When She Spoke (Marauders Era)

Chapter Seventeen

The days proceeding Andromeda's historical announcement were lived through reassuring glances in the hallways and slight tremors in Lark's confounded heart, slipping in between her forever shifting emotional barriers, which were normally stubborn as diamond. The past week or so, however, the world seemed to have been tilting in different directions, swerving whenever she finally caught hold of some stable ground. One minute she rotated around Andromeda and her troubles, then Sirius and the gang, and after that Severus, who seemed to be popping up everywhere.
"Are you okay?", the greasy-haired boy waved a pale hand in front of Lark's face on a particularly unnerving, misty day.
She shivered, smooth hair shifting over her shoulders as she was jolted back to be reality. "Yeah, Sev, I-I-I'm fine. Just thinking, you know?"
He pursed his lips, stepping in front of her before she could shove past him and bolt down the hall. "Actually, I don't. You never tell me what you're doing anymore!"
Lark rolled her eyes and gave a small, dazed smile that reminded Severus of the look on James Potter's face when he looked at Lily. Something was very wrong. "Shouldn't you be at Charms?," she asked, voice slick with false normality.
"I-"
"Well, off you pop!," she chirped. Severus scoffed and brushed past her, shoulder bumping hers forcefully.
That was the last she'd seen of him in the past two days, despite the fact that they lived in the same common room and shared half of the same classes.
Sirius was another troubling matter. He was constantly finding Lark between lessons, hitting her with paper airplanes in the halls and "accidentally" running into her at Hogsmeade. It was almost uncanny how irritated she was by his regular appearances, the signature smirk he wore at least fifty percent of the time and his annoyingly long hair, which could really use a trim. Even more of a pest was how much she enjoyed his company, which Lark was very reluctant to admit.
"Oi, have you ever wondered why you're in Slytherin?," said Sirius as he cornered her before Defense Against the Dark Arts, coincidentally on the same day Severus had made sure to bug her profusely.
"No," she replied, quite miffed. "I like it in Slytherin. People are nice there."
"Don't you think people are 'nice' in Azkaban too?," he asked thoughtfully. "I mean, judging by your definition of 'nice', it's only reasonable."
"There are dementors in Azkaban."
"My point exactly."
That was when Lark flicked her badgering friend in the forehead, but as the educated author I'll be careful enough to spare you the petty details. Right before the mid-year mark, the narrowing space between sanity and pandemonium was becoming a bit microscopic, much to her aggravation. You could only expect Lark to begin to crumble. However slowly, it was happening, and people were starting to notice.
"Are you alright?," Andromeda's words seeped from her lips and slowly slid into Lark's ear at the tip of midnight.
"Just jolly!," she responded sarcastically, half asleep and hopelessly lost between the endless lines of her History of Magic textbook, now only blurred black columns drooping off the edge of a page.
A whole day later, the same misconduct continued as Lily offered to accompany Lark to Hogsmeade. Sitting at the corner of the library and forcing a calm appearance as she precariously balanced a cup of chamomile tea in her lap, she felt quite disrupted.
"No," she answered sharply, barely even bothering to look up from her copy of The Tales of Beetle the Bard.
"You can't just say-"
"Possibly," Lark corrected herself, finishing the statement off with an exasperated groan, frosted with a comical eye-roll. "I may possibly go to Hogsmeade with you."
Lily scoffed and whirled around on her heel, red hair snatching up its opportunity to billow out around her skull like a halo of orange peels.
A small collection of imperfections clashed together to create a full-fledged catastrophe about a week later.
"Ms. Riddle, Mr. Black, I trust you've been working hard on the perfection of your Patronus charms."
Silence.
"I'm sorry... What?," was Sirius's first reaction.
"Excuse me, Professor Dippet, but I don't recall-," Lark attempted to weasel her way through what loopholes she could, no matter how small.
"Oh, Ms. Riddle, the assignment was given months ago. If I remember correctly, you were quite eager to begin the project. I expected you to be among one of the best in the class."
She felt a heat rise to her face and found herself quite unavoidably flustered. "Sirius?," Lark squeaked desperately.
"I- er- I," her mediocre partner made a feeble and roughly cut attempt to make one last lunge for decent marks. When no fully formed words followed, Professor Dippet dismissed the two teenagers with a disappointed click of his tongue. They both sank down in their seats a fraction of an inch, neither bold enough to push any further. That semester ended with a solid A (Acceptable) in Defense Against the Dark Arts, leaving Sirius mildly relieved and Lark frustrated.
