Poison and Peppermint
Word Count: 2674
Tags: Holiday Horror, Poisoning, Hallucinations and Illusions, Revenge, Morally gray protagonist, Plant magic.
tag list: @butternutt613 @stein0806 @morelikeravenbore @galaxiasgreen @amethystandemma @whalesongsblog @heylorrain @polarisgreenley @smile-arigatou @baby-snakey @speedysart @stellarisnova713 @leaping-toadstool-capsand more likely.
Adelia couldn’t stand cowards. They were the worst breed of people in her book, especially when they made others do things for them and disguised their cowardice by bullying others to make themselves feel bigger. The worst kind of cowards she found were the purebreds, who had soft hands, pockets full of cash, and full bellies. Duncan Hobbhouse and Leander Prewett were exactly the kind of scum she hated. People who hadn’t had to fight to survive, who never had to be brave, who never had to fear anything because they always got what they wanted.
She had met them both during plant themed quests. What was it with cowards and plants? They wanted to be the ones to care for them and to seem like they were strong yet jumped backwards when the green “innocen”t seeming things had more bite to them then they thought. Adelia found she had the same qualities. You see, to them she was small, bendable and green on the outside. Inexperienced, a half blood weed, sweet voiced, tender and mild.
For now.
Adelia also hated herbology. Plants were just too much of a task. They were too unpredictable. Despite precise planning and hard work they could still die. Ridiculous really, weak. Which is why she preferred plants when they were dead. Much more useful, and easier to manipulate. People were also easy to manipulate, if you knew how . You just needed the right ingredients. Good thing she knew exactly how to obtain them, with the help of her favorite troublemaker.
Adelia looked up from her book as he entered the potions classroom. His red hair was a mess, his freckled face aflush as he panted, emptying his arms onto the workbench. Garreth Weasley was her closest friend and most loyal servant. A loyal little puppy dog,whether he knew it or not. The ingredients she used to tame him were simple, praise, reward, and some potion training.
She set her book down elegantly, marking the page of course, and then came around the table to gently brush dirt off the front of his vest. His cheeks flushed even more when she smiled sweetly up at him, before licking her thumb and rubbing a bit of dirt off of his hot cheek.
“Gar Bear, don’t tell me you ran all the way here?”
He grinned, straightening a little taller. “Of course I did, Addie. You said it was a Christmas emergency. I figured I should try for once to stop a problem instead of creating one. Besides, you know I would do anything for you. Afterall, you turned a disaster into a potions prodigy."
“I did, didn’t I? You could say I’m a miracle worker. Now what did you get me?”
He watched as she inspected his bundle, running her small pale hand across it, picking through to find what she could use. She smiled when she found the peppermint, bringing it to her nose to take a long delicious whiff. Spicy with a twinge of sweet, just how she was feeling right now.
“This will be perfect Garreth. Thank you, I have everything I need now for my surprise.”
She turned and headed towards the stairs, pausing when he didn’t follow. “I still need your help, you know. I’m not very good in the kitchen, despite how good I am with a cauldron.” With that she winked and in a flash of green floo flames she was gone, leaving Garreth behind.
He stood there stunned for a second, before laughing in delight and scrambling up the stairs.
“That girl is going to be the death of me!”
~~
The rest of the afternoon consisted of Garreth preventing Adelia from burning down Hogwarts kitchens as she left the fudge on for too long. A sugar fight that resulted in crystal freckled cheeks stained in chocolate lipstick marks. And ginger stained hair despite how tight she had tied up the golden blonde locks into a bun. She had her revenge by dumping butter in his curls.
As he left for the showers, despite protesting that he would be fine to continue helping, she finally had her moment to slip in the secret ingredients she had waited so long to finally use. Pulling a small vial from her bosom she held it delicately over the smooth brown mix and watched with sick delight as a few drops of purplish black liquid dripped, blending in effortlessly.
With a finishing touch of a little bit of salt, she handed the tray to the elves warning them not to touch it or dare have the tiniest bite with the reason that it was a special present for someone as well as a gentle threat on top that news of their crime would find its way to the Headmaster.
Adelia then found herself a bit tired. Something that she hated. Sleep was not her friend, it always brought visions of darkness, often consuming her, turning her into a monster she told herself she wasn’t. Adelia didn’t like death, the concept of it frightened her. Trapped forever in a world of peace that couldn’t possibly exist or one of eternal suffering. She’d suffered enough.
