PAPER CONFINES.
32. / Traces

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When the door's lock clicked, Colette was half-asleep and pressed to Nadya with her chin on the top of her head.

The sound startled her backwards, which startled a sleeping Nadya out of bed, her hair unwoven from her braid by Colette's fingers and standing in an arc by the tug of static. She cursed loudly as she hit the floor, and by the time Reid walked in with Claude, Nadya was wincing through expletives and Colette was stretched horizontally across the bed to check on her.

Claude was still in formal robes, and slightly dusty, but otherwise looked comparatively unstirred. Colette supposed an absence of duelling and Living Death would explain that, but he hadn't avoided the Knights entirely.

"About time," he teased, glancing between them.

Nadya pulled herself upright and crossed her arms. "Bite me, Ozanich."

"You've had enough of that for all of us, the way I hear it."

"Not quite."

Colette sat back against the pillows and tucked her legs in, her dress skirts in a heap at her ankles. She pictured herself looking more ferocious than she felt, half-fetal and barefoot, the pearly blue fabric of her last nice dress in tatters. How long since her hair had been down and flat and streaked red by blood like summer berries? Since she had sisters to squeeze the colours through the strands, a brother to twirl her braids and call them pretty—since Bordeaux fell and she held their bodies close, washed the colours of death away in the morning and cut the hair to her eyes?

She curled further into herself.

"Not quite indeed," Claude said.

Reid's perpetual frown deepened as she took her coat from the foot of the bed and presumably noticed an absence of weight.

Nadya pointed languidly across the room from still-crossed arms. "It's—"

But Reid was already two long strides over, muttering exasperatedly under her breath, words fortunately unheard. She plucked the book from the desk Colette had left it as if it was going to grow legs and sprint for the crack under the door.

"This is not to be paltered with," she asserted, tucking it once more in her pocket.

"We didn't do anything to it," Nadya assured, albeit a touch guiltily, "just looked at it."

"This book could be cursed enough that just looking at it is all it might take. We wear warded coats in my line of work; keeping it with me is not only for my sake."

Colette frowned. "All it might take for what?"

"For an attachment to be made," she said obviously, "for you to be influenced, for it to steal, or control, or learn from you. Certain forms of dark magic have a sentience to them, and if not a goal they're tasked with by their creator, one they will make for themselves. Can you imagine, do you think, what sort of goal something like that might have?"

"Nothing noble, I suppose," Nadya muttered.

"No," Reid concurred, "Nothing noble. Any pull you find yourself feeling towards it—even abused at the root by your desire to help my sister—consider it with the same trust you would the pull of a parasite. You offer it shelter, food, magic, a culture to grow and strengthen. Dark magic is innately self-preserving, and wickedly smart about it depending on its source and kind, both of which we know extraordinarily little about."

"We know its source."

That his name was etched down the side was a kind reminder. Colette chewed at her lip. "We may not know what the magic is exactly, but it is Tom's. Unfortunately, he is not incapable."

Reid nodded. "Far from it, from what Etta used to tell me. He was an odd boy in first year. I suppose that wasn't ameliorated."

There was only so much Amoret could have said about him before Reid left, idle gossip and complaints about his grades. Nadya had told Colette once that Amoret barely used to talk about him before becoming a prefect, but that she'd called him handsome in fourth year and dropped the matter when Nadya pestered her relentlessly about it. If what Reid knew of Tom was from then, Colette wondered what she'd think of him now.

"I'd pin him as a cult leader on top of murderer if I could," said Nadya, "But we'll try for the latter first."

"A flock that blunders without their herder," Claude muttered.

Or knights without a king.

"We could afford for them to blunder harder."

"You could afford to avoid an altercation like last night's ever happening again," Reid said tersely.

Claude leaned against a spare desk. "It wasn't particularly beneficial to their case that they left me stupefied at the door. Could've shoved me into a broom closet, at least. That is the decent thing to do."

"As I came here to discuss," Reid diverted, "your Knights. The parts of the Ministry that know about last night are... demanding more than I presumed. All but senior Nott took unkindly to the idea that a full investigation would be a waste of time and resources."

Colette was going to have scars on her lower lip like vampire bites if she didn't hear something positive soon, and bruises even her best red couldn't hide.

Nadya just shrugged. "Not surprising."

