Harry Potter: Beyond Good and Evil in the Wizarding World

Chapter 222. Mother and Daughter.

The moment the two women looked at each other, Helena, nearly an exact image of the woman in the portrait, only younger, wheeled around, panic on her face, and shot toward the door.

"I’m not..."

Thud!

"I wouldn’t recommend that." The ghost struck the barrier and was flung backward with a loud, hollow impact.

"Helena. Is it truly you?" Ravenclaw asked, swallowing, disbelief written across her face, tears slowly forming in her eyes.

"I..." Understanding that she had no way out, Helena clenched her fists at her sides and turned toward the voice. She bit her lower lip, dropped her head, and simply could not bring herself to meet those eyes, not even the eyes of her mother’s living portrait, though more than nine hundred years had passed since that day.

"So you became a school ghost. But why... why did you never come back before?" Ravenclaw looked at her with a bitter smile, pressing her open palm against the barrier that separated the outside world from the space behind the portrait. Then something seemed to surface in her memory. Her hand trembled and slowly fell. "Forgive me."

"I... I’m the one who should be asking forgiveness." Seeing the regret on her daughter’s face, she shook her head with quiet tenderness.

"I was a terrible mother."

"That isn’t true!"

"I never tried to listen to you. I constantly compared you to myself, made you do what I thought was right, and never once asked what you wanted. I..."

"Stop." Tears began to run down Helena’s face, and she drifted slowly toward her mother’s portrait, wearing her warmest smile. "There’s some truth in that. But you were still a good mother. You only wanted what was best for me. It was I who..."

"Don’t be ridiculous. I’m certain that if the real Ravenclaw were here rather than the echo of her former self, she would have knocked some sense into you for saying something like that. You were everything a daughter could be. I was the fool who cared for nothing but her research. If only I could go back and change things." Ravenclaw’s smile grew more strained, almost self-condemning. "Godric was right. We only learn to value things once we’ve lost them."

"Mum. Please, don’t cry. I’ve never blamed you for anything, not once. Please, stop." Helena reached out, trying to brush the tears from her mother’s face, but her hand passed straight through. She felt a pain in her chest, as though her very soul could not bear it. "I’m the one responsible for all of it. If I hadn’t stolen your diadem, if I hadn’t let Freya and Brunhilda talk me into it, all of this could have been avoided. But I was an idiot. An absolute idiot. And even as a ghost I couldn’t bring myself to come back. I was so terrified you would hate me. That you would refuse to claim such a daughter."

"We are both fools. We trusted those who should never have been trusted." Within days of the diadem’s theft, Ravenclaw had wanted to go after her daughter herself and speak with her. The artifact hadn’t mattered to her at all by then. But under pressure from those two hidden serpents, and the fear of tarnishing her name and Hogwarts’s reputation, she had kept the theft secret, told no one, not even her colleagues, and sent the Baron to bring her daughter home. But...

"About the Baron. He is in this castle as well."

"What?! Bring him here this instant. If he hadn’t taken his own life I would have strangled him myself!" Ravenclaw’s voice turned to a venomous hiss as the memory surfaced: the image of her own daughter’s cold body.

"He didn’t want to do it," Helena whispered with quiet grief. From that day forward, the Baron had never been able to bear to look at her. Even after so many centuries, he could not forgive himself for the death of the woman he had loved.

"What do you mean?" Ravenclaw frowned.

"He was a hot-tempered man. That much was true. But he would never have harmed me. When we both became ghosts, he begged endlessly for forgiveness and kept murmuring that his hands had done it by themselves. He would never have raised a finger against me without being forced. You know perfectly well how much he respected you, and how much he loved me."

"You think...?"

"Someone made him do it. Gave him a potion, or used confusion charms, or perhaps a full Imperius. Isn’t it rather telling that he took his own life immediately after my murder?"

"Now that is an interesting theory." A mildly attentive male voice cut in, drawing the attention of both women at once. "More than interesting. Quite convincing. And let me guess: after it happened, they never left your side. Constant support, endless comfort?"

