Disclaimer: All usual disclaimers apply: don't own, don't sue, don't ask, don't tell.
Note to readers: Yes. This chapter is insanely long. I know and apologize. Please, bear with me.
The name "Queudver" is, in fact, the pseudonym of Peter Pettigrew (Wormtail) in the French versions of the Harry Potter books, which JK overlooks in the translations herself. She was a French teacher once, after all. She picked the French names of the characters herself. But I did work out the etymology for myself. As is "Douce Nuit" a real French Christmas carol to the tune of "Silent Night".
Also, as for the chess game scene between Rouge and Ron in this chapter, the chess game they're playing is, in fact, the chess problem in Through the Looking Glass. I worked out all the chess notation myself and it was difficult and evil, but I wanted to do it. It for nothing else, for my love of "Alice", my parents' love of "Alice"; and also I wanted to do it as a tribute to my role as the White Rabbit in a theatre production of "Alice in Wonderland" this past year. C'mon, I had to fit some "Alice" into this somewhere.
Chapter 15: Le Vigile de Noël
Among unidentifiable shapes, things that her consciousness disregarded either from skepticism or ignorance, a few shapes appeared; but whether from her subconscious or some great, divine, precognitive force, she didn't know or care.
...She saw... a bridge... a windmill... the pulsing webbed feet of a frog... the painted grin of a jester...
Shapes appearing and introducing themselves like polite strangers that she acknowledged with blasé indifference and promptly forgot. And in the swirling shapes, she saw an arch...
She choked on the dregs of her tea and tried to muffle her coughs as best she could. She couldn't bear the thought of catching Trelawney's attention.
It was Divination class once again. Bodies huddled together in the heat of the North Tower against the chill of the winter morning. This was the first of the last two days of classes before the Christmas Holidays and no one could stay focused on their work.
Lots of students played cards with the cartomancy materials, making bets with the Christmas candy that they kept in their pockets to keep up their festive spirits. Some of the braver students in the back of the classroom played Gobstones, pretending that the stones were for lithomancy whenever Professor Trelawney stalked by. Hard for them to explain the foul liquid that was spat out of the stones at the losers, though.
Rouge, though, was satisfied with a cup of tea. Pretending to practice tasseography, sipping slowly at the steaming cup, she found a true moment of peace in the small pleasure. She had her textbook open—a prop she glanced at occasionally, as though to help read her findings.
Professor Trelawney, expecting (or maybe even predicting) the restlessness of the class, had assigned an easy activity today. At every table was set a few sprigs of holly. First thought of by the class as festive decoration, Professor Trelawney explained that holly had properties that improved foresight. The students were expected to try different practices of divination and see if the presence of the holly sprig gave any more clarity or copiousness to their visions. It was as if Trelawney was asking for the class to disregard their class-work.
At first, Rouge had tried to stay on task, she had. At her empty table, she twisted the holly between her fingers, dealing cards to herself, tossing stones, staring into bowls of water and balls of crystal. At one point, she was trying to light a candle to practice lampadomancy, but the wick refused to light. As Rouge struggled with it, Trelawney passed and remarked, "Oh, my dear... a candle refusing to light foretells rain." Rouge gave up.
She sipped her tea. For the most part, between glancing at the dregs of her tea and at her textbook, she kept her eyes closed. She rotated her cup with gentle motions of her wrist, proving to Trelawney that she hadn't fallen asleep (as some students had), but acted as though she were in a trance, eyes closed and silent. As though not to disturb Rouge's visions, Trelawney kept her distance, which was exactly what Rouge wanted.
As Trelawney conversed in whispers with Lavender and Parvati at a table across the room, Rouge poured herself another cup, more of her performed trance, another moment of peace, if her mind would allow it.
But kept thinking. Thought, over and over, about last night, when she'd drowned herself beyond coherence in numbness, trying so desperately to forget the despair of tear-stained green eyes. And the pain they'd caused her. Tried to forget Cho's screams and bloodied face. It was over now. The task was done, in the past, and beyond her.
Rouge remembered her mother telling her so many times, "Quand tu fais, fais sans remords." 'When you do something, do it without remorse.' Her mother had always taught her to never second-guess herself, because the pain of regret is maddening. She had no remorse. She mustn't. Even though it was pain that made her still feel human.
And yet she couldn't find it in herself to repeat what she had done. What the match had caused her... But all she thought of was that it had been her plan, her own. She didn't even think that it was the act itself that caused her this pain, but instead that it was her plan. She hadn't planned on... She hadn't accounted for... it was her fault. Had to be.
What she found was that she'd lost faith in herself.
Absently swirling her tea, just another ghost-like student in the red-tinted room, eyes hidden by the shadows of her brow and the shadow made by the crest of her cheek tapering down the side of her face, light flickering in washes of red, she pried open her eyes. She stared at the crystal ball on the table before her without seeing it. A slash appeared from within the ball of gray wisps of smoke, as though something was trying to cut open the ball from the inside. The smoke that escaped turned to blood and bled onto the floral tablecloth. From within the ball, a hand reached up and slapped against the interior of the orb, as though reaching desperately for support, a handhold, something, anything. Then another hand, and another, three different hands. And the slowly pulsing palms slid down the glass and into the smoke, distorted by the spherical curve of the ball, and disappeared.
Rouge reached out to touch the bleeding slash on the crystal ball, but as her hand hid it from view, it too disappeared, and the blood evaporated into the washes of red-tinted light. Nothing was there, so she forgot about it, out of sight, out of mind, another stranger lost in the crowd, gone as quickly as it came with an introduction but no good-bye.
Rouge had barely gotten out of her last class that Thursday afternoon when the sun plummeted—a death dive—into the horizon. It was winter, after all; short days, long nights.
The night was reaching its apex—it was nearing midnight—and Rouge was outside, starkly contrasted against the snow in her black cloak. The courtyard was dark, she was safe here, and from where she stood she could see well out into the grounds. It was a vast plane of white beneath the moonlight until the forest, branches weighted down low with snow. But the long stretch of snow-covered land, where even the cover of night couldn't hide her... How was she to get across?
Careful to step only in the footprints left before her lest she leave her own trail, she began the long trek over the blinding white into a darkness greater from whence she came.
It felt like a masquerade ball, black cloaks rustling over snow and faces hidden behind white masks. They were to discuss plans for the upcoming year, and Rouge couldn't miss this. His Lordship was off to one side, speaking quietly with Lucius, and everyone present knew better than to disturb them. So everyone else was left to... mingle. Small circles of a few members formed, murmuring to one another, like cliques of friends, as though this were nothing more than a teenage party. With Draco absent (though she was albeit thankful for his absence now; he wouldn't be here to protest), and thinking better of approaching Severus, Rouge was left alone.
