Of Magic and Pain
Mood music if you fancy it. 🖤 https://open.spotify.com/track/6QzGqC6uS8RuMDDNxdJgPK?si=7357297af8574d16
Monday, 19th September 1892
Was there a sound the world made when the glass castle fell? When the turrets fragmented and the foundations crumbled. When the truth she’d clung to for any solace of redemption came crashing to ruin and left her spiraling into freefall.
If there was, Clara couldn’t hear it over the steady thrum in her ears. The rush of blood that pounded that steady drumbeat against her veins. Though, even that could not stifle the feeling of the eyes that bore into her skin–watched and waited for her fall. And it was only when she felt the sting and hot trickle of blood against her skin that she realized she’d marked scarlet crescents into her palms.
She made no excuse when she left the classroom. Professor Ronen had asked if she wanted a break, and she supposed that was reason enough—not that it would have mattered.
Clara didn’t wait to hear if anyone called out to stop her.
She didn’t look back to see if anyone had followed.
If there was anyone left to care when she sliced her feet on the shards of her fantasy and left crimson through the wreckage.
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There was nothing gentle in how she threw the Map Chamber door open—nothing comforting in the crash of metal on stone.
There’d been a time she’d held reverence for this place. When she’d brushed footsteps through the mist and gazed through stardust at the world, they had shown her. A time it had caressed the edges of her daydreams and spoke of a purpose beyond the shambles of her destruction. An answer to the question of who she was and reason to the unexplained bursts of energy that had not once shown her a Hogwarts letter, until that day when she’d been fifteen, and those men had cornered her in an alley.
There’d been a time she’d thought she’d found her place in this room.
When the waning glimpses of her naivety had pushed past the demands of the Keepers, the Ministry, her Mentors, everyone. It had wrapped the lies in pretty paper and whispered that people were more apt to help her than use her.
But whatever naivety she’d still clung to–the smallest of threads held between fingers tight enough to feel the fractures in her bones and bruise the places she refused to let go–had snapped with the revelation of their deception.
The portraits were empty. They had been since the end of Fifth year. When Ranrock had been defeated, and Sebastian had gone. She’d rushed down, determined to renew her training, to reassure herself that it hadn’t all been for naught, only to find herself abandoned again.
She’d called out to them all of Sixth year. Beat her fists against the empty frames until the skin on her knuckles cracked and bled. Until the stardust lost its luster, and the map became no more than a reminder of the crimson stains she’d left over the highlands.
“PERCIVAL!” Not Professor, not even Rakham. She was done offering them the respect that came with the title.
It wasn’t a shout,
It wasn’t even a scream.
More inhuman than anything.
So often, it had been her fear that called the ancient magic to her. Fear that had seen the magic use her body as a conduit for its power until the threat was deemed neutralized and Clara was left weak and shaking. She’d collapsed more than once when it came to their trials. Woken after her battles with the guardians, cracked heavy eyes through the layers of dust and swallowed the sour that lingered on her tongue to stumble through the wreckage and claim the memory she’d given so much of herself to obtain. Fear had called the magic over and over until she’d tried to fight past the verge of collapse in the repository. When it had taken too much from her and, consciousness had fled to the depths of her mind for weeks to escape the onslaught.
Now, her anger took its place.
It was not the sweet rush or elegant violence of an unforgivable. No, this burned in her throat, curled acrid against her tongue. White hot and caustic until her lungs strained with every breath–scraped raw and bloody against her ribs.
She could hear the places it cracked in her voice, feel where its untethered form took hold of the syllables, and rent them apart.
Perhaps it was the presence of the magic that brought them out, that called them to their frames. All four of them, their eyebrows creased. Their postures too stiff for ease, guarded secrets– lies cracked through the visage of kindly guardians who would teach her to control her magic.
“Miss Elmore?.... How….why are you here ?”
Charles spoke first, and Clara didn’t have time to acknowledge the falter in his question or realize the tension that darted in glances between the four.
“The memories. You changed them. Why?” She could feel the places where the magic crepitated against her tongue. She’d never tried to talk through it before, and the magic scorched with every word.
The insult behind Percival's expression might have angered her more than his words. The simpered smile of an adult talking down to a child, “My young friend, the memories showed all you needed to know.”
“You lied !”
“We gave you the information we deemed necessary .” Bakar had never been one to mince his words, and his disdain for her had never been hidden behind shrouds of false comfort. At another time, it might have calmed her.
“ I KILLED PEOPLE!” She wouldn’t have been sure if they’d understood beyond the crackles of magic if it hadn’t been for the little gasp behind her. So small she shoudn’t have been able to hear it, except the magic sent every one of her senses to high alert. The very air chaffed at her skin.
The sound snapped her head to the doorway. She could see them there- The twins and Ominis, all crowded in the entrance. In the past, she might have been annoyed they’d followed–adamant as she’d been in the past, despite Sebastian's insistence, that he not accompany her here.
Now, she only feared she might hurt them with how the magic festered under her skin.
She had only had the slightest twinge of regret for what Anne had learned. She’d managed until then to keep vague on the details of what she’d needed to do. She’d never meant to confirm what she was certain the brunette had already suspected in that way.
