Pronunciations:
Achernar - I'm not exactly sure how it's pronounced. I say it like Ash-er-nar, but that might be wrong. It is the name of a star in the Eridani constellation, which is also called the river. The name is of Arabic origin and literally means Rivers end. Achernar or Alpha Eridani is the ninth or tenth brightest star in the sky.
Zaurac- Is another star in the Eridani constellation. It is pronounced Za-rack, or least that's how I say it. It means boat and ironically enough actually has a boat named after it. USS Zaurak (Ak-117).
Yvonne- E-von is of french origin. It is means yew, or archer. Basically the name for a huntress. At one point it was one of the most popular names in France in the late 19th or early 20th century. I can't remember which right now.
Two-Faced Dogs
Chapter 2
"Muffins and Myrtle"
October 3, 1941
"So how'd it go?"
Adeliz looked up as she exited the Headmaster's office to see her best friend, Yvonne Flint, standing by the door with an animated expression on her face as she waited for an answer. As usual her amber eyes were lit up with life and excitement; it was a look that wasn't mirrored in her own eyes.
While Yvonne was energetic and outgoing, Adeliz was more reserved and observing. Physical appearance wise, a person wouldn't suspect they were related, being second-cousins, they looked completely opposite from one another. Yvonne was petite, but rough. She had the muscles of an athlete and the golden tanned skin of someone who enjoyed the being outdoors. Her hair was this pretty sun bleached blonde that fell in large ringlets down her back and her eyes, also the counter opposite of her cousin's, were a warm golden amber that ironically enough reminded Adeliz of Gyrffindor, which just happened to be the house that the other girl had been sorted into. She radiated friendliness and warmth.
Adeliz was taller than most girls her age as she was thin. Unlike Yvonne her curves weren't nearly as robust, but she also wasn't a stick figure. Her skin was a pale creamy white that contrasted greatly with her dark bronze hair. It wasn't like Yvonne's hair; it didn't rain down her back in ringlets, but instead glided down in soft waves. None of this however could be compared to the color of her eyes. Her brothers, Achernar and Zaurac, used to laugh and say, "Your eyes scream Slytherin like Yvonne's eyes scream Gyrffindor." Because unlike the rest of her family who was gifted with pale blue eyes, Adeliz was granted silver—a pale liquid silver that burned when she was angry and cooled when she was bored (which was almost always). Even so her eyes were unnerving to most people, especially when combined with her usual indifference, and they tended to steer clear of her. She only radiated cold detachment and mischievousness.
"How'd what go?" Adeliz asked. Yvonne shot her friend an exasperated look. "It went. You know how it is he slapped my wrist, lectured me for about ten minutes, we drank tea, and now I have to go scrub toilets," she told her.
"We were going to study for our OWL's this afternoon. Well I was going to study for my OWL's at least," she hummed disappointed.
"You can still study. I won't take me that long anyways all I have to do is charm some sponges," she said as they began to move down the corridor. The heels of their shoes clipped sharply, echoing off the stone bricks as they did.
Yvonne looked surprised, "You're going to use magic?"
"Is there any other way to scrub a toilet?" She looked confused. Surely she wasn't suggesting that. That she'd lower herself to the standard of a muggle and scrub the toilets out by hand. Adeliz cringed at the mental imagine.
"Well," Yvonne replied, "muggles don't use wands to clean toilets."
"And how very sad that is for them," she shot back. The both stopped at a broom closet while Adeliz leaned over and slipped her wand out of her boot. Her wand was unlike most wands as her wand wasn't carved out of wood. No, instead the wand that had chosen her was carved out of the ivory bone of a Basilisk fang with a phoenix feather core. It also wasn't very long, only about 9 inches in length. A double infinity was carved into the handle that wrapped around and connected to each other.
Yvonne shivered at the sight of Adeliz's wand. Once she found out it was made out of bone she was never able to look at it without being a little unsettled. Her own wand was carved from rosewood with a dragon heartstring core. Longer than Adeliz's wand at about 10 ½ inchesin length, it has a carved head of a wolf at its base.
