This Time, It Was Your Turn

Cordelia froze.

She had heard Gavin perfectly clearly and understood exactly what he meant. That only made it harder to decide what expression to wear.

She really had said those words. She had meant them then, and she did not regret them now.

But opening with a request like that was incredibly rude.

Clutching her book by the hospital room window, she looked at Gavin. Her expression grew more complicated by the second.

If she had known a certain writer from the East, a line of his might have come naturally to her just then:

"He didn't treat me like a patient, or even like a person."

Unfortunately, she did not know him.

So she merely stared at Gavin. Several seconds passed before she spoke.

"You..."

"Hmm?"

"Sometimes it really doesn't feel like you're talking to a living person."

Gavin nodded.

"That means I expressed myself directly."

"That isn't a virtue."

"At least it's efficient."

Cordelia opened her mouth, apparently ready to say more, but Dibby rushed over first.

The House-elf planted himself between them almost instantly. His ears stood straight up, and his entire body went visibly on alert.

"Mr. Gu mustn't hurt Miss!" His voice rose with anxiety. "Dibby won't allow—"

"Dibby."

Cordelia spoke softly.

Dibby turned at once.

Her voice was quiet and steady.

"Step aside."

"But Miss—"

"I trust him," Cordelia said.

She kept her eyes on Gavin as she said it.

"If Gavin needs to do something to me, let him." She paused. "I only hope—"

Her voice softened.

"He won't hurt himself again."

The hospital room fell silent.

Dibby's ears drooped with distress. He clearly hated the direction this conversation had taken. But after looking from Cordelia to Gavin, he reluctantly edged aside. He did not move far, though, and remained poised to throw himself forward at the first sign of trouble.

Gavin looked at him, then at Cordelia.

"It isn't that serious," he said.

"You nearly convinced yourself it wasn't serious last time, too," Cordelia said.

"That was an accident."

"Haven't there been rather too many accidents in your life lately?"

"It means my research is cutting-edge. There aren't many cases to consult."

"...You're awful."

"Thank you."

Cordelia could no longer be bothered to correct that "thank you."

She simply stood there holding her book, waiting for him to continue.

This time, Gavin did not give her a single conclusion about what he had accomplished, as he had before. He told her everything in detail, from beginning to end.

He told her why he had begun studying the Obscurus, and about the experiments without spellcasting, the amplification of emotion, and the dual manas consciousness he had found through meditation. He told her about the experiment at the Astronomy Tower after Christmas, how he had truly become an Obscurus, and how he had escaped it within his consciousness space. Then came Dumbledore's help, the Super-Sensory Charm, Legilimency, the animal experiments, and the theory about manas consciousness that had led him to a path he had finally confirmed.

At first, Cordelia listened quietly.

As he went on, her mouth slowly fell open.

Her lovely face took on an adorably stunned expression.

It was not because she had failed to understand.

Quite the opposite. She understood Gavin's entire journey perfectly.

Only then did she realize that Gavin had not merely been trying to comfort her.

Nor had he been saying what she wanted to hear.

He had actually done it.

He had reached a realm no one before him had ever touched.

More astonishing still—

Grandpa Dumbledore knew about it and was helping him.

"So..." It took her a long time to find her voice. "You weren't boasting before?"

"I generally don't boast," Gavin said.

"And you weren't lying to me?"

"You can ask Pipi," Gavin said. "He's practically become my supervisor lately."

Pipi tried hard to look solemn, but the slight twitch of his ears betrayed how he felt.

Cordelia stared at Gavin as astonishment surfaced on her face in wave after wave, leaving her delicate features wonderfully expressive.

What she had feared most was that Gavin would keep acting recklessly.

So throughout the holiday, she had barely let him mention anything related to his experiments.

The moment a conversation veered even slightly in that direction, she pushed it back, as though guarding a door she knew she could not hold forever but absolutely could not open yet.

Now, though, she suddenly discovered—

There really was something behind that door.

It was not empty.

None of this had been the product of a reckless whim. It was serious research, planned and organized, grounded in theory, and even supported by outside help.

"So you need me now?" she asked softly.

"Yes." Gavin nodded. "First, I need to find out what's happening inside you."

He said it calmly and sincerely.

As though stating a necessary step.

Cordelia looked at him and answered almost without hesitation.

"Go ahead."

Dibby immediately stepped forward, his little face full of unease.

"Miss!"

"It's all right," Cordelia said.

"But—"

"Dibby." Her voice grew gentler. "If he's come this far, the least I can do is make myself useful."

Dibby visibly wilted.

He was still uneasy.

The constant trembling of his ears made that plain.

In the end, however, he did not try to stop her again. He stayed beside them, knowing that once Miss had made up her mind, no one could change it.

Gavin glanced at him and, after a moment's thought, tried to reassure him.

"I've done animal experiments and human experiments. It's safe."

Dibby was clearly not reassured.

Cordelia, meanwhile, looked up at him.

"Human... experiments?"

Gavin paused for half a second.

He naturally pictured Cedric at the edge of the pitch early Friday morning, so exhausted that he had collapsed and could barely be bothered to speak.

