Ace had gone up to their dorm after a massive dinner to do her hair.
Charlie was with his dormmates. Or the ones he liked, at least. Carmilla didn't know their names. He didn't like talking about them very much. Apparently, he would much rather talk about how exactly Carmilla physically turned into a bat [she hadn't even realised there were different types of transformations]. She had explained every aspect of being a knock off vampire to him before she was left to wander the corridors by herself.
It had stopped snowing quite as much outside, but it hadn't melted, so the stars glowed as brightly as the grounds through the window Carmilla was sitting on the sill of.
Tinsel lined the hallways, and the smell of dinner was wafting through the castle. The food served at the Christmas feast really was the best. Carmilla squashed herself into the stone groove, pressing the side of her head against the cold frosty glass.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and picked at her nails. It was a bad habit.
It was tempting to open the arched glass window and fly through the snowflakes until she should be feelings something. Anything, really. She wanted her body to ache after too much flapping around and she wanted to feel the cold biting at her toes.
Carmilla wanted her heart to beat. She wanted her lungs to breathe. She wanted to cry out all of the numbness.
She wanted to not have to be still inside and outside at every moment of everyday.
Footsteps echoed from a hallway away, the ringing sound of shoes on carpet reaching her ears easily. She also wanted to not hear absolutely fucking everything. Unfortunately, whoever it was, was headed in her direction.
Maybe Carmilla could pretend to be a dead bat. Then she'd be left alone.
"...Good Christmas?"
Carmilla smiled. "Hello Catfoot."
"Merlins balls, no one is giving up on that nickname, are they?" Sirius muttered, and squashed himself onto the windowsill opposite her. He shivered. He was wearing his pyjamas. Strangely, she didn't quite know how to answer the question.
It was a simple one, obviously, but what did he expect her to say? That Hogwarts was amazing, it the best Christmas she'd ever had. All of its rich foods she wanted to steal away and send back to her hungry sisters at the home and the sparkling tinsel that blurred in her eyeline.
That it made her feel sick to her stomach? How there was mountains of decorations and expensive presents that could've sent her and every girl at the home to primary school. That with one table of the feast she could feed families for days with.
That she was so very, very selfish, because she loved it so very, very much?
She shrugged instead of pouring her heart out, "Its different."
Sirius nodded.
It didn't take a lot of work to put together that he hated his family and anything to do with them. Carmilla assumed he was a pureblood then, with businesses built on hatred and greed to inherit, along with the expensive paintings and grand pianos in the summer holidays dotted around the coasts of different countries.
All of the good people she knew with bad parents were.
"It doesn't really feel like actual Christmas," Carmilla said quietly. She brought her knees to her chest and held them. The snow thickened on the flattened grass below.
The humongous Christmas trees and smell of peppermint, the numerous mistletoe incidents in the hallways, and feasts of pudding and turkeys were right, they were Christmas, but they weren't Carmilla's Christmas.
"What's actual Christmas?" Sirius asked. "Like, for you."
Carmilla squinted at the cloudy sky. It always looked like that though. The stars were blurry dots of light on clear days at best. "Mass is in the morning. The younger girls can never sit still for so long, so me and Dawn draw little pictures in the back of prayer books with crayons for them."
"...What's Mass?"
"It's like... Like a class sort of, but you learn about God and Mistress Theeny reads bits of the bible and there's music sometimes. Rose is learning how to play the piper organ," Carmilla said.
She forgot sometimes that people didn't grow up using candles when it got dark and learning to keep skirts below the knee.
"We all make lunch together, with roast potatoes and radishes. We get the spare batter from them and fry these tiny little Yorkshire puddings. They're amazing. Rose's Auntie Nelly works at the butcher, and she brings pieces of pheasant."
Carmilla stopped picking at her nails. "We'd byy sweets and spend the rest of the day making presents for each other. I use the fabric from the old uniforms donated and make skirts for the little ones." Carmilla said, remembering the afternoons she spent with a needle in her hand carefully pulling threads out of old blouses and sitting on the cushions around the fire in the room that smelt of boiled raspberries and lemon drops, heads in her lap.
Sirius frowned. He looked very confused. "Who're the little ones?"
"...My younger sisters?" Carmilla said. It felt like someone was poking a sewing needle into her gums. She pushed on her sharp teeth with her tongue.
"How many sisters do you have?" He asked. His pyjamas had snitches on them.
"...Eleven?"
Sirius stared at her.
She picked at her nails. She really wanted to paint them; she just hadn't gotten around to asking Ace to borrow some polish yet. "Now might be a good time to mention that I'm an orphan."
"With eleven sisters?" Sirius nearly shrieked. "Where do all the babies come from if your parents are dead?"
"I live at an orphanage, dumbass. I'm not actually related to any of the girls there... They're still my sisters though," she defended with a frown. She didn't know how to explain it to him, but he had to understand. They were her sisters. "It doesn't matter if it's not by blood."
