B.Q. Book Two: Black Princess Ascendant

Chapter 25: Dark Devotions

Disclaimer: Was Tom Riddle able to go anywhere in Hogwarts he wanted when he returned for his job interview, even though Dumbledore knew he and his Death Eaters were there, and was still highly mistrustful of the budding Dark Lord?

If so, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whomever else she sold the rights to.

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Jen twisted the knob to cut off the shower, and water ran in freezing rivulets down her body to wash away the last few grains of salt still sticking stubbornly to her skin. A warm bath in salt water, then a cold shower in pure, she recited to herself, but why the temperatures for those two can't be reversed, I'll never know. Pulling back the curtain, she stepped out of the shower and picked up a rough towel to dry herself. And of course any magic that would make me more comfortable is strictly forbidden.

A breath of the smoldering bundles of sage and jasmine scattered through the room quickly cleared her head, or at least reminded her of what was at stake.

She walked to the sink, or more specifically to the bowls of paint she had put there before her watery ablutions. Sponges, already dripping with black and purple dyes, rose and began sweeping over her outstretched arms while a snap of her fingers caused her hair to be pulled up in a loose clump on the back of her head. It would need to be loose during the ritual – which was why she had sheared it off to just above her shoulders rather than leave it stretching to her upper back, to keep it from disturbing anything – but for her preparations, it was best that it stay completely out of the way. The sponges reached her shoulders and turned to continue down her back and over her breasts, and she dipped her fingers in the smaller dishes of black and white paints.

This degree of preparation was unusual for her; normally, she would simply worry about the runes and veves and not bother with what she herself looked like. Not even Elsie, born and raised in Haiti, the heartland of Voodoo itself, went through a complete purification or dolled herself up like this on a regular basis. While it never hurt – in point of fact, it made the magic more worthy of the Baron's attention – most of the rituals found in the grimoire she generally used, Maji a ak Spirtuèl nan Vodou, made no mention of such details, the procedures so old and so practiced that they had been stripped of all but the barest essentials. Honestly, the last time she had ever gone to this much effort was when she was eight and still learning the finer nuances of her craft.

Unfortunately, the magic she was about to work was not in that book, nor in any other that she knew of. It was instead of her own creation.

Hence the elaborate decorations. She was confident that it would succeed, as she had cobbled it together from several other rituals, even if they were only tangentially related to tonight's grisly purpose, but if this were not exactly right, the dedication her preparations displayed was believed to persuade the Baron to be more forgiving of mistakes and thereby ward off a potential rebound. She would rather not have to go home in a couple of hours and explain to the rest of the family how she had lost her magic or a limb or even the entirety of her physical form. And that assumed she could survive the backfire of magic in the first place.

The sponges trailed over her feet and tumbled away, and a loincloth, the only clothing she would wear during this early morning ritual, rose almost of its own accord and tied itself around her waist. The silver blocks of the belt sat heavily on her hips while the ragged ends of the cloth strips tickled the middle surfaces of her knees. She pulled her fingertips away from her neck and wiped the excess paint off on a rag, a flick of her wrist causing her hair to tumble down from its perch. Taking a deep breath, she raised her head to examine the finished product in the mirror.