A good song to listen to while reading this is Thinking of You by Katy Perry.
This idea got lodged in my head and wouldn't go away so I wrote it down. For now it is a one shot, but if people seem interested I wouldn't be against expanding it into a full story with an OC romantic pairing.
Korynna was a student that everyone in Slytherin knew about but never mentioned. I never spoke of her, that was certain. She was an oddity, and not in a way that made her seem more superior. It was not the kind of special that someone in the great house of Slytherin was supposed to be.
She was odd, and despite the fact that I joined the others in pretending she was not one of us, I found her terribly interesting. She was not unintelligent, and yet she never did seem to pay attention in any of our classes. Her head always seemed to be in the clouds, looking out the window at Merlin only knows what, but she never fell behind. Her marks were competitive, despite her lack of attention.
She never attended quidditch matches, despite the entire school flocking to the pitch no matter the weather. That in particular always made me wonder about her. If she couldn't keep her eyes off the sky in a transfiguration lesson why was it so easy for her to ignore it during a quidditch match. It had to be far more interesting then didn't it?
She was always outside on those days however, no matter the weather. Without fail I inevitability stumbled upon her on my way to the pitch, or my way back up to the castle. Sometimes she was sitting on a picnic blanket near the lake enjoying the sunshine. Occasionally she would be dancing about in a light breeze of inexplicable flower petals. One time I even found her sitting in a low sweeping branch of a tree holding her hands up and catching the rain drops that fell as it poured outside. She always seemed to be there, and no matter what she been focused on before I stumbled upon her she would stop and offer me a smile. It was disconcerting.
All of that did not quite compare to the one things that made her so different from everyone else in the house of Slytherin. She always looked different. She wasn't very talkative , so no one was actually told what it was about her that made her like that. In our first year plenty of rumors had gone around about glamour charms, and wigs, and polyjuice potion, but eventually even an idiot first year like I had been was able to figure it out. She was a metamorphmagus.
Some days her hair was a ridiculous color, but other days it was a perfectly normal color and her face was different. No one was really sure what she looked like because he features shifted so quickly. The most striking transition I had ever seen was during a charms lesson. Flitwick had just demonstrated how to conjure a flock of birds from thin air, and she had emitted a tiny gasp at the sight of them before a beaming smile over took her features. I watched in fascination as right there in class her hair turned the same vivid blue of the exotic bird feathers and her eyes shifted to a shimmering gold of its belly. Her features became more dainty and birdlike and she seemed to shrink three inches right before my eyes. Overall it had made her look very much like the bird she had been so enamored with.
I had thought to myself, for just a moment, that she was actually quite beautiful like that. Then Lily had started to laugh in her seat next to me and I had been reminded of what true beauty looked like. Lily seemed to find Korynna fascinating. She took up a strange hobby in our fourth year of approaching Korynna on the grounds and presenting her with a different flower each time and then watching as the girl's appearance shifted when she sniffed the flower. Being happy, particularly while around nature, seemed to make her blossom just like her flowers and Lily loved to witness it.
"I wonder what she really looks like," Lily had whispered once as we walked away. "I imagine she doesn't think herself very beautiful since she is constantly changing her features, but I can't help but wonder how she looks."
"She must have a reason to change," I had told her with a shrug. "Perhaps her nose it too large, or her brow too pronounced. She is a prime example of Slytherin students knowing how to present a proper face to the world by hiding her flaws the way she does. She would have been smarter to keep her power to herself however, and leave all the girls guessing how she did it."
"That's an awful thing to say Severus," Lily had chided me before she left me standing by myself in the middle of the grounds wondering what had happened.
That was another thing, any time Lily wasn't with me, it was like I could feel Korynna's eyes on me. Without fail, if I looked around at a moment like that I'd find her looking at me. Always a different colored eye looking out of an unfamiliar face, but I knew it was her. It was like having a benign stalker. Instinctively I knew she was harmless, but she did have a bit of an oppressive presences from time to time.
