Invidia, a short story for the 7 Deadly Sins competition.
Prompt/Category: Envy
Summary: Helena Ravenclaw is envious of her mother's fame and greatness.
Words: 964
en·vy
/ˈenvē/
Noun
A feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck.
Verb
Desire to have a quality, possession, or other attribute belonging to (someone else): "he envied tall people"; "I envy Jane her happiness".
Synonyms
noun.
jealousy - jaundice - heartburning - grudge
verb.
begrudge - grudge - be jealous - be envious
Helena Ravenclaw slammed her mother's dictionary shut with a resounding thump. She most certainly did not envy her mother, and she told Friar Thomas so.
The plump Hufflepuff smiled wanly. "I hope it is as you say, sister. I shall keep you in my prayers."
Helena snorted. "You do that." She said, as she waved her hand to open the door for him. He cheerily saluted her and was gone.
"And good riddance." Helena thought. She normally enjoyed the company of the good-humored young man, but today he'd had the audacity to caution her- Helena Pallas Ravenclaw- against, as he called it, the cardinal sin of invidia. What nonsense. What utter and foolish tripe. Who had she, daughter of one of the four Hogwarts founders, renowned wit and beauty Rowena Ravenclaw have to be envious of? Few there were who could rival her intellect, much less her intellect, beauty and lineage. No, Helena had absolutely not cause to be envious of anyone, and she resented Thomas' insinuation that she did.
Huffing angrily, she wrapped her arms around herself and stared out the window. There was someone coming up the path. Helena opened the glass and leaned out to look.
She blanched, and slammed it shut immediately. The Baron Alistair was coming, and she was in no mood to see him. With a whisper of her skirts, she turned and ran up the winding stairs to her bedchamber for her wand. That in hand, she hurried down the back staircase and along the Hall of Treasures. She skidded to a stop near the secret escape, right next to the room where her mother kept her diadem. Helena reached out her wand to tap the third stone form the door, on the second row up, then hesitated.
Her mother's diadem. It was nary a stone's throw away, and it could give her wisdom beyond the lot of mortals'. Not that she needed it; just perhaps it would show her the way to get rid of the bloody Baron forever. Mind made up, she unlocked the door with a complicated wand movement and darted inside.
The small, circular room was bare but for a pedestal in the center displaying Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem of wisdom. Helena reached out for it, hesitated then picked it up. She felt a slight buzzing sensation, then disabled the tracking charm. Tracking charm. She froze, realizing her mother would now know.
Tempted to simply put it back, she paused, and then set the diadem on her head. At once a sense of calm and understanding flooded her mind. She would not put it back. Wisdom, knowledge, erudition, were meant to be shared with the world, not locked in a room, accessible to one lady only, no matter how wise. Helena would take the diadem far away from this selfishness. She would go, go to… Albania. Yes. No one there would know of her, she was sure. Even if by some strange chance of fate someone did, her mother would be too ashamed to tell anyone of the diadem's capture. She would consider it treachery; but something she should have foreseen. No, Rowena Ravenclaw would not tell anyone; she would conceal it, for fear of seeming foolish. And Helena? Helena would no longer be seen as lesser. She could become an oracle to the people, sharing with them her knowledge and her wise counsel.
Helena's head was humming with a thousand different thoughts, working at an impressive pace, but she glided out of the room with complete calm. "Accio bag." The satchel she had prepared for such a time as this came flying from her bedchamber. She caught it, fingers fumbling on the handle, then tapped the third stone from the door, second row up.
The masonry grated back, forming into an archway leading to a sloping, straight path beneath the Ravenclaw home. Helena lit the dark tunnel with a murmured "Lumos" and an upraised wand. She closed off the passage behind her and hurriedly followed it to a hatch on the south edge of the property. She stealthily clambered out, but halted when she heard voices.
"A disillusionment charm." She thought, and cast it. Then she waited to see if the owners of the voices would reveal themselves. They did. It was her mother and Salazar Slytherin.
"Really Rowena, I just don't think that wisdom is all it is reputed to be. You can be as wise as you please, but without ambition that wisdom will not do you, or anyone, any good." Slytherin said. Rowena did not answer him. She had stopped, and was staring directly at where Helena stood.
Normally, Helena would have been breathing hard and panicking, but with the diadem she stayed at peace, and hushed, and was even able to think of a counter-argument to Slytherin's. "Ambition, untempered with wisdom, does no more good than a rampaging dragon."
"Rowena?" Slytherin inquired. "Do you see something?"
Rowena Ravenclaw shook her head. "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure." She quoted, barely above a whisper, turning away from her daughter. "Intemperate ambition, just as any other vice or virtue, is worth nothing. Only in balance and conjuncture with others can it achieve anything of repute, for good or ill." She took Salazar Slytherin's arm and walked firmly away.
Helena smiled. "It seems you are not as perceptive as your reputation would say." She thought, slipping away through the trees.