The vulnerability of it made her uneasy, so she went in search of Wormtail to have someone to stand by. She found him by a tree at the edge of the clearing, flexing the fingers of his silver hand, and he looked up as she approached. Even from beneath his hood and behind his mask, Rouge could see him smile.
They made no contact of greeting, no embrace, no clasping of hands, and nor did they make any sort of verbal greeting. There was no need for it. After a few moments of standing in the security of each other's presence, safety in numbers, their breathing in of the crisp air the only sound, Wormtail spoke, though not without much awkwardness, "...Hey... when's your next trip to Hogsmeade?"
Rouge looked up at the unexpected questions and she had to think about it for a moment before answering, "...This coming Saturday, actually."
"Would you meet me at the Hog's Head at about noon?" he asked, and smiled meekly at her. "I want to give you a Christmas present."
Rouge returned the smile. "Yeah, okay."
But at their feet, there was the sound of the ever so faint disruption of snow, not the 'crunch' of footfall, but of individual snowflakes having to make way for a slithering body. Rouge looked down to see Nagini coming to rest at her and Wormtail's feet after making the rounds about the others as though checking to see that all was in order like some overbearing school matron. The snake hissed at Rouge, circled about her ankles—attracted by the warmth in the snow—and snapped her jaws dangerously close to the fabric of her uniform's black stockings.
It was then that Rouge fully took in her hate for the wretched reptile; it always hissing its insults and threats at her, snapping at her ankles. And her father loving Nagini so much while he hardly felt anything more than contempt for his own daughter...
Rouge wrenched her ankle away from Nagini and kicked the snake brutally into the snow, Nagini flailing her rope-like body and hissing angrily, screaming and swearing insults that only, in that earshot, Rouge could hear.
Some masked faces turned to the source of the sound as Nagini, spitting in her wrath, slithered away to her master. Rouge watched her go, wondering if her father had seen her kick his precious pet. He hadn't. And she wondered if she should be grateful for not being caught and therefore punished, or if she wanted him to see her hate for his pet—
"That wasn't a terribly nice thing to do, was it, Rouge?" said a voice close to her ear and she felt fingers curl around her upper-arm.
Rouge twisted out of the grasp and whirled around to face her faceless tormentor. It was Avery. The man she'd seen His Lordship mercilessly punish more than once, but him being even a little higher on the food-chain (forget hierarchy) than her, he took whatever status he had above her and flaunted it, using it as reason for him to humiliate her. If His Lordship was going to punish him, he wanted to punish someone else.
"Don't touch me, Avery," she said simply, none too warmly, though not particularly threateningly. She didn't want to start anything, not with another Death Eater, especially someone older and higher-ranking than she, which was probably what egged him on.
He was smirking carnally, but there was something more sinister than sexual in the air about him as he circled her, reaching out to grip her waist. "No, little girl," he taunted, something so degrading in the way he called her 'little girl,' "you ought to be punished for bad things you do."
Rouge pushed him away. "Don't touch me, Avery," she said again, her voice wavering slightly. She could see people watching, watching him do this to her and they did nothing to help her. She even saw Wormtail shrink back and out of sight. Severus, where was Severus? He had to help her, someone had to help her. Avery was circling her again, touching her again and again, and she was dizzy with fright, but she couldn't let him know that, let all of them know that.
"Gonna put up a fight, little girl? You're not gonna win, y'know. All the time before, you never have, you never will—"
"Don't touch me!" she screamed—her wand suddenly in her hand—followed by the first thing that came to mind, because, oh, she wanted to hurt him, "Crucio!"
Avery was screaming, now. And suddenly, Rouge was not the one circled in her humiliation. She was part of the circle, watching someone else.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. "Release him, Rouge." Strangely, the voice held no anger, and she was surprised to recognize it as her father's. She lowered her wand, and, dryly, he went on, "Very good, very good. A Happy Christmas to you all. Now, if we can, we have some business to attend to."
The moon was just a sliver above her head, the very faintest of the Cheshire Cat's grins. Tomorrow night would be a new moon, she could tell. Through the crosshatch of branches, she could see the outline of the shadowed arc of the moon. A new moon with a visible outline, that foretold rain.
Rouge closed her eyes, white mask clutched to her chest. She was leaning against the trunk of a tree, alone on this path out of the woods, pausing for a moment or two before she returned to the castle. She hadn't brought her flask of Exhaurio potion outside with her, thinking that it might freeze in these low temperatures, but she wanted a swig of it right then. Oh, how badly she wanted it.
She tried not to think of what she'd gotten herself into, what she chose to undertake. Undertake. She exhaled what would be sigh. She fought Draco for this, practically stole it from him, this piece of parchment now in her cloak pocket, handed to her personally by her father, these three names...
This was going to change everything. She meant it to.
She heard the 'crunch' of footfall on snow and she gave and involuntary twitch of fear and grabbed her wand on reflex, eyes snapping open. It was Severus. She relaxed, but only slightly.
"Are you going to put me under the Cruciatus too, Rouge?" he asked, eyeing her wand dubiously and she put it away. She said nothing, so he asked, as if they were two blue-collar workers or London teenagers, "All right?"
"Is that a greeting or an inquiry as to my welfare?"
"I'll grant you the leisure of choosing."
"I'm all right."
She turned up her head to look at the moon again. He kept his distance, she noticed. Prevented any feeling of intimacy.
"You surprised everyone with your little outburst," Severus remarked conversationally. "Avery, most of all." Rouge closed her eyes.
"I didn't want him to touch me anymore."
There was a moment of silence and Rouge heard Severus take a step towards her, a new depth of feeling added to his voice as he began, "Rouge—""Don't," she interrupted. So he didn't.
After another moment of silence, Severus asked what Rouge and hoped and hoped that he wouldn't. There was a change to his demeanor, now. Awkwardness so heavily imbued with condescension and patience that it screamed at her. "Are you sure you've fully thought out the assignments you decided to take tonight?"
"Why are you talking to me as if I'm a child?"
"Rouge—"
"Yes, I have." She kicked at the snow at her feet, scuffing her shoes.
"Who's the first one?"
"You'll find out."
"When are you going to do it?"
"Christmas."
"Do you have an alibi?"
Rouge looked up, biting her bottom lip before admitting, "...no."
"I'll walk you up to the castle." He stepped up to her and took her arm; she gave no resistance. "I'll give you an alibi."
"...thank you."
