Helena was so insatiably, unfathomably, unimaginatively beautiful.
This wasn't technically her fault – who was she to decide from before birth how she was to look, coming from her mother and henceforth blossoming like a rose, acquiring all the attributes of one, as well, as she grew to know the value of her own countenance, wit and undeniable charm and grace. Sweet to the eyes when looked upon, sweet to the ears when speaking, and most likely – the Baron thought to himself as he gazed out through the rain-struck window by his bed in the Slytherin dormitory – sweet to the taste, as well, if she were to be kissed.
As it was, the wealthy, self-nicknamed young man who had just celebrated his own seventeenth birthday the week before in gloom and depravity all on his lonesome in his bed – which he'd casted a jinxed veil about, to shroud and conceal him completely within it – was now in brighter spirits, for he had divined a secret from the one and only person in all of Hogwarts that he would have ever given a second thought about at all.
His great victory had happened shortly after the evening meal in the great hall. Oh, how he'd been stalking Helena for the prior thirteen days straight just to be sure of her actions – to be completely positive of the path she'd taken each time and to figure the probability of her continuing to do so. Motives unknown and irrelevant to him personally, the Baron had watched the daughter of the Head and Founder of Ravenclaw House slip away after dinner each evening for the past two weeks straight; and each time she did the same thing, which was this:
She would quietly make sure no one had noticed her absence, and she would then duck down a hallway that led toward the dungeons, hiding there, sidled along the wall until the main corridor was emptied of anyone at all. Then she would duck back out again, sure of the hall's emptiness, or else near-emptiness, which apparently would do for her, because she would then slink quickly along the corridors, making sure to keep closely alongside them as she went. Though her intent would seem aimless to those less privy, the Baron knew from his extensive watching that she was heading for her mother's room, which was located in a secret room technically adjoined to the Ravenclaw Dormitories, though not accessible through any of them.
Oh, how he'd been even quieter and sneakier than she, slipping along after Helena, watching and waiting, hearing her murmur the password that should have caused a reaction in the large stone statue of the owl affixed at the end of the hall that guarded the entrance to the staircase that led up to her mother's bedquarters.
"Begonias . . ." she'd whispered on the first night, before looking caught off-guard when nothing happened to the statue. "Gardenias . . ." – nothing – "Petunias . . ."
Throughout thirteen evenings of three guesses of flowers, and not a single guess more, the Baron waited and watched, unknowing why she only dared to guess three times.
(The reason being was that Rowena Ravenclaw had bewitched the statue to give off the sound of an alarm if slipped the incorrect password five times once in a single twenty-four hour period – the Baron, naturally, didn't know this, but Helena, Rowena's daughter did, and so this was the reason why, but we digress).
On the fourteenth evening – this same evening on which we now find the Baron reminiscing by his bed's window – he had been spying upon Helena in the hallway all the same as he'd done the past couple weeks when what should happen but this:
"Daffodils . . .?" Helena said, before looking nearly morose as nothing happened to the statue. "Oh, good gracious, Mother of mine, why do you change your password so, and now what shall it be? You told me Year One I could count on it to be the name of a flower, but you are too clever for my own good and is it not fair. You simply suppose someone might be trying to gain unwarranted access into your room, and my word, you go and start changing the password in rapid-fashion. Mother of mine, so bright and so quick . . . sometimes I do indeed wonder - do you already suspect that the perpetrator of the break-in attempts is . . . me?"
Upon hearing Helena's spiel, the Baron felt his heart give a fair swoon; she spoke most poetically, even in her own inward musings, never even mind the fact that she was able to do so even when speaking of naughty things that she knew very well she ought not to be doing in the first place. Naturally, it only gave her an edge – a sharp, shining, breathtakingly attractive edge that served no other purpose than to make the Baron want her for himself all the more.
Deciding to reveal his presence to her then, the Baron slinked away from his hiding space in the dark corner near the end of the hall, before striding up to her, standing upright and holding his self in the way his noble-bloodline allocated that he should. "Helena, my fairest and most beautiful and brightest – Helena, my dear –"
"Whatever is it that you want, Baron?" the Witch with long, flowing and waist-length brunette hair asked, sounding at once both impatient and annoyed by his mere presence.
"Now, now, was that not gracious enough of a greeting from me to you, milady?"
