Selection
Potions passes the way every other lesson does: swiftly, with little interruption.
Often, Black will try to start a conversation or pick a fight. She knows him well enough to ignore both attempts. She’s taken on the solution of ignoring his existence entirely. It makes for peace and quiet, whilst also angering him further.
Like her, he does not believe himself to be beneath anyone.
She makes sure to highlight a point against this in every disdainful glance she chooses to send him.
Besides that, the days are quiet. She doesn’t cross paths with anyone surprisingly irritating, nor does she meet anyone particularly exciting. It is a blend of the average, and she finds herself falling into the routine almost forcefully, as though attempting to convince herself that nothing is out of the ordinary.
Certain things in her life, she doesn’t mind being unusual.
Allegra has been out more than she has been within their dorms, and while her company will be missed at times such as these—when the night is quiet and the room is warm with the glow of poorly lit candles—her absence gives them an extra bed to stock with sweet jars filled with an assortment of colorful treats.
It’s not a tradition per se.
Traditions are neat and consistent. They remain within bloodlines for generations and uphold something to do with family honor.
Late-night snacking is merely a timely occurrence shared between acquaintances that are much too distant to be referred to as friends.
It’s hard to think that way, however, when Nesrin sits beside her and Narcissa on the floor, their pajamas creased and their hair beyond presentable; when this feels like the only proper comfort she gets to have in the cold walk of her life.
Very hard indeed.
They never speak much on these nights, the darkness of the evening engulfing the shadows that chase them in the day. It’s a bit silly, really, how everything feels so much worse during the night and yet infinitely better.
There is no expectation to hide your worries during darkness. You must simply let it all out to be absorbed by the eventide and move on with your life.
She’s been doing a lot of that recently.
Accepting things and moving on.
Perhaps it is a mistake, and she ought to have stronger emotions about these things. She ought to fight them as they come and brandish her sword as an angry challenger. There are many things she ought to do, but she simply won’t.
She lets the darkness take them from her.
Narcissa’s face is blank as usual; she does not seem to be conflicted. She never does.
Sometimes Alexandra sees her and wonders how she can be this way, so free of the burdens that weigh on all of their shoulders. Even now, she can see it—the metaphorical weight that lurks in the corner of their bedroom. It cowers now, stripped of its power in a night darker than itself, but it shall rise.
The morning will come, and they will no longer be free. Their shackles shall be reinforced after an evening of waiting, and they shall not be removed until the next wave of comfortable night. Or perhaps the shackles will never truly release them, not until the final and most impenetrable fort of dark. Until they are engulfed in their entirety.
She rubs her wrist experimentally to check for them. And while the chains may not be there physically, she still tenses at the feeling. There is something inescapable that surrounds the three of them in this room, and they have all accepted it.
Well, she is going to accept it.
Like most things she has acknowledged for the past lifetime or so, she will accept this.
Whatever it is, she cannot escape it.
—------
Morning falls upon her like a wave upon a shore. She feels as though she has been uprooted by an angry sailor and forced to clamber pathetically onto dry land that scorches at her ankles and makes her long for a life upon a lilypad, where the cold water of the ocean is not torture and the dry sand is not a punishment.
In short, she does not enjoy the way she feels today.
Often, she does not enjoy the way she feels on any morning, but today she feels particularly spiteful.
The cold autumn air bites at her cheeks, but the signs of heat stroke bang on her chest every moment that she attempts to console said issue with a blanket. Her hair sits messily, escaping her bun, and yet certain pieces dangle to tease the hairs on her neck.
She is not the first to wake up today, and she can hear the chatter of her dormmates as the light flickers on and the room is bathed in obnoxious light.
The intimacy of the night before is forgotten, and the clamps that awaited so readily for her are firmly set in place.
It feels as though she has undergone a reverse transformation—from the free and excitable butterfly to the insatiable caterpillar. The kind that forces himself to exist for the sheer joy of leaving and becoming something else.
