AN: I have a real fixation for taking on minor character that we know very little of in the books and exporing them in my own ways. I hope you all like this version of Dorcas Meadows.
Let me know your thoughts! :D
I read somewhere that there are two wolves battling inside us. One is evil, and represents hate, anger, arrogance, intolerance, superiority, spite, distain . The other is good, and represents joy, love, tolerance, kindness and compassion. It said that the one we feed most will win the fight.
Changeling
7.30 am.
The noise in the Great Hall was so loud it made me remember the time I came across a bee nest in the grounds of my family's summer estate. It seemed like every mouth in the Great Hall was opened… and they were not eating. To make matters worse, the black smoke that fell from the ceiling was becoming thicker and it smelled like burned porridge (which, if you really must know, it's very close to rotten potatoes). Even the color of the decorating house flags over each table had lost their meaning, now looking dirty, smoke stained.
It was impossible not to notice that the pink rose petals that had been raining all morning from the ceiling, burned to black as soon as they fell to a certain height, as if passing through an invisible sheet of fire. Needless to say that the decoration's purpose had been lost to the new ebony color.
To tell the truth, I liked them better burned to black. I was fully convinced that the pink shade they had been before had been created soly for my eyes' irritation. The horrid stench that was growing ever more powerful was harder to appreciate though. It was starting to smell more and more like bile or something.
In fewer words, the Great Hall might as well have been a troll's toilet... so my sudden lack of appetite was utter justifiable.
"What is going on here? Oh my God, not again!... I swear, this year someone is getting expelled for this!"
Evans' voice was shrill. Apparently that was the best representation of ager she was capable of. Was her yelling supposed to induce fear I wonder. What were people supposed to be scared of, more yelling?
I scoffed a little at her reaction. The mudblood was seriously lacking when it came to intimidation skills. But that was not more irritating than her incompetence when it came to cleaning up the mess.
And look at the way she was fuming to passersby! Like she hadn't been expecting this.
Please! An atrocious Valentine's day at Hogwarts was a tradition now.
Every year, this being the sixth one straight, someone would crush the 14th of February in the most horrid of manners. It was worse that April's Fools Day: there would be traps everywhere, all sorts of stupid pranks, mostly designed to humiliate (and people always laughed)…
Like the trap-closet that jumped out of the blue, sucked boys in and then spit them out wearing pink bras and small lace thongs. Honestly, who could possibly find boys in the nude funny?! With all that hair growing in the most uncommon places, it was a gag-worthy sight.
God, the sick humor of some people!
All the students were used to avoiding certain areas of the school in that day, me included. It was too tiresome to start taking vengeance on a mischievous closet or a biting mistletoe that wouldn't stop calling you nasty names. I had better use of my time.
However I seemed to be the only one able to dodge them – which, again, didn't surprise me. The intelligence of people in this castle was laughable. It's a disgrace that some were allowed to continue staying here.
The funny thing was that nobody knew who was responsible for the pranks. All the traps disappeared the first second past midnight of the 14'th. I suspected a timed charm that held them all together. It was quite brilliant from a magical point of view, I had to admit. One had to admire the nerve and vicious imagination of it all.
At first everyone had suspected the four Gryffindor clowns that were always causing all sorts of troubles. But after Glasses was turned into a very ugly transvestite, Lupin was chased around the castle by 1400 flying biting daisies, the short fat one got beaten up by 14 green hairy - and foul smelling - gnomes dressed in magenta tutus (even I had to laugh at that one), and Black started singing 'Dancing in the rain', 'Marry me Lucy' or some other ridiculous song every 30 minutes… well, it was fairly clear that those boys had nothing to do with it.
So naturally, the questions started to arise, and with them the curiosity. Measures were taken to assure that nothing would happen. They always failed, because something always happened. There was no help from the staff either. Dumbledore had said that decorations are a matter of point of view, and that since it is allowed to decorate the hall with pink, then why not it be allowed to decorate it with more smellier things. Everyone deserved a chance to express themselves.
Yeah right! Maybe it was just me, but I always thought that old Dumbledore actually enjoyed the situation.
Well, his mental health had always been in question, so no surprise there.
If the Prefects or Headboy/Headgirl had asked me, the advice I wouldn't give them was that they were looking for the culprit in all the wrong places. I had a very accurate suspicion about who it was that was pulling the strings, but nobody would believe me if I told them.
