I return to you all typing in the coolest font ever, because my writer's block is kicked by the strangest of things.
So for this chapter, I was going to do Al, but couldn't figure out anything that didn't make him sound psycho, the roleplay group said Lynx but I want our reader-author bond to strengthen before I test it with an OC, and then I stumbled across Dom...
Also, just a warning, she's got this slight obsession with other peoples' appearances, so beware physical descriptions...
Dominique was Queen of the Ravenclaws. Not all of them were aware of this. They thought she was princess of Ravenclaw, beautiful and always getting what she wanted. But Dominique was Queen, and she'd earned the capital letter. Ravenclaw were her subjects, and it was her duty to care for them. She talked to the younger ones and helped the first-years to classes and soothed their homesickness. She helped fifth-years study and helped the stress on the sevenths. She ruled them with a kind hand, even picking Malfoy up off the ground and dusting off Nott and cleaning up after Zabini.
And still, if anyone was asked the most memorable thing about her, it would be her body. Dominique was irresistable. Dominique had great tits. Dominique had lots of friends and probably slept with all of them because what else do pretty girls do?
She was propositioned by, it felt like, everyone when in public. Hey, you want a date at my place? Hey, you'd look good naked in my bed. I'll pay you to suck me. I'll pay you to shag me. Of course you want to, why wouldn't you? Hey, would you like a job in nude modeling? How about porn? Just let me feel you up, don't be a bitch...
Dominique felt like one of those girls from a cheap novel, where the author pushed her beauty on you to pretend she had flaws and so she could complain about being too beautiful constantly. Dominique was too beautiful, she was told, but no one treated her like the girls in the books, with sympathy and gifts and poetry that rang empty. So she stayed silent. She refused to be shallow.
She also refused to move, even while Hector shook her gently. "Come on, Dom, we'll be late for breakfast."
"You're warm, Great Hall's not, just a little longer..." She tangled her legs around one of his, face pressed to his chest.
"Dom, Slytherin House will be getting up soon."
She groaned and stretched. "But Teddy will be at breakfast... I don't want to face him this early... Please, Hector..."
Hector was her friend. Surely he wouldn't make her stare at Teddy's grinning face and watch him laugh, see him look at her and think only of his girlfriend's little sister. Every time Teddy looked at her, it hurt...
He sighed. "If you'd gotten up before, you could have had an early breakfast and avoided him completely. And if you're not up in fifteen minutes you won't avoid Slytherin House either."
She stared at him, mind trying to put the second part of his sentence into an image. Rumors came to mind, and people leering at her and saying that if she slept with Hector, maybe she'd-
She sat up slowly, one vertebrae at a time. Books said that was impossible, to which Dominique said 'Go stuff yourself,' because it was too early in the morning for reality. She kissed Hector's cheek and summoned her bag. Out of its depths she pulled a change of clothes, refusing to leave the warmth of the bed to pull them on. She watched Hector as he moved around the room.
She liked Hector's face. It wasn't handsome, no spectacularly attractive features to yank a girl's attention (Except his eyelashes, and sometimes their length seemed to swamp his eyes), he was rather plain.
If he was a corpse.
His features were plain, but life animated them well, illuminated just the right places that physical appearance had missed, and gave him beauty-the type she wished she had. Life was like sunlight-some people looked sallow in it, and Dominique was one of them.
Socked feet now touching the cold floor, she pulled on her shoes and laced them, and folded her clothes from the day before, shoving them into her bag. "I'll see you later, Hector. Have fun organizing all the first-years."
Because there was always schedule printing problems, and some maps were always mislabeled or outdated, and somewhere, Peeves was sending them down the wrong hallway again to Hufflepuffs who did the same.
He groaned, reminded of the nightmare today would be as Dominique opened the door. Down the small set of stairs, and she paused around the bend to listen. No voices bounced back to her, but there could have been a silencing spell in effect. She swallowed and took her chances.
