A Marvellously Bad Idea: Part I
A dim light slinks into the dorm, making a lap across stone walls as the screeching oak door is swung wide, and petulantly stays put even after the distinctive drum of booted feet fades.
Sabine has half a mind to chase after her dorm-mate, whichever of the gits it is, and hex her until she's forgotten her own name alongside the common courtesy not to disrupt your peer's sorely needed sleep.
Lamentably, however, the sudden pressure that had been building between her eyes keeps them screwed shut, her nose nuzzling further into her fluffy pillow as she attempts to drown herself in the silken material.
A thousand needles prick into her forehead, intruding past flesh and bone and brain to sink deep somewhere none of her lessons can name; her centre, of sorts.
Wherever they have gone, the needles have torn apart her tapestry and sewed it into something new; the loud mantra of make it stop confusing her thoughts until she is simply, wholly angry - her hands flex into the blanket and and she knows intimately that they mean to wring that uppity girl's neck.
How dare that arrogant good-for-zilch witch rouse her?
It isn't like her, not her cunning, calculative, clever self, who'd rather play with a boy's heart and sink her fangs into his wealth than pick up a beater's bat and take it to the knees of the vermin who cling their gazes to her generous curves, to be so angry.
Usually, with her unruly curls tied into a thick braid long enough to whack against her hips as she walks - a grounding weight, a re-assurance and a reminder of her control all at once, she feels strong.
It's enough to last her every day and night, even when her hair is bundled away or flattened and twisted intricately instead, a crown of her own making saying that, she is the puppet-master, allowing her to stay beautifully, far above ugly, useless feelings.
Sabine would blame them for this turn - the spoilt, baleful bunch she clings to, accusations of foul play at the tip of her forked tongue and a torch ready to light stakes in clawed hand, if only she could ever think them smart enough to see past her incessantly coy behaviour and realise her conniving mind is the flint with which she sharpens the blade of her body.
Just what did she drink last night?
And whose bed has she fallen into?!
Hers has a light duvet, as if she sleeps directly below the clouds, encaged in a heavenly prison of her own making for roughly two-thirds of her nights at Hogwarts - enough to make people remember that her company is expensive, not too much that the remaining time doesn't grant her a hefty sum.
The bed she finds herself upon isn't truthfully… lacking in comparison.
She is covered by a thin blanket, one that should leave her exposed to the chill of the Slytherin dorms if she were still within them.
Here, wherever she is, must be significantly warmer or more likely, considering the on-going winter has long seeped into the very crevices of the castle, whom she lays with must run unnaturally warm.
A living furnace... her mind simmers silently to the itch that she's accidentally prodded awake.
The blanket drapes across her not unlike a gown, hugging against her bare skin until every inch of red-brown ochre* has been hidden by a chivalrous navy blue.
With a hastily drawn breath, she realises she had forsaken all her clothing the night previous and yet, for once, not drowsily drawn them back on after the initial deed; her typical mannerism with which she subtly discourages wandering hands and hopes of more.
The heavy rasp reverberates in her, and her mind is sent wheeling away from clarity.
No, no, she is strong.
The sheets are navy, she knows not how the memory remains intact, but she knows this.
The sheets are navy, and she pushes upwards, remaining hunched with more than only vertigo.
Her arms shake and she wishes to hurl, she wishes for the privacy of her childhood bedroom and her father down the hallway and the nice cramped space in which she can easily order her thoughts without a thrum of impending destruction ringing through her skull, and she does not hurl.
Her braids are down and loose, free of the silken cap in her own drawers in her own dorm in which she clearly is not.
Her fingers dig into the blanket so harshly she is slightly offended that it does not rip, summoning back a flash of hatred, but not truthfully and not successfully because she wouldn't want to ruin the beautiful pattern of lilies on his bed.
More-so, rather than any cheap fire that would soon be doused anyhow, she is proud; a good investment by a greater mind.
...His? ...Proud? ...Greater?
She is hunched, and how badly she desires to sink back down and burrow into the embrace of the blanket and the pillow and the arms that had detached sometime in the night is medal-worthy.
She is greedy, she can unabashedly give in to her gluttonous wants - but she is also clever and she has a creeping suspicion it is urgent for her to know her bedfellow's identity, so she remains.
She is hunched because absurdly close above her is a shelf dotted with knick-knacks that burn curiosity into her and make her want to grab him by the shoulders, shake and demand he provides recompense by way of a dozen butterfly kisses and eyes sacrificed to be solely in service of her for how he has irreparably altered her brain chemistry.
She is hunched because above the shelf is a poster of Psycho* he had charmed to occasionally pop-out after she'd smirked at his predictable taste in films, a poster that wails and shrieks and harmonises in a daunting tune that had elicited broad fits of laughter from her and Regulus then but she prays may not awaken now - when he is surely asleep... and peaceful.
Reluctantly, her almond eyes peel open, allowing an abundance of pesky colours to swarm her vision.
Sabine breathes through the accompanying nausea, suddenly with a newfound appreciation for the abyss behind her eyelids that had shielded her from the worst of her hangover, and lets her hand to crawl farther towards the source of seductive heat on her left in the meanwhile.
Her hand grazes solid form exactly as the room clears before her, and with a trepidation wracking through her like gales of wind ravaging her insides - like her drinks have taken cue to swirl inside her a sudden storm, Sabine observes carefully as she carefully caresses a pale shoulder.
