Weepy In The Eyes
The loud voice of Ronald Weasley carried through the frequented corridor, turning some heads. “Honestly! Why are we doing this? Why do you want to find her so badly? Don’t tell me she’s your friend now!”
“What we should be doing is completing our History of Magic homework since you’re now behind on your studies. You should really start coming to class, Harry.”
“Yea. For once, I think Hermione’s got it right. We should be… looking at books… instead of wasting time on a witch hunt.”
“Try saying that like you mean it,” Harry sassed at Ron. “When we find Catallena, we can go together. She said she likes the library. Besides, I promised that I’d see her today.”
“But Harry, do you think that’s wise? I mean – wouldn’t it be more efficient if we did our school work first and then looked for her,” Hermione requested, grasping at straws. “You have so much to do, you won’t be able to properly talk to her, anyway. In fact, maybe we should look for her tomorrow when you actually have time.” She was walking ahead of them all, trying to sneakily direct them toward the library.
“Will you stop trying to find excuses? I don’t get why you can’t be friends with her! And stop pushing me! We’re going this way.”
They walked down another hallway and climbed a few staircases, though the other two were reluctant in their steps. Harry didn’t know exactly where they were headed. He was just hoping to catch sight of a silver braid disappearing behind a corner.
“It’s not like I don’t want to be friends with her! It’s just that… well… “
“What Hermione is trying to say is that we’re sure there are lots of interesting and not-at-all-creepy thoughts behind those eyes. I’m sure that she would be… entertaining to hang out with. She seems like a right blast. It’s just that everyone knows hanging out with her will get you on the bad side of most of the school. I don’t want to die at eleven! I haven’t outclassed Percy yet!”
“Well don’t say it like that!” Hermione shoved Ron, making him rub his shoulder and begin to argue back when she continued, facing Harry: “But he is at least a little in the right. It wouldn’t go unnoticed that we’re close to her. You saw how everyone reacted at the Great Hall.” Harry knew she was referring to when Harry brought Catallena to have dinner with them at the Gryffindor table. He reminded himself of the stares, the sneers and the not-so-subtle whispers but couldn’t bring himself to care all too much. He kept on walking forward and peering behind hanging curtains and statues.
“The Slytherins will skin us!” Ron groaned, tugging at the collar of his jumper. As if on cue, two Slytherin first years threw them a mean glance as they walked by. Hermione took fistfuls of Harry and Ron’s robes and pulled them through the first set of doors out of the hallway.
The doors led them into a courtyard, where the sun shone coldly and the air smelled strongly of dirt and fresh rainfall. Little raindrops sparkled on spiderwebs and the ground was covered with colourful leaves that last night’s storm had finally rattled from the tall trees.
“See?” Ron exclaimed, his voice slightly higher than usual. “Those snakes! It’s like–!”
A few students practised spells sitting on the stone steps leading to a bubbling fountain depicting a small dragon. Surprised by the trio’s sudden and loud appearance, one of the students accidentally sent a splash of water their way. If not for Hermione’s quick thinking, the three of them would have been frustrated and soaked . A quick “ Protego !” and a sheepish apology later Harry, Ron and Hermione were scurrying along some pathway, away from listening ears.
Ron wouldn’t let it go, however: “It’s like they sniff out the weakest of the pack and strike at anyone who tries getting in between them and their dinner. I may be a lion,” Ron stared gravely at Harry, pointing at the crest on his uniform, “but I don’t want to be snake food.” Harry had to seriously fight the urge to roll his eyes at his friend.
Ron continued: “Nocturne is a baby bird Ravenclaw, practically begging to be flicked on the forehead as you walk by that abnormally short and weepy eyed little–”
“ What Ron is trying to say ,” gritted Hermione through her teeth, shoving Ron into a rose bush and making Harry turn to face them, “is that she doesn’t really blend in and everyone knows it. Everyone talks about her behind her back saying nasty things. I mean – I heard Susan Bones tell Parvati that if you strike Nocturne with the handle of a broom three times hard enough, she’ll spit out pumpkin flavoured gummies like a piñata. I’m just not sure it’s very smart to be associated with a person like that.”
Harry couldn’t believe his friends would say the things they were currently very passionate about. He was getting fed up with his friends. Harry turned to them, face feeling a little hot, and blurted: “We’ll you’re friends with me, are you not?” It shut the two of them up effectively.
They stood there in the garden for a quiet moment. Only the low chirping of a mourning dove and the quiet stream of water down a drainpipe could be heard over Harry’s heavy breathing.
“I know they talk about me too. About the boy who lived and about my parents and about Voldemort . The Slytherins have already got it out for me too. I didn’t think you two cared because you’re my friends!”
Hermione was getting teary eyed and stuttering, saying that she didn’t mean it like that and that of course she wanted to be friends with Harry. That she didn’t care about the attention or the bullying from Malfoy or the others. Ron looked ashamed of himself (and a little uncomfortable tangled up on the ground in the bush’s branches).
