oracle | xephyr

[Persephone Amberghast]

Hogwarts Castle
8 June 1974
10:47 am

Just like that, summer was upon them.

She'd survived her first year back at her Alma Mater and though it had taken her months to admit this to herself, had actually enjoyed every single moment. The halls had changed but she felt more herself inside of them, a pleasant surprise as she'd always assumed that the Ministry would become her spiritual home.

Perhaps it was the lack of supervision that had done it? Much as she loved the rules, she yearned to abide to her own rules above all others and here, in these hallowed corridors that smelled of books and botched potions, she could rewrite the regulations as she pleased.

The children were a nuisance, of course. Even now, as she watched them rush out of the castle and scurry down towards the station she marveled at the way the barely controlled chaos didn't erupt into something much more serious. With so many young feet running all over the spot, and so many vulnerable hearts throwing themselves open while disengaging every part that would help them think, it was honestly a miracle that these floors weren't slippery with a mixture of tears and blood.

"Watch yourself," she called as a small girl rushed right by her, inching Seph out of the way without so much as a backward glance before joining the screeching horde heading down towards Hogsmeade.

Seph was left to shake her head, clutching her favourite tapestry bag as she made her way to the gate.

The courtyard below Indigo's office,
Hogwarts Castle
2:13 pm

She'd made it all the way to Prague before realising she'd left her wax seal behind. There were two more in her drawer at the Ministry and she could have as easily apparated to fetch one from there, but she had urgent letters to write and the thought of running into her father during these first few days of freedom made her stomach twist tight.

Instead she'd changed out of her travel robes, exchanging the trousers with the delicate pin stripe for a soft skirt and white blouse, pulled her hair up into a bun and headed back, fully expecting to find the castle deserted.

There was no telling why she'd decided to cut across the courtyard instead of heading straight for her office. A part of her had wanted a second goodbye; Indigo had left the castle hours before and though she hadn't asked outright, she'd been left to assume that it was because one of these hearings that was taking up so much of his time these days. Something had driven her up those stairs and towards his office and though she'd found the door closed, just as she'd suspected she would, the cigarette that had been left on his windowsill was not yet cold.

The smoke that rose from it twisted her stomach into a tight knot and as she stepped forward, slender fingers always so curious and ready to touch, she realised something else: a tiny part of her had always known he was still here.

She couldn't explain it, couldn't sort through her reasons for feeling this strange tangle of obsession that had been twisting ever tighter as the months had gone on. Something had felt off to her, maybe even from the beginning and though she'd never been able to put a finger on it, it had been growing steadily for months. There was something about seeing his cigarette and the smoke that felt so damning that she knew she'd have no hope of deciphering it alone.

Persephone turned without so much as another breath, steeling herself as she headed straight back to the gate she'd just come from.

Xanthe's cottage,
Hogsmeade,
3:01 pm

"Something's wrong," she said the moment her sister opened the door, eyes pleading as she looked at the girl.

Her showing up like this was unfair; Xanthe's boy had likely been looking forward to this afternoon of undisturbed intimacy and togetherness for months yet now that would have to wait. Her sister's other shadows seemed unbothered by the untimely arrival and Seph dropped a gentle hand down onto Sigmund's head before the darker counterpart made itself known as well, barking excitedly as he sniffed at her ankles.

"Indigo is being strange, I am having nightmares, I think about the Lake all the time... Xanthe, something is wrong."

None of her poise had survived the walk. Instead, the panic had taken a firm hold and instead of making her colder, like it usually did, it left Persephone confused and very afraid.

[Xanthe Amberghast]

harrowdown
June 8, 1974
1:41 am

Wakefulness had not stopped her stomach sinking, or the moisture gathered at her lashes, and it felt like a dream still, her steps as quiet as a thought, her knuckles like porcelain as they tapped, tapped, tapped on the door to her brother’s wing, a whispered plea into the dark.

“Lady Xanthe—”

And like a dream she knew what the little elf was going to say before he said it, heard his tiny, cautious voice in the drafty corridor reminding her of what she already knew: that Indigo was not in his wing; not in Harrowdown; that the door she was knocking on had not been opened in many years (though she suspected he still came and went as he pleased.)

She slipped a small vial from the sleeve of her nightgown, instinctively catching her falling tear as it curved itself around her cheekbone.

Her dreams of late had been frightfully cold, frightfully dark, frightfully deep, these traits which so resembled her brother only worsening until he was no longer a metaphor for doom but doom itself, tearing down her slumbering walls not to show her the man she knew, or the brother she loved and missed, but something she knew only upon looking at it, into it—

The nightmare of a child, and the nightmare was his.


She was preparing the reading when she heard the knock at the door, preventing her suspicious gaze from lingering on the deck of Tarot cards, her favourite set, which she had shuffled mindlessly — knowing, somehow, she was waiting — until her delicate hands began to hurt.

