PAPER CONFINES.
06. / Tell Me a Rhyme

✶

       When Colette dreamed, she dreamed in counts of eight. It was the same each night. The strings snapped, her fingertips bruised, the composition went awry, and she woke in a sweat. All the very same, the count; a coronet of snow in her hair, a pine hearth on a stained glass window, the lilting echo of her laugh. Sacred Faustine with her strawberry hair spilling from her coat, her shoelaces untied, her socks full of mud. They'd hide in the crescent of a narrow alley. They'd kiss against the cobblestone—and this was how Colette knew it was a dream—until dizziness spun Colette into something new. She knew what it was. Seven and the sonata swelled with the heavy notes of her heart.

Eight was lovely and ruinous.

Shadows struck the apples of brown cheeks, thick black hair blew wild in the snow, and firewhisky-stained lips parted in beautiful awe.

Faustine was gone, and Nadya was like a mirror. Silver. Sparkling. The whole world shone through her.

It bled, through and through: a world on fire.

Colette couldn't see the bodies, but they were always there. The count had frozen on eight; a flat note stuck spinning forever like she'd spun into a thousand invented kisses.

Dazedly conscious, she tried to reach for Nadya, but there was only storming wind and the lingering, broken sonata. She was alone. The world turned, fire to snow, snow to ash, and only Colette remained.

She shot out of bed with her head pounding, wondering how much longer she would be made to dream such things.

Light poured into the Hufflepuff dormitory. Colette granted herself five deep breaths before she'd tuck the nightmare into a pocket and zip it shut for the rest of the day.

Her ears still rang from the discordant eighth note, but she propped her legs to the side of the bed and stretched, revelling in the soft rug under her feet. Five toes curled, and in the others there was a whispering ache of the surviving nerves.

When she'd first transferred to Hogwarts, all of her dreams had been of Bordeaux—the crescendo of long, elegant fingers dancing over the keys of her mother's piano, the wooden melody of the galoubet, a folksy rendition of some stiff classic. Real music. Cantatas. Music full of life, made with love.

Colette could think of a time when love was scattered in everything she knew. In marjoram and mutton on fine china. Papa's cigars snuffed on a century-old ash pan, spinning tales of Gévaudan between puffs of smoke. Maman and her long white curls, her fitted grey slacks and cuff-sleeves, so different from the girl painted in a pasture at nine that hung above the credenza. Her sister's flowers in the garden; nights of gifted song and supper and too much art too fit in fifty rooms.

The nostalgia of those dreams stung, but they soothed an unmendable wound, like gauze lovingly wrapped too tight.

Colette sighed, practicing Madame Codde's assigned stretches from heel to calf on the ottoman at the foot of her bed. She painted her toes pink and watched the sunlight through the high windows.

A few girls shuffled out of bed with yawned good mornings, the sheets on their empty beds tidying themselves after them. As Colette pulled her robe over her shoulders, her bedding did the same. Someone had told her once that that was a charm set in place by Helena Hufflepuff herself at Hogwarts' inception, but Colette was wary after the other stories they'd tried to fool her into believing when she first transferred.

Did you know that Peeves died after a run-in with a centaur in the forbidden forest? Peeves, annoying as he was, wouldn't be caught dead past the Gamekeeper's hut. Figuratively or literally.

The Slytherins have a blood rite each Friday, practicing necromancy. That wasn't possible, because Colette's Friday nights were routinely occupied by tending to Nadya's drunken wounds, and the RRI was mostly Slytherin anyway. If they were experimenting on the dead, Colette was quite sure she'd have noticed by now.

There's a hidden chamber, deep in the school, where a great beast lurks, awaiting its master's murderous command.

Colette took her cane and left.

The Hufflepuff common room was decorated in a similar fashion to the Great Hall, strewn with paper pumpkins and lights that dangled across the ceiling beams, bowls of sweets on every table, a wonderful assortment of—

"Morning." Nadya was sat on the furthest sofa, wiggling her fingers into a faint wave.

Colette nearly fell down the remaining stairs. "Putain, Nadya! What are you doing here?"

