Helped back to the manor and marched straight into the bathroom for a shower, Kate finally emerged in a bathrobe with her head hanging.
Luckily she'd refused several times over, or there might well have been more than one person coming out of that bathroom.
"Cough… cough, cough!" She hadn't stopped coughing since they got back to the manor. The rain had soaked her through, and the chill had settled in again.
The thought of the state her body was in dimmed the light in her eyes.
Shuffling out in her slippers, she looked up and found that Katherine had installed herself at her desk at some point.
"Auntie?" She stopped short in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
Katherine set down the book she was holding, saw that Kate's hair was still dripping, and hauled her over to plant her firmly on a stool.
"Look at you. You don't even dry your hair. Do you want a proper cold on top of everything?" She grumbled as she snatched up a towel and scrubbed vigorously at Kate's head.
Rocked back and forth by the scrubbing, Kate guiltily sneaked a glance at her in the mirror. "Actually… I've already got one."
"You knew you had a cold and still didn't dry your hair? That makes it worse." Katherine gave her a deliberate poke on the crown of the head, then set two bottles of Potion on the desk. "I'm watching you drink them," she said sourly.
Kate eyed the two bottles and decided to change the subject. "Where are Hermione and Cho? And Grandpa Rand?"
"Gone back to their own rooms to wash. Sending two half-grown girls and a man in his seventies out into the rain at midnight to look for you — very impressive." Katherine jabbed at the sore spot without a shred of mercy.
Kate turned her face away without a word and settled for draining both bottles in one go.
She knew Katherine had her own grievance to work off tonight. That was why she was needling her like this.
Before long the pressure on her head eased. With the hair rubbed half dry, Katherine seemed to have moved on to massaging her scalp.
"Auntie, you really don't have to do that…" she said feebly.
Katherine paid that no attention at all, tipping her head back to rest closer against her. "Less noise. Unless you want a headache tomorrow, be quiet."
So Kate obediently shut her mouth.
After a while of this, Katherine said, "I know why you bolted out of here earlier. Because you couldn't take it. Am I right?"
Kate's eyes flickered. "I — I don't know what you're talking about," she stammered.
"Hmph. You think those little calculations of yours can get past me?" Katherine gave a small snort and flicked her on the forehead. "I am your own aunt, you know."
She dropped the towel over Kate's head and sat down on the bed. "From the day you started learning magic you showed real talent. And not only that — you worked harder than anyone. I've seen all of it.
"On that count alone you're far ahead of anyone your age. Even that Savior every household in the magical world talks about doesn't measure up to you."
Kate pressed her lips together and pulled a hand free to rub at her wet hair.
"But precisely because you're stronger than your peers, there's a streak of pride in you.
"Can you honestly tell me that not one small part of the reason you drive yourself so hard is the fear that someone might overtake you?"
Kate went silent under the sharp question. The towel slid down until it nearly covered her whole face.
Seeing her like that, Katherine went on. "So when you learned that the constitution you've trained at for years and never improved is the work of a Curse, when you learned that you came within a hair of being a Squib — you couldn't accept it.
"Your pride won't let you fall behind. You've stood at the top of the pyramid among your peers for years, so the last thing you can bear is everyone looking at you as someone weak.
"Up until then you were just about holding it together. But when Rand brought you the hand-warmer, you decided he was treating you as weak because of the Curse, that he was pitying you — and you couldn't stand it, so you ran. Isn't that right?"
"I did not!" Her fingers clenched the towel white. Kate shot to her feet, colour flooding her face, her chest heaving with the force of it.
Katherine rose to meet her eyes, chin high. "I named what's inside you, and now you're irritated. Furious. Has nobody ever taken you apart like that before?"
Kate floundered, mumbling for a long moment, then simply turned away and dragged in great gulps of air.
"Don't breathe so hard, your hands and feet will go numb." Katherine laid a hand lightly on her shoulder, the edge gone from her voice.
"Remember, I'm not saying all this to corner you. I only want you to understand — Kate, you're still a child. You don't have to swallow what you feel. Let it out."
Katherine had noticed it from the moment she began telling her the secret of the Curse.
The girl had only just turned fifteen. By rights she should be in the thick of adolescence, and however hard someone that age holds her feelings down, they break out eventually.
Yet from the moment Kate fled alone to the snowfield to the moment they brought her back, every emotion had stayed locked in the same loop: on the verge of erupting, forced down again.
That was no good thing in a child.
"I want you to understand that keeping your emotional state in proper order is part of the basic groundwork of a fine wizard.
"You want to be rid of this Curse, don't you? Then sooner or later you'll have to face that man — your own grandfather. And when that day comes, what he does and what he says will be a hundred times crueller than anything I've just said to you.
"So first you let it out. Empty yourself. Then you prepare yourself again, properly, and you go and face him."
The words had barely left her mouth before she saw her niece's back begin to shake.
With a silent sigh, she turned the girl around and gathered her into a gentle embrace.
