‘Well, that’s nice, isn’t it?’ she said lightly. ‘Aren’t those people your friends?’
‘They used to be. Lucius ��� well, I guess he still resents what he perceives as my betrayal of him.’
‘Let him sulk, then’, Elena counselled. ‘At least his wife and son are on your side, so he might come around eventually.’
He didn’t say anything, just stared ahead.
‘You’re going to go, aren’t you?’ Elena asked, uncertain about what was going on inside his head. ‘Or are you uncomfortable about it?’
‘No. I’m going to go’, he said very quietly. His eyes were on the dashboard now. Elena almost didn’t catch it when he murmured, ‘Would you?’
It took her a few seconds to understand what he was proposing. ‘Would I what? Come with you?’
He continued to stare ahead, then turned his head slightly towards her ��� without looking into her eyes ��� and nodded.
‘Sure I would! I’d love to!’ Her affirmation came so quickly and enthusiastically it made Daysen look up in astonishment which, in turn, made her laugh. ‘Come on, that can’t be such a surprise!’
He knew what she was alluding to, that it was an encrypted way of saying ‘I’d go anywhere with you’, but still that simple affirmation of affection swayed him; he wasn’t used to it; he always suspected ridicule; but at the same time, he couldn’t believe anymore that she was making a fool of him, not after all that had happened. Yet, he was a little disconcerted when he felt a smile come to his lips. ‘Well then. Fine.’
Elena laughed again, but he saw immediately that it was a happy laugh. She was delighted at the prospect. He had hoped it, but was still surprised that asking a woman to go out on a dinner date with him ��� for the first time in his life, in fact ��� had been so easy. Yet, he broke off the meeting quite quickly after that, quoting his Hogwarts duties and that only a few hours of sleep remained (the insomniac detail suddenly seemed forgotten). Also, he promised that he would get in touch about the dinner, admonished her that the dress-code would be formal as they were going to visit a very grand wizarding home. Elena realized quickly that he was only talking to overcome his embarrassment and waved it away.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t cause you any shame’, she promised mirthfully as they got out of the car.
‘I didn’t mean to say ���’, he started to growl.
‘I know! I know ���’ And with a playful wink and a tiny wave, she’d left him standing there, walking away with a jaunty walk and swaying hips and feeling his eyes burning holes into her back.
The meeting with Jack in the car had put her into a good and confident mood for almost a week. Now, however, sitting in the dirty sitting room and waiting for the assessment to begin, she felt that confidence quickly evaporating. Also, she suspicion that this was the intended effect of letting her wait so long grew ��� it was more than half an hour by now ��� and this made her slightly angry. She got up from the dingy sofa and started pacing around. She had hardly got into it when the door to the cramped room flew open and a slightly breathless Waldemar Periwinkle appeared. The beads of sweat were back on his forehead.
‘Sorry for the wait, Ms Horwath. Like I said, we had some problems. You can come up now.’
She gulped as she followed the young man up a rickety staircase. Part of her wanted to ask what was coming, how she was going to be ‘assessed’, but she feared that any question in that direction might give away how nervous she was and so she said nothing. They came to a door, and when Periwinkle the Younger opened it, he made way into a spacious room, far less dusty than the rest of the house, although it looked crooked with its slanted walls and askew floorboards. In the middle of the room stood two chairs facing each other. Immediately, the word ‘interrogation’ popped up ominously in Elena’s mind.
She stepped into the room, looked about. There was a half-open door leading to an adjacent room. A loud rustle came from it.
‘Stephen?’ Waldemar Periwinkle called out as they entered, visibly irritated. ‘Where are you?’
Another rustle from the adjacent room and a tall thin figure appeared. Elena looked up and set eyes on one of the prettiest young men she had ever seen. His hair was as black as Jack’, though shorter and quite unruly, the features fine, skin pale with a slight golden hue. The young man’s eyes had the colour of molten chocolate, but they were unsteady, roving around. Elena wasn’t sure whether he had noticed her at all.
‘I can’t find my quill.’ The words came out in a hectic staccato.
Waldemar cleared his throat. ‘Ms Horwath, may I introduce my brother? Stephen Periwinkle.’