-`-'-
Things had… shifted a bit in sixth year. I no longer had Lily by my side. She wasn't my friend, and that seemed to have given Korynna a bit more confidence. I discovered that she had a very sweet voice the first time she spoke to me. It warmed me to her slightly, despite the fact that I didn't want anyone to talk to me except for Lily.
"Severus," she said, drawing my attention away from my book and to her face, which had a smattering of light brown freckles today "I don't mean to disturb you from your reading, but I was wondering if you might be willing to help me with a potions assignment."
"They essay on moonstones?" I asked her distractedly as I continued to read. "That's due this afternoon, if you haven't finished it yet there's no real hope of improvement at this point."
"Oh no, I finished that paper ages ago," she trilled with a little laugh that made me think of her as a bird once more. "I took on an extra credit assignment, and I need a bit of help with that."
"Absolutely not," I snapped at her as I shut my book with more force than was necessary causing her to flinch away from me and her light pink hair to flicker to a light golden brown before it returned to the cotton candy shade. "I will not do your work for you so you can attempt to turn an outstanding into something higher."
"Severus you know you are the only one pulling an outstanding in Slughorn's class," she said in a timid voice. "I'm only pulling an acceptable and I wasn't asking you to do my work for me. I know exactly what to do, but the last ingredient I need to collect for my potion only blooms at midnight in the forbidden forest. I'd rather not go in alone, even if the small plot of Mock Orchids is near the tree line.
"The Night Blooming Mock Orchid only blooms once every forty years," I said quietly, focusing my full attention on her. "And for just a few seconds at that. What potion could you possibly be making with that?"
"I'm attempting to invent my own, it's the extra credit assignment I was given," she whispered, a deep pink blush filling her cheeks and instinctually I knew that was an actual reaction rather than a magical shift in her features. "I know it's a stupid idea, but I think I could still get a few points if I completely botch this, so I'd like to continue but I need help. So will you help me?"
"Yes," I agreed easily, unwilling to give up such an opportunity. "You are certain it will bloom tonight?"
"One hundred percent," she said with a beaming smile, her eyes shifting to a bright sky blue as she did. "I've been following explicit instructions from Sprout, and monitoring it during the afternoon when the forest is a bit safer. I expect it to bloom at exactly 12:04 this evening, but I'd like to be a little early just to be safe."
"I'll meet you in the common room at 11:30," I said with nod as I hopped up from the ground and shoved my book back into my bag. "That should give us enough time."
-`-'-
I barely recognized the girl standing by the common room door when I emerged from my dorm room that night. She lacked a certain amount of color, but she was incredibly striking despite that. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, there wasn't anything particularly special about her golden brown hair. Except that it had these picturesque curls and it fell all the way to the small of her back. Brown eyes were a fairly common trait, but her were large and doe like. It made her look… sweet, and soft. An image only aided by the sun dress and cardigan sweater she had chosen to wear.
"I don't know which person or fairy tale creature inspired your look tonight, but I don't think it lends itself to a trip into the forbidden forest," I chided her. "You look like something a werewolf should devour, and the tall grasses alone with tear up your legs in that dress."
"I appreciate your concern," she said sweetly. "But my stockings have an impenetrable charm on them so I will be fine. And simple genetics inspired this look, though I suppose I did choose the outfit."
I froze in the act of exiting the common room to stare at her. I ran through all of her features, cataloguing all of them as I did so. Without my permission the memory of a conversation with Lily about what Korynna actually looked like floated to the forefront of my mind. I had been very wrong in my assessment of why she was always changing her features.
"This is what you actually look like?" I asked her as I began walking again, and she followed me out into the deserted dungeon corridor. "Korynna I don't understand you one bit. Why do you bother changing your features at all if that's what you look like underneath?"
"I like beautiful things," she said with a shrug. "Like flowers, and birds. They inspire me, and sometimes the shift just happens without me even thinking about it. I just want to look like those beautiful things too."
"That's silly," I said with a shake of the head as I lead her out of the castle. "Your constant shift suggests that you have some sort of defect, an ugly feature that you're trying to hide, but that simply isn't the case. You don't need to look like a flower in the grass or a bird in the clouds. You're above all of that nonsense."
