Paper Confines

xxii. Falling

By mid-June, summer had come late to Beauxbatons, and the trip to Megève had ended early.

Colette had never heard a howler so soft. It was quiet enough she couldn't tell the words from the crack in her door, but she knew the voice. The headmistress whispered, and Colette's father dropped his wine at whatever she'd said. It was the closest thing Colette had gotten then and ever to the screams she wished she'd suffered. The violence she felt she deserved. She remembered it better than any of the rest—the hilt of the glass on the coffee table, the shatter as it hit the floor—the red. Colette remembered the wine falling and all she could see were bombs.

She sat in the headmistress' office surrounded by golden plates and candelabrums and white walls, and heard nothing but Faustine's name when the guillotine came down. They were a perfect pair of syllables. No mouth had ever muttered them that gave her less beauty than she deserved. Faustine, she echoed even as her ears rang with exile. Faustine, as she handed back her uniform. Faustine, as the floo powder brought her to the rubble that remained of Bordeaux.

It was June. The corpses sung in the heat. Luc's clothes were burned black, but Colette could see from her hands and knees that he hadn't tied his shoes.

━━━━━

       Professor Kolgrim had assigned nearly half of The Standard Book of Spells to be studied before winter break, which was only three weeks away, and even non-N.E.W.T courses were chalk with revisions and tests. It was his fault for spending two entire months on the Impervius Charm, and now the entire class had to suffer with their noses in their textbooks to catch up on the curriculum. Colette hated Charms, but took it for exactly that reason. It was good discipline to not choose only the courses that were easy to pass, and at least she had Claude to share a desk with.

He was better at Charms than anyone she knew; skilled especially with the Fidelius Charm, which Colette enjoyed observing. She'd pass him quills and parchment and dolly beads to make vanish and reappear. It fascinated her to wonder where they went—some in-between world invisible to the human eye and full of lost things.

But Claude's seat was empty that class.

Colette copied Kolgrim's notes for him and left them with Lillian at Ravenclaw Tower after indulging her for a cup of tea and a bit of gossip.

Everyone, even the most dutiful of the badger's house, had something to say about Rosier's new reign as Head Girl. It was perhaps the only justice of Banks' disappearance that most people had decided she wasn't such a bad leader after all. Where Banks was disciplinary, Rosier was sadistic. She had eyes and ears everywhere now that the Knights were stationed around the castle at curfew. The older students were vigilant enough, mostly impervious to her academic lashings—especially the Slytherins, who could do whatever they pleased without a blink of her brown eyes—but the first and second years were scared, scurrying mice if they were lucky and puppets to her bidding if they were not. Dippet, of course, was too busy on the tightrope of collapse to notice, treading between Ministry conclaves and clandestine meets with Spyros Yves to get to the bottom of his murders and missing protégés.

By the time Colette arrived back at the Hufflepuff common room, her tongue was burnt with peppermint and the thought of balancing her homework, her shift with Claude's listening bug, and her weekly letter to her aunt and uncle felt like it might sink her into hibernation and send her to the hospital with the petrified students. Colette scolded herself for even making the comparison, and stumbled into her dormitory with a small, strobing pain stemming from foot to knee.