"I memorized your little entry sigil from last time."

"You cannot—What? You cannot memorize it, we have it changed every week!"

"Fine," she sighed, and Colette thought she must have known she was sat right in the stark light of the window, and that her eyes looked like copper medallions; that she looked like she'd been sculpted and splayed for display. Nadya tossed her legs up and spread across the whole sofa. Of course she knew. "I told Julian Abuyen if he didn't let me in I'd transfigure his kidney into a swarm of wasps."

"Nadya!"

"I'm joking! I don't need to do all that work."

"But you would."

Nadya pursed her lips in consideration. "I doubt it," she decided, "Not for him, anyway."

"What are you doing here?"

How long had she been here? Posed in patience, waiting for Colette to wake?

With her cheeks puffed up, Nadya blew out a wearied exhale. "I was thinking of... an act of kindness. Not my forte, but historically yours. So."

"An act of kindness," Colette echoed suspiciously.

"I am capable."

"Yes. In theory you are."

Nadya sighed. "It's for Banks. I don't know what to do."

Colette's tension eased, but was replaced by a new frown. That was characteristic of Nadya. Difficult, but characteristic. "She isn't speaking to you, either."

Nadya nodded.

"Could... could space be better for her?"

"No. She's going to bury herself in books and guilt and—" She slapped the latest edition of The Prophet onto the coffee table— "this bullshit."

Colette leaned forward to pick up the paper, immediately scrutinising the big lettering of the front page.

MURDER AT HOGWARTS:
HEAD GIRL RESPONSIBLE?
By Elisabeth Hopkirk

          The investigation of fifth year prefect Ruby Belahue's gruesome murder continues away from what Ministry officials call 'the scrutiny of the press and public', a disservice to both. With no word from either of the suspects since the week of the attack, the UK waits in anticipation of justice with nothing but stale evidence to assuage fear. One Hogwarts student writes: "Whoever did the killing is still in the castle with us. It's not safe." [...] Another spoke to me personally by means of Floo, desperate to be heard amidst the secrecy: "We all know the petrifications are connected to Ruby's death, but no one's allowed to talk about it. They say they're keeping us safe, but really they're keeping us quiet." When asked about his suspicions, the student told me only that "everyone has their theories, but only a few people besides the professors could have been roaming around that night. I don't think I can say more, but — do I need to?"
           Must this horror be unravelled by Hogwarts' own? Or will Headmaster Dippet maintain impartiality despite his connections with one infamous house at the heart of this case? More on the history of the Banks family can be found

She stopped reading with a huff. A furious ruffle sent the paper right back where it came from, though Colette yearned to tear it in two for good measure.

"I hope she has not been reading these."

Nadya's eyebrows tipped incredulously. "Of course she's reading them. Only I've got no idea where she's doing it. I checked all of her usual spots—in the least 'overbearing mum' way a person can do that—hell, I even asked Circe if she's hiding in her dormitory, but she's not there either."

"Hogsmeade?"

"No, there's too many people."

Colette slumped against one of the bookshelves, sighed, rubbed her eyes and the crease between her brows, and opened them like she'd woken up a second time. Nadya waited with her arms crossed, basking miserably in her little frame of sunlight. Her skirts were in a heap at her thighs, knees dark with bruises from the RRI and a subtle pout on her lips. Her fingers were littered with brass and emerald, a yellow gemstone Colette didn't know and two eyes in different shapes. Nadya twirled one through the escaped strands of her braid: hair that looked so soft Colette wondered how it would feel to comb her fingers through it. She blinked again.

"What do you propose?"

She groaned and sank into the sofa, and did actually look like she might fall into the crevice and send the cushions flying. "Cookies?"

Colette couldn't help it. She laughed.

"What? Don't laugh. I tried thinking of other gifts but I don't want to overdo it or she'll give me that funny look she does. Or maybe I should aim for the funny look, and that way I'll know she's at least well enough to judge."

"I wasn't laughing," Colette said, still smiling, "It is a very nice idea—very thoughtful!"

"Ugh."