She doesn’t think she’ll return to a free state anytime soon. The shadows of Halloween are upon her, and she knows what she has feared will come to fruition, the way they always do in the case of her miserable existence.
When she dangles her legs over the floor, and the shock of ice rushes up her leg, she feels the sudden emotion that one may feel when drowning, when the weight of something drags you beneath the tides and you cannot find the strength to fight it.
She wonders why her father’s words have so much gravity. How sheer words on a page can cause such an experienced sailor seasickness. How they can make a fish long for oxygen underneath the water.
She shouldn’t be stressed nor upset.
She had done as he’d asked, and he was pleased.
And yet the words “I am proud of you” leave an unpleasant residue on the very fabrics of her being. She isn’t ready to part with the words, despite the foul odor of deplorability they leave on her.
A hot shower will not remedy the stench. She takes it as a solution anyway.
There is a collection of his notes in the innermost pocket of her trunk, sandwiched between her schoolbooks and the jumper she carries around almost everywhere. It’s a bit ironic how she decides to squash her issues under the ties of a higher responsibility and a bitter loneliness of the past.
She’s not the best at letting things go, or letting them happen.
She may accept things, but she can rarely move on from them.
The shower has done little else but cause a flare-up on her skin, particularly in the sensitive area below her knee, which is prone to redness and bruising. As far as she knows, it's not a genetic issue but rather a functional one, signaling that her body cannot keep up with the strain it is undergoing.
It’s a lying alarm. One that has been ringing since she was born.
The moisturizer lying in her trunk is half open and has the outline of an annoying pair of fingers. Allegra refuses to keep her hands out of other people's things, and she rolls her eyes annoyedly.
One of these days, she’ll find something she shouldn’t be looking for, and Alexandra will have to total up consequences.
Not today, though. She has not found the letters yet.
She is not a collector, but rather a nostalgic.
She misses the rhythm of things that used to haunt her every waking moment. She misses the silent walks of fury she had to take when her mother used to write, and the sad dullness she felt when her father didn’t.
Perhaps she misses the ignorance that she was afforded as a child. Perhaps she is simply delusional.
The trek to the Great Hall for breakfast is an annoying one that leaves her with too much time to fester. There is a silent song ringing between her ears, the sound that manifests as a dull ache in the back of her mind. The drums of a migraine are sounding, and it is only two months into term.
It seems Hogwarts is no longer the reprieve from silent tunes of agitation, but rather the inflictor.
This was supposed to be her final year of freedom.
She hadn’t had the time to think about the tournament in as much detail as her father would have wanted. She doesn’t get the time to do so right now either, as she settles on a bench facing the wall, opposite Regulus Black.
He is as bored as he always is, taking apart his breakfast with as little care as possible. She thinks about envying him but decides otherwise. She probably looks the same right now, even though her insides scream out in a fight of numerous unidentifiable emotions, each wanting to best the other. It’s the average appearance of a Slytherin with much to care for in the world—one of bored disregard.
It is quiet while they eat, the only sounds of movement being the occasional scrape of metal on plastic, and she is even more on edge. There is something about being in a place of chaos while being in a bubble of quiet that irks her, that brings words to her lips that she might not have uttered before.
“Do you think you will be a champion?” Her voice is quiet and careful, and her gaze does not move further than the cup of juice that she busies herself with drinking.
She was not there when he had volunteered, but she had heard many speaking of it in hushed voices. Quite the spectacle, you see, when both sons of the noble Black heritage offer themselves to the whims of the Goblet of Fire. Almost as much as the only heir of the Garnier fortune doing the same.
He’s probably thinking along the same lines as her, which is why he chooses not to reply. It’s not out of malicious intent, she doesn’t think. He’s never been outwardly untoward to her. He’s never been one of many words either.
Perhaps he does not feel comfortable speaking freely in the den of vipers the way anyone might.
He’s better at this than she is. He’s more of a Slytherin than she is.