The girl summoned a bucket and sponges simultaneously before she slipped her wand back into her knee high laced boot and shut the broom closet door with a snap of her fingers. "I don't understand why muggles would clean toilets by hand," she remarked, "Surely they could invent some gadget to make it not so gross."
"They have it's called a toilet bowl scrubber," Yvonne informed her cheerfully.
"Yeah that's not much better," she replied. The two girls fell into a comfortable silence. Yvonne was being unnaturally quiet; typically she would have loads to talk about and basically be the only one carrying the conversation. Adeliz glanced at her friend as a stupid smile stretched across her face. "What happened to you? Did you have a stroke?"
Yvonned snapped out of her trance and attempted to wipe the grin off her face. "No, I got asked out on a date," she admitted sheepishly.
"By Tom?"
"I wish," she sighed. "Actually it was your cousin," she explained.
"Which one?"
"Alphard," she mumbled. A red tint darkened her cheeks as she looked down at the ground shyly waiting for her friend's response. Like Yvonne, Alphard was Adeliz's second-cousin also.
The girl blinked in surprise. "Is that legal?"
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"Well you're my second-cousin and he's my second-cousin. I know there's technically no blood relation, but it just seems weird," she rationalized, "Weird for me not weird for you. You should definitely go for it. It just something I'm going to have to get used to. Where's he taking you?"
"Hogsmeade."
"Oh right, there's a trip coming up the day after tomorrow."
"Are you going?" Yvonne asked.
"No," Adeliz shook her head for emphasis, "Zaurac and I have this prank war going on. It requires vigilance. If I leave for any given period of time it will give him the upper hand."
Yvonne wasn't surprised by her answer. Adeliz hardly ever went to Hogsmeade and when she did it was to get 'school supplies'. "Do you want me to bring you back anything?" She offered.
"Muffins and –"
Adeliz didn't get to finish what she was saying. A loud wail interrupted the girls' conversation as they neared the second-floor bathroom. It was common knowledge that a third year Ravenclaw by the name of Myrtle Mason, or Moaning Myrtle as she was later named, would retreat to that bathroom to escape the insistent teasing of Olive Hornby. The girls shared a glanced before they entered the room were the sniffles were coming from.
"Myrtle?" Yvonne called cautiously. Adeliz placed the bucket in one of the sinks and turned on the taps letting it fill with hot water as she watched her friend approach one of the cubicles. "Myrtle?" She knocked softly on the latched door. The second she did the sniffles abruptly stopped.
"Who's there?" A shy voice croaked.
Yvonne shared a look with her friend before she answered, "Yvonne Flint."
"Go away."
"Myrtle, open the door, please."
"No."
"Myrtle," Adeliz sighed exasperated;" we're not going anywhere, so you might as well come out." That seemed to do the trick. It was only a second later that Myrtle unlocked the door and pushed it open.
Myrtle rubbed her eyes to dry her tears in a poor attempt to regain some dignity. This did very little to help however, because the rubbing only made the whites of her eyes more bloodshot and teary. Her nose was runny from tears and her throat was sore and scratchy. She was in desperate need of a glass of water.
"Oh Myrtle," Yvonne sighed as she got a good look at the girl, "What happened to your glasses?"
There were large cracks in the glass that spiraled out like a spider's web. The frames were bent precariously and it was miraculous that the glass even stayed in the frames. All of this of course made the glasses unusable and Myrtle having given up trying to see with them had taken them off and placed them in her lap. She would have fixed them by now, yet she couldn't remember the spell that would have enabled her to do so. That was in part what had caused her crying.
"Can I fix them for you?"
Myrtle looked up to the blurry shape of Yvonne and handed her the glasses. The other girl slipped out her wand from her robes and tapped them on the glass with a murmur of "Oculus Reparo," before she handed them back with a sympathetic smile. The newly repaired wire rimmed glasses allowed Myrtle to finally see who was standing in front of her.
Now Myrtle had never talked to Yvonne in passing, being in different houses and different years the two rarely saw each other. But despite this from what Myrtle had observed of the older girl she knew that she was undeniably kind toward others. Though she may be a bit quirky she didn't intentionally cause harm to others. That thought made her relax in the other girl's presence.
