Miss Moony would like to say that she doesn't own Harry Potter, and that she had no help with this story from Miss Wormtail, Miss Padfoot or Miss Prongs.

Slightly Tom/OC, and written while listening to the Pete Yorn's cover of Dancing in the Dark on repeat. Also, slightly inspired by the movie Constantine, which is where I got all my information regarding to lung cancer (I can only hope that it's accurate). The teensiest HBP spoilers.

------- I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good -------

Blood

Ariane Nila is dark haired and dark eyed and pale skinned and Tom sometimes thinks that she's the most beautiful girl in the world. She's from old blood on her da's side, but her ma's a Squib. She's known Muggles all her life; known their judgemental ways, their powerful belief that all magic is inherently evil.

It's not her background that makes her beautiful, though, or her looks. It's that deep blue aura that shines blindingly around her when he slips into his magical vision. Ariane is the Heir of Ravenclaw: The last of their line.

Once upon a time, she brought him to her home in Norfolk, and showed him her da's hidey-holes. There was an old, tarnished silver ring in there, shut away in a dusty old box, undecorated except for the carved bird on the lid.

Ravenclaw's, she told him, and let him take it out before putting it back in the box and stashing it away in its dusty little corner.

High up in the owlery, she takes out one of those muggle cigarettes she's stolen from her grandma, and lights it with her wand. Tom wrinkles his nose at the smell, and asks her, 'Why do you smoke those things?'

She looks at him simply and says, 'Ma always tells grandma to stop; that they'll kill her one day. She calls them poison sticks.' She laughs. 'No muggle can kill me.'

But they can, and he stares at her in mute fascination and makes no move to help as she falls to her knees, meeting his eyes with betrayal in her own, even as she coughs and hacks, and chokes to death on her own blood.

The funeral is open-casket, and her pale, pale face is ugly to Tom's Sight. The blue is gone, and when he kneels to pick up a handful of dirt, he kisses his closed fist in spite of it.

When he returns to her house in Norfolk afterwards, her family accepts his condolences, and never suspect a thing as he tucks the little wooden box into his robe, putting a magical duplicate in its brown paper wrapping and replacing it in its corner. A fine trophy, Tom thinks, for Not-Quite-Love Lost.