Clover Hawkings and the Triwizard Tournament

9. The Welcoming Party

The man's face is burned into my brain, and it takes only moments for my mind to connect a name to him: Igor Karkaroff.  What is he doing here? And more importantly, why do I know him? As soon as the thought comes into my head, his face starts changing; his goatee becoming darker, his hair thicker, his hard, set face with fewer lines around it. 

Then it comes to life- he's standing in a hallway, looking down at something. 

"Hello, you stupid child," he leered.

 A short baby girl, scarcely a year old, walking and clinging to the wall, raised her eyes off her juice slippy cup and fixed them on the man, Igor.  "Dada."

"No, I'm not your father, ignorant twit," Igor snarled. 

"Dada," the girl said stubbornly, grazing past the man and down the stairs, to the kitchen. 

"He's down there, idiot,"  Igor said, exasperated, pointing to where a dark-haired man sat with several others hunched over a map. 

"Dada!" the girl insisted, not understanding what this man could possibly be confused about. 

"Whatever," Igor said, and with a flick of his wand and a cry of "silenco", the girl was forced to fall silent. Scowling, Igor disappeared in a puff of dark smoke and re-appeared in the kitchen, where the other men and two women sat. One had dark, curly hair, the other long and fair- my stomach clenched. I did not want to see this. Once, long ago, my aunt had taught me how to break out of a bad dream. Unfortunately, closing my eyes and reminding myself it wasn't real didn't work any better than it had then, back when the nightmares of the last weeks had been something that dragged on for months. When I opened them, she was still there, scowling in her dark cloak like all the others had, and when she waved her arms in exasperation, I could see the tattoo on her left arm.  I run over aunt Cass's tactics once again: remember it's a dream, it's already happened, give the bad guy a teddy bear..........I refuse to hear the scene my brain is remembering anymore.  

I scream, as loud as I can, long and hard, the walls shake and the ceiling is caving in, my throat burns-

"Clover, calm down!" A voice, normally soft but now hard with fear, yanks me back to reality. 

I open my sleepily eyes to see a hazy figure bending over me. Her dark hair floats towards my face and tickles my nose. I sneeze.

"You good there?" another humanoid shape says from next to the first, her normally dreaming blue eyes sharp and in focus and by the way those fuzzy caterpillars on her face are knitted together, I'd say it's from fear, or at least nervousness.

"Oh!" a third one exclaims, then bursts into tears, burying her face into her hands.

"It's okay," the second says, and she walks over and hugs the third, whose sobs don't relent. Her blurry face slowly comes into focus. "Alura?"

She releases a relieved smile. "You sure gave us a fright." My eyes travel along the length of her arms.

"Oh, Scarlet, it's okay," I say awkwardly in my best soothing voice to the redheaded crying to Alura's chest. "I'm fine."

Scarlet looks up and gives another sniff, trying desperately to wipe away her tears at the rate they came. "Oh, Clover, we were so worried about you!" 

Well. Way to make things uncomfortable. Why do they have to care? 

"Yes, Scarlet almost fainted as well as you did," the first figure says, her face still coming into focus. Her words are teasing, but there's a hard seriousness behind them. As I catch a look at her striking green eyes, a name clicks into place. "Artemis?"

She smiles, and suddenly I become aware of a stabbing pain in my right hand. I looked down to see a slender hand - Artemis's- clutching my hand so tightly her knuckles were turning white. There's a stuffed fox in the crook of my arm. "Artemis," I smile, recalling when the dark-haired girl had blushingly given her to me, and how I had named her in the real Artemis's honor.

"Aww, I have my own little welcoming party," I say snarkily, and even Scarlet manages a smile. In place of the Welcoming Feast I can't help feel relieved I missed, I added in my head, but I didn't dare voice these thoughts.  

Artemis gives a weak smile, and once again my vision becomes blurry, this time from tears that I refuse to let fall.

I searched her face, and as my eyes drift across my friends' I notice their white faces, dark circles under bloodshot eyes, and oily hair. Apparently, my own little welcoming party has been here for quite some time. 

"Have long have I been here?" I ask slowly.

It was Alura who answered. "Almost three days."

"Oh!" Scarlet cried again, and new sobs racked her body. Anger starts crawling through my body for reasons beyond me. Three days?

"What happened?" I said groggily.

"We were outside the Great Hall. You saw Karkaroff- head of Drumstrang, you know- and you, um..started screaming and fainted."

"Dramatically," Alura added. "Nicely done, actually." 

"You missed the Welcoming Feast," Scarlet sniffed.

"We all did," Alura reminded her.

"What do you mean?"

"They were here," a voice answered. A figure in flowing white robes sweeps through, and it takes me a second to realize this hazy person is Madam Promfrey.

"Refused to leave the Hospital Wing for the last day. Almost had to drug them to sleep," she added, "but a library bann was enough to keep this one out," she gestured to Artemis, who grinned sheepishly. "Now, Clover has just been through a major emotional shock, and a Class Three Memory Regain. She needs rest, relaxation, and chocolate."

"I want chocolate," said Alura, and later I realized this was a desperate attempt at distraction.

I almost bought it. "Me to-......." I stop and turn to Madam Pomfrey. "Class Three Memory Regain?"

The old nurse looked almost apologetic. "As you know, memories can be buried, shattered, or taken."

I did not know this, but I nodded anyway.

"It's not a hard process to regain buried memories- should you have the right trigger. Once it is triggered, it takes your mind quite some time to get used to having that memory and the mental space it takes up." Her expression softened, and she opened her mouth to say something, but then, thinking better of it, set a huge slab of chocolate on my white nightstand and left the room.

My mind had been stuck playing that scene for three days.

But why had it- then it hit me.

Buried.

That memory had been buried, it was the only possible explanation.

But who? And why? I knew clearly Karkaroff from the Death Eater Days, as I not-so-fondly called them, so then why had they been erased from my mind completely?

"Fuck life, honestly," I said loudly to no one in particular, giving a wild grin at the temporary satisfaction swearing and screaming gave me. Scarlet winced at my language, and Alura's expression of concern deepened, but Artemis just held my hand.

"It's okay," she whispered, over and over. "It's okay."

And even though I knew it wasn't, this time I let the tears fall.