Sunday Morning, 4 September 1977
One day, long ago, she had woken up and all she could see was green.
When she would close her eyes— green. When she would dream— green. Her mother had embedded into her that their blood ran green, for Merlin's sake— and for so long, Eve had been convinced that there was no way she bled any other color but green. Green: the color she absentmindedly picked when buying a quill, a notebook, a cloak. Sometimes, she could swear that even her skin was tinted green.
But now, Eve only saw green when she opened her eyes. Only when it really slapped her across the face and said wake up! Like the first thing she saw that morning: the canopy over her bed— green.
Because Eve could no longer see colors, not really. She couldn't see yellow when someone lamented over how terrible their sister's dress had been, or pink when Aphrodite wondered if she should lift her burgundy-red hair to something lighter, fresher. No, her mind had become the battleground for something else: static. Static noise. She could hear white, she could hear black, brown… But ask her to picture them as she could once upon a time? Impossible. Completely undoable.
Eve lifted her torso up slightly to glance over at the clock sitting on her bedside table, a small groan erupting out from her as she realized the time. She smashed her face back into the pillow. Sleep had come and gone in a blink of an eye. The vexation of her reality giving away to numbness and then emptiness.
She took a deep breath.
Just get up, she commanded herself, letting go of the breath she had been holding onto. Gently, she pulled aside the bed curtains to peek out. Nothing seemed out of place, not from where she observed. She sat up and hung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her feet pressed into the frozen floor, observing the stillness of the early morning.
The stillness of the early morning— the first few moments always so silent. Never lasting. As the day rolled on, everything would come back. The rackets, the music, the voices of everyone and no one. The truth was, it was easier during the day. During the day, she could pretend, wipe it off like it had been some gossiping girls in the background. But during the night— that was hard. Every sound was amplified: the creek in the walls that would've gone unnoticed during daylight was suddenly an earthquake, the buzzing in her head a whole carnival of drums and trumpets, Gamp's snoring akin to a lion's roar.
The war had been going on for nearly ten years, but something had changed. It wasn't a feeling, this was knowing. She knew something had changed because it had gotten worse. Everything had gotten worse that summer as if someone had flipped off the switch and said boo! Growing up, she had been able to live and move as everyone else because of just how rare it had been. But now— it was never a matter of if, but when, and the when had gone from every so often to nearly every day.
That morning, and every morning since she had been in Scotland, had offered her some semblance of peace. The noise was there— but it was distant and didn't concern her. At least, she didn't think it cared much for her attention. It had been louder, more urgent the further south she had been. But there, in the bogland, only in the depths of the night could she really hear it.
"Mm," she heard someone say from in front of her. "Good morning."
Eve woke from her solitary soliloquy and, as an absentminded smile grew on her face, stared glossily as Aphrodite Flint stretched her arms up and over her head towards the sky.
"Morning."
It's bloody cold, Eve thought as her teeth chattered in her jaw and her arms wrapped around her body even tighter than before.
Just before the fall equinox, everyone fooled themselves by thinking it would be the perfect transition from summer to early autumn. The last of the birds would migrate south, the air would be crisp and clean, and the sun would shine for as long as it could through colored trees before it, too, hibernated for the winter. Instead, and as always, she was met with the all too familiar British Isles damp mist that could make even the driest of bones grow mold. The same damp mist she had tried running away from all summer, every summer. But alas, the relentless gray that had chased her all the way from Hook's Head.
Naturally, there was something indefinably romantic about the whole thing. In a way, it was the type of weather that had inspired many a poet to write love sonnets about widowed brides and dishonest men. The castle was tranquil as if not a soul had set foot in it since its founding. The thick fog discouraged morning wanderers, threading and waltzing throughout the land before kissing the lake.
Eve hated it.
That morning she had made three mistakes: waking up the time she had, not questioning why Aphrodite had also woken up the time she had and then engaging in conversation with the witch. Because somehow, in some way, in her own daze of sleep, Eve had been convinced that attending the Slytherin Quidditch tryouts was going to be great fun.
Except now she was frozen to the bone.
She was frozen to the bone sitting in the lower levels of the pitch, on a moist, splintered, rickety bleacher that had not seen construction in what she assumed was a hundred years. All around them, threatening noises vibrated out throughout the columns and rows of wood that kept the flimsy structure standing.