She didn't say a word to that, though I noticed she seemed to be blushing again. In hindsight I suppose what I had said could have been taking as flirting rather than chiding, though that had been my intention. It was idiotic to use her magic to hide flaw that didn't exist. She should be training to use that skill for something useful, perhaps to be an unidentifiably spy in the coming war.
I chose to say nothing at all after that, instead letting her lead the way once we entered the grounds. I maintained my silence as we walked and she quietly hummed to herself as she skipped along beside me. I was torn between being amused, and thinking she looked ridiculous beside me. She reminded me of a innocent school girl and little red riding hood at the same time. She wasn't wearing red of course, no one in Slytherin ever did, but with her basket over her arm just skipping to her hearts content she still managed to look the part.
"You really will lure any lurking werewolves in the forest to us if you skip like that in the forest," I told her with a laugh.
"I promise to be the consummate profession in the woods," she told me, smirking over her shoulder at me as we rounded and out cropping of trees. "We're almost there actually."
She slowed to a walk when she came to the edge of the tree line and motioned for me to follow her. I noticed that she had started to tip toe a bit and decided it would be best to try and be as quiet as possible as well. I couldn't help but admit to myself as I held my wand aloft and kept an eye on our surroundings that I was having fun.
"There isn't a true path to where we are going," she whispered to me as she finally lit the tip of her own wand and stepped inside the line of the trees. "But I've spent so much time walking through this way in the past few weeks that one is starting to break. You could follow it even if you didn't have me to lead the way for you."
"Luckily I won't have to worry about that," I whispered back as I followed her into the darkness that was deeper than anything we'd seen on the ground despite the light coming from both of our wands. "How far in do we have to go?"
"Just another hundred meters or so." She trilled quietly as she continued forward.
It took us roughly two minutes to reach our destination. Korynna immediately extinguished her wand when we found them, but I wouldn't have needed that to tell me we were there. I saw the flowers immediately; my attention drawn to the glowing flowers on the ground. They simultaneously exactly like and nothing like what I had read about in one of my potions texts. They were stunning. I knew that only one flower would grow per plant, so there had to be at least fifteen plants growing in this little cluster if my count was right. The flowers bloomed low to the ground but all of their oblong petals toward the sky. The very center was pure white, but it faded slowly to a deep purple tip, the color of a perfect night sky when it switches from sunset to that purply-blue that mean true night had come. But even that was not the most beautiful part. It was the glowing residue that was speckled across every flower that was stunning. It was like looking at the constellations in the sky, but they had come to rest on the petals of a flower.
"Aren't they beautiful?" she whispered to me as she sat down on her knees and withdrew a glass jar from her basket.
She didn't wait for my response as she began to work, for which I was glad as I found myself unable to speak. The flowers were beautiful of course, but there was something much more striking about her kneeling before they pulling on her gloves to begin gently extracting the blossoms. I belatedly extinguished my wand, realizing that the false light coming from my wand actually detracted from the allure of the entire seen. The flowers seemed to bloom brighter as soon as the light had gone.
"We're only going to take two," she told me as she set to work very gently detaching her blossom from the plant. "There's another jar in the basket if you want to pick up my backup for me. They jars have a preservation spell on them so you don't have to worry about casting anything on the blossom itself."
She was completely in her element working with the plant and I found myself watching her instead of doing what she had asked me to. I shook my head and tried to focus on the task at hand. From the light of the flowers I noticed it wasn't just jars she had in her basket. There was a blanket and what looked like a covered dish from the kitchens.
"Korynna what is this?" I asked pulling all of the contents from the basket.
She didn't answer me at first. Instead she sealed the jar in her hand and placed it in the basket, lighting it up with the flowers glow. She then quickly and efficiently detached a second blossom, sealed it in a jar, and put it in the basket as well before turning to look at me. Despite the fact that we were sitting in a dark forest I could see her every feature clearly. She looked like she was hovering somewhere between nervous and hopeful.