No, she couldn’t sleep. Not now.
Not when she was so close to making them pay.
There was one more treat she had to make and Christmas was tomorrow. If these weren’t done, put aside for their future consumers and she wasn’t far from the scene, she’d be suspected immediately. Which is why she’d sent Gar away.
“Feenky! Get me my favorite treat will you?”
A few seconds later a plate of apple cake was in front of her, as well as a shot glass of wideye potion, her regular drink.
She sighed as she took a bite, the sweet sour taste of the green apples they’d used melting over her tongue, then downed the potion grimacing at the taste wolfsbane left.
Another bite.
The taste was gone, so was sleep.
Perfect.
Now it was about time to brew some peppermint hot chocolate for a certain anxious little puffskein hater. Undone by the very thing he sent her after, only to stab her in the back later.
~~
The hall was bustling, decked from floor to ceiling with Christmas decorations. Matilda had managed to make it feel homey even though Black had wanted something more high class.
Silver and gold stars hung from the ceiling interwoven with mostly greenery and a splash of red here and there. Candles floated high in the ceiling, snow drifting gently down among them.
Despite the elegance, there were also homemade ornaments that students were allowed to carry up to the front and hang one by one on the giant main tree towering over the tables.
Adelia hung back, about the only one who didn’t have something to offer. Even Ominis had something. Next to Sebastian’s picture of himself and Anne, his silent Christmas wish, Ominis hung a poorly stitched fabric owl. Imelda, a broom, and slowly but surely the tree was filled.
A tap on the shoulder made her turn.
It was Garreth, and he was holding something.
A spider? He knew how much she liked them.
“Yes Gar? What is it?” She sighed, tucking a strand that had escaped her bun behind her ear.
“I uhh,” he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “I have something for you. A present.”
“Garreth you didn’t have to. I don’t have anything to give you in return.” Adelia couldn’t help but be slightly upset. Their relationship had always been mutual in that they each got something.
However, here he was giving her something without telling her in advance. And she was unprepared. As if he could tell what she was thinking, he simply laughed and just pressed it into her hand. It was a small woolen circle, and in the middle was a knitted purple thistle.
“Just take it, Adelia. Love isn’t transactional. I like you, not what you have to give.”
And then with that big stupid grin that made her traitorous heart flutter, he headed to his table.
~~
If Duncan Hobbhouse could sense the emerald eyes watching him closely it wasn’t obvious. Perhaps it was because his mind was preoccupied with the anonymous note he’d found tied to a terrifying furry puffskien sitting innocently on his chest this morning. He didn’t know which was more frightening, the way its tongue licked across his face or the sweetly veiled threat that he would be made to pay for hurting muggle borns.
He only looked up from nervously twitching his hands when Everett ploppped a big mug of steaming peppermint hot chocolate in front of him. Duncan gave a twitching smile as he wrapped his hands around it, sighing at the soothing warmth.
“How’d you know?”
His friend smiled, rubbing his glasses on his shirt to clear the water from the steam. “Easy, you always drink hot chocolate whenever you’re nervous. Just so happened the elves had some already ready. You really shouldn’t worry that much.”
“Easy for you to say. You didn’t get a note.”
Everett slapped him on the back. “Come on Dunc, it was probably just some dumb prank, let it go and enjoy Christmas. Christmas at Hogwarts is probably the best thing since…ever.”
“You’re right. It’s likely nothing, probably just Andrew doing Gaunt’s bidding per usual. The scrawny blood traitor has no actual bite to him. All words and no venom. Pathetic if you ask me.”
Raising the steaming mug to his lips, Duncan took a long swig, sighing as the taste of peppermint and chocolate soothed his frayed nerves just like it always did since he was little.
Across the hall at the Gryfinndor table Leander grinned as a house elf plopped a giant treacle fudge right in front of him with the news that he had a secret admirer, making the others groan.
He puffed up his chest as Natty frowned. “A secret admirer? Really? Who could like you?”
“Who wouldn’t? I’m practically the finest catch in Hogwarts. An excellent dueler, talented with caring for the most sensitive plants, charming, and if I do say so myself, very attractive. Besides, I come from one of the oldest pureblood families. What isn’t there to like?”
“Sure, sure.” Garreth said, patting his best friend on the back. “Go ahead, what are you waiting for?”
With a big grin on his face Leander lifted his knife in a dramatic manner, cut into the fudge, and brought a rather large piece to his mouth as Adelia watched with wicked glee.
