She whispered

by Lucas Chesterton

  ‘She has never seen a place like this’, Daysen explained to Narcissa and sounded completely patronizing.

  ‘That’s not true’, Elena said sharply, feeling the champagne in her cheeks. ‘I have been to museums ���’

  Draco sniggered.

  ‘��� and to Abrasax Manor!’

  Narcissa raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s the Crowley’s place, isn’t it? ��� I have heard about it. So you’ve been there? What is it like?’

  ‘Lots of house-slaves ��� um ��� elves’, Elena blurted out, earning a stern glare from Daysen. She felt a strong urge to stick her tongue out at him.

  However, Narcissa laughed and it sounded as sweet as the chattering of a brook. Everything about her was refined, almost aristocratic. ‘You have to tell me everything about that Crowley Academy, dear. Draco’s told me very little, and I’m dying with curiosity. ��� Where, for instance, is it located?’

  Elena opened her mouth to reply. However, she found that she couldn’t. Her tongue was suddenly as heavy as lead and she couldn’t even lift it, let alone speak. Three pairs of eyes were on her and she couldn’t get out one word, in spite of the alcohol she’d consumed to loosen up. Her fingers cramping around the champagne glass, Elena stared up at Jack desperately who stared back with cool interest.

  ‘Tongue-tie’, he said to the Malfoys, ‘they probably made her take a Fidelius.’

  ‘Makes sense’, murmured Narcissa, examining Elena as if she was an insect in a glass jar.

  ‘I don’t know ��� anything about that’, Elena croaked, utterly confused. She found that her mind felt stuffed as with wet cotton wool in which her thoughts and intentions had got stuck.

  ‘I guess they Obliviated her after the event’, Draco said importantly to his elders before turning to Elena with the air of someone completely in the know. ‘Try not to think about it. It will only confuse you.’

  However, she was already confused. What a strange feeling! Not to be able to speak about something, not even to think of it although she wanted to!

  ‘Draco’s right’, Narcissa warned her, ‘you might even hurt yourself trying. A Fidelius is a powerful charm.’ When Elena stared at her with wide eyes, the lady of the house took her arm and led her on to the next room. ‘I realize this must be scary for you. It would be to me, and I’ve been a witch all my life. But not to worry, we will find a way to ask around it; we’re good at that, aren’t we, Jack?’ She looked over her shoulder and Elena saw her wink at Daysen. He responded with a smile, a genuine one, as Elena had hardly ever seen it on him. With a mounting feeling of foolishness, she let Narcissa take her into a grand dining room. It had a style very different from the salon they had just left, all stone pillars and arches and with a long and magnificently set dinging. House-elves were holding out chairs for them. Out of the corner of her eyes, Elena saw Daysen hesitate in the doorway. For the briefest of moments, it seemed as if he was bracing himself, but then he went straight to the chair that Narcissa indicated to him, face impassive as ever.

  The next hour was taken up exclusively by eating and polite dinner talk. Course after course arrived ��� the dishes small, but elegant ��� and the wine glasses were generously refilled in short intervals by house-elves behaving like stern butlers with immovable faces. Draco and Narcissa did most of the talking, telling Daysen about mutual acquaintances; he issued a response every now and then, or rather the occasional assenting murmur. However, it was obvious that he didn’t feel too comfortable. Elena watched him out of the corners of her eyes and noticed with interest that right from the start, he seemed to particularly enjoy the wine. Not that she blamed him, she drank quite a bit of it herself, but that was chiefly because she didn’t have anything to contribute to the conversation. She was an outsider and very much aware of it. However, the wine did the trick eventually, she felt herself relax, leant back in the chair with the stiff high back and observed what was going on around her.

  Narcissa, for instance, obviously very much enjoyed the company. Her eyes sparkled while she talked vivaciously and even with a note of desperation which made Elena guess that she was usually quite lonely, with Draco out of the house and a husband in a generally sulky mood. Elena eyed the place setting at the end of the dining table, put there as if someone might make an appearance any time. On the one hand, she would have liked to meet the elusive Lucius Malfoy to complete her mental image of the family; on the other hand, she found the present company overwhelming enough. At the same time, she felt the occasional itch at the back of her head as if the master of the house was watching from some hiding place. It made her wonder whether Daysen felt it, too, and whether this was the reason for his generous wine consumption and the way he kept shifting on his chair.