"And yet, their protests are unfounded. Claude and Alexander's involvement is your saving grace. Without it, the evidence would all point to you and Colette, and frankly you'd be lucky to be expelled.

"That Nott's father and in turn the sanctity of the Ministry itself could be brought into question means they'll want this cleaned up as swiftly as possible; I suspect a quick trial to appease the parents, if not a private vote within the Wizengamot. There's chaos enough with Myrtle and Ruby's cases still dominating the tabloids." Reid paced in a way that made it look remarkably purposeful, though Colette knew she was reeling. "I was able to convince Gamp to send in Dawlish for questioning on both sides—he's a half-blood, and relatively unbiased. Otherwise, I'll push for minimal charges if it's taken to trial, but I maintain faith that it won't make it that far. Best case scenario, you'll get school restrictions and a minor suspension."

Nadya appeared ready to disagree, but sleep had at least caught up to her, and with it sense. She took a breath, and Colette ran her thumb across her wrist under the quilt. Nadya did not protest that.

"Your story is good," Nadya said tactfully, "but I can't be chained to my dormitory to spend the rest of the year studying. That's not the best case scenario for anyone but the Knights."

Reid's eyebrow lifted. "Well, your grades have dropped in everything but Potions, so perhaps it is."

"Reid," Colette said, her tone taking an edge of gravity, "you must understand we cannot sit and do nothing. You want to find Amoret. Please, let us help you."

"What would you have me do that I haven't already done?" Reid asked, and for the second time her veneer of control slipped, her voice newly exasperated. "To reduce your punishment to basic security sanctions and a suspension has been, potentially, a more trying task than my Ministry training assessment—which you should know involved Human Transfiguration and a Qilin. You're asking me to convince a team of aurors, if not the Wizengamot and Moon himself, to let you off scot-free?"

After a pause, Nadya said, "no," at the same time as Colette asked, "yes?"

"Uh. Ehm, or not," Colette mumbled.

"Well—yes, in that sense," Nadya rectified.

Claude snickered from the desk.

"I mean," Nadya bristled, "that we need flexibility here. If what happened last night is going to have been worth anything, we can't be watched and confined all the time. If there has to be a consequence, just... make sure it's something else."

Reid rolled her eyes and looked ridiculously like Amoret. "Shall I tame Swooping Evil while I'm at it?"

"You're the graduated genius!" Nadya exclaimed. "Don't say it outright or anything. Stir it in their subconscious, make them think they thought it up themselves, make it something that seems inarguably crueler than curfew and timeout. Let it scratch their stupid fucking itch for justice for their poor, pureblood children."

"Trying for medieval torture, Sidhu?" Claude asked.

"You're medieval torture."

Reid had given up on composure somewhat, her hands wiping over her face.

Colette didn't think she had much to offer in terms of suggestions. She could think of plenty of things she wanted the Knights to suffer, but anything they did, her and Nadya would too, and the sheer balancing act of trying to impress that onto the Ministry was Sisyphean. Nadya was asking a lot. Colette recognized she was asking it too.

"Worry about Dawlish," was all Reid could muster. "I'll see what I can do."

Colette, following instruction, worried greatly about Dawlish.

She was led by another auror to the Hufflepuff dormitories, given an opportunity first to clean and redress, and felt on display when she was taken through the corridors again a polished spectacle. Word had naturally spread about what happened, mangled little rumours like sprouting weeds, twisted from the truth because so few knew it. It was lucky most of the students were gone on holidays, and yet, eager first years clustered at the corners and giggled quietly. Colette tried to imagine Nadya taking the same journey and figured she was probably glowering at them while her auror wasn't looking.

Dawlish was as fair as Reid made him out to be. He probed little, wrote plenty, and smiled sincerely between questions. Colette's skin was still littered sparingly with cuts that stung with her fidgeting; she'd healed most of Nadya's last night, before Reid, propped on a knee where she was bent over scouring Rosier's memory, hissed at her to stop. Injuries made for better optics.

By the pity on Dawlish's face, Colette suspected that was true.

It helped that she wasn't nearly so bad at lying as it was decided she was. Little lies—lovely lies, yes—Colette couldn't keep conviction to save her life where those were concerned; lovely lies like not loving Nadya and not being afraid, things she couldn't convince herself to believe under the harshest circumstances. But to lie for her? Poisoned canelés and twisting tales of thieves? She told them like the truth.