He registers most as adversaries, as rivals, as planes to cut down and challenges to conquer.
She views them as weary hills she must clamber over to reach some form of peak. She will rest, and then clamber down again, if only to avoid overcoming anything new and steeper than the last mountain.
There appear to be many hills in her path as of late, and unfortunately, there are few ways to work around them.
She has been forced into climbing tediously without end.
The silence is a steady beat as the rest around them finish their meals. She doesn’t feel like getting up just yet, and neither does Regulus. He’s long ago completed the food on his plate, so he just sits there unmoving and yet perfectly comfortable where he is.
She won’t ask him any more questions nor attempt to begin a conversation. This is the forefront of all of their interactions, a clear example of his true nature.
Regulus will do as he pleases.
She waits for him to play his hand, and when it becomes unclear of his intentions, she makes up her own judgment.
He intends to speak but does not feel comfortable doing it. There are a few loiterers around the dinner table, and they all wear obnoxious red.
He is wary of Durmstrang.
And so the silence continues, his blank expression not doing much to acknowledge her realization. The dull sheen over his eyes reflects that she carries something very similar on her own face.
When a few minutes pass, and they are undoubtedly late for whatever lessons they have, and the house-elves begin to shoo them out of the hall, Regulus opens his mouth to speak. “No, I don’t think I will,” he replies, and the dull drum in the back of her mind becomes an incessant thunder.
He doesn’t walk with her down the corridor.
The rest of the day is as follows.
She enters Herbology with a headache that only strengthens as they are shown the topic of study for the hour.
The mandrakes scream loudly as she lifts them by their stems, and the sound alone has her flinching despite the thick ear coverings over her head.
They wriggle out of her grip as she tries to repot them, and her patience only grows thinner when Professor Sprout, usually a teacher she respects, comments on the fact that she had not harvested their leaves the way the task had instructed her to, and that as a result, she would now be expected to write a foot of parchment on the properties of mandrake leaves and their purposes.
She nods, though a bit irritated.
She’s out of it today; her hands are no longer trustworthy, and they shake when she reaches for the clippers required to clip the leaves.
Her thoughts are empty; she doesn’t have much to think about, so she just sits there in silence, quietly cursing herself under her breath.
He might notice that she’s out of it too, and that she is less likely to antagonize him today. Either that or the stupid Gryffindor bravery wills him to speak to her. “Bad day?” Frank Longbottom asks, his eyes peering at the screaming mandrake in her grasp and perhaps the equally distraught look on her own face.
“What makes you think that?” she scoffs, though there’s no real annoyance in her tone. Striking up a conversation with Longbottom, of all people, wasn’t on her to-do list for the day. Then again, her to-do list had been rewriting itself as the day went on.
He has a soft sort of smile. Not a rambunctious one that invades his whole face, but a small one that makes his features seem kind. “Just a hunch.” He shrugs but pauses as though he has something else to say. “You’re holding onto him too tight.”
She frowns, looking at him with visible confusion. “What?”
“The mandrake,” he offers, though his voice is wary, as though he expects her to snap at him. “They’re sensitive around the top, and you’re squeezing him. That’s why he’s causing such a fuss.”
She knows that. She just hadn’t noticed how tight her own grip had become. “Oh yes.” She relaxes her hold, and the plant becomes slack. It still screams; however, it is less piercing, less agony-stricken. “I didn’t notice.”
“Happens to the best of us,” he offers, planting his own in a pot. “Best to treat them as people too. That way you won’t forget.”
It’s slightly confusing, the statement.
She pauses a moment, wondering whether it’s worth continuing the conversation. She ultimately decides she has nothing better to do. “They’re plants, are they not?”
If he is shocked by her sudden participation in the conversation, he doesn’t show it.
“They’re still living things, right?” He shrugs. “They deserve some kindness too.”
She nods her head and doesn’t verbally reply. He clearly doesn’t mind, though; the company of the plants does enough for him to be content.