Brothers? Elena looked from one man to the other. They didn’t look related at all. ‘Nice to meet you’, she said to the black-haired one.
However, he ignored her. ‘I can’t find my quill!’ he repeated, obviously distraught.
‘That’s not important now, Stephen!’ Waldemar’s irritation grew. ‘Ms Horwath is here for the assessment. Let’s go to work.’
‘I cannot work without my quill!’ Stephen Periwinkle insisted, turned a cold shoulder to them and disappeared into the adjacent room.
‘Damn it, Stephen!’ Waldemar made to follow him, then thought twice and turned to Elena with an apologetic smile. ‘I’m sorry about this. My brother is a little ��� peculiar. However, I can assure you that no one can do what he does quite like him. You’ll see.’ And with that, he spurted into the next room. ‘Come out, you dimwit! You can look for your bloody quill later!’
The reply was dry and dogged. ‘I cannot work without my quill!’
‘God damn it, Stephen, why now?! You can’t do this!’
‘I need my ���’ The rest was drowned in a frantic rustle of papers.
Elena frowned, looked around. She spotted peacock feathers on one of the window sills. ‘Sir, is this your quill?’ she called out gently.
Stephen Periwinkle appeared in the doorframe, stared. ‘Don’t touch it!’ he shouted and hurried towards her.
‘Don’t worry. I won’t.’
‘How many times have I told you?! You can’t talk to people like this!’ Waldemar looked livid.
‘That’s quite alright’, Elena said evenly, watching as Stephen Periwinkle picked up his quill with a satisfied murmur and proceeded to stroke it with thin, delicate fingers. ‘It’s a very beautiful quill’, she said.
The handsome young man looked up. For the first time, he appeared to really see her. ‘Elena Johanna Horwath’, he said, his pronunciation perfect. ‘Born 7th of May 1974 in Vienna, Austria.’
‘That’s right’, she said and smiled. She was used to her name being mispronounced, ‘Elaina’ instead of ‘��lena’, ‘Joanna’ instead of ‘Yo-hanna’ and with an English ‘th’ instead of just ‘t’; she wondered if Stephen Periwinkle knew any German.
‘What are you, a bloody robot?’ With a quick and vicious movement, Waldemar Periwinkle hit his brother around the head with a copy of the Daily Prophet. ‘Or a zombie, more like.’ He grinned at Elena, waiting for her approval, but she returned his look coldly. Waldemar fidgeted, then put on a bright face. ‘Let’s proceed now, shall we?’
However, Stephen ignored him, looking very earnest. ‘My mother gave me this quill’, he informed Elena.
‘Mother’s dead!’ Waldemar hissed. ‘Enough with that bloody quill now, one might think you’re obsessed! Sit down already. ��� Ms Horwath, I’m really really sorry for this!’
She decided to do as Stephen did and ignored him. ‘Are you going to do the assessment?’ she asked the young man who was carefully pocketing his quill.
‘Yes. It’s what I do.’
‘And he does it really well!’ Waldemar butted in. ‘He’s an utter fool otherwise, but he can do that.’
Elena’s eyes darkened. She didn’t at all like the way how Waldemar talked to his brother. Certainly she saw that the young man was peculiar in a way that she didn’t quite understand. Ho
wever, his eyes ��� as soon as they had stopped roving ��� were alert and intelligent. No, he wasn’t stupid; he was merely different.
‘I’m not in a hurry’, she said to Stephen, ‘we can take our time.’
‘Don’t encourage him, Ms Horwath. It was his fault you had to wait so long in the first place.’
‘I survived’, she said.
Stephen looked at his brother pointedly. ‘She survived’, he informed him reasonably. ‘And I had to find my quill.’
Waldemar’s head acquired a slightly purple colour.
‘Uh-oh’, said Stephen, but sounded completely unfazed.
‘Maybe we should begin’, Elena said gently, ‘what do you think? We don’t want anyone to blow a fuse, do we?’
‘No. That’d be unpleasant.’ Again, Stephen’s voice was monotonous, unemotional, and Elena sensed that this was his ‘problem’. It made for a wonderfully sarcastic effect, though. He pointed to the chairs in the middle of the room. ‘You have to sit down. There. The right one. Not the left.’
