desiderium | t. riddle

vi. demon ichor

Evangeline's knuckles grew paler than the greying porcelain of the sink they were clamped onto. Her lungs expanded, grasping, pleading, begging for air —in, out, in, out, in, o— only for it to slip cruelly through their steadily weakening fingers.

Everything around her was white. Like clouds, like snow, like her tights. Her bloody tights. Or so she'd make them.

Her fingers unclenched and the perspiration glossing her palms soon changed color on her pearl-colored legs. The lashes that had been so fervently pressed to her cheeks to inoculate her from the countless white tiles that lined the washroom's walls shot up to plaster against the ghostly skin that rested underneath her eyebrows.

The scream that escaped her lips by a hair was mute, though it echoed around her own dizzied head with the volume of a banshee.

The girl's lids hooded in denial as her pupils focused in on her own unrecognizable hands. Then sluggishly on to the angry lacerations whose wet paint dripped derisively to taint the taunting white color of the floor. It pooled into the mortar plaid hardened between the polished tiles and soaked leisurely into the lines of cement, creating a horrible contrast.

She should have known. She never did belong in the clouds, but she had hoped that the act she'd put up all those years would be enough to keep her there.

Some things couldn't be changed, though. Some things were just too deep rooted into your blood.

Her feet slapped weakly on the wet floor in front of them and her fingers shook as they extended forward to find their grip on the dirty porcelain again.

She tore her ghostlike gaze away from the blood rotting the enamel of the teeth that resided within the jeering white grin of the washroom floor. Her eyes locked with their own reflection in the mirror that was now mere centimeters away from them.

The irises that glared back were flickering between a pure black and eldritch white. A strangled noise shot out of her throat before she could even think to stop it.

Her already feeble lungs quickened their tempo, trying to match the vicious pace at which her eyes were changing color. Her lips parted in exhaustion as the tip of her nose lowered to face the drain nestled in the sink. Her eyes stayed focused on themselves, narrowing on the color changes through the copper prison bars of her own lashes.

Black, white, black, white, black, whit-

She tried in vain to find a crack in the uniformity of the pattern. To see if one side might claim victory over the other as their iron blades clashed. No avail.

Her head in reared in fury and her arms straightened against their hold on the porcelain sink before jerking her petite figure forward again, this time far enough to strike the mirror.

Strawberry-blonde roots collided with their own glass echo, which cracked into a spiderweb of reflective fractures. 

She looked back up into the mirror to see that the cleaving of her own reflection had broken two things. The mirror and the pattern of her iris' flashing.

Her eyes had settled into a dark, ruminating grey. A choked breath made itself audible.

She wasn't fully gone.

Not yet.

She didn't feel relief yet. The reason for this lay in the color of the print left by her bloodied hands on the sink when Evangeline pushed against it to bolt gracelessly away and hunch over the nearest toilet, retching.

Washroom water swam with her ebony blood, disfiguring the handprint clutching the porcelain.

Not the pearly silver of angel blood. Not even the rude crimson of human blood. But the unparalleled black of devil's blood.

Evangeline glided in a lackluster fashion from her stall and held a hand to her mouth to clean the bile from it with a spell.

A figure in green and black robes stood in the doorway. A boy. This was a girls' washroom.

"Get out of the girls' room," she demanded tiredly.

Her tone must not have held enough conviction, because the blurry figure did not move. She sighed and waved a hand in front of her. The boy was flung out of the doorway.

"Creep," she hissed scornfully, taking out her temper on the first person who came across the misfortune of crossing paths with her when she was in such a dreadful state.

Her tights were still stained with black claw marks where she had successfully attempted to destroy their pure white and shards of mirror remained poking out of her hair. She paid this no mind and stalked through the halls of Hogwarts as though they were her very own. Not many students saw, due to most of them being in the Great Hall for lunch, but the few who did looked terrified instead of disgusted. Word must have travelled of her magical abilities.

When she reached the crown of Ravenclaw Tower, she held out hand to blast away the entrance. She wasn't in any state of mind to answer one of the eagle knocker's ridiculous riddles and didn't quite care the impression she made upon the school, although one might think she should care the most at that moment due to recent events.

This brought her mind to focus even harder on those events. The one that lay in the form of peevishly elegant penmanship on the first page of her newly acquired diary.

She was just about to shred the entrance to pieces with a jerk of her hand when it opened, a familiar face standing behind it. Both the girls blinked.

"Eva... what happened to y-"

Evangeline pushed past the platinum-haired girl, knowing that if she spoke, the words that would spew from her lips would be nothing short of cruel.

Once she was safely closed off from the school inside the sheltering curtains of her four-poster, Evangeline picked up the diary. Contempt flooded her fingers at the feeling of its leather. At least that wasn't white. If it were, she'd probably spend much longer than she already had trying to burn it to pieces.

Unable to prevent herself from diving deeper into the pit of negativity she was drowning in, she flipped the tome open to its first page and locked her eyes onto the very ink that had sent her into the destructive spiral.

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Evangeline-

I told you to lie low. To use your powers for good. The bits of petty rule-breaking you did last night were excusable since you have been on Earth, but to use your Hellfire (in front of humans, too! What were you thinking?) is unacceptable.

It's the very thing that got you suspended and now it has gotten you exiled. The wing removal will begin soon. You have been excused from a traditional falling since you are already on Earth.

Do not try to contact me; this page will no longer send messages. Armando Dippet, the headmaster, should see you shortly to sort things out.

-You know who.

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