Soon a smothered sound of weeping filled the quiet room.
Katherine patted her back and said nothing more, listening as the crying went from stifled to violent shuddering, and at last to hiccupping sobs that came in waves and slowly guttered out.
"Letting it out is enough. Once today is over, things will get better." Katherine kept patting her back, her voice soft and warm, carrying something almost like magic that gradually smoothed the storm inside her flat.
After most of a night of turmoil, Kate finally sank into a heavy sleep.
Katherine lifted her onto the bed as quietly as she could, pulled out a tissue, and wiped away, bit by bit, the tears rolling down that still-childish face.
However great the talent, she was still only a child who had never met the world at its worst…
Then again — there probably weren't many pieces of filth like that man in the whole world.
Looking at the young face in front of her, Katherine curved her lips in a self-mocking smile. She was about to get up and leave when two figures seemed to flit past the doorway.
She gathered herself in an instant and raised an eyebrow.
Why not give her niece a little surprise when she woke up?
Kate woke in the middle of the night, parched.
That was what came of tipping two bottles of cold relief potion down her throat at once when she was already short of water before bed. Halfway through her muzzy sleep, the thirst grew unbearable.
The obvious next step was to get out of bed, find some water, drink it, and sleep straight through until morning.
But as she groped drowsily for the edge of the bed, something under her hand began to feel distinctly wrong.
Warm to the touch. Why did it feel like a person?
She squinted and felt around more carefully, and through the mound of the quilt her hand closed on something soft.
That part of a person was —
Her drowsiness fled on the spot. She flicked on the light and discovered there really was someone lying beside her. Two someones!
"Mm—" Woken by the sudden glare, Hermione opened her eyes with a wince and scratched at her bushy hair. "Kate? Why are you up?"
Kate, still blank with shock, had her arms folded over her chest and had retreated under the covers. "Why are the pair of you in my bed?"
On the other side Cho Chang stirred awake as well and sat up to explain. "Professor Katherine told us to sleep here. She was worried you'd wake in the night with nobody to look after you."
Was she a small child?
Did she need looking after? And two of them at once?
Was her aunt trying to help her sleep, or make sure she didn't?
"What woke you?" Cho Chang asked with concern.
Kate's face twitched. "I only wanted to get up for some water," she mumbled.
"I'll pour it!" Hermione was off the bed at once, not even stopping for shoes, and hurried back with a glass.
Kate stared at the glass in front of her, glanced up at Hermione's anxious eyes, swallowed, and had no choice but to drain it.
When the water was gone she looked at the two of them, hesitating. "Maybe… you should both go back and sleep in your own rooms?"
Her bed was large, certainly, but three people in it was a bit odd, wasn't it?
The two girls, however, granted her no right of objection whatsoever. The moment she finished drinking, they reached out together and pressed her flat back onto the bed.
Kate, forcibly powered down: ???
Was this reasonable?
It was not. But in this room, patient or no, she ranked lowest of the three.
Cho Chang she didn't dare provoke. Hermione she couldn't afford to.
So three people lay side by side, Kate wedged in the middle, eyes wide open at the ceiling.
It felt exactly like being a sandwich. She was the slice of meat in the middle, about to be squashed out of shape by the two pieces of bread on either side.
This was not a healthy way to sleep.
She'd slept soundly enough in the first half of the night, but that didn't mean she could go on pretending the two of them weren't there now that she was awake.
So after the room had been quiet for a while, she spoke up. "I can't get to sleep."
Hermione rolled onto her side to face her, hand searching through the dark until it found her cheek. "Does it still hurt where I hit you?" she asked gently.
"…No." Kate felt those warm fingertips tracing carefully over her face, and her pulse leapt.
No. Calm. Stay calm!
She started to turn away without thinking, then remembered Cho Chang was on the other side, and her half-turned body froze where it was.
On one side, a girl she'd had feelings for. On the other, the same.
How was she supposed to sleep?
Forget sleeping — she was starting to sweat.
No good. She had to say something, or her mind would keep running off on its own and she'd get no peace for the rest of the night.
"Ahem." She cleared her throat. "You both know about the Curse on me by now, I take it? Running off like that tonight — was it cowardly of me?"
Hermione propped herself up and leaned over, thoroughly baffled. "Why would you think that? If it were me, if I suddenly found out there was a time bomb inside my body, I'd be shaken too."
"She's right. Don't be in such a hurry with yourself." Cho Chang's hand came up to stroke her face as well. "There's nothing the magical world doesn't hold somewhere. There'll be a way. We'll all stay beside you and face it with you."
Face it together…
Something tightened in Kate's chest. If it were only the Curse, she could live with that. But, as Katherine had said, sooner or later she would have to face that man.
A man ruthless enough to kill and use his own family as it suited him. A man whose voodoo dolls had already come close to dragging all of Hogsmeade down with them.
If the people around her were pulled into it, there was no telling what might happen.
The enemy had already come knocking. If she went on defending passively, then one day he would use the people at her side to force her to heel.
