Beta:lil'hawkeye3
Comemorative update (my birthday, yay!)
The girls' room of the Slytherin class of '38 was a mess of silks, shoes, laces, and jewels. Powder puffs floated around, blotting at the faces of ten girls until the puffs judged enough. They had hung several talking mirrors on the walls, whose comments joined the ongoing conversation between the witches.
Gerda Catchlove waved her wand around them, arranging their hairs in several styles with a spell Maeve had discovered. They had managed to slip two ravens and one badger into their dorm, and no less than four firsties.
Anya looked over to her bed where, on top of many pieces of clothing, lay a bronze collar. It resembled a plackart of an armour (although much narrower than one); nonetheless, Stefánia Mordon had bought the ornament that day in Hogsmeade. A friend of hers, Hungarian as well, had brought it to Anya the day before. Apparently, the witch loved antiquities, and her friend had thought fitting to gift their saviour with something of the dead.
The Hogwarts student had tried to refuse it, but when she saw the deeply marred-by-tears face of the Durmstrang girl, she accepted it with a forced smile.
"Is that from the Hungarian girl?" Laws inquired, glancing over her sketchbook, wearing a baby blue gown; a long shawl hung from her neck, trailing down her back.
"It was." She agreed, closing it around her neck while avoiding the locks freed from her loose bun. "I'm the usurper, it seems." She intoned distantly.
"It seems strange on you." Clemency opined.
"Look at me." Dorea commanded, in myrtle-green coloured and fur-sleeved Point de Gaze robes. The older Slytherin took in her friend's robes –off-the-shoulder long sleeves, made of champagne and maroon paduasoy silk. "It's beautiful." She declared. "Now, Mab-Anne, come here."
They were soon ready, faces rouged and mirrors praising their appearances greatly. The young witches paraded down the corridor and headed towards the common room, where their partners expected them, over the light of greenish lamps and chandeliers, sitting on button-tufted sofas. Anya would be escorted by Tom, as expected, and Dorea was paired with Abraxas. Brianna was to go with Dolohov; Zabini with Nott no. 2; Bones with Rosier; Gerda with her brother, Sean. Avery had kindly invited Mab-Anne at Dorea's urge, who had also settled Maeve with Orion – which was meek enough in her opinion. Ragnar would take Clemency and Alphard was to take Laws – a match made in heaven, in Anya's opinion, not that the Ravenclaw shared it.
"I didn't know it was possible for you to look more beautiful." Tom whispered to her as she took his arm, the flatterer. She glanced at him with a sardonic smile.
"You clean up well, I suppose." She took in the small manifests of colour all over his robes, concealed in a manner his owner wouldn't be able to complain. "Abraxas chose them, I assume. He knows what suits you better than you do."
"He also can name every type of needle lace; from 'Point de France' to 'broderie anglaise.'" They snorted.
"Don't tell me. Clemency is fashion-obsessed. Are you aware that the tail is because is a ball? And that if this was a feast we were supposed to wear strapless robes? That short-skirt robes are only allowed in fancy parties? Pointed hats are out fashioned, by the way, we should snicker at everyone we see wearing them."
"Really? Well, I will gladly do so. But I suppose the only way I would know all that would be reading Witch Weekly."
"I fear what is written there." Anya deadpanned. "Maybe they can inform me what Grindelwald is wearing this season. I'm so curious."
"You can blame people for being self-centred, Anya." Tom lectured her. "Doing so will make you be hated by half of the world."
"They simply don't care for the war, Arawn! When people die at their doors."
"They are eleven or twelve, Anya." Tom noted, and she wanted to argue that she wasn't only talking about the student body. "The only thing that matures on people's mind after this age is sexual."
Anya couldn't help – she laughed out loud, just as they reached the entrance of the Great Hall, drawing the attention of many to the beautiful young couple. Inside of the chamber, the house tables had been vanished, and the chamber past the High Table had been opened as a refreshment room. Love seats had been placed against the walls, serving as replacements to the sitting room.
The orchestra was playing a renaissance kind of music, but Tom and her wouldn't play tonight – Professor Trocar had dismissed them, saying that they weren't supposed to play at the light of the events of November. Anya suspected the vampire didn't need one more chord quartet this evening, and he had no use for one whose viola player had been murdered. The cellist eyed the dance floor warily. She had never danced a volta.
"How you are supposed to dance this?" Anya asked the Black scion.
