Testing the Metal by Allison Jackson

Pairing: Penelope Clearwater/Dennis Creevy

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Time doesn�t quite heal all wounds

Disclaimer: Don�t own characters except for the new Headmaster, so. Yes.

Author�s Note: Done for hownovel's Three Word Fic Challenge. My words were �Benedict Arnold,� �walleyed,� and �garish.�

�������
You tested your metal of doe's skin and petals
While kissing the lipless
Who bleed all the sweetness away
-The Shins, �Kissing the Lipless� �������

Nobody ever said she was a very good Defense teacher. If truth be told, not that it ever was, she has only barely passed the class as a student.

Thankfully, Port-War curriculum didn�t require much more than a few counter attack spells and maybe a few nursing skills.

Class went on, though, almost as it has Before. The students sat and listened and she would speak, tell her students what to do, show them perhaps, and son the classroom would be filled with half-shining sparks and spells. Every one of them was perfect, of course, as any students that survived had skills far beyond their years. And if she stopped to think about it, she would realize this is because they were all either Harry Potter supporters or Voldemort supporters. Not that she really put much thought into these kinds of things, since she really spent more time trying to not think about it.

She did realize that she could teach them nothing, not as long as the fifteen pairs of eyes that stared back at her mirrored her lifeless apathy.

From the looks of things, nobody would be learning for years.

�������

While the eastern side of Hogwarts was undergoing reconstruction she was shuffled around, her sleeping quarters new almost every night. Some nights she even found herself sharing a dorm with a student or two, who would briefly look up from their beds, see her, and lay their heads back down, only speaking a quick �g�night, professor,� before the they would all pretend to be asleep. As fate would have it, though, her final resting place would be hauntingly familiar.

�Miss Clearwater!� The new headmaster, a young, ex-ministry worker, had given her his sparkling smile that won many a young heart back to the Ministry�s side after the War. �I�ve done some snooping around, and I think you�ll be pleased with the room that I�ve found for you.�

He was hailed as a hero. One of the greatest of the century. They all said it.

He was a damned fool.

His Welcoming Feast Speech had been uninspired and shallow, trite even. He spoke of a need for optimism and hope, revival. �Like a phoenix from the ashes,� he had said, no doubt trying to pay homage to his predecessor, now reduced to a painting on a wall. It was easy for Headmaster to say. He had never been to Hogwarts. Never seen it in all of its spectacular glory, a true feat. He didn�t know that the halls were supposed to be brimming with throngs of smiling, happy students. Normal students. Instead, every house had maybe fifty people in it at the most, half of these being first years.

It wasn�t his fault, though. He was just ignorant.

He couldn�t possibly know that the happy memories of that room haunter her. That she spent every night scratching and clawing at her skin, trying to wipe the blood and carcasses away.

�������

His fingers mold into her hand and stroke her palm, and she can only hum to herself.

It�s the Holidays, Yule. She sits on his lap and lets him pet her hair, stroke her back. She only leans into his shoulder and looks. Just looks. She can remember coming home every year, hair bouncing, smiling, with fresh news about Hogwarts and life and love. The decorations are the same, gaudy, far too overdone. In a way this is just like her mother herself, who does the decorations. She can think about how embarrassing it always was to be seen with the older woman, flashing earrings hanging from her neck and elegant dresses covering her hourglass figure. She seemed to want to be back in the Victorian era, lost in the past.

But then, aren�t we all.

She remembered the past Christmases well, especially the one where she had come home and promptly announced to her parents that she was in love and would forever be betrothed the a man with perfectly pleasing hair and the cutest glasses a man had ever worn.

Her father continued to stroke her hair as she cuddled in his lap, the tears streaming down her face. It was funny how sometimes you could spend your whole life running from the past but then it would hit you right in the face.

She sneezed, and he laughed.

�������

Mungo�s released them. In the war, there had been a group of people who got injured. Badly. Crucio, of course, because that�s what happened when you dealt with sadistic bastards. Half of their minds had been scrambled, and obviously the recuperation took a long time.

Halfway through the school year they returned, slim ghosts wafting through the halls.

It was general knowledge that you weren�t to push them or even hope for any scholastic achievement at all. If truth be told, nobody expected them to even produce spells worthy of a first year.

All of this meant that they were heroes of the war, each with their own proverbial purple badge hanging from their necks, a constant reminder of the past.

She remembered the first time she saw him. He was to come up to the front of the class and she was to introduce him.

Excuse me class, but you all remember Dennis. He�s a war hero now, so let�s give him a round of applause.

She was supposed to smile, to shake his hand, and he was to sit down and shine for the world to see.

He had entered the classroom, uniform hanging loosely off of his slim shoulders, collarbone visible where the shirt was too wrinkled to hang straight. His mouth seemed to be constantly halfway-parted, his eyes halfway dead. His hair, however, shone in the dim, castle light with such radiance that she was sure that he did glow.

Not that that was enough to really catch her attention. All of the supposed-to�s happened, as well as a few not-supposed-to�s, like his unceremonious tripping on the step. He fell with a crash and got up as though nothing had happened, apparently unfazed.

The rest of the class acted accordingly.

It wasn�t until she asked him to fetch her the bag in the back of the class that she truly noticed him.

He shot up, ran, and ran back to give it to her.

Obedience.

Yes.

������� He stood in front of the class, his eyes staring forward as the rest of the eyes stared at him. He opened and closed his mouth a few times as they all stared anxiously.

Waiting for his story.

Finally, he shouted.

�Desk.�

He went over to a desk, his desk, and crawled underneath it. He rocked back and forth and they watched as his purple medal came crashing over his head.

�I was under. He came up. He asked me. �Where is Potter.��

He took in a deep and shuddering breath.

�I said. I said.�

She stared, openmouthed, as a trickle of blood ran down his nose and into his open mouth. He didn�t seem to mind and he continued to breath and stare walleyed, just looking in front of him. She heard the murmurs all around them.

So the mystery was solved, at least.

She took him by the arm and out of the classroom as he kept on mumbling to himself.

�I said, I said.�

�������

The bathroom was empty, thankfully. She sat him on one of the sinks and turned the water on, using that to wipe the blood that was crusted on his nostrils away. When she finished wiping, she noticed that he was staring at her.

Obedient.

�Dennis, get off the sink,� she commanded.

He followed.

�Get back on the sink.�

He followed.

She absentmindedly scratched at the inside of her palm as they stared at each other.

Seeing the past.

Seeing the future.

Seeing nothing at all.

Even Benedict Arnolds needed love.

All at once she grabbed his sides and dug her fingernails in as her mouth crashed against him, working madly. His hands also held her, and when they broke apart they both had ripped clothing from where the bitten, jagged fingernails had dug into them.