Lesson 8 - N.E.W.T. Level

Of course Elijah would have a retort for that. He has an answer for everything, Amelia’s subconscious fumed, listening to Elijah try to turn the accusations around on her. But he didn’t stop there. No. He kept talking, the way he always did. Amelia used to appreciate the fact that Elijah had 50 words for every one of hers; it had made being around him much easier back when she had believed all the nonsense he spewed on a consistent basis.

It was difficult, looking back on that time in her life, and not just because her life was so drastically different now. Looking back on that always made Amelia cringe because she had gone against so much of what she had believed in, and for what? For a life that Elijah had promised she was capable of leading. She had always said she’d be happier alone. She had her classes, her music, but someone in her life all the time? More trouble than it’s worth, she’d always said. But then Elijah had come in and somehow made her believe something different, and she would forever begrudge him that. Even if he tried using the ‘I miss you’ card, as he was doing right now.

Amelia’s palms were both resting on the table, pushing into it like the wooden surface might give to her will if she pushed hard enough. It was serving as her substitute for pushing Elijah away, though she would very much liked to have done that instead. It seemed that every time he was near her, he somehow managed alternately to hurt her or weasel his way back through her defenses. It was completely illogical that he should be able to do both of those things in succession, and repeatedly. She had to hand it to him: he had a definite knack for talking his way out of or into whatever situation suited him best. He had done it when he returned the shoes, in the owlery, and in the chess park. Each memory was like a clearly defined snapshot for Amelia, and no matter how she tried to forget, they were all there in the back of her mind, as clear as all the others.

Elijah lit the burner beneath her cauldron, beginning the process of heating the water she had filled it with. She was careful not to breathe as he leaned over and did this, because Amelia knew all too well how the scent of Elijah had always been a powerful weapon against her better judgment. When he pulled away, Amelia allowed herself to exhale, which came out as more of a sigh when Elijah asked her yet again to give him another chance.

“Why should I?” Amelia asked plainly, keeping her voice quieter this time because she was all too aware that other students were beginning to take their seats in the dungeon and would easily overhear her if she berated Elijah in the tone she would have liked to use.

“You say you would do it differently, if you had the chance, but you’ve already proven that you wouldn’t,” Amelia said, looking up at Elijah again, this time without the same fiery scorn as before. Now she was just laying out the facts for him; they didn’t need an emotion behind them to prove her point. They did the talking for themselves.

“I gave you a second chance after you ignored me for months without explanation,” Amelia stated, her voice perfectly level as though she were reporting the charges against Elijah in a court of law, “And then you went and disappeared again for months without warning. Then fate saw fit to give you another crack at me in the chess park with Faye, and I actually thought you might give a damn because you saw fit to introduce me to your adopted daughter. So I gave you another chance. A third chance. And what did you do with that? You went and slept with Chase and got yourself a biological daughter.”

Amelia had started speaking plainly, but the farther she got into her story, the more angry she became. That redheaded temper of hers was bubbling to the surface as she stared at Elijah, her whisper becoming a hissing the longer she spoke. She knew that if she kept this up much longer her body would betray her and send that telltale catch into her throat and show Elijah that for all her cold and ice, she had been truly hurt by him, over and over again, and that she still hadn’t recovered. It had been nearly a year, and she still hadn’t convinced herself to forget. She needed to wrap things up before she revealed something she'd regret.

“So if you can give me a reason why I should give you another chance,” Amelia whispered with finality, stressing the word that would really imply just how little he deserved one, “I would really like to hear it.”

Unsurprisingly, Amelia gave him a list as her anger rose in time with the heating water. Elijah had never really responded well to anger. His sarcasm usually took over when someone was angry at him and he would bait them and bait them until they snapped. The only problem was that that was then and this was, well, now. Elijah hadn’t experienced a heavy-duty bout of anger apart from his own since the ‘event’ and he wasn’t sure how he was expected to respond. No doubt Amelia already had an idea as to how he’d retort but so far, Elijah was drawing blank straws as the water beside him continued to boil.