It was faster than Hopkirk's interrogation with Amoret, and Colette wondered if Reid had anything to do with her absence (it seemed Reid had something to do with everything) or if the Ministry had decided at last that the Prophet had no place here.

She prayed for the latter on her way out, and stared listlessly at the empty corridor, resigned again to waiting. It made her skin itch.

Colette did all she could think of until Reid returned with news: spiralled over the piano, mourned a thousand pasts, and hoped for the future in spite of it all. The cycle span. It was never perfect; she never had been. But she still hoped at the end of every turn.

"Knock knock," sang a voice at the door with a rapping fist.

Claude peered his head out from the doorway, now in a cream-white jumper and brown slacks, hands slipping down to rest in his pockets. He was distinctly clean of paint and dust, and if Amoret were here, Colette dared to think she'd compliment him for finally looking as rich as he was.

It was lucky dittany was in high supply during the war—his family was one of the few half-bloods who were still making a profit. Colette, on the other hand, thought of the silken blue dress she'd tucked in her trunk and shut away, and realized she might never wear a dress like that again.

"I had a feeling you'd be here."

She smiled faintly and nodded him over. "Has Nadya finished?"

"Still being questioned. I told Reid to meet us here when she could, but she got woven into something with Dippet again, probably trying to sort out Nadya's proposal. I have to admit, I'd rather be forced to bed early than take... warding, or... cleaning Slughorn's cupboards every Saturday."

"You know it would not be so simple. In either way, it would not be."

He sighed, taking a seat on the piano bench. "I know."

"You're very good with wards, anyhow."

He smiled with the weight of something he didn't often carry. He'd never told her what it was, and so she had never asked. "I know that too."

"Do you think it will be worth it? The book is not like any magic I have felt before. We may not be able to understand it."

"We will. Or Reid will."

"She has come far for her sister."

"She'll go farther yet."

Colette closed the fallboard and propped her head against it. She mourned newly for her siblings, dead for years. That sort of wound never closed. There were just better bandages. Different stings.

"I wish it was... clearer than this," she mumbled, shutting her eyes. The piano was soothingly cool on her cheek. "A part of me thought—I hoped—that last night would be the worst of it. Maybe I assumed, foolishly, there would be answers inside. Directions, even. Finalement, j'suis fou."

"Vous are exhausted."

"Ugh. Tu, if you must, Claude. I am not your professor."

"Thank God." Colette didn't answer, and Claude put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, you did good. And,"  he added enthusiastically, "you got a nap in with Sidhu!"

She smacked him, but her teeth shone in a real smile. "You are ridiculous."

Claude hummed in response.

Snow was falling again outside. It would be a long while to spring this year, the sky red with dusk and shutting closed behind quick clouds. Colette watched the colours be engulfed. Claude watched too, and sketched the scene in a little moleskin from his pocket when the silence dragged on.

"I'm scared too," he said after a while, too casual for the confession. "I don't know if that's helpful to hear or if it makes you feel worse."

Colette peered at him, sideways in her vision and slightly blurry. "It doesn't need to be helpful. You're a dear friend, Claude, I want you to be unhelpful to me."

He blinked, and she stretched from the piano. "Our burdens weigh less on two shoulders."

Claude's cheeks dimpled. He folded the moleskin shut on his lap and smiled even more and Colette was proud to have caused it. "Who told you that, O wise one?"

"Vivi," she said fondly, and then laughed. "I meant to say it to Nadya once, I can't remember when, but I thought then she wouldn't like it."

"Try it sometime. I hear kissing follows closely after napping, in the order of romantic acts. That might be the push she needs."

"Mon dieu, you are..."

"A dear friend, so I've been told."

"A terrible nuisance."

"You're talking like her now!"

Colette was blushing furiously. "No, I would have always said that to you."

"Hm. Yes, you would." He cleared his throat. "Thank you."

"For calling you a nuisance?"

"No. For letting me be scared and unhelpful. I haven't felt that way in a long time, and you're right—it's harder felt alone."

"I... You're welcome."

It was a strange, warming honesty. She thought she was exactly the sort of person to know what to do with it, but all she could find was a nod. She kept surprising herself. Everyone else kept surprising her too.

Another knock from the open door. Colette was beginning to think this room was cursed for interruption, which was a shame for a place built to play music.

"Um," was Nadya's formal greeting, announced stiffly from the doorway and followed shortly by a more appropriate, "Evening."

