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𝗙𝗲𝗯𝗿𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝟭𝟵, 𝟭𝟵𝟰𝟱
Her hands are buried knuckle deep in frigid, stiff dirt – and yet it is the first time her nails remain clean of filth and phosphorous.
The minute uptick in average temperatures that February often introduced to the Scottish Highlands, meant that they were once again expected to venture outside of the castle for very early morning Herbology lessons.
Back to her nails, and why they smell of soap.
Jacques tried to explain it to her once, years ago, that a person is made up of countless other people – that everyone could stand to learn from each other. He tied his apron in a knot that a soldier from the French Navy taught him before he went down with the Danton in WWI, he combed his hair the way his father taught him to.
But explaining an interwoven net of sinew and flesh and ligaments, to a child of paper and ink – for those were her sole companions besides him – was useless.
But Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw have Herbology together, and since the pink hair dye fiasco, Ursula Laveau had grown on her like English ivy on an abandoned house – unwilling to part.
And she suggested that Elizabeth scrape her nails unto a bar of soap, to create a barrier that would prevent the dirt from seeping in and tarnishing her further.
Like the Knights of Walpurgis – for that was their group's name, which no one thought to inform her about up until yesterday – contributed to numerous little habits and mannerisms and idiosyncrasies cropping up within her like mushrooms on lightning-struck, wettened soil.
Graveyard soil that had been thought barren for years.
All of these nature-based allusions and yet she still forgets herself until her fingers bluntly strike something hard beneath the dirt and Elizabeth curses under her breath. Instinctively, she stifles her emboldened magic before it breaches the surface of her fingertips and causes the entirety of the vegetation and flora in greenhouse no.3 to shrivel up and die.
"Careful," Ursula mumbles absentmindedly. Her nimble fingers work the shrivelfig's aggressive roots with seemingly no problem, brushing away clumps of soil to remove the medicinal plant as harmlessly as possible from its earthy confines.
"Thanks for the forewarning, Ursa."
What? The Blacks' astrological fixation bore decent fruit sometimes.
Ursula sighs, and finishes uprooting her specimen before turning to face her. "There's no need for the affront, ma sauveuse. I was simply trying to be helpful," her creole accent peeks through the words and makes her all the more endearing.
Elizabeth purses her lips, biting the inside of her cheek in a sort of self-flagellation – like with Minerva McGonagall who asks how her day has been at every prefect meeting, there's a certain struggle there. Female friendships were something she had to adapt to, as all of her prior experience with other girls and women had been painfully and scaringly negative.
The nuns and future nuns of St. Joan's, the girls at the ballet studio, her dormmates who are currently glaring at her from across the greenhouse.
Every friendly interaction with another girl makes her feel like she's the gravel on a smooth road, which impedes otherwise frictionless movement. Wally and Drue had been a balm to her, but childhood wounds were something that required constant care and didn't heal quite as linearly as one would hope.
Noting the peeping eyes – and likely perked ears – Elizabeth switches over to a language both she and Ursula share.
"Je sais, Je suis désolée."
God, if Jacques was here, he'd be laughing his arse off at her sordid accent.
The doe-eyed girl lifts a brow at her, asking "pourquoi parlons-nous soudainement français?" She bites her lip before adding on, "et depuis quand parlez-vous français?"
Elizabeth can't help but playfully scoff, "depuis que je suis née, clairement," she sends Ursula a smirk when the girl parts her lips in an o-shape – before turning serious once again. "Et les gens nous observent, alors je préférerais que nous gardions cette conversation pour nous."
Finally, she succeeds with unearthing her own shrivelfig, a wry smile developing on her lips as she spins around to show it off to her friend proudly, lifting the bruise colored mess of a sapling in the air triumphantly. Ursula claps her hands, giggling and seeming truly happy for her. But her hands cease their clapping and she appears confused again, "Quelle est exactement la conversation que nous voulons garder privée?"
Picking up her thrifted paring knife, and handing Ursula her Damascus steel equivalent, Elizabeth breathes deeply – thinking that it's only fair the girl would know how she fixed her hair.
She was already running her business into the ground, so who cared?
There was barely any use made of the enchanted journal in the library in the last few days.
"Celle où je vous dis que j'ai réparé vos cheveux parce que c'est mon produit qui les a abîmés en premier lieu - et je me suis sentie coupable." Elizabeth gets it out with in one breath, her tongue slightly fumbling the vowels that she'd grown rusty pronouncing.
Ursula says nothing for a good few minutes, her lovely face closed off, and they each peel their specimens with expert – but differing, stylistically – movements. Worry churns in her guts like cement and Elizabeth once again feels like gravel being stomped under someone's feet.