"We will make her canelés," she decided, pushing off from the shelf.

"Canelés. Right. Which are...?"

"Better than cookies. But the elves will be displeased."

"Oh, nothing new then." Nadya propelled from the sofa in a little jump, rings clacking as she cracked her knuckles. "Shall we?"

Colette would not pass up an opportunity to spend time with a sober Nadya, regardless of the direction of her intentions. She frowned at the corridor door. "Nadya—how will we give these to Banks if we cannot find her?"

"Hmmm, she'll be lured in by the smell?"

Colette scoffed. Off they went.

━━━━━

The cloud of steam followed them all the way from the kitchens to Ravenclaw Tower.

It had been difficult to bake, even with magical assistance, as the house elves insisted upon inserting themselves between Colette's tray and her batter-sticky hands in protest. Our kitchen, they said. Lunch soon. She had attempted reason while Nadya, swinging her feet on the counter, attempted bribery. A foreign concept to the elves. They ended up most responsive to being promised Colette would never ever come back. It was, admittedly, not her first time stealing their kitchen.

Then, they worked in the wordless noise of pots and pans, scowling between peeling potatoes and shucking corn. Nadya once more dangled her coin purse in case they'd changed their minds, and Colette slapped her hand back to her pocket.

The scent of the canelés, sweet and bronze, would not be enough to lure Banks from wherever she was hiding. However, it was Nadya's compromise to cast a warming charm upon the plate and leave them in her dormitory for whenever she returned. She was contemplating aloud what to write in a note as they roamed upward through the halls.

Colette, for once, wasn't listening to her. She closed her eyes and breathed in the steam and she might have been home again if she stopped long enough to sink into memory. She'd see Vivi bringing out her own canelés in one hand, a bottle of Armagnac from the winery in the other; pressoirs and full casks of grapes next to the coup, riddling tables and a cellar glimmering with glass in the summer dark. Another breath in and there'd be Nathalie whipping cream, Luc licking the spatula. And then that smell—vanilla and a hint of rhum. Nadya's canelés were almost identical to the ones Vivi used to make.

She opened her eyes and breathed through her mouth instead.

"The one who fashions me," proclaimed the Ravenclaw door in a loud, wizened timbre that startled Colette enough to nearly drop the platter, "has no need of me! The one who purchases me has no use for me! The one who uses me can neither see nor feel me. What am I, child?"

"Forgot about this old fuck," Nadya mumbled over her shoulder.

"What was that, dear pupil?"

Caught, Nadya winced. "Oh, just thinking. Er, wise one."

"I don't think it will harm you for how you address it, Nadya," Colette whispered, "it's a door."

She shrugged. "Never know. This school is a death trap."

"Coffin," answered a brusque voice behind them. "Hello, Colette."

"Claude!" Colette exclaimed as the door opened with its own exclamation. (Sagacious! it said buoyantly, while Nadya grumbled, would be a bloody coffin, wouldn't you?)

Claude's smile pressed into her shoulder as she hugged him, offhandedly passing the canelés to Nadya, who made a small grunt of surprise as she balanced them.

"You are supposed to be studying with me for Charms this afternoon."

"I remembered, antsy, don't worry. Taking a detour, are you?"

"Visiting Banks," Colette told him, earning a sympathetic smile that only warned her to keep her expectations low. "Is she here?"

Claude's eyes flitted to Nadya, who gripped the pastry dish negligibly tighter. "Not usually, but she's always back before curfew. I'm assuming those are for her?"

Colette nodded.

"I can give them to Lillian for you, if you want?"

"That would be—"

"I can bring them up," Nadya said with discomforting eagerness.

Claude paused for a moment, then gesticulated toward the common room. "Be my guest."

She went off without a second glance, swallowed by window light and shades of blue, and Colette soured slightly.

"You two are... spending more time together," Claude prodded carefully, sketchbook pressed to his chest.

"I—it's for Banks."

"You monitor Nadya at RRI meetings for Banks? How charitable you are, I had no idea the two had any connection."

Colette slumped against the wall as the door croaked shut again. "Someone must."