But much to her surprise: it was bustling. Whether it was the crack of dawn or not, the pitch was anything but desolate. Melisende Gamp had already been there, stationed where they were seated now, watching on as Rosalia Selwyn finished the Herbology exercises she had been meant to complete on Friday. Alexander Sykes was seated a few rows above them, chewing on biscuits with a steaming cup of tea in his hands as he cheered Moira Palancher on every time she flew past. In another section, younger years sat— some witches, but mostly wizards who watched on, commenting on who would make what.
For the most part, though, the Slytherins were a silent bunch, murmuring to one another every so often— if even that. The seventh-year witches, especially, had not uttered a word to one another since they had first come together. Both Melisende and Eve made an attempt to be at least partially interested in the bodies dizzily flying back and forth. Aphrodite would make the odd comment or two on some bloke's body, and Rosalia was permanently hunched over, scratching over and rewriting the same sentence a thousand times as she tried to search her brain for last year's information.
"What're you all doing here?" A voice acknowledged from behind them. They turned to see Moira Palancher, their fellow housemate, hop over the benches towards them from where she been with Alexander Sykes. She was in full costume, holding her broom in her hand, as she finally took a seat beside Aphrodite.
"We came to support," Rosalia responded cheerfully. Melisende snorted from beside Eve, but Eve hadn't been paying attention, instead every so often looking around towards the exits, her legs beginning to jump up and down to keep warm. Moira let her broom fall to the side and pulled off the thick leather gloves on her hands. She stretched her fingers, letting them breathe.
"How come you aren't on the field?" Melisende asked her.
"I'm co-captain," she answered, a playful grin plastered on her face. "No need to try out, just observing."
"Oh, I didn't know! That's brilliant," Aphrodite exclaimed, clapping her hands together. Melisende's eyes narrowed on Moira's face.
"Why not captain?" Melisende asked.
"As if they'd ever make a witch captain of the Slytherin team," Moira responded, rolling her eyes. "They'd rather a sixth-year wizard be in charge than their most veteran player, but," she shrugged her shoulders, "it is what it is… It would've been a right pain, none of 'em would've listened to me anyway. "
"Bollocks," Melisende chimed in, her lips pressing tightly as she and Eve both watched the field. The players darted back and forth with their bodies as they tried to reach for quaffles and smash others with bludgers.
"Didn't know you were one for the game, Kavanagh," Moira commented, leaning over, her elbows pressed into her knees to glance at the witch.
"Not particularly, no," she admitted, scrunching her face as her eyes followed the path of a body falling off of a broom towards the ground.
"You ever even come to a game?"
"First-year?" Eve's honesty forced a bubble of laughter to escape from Moira.
Silence ensued, the four witches falling into their typical habits— Rosalia rushing to finish what she believed was procrastinated work, Aphrodite playing with her nail beds, Moira strategizing the game, and Eve— well, Eve had been sucked back into her vacuum.
And then around the tenth time that Eve had blinked, a body began to convulse in the corner of her eye.
"Fuck me," Moira muttered under her breath, lifting herself and her broom up. She mounted it and jumped off the lower pitches to fly down to the body. Eve watched but could not register what was happening.
Then, all of a sudden, her head whipped around. The noise, that noise, was back. But despite what her instincts would have indicated, it had not traveled with the wind. It had been in there, in her.
She blinked slow, turning back around. As she turned, she caught sight of four boys sitting in the higher sections of the pitch. Aphrodite noticed her friend's apprehension— she, too, turning to look up at them.
"They were the first here," Melisende informed the two witches, watching both of them twist around. "They have not shut the fuck up since— especially Potter, you can hear him from all the way down here."
"Who's got the bottle," Sirius muttered under his breath as the laughter from his friends wavered. He had, once again, despite all the efforts to avoid it, caught sight of his brother in the distance, hovering about five feet off the ground amidst the rest of the potential players. Though he wasn't sure what he had expected, the sight alone put a bitter taste in his mouth.
"We haven't even eaten breakfast yet," Remus commented. Sirius rolled his eyes.
"Fine, bring me toast with that would you, mate? Thanks."
"What'd you expect? It's the Slytherin team," Peter pointed out, directing a whole hand towards the field.
"Cheers, mate, I wasn't sure," Sirius spat back. Peter opened his mouth to reply but quickly shut it as Sirius turned his head around to look at him. Remus looked up from his book at the both of them, placing a brief hand on Peter's shoulder. Peter waved it off, not bothered with Sirius' jibes. "Who bloody cares," Sirius cursed under his breath.
