Chapter 5
I had never been as empty and numb as I felt right now. My mind was quiet, truly quiet, with no locked-up chest threatening to explode with erratic thoughts. I did have a million questions, but none of them seemed to reach my lips as I drank long and deep from the mug of hot chamomile tea. Madame Pomfrey had helped me change into a pair of pale blue pajamas, and while I nursed my tea, she cleaned the open wounds that had indeed been bleeding. I tried not to wince at the astringent she used, but the healing salve that came after soothed the sting. My head ached terribly from the impact against the wall, and she confirmed what I already knew — that I was concussed.
She wanted me to stay awake for a while so she could monitor me and I obliged, staring at nothing, while, in an office just on the other side of the wall, Dumbledore was tending to Professor Snape.
“Those boys are going to be expelled,” she told me with a frown set in her features.
I nodded, expecting as much. I didn’t wish that on them, but I knew the punishment would have to be extreme. What they gave Snape not only made him harm a student, it caused him to be sexually aggressive towards one. I thought back to how they had plucked my hair a few days ago and briefly wondered if it had been intended for a different potion, or if this had been their intention all along. They certainly couldn’t have known his frustration would have been directed at me — I didn’t even know, so it seemed ridiculous to think they hadn’t already formulated the potion by then. Regardless, they had discussed dropping out anyhow to open a prank shop, so I imagine they weren’t entirely disappointed with the consequences, although I doubt Molly Weasley would be so forgiving. Madame Pomfrey sighed when she finished tending to my injuries and stared at me for a moment.
“For the record, I don’t believe he would have ever hurt you if he was acting on his own free will.”
It was a strange thing to say, considering he was a professor. It implied that should there have been an opportunity for any physical interactions, it wouldn’t be painful, not non-existent.
“I don’t think he would’ve either,” I said carefully, and despite his vitriol towards me the last few days, I did believe that.
I swallowed hard, afraid to ask the question I already knew the answer to, but I met her worry-filled eyes, and I had to say it, had to ease her of the burden.
“Aside from him being dosed with that potion, everything before that…it’s because of the wands, isn’t it?”
She opened her mouth to protest, but no denial came, and she stared at me with an exasperated expression.
“He’s been angry because the other wand belongs to him, doesn’t it?” I demanded firmly.
She glanced at the still-closed door behind her, hesitating. She shook her head, suddenly filled with resolve.
“Yes, it does.”
“And the symptoms…we were both experiencing our own versions of them. All his outbursts and irritation?”
“The wands can drastically heighten everything - emotions, fears, anxieties, insecurities, all of it. For you that displays as panic attacks and an inability to control your thoughts, for him, anger.”
“He’s been more irritable this year than ever before. Is it getting worse, or is it just because he knew I was questioning it myself? You told him I was questioning it, after we talked. You must’ve. Was he angry that I was getting close to the truth?”
“Are you?” She asked, quirking an inquisitive, hopeful brow at me.
I thought about it.
“The symptoms started shortly after I met him, at least for me. He’s always been ill-tempered according to the students that came before me, but nothing quite like this. That must mean the wands create this chaos for their witch or wizard when they’re close to one another,” I said carefully.
She nodded, encouraging my line of thought.
“Obviously they impact our emotions…”
I considered how I felt when I was in his presence. Aside from today, my mind felt quieter, more subdued, but my anxiety was higher and so was my fear. Being near me made him angry, but that was anger that only seemed to become prominent this year. Had he been angry before now and I just didn’t notice it? No, I don’t think so. Come to think of it, his anger wasn’t quite as potent until the topic of the wands came up with my friends, the day Ari requested that book.
“The textbook Hagrid told you about, the contents were intentionally erased, weren’t they?”
“Yes.”
So maybe him demanding me to leave and being angry wasn’t because he hated me, but because he knew something he didn’t want me to find out. Something that would make him keep his distance and hide any trace of its existence. I considered the symptoms themselves. They never really go away, but they do lessen when we’re far away from each other, and become more pronounced when reunited or right after they’re separated. As if they needed to be near each other, inflicting discomfort on the wielder at separation, and exacerbated symptoms once brought back together, like a reminder of what they were. Why would he go to such trouble to keep me from finding out? There was something else, there had to be a motive, a reasoning for it. I recalled Madame Pomfrey saying it would come to a head at some point anyway.