She’d given him three chances. Elijah didn’t think he’d asked that much for her. It showed he was either stupid or he had bollocks. Amelia hadn’t deserved the treatment he’d given her. He’d always played on the fact that women were, and would always be, replaceable but his children weren’t. He always believed that as long as he had his daughter and his son he would be fine, he wouldn’t need anyone else. He’d gone out on a limb and trusted Chase because, well, he didn’t know why; now he stood there having had his children robbed of him and he had no response for Amelia’s argument.

Oh, how the mighty do fall.

“What do you want me to say; ‘oops’!?” He hissed back. “I don’t have any explanations for the things I did, Amelia. I don’t know what was driving me to do things like sleep with her or snog him or shag the living daylights out of a, b and c consecutively. The only thing on my mind was sex, nicotine, more of the latter and a hell of a lot more of the former. I’d led a hedonistic lifestyle up until I ended up here and I was clawing it back in an attempt to keep it. I wasn’t eating crepes every morning on the river bank but I was waking up in a different bed every morning and that suited me right. You don’t realise how wrong you are about things until you look at it with fresh eyes. I lost a big part of myself in more ways than one in one night. It was the biggest success story to date. The fates haven’t quite finished with me yet, Amelia. They hate me as much as I hate them yet we get on splendidly. Until everything goes down the pan for, I don’t know, the third or fourth time – heck, maybe even the fifth time – in my life, I want to make things right. Sod chances. I don’t care whether you want to give me one or not. I am going to make it up to you. I don’t care what it costs me. I need to make this better again. I need to fix everything I’ve blown through and destroyed.”

Elijah crossed his arms over his chest and scowled openly. He reached down and lowered the gas levels on the burner before biting his lip and looking at Amelia.

"I want to make peace with you." He replied simply. "I know what I did was wrong. I wake up knowing that what I have left is very little and all of it I don't want. I am going to stop acting on impulse and start using my head. The first thing I did was decide to make it up to everyone I've seemingly ruined. It's a long list but I want to start with you, Mia."

Jack was running behind, but in her opinion, this was much more akin to her usual schedule had been. Lately, it had seemed like she was either early/on time (though on time meant early for Jack) or she was simply not there at all. This, however, was more like it, slipping into class once most the class had already settled itself. She tugged the strap of her bag and headed for the first open table.

She ended up at a table in the back corner, which was typically her favorite seat, because she had a good angle to aim at her classmates if she got bored and decided it was necessary to stir things up. She was considering doing so, but she decided to wait for a good reason. She really did not need detention at the time being. Instead she worked on dragging all her supplies out for the day, taking her sweet time, in absolutely no hurry to begin her work.

Amelia closed her eyes when Elijah responded with one of his characteristic, “There’s nothing I can do to fix it, so why don’t you just forget it and we can move on” explanations. It was the same spiel he had given her before, and it made Amelia want to dump the cauldron of boiling water on him. She was trying to control her anger, hold back the temper that had already flared once, but Elijah was pushing too hard at her. He always pushed too hard. That was the only reason he had gotten through her walls in the first place – all the pushing, the hunting her down to make her talk, repeatedly asking questions she didn’t want to answer. And now he was trying to do it again.

Why not let him? a traitorous voice in the back of her mind said, bringing up images of the Yule Ball when Elijah had given her the ruby necklace, making her skin tingle when he brushed the back of her neck while putting it on. He had smelled like cedar and that specific cologne she had never smelled on anyone else. And he had smiled that crooked smile up at her and placed a kiss on her lips and….

NO! Amelia’s rational mind interrupted, shattering the mental image and chasing it back to where she had carefully placed it so many months ago. It had to be hidden out of site, just the like necklace that had been shoved to the back of her closet, and the dress she had worn that night – donated to a thrift store so she wouldn’t have to look at it and remember. But Elijah, the living human being, could not be shoved into some cabinet or donated to charity. He was a constant reminder she couldn’t shake, as the current situation was proving.