You do, Remus wanted to tell him.
"Fucking hell," muttered James as they watched Niger Seacole, a Slytherin fifth-year, fall off his broom and crash into the ground. Regulus shouted, signaling to the other players to continue their tryout as he flew over to the injured wizard. To the right of them, Remus could see Moira Palancher flying down from the seats to join Regulus and Niger.
"It was only a couple of feet," Sirius said.
"He fell on his back," James returned, not even fully paying attention to what he was saying. Instead, he looked intently at the situation unfolding beyond them. Moira was bent down, placing Niger's head on her lap as she looked up to Regulus with wide eyes.
"Whatever." It was Remus' turn to roll his eyes, but rather than engage, he placed his chin in the palm of his hand as he returned his attention to the book split open in his lap.
"Blimey!" James shouted, standing up in his seat as he watched two younger years go at it with a bludger. "Blow the whistle— Black, what're you doing!? Behind you!"
"What the fuck do they want?" Remus brought his gaze back up to Sirius. The latter wizard had turned his attention down towards the lower sections. He followed his friend's watchful stare, only to be met with two others. Aphrodite Flint and Eve Kavanagh.
He knew them by name and name only. They were friends with each other and not him— and that was the extent of his knowledge. Matter of fact, he could count on one hand the number of times he had actually spoken or interacted in any way, shape, or form with either one of them.
Suddenly, the less-than-cheerful memory of Eve Kavanagh calling him Richard in third-year divination struck him. Sirius had corrected her, and Remus remembered her only response had been looking at the both of them like they were gum stuck to the bottom of her shoes. The name had stuck for quite a while, too, he recalled, with Slytherins coming out of no where to call him Richard and then laugh about it as he walked away.
Actually, Remus could swear that the seventh-year Slytherin witches still called him Richard in the rare times that they spoke.
Initially, it had caused him great distress— he could admit to that. Mostly because he had not quite grasped what the joke was. Why was Richard so funny? To him, Richard was a more than normal and appropriate name to give someone. Sure, it wasn't his name, but it wasn't anything like some of the nicknames his own friends had come up with for others over the years. But over time, he had shaken it off, coming to terms that there were much worse things they could call him. That there were much worse things about him.
"Broom bitches."
"Yeah? And what are we, then?" Remus asked, his face scrunching up. "It's barely ten in the bloody morning on a Sunday, and we're here doing the same thing, mate."
Peter let out a short-lived chuckle from beside him.
"No, the difference is, Moony," James interrupted, twisting his full torso to look at him. "They're here for the blokes, we're here for the strategy— it's completely different."
"How do you know that?" Remus countered.
"Because, I do."
"Okay, I'm over this. Peter, breakfast?" He asked, running a hand through his hair and shutting the book in his lap shut. Remus turned to the wizard next to him, watching as Peter's eyes widened, his head nodding up and down slow with delight.
"Yes. Please, Merlin."
Sunday Night
Eve's shoulder pressed against a cold, bone-chilling stone wall in the first vacant bathroom she could find. Her hand reached out to slam the door shut, the bang resounding and echoing throughout the empty room.
The all too familiar ringing had spread from back to front, beginning as a dull ache in her ears hours earlier. It had been hours. Yes, hours. She lifted her fingers, pressing and rubbing at the sore spot as her eyes remained open, plastered to the window.
"Not now," she whimpered, the corners of her lips turning downwards. "Please, not now."
The only relief at that moment would be to listen. And to listen meant to drown out everything else. And to drown out other noises meant to get their attention. And to get anyone's attention was to scream.
A faint, buzzing sound that drove her to the edge of the world every time.
She took a deep breath, hooking it into her lungs, fingernails pressed into her palms. A pain behind her ears, something scratching at her throat from the inside. She felt like sticking her fingers down there and watching what came back up— but she knew exactly what would come back up.
Though she could not recall perfectly, this felt like how it had all summer. They were closing in on her, they wanted her attention. Fuck you, she said to them— she wanted to shout it, she wanted to write it on the walls, splatter it into the sky. Fuck you, fuck you— whoever you are, whatever it is you want, fuck you.
Eve had learned long ago that they did not respond to curses, much less English curses.
She threw her head back against the wall, forcefully banging into it as the stone fought back— pounding through her head. Her breath grew heavy, her chest heaving up and down. She swallowed— hard, filling up her chambers while the buzzing grew exponentially. Ignoring it always made the suffering worse. Was there any stop? Mercy? Of course not. Never.
