GUESS WHO'S BAAAAACK! Me. I'm back.
If anyone was wondering, I succeeded in writing all 50,000 words required for NaNoWriMo. Barely. (I got sick in the middle and was delayed. :P)
To people who read this long after it's posted: This chapter was originally an author's note coupled with several omakes to inform readers that I would be gone for November doing NaNoWriMo.
And yes, this chapter is really long. Without author's notes, it's 4,953 words.
"So you're saying that a voice was speaking from inside the walls?" Envy asked skeptically. He took a large bite of his egg sandwich.
Harry nodded, munching on some bacon.
Envy sighed. "Well, I would say I believe you, but it was pretty late and you were tired. You were probably just imagining things." Unless Pride had ended up here too. Come to think of it, he'd never really thought of what had happened to the other homunculi. . . .
"I didn't imagine it!" Harry snapped, breaking Envy from his thoughts. "It's just . . ." He trailed off, as if unable to put into words what he wanted to say.
"Hm." Envy swallowed another bite of his sandwich. "Well, you should probably go to Madam Pomfrey and get your mind checked, or something. Just in case. I don't want my friend's brain going down the drain, y'know?"
"He's not crazy," Hermione broke in. "Maybe there really was something in the walls."
"Well, that might be possible." Envy took another bite of his sandwich.
"Of course it is. The voice led to the writing on the wall, it's got to mean something," Ron put in as he impaled a sausage on his fork.
"I heard it while in detention with Lockhart too, I forgot to tell you."
"Let me guess: he didn't hear the voice either, just like Ron and Hermione." Envy popped the last bite of precious sandwich into his mouth. It was a shame—that had been an excellent sandwich, wonderful taste. If only it had lasted longer.
Harry sighed, and Envy forced himself to stop mourning his sandwich. "Yeah. But I know it's real."
Hm. Well, there was magic in this world, he supposed, so it was quite possible that whatever this voice was wasn't all in Harry's imagination. "I'll agree with you unless Madam Pomfrey says you're insane." He reached for another sandwich. It was Sunday morning, the day after Halloween, and seeing as there were no classes today, he had plenty of time to satisfy himself with as many sandwiches as he pleased. He swallowed a bite and took a swig of pumpkin juice. "Do we have anything planned today, or are we just going to lie around doing nothing and pretending yesterday never happened?"
"Well, we don't have anything planned," Hermione said, poking her porridge with her spoon. "But we should get our homework done. We have an essay for Potions due on Wednesday, and I'm only half finished."
Ron groaned and Harry didn't say a word at this reminder.
Envy swallowed another bite of his new sandwich. "My homework's still down in my dormitory, and I don't exactly want to go down there and get it."
Ron rolled his eyes. "It's not that far, Envy. We'll have to walk all the way up to Gryffindor Tower for ours."
"It's not that!" Envy protested. "I'm not that lazy, jeez. I just don't want to bump into any of the people down there; they're not well wishers coming to bow and give me candy out of the goodness of their hearts."
"Oh." Ron was silent.
"You could wait until after breakfast," Hermione suggested. "There's bound to be less people then than there are now."
Envy grinned. "Yeah, but who ever said I wanted to do homework?" He took another bite of his delicious sandwich, commending whoever was down in the kitchen making them.
"Our homework's not going to do itself!" Hermione huffed. "Have you finished any of your homework at all?"
"Hm . . . just the Transfiguration stuff. The rest can wait until I'm scrambling to get it done on time."
"You can't just—"
And from there, the argument spiraled further. Ron decided to pick sides and went with Envy while Harry remained neutral, not wanting to get between his friends.
"What would we do if we don't do homework, anyway?" Hermione snapped eventually.
"Eh . . ." Envy exchanged a glance with Ron.
"We could go flying," the red-head suggested.
Harry brightened then, and seemed much less hesitant to choose between his friends. "Yes!" he agreed. "I'll go get my—"
"I'm not that fond of flying," Envy interrupted. He had swallowed the last of his sandwich by now, and he wasn't sure if he was hungry enough to stomach another one. It would probably be best to just stop eating.