The Slytherin boy had gotten to the part of his elaborate speech in which he was informing Amelia that she had no say in the matter, that he was going to take another chance even if she wasn’t willing to give him one. Amelia scoffed at this, her eyes still closed against having to watch him gesture with fake sincerity, or try to catch her eye and will her into submission with that apologetic gaze of his.

When Amelia didn’t respond to all of this, Elijah got tired of waiting and started in again, only quieter this time. He was being honest, or at least pretending to be, but Amelia had come to realize that when it came to Elijah, it was hard to tell the difference. He was so practiced at screwing with people that Amelia figured he even fooled himself sometimes.

And he had used his name for her. Mia. He was the only one that had ever called her that, after deciding she needed a nickname (despite her protests). This simple word made her heart skip, but Amelia suppressed the vital organ. She wasn’t letting it run the show again. But she was realizing that no matter what she said, Elijah wasn’t going to let up. It wasn’t in his nature. He would keep coming at her, like he had three times before, regardless of what she wanted. So she was just going to have to accept that and brace herself to tolerate it with indifference.

“Well it doesn’t seem you are asking for my permission anymore,” Amelia said rationally after taking a few deep breaths and opening her eyes only when she was certain she wouldn’t either curse Elijah or cry, “So there is no reason for me to argue this any longer. You’re going to do what you’re going to do, but you also know where I stand.”

“I don’t think there is anything you can say or do that can make up for what you’ve done to me,” Amelia said plainly, unintentionally giving Elijah a small glimpse of the fact that the hurt he had caused still hadn’t gone away. To make up for her honesty, Amelia’s subconscious could not help but bring a barbed and hurtful comment to her lips: “But you’ve never really cared much for what I think, so you can go ahead and try anyway.”

Amelia had already said too much and was not interested in giving Elijah any indication that she wanted to discuss the topic any further, so she dropped her icy stare back to the table. Having nothing more to prepare, Amelia took out her potions book and started flipping through the pages, not really reading anything, but stubbornly trying to make herself unapproachable to Elijah.

Allowances had been made for Elijah throughout his life. Now, however, his nine lives were up and he had to do this right. He had one last whack at this before it all went down the pan. He wanted to pave his own way and he’d started that in Paris. Admittedly he’d been a bit careless about it but it was the first thing he’d done to actually find his own footing; to get his own life together. He’d hit too many obstacles since then. Part of him wanted to make a hasty retreat and spend his last year of schooling there instead of in a classroom taking notes like a good boy. He knew that would be a fruitless effort. He wanted to make something of himself – he didn’t want to spend the rest of his youth drunk only to wake up one morning, fifty, with eighty kids and too many wives to count. That wasn’t Elijah’s idea of fun. He wanted to be something other than Viktor Krum’s son who could do nought but make his life and the lives of those around him go belly up.

That’s why he needed to make peace with these people. He’d made peace with Mira already seemingly, without even having to really try. The proof of that was now inked into Elijah’s back, the other half of that peace making inked into hers. His second trial was getting through to Amelia. Officially he was starting with her. He knew Mira far too well so he knew which button to press to get her to forgive him. She had as well, without fail. Everyone else would be an easy solution (he hoped), it was Amelia who would be the real problem and rightly so. He’d already decided to butt back into her life, though and she wasn’t happy with it – not that he exactly expected her to be.

Elijah winced at her words and looked up from the book he’d been trying to bury himself into. His face was pressed far too close and when he was welcomed back into reality, he tore himself away from it, his hands clutching at it as if it were some sort of life preserver. Elijah swallowed and licked his lips before turning his head towards his ingredients. He took out the things he’d need first and placed a vial full of ingredients on the chopping board. He picked up his knife and began to chop at them just as the book indicated. He cleared his throat absent mindedly and looked over at Amelia.

“Things have...changed...”

Oh Merlin...she’s going to crucify you now. His mind complained.