The world in front of her glossed over into nothing more than a nightmare.
She ran over to the sink, her hand clutching at her throat as she plugged the pipe and ran the water. The buzzing whirred into her faster and faster, scratching against her ligaments. Her breath drew heavier and heavier, rough and aching as her mind began to turn black, focusing on the noise. Every moment that passed, the world only grew dimmer and dimmer.
She bit down on her tongue, cheeks, anything to keep that icky blackness from rising up and climbing out. Soon enough, metal pierced every inch of her mouth, the taste of hot iron that she forced back down into the pits of her stomach.
Torture.
And without a second thought, she plunged her face into the overflowing sink and opened her mouth.
The scream was nothing more than muted, turning into bubbles that eventually popped against the porcelain basin. She screamed, screamed, and screamed— and as she did, all noise faded. The noise, the buzzing, the running water, everything faded.
Decipherable words. She could understand now— directions, commands, information.
But Eve's purpose then and there was not to listen, but to drown. Despite the natural human instinct to survive, she beat all odds and fought her own damn body from lifting up out of the water. Her screaming, her lungs shrieking for oxygen, for fresh air— telling her get up, get up, get up. And instead, her hands grasped the edge of the ceramic sink, crushing her fingers into the stone as she kept her thrashing body from pulling up.
At some point, her lungs gave in and she collapsed to the floor.
Monday Morning, 5 September 1977
Unfortunately, it was not the first nor the last time. The awakening. Would she survive? Was this what it felt like to die? No, death couldn't feel like this. It couldn't feel like she was stuck between two walls, two walls that slowly closed in on her. Her hands placed against them— spread apart and holding them open as if she was Atlas who held up the world. Death was supposed to be liberating, freeing. Painless.
Though her eyes could not open— she very well knew she was alive. Her body, from where it was amassed on the floor, lurched forward, expelling the contents of her stomach onto her very own lap. The girl heaved inward and then lifted up and forward again as she purged, for a second time, whatever was inside her.
It was water.
Sink water, at that.
And yesterday's lunch.
"Ugh," Eve groaned, lifting the back of her hand and rubbing it across her mouth. Her head lolled to the side, her temple hitting the bottom of the sink basin. She still could not open her eyes entirely. Every muscle quivered, her head lifting and banging against the bottom of the sink again. And again. Harder and harder.
The understanding squeezed the air out of her, her chest tightening. She had not escaped herself. She could not escape herself. No matter where she went, it would always follow her.
After what seemed like forever, she managed to put two feet on the ground and lift herself up. She grabbed the corner of the sinks, holding herself up over them. Her eyes looked up at her reflection through her lashes. Shadows covered her face, veins popping out on her forehead, a raw redness forming on her temple.
Eve closed her eyes to listen carefully to the distance— nothing, except the occasional clanging of the pipes in the bathroom.
Whoever it had been, they were long gone now.
Whatever, she thought to herself, opening her eyes back to the witch standing there, looking down at her in the mirror. WHATEVER, she screamed in her own head. All the blood pumped into her right fist as she brought it up, pulled it back, and released it on the glass.
"Fuck, ow!" She yelped, holding her right hand and squeezing it.
Of course, she said, looking at the mirror that had remained completely intact save for the oily knuckle-prints now staining its distorted glass. Of course.
Later that Same Monday Morning, September 5
"Lily," Dorcas Meadowes said, looking at her friend as she approached where they sat in the Great Hall. They were not the only, Lily noted. It seemed as if everyone was crowded around one particular section of each table. Some had their mouths gaped, others shoved the paper in their peers' faces, and a minority had continued on with their day as if the whispers weren't filling up the whole room. Lily immediately stopped, looking around the room with scrunched brows and a slightly tilted head.
"What? What's going on?"
"Look," Dorcas said, lifting the Daily Prophet in her hands and shaking it towards Lily. She stepped closer, her eyes widening as she read the headlines.
"What?" She whispered, grabbing the newspaper in her own hands. "Dundee? But that's right here."
"He's getting bold," Sirius mumbled from where he was seated in the center of the crowd, a finger on the corner of the page of someone else's paper. "Didn't think he would dare come all the way up here."
"You think?" Lily asked him. Without putting much thought into it, she took a seat right next to the wizard— her eyes as big as a deer caught in headlights. James' gaze darted between the two of them, even Remus had peered over at them from where he was shoveling eggs into his mouth. "You think he'll come here?"
