Ancient Rome Had a Hot Aesthetic
Drunk out of her mind, on the verge of tears, and having begged Abraxas and Melania to allow her to be the godmother of their first child at least three times — Natalie managed to apparate back to the house she used as her personal base of operations, or when she didn’t want to destroy the Malfoy Manor. It was her father’s old mansion in Ireland, refurbished to fit her magical needs — which tended to be uncontrollable and ruinous.
It had taken her a while to escape the clutches of her old teammates and friends. The drunker she was — the more intoxicating her energy. Combined with the fact that everyone was already drinking anyway, by the end of the night, everyone was behaving completely out of their minds.
Eric Dawson collapsed into tears on her shoulder and cried until she hugged him. He then perked up immediately and attempted to demonstrate that he could produce a Patronus Charm. He failed drastically, and ended up lighting their table on fire. Giles Morrison had to hurry over from a conversation with Seamus Dawson to put it out before Eric’s father (or anyone else) noticed, because everyone at the table was too busy howling over how hilarious it was.
Antonin Dolohov insisted that the lack of appearance by Tom Riddle meant she and Riddle had broken up. So she punched him in the face right in front of her uncle, the Minister of Magic, and Dolohov’s boss, (who just took a sip of wine and pretended not to see) and Dolohov fell to his knees and asked her to marry him. She answered by throwing her drink in his face. This did nothing to deter him, and he was attached to her side the entire night, pledging, if not his love at least his loyalty. This had done nothing but cause Lestrange and Dawson to have a very clandestine conversation over whether or not Dolohov could ever become “one of the Knights”.
Adolphus Lestrange charmed a silver knife into a ring — his drunk magic made it end up the size of a bracelet — and he used it to propose to Savanna Rowle, who insisted they at least wait until she left Hogwarts. But she still slipped the charmed silver onto her wrist anyway.
Eric Dawson then demanded his own “love and fealty bracelet” from Adolphus, who gladly complied (complete with a proposal) until everyone was wearing magicked silver bracelets that were once cutlery and Adolphus, to the disgust of both Eric and Savanna, had asked all of them to marry him. All except Nott, Selwyn, Rosier, and Bulstrode. Seymour Mulciber reported that the two long-time couples were “frolicking on the front lawn in the rain” though everyone assumed this meant they were shagging somewhere.
Jonathan Shaw then broke down and told everyone he and Mallory Blackwater were no longer dating, and Lloyd Avery passed out in the middle of dessert, face-planting into a piece of wedding cake and getting frosting all over Cygnus and Druella Black.
Furious, Druella had taken her cake and thrown it in Avery’s face — which hadn’t woken him up but had begun a massive food fight at their table. It didn’t end until Abraxas and Melania marched over — only for Lestrange to fling cake at the groom which ended up hitting the bride. That was when everyone froze in horror. But Melania had just giggled, picked up the nearest uneaten slice of cake, and smashed it all over Abraxas.
And once, when Horace Slughorn was spotted waddling over to greet the hodge-podge collection of his current and former students, Alphard Black (who, his sister Walburga insisted, would be the funniest wizard alive if he wasn’t so fond of mudbloods) conjured copies of the Daily Prophet, distributed them to everyone, and the entire table fell silent, thoroughly engrossed themselves in their newspaper (Adolphus and Eric even conjured monocles), and pretended to be unable to see, hear, or notice Slughorn until he trudged off, bewildered by their collective odd behavior.
God, the night had grown so ludicrous Natalie nearly forgot her aunt had died and her boyfriend had never showed up.
The stone steps that led to the front entrance of the modified mansion seemed as steep as mountains. With tears streaming down her face, Natalie cursed herself. Why had she added so many when redesigning the place? Sure, it looked fabulous — but climbing them while drunk was a bloody fucking goddamn dragonshit nightmare.
At least they glowed so she could see them. The Irish countryside was pitch black at three in the morning. The night had been moonless, given the blanket of sluggish clouds that hung in the heavens from the storms earlier, and the fog creeping silently over the grass.
Wait a second. . . .
Natalie tripped and fell, scraping her hands against the stone steps. Wondering if she was bleeding, she looked down at her hands and realized two things.
She was not bleeding. At all. She hadn’t even scraped herself.
The steps weren’t glowing. She was.
“Oh, bloody hell,” she whispered, gaping at the wisps and strands of white energy curling around her skin and melting into the fog. They grew blurry and her face felt wet.
Natalie wiped at her eyes and shivered with something that was not cold.
That was when she realized she was inhaling and exhaling so quickly it didn’t feel like she was breathing at all.
“I bloody hate drinking,” she moaned, picking herself up and continuing to stumble through the fog and up the steps. And she knew she was full of shit because she loved drinking less than an hour ago.
She definitely had to get rid of at least half of these steps. Maybe all of them if she remembered how bloody annoying they were when she woke up in the morning. If she could even sleep, that is. It was awfully hard to calm your mind enough to get some shut eye when your body felt like a lightning rod for raw energy. Bloody hell.