And besides, watching the student body squirm their way through what was supposed to be a special day for romantic idiots was actually good fun once you got the hang of it.
I looked at the great pains Evans was taking at trying to reverse the burning of the decorations. All in vain, of course. Every time someone tried to make them stop, the intensity of the incantation doubled. Evans was furious and in her rage she was completely impotent, so naturally she was proving a very funny sight for me.
I was tempted to go over there and tell her that I knew who was responsible, just so that I could watch her squirm. That would be a fun way to irritate her I suppose.
More than once I'd thought about starting a duel with her just for the fun of it. Every time I saw her I felt like putting a scar on that pretty face, to spite her perfection, her beauty. I knew her skills in a fight. By instinct I compared her to my standards, knowing that even had we had equal knowledge of magic – which we did not - I would still win: because she would play fair and I most definitely would not.
She was book-smart, yes, but she had never experienced what a real duel was. She did not know how to fight fire with fire, I doubted she even had the nerve for it. She didn't know what it was like to fight to draw blood, to be cornered enough to feel like you were fighting for your life… and what it was like to know, deep in the inmost part of you, that if you had to kill to survive – you would.
I stopped the stream of those dark thoughts. Such a deep comparison was unnecessary when it came to Evans: she was a mudblood, therefore worthless of my consideration or even a speck of my thoughts.
The fact that I was thinking about her now was testimony to two things: one - I was incredibly bored. Two - Evans was being way too loud.
I fumbled with my half finished food again, now irritated by all the chaos. The smell was nauseating.
I stood and headed to finish my last day of school for this week before I went back to my mother's house for the weekend. My sister was getting married and I had to attend her celebration. It couldn't be more tedious but I had to be there. I was born in privilege and that carried the duties of unforgiving formality.
I couldn't escape the dullest bits of my family life even if I tried. And I had tried, in all the forms imagination could create. But the rules of this world could not bend, let alone break – not even if it was me willing them to do so. So with the possibility of escape out of my reach, all I had left was trying to endure.
Interesting choice of word - 'endure'. When I put it like that, it sounded like I was carrying a disease…
The scoff that escaped was out of my control. Of course it was not a disease; it my destiny - the one I was born into. One cannot control one's fate or the family one belongs to. I had stretched my limits to fit the rules and obligations of my family's lifestyle, but that did not mean I had to like it.
It didn't mean I had to like anything really. Hogwarts was boring, home was irritating, away from home was impossible…
I sighed and with my books over my shoulder I walked past the group of girls giggling at the end of the table and headed to Potions.
oOoOoOo
"I didn't do anything wrong."
I was calm when I spoke. I never lost control, not even when I lost my temper. Time had taught me well.
And so had the unnumbered nights I had spent in the dark, sleepless and angry, consuming myself with powerless hate, born of hurt and humiliation.
There's a funny thing about anger and hate though, something that nobody tells you: Once you learn how to channel them, they are not powerless anymore. They become your best friend. They are feelings that can bend and change at your will, feelings you can use, manipulate. They can be hard and soft according to what you need from them.
They cradled me, taught me to get what I wanted by any means. They taught me independence from ideologies of right and wrong. How to rule the moment instead of being its slave.
They taught me patience.
For example, that Hufflepuff would have remained insignificant if she had kept her place. She was something empirically inconsequential in my world. If she hadn't given me a reason to squash her, I wouldn't have known she existed. But she did and I would make her think twice about speaking ill of me behind my back.
But experience had taught me that acting rashly is not the way to go about getting anything.
"I saw you put the Gillyweed in the cauldron, Meadows. You did it on purpose, don't deny it." Abbot said, her soft voice trying to be strong, the result sounding pathetic.
Lupin was seated next to her and he put an arm over her shoulder as the useless girl cried because of her wounds. Lupin looked so calm, but his eyes were shining and the emotion in them was very clear. Curiously, he was not angry at me. There was contempt in him, as if he scorned me but he was too good to hate me.
I felt the corner of my lip twitch in a smirk, as I brought my chin up to meet his scorn like it was a personal challenge.
The funny thing about people like Lupin was the fact that they thought they had morals, some kind of code they held and hoped that by doing so, it would protect them. All a bad joke if you ask me. I had seen those that called themselves 'good people'. I had seen them abandon their morals at the first sign of trouble. When the shit hit the fan, everyone became what they really were inside: ruthless and selfish.
