Dose of Darkness | Tom Riddle |

Chapter Seven: You Started the Fire

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"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall"
--F.Scott Fitzgerald

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Eleanor pulled her useless silk robe around her comfort clothes as she headed down to the bathrooms early that evening for a fresh bath with refreshing scents of what made her think of coconut and salt water.

It was courtesy of her brother who was off in Greece right now, where her family suspected he was on Auror duty but with a particular woman new to his life. It explained why it took so long to find its way to school.

The corridors of Ravenclaw were filled with a distinctively chillier air today, reminding her how quick the season had arrived and how the cold was only extinguished when the sun passed through the thick gray clouds that haven't went away for days.

But Eleanor dressed in a knee length skirt the color of dampened sand with a fitted navy blue sweater with a round neck tucked in. It was nice to get out of the daily school robes for an evening out of the school itself. She's felt suffocated the past month and a half but at least she could say it was due to school work only.

"Hey, Eleanor." said Marcella, her heels clicking against the wood before being muffled by carpet.

Eleanor turned around from her bed to see Marcella, hair pinned up and the slim coat lined with fur along the neck already on, with a package in her hands.

"This must have came for you after lunch." she said, handing Eleanor the beige box wrapped with a single white bow of silk. "I'll meet you in the common room with Julius once you're ready."

Once she put on her pearl earrings as quick as she could, she took the package and thanked her friend. Now that she was ready, she wondered what the package could be, seeing that her sisters name was written on a note beside the bow.
When Eleanor lifted the lid, her eyes fell across a burgundy fabric and her fingers brushed its wool texture over two flaps that clarified it was some kind of coat. She lifted it from the box completely, letting it unfold itself and a wide grin spread across her lips, taking in the knee length coat with a single, thin brown belt around the waist with her eager eyes.

Then before she knew it, Eleanor walked out with her fellow Ravenclaws and went on to Hogsmeade in her newly fashioned coat.

"I got someone to sneak us in some liquor by the way." Cormac said in his giddy voice as he walked at the edge of the five of them that took up the path.

Eleanor glanced over at him with a intrigued look.

"Just so you know, Giggle Water isn't considered liquor." she commented flatly, earning a laugh from the other three that were there.

"Oh shut it." he murmured.

"Well to back up his claim," Julius said, sporting a leather jacket, the same one she recalled from last years trip to Hogsmeade. It made her inwardly cringe and she looked away as Julius continued.

"It's apparently something stronger than Fire Whisky, which we have also obtained."

"So you girls do your thing. We got business to do." Cormac proudly said as Hogsmeade came into view.

Eleanor grinned. "I'm going to need some of that for compensation."

While Marcella and Lillian argued with Cormac on a topic of women in the war of the muggles, Eleanor entered the cobblestone town decorated with the natural strays of Autumn, her mind only thinking of how she'd only get to experience the joy of her favorite time of the year for just moments before she had to go to an awful place.