Harry and Ron looked horrified.
"It's okay," Envy drawled, not suppressing a grin at the looks on their faces. "But not my thing."
"See?" Hermione spoke with triumph. "Envy agrees with me—and I don't like flying either."
"Hold on, I never said I wanted to do homework," Envy protested. "I just said that I don't like flying."
They had all finished their breakfasts now, although Harry had finished first, seeing as he hadn't joined in the arguments.
"Then what are you planning to do?" Hermione asked. "We can't all seem to agree on one thing."
"We could walk around the lake," Harry suggested.
"That would be boring," Envy groaned, leaning an elbow on the table. "Is there anything interesting to do in this place?"
"We could practice spells in an empty classroom," Hermione began, "or do our homework in the library."
Ron and Envy both shot her mild glares.
"What? We could find something interesting in the books. We don't just have to use them for homework, you know, there are a lot of things in the library that they never teach you. The sooner we get the homework out of the way, the more time we'll have for other things, anyway."
Hm . . . well, Envy could see her point, but that didn't mean he wanted to give in. Still, it might be a good idea to get his homework over with quickly for once. Which meant going downstairs and back to the dormitory. What a pain. . . .
"Fine," he conceded. "Just this time, though."
Ron groaned and muttered a grudging agreement, and Harry followed in that pursuit. And thus, they all stood and left the Great Hall.
"We'll go up to our dormitory to get our homework," Hermione decided. "Meet us in front of the library."
"All right," Envy sighed. He started toward the stairs leading to the dungeon, and once he was sure their backs were facing him, he turned and watched his friends depart up the sweeping staircase leading to the higher floors. Hopefully no one would bother him in the common room; he'd prefer to be in and out as fast as he could, and perhaps beat his three Gryffindor allies to the library doors.
With a deep breath, he descended the stairs. He passed only one other person on the way down, a still-sleepy member of the higher years, one of those who didn't bother him. He supposed that most of the people still in the common room would be like that, tired and not quite registering their surroundings. That would be good for him; all he would have to do was walk straight through and back, and not a single head would turn.
As it happened, this was not to be.
It seemed Malfoy had returned from breakfast earlier than Envy had—at least, that was what it looked like. He was quite sure he had seen him in the Great Hall when he himself had entered, which wasn't astonishing, since Malfoy was always up early enough to use that spell to yank him into the air.
And there he was, seated in one of the tall armchairs as if it were a throne, laughing his head off at something which had probably been said by him, since his two gorilla bodyguards were too stupid to come up with anything that he might find funny.
This, Envy decided, meant that he would have to be as quiet and unobtrusive as he could in order to get in and out as fast as he possible. With that in mind, he began tiptoeing along the edge of the room, dodging around a couch halfway to the dormitory doors. Unfortunately, it seemed he wasn't going fast enough, because a drawling voice interrupted his steady trek to freedom, though it would be brief.
"Novus." Malfoy smirked. "Not with your little friends? Have they finally abandoned you? I don't blame them, you're even lower than that Mudblood Granger."
Envy clenched his fists. The three other students in the room chose that moment to notice him as well, leaving him in the spotlight. This wasn't the first time; usually he had a larger audience, but of all the inconvenient moments . . .
"And really, that's saying something, since she's about as low as anyone can get without being a Muggle. Didn't you grow up in a Muggle orphanage?"
Envy's hand twitched toward his wand, but he resisted the urge to draw it. That would be a bad idea; who knew what kind of trouble he would get into for injuring the brat?
"Yeah, that sounds about right; did they teach you to roll in the mud with them?"
Wait, never mind, screw it. No way was he going to let that little piece of dirt insult him and everyone he knew.
Envy's hand shot into his pocket and his wand was out before he even registered drawing it, poised to fire a spell, anything that could cause Malfoy pain—but before a word could slip over his tongue, Malfoy was incanting a spell of his own.
Not for the first time, his legs were jerked out from beneath him, leaving him suspended in midair.
One of the audience chuckled hesitantly, and was soon followed by another. This chain of events continued on until each of the few people in the room was laughing.