At least I was always coherent with my nature.
"Careful, Hufflepuff. A loud mouth can bring about trouble… I said that it was not my fault and that is the truth." I stated calmly.
I was actually trying to amuse myself now. The way the girl's face paled when I warned her brought about a strange feeling in me. Was it pleasure I was feeling? It was probably the high that having such power over people brought. But it faded quickly. Abbot was weak, there could be no real pleasure from hurting her. She was so beneath me, practically a bug at my feet.
The burns on her hands would stay there for a while though, and they would probably teach her not to entertain gossip about people that could snap her neck in the darkness of a hallway and get away with it.
I smirked at the looks of the Red students. They were hoping so strongly for me to be punished. Everyone saw that I had been the last one to get close to the potion, so naturally, in the long run it would have been my fault.
But I had also been really close. I wouldn't harm myself intentionally, would I?
Would I...?
"Now, now, Dorcas dear, don't be rude. Megan, my darling, it was an accident. Dorcas would never do something so reckless when she was standing mere feet from the cauldron herself…" Professor Slughorn said softly, trying to calm her down. "We are studying advanced potion making after all, things like these happen. This is why you are required to wear gloves and protective masks during these hours."
Now I was bored again. Must everything be such a short tease?
This girl's sobs were getting on my nerves. The way Lupin was trying to soothe her from something that needed no soothing at all, irritated me further. I hated melodrama. It was such an eye-roller.
"She'd have known that, if she had any idea what she was doing 5 minutes ago. Anyone with half a brain could see the chain reaction and get away." I deadpanned, looking into the eyes of a scared Megan Abbot, trying to feel the same high again. But it was long gone by now.
Her weakness so despicable, something that alienated me to the core.
"Calm down, Meg. Let's go to Madam Pomfrey, she'll make you feel better." Lupin said softly.
"But I saw her! She knew what she was doing when she changed the roots!" Abbot whimpered. She actually whimpered! I felt disgust bubble inside me for this infuriatingly innocent girl!
Had she not been outside of her houses walls ever in her life?! Of all the things one could do when one got hurt, she was whimpering, like a helpless baby.
She wouldn't last 5 hours in my household.
"Oh please, how can anyone take you at your word when you can't even begin to tell the difference of a Gillyweed from a coconut, for Merlin's sake!" I did say this out loud, but the fat man was too busy trying to put contain the mess that the exploding potion had caused. It was far too easy for him to pretend that he didn't hear me when nearly all the class did.
Lupin narrowed his eyes, while all the students in the class, except for the my Slytherin housemates, were staring at me with anger burning their features.
It somehow made me feel a little exited when I was able to provoke them so deeply. There was power in manipulation, in knowing that I could extract such a strong reaction from someone while myself remaining completely cold. The lot of these idiots were far too easy to mess with and it wasn't nearly as satisfying as it should be, but making Remus holier-than-thou Lupin glare daggers… that was quite an accomplishment!
I knew that this was making my fellow house-mates uncomfortable as well. We were maybe 6, while they (with they meaning the non-Slytherins) were almost 14.
My smirk widened - I loved a little challenge. I knew that nothing would happen to me, but as for the rest, well, too bad for them.
In fact, maybe I would just have to make sure that they all got caught. Why not, I could do it, it wouldn't be difficult. They would get into a fight sooner or later, since the Gryffindors were always trying to get us for just about anything - and we never let them run out of opportunities.
I was entertained by the idea to some extent, but the scorn was right on its tail. I hated them all - Gryffindors, Slytherins – their stupidity was all the same to me. All of them deserved punishment for being dense enough to believe we were of different kinds. Having the misplaced audacity to fight each-other in the name of that belief only added insult to injury.
Who holds that kind of stupidity deserves punishment.
"You are one lying hell-bitch, Meadows and we all know that."
The words came deliberately slow and sharp as knifes. They missed my ego by far though. Ironically, Black had said them, he who was supposed to know better than the rest that insults like that hardly meant anything to me.
"Mister Black, you shall hold your tongue in my class! You will get 10 points taken for that unworthy remark and you shall apologize to Miss Meadows this instant for your disrespect."
Slughorn might be the daftest, most materialistic person ever to have lived, but sometimes he did manage to do some things right.