But as she chased the sound she saw herself, walking just ahead of her, towards the door; the steps, the movement, the aura aching out of her, something, someone, some being or creature bound to her perfectly and yet it was not her at all but her brother, on the other side of the door to his wing, there to comfort her; to answer her questions; to tell her that it was just a nightmare, and that he was not a child, and that despite how cold this all felt in her bones it would be okay—

She caught her sister’s willowy shape through the stained-glass bleeding at the door and when she looked again, over her shoulder, her brother’s shadow was gone.

“Seph—”

But for the first time in twenty years of adoring her sister, Persephone did not let her speak first, or allow her heart it’s usual performative bleed, but instead did something else she was not known for doing — not to Xanthe, perhaps not to anyone but the shadow no longer haunting her door — and spill her troubles for all to see.

This led to a third and final troubling inconsistency—

Her sister's words had never left her so cold.

“Come,” she said, taking her sister’s hand, the ice heaving in her heart easing somewhat at the familiar warmth of Seph’s skin, leading her through the cottage — two very brave boys padding after them — and into the interior courtyard, where the air was light and sweet, like roses and gardenias, and thin, hopeful rays of sun poked at them through the leaves.

Beside the well-shuffled Tarot cards sat a small bowl, almost overflowing with vials containing tear-strewn dreams, and only when Xanthe was sat across from Seph did she release the slightly smaller hand held vice-like in her uncharacteristically rigid grasp to hover her own over the deck.

“Tell me about your nightmares,” she said, wishing she hadn’t; wishing she was not overwhelmed by the heart-aching need to know.

[Persephone Amberghast]

She felt like a child being led through a storm, her icy little palm pressed against one that was warmer and stronger. Seph wasn't accustomed to staring at her own toes, and sometimes it felt like she'd been born with her chin jutting out just a touch, but that was exactly what she did as Xanthe guided her towards the little table and the warm touch of the sun.

She didn't notice the bowl of tears. Though her eyes fell onto the cards, and of course there would be cards because this was Xanthe's home, she looked at little else as she dragged the chair out and slipped into a seat. Her senses, usually so alert and sharp to the point of piercing skin, had been blunted by the shock and the strange feeling of knowing and yet being completely in the dark.

“Tell me about your nightmares,” Xanthe asked and Seph flinched without knowing why. She'd come to ask the younger woman to make sense of them yet now, as she sat across from the one person who could reach into that dark pool to grasp onto something concrete, she was afraid of what this panicked search could bring.

"There's always water," she finally said, shrugging delicately as she clasped her hands in her lap. It was a gesture that didn't really suit her, demure and unsure, yet her palms still felt like ice and she didn't trust her hands not to tremble if they rested on the table.

"Dripping, flowing, rushing... like this constant backdrop that just seeps into everything. We were at the tower, Indigo and I, not in my dream but actually, and I mentioned bodies being pulled from the Lake. It wasn't supposed to mean anything, I'd just said it and yet once I thought on it..."

Seph sighed, shaking her head very lightly.

"I don't think there are bodies in the Lake, but there is something and I know because it calls to me when I sleep. I hear water even when I am dreaming of something else, I want to dive into the Lake even though I know it's dangerous. I feel so empty all the time now and I think that maybe it's luring me because it promises... home?"

Another sigh as she ran both hands across her face, shaking her head.

This was utter nonsense. None of her words were coming out right. It felt like language suddenly held no meaning because human phrases and expression would fail to capture the depth of what she felt as she dreamt. It was strange feeling and the irony of her semantic shortcomings was not lost on her.

[Xanthe Amberghast]

Her beloved Persephone’s imagery rang like death knells, louder and louder through the faintness in her head, symptoms of a disease she already knew they had even if she refused to push it, or force it, or allow it anywhere in the vicinity of her already troubled thoughts.

It was like one night she went to bed whole, and when she woke she knew her dreams had been surrendered.

She could not afford to lose what was left.

She could not afford to fear the day they needed her like she needed them.

“I love you, Seph; and I am sorry; I am so sorry—” she said, squeezing her sister’s hand in her featherlight and no less needy grasp.

The silence stretched away, far beyond, like a last nerve stretched too thin, huge, glassy, doe-like eyes lingering on her sister, frightened, surprised, unprepared by nature and nurture to be so wounded.

“But I have dreamed the same dreams.”

The death knell rang with her own voice this time.

“And I have dreamed more. Worse things. Things I cannot bear to speak aloud.”

Her other hand slid the bowl of tears across the table, between them, fearing the cards would only obscure what now seemed frighteningly apparent.

“You must choose,” she said, giving a shaky nod towards the bowl, the little unicorn unsure what to do with her tears but pass them on to those in need.

The beginnings of dusk began to threaten the courtyard, the day’s warm glow diffused with night’s soft edges, time running on, running away. Xanthe floated over a large metallic tray — a Pensieve from her grandmother, a gift upon graduation — sneaking a glance into the mercurial swirling of the silver surface before she turned again towards Persephone.