"And you always believe that someone must be you."

"Who else?"

"Anyone, Colette."

"Would it make you uncomfortable to know that I was going alone? Alone, among all of them?"

He looked both unimpressed and unheard. "Obviously. Which is what prompts this train of guardianship in the first place. You go to watch her, and I'm forced to forgo my precious alone time to watch you. We're going to crash one day, the three of us, into a big ugly pile."

"I..." She huffed. "Yes, well."

He patted her on the shoulder. A comfortable silence fell upon them.

Guardianship, as Claude put it, was not a role designed for Colette. For one, she could barely drag a sober Nadya through the corridors, let alone carry her injured and inebriated to the dungeons. For two, she was not a particularly masterful liar, which was an art the Knights of Walpurgis dealt in often, and for three, she did her best, on principle, to avoid any Slytherins who weren't wrathful five-foot-one girls with letter openers in their waistbands and the calligraphy of a maladjusted first year. That left her pick of the den thin, but at least she knew the serpent she'd chosen wasn't going to bite. Not her, anyway—not in their way.

Attending RRI meetings was an error in the face of pretty much all of those things.

She groaned again. Claude did her the kindness of not asking why.

"WHAT MANNER OF SEEDLING BLOOMS ONLY—"

Colette shrieked at the riddling door.

"No one wants to enter!" Claude shouted.

"Ah," the door said calmly, "forgive me, Mr Ozanich."

"Does that sometimes." He shook his head. "If there's one thing I can appreciate about your choice in company, it's her choice in words. Old fuck was aptly put."

"I cannot breathe," Colette said. She was still clutching her chest. Why was it so loud?

He patted her shoulder again, and then the door, which Colette now despised, opened a crack for a ring-laden hand to push through. Nadya squeezed by, and it shut in miraculous quiet.

"Was she there?" Colette asked hopefully.

Nadya's face was all the answer she needed, but she replied all the same. "I gave them to Lillian. They should keep warm until she gets back from... wherever she is." Her gaze pointed at Claude. "You haven't seen where she's been running off to?"

"I don't follow her, Sidhu, so no."

"Great." She looked newly lost. "You two are studying, then?"

Colette frowned. "You could join us?"

She pretended not to notice Claude's eyebrows raise.

"No, I... thanks, but I dropped Charms for a reason. As it stands, I think I'm unofficially banished from Kolgrim's classroom. Thanks, really, for the canals. Your name's really big on the note, so, let me know if Banks finds you first."

"Canelés."

Nadya blinked. "Canelés. Yeah. The not-cookies."

It was too easy to slip into this—the amateurish stiffness, like a hard wedge between them. It had never been a problem before. Colette wanted to scrub the last year away and begin anew.

Instead she nodded, resigned beyond stating the obvious. She would fight for Nadya always, but slowly she had given up on fighting for them. A concept long foreign; Nadya alone was enough.

"The same to you, for Banks," Colette said.

"Of course. I'll let you know."

With that, she smiled as apologetically as she was perhaps capable, and disappeared around the corner, her bag clutched over her shoulder.

At lunch, her seat was empty.

Colette tried fruitlessly not to care.

"This makes no sense," muttered Claude, skewering a carrot.

"Hm?"

"The wrist motion is supposed to modulate the volume of light, but it says here—oh, you're helpless."

"What?"

"I see what you have in common now," he said, following her gaze to the Slytherin table. "You're both obsessed. The notion of space is entirely alien; no pun intended."

"She is very good at giving space," she muttered bitterly.

"God... no she is not. If physical distance were the only measure of such things, my mother would be championed as serene and oblivious."

Colette sighed. "I'm only suspicious that she came to me for help so..."

"Readily?" he finished, "That's fair."

"She does not like asking for it."

"Mhm, but the circumstances aren't quite normal."

She nodded glumly and returned to her work. Claude filled her in on the factors of Lumos Solem she hadn't been paying attention to, and her wand glowed softly under the table as she recited the basic spell for further understanding of the complex, and potentially blinding one. She giggled as Claude shaped animals with his fingers, a story told in the light, until the student across from them cleared his throat and informed them he did not appreciate having a lit wand pointed between his legs.