Harry wondered how Professor Flitwick, as Head of Ravenclaw House, was coping with Cho's death. Surely he knew; everyone knew after all the rumors and then Dumbledore's speech earlier that week. Had the professor known Cho that well? Had he been one of the sources of comfort Cho had gone to in her grief over Cedric?
And Professor Sprout, at that. Did this tragedy bring the two professors together, both having lost a student of their houses so recently?
Harry considered the elfish professor in his Charms class late that Friday morning. Professor Flitwick had seemed quieter that morning, staring distractedly out the window while the students were busy working. Knowing that, on the last day of term, students would be quite simply unable to have enough focus to learn anything, Professor Flitwick had them on a "fun" assignment. In an attempt to be festive, they were trying to make enchanted snow. Hermione was thrilled, producing kinds of snow only an Eskimo could identify, while most of the other students merely delighted in blasting jets of snow at each other. Flitwick let the children play.
Harry noticed that the professor was talking now—with Rouge, actually. He overheard some of what they were saying ("Yes, I've heard so much about your mother's work, Ms. Magie. In fact, a few weeks ago, my sixth-year class worked on some of the genetic alteration charms your mother advanced. Of course, we only focused on detailed color changes—") but didn't listen long. Hermione would be more interested in that stuff than he would, and she was busy playing Mother Nature.
Harry turned his thoughts to Rouge. It wasn't often that he thought about her, even though she was a housemate even of his year, but he did think about her. Thought about their odd meeting the night Dumbledore had given his speech. They hadn't spoken since, hadn't even made eye contact. Things were back to normal.
The only thing different, Harry noticed, was the spectacle made of her in Potions class today—the very first class of the day. As far as he knew, it was the first time this year that Rouge and Professor Snape had made eye contact, and they certainly did more than that.
The class was working on a medicinal draught whose main ingredient was cod liver oil. The simmering brews were sickly yellow, but, for the most part, odorless. Some students remarked that it looked like vegetable oil. More said that it looked like urine. And then, in the back of the dungeon, without warning—or perhaps it was the warning—there was a deep, resounding 'poof' like that of the flash powder from an antique camera. And from Rouge's cauldron, swirling smoke drifted not up but all around and with the smoke was a smell. A noxious smell, positively putrid, ripped at their nostrils.
A few students became violently ill, vomiting into their laps, onto the floor, or even into their cauldrons, and were rushed to the Hospital Wing, though not before Snape submitted Rouge to cruel censure and berating. And following this, Snape publicly gave her detention specifically to be served on the night of December 25th. The rest of the class was spent getting rid of the smell and the mess, and only Neville offered Rouge and comfort.
Harry still had the fragrant lip-gloss (that smelled of artificially sweet fruit) that Lavender and Parvati doled out to nearby Gryffindors on his upper lip, smeared on like the others did in attempt to fight off the smell of the ruined potion. Lavender and Parvati even gave some to Rouge, pitying her some for the punishment of detention on the night of the Yule Ball—inhumanly severe punishment in their eyes, and yet, Harry found himself ever so slightly jealous of Rouge. Why couldn't he have the excuse of detention to not go to the ball?
After Cho's refusal, Harry procrastinated on asking any other girl in some feeble hope that she'd reconsider, but after Cho's death, Harry couldn't even bear the thought of asking another girl. So with less than three days until the ball, Harry was dateless.
When it came to the grief that was the Yule Ball, the only way Harry found himself able to cope was through denial, and his coping skilled with which he tried to deal with Cho's death were only little better. Cho...
"What flavor is this? Cherry? Strawberry? Something red. Whatever it is, I think I'm starting to like this lip-gloss. Hey, Harry," Ron's voice invaded Harry's thoughts, his freckled face smiling broadly, "can you believe Snape gave Rouge detention on Christmas?"
Harry smiled because he knew that if he didn't, he would never smile again. "Well, it means that Snape's got a date to the Yule Ball. That's what's unbelievable." Everyone laughed.
On Saturday, December 23, most students, third year and above, bundled up to buy last-minute Christmas gifts. The snow was relentless, sifting sugar onto a Christmas cake. Brown and white, the scenery was of sharp contrast with only traces of green from the evergreens. Snow piled around the bases of the trees, tapered upward as though to engulf the trees into a cold, white death. They would be reborn again in spring, but lost in late December, spring seemed so far away.
Snow clung like greedy fingers to their cloaks and boots, prying through their hair and dusting them with crystals and white until they seemed another part of the scenery. Third-years threw snowballs, laughing and bounding through the snow as older students trudged along through the trenches, chatting among their tight-knit groups.
Every breath from every body clouded at their lips, akin to the smoke a dragon would exhale. But Rouge thought—with Hogsmeade train station approaching from the distance—they looked like steam engines. Locomotives with billowing clouds raising high above them as they trundled along. Body machines—breathe in, breathe out. But no clouded breath formed at Rouge's lips, her tongue and teeth as cold as her nose, as if they too were exposed to the winter air. A cold body wrapped up in her cloak, with icy breaths issuing from beneath her hood. Without these wisps of clouded breath rising above her like a chain to the heavens, she felt invisible, free. She felt like a ghost, a specter, a wraith moving about the living unseen and unchained. With steadily bluing lips, she smiled.
Past the Quidditch stadium, down the drive, through the wrought-iron gates flanked by stone pillars topped by winged boars—When pigs fly, Rouge thought, and laughed to herself—and into the village.
The High Street of Hogsmeade looked like the cover of a Christmas card, cheery and quaint. Or a picture in a fairy-tale book, houses and shops of gingerbread with golden, brandy-sugar windows and white icing dripping from the roofs. The students were hungry Hansels and Gretels. But where was the witch?
Rouge went to go get a butterbeer, though she hadn't the faintest idea what a butterbeer was. She found herself tailing a group of sixth-year Ravenclaws and mixed Hufflepuffs, listening in to their conversations as though she were part of their group.
"Hey, let's pop on over to the Three Broomsticks for a butterbeer," one suggested, and was answered with murmurs of approval. At some distance, Rouge followed.
Once upon being inside the Three Broomsticks, she sat at a booth, keeping her hood lowered to keep the fact that she was a student from being too terribly overt. Students sitting alone draw attention. But she watched the other students as they went back and forth to the bar, ordering their drinks from the pretty barmaid with the turquoise shoes. Sparkly turquoise. High-heels. When she had gone up to order, she didn't look at Madam Rosmerta directly, but rather gave her order to the mirror over the bar, and watched the flash of her shoes as she moved about the pub.
To Rouge, butterbeer tasted sickly sweet and burned at her throat. But she sipped at it anyway, watching the planets move around the face of her wristwatch, waiting for it to get near enough to noon.