  Dinner conversation was revolving ��� and had been for a while ��� around a character by the name of Theodore Nott. A Death Eater, quite obviously, and a peer of Draco’s. It appeared that since the end of the last wizarding war, he had displayed quite a talent at escaping the authorities, duping them on more than one occasion and going underground. Draco declared that he hadn’t thought ‘the guy had it in him’, and Jack, too, remembered Nott as a mediocre student ��� referring to Theodore’s sister Alice as ‘the brain of the family’ ��� who had never shown traits of particular cunning.

  ‘And yet he escaped out of a secured cell in the Ministry dungeons on the first occasion presenting itself!’ Narcissa exclaimed, and the admiration was clearly visible on her face.

  ‘When did this happen?’ asked Daysen with an incredulously raised eyebrow.

  ‘Only two weeks ago’, Draco said. ‘Blaise told me. He said that Nott must have had some help, probably something magical. They kept it out of the papers, it was such an embarrassment ���’

  ‘Quite daring, don’t you think?’ Narcissa chuckled delightedly. ‘A true Slytherin ���’

  ‘Like I said, I’d never have guessed. Right, he was a loner, and certainly not as dim as Crabbe and Goyle, but ���’

  ‘Maybe he was just lucky’, Daysen said with a shrug, but a smile was playing around his thin lips.

  ‘Maybe. Yet, I can’t help wishing that boy luck. Such cunning, such daring! It’s ���’ She broke off, staring at Elena. ‘I’m so sorry, dear, we’re being unforgivably rude talking about people that you don’t know ���’

  However, Elena doubted that this was the true reason. In fact, Narcissa ��� and probably Draco, and Jack, too, to a degree ��� couldn’t quite help rooting for their old associates. And with the menacing figure of Lord Voldemort gone, a boy wizard on the run and tricking authorities appeared like an underdog ��� no matter what he’d done in the past ��� and one was disposed to congratulate him. Good and evil were, as Elena had noted before, largely a matter of circumstance and perspective. She turned a smile on Narcissa. ‘Don’t worry about that. Most things I hear in the wizarding world are new to me.’

  Narcissa looked at her attentively. For the fraction of a second, she appeared to wrinkle her pretty, slightly turned-up nose, but caught herself immediately, looking kindly. ‘I can only imagine’, she purred smoothly. ‘The last months must have been very eventful for you. ��� What do your parents say about your newly discovered talents?’

  Elena’s cheeks reddened. ‘I haven’t told them’, she confessed.

  Narcissa’s eyes widened. ‘No? ��� I should have thought ���’

  ‘For Muggles, mother, it’s sometimes as embarrassing to have a witch or wizard in the family as it is for us when a squib is born’, Draco explained with the same patience as if he was imparting a recent global development his mother hadn’t yet heard about.

  ‘When they really should be proud?’ Narcissa asked a little incredulously.

  ‘You have to put yourself in their shoes’, Draco said and swept his white-blond hair across his forehead as he leant back, every bit the liberal man of the world. ‘Imagine you can do
nothing but work with your hands, or your brains if you have them, and then have a child upsetting stuff with the wink of an eye. Be stronger than you are. Wouldn’t you find that scary?’

  ‘Probably’, Narcissa admitted, still looking a bit mystified. She suddenly looked up, sought Daysen’s eyes. ‘How was that for you, Jack? I keep forgetting you’re a half-blood. Was your father afraid of you?’

  Elena squirmed, knowing that this was a touchy subject. However, Jack responded with surprising calm. ‘He was. Although he didn’t appear scared at the time. It was more the other way around.’

  Narcissa digested that, and it was obvious that it wasn’t too easy for her, that this line of thought was new. Then her face changed slightly as she remembered something. ‘Isn’t your mother with you right now?’

  Daysen sighed and murmured assent. Elena, sitting at his side, couldn’t help smiling, which Narcissa saw.