“And Catallena never said anything. Just… I really like her and I want you two to like her too.” Harry looked elsewhere, not wanting to meet their sorry eyes. Ron nodded at Harry’s feet (as he was eye level with them) and Hermione was about to apologise again, when another pair of feet not belonging to any of the three of them caught Ron’s attention.
He screamed and bounced to his feet like a cat, making the trio quickly and unceremoniously rush away from the rose bush and clutch each other’s hands. The bush was unnaturally big and the last of its roses were barely hanging on to it. Yellowing petals had gathered at the foot of it, carried down by the cold weather. They stared at it intently, catching how amongst the fallen petals next to the indent of where Ron had smashed down some of the branches, two feet wearing pearly white shoes stuck out.
“Who is it?” Hermione whispered barely loud enough for the boys to hear.
“I don’t know,” whined Ron, looking positively shaken.
“D-Do you think they’re okay? Why are they laying in a rose bush?”
“I don’t know,” sniffled Ron.
Harry took a few steps toward the bush, making Ron and Hermione whisper-shout at him about some trap Malfoy could’ve left for them. To be fair, it wouldn’t have been the first time, given that Malfoy had tried to trap Harry into getting caught out of bed after curfew by Filch by initiating a duel in the trophy room only a few weeks prior.
But Harry had a good idea of who would be the kind of person to lie in a rose bush for unclear reasons. He thought he now recognised the shoes as well, and a mixture of relief and happiness settled in his stomach. To make sure that his hypothesis was correct, he kneeled on the ground and carefully, so as to not get pricked by thorns, reached in and parted the thick branches to reveal a silver braid.
“Catallena!”
“Oh, hi.”
Harry tried parting the branches further but couldn’t get to the girl at the bottom. “What are you doing here?” “Sleeping.”
“It’s Nocturne?” Ron asked with a strange look on his face. Hermione joined Harry in trying to find the girl within the leaves. There were still tears in her eyes. Ron stayed planted to where he was.
The two children’s sleeves were getting damp from the wet leaves and yet the most they did was reveal a braid here or a blue bow-tied tie there. How had she gotten in there in the first place?
Harry resignedly pulled his hand out, his sleeve getting snagged on a thorn in the process, ripping it slightly. Hermione did the same and muttered a “ Reparo ” to fix his robe. “Thanks,” Harry muttered back. Hermione wiped her eyes.
Ron groaned and suddenly he was next to them, pulling Catallena out of the bush by her feet, revealing the tousled and confused girl to the sunlight. “There,” he said, but though he was trying to sound annoyed, he couldn’t quite manage that.
“Y’know eavesdropping is wrong, don’t you? How much did you hear?” He asked Catallena, sounding quite dejected. Bright orange hair partly covered his quilty eyes.
And when Catallena wouldn’t answer, Hermione burst into a teary apology directed at both Harry and Catallena.
“I was wrong,” she would say in between explanations and apologies. “Of course I want to be friends,” she reassured often. “I don’t think any of those nasty things I’ve heard about you are true.”
“I don’t like pumpkin,” Catallena confirmed, though her voice was even quieter and sadder than usual.
“And I don’t actually think you look like a baby bird who deserves to be flicked on the forehead.”
“ Ron –”
“I mean it! I'm sorry!” Hermione sent him another dirty look. “And yes, you can eat with us sometimes. Even if they might kill us.”
Harry looked happier than he had that whole day he had spent listening to his friends reject Catallena. “It is almost dinner time,” he pointed out.
“ Fine ,” Ron relented. Harry got up and extended his hands to Catallena and Hermione. (Before getting off the ground, the latter smiled with her puffy eyes and Catallena shook his hand.) They began walking toward the Great Hall, but not before Ron remarked to their newest addition: “But you do have to admit that you are abnormally short and extremely weepy in the eyes.” He clutched the back of his head in pain after Hermione was done with him.
Dinner in the Great Hall tasted delicious as it always did. Catallena would’ve preferred desert – the superior course – over meat, vegetables and gravy. However, one spoonful of chewed mashed potato flung to her back with a spoon was enough reason to leave for the library earlier that day.
Hermione’s knowledge on spells was once again very useful. They stood in the dimly lit book isles of the library and watched the witch swish her wand and pronounce an incantation that left Catallena’s robes spotless.
“Where did you learn that?” Harry asked her.
Exasperated, she wondered aloud: “Honestly, the three of you! Where have you been during the last few months when we learned these basic spells in class?” Catallena’s suddenly sombre demeanour made the rest of them really wonder, however, just where the girl had been. In the past, days would occasionally go past without anyone seeing her.
Hermione backtracked and added nicely: “But it’s okay! Not too late! Besides, I’ve been helping these two with their homework and was hoping you would join us. Y’know, now that we are friends. I’ll teach you the spell.”
