⋆𝐃𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠⋆ - 𝐓.𝐌.𝐑

𝟎𝟑𝟖 - 𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐁𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬

⋆

𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝟰, 𝟭𝟵𝟰𝟱

Elizabeth is woken up by insipid, tittering laughter - and for just a moment, she is again a child at St. Joans', and the other girls walk by her dingy room on their way to Sunday service. Tinkling glass bells - shatter-able ones, in her opinion - perforate her ears and seep through the blue velvet drawn curtains of her bed like poisonous gas.

The one time she chooses to sleep in.

You see, her schedule had to shift a little to accommodate the current circumstances. If she were to abide by her strict regimen and head to work on her pirouettes before the break of dawn – Thomas would undoubtedly impose upon her little practice to supplicate.

Or his skewed version of supplicating, because the boy was incapable of getting on his knees - he could only grovel at her from above.

Same could be said for prefect patrols, which she had skipped on with the excuse of the Med wing being severely understaffed for the last few days - shirking one duty under the guise of another was rather brilliant, she thought-

-but her lackluster shifts would still be interrupted by lengthy missives folded like swan origami that would fly into the wing, detailing upon their paper feathers in sharp strokes what he observed during his duties.

Very little of wee Rubeus, to her surprise.

She kept them all.

Meals and lessons proved tense beyond the bounds of healthy imagination; spooning stew and nibbling on red currant tartes across from him whilst he stared her down as though possessed, silent and alluring, fossilizing her innards. Lessons conducted themselves like the birth of Athena, an ache constant and throbbing at her skull, a rod penetrating her temples as she spitefully chatted with Drue and Wally or focused on the board.

Out in the corridors and on the spanning grounds, hunting season commenced with the first signs of spring.

But she had her girls.

Many breaks were passed in the bathrooms spread throughout the castle, skirts wrinkling from sitting primly on porcelain sinks and initiating Ursa into the fold, talking about anything from the most benign to the profound depths that no one ever thought teenage girls capable of.

Evenings under the lake in the Girls' dorms in Slytherin where future Dark Lords could not go, just the four of them and the Grindylow, Elizabeth would conjure a dusty gramophone from visceral memories-

-seeing one buried amongst the still-smoking ruins of a bombed musical instruments' shop-

-and it would play the diaphanously soft notes of Tchaikovsky's labor, entwining with mossy green lighting and wafts of expensive French perfumes from Drue's collection. Possibly, it was just a figment of her imagination, a thirst for bridging the two worlds - but she swore there would be a silvery flash of light in the lake water, a medieval dress swaying in the currents, and lustrous eyes watching them matronly from afar. It was all so terribly tender and tranquilizing in a disconcerting way that she wasn't used to.

Elizabeth would glide her fingertips along the lush sage and silver brocade of their beds while speaking, and feel as though the fabrics snagged on every jagged edge of her.

In plain words that you only use late at night, she admitted to being an orphan to them.

No gory lore or other such destroyers of the well-bred lady, just her absence of parentage.