Back on High Street, it was easy to blend into the crowd, but she didn't get lost in it. She could still see into every shop, decide if she wanted to go in, and then not. She'd already sent a letter of Christmas tidings to her mother, so she had no reason to go into the post office. Honeydukes was too crowded with students. She had no need for jokes and tricks, so she didn't give Zonko's even a second glance—also too crowded. Opposite Gladrag's Wizardwear, High Street branched and she turned to the right.
A few shops down, the head of a wild boar—severed, not simply with the body out of sight, but a severed head—bleeding onto a white cloth caught her eye. An emblem on a swinging sign. Cheery, thought Rouge, and entered the Hog's Head.
My god, she thought, upon entering, this pub is like a matte painting.
Besides the artistic styling epiphany, her first impression was of how dirty it was. And the smell—the first thing you notice is the smell, but just from how dirty the pub was, she wished she had brought a pair of gloves. Even at the door, she swore that there was an inch of dust on every surrounding surface. Her entrance was not noticed, so stalling for a moment, she touched the nearest wall and her fingertips left a visible trail in the dust, like snakes winding over sand. She could even see her own fingerprints. She should have brought a pair of gloves.
She noticed with surprising quickness that she could not see anyone's face in the pub, save the barman, whose face she was not entirely sure she wanted to see. Following the patrons' example, she tugged down her hood a bit farther.
Carefully, she approached the bar, looking for a familiar face—...well, familiar figure, actually. But it was so dark, she could hardly see anything else about the pub's patrons. She was sure they'd still be obscured (if that was the word she was looking for) by the gloom even without their faces concealed. Were there even any windows in this place...?
Standing at the bar, she knew this wasn't a safe place for a fifteen-year-old girl to be alone. But she wasn't supposed to be alone, she was meeting someone. She took a seat, not meeting the eyes of the barman so she wouldn't have to give him an order for a drink. But she felt more eyes on her, her skin prickling beneath an unknown gaze...
"Rouge."
She didn't turn, but instead slowly... shifted... her eyes... to the left. And beneath her hood, she smiled.
"Queudver."
A squat male figure in a cloak sat to her left and she could just makes out the dim light reflecting off his silver hand. So it wasn't a matte painting after all. C'est Queudver. It's Wormtail.
"Queudver" was a name that she'd given to him while struggling with hearing only English, all day, every day—a culture shock of sorts. That'd been early that summer. "Queue" was "tail," "de" was "of," and "ver" was "worm." Queue de ver. Tail of worm. Queudver. Wormtail.
He grinned at her. He'd always liked Rouge having a nickname for him. It meant that he was special to her. ...Even with all the times he couldn't help her...
"Happy Christmas." He slid a package over to her. It was no larger than her forearm—wrist to elbow—probably smaller, and wrapped up in what looked like old Daily Prophets and Spellotape.
Rouge took the parcel and clutched it to her chest, smiling. It was her first Christmas present of the year.
"Merci, Queudver. Thank you."
"...I wasn't sure if you'd be getting many presents this year... I didn't want to ask—...your father... if he was going to give you something... and... and I thought... I thought it'd help—"
He stopped as she touched his hand.
"It means a lot to me."
There was a moment. Not of romance, but a moment of a certain kind of platonic love, all the same. This was real friendship. Perhaps even family.
Wormtail explained that he couldn't stay much longer; he'd be missed if he did. They exchanged farewells and "Happy Chrismas"es and "Joyeux Noël"es, and Rouge watched him exit the pub. She put the gift in her cloak, waited a few minutes to avoid as being seen leaving with Wormtail, for his safety, if not her own, and then stepped out into the light.
There was a herd of girls in Gladrags Wizardwear that winter afternoon. Usually, Rouge thought of them as packs, like wolves... or hyenas. But no, today they were a herd of frightened cattle, desperately looking for robes. Dress robes. That were pretty enough, that were their color and style and size, though the issue of price range rarely entered their minds as a concern. Their young, quixotic, naïve minds would never process any doubt that their parents would send them the money on the fastest owls in Britain, however much it was, because of course their parents would do anything to make them happy. This was because most of these girls' parents had already sent them said money.
The fastest owls in Britain were getting a lot of work, this Christmas season. And were getting tired.
Oh what a world we live in.
But Rouge was not looking at dress robes. She was in the corner of the shop where accessories were displayed. She was looking at gloves, turning over a pair made of black silk in her hands. She held them up against the sleeve of her cloak; there was no difference in color. She tried them on, and they fit like a—...they fit to do justice to a cliché simile. As she dug into her pocket to retrieve some coins to pay for the gloves, she saw someone approaching her out of the corner of her eye, though didn't register an identity until there was a voice she could pin to the presence.
"All right, Red?"
Rouge turned and tried not to look at as surprised as she really was. It was Ron, and, in truth, she was shocked. Ron was talking to her? Wasn't he mad at her? (She'd inferred as such not from any outright admittance of such, but from the chilly and silent disposition he'd displayed towards her these past few weeks.)
He didn't look altogether pleasant and friendly, though, which wasn't that surprising. His bottom lip was drawn in, biting it, and he wasn't quite even looking at her. But he was talking to her, and she clung to that mercy. And "Red"... He'd called her by that during their brief interlude of a friendship. The boy was hopeless when it came to French.
"Ça va, Roux." So, of course, she gave him a French nickname and responded to his British colloquial greetings with those of the French persuasion.
"Ça va?" he attempted, his tongue wrapping unfamiliarly around the two syllables. SAH-VAH.
"Oui." WEE. 'Yes.' "Ça va."
"...What's it mean again?"
"It's a cultural expression. The literal translation is something like... 'It goes,' I think. Life, you know. Life... goes, whether it be good or bad. Ça va. It goes."
"Yeah." He smiled, just a little bit, and met her gaze. "And 'Roux'?" Absolutely hopeless. His 'r's were painful, pushed to the front of his mouth when he pronounced ROO. French 'r's stay in the back of the throat, and the 'n's in the nose.
"I've told you this before. It means 'redhead.' R-O-U-X. Roux."
"R-O-U-X? How does that spell 'Roux'?"
"It's French. It just does. You don't pronounce the 'x'. And in English, how does o-u-g-h end the words—" She counted them off her fingers, "—'tough,' 'though,' and 'through,' but make completely different sounds?"
"Yeah, okay, I see what y'mean, Red... Well, couldn't I call you 'Roux', too?" he asked, as he glanced at her hair and those faithful red streaks.
"No... I'd be 'Rousse'."
"Rousse?"
She smiled. "Well, 'Roux' is masculine. 'Rousse' is feminine."
The neurons in his head fired. "Oh, and because you're a girl—"
"Vive la difference."