No one, no rustle of clothes or sound of footsteps but her own. The green fire roared to life as she passed it, the dark green lake-water swishing gently past the windows-like the winds around Ravenclaw tower, softened. She let herself out, watching the passage disappear behind her, and hurried through the dungeon corridors, her footsteps now loud, keeping an eye out for Mrs. Chang (She'd given up her married name, but not the title) and Professor Grouse.
"What are you doing down here?" The voice lacked inflection, emotion and even life.
She closed her eyes tight and turned to face the old man.
Professor Grouse was truly old. No one really knew his age, but if asked to guess, things in the hundreds tended to pop out of peoples' mouths without stopping to soften the blow. Some people were old but so full of spirit they seemed decades younger despite the grey or bald patches. Some people were young but desolate, prompting embarrassing attempts to cover up mistakes from strangers. Professor Grouse was old and desolate and it had weighed into him, pressing on his shoulders till he was nearly bent all the way over, spotting his skin and making it hang like it wished to abandon his body for the floor, and what must have once been brilliant dark eyes, the remains of flecks of gold, were now like rough common stone without all its artistic beauty. He leaned himself on his cane - a plain wooden thing that must have been thirdhand fifty years ago and uncared for since new - like it was his spine and legs with hands that she had never seen off of it, spindly hands like wet twigs.
They said Professor Grouse had a different name, once. They said Professor Grouse had a child once. They said Professor Grouse had been someone grand, once. They said lots of things about Professor Grouse, once, and you had to ask Teddy to hear them now, and the old man only sank deeper into his own ruination when asked. Whoever he had been, he wasn't anymore. Professor Grouse was only once.
"I'm really sorry, I was looking-"
"Go, and sneak away better next time." He was already turning, head swinging around first, the rest of him following. "Five points from Ravenclaw."
She hastily retreated, imagining the sapphires rising up in the hourglass, writing a mental reminder to earn ten points later that day. She left the dungeons behind, the early morning sun pooling on the hallway walls and dripping down in golden tones. Soft shadows hid in the names carved in the walls. As she always did in the morning, she pressed two fingers to her lips and then pressed them to the name, repeating it for each little memorial she passed. The names had rearranged themselves over the summer again, and this year the name Ted Tonks was in the hallway to the Great Hall. She let her fingertips linger over that name, the simple font and deep lettering, and the same for Sirius Black in an elegant script. She could have known them. She wondered if life brought beauty their faces-photographs often lied. She imagined it did.
"Admiring the stars, Dom?"
She jerked her hand away from the wall, breath catching in her throat. She counted to ten - she tried to, but forgot the numbers after five and before nine. A blush, bright red, spread across her cheeks.
"I-Hi, Tedd-Prof-Professor Lupin."
She knew she shouldn't look at him, but that it would be rude not to, and compromised by half-turning, auburn curls shielding her from the captor of her heart.
Teddy's hair was pink today, and short, and his build slim and tall, and he was grinning as always. His cheekbones were low, rounding out his face, and his eyes were turning amber. Teddy only had amber eyes for her.
"Enjoying the start of second week? Thrilled by the idea of getting homework again?" He began walking towards the Great Hall, then twirled in mid-step and began walking backwards. "Imagine, all those lovely essays you'll be pressed for time to even turn in late! The festering of sleep away to work for extra credit we didn't know we'd give until it shows up on our desks!"
That wasn't the proper use of fester, and he knew it, but she only smiled shyly.
"I can taste the time I shall lose like knuts behind the couch to grading the Ravenclaws! And signs says that we've got a smarter-than-average bunch of first-years! Hey, kid, you shouldn't sleep there, you're depriving the desks of their jobs!" He shepherded a tiny and tired Gryffindor first-year into the middle of the hall. She'd been leaning in a corner, eyes closed. She bundled her worn robes closer around her and stared at Teddy's pink hair in shock, his joke flying completely over her little tangled head. Dominique frowned at her hair. It was a wonder it wasn't dreadlocks, black strands horribly tangled. It was basic hygiene to brush long hair once a day.
"So, what's your name, cub?"