She did as told and watched attentively as Stephen sat down opposite of her. He was breathing deeply now, obviously preparing himself. Then he looked at her very earnestly. ‘When I tell you, you have to put your hands in mine’, he said, ‘but only when I tell you, not before that.’
‘She understands English’, snarled Waldemar.
Elena turned her head sharply and glared at him with sparkling eyes. He clamped his mouth shut.
‘The assessment of Elena Johanna Horwath, born 7th of May 1974 in Vienna, Austria, is about to begin’, Stephen Periwinkle said, sounding a little solemn. ‘When I tell you, you have to put your hands in mine.’
She nodded and Stephen breathed deeply again. Elena sensed that this was difficult for him, that he had to brace himself for the physical contact. When he finally said ‘Now!’, it sounded laboured.
His hands lay on his knees, palms facing upwards. Very gently, Elena put her hands in his. They felt warm and only slightly sweaty. As soon as contact was established, Elena felt a peculiar tension moving upwards from her hands into her arms, her shoulders, then her chest. It was like a very slight electric vibration. She tried to focus, put up her Occlumentic shield. She recalled Jack’ favourite exercise ��� he saying ‘blue elephant’, and she trying to think of anything but that, only now her prescience had become the blue elephant.
Stephen Periwinkle’s head fell back, his brown eyes rolled up in their sockets. The vibration in Elena’s body increased, it started to feel slightly disagreeable. She tried not to focus too much on the discomfort, but on shielding her thoughts.
A strange humming sound came from Stephen’s slightly open mouth. With a start, Elena realized that he had gone into a kind of trance. Waldemar Periwinkle watched closely from the side lines.
‘Strong mental powers’, Stephen whispered in a voice quite unlike his own, ‘vivid imagination and powers of projection. Empathy.’ Again, he inhaled sharply. ‘Not very practical, though. Working with magical materials won’t come off as desired.’
It was a very sound summing up of her potential, and Elena had to bite down on a smile, then focussed again.
‘Also, there is ���’ Stephen Periwinkle broke off.
Involuntarily, she swallowed. For some reason, she sensed that this very specific power of his was much stronger than her Occlumency. Was he on to her prescience?
‘What is it?’ Waldemar hissed impatiently.
It jolted Stephen out of his trance. He gave his brother a cold look. ‘You mustn’t disturb. I told you. It ruins everything.’
‘Come on, don’t be daft!’
‘It ruins everything!’ Stephen insisted, then suddenly shot up from the chair. ‘It’s over’, he stated dryly.
‘Stephen! Go back to work!’
‘It’s over’, Stephen repeated doggedly, ‘I’m done.’
‘Do as I tell you, you dimwit! Or father will hear of this!’
Stephen twitched, but refused to sit down again.
‘I’m afraid your brother has summed me up very well’, Elena said quietly. ‘He’s right, I’m no good at Potions and Herbology. I do better in other fields. Also, I’ve only been doing this for a short time. I guess there’s not much to see.’ She allowed herself an unnoticeable sigh of relief.
‘Very good at Transfiguration’, Stephen said monotonously. ‘Charms work, too. ��� However, she’ll probably never concoct a proper potion. ��� I recommend Arithmancy. Will school abstract thinking, though it won’t come easy.’
Waldemar Periwinkle swore under his breath, then tried to calm down. ‘Well. I guess that’s quite enough then.’
‘So you know where to start with me now’, Elena babbled happily to distract Waldemar from demanding that his brother try again. ‘Guess you’ll have to plunge me into Potions and Herbology classes. Got around it way too long ���’
But to her surprise, Waldemar Periwinkle shook his head. ‘That’s not our philosophy’, he explained tersely. ‘At the academy, we don’t believe in working on people’s weaknesses, but rather to further and improve on their strengths. What use is it to school you in subjects in which you’ll never achieve more than average standard? ��� In that way, we are very different from other teaching institutions such as Hogwarts. We believe in focussing on the useful.’
‘To be properly made use of’, Elena thought sarcastically. ‘Interesting approach’, she said politely.
‘Well’, Waldemar Periwinkle said, ‘I guess we’re quite done here.’
