Helena would sneak into her mother's chambers while her mother was having tea with Godric Gryffindor. She would take the diadem from the pillow her mother kept it on, and then she would conceal it... But how? She was afraid to turn it invisible. It was delicate. She thought about shrinking it, but there was quite a lot of danger in that, as well.
With a nibble of her lip, she grabbed a small bag on her bedside table, and attempted her first Undetectable Extension Charm, which was something she'd seen her mother do hundreds of times. It was really quite useful, she decided when she discovered that she'd done it all right. They should have been teaching it to the students.
The hardest part was the getting everything together for fleeing the castle. She had a broom, but she would go at least the first part of the way, to the village at the very least, on foot. They would expect her to fly, and so that would be the first place they would look, the skies. Helena was determined not to be caught. She'd said her goodbyes. She'd gathered all of her things. All she needed was the diadem.
Slipping down into the corridor, Helena tried her best to look completely like her typical self. No one could know that she was doing anything other than going to see someone for tea, going to meet her friends in the library, off to grab a quick mid-evening snack. There was nothing unusual gone. She would go to her mother's chambers, get the diadem, then go out to the grounds and get her broom, and take off from the edge of the forest. Everything would be fine. No one would suspect a thing.
The trickier part, she knew, as she neared her first destination, would be not to draw attention to herself, going out the front doors when it was growing so dark outside, for by then it would be darkening fast. Perhaps if she got waylaid she could make some excuse about leaving something out in the broom shed that she needed for an assignment. Surely she could think of some book that she might have left out there, something that couldn't possibly wait until morning. Books were very expensive, after all. What if something happened to it?
Only Godric and Salazar would see through a ruse as good as that.
She slipped through the corridors relatively unnoticed, though, and knew no one would have thought a thing of her going into her mother's chambers, so she entered them without hesitation, without bothering to look and see who might be watching.
Helena didn't need to search for her prize. Rowena Ravenclaw didn't bother hiding or locking away the diadem, because stealing it wouldn't have gone undetected by anyone in the castle, with no means of using it without someone finding out.
But Helena wasn't staying in the castle, so none of that mattered. She could use it to her heart's content in the wilds.
There the diadem was, sitting on the cushion her mother always left it on, gleaming slightly in the last vestiges of sunlight that were coming through the thin windowpane. So beautiful it looked that Helena realized after a moment that she had forgotten herself and had been standing there staring at it. Quickly, she snatched up the delicate diadem, gently lowering it into her bag, feeling around to make sure that it hadn't been damaged by any of the meager supplies she had packed, and then, satisfied, she turned and walked back out into the corridor.
It didn't take long to reach the entrance hall, which Helena thought was odd, but time traveled strangely when important things were happening. Perhaps it had something to do with that. There was no one to stop her from leaving, no one to make her stay, no one to witness her departure.
Good. She'd been half worried that Golda would have told her mother or Godric or Helga, or that Christiana would have actually gone out of her way to make Helena stay, to try to convince her to change her mind.
Nothing would change Helena's mind, not even Nathan saying he didn't love her anymore. It would be some design of Gryffindor, and she would trust everything she already knew to be true, nothing more or less.
The air was cool and close that night as she made her way across the grounds toward the broom shed. Helena drew her cloak close around her, pulling the hood up, both to hide her face and shield her from the cool of the night. She wasn't going to catch a chill when she wasn't skilled in healing and she was going somewhere where none could heal her properly.
Helena wished she could have brought Nathan with her. It would have been more difficult, of course, to get out without arousing suspicion. Especially as they were so very careful not to spend more time than necessary together in hours when anyone would be expected to be awake. But she still felt more than a little bit empty without him at her side.
She couldn't stop and think of that. She was almost at her kickoff point, the place where she would last put her feet on Hogwarts grounds, the last bit of the place that had been her home for as long as she could recall.
One last look back at the castle, Helena took a deep breath, mounted her broom, reassured herself that her bag was secure and her cloak was fastened tightly, and then she turned away from the castle and kicked off of the ground. She flew as fast and hard as she could, wanting to get as far away as possible so that if she did give in and look back, she wouldn't be able to see the outline of Hogwarts on the horizon and change her mind.
She couldn't change her mind. She'd gone too far.
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Megan was smirking out over the grounds, watching the image of Helena Ravenclaw shrink into the distance, a tiny dot, just a sliver of a reminder of the thorn that had been in her side for too long.
Now if she could just find a way to get rid of Christiana, she could be happy.
"She's gone, isn't she?" said Christiana's voice from behind Megan's back. "She really left."
Think of the devil...