Smirking as if amused – though, of course, she and the Baron both were wise enough to know that it was not a kind sort of amusement – the daughter of the Ravenclaw founder said, "Baron, you will never contain grace enough to even fill the curls of your hair, never even mind the fact that you will never possess enough poise to even speak my name without offending she who gave it to me in the first place."
"Now, now," the Baron had returned, turning in the blink of an eye from a mood of magnanimity to one of obscene anger as he quickly grabbed Helena at the wrists and pressed her up against the hard, brick wall of the hallway, holding her hostage there as he pressed his body in against hers, pinning her so that any hopes of her reaching her wand were quite laughable at best. "Speaking of she who named you . . . I may not be one of her pupils, but Salazar Slytherin, why, he speaks nothing of me to your mother but of my insatiable brightness and wit – indeed, if I was of good form, I might have been chosen by your mother rather than good ole Salazar in the first place."
Helena opened her mouth to no doubt retort in some sassy way, but the Baron moved his face in closer to hers, so that the tips of their noses touched, and this alone seemed to quiet her before she had even begun to speak in the first place.
"Now," the Baron then said, his breath coming out as hot and offensive as Helena felt it against her skin. "The point is, I am quite on your mother's good side, and I daresay I might be able to charm her password right out of her."
"Ha! I daresay she would do no such thing while under the assumption that a would-be intruder is at large within the falls of this castle."
"Helena, I daresay she only won't let you be privy to whatever the password may be because she does suspect you to be the would-be intruder in the first place."
"So you were spying on me," Helena said simply, turning her head off to the side, so that the words coming from the lips of the Baron reverberated off of her cheek now. "Of course you were. I'm sure if my mother of whom you speak knew of you doing such a thing, then you'd be quick to fall from her favor."
"And likewise, my darling, if I was to call aloud for someone to go and fetch her at this moment, to prove who the alleged suspect at large is once and for all, I am sure that you as well would fall from her favor even more quickly than I would."
When Helena said nothing in return, the Baron spoke again.
"So once more I say unto you, I can charm the answer you seek from your mother – I'll not even ask you why you seek it in the first place – indeed, I'll only ask of you one teensy tiny form of payment in return for the favor, my dear."
Giving in just enough to decide to humor the idea, Helena replied, "A payment in the form of what currency? You have enough money to last you six lifetimes and a half."
"Aye, that much is true, and so, milady, I would ask of you in exchange for the password naught but a single, chaste kiss – your lips to mine."
Beginning to laugh, Helena shook her head in what little way she could, considering the manner of her confinement. "Baron, you have the face of a handsome man but the mind of a complete fool! No one has ever kissed my lips, and I daresay I might search the ends of the Earth and still never find someone worthy enough to be permitted to do so."
Releasing Helena at once, the Baron, too, gave a cheery sort of laugh, before saying, "My offer will forever stand as long as it is needed. In the meantime, I wish you luck in completing your endeavor alone . . . whatever it is that that endeavor might be, my beautiful, darling, Helena - the sole keeper of my heart's desire."
And with that he had parted and went on his way down to the dungeons, to the Slytherin Common Room, where he'd ignored the few hellos he'd received, aiming to make a beeline for his bedchambers, to celebrate alone regarding the secret he'd found out without even meaning to. Not as if he'd ever honestly questioned it before, but now as he continued to gaze out in a longing fashion through the window, the Baron said aloud, "She is but now undeniably perfect and unblemished. Why, even her very lips are pure and untouched. Wholly, she is untouched, and by her own word she is likely to stay in just such a way until I can take her for my own . . ."
Closing his eyes, the Baron envisioned that sweet day that was surely only inevitable – fate could certainly not be so cruel as to deem it impossible – and so it would happen, and so now he smiled, imagining how he would finally take the lady by the hand, to dance with her, spinning her about beneath the shimmer of a full moon, perhaps in a place of ancient magic – such as a forest.
There he would kiss her. He could see it now in his mind's eye in one of several ways; either she would give him the kiss gleefully, happily, or else she would scorn him for stealing it from her, anger in her gorgeous eyes as they glared back at him, burning so.
This alone was enough at the moment, for it satisfied his overworking mind by providing it with a conquest to map out, for either way – whether with permission or by force - the Baron now felt himself certain that he would be the one to claim the glory of the first, hidden kiss of Helena Ravenclaw.