‘Seriously? That was it?’
Waldemar rolled his eyes at his brother who’d ventured over to the window and stared out of it, seemingly unaware of what was going on in the room. ‘May I escort you down, Ms Horwath?’
‘Sure!’ She jumped up and followed the more obnoxious of the two young Periwinkles. In the doorframe, she turned around and looked at Stephen who’s back was still turned to her. ‘Goodbye, Mr Periwinkle. And thank you for your time.’
He didn’t turn, stared out of the window. Only in the last moment, when she was already out in the hallway, did she hear him say, ‘Goodbye, Elena Horwath.’
‘I hope he didn’t upset you’, Waldemar said to her as they walked down the staircase. ‘He’s been that way for a long time; ever since our mother died.’
‘What happened?’ Elena looked worried, but Waldemar waved her question away.
‘Long time ago. Doesn’t matter now.’
‘Your brother didn’t upset me’, Elena said with a slight scowl, ‘I think he’s remarkable.’
‘You’re being very polite’, Waldemar replied with a chuckle, ‘but you may well say it as it is: he’s a nutcase.’
She wanted to object. In fact, the way Waldemar put his brother down angered her to no end, made her want to defend him. However, she saw that it was probably not very sensible to do so. Getting emotional would not help her in the weeks to come, so she didn’t comment. It wasn’t necessary, either, because Waldemar prattled on. ‘They are very good with him at the academy. Father said they might eventually make a wizard out of him. Not that I believe it ���’
‘He’s enrolled at the academy, as well?’
‘Yes, but in a special program.’ He made a dismissive gesture, then smiled at her. ‘Are you looking forward to starting your studies?’
She stared at him astonished. ‘Does this mean ��� I’m admitted?’
‘Of course! Didn’t you hear him? Strong powers, he said. ��� Now, you can’t trust Stephen with most things, but he is very good in that regard. ��� The academy would be thrilled to develop a talent such as yours.’
‘Well ��� great!’ she sputtered. ‘That’s exactly what I need!’
They had arrived at the front door. Instead of opening it for her, however, Waldemar Periwinkle eyed her curiously. ‘I thought you had a teacher? ��� Last time I saw you, you were quite insistent as to that.’
She had prepared
herself for that question. The rueful smile was carefully studied, as was the down-casting of her eyes. ‘Well. That changed.’ She said it in a small voice to suggest that she’d rather not talk about the reason.
‘I see.’ Waldemar appeared understanding. ‘Difficult person, Professor Daysen, isn’t he?’
‘Yeah’, she scoffed. The way in which she said it made Periwinkle even more sympathetic.
‘You can rest easy now, Ms Horwath. Your magical education will take its course. And you don’t need to concern yourself with having to learn stuff you’re not really made for. Instead, we will focus on developing your full magical potential in a manner in which it is seldom realized in ordinary education.’
She kept an even face, but thought that this sounded like the doings of a sect. ‘Sounds very good indeed’, she chirped.
‘Your lessons will start next week. You will be collected from your house Monday morning. Keep yourself ready at around 8 a.m.’ With those words, he finally opened the door for her.
‘Alright then’, she said. ‘Can I just ask ���?’
‘Yes?’
‘Ansgard Periwinkle ��� is he your father? I wasn’t sure the first time I met you ���’
‘Yes. He doesn’t like to put too much on relations in a work environment, but you’re right, he’s my father. And Stephen’s, too. No one knows how that happened. The Periwinkles are known for being sharp. Probably a weakness in my mother’s blood ���’
Again, Elena bit her lip. It was no use telling him that she strongly suspected Stephen to be the sharpest tool in the Periwinkle box, and that the others just didn’t see it because they weren’t as sharp as they believed. Yet again, it would have been highly undiplomatic.
‘Fine’, she said, ‘so I’ll see you next week?’
‘We might encounter each other every now and then’, Waldemar said with a warm smile ��� a little too warm for her taste.
Elena wanted to say ‘I’m looking forward to it’, but found that she couldn’t bring herself to say it. In only a short while, she’d come to intensely dislike Waldemar Periwinkle. So she settled for a noncommittal ‘See you then’, inclined her head and then walked away at a brisk pace.
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