A Merciful Burn
Yo, Devlin! I see you've changed your lute recently, what happened to the old one? It had a nice ring to it, rather charming if you ask me! … What are you giving me this look for …
The thrumming she felt wasn't beneath her fingers. It was beneath her ribcage. Beneath her skin, and perhaps in her blood. Where it always had been.
She lets the slow build of the tension release, dripping from her fingertips into the plucking motion of the strings that brought forth a the a tune that felt nothing but discordant with her current efforts.
Every so often, the wrong chord drew a sting from the recently opened scar on her palm. A remedial, yet sorry excuse for a bandaid on the ever present wound that was the yoke that bound her to Montrose. But it hadn't stopped her from finding an open space in the common room to practice. She had been lost in her efforts until...
“What are you giving me this look for…?”
Perhaps the forced grin on her face was there to suggest that it was foolish to assume that just because she was a Hufflepuff she would always be happy to give so easily.
Answers to questions she didn't invite? Secrets she kept? Feelings she....just feelings in general.
No. Her palm had bled enough for Montrose. She didn't need a bleeding heart as well.
Theo had learned long ago that it would never serve her to simply take what was given. She planted her own flowers if she wanted them. And she'd raze the earth to burn them down if the mood struck her as well.
Despite what others saw in her, Theo didn't love anything more than being underestimated. So no, she wouldn't take what she was given. She would take what she pleased.
Maybe that's why she had been fueled by her very own obstinacy that night at the Three Broomsticks when she commandeered the very instrument currently resting against her.
The grin evaporates, her attention shifts back to where she wants it, and the tune picks up as her fingers move faster, and more sure. She doesn’t bother to look up to the student again when she responds to their question.
“I set it on fire.”