.

.

She faced him across the wide desk; a brutal, masculine thing that was oversized and heavily varnished; the kind of escritoire favoured by high ranking members of the ministry because they could hide behind them. In her left hand she held half a pack of well-shuffled playing cards; red backed, Bicycle Standard, and with her right hand she removed one from the pile and held it up to face her. Upon the tabletop before her lay about a dozen discarded cards; the visual debris of her failure.

"Ace of hearts, six of clubs, two of diamonds.”

She glanced at him over the top of the two of diamonds. She had only just glimpsed at it and had barely registered the suit. And one more, again with no warning, she was momentarily struck dumb as a vignette of images flashed before her; the ace of hearts, a dark stairwell, a typewriter upon her desk, a cup of steaming coffee, breakfast, a street with car headlights illuminating a wall, a man, a gaze, a feeling in the pit of the stomach, Avenue J.F. Kennedy and a blood red sunset and warmth upon her forearms, undressing . . .

“Stop it,” she spoke suddenly, her mouth dry. “You don’t have to go that far.”

————

She had opened the door of her apartment on one dark, wet November evening when the cold was begging to set in for a long winter, and as soon as it had swung open she realised something was amiss. A window was wide open, and the bitter air was blowing through the room. She went to close it, and noticed the small piece of parchment upon the tabletop; weighted down with a teacup. It contained nothing but a carefully handwritten address and a date, and in the bottom right corner, an extremely small facsimile of the symbol of Saturn. Immediately her blood ran cold, and she sat her self down upon the nearby kitchen chair, turning the paper over and over between her long fingers. Apprehensively, she pulled the sleeve of her raincoat upwards, and unbuttoned the cuff of her blouse, exposing the underside of her forearm. It was nearly invisible now; she remembered it grey in the cold morning light when she had bathed, but as she ran her fingers over it in the darkness she could feel the cicatrix; like an old wound.

And she had gone to the address on the required evening; a horrid area of East London where Muggle warehousing was slowly invading the crumbling and long ignored Georgian housing; every street and way lined with chain-linked fences and wooden posts climbing into the sky, the sickly glow of sodium vapour lamps that made everything look black and where cars were bizarrely parked in overgrown grass verges, as if abandoned to the wild. Puddles of water shivered as the District line tube sped along somewhere nearby, and dogs barked angrily in response.

She entered the old abandoned building, and she met her mentor for the very first time.

————

Three meetings later. She still did not know his name; this strange, intense man with the darkest eyes and his accent that placed him to the east. She knew nothing about him, but she was able to piece together something of an impetus for this strange activity. She was here, he had told her on the first day, to protect her mind. That would make her trustworthy and useful for whatever purpose had been decided for her. She could only presume that it was because each day she was in the Ministry, and thus needed to steel her mind from any outside intrusiveness. Someone had arranged for this training for her. It was not optional.

And whilst she was in the dark about her teacher, unfortunately he was learning more and more about his pupil in intimate detail. His Legilimency would simply open her mind like a boiled egg; and suddenly she would be spilling images across her mind’s eye for him to pursue. All her shame, her desires, her guilt and her embarrassment, ready for this stranger to pick apart and then mock her for being weak.

And he loved the cards. The cards were useful because they would always lead her into a sense of security; she would concentrate on blocking the number and the colour and the diamonds and suddenly he was in, he had picked her lock, his mind a torsion wrench and she was wide open for his perusal and enjoyment. Each time, it got worse and worse and he could delve deeper into her.

The air had the peaty scent of his whiskey, and he took another gulp whilst she settled herself, ignoring his little comment about her because it was, as usual, correct and she closed her eyes for a few seconds, preparing herself for the needed concentration. She turned the topmost card, opened her eyes and he spoke the number and suit again, calmly and mechanically.

“For fuck's sake!” she exclaimed between her clenched teeth, and whilst forcing her chair back suddenly, she tossed the remaining deck of cards away across the desk like a poorly performed magic trick, where they fanned out before spilling onto the floor.

