"Shut up!"
Jade threw a pillow at Helia as the other girl moved around the dormitory, trying to make her bed look lived in, as she did every inspection, despite the fact everyone knew she never slept in the dormitory. We must always present the proper face to the world, no matter what the occasion. Quoting even in her own self-monologue. Could Helia get any sadder?
Helia was humming a tune under her breath, one that had been trapped in her head for days. It was one of her brother's that he kept on a CD in his room and blasted through the house whenever he had the opportunity.
"You just don't understand fine music." Helia said. She hadn't even realised that she had been humming.
Jade scoffed. "I know it, I think. The Flies, or whatever?"
Helia stared. "The Beatles? How do you forget the name of the Beatles?"
Jade shrugged. "Only half muggle, remember?"
"That is no excuse."
Helia resumed humming, this time even louder. Eleanor Rigby was such a sad song, or she assumed it was sad. The lyrics were so confusing, it was difficult to tell. Still 'All the Lonely People' wasn't that promising.
Jade pushed her way out of bed. "Okay, fine. I'm up. Now cease that infernal racket."
.................................................
"What constellation is that?"
"That's the Big Dipper. It has another, more sciencey name, but I can never be bothered to remember it."
"And what's that?"
"That's the giant waffle in the sky, who watches over all of us and makes sure we eat our breakfast."
Helia and Remus were lying on the stone roof of the Astronomy Tower, looking up at the stars. Their heads were almost touching, and their feet were just grazing the opposite ends of the tower. Helia's Ravenclaw robe had been given up as sacrifice for a pillow to rest their heads on. As with most encounters with Helia, Remus wasn't quite sure how it happened, but he wasn't going to complain. He twisted his neck to look at her now.
"Are you sure that's not just something your parents invented to convince you to eat healthy?" Remus asked, smiling lightly.
He could feel Helia shrug. "You may be right, Moon Boy, but the lesson of The Great Waffle can be passed down to us all."
Remus laughed lightly. "I will remember it always."
A chill breeze rushed the stone barricade, making Remus shiver. The Christmas holidays were fast approaching, and with the descent into the winter months, a sudden cool snap had overtaken the castle. It was nowhere near the freezing temperatures required for snow, but it still managed that awkward kind of cold, where you think it's warm enough to escape wearing gloves, and then immediately regret your decision but feel too awkwardly out of place to make an excuse to go and get them.
Maybe that was just Remus.
"Are you going to Hogsmead next weekend?" Remus asked, casually.
Helia stared straight up into the clouds. "I don't know. It depends on whether Jade and Lin drag me. I have so much work to do and the school will be mostly empty..."
Remus frowned. "It's just one day off from homework."
"I'm not talking about homework." Helia said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm talking about The List."
The List, Remus was beginning to understand, was a record of all the people at Hogwarts whom Helia had decided deserved 'punishment'. Whether they be friends, or teachers, or prefects, it seemed no one was safe from The List. It only discriminated based on individual action, instead of title.
Despite this, there were some minor flaws with Helia's vigilante system. After the stunt she had pulled with Arnold Macmillan, a number of his supporters, and a few people just using the incident as an excuse for rule breaking, had taken it upon themselves to enact revenge on Helia. None of which had succeeded thus far, but it had resulted in The List getting longer and longer, and Helia's capacity for getting away with pretty much anything being tested more and more.
"So who's next, Hitman?"
"You'll just have to see, wont you?"
Remus grinned, knowing she couldn't see him. "You're like a more subtle and less violent version of Batman, you know that?"
"I prefer to think of Batman as a more stupid version of me."
"I'm serious. It's like you have your own Bat Cave and everything."
"Yes, you're right." Helia's voice was dripping sarcasm. "That's where I sleep. In a giant underground man cave filled with flying rodents."
"I don't think there are literal bats in the Bat Cave."
"I beg to differ." Helia said stubbornly. Remus laughed. "Although, I'm sure Lin wouldn't care whether it was a Bat Cave or a small broom closet as long as I'm making out with you in it."
Remus felt himself go red. "You too, huh?" he managed, hoping he sounded at least partly normal. "James and Sirius seem desperate for us to... you know."
He heard Helia snort and shift slightly. There was a long silence. Helia started humming a tune under her breath. Remus recognised it in the back of his mind, but wouldn't have been able to tell you the name of the melody. It reminded him of childhoods where his parents had always been the one who chose the song and the songs were always the same, but it didn't matter because they knew all the words and that made it feel so much more like coming home.
Unconsciously, he found himself humming along. Helia paused for a second in surprise that anyone else knew her muggle brother's music and then carried on. Until they were just two teenagers, trapped in a melody, on top of the highest point of a castle.