“I’ve changed. Merlin knows I’ve changed. If I haven’t spoken to you in months then why would I have bothered now if everything was still the same? I made a lot of poor decisions and not I am determined to make things right. I know what I did was wrong. Everything I have done in the last year seems to be wrong on review. I have buggered things up spectacularly and – ow shit!” The knife slipped and sliced into Elijah’s hand. He dropped the knife and brought his hand up to his face. He licked away the blood that was already beginning to escape and he looked around for something he could use to quell the blood flow. Elijah looked down at his shirt and bit his lip before picking up the knife again and cutting a strip of shirt off. He licked his hand again and fumbled as he tried to get the piece of cloth around him.

“Could you...help please?” Elijah asked, wincing as the fabric touched the sides of the wound. He rubbed his wrists together to stop the flow of blood from travelling down his arm.


(OOC: I am so ashamed of myself. This post is awful. D: )

((OOC: Admittedly, it is not your best, but it will do.))

Amelia heard Elijah setting something out on his cutting board and beginning to go about cutting whatever that was, but she wasn’t interested enough to look up and give him another opening. At first, she had taken this as a good sign because she figured if he was doing something else, he might spare her from having to hear any more of his explanations.

But, as she should have recognized was inevitable, Elijah once again launched into yet another explanation of why things were going to be different this time. Except, as usual, he was doing an exceedingly feeble job of it. Amelia could not resist shooting him a sharp look that suggested she thought he was about as intelligent as the nematodes in the jar in her potions kit, and they weren’t even alive anymore.

Oh yeah, things must have changed if he’s talking to you again, right? Just like they were changed the last time he decided to talk to you after a four-month hiatus. Oh wait…. Wrong again.

Amelia didn’t spare more than a few seconds of her attention making Elijah feel like an idiot before turning her attention back to her potions book, silently cursing the fact that the headmaster hadn’t yet bothered to start the class. The longer he waited, the longer Amelia was doomed to listen to Elijah blathering on – not that the start of a lesson ever really kept him from talking, but at least it might dissuade him.

The Ravenclaw girl was looking at her watch when Elijah’s ineffectual “I’m sorry” speech came to a shuddering halt and was abruptly replaced with him swearing loudly. Amelia couldn’t help but turn instinctually to see what had gotten Elijah cursing, and it only took a second for her to see the crimson blooming from his finger and the blood on the knife he had been holding. She was smart enough to put two and two together, even without Elijah attempting to stem the flow by sucking on the end of his finger.

Amelia didn’t move to do anything about the fact that Elijah’s finger was bleeding. It was perhaps an immature stance to take, because if it had been anyone else, even someone she didn’t know well, Amelia likely would have reacted to help with the situation. She was being petty, watching Elijah struggle as he tore at his shirt and attempted to construct a make-shift bandage. Despite the knowledge that what she was doing was juvenile, Amelia did not move to correct herself until Elijah practically begged her to do so, and even then she was begrudging about it.

“You are a wizard, are you not?” Amelia asked, rolling her eyes and she closed her book sharply and took her wand out of the pocket of her robes. Amelia didn’t know the extent of Elijah’s knowledge when it came to healing spells, but it seemed entirely impractical to be tearing off pieces of your clothing if you had a wand available.

“Episkey!” Amelia said firmly, pointing her wand at the exposed wound on Elijah’s finger. The cut sealed itself cleanly, making Elijah’s torn shirt strip and Amelia’s further attention unnecessary.

“You might do well to wait until you actually know which ingredients we will be using today before you bother to slice open any more fingers,” Amelia said dismissively, commenting blatantly on the fact that Elijah was chopping ingredients without the knowledge of what today’s potion would be.