The wands are undoubtedly drawn to one another. Distance subdues them but doesn’t satisfy them. Proximity heightens them but makes the witch or wizard so high-strung it would be foolish to keep the wand if there was no solution to the distortion of emotions, which means ultimately, there is a goal.
My stomach churned. I’d been having thoughts about Snape recently. And he’d been odd in class, not reprimanding me, correcting my mistake, leaning over me… all of that, until he was suddenly furious. Why would he be so mad? Except, I’d been having thoughts about him. Intimate ones. And he was showing me ounces of favoritism with the liquid luck potion whether he meant to or not. And then, he was furious, kicking me out of class for seemingly no good reason. Why would he have wanted me out of his sight? Or perhaps he just wanted me to be as far away from him as possible. But why? What would happen if we remained close by? The wand always chooses the witch or wizard, and if the wands are drawn together like magnets, then surely it must’ve recognized something within each of us that would align with those intentions.
“You are mine, Hellstrand.”
“You’ve always known that, haven’t you? You’ve always known you would be mine.”
It was all just a ploy to pull us together, to keep us together. I gasped and looked at Madame Pomfrey who examined me with a knowing expression.
“It’s a bond, drawing us together to satisfy their own magnetism. It causes us to lose control of our thoughts and emotions until that goal is fulfilled. It’s acting like a bond connecting the two of us,” I breathed.
“It is a bond,” that familiar dark voice said from the entryway, stoic and preternaturally still as his eyes trailed over me. “One that cannot be broken.”
Madame Pomfrey squeezed my hand and stood up, nodding past Snape and towards Dumbledore who waited for her to walk him out, leaving the two of us alone again. What a strange thing to do considering what had just happened.
He stepped into the makeshift bedroom, leaving the curtain open behind him. His obsidian eyes scanned my face and neck, all the way to my exposed collarbones, eyeing the ruin he left behind, I suspected. He didn’t look as nearly disheveled as I felt, but then again, I hadn’t been touching him. Still, there was an exhaustion present in his face.
“Even if the wand was claimed by someone else?” I asked, gripping my mug tightly.
I fought the urge to cover up the bruising, to hide beneath the blankets. My mind was unable to forget the way his fingers had stroked me or the wetness between my thighs. I was still wet from it, having not had the chance to change my knickers or bathe yet. It made my stomach churn.
“It would incinerate them. Some have tried, in the past. It is inescapable, irrefutable, and unbreakable.”
“You’ve known since I first received my wand, haven’t you?”
“Yes, Ollivander told Dumbledore and I when your wand chose you. It is rare, but it has happened before. Every case just the same. Anyone who has dared to try to control the magic, or change its outcome, has suffered a terrible death.”
“And the alternative is living with it, with each other,” I phrased carefully.
His brow tightened, and though I knew I had been delicate about it, he did not seem to possess such niceties.
“It’s more complex than that.”
He looked weak, like he needed to sit down. I didn’t know what effects the spell had left on him, but he was calm now, or at least composed. Had he not been under its effects, he never would have attacked me. I felt sure of that.
“You can sit,” I said quietly.
I had the upper hand here, and he knew it. He wasn’t trying to intimidate me or be the disciplinarian professor I knew him to be. This was about honesty, about the truth. He obliged, settling stiffly in the wooden chair at my bedside.
“It’s not just proximity it requires. There’s an ancient magic tied to the Phoenix, something that enables it to regenerate from ashes each time it dies. It’s unstudied…We do not know what causes it or how it works. Only that it does. That magic is passed on to the wands through its feathers. Its desire to be united is driven by the need to regenerate, to reform.”
My mouth grew dry with understanding.
“It’s not often that those wands make themselves available to be chosen by a witch or wizard, but when it does, they often anticipate being reunited shortly after it claims its wielder, by its other half matching with another magical being it deems compatible.”
His jaw ticked.
“And through us…it’s…what? Meant to regenerate? To reform after our deaths?”
“To reunite that which it believes to be most adept at what it does itself. To reproduce. By translation, to have us reproduce. To form an intimate bond that would make that possible. A permanent, unending commitment. Through magic, and through intimacy.”
