, some of it has recovered. If so, then Ophelia wasn't the evil witch we think she was," he sad softly, his eyes reflecting his hope, but then he continued with a sad expression, "but that her mind had been twisted and skewed by events around her."

He looked at Sirius and studied the man's thin face, wondering whether his suspicions would force Sirius back to the unforgiving man he had been. The idea that as some of her memories had returned, so some of her true personality had shone through without the corrupting influence of her family; and it had been far from twisted and foul.

"I don't understand." He frowned at Lupin and rested his hip against the work top, waiting for the first dish to dry.

Lupin turned away and began to scrub at the sides of an eggcup. "Moody's findings indicate that while in the Muggle world, she was a deeply troubled child, prone to violent, furious attacks upon those who threatened her, and yet she defended and helped those who needed it. Her life after her stay in hospital was reserved and calm, and he found that she had made a few abiding and deep friendships while in possession of her full abilities." He paused and looked up to face Sirius' sceptical expression and sighed resignedly. "I just have this feeling that she's more than what we think or remember her to be."

"A feeling?" Sirius queried softly as he dried the eggcup.

The question held none of the incredulity or ridicule that Lupin had expected, but it was amazingly interrogative. The other eggcup was subjected to a bout of intense attention as they stumbled through the conversation.

"I can't explain it well," Lupin said with a hint of frustration. "But when I saw her outside the cottage, there was a sense that she was as lost as everyone else."

"Don't expect me to believe that she's another person struggling with a terrible past to be a good person," Sirius snorted contemptuously. "I have enough trying to deal with Snivellus helping us."

Lupin placed a spotless plate on the draining board and pulled out the plug. He watched the water spin and then pull down into a small whirlpool as the dishwater drained. There was one other thing that was occupying much of his thoughts: that sense of recognition, a recognition that went both ways.

"I can't recall ever meeting Ophelia like I remember meeting many of the others?" His question hung in the air, as innocuous as a dusty cobweb and yet as inescapable. He watched Sirius potter around the kitchen, putting the few dishes away.

"Nah!" Sirius said while tugging on a sticking drawer. "I can't see as you would have; we rarely spoke at school because of ... well, just because, and she spent most her time with Narcissa and all the other Slytherins. Over the holidays, she was at Malfoy's, and she wasn't with Andromeda that long." The drawer sprung open with a clatter of cutlery and a curse from Sirius. "I can't think that you would have had the opportunity to meet her. You may have seen her about the school?" He paused and stared into the drawer, his face paling, pain flickering across his features. "You would have liked her; she always reminded me of you." He smiled. "She was a remarkably stern child too."

"With you around, Padfoot, I had no choice," he countered with a smile. "I just have this feeling that we've met before...that I know her."

Sirius shrugged and tidied the drawer so that it would shut and open smoothly. "I don't know... just one of those things, I guess."

Lupin inhaled slowly and tried to relegate his feeling to a mere 'one of those things', but still, the sensation nagged at him. He couldn't see that a chance meeting, especially one that he couldn't recall, in the corridors of Hogwarts would have had such an impact upon him. He bit down on the rising frustration and turned his mind to another dilemma.

"Sirius," he said gently. He saw Sirius stiffen and slowly close the drawer.

"I know that voice, Remus," he replied warningly, still looking down at his hand on the drawer handle, "and the answer is no!"

Lupin felt the urge to argue, to force the issue, but he knew that of late, Sirius' mood was variable and unpredictable, and he was loathe to spoil this tentative moment between them.

"You're right," he conceded. "Have you heard from Harry lately?"

Sirius shook his head and sighed wearily. "Not since he used the Floo in Umbridge's office and basically told me off about tormenting Sniv... Snape." He smiled wryly at the memory of his godson's troubled face in the flames. He sobered and shook his head sadly. "He worries me," he said quietly. "And there is nothing I can do!" He thumped the worktop, suddenly outraged. "I'm here doing nothing, and he's facing it all; he's suffering that woman, Umbridge, and Voldemort crawling around inside his head, and I'm here, babysitting a Hippogriff and a Death Eater!" His voice had risen in pitch and volume.

"You need to be here, Sirius."

Sirius stared at him as if it was the most ridiculous thing he'd heard. "I don't need to be here," he protested. "What I need is to be looking after him; need to get out of this hell-hole and watch over him."

The sudden desperation and frantic expression on Sirius' face distressed Lupin, and he swallowed hastily. He knew that the enforced stay in this house was contributing to his bouts of dark depression, and he knew that Sirius was succumbing to other vices while within these walls. His mind worked quickly to see a way to give Sirius some focus and hope, but he knew that the only answer to Sirius' dilemma was to go to Harry and leave this mausoleum of a house.

"It'll be the end of the school year soon," Lupin said with forced brightness, but before he could expand on his ideas, Minerva's amplified and harried voice filled the kitchen.