Oh. Not so much a curse, then. She was lovely.

"Uh. Nadya," Colette answered with equal smoothness.

Claude buried his face in his hands.

"Just Reid left to join us?" Nadya asked, ignoring him with improving proficiency.

"She may be a while."

"Wonderful. I love waiting helplessly almost as much as I love playing quidditch with bowling balls."

"You hate regular quidditch." Colette noted she had no idea what Nadya was talking about.

"Yes, well, imagine that but a hundred times worse."

"You are a creatively disagreeable person," said Claude.

Nadya pulled out her usual stool. "Thank you."

"So..." Colette began, "should we discuss? Plan?"

"Reid has the book. I'm not sure what else there is to say."

"Well," said Claude, "You both said it was stained by dark magic, and Reid agreed in frightening detail. She's the closest we have to an expert on the subject."

Nadya frowned. There was a cut near her lip that hadn't healed right. Colette had felt it on her skin when Nadya kissed her forehead. "Banks would know. Or—Amoret. I sometimes forget they're both Banks."

That was hard to do. Colette had never met Sybil to compare, but Reid and Amoret looked remarkably alike in certain lights, and especially when frowning. Reid did lack the thicker curve of her sister's brows, the vaguely auburn hue of her curls in the sun, eyes that thinned to lashes when she laughed, but they were sisters—plainly so—even at first glance.

"I think anything Amoret knew, Reid would too. If not during her time at Hogwarts, then certainly doing whatever it is she's been up to in Russia for two years."

"What Reid knows does not matter in this," Colette said pensively, "We know dark magic is involved. The Knights have used it before, and Nadya and I have felt it. What matters is we have something to study from."

"I thought you said Zippel went looking in the Restricted Section and all the dark arts books were gone," Nadya recalled.

"Nearly all, and they would have been returned yesterday before the break, no?"

"If the person who took them was even here yesterday," Claude said thoughtfully, "But what if that person had been gone before that? What if the one who took them used what he found on that diary?"

Colette wanted to hit herself for not thinking of that weeks ago. It was so obvious—students petrified by indiscernible magic, Tom at the scene of Ruby's murder, then at the scene of Myrtle's, his disappearance along with that of shelves-full in the Restricted Section, the only thing left behind a single book in the water—she should have guessed it. Everything about this echoed something darker.

"We could check the library to be sure," Nadya suggested, and Colette could tell she was thinking the same thing because she was fussing with her rings again, her lips pursed.

Claude shook his head. "We can't. Until last night's mess is sorted, sneaking into the Restricted Section is as good as breaking into the Department of Secrets, especially if someone were to find out what we were after."

"Where else is there to start? Anyone in this school could be flirting with dark magic, Ozanich, but the Knights had all their secrets stored in Nott's chest. Unless they spread them out, I don't think they have any more books hidden. And the Ministry would've found them when they searched our dormitories."

"So what? We are... back to waiting helplessly? So Nadya can imagine she is being hit by a... bowl-in-ball?"

"You imply if I played quidditch I'd get hit."

"No! I said just recently that you would make a good beater, and you told me—"

"Is this how every conversation with you two goes?" Claude asked, astonished. "I hope I get hit by a bowling ball."

"All right! Then we assume it was Tom. That seems sensible."

"And what does assuming it was Tom entail?" Nadya wondered, "Not that I disagree, I quite like accusing him of things, I just don't know what follows tracking information from someone who's not here."

"You said the aurors checked his dormitory too?"

Nadya nodded. "He shares with Malfoy, so they would have had to. Still... I don't know. I paid Tom less attention than the other Knights, and he paid me less attention than they did, but he wasn't present very often. I figured he studied in the library or one of the courtyards, or busied himself with tasks from Dippet and plotted murder. Amoret said he was helping her with Transfiguration."

"She didn't say where?"

"I... I don't think so."

"Amoret was keeping her head down after what happened with Ruby," Claude offered, "If she'd been anywhere public with Tom, and by the sounds of it, more than once? People would know."

"But where could they go?"

"I don't know. Where could they be now?"

"This is useless."

The door was waved shut by a nimble, bronze hand. "Naturally."

"Gracing us once more with your presence," said Claude, a fraction of levity resumed.

Reid's heels clacked on entrance. "Shall I grace you with good news as well?"

"I assume it's preceding the bad."

"Quite right."

