Date: 9.5.1944. {{ day two of classes }}
Location: Astronomy Classroom
Written for: @camillabbott
As glossy eyes stared down at the mountain of folders, textbooks, and dust, Ariadne began to realize a fatal mistake had been made - and it was only the second day of classes. It was her last year in the castle, her last year being a Ravenclaw student, and the Greengrass girl had bitten off much more than she could chew. In additional to family affairs, time spent with Abraxas and planning their future, as well as a few hobbies on the side - Ariadne found herself completely overwhelmed with coursework. Especially the advanced coursework in subjects like Astronomy.
Of course, she’d always enjoyed the topic, but had never attempted to learn in a traditional way. The terminology and history, though familiar, still seemed distance and the girl found herself growing frustrated.
Eyes lifted in hopes of calming back down - the chaos of the previous days had left her still anxious, itching to get back to normal, to throw herself back into studies and hobbies to take her mind off of the horrors they had all experienced. A letter had arrived that morning from her parents, threatening to rip her out of the school if she was not properly protected. France, or better yet China, would likely be safer, especially in their secluded villas and mansions, but Ariadne dreaded the idea of leaving and missing the last year she would get to spend there.
Hogwarts was where her freedom had been discovered. It felt as if she’d only scrapped the surface of what she could achieve, and now suddenly bogged down against with academic requirements. How was it she always found herself falling into the same patterns, repeating her mistakes, and refusing to allow herself to rise from her former glory?
“Bother,” The Ravenclaw sighed, standing and beginning to gather her things when she noticed another figure, alone in the room in the far corner. Pausing, Ariadne stood still, eyes locked on her former friend. They woven their fingers together and tilted their heads in, pressing whispers and fairytales into each other ears, bonding over the differences in their opinions from their friends. Purebloods, but not the kind everyone else seemed to be. Ah, how the distance had grown, ripping a piece of Ariadne away. Why was it a silk screen held her away from the world? Never could she seem to experience the closeness with her peers, or anyone. Even Abraxas seemed worlds away, even when they touched, though rare the occasion was.
Perhaps it was because she’d survived near death in the castle only days before. Perhaps bravery now coursed stronger through the veins of the Greengrass Ravenclaw. Or perhaps, she was just tired of being estranged from an old friend. “Camilla,” She spoke, calm and collected. Ariadne always talked as if she were narrating a poem, reading of grand adventures and gestures of love. Her accent, more French in nature than Chinese, held the traits of several languages, as she was fluent in many. Yet, somehow, the warmth in her voice is what caused others to stop and listen. She never smiled - maybe that is why everyone trusted her word, hung on the syllables like they would offer wisdom beyond their time.
“I thought I knew everything there was to know,” A confession of hubris. “Yet I find myself lost in these pages. You’re good at this, you’ve always been such a star.”
A joke? Was Ariadne joking now to win over the affections of the Hufflepuff? It was good none of the serpents were around to witness the fail at humor - she’d never live it down, likely.
“Please help me?”
Shivering moonlight, constellations glinting as the tine of a dagger, she had held an adoration of that romantic, shimmering blackness since a child. Captured between her hands, against her breast, had it not been a Black to teach her of this longing, initially? Gaze drawn upward, no matter her quarrel with it, instinct drew her sight to their legacy --- as it fell to Abraxas when she thought of Pushkin, of Saint-Exupéry and Huxley. As her heart to fell to Ariadne in many things, as it did to the lot of them. Her past resided with them, ultimately, something of a awkwardly assembled mosaic --- colored by the pale gold of a Rosier, fair skin kissed by midnight, the backward step of a Greengrass.
Though, the pieces were jagged; never meeting evenly and cutting at each other, her memory was a feral thing --- bearing teeth, scratching. Nausea rolls at recall of her veneer, their cruelty, her fear ( the latter has not left her yet, nor the first perhaps ). For all precious, crystallized moments she held fast to, there was an unseemly counterpart that reminded her of their grotesque prejudice or --- just as well, perturbing disassociation.
But it was not I who slandered the muggleborns, their doves cooed.
Nor had it been them who spoke against it, she reminded herself. In that, she refused to be alike them; a cog, a wheel in their infinite cycle of elitism, turning over and over, like clockwork ( how does one stop the succession of malice in a young girl’s heart, a boy’s? they don’t ). Rather, she cultivated a sense of ignorance against them, her traitorous adoration of them --- a sneering beast, nestled tight to her heart and caught in the space between her lungs as contagion often stuck. Was her love of them not a sickness, after all?
Rather, indeed, she’d developed somewhat of a talent in steeling herself against former friends, lest they carry daggers at their lips and menace at their hearts ( as they did, often ). When she thought of Fiora, the prejudice which she had endured and would continue to at the elm end of a Malfoy’s wand --- a Nott’s aspen, a Black’s blackthorn, it was simple. When she thought of their beastly ferocity against all whom she held dear, it was simple. Even against those gentler hearts, for they had their stakes in the collective malice, monstrosity.
So, when Ariadne Greengrass passed through the Astronomy classroom, as the specter, the ghost which she knew Druella to be, as Lucretia, she did not lift her gaze. Not even at her melodic sigh, a bird’s song. Not at her rising, either, did she seek to meet the Ravenclaw’s eyes. To meet their blackness would murder her resolve, because so much as she vehemently denied it, she’d loved them. Once, surely, and perhaps she still did; an uncertainty she couldn’t gamble against, not even ----- ah, but her voice. Its softness, its familiarity eased over Camilla, as conspiratory whispers and promises which she had not forgotten.
Hesitantly, she raised her head, as called for when in the instance of such precariousness --- hesitance. The swell of nostalgia, though, could not be eased by caprice, breaking over her as a tidal wave: all in salt tears, agony. “Ariadne,” her voice did not betray her longing, not entirely, but its strain was unmistakeable; taunt as wire, twisting out stiffly. How was she to react; what was she to say? Her delicate fingers latched to her notebook as an anchor, creating crescent, half-moon shapes in its cover at her anxiety, her fear.
Not of Ariadne, but of Camilla’s love for her.
“Ah, I’m not so good at it --- -- you’ve always been the clever one,” the words proceeded at a clumsy pace, as a newborn fawn making to stand, trailed by a pause as she considered herself. “But of course, you know, if you needed my help --- I’d always, well, I’m willing to lend you a hand. Beery doesn't need me in the greenhouse for a good while, anyway.”
“Have a seat,” her invitation came more as a question, one might’ve said, as she inelegantly, as Camilla Abbott indelicately fumbled to make room for the other at her desk. But her movements were too eager, too anticipatory; she cursed herself for it, casting her gaze back downward.
