The Black Dahlia

Autumn came swiftly to Hogwarts, and with it came Halloween, a most celebrated day in the castle. Classes were always cancelled for Halloween and the night always ended in a large feast in the Great Hall. Carved pumpkins lined the walkways and occupied the corners of Hogwarts, a relic of a forgotten time. But what made Halloween memorable at Hogwarts was that it was the first time third-years were allowed to visit Hogsmeade. For Draco and his friends, it was a right-of-passage; for Dahlia it was a tedious burden.

As a prefect, it was her responsibility to escort the younger students on their first outing. Thus, she would not be able to drink with her friends and instead was resigned to babysitting alongside her partner, Diggory.

The very boy she stood next to as she waited for the procrastinating third-years to hand in their permission forms at the last minute. She dozed off as she listened to Professor McGonagall tell the young students the rules, how to conduct themselves in Hogsmeade, what time they were to meet back with the prefects to walk back to the castle, et cetera et cetera. Dahlia eyed how Potter was speaking to the Deputy Headmistress fervently, pleadingly, and then his shoulders sank and cast a sunken expression to Granger and the youngest Weasley boy. But then her eyes, and ears, drifted over to her younger brother approaching Potter with a smug smile on his lips.

"Staying here, Potter?" shouted Malfoy, who was standing in line with Crabbe and Goyle. "Scared of passing the dementors?"

“Draco.” Her voice cut through the line like ice, immediately freezing her brother, his lap dogs, and even Potter in their tracks. After a moment, the scene thawed, and Draco followed the now moving line of students out of the courtyard, Potter glancing back before making his way back into the clock tower. Dahlia followed her brother at the back of the line, Diggory suddenly appearing beside her, while the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw fifth year prefects led the line at the front.

Dahlia kept her arms crossed over chest, trying to retain as much heat as she could with her green sweater, avoiding touching her silver prefect’s pin. Diggory was a half-step behind her, but she could feel his watching eyes on her swaying hair. He wanted to say something. That she knew, but he was also trying really, really hard not to think about it. She appreciated the effort to keep his thoughts quiet, not that she would ever voice it.

The walk to Hogsmeade was not a long one, but it wasn’t short either, and Diggory’s silence had become loud. Dahlia even caught her younger brother glancing back at her with a curious look every now and then. Once they had arrived within the limits of Hogsmeade, the young students scattered like pixies and into the lively town.
Cedric shuffled his feet before he spoke, tentatively, “So…partner…anywhere you want to go?”

“Potion shop” Dahlia answered matter-of-factly and allowed her feet to carry her before waiting for a response. She thought she caught a stuttered okay, but she couldn’t be sure.

The bell on the door rang as the pair entered and were greeted by a rosy-cheeked man in glasses that were far too large for his face. “Oh, hello there, Miss Malfoy. What can I do you for today?”

Cedric was shocked by how casual the old man seemed to address her, as if he was immune to her cold stare. But he was more shocked by Dahlia, whose frosty grey eyes had seemed to melt into kindness.

“I was rather hoping you had some stewed mandrake in stock.” Dahlia’s voice was higher than normal, brighter, and polite. “And a vial of Hellebore Syrup, perhaps?”
The Hufflepuff was stunned. Completely and totally, stunned.

The old man smiled and shuffled towards the back room while the snow-haired girl perused the shelfs as if her behavior was nothing special. As if she didn’t break the boy accompanying her concept of reality.

“Ah, here it is” exclaimed the shop keeper joyously and Dahlia made her way towards the counter to pay. “I hope by now I don’t have to tell you to be careful…syrup of hellebore can be deadly…”

Dahlia hummed and handed the man seven galleons, “I know, I know.”

The moment the Malfoy girl stepped back out into the street, she transformed back into her unapproachable self, leaving a still flabbergasted Diggory in her wake. The two potions ingredients were the only things she needed from Hogsmeade, so she marched towards the tables set up in the square alongside the outdoor butterbeer cart.

“What’s wrong with you, Diggory?”