Embarrassment flooded through Envy, making his face grow red even faster than it already was, but anger soon overrode the emotion. "Why you little—" He then proceeded to curse Malfoy out in every way he knew—not with spells, his wand had fallen away from him when he was jerked from the ground, just words of every sour flavor.
The look on Malfoy's face changed from great amusement to mild shock at the expletives flying from his captive's mouth.
Once Envy couldn't think of a single new insult, he stopped, panting. How long had he been hanging there, upside down in the air? He was quite sure his face was growing purple by now from the blood rushing into his head. That brat had better let him down soon. . . .
However, Draco didn't seem to be in the sort of mood that allowed him to release anyone from a cruel spell of his. His face broke out into an amused smirk again when Envy stopped speaking, and he opened his mouth to say something new. "Well, looks like the Muggle mouths are as filthy as the dirt they roll in."
Envy couldn't help it. The anger running through him was too much to hold—he had been humiliated by this boy and his housemates time and time again, and he bore it despite how loudly his gut told him he needed to send them flying through the window and destroy them for their insolence, and this was the last straw.
His anger was given a physical form—more like one made of energy, actually. There was a small shockwave of bright light that shot about the room around him in an ever growing circle, and he dropped to the floor with a stifled yelp.
A small crash sounded as tables and chairs were knocked to the ground, then there was silence.
Envy clambered to his feet, blinking a couple of times and straightening his robes. He turned, observing the disheveled common room, just in time to see one of his classmates faint.
Malfoy stared at him in dumb incomprehension, his bodyguards doing the same and managing to look even stupider. The two other Slytherins who hadn't fainted blinked several times and rubbed their eyes, hair sticking up in every direction.
Well, that was unexpected. . . . Didn't have time to think about it, though, he still had to get his bag and hurry to the library.
With a small huff, Envy brushed off his robes one more time and stalked to his dormitory. He retrieved his bag from where he had left it under his bed for safekeeping from his dorm mates and marched back into the common room, where everyone was just getting over their shock.
"Well, well," Malfoy sneered. "Who would've thought that Novus hadn't gotten control over his accidental magic yet?"
"Shut it," Envy snapped, still continuing his journey across the room. He stopped halfway to retrieve his wand from the ground, then continued to the door, which he opened as fast as he could.
"If this continues, who knows how slowly—"
Gritting his teeth and resisting the urge to turn around, dash across the room, and punch Malfoy square in the face, Envy made his way down the dungeon hall and up into the entrance hall.
The stone wall slid closed behind him.
'-'
Envy made it to the library doors about three seconds after Ron, Harry, and Hermione did—it was practically a miracle that he wasn't suspiciously late, although that might have had something to do with the fact that he ran most of the way there.
Their stay in the library was dull and uneventful as usual. It wasn't until they exited the library that they were intercepted by Professor Snape. Or Envy was, at least.
"Mr. Novus," he began, "I heard about a certain . . . incident down in the common room. Care to explain?"
Envy sighed. "Look, that was an accident. I didn't—"
"You almost destroyed it; the lake water nearly spilled into the dungeon. Your classmates could have died."
The rest of the quad was gaping, staring from Envy and Snape.
Envy crossed his arms. "Well—"
"That's another detention, Novus," Snape interrupted. "A week of them. Every evening after dinner, don't be late." With that he strode away, robes billowing behind him as usual.
"Uh . . ." Ron looked away from the Potion Master's retreating figure and stared at Envy in confusion. "What was that about?"
Envy groaned and dragged his hand down his face. "I'd rather not talk about it."
"What did he mean, 'another detention'?" Hermione asked, shifting the strap of her bag on her shoulder.
Harry frowned. "Why would the lake water flood the dungeon if you destroyed the common room?"
"Ugh! Okay, I'll explain when we're somewhere no one will hear. The other Slytherin's would kill me if they found out I told you. . . ." He muttered the last part, just loud enough for his friends to hear.
"Let's go down to the lake," Hermione suggested. "There aren't very many people there, I think, I saw out the window before we left the library."