After Herbology, she drifts around her other lessons in a distant focus.
Her wand is sloppy in her hands during Charms, and the spells she so often excels at become hard for her to maneuver. Her patience is thin, and she snaps too quickly. The glare of Mulciber from the corner of the classroom has her skin feeling as though it is on fire, and the concerned glance that Professor Flitwick sends her so often doesn’t do much for her mood. The headache pounding at the back of her skull is doing so with such fury that she decides against going to any other lessons for the rest of the day.
By the time Alexandra finds herself in the library, the day has already worn her down, and she turns to the familiar solace of the books on the shelves to keep her company. The towering shelves around her are no longer the comfort she had hoped they’d be, and the scent of aged parchment makes her feel dizzy.
Her fingers tingle as they brush against the worn tomes on the aisles she passes. She’s read a lot of these before—the stories of brave wizards fighting creatures of hell, a textbook on the maladies of mankind, a recipe book on all things love and potions.
They do nothing for her today.
She picks up a particularly old one—a research paper on the differences in the anatomy of a Muggle and a non-Muggle. On most days, she would find this a fascinating read, no matter how far-fetched it might seem. After all, she’s been to a Muggle hospital before; she knows what they look like. To her, they seem no different outwardly, like one frog might seem to another.
Today is not most days.
She might tell you she was entirely entranced by the words on the page and that is why she hadn’t noticed his presence, but that is not the truth. The truth is she’d noticed him from the moment he’d walked into the room and watched him out of her peripheral vision as he made his way over to her.
“Alexandra,” he greets, his tone even with a hint of
an accent. He’s currently hovering over the same shelf she had just been at, scratching his chin as he looks for something. “You wouldn’t happen to know if this library has the research paper on Muggle anatomy, would you?”
Her dry greeting is quickly hushed back down her throat as she looks up at him, a mixture of skepticism and awe on her face. “I have it here if you want it.” She says, keeping all of those emotions out of her voice. “I see you haven’t stopped stalking me.”
He turns to look at her and there is a small amusement running across his thick eyebrows and reaches to take the pages out of her grasp. There is a fleeting moment where their fingers touch and Alexandra has to stop herself from having an outward reaction. “I do not think it is stalking if we simply find each other wherever we go.”
She shakes her head and sighs, feeling the tension in her neck pool into her shoulders. They do a lot of this, meet accidentally and then talk about the coincidence. It’s something she doesn’t mind so much these days, something normal to irritate her.
They aren’t friends exactly. She doesn’t spend enough time with him to consider him one but then again she doesn’t spend much time with anyone.
Not that she’s avoiding her housemates. She simply doesn’t make it a habit to find them in between the crooks of an old and dusty library like the one she currently sits in.
“You look tired.” Is what Dmitri Volkov states to break her out of her thoughts. As though noticing her weary appearance and thinking that is the best thing to comment on.
She rolls her eyes, “Just a gentleman aren’t you?” She says dryly, her expression deadpan. She doesn’t have enough energy to be properly angered by the observation, but she will admit that it's a blow to her pride nonetheless.
“The selection is approaching.” He cuts in, though his tone doesn’t seem as harsh as the words he speaks, he must notice how her grip tightens around the seat of the chair because he adds, “That is what bothers you?”
She does not respond, slightly frustrated that he could possibly come to a conclusion so quickly. “I am not bothered.”
He looks at her for a moment longer than comfortable, before sighing and returning the paper in his hands. “I see.” His tone is darkened by something she might confuse for concern. “So you are prepared?”
She isn’t very fond of this tempo of conversation. She isn’t very fond about the way it brings the dull pounding in her mind to the very forefront of it, making it impossible to ignore.
“As prepared as I can be,” she responds, her tone neutral. She doesn’t look at him, and he doesn’t bother looking at her. There’s no point—they both know their expressions wouldn’t betray anything. They’re both well-schooled in a way that allows no cracks of light to shine through, no matter how powerful the beam within might be.