Colette apologized profusely. Then she apologized more. Her face was violently pink, and Claude's was buried in his textbook.

It was only when Nadya returned, cheek in teeth, eyes darting briskly around the room, that Colette noticed the gaping wound at the Slytherin table where the Knights were not.

"Merde," she muttered as she rose from her seat.

Claude peered up from a falling grin. "Everything okay?"

"Most likely not."

Colette sauntered toward the Slytherin table and her suspicions were confirmed when Nadya glanced up and immediately tensed. She had done something.

"What happened?" Colette demanded without preamble.

No one sat near enough to Nadya to be bothered by the sudden strain.

"Hello to you too," she said bluntly.

"Nadya, where are the Knights?"

"I didn't realize they were my charges."

"You walk in here and they do not, and you have that face—"

"It's fine," she snapped, and then straightened her shoulders like she could dispel the agitation by appearing unvexed. "You don't need to worry about everything I do, Colette, I can take care of myself."

Colette persisted. "What did you do?"

"Jesus—I gave them a gift. More accurately, they took something from me I predicted they would. Very reliable, the Knights; I hardly have to exert myself to get their attention."

"What gift?"

"Colette—"

"What gift?"

Nadya's eyes were stern but glittering all the same. No light was lost in them. "Leftovers," she said wryly.

The canelés. Colette shook her head, half a miserable laugh escaping her. "Of course. A kindness cannot be untainted, Nadya, you cannot do anything without... sewing some plot into it. What did you do, then? Poison them?"

"They were for Banks," she insisted.

"Oh, all but the ones you stole away, no?"

"I didn't fucking—do you see how insane it is that I could have even known? All they had to do was leave it—leave me—and they couldn't."

"You lied to me."

"And if I had told you?"

"Then I would never have helped you!" she hissed. "I thought today was for—for Banks. And maybe in your way it was, until..." She scrambled to articulate her thoughts. "Until it was about what everything is about for you now. Is there a day, Nadya, where you think of anything else but them?"

Nadya stared at her with a blankness that just barely shrouded the anger beneath it. Colette looked for something else; a face she'd known well once, where anger sat amongst a thousand better feelings. She wasn't surprised to see that it wasn't there, but it stung today like it hadn't in a long time.

"And when they recover from what you put in the gift I made for you?"

"Then they might think twice about taking my things, or threatening me, or casting fucking Unforgivables at parties! Anything but expecting me to lie down and take it, and you should know me well enough to know that'll never happen."

"They will never stop, Nadya! It does not matter how many times you get angry, or how many times you think you are ahead. They will always win. Always."

Nadya shook her head. "You're wrong."

"No! You fight them but you don't see that it hurts you more than it will ever hurt them."

"God, Colette, this is not about—"

"It is about you to me!" Colette exclaimed before she could finish.

The blankness stirred.

There was no objection to shout; Colette had made enough of a fool of herself already and even severed from the rest of the table, people had begun to stare. She searched once more for her, but Nadya did not want to be found.

Colette nodded in steady, sinking acceptance, and walked away.

━━━━━

The day before their Transfiguration exam, Tom was running a hand down the back of a new chair in his library. Amoret listened to the croak and sigh of leather as he pulled it out from the table to sit, fingers rolling down the spine. She was burning holes in the Jacobean wood with her eyes and fighting the urge to watch him instead. Oxford-fitted feet tapped along the floorboards. Hers and his. A part of her suspected he was making a show of his disquiet just to appease her.

"Would you like music?" he said then. His fingers stopped on the leather chair.

Amoret tore her gaze from the bookshelves. "Sorry?"

"Music? I don't mind turning one of these useless books into a phonograph if it helps you focus."

None of the books in Tom's library were useless. Everything in here was chosen with intent. Where he'd acquired all of it, she hadn't asked, but none of it was useless.

"How about that hideous carpet?" she said instead, forcing steadiness to her voice.