  ‘Have you met her?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Briefly’, Elena replied curtly, not wanting to discuss it, and a sly expression appeared on Narcissa’s face, although she didn’t ask further.

  ‘Draco says she was very kind to him’, Narcissa declared lightly.

  Involuntarily, Elena’s eyebrows shot up. Jack caught it and the corners of his mouth quirked.

  ‘Tell us about the academy then’, Narcissa quickly changed the subject, ‘unless, of course, your tongue-tie extends to lessons, as well.’

  Elena had thought of that possibility and started a little hesitantly, but soon found out that she could talk about most things in quite an uninhibited manner. In actual fact, she had waited for this moment, bursting as she was with the events of the week. So she explained how she had been asked to present herself once more at 66 Carcass Lane last Monday morning where another carriage drawn by Hippogriffs had picked her up. It hadn’t been as grand as the private coach of the Crowleys and there had been no champagne waiting for her inside, but Waldemar Periwinkle instead, as well as a thin pale girl dressed in a black veil, huddled into a corner. The girl hadn’t been introduced to her, other than Waldemar explaining to her that she didn’t speak any English but was a rare talent sent to the academy by her parents. Elena had tried speaking to the girl ��� who’d been no older than fifteen or sixteen at most ��� going through all the languages she had at least a fleeting knowledge of. However, she hadn’t got a response, the girl had stared at her blankly and with a look of disgust. When Elena had given up, Waldemar had shrugged at her in an ‘I-told-you-so’ manner, looking smug and satisfied.

  ‘Wait’, Narcissa interrupted the account, ‘Waldemar Who-Did-You-Say?’

  ‘Periwinkle’, Daysen explained before Elena could, ‘you heard right.’

  ‘Not Ansgard Periwinkle’s son?’

  When Elena confirmed that, Narcissa looked mystified. ‘Never knew he had a son ���’

  ‘He has two’, Elena explained, ‘Waldemar and Stephen. I met them both.’

  ‘You did? You never said so.’ This from Jack, with a stern look.

  ‘You didn’t let me. ��� Yeah, Stephen Periwinkle was the one who assessed me’, Elena continued, ‘he has this talent where he takes someone’s hands and feels in which directions their magical abilities are going ���’

  ‘Interesting’, remarked Draco, looking intrigued.

  ‘Is old Periwinkle even married?’ asked the Lady of the Manor.

  ‘Was. He’s a widower’, Jack said, thus revealing that he was informed about the man who, as the hearing at the Wizengamot had shown, continued to be one of his harshest critics and probably an enemy, as well. ‘His wife’s name was Maude, ne�� Abbott. She died many years ago in an accident involving an aggressive magical plant.’

  Elena knew how good he was with names, but was still surprised. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘It was in the Prophet then’, Daysen replied with a shrug. ‘One of the sons was with her when it happened. He was unharmed, though I’ve heard rumours that the incident has pushed him over the edge somehow.’

  ‘Somehow?’ Elena repeated doubtfully. She guessed that Jack meant Stephen. The story of what had happened to his mother quite shocked her.

  ‘The child has never been to Hogwarts’, Jack went on reasonably, ‘home-schooled, which suggests that he wasn’t suitable for an ordinary school system.’

  Elena was tempted to voice her thoughts on Stephen Periwinkle, but remembered that this was not what the others wanted to hear and thus continued to tell her story. She described how after half-an-hour’s flight, she had arrived at the place. She couldn’t explain it any differently, because the moment she thought about the location of the academy, her tongue became heavy again. Whatever spell had been put on her at the academy ��� and she couldn’t even remember when exactly it had been done ��� was very strong indeed. And thus, she was unable to tell her listeners that she knew damn well where the Crowley Academy was ��� nowhere else but in an outhouse of Abrasax Manor, called Abrasax House, next door to where the Crowley family lived. But then, realizing this hadn’t exactly come as a surprise to her.

  Upon her arrival, she had gone through an admission procedure, mainly consisting of her filling out forms in the presence of a kind and formally dressed witch who’d then presented her with a timetable and sent her on her way to classes. According to the schedule, it had been Transfiguration which had put her into a good mood right away as it was her favourite subject. However, the lesson hadn’t quite gone as she’d expected.