They found an empty table big enough for the four of them and set their spell books onto it. Ron was still huffing “I told you so’s” in between note taking and Harry set to finish his History of Magic homework before the approaching quidditch practise.
Catallena sat low on her stool and stared at Harry and Ron as they worked. She wondered to herself how she had gotten there, into the circle of friends, so suddenly.
She watched Ron Weasley scrunch his freckled button nose as he scratched ugly letters onto his essay paper. Every once in a while he would let out a frustrated sigh and messily overline his text while twisting at his hair with his ink splotched fingers. His mouth moved funnily as he wrote, twisting into grins and grimaces as he went.
Harry Potter was more purposeful in his writing, yet Catallena noticed him sneaking glances at Hermione and Ron’s homeworks. Candlelight reflected off his round glasses and sparkly green eyes as they shifted from paper to paper. His hair looked like the ink on Ron’s fingers, black and very messy. Though his bony fingers were cleaner, there were random bandages covering what Catallena imagined to be small injuries from playing quidditch.
Catallena turned to look at Hermione next, but found that much like how she had studied the two boys, Hermione had been studying Catallena. Their brief eye contact startled them back into the task at hand.
“I can teach you the spell, if you’d like. The cleaning one.” Catallena stared at Hermione’s red and gold tie pristinely hanging from her neck. Her eyes flitted over to the tight curls that weren’t confined in braids, but rather bounced around freely and wildly down the girl’s back. Catallena nodded and watched how her response made the curls fly around when Hermione reached for her wand and text book.
At the same time Ron pushed the book he had been reading off the table and buried his face in his hands, getting ink on his nose and cheek. Harry secretly snatched Hermione’s essay and held it on his lap as Hermione was distracted by the promise of showing off her skills and teaching a friend.
“Take out your wand, we’ll be practising,” Hermione instructed, feeling important. Catallena pulled her wand out of its bunny-covered holster.
“Whoa! That’s a cool wand!” Ron voiced and leaned forward on his forearms to take a better look. He snatched it up to bring it up to his face and looked like he was going to try a spell but immediately yelped and let the wand clatter onto the middle of the table. He hissed in pain and held his hand closely to his chest, tears welling in his eyes. “What in the name of Merlin was that?” he yelled.
A few faces peeked from behind bookshelves and the librarian – Madam Pince – from across the library looked like she would jinx Ron on the spot. “Sorry, sorry!” Ron mouthed to her and she shook her head disapprovingly, though she returned to her duties.
Ron turned back to the table and whispered unbelievingly: “It burned me! I tried to do the Wingardium spell, but it burned me!”
Harry grabbed the hand Ron was clutching and looked at it in confusion. “There’s no mark.”
“No mark?” Ron examined his hand as well and looked even wilder when he concurred that there was, in fact, no proof of any burning on his palm. “Witchcraft.”
Catallena took her wand and turned it over in her hands. It had never burned her. There was a sensation, a buzz or a warmth, but it never hurt. Hermione took the wand out of Catallena’s hands and attempted the cleaning spell. “ Scourgif – OW!” The wand once again fell onto the text books on the table and Madam Pince had murder in her eyes.
“Hurts doesn’t it?” Ron whispered. Hermione was biting her bottom lip and massaging the palm of her hand. “Your turn,” the ginger boy beckoned Catallena.
The little girl took the wand and turned it in her hands a few times. She read the textbook’s instructions carefully and then with a firm grasp and a whispered spell, she casted Scourgify . The burn felt pleasant travelling throughout her body, like a hot cup of tea on a cold day.
In an instant flash of bright blue light that raised her shining hair, all the books, scrolls and quills were returned to their respective book bags. The ink on Ron’s fingers and face disappeared with a fizz and Harry’s glasses’ lenses became clearer than ever.
They sat stunned and unblinking (perhaps a little blinded by the light).
“I did it?”
“Ye– uh… Yes, I think you did it.”
“It didn’t hurt you?”
“No.”
“Hm. Catallena, exactly what kind of wand is that?” Harry whispered, still staring at the empty table through his spotless glasses.
“You got it at Ollivander’s, right? I mean, it looks smaller than the Elder Wand I’ve been imagining.”
“The what wand?” Harry asked Ron.
“Nevermind,” Ron dismissed. “What is it made out of?”
“Aspen.”
“Huh. Nice. And the core?”
“My hair.”
“ Your hair ?”
Catallena nodded.
“Your own wand. Is– Has your own hair. Inside it?” More nodding.
“That would explain it, I guess. The wand refuses to let anyone else use it, because it is very attached to you. And why exactly is your hair the way it is? All shiny and magical?” Hermione asked what everyone was thinking.
“I was born like this. I don’t know.”
They all became silent once again, thinking deeply of their discovery.
“Well, I think I was wrong about you. That was pretty cool,” Ron offered as a sort-of-apology. “Did you want a go?” he then asked Harry, offering the wand to him.
“No thanks, I think I’ll pass.”