When She Spoke (Marauders Era)

Chapter Five

Dear Tom,
It is only my second week of fifth year and I already have a sworn enemy, loads of school work, and Bellatrix is "accidentally" spilling everything on my shirt as I write this. What am I to do?
Love,
Lark

Dearest sister,
I simply cannot imagine you hating anybody. You with your fairy tale books, television (I think that's what they call it) and joyous smile? No, Lark, you could never actually hate anybody. You unlike me, have no reason to. Don't worry about the school work, I'm sure you'll manage!
With Greatest Wishes,
Tom Marvolo Riddle
PS. Tell Bellatrix to visit me if she continues her foolish nonsense.

Lark looked in between the two letters, sighing without making a sound. She hadn't wanted any sort of advice, or objection to her feelings. She had been hoping for Tom to tell her about his days at Hogwarts, and how he had been different and had many problems also, then again, Tom was able to speak, and Tom didn't have to deal with Sirius.
Lark rolled her eyes once more, and threw the two letters in the air exasperatedly, , accidentally tipping over the chair she was sitting in and landing on the ground with a large thud!
"Some help you are," she heard a moderately low voice grumble from behind her, and gave one more inward groan before hoisting herself off the floor, straightening her Slytherin tie indignantly and flipping the long chocolate waves of hair over her shoulder.
"Can't we try the spell again?", Sirius said excitedly. Lark shook her head. They must have spent at least an hour trying to produce a patronus, all of which was unsuccessful.
"Please?", he pleaded the same way Lark remembered herself doing as a small child for candy. "Just a few more times?"
She gave a reluctant nod.
"Expecto Patronum!", he exclaimed, arching his back dramatically and waving his wand at thin air. Lark tapped him on the head lightly, indicating that he should focus on happy thoughts.
"Right," he said, ruffling his hair. "Do you think that you could help me with the motions?"
She nodded, wrinkling her nose, and reluctantly stood in front of him, extending her wand hand and placing it over his to guide him. Sirius cleared his throat awkwardly, and Lark cringed when she realized how close they were standing. E
"Expecto-", Sirius began, and she drew a quick circle with the wand, hearing his deep breaths of concentration from behind her. "Patronum!"
Neither student expected the moments that would follow. A bang went off, sending Sirius and Lark flying backwards, landing side by side on the carpeted ground of the Gryffindor Common room, soon followed by a bright, blinding flash of white light. Sirius raised an arm to shield them from the light, yet Lark still had to squint, and inched closer to him, curling up to protect herself from any flying debris, though there really wasn't any. Within seconds, the light faded, and the dimly lit lanterns hanging on the walls replaced it.
"W-w-what was that?", Sirius stuttered, looking down at a very shaken Lark, who was curled up against his chest, looking like she had seen a ghost.
"I don't know," she wanted to answer.
"Neither do I," he chuckled nervously. It took the shaken girl a second to realize what was happening, before turning her head up to give him a quizzical look.
"You did say something, right?", he asked, shifting out from under Lark as if maybe she would bite. Lark glared at him. There was nothing to be scared of. Even if he could hear her, it wasn't as if it had never been done before. Looking back to the event, she remembered that Tom was very young, and was probably inexperienced at casting the spell, therefore causing small side effects. Aside from that, he didn't even know that Lark had been magically silenced- he probably thought that she was just very shy, so it shouldn't have been so frightening. Remembering her recent decision on her feelings for Sirius, Lark gave a forced glare and shook her head.
"Why don't you try it then?", he gave her a similar piercing stare. "Whatever I just did, I'm betting that you can't get anything close to it!"
She stood, brushing herself off and shoving past him in a way of saying "Just watch me!"
Lark stood poised and ready, taking a deep breath and searching for some kind of happy thought. There weren't many, yet the few that existed remained strong and beautiful.
"Expecto Patronum!", she screamed, but in a way that only she could hear.
Lark was fourteen that day- exactly fourteen. Tom sat across from her, and the three Black sisters surrounded her as they picked away at a small marble cake, which Tom had secretly slipped Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans into. It was a tradition to do so every year on Lark's birthday, and so it wasn't really all that secret; the Black sisters didn't know. He gave her a sly grin, carefully navigating his fork around the colored beans. Lark didn't mind the odd flavors, and so she dug right into the pastry, swallowing bites so large that an overweight trucker could have been barely capable of them. Bellatrix was doing the same, though she was unaware of the colorful flavoring in the center of her slice.
As the first piece slipped through her lips, the girl's eyes widened, lips pursed and nose wrinkled. With Bellatrix's small nose, already large eyes with thick makeup and overly puffy lips, the expression was impossible not to chortle at. From across the mahogany table, Lark could spot the twinkle in Tom's eyes, though the expression only reached the corner of his lips. She, however, gave a loud snort pointing at Bellatrix mockingly and trying hard not to spit up her cake as she laughed.