Just remember to get rid of the steps.
She still glowed. The white energy flashed with little silver bolts — or it was a figment of her drunken imagination.
Either way, when she looked down at her hands, it seemed so surreal she wondered if this was a dream. Maybe all of it was a dream. The wedding, Portia Malfoy dying, someone never showing up, getting absurdly drunk, seeing all her school friends and old teammates — maybe she’d taken a tumble off her broom during Quidditch practice and would wake up with Dent glaring down at her and telling her not to be so bloody stupid-
When she fell a second time, she decided she was definitely getting rid of the steps. Fabulous-looking or not, they would have to go. The aesthetic was worthless if it wasn’t practical. And she was too drunk for this shit.
Maybe she could just get rid of them now? Sure, she had left her wand with her grandmother (or at least, she hoped she had) but why should that stop her from ridding herself of such a massive inconvenience while drunk?
Glancing behind her, she had to blink tears out of her eyes and rub her hands over her face to squint through the fog and understand what she looked at.
The steps behind her were destroyed. Pulverized to rubble as though someone had blasted each of them apart. The fog swept over them like a blanket, like it wanted to hide the destruction, like it wanted to blindfold her from the chaos.
Well, it was doing a shitty job at that. Once she knew they were destroyed, she felt they were destroyed.
“You suck,” she grumbled at the fog as if it could talk back.
She looked at the steps still in front of her.
They were untouched. For some reason, this wasn’t surprising.
Pulling herself to her feet, she staggered up a few more and glanced back.
Those steps were now in ruins, fog spinning over them as if laughing with her. Or at her. Stupid, bloody, awful fog.
With a drunken groan, Natalie fled up the remaining steps. She fell for the third time at the very last one, tripping and flinging herself onto the marble entrance platform. As she scrambled and rolled to regain control, she was overcome with a childish feeling that she had just jumped onto a life raft in the middle of a shark-infested sea. Or from one piece of furniture to another, and the floor was lava.
And she was hit with a yellowed memory of jumping between a couch and an armchair, laughing and squealing with her father.
Her filthy, Muggle, murderer of a father.
There was a rumbling noise as she collapsed onto the smooth marble, in the shadows of the Ionic columns that imposed the front entrance. She knew she now lay in a network of cracked, broken, damaged marble. But she didn’t care.
Unable to bring herself to open the doors — and half afraid she would bring the house down on top of her if she did, she rolled onto her back and stared upwards, sucking in the chilly night air.
Which was ridiculous, because it was fucking August. Why was it so foggy? Why had the weather been so shitty all day? Storms and such bullshit — nearly ruined the wedding. Thank Merlin for Cassius Malfoy’s manner of living, which required he have a whole fucking ballroom on call whenever necessary.
God, that was so dramatic. She loved being a Malfoy. They were all so extravagantly outrageous.
But Merlin, what a shitshow. Why had she drank so much? Dent would kill her if he found out how much alcohol she had stuffed into her body. It was definitely against team rules. She was a professional athlete, not an alcoholic teenager. And they had practice tomorrow, too. Or, today. She knew that Dent knew she was showing up hungover.
But still. He would be shooting comments at her the entire practice about how irresponsible her behavior was and then she would feel guilty for getting so drunk and then she’d have to work even harder in practice which would only make him obsess over her more-
A creak, a groan, and two heavy thuds. She felt a slight breeze blow towards her, sending fog dancing about.
The fucking front doors had fallen off their hinges.
Bloody hell.
As long as the Ionic columns remained untouched. She loved the columns.
They were so handsome and divine. So tall and calm. And now they looked alluring and mysterious with the heavy fog seeping around. She loved them. They felt like ancient Rome. Ancient Rome had a hot aesthetic, she’d give Julius Caesar that. It was probably the distinct feeling of unparalleled empire, of hegemony, of power. You can't get much more "I own this shit" than some massive fucking columns and arches. And for some bloody reason, it all reminded her of a certain someone-
She watched as the marble scrolls at the top of an Ionic column had the fucking audacity to shatter.
Chunks of marble dropped to the ground where she lay. Exploding just before they could smash into her. Merlin, if her drunkenness caused her to obtain an injury — Dent would actually kill her. Dust from the destruction blew all around, mingling with the fog and making her cough and wheeze.
“I’ll kill you,” she growled at the damaged column. Now she was mad at it. How fucking dare it stand there-
“I’d love to see you try,” a familiar voice had her rolling up to her knees and nearly falling over as she drunkenly swayed, searching for whoever it was.
Squinting through tears, fog, and alcohol, her eyes landed on a tall figure by the opposite column.
This column, which the figure leaned on with the steady ease of an ancient god, hadn’t been destroyed.
She recognized him instantly and found her vision blurred with fresh tears. But these were tears of relief.
Black eyes flashed and Tom Riddle grinned.