desiderium | t. riddle

ix. black & white

"Hold my hand."

Myrtle's royal blue eyes snapped up to the doorway. The blonde moved closer with an inexplicable sense of urgency.

"What?" Her brows furrowed behind the brown hair that had fallen into her face at the sudden movement.

"Hold my hand." The urgency morphed to pleading as the girl stuck out an open palm.

The brunette tucked her hair out of her vision before tentatively slipping her hand into her roommate's cool grasp.

Evangeline held her breath hopefully for a second, her eyes so busy threatening their clasped hands they missed the other girl's flustered state. Tingles shot through her skin at the unguarded touch, but nothing more.

The captive breath escaped dejectedly through the parting of her lips and she dropped Myrtle's hand.

Maybe it's only like that the first time.

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That night, Eva plopped down into the field of cushions strewn across her bed and began to toy with her own strawberry locks in boredom. She didn't quite know what to do with herself now that she was... human. The word hadn't even settled in her mind yet. Like trying to fit a belt into denim loops that just weren't big enough. It didn't make sense.

But then again, neither had the title of an angel ever felt right.

Snores floated from Olive's four poster bed again, to Evangeline, a cue of liberty from the sleeping dorm. She lifted her head from the comfort of the cushions, and immediately felt dizzy. Though the wing removal had ended much earlier that day, Eva still felt rather sickly.

She had yet to decide whether or not it was a good thing her insomnia had not suddenly disappeared in the same way her immunity to human touch had. Either way, she wasn't going to spend her nights in the dormitory, trying to make out the strange words Cassi seemed to be reciting in her sleep.

After her invisibility spell had taken effect, she grabbed the books she had taken from the Restricted Section on the midnight excursion of the night before and slipped out of Ravenclaw Tower.

The stairs descending to the Astronomy Tower, where she had been planning on sitting and reading, soon came into view, but something else diverted her attention.

A dark, rich harmony danced in the air bridging the doorway of a nearby chamber and the long, winding staircase to the Astronomy Tower.

Evangeline almost wanted to hum along, but she had never heard the tune before. Or any, for that matter.

She inched closer to the doorway, wanting to hear more of the music that was teasing her ears ever so softly. Eva's eyelids fluttered shut and she inhaled deeply, as if hoping the melody might infiltrate her senses through her lungs as well. When she was just short of unconsciously revealing herself in the doorway, her ears pricked at a new sound.

A low humming, sliding along the notes of the instrument like silken fudge glossing the satiny red skin of strawberries, turning the delectable, seed-embroidered fruit into an ambrosial dessert fit for amorous midsummer twilights. Eva's zealous inhale morphed from a bridge to survival to a barrier in her throat, suspending as her lashes swept up again to reveal the steady blooming of her pupils as they swallowed the silvery ring encasing them.

The dulcet gravel of the voice laced with the more sonorous timbres of the music to waft along the halls in which she stood and in that moment Evangeline thought it to be illicit that she had heard the midnight harmony. It was so faint, surely the intent had been that no one hear it? Though, it also felt as though her ears ought to be the only ones graced by the low, throaty octaves that drizzled along the marble grounds strung by the instrument.