Sirius nodded. "Yeah... I get that."
Carmilla let her shoulders fall. She rubbed the crease in her eyebrow and looked out the window. She knew he wasn't going to be all weird about the orphan thing, or at least she hoped so. It was Sirius. He was awkward about everything.
She could feel his eyes on her still, and she turned back after a moment of staring at what looked like a half moon and wondering if she could turn into a bat and fly away from this increasingly awkward conversation. "Yes?"
"I just..." he shrugged and broke eye contact. What a dork. "I didn't know you're an orphan."
"Well, it's not exactly something I parade around," Carmilla said. She smiled a little bit, and noticed that he was wearing bunny slippers instead of his normal black stompy boots you could hear from three halls away.
Sirius nodded quickly. "Yeah, obviously, I mean... I would, but yeah."
Carmilla stared at him.
"...Cause, like, I'd be happy if my parents died, but..."
Carmilla kept staring at him.
He flinched back, his face screwed up. He even flapped his hands like Ace did. "That sounds really bad cause your parents are dead and... Ignore that. Please. Sorry. Anyway, I just kinda hate them, but... pretend I didn't say anything, actually. Sorry."
"...You're hilarious," Carmilla muttered, watching him flail and apologise frantically. "And my parents aren't dead, by the way."
Not dead. Just gone.
Well, her mother could be dead, Carmilla wouldn't know. No one would tell her. Sirius rubbed his hands together, and Carmilla realised that his breath was steaming up against the frosty glass window with a scorch mark in one corner and a few initials written in purple quill ink along the bottom.
He didn't say anything else, probably figuring out that everything he added was just digging him into a deeper hole.
Carmilla smiled. "...Good Christmas?"
He mimed zipping his lips.
"Dork."
They sat on the windowsill in silence for a while longer. Her butt was numb. She didn't really want to stand and go to bed though. Something about another person being there stopped the ache in her chest for the release of all her horrid emotions.
So, she traced the words written on the bottom of the glass and watched snowflakes in all different shapes and sizes drift past.
Sirius kept tapping his fingers on the stone they were squashed onto. He probably wanted to leave, though. Maybe she should say something that could end the conversation they weren't having and let him escape up to his dorm room where his friends were probably waiting.
"...What else do you do?" he asked, instead. "On Christmas?"
Carmilla blinked. It sort of sounded like he wanted to stay. She thought for a second. "Well, I sneak out with Dawn and Rose once everyone's in bed."
"No."
She couldn't tell if that was sarcasm or not, so she tried to sound more casual about the fact sneaking out on those precious nights and riding the bus into the outskirts of London weren't the highlight of her year.
When she wasn't one of those girls from the church coming along in long skirts asking for donations or running the Masses when the nuns were sick in bed again because flu's could kill when your only warmth came from fireplaces. She was just some silly out of towner with her friends in high heeled shoes with prayer pamphlets stuffed into the ends no one else knew about.
She could dance and not buy drinks because there were far too many people stuffed into the cramped low rooved pubs filled with spiky haired people and loud music that hurt her ears.
"We just take the bus," she shrugged, picking at her nails. "And go hang out in London for the night. It's fun."
"You don't live in London?"
"No, we live by the ocean. One of those towns split by the river. Over to the South. The one with that guy who was eaten by his cats when he died and it turned out he was selling them as pork meat at the butcher, like five years ago."
Sirius nodded. "I remember that. It freaked out my... uh, yeah, it freaked me out."
Carmilla raised an eyebrow. And she thought he was good at lying. "Nice try."
He rolled his eyes. She let him stay quiet for a bit. He opened his mouth to speak a few times and then shut it again until finally he got the words out. Carmilla's butt was really numb by then. "My brother."
"I didn't know you had a brother."
"Well..." He looked like he might cry. "It's not exactly something I parade around."
Carmilla wasn't sure what to do, so she hugged him. She grew up surrounded by little girls, hugs and band aids and sweets fixed everything. Until they didn't. She didn't know what her friend was so upset about, but she just wanted to make it better. Sirius tensed for a second and then buried his face in her shoulder and hugged her back.
Sirius smelt like the smoke from a pack of exploding cards and peppermint gum.
Underneath the overwhelming scent of blood, of course. Carmilla kicked that thought out of her head. His voice cracked when he spoke. "I just, I just don't really talk to him anymore."
"...Why not?"
Sirius sniffed, wiping his nose and pulled away. "He's in Slytherin. It's fine, really. Reg just, he's... it's complicated. Whatever."
Carmilla raised her eyebrows. "I can tell."
"Rude," he muttered, but he was smiling again. There was probably snot on her shoulder, but the house elf that left smiley faces drawn on their things would probably clean it off tonight.
Carmilla smiled back and nudged his bunny slipper with her shoe.
He nudged her shoe with his bunny slipper.
kind of a short one but i spend so long writing chapters that they feel long to me anyways
<3