Chapter Four
A/N: No reviewers.
Despite her personal doubts about that fact, Helena was certainly flourishing as a member of Ravenclaw House. She had made a good friend in a fellow Ravenclaw girl named Gisela Bennett, was succeeding in all of her lessons and had become quite the model student. The only problem was this… something just didn't feel right.
She was completely unsure what it was, but something felt wrong when she sat at the Ravenclaw table, when she donned her blue and bronze edged robes in the morning. She felt as if the Hat may have made the wrong choice for her.
When she had communicated these concerns to her mother, the woman had brushed them off, telling her daughter that she was simply trying to become accustomed to her new surroundings. The only problem was, Helena was not certain that her mother was telling the truth.
'Still,' the girl thought, shrugging her shoulders a little. 'My mother is proud of me, lying or not, and I am not about to let her down.'
It was for this reason that Helena condoned the gasps and sniggers around the corridors, the malicious whispers behind hands. It seemed that the students had already passed judgement upon her, but the eleven year old tried her level best not to care.
What she did notice, however, was that one boy, one Slytherin, did not snigger, nor gasp, nor whisper to his friends. He just stood and stared at her. Each and every time she turned, he was there behind her.
She had discovered from Gisela, who was a brilliant source of idle gossip when there was nothing else to do, that the boy's name was Baron Godwin Jameson. He was in his sixth year, at age seventeen, and was a Prefect, so she had been told. 'They must have been truly out of options.' Helena thought, a little smugly. 'He is the cruellest Prefect I've ever seen.'
That was why the young girl had been so apprehensive at the thought of him concentrating so much on her. 'What if I am the next target of his unpleasantness? What if hates me for some reason?' The thought was making her more fearful by the moment. 'I haven't done anything wrong, but may that is the problem. Maybe he thinks that I'm too good.'
Shaking her head, Helena sighed slightly. 'I am just being foolish.' she told herself, a mind speaking in an admonishing tone. 'He probably does not have the slightest bit of interest in me.'
"Helena?" came a voice behind the girl. She turned immediately, a little startled, to see her friend, Gisela, stood there. "You're not still looking at that ghastly Prefect, are you? You know you'll only scare yourself by doing that."
"I know. I try to stop listening to the stories about him, but I simply can't do it. I have a strange feeling about him, Gisela, and I just know that I'm right to have one." Helena responded, although after a moment, she complied with the friend's request, turning and walking away from the strange Slytherin boy.
Still, even after she had walked away, no longer able to see the boy at all for the distance and the crowds, the young Ravenclaw could not think of anything but him. It was as if he had crept into the very recesses of her mind, hiding there even in her subconscious, like a tiger crouching in the undergrowth, waiting to launch at his prey. It was highly unnerving for the young girl, and she could simply not allow the feeling to pass.
Gisela seemed to have noticed this, as she rolled her eyes, once she noticed that her friend was still away with the fairies. Helena had been rather distant over the past few days and, having known the girl for quite a while, she knew that her mind was occupied by the Slytherin Prefect, as it had been since almost as soon as she had arrived in the school.
"Helena?" she asked her friend, as the pair of them made their way down the spiralling staircase that led to their first lesson, Potions. "He is not going to hurt you, you know. He probably isn't even interested in you, he may have just been glancing over and looked at you for a moment. You aren't in any danger."
"I know." Helena replied with a sigh, though she seemed to have reluctantly given that answer to stop Gisela from speaking.
"Anyway, even if you were…" the redhead began, glancing over at her friend. "I would protect you. He wouldn't get anywhere near you with me around!"
"I suppose so." the brunette responded, with a slight laugh. If anyone could ever have cheered her up when she was feeling nervous, it was most certainly Gisela Bennett, the most witty girl that Helena had ever met, although in truth, she had not met many, having lived at Hogwarts all her life and hardly having been away from the place. Even so, Gisela was extraordinary, and she would never consider having anyone else as her best friend.
However, even with Gisela's threat hanging over his shoulders, one which the girl swore blind she had made in person to him, despite the four year age gap and his being a well-built man, in comparison to her young, eleven year old form, the baron did not leave the young Ravenclaw be. If anything, he watched her more than ever. 'Perhaps because he now knows I am looking back.' Helena told herself, in a futile attempt to explain the situation she had unwittingly entered into.
'I won't let him affect me, not anymore.' the girl vowed to herself, the point coming from the dark recesses of her mind, where she had not even known it had rested. Still, she felt that the promise was the right thing to do for herself, and so it was what she had done.
"Don't worry, Gisela." the brunette told her friend. "I won't let that bloody baron get to me."
A/N: A bit of irony to end there. Please review!