❝"I want to save them."
"You're just saying things that I already know, Nellie."
"You're not going to try and stop me?"
"On the contrary, my little Witch. I'm going to try and help you."❞
***
Viatorem Atramento: Ink Travellers. That was what Noell...
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Noelle liked to think of herself as a patient person.
"Will you stop that?"
Not a Hufflepuff by any means, but she could tolerate most things, and she prided herself in her kindness and ability to react to most cases with a cool head.
"Harry."
Like that one time the boy who sat behind her in Geography kept poking her arm with his pencil and making terrible belching noises? She hadn't blown up at all. She simply turned around, asked him to stop, and he did.
"The both of you!"
Really, she was rather good at not blowing up.
Her goblet met the table in a harsh, resounding bang. "I swear to every holy power that's keeping me from shredding your firebolt to twigs, if you don't stop sneaking around and hissing behind my back I will find a way to obliterate your fucking kidneys." Her eyes had darkened, narrowed to slits, and Harry only blinked. "Don't test me."
Except for this moment.
(And, perhaps, that time when she had actually threatened to shove the pencil the boy in Geography was so fond of so far up his arse he'd feel it in his lungs, that had him quietly request their teacher to seat him far, far away from her by the end of the lesson. She had a limit you see, and he had surpassed it by the second thirteenth poke.)
Harry raised his brows at her, and then looked to his shoulder. He hissed something at Amira, who happily hissed back, and Noelle threw her arms in the air with a cry of frustration, almost hitting poor Neville in the face.
This had been going on for weeks.
Almost every lesson Noelle would have to suffer through the traitorous hissing of her Daemon and supposed friend, who had ganged together in an unlikely duo to torture Noelle with secrets she couldn't understand. She had specifically chosen Ancient Runes and Arithmancy as her supplementary courses for the very reason of not having to spend yet another two hours in their scheming presence. Every time Harry's choking attempts to stifle his laughter slithered into her ear, she had the burning sense that Amira was making fun of her and sharing embarrassing anecdotes.
"I don't know what the hell you're saying!" she cried, tugging at her tangled hair.
Perhaps, if Noelle could speak Parseltongue, she wouldn't have even bothered with the threat and skipped straight ahead to apathy, because then at least she would know they weren't sharing stories at all.
"Mortgage payments," rattled Amira, coiling happily around Harry's neck.
"Wear your masks outside," he said pointedly with positive cheer.