He grinned. "Ça va, Red."
So did she. "Ça va, Roux."
It was Christmas Eve, and things were almost back to the way they were before, during that brief interlude of friendship back in... November, wasn't it? Yes, early November... before the snow... Rouge and Ron didn't speak of the long stretch of silence between them that had lasted all those weeks, pretended it hadn't happened. Didn't address it then, wouldn't address it now.
Rouge was vaguely aware of the common room around her—she and Ron, she amended—but all her attention was focused on the black-and-white-checkered board on the table between her and the redhead who she occasionally gave a fragment of her attention to. But he was just as absorbed in the game as she was. And he was actually good at chess. As was it good for him to play chess. The Quidditch cancellation issue still sore for him, it was good for him to remember that he was good at other things.
"Pawn to d4," Ron directed, and the round-topped, lily-white piece hopped forward.
"La reine va en a4," Rouge replied, and her dark-crowned queen slunk to the left. Neither of them looked up, or had in some time, or probably would in some time.
"...I don't think it's fair that your pieces don't understand English," Ron commented. "Can't understand what you or your pieces are saying."
"Not everything can be bilingual. And your set's accent is so thick, I assure you, anyone not a native Englishman hasn't any hope of understanding it."
"That bad, eh?"
"Oui." Yes.
It had become an unconditional law of time and space that Rouge always played the black pieces, Ron always the white. It had also become a vested fact that Rouge always lost. Of course, Ron always offered to let her play white, but Rouge was insistent in her refusals.
She found comfort in the constant, clear-cut, black-and-white ways of chess. There is no gray in chess. That was comforting. Ron played white, she played black. Ron won, she lost. If it were any other way, it would make gray, and she didn't want any more gray. She submitted to the dogma of white and black because it was just so much simpler that way.
There was black and white in life, too. On that symbolic morality scale, for example, Ron was white. She believed that strongly. Harry and Hermione, too. White. Of course.
Her father, on the other hand, was black. If there was any great truth to this, it was that her father was the former of the black-and-white morality.
But then there were gray areas in life, wherein names like "Wormtail" fell. Queudver. He was Death Eater, like herself, and a follower of her father, O Great Dark Lord. And even as a person, she'd heard of how terrible he was, of the way he'd betrayed his friends...
...But he was kind to her. Gave her a Christmas present, which she now had tucked away in her trunk, waiting to be opened tomorrow morning.
The contradiction made a great big gray splotch.
And then there was Snape. Severus. He was a gray area if she ever knew one. Just the sheer mystery... He was her friend. He told her so. But that fact alone made some suspicious gray. He told her that he was her friend, but they had to be secret friends... And yet, she hardly had the grounds to complain. She found herself trusting these gray areas. The only reason they were gray at all was because they'd shown kindness to her—that they'd shown so semblance of humanity. So what did that make Ron? Blinding white?
...And Draco. The name sauntered across her mind like pretentious sin, demanding that attention be drawn to itself in her little mental list.
She'd have trouble with this one.
Black or white? Rouge pondered, a chess piece held poised between her thumb and index finger, then decided.
Gray. Definitely gray. Involuntarily, a mental image of Draco appeared before Rouge's eyes—a picture of, specifically, his eyes.
Gray eyes. Pale eyes. Silver eyes. Irises spun of spider webs and dusted with frost and ice. There was something intangible about those eyes, something so delicate as to not be untouched by human hands. Gossamer with wraiths. Ethereal. Empyreal. Forged from the same divine fires as souls and angel wings. Or yet, the six wings of a seraph, of fiery, serpentine angels of vengeance, of righteous penalty of sin, of burning love.
Eyes made of something above reality and those bound to it, above the conscious mind. Eyes made of twilight, of gloaming, of dusk, of the unions between Somnus, Morpheus, and Mors. Sleep, Dreams, and Death. They were oneiric eyes.
Gray, she decided again.
But what about herself? What was she?
...Well, some chess sets have red instead of black as the opposing side. Maybe she was that.
This was all just inside her head, of course. What was going on across the chess board between Rouge and Ron were distracted tidbits of conversation, tamely breaking the silence not already broken by their chess sets. Rouge's set gave her guerilla tactics in rapid, shady-sounding French, and would occasionally burst into a verse of the French national anthem to boost morale. Ron's set, on the other hand, was winning.
"Queen to c4," Rouge heard him say. She hardly remembered the move she previously made, and she watched his queen make a waddle to the left. He asked, "Play much chess."
"Pardon?" She hadn't been listening, but he was hardly listening himself, transfixed by the game.
"Play much chess?" he repeated with different inflection, as if his delivery would help her hearing.
"Some," she answered. "Bought this set in town on Bastille Day." Said chess set burst into the anthem again. "Hence the jingoistic manner of this particular set."
"Bastille Day?"
"French Independence Day. The angry peasants stormed the Bastille—it's a prison in Paris—and, thus, marked the beginning of the French Revolution. It's supposed to be symbolic... ending the absolute and arbitrary power of Louis XVI, beginning the birth of the Republic... just a lot of symbolism. But Bastille Day itself is the celebration of the decapitation of the French monarchy."
"Decapitation?"
"Do you know Sir Nicolas?"
"Y'mean Nearly Headless Nick—...oh."
Tidbits of conversation like that. Silly little bits of conversation like that.
"Another good word, like 'decapitation', is 'defenestration'," Rouge found herself saying.
"And it means...?" Ron prompted.
"The act of throwing something, or someone, out of a window."
"Defenestration?"
"Yeah. 'La fenêtre' is 'window' in French, which is from the Latin 'fenestra'. I have no idea how you English lot came up with the word 'window'. Isn't English supposed to be Latin-based?"
"We steal bits of vocabulary from whoever we conquer, so English is a bit of a hodge-podge language, really, but... defenestration? Is that really a word?"
"Yeah."
"Th'act of throwin' somethin' out a window?"
"Yeah."
"So y'mean there's really a word for throwing someone out a window?"
"Yeah. To defenestrate someone."
"Hmm," Ron declared. "...Wow."
"Yeah, I know."
The fruits of two distracted minds.
Most of Rouge's attention was on one of Ron's pawns, watching it make the long trek across the board, one move at a time, one space at a time. Ron directed his queen a bit about too, but mainly it was that one little lily-white pawn. d4. d5. d6. She was hardly aware of what she was doing with her own pieces. They were merely moving about and around this one pawn, merely background, rotational heavenly bodies in the microcosm of chess all around this one little pawn making its own little way across the board.
