tw: discussions over death

THERE WEREN'T MANY THINGS THAT COULD GET ON MALKA'S NERVES. The clatter of knives and forks filled the air around her, and even though her best friend chattered next to her, Malka couldn't stop her focus from drifting away from her plate of scrambled eggs and ham.

"Malka. Malka," A girl with frizzy chestnut hair waved a sausage in her face. "Are you eating?"

"No, Cass," Malka sighed. Again, she was not exasperated, only tired. Cassana Fortescue was a fellow fifth year, though she was so short that she could be mistaken for someone far younger, and only the little first years were shorter than her.

"Can I have it, then?"

"Sure," Malka hummed, flashing her a gentle smile.

Cass grabbed her plate, flipped her red and