At last, Colette stopped caring about the state of her mouth as her teeth dug in. Night had fallen swiftly, and frost blossomed on the windowsill.

"The events of last night," Reid began heavily, "will be taken to the Wizengamot for private deliberation, meaning, as I suspected, the Minister is not taking this public. It also means I can assume your punishment won't be a guard detail, as that defeats the purpose of subtlety, so Nadya should be pleased. Suspension is still on the table."

"That's the good news?"

"Yes."

"Well then...?"

"The bad news is, the Minister isn't taking it public. That means an abnormally fast procession. The Wizengamot will vote in confidence in two days, without a hearing, and I'll have no power to defend you. All we can do is pray my memory charms endure long enough that the Knights don't make this messier than it already is."

"Two days? " Nadya choked.

"The vote will be on Christmas?" Colette muttered under her breath.

"Celebrate tomorrow. The tree at the Ministry is hideous, and the roast there tastes like rubber."

Nadya was stammering and Claude was oddly quiet. Both provided Colette no comfort. "But they'll—I mean, I know pureblood politics go far, but even the Knights can't get away without getting the same punishment as us."

"That's what worries me. They might not be able to lessen one charge, but they can make it so you suffer more for having to suffer with them. Imagine cleaning the Owlery—"

Now Claude spoke. "Oh, God, I knew it."

"Now imagine cleaning a secluded Owlery with Dolohov and Rosier at your back and no professors to monitor you. You didn't want to be stifled by authority? That's what that entails."

"That's ridiculous," Colette declared, "If the problem is our fighting, why would they trust us alone together?"

"They don't."

She looked wide-eyed up at Reid, who appeared to swallow her remorse like a cup of tea, and shunned any expression of it from her face, but Colette could see her tucking chipped nails behind her back. "It's my best guess, anyhow. It could be different. Like I said—celebrate tomorrow. The next day will be long."

Reid began to walk away.

"Reid?" Colette called after her, "Be careful with the book."

Reid smiled faintly, cheeks girlish when she did, and the realization that she was not so many years older than Colette exposed a tiredness she hadn't noticed before. It made her wonder what manner of toll Amoret's disappearance had taken on her. "It's not the first dark artifact I've dealt with, but thank you, Colette. Expect me back on Christmas morning unless something urgent happens tomorrow. And dress respectably."

"That's for you, Ozanich," Nadya jibed lazily, reclining backwards on the stool until her voice was stretched thin and her hair was touching the ground.

Reid was already gone. Her smile left a weight like a headstone behind.

"Clever," Claude replied, "I'll show up covered in paint, and you can show up in a pair of trousers and a man's undershirt."

"Picturing me in a man's undershirt, are you?"

"Picturing a man in an undershirt now, if it's all the same to you."

Nadya sounded like she'd caught something in her throat, and sat upright. "Mhm. All the same."

Colette traced her fingers across frost-painted glass and had never missed Amoret so badly.

Reid must have been at least twenty-four now, and looked somehow too young and old at the same time, stuck in the years Amoret was stuck in too. She must have warred between the life she chose and the one left behind her. Colette knew that in part, though she hadn't chosen. The old life screamed in dull, constant echoes, a record stuck on scratch.

Vivi had never made it past eighteen, and Colette envisioned her older then, working a Ministry job, worrying after her youngest sister and smiling with years too many. How far would she have gone for her? How far would Colette?

Anywhere, she imagined. For the sisters she could not get back, she would bring one home to Reid.

[ . . . ]  i'm gonna be really transparent but i've never been so uninspired with the nadyacolette plot of this fic. i love these characters more than air probably but i've come to feel like i did them a really big disservice with their side of the story :( i know this fic in general is pretty dialogue-heavy at times but so many of the cool magical elements and environments transpire solely in amoret and tom's side of the world. maybe it's my lack of creativity, but i find myself feeling more trapped by hogwarts than the horcrux, and ask myself a lot whether the nadyacolette chapters seem repetitive and unengaging. sigh. i really did try with this chapter for a long time, but that (and lots of personal stuff) is why this one took a long time to publish. i think it's just that part of the fic where i (22) reflect on the plot i set up at 18 and wish i had done it justice by writing it now instead. there's a lot i would have changed! (also this chapter probably should have gone on the end of the last nadyacolette chapter instead of being its own. oh well.) OKAY vent over ... /  word count. 4218

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