It made her think of "Alice in Wonderland". Oh, but it'd be "Through the Looking Glass", would it? Yes, that was the one, the whole story one big chess game, and the heroine was just a little girl who joins the game as a pawn and becomes a queen. She remembered loving the stories about Alice when she was a little girl. She now supposed the reason she'd liked the books so much was because she'd been able to believe that she could be just like Alice. Alice was just a little girl—a seven-year-old girl—who had fantastic things happening to her. It wasn't because she was beautiful or a princess or other such things like in other fairytales; she had these adventures simply because she was curious. And though we can't all be princesses, we can all be curious.
"Pawn to d7," said Ron, and Rouge's stomach gave a lurch. Oh, just one space off, and her knight would've been able to take that pawn...! She gave no attention to either of the kings, or any other pieces for that matter, just that one pawn...
"Le cavalier va en e7," said Rouge. Her knight made its awkward L-shaped move and sidled up close to Ron's pawn, brandishing its great club threateningly.
"Did you have many friends at Beauxbatons?" asked Ron, his eyes scanning the board, and Rouge shrugged. "Knight to e7," Ron added triumphantly, and his knight came to his pawn's rescue. The two knights dueled, banging at each other with their clubs, but Rouge's knight lost the duel and was forced to gallop off the board.
Rouge frowned. She was losing badly. This wasn't just her losing-streaks, but she was losing dignity, here! And still she watched that pawn make its journey to the eighth square... and it did make it. Ron declared it a queen and Rouge commented, "Ah, a coronation, then." He smiled a bit, but this was followed by a long pause. All she had left was her king and her queen... What move could she make...? So absorbed in thought was she that she didn't notice that Ron had turned up his head and was watching her. Nothing could have prepared her for what would break the silence.
"How come you never told me that you asked Harry to the ball?"
And Rouge actually looked up, blinking. "...I...I didn't think it was important." Ron returned his gaze to the board, and she offered feebly, "La reine va en e8."
Ron was silent for some time, seeming to be thinking hard. Then, "...coronated pawn to e8," he said, taking her queen. "You're right. It's not important... oh, and, 'check,' by the way." But even then, Rouge was too late to save her king.
The Gryffindor Triumvirate was alone in the common room. The hour was late and everyone else had retreated to bed. Rouge had left the common room some time ago, offering the excuse to Ron that she'd left something in the library. It was past curfew now and she still hadn't returned, but, absorbed in their own thoughts and doings, her housemates had forgotten her.
Hermione, who'd apparently learned to knit—when did she learn how to knit? Harry wondered—was knitting something pink... and fluffy, as she read a book propped open in her lap. Even on Christmas Eve, she multitasked to make full use of her time. Upon further investigation, she proclaimed that the pink fluffy something would eventually be a sweater for Crookshanks. A particularly bored Ron proclaimed that she was mental.
Ron, overcome by boredom, had finally gotten out his Cleansweep Seven and was polishing the handle with one of his old sweaters ("Why not? I'll be getting another one tomorrow."), insisting that he didn't know what else to do. He murmured something about polishing the broom up a bit before he put it away for a whole year. This mourning over a lost Quidditch season was beginning to get out of hand, Hermione felt, and she suggested that he get some homework done if he really didn't know what else to do—they certainly had enough homework over the holidays, with the O.W.L.s coming up later this year. Ron suggested, upon the defense that it was "bloody Christmas Eve," that she was mental.
Harry was thinking of suggesting that they both go on off to bed, though he knew that they wouldn't, not until he'd gone to bed, too. After leaving him alone in the common room Wednesday night and how terrible he'd looked Thursday morning, his best friends had decided that it was detrimental to his health and wellbeing to be left alone to brood. In fact, they seemed determined to keep him from brooding at all, whether or not they were present.
"Why don't we go down and visit Hagrid?" Ron suggested to the group, though Harry knew it was specifically for him. "I bet he's up, and we can wish him a Happy Christmas."
"Not now," said Harry, not meeting their eyes, but Ron was not to be daunted in his task, his duty, of being cheerful.
"How... how about we sneak down to the kitchens? Dobby could give us a preview of Christmas Tea tomorrow. Couldn't you go for some Christmas pudding, swimming in brandy butter—?"
"Not tonight. Not now."
Ron and Hermione shared a significant look that Harry wasn't supposed to see but saw anyway.
"Harry..." Ron began, struggling at first, but then barreling on intently, "Listen, Harry, with all these things that have been going on, everything that's happened... we've been thinking that maybe we should—" But Harry already knew. For the past four years, it'd been the same, that mischievous air already breathing into life, that adventurousness, that foolhardy Gryffindor bravery. And Harry was done.
"NO!" Harry shouted so loudly that both Ron and Hermione jumped. Harry didn't care how late it was; he wanted to shout at them. He'd wanted to shout at them all year. "No more investigations! No more mysteries! No more adventures! Don't you get it?! Cedric's dead! Cho's dead! I watched Cedric die— We all watched Cho die! All these people are dead and it changes everything!"
"Harry..." His name came from somewhere deep within Hermione's throat, pleading, "Harry, we know you fancied—...well, we know Cho was important to you, and... and we know how hard the night Cedric died was for you... But Cho's death was an accident, and there was nothing you could do about Cedric—"
"Fine!" Harry interrupted, bitingly, viciously. He didn't care that they were only trying to help. He didn't want this kind of help. "Fine, if there's really nothing I can do, what's the point of having another little adventure?! We're—we're kids, we're just kids! We can't save the world all the time...! Where's our time to just be kids?!"
Harry got up from his armchair and made a beeline, not for the stairs to his dorm, but for the portrait hole, but then— "...Harry..." Hermione again. Harry didn't know when she started crying, probably while he'd been shouting, but she was definitely crying now. Ron just stared. "...Harry, where are you going?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "I'll figure that out when I get there." He stepped through the portrait hole and out of sight, but he'd been gone before he'd even left his armchair.
It took a while to calm Hermione down and even longer to get her to stop crying. She just sat there for a long time, sniffling and hiccuping sobs, and Ron, sitting on the couch with her, tentatively held her and awkwardly patted her in what could only be assumed as in a comforting matter. But the sentiment was sincere, and Hermione seemed to appreciate it. She clung to him, too distressed for caring about limitations of platonic proximity. All Ron could think to do was pat her, trying to be as comforting as he could. They both felt distressed over Harry, but if Hermione was going to cry, Ron had to keep himself together.
When Hermione calmed down enough to speak, she asked, still hiccuping and bit, "W-what... what are we going to do about H-harry...?"
"I dunno," Ron admitted truthfully. "I guess we'll just have to wait for him to snap out if it."