Trailing her gaze upwards reveals a thick nest of light brown curls she's had drilled into her memory since when she and that echoingly devilish Ravenclaw had imprinted onto the same, perfectly suspecting and hardly innocent, son of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black in their very first year at Hogwarts.
She'd decided it not very flattering then, sitting with her little fists drawing crescents into her flesh in the near-empty department, the way it infuriatingly swooped to hide his wicked eyes.
She'd missed it when it had finally left in their 5th Year and girls began to take notice of the unexpectedly studious trouble-maker, and gave a secret smile when, over that summer break and with the help of a ferocious mama-bear Mrs Crouch, it returned.
Her companion's face is pushed into the pillow, turned away from her, but she would not need sight to map out his features; his furrowed brows, his wet lips from constant, though often chastised, gnawing, and those deep, velvety eyes a touch too wide to mistake him for sensible.
Barty Crouch Jr.
Besides her, cuddled into his sheets with a light sheen of sweat making his skin glisten and completely, utterly naked, is Barty Crouch Jr.
Oh, Merlin's teats.
Swiftly, Sabine retracts her hand from that ivory skin, as if she's a child again caught swiping her dad's home-made cookies when they're fresh and sizzling, aroma irresistible.
He'd shake his head then, smiling.
She shakes her head now, more a tremble than anything else, and she feels like a puppet jerked along by her own spindly fingers, suddenly foreign, as she does so.
Her head jerks backward and it is all she can concentrate on, her stellar mind numbed.
How could she have been so stupid?
Her eyes tear away from his sleeping figure frenziedly and she curses the stampede running through her mind because she cannot hear if there are any others in the dorm, potential witnesses.
There are lumps upon beds but all the curtains are drawn open, she chooses to believe that those menacing balls are only the product of teenage boys laziness.
The dorm smells of deodorant, still strong, far too strong for her sensitive sense of smell, already irritated by a night of heavy drinking. They must've all gotten ready for the day already - what time is it? What time is it? What time-?!
Just, just, why?
Why curse her with this hard-as-nails and stubborn heart?
Why must she pine after one of her closest mates?
Oh.
Oh no, Rex's best mate.
She's dead.
Her rival, in all things petty and possible.
Oh no.
She's got a problem on her hands, a real, solid, walking and talking and apparently fucking problem rather than just her traitorous, rapid heart and bouts of uncharacteristic bashfulness.
Said problem chooses just that moment to stir, groans muffled by his slumber as he turns and stretches a hand outwards - towards her, towards her.
And, she freaks.
You see, Sabine Zabini - for all her sharp remarks and callous ambitions - does have a heart, not often employed but existing nonetheless.
For whatever reason amongst the list she had narrowed down to of about thirty-one or so, that heart has chosen Barty Crouch Jr. to be her champion.
And this is a problem as the boy is the one most intent on giving his father the bird.
He's on some insane attempt to become the youngest wizard truthfully disowned, not simply burned off the tapestry and shunned like the elder Black brother, in centuries - and she, she is genuinely respectful of the foolish notion.
So, there is not a justification to go any further than making his acquaintance, which was originally for Rex.
And this is a problem as the boy is the one majorly uninterested in her, flirting rambunctiously and yet chasing after another's skirt on the few drinking nights he does not end wrapped up in the quidditch team's discussions and sleeping by the communal hearth, teasing her on her ruffled appearance as they share breakfast in the Great Hall without a jealous bite to his words.
Until now.
Logically, this means nothing, is nothing.
That's what a tumble in the sheets typically is to her, and though he never speaks of his dismissively they must be inconsequential as well for he never mentions them, not even by name or House, to her or to Rex.
However, Sabine is skilled at delusions.
When young, she'd rest her head against the cracked window-pane of their kitchen-living area and dream of grandeur and riches with open eyes.
Now, when a voice reaches her, slow and sleep-addled, mumbling, "Mssy", as his arm narrowly avoids her and falls back to the bed, she pretends that he's aware enough to recognise her, that he's saying the blasted nickname he'd bestowed upon her early in their unconventional friendship, Missy.
She responds faintly, humming, "Sleep," and then also, tacked on cautiously, "love," and allows herself a moment of satisfaction, of the puzzle slotting into her face and her deepest desires accomplished, before slackening her grasp and letting them go.
Her piece said and done, and with undeserved adrenaline, Sabine slips off the bed and gathers her clothes.
She slips them on slowly at first, revelling in the feeling of waking up bare, the ghostly touch of cold trailing against her stomach.
Then, quicker until only her robe is left and she deliberates between two identical ones on the ground, both pristine and pitch black.
Eventually, she finds a tag with Barty's name in his mother's looping handwriting and takes the other, glancing down at herself and noting the bruises on her neck, barely visible against her dark skin but undeniably pinker than the rest of her.
He marked her so publicly and though she thinks she can recall demanding for it she spies his signature blue and silver scarf lying discarded on his drawer and after momentary hesitation winds it around her own neck, for penance.
One final inhale, his scent overpowering on stolen fabric, and she exits with a solitary word, "Goodbye."
This will most definitely be a problem, and in more ways than only one. And yet, she can't find it in herself to feel remorseful, not quite yet, not quite ever if she can remain tucking her small, treacherous grin into his borrowed scarf.