Disclaimed.
Chapter two-
Once upon a time in a faraway land there lived a beautiful princess. Her castle was magical, and her father, the King, was a snake charmer who had fled the country long ago. Her mother was the perfect queen regent, beautiful and fairly austere.
Logical, calculating.
But Helena had never been a princess, and the closest to nobility she had ever truly been was as the fiancée of the Baron, who, by his mother was due to (if his third cousin's eldest son's daughter's husband's brother-in-law died) inherit a small share of the Plantagenet's Aquitaine duchies.
The only castle she had ever known was Hogwarts, and that was a school. Scotland, too, was hardly a faraway land.
Her father never did resemble a king, but her mother certainly was. A man's head on a woman's body— shrewd, clever, intelligent.
There were times when Helena looked at her mother; really looked at her, and decided that she loved the woman. There were times when Helena wanted nothing more than to make her mother proud, than to see her smile and catch the compliments that were unlikely to fall from her lips.
Instead, there was silence where Helena ached for laughter, and there was indifference where she looked for pride.
To be quite fair, Rowena had loved Helena. In her own, strange, foreign sort of way, Helena had been the light of her life. Helena: a product of her making— rather pretty and rather smart. Helena had never truly been a threat to Rowena, and therein, Rowena loved Helena.
For that very same reason, Helena hated her mother. In small children, there is the general paradox of loving one's parents unconditionally, no matter the pain inflicted.
In Helena, this paradox did not exist.
Only a few words could fully describe the relationship between mother and daughter, and Helena summed it up to unhealthy. Theirs was not a normal, nurturing relationship. It was one built on unnatural competition, and an ever-growing sense of loathing.
Rowena never took pride in her daughter's accomplishments, and Helena always viewed her mother as more of a rival than a parental figure.
For instance, the only reason that Helena never completely dismissed the Baron was because of her mother's own interest in the man. Of course, it wasn't a romantic interest that Rowena had taken in the man, but Helena had always seen the world in shades of grey.
Whatever the draw that Rowena had to him may have been (whether it was intellectual compel, simple curiosity, or more), Helena disliked it.
It made things easier to know that the interest was unreturned, and the Baron had invested his own interest in Helena, and if his eyes ever strayed to Rowena, it was only momentary, and those baby blues only ever lingered on the younger Ravenclaw.
But, Helena never liked to take chances, and so she worked very hard at never completely turning the man away—
She was excellent at stringing men along. It was, she deduced, the one gift she had inherited from her mother dearest.
"I love you," he told her once, when he caught her wandering in the castle's corridors. It was a spur of the moment confession, proclaimed only months after having known her.
"No, you don't," she told him in a matter-of-factly voice, staring him down knowingly, despite his full six inches on her own measly five foot five inches. "You don't know me, so how could you love me?"
"I do," he persisted, "I've fallen in love with your smile—when you smile, I mean—and I love the way you jump into conversations so passionately, the way your face lights up when you perfect a new charm, and your…" he faltered here, so uncharacteristic of his usual arrogance. "Your nose scrunches up when you're angry or irritated."
She rolled her eyes, unaffected. "Please," she retorted disgustedly, "Falling in love implies you can fall out of love, my nose does not scrunch, and you, Dearest, have been reading too many romances."
His face had hardened, and that was the last time he ever brought up his feelings with her, much to her satisfaction. She had no time to deal with an overgrown boy's silly ramblings— Helena Ravenclaw didn't have time to deal with nonsensical concepts like love.
Surprisingly though, his attempts at courting her never let up. He continued to (try to) woo her for the months to come, until their engagement. Of course, he didn't ask her for her hand in marriage, he went straight to Rowena, who, of course, accepted.
And Helena found that she couldn't help but admire his shrewdness, however unprecedented it was. Obviously, the man knew how to get what he wanted.
If Helena Ravenclaw were a princess, he would be the dragon guarding her bedchamber from wayward princes intent on finding brides. She was, for all intents and purposes, though she loathed to admit it, the virgin maiden forever trapped in a stone tower.
Dragons, of course, have a nasty tendency to eat virgins. You can't blame the monsters for acting the way they were born to act, though. It's like blaming a witch for being born with magic— preposterous and entirely unfounded.
This is where we pick up where we left off.
"Where are we going?" Helena asked him when he grabbed hold of her hand, leading her to the Forbidden Forest.
"I told you, we're going out to lunch," was his vague reply, and she found herself annoyed with his evasive answer.
"I refuse to go anywhere with you until you tell me where we're headed!" she exclaimed, planting her feet to a halt. The Baron stopped too, a slight expression of aggravation crossing his face.
"Helena, act like an adult, will you? I had no idea I was marrying such an immature child, for Merlin's sake!" was his impatient response.
She didn't mean to take offense, she really didn't, but she couldn't help it. "I'm not a child!" she cried out, affronted. "I'm eighteen years old, thanks!"
His eyes rolled heavenwards in agitation and then settled back to her, and he spoke, sarcastic and mockingly. "Oh, I'm sorry, I meant my eighteen year old childbride. Since obviously your age isn't suited to my own maturity, do you think I should aim a bit higher? Like your mother, maybe? After all, I don't think she's been with any men since your father dearest left all those years ag—"
"STOP IT!" Helena shoved him back from her, and they stood a good five feet apart. She glowered at him, and her fingers twitched, as if to make a go for the wand that she had forgotten back at the castle. "Take me home." She said finally, after an eternity of silence, with the two of them just staring at each other.
He made a move forward, as if to embrace her. "I'm sorry—I didn't mean that, you know I didn't mean it," he tried to apologize, but her head was still pounding with his words vibrating inside her skull.
"I said I want to go home, Baron," she interrupted, her glare still intensely fixated on him.
Instead of arguing, he nodded wearily and began his trek back out of the forest, all semblance of playfulness gone from his demeanor.
She followed him quietly, her steps awkward and stiff, as though her body was protesting the walk back to the castle. However much she didn't want to go to lunch with the man, there was still a slight twinge of regret that strummed in her stomach.
It was a sickening sort of feeling, but her pride didn't allow her to apologize first. It was his fault, anyways, mentioning her mother. He had no right to even joke about those things…
And when he brought her back to her room half an hour later, she closed the door in his face, no further words exchanged.