"Little jumps. Like a bunny." Dorea explained, her hands forming paws as if to demonstrate. At her side, Abraxas snorted.
"My dance instructor used to say: "Yes, young Master Malfoy, flying like a splendid swan!" He said, giving little jumps and throwing his legs up.
"It looks more like a stumbling kangaroo." Tom concluded blankly, and all of them laughed. On the dance floor, all the wizards lifted their partners up, spinning with them. "Well, we should try after such class, shouldn't we?"
At the end, they managed to dance those medieval steps rather well, a natural gracefulness associated with a secret ability to fly some inches above the ground without jumping from high places. At first, they did not talk, concentrated over the dance and the tiring steps of it – but slowly they started to exchange hisses, resuming their conversation while attracting some glances from others at the sound of Parseltongue.
Then, Tom exchanged places with Abraxas in an allemande, who then went to dance with Clemency, leaving Ragnar as her partner in foxtrot. Anya danced jazz with Orion and Alphard, and a mazurka with Dolohov and Slughorn, who delivered her again for Tom. Harfang took her aside for a waltz and a gillard, and Charlus danced ragtime with her. The former told her about his baby sister, who had just started to say her first words – the first one being Alge, his younger brother's nickname. The latter rambled the whole time about Quidditch and about Dorea, who had apparently forbidden him from drinking the firewhiskey an upperclassman had found to him – not that the conversation bothered Anya.
Deodor left his cousin in her fellow Gryffindor's hand to dance a polka with Anya, and then Dumbledore danced something with Anya whose name she didn't know – but it was immensely full of jumps. Professor Sankara danced with her a borry, and Professor Trocar danced with her a jazz, leaving her at Tom's arms again for a foxtrot.
'I have already bought your birthday present. I hope you have mine.' Tom told her.
'Of course. But my birthday is just in May.'
'Whatever. My supposed father will send me something as well?'
'I'm not an idiot, Arawn. Surely I must have remembered that, don't you think?' She giggled. 'You are acting like an overexcited child, dear king of otherworld.'
Tom huffed, spinning her at his arms. 'Perhaps this war can help us with our parents.' He mumbled. 'Well, I was speaking with Georgie…'
'Are you aware that Leonard Spencer-Moon won't be the minister forever, aren't you?'
'He will be through the war, which isn't going to end soon.'
'If he doesn't get killed, you mean. It was as you said, no use getting entangled too much with politicians when they can lose their popularity so suddenly.'
'I pretend to make myself powerful politically before his rule comes to an end.'
'You are a second-year. You will have to wait at least to your graduation if you want to have some real political power, Arawn.'
'Not if I become the British Youth Representative at Wizengamot.' At her raised eyebrows, he elaborated. 'I was researching Dumbledore…he did it when he was a fifth year. Georgie mentioned her uncle was when he entered in his sixth year. Miranda Goshawk was two years ago, but now it's a seventh-year Gryffindor girl named Wilhelmina Scrimgeour.'
'Can I see her from here?'
'Blond mane, yellowish eyes, elegant but incredible red robes. Laughing merrily with Polaris Tuft.' Anya nodded, locating the girl who was surrounded by Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, sitting on a love seat. 'She has good-grades, and is pretty popular, no wonder. I suppose she is worth of associating with – she has a promising future, and I could use her ascension.'
'She is strolling to the refreshment room.' Anya announced.
'Come, I will take you there and start a conversation.'
Tom guided her to the chamber past the High Table, in which a large fireplace was located opposite the door and portraits stared them down. Tables with tea, coffee, cold tongue, biscuits, cauldron cake, non-melting ice cream, chocoballs, chocolate gateau, treacle and custard tarts, sandwiches, breads, cheeses and many others.
Anya saw their target near a dessert section, eying a sachertorte and ice-cream indecisively. She smiled, freeing herself from Tom as he approached the group Wilhemina had entered with into the chamber – and to whom she would undoubtedly return. But Anya wanted to taste the cake, so she had enough excuse to go to their target directly.
"I would suggest sachertorte if you are in doubt. That's it, if you like apricot jam." Anya said, helping herself with a slice. "But the chocoballs are also incredible."
"I'll always prefer fudges, but I suppose I'll never know if I don't try, will I?" The girl said, smiling and copying the younger witch's actions. Anya nodded, stealing a chocoball with a fork, and holding it in front of the Gryffindor.
"Give it a try. Strawberry mousse and whipped cream." She encouraged the other, who bite it and hummed in pleasure. "Trust my sweet-tooth, I always tell people. I'm Anastasia Donbyre."