Though most everybody in her small crowd of acquaintances expected peace during the train ride home, the state of grace that they had once dreamed of was completely demolished as soon as one small, soft flat hit the crisp winter ground next to the carriages. Gazing out over an abundance of heads, Lark's immediate observation was the resemblance to porcelain dolls that the stature of the students possessed. She found herself nearly satisfied with this startling detail. Heading back home for the holidays, everybody was very prepared for the proper, polite farewells to their friends and greetings to family.
Maybe this way, Lark could finally capture the relaxed nature she'd been hunting down for quite some time. Her dollhouse Christmas chard would fall into place, and happiness would drift down to the Earth with the snowflakes. Of course, this goal was rarely one of hers, but chaos simply didn't seem fitting on holidays, the special times usually set aside for things like foam rolling over the surface of churning cocoa and the chime of ornaments humming together in a decorations box.
"Are you coming or not?," she caught the voice of James Potter drifting over the crowd. She scanned the crowd for a replying voice, but was thrilled as she realized that the pale, benign boy was looking at straight at her. Lark let her cool lips pull back into a fragile smile and began walking towards him. James' features were blurred and contorted through the frosty breaths of hundreds of students, yet she could just barely make out the eagerness in the corners of his soft hazel eyes.
I've made a friend.
By the time Lark reached him, her smile was no longer delicate, rather bold and joyous.
"Of course I'm coming," she chirped briskly, seemingly pulled together as her heels clicked against the dirt, slowly fading into a cobblestone platform. Little did James know, his shorter ally was just barely managing to maintain her atmosphere, excited yet at the same time torn apart that she had made somebody like her. She'd only been able to speak for a small while now, yet James Potter liked her... and he was James Potter (popular, wealthy, humorous, ect.)!
A shrill whistle pierced the already bleak air, and he gave a small chuckle, directed at nobody in particular. "C'mon, Slythers, move it! We'll miss the train!"
The last of the student body was slowly ebbing away, the last of them slinking into the train cars. Lark picked up her pace, determined not to demolish this newfound friendship, but still allowed herself to frown.
"Slythers?"
"Well, you're in Slytherin, aren't you?"
He looped his dry, wintry fingers around her gloved wrist and tugged her towards the nearest car. Lark could've pulled away, could've rejected the nickname, and probably should've, but didn't. She was enjoying the smooth, relaxed feeling that this- whatever this was -was giving her.
"Yeah," she grinned, showing of a slightly gap-toothed smile, the kind you would see on a freelance teenager, not a waddling toddler. "Yeah, I am."
The roaring screech of metal wheels on the rusting rails began to whisper across the platform, slow and usual but arousing in its own way. James' eyes grew wide, showing off the surprised gold slivers almost crushed between different shades of brown. He gave a quick, sharp exhale and broke into a run, his dark green jacket flapping out at his hips. Lark followed him without hesitation, both breathlessly chasing down the handle on the nearest door. The train was ever so slowly growing in speed, which only increased their adrenaline.
"Go faster!"
"Trying," James huffed, completely amazed by the small girl's uncanny ability to run in flats of all footwear. "Trying very hard."
Their desperate breathing began to mingle with the lightning pace of their feet slapping against the ground, almost like a snare drum in the center of a performance. Though this sort of adventure was very exerting and uncomfortable, Lark found it all very musical. Within seconds they were both up the steps and off the platform, safe within the stuffy car, though the whole chase was already a haze by then, slowly fading over the horizon of emotion.
The two teenagers were both leaning against the door. frantically catching their breath. James laughed, squinting his cinnamon eyes and keeling over. It wasn't too long before Lark followed suit.
"Can you leave please?," the high, pinched voice intruded quite abruptly on their moment of brief clarity. Both looked up simultaneously, startled and indifferent. They found themselves eye-to-eye with none other than Bellatrix Black, who was calmly filing her nails. Her legs were formerly crossed under a dark silk dress that glided to the floor abstractedly and her hair neatly tossed over one shoulder.
"Obviously," James snarled, straightening his coat hurriedly and marching out the door.
"My pleasure," Lark sniffed, forbidding herself to recall that only a month ago she would've been delighted to spend a train ride with Bellatrix and Narcissa. A few extra pairs of eyes followed the two out of the room, but they chose to ignore the gazes that might've strangled them if looks could kill.
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A/N: It's been forever... uGH. But hey we're getting there! Tom's in next chapter. Yaaaaaaay.
So today is just a casual, leisurely summer day so POP QUIZ!
1.) I've made one grammatical mistake all through WSP that I just recently went back and began to correct. What is it?
2.) What is Lark's middle name?
3.) What is an anagram(s) of Lark Riddle?
Person with the most right answers gets a character named after them!
XOXO,
Rose