"Yes," Megan said, trying to sound solemn. "She's gone. I had thought to try to change her mind, but when I looked outside and saw her taking off, I knew it was too late."
"You didn't want her to change her mind," Christiana accused. "You wanted her out of the way. What I can't figure out is why. Was it for your father's attention, or some academic reason? Or..." Christiana's eyes widened. "You want Nathan, don't you? Or Ernald?"
"Don't be silly," Megan said, rolling her eyes. "You always did think small, dear. Why should I only have one reason to get rid of her?"
Christiana took a step back, disgust in her pretty green eyes.
"I'd hoped," she whispered, "that you wouldn't turn out to be such a horrible person. I guess it was too much to hope for."
Megan just smirked. Christiana and her talk of 'horrible people'. She still believed in good and evil, like she never did bad things, like Megan never did good things. Somehow it would be said that Megan and her father had corrupted Helena, had pushed her into the decisions she made, when really, she had that behavior in her all along. She probably would have come to the same conclusions herself. Megan just helped the progression along.
Selfishness wasn't a crime, Megan's father had taught her. It was a way of survival. She had to look out for herself, because no one else was going to look out for her. And so she looked right in Christiana's face, smiled, and said, "I'm sorry you feel that way. Perhaps we shouldn't be friends. After all, our fathers certainly are hardly even feigning civility at this point. What's the point in continuing our own charade?"
Christiana smirked right back, and Megan was almost surprised. But then, her father had always warned her that the Gryffindors weren't as perfect as they made themselves out to be.
"Fine," Christiana said smugly. "But don't expect this to go your way. Golda's going to side with me."
Megan snorted.
"Do you think I need Golda Hufflepuff to support me? How pathetic do you think I am? I don't need either of you, Christiana. Don't forget that. I'm a Slytherin. I rely on myself."
And with that, Megan turned on her heel and marched back to her quarters, ignoring the growing shadows, the suits of armor that watched her as she walked, their metal heads turning with the sound of metal scratching metal.
She hadn't done the right thing. She knew that. She had known all along that there was nothing right about it. But that didn't matter to Megan. She was doing exactly what she wanted to do, and nothing and no one was going to stand in the way of her plans.
Let Helena grow powerful in some forest on the other side of the world. Megan Slytherin would marry Ernald, would maybe even lead his brother along for a bit for fun. Ernald wasn't particularly fun, and Megan wasn't going to suddenly desire boredom in her life when she was married. Her father certainly hadn't, which accounted for the handful of mistresses he'd had before Megan's mother died and he went into mourning for the sake of his daughter.
Megan found her bed and curled up into it, turning the portrait of the four 'friends' over on her table, not wanting to look at those smiling faces of ten-year-old girls that looked like her and her 'friends'. They were young, naive, thinking that all they needed in life was friendship, as if such a trivial notion would get anyone anywhere.
Yes, Megan had needed her friendship with Helena, but Golda and Christiana had been a tiresome sort of waste of time.
The Wyrmthorn fortune and title were certainly low goals, but Megan had a bigger one to start planning: The downfall of the Gryffindors.
How she was going to do it was still a mystery, and whether or not to wait until Godric Gryffindor was dead was a very big question, but Megan knew that if she didn't determine her path right away she would end up like her father: aging and still looking around for an in to begin his devastating plan. Megan wouldn't be so weak. She would finish her goals on her terms, not on what was presented to her by someone else's folly.
"I will succeed," she whispered into the darkness around her, the night that filled her room. "I have to succeed."
And her father would be proud of her. How could he not be? She would have accomplished everything he had wanted to accomplish for so many years, and quickly.
And she would be the one to do it, not Helena, to accomplish it.
Salazar Slytherin would be proud of his own daughter for once, not someone else's.
Megan lit a candle, deciding that the air was closer than usual in her room and that she wasn't fond of the dark.
She watched the flames dance along the wall, the green light that covered the rooms in her part of the castle, the place where students of her father were housed, dancing along the wall.
She had done the right thing for her goals. Helena was expendable, even more than expendable, and Megan had big goals. And that was that. Christiana could paint it with whatever moralistic color she wanted, but Megan had done what she needed to do.
Megan watched the flame flickering in the green light as it went on and she fell asleep.
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In his own way, Salazar Slytherin really did love his daughter, but she was too much like him to really be anything other than proud of in a way that most of the world could understand. And he knew almost the moment that Helena left what was happening and who had done it. What he didn't know was why she was leaving, what Megan had whispered into her ear to convince her that it would be ideal for Helena to leave Hogwarts, leave her mother's care, leave Nathan Wyrmthorn. No, he couldn't figure it out, but he would.