Gingerly, Ursula places down her knife and asks, "mais vous n'avez rien à voir avec la blague elle-même, n'est-ce pas?"
"Absolument pas! Vous vous souvenez de mon propre accident, n'est-ce pas?" Utterly aghast, Elizabeth braces her hands on the wooden bench and tries to instill as much sincerity into her words as words can carry. She waits until the girl nods, the winter sun filtering through the greenhouse's glass paneling catches on her green silk headscarf.
A gift from Tibs, perhaps.
"Vous pouvez donc supposer que je ne souhaiterais jamais cela à quelqu'un d'autre."
Sure, since founding her business, Elizabeth mostly believed that her only job was to create and sell the products – and she held no responsibility for how her customers chose to implement them.
But that mindset had been shifting for a while now.
"J'imagine que oui..." Ursula timidly concedes her point. She starts preparing the pickling substance for the purplish fruits that they'd harvested, and Elizabeth hurries up to do the same – the last thing she needs is for professor Beery to amble over and start lecturing unsolicited.
As they work, mixing vinegar and preservatives; Ursula is clearly deep in thought, mulling over something before she tilts her head up to regard her. "Mais pourquoi créer une entreprise? J'imagine que c'est coûteux et difficile, sans parler de l'illégalité."
That is the million-galleon question, which is somewhat also the answer.
Wiping her vinegar-soaked hands on her burlap apron, Elizabeth whistles lowly, deliberating how to answer this time. "C'est le cas, mais je ne sais pas si les Américains, et les sorciers américains en particulier, sont conscients de la pression financière que la guerre a exercée sur les gens ordinaires...." she looks at Ursula to confirm or deny her words.
"Nous sommes conscients, oui."
Gesturing vaguely with her hands, Elizabeth mutters "voici votre réponse", observing as the New Orleans witch still doesn't lose the furrow between her brows and the confused scrunch in her nose.
What now?
"L'argent est une raison logique, oui, mais je pensais que la malédiction jouait aussi un rôle, n'est-ce pas?" Ursula whispers, carefully scrutinizing her as though she's a volatile creature.
Which at the moment, she is.
"Quelle malédiction?" Elizabeth snarls, hands gripping the glass jar in her hold which threatens to break under the insulted magic reverberating through it.
"Votre malédiction, celle qui a été jetée sur votre magie et votre corps, celle qui vous tue de l'intérieur."
Tiberius Baldr Nott was a dead boy walking.
"Quoi? Ai-je dit quelque chose de mal?"
Ignoring the question and slamming the glass lid on her pickled shrivelfigs, Elizabeth brusquely starts gathering up all of her equipment in her worn leather satchel. She notices Ursula loitering, and aggressively gestures for her to the same.
Her hands shake with the urge to end the noble house of Nott and when she tries to untie the accursed Herbology apron, she can't seem to manage. Ursula makes a motion to help her and Elizabeth hangs her head, turning around so the girl could reach her back as she stares down at her hands and tries to will them to still.
Once the girls are all packed up, she throws a frantic glance at the work bench to ensure both of their jars were visibly done and ready; before booking it out of the greenhouse with a manacling grip on Ursula Laveau's wrist, stringing the poor girl along.
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Interlude A/n. convo transcript, note my French is the culmination of four years on Duolingo and Google Translate's help - so feel free to yell at me in the comments.
ma sauveuse - my savior, because of the hairdye thingie, ain't Ursula sweet?
I know, I'm sorry.
Why are we suddenly speaking french
And since when do you speak french?
Since I was born, clearly.
And people are watching us, so I'd prefer we kept this conversation to ourselves.
What exactly is the conversation we want to keep private?
The one where I tell you I fixed you hair because it was my product that damaged it - and I felt guilty.
But you had nothing to do with the joke itself, did you?
Absolutely not! You remember my own accident, don't you?
You can therefore assume that I would never wish this on anyone else.
I guess so... But why start a company? I imagine it's expensive and difficult, not to mention illegal.
It is, but I don't know how aware Americans, and American wizards in particular, are of the financial strain the war has put on ordinary people....
We are aware, yes.
Here's your answer.
Money is a logical reason, yes, but I thought the curse also played a role, didn't it?
What curse?
Your curse, the one that's been cast on your magic and your body, the one that's killing you from the inside.
What? Have I said something wrong?
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At some point towards the end of their journey from the frosty castle grounds and up to the Charms classroom in the east-wing tower, the Hogwarts bell toils haggardly with the sound of ancient bronze lamenting its endless job – letting her know that Slytherin had just finished their lesson with the lions.
Good, she would've felt a bit bad about barging in and killing a student during professor Quark's class.