Tom gave her a questioning look before pointing his wand at the animal hide and waving it in a firm motion. The fur transfigured into brass, and silky violin crooned without any record to play.

Amoret stared at the once-rug and then at Tom. "I was joking."

"You have a particular sense of humour."

"And you have a particular way of rephrasing insulting things to make them palatable."

His lips turned. "So I've been told."

"Is it Chopin?" she asked at the familiar chords.

"A muggle composer? No. I have more specific tastes. This is Vostrovsky; she studied in Russia during the turn of the Lycanthrope Clause. Politics ate away at her. She was quite a gifted witch to have died so young."

"Oh," Amoret mumbled, "I don't actually know many magical composers. My dad always loved the muggle greats. Chopin, Vivaldi, Liszt, Tchaikovsky... well, mostly Colette likes Liszt, actually."

"And you? Do you play?"

"Oh, no. No, but my sister does. Beautifully."

"I'd never have guessed. She works in one of our Ministry compounds in Russia, doesn't she?"

Amoret ignored for a moment that he'd thought of the wrong sister. "Karelia, the last time I wrote her. How do you know?"

"She's been in her fair share of articles in the last few years. She was a good prefect. I still think she would have been a better Head Girl than—what was her name? Vita?"

"Vita Monomara," Amoret groaned, "Don't remind me."

"Then perhaps strong leadership runs in the Banks family."

She thought of Bibi and all that she'd accomplished in her time. It was the Salehe witches that had gotten Amoret and her sisters here, her grandmother above all. The Banks bloodline was an unwritten enigma, as far as she knew; a millenia of seers, charmers, and keening women lost to the highlands. "Maybe not the Banks side... my father was always more of an individualist. He didn't much like leading or being led, and I never met his parents, but they didn't seem to want to lead him, so, I've made a few assumptions." Amoret squashed the stinging feeling in her gut. She was oversharing, surely. "Anyway, Reid is far too busy for things like that. Sybil is the artist in the family. Graduated two years ago, I don't know if you remember. Which makes me the boring one."

"I don't think you're boring."

"No, my public breakdowns are far too entertaining for you."

"I'm serious."

"It's not often you're not."

"Tell me then."

"What?"

He sat in the chair he'd been pawing earlier and looked at her like a thousand-pieced puzzle he was ready to complete. "Why you think so."

She gave nothing but an uncomfortable shrug and prolonged silence before realizing he really did want an answer. "Um, future Minister of Magic and the greatest young musician you'll ever meet compared to a mediwitch? I've met plenty of those, but I've never met anyone like my sisters." That wasn't counting Bibi's legacy, which Amoret, should she go home and visit her urn, would kindly ask her grandmother to keep far away from Amoret's already collapsing life.

"You want to help people," Tom said, "not many can turn their noses up at that."

"Yes, because it's boringly sympathetic. And anyone can do it—muggles could do it, if they knew about us."

"I hardly think they'd compare to you."

"Don't flatter me, Tom. You don't even know if I'm any good."

"I know that you're the only witch our age who could best me, and I don't say that in arrogance. You've challenged me more than anyone I've ever known, and how often have we truly spoken?"

Amoret felt her face warm. "Well, I'm sure you've had more than enough words out of me in the last week to make up for it."

Tom inclined his head as he looked at her, wholly, analytically, like he knew every cog in her brain as it turned. "Not nearly enough." He stood from the chair after a pregnant pause. "Enough stalling, though."

Amoret nodded hastily and dusted off her skirt. The room quivered with candlelight, and something about the secrecy of it was invigorating. She felt somewhat akin to that giddy child practicing spells with her sister's wand under the covers, in the garden shed, in the woods before the merrows scared her off. As if the past years could be scraped clean by moments like this.

No. There would be no grieving inside these four walls. There would only be magic.

Tom's fingers danced over the bookshelves. He stopped midway on the third shelf and shuffled a thin green book from between two much bulkier ones.

He held it up. "Any objections?"

Amoret shook her head no.

"Any suggestions?"

"On what?"

"On what to turn it into."

