A flickering light winked on in the highest and smallest window of the Prince Manor, revealing a young girl scrambling under the covers of her purple bed in the wavering light of a candle. The moon sat high above the manor, casting a grey glow over the grounds awash with grabbing weeds and trees and puddles. The girl poked her head out from under the blankets. Her long brown hair frazzled from the friction, she peered through the window that sat above her reading place and overlooked the gardens and private drive. Small pieces of steel, glass, and mud glinted from the ground, looking every bit a mirror for the sky. She loved living with her grandparents in the family manor, if for no other reason than the beauty that the land retained throughout the seasons.
"Girl, if you don't blow out that candle in the next five seconds…" her Grandmother's smoky voice threatened from the spiraling stairwell outside her door. Not actually fearing the threat but disliking the idea of upsetting her Nona all the same, she scurried to her work desk and blew out the candle, her beady child's eyes scrunched up as she forced all the air out of her mouth. When she opened her eyes, she panicked a little at what the excess blowing had made of her candle.
Her Grandmother knocked on the small white door to her room, "Eileen? Can I tuck you in tonight?"
Eileen's voice shook a little despite her efforts to remain cool, "I am fine, Grandmother, there is no need tonight or any other night."
The elderly woman's voice shook mirthfully, but she covered it in what sounded like scandalized tones, "Girl, I've tucked you in since you wore rags around your bottom," she paused to hear an agonized moan of pre-teen angst from behind the door. "You are far too young for independence, little Prince." She pushed open the door and peaked inside.
Eileen hurriedly opened a book on Russian birds of prey to cover the mess she had made, "Nona, I'm working!" She motioned to a pile of papers on a corner of her desk, each of which was covered in abstract doodles and minimalist notes.
"Eileen, are you terribly daft? It's pitch black in here, how can you see what you're reading? Do you think I am so ill minded? Besides, you're going to get your books oily if you leave them on the wax any longer." Her voice was stern and thorough.
Eileen's head hit the book with a good thump, and she groaned, "How?" She asked without looking up. How did you know I am an imbecile?
Her grandmother smiled down at her and lovingly stroked her ginger hair, "I heard you blow out that candle even at the bottom of the stairs, doll. Also, you hated that chapter on the Lesser Kaliningrad's Orly when I tried to test you on it." She spoke gently, and with gooey sympathy that made Eileen feel worse about something that should have been insignificant.
She raised her head up and closed to book, before speaking with a little resolution, "Right, I apologize for messing up the table. I will clean them myself."
Her grandmother shook her head, "Nah, child, I'll have Lute help me." She absently rubbed her hand on her pant leg where the penny oil from Eileen's curly hair had stained her skin. "Actually," she said after a second of thought, "Why don't you take your bath while I clean up the table tonight?"
Eileen mumbled in her normally persecuted manner and cleared her stuff off the desk before sulking her way out of the door and down the stairs into the kitchen. Her grandmother shook her head, remembering how reluctant Eileen's father had also been when it came to the impractical aspects of personal hygiene.
"Mother, you up there?" Eileen's grandfather pushed past her absently and knocked on the wooden wall of the stairwell.
"Yes, sir, I am. What you want?" her grandmother replied, trudging down the stairs with all of the dishes and dirtied clothes that had been in the young girl's room, while a tall, prune-like house elf followed her carefully with the Eileen's entire table in it's long arms.
"I was wondering if you had cooked dinner yet?" he asked, wiping some of the mud off his worriedly creased brow and peering up at her in the dimly chandeliered-light. He was a hard-working man and spent most of the day hunting, fixing things up around the home, or selling their goods to various merchants in town. They made quite the gain at the end of the day considering how little they required from others, and today he had been pulling weeds in his wife's herb garden to prepare for the lavender's bloom next week, hence the dirt under his nails and across his salt-crusted face.
His wife fumed, largely hooked nose raised as she glared down at him, "You lazy bastard, I told you I wasn't cooking tonight, I was—"
He raised his hands in apologetic surrender, "Yes, ma'am, I know… I was just asking to make sure you had room for the honeycombs I found out back behind the smoker." He pulled a large bundle covered in wax paper out from his plain emerald robes, and handed the crinkling paper package to the silent and abashed woman.