Hermione gave a loud hiccup and Ron patted her. She thought to say something about how unsympathetic Ron was—you don't just "snap out of" grief!—but she couldn't think of a better plan, so she simply let Ron pat her.
"I mean, where could he go?" Hermione asked fitfully. "It's after curfew, so what's still unlocked? The library—? ...The library... Rouge said that she went down to the library... She hasn't come back yet, and now Harry's out there—" She seemed panicked suddenly, leaning forward on the edge of the couch.
"What are you getting at, 'Mione?"
She faltered for a moment, then sat back again. "...Nothing. It's nothing. It's just... Rouge..." She looked up at him. "What happened between you two?"
"What?"
"You and Rouge. You were acting rather oddly toward her for a while. You were friends with her for a bit, weren't you? But after you got the Keeper position, you two... just stopped talking."
"Oh. That. Well... we had a... a bit of a falling out, I guess."
"What, was she jealous of you for getting on the team?"
"No—...no, or at least I don't think so... We didn't have a row or anything, we just... stopped talking."
"Well, what happened?"
Ron shifted a bit in his seat. "Well... I... well, she... That day, when I got the Keeper position... I found her that night, going down the corridor; I guess she didn't see me... But I followed her, y'see, all the way outside... It was dark already, but I saw her—...I saw her with Malfoy." Hermione could feel Ron grow tense beside her. She grew tense herself. "They were talking all quietly together, I couldn't hear 'em, nestled up nice and close, and they walked off together and... and... well, what was I supposed to think? She was—... was...!" he struggled for the words to finish his accusation in his fervor and vehemence.
"Fraternizing with the enemy?" Hermione offered, and Ron exploded with a passionate, "Yeah!"
She wondered if he remember using that same phrase almost exactly one year ago. She did.
"But now you two are friends again," Hermione stated with every possibility of it being a question. He rose his eyebrows at her, so she added, "...you were playing chess with her."
Ron shrugged, clearly taking the matter lightly. He didn't see a few games of wizard chess as "fraternizing with the enemy," or perhaps not Rouge as "the enemy."
"You'd said no."
The sheer simplicity of the statement caught Hermione off guard and she fumbled for an answer. He had asked her if she wanted to play, but, "I... I was busy. I have all that homework—"
"It was just a game of chess, Hermione."
Despite how without accusation Ron had said it, Hermione still got a pang of guilt from the statement. She wasn't sure if he meant it was only a game of chess with Rouge, it wasn't a big deal and she was making a big deal out of it. Or that he meant that it was only a game of chess, and she probably could have taken a break from her studies for just one game.
Either way, she felt a weight of guilt that she hadn't intended on.
Ron still had his broom, tail to the floor, handle leaning against the arm of the couch, and he stared at it, considering it.
"You know," he said after a moment of silent thought, a moroseness suddenly clinging to his words, "maybe it's for the best that this year's Quidditch season was cancelled. I mean, I shouldn't have been picked for the Keeper position, I'm not cut out for it. That charm you put on me during the try-outs was the only reason I made it, I'm sure of it. Did I even deserve—?"
But Hermione was laughing. Here he was, bearing his soul to her, and she was laughing!
"What are you laughing at?!"
"You!" she exclaimed. "Of course you deserve the position, Ron! That charm— what was it? Illudious? Oh, Ron, that charm was a placebo!"
Ron stared at her. "What?"
"A placebo! A dud! That charm wasn't real. It doesn't do anything. It's psychology, Ron. It's the idea of... oh, how to phrase it... you know, wanting, like, medication, for example, so badly, that even if you don't get it and you think you get it, you think it's working and even feel the effects of if you'd had it. It's psychology."
Ron was so stunned, her explanation hardly penetrated his skull. "You mean... I got the position on my own?" That fact seemed to have reached his understand, and he was so dumbfounded, too happy to possibly believe it.
"All on your own."
Smiling, Hermione said nothing more, gazing into the fireplace and watching the merry blaze reflect in the tinsel hung on the mantle. Ron felt an immense relief within him, having shared these painful pieces of information that he'd held secret for so long, and he felt immensely grateful for Hermione, not just having her as a friend, but just Hermione.
Ron found himself looking at her almost expectantly—well... no, not quite. He was just looking at her, and, in his very male mind, identifying her. Hermione. Best mate— ...or, rather, one of two. Insufferable know-it-all usually came next, but he left that one out just now.
Girl.
Hermione was a girl—a member of the opposite sex that all those hormones told him to suddenly take an interest in. And because of his incredibly male mind, his mouth was voicing his thoughts before they got to fully form, never mind think through, "Have you gotten a date to the ball yet?"
Hermione looked at him. "You mean the ball tomorrow?"
And she was supposed to be clever! "There's another?"
She looked away, brow furrowing. "...Well, Neville asked me again..."
"You didn't accept, did you?" The panic in his voice was almost endearing.
"I told him... maybe."
Ron considered this. "And in the strange, incomprehensible language you girls speak, that means 'no'?"
"Generally," she conceded, and Ron laughed a bit. There was a pause.
"...He didn't ask Ginny again, did he?" The brotherly concern was actually quite endearing, here.
"He did, but she declined," Hermione assured him. "She's going with Colin."
"Colin?!" Not so assured, then.
"Yes. Colin."
"He's a bit of a... twitchy... kinda pesty kid, innhe?"
"He's a good guy."
Ron wasn't so sure. Brotherly over-protectiveness wouldn't allow it. "And what do you think qualifies as a 'good guy'?"
"Well... you're a good guy."
Ron hadn't been expecting that.
...But suddenly his opinion of Colin increased dramatically.
...And he had to do it. Right now. Because if he didn't, he was sure he'd never have the courage to try some other time. And right now, at this very moment, it seemed so logical, it couldn't make any more sense, right now...
"Hermione, would you go to the ball with me?"
She looked at him, and suddenly them seemed so close—too close—but couldn't move. And Ron felt his throat tighten, his vocal chords constricting painfully, and he was glad that he wasn't the one who had to give an answer.
She was. And she did answer: "Maybe."
She gathered her knitting, long abandoned, and she got up to leave. It was late. They ought to be in bed. But the movement made her seem so far away after the closeness they'd shared. And he made himself speak, croaking out the words, "And in that girl language, that's a 'no'?"
"Only generally," reminded him. "Good night, Ron."
Five floors of empty corridors, lonely stairs, and darkness Harry Potter thundered down, the smack of his feet in his shoes against the stones of the floor oddly satisfying, letting out his anger in the painful pressure, running, just running.
The second floor, now. Corridor. Empty. Stone walls and an arched ceiling that would resonate beautifully if he finally gave into his anger and just screamed. But the violence and craze that came with the emotions were dying down now, as if he'd lost them on one of the upper floors. Now he'd just have to hide from them for a while.