"I brought those things so I could ask you to stay for a bit, with me I mean," she told me quietly. "I know it's the forbidden forest, but Sprout has wards cast around here to keep her flowers safe so nothing should bother us, and it's so beautiful right here don't you think?"
"If you knew about the wards why did you even need me to come?" I asked her, my mind already landing on what I suspected the answer would be. "You didn't need anyone here to keep you safe."
"No, I didn't want you for safety," she admitted with a sigh. "I thought you might have figured it out by now, but I suppose I can just say it plainly. I wanted to spend time with you, and taking you somewhere beautiful seemed a good place to do it. So I brought the blanket and the food in hopes that you would stay and have a picnic with me in the light of this flower that only blooms once every forty years."
"In a few minutes the light of those flowers will go out, and they will wilt away once more," I told her stiffly. "When that happens we would be left sitting on a blanket in the dark once again having nothing in common accept for the house that we were sorted in to."
I could see instantly that my words injured her, and I was yet again reminded of a memory of Lily that I had buried. I remembered her face when I had said that evil word to her that severed our friendship forever. I regretted it just as swiftly as I had then. Clearly he was nursing a soft spot for me, and I didn't need to hurt her just because I didn't feel the same way. I wished a bit that I did feel the same way, she was a beautiful girl… but my heart belonged to another.
"I get it," she croaked, trying to keep her face passive, but I heard the tears in her voice long before they started falling down her cheeks.
She was practically sobbing when she sat up on her knees and shifted so she was kneeling just a foot away from me. Despite the way her face had gone a bit red and tears refused to stop falling she faced me with a look of determination in her eyes.
"You don't like me the way I like you right?" she choked out. "I don't look the way you want me to, I get it, but I can look like what you want. I can."
And just like that her features began to shift before me. Her skin grew more fair and the curl fell out of her hair. It was hard to truly see her eye color in the very low light created as the flowers began to die around us but I knew it was changing. My heart took off at a spring in my chest when I saw that her hair had turned auburn red and her face and bode had transformed to a perfect copy of Lily Evans.
"L-lily," I choked in my momentary confusion before my world came crashing down around me. "Korynna you look like Lily."
"You can call me Lily if you need to," she sighed, her tears still falling heavily. "If it means you'll stay for a little while."
It was tempting, highly tempting, to have a memory with Lily that was so intimate even if it wasn't true. It was tempting but I couldn't do it to her. So despite the way that she was leaning in toward me, practically begging me to pull her into my arms I refused her. I sat back on my haunches and moved away from her.
"No Korynna we can't do this," I sighed regretfully. "This isn't right. It wouldn't be good for me and it certainly wouldn't be good for you."
"I don't understand," she sobbed. "What do I have to do to be good enough for you?"
"It isn't like that Korynna," I whispered, wanting to console her but knowing that touching her now would only hurt her more in the long run. "I'm not the guy for you. I'm not the guy for anyone."
"You would never turn Lily away like this," she sobbed. "I don't get it, do you need me to change my voice too? I've never tried it before, but I'd try it for you."
"No, stop trying to change yourself for me," I told her, hearing my anguish in my voice. "I'm not worth it. You deserve a wonderful man who can appreciate you the way you deserve, and I am certain you will find him if you start looking. Look away from me and see all the potential suitors that surround you in this school."
"I don't want a potential suitor," she sobbed, only it no longer sounded like a lament, she sounded angry. "You just don't get it Severus, you don't. You can't have Lily, you won't ever have her! I am offering you something that you can have, right this second if you wanted it, and you spit on my offering because it isn't good enough. Well screw you Severus, screw you!"
She choked on her sobs but she angrily threw the blanket and food back into the basket with her flowers, no longer looking at me. She hopped up off the forest floor and ran away from me, leaving me sitting in the dark wondering what just happened. I couldn't begin to process what she had offered, or how I had hurt her with my refusal, or even the angry things she had just said. I just felt… lost, and alone. Of course sitting on me knees in a dark forest with no one beside me could be causing that lonely feeling. With a sigh I hauled myself to my feet and started to pick my way back toward the castle.