“I killed so many people because of those memories. To protect what you showed me. I nearly died –”
“And that was a necessary sacrifice.”
Charles again, but there was too much concentration required in her attempting to restrain the magic to question if he’d been referring to her or those she’d murdered as necessary .
“Why? What haven’t you told me!”
At times, Clara had wondered why they’d made their portraits unreasonably large. But now, as they glared down at her, she thought she understood. She was to be trained and intimidated into submission. If they couldn’t express their power in the physical world, they’d domineer the space. Crush her under their gaze until she was no more than a bug running from giants.
Only Niamh held something different behind her painted eyes. Perhaps because she was another woman, reduced to being known not by her title, as her male counterparts were–though as Headmistress, she’d held rank above them–but by her given name. It wasn’t pity Clara saw there, but something deeper–perhaps understanding. “I warned you this was not a wise path to take with her, Percival.”
“She shouldn’t even be–” Bakar started.
“Another way in which you have underestimated her then.”
Clara only vaguely registered the defense in the woman’s voice, flickering her gaze back to the twins and Ominis before she rounded on the portraits again.
“Where have you all been? All this time. I’ve come here for months! Clara screamed that last word. Forced it past the scrape of magic in her throat. “Were you ever planning to finish my training?”
Maybe it was the way the men laughed. “Finish your training? My dear child, your training is finished. You served your purpose in protecting the repository. What more training could you possibly need?”
If the laughter wasn’t enough, the condescension in it was, and the magic flared around her again. Stronger this time. Wild and untethered, She could feel the places it licked along her bones and ached for release. The places her anger tugged it to the tips of her fingers and begged for destruction.
Only the presence of Ominis and the twins held her conscience enough to force her feet away from the portraits. Ancient magic had never discriminated between those she might determine as good or evil in its devastation, and she couldn’t risk hurting them .
She wasn’t sure if apparition could have moved her faster through blinding flares of white light. Past the Guardians framed at the doorway
Down beneath the school to that pulsing orb. Wrought gobin metal and wreathed in scarlet. The trophy for her sacrifice, or perhaps only evidence of her massacre. They’d cleaned the bodies away since she’d been here. Scourged the blood from the stone and left it to linger in the crevices of her skin.
She couldn’t be sure if the ground cracked below her feet when the magic released and walls crumbled around her. When the blinding pain shook her body so violently, she thought tendons might snap, and her vision faded to flares of white. She might have choked on the ash and dust, except she wasn’t sure there was anything but fire to lick the inside of her throat as the magic maintained its rampage.
Ancient Magic was not kind. It never had been
‘You served your purpose in protecting the repository.’
She’d been used and abandoned. By the Keepers, by the Ministry, her professors, Fig.
Even by Sebastian.
The knowledge of it left her raw.
There’d been one thing she’d held to those nights after the repository. In the nights, she’d dug scarlet to her cheeks with the ferocity of her nightmares and screamed into her pillow. Those nights, she’d hoped those screams would take her to a place she wouldn’t wake from.
Through all of it, she could cling to the belief, the knowledge, however minuscule, that she’d done it all for something .
It was gone.
Crumbled to dust and ruin and whatever excuses she could pin to her destruction were shut away, her conscience set as a prisoner.
Perhaps that was what pulled her fingers toward that hovering orb and siphoned Isadora’s magic to her. Just a piece. She let it gather along her fingers–tendrils of crimson and onyx. The briefest cold relief before the ancient magic resumed its barrage, and whatever of her vision was left faded behind white flames.
Clara couldn’t remember the exact moment she felt his hands against her shoulders. She didn’t know how he’d even managed to follow her. Nor could she determine the precise moment his hands cupped the sides of her face. But she could almost see his freckles beyond the white fire that licked over her vision, and despite how she shook–how her skin must have burned him– his hold never wavered from her.
Sebastian was warm
He always was.
Not blistering like the ancient magic that threatened to consume her. No, this was softer. Something closer to a kiss of sunlight on her cheeks. Warm in a way that pulled her mind beyond the blinding pain that threatened her collapse.
Still, it was minutes before she began to hear his voice beyond the rush of magic in her ears.
“Ara, Love, you have to stop. You can’t do this again.
Mo chridhe, feuch,
feumaidh tu tilleadh.”
Perhaps it was the plea in his voice beyond the words that couldn’t register meaning through her muddled thoughts that let her calm enough to notice how wide his eyes had gone. To see the swirls of pine and the explosion of honeyed flecks through his iris.
Clara fell against him, then. Gripped her fingers into the fabric of his robes and pressed her face into his chest. She was settled enough to feel his arms wrap around her, to feel the way he pulled her against him. How his fingers twisted through her hair and rubbed along the nape of her neck like he’d done those nights in Fifth year when things had become too much.
Just as she’d imagined, he might do all those days ago in the lift.
She knew things weren’t fully settled between them. There was still too much left unacknowledged.
But just then, she didn’t care.
The world could fall to ruin around them.
Because Sebastian had found her in the storm,
and for that moment, however fleeting it may be,
she was safe .