The Boy With Black Eyes

Lacewing Flies and Legilimency

While Melissa slumbered, high in Ravenclaw tower, a tumultuous. mostly one-sided arguement was taking place in the bowels of the castle. As Rachel returned to the Slytherin Common Room, a silencing charm muffling her footsteps, the whispers of the castle surrounding her, she was startled by a strangled shout, one that was not typical of the dingier corners of the dugeons.

Creeping on hushed feet, her breathing slow and mind diverted for the moment, Rachel crept toward the source of the sound. Moving away from the main corridor, and into the maze of twists and turns that was the bowels of the castle, and ignoring the couple that had tucked themselves behind a statue of some long-forgotten wizard that must have contributed to the school in some way. A door, ever so slightly open, lay at the end of a long corridor, and as she crept toward it, the shout rang out again, echoing down the corridor, bouncing off of rough-carved stone walls.

Rachel crouched low to the ground, knowing the trick from listening to her parent's conversations for years. In the room, was her head of house, missing the characteristic long black robes, hair tied back in a ponytail, spectacles on his nose, puddles of various coloured liquid pooling at the bottom of the far wall, glass shards sparkling in the darkness.

And then, there was a voice, a barely heard whisper that contained a woman's tones. "...what did you expect would happen...?"

The noise that came from Professor Snape could only be equated to a roar, as a vial of something was hurled at the far corner of the room, and the sound of glass shattering and liquid exploding against the wall made Rachel flinch back. From her limited viewpoint, she could not see the woman who was talking, but she could hear her.

"...you can hardly punish her for fulfilling my wishes..."

"I remembered you. Lupin..." Her Potions professor, pleading.

"...is dead..."

Another vial went flying, his shoulders beginning to shake. Fists clenched tight at his sides, voice bubbling as he rounded to a space just beyond Rachel's field of vision. She couldn't see the woman he was talking too, or hear what they whispered to each other. Rachel pulled away from the door, and looked down at her watch double-checking the time. She'd left Gendry more than twenty minutes ago, and he'd be looking for her now.

Keeping her footsteps light, she hurried down the corridor, rounded a collection of corners, again ignoring the couple behind the old statue, and half-ran back to the Slytherin Common Room.

If she was willing to sneak around to get condoms from her Head Girl, then her Head of House yelling at ghosts was not going to stop her from getting laid.

**********

The next day passed around Melissa with little consequence, as did the next one. She was rather careful about her pumpkin juice, and even about her food. However, bigger things came up that did not compare to the threats of an old man. One of her prefects had a really nasty break up, Howlers being hurled on both sides. Some of the Slytherin first-years kept reporting funny sounds coming from the Common Room at around midnight, and their persistence roused her suspicions. She had plans to stake it out this coming weekend, as she worked on a pre-Healing assignment she'd asked Madame Pomfrey for.

Her nose was buried in a book in the Potions section of the library late on the afternoon of the fourth day after the incident, searching for the reasons why they weren't allowed to use sassafras in the seventh-year curiculum. Her grandfather had told her to use it for acne since she turned thirteen. It even tasted half-decent.

Nox went with her everywhere she went, and still hung in her rucksack like a lead bar. Potions yesterday had been tense, and it resulted in her cauldron boiling over with noxious black smoke, the bat having to swoop in and fix the problem she created. When he reprimanded her with a rather snarky comment about her intelligence, she'd meant to shoot him a glare, but could only remember the way in which he'd looked down the long, hooked nose at Nox, towering over her even then, at seventeen.