Now that he thought about it, Envy remembered looking out the window too. How convenient that Hermione had remembered.
They passed few people as they made their way down to the ground floor. There had been several other students in the library as well, taking care of the homework they'd let sit yesterday in their eagerness to get to the Halloween feast, so that explained where several people were.
Not one of the students they encountered was a Slytherin, and Envy supposed they must have all heard about what happened in the common room and gone to have a look. If they had heard right, the weren't in for much of a surprise.
Hermione had been quite right when she said that there weren't many people by the lake. Three students chatted by a beech tree on the shore, and one other was seated on the ground a little farther away.
Envy waited until they had walked a safe distance around the lake before explaining anything. "All right, I have detention with Snape tonight because I snuck out last night to find you guys," he began, and from there explained what had happened last night and the events that had transpired in the common room a couple hours ago. When he finished, the expressions on his friends' faces ranged from worried and shocked to tentatively amused.
Harry repeated his question from earlier. "Why would the lake have spilled into your common room?"
"The Slytherin common room is in the dungeons, and dungeons extend under the lake," Envy explained. "If you look out the windows, you can see the squid and other things swim by sometimes."
"Huh. Cool."
"Oh, I wish I could've seen the look on Malfoy's face when you did accidental magic," Ron groaned.
Envy grinned. "It was priceless, not to mention all the other Slytherins. Crabbe and Goyle just looked stupider than usual."
"How can you find any of this funny?" Hermione snapped.
Harry decided to chip in here with his own depressing reminder. "Who knows what Snape's going to make you do in detention."
Envy's face fell slightly at this. "Yeah, well," he sighed, "I can take whatever he throws at me."
They all fell silent after that, though if Envy had to guess, he would say they all perceived the silence to be filled with something different. For Envy, it was a sense of dread and faded amusement. He was pretty sure he wouldn't be feeling this way if it weren't for Harry. Oh well.
'-'
As it turned out, Professor Snape had decided that the best punishment for Envy would be sorting the slimiest of potion ingredients.
Although Envy had correctly said he could take whatever Snape threw at him, he was rather displeased to be doing this.
He groaned and cursed under his breath when he dropped a frog liver for the fifth time. These things were so damn slippery! It was hard to look on the bright side of things, but if he cared to take a peek, he would remember that, "at least he was allowed to wear gloves."
Neither he nor Snape said a word to each other during the detention. Envy was pretty sure that he would end up cursing the professor out every time he tried to speak to him, so he supposed that was a good thing.
Snape let him go at last at about eleven o'clock, and when Envy returned to the common room, he found it was now completely undamaged.
The next evening's detention passed in much the same fashion as the previous, although Snape did say one thing;
"Watch where you put that crocodile heart."
Envy didn't answer; his tone would probably be aggressive enough that Snape would use it as an excuse to give him another detention for disrespect to a teacher, or something.
The third detention was also silent, just as the first; the only significant thing to happen was Envy realizing that he was starting to get the hang of handling the slimy potion ingredients.
Snape seemed to notice that he was getting more adept at handling what was being assigned to him and decided he might as well make it harder for him by switching to another ingredient. This was the fourth detention.
Envy shot the professor a glare as he sat down to sort the dried and crushed herbs he had been given to sort. The hard part of this was that if a single leaf ended up in the wrong bottle, a potion would be left in ruin, and the maker might not even know it and therefore end up doing something terrible to themselves.
By this time, Envy was getting quite used to this routine; enter, sit at a table with the potion ingredients, and sort them. It was all becoming rather dull. He kind of wished something interesting would happen.
He skipped the fifth. As it happened, he didn't skip because he was annoyed at having to go; he skipped because he was upset.
As you can tell, this was not a daily occurrence. It wasn't even weekly, or monthly, for that matter—Envy hadn't been this upset since the moment before he killed himself, though he wouldn't admit it.
It had all started after the last classes ended on the day of the fourth detention. Envy had hurried to put his bag away in his dormitory before any other Slytherins made it down and sprinted back to the doors of the Great Hall to wait for Ron, Hermione, and Harry.
And he waited. And he waited.
This was taking way too long. . . .
