Dark Dynasty || Tom Riddle

xiv. november nights

On Thursday afternoons her second-to-last lesson was Magical Theory, where Theodor Nott, inattentive as always, had spilled ink all over her robes. Victoria entered the bathroom on the second floor. As she was used to by now, she heard Myrtle Warren in one of the stalls, crying her eyes out. The poor girl was neither blessed with good looks nor particular intelligence. On top of that she was not of strong character either and was thus an easy target for bullies, the worst of all being Olive Hornby. Not that Olive was one to talk, she was a dimwitted, unrefined person herself, but these people were most often the ones to project their insecurities onto others. She'd tried it one time with Victoria, but quickly came to regret it.

Victoria considered approaching Myrtle, but she was running late already and had no idea how to console the sobbing mess in the bathroom. So she just went over to the sinks to wash her robes. She checked her appearance in the mirror and tried to turn on the water after, but the tap wouldn't work. Thinking nothing of it she tried the next one, which luckily did work.

After she'd gotten as much ink as she could out of her clothes, she grabbed her things and hurried to get to the North Tower, where the Divination classroom was located. Just as she sat down on one of the purple cushions surrounding the dozen or so tables, Professor Atropos emerged from a part of the room separated by lavender drapes. In fact, everything in there was overwhelmingly purple, from the curtains to the teacher's own clothes.

On each of the tables waited a crystal ball on a three-footed, golden stand, which Professor Atropos pointed to as she addressed the class. "In front of you, you'll find something all of you should be familiar with. We've worked with crystals before to predict the future, but today..."

Victoria stopped paying attention. She regretted taking Divination, but she was also too proud to drop it and admit defeat. Instead she turned to just inventing things she saw in tea leaves or in the array of erumpent bones. To her surprise it's been working splendidly.

Something was different that afternoon though. Her body felt strange and it became increasingly harder to listen to the professor's voice. As usual, purple steam rose from the big teapot in the corner, but today the smell made Victoria even more tired. Her eyelids grew heavy and she dozed off.

When she woke up, she'd no idea if hours or mere minutes had passed. Still feeling dizzy, it took her some time to remember where she was and what had happened. She slowly picked her head up from where it rested on her arms and realized that outside the sun had been replaced by the moon. Candles lit up the space, but no one else was with her.

Victoria quickly got to her feet. She'd still got an eerie feeling and just wanted to leave. But then she noticed that her crystal ball was dimly glowing. Silver smoke swirled around a dark core, beckoning her closer. Intrigued, she couldn't help but follow the call.

She made to grab the sphere, but as she touched it, Victoria was pulled out of her body. She felt like she was loosing herself and screamed, no sound escaping her lips. A moment later it was over. She got thrown into... a memory.

Victoria stood in the corner, invisible and unable to move or speak. She saw her younger self, seven years old if she remembered correctly, and she was with her mother in their kitchen. Her beautiful, loving mother with the kind smile that was only reserved for her daughter. Victoria could smell the perfume she always wore, sage and white lily. She was now glad that she had no physical form in this memory or she would've teared up.

It was late November and they were making cookies. Even if they had house elves to cook and bake for them, there were two things Anastasiya Petrova Greengrass always did by herself: christmas cookies with her daughter and her coffee, which she liked impossibly strong. The cookies never came out right and usually didn't taste very good, but they didn't care. They didn't do it for the outcome, but rather for spending time with each other.