"Oh, dear, I— I'm sorry, dear, I just—"
Eileen sank her head into the water and the world's noises became muffled; her colorless eyes becoming slits as she pinched her nostrils shut and shook her head in the warm and soapy water. She rose back up out of the water, and reached for a small rag laying conveniently on the edge of the tin tub. It was very annoying to her to bathe on the back porch, where mosquitoes and such things could reach her, and where wandering muggles sometimes decided venture in the dead of the night. She shook her head, scrubbing her lips and closed eyes with the knuckles of her bony hands. Damn muggles didn't know when to let things lie, and the old charms that were meant to keep the grounds obscure were falling apart at the seams. Her grandfather had had to obliviate three muggles in the past month… more than in last year combined.
Footsteps shook her from thought, and she turned her head to see her house elf approaching with a steel sponge and messy clumps of homemade herbal soap. Eileen smiled a little bit at the big sad-looking green eyes, each the size of a tea saucer, deep in the face of the unusually tall lavender elf. She was such a sullen-looking elf, Eileen thought, and it cheered her up momentarily, until the abrasive steel touched her skin and the pointy fingers began rubbing the oily soap into her hair, her scalp.
"Ergghh," Eileen groaned, trying to pull away but restrained by the deceptively strong hands of her childhood friend. She growled loudly as those same hands dragged themselves down her scalp and through her wet ringlets, combing thickly and roughly through the knots and nests that found themselves tangled towards the bottom of her hair. Eileen hissed a little as a particularly big tangle was pulled free from her hair, but quickly tuned out the menial working behind her and thought more about the changing times around her hometown.
Soon, she would be eleven and the summer would be in full. The letter she had been dreading would arrive, and she would wake early to the scraping tap of claws against her dainty and fragile window. She would blink with interrupted slumber and heft the window open, then grab the damned generic barn owl with both hands and shake it until it decided that it's master must have been mistaken, they could not want this violent little girl at their institution. Then, when she saw the bird disappear into the sunset, she would set the godforsaken letter aflame, swallow the ashes, and go back to sleep.
Eileen snorted, knowing it would go more like: She wakes, stumbles downstairs with the smell of breakfast meats in her nostrils, and finds her grandparents huddled at the table whispering. They look up, grin and say, "Times come, little Prince, off to Hogwarts you go! Don't let that pesky swinging door hit your little Prince bottom on the way out." Then she collects all of her shabby things and floos into the headmaster's office, where she is greeted like some kind of celebrity.
The house elf poked her shoulder, pulling Eileen from her thoughts. "Lute needs Eileen to stand up, so Lute can clean Eileen's knobby knees," she said with an affected Russian accent.
Huffing, the knobby girl stood up, covering her flat chest with her crossed arms and sending her attending elf a look of pure loathing. She thought she felt the wire dig a bit more into her sensitive and wrinkly kneecaps She shivered despite the humid heat and hoped that no poor muggle chose this moment to show up at their backdoor, or she would simply have to eat them.
She would be eleven shortly, she realized with a little catch in her breath. She never could quite keep track of the date during the lazy days of summer, but she knew the lavender bloomed weeks after her birthday. It was not a big occurrence normally, her grandparents asked her what she wanted and she usually received a large gift and a few smaller things. The year before, she had gotten her own baby magpie, and a few books and dresses. She hated the dresses, and had only read the books once each, but the magpie, which she named Ophelia, was so useful and pretty—not very nice, admittedly, but very pretty. In the morning, Ophelia could be used to fetch news from town in the form of notes by the paperboys who stood by the only bar in town, and at night she sat on her perch in Eileen's room and ate insects that invaded her air. Ophelia had actually attacked the girl's grandmother once, when she had attempted to clean her large brass cage, but other than that she was just generally snooty and snippy.
Eileen knew her grandparent's wouldn't let her take Ophelia with her to the damned school. Could she argue that point as a reason to avoid the school like the plague, that her poor familiar would be so stricken with sadness without Eileen there? Another snorted at the unlikelihood emitted from Eileen's lengthily hooked nose, and she wiggled her limbs to bring herself back to present and away from her mind's drifting.
"Lute, are you quite finished scrubbing my butt?" Eileen asked snottily, sneering down at the elf, which was indeed scrubbing quite roughly at the girl's ass.
"Lute think you is sliding around in mud on bottom quite on purpose, Domnisoara," Lute said, sniffing indignantly, and digging into the tender fat with a touch of spite.