“That is good to hear.” He says though he doesn’t sound as though he means it. He doesn’t sound like anything if she’s honest, like a carcass bewitched to speak to her.
She isn’t much comfortable with the dull silence that follows his words, nor the heaviness that pollutes the air of the library. It’s as though others in the room can feel it also, and Madam Pince reaches over to open the door at the front. Cooler air seeps in, and it also darkens under the heaviness of it all.
“You put your name in, no?” She asks, finally looking up at him. Her voice is dry and she’s suddenly aware that she hasn’t drank anything since breakfast. No wonder her head is spinning.
He meets her eyes and the first crack of something appears on the outside. His resolve weakens for a moment and it appears as though he can’t patch it up fast enough. “It was expected.” Is all he says, and Alexandra feels a pang of understanding in a place too high to be considered her stomach. It’s almost reassuring to know she’s not the only one that has to go through with this. That she’s not the only one struggling under the pressure of it all.
“And if you hadn’t?” She asks, the curiosity in her voice carefully masking the shake in it. It still surprises her how she can hide so easily.
He just shakes his head and gives her a look that seems more like a grimace, “That was not an option.” He says and his voice is deeper than it normally is, “You know that.”
Her gaze doesn’t falter under the weight of his and her face is carefully blank. The words unnerve her and she genuinely wonders whether he can read her thoughts. She wouldn’t put it past him, those eyes seem as though they know more than they let on and she finds herself wanting to clamber in and discover every secret hidden within them.
Instead she settles with, “You seem certain.”
“Sometimes certain is the only thing I can afford to be,” he mutters, his voice returning to the steady beat of careful neutrality. It’s almost unnerving how he can mirror her so closely, yet remain distinctly different. He reveals a side of her that she keeps fiercely hidden from the world, only to mask it again on his own face with such ease.
It shouldn't draw her in, really. The concept of being seen.
A beat of silence cages around them once more, but the dam is repaired, and everything that had spilled out is carefully gathered back in. This time, he’s the one to break the silence. “The selection is soon,” he repeats, standing up, as if trying to rewrite the script of their conversation.
She goes along with it, “Yes it is.”
He lingers, looking into her eyes as if searching for something. She knows what he wants, and she allows the dam to open just enough to show she understands. He acknowledges what she communicates, but his face reveals nothing. “We must do what we must,” he says finally, after suffocating her under his gaze.
“We will.” She says to his retreating form as he leaves the library, the research paper in hand.
She doesn’t feel much lighter as a result of the conversation. Her head still ails her and her thoughts remain at war with each other. Her heart drums a little harder in her chest though, though she can’t pinpoint the cause..
It continues to throb against her rib cage as she leaves the library an hour later, and it follows her down the corridor as she walks to lunch. It matches the dull thrum of her footsteps as she walks with Narcissa who links her arm through hers and falls into step with her fiance and Mulciber.
It drowns out the curiosity in their voices as they ask her where she has been and whether she ought to invite them the next time she chooses to ditch every lesson.
It mutes the sound of her own voice as she tells them to shut up in response.
It’s an odd feeling really, one her future self will ponder upon for many nights to come.
If the great hall was loud at lunchtime, she finds it more so during dinner, when the students rush down into the food hall, in a fit of what could be a combination of hunger and excitement.
Everyone knows what day it is. October 31st, the night of halloween and the day the champions are to be selected.
The Slytherin table is as quiet as ever as she takes her place alongside them, whatever calm look on her face not matching that of the whirlwind inside. She catches the eye of Sirius Black across the room, and he holds her gaze with a look that is somewhere in between disdain and disgust, as though he can’t believe she’d had the audacity of looking over when he was in the middle of enjoying his meal.
As usual, in the case of Sirius Black, the tornado of thoughts in her mind slows to a pause and is replaced with a fiery irritation that takes up the majority of her being. If her heart had been drumming before, it has stopped now. Now that her soul has become lit with a hatred for him.