“This doesn’t work.”

.

Whilst he sat in stony silence, glaring at her languidly like a satiated lion unsure if yet another hamstrung gazelle was exactly what it needed right at the moment, she could feel nothing but acute embarrassment. With colour rising in her cheeks, she looked away, to the mess she had made upon the floor. She picked up her wand; it had been laying upon the desk in front of her (he had always wanted her wand separate from her person, for some reason she still didn’t understand), and with an elaborate snap of her wrist the scattered cards collected themselves together, sliding along and stacking quickly on top of each other, before the reconstituted deck jumped off the floor and back into her hand. She placed it back upon the dark desktop as he questioned her. Her grey eyes looked up into his face, his intense gaze not leaving her. “ . . . no. No, I don’t know who you are.”

She had wanted to add and I don’t particularly care, mostly because of this calamitous power he wrought over her and, if she was honest, she was both terrified and somewhat enthralled by him. But even that seemed, right now in this room with him carefully dissecting her memories for sport, somewhat too brazen. But he was right; whichever shared shadowy associates they had in common, operating in channels unknown, had certainly liked to make things interesting for them. The mixture of uncertainly and veiled threat was assuredly bracing, she thought. She wondered how much he knew; or was he purely here because her was being paid; a freelanced teacher of occult techniques, always auctioned off to the highest bidder?

It followed that he asked her about the windows. She raised an eyebrow in confusion. A test? She turned her head to the windows on the left side of the room. Beyond lay the black sky and the orange glow of an old streetlamp. She looked back to her teacher, whose face was a simple picture of concern for her answer. “ . . .Two.” she responded, her sense of uncertainty growing. Following his instruction, she gingerly got to her feet and crossed the room, several times looking back at him; wary of him. Two windows, old tattered curtains hanging forlornly on either side. She caught sight of her reflection intermittently upon the grimy pane. Again, she looked to him, confused. “Two, unless it’s a trick question.” Hesitantly, the blonde raised her hand to the glass, and her stomach fell when her fingertips met only cold brick. Suddenly the illusion was broken, and she was before the wall. Both hands now upon it, looking for the explanation. Old victorian masonry, nothing more or less. Solid. Unlike her mind.

Nathalie turned back to the room, and to her lecturer. “Alright, I -“,  but he interrupted again, asking for her wand. In fear her eyes widened, and for a moment she had no idea. “On the desk, it’s on the desk,” and she nearly ran to it, grabbing it quickly, suddenly relieved to feel its ligneous solidity in her fingers, and she gave a half laugh at how ridiculous this whole thing was; his playing with reality. A good party trick.

"...What does your mother's face look like?"

And thusly the blood drained from her face, and she looked directly at him with fear in her eyes. “- no please don’t,” she blurted out, and she closed her eyes hard and tried to flick through the similitudes in her mind; because she couldn’t lose another. Not again. She had both hands upon the desk now, and she studied the ghostly remnants as hard as she could. She looks like me. I look like her, everyone says so. And then she found her, an image of a photograph. Nathalie the child dressed in white with candles in her hair as Sankta Lucia, he mother behind her to the left, hand upon her shoulder. Nineteen-ninety or ninety-one, they still argued over the exact year. Both were smiling. She could remember, and her eyes opened and she saw him, still seated, still studying her impassively, still with his little tumbler of whiskey. Whether he took her mother away momentarily with these awful demential blocks of his, or had simply allowed her to get herself into a panic, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t want to know.

“Okay you’ve made your point,” Nathalie said eventually, her voice a little broken, a little weakened. The blonde slowly seated herself opposite her companion, feeling slightly sickly. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Just - don’t do that, okay? Please.”

“I don’t know your name,” she replied, trying not to meet his eyes for a moment as she collected herself. “You know everything about me by now, and I don't even have a name for you. Are you allowed to tell me? And what’s your . . . your job? Are you like a . . . professional Legilimens for hire, or something?"