Irritated by the sound of her own steps, Delphini kicks them off at a wall. She quickly casts a spell on her feet to keep them warm, and gets back to walking down the corridor before her shoes make their way from the floor to her hand. She holds on to her pale wand for a couple of steps, but ends up stowing it away in her robes with a sigh.
She knows she is not focused enough on keeping quiet and it only aggravates her further. She wishes for something she can just blast her way through. Just to vent some of her anger. She is struggling to keep her hair from changing, well aware that her eyes are red already. She has allowed her Lumos to fade, her eyes adjusting to the dark or dim lit corridors. She keeps to the ones less travelled, the ones not even other curfew breaking students like to tread.
The ones with marks and taints on the walls not even magic could remove. The castle has scars of magic so dark and vicious that most people avoid some corridors. She doesn't. She travels through them with one hand caressing the walls. Some marks still feel warm.
Sometimes, she comes across ghosts here. Old ghosts, and even some new ghosts that the school gained the day of the battle. A nice boy that misses his camera but doesn't regret staying because this way he can witness everything. He is not here tonight, but she can feel another presence. Someone else is watching her.
Something else. And it's not the damned cat.
"Ah, ah! Mad little witch is out of bed, is she not?"
Peeves torments her from the air, hanging upside down from a chandelier covered in webs.
"Go tell Filch, then. Better yet, tell him to bring the cat and I'll make him a new pair of slippers."
She can't bring herself to care at all about the consequences. She doesn.t know where these urges are coming from, but she wants to hurt someone, destroy something. As if sensing her unease tonight, Peeves decides to let Filch sit this one out and torment Delphini to her breaking point. The one where she will be so mad at him, she will give her own position away by screaming back, or attempt to hex him.
Delphini takes a deep breath in and decides to ignore him. She avoids the main stairs, since the blasted poltergeist is making so much noise that the entire castle would be out of bed because of the echo. She treads corridor after corridor until she can't take the teasing anymore. Peeves is pushing all her buttons at once, bringing her parents up, alternating between mocking the crazy dead one and the probably crazy and locked up one. She knows her eyes are now a dangerous scarlet but she keeps them down, knowing it would only make it worse.
She can feel the dark creature within her stirring in her chest, roaring in her head, clawing at her skin to get out. She needs to keep it under control, but Peeves is making it so very hard. She retrieves her wand from her robes, looking for comfort in its touch, stroking her thumb on the handle, but it immediately comes to life, the heat mounting, leaving her palms searing. She wants him gone, why won't he just go?
"Come on, mad little witch Lestrange! Got your wand out, did you? As vicious as your mother! Come on then, let's see what you're-"
A loud luminous explosion cuts him off. Delphini is trembling in the middle of the corridor, her wand pointed at where the poltergeist floated just a moment ago, panting. There are silent tears coming down her face, from her still red eyes, sobs she won't allow past her throat. She recognizes the dark veil around her. This time it doesn't cling to the walls. It clings to her skin, as light silk waving in the breeze would.
She lost control once more. There's a painful pinch in her memory, as the image of Wabby lying dead on the floor surfaces through the angry fog that occludes all of her thinking. She holds on to that thought in her way back to serenity. She calls the dark beast back under her skin, locking it away in that deep corner of her, from where it should never have escaped.
She gasps; her body forgot to function for a second. Her lungs crave air and her heart is galloping and her mind is running and her eyes won't settle and her hair won't stop changing and her wand is still burning. She drops it and the clatter brings her mind back to focus.
A poltergeist is not a living thing, nor is it a ghost, she knows that from Defence Against the Dark Arts. It cannot be killed. She has no idea about what her wand just did. About what she just did. Maybe she vanquished the thing. What she does know is that someone must have heard the commotion. She needs to get away.
Her anger may have found a way out, but her unease is still all there. She turns and runs towards the stairs, climbing higher and higher until the wind whips her hair and the stone under her feet is cooler and slightly wet. She finds a corner to sit down, dropping her shoes and her wand by her side, and curling up her body, hands under her bent knees. She turns her eyes up to the clear night sky and feels them ease back to green. Finally.
The cold and the stars settle her mind just enough. She looks for her family in the sky. She finds her Mother there, and a sob breaks the seal of her mouth. She finds her cousin there too and the sobs subside, giving way to more silent tears. She would give anything to be in his embrace right now. She finds herself up there too.
Alpha Delphini.
She swallows her tears, wondering what she is supposed to be the first of, what she is meant to lead. Her eyes never leave the firmament, as if looking for a star of peace, of ease, some sign to assure her that she is not evil. Not a thing of darkness, in spite of what she has done; in spite of what she is capable of. Maybe she should write home, write to Draco or to Aunt Narcissa, but she knows she will not. She can't risk telling them of Parseltongue, for she fears what may happen next. What if the Ministry decides to take her away? What if she is expelled? What if they take her wand? What if they decide to exile her from the magical world?
What if her friends deny her? What if Teddy never talks to her again?
What if her family stops loving her? What if Draco never hugs her again? What if she's never allowed near Scorpius again? What if the Ministry goes after them?