And finally, once the doors had opened to allow students entrance and many of the seats in the Great Hall were filled, along they came.
Envy noticed Ron was slightly red in the ears when they made it to him, and also vaguely irritated. Harry and Hermione looked a little ruffled.
Envy raise his eyebrows at the sight. "Mind telling me why you're so late?" He addressed the question to Hermione, leaving the other two to watch.
"Well, we went poking about the area where Mrs. Norris was petrified," she began, and then proceeded to explain what had happened in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and their being caught by Percy.
Ah, that explained why Ron's ears were red.
They headed into the Great Hall then, and after a short search, they were able to acquire seats somewhere near the middle of the Gryffindor table.
"Anything interesting happen today?" Envy asked, ladling soup into a bowl. He would have preferred a sandwich, but they didn't serve those at dinner.
"Well," Hermione started, continuing to be the main speaker of the Gryffindors, "I asked about the Chamber of Secrets in History of Magic—" She explained what had happened, occasionally being interrupted by Ron and Harry, who added unimportant details such as Binns's surprise that anyone wanted to ask a question.
"Slytherin's monster, eh?" Envy frowned. "I haven't heard anything about that before."
"Well, you are sort of isolated," Hermione said tentatively. She paused. "Maybe you could ask around a bit?"
Envy snorted. "You kidding? They'll tear me to bits. Even the ones who don't do anything to me aren't remotely friendly if I try to talk to them." He chewed and swallowed a spoonful of soup. "I figured that out a while ago."
Hermione winced, and Harry nodded understandingly. Ron remained silent.
They ate without speaking for a little while, passing glances every now and then before Ron spoke up.
"Don't s'pose you know who the heir could be, do you Envy?"
Envy looked up from where he was spooning the last of his soup into his mouth. He waited until after he had swallowed to reply. "Well, it could be anyone. I don't talk to any of them, and I only talked to a few of them once or twice before they all decided I was a blood traitor."
"It could be Malfoy," Ron suggested.
Envy scoffed. "That wuss? No way."
"But it could be," Ron persisted. "Like you said, it could be anyone."
'-'
Anyone indeed; that was the start of everything. Over the next day, Envy could feel a kind of invisible wall building between he and Ron—not exactly hostility, but more like a sort of suspicious caution coming from his red-haired friend. He didn't notice it at first; everything seemed normal, rumors flying about the heir, classes, meeting up with friends at meals, but it grew more noticeable as the day wore on.
He wasn't sure why it was there at first; as far as he knew, he had given Ron no reason to fear him—but while listening to some particular rumors, he remembered.
He had said anyone could be the heir last night. But the prime suspects were Slytherins, and—well, Envy was a Slytherin.
He supposed it made sense that Ron would pin him as one of the suspects. He had never been as close to the red-head as he was to Harry and Hermione, what with Ron's animosity toward all Slytherins, and he had always been close to toeing the line of suspicion with him.
But even after realizing it made sense, it still stung a bit. He didn't have many friends, and one of the few he did was drifting away from him.
It was even worse the day after that, the day he skipped detention. Envy supposed Ron must have had time to think when he was lying awake in bed, and so the suspicion had grown deeper.
Ron was always sure not to seat himself directly next to Envy during breakfast and lunch. They didn't speak to each other, and Envy had noticed Harry sending him wary glances once or twice.
It wasn't until dinner that anything happened; they arrived slightly late, and though they managed to find seats at the end of the Gryffindor table near the doors, Envy and Ron ended up sitting next to each other.
The four of them remained uncharacteristically silent as they consumed their dinner, and Envy could practically feel Harry and Hermione's gazes trailing to and from he and Ron every few minutes
After awhile of this uncomfortable quiet, Ron finally said something. "Are you ever going to go back to sitting at the Slytherin table, Envy?" It was stated casually, but Envy could feel the underlying suspicion.
He tensed slightly. "Only during feasts. Snape makes sure I sit with Slytherin during all the important things. Other than that, I think I'll stay here." He took a sip of pumpkin juice, trying to keep his face neutral. He really didn't like where this was going. . . .