They could almost be normal.
...........................
"'Oranges and lemons' say the bells of St. Clement's."
The sing-song voice sounded like that of a snake, it sounded evil, and warped and sadistically amused, echoing down the corridor, though she couldn't tell from where. The little girl was huddled next to her mother's sleeping form.
Because her mother was sleeping.
Of course she was sleeping.
And she would wake up soon.
Wake up and smile.
The voice came again. "'When will you pay me?' say the bells of Old Bailey."
Yes, of course. They had played this game before. It was called sleeping lions. You had to lie still on the floor and not move, never move an inch until the game was declared over. The little girl lay down on her back and tried to be still. She glanced over at her mother.
Wake up.
"'When I am rich' say the bells of Shoreditch."
The little girl didn't like this game. And she didn't like the unfamiliar footsteps banging about in her house, in her room. Maybe they were playing with her action figures. Maybe they would mess them up and make Wolverine's claws bent (someone at nursery had done that before). Maybe they would move Spider-Man and Dark Spider-Man to the wrong places. Maybe they would ruin Batman's new glossy armour.
She opened her eyes.
"Mummy?"
Her mother didn't move.
"Mummy, I losted. Can we go and find Superman? I don't want to play this anymore."
Still nothing.
"Pretty please, Mummy?"
"'When will that be?' say the bells of Stepney."
The voice was so much closer this time, and recognisable as female. The girl could feel it in the air and down her spine in the way that you can't while walls and doors separate you. She glanced up the staircase that she had found her mother lying at the bottom of and was able to catch the flow of skirts as someone walked the distance around the banister at the top.
"Mummy?"
Her voice was barely a whisper, but desperate still. Flying saucer eyes clutched at her mother, begging her to move and protect her.
"'I do not know' says the Great Bell of Bow."
Feet appeared on the modernly carpeted stairs that her mother had got installed. High heeled boots. Leather. Laced to the top. Six inches. Her mother thought that girls shouldn't go around wearing heels that big because they left marks in her carpet. Not huge ones. Little dents. Minor imperfections.
"Here comes the candle to light you to bed..."
The little girl was granted a view of the person walking down their stairs: She had wide eyes, not like the girl, but like she was constantly surprised by the world's inadequacy to tailor to her needs, wildly curling dark hair huddled tightly around her face, a smirk played at the corner of her mouth as she sang, widening as she witnessed the scene before her.
She was young-old, the little girl recognised, referring to her own, personal vocabulary: She was old enough to stay up as long as she wanted, and go out after eight, and eat pizza even when it wasn't tea time, and do all the things adults do, but she wasn't quite one of them yet. Still young enough to be the cool one at a family gathering.
The little girl curled tighter to the side of her mother.
"Here comes a chopper to chop off your head."
The woman lowered her skirts, cocking her head to the side slightly in a grotesque parody of a puppy waiting for a treat. She seemed genuinely delighted by everything she saw, but it was the delight of a little boy pulling the wings off a fly, it was the delight of lighting matches and watching the fire eat everything in it's path, it was the delight of Satan standing on a cliff overlooking a city of his making, and watching the world burn.
The woman raised a small twig, and at first the little girl thought it was another game- the kind she used to play on the banks of the river with her older cousins, where swords erupted from foliage and lightsabers were cast into being by the existence of trees.
But if it was a game, why was the girl paralyzed to the spot? Why was her stomach aching? Why was her hand clenched so tightly around the sleeve of the woman who had given birth to her?
And why wouldn't her mother wake up?
"Chip chop chip chop-"
It only lasted a moment.
The flash of light was blinding, and stung. The world turned every shade of shocking green, neon lights dancing behind in front of her eyes. Everything turned upside down and wrong. And then the light went away. And then everything went away.
Green had been her favourite colour.
...............................
"The last man's dead."
Bellatrix finished the nursery rhyme on perfect evil timing, watching as the little mudblood thing fell to the ground, head landing on it's mother's stomach. It always felt so satisfying, the moments like this, where Bellatrix knew that not one of the things inside the house were ever going to move again. It built a world of order, a world under her thumb, a world she could control.
And Bellatrix loved control.
She stepped casually over the corpses she had left behind and walked over to the door. She could have apparated, but apparition left traces on the air, traces with which to find her by. And Bellatrix was not about to let her battle for glory fall short because of a few blood traitors who were too weak to do what she was doing.
Bellatrix knew that the mission she was on was right, and good, and made the world safe for future generations who wouldn't be tainted with the blood of non magicians. It was what she had been brought up to believe, and she knew it was true that the bloodlines must be cleansed. She knew she was doing the honourable thing.
But it was also terrifically, incredibly fun.