A bathroom door was a little ways off, an "Out of Order" sign hanging on it, but Harry didn't care. He just wanted to splash some water on his face or something. It was also a girls' bathroom, but he didn't much care about that either. Didn't really care about anything, as apathy is a common symptom of overwhelming angst.
The bathroom was dark, dank, and depressing. Harry rather liked it. It seemed to compliment or at least suit his current mood. He went all the way to the last sink in the row of them against the wall, feeling as though the last sink in a disused girls' bathroom was a good place to hide away at.
His face seemed so alone as he stared at it in the long, cracked mirror that stretched across the wall above the sinks. He didn't seem able to look at just his own reflection in the great big mirror, but was forced to take in the whole depressing bathroom and it made him feel small. He sighed and turned his eyes down to the chipped stone sink before him. He turned one of the taps. It didn't work. Tried the other one, and splashed the water on his face, leaning on the sink and cupping his face in his hands. The water was freezing (the pipes were probably all lined with ice this time of year), but it made him feel better. Good thing, too. It'd have killed him to cry twice in one week.
"The position of sulking about a girls' lavatory has already been rather filled, don't you think?" said a glum-sounding voice from somewhere behind him. Second floor. Girls' bathroom. "Out of Order." How could he have forgotten Moaning Myrtle?
"Hullo, Myrtle," said Harry with a sort of resigned hopelessness that could've given the sulking specter a run for her money. Apparently Myrtle noticed this.
She glided over to him, her translucent, silvery figure coming to perch on the edge of the sink next to him, hovering just above it. She peered intently at him from behind her thick, pearly glasses.
"And what's the matter with you? You haven't got anything to be really upset about," she informed him as if she were the expert on misery. "You're alive."
"If this is being alive," Harry told her numbly, "then I don't much like living."
"Ooh, that's original," Myrtle snapped sarcastically at him. "I was using that line before you were even born. You think that you know pain? That you know suffering—?"
"I know pain."
That made Myrtle stop, and she was quiet again for some time. And they were able to be miserable, there in that awful bathroom, together. But Myrtle had to ask, "What's the matter, Harry?"
What's the matter? What's wrong? Oh, where to even begin...
The most pressing matter, he supposed, was that it was Christmas Eve. The Yule Ball was tomorrow night. Godric knows, he had no desire to go, but he had to open the hellish holiday event with a dance. With his dance partner. Which would be hard, because he had no dance partner. That was the most pressing matter, he supposed.
He gave a sigh, and then gave his problem: "The girl I wanted to go with to the Yule Ball tomorrow di—... she died last week. And I... I haven't had the heart to ask anyone else."Myrtle picked thoughtfully at a spot on her chin, considering Harry as well as his problem.
"...How about going with another dead girl instead?"
What seemed like millions and millions of years later, Harry was back in Gryffindor Tower, behind the curtains of his four-poster, in bed. The first million was just how long it seemed to take him to hear himself answer Myrtle's offer with a deep and meaningful, "What?" But these millions beyond millions of seemed years later, as Harry lay in bed on Christmas Eve—and Christmas morning rapidly dawning—he believed quite certainly that he was insane.
He was going to the Yule Ball with Moaning Myrtle.
...His mind repeated that, just because it bore repeating. He was going to the Yule Ball with Moaning Myrtle.
He rolled over, trying to fall asleep, and simply hoped that there wasn't a rule against going to the ball with a ghost.
"...Douce nuit... sainte nuit..." Rouge sang softly to herself—"Douce Nuit", a French Christmas carol to the tune of "Silent Night"—sang quietly as she worked, "...Dans les cieux... l'astre luit..."
She wasn't sure how long ago she'd found this place, this long, hidden room behind a mirror on the fourth floor. There were lots of mirrors on the fourth floor, she'd noticed. But one night, past curfew and she was out of bed (she'd been down on the Quidditch pitch, practicing with Draco, back in November), she'd stopped in front of this particular mirror. She imagined herself as Alice, clambering up onto the mantle to look closely at the mirror above the fireplace, talking on and on to herself about the looking-glass house just on the other side... Through the Looking Glass.
She'd pressed the palms of her hands against the surface of the mirror, and though she imagined it—and it'd seemed so clear—the mirror did not turn to bright silvery mist beneath her hands that she could climb right through.
But she was certain she'd felt it give, just a little. Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it, somehow, she thought to herself, and, feeling almost silly, she got out her wand, and tried, "Alohomora."
The glass melted away, revealing a long, empty chamber, made all of windowless stone walls.
This was her looking-glass house, then. So she'd make her own garden of live flowers.
She smuggled in the materials, sent away for the seeds, and now visited her garden behind the mirror at least once a week. She liked feeling as though she had a place all her own to go, liked the feeling of growing something again.
"...Le mystère annoncé s'accomplit..." she sang on, cutting a few select roses from the bushes. She hadn't passed up the opportunity of magic in her botanical work. She'd sped them along in their growth so that they were fully mature within a few weeks. She wanted flowers in time for Christmas.
Three roses she cut—one still only a bud—that she'd treated herself. Her mother had taught her well.
But not only did she grow roses and other such flora coveted for their flowers. She grew perennial herbs, too. One in particular she had to nurture with heating charms and plenty of space was Arisaema dracontium. Dragon root. Green dragon. Over two feet tall, the herb towered, with an arc of long leaflets on the top of the stem, stretching like an outspread wing. Delicately, Rouge cut away one of its flowers, the fleshy, green sheath it was, with a long protruding, pale yellow tongue—a dragon's tongue.
Rouge liked to believe that everything had a meaning. Flowers, flowers especially, they had meanings, even herbs.
"...Cet enfant sur la paille endormi..."
But even as she set her long-tongued dragon root flower aside with her roses, she knew that maybe it wouldn't be appreciated, not being a traditional, many-petal-bearing bloom. So for good measure, she also cut a yellow chrysanthemum, and tied around it the lead of a Virginia Creeper.
But she had to hurry back to the common room with her bundle of flowers. She needed to catch Barmy, her dear, favorite house-elf, and ask him to make the delivery of a Christmas present down to the dungeons, to a certain student of Slytherin House.
Yes, she'd treated the Green Dragon to rid of its poisonous qualities. She wasn't trying to poison her once-accomplice. She was just giving him some flowers with meanings.
"...C'est l'amour infini... C'est l'amour infini."
"Sweet night, holy night,
In the heavens, the star shines.
The foretold mystery comes true.
This child sleeping on the hay,
Is infinite love,
Is infinite love!"