Along the way, Ursula kept straggling behind her, muttering prayers under her breath in a bastardized mix of French and English to various ancestors. Once they reach the sea of students unfurling from the Charms classroom, the girl spots her beloved – and likely realizing Elizabeth's intentions – signs off her lovely family reunion with a muttered "Oh mon Dieu, non!"
"NOTT!"
Stomping into the corridor and splitting the seas of people; she watches a jolly Tiberius catch her eye and clock her murderous expression, glance at her companion – and turn around on his heel to walk in the other direction with a bright smile on his face.
He barrels into Reinhard's chest hard and nearly gets knocked on his arse.
The Lestrange heir catches him in what could be a romantic sight if not for the wink he sends in Elizabeth's direction before spinning Tiberius around and laying a heavy hand on his nape as he marches the bartering dullard towards her. Walburga skips ahead, reaching her first and greeting Ursula amiably as they wait for the rest of the knights to corral her victim.
One person is noticeably absent.
Until he isn't.
Thomas exits the classroom last, cutting a dashing figure – perhaps caught up conversing with the professor, like a good little prized student – and is welcomed with the peculiar vision that they make in the barren corridor. Elizabeth stands tall with Ursula mildly cowering behind her, she's glaring down Nott who is cornered on either side by the beefy walls that Abraxas and Reinhard make for – and then she looks up at him and shoots him vexation-marred quirk of the lips.
The way his eyes flash red for a millisecond could be a trick of the light from the leaded castle windows, but those are opaque with fog.
He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes shuttering as though he hopes to find this spectacle gone when they reopen – he is about to be sorely disappointed, because she isn't going anywhere until Tiberius is punished for gossiping about personal matters.
Thomas' eyes open again and she allows herself a moment of weakness, to readily drown in those Aegean blues that wish to consume her whole – before she regains her composure and tilts her head in a come-hither motion.
They begin walking, Ursula perhaps the only one unaware that they're heading to the 'Come and Go' room.
It feels odd, this procession.
Elizabeth – well, Myrtle, in this case – is never part of the executioner's posse; she never leads in the spearhead of the group, and she is rarely aware of the end-destination to which she is oft being led. Self-victimizing is something she had been trying to grow out of, but the patterns of her life are undeniable.
If Elizabeth had lived a thousand previous lives, she doubted there would have been even one instance where she washed her hands of someone's fate after dooming them.
À la Pontius Pilate.
Let's not compare yourself to Roman rulers, that felt more like her boyfriend's thing.
But they reach the room soundly, she and Thomas striding silent in the forefront while the others dally behind like fluttering ribbons in the wind, forking into several quantifiable groups. At the heart of them, the thickest ribbon, lagging due to Tiberius' attempts at dissipating the mood with jokes.
Elizabeth lets Thomas do the honors of summoning the door – he'd confided in her about the specific phrasing he uses, some regal speech about her having equal right to call a meeting as he does – but, frankly, it is rather amusing to watch him march up and down the length of the corridor like a loony bin escapee.
The cobblestone wall unbuckles, bricks shifting around like chest pieces across a board to accommodate the unearthed ancient wooden door that towers over them in a foreboding manner – she suddenly gets the acute feeling that this isn't going to play out in her favor.
They enter, and oh how she wishes she could join the rest of the knights in onlookers' balcony – but she can't. Thomas does though, leaving her standing alone in front of Tiberius who is still manhandled by Reinhard, and Ursula who seems rather confused about the whole ordeal and slightly intimidated by the ominous atmosphere that pervades the room.
Which, considering it is modeled after a trial hall – Elizabeth supposes the disconcerting vibe is intentional.
Swallowing her discomfort, Elizabeth gestures grandly with her arms whilst stitching a wry smile onto her face.
"Welcome, Ursula Laveau, to the Knighthood of Walpurgis."
"Now that you are aware we exist, you have to die."
Whirling around upon seeing Ursula's panicked expression, she shoots a scathing glance at where Thomas is leaning over the balcony – still a with kingly disposition despite not being part of the main event. Ignoring how bewitching an image he makes; she seethes out a "Thomas."
Her boy barely has the decency to look disparaged, continuing to smirk at her.
Spinning back around, she addresses Ursula again, determined to assuage the girl. "Or be initiated, which is also an option – but not one we have time to undertake currently, so! My apologies for the tepid welcome."
"No problem, Élisabeth." The girl smiles at her kindly, warm like her skin tone – though she is clearly still unsure about her circumstances. Elizabeth can only grimace back as the French pronunciation of her name imbibes her with a sense of hiraeth.
"Yes problem, Elizabeth. Could someone perhaps tell me why I'm being sentenced to the gallows – please?" Nott's voice is tight around the hand still on his nape – but he seems to have lost his patience with the exchanged niceties.