~~~
Adelia knew it would take a little while for her plan to come to completion. She didn’t mind if she wasn’t there to witness every single second of her punishment, as long as they suffered. What she did want to do was enjoy every moment she never had back in her orphanage.
Apple pie and ice cream, warm cider, and laughter shared with friends she could almost call siblings. Ominis’s slight grin at Sebastian’s dramatic antics as he tried to balance a silver spoon on his nose to flicking cream at him only seconds later for an inappropriate joke that despite Adelia’s proper training made her cackle just like the witch she was, the witch that was still a girl.
Witches are simply just innocent girls who have more intelligence than most. The ones that can read the stars, connect with animals deeper than most. Girls who love to read, to write, to dream. Not that other girls don’t but witches pour themselves into it with passion, as it is in their blood. Magic isn’t just something that everyone has, it’s what the ones labeled crazy have. And if they become good it’s because there was love, if they become evil it’s because it was taken.
But there is a fine line between dark and light, and it’s called gray. When someone uses evil for love. Adelia loved deeply, but she hid it. Yet it didn’t stop her from hurting those who hurt others. Especially when those were the ones who accepted her when no one else did.
Those happened to be the young men sitting on both sides of her, a traitor and a halfblood.
You’re probably smart enough to make the connection.
They’d been hurt, how you’ll soon find out.
A shriek drew Ominis’s attention away from a delicious chocolate frog, which to his despair escaped. But the commotion happening at the Ravenclaw table was far more interesting to keep feeling around for the sugary amphibian. Turning towards Sebastian he asked sharply, “By Merlin, what is going on over there? I know it’s Duncan, but what exactly is happening?”
Sebastian chortled with laughter. “Why, Duncan’s turned purple!!”
Duncan Hobbhouse was running around screaming, “It burns, burns, it burns!!” but just like Sebastian had said, his skin had turned a deep purple color that despite his rubbing didn’t seem to make any difference. Professor Weasley hurried over only to hear other shouts of terror.
For Leander Prewett was stumbling around like drunk, pale and bumping into people as Garreth hurried after him trying to comfort him. “Aunt Matilda, help him please! I don’t know what’s wrong!!”
Let me give you a little peek into what he was seeing and you’ll see why Prewett peed himself.
~~~
It began with shakes, tremors, and then a sound. A terrible, snapping, sound. The fudge was moving, the table was moving. It was bubbling and there was a low thrumming like fists on wet soil just before a cabbage burst out from the plate biting at his face. He leapt back with a scream but it was no good.
The cabbages were coming and they were everywhere.
Swollen, overgrown reddish heads of leaf and sinew as big as a troll's head were rolling, no hopping towards him, their outer leaves peeling away to reveal jagged drooling jaws.
“Feed us, feed us, we’re hungry, so hungry!!” Each fibrous mouth chomped with a wet grinding sound as the serrated teeth rubbed against each other. Their rubbery roots were with them, weaving and twisting along the ground towards him. Their eyes- they had eyes?! - were pale and buried deep within their whorls and blinked at him angrily as they got closer as he fled.
“Thirst, we thirst, thirst for vengeance, thirst for blood, thirst for Prewett. Water’s not enough.”
Every time one landed, the air smelled more of crushed plants, of rot and dirt, and blood. And that my dear was not part of normal belladonna symptoms. No, that was purely Adelia.
But he didn’t know that. All he knew was that the chomping was louder, faster, and closer.
He fought them as the vines wrapped around him, fought as their mouths licked at his feverish forehead, and screamed trying to drown out the voices that tried to tell him it was okay.
Because the only voices he knew were the voices that promised to digest him slowly.
~~~
As I stand outside in the cold, letting the frigid air wrap around me in an almost comforting hug, I know that this won’t be the last time. Because just a little taste of revenge isn’t satisfying enough for me. Especially when it wasn’t against the real ones I want to punish. The anger still burns like white fire inside me, the tendrils of my illusion magic burning away with it.
I have to be more careful. Sebastian is far too clever to not make a connection to me, especially when he was the one to tell me venomous tentacula poison made one permanently purple. Ominis is far too aware of my every breath to have not noticed the satisfied sigh that left me as they were rushed to the hospital wing. But they could understand, as it wasn’t fatal.
The one thing I didn’t count on was Garreth’s eyes, though full of worry over Prewett, darting to mine with a look that told me he knew what I had done, and how I had used him to do it. Now that was a problem.