She looked at it. Tom was too far away to read the small, silver-etched title on the cover, but something came to mind anyway. She nodded at him. "I've got an idea."

"Good."

He placed the book on the centre table and stepped back.

"It's complicated," she said nervously.

"You'll manage it."

She wished he was less motivating. It was starting to annoy her.

"Whenever you're ready."

Amoret lifted her wand and focused, not on the object before her, but on home. Contradiction welled up in her—the want for her trinkets, her mother and her sisters, and the simultaneous urge to run like hell from her cot before it became a deathbed, before she returned home and never left. She shut her eyes and imagined the music as something familiar. Imagined Sybil's fingers on the violin, the piano, the cello. Bibi's instruments. And something glorious being made from them. New life. The heart of her. Crescendos reaching the open windows and kissing the night, singing to the Fae, gifting them silvery song. Sybil's voice was in the strings; all the words she couldn't say otherwise. This was the way she spoke to the world now, but Amoret thought of the music and heard laughter, grief, prayer, a morbid sense of humour. She could have wept at how much she missed her sisters.

She turned her wand with precise motion, intention set and heavy, and cast the spell.

"Brilliant," Tom breathed, "You're brilliant."

Amoret opened her eyes and Sybil's violin was propped on the table before her.

"Oh my God!" she squealed, practically leaping for it in excitement. "Sorry. Merlin, can I...?" She looked to Tom before touching it, a big grin on her face.

"You don't need my permission."

Amoret picked it up carefully, brushing her fingers over the rosewood, the bridge, the scroll. Everything was finely detailed, just as she remembered it. She turned it on its side and laughed. Sybil's initials were carved into the middle bout, painted in with wood finish in their mother's frantic attempt to hide them.

"It's your sister's?" Tom asked, assessing it.

Amoret nodded fiercely. "I can't believe—I've only ever turned beetles into buttons or bonded objects or... I thought it would take me months to transfigure outside of school-sanctioned spells."

"I didn't know you had intentions of practicing outside of school sanctions," he said inquisitively, "You continue to surprise me."

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you but that's as much of a surprise as you'll be getting. I'm afraid my greatest plans aren't quite ready to be heard yet, by you or anyone."

"I'm renownedly patient."

She smiled. "Good to know."

Tom hesitated before reaching a hand for the violin. He didn't take it from her, only brushed his fingers over the strings. A small melody whispered. Amoret noted how close he was, but his eyes were downcast on the instrument rather than her face. She supposed it was better that way. "Perfect," he said, low enough she barely heard him. He drew steadily down the bouts and the tailpiece, and she refused to watch the careful movement of his fingers.

Clandestine seemed a better word than secret for the way the room felt now; distressing in the way a Victorian woman might have gasped at her unclad ankle.

Tom met her eyes and she startled. "Would you like to change it back, or..."

Or are you going to cradle it like a baby's quilt for a while longer? she imagined him asking.

"Oh, yes. Yes, I should." She pulled back from him to place Sybil's violin back on the table (or simply because she needed to look away) and moved to her previous spot.

Tom stood back to watch again, but Amoret was fretful under his gaze. Nadya would most certainly call her chaste if she could see her now, or melodramatic, or most realistically, she'd just laugh.

Amoret told imaginary Nadya to keep her mouth shut.

Again, she closed her eyes. The image of the green book came to her in blurred snatches. Those silver words undistinguishable and thin. She tried to think of its energy rather than its impervious contents, but the room was so cloudy with her eagerness over the violin and Tom's closeness that she could hardly remember something so unimportant. A counter-spell like Reparifarge was always an option, but those were used for poorly transfigured objects, and Sybil's violin was an exact replica. But the image of the book wasn't coming to. Its aura was sawtooth, unfixed. Amoret shuddered as she pointed her wand and imagined it, something distinct but unknown, and hoped for the best.

When she dared to peel an eye open, the book reformed with a tear in its spine, splintered like it was cut into by a mangled claw.

"Oh god..." Amoret's mouth hung open. "Oh—I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened, I must have lost focus."