Her look must communicate this somehow because he sends her another glare before returning the conversation between his friends and a few beauxbatons students. His face has lit up now, the scowl that made him look so pureblooded, so arrogant, is wiped from his face and replaced with a grin that she has to look away from in fear of being blinded.
They are worlds apart, sometimes.
Dinner continues and she floats in and out of conversation. Alecto Carrow asks her if she fancies coming to watch as they make an example out of a few muggleborn first years. She snorts into her goblet of juice before shaking her head in mock regret.
“I’m a prefect now, Carrow.” She says, though her stomach churns uncomfortably as it always does in the bigger girl's presence. “Mother will have my head if i get my badge taken.”
“As I'm sure many of you have anticipated, tonight marks Halloween, meaning tonight is the night we select our champions to represent us in the triwizard tournament.” He says, his voice warm and bright despite the weight of his words.
Something nasty is crawling up her throat, waiting to be let out.
The room is intense in their reactions. A combination of excitement and tension, loud as they communicate their own guesses toward the tributes.
They quieten down when the glass is tapped again and Alexandra feels her stomach start to swim.
He moves away from his place at the front and walks down the aisle, pausing when he reaches the shadow of the large cup before him. She had noticed it upon entry and yet had thrown it away from her thoughts with a fury, as though ignoring its existence would result in its disappearance.
Unfortunately that is not the case.
It is as foreboding as ever, its flames burning with a barely contained fury, it wants release, it beckons selfishly for liberation as though it has not captured the soul of three tonight. As though it will not go on to claim more.
She can see the headmasters of the other schools tensing as the time draws closer. No doubt they have their own picks, their own preferences when it comes to who best to represent their respective schools.
Watching Dumbledore she already knows his preference, his want for the young and brash Gryffindors to represent Hogwarts and take them to victory in a burned path of fire and ignorance. He cannot change the inevitable however, much like the way fire must bend its knee to water.
The certainty of fate, as unalterable as the destiny of the drowned, looms over her.
He dips his hand into the flames, the blue of them dancing along the sleeves of his robes.
When she was a child, she did not understand much. She’d read book about the tournament and what it entailed, she'd heard stories of the strength of the champions.
“From Beauxbatons Academy of Magic!” He announces, and the hall is silent enough that she can hear the sharp inhale of breath Carrow takes from beside her. “Theodore Dubois!”
The sound of cheers invades her ears and it feels as though all of her senses are shouting at her to shut down.
She had heard of their feats and their abilities and the way they never managed to back down from a challenge.
“From Durmstrang Institute!”
The stories varied, telling her tales of magic and sorcery, of comradery and betrayal.
It feels as though the world as she knows it is slowing down. She makes contact with Dmitri from across the room and a bitter acceptance is written all over his face. He gives her a brisk nod.
“Dmitri Volkov!”
The room is in an uproar, with numerous students from her own house reaching over to pat him on the back as he walks down the aisle and over to Dumbledore. In the light of the fire, he looks like a true champion. A man who would stop at nothing to get what he wants.
The stories always agreed on one thing though, and she had asked her mother what they had meant time and time again.
“And finally, the champion that will be representing Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry!” Dumbledore says as he reaches into the flames for the last time. They are angrier and the pressure of them tinge his supposedly untaintable sleeves.
Nobody to enter the triwizard tournament has left unchanged.
“Alexandra Garnier!”
The room is silent for an exact moment, and yet there is a sound screaming inside her ears.
The die has been cast, the clock has begun to turn.
Her fate has been sealed.
The weight of inevitability has dropped itself onto her shoulders and pushes her under the tides of something she will not be able to escape. These waters will transform her essence and she will become irrevocably altered - reborn as something completely different, a metamorphosis of character. The tides of her destiny have begun to pull, and with them, she will be reshaped by the depths she is about to face.
Sink or swim, she would survive.
The lineup of champions is formidable, each with their own motivations to win.
She catches the eye of Volkov.
He looks away.