The older girl frowned, refusing to swallow. Instead, she leaned over, and to Lark's disgust, spit into her lap.
"Oh, goodness," Narcissa gave a horrified expression, shielding her and her older sister's eyes. "Bella, that's disgusting!"
"She deserved it!", Bellatrix defended. "You don't just throw disgusting ingredients into a cake of all things!"
"Why would it make a difference if it wasn't a cake?", Tom wondered.
"A cake is supposed to be good!", she exclaimed. "Lark ruined it!"
"I would like to think that the cake that I made was good," Tom reacted coolly.
Realizing her mistake, Bellatrix shrunk down into her chair.
"Lark, would you like to take a walk while I clean up?", her older brother asked. Lark nodded excitedly, for it had been at least a week since she had last seen Severus and Lily, who Tom did not yet know about for reasons that she preferred not to mention.
Lark slyly slipped off her uncomfortable stilettos that Tom had bought for her and stashed them under the table, walking out the door quickly, hoping that her guest would not notice her sudden decrease in height. Only Andromeda knew about Lark's distaste for shoes in general. She hated the way that they made her feet stink, and crammed them into small spaces. Why did people even wear shoes anymore? Why didn't they just make strap-on roller blades?
Closing the door behind her quietly, Lark began the familiar route down Spinner's End, the same one that she had walked the day she had met Severus. A cool hand slipped into her's, and Lark whirled around in surprise. There stood teenage Severus Snape, only a mere two weeks older than she. He squeezed her hand, grinning oddly. Lark giggled, for the pearly white teeth and hopeful, shining eyes clashed horribly with his depressing long, black hair.
"You didn't really think that I'd forget, did you?", he smile, and she leaned into his chest, so happy that she had people like him to look forward to. "How was your brother's?"
Lark snorted, rolling her eyes. He laughed, shaking his head, "Was it really that boring? Didn't he at least do the beans?"
She nodded her head to both questions. Severus was always eager to hear about the goings on in the Riddle household, as if the strange formalness of it all confused him, and the silly little quirks such as the beans, which seemed to have slipped through the cracks in formalness delighted him; he already knew most of the details of Lark's awful birthdays, with uncomfortable shoes and horrible cake.
He smiled at her again, "You do know how happy you are, right?"
Lark shrugged; she was actually quite a melancholy person, at least in public.
"No, that's not what I mean, whatever you were thinking. You're like a...daydream at the end of a nightmare."
Lark retracted her hand faster than light, mimicking barfing. Severus burst out laughing, doubling over, his face red from laughing so much.
"Not like that either!"
Lark gave a sigh of relief and placed her hand back in his, resuming where they left off: her head resting on his shoulder and Severus smiling lightly, which was a rare occasion.
"I mean that I'm tormented all year. You have James, who is fully convinced that Lily is destined to be his wife-" he rolled his eyes, "-and Sirius, who is like his personal bodyguard. There's Peter, who's just as smart as a rock, and Remus the bookworm. They all think that they rule Hogwarts, hexing anybody who gets in their way and acting like they're kings. But I have you.
"You always know how to act, when to comfort me, and-" he moved away, turning to face her, so close that their noses were touching. This time, Lark didn't move away. "- after all that, you never ask for anything in return. You never speak, never cry, you're just wonderful. You're like a sort of miracle to me, Lark. You're just... marvelous. And-", his voice cracked sorrowfully, as if he was trying very hard not to cry. "-I think I love you."
He looked down so that Lark couldn't see his face, but she could imagine the tears running down his face, and sniffed only to realize that she was leaking water out of her eyes as well. Severus looked up, his cheeks wet and nose red from the oncoming Autumn weather. Lark's heart sank, and she felt nothing but remorse for her best friend. He was so young- only fourteen-yet he had already fallen in love, and had his heart smashed even faster than it had fallen into Lily's hands. She didn't blame the beautiful redhead, for it wasn't her fault that she was oblivious to Severus's feelings. Now he was turning to the only person he could trust, with his parent's cruelty and his hard life at school, he had Lark, who knew how much he loved her, and loved him right back, not in a romantic way, yet not between a brother and sister, maybe somewhere in between.
Severus leaned into hug Lark, and she fell into his open arms, resting her head on his chest and wishing that it could stay this way forever. Somewhere far away, wars were raging, people were dying, hearts were being broken, and darkness was tearing the fabric of light, but she had Severus, and Severus had Lark, and that was all they needed to survive.
"I love you, Lark," he whispered.
