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chapter three, wild child
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AS CALAMITY'S CHILD, DAPHNE likes to think that chaos pursues her and not the other way around.
It tends to hang over her shoulder like a silent shadow, creeping around and catching her off guard whenever life is trundling by a little too smoothly. To her knowledge, mischief isn't in her blood, but it seems that she falls fate to it far too often for it not to be at least slightly hereditary. She seems to have an exceptional talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, for tripping into the gaping rabbit hole of her own premeditated mistakes — at this point, mayhem is her middle name!
Of course, when she finds herself sauntering toward Slughorn's office, Daphne starts to wish that she had a more normal middle name, and that she had been more pious and saintly in her time at Hogwarts. How did Joan of Arc make it look so easy?
Maybe this is it for me, Daphne wonders as she continues down the hallway. Maybe I'll have to be sent back home to grand-mère in Lyon, or even worse: Atlas in Liverpool.
She clings to her fluorite in terror.
The dungeons are chilly and everything tends to echo, so it's an immense relief to finally reach her Head of House's grand office. There's a crackling hearth on the opposite side of the room, directly behind his armchair in an attempt to give him the majority of the heat that the leaping flames exude. A long mahogany desk cluttered with trinkets and stray books sits before his velvety chair, the great lamp that's teetering on the edge slightly tinted green. Many portraits hang on his dark walls, but there's one of the current Slytherin Quidditch team that sticks out to her in particular, the players having solemn glares that contrast Professor Slughorn's infectious grin. A tall cupboard is tucked in the corner, filled to the brim with his finest drinks. There are tins of biscuits and sweets alike on his mantelpiece, surrounded by plants that may have been gifted to him by Professor Sprout judging from the terracotta pots that are starkly different to the otherwise shadowy colour palette of his office.
