laconic • t.nott ✓

01 ➺ what are nargles

「 WHAT ARE NARGLES 」

IT WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING of October, and Theodore Nott was already filled with the when will the school year end mood that takes over a student's mind at least once a year.

This feeling was amplified by the fact that Hogwarts was no longer as it used to be. The halls now often deserted, the constant buzz of chatter was replaced by an eerie silence that may as well have belonged to a graveyard, and the lively air of the school has been vacuumed out through the high windows to make way for the chilled air produced by the dementors that roamed the school grounds although the Carrows have promised that they wouldn't have any effect on the inside of the castle, that they were merely there to punish the brats that would dare to leave the castle without supervision.

All in all, the year was going on perfectly. Absolutely fantastic.

Theo stumbled upon something on the floor and his heart skipped to his neck in panic. He whipped around, drawing his wand, though deep down he knew that he had simply walked over a dislodged stone on the floor. Nevertheless, it took him quite some time to get his heartbeat under control, and telling himself that there was nothing to be scared of, he put his wand back inside his pocket and continued on his way to the Astronomy Tower.

It was only twenty minutes before the curfew was to start, a voice inside his head reminded him, although he knew there was nothing to worry about. The Slytherins were favoured by the Carrows, especially those that came from as prestigious a family as his. Most of the Slytherin students who were under the good graces of the Death Eater siblings were allowed to roam the castle as though it belonged to them, and often earned points for themselves by hexing a random blood traitor, or, as the Carrows liked to put it – keeping them where they belonged.

Thus, Theo really had nothing to worry about. He could strut along the corridors while singing obnoxiously loudly, and the Carrows would worship him simply because his father was one of the Dark Lord's earliest and most trusted followers.

Unfortunately, the thought didn't bring much satisfaction to him as it normally would have.

Moonlight flooded over him all of a sudden, making him blink in surprise, and he realised that he had reached the Astronomy Tower. His feet padded softly over the stairs as he climbed quietly, hoping to get some peace and quiet that was so hard found these days. A semicircular area came up before him when he pushed the door open, which moved with a rusty grunt, and heaving a relieved sigh he walked out into the open, wishing that he could simply jump into the open air and float away out of this prison, for prison the Hogwarts Castle has become, where no one was allowed to leave the walls without express permission from the Headmaster himself.

He stepped towards the edge of the tower and placed his hands over the parapet, his fingers gripping the stone tightly. A terrible sense of longing swept through him as he was struck by a sudden thought – this was his last year of school. Some bloody rotten luck he had, he thought to himself, for his last year had to end this way. Seven years before, when he was still waiting for his Hogwarts letter to arrive, would he have imagined at all that this was what his last year would be like? No excitement, no good times with friends? Standing on a cliff, where any moment, he could slip and fall into a war that was swelling below him?

His eyes roamed over the Hogwarts grounds before him. He tried to ignore the dementors gliding across the sky, and the reminder that this was where Dumbledore had died just months before, that this was where his body had stumbled over the edge and crumpled into a heap down below. Instead, he focused his eyes into the Forbidden Forest that stood dark against the indigo sky, the crowns of the trees swaying slightly in the breeze. As a young boy, he had been irrationally afraid of the forest, fearing that it held creatures that only appeared in his nightmares, and one step toward it would result in those god awful creatures to swarm down upon him and punish him for embarking upon their territory.