Cedric sat down across from her, scanning the girl in front of him up and down. “I…you…er…what just happened in there?” he whispered, and gaped when he watched her raise a lone eyebrow.

“What are you blabbering about?”

“You were…well you weren’t you.”

Dahlia rolled her eyes, “I’m always me, Diggory.”

Cedric’s eyes hardened and stared down at her, but they weren’t menacing. There wasn’t a menacing bone in his body, Dahlia thought to herself and then chewed herself out for such a ridiculous thought. “You were…kind. To the shopkeeper.” Dahlia didn’t say anything. She didn’t move. Her eyes didn’t widen or narrow, there was no flinch in her eyebrows, or a stiffening of her shoulders. She was unmoving and unchanging. “You aren’t like that with anyone else. Not that I’ve seen.”

“I respect him.” She made it sound so simple, so obvious. “He’s a gifted potioneer.”

Cedric gave a short nod, not completely understanding, but accepting that it was something he was never going to fully understand. Dahlia Malfoy wasn’t a witch that was meant to be understood, not unless she desired it. He got up and bought two butterbeers, setting them down between the two. He sighed and Dahlia glanced back at him and narrowed her eyes.

“Just ask me whatever it is you’ve been trying not to think about.”

Cedric blinked and cleared his throat, “what number did you get?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Cedric chuckled and his face warmed back into its natural, gleeful demeanor. “In arithmancy. We were calculating our vibrational numbers. I wanted to know what number you came up with…”

Dahlia took a sip of her butterbeer and straightened her back. “Eight.”

She watched as the Hufflepuff grinned and took a sip of his butterbeer. Dahlia didn’t take much stock in divination in any form, numbers, tea leaves, or crystal balls. She certainly didn’t believe that her personality was dictated by a number derived for the date she was born being dissected and then added up all together again as single digits. What Dahlia did believe in was numbers used in ritual, that they had a scared meaning in practice.

“Mine’s five, by the way.”

“I didn’t ask.”

Cedric chuckled again and his eyes drifted off behind her to a pair of third years exiting Honeydukes and he cocked his head to one side. “I feel bad for Potter, being stuck in the castle all alone, instead of here with his friends.”

Dahlia was taken aback and focused on the fountain across the square. “There are plenty of people in the castle. He’s not alone.”

Cedric regarded the Slytherin who had an unreadable expression on her face. “I just mean cause it’s Halloween. It’s the anniversary of his parents…y’know.”

Dahlia pulled a strand of her long hair from her face, lifting her butterbeer again. “He was baby, I doubt he even remembers.”

“Still, I’m sure he still grieves.”

Dahlia looked back at him then, “you can’t grieve someone you don’t remember.”

“Sure, you can.” Cedric lowered his own glass and looked off again as the wind ruffled his brown hair. “There are no rules for grief.”

Dahlia considered this for a moment. Of course, there were rules: funerals, burials, wearing black. All rules you followed until grieving was done. “Well, it’s pointless anyways. Grief. It doesn’t change anything. Doesn’t fix it. Grieving can’t bring someone back. Better you just move on.”

“Easy to say when you haven’t lost someone.” Cedric spoke softly. They were silent for a moment, but then Cedric shook back his hair and smiled again, as though they hadn’t been speaking of something so heavy seconds before. “What are brewing up then? More of whatever it is you took at the party?” He wiggled his eyebrows and Dahlia rolled her eyes.

“You saw me then. That night.”

He smiled, “only for a moment. Then you just disappeared. But you seemed to be having fun.”

“Elixir to Induce Euphoria. Daphne – er, Greengrass, swiped it from her mother over the summer.” Dahlia clarified, “But no, I’m brewing Draught of Peace.”

“We haven’t learned that one yet?”

Dahlia smirked, “you haven’t. But we will next week, and I needed some extra ingredients for my personal batch.”

Cedric’s brows furrowed, “what are you taking that stuff for?”