"'Inks," she mumbled, scrubbing at dark blue eyes as Teddy continued walking backwards down the hall.
"Well, Ink, nice to meet you, I'm Professor Lupin and I teach you how to punch bad men's teeth out with a spell!"
An un-Dominique giggle slipped past her lips, and Teddy gave her a grin. 'Inks' was mumbling something about how she couldn't as they passed the doors of the Great Hall, the noise gently washing over them.
"'Course you can't! I haven't taught you yet! What sort of teacher would I be if you learned it before I taught it?"
Her expression crinkled, openmouthed, as she struggled to word a reply. One could hear the gears in her brain groaning rustily, getting nowhere.
"That's rhetorical, Ink. Go sit down, I'll see you in class! And you I shall only see in the halls, so I need a hug to survive." His strong arms circled her, pressing their bodies together for a brief moment. She held her breath to see if time would stretch to make it last longer. Then his warmth was gone and her sister's boyfriend bounded up to his spot at the staff table.
She shuffled to her seat and put her head in her hands. It was going to be a long day, getting longer.
. . .
The day got longer. Time, spiraling out of her grip, stretched itself so each minute was agony. Dinnertime rolled around, and too sick to her stomach to eat, she grabbed her brother and pulled him to the library.
Louis and Dominique had always been close. Born eighteen months apart, they'd been friends most of their lives, knew all the other's secrets. They weren't nearly as close to Victoire - she was six years older than Dominique, universes away when you're just learning to walk and she's running up and down stairs, playing tag with the cousins; worlds away when you're playing tea with your bears and she's gone to Hogwarts and the gap between Victoire and her younger sister and brother never closed. Dominique could count the things she knew about her on her hands. She could fill a paper with tally marks for the things she knew about Louis.
Louis was five-foot seven, as bright blond as Malfoy but thin and lanky like his limbs had been built for someone else - taller, broader shouldered. He still had growing to do. His face was gentle and his hair wild, bangs brushing his cheeks and refusing to stay pulled back, but he was terrified of haircuts. The time he met Uncle Charlie, they were trying to cure him of a thumb-sucking habit, so he told him about the scissor-man who cut off children's thumbs. Louis refused to have anything to do with scissors for years, getting cornered by their mother for haircuts and crying against Dominique for hours afterwards.
His hair was fascinating, almost perfectly straight and yet wild as a cornered lion. She ran her hands through it often, trying to neaten it. It never worked.
His eyes were a light blue, crystal blue, a July sky at midday, beautifully expressive, and right now were trained on her as she tried to think of where to start.
"T-Teddy?" he finally asked.
Oh, and he had a stutter, or stammer, or whatever the word was.
She nodded.
"I-I'm s-sor-sorry..." He hugged her, cheek on her shoulder.
"He found me in the hall before breakfast, and he talked to me at lunch and then he asked me to volunteer to help him in his class this week... I thought I wouldn't have to face him if I dropped Defense! And yet there he is, prancing around, still in my life! I can't-I can't do this..."
"It'll-It'll b-be okay..."
She sighed, and hugged him back. He was usually right, though it often took her a long time to realize. "Thanks, Loo. How are things with Zabini? Gonna talk to her this year?"
"I-I-I-"
"Tournament means a Yule Ball... You can ask her to it... Just imagine, you and Valentina Zabini, sweeping around the Great Hall Ballroom!"
"I-I-" Louis looked ready to faint of embarrassment.
"Thanks for listening to me whine, let's go get dinner! I can face him now!"
Louis blinked, the red fading from all over his face, slowly. They were late, and he probably wasn't pleased, but he never complained. One day she'd have to pay him back. Somehow she'd package him the years-worth of time he'd spent listening to her complaints and give it to him. Pay him back his time, let him use it for other things.
"Plan any good projects recently?"
He grinned.
Sunlight is a little brother's childish smile.
Hey, three chapters and almost twenty reviews! I feel so proud! *happy* Who wants to be twenty?
Better yet! Whose review wants to be drinking age in America!