Maybe in a parallel universe, somewhere far away, where silenced Larks had voices to sing with and broken hearts had glue to mend them, Lark would have said something like this: "I love you too, Sev. More than you could ever know."
Lark grinned madly as she remembered, energized at the thought of going back to that moment, where all was right in the world and Severus and she had never had any wounds between themselves to mend.
A sort of shimmering strand of silvery magic seeped from the end of Lark's dark wand, shaping itself so perfectly that it might have been filling a mold. First came the worn feet, with toes larger than Lark's hand, then the wrinkled legs, all four of them, and the body. It had a strange beauty to it, marching around the room with an air of elegance that she admired so. It gave a loud trumpet of pride, raising a wrinkled trunk in the air and stomping one heavy foot on the ground, before fading away as fast as it had appeared.
Lark stood, gaping in awe at her marvelous creation.
"An elephant?", Sirius scoffed from behind her. "That is the best you can do? My flash of blinding white light was way better!"
Lark glared at him, and stormed out of the Gryffindor common room after stuffing all of her papers into a small leather messenger bag, swinging it over her shoulder, mouthing a few choice words at Sirius and slamming the portrait hole behind her.
It felt as if he always had to ruin everything, even if she had only known him personally for so long. She had been enjoying herself for the first time in a while. Ever since the cookie incident, it had hurt Lark to think about the few moments in her life when she felt as if she really belonged in the storybooks that she read, and would finally get her fairytale ending someday, right along with Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Belle.
That day on her fourteenth birthday, when she and Severus's faces had been soaked with salty tears, and they had finally accepted that the days of stargazing were over, Lark had felt truly happy. They had been sad, a bittersweet sad that left scars on their hearts and stars on their souls, and she had loved every minute of it. Lark loved Tom with all her heart, she really did. No matter how much trouble she had at school, he was always there, yet he would never be Severus. Severus, who made her feel as if she was part of something other than silence. Severus, who understood her emotions without any words to express them with. Severus, who had given her the best birthday present of all.
He had told her he loved her that day, that he was grateful to have her and that she was the shining sun in his life of clouds, which was all she could have ever asked for. Tom could never give that sort of a gift to her. Tom would always be better alone, no matter how much he loved Lark.
Seeing the scars on her hands whenever she looked at them, attached with memories of pain inflicted by Severus, who she loved so much, hurt her more than that burning pan. Remembering the times before it hurt wounded her even more.
Seeing something beautiful coming out of those memories had been like having a weight lifted off her shoulders, and she could smile when remembering rather than looking at his face and remembering what she could never have again. She had been enjoying herself, and he had ruined it.
Wiping angry tears from her eyes, Lark burst through the Slytherin portrait hole and collapsed onto a grey leather couch, burying her face in a pillow and groaning.
"Hey," she felt someone's finger on her shoulder, and rolled her eyes once more, cursing at herself silently for not just going up to her dormitory for privacy while she sobbed rather than crying in the entirely public common room. Lark rolled over onto her back to look at the hateful soul that had interrupted her sobbing. There stood her black-haired best friend, eyes hopeful.
"You okay?", Severus asked. She narrowed her eyes, and flicked his forehead in a way that was a little too hard to be playful.
"Just go away!", she wanted to scream; Lark only wanted him around if he was there to apologize.
"What happened?", he pressed. She just continued to stare at him angrily. He should have known what she wanted him to say.
"Lark, you know that you can't just shut me out-", he began. Lark clenched her jaw. She could shut him out, all she wanted, in fact. Not only that, but she had a right to.
"Lark-", he continued, his voice growing more desperate by the second. "There's no way that you can still be mad."
With those words, Lark was no longer tired and exasperated. Now, she was angry and energized. She shot up, not only a few inches shorter than he was. Without even comprehending what she was doing, Lark's hand was raised and flying towards Severus's face, and she was satisfied as the smack of her hand against his cheek echoed around the empty room.
When she withdrew her hand, Severus's wide eyes were even wider than before and mouth in a stunned 'O'. He was stunned that Lark would ever do such a thing. The Lark he knew embraced her silence and made up for words with smiles, tears and small adventures, but never physical harm. He had never seen her so out of control in the three years that they had known each other.
"Lark-", he started again, but she only held her arm up to point past the green, glowing fireplace to the staircase leading to the boy's dormitory. Even if she was an innocent little being, Severus knew better than to aggravate her when she was mad. He knew from personal experience that pent-up emotions didn't come out in good ways.
He looked down and stalked past her, feeling a warm tear brim the corner of his eye. Behind him, the raven-haired girl fell back into the leather couch, hugging her knees to her chest and trembling with emotion.
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A/N: Long story short, I LOVED writing this chapter. Just updated the summary too, in case you were wondering...
ANYWHO... Happy reading!
~R O S E