"That..." Ravenclaw was beginning to understand what Severus was implying. She pressed her lips together and clenched her fists. "That is exactly what happened."

"They were very determined witches. Not in any admirable sense, but I’ll grant them this: it was beautifully played. No one understood a thing." He gave an approving nod, catching the two dark looks aimed in his direction.

"Why haven’t you told the Headmaster about this place?" Helena narrowed her eyes, her tone unfriendly. She was grateful to him for reuniting her with her mother and for forcing them to finally open up to one another, but she couldn’t understand why this Slytherin had concealed the room’s existence.

"To avoid drawing the attention of whoever did all of this to you. They may have forgotten about Hogwarts in the nine hundred years since, but neither your mother nor I saw any reason to take that chance." Severus rose from the desk, showing his teeth in a sharp grin. "There’s a saying: three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead. Think about it."

"But there are exceptions!"

"There are. Did I say otherwise?" He gave Helena an amused look, then drew his pocket watch. His expression shifted to mild annoyance as he clicked his tongue. "Right. I’ll be off. Seven minutes to curfew. The two of you talk. You know where the entrance is." He threw it out as a parting remark, turned, and headed for the door. "Enjoy yourselves."

The moment Severus left the room, Helena gave a cool huff toward the exit. Then a light sound of laughter reached her from behind, startling her into remembering that she was not alone here, and if she was honest, being left one-on-one with her mother was intensely uncomfortable.

"He’s right. Let this place stay secret until the crisis is resolved."

"But aren’t you lonely?"

"Lonely... these centuries have been simply terrible. But at least I had time to think. And now I have you." Ravenclaw looked at her embarrassed daughter with quiet tenderness. "You won’t leave me here alone, will you?"

"No! Of course not! I... I always dreamed of seeing you again, even if only in the next life. But this is a rather strange sort of reunion we’ve managed," Helena said self-consciously, dropping her head as a fresh wave of nerves washed over her at being alone with her mother at last.

"You’re telling me." At that moment Ravenclaw felt like the happiest person in the world, with only one regret: that she could not reach out and touch her daughter, could not feel the warmth she had been denied for a thousand years, since the day she lost her. She knew it was nothing but an impossible dream. "Tell me how you’ve spent all these years."

"Yes, Mum."

Severus had been putting off bringing them together for a while. So when he ran into Helena that morning near the entrance to the Great Hall, he had finally decided to act on it, while he had a free moment before the weekend.

Getting her attention had been simple enough. He had accidentally let the eagle badge he had received from Ravenclaw catch her eye, which immediately sparked her interest. Even if she had never seen the object itself, she would certainly have recognized her own family crest, and he had used exactly that. Though a small complication had arisen in the process.

At first, just as Severus had predicted, the badge sparked genuine curiosity in Helena. The existence of ghosts could, at times, be called the most tedious thing imaginable, and anything new was bound to attract attention. The problem was that after several hours of following him at a distance, she simply drifted away, which left him mildly puzzled.

That was why he had been surprised when, after leaving the hospital wing, he felt that attentive gaze settle on him again. But once he understood who it was, he made no move to lose her. He let her follow.

There had been a chance, of course, that Helena might have demanded an explanation right there in the Great Hall: what gave some Slytherin the right to wear her family’s crest. But the chance had been slim. Helena, strangely enough, had taken entirely after her mother: just as cool, just as self-assured, and at times, toward Slytherins in particular, even openly haughty. A woman like that simply would not have behaved so impulsively. And the fact that she was a ghost was no small factor. The emotions of the undead were naturally suppressed, which was precisely why ghosts could endure thousands of years in solitude without losing their minds. The younger Ravenclaw’s particular brand of self-possession had contributed to that as well.

But Severus was more than satisfied with how things had turned out, and beyond that, he had learned several new things about the past in the process. Now he could prepare for the upcoming meeting in Romania with a clear conscience and a sense that things were properly concluded. That meeting was in two days.

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