"Oi! You dirty little—"
"You is the one with a poor elf cleaning dirt out of places not meant to have dirt!" Lute snipped, spinning the girl around roughly so she could begin on the other side. Eileen sniffed, quite as Lute had moments before, and turned her nose up. She heard the quiet mumbles of her grandparent's speaking, and assumed they had finished the honey and jam sandwiches already, without her. She fumed silently. She really liked honey and jam.
"Domnisoara, you know they is saving you one," the elf chided, seeing the petulant pout upon her friend's aristocratic lips.
"Yes, but, they ate without me," she said, surprisingly saddened by such a little thing.
"You are much a child, Eileen," she eased.
"Yes, but—" Eileen tried protesting, knowing there was no reason for her to be upset.
"No buts, you is being worried about their forgetting you, yah?" Lute asked, finally getting off her knees to begin combing the penny oil in Eileen's hair that would keep it curled and shining for at least a day.
"Yes, I guess I is—" (a slight wince), "I mean, I am a bet touchy. I've never really left for so long, you know," she replied, looking into the big green eyes of her best friend.
"Well, they is not knowing this yet, and I is not telling them," Lute whispered in a conspiratorial manner, "but Lute is not leaving Eileen to just up and leave!"
Eileen gasped and wrapped her arms around the spindly and prune-skinned shoulders of Lute, then asked, "Merlin shit, are you serious, Lute?"
Lute smacked the back of Eileen's head lightly, and gently admonished, "Hush, too many bad words, Domnisoara. Of course I is being serious. I is coming too, as I is not leaving you and also knowing bits and few of the elfs at Hogwarts."
Eileen felt like crying and dancing for joy knowing she wasn't going there alone, and hugged her friend even tighter, before realizing a few moments later that she was cold as hell and shivering. She clumsily hopped out of the washtub and managed to stub her big toe as she grabbed a towel from one of the antique white rocking chairs and quickly wrapped it around herself.
"Eileen? Are you and Lute fine out there? I heard some swearing," her grandfather asked, before poking his head out of the back door with his great big hand covering his eyes.
"Yes sir, I'm fine," Eileen said, hopping around agitatedly as she rubbed her foot.
Lute walked past him with a rag over her slender purple shoulder and the steel sponge in one hand, "She is always banging toes and knees and noses, Silas."
He shook his head and lifted the hand from his face, "I know Lute. She'll be a looker in a few years, but for now she's just a little, lanky Prince. Can't anything be done for it."
Eileen only rolled her eyes and limped inside with as much dignity as possible. Her grandfather, chuckling, followed and let the door swing shut behind him.
Eileen stomped up the stairs, glad for the numbness that sank into her foot, and slammed the antique door as she sat down in front of her classic vanity. Laying her head on the cool and dry wood, she blindly traced a finger on the carved white ivy surrounding the long oval mirror. She reached into a small drawer that pressed against her ribs, and grasped a silver brush with white hair bristle, firmly brushing her hair in short strokes from bottom to top. The reflection in the glass followed suit, and Eileen eyed her pale skin and freckles with suspicion. She agreed with her grandfather, she wasn't very attractive. She had a long face, much like her grandfathers, with high cheekbones and small, slanted eyes. Her hair fell about her face, emphasizing nothing but her pointed jaw and broad brow. She had thin, brown lips, and the upper was a bit bigger than the lower lip. She looked delicate and brutish, like some of the Byzantine paintings that had been popping up locally.
She stood up, laying the brush gently down on the vanity, and turned a bit, letting the towel drop at her feet. She just as dreadfully pale all over, and the annoying length was constant in her limbs. Her knees and elbows were knobby, just as Lute had said, and though she had bigger breasts than most girls her age, they were pointy and nearly triangular. They emphasized the width of her chest, which in turn made her hips seem even narrower. She shook her head, and tried to rouse herself from the aesthetic pity-party. When she was older, she told herself, she would look like her grandmother had when she was younger. For now, she decided, she was just out of luck.
"Honey, Lute and I have finished polishing up the table," her grandmother said, and pushed open the door. Eileen nodded and helped align the table properly with the dresser. A few minutes after her grandmother had left, she lie in bed, hoping for sleep and wondering when it would be too late for such things.