Chasing Riddle

:･ﾟslughorn :･ﾟ

The icy cold water around Harlow stung as she swum through its depths to find Luxe. Finally, she saw his pale skin, standing out in the murky water of one of the deeper parts of the lake and reached out a hand to grab him.  He was gulping in huge mouthfuls of water from what she could see and Harlow started to panic.  They were in deep and the time it would take to reach the shore...She wound her arms around his neck and started to kick, the deep water fought back at her the more she tried to get to the surface.  Where was the octopus when you needed it? 

Some slimy high reaching seaweed wrapped their rubbery long tentacles around her body as she writhed and kicked them away.  Luxe was running out of breath, and her own steady stream of bubbles was coming out less frequently now.

She had left her wand on the bank, thinking that Luxe would be near the surface but for whatever reason, perhaps it was the weird mutant seaweed, he had been pulled under more than expected.  Slowly, Harlow's brain started to feel fuzzy and her eyes streamed.  Her lungs burned and she sought to find air again.  They were barely breaking the surface now and Harlow could feel herself sinking back down with Luxe's weight.

Suddenly, a wild cacophony of bubbles sped towards her and a human being (she couldn't see who) grabbed her waist and hauled her up.  Harlow hung on tightly to Luxe before they surfaced, gulping in huge amounts of air.  She was light headed and dizzy. The grass below her scraped at her skin, tickling it before catching on with their sharp tips. She couldn't get enough air. The arms that had wrapped around her torso disappeared once she was dragged beneath the shade of a tree and Harlow sat up, dry retching into the grass. She hoped that she wouldn't vomit though that seemed like a likely possibility.

"Is - Is he okay?" She crawled over to Luxe's body.  His pulse was slow but still going.
"He needs CPR" Harlow's own head hurt like hell and as she tried to get her eyes to focus Tom was drawing out his wand. With a small mutter and an elaborate stabbing motion, Tom magically dispersed the water from Luxe's lungs, the water exiting through his pale lips.
"Who pushed Luxe?" Tom was soaked and upon a bit more squinting Harlow realized that he didn't have a shirt on.
What a weird sight.  She wished she had more time to enjoy it if he were a normal guy.
"WHO PUSHED ROSIER?" Harlow jumped.  Tom's voice, it was filled with an undeniable anger at something so deep it shouldn't have been someone just playing a prank on one of his servants.
Tom's friends looked at each other nervously.
"Prewett, dry up." Tom turned his angry stare at her and Harlow decided to back away, she wasn't close enough yet to fully know everything and it also wasn't her place.  Yet.  She looked at Luxe once but he didn't look back, he just merely glared at everyone there.  There was the darkness she hadn't seen before.  Luxe looked ready to kill.

▽▽▽

Harlow was walking back to the common room after dinner when someone approached her from behind. She kept herself from jumping in fright.  The boy behind her, she recognized, was one of Tom's friends.  He had introduced himself earlier as Robert. 

"Why was Tom so angry?" Harlow asked, slowing down her step slightly.

"It's Rosier, everyone knows he can't swim.  And to push him in with no one to rescue him but an unknown girl...it means that someone has a grudge."  

"But it was just a push into the lake! My friends used to do that all the time when they were joking." Harlow turned to him with wide eyes.  Inside, she understood, they were a well-kept group and anything that happened signified something or other. 

"Well..." Robert shrugged, stepping into the common room.

"Where are the others?" Harlow asked

"I don't know," Robert responded coolly.  He thought she was nosing into other people's business.  She gave him a small smile and sat down in the common room, waiting for the door to open.  It never did.  

As scrolls of parchment were discarded and homework was thrown this way and that Harlow decided to go search for Tom.  She exited the common room quietly and made her way to where she had found him and his friends that one drunken night.  Luckily enough, she didn't see any teachers. 

As she walked past a seemingly empty stretch of wall thinking about them a door appeared. She flattened herself against the wall in surprise before realizing that this was the room of requirement, where they'd been hiding out all this time.  She could hear nothing from inside though so she pried the door open ever so slightly.

Groans of pain instantly made her leap away, still holding the door open. Did she really want to go in? Suddenly Harlow spotted a small cabinet that stood between the door and the main space.  With a deep breath, she ducked in to hide behind the cabinet.

There was a silence before another groan of pain emerged, right after the sound of something hard hitting a soft underbelly.  Harlow narrowed her eyes.  Whoever in this room was beating up another person.  She wanted to save them, she really did but she didn't know if it was Tom's group or not.  She stayed put.

"Wh-why are you punishing me? Shouldn't you.... be punishing the people who pushed me into the water?" The voice that spoke up was undoubtedly Luxe's.  He was panting and very shortly after he said his words there was a spitting sound, blood and spit landing around a meter away from Harlow.  She winced.

"I was the one who pushed you into the water." Tom's voice was cool, harsh and without a spirit of love or care into it.

Harlow tried hard not to breathe in deeply.  So Tom had almost killed Luxe?

"You...?"

"I told you not to give away secrets.  And you did, to Harlow." A pause and then "CRUCIO!"

This time Harlow really gasped.  Luxe's screams of pain vibrated the air around her, strangling and yelling for help.   Harlow put her hands over her ears and sunk down to the ground, closing her eyes.

"CRUCIO!" This time his scream punctuated her cupped hands and Harlow gritted her teeth.  

"Stop....stop please stop." The voice that Harlow heard sounded nothing like the Luxe that she knew.  It was a whimpering, simpering sound.  She could only imagine the pain he was in.  She heard his body hitting the ground, his clothes catching onto the rough floor and twisting around.  The silence was threatening, once punctuated with the small sounds of pain and hoarse breathing.

Harlow relaxed once he stopped crying out in pain, thinking that this was the end of it. 

And then another spell, a quiet one that rang out soundly in the room.  A single gasp of breath and then silence. 

As Harlow crouched behind the cabinet she turned herself slightly, realizing that her slippers were wet.  She looked down and bit down hard to keep in a scream.

It was blood.