"I don't suppose you could head over there and pretend to be one of them for a night?" Picking up his fork, Ron stabbed a bit of his roast beef with a little too much ferocity.
Envy's eye twitched, and he fought to keep from giving Ron a deadly glare. "And just why would I do that?" He wasn't able to keep the restrained hostility from penetrating his voice.
"Maybe because you're one of them."
That. Was. It.
Envy's hands slammed on the table. "You know what?" he snarled. "If you want everyone to return to their tables so badly, why don't you go to the one where the arrogant pigs sit? Because I'm pretty sure that's where you belong!"
By now, he had caught the attention of several of the people seated around him
"A-arrogant pigs?" Ron spluttered.
"Yes, they're all just like you over there—maybe they could even teach you a lesson about being more superior than you already are!"
"I wasn't being superior, I was just saying that maybe you should go back to the slimy Slytherin table where you belong!"
"Oh, but that's not all, is it?" Envy hissed. "You suspect me, don't you?"
Ron's face was contorted with anger and slowly growing redder. "Of course I do! Even if you're not all like the rest of them, you're still a bloody Slytherin!"
Envy stood up, and the feet of his chair scraped loudly against the floor. "Well," he growled, "I guess I should leave you before your Gryffindor purity is tainted by my depraved Slytherin soul." He looked up and glanced around.
Nearby Gryffindors and students from the tables on either side of them were staring, some of them whispering to each other. The head table was far enough away that none of the teachers had noticed, except maybe Dumbledore, who seemed to look away the moment Envy's gaze turned toward him.
Hermione and Harry were staring between he and Ron, eyes wide.
Envy scoffed, then pushed his chair into the aisle between house tables and stalked away, out of the Great Hall.
Dinner would be ending soon. That meant detention. Well, screw that. Who cared about a damn detention? It didn't do anything for him, and Snape didn't seem to find it pleasurable to make sure he was sorting things correctly anyway.
Envy stalked down the stairs to the dungeon, glaring at the stone wall which led to the common room and walking straight past it. Down, down, deep into the part of the dungeons where no one ever went.
Once he was sure he was far enough from everyone else that no one would hear or find him, he sat down outside one of the doors that lined the walls and put his head in his hands. The anger washed away.
Merlin, he'd been so stupid. Why had he retaliated? He'd probably made Ron's suspicion worse, and if it wasn't, he would certainly be openly hostile now. He wouldn't be able to go near him without causing conflict, which meant also avoiding Harry and Hermione. . . . Bah, what did it matter? He'd seen the wary looks Harry had shot him over the day, and who knew? Maybe Hermione would start suspecting him as well.
Damn it, damn it . . .
A tear slipped out of his eye. He wiped it away furiously.
He shouldn't have gotten attached. Friendships didn't last, and even if they did, one of the friends would die in the end. He supposed he had proven that when he shot Maes Hughes.
That friendship wouldn't have ended, though, if he hadn't come along and done it himself. Or maybe it would have. Perhaps Pride would have reached out with his shadows and made sure there was nothing left of it, or Lust would have caught up and stabbed the officer in the back.
Damn this hurt.
More tears threatened to spill, and he didn't bother to suppress them.
Losing a friendship wasn't supposed to be this painful, was it? He didn't know . . . it wasn't like he'd been sad when Greed left that first time. Just annoyed and perhaps a bit angry that he was abandoning them for his own cause instead of helping Father. But that didn't really matter anymore, did it? He was somewhere else now, and there weren't any homunculi here. Unless one were to count him, but he was a human now, wasn't he? Not having to fulfill any goals other than his own, able to form attachments if he pleased.
He shouldn't have gotten attached.
Yes, that was long. So long. And the end was more emotional than originally intended. Also, Envy loves sandwiches! :D . . . And he thinks one argument means he's lost all his friends. . . . He's so inexperienced with friendship. XD
So, I plan my chapters ahead of time. And about half of what I planned for this chapter didn't happen because it got too long. Yeup.
Anyway, please review! If you spotted any mistakes that I missed, please point them out!
-Quiet Leaf