The Queen of Vipers || Fred Weasley

i.

Shrill bells rang as they did every morning, waking Electra with a skipped beat of her heart.

She groaned and rolled her head to the side. She watched for a while with her cheek pressed into her pillow as some of the other girls got out of bed and began fixing their hair or grabbing their toothbrushes from under their beds.

"Up up!" said a stern voice by the door as they clapped along. "I'm talking to you, Electra. Get a move on. And I won't be asking you to get up again."

Electra rolled her eyes as she pushed herself up from her bed and began to dress in no hurry at all. She pulled her brown tartan pinafore dress over her white blouse and hiked up her knee high socks. Electra hated every bit of her uniform. Every bit but her Oxfords... they had potential.

Electra liked fashion, loved it in fact. It absolutely stemmed from living in one of the biggest fashion capitals in the world. Though she may have an eye for fashion and see the most wealthy and fashionable people on the Upper East Side, she certainly could not dress like one of them. She didn't have much of an allowance as a foster kid living in an all girls home.

The Our Fair Lady Orphanage in Manhattan was part of a large division of Roman Catholic all-girl homes around the east coast of the United States. 'Orphanage' was an outdated part of their name, but Our Fair Lady was just a fancy home for girls in the foster care system. How it all worked, Electra didn't give two shits to find out.

She brushed her teeth in front of the filthy mirror, threw her mess of curly black hair up into a haphazard bun and grabbed her cassette player from under her bed. She purposely stomped down the rickety wooden stairs in a hurry, getting an angry "No running!" from an old nun as she went. Electra smirked to herself. She loved irritating the nuns, mainly out of spite because she knew they were counting down the days until her eighteenth birthday when they'd finally be rid of her. And the feeling was incredibly mutual.

Electra slipped into the library, on her way to her favorite hiding spot for banned books— you know, in plain sight— when her footing faltered. Sister Wilhelmina sat on an old velvet armchair under a lamp working on her embroidery, her dark brown eyes trained on her needle with intense focus.

Sister Wilhelmina was an old Irish woman —with a thick accent to match— that (Electra wasn't sure was out of respect for her rather old age or fear of her sharp wit and quick tongue) the other nuns seemed to avoid conflict with. She was the only tolerable nun in Electra's opinion. A bit of an oddball, but Electra secretly liked that.

Electra tip-toed along the shelves so as to not draw the nun's attention away from her skilled needling. 'Maybe the crazy old nun won't notice if I—'

"Good morning Electra Alcyone," she said in her hoarse voice. Electra frowned. The old woman never missed a tick.

"Good morning Sister," she replied tonelessly as she grabbed a random book off the shelf and sat on a wooden stool across the Sister. Ugh, a collection of stories about Saints. Electra rolled her eyes and tossed the book onto an end table.

She made a habit of ignoring the nuns as much as possible, all except Sister Wilhelmina. She was the only one who didn't seem to look at Electra as if she were something repulsive, or turn a blind eye when the other girls were beating her. Electra suspected she feared God more than the others. That, and she didn't fear Electra like the others did. Plus she was mildly senile and when she was in her weird moods she would tell Electra bizarre fairy tales that Electra enjoyed probably more than she should. Like she said before, the old nun was tolerable.

She peered over at Sister Wilhelmina's project. She was always working on this project off and on since Electra could remember. It was a large piece of off-white silk tulle in no particular shape at all. She watched as she expertly stitched delicate french knots and silk stitches. "What are you working on?" The nun's dark eyes slid over to the girl, a sly look on her withering face. Electra asked her that question every time she was caught watching Sister Wilhelmina working on this particular piece.