August 2nd, 2011.  (M for depressing thoughts)


Aileen Reid sat at her desk in her hotel room, her fingers worrying at the broken seal on Virgil Carstair's letter[1]. She tucked a limp piece of hair behind her ear. The strand smelled faintly of the lavender satchels that the maid service left on her pillow, and the sweat of troubled sleep. Her toe traced a sun-bleached spot on the worn rug laying wrinkled against the desk leg, a pirouette slowed and snagged by the warm, musty air permeating the room.

She glanced down at the first sentence for the thousandth time, drawing her shawl around her.

          You might recall me from when I used to take your Runes class...

Of course she remembered Virgil, the Slytherin brimming with potential who had used his smarts to provoke his peers whenever he'd grown bored of his studies. She had hopes that he'd graduated Hogwarts a fairly well-adjusted young man, enough so that he would refrain from alarming his former Runes professor and be able to separate reality from nightmares. She had hopes for many of her students. Still, there was something about his careful, polite tone that begged her to believe him. Aileen imagined that he’d spent a few minutes weighing what to say and how to say it. If he were making it up, he'd sprinkled in the strangest of details. He'd avoided melodramatics. It sounded, to her, like simple truth. Or his version of it.

Aileen touched the handle of the desk drawer on her right side, her foot stilling in the air. Maiko might verify his burgeoning seer status. She opened the drawer an inch, glancing at the stack of unfinished letters going back since December. They began with Dear Maiko, Dear Tapendra, Dear Aisling, Dear Herschel. Even Dear Oz.

           Your sister, in a forest, experiencing a state of fear and distress.

The forest surrounding the Lilly Lakehouse was vast. Though Aileen had not seen any unicorns when she'd first arrived, the curving edge of the woods had rustled behind her as she'd gazed up at the fortress before them, all the way up to the tower jutting into the sky. Owls had fluttered in the open windows. Abby had skipped ahead, teasing her for gawking.

Who would dare treat her little sister cruelly?

Aileen's fingers clenched at her sides as she stared out at the shadows slipping over the green fields visible from her window. She tugged the drapes together, blocking out something black and ragged billowing on the horizon. She lifted her wand and lit every lamp in the room.

Quill. Where was her good quill?

She looked under the duvet kicked off the edge of the bed, moved a few of the dishes piled on the nightstand, and sorted through a stack of books on the floor. Most days, Aileen woke curled in the armchair at her desk. She woke late, to the maid service knocking. This shamed her enough to leave her room for a while, step out for lunch, or visit her colleagues at the infirmary. When she returned, the bed was there, two feet away from her desk, and she was often so tired. As the sun began to sink down, she'd shutter her room and sleep. When her dreams woke her in the middle of the night, she'd move to her desk and try to get things done in the wee hours, listening to the sounds of the night outside, imagining every gust of wind as a cold breath against the window pane. She'd sleep, again.

           She felt (I felt) trapped.

Aileen glanced at the bed, then at the door as a family traipsed down the corridor, banging luggage against the walls. A young girl hummed a song.

She missed her sister. She'd written her every week last fall. Had not heard back once. Her mother's letters reassured her that Abby was well. Aileen had tried to feel glad for her, but as months passed without a word, her relief turned to bitterness and hurt. If Abby didn't appreciate Aileen, fine. If she wanted to settle for the first person who seemed to care about her, then fine. They'd been a team, the sisters. When they'd lived together, Aileen had grown used to Abby seeking her opinion. Leaving her shoes in front of the door and her glass next to the coaster. Dancing in her room. Charming the neighbors. Leaving notes that she called 'texts' around the house. Filling a hole in Aileen's life that she'd never acknowledged, had barely felt, keeping her house calm, orderly, and oh so quiet, with nothing to distract her from the chime of the clocks or the crisp, sharp edges of her thoughts as they marched on their orderly path to accomplish the things that must be done day after day, the practical matters that made her feel content.

Abby had brought a whirlwind of chaos and joy into her life. The eldest sister had not been ready for the youngest to leave her.

"Hoo, hoo."

Virgi's black owl ruffled his feathers from his perch on the stand by the window.

Aileen shot the owl a sharp look, set her books aside and rose. She returned to the desk, finding a dulled quill. She dipped it into the open ink pot, puncturing the congealed film, and swirling until the fresh green ink rose to the top.

