The Come and Go Room
The translucent and exceedingly dreary History of Magic professor, Mr. Binns, droned on and on about a famous wizard author who played pretend as a muggle—to sell more books, naturally.
Byrdes of on kynde and color flok and flye allwayes together.
Starling thought the famous phrase could never apply to her. She was destined to be an outcast. And it would be paradoxical to think of outcasts “flocking together”, as it would make them, invariably, not outcasts. Starling, contrary to the nature of her namesake, flew alone. She didn’t mind, but, in truth, it wasn’t entirely by choice. Her family name kept a good 80% of the student body away from her, and the remaining brave (or stupid) 20% scattered when she became known as the girl who opened the Chamber of Secrets.
And it wasn’t her fault. Or, at least, that’s what Madam Pomfrey, the closest thing Hogwarts has to a counsellor, keeps telling her, every Friday at 4 o’clock.
Starling was a Blackthorn, a word with many meanings and associations, almost all of them unsavory. But, the most basic definition, and also the mildest, is a species of flowering plant in the rose family Rosaceae.
But, on the magical side of things, it gets very dark, very quickly.
The Blackthorns are famous for being two things: firstly, Starlings ancestors were quite promiscuous with vampires, and with fairies—of the Old World, the Tuatha de Danann, not those weak, empty-headed, pixie-adjacent creatures that appropriated the name—and, secondly, they were addicted to anything considered dark—dark magic, dark creatures, death, decay, the bloody night sky, all of it. So, it was no surprise to anyone when she turned out to be the one smearing rooster blood on the walls at night and commanding Slytherin’s beast, even if she was a Ravenclaw.
Most considered her reputation to be on equal footing with that of a Death Eater’s, except the actual Death Eaters believed those “half-breeds” to be beneath them, and she dealt with the social fallout of all that accordingly. Case in point, the desks within a metre of her were left vacant. Being a Blackthorn, she did not really mind being treated like a leper. At least, not in comparison to her six month series of conversations with a young Voldemort and near constant blackouts. That had been much more upsetting than being “unpopular”.
Even as she took notes on the useless lesson, Starling’s mind constantly drifted back to Riddle. The psychiatrists at St. Mungo’s diagnosed her with the dreaded “Memory Fits”, a term which covers all anxieties or other disordered thoughts and behaviors after being exposed to some trauma. She was given a Calming Draught prescription and recommendation for therapy—hence, Pomfrey. It didn’t work.
Starling dreamt of him, of the Basilisk, of her life being drawn out of her, every night for the last few months. There was a point when, during the Summer after the incident, she thought she was getting better. But, it was like a switch. All of a sudden, just one day out of the blue, Starling was as consumed with Riddle as she had been when she was under his control. And it Never. Got. Better.
Professor Binns dismissed the class. She blinked and noticed she had been scribbling the Old English rune Eihwaz on her parchment for so long that the tip of her quill broke through the page and carved into the wood of the desk underneath. Starling hastily packed away her class supplies and left before Binns could notice the destruction of property—not that there was any danger of that. He hardly noticed he had died years ago.
As Starling walked through the halls, the sea of students parted for her like she was Moses. As she passed, the noise would follow a pattern: it starts loud, students would get quiet when they saw her, and then the whispers trail behind. They were all so pathetically obvious. On some level, Starling liked freaking people out, but it was becoming tedious as her time at Hogwarts trudged on.
Eventually, Starling reached a hallway where there were no students, and she sighed in semi-relief, but maintained her pacing in an attempt to forget—a useless action. Back and forth, back and forth, her steps the only ones to echo. Students would be packing into the Great Hall, she had gone the exact opposite direction on purpose, closer to Ravenclaw Tower. Starling craved a single moment to breathe, but through that whole damn lecture, her mind was occupied with 'him', and it was driving her insane!
Starling needed closure, maybe then she could stop obsessing over a dead man, but she didn’t know how to get it. She needed to remember that Tom was gone, Voldemort was gone, there was not even a pile of dust left between the two of them, but knowing the obvious just wasn’t good enough, apparently, because Starling kept looking over her shoulder, half expecting to see him standing there with that damn smirk she remembered so well—the same one that made her heart thud harder and the butterflies in her stomach take flight.
She needed to see. She needed to see that there was nothing that could touch her like Tom touched her. His hands didn’t exist, his face was just a memory, and the snake and book would be nothing but ash. And, when she is alone in the Chamber, maybe then she can forget all about Tom Marvolo Riddle and everything he caused her to feel.
Oh, the things he made her feel…The things he still makes her feel—now, those are the worst, because she feels shame for feeling shame for those other things, and none of it ever makes any damn sense!
From behind her, wood creaked. Starling whipped around, coming face to face with a door that certainly wasn’t there a few seconds ago. Tentatively, she took hold of the knob and pushed open the door. It was an empty room of wall-to-wall mirrors. As strange as this all was, something very familiar was at the center of the room.
A white sink.
The white sink.
It opened for her without her having to say anything at all, in any language. Starling looked down. She could see nothing but blackness, a straight shot for however many metres. For a moment, the young witch entertained the thought of jumping in; instead, she left, pausing once to look back at the sink as the great wooden door shut her out.