The idea of coupling with man sitting next to me made my blood run cold. Sure, I had imagined it a time or two, but only when my thoughts had run away from me with his scent fresh on my mind. But, the reality of that, of being tied eternally to my Potions professor, to a man twice my age — it seemed insane. And yet, here we were, the evidence of an inconceivable truth. I licked my dry lips thoughtfully, souring at the taste of blood as I felt the scab forming there.
“I apologize for what happened. Had I been in control of my own actions, this never would have occurred.”
I cleared my throat at his declaration. “Fred and George mentioned they’d slipped you something just before you walked in. By then…”
I shrugged, wincing at the stiffness in my shoulders. The bites covered them, and there was deep bruising all over my torso from his hands and possessive grip on my body.
“I will understand if you wish to search for other solutions to this, but I must tell you that resisting the bond is painful.”
I frowned at that. “I wasn’t aware of it until now, and while I’ve had symptoms over the years, I haven’t exactly felt pain. Well, maybe the headaches, but… Does that mean you’ve been resisting it? From the beginning, you’ve been plagued with different symptoms?”
“The magic apparently does not recognize the more respectful traditions of the new world — meaning age, evidently, means nothing to the Phoenix. It only understood that the bond had not been fulfilled. Given your age, I resisted, yes, and remained resolved to do. Molesting an eleven-year-old girl wasn’t exactly something I was eager to do,” he quirked a brow at me.
A sadness hit me then. He’s known for six years and actively resisted it to protect me. It’s why he was so mad I was digging into it this year.
“If all of this hadn’t happened, how long were you going to wait to tell me, if at all? Would you have just allowed it to drive us to insanity?”
He sighed. “It wouldn’t have been long after you graduated. While you weren’t aware of it, I was, and when you’ve been away for holiday, the pull, which began as an uncomfortable twinge, has worsened each year since. This year, was nearly your last, however. I was confined to this wing the two weeks before your return.”
My eyes widened at the thought of him in here, alone, and suffering with symptoms I could only imagine.
“You could have told me before now. I understand wanting to wait until I was of age, but if the magic exerted or punished you so terribly —“
“What would you have had me do? Tell a fifteen-year-old girl that she was to be intimately chained to her professor for the rest of her life? Taken you against your will in front of your classmates?” He leered.
My face heated at the implication.
“I imagine there are other things that can be done to satisfy the bond, at least enough effort that it would’ve recognized…the consummation would follow soon enough.”
“And how would you have proposed that, Miss Hellstrand? Would have sat at my feet while I instructed your peers? Should I have had you spend your free evenings on your knees for me instead of getting sweets with your friends and studying for exams?”
The vulgarity of his words shocked me, though I supposed there was no reason left to be discreet. The idea of getting on my knees in front of him, and what that implied had me shifting my thighs ever so slightly. He didn’t miss the movement, those dark eyes whirring towards my legs. It dawned on me then that I hardly knew the man in front of me, and yet, he had just stolen my first kiss, been the first to touch my breasts, to pet my me so intimately. And, undoubtedly, he would be the first to do so much more.
Unable to think through a solution that would’ve been at all appropriate, I relented in my scolding of him.
“I’m sorry you had to carry that alone. It was unfair for you to live in such pain at the expense of preserving my innocence.”
The statement alone not only made me feel guilty; it made me realize how fortunate I had been that he didn’t force something so mature on me at such a young age. I had been given the gift of a childhood spent with friends I adored, and the freedom to explore my sexuality with no fear of what the future held. Had I decided to be intimate with someone or plan for a future with a boy I fancied, even if it could have never come to fruition, it was within my grasp. Only I never did. I had never desired anyone, never experimented with anyone. Maybe deep down I knew, somehow, subconsciously that there was no one out there I would want. It wasn’t until this year that I had even begun to understand my attraction to him.
“Thank you for that…For giving me the chance to be a teenager,” I whispered.
His head dipped, though he said nothing as he studied the sleeves of his frock.
“I suspect the events of today will be enough to satisfy the bond for a week or so, perhaps even longer. I will discuss with Dumbledore what the appropriate next steps might be and how can we navigate this while you are still a student. Rest, Miss Hellstrand. You have need of it.”
I watched with weary eyes as he stood and walked away without so much as glancing back. The curtain slid shut behind him, and I let his footsteps down the hall lull me to sleep.