I raised one eyebrow expectantly to Black, presenting the most arrogant smirk I could master, expecting his apology, knowing it wouldn't come. He was raised a pureblood aristocrat and one of the few mantras you were taught as one was that power meant never having to say you're sorry. We never apologized for anything and even though Black denied being one of us, he could not deny himself.
"I'm not apologizing for stating facts." He said calmly. Being right felt so good.
"Then it will be detention Mister Black. After class, you shall clean up the mess that was just made."
I almost laughed out loud at this part. Sirius Black was going to clean up my mess, like a servant. Oh, I was never going to let him live that down. Black's eyes seemed to almost pop out of their sockets as he looked at the fat man, too amazed even to glare.
But that changed soon enough.
Blood was in his mind as he stared at me, I could tell. I knew that look well, and the fire in his eyes was familiar too. I saw Potter put a hand on his shoulder and most of the class served as audience to my sneer of victory, directed right into their faces.
I could see what they were thinking, it was written plainly on their faces. They all hated me maybe just as much as they feared me. In that moment, I knew that this was the closest to pleasure I could get within the castle walls.
I enjoyed every second of it.
They would try to get back at me, I knew that. But since they had no idea who I was, they also had no idea what could upset me. Their efforts would result in vain no matter what they tried to do. None of them knew me well enough to point their wands where it would hurt. All that strength and still nothing to threaten me with.
None of them could match me that sense, so that made the game unfair and predictable, but not less fun for me.
Almost like a social experiment – I thought smirking. I was the scientist, they were the lab-rats. And I knew their limits well. Beyond those limits, people like Lupin and Potter, couldn't go. It was Pettigrew and Black that I should be concerned about - those were the truly dangerous kind. People who didn't know their limits - like Pettigrew - and people that could push their limits to a straining point to get what they wanted - like Black.
Ah, Black... It was so easy to see through his facade. He was nothing but a liar to me, pretending to be good and decent, pretending to belong in the House of the brave, when in truth, his very core was as rotten as mine. He was a born pureblood, raised like one, with all the telltale signs of one in his character.
He was no better than the ones he hated - me in particular, even thought he liked to pretend that he was.
The bell rang and I took my time collecting my things.
I saw most of the Gryffindors leave class, probably in a hurry to prepare a trap for us. A few of the Slytherins were waiting for me. Like I needed their protection! Like I needed anything from any of them! Please! The mere idea was laughable.
I got up and walked past the huge frames of Nott and Parkinson, not bothering to let them keep up with me.
I despised their attempts to preserve what they thought mattered. The way they liked to drool over the little scraps of entertainment I provided them with disgusted me. As did the insignificant things that made them all jumpy with vile enthusiasm. It was a distorted image of reality they chose to see: by birth right was the only way baboons like Nott and Parkinson would ever be on top. Their way of thinking, the way that was supposed to be mine as well, had been proved wrong a thousand years ago. Still they persisted upon it, upon the blood and its treasures…
Bullshit. I wasn't the best because I was born of purer blood. I was the way I was because I was raised to be that way.
I had had the best training, learned from the most efficient methods, learned how to yield the most powerful magic. My talent was the only thing I owed to my blood. The easy affiliation and manipulation of my magic was the result of being close to it from the moment I had been born. Without honing the inborn skill, I would be no better than Malfoy or Black.
Purebloods were the best because we had the best honing methods, the best tricks up our sleeves - results of an eons-old tradition of stabbing each other in the back to get what we wanted.
That was not the way Nott or the likes of him saw the world though.
I didn't believe in what they believed, not because I had other allegiances but because I was smart enough to see past the indoctrination. Like everything else, the play on blood purity was a political game very few caught up with.
The mixing of the magical and non-magical folk had increased, and in the long run, that was the main reason why old families were not as powerful and influential as they once had been. There were too few remaining, the concentration of wealth was spreading. They had lost power (and gold) to the newcomers, who were much more practical in their customs than their old ways and traditions.
But when old gold starts losing value, that's when things turn ugly.
People like Nott and Avery didn't even want to see that truth. They liked it the easy way, of course. People like Malfoy used it for power and benefit.
People like me... well, there aren't many people like me. I was taught how to use other people and their views to my advantage only, but never to believe in general lies one tells the crowd. The Meadows were made to stand above that. We weren't to be lied to, we were the liars.
I was taught that what you believe in doesn't matter, as long as you're on top. And what you do doesn't matter, as long as you find a way of staying there.
What I learned for myself though, is none of your business!