"No," Sirius said without a second thought. "But," he lifted his brows quickly, tilting his head slowly back to indicate behind him. "A little too quiet, today, eh?" Lily threw her chin over her shoulder, sparing a look at the students behind her— she hated to admit it, but it was true. As everyone else hovered around the few individuals with news subscriptions, the Slytherin table was a bit too quiet that morning. Going about their lives as if the world around them didn't exist— as if it was just them in that infinite universe.
Lily's lips pressed into a tight line as she looked back down to the paper in between them all.
"You know… we shouldn't assume the worse," Dorcas began, taking the paper and folding it in half so the two moving images no longer stared at them. Her hopeful expression fell as all eyes turned to her, none of them making a sound.
"Who are they?" Lily knew she could have read the newspaper right in front of her, but her heart was in no place for the details.
"Worked for the Ministry's Investigation Department, " James answered. The two of them locked eyes, the last of the explanation on his lips— but he didn't have the stomach to say it aloud. Lily knew, she had known since she saw their images.
Muggleborns working for the Ministry's Investigation Department.
They had flown too close to the sun.
At the entrance, Eve stopped short, her eyes scanning the room in front of her.
It didn't take a genius to know. The moment she had walked into the Great Hall that morning, she had felt it. One look around the room— something bad had happened. Not even a week back, and the war had already come knocking on their front door. She walked over to the Slytherin table, her eyes peering over her housemates.
The rest of the hall had an air of unease, the Slytherin table — though — was stiff. Tense as an unstretched muscle. No one talked to anyone else, no one dared look at anyone else— as if they were all walking around with eyes on them. As if someone was watching them and their every move, waiting for them to mess up.
"May I?" Eve stopped— the only person occupied at the whole table with what seemed to preoccupy the rest of the school was Alexander Sykes. The wizard turned around to look at her, gesturing with his hand for her to go right ahead. She took a seat next to him and Moira.
TWO VANISH: VAST HUNT IN EASTERN SCOTLAND
Her eyes dropped to the pictures displayed large and square in the center, just in case anyone had seen them. Two women: one a bit older with spectacles as round as oranges, the other younger, her hair cut short with gelled curls pressed tight into her scalp and forehead.
Ah, fuck, she said to herself, her blinking increasingly becoming more rapid. Her gaze ping-ponged across the black and white print. Because she knew they were dead, like very dead. She knew they had died about twelve hours ago. She knew that she had heard them dying and drowned herself instead of doing anything useful about it because she could not be bothered to hear them dying.
Was it guilt? No—how could she feel guilty? She didn't know them, she didn't really know how any of it worked. Sure, it happened to her— but the details were blurry, the window foggy. How could she blame herself? No, Eve could easily absolve herself of all and any blame— that wasn't what made her heart race... But the realization that if two witches in Dundee could be murdered— what was stopping someone from murdering right there at Hogsmeade? What about Hogwarts? And how many more would be murdered in Dundee, Montrose, Inverness, and Portree?
Execution Day had arrived a bit too soon for her liking.
Is this it? She asked herself, or was it about to get much, much worse?
"Pity," Eve said, dropping the paper to the table. Moira peered over the rim of her goblet to look at her.
"Is it?" Alex asked. They locked eyes, Eve suddenly unsure what the right answer was.
Goosebumps erupted over the back of her neck as she heard Eoin's fork scrape against the silver plate— the sound ear-splitting as the entire table ate and did in stillness. She eyed the metal cutlery, a flash of her own eyeball at the end of it. She grimaced, looking down at the empty plate in front of her, her appetite completely vanished. Sleep barely there— or had she slept? Did passing out on the bathroom floor count as sleep? Her head banging from the dehydration, the knuckles inflamed from trying to one-up her reflection, overall weakness settling in as she hadn't eaten since Sunday lunch.
Was this it?
Author's note: Chapter 3 up! I am trying to move through the story at a decent pace and not have a bunch of filler scenes that make no sense for the actual story. Eve-heavy chapter so you (as readers) could get to know her a bit better, Remus-heavy chapters will be coming up as well. This will be the setting most likely for the fanfic: Eve-center + Remus-center chapters going back and forth between the two mixed in with the other storylines as they pertain to the actual storyline. I hope this was good, next chapter should be up by this weekend at the latest.
Thanks a bunch, M.