She lets new tears fall, as the wind tousles her hair and her curls whip her cheeks. She needs to settle down and gather herself. She needs to get up and back to the dungeons, and she must do it looking as if nothing has happened. She needs to conceal yet another secret in that innermost place of her mind, of her heart, never allowing it to come to light. No one must know.
Not a gift to boast about, only one to hide.
She picks up her wand from the floor and it doesn't feel hot anymore. Her magic has settled down. She brings forth a pale blue mist and draws shapes in the air with it. She dries her face with her sleeves, and attempts to comb her hair with her fingers. She must wait a little longer now. Were she to return to the dungeons right away, she would have to explain herself; so she will wait here, amidst wind and starlight, until the others fall asleep.
The sound of shackles dragging on the floor and clanging together drives a shiver down her spine. Could they know already? Could they arrest a student?
A near transparent shape, alight with silver running down its form, comes into view.
Her heart beats again, relieved. The ghost of Slytherin has come to his favourite place. The Bloody Baron is sombre and unfriendly on the best of days, but his manners are always pristine when it comes to students in green-rimmed robes.
"Does the meaning of curfew escape you, young lady?"
Unfriendly, but never rude. Delphini allows herself a little smile.
"No, it does not, my lord," she raises her eyes to him and proceeds to stand before him, "I apologise for trespassing, but I needed air."
The eyebrows of the ghost rise slightly on his transparent forehead, and she could swear the Baron actually smiled. He flutters closer to her, with a prelude of metal on stone, towering over her. His hoarse whisper forms words in the space between them, lacking the small clouds of warmth her voice creates.
"You are not trespassing, child, although you are breaking curfew. Peeves came to me," his eyes seem capable of seeing right through her, but she holds his stare, head held high, "and it seems to me that you have earned his… respect, for lack of a better word."
For the first time in her life, she does not know what to say, isn't sure about the best course of action. To lie? The Baron can tell, she is sure. To tell the truth? She is afraid of the consequences it may entail. Realizing the doubt in her eyes, the Baron clears a path for her. Removing her choice too, she can't help but notice.
"From his tale, I would say you are gifted, Miss Lestrange. It takes a great deal of determination to handle a poltergeist…" He lets his last words linger in the air, inviting her to fill the silence. Giving her a choice, she understands.
She chooses honesty. They are both Slytherins, and will only give as much as they get from the other. She needs something from him, protection and reassurance, so she gives. She tells the Baron that she does not know how she did it, or what her wand did. Letting her fingers slide over the pale yew, she confesses that she meant harm, that she was eager to silence Peeves, albeit not knowing how.
The shimmering ghost entwines his fingers just below his chest, the shackles singing their grim song with every movement. She can feel his curiosity, the way his eyes seem to ask a question to his mind. He angles his head, his gaze travelling from her features, to her wand and then to her eyes. There is a glimmer there, but no words. Until he breaks the silence this time.
"It seems to me you lost control," she lowers her eyes, acknowledging her fault, "and such would not happen without a cause."
Another silence, another invitation. She has no explanation to provide him, not without omitting facts. The Bloody Baron wasn't always a ghost. He once was a descendant of Salazar Slytherin. She cannot simply lie to him, but the truth is too dangerous to be spoken.
"Were you gifted, my lord? In a way others weren't?"
It's both an answer and a question, and the Baron nods, gathering his hands behind his back. Peeves was right when he said the girl made a strange sound. The silver streaks on his clothes shimmer rhythmically, giving away the quiet laughing of the ghost. So that is how she got those eyes. He allows his eyes to take in her figure once more, her stance, the proud lift of her chin, the green encircling her pupils that grow wider as he holds her in suspense. Salazar's blood lives on.
"Still am, I'd like to think." He answers her in the tongue of serpents.
She replies to him in kind, unfazed and not noticing the change in idiom. He wonders about how much the girl knows. There is no deceiving when she calls herself a Lestrange. She is also concerned in a manner in which he never was, not until it was too late. The Baron decides to reassure her. Gifted wizards and witches were made for greatness, he tells her, but that is not to say they are made for darkness. Only a selected few are, he knows. He does not tell her the latter.
Without ever telling him that she is also a parselmouth, Delphini manages to find some comfort in the ghost's words and leaves the Astronomy Tower feeling lighter. Unburdened somehow. Greatness, not darkness. Like the snake said. There is even a hint of happiness deep inside her, in that cunning corner that believes her secret is not out, that she was capable of fooling the ghost.
It's not until she is in bed, warm and cosy, after lavishing some attention on Darkie, perched on the canopy of her bed for the night, that she realizes there's another thing in common between the conversation with the little serpent by the stream and the ghost in the tower.
The tongue she spoke.
The Baron won't tell anyone, she knows that, but she lost control yet again. In a different way, but lost all the same. She doesn't have any anger in her anymore. Only disappointment. She needs to learn how to control herself, and her magic, and her gift.
She falls asleep in tears, hugging her pillow close, the scent slowly easing her into a dream. Of stars and serpents, of blood and smoke.
Author's Notes: Sorry everyone, but the Festive Season is a tricky one to my writing mojo, plus I've started working (first job Yay!) and I'm still in the process of moving. Basically, real life got in the way. I'll try and get back to the previous schedule of an update every ten days ;)
Reviews feed the author ;) If anyone missed them, there are two "new" side pieces uploaded on Christmas' Eve