The ink was the deep, verdant green of the hills looming in the distance, a few miles away from this humble Bed and Breakfast where she and the other scholars had found lodging almost a year ago. Aileen had arrived confident, poised, flattered that her old friend and colleague had asked her for assistance. She hadn't expected to stay so long, and still had last year's tentative lesson plans for Runes tucked into her suitcase. A week had turned into another and another as they'd realized the hills hid sinister secrets, a magic so ancient and powerful that the muggles had attempted to copy it with burial mounds such as Newgrange, imitating the function without understanding the true purpose.

A fog had been seeping out of the hills for years, a fog of many faces, haunting the muggles and wixes in nearby towns. Pentrals, an older researcher had called them. Aileen had scoffed, agreeing to stay on to help but remaining skeptical as to the severity of the issue.

December had brought the cold truth crashing around her. On the day of the winter solstice, the ancient burial mounds of witches and wizards flooded with light, illuminating the stone slabs that hid portraits carved in spirals and swirls. The fog had separated, grown thick as snow, and formed pentrals, tumbling out of the tombs and over the land.

In ages past, souls roamed the earth during the solstice and then returned quietly to their graves. That was the purpose of the burials, the position of them, the light. All to honor the dead. In recent years, the ancient magic had begun to break down, and the pentrals themselves began to break and grow bitter.

Those pentrals attracted dementors to Ireland's chilly, gray skies.

           Couldn't make it.

Her quill scratched and tore at the thin, cheap notepad. The logo of the infirmary marred the page like an omen of all that had and could go wrong. Two of her colleagues were still recovering from the dementor attacks they'd suffered. The rest of the research team had dropped off one by one, fleeing for safer shores and warmer climates. Aileen had remained, doing her part to reinforce the ancient magic. The fog too, remained. Aileen felt it in every breath she took, every tendril of damp snaking around the back of her neck, every blurred blink.

          Experiencing a state of fear and distress.

Mr. Carstairs,

          I felt (feel) trapped.

Thank you.

          I'm never going to make it.

~A. Reid.


Her thoughts blotted and bloomed in dark inky spatters against the corners of her mind. She stood for a few minutes, head bent. The owl fluttered his wings.

Aileen opened the window, letting the owl fly out and her words with it. If Abby was scared, Aileen would find her. She would find the strength. They would both go home. Come home, her father had written her a week ago, noticing the wobble in her elegant scrawl and sensing all the words she couldn't write between the lines.

She shivered at a chill seeping into the room. Tomorrow.

She and Abby would come home tomorrow.

1.	Hint of the Century

August 3rd, 2011.  (M for language)


Aileen smoothed down her blond hair and her pale gray dress, adjusted her shoulder bag, and stepped into the fireplace in the hotel lobby with a little nod and wave to the receptionist. The dress fell in folds and pleats and molded around her, a pair of delicate earrings glimmered behind her hair, and the slight scent of perfume wafted in her wake. If anyone noticed the slight tremble in her fingers or the tiredness in her eyes, they were too polite to mention it. The hotel staff had already sent her luggage to her house in London, and sent the final bill for her room to the Irish Ministry. As far as she and they were concerned, this part of her life, this overwhelming year, was over.

She flooed to Iovantucarus Infirmary with its sage green walls. She walked around the fountain of the Healer-Saint offering herbs to children while birds flocked at his feet. The lift took her to the Spell Damage floor.

Though Aileen walked at a brisk pace, there was a lag to her movements, a delay in her limbs. In her thoughts, she could float into the clouds at any moment, but here on earth, an invisible anchor dragged at her heels and tethered her to the ground. Her neck ached. She kept her chin up. Her shoulders hurt. She dare not slouch. The eyes of the Healers were sharp, even within the ward she privately called the point of no return. The infirmary staff moved with ease, checking all the boxes on their forms and speaking in slow voices. The best they could do was make the patients here comfortable.

Aileen knocked gently on room 43. The man in one bed might be sleeping. The woman in the other bed always was.

She went inside, gaze falling first on Arvid Winter, renowned scholar, former mentor, former lover, almost-fiancé, and then to his wife sleeping in the bed next to his. Aileen drew in a heavy breath, and made herself move forward. One step, then another.

She looked down at Arvid's sandy brown hair flecked with gray, his tanned face leeched of color, the frown tugging on his thin mouth, the sharp, arrogant line of his nose. If he ever stood straight again he'd be just a few inches taller than her, wiry and strong. His eyes were a warm hazel, forever squinting, as if the years they'd spent working together in Egypt had left a permanent mark. Or so she liked to think.