Dahlia then realized she was being too open. That was his trick, his kindness. It made you open up and spill all your secrets. That was something Dahlia could not afford. In an instant, she was Malfoy again. Frozen, rigid, and apart.

“I…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

Dahlia stood and grabbed her bag off the table and headed towards the bridge. “We should start walking them back.”

She was silent the whole walk back, refusing to even glance at Diggory. She could feel that her eyes, which normally showed cold impassiveness, were lit with a fiery rage. A rage towards Diggory and rage towards herself. Diggory was not her friend. He was not privy to the details of her life and thoughts and opinions. He was nothing. Inconsequential. Unworthy.

She remained silent in the common room, her charmed book laying out in her lap and mindlessly flipping through the pages. She didn’t speak when Daphne, Adrian, and Cassius all returned from Hogsmeade, tipsy but not hammered. She even kept quiet all through the feast and performances by the ghosts, earning curious and worrying glances from the other Slytherins, including her friends and her brother. She wouldn’t say a word, but they could all tell, she was silently seething, and wisely left her to it alone.

She was walking behind her brother, leaving the feast with the crowd, when she heard him shout out to his rival. "The dementors send their love, Potter!" She pulled at his ear like their mother would when they were being troublesome and kept him in line with the others. Any other day he might have protested, but he knew better than to pick a fight when she was already angry at something else. Had they been in the privacy of their own home, he might’ve asked her about it.

They were halfway to the dungeons when she heard it and froze. Draco and the other Slytherins continued their walk to the dungeons, either not noticing the halt of her movements or not daring to question an already agitated Malfoy, leaving the blonde girl to stand in the dark hallway utterly alone.
Dahlia had hoped the muffled whispers of the castle would have stopped after last year, after Potter had slayed Slytherin’s monster that had lived underneath the school. Alas, she had been proven wrong. It was like someone, or something, was trying to speak whilst underwater, the density contorting attempts of speech into something unrecognizable. The sound of the castle trying to get her attention.

Slowly and cautiously, she spun around, trying to identify where the unwelcome noise in her head was coming from and reached her hand out to graze the wall of the hallway. The moment the tips of her fingers grazed the cold walls of Hogwarts the whispers became clear was day, except that they weren’t whispers, they were laughter, the laughter of a group of boys.

In a trance, Dahlia kept her fingers dragging on the wall as she walked, letting the laughter guide her through the halls. The further she went the more she wished she could stop. Laughter had faded into tortured weeping and wails so raw she thought she could feel her own heart being viciously ripped apart.

Mingled and mangled into the heart-wrenching cries was the distinctive hushed whispers she knew to be the voice of Hogwarts itself. It spoke a language she didn’t understand, a language she knew to not exist in any book she had ever read, it was more ancient than any tomes or scrolls hidden in the deepest and darkest corners of the restricted section. The secret language of the school seemed to be urging her forward, pushing her to move, to see what had woken them from their peaceful slumber.

Dahlia had found herself in Gryffindor Tower and could see a mass huddle of bodies waiting on the upper staircases. As though the school had been waiting for her to arrive, the staircases moved to allow her easy access, creating the perfect path upwards to the commotion.

Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Filch were already there but something continued to pull her forward, a new drowned sound coming from where the portrait of The Fat Lady used to reside but was now slashed by claws. The crowd had made way for her, but she couldn’t hear them whisper or grumble about why the “Slytherin Princess” had come. She didn’t even look to the Headmaster, she went straight for the abandoned portrait. Dahlia took one deep breath to steady herself before she reached out her hand and touched the empty, exposed canvas.

A deep, guttural, scream of rage and pain and heartache sounded through her head, echoing against the walls of her mind. Her fingers had barely grazed the portrait before she gasped and pulled away like she had touched an open flame of a fire.

The castle had whispered a name behind the screams, fondly, like a mother would whisper to a young child they held in their arms.

She turned to look at her Headmaster and answered the question of which everyone already knew the answer but didn’t want to confirm aloud.

“He’s here. Sirius Black is in the castle.”