"Gladly," she quips, annoyed again. "You know what I hate, Nott?"
"Mirrors? Current trends? Vampires?" He tries to shrug, boyish curls flopping around his face.
In the next second there's a white flash flying overhead, Tiberius' tie comes to life, undulating like a serpent and tugging upwards in the air. He is pulled out of Reinhard's gasp who stands unsurprised, and fists his hands in the green silky material that laps at the sky – trying to loosen it as it constricts his airway, staining his skin a curious shade of pink.
Thomas, honestly.
Ursula moves to help him, but Elizabeth is already honing in on the spell with her so-called Mage Sight, flourishing her wrist to release the edge of the tie from the magic sticking to it – causing it to flop lifelessly against Nott's chest as he flails his arms wildly to not stumble at the loss of momentum.
"What I hate," she breathes, "are talebearers and circulators – who spill secrets that are not theirs to share."
There's a markable uptick in the murmuring in the gallery.
Turning to address Ursula, who has a look of dawning epiphany on her face, Elizabeth quickly amends. "Not that I distrust you, of course, Ursa. But the curse that I'm dealing with is not something I go around publicizing-"
A few agog outbursts sound out – the curse – their one singular taboo, a word stricken from every record and smothered under mental shields in every mind that is aware of its existence.
Well, perhaps the theatrics aren't as ridiculous when she employs them herself. At the very least, they sure do lead to satisfying responses.
"-so, it was understandably rather baffling to hear you mention it so nonchalantly," she glances at Nott stonily, "and led me to an obvious conclusion."
"I know that Lizzie," Tiberius begins, breaths haggard as he still recuperates from the spell – an angry bruise developing on the pale skin of his neck. "Which is why I didn't tell her."
He sighs deeply, working his jaw. "I know, I can behave like an utter pillock at times, but I would never divulge any of your secrets." Tibs' eyes stray to Ursula and soften incrementally, "even to a very pretty lady."
So, she made a mess over nothing, great, exactly what the proverbial 'Lady of Slytherin' is supposed to do.
Flattered, Ursula giggles melodically, bringing a hand over her mouth in a show of sweet bashfulness.
But then how would she-?
"How did you come by the knowledge of my girl's curse, Laveau?" Thomas' tone is downright terrifying – the cadence of a predator, her mind shrieks, Threat! Threat! Threat!
My girl?
A predator who has laid claim to her; which is not as comforting when the clicks of his shoes against the steps are long and drawn out in perfect silence, like the beats of a dying heart. Like a promise.
The walking war drum comes to a stop beside her, looping his arm securely around her waist as she stands stock-still.
Ursula bears the weight of their stares like Atlas under the earth under their feet, her doe-eyes wide and lips parted with a thousand quiet excuses. But Elizabeth does know better – Hufflepuffs do have a spine buried under the mud they roll in, in case of an emergency.
And Ursula is still a descendent of the most feared witch clan in North America.
She awaits her excuses.
The girl looks at Tibs as she starts off, likely eager to wipe the slightly betrayed look on his face. "He didn't tell me, mon cheri is an honest man," she dimples at him – but the creases in her eyes are not from smiling. And he doesn't smile back.
"How then?"
Ursula levels her with an uncharacteristically serious expression, ardentness drips from her voice. "I talk to the spirits, ma sauveuse, I can feel that you do to."
Fuck.
The hand around her waist tightens. Hard.
"And they tell tales, they have decades and centuries and whole libraries of stories and secrets to share with whomever is willing and capable of listening – as you know." Elizabeth just wishes that the girl would stop fucking talking.
"The things that the unseen see, the Hoodoo that your government despises so terribly they made laws against it, that is how I knew," Ursula grins at her – it has a worryingly malicious edge. "I could feel the curse that covers you, vile soul magick that reeks."
She needs to shut her up.
Clapping her hand together, Elizabeth steps out of Thomas' grip – though it proves a struggle – chirping "right! Now that we've cleared this up, we can adjourn the meeting-"
"-it has a very... particular stench, like 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡." Ursula's tone is thick with her accent and the grin is now undeniably mean. "And that, is how I knew that the curse is killing you."
A large, firm hand grips her wrist and yanks her back in a whirlwind, leading Elizabeth to be pressed to Thomas – chest to chest. His eyes are red, no trick of the light or illusion – no excuses – they are burning, flaring, blazing bloody red.
The red leeches into the air around him, haloing him like a fallen, vengeful angel. It is not saccharine and persuading – nor is it violent and warmongering. The red miasma of his magic seeps into her pores and it hurts.
"You're dying?" he asks.
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A/n. dun dun dun!! lmao I love fucking my characters over.
As always thank you beloved readers for reading my work, I love you dearly and please leave a vote and comment <333