Tom was silent as he crouched down and picked up the book, opening it and flipping through torn pages before landing on one salvageable enough to read. He held it open with his thumb and handed it to Amoret.

She knitted her brows and accepted. The parchment was splitting at the ends from age alone when she opened the book, stained ecru with tea like unbleached linen. She read hesitantly:

Mistress Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With cockle-shells and silver bells.
And pretty maids in a row...

Her eyes met his across the room. "Nursery rhymes?"

"I wouldn't have given you the secret to immortality to practice Transfiguration on, Amoret. You needn't feel so bad about ruining it."

Amoret sighed in relief. "You're sure it isn't anything important?"

"Well, I enjoy my folklore, but a book of Catholic children's rhymes isn't quite enough for me agonize over."

"These are Catholic?"

"Mistress Mary... Mother of Christ, or, as alternative rumours go, Bloody Mary. Either way, the story is a Catholic one."

"One of those sounds a bit darker than the other."

He smiled the small, fascinated way he always did when she countered him. "Both tales invoke death, do they not?"

Amoret could admit she enjoyed his banter too. "The corpses of executed Protestants or the resurrection of Christ? One is darker."

"I wasn't talking about the children of God," he said, a curious look in his eyes. "I was talking about the ones who didn't follow him."

"I clearly haven't studied my Bible well enough to know."

"Most who follow it haven't. I certainly don't expect it of purebloods."

"Well, it's an oxymoron, isn't it: a pious witch? Then again, most purebloods didn't grow up the way I did." She found the words pitiful as soon as they left her lips.

"I think we're more alike than we're not," he mused, "You don't suppose Augusta Rosier grew up in an orphanage, but she's still a friend of mine."

Amoret frowned at that name.

Tom took the book from her hands. "Shall we try again?"

"What?"

"Transfigure the book to its original state."

"Transfigure—" It was so close to what she'd been trying these last months that she wondered if he somehow knew. This was mending magic. It was too precise, and written about only in the footnotes of transfiguration studies. It was something she doubted even Tom knew how to do, so why he would ask her— "I feel like I'm only embarrassing myself."

"Then I'll turn away and close my eyes. Do what you do best."

She snorted. "What do I do best?"

"You make the magic your own, Amoret. Do it how it comes to you, not how you read it in a textbook."

She considered him for a moment, but something about looking at Tom Riddle felt like threateningly like leaning over a seawall into the waves below. He was a warning not to approach without even trying, and that might have been why everyone wanted to.

"All right," she said, focusing her gaze on the schism down the side of the book.

Amoret pretended it was the tear in her wallpaper that she glued down years ago, the one that kept popping back up and peeling. She thought of her and her sisters' shared bedroom, of running her fingers through wind-blown lace and looking out the window at children playing Red Rover on the street. She thought of her books, Mum's rhymes, Bibi's recipes from Tanganyika, full bellies on summer nights and groaning emptiness on winter ones. Amoret thought not of Tom's rhyme book or the religious undertones of a god she was never allowed to pray to, but instead, of her own memories. Sybil speaking in strings. Reid watching from the moving pictures in the newspaper. And mother whispering her own bedtime lullabies in her ear, and papa singing shanties to the boat dock. Make the magic your own. She watched the pages flutter as letters reformed in the gashes.

It was imperfect. Amoret could have fallen to her knees if it hadn't been—there were little cuts between the lines and some letters seemed malformed—but it was legible. Whole enough to be put back on the shelf. Tom almost tripped over his feet as he moved to get a closer look, and something about that was more rewarding than any top grade or trophy the school had to offer.

He stared at her like the achievement was his too, amazed like some impossible question had been answered. Amoret was so stunned at the realization of what she just did that she could stare back at him without feeling sick.

"...Brilliant," he uttered.

She smiled. "You keep saying that."

"I keep meaning it."

[ . . . ] "brilliant" ... tfw the girl you're manipulating is super powerful actually? also COLETTE POV!! i hope u liked it and nadya is next! i tried to fix the structure of colette's characterization from the old version so hopefully that came through. love my little (tall) french lady / word count. 6343

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