"I know of you, you gave a show with Kneeler last year. I'm Wilhelmina Scrimgeour." She introduced herself, tasting the cake she had just served. "This is good."
"Life is good with sugar. Do you accept tea?"
"No, thanks. I'm drinking nettle wine, I left my glass with my friends." She motioned to the large group, in which Tom had easily settled himself into. "Isn't that your partner today, Tom Riddle?"
Anya glanced at him again. "He is." She said when she finished pouring coffee for herself.
Wilhelmina dragged her to the group after that, introducing her to the circles of older Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs. To her surprise, Euphemia and Lawrence were great friends of her, as was the Head Girl and Septimus Weasley. Even Alberch Fawley was part of the group, even if most of the group seemed to only tolerate him for his girlfriend Cecily Oaken.
A hand landed over her shoulder and Anya turned on her heels to see an Austrian wizard staring at her. Dominik Meier. She hadn't talked with him since the Hogsmeade's raid, although she had known he had left before things got really bad. He had sent his homework to her, as they had agreed previously, and she had completed it – but they hadn't had a conversation since then.
"Dance with me." He ordered.
"I'm busy." She retorted. He arched his eyebrows, defying her to disobey his commands. Anya gave in quickly when she thought of her lies. He smiled satisfied and steered her to the dance floor, leaving the group behind – and Tom alone to enchant everyone.
Anya was very aware her partner wouldn't be happy.
A waltz started and Meier began to swirl with her around the dance floor. Anya followed his lead silently, gracefully but also robotic. If only she could raise her feet for a longer than normal time while dancing with him. She didn't answer his comments not even once, but her eyes never left his. A statement that the dance was an obligation, and she was only fulfilling it.
Something strange went through her head. A vision, probably, one of those she was unable to remember. The whole thing was strangely familiar.
"Smile or we won't have danced." Meier instructed her in the middle of the waltz. Anya smiled, but it never reached her eyes. Not even when the boy lifted her up in the air, and spun several times – very graceful he was. A great dancer.
The music ended and Meier grabbed her wrist. "Come with me."
They stalked off the Great Hall before any adult could catch them, and Anya was blindly guided to the grand staircase. She was guided across the sets of stairs, jumping from a stairway to another when they started to move, because he simply wasn't in the mood to wait. Not that she had many problems with jumping, she did it all the time, after all she could fly in her most desperate moments.
When the two students reached the left corridor at the seventh floor, Meier meandered in circles, and Anya watched with interest as a door appeared in front of them. The wizard at her side smiled in satisfaction and motioned to the door.
"Frauen first."
"I prefer be the second when I'm entering in an unknown place. Even more when it just appears out of the wall."
"Get in." He commanded, shoving her inside.
Immediately, Anya stumbled to equilibrate herself, only to lose the feel of the ground beneath her feet. A hole, her brain told her at the same time she turned her body and grabbed the lapel of the other's robes. She could fly, mind you, but then, there is a survival instinct inborn in every human who makes them react the most commonly and several times unreasonably.
The Austrian wizard looked at her in surprise and for a moment Anya wondered if he had truly planning to push her inside a hole. Yet that thought left her when he easily took her hands of his lapel.
Anya grabbed the first thing she could again, but this time she wasn't so lucky and the necklace the wizard had been wearing snapped, and she felt.
Obviously, anyone else would have been killed by falling off a forty feet cliff. But she was she, and she didn't even fell, her innate talents taking only ten feet or so to stop her fall and push her up. The emerald eyed witch breathed in relief when her body touched the ground of the corridor – her tentative murder nowhere in sight.
Anya took a look at the room – which was only a giant hoistway – and closed its doors. She had no need to be back here now, but she swore to herself to remember the location. Maybe someday she could use it to fly. The doors vanished as soon as they were closed, but she would remember the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy in his attempt to teach trolls how to dance.
The Slytherin looked at her hands, which still held a pendant. A circle inscribed in equilateral triangle, and a straight line representing the height of the triangle. She knew that symbol. But she didn't knew it either. She had many images of it, a pendant – another one – a book with it written. She had seen it – a clothing, a peddle, a stick, or something like that. She had touched it.
But she had no idea what it was. Still, for some reason, she had to know.
So...a short chapie, but I am back to writing so you should see more of them soon. Here we can see a lot of what Tom plans to be! Accepting reviews 24/7, thanks!