  The classroom had been spacious, almost purist, suffused with a bright December sunlight and only a small number of desks. Along with her, six other students had gathered there, only half of them English as she had soon found out, and of varying ages. The pale girl from the carriage had not been among them; Elena had watched her being ushered away to a place unknown immediately upon arrival.

  The teacher ��� a witch in her fifties and obviously pureblood (by now, Elena was quite able to tell the difference) ��� had had a heavy French accent, introducing herself as Madame Calvet. She was tall with smoke-grey hair arranged in a beehive and left an altogether stern and forbidding impression. However, the first thing she’d done had been impressive: with only a few sparse waves of her wand she had transfigured a leather bag first into a jewellery box, then into a teapot and then into a vermillion-feathered bird she’d let fly out of the window. The speed by which she’d done it had taken the student’s breath away; even Elena had realized that this was quite out of the ordinary. Normally, transfiguring was a process that required a lot of concentration, and even then no more than variants of any original object could be achieved. When the students had stopped gasping, Madame Calvet had explained that this kind of powerful transfiguration could only be done by means of certain mental techniques; these techniques were exactly what Madame Calvet was going to teach her students. She had then asked them to all gather their chairs and form a circle in the middle of the room. What had happened then Elena found hard to explain.

  ‘It was like meditating’, she said, ‘she wanted us to practice emptying our minds. So we sat there like idiots, I was totally expecting her to start with Om mani padme hum any moment ���’

  ‘Om what?’

  ‘Meditation mantra’, Daysen supplied dryly, ‘Muggles think it’s useful.’

  Elena cast him a dirty look. ‘Anyway’, she went on, ‘Madame Calvet explained that ordinary wizards only use a fraction of their brain power as it is, and if the dormant parts could be awakened and harnessed for magic, anything was possible, one’s magic would become so much stronger ���’

  Jack scoffed and all eyes turned on him. ‘That’s not new’, he declared, ‘it’s the basis of Dark Arts.’

  Narcissa raised another eyebrow and looked partly amused. ‘They’re teaching their students Dark Arts?’

  ‘I don’t know about that’, Elena said, ‘but I certainly never heard the words ‘consciousness’ and ‘capacity enhancement’ that
often in one week. To be frank, it reminded me of the workings of a cult. Have any of you ever heard about Scientology?’ However, she met with blank gazes and waved it away. ‘It all sounds interesting, no doubt. But I can’t shake the feeling that most of it is quite ��� dodgy.’

  ‘Did it take?’ Draco asked curiously.

  Elena grinned, then stretched out her hand. Within a few seconds ��� and solely by using her hand ��� she transfigured her fork into a quill, then into a pencil, then back into a fork.

  ‘Whoa!’ was Draco’s reaction.

  ‘Not too bad’, said Jack with a dead-pan face and gulped down the rest of his wine before impetuously holding out the glass to be refilled by a scurrying house-elf.

  ‘However dodgy, those techniques appear to work’, remarked Narcissa, partly amused. ‘That can’t be too bad, can it?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure’, Elena replied, ‘and maybe it’s just me that I find it ��� peculiar and ��� dangerous.’

  ‘Magic can be dangerous’, proposed Narcissa.

  ‘It all depends on how you use it’, Daysen commented. ‘I agree with Elena, though, in that it all sounds very ��� power-oriented.’

  ‘How about the other students?’ Draco wanted to know. ‘What did they think about it?’

  ‘Most of them were just thrilled. ��� I found out later that at least two of them are more or less squibs, though from very wealthy families. So I’m guessing that they bought their way into the academy. They did get quite good results, too, and it was obviously much more than they’d expected.’

  ‘We should send Argus Filch there’, murmured Daysen and it earned him a neighing laugh from Draco as well as a delighted chuckle from Narcissa.

  Elena who didn’t know who Argus Filch was went on. ‘In the afternoon, it was Charms. The teacher’s a guy from Russia, he hardly speaks English, but he was very well able to let us know what he wanted from us, just by menacing stares and imperious gestures. ��� Again, he started the lesson with meditation. Any lesson there starts with it. ��� The next day was even harder. It was Arithmancy almost all morning ���’