It had not yet been fully light. Gavin had crouched beside him and taken the opportunity to try the combination of Legilimency and the Super-Sensory Charm he had only recently learned.

Considering how much the Nimbus 2000 had cost, Gavin thought it highly likely that Cedric would have agreed to cooperate even if he had been awake.

Put that way, it was perfectly reasonable.

So he nodded quite naturally.

"Of course. The subject was very cooperative."

Cordelia: "..."

She did not ask anything else.

Her instincts told her that further questions were unlikely to produce an answer involving proper medical ethics procedures.

"Then let's begin," she said.

To be safe, they did not attempt it in the corridor.

Dibby shut the hospital room door and stood guard with great seriousness, like a tiny alarm ready to sound at any moment.

Cordelia sat on the edge of the bed, while Gavin pulled up a chair across from her.

They were not far apart.

He was close enough to see the faint shadows beneath her eyes—she probably had not slept well the night before. She was close enough to see the marks on his face, which had healed considerably but had not yet vanished.

Her gaze lingered on them for an instant before she looked away.

As though one more second would bring back an image she did not want to remember.

"Will it hurt?" she asked.

"No," Gavin said. "It might feel a little strange."

"You said it wasn't serious last time, too."

"This time, I'll try not to sound like I'm delivering a report on an accident scene."

Cordelia drew a quiet breath, as though gathering her courage.

"All right."

Gavin did not raise his wand immediately.

First, he briefly explained the process to Cordelia again.

"I'll use the Super-Sensory Charm to heighten my perception, then enter with Legilimency," he said. "If it works, I shouldn't see ordinary fragments of memory, but something deeper—your internal structure."

"What will you see?"

"I don't know," Gavin said. "That's what I'm trying to find out."

"What if it's a mess inside?"

"That would still be a result."

"And what if there's nothing there?"

"That's unlikely."

"Why?"

"Because you're alive," Gavin said. "As long as you're alive, something has to be working in there."

Cordelia had been tense, but at that, she suddenly relaxed. She even smiled.

"All right," she said. "Take a look, then."

After that, she sat still.

She did not close her eyes and pretend to be brave, or change the subject and pretend she was at ease. She simply sat there, watching him quietly, as though she had decided to place her fate in Gavin's hands.

That made Gavin take it more seriously, too. He drew several deep breaths and settled his mind.

Then he raised his wand and cast the Super-Sensory Charm on himself.

The six consciousnesses opened.

Everything around him grew clearer. Breathing, the faint rustle of fabric, the tiny, nearly inaudible catches in Dibby's breath, even the minute shift in the air when Cordelia's long lashes trembled—all of it swelled within his perception.

Then he gathered all his attention into a single point.

On her.

Legilimency—

Magic bored its way in.

At first, there were only fragments of surface memories.

Fragments of cold white hospital walls, a Healer's voice, her mother's blurred figure, Dibby carrying a tray back and forth, the book Gavin had left by her bed, words on a sheet of letter paper, and a Hogwarts Great Hall she had never seen but had pieced together in her imagination.

The fragments flashed past.

Deeper—

Gavin did not stop.

He pushed through that layer of surface thoughts, maintaining the clarity granted by the Super-Sensory Charm. He tried to keep his own thoughts from interfering and remain a steady observer.

The next instant, the whole world suddenly sank.

He was inside.

It was nothing like the toad's cramped, damp, dreary inner space.

Cordelia's consciousness space was astonishingly vast.

It seemed boundless, like a wilderness.

That was Gavin's first impression. But once he steadied his mind, he realized it was no wilderness. Beneath his feet, where the Alaya consciousness should have been a river, he saw—

An ocean.

But the weather in this part of the space seemed poor, like an overcast day in the United Kingdom.

So he looked up naturally and saw a bank of dark clouds. He turned to follow them with his gaze.

Then he saw it.

Not a black whirlpool.

Not an Obscurus like his own, whose boundaries and pulsing rhythm he could still make out.

But a massive black hole.

Or rather—

An Abyssal Eye.

It hung at the center of the entire Consciousness Space, so vast it seemed out of proportion. Its blackness had no depth, and its edges had no clear shape—only ring after ring of shadow collapsing inward. It did not seem to be spinning. It seemed to be staring. The moment you saw it, you instinctively felt it was looking back.

This was not some corruption still taking shape.

It was a black hole that had been fully formed for far too long, grown so large it was on the verge of dragging the entire space into itself.

And beside that "giant eye"—

There was a little girl.

She stood there—or rather, floated there.

Small and thin, she was silent, her eyes vacant. It was as though most of her weight had been drawn out of her. She was far too close to that black-hole eye, close enough to be swallowed at any moment. Only a faint, terribly fragile outline remained, barely holding together the notion of "her."

Gavin recognized her at once.

It was Cordelia.

The "her" who had been trapped here for so long and was on the verge of being swallowed whole by the Obscurus.

Standing in the Consciousness Space, Gavin felt a tangible sense of oppression for the first time.

Because it seemed—

The Obscurus really was only a hair's breadth from swallowing her completely.

He stared at the scene with only one thought.

It's much worse than I thought.