Only by striking first, by strangling the danger at its source, could she save the people she cared about.
Only now did Kate finally understand why Katherine had said what she'd said.
Her aunt must have steeled herself for exactly the same thing long ago. That was why she'd warned her.
"Cho," she said, sitting slowly up and looking at her in earnest, "I'm going to get better. For all of you."
To be rid of the Curse she had to face her grandfather. And to protect the people she treasured, she had to be ready to kill him.
The words had barely left her mouth when System's chime sounded in her ear.
[Family Mission 3 triggered: The Lost Truth]
…What?
Kate stalled, blinking in blank confusion. The System was handing out a mission now, of all moments?
So if she had chosen to run from it just then, would the mission never have triggered at all?
She had no words for it, and no way to describe the tangle of feeling in her.
Was resolve itself the only thing that could set this mission off?
"What's the matter, Kate?" Hermione asked, at a loss.
Kate shook her head at once. "I need the bathroom. You two go back to sleep."
With that she got up quickly and shut herself in.
"What's she…" Cho Chang turned a doubtful look on Hermione. Neither of them had the faintest idea, and both looked at the bathroom door with the light burning behind it.
If there was any more drama, none of them would be sleeping tonight.
Inside, Kate had no idea what the two of them were thinking. She paced back and forth, turning it over again and again, and then said in a low voice, "Accept the mission."
[System notice: Host may choose whether to accept this mission. If it is accepted, the monthly exercise mission will cancel itself once this mission is complete.]
That gave her pause, and her steps slowed.
The monthly exercise mission awarded five Attribute Points for completing System's prescribed routines on twenty-eight days of the month, and she had been milking it since her first year.
Most of the Attribute Points she carried now had come from that steady milking.
Thinking about it now, perhaps System had known all along that the Curse left her body unable to grow its own Mana, and that was precisely why it had set up a monthly mission.
And now System was telling her that once this Family Mission was complete, there would be no more monthly missions.
Which meant one link in the chain of this mission was, in all likelihood, breaking the Curse itself.
She splashed cold water over her face and let out a sigh. "Accept the mission."
[Family Mission 3: The Lost Truth]
[Completion Condition 1: Break the inherited family Curse]
[Completion Condition 2: Kill Corbin Winyard, and find the master he serves]
Well then. Two conditions before this one counted as finished.
Both of which suited her perfectly.
Kate lifted her head and looked at the girl in the mirror, her eyes dark and deep.
Not only for the mission, not only for herself, but for everyone she cared about.
Corbin, her own grandfather, had to die.
She leaned against the basin and closed her eyes, feeling the cold drops slide down her face and fall slowly to the floor.
First, she had to establish the identity of the other person the mission mentioned besides her dear grandfather.
Corbin Winyard's master — the one he had addressed in the memory as "Master."
Her mind, cool again, spun rapidly through the fragments of the past.
Neither of the two memories nor Katherine herself had spelled it out, but from those scattered pieces Kate could still draw out a hidden thread.
The year 1945. Germany. And the "Master" on Corbin Winyard's lips.
In those years, the men with influence enough to bring hundreds, even thousands of wizards running at a single word numbered exactly two, and one of them was Dumbledore.
The "Master" her grandfather served was the other: the first Dark Lord, the man who had once shaken all of Europe — Gellert Grindelwald.
That was the year Grindelwald was defeated by Dumbledore and shut away in Nurmengard, where he had remained ever since.
In the Dark Lord's final year, the wizards who followed him, with the shadow of defeat closing over them, went on a frenzy of attacks against Muggles. Corbin Winyard was among them.
And the Curse he had laid on her mother, which had then carried on into Kate herself, was a life-swap.
Kill the person carrying it and you could steal whatever remained of their lifespan and graft it onto someone else — a vicious method of prolonging a life.
In essence it was much the same as drinking unicorn blood: whoever received those years fell under a curse of their own.
For all those years Corbin Winyard had never moved against her mother. At the very least, he hadn't struck at their first meeting, when she was completely unguarded, which meant that at the time he had no intention of extending anyone's life.
And by then his face was already ruined and his body crippled, and he had been alone for years — he was at the most wretched, most thwarted stretch of his life.
Still he did nothing.
Which meant the Curse he set on his own daughter had never been intended to lengthen his own life. It was for someone else.
Given the fanatical worship of Grindelwald he had shown in those memory fragments, Kate could all but settle the matter.
A little over ten years ago, when he had come to the house to kill her, it had been to add years to Grindelwald's life.
From the very beginning the Curse had been prepared for that first Dark Lord — because of his fanatical worship of Grindelwald, and perhaps also because… he was himself a Muggle-born wizard.
Only a mind twisted to the very last degree would deny and loathe its own origins, and then mutilate its own family to escape that "base" birth.
Just like a certain Führer who carried the very same blood as the people he slaughtered at will.
Kate thought that perhaps she knew, now, how to draw him out.
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