Emrys Peverell was a bit of a mystery. Well, that wasn’t completely true. She was a real open book for anyone who knew her. Who really knew her. (Or maybe she was used to having no privacy and her mind invaded a little too often).
That brings us to the part where no one knew her—well, at least no one who currently surrounded her. Honest to heaven, it was painful. She went about her day as she would have back home, but this wasn't back home.
The Blond pompous arse here didn’t know how to say the exact right flick to break her down like a castle of cards— he also didn’t know that she took her coffee black and despite the jokes of how it was Black Family Pride, it was actually because she habituated herself to it just so the youngest house elf, Iree wasn’t scolded for mixing up the drink with that of Lord Arcturus Black.
The narrowing blue eyes of a betrothed to the Malfoy family were here too. Only, she wasn’t the sweet little girl with excitement in hers. Sweet little girl who hung up on every word that escaped Emrys, to absorb all that she could. It wasn’t the same girl who always bought an extra bow ribbon anywhere she went because Emrys mentioned once that she loved those.
She found some solace though, that she could still grin as the wind swept their hair as she zoomed through the clouds like nobody could reign them in.
Nobody but him. Only, ever since she came back(?). The him in context changed drastically.
---
Emrys would admit sheepishly that she was rather busy staring—gazing lovingly at a boy with dark hair and dark eyes and dark under his eyes. She wasn’t particularly attracted to him. Really. She wasn’t. He was only the most beautiful sight she had set her eyes on since she very uncharacteristically dropped–rather dashingly, she will insist— right in front of Albus Dumbledore with a shorter beard and still just as horrible sense of fashion— she supposed it was a bit of solace that his fashion sense remained abysmal through time. She grimaced. She was definitely losing it if she found comfort in neon magenta with copper outlines.
“Emrys, darling. Tell Druella how dashing I am”, Killian Nott flashes her a pretty smile. It’s lazy and drunk and she could tell from how there were smudges of a variety of red that he has snogged three different witches since morn.
“You’re a vision, Kil”, she agrees, shifting in her seat beside him. She steals the buttered toast from Abraxas. She found it fascinating. His sneer is the exact same as Draco’s. His buttered bread, especially thick on the edges just like Draco preferred. She supposed they got it from somewhere.
Her eyes trail across the hall to the loudest house, her former house. She admittedly found them annoying once she wasn’t a part of them. Even as she knew that half of them weren’t really as boisterous and only behaved so take the piss at those that believed them to be.
Her eyes were back to the table of masks and perfect postures. She tugged lightly at her scarf. She never felt out of place anywhere. Not truly. Back home, she oft sat with the snakes much like now. It meant little to her. Anywhere she was, she ensured she belonged. She was heard.
Admittedly, anytime she wasn’t in fact the centre of attention she dissolved into petty whiny fits and tantrums— people around her didn’t have much choice but to accommodate. She would forever insist, they were honored and more than happy to do so. She didn’t want to think otherwise.
“ —not at breakfast again”, she focused on the conversation around her again.
Silas Rosier shook his head and sipped at his pumpkin juice. She narrowed her eyes. That was too dark to be just pumpkin juice. She scoffed. She’d played the same trick multiple times.
She snatches the glass eliciting protests and looks of disdain and annoyance just as Silas speaks. “Riddle came before us. He already had his breakfast. Probably sulking and planning next big move or charming Slughorn into spilling all wicked magicks.”
Emrys perks up. She sips at the liquid and pinches her nose before planting a fading kiss right below Killian’s cheek. Her heart ached as she remembered another brunette with drunk eyes and how he shivered at it. She watched with bittersweet nostalgia and a certain smugness as Nott did the same before she rushed out, ignoring Druella and Alyssa’s bemused frowns along with Lazaras Lestrange and Ira Dolohov’s looks.
---
“Hey Charming”, She teases Tom the second she happens upon him. He had just walked past a girl who was clearly trying to confess but turned red.
Emrys glances up. He waited a little away upon sensing her presence while she consoled the young girl.
“Charming, am i?”, He asks rhetoric with a smirk as she walks along after catching up. “I thought I heard you call me a–what was it? Oh yes, ‘emotionless prick with pretty looks’”.
She flushes as he repeats the words she used to comfort the Halfblood Hufflepuff girl. “You are”
She tries to sound nonchalant as she adds. “Did you also hear the heavy emphasis on pretty?”
Tom’s smirk widens, barely a second before the Ravenclaw finds herself pinned to the wall with him too close. Oh heaven, his eyes, so blue, she could drink it like nectar all while drowning—
“You will watch how you speak of me, Peverell— wouldn’t want anything happening to the pretty little mouth of yours now would we?”, He hisses into her ear. She realizes only much later, that he had bordered on parseltongue and she only understood it because she had him in her head before.
She thinks in that moment, however, of just how brilliantly smooth his voice was and how his lips barely curled as he snarled and hissed all the same. “You think I’m pretty?” She breathes, her eyes vying to meet his.
Really, how the mighty have fallen? Draco would sneer at her like never before if he saw just how much a pretty–no, enchanting voice and devil-handsome eyes affected her.
Riddle, however, only smiles. It’s not the pretty small boyish smile he gets in his solitude upon solving a mystery or finishing a complicated spell. It isn't the faint charming bashful and yet confident one he flashes at the professors and the masses. However, it wasn't the sardonic cruel one his enemies face either.
Her heart soars and sours as she recognizes it as the same one she received from his memory many a time. A mix of all three. And oh so mesmerizing.
She would argue with anyone that knew her that she wasn’t the kind to blush and stutter. That she was a queen of madness and sin and darkness like any Black before her. And that would seem to remain the truest of statements— because she had a great tongue (in a number of ways) — until Riddle so much as glances in her direction.