"Hey Eve," Adeliz called from over by the sinks turning off the hot water, "You might want to take Myrtle down to the kitchen and get her some chocolate, maybe a backbone if you can find one."
Yvonne rolled her eyes at her friend's not so subtle joke, but otherwise chose to ignore it. Turning back to Myrtle she smiled, "Well do you want to come with me to the Kitchen? You don't have to, if you don't want. I was going to stop by there anyway and pick up some dark chocolate granola to snack on while I study."
Myrtle was surprised that this older girl was taking a genuine interest in her. "Umm, sure," she stuttered. Yvonne stepped out of the way and allowed the other girl to pass. Myrtle stopped when she saw Adeliz and regarded her fearfully. The other girl was staring back at her with an even silver gaze that unnerved her. "He-llo," she mumbled sheepishly. Adeliz didn't respond verbally, but her lips did twitch up ever so slightly in greeting.
"Liz, we're going to the kitchen," Yvonne told the other girl, "don't burst any pipes okay."
"I'm surprised at how little faith you have in me," she responded feigning a hurt expression. "Fine I won't break anything," she conceded when her friend shot her a glare. Seeming satisfied with her answer Yvonne walked out of the bathroom with Myrtle on her heels.
Adeliz stared at the door frame from where they had exited the bathroom and groaned. "Okay let's get this over with." She picked up the bucket from the sink and set it on the stone brick floor. Then retrieving her wand from her boot she casted a charm to make the water soapy and with a levitation charm dropped the sponges into the bucket. She casted one final spell on the bucket to clean the bathroom until it was spotless then sat back in one of the window ledges and watched the sponges go to work.
First they splashed around in the bucket, happily, to get as soapy as possible. Adeliz thought it looked a little similar to dolphins playing in the ocean, but that was a pretty ridiculous comparison. Then they wrung themselves out and went to work on scrubbing the floor and sink basins, removing all the dirt and grime that people had tracked in on their shoes. After about a minute of watching the sponges Adeliz got bored and pulled out a book from her charmed bag.
It was a relativity thin book with a faded red leather cover. A leather cord was wrapped around the book and secured to the tiny knob like hook on the cover. It appeared to be a journal and to anyone who didn't know Adeliz well enough thought it to be. However despite its rather unassuming appearance, the little book in her hands was actually magically charmed. Inside were about three hundred pages of seemingly 'blank' parchment. It worked similarly to that of a hard drive, though Adeliz hadn't the slightest clue what that was, as it sorted and copied down information that was written on the pages. Generally this information was things that Adeliz thought was useful, spells and potions mostly. Sometimes Adeliz would write down random observations of the people around her, those were typically ambiguous however.
She soon became lost in the pages. In fact she didn't realize that the sponges had stopped scrubbing the bathroom until a set of footsteps snapped her out of her stupor. Her head snapped up to be met with the steady gaze of no other than Tom Riddle. He looked surprised to see her there, which was strange considering that he had walked into the girls' lavatory.
"Riddle?" Adeliz glanced at him curiously as if to say, "What are you doing here?"
Tom quickly regained his composure and slipped back on his usual charming mask. "I came to look for you. You were late for prefect duties and I'm not going to be making rounds by myself tonight. It takes too long," he informed her plainly.
Adeliz slipped off the ledge and scoffed, "That's never stopped you before." Tom chose to ignore her comment shooting a look at the wall of sink basins over her shoulder. It was so brief that if Adeliz hadn't been studying him like a hawk she would have missed it.
"Yes, well you were exceptionally late yesterday, even by your standards. I figured it would be quicker to continue on by myself," he explained as he headed back out of the bathroom into the long corridor. Adeliz's eyes flickered over to the row of sinks warily as she followed behind Tom out the door. There was a reason Tom had come to the bathroom and she was fairly certain that it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with that row of sinks.
Author's Note:
Here's chapter two. It's actually twice as long as the last one, so that's good. I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this story as of yet, but I know I want the next chapter to be mainly focused on Tom. Maybe him entering the chamber of secrets for the first time... Oh that sounds like a good idea, I'll probably do that.
Suggestions encouraged just leave them in the reviews or PM me.