Blood and injury was enough to send Elijah’s mind into overdrive. It was as if everyone inside there was going absolutely freaking bonkers and he could feel them all rattling around inside his head, jumping to attention and beginning to sort out some way to fix the rather nasty gash down the side of his hand. It was a wonderfully clean cut, as if he’d carved into himself purposely. He’d always been intrigued by his own injuries. He liked observing them after the event; the greatest example of this being after he burnt his hand with a cigarette. If his memories were correct though, something fairly brilliant came out of that St. Mungo’s trip. Obviously now upon looking back it was all rather crude and senseless of him to go on hours later to not only reject one person but shag the living daylights out of another. Then again, that was his past mentality although for the life of him, Elijah couldn’t understand how he’d survived this long without any diseases. Thankfully, his reoccurring trips to St. Mungo’s appeared to be cleansing him of anything he was afflicted with.

Amelia helped him of course but begrudgingly so. She used a spell; something Elijah should have thought of before he started slicing up his shirt. He ducked his head a little in embarrassment and tossed the piece of shirt away. It landed on the floor beside his bag and he bit his lip before turning his hand over to look at the freshly knitted bit of skin. He rubbed away some of the blood that had stained his skin and observed the wound a little closer. The skin was pink and angry where it had been drawn together again and Elijah, as per usual, teased it to see if it would open again. When it didn’t, Elijah dropped his hand down by his side and sat down.

He’d intended to change the colour of the water, just for his own amusement. He didn’t handle knives particularly well and Potions was never going to be a strength subject-wise for him. He may as well just quit the course while he was ahead (and still had a head) and take up something sensible. He was proficient in use of spells so perhaps that practical magic course would do him some good. He’d never be good at stuff like this. He would constantly be inadvertently hurting himself. Perhaps on that practical magic course he’d kill himself – inadvertently hopefully. Basically, he was buggered no matter what he did.

He’d been offered his studio back in Paris again. Arnold had secured it in case Elijah wanted it and frankly, he was considering it. The only problem was that he hadn’t actually painted or drawn anything since the Obliviation. He hadn’t even considered it; and what was worse was that he didn’t even know if he could draw anymore.

Then there was the whole ‘wizard or not a wizard’ debate.

Elijah’s hand strayed to his pocket where he knew his wand was. He withdrew the Hawthorn wand and turned it over in his hands. It was longer than the Willow wand he’d had before, three inches longer to be precise. He hadn’t really bonded with the wand very well. His father had invited a wand maker over while Elijah had been at home recuperating and he’d lost patience with the man. He sent him away and left Elijah with a wand that had no respect for him and vice versa. There was no way he would have been able to heal himself even if he had known the spell – which he had but he could not remember the incantation. It was a Hippogriff feather core so that summed it up in all its entirety. If Elijah didn’t respect it then there would be devastating results. He hadn’t bonded to the wand at all so until then he would be vulnerable in more ways than one.

“I don’t feel like a wizard anymore,” Elijah replied solemnly, placing the wand on the table. He cracked his fingers and shook his hands out before carefully picking the vials he’d taken out. He placed them back into the safety of the satin and closed the box of ingredients. He clicked the clasp into place and drummed his fingers on the lid as he thought. His eyes fell to the stain of blood on his wrist and he brought his hand to his mouth. He licked the blood away and let it fall after he was clean.

Then, unexpectedly, he rose from his seat. “I have to go,” he mumbled, reaching down to pick up his bag. Elijah felt as if he was in some kind of trance. He needed to leave, desperately so. The room was suffocating him and he knew that if he didn’t do something along the lines of departing soon then he would be clawing at the walls. “Goodbye,” He swallowed and slung the bag onto his shoulder before turning on his heel and leaving the room. The ingredients were useless, the cauldron was useless; but more importantly, he was useless. He wasn’t a wizard anymore; he wasn’t even a man. Elijah didn’t know what he was. He just simply existed with something in the back of his mind telling him that he wouldn’t put anything right and that his endeavour was a waste of time. Elijah agreed; he couldn’t help but agree.

He needed some air; and maybe even a cigarette.

I shouldn’t even have bothered… Amelia thought wearily to herself as Elijah poked and prodded at his newly healed wound as though trying to see how quickly he could open up the wound again. Now what does that remind me of…

When Elijah had inspected Amelia’s handiwork to the point that he was certain it wasn’t going to open again, his hand moved to the pocket of his robes and he withdrew a wand. Amelia’s mind immediately jumped back to the last time she had seen Elijah use a wand – to burn a book so many months ago – and the discrepancy did not go unnoticed. The wand he was holding now was not the same wand he had been using then, which immediately made Amelia curious. The way Elijah was holding the strip of wood and the words that fell from his lips confirmed what Amelia already knew to be true – her memory never failed her – and a thousand new questions flitted through her mind.

What happened to Elijah’s old wand? Where did he get his new one? Why is he acting as though this wand doesn’t belong to him, when clearly it does? Doesn’t it? He wouldn’t be carrying around someone else’s wand... unless… no, that’s foolishness…

Amelia’s mind was still creating scenario after scenario when the clattering of Elijah’s vials brought her mind back into the classroom. But before she could even debate whether or not to ask any of the questions, Elijah stood up abruptly and announced that he was leaving, and within seconds proceeded to do just that. He left his cauldron and potions kit sitting on the table and just turned on his heel and left.

Amelia should have been happy about this. Elijah had finally left her in peace.

But he had also left her with questions, and that was more frustrating than his presence had been.

Damn him and his insufferable ability to do just the right thing to make me have to think about him again… Amelia thought to herself as she crossed her arms across her chest and turned back to face the front of the room.

Potions bored Ariel to no end. It was a shame he couldn’t drop it really but he was Doyle’s apprentice (of sorts) so he figured he might as well show his face. After having something of a breakfast that morning, Ariel wandered down towards the dungeons. As he stepped over the threshold, into the dark damp that was the dungeons of Hogwarts Castle, he spotted a rather red-faced Krum who was storming along the corridor like someone had set fire to his arse instead of his burner. Ariel smirked at him but kept tight-lipped. He didn’t want to provoke the young heir just in case his daddy decided to bring in some disciplinary action at Hogwarts. It would be a shame to see Viktor Krum have to cut Hogwarts funding or something of the like because his little baby wasn’t getting the treatment he deserved.

When Ariel entered the classroom he found that the lesson had barely started. Krum’s stuff was beside Amelia’s though, giving Ariel all of the information he needed. A quick scan of the classroom brought Ariel’s attention to Jack. He smirked again and wandered over to her. He planted his arms on her shoulders and leaned over, popping a quick, cheeky kiss on her cheek before taking a seat beside her. “You always sit here,” he stated the complete obvious before smiling a bit. “I feel as if we haven’t spoken for a while,” he said gently. “I kind of miss you.” And he did, that was no lie.

Ariel leaned over and dropped his bag onto the floor. He unbuckled it and retrieved his book from inside. He didn't care to do anything with his cauldron or ingredients just yet; their use would come soon enough. He dropped his book carelessly on the table and looked up at the Professor. His eyes travelled over to Amelia's desk and he bit his lip before looking at Jack and asking,

"So what happened over there?" Cocking his head towards the table and the person in question.

Jack felt hands fall on her shoulders and she felt her hand twitch into a fist, still holding a stirring rod in one hand, about to defend herself. She felt lips peck her cheek and turned to see Ariel sitting next to her. She gave him a dangerous smirk and whacked him in the shoulder with the stirring rod. She was trying to go about this thing as though she did not care what people thought... but she did.

She shrugged, saying, "I've found little reason to venture out into the general populous," she added a gesture around the room to back her statement up. At his words, she looked back at her cauldron and adjusted the heat, knawing on her bottom lip. "Yeah, we haven't. It's been a weird few weeks, y'know?" She cleared her throat awkwardly. "I do too."

When he asked about Amelia and Elijah, she was able to relax a bit. "Oh, I don't know. I try to ignore the whims and the petty tragedies of Mister Krum. He probably messed with Amelia and she was not in the mood. T"e usual shenanigans."