Aileen touched his hand. When the dementors had come for them, she'd felt frozen, made of ice. Merely feeling content in life was not enough to drive away such darkness, and her patronus had sputtered and faded out faster than the pentrals flitting around the tomb. Arvid had reached for his wife and then reached for her, pulling them back into the tomb, away from the dementors' clutches.

"I'm going home," she told him, watching his eyelids flutter. "I'm fetching my sister and going home. It's time. I've owled your brother. He'll be here soon."

Another owl that had taken her days to send.

"Can you hear me? He'll look after you and Renata. He'll make sure you get better."

Aileen squeezed his hand, wondering if any of this was getting through to him. Perhaps his silence caused her to admit, in the lowest of murmurs, "I'm sorry."

He muttered something in his sleep.

She leaned close.

"Tell the dementors," he mumbled, turning his head toward her.

"Hm?"

"Tell the dementors to fuck all the way off."

She drew back, smiling a tiny, bittersweet smile. "Such language, Arvid. I'd rather say desist your dementing. Kindly gather your cloaks and collude elsewhere."

Because that had worked out so well for her in the past.

When he didn't respond, she lifted his hand and kissed one of his knuckles.

She went around his bed, to his wife Renata. Her dark brown hair spilled dry and dull over the pillow, a stark contrast to her wan, olive-toned skin. Only under the glare of the hospital lights did her face look vulnerable. When she'd been awake and fully alive, she was warm and funny. She'd treated Aileen with a respect that Aileen had not at all anticipated, and attempted to return in kind. No one deserved this, least of all Renata.

Within the tomb that the three of them had retreated to, a pentral had been laying in wait. The pentral had possessed Renata, destroyed her, destroyed itself, leaving her an unconscious shell. As Arvid and Aileen had moved to help her, a dementor broke through the roofbox, flying toward them. Arvid had told her to go, that he would give them time. She'd listened, grabbing hold of Renata and apparating away.

The dementor had nearly consumed his soul. He was now caught in a state between life and death, a part of his soul gone. The effects were eerily similar to his wife's. Aileen felt them like an echo, still saw cloaks in the gray clouds above, still felt the bitter winds of December. 

Aileen adjusted the blankets snugly around Renata's thin shoulders. She looked out the window for a long moment. It was time.

Aileen Reid appeared on the path between the trees and the Lilly Lakehouse with a sharp pop. She stumbled a bit, took a few shaky breaths. It was fine. She was fine. She looked up.

Owls whirled around the tall tower attached to the mansion, fleeing from the white, wispy shapes pouring out of every window and every crack in the wall. The shapes spread like smoke, laughing and shrieking. Aileen gripped her wand. What, pentrals? Here?

"Abby!" Aileen called.

She hurried down the path, then stopped short as a wave of despair struck.

No, no, no. Not here. Had she brought them with her? Would she ever be rid of them? Dark, robed figures swarmed the sky, looming over the pentrals, silencing their laughter and shrieks, making the tower look stunted and fragile.

Aileen raised her wand and tried to do something. Anything. The thoughts and memories that invaded her mind obliterated all thoughts of magic. In her mind she saw the child she'd been. Wretched, cruel, not only to students but to her little brother Simon. The petty young woman she'd become. The heartbreak she'd caused Oz. The shame she felt when she realized what she'd done. The running away from her problems. Finding something she was good at, gaining recognition in her field, only to doubt whether it was her or her mentor. Arvid telling her he intended to marry her. Arvid leaving her after her family had insulted him in every way they could. She hadn't followed. She hadn't fought for him. The years alone. The way she'd let her sister fall prey to a curse. The way she'd rejected responsibility. Her fear of Snark. The loneliness - persistent, crushing. The sudden hope. The waiting. The realization that she would never be able to tell him she cared, and he would never know.

As she stood frozen, a pentral crashed into her. It swept in under her breath, blurred her vision, drove her to her knees. Aileen's soul fought with everything it had. It latched onto the most superficial of things, the only things she could still control even at her lowest - her face, the shape of her head, the color of her hair, her height, the curves and angles of her body.

Aileen's soul fled. She flew down corridors and through a dozen hotel rooms that all looked the same. She hid behind countless locked doors, ducked below windows, crawled under beds. She spoke the quietest Lumos and hid the smallest light with her hand. She hid far, far away in her own mind.

The dementors circled around her like a murder of crows. Someone else took over. Someone else opened Aileen Reid's eyes, rose on shaky legs, and pointed Aileen's wand.

"Oh, fuck all the way off!"

With a flick of her wrist, she apparated away.