A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews on the first story. As for the suggestions, they are great and I promise I'll get round to them on the fourth entry, but this and the next one are reserved for plot bunnies that sprung to mind, so please excuse the delay to your input.

Okay, you can go ahead and read now. Enjoy! :)

Written for: Pairing Diversity Bootcamp [translucent]; Fave House Bootcamp [blood]; Hunger Games Trilogy comp [Characters - Peeta - Unrequited love]; Birthday comp [July - flower - literal floating]

Our Blood

Bloody Baron/Helena Ravenclaw (Romance)

Blood. That is usually the first word that comes to mind when a student lays their eyes on me for the first time, or indeed, any time. They are, for the most part, familiar with my moniker, the Bloody Baron, and so accept my appearance for what it is. I'm thankful for the defiant ignorance or intimidation I seem to evoke in the students, for it allows me to live in my own fantasy world in which I can pretend the blood is not hers…

I often spend the majority of the school year rehearsing several different scenarios from which I can claim I got my famed blood-stained attire; however no matter how convincing these theories sound, everything goes to hell when the damned first years arrive.

"Oi, you there, ghost. What happened to you?" one particularly obnoxious child would jeer.

"Oh wow! Were you in a war or something?" another admiring eleven year-old would swoon.

"Nah, I bet he fought dragons," one more would counter.

"Maybe he's the one who almost beheaded that Gryffindor ghost!" cries a fourth.

And there I float, hovering on the spot with all of the situations of bogus reasoning handed to me on a platter. I've always been a Slytherin through-and-through; lying should be like second nature to me. But I can never bring myself to utter a word. It perhaps doesn't bode well when I spend three hundred and sixty three days of the year blocking the truth from my mind. The reality comes rushing back to me without fail every time I am bombarded with questions from a new crop of Snakes.

I am almost driven to the brink of insanity with flashes of my human-life. I remember all too well how quickly the anger rose within me, and how I lashed out at her. I remember her terrible screams and the spray of her blood splattering onto my clothes as my knife plunged inside of her again and again until she lay dead in my arms. The storm in my mind cleared and I couldn't believe what I'd done. The anger fired up within me again with more intensity than I've ever felt before. I couldn't live with myself after killing Helena, so I ended my own life with the same blade.

Many humans are so narrow minded these days. They are driven to the assumptions that ghosts are without the capacity to feel. On the contrary, being the soul of a deceased mortal, all we do is feel, though not in a physical sense. Needless to say, I often work myself up into that same frenzy of anger when I am questioned about my appearance. I slash my blade across the heads of all of the students at the table as I relive that terrible day. It has no effect of course.

I became a ghost so I could be near Helena, hoping every day that she could even look at me, let alone love me as I do for her. I realise after centuries of wishful thinking that we can never be together in this realm, just as we could not in our human lives.

The only consolation I find in this is that we are together in one way, and it is a way that I am able to carry with me forever. A part of Helena and a part of me is bound together on my translucent being, in blood.

A/N: Well, writing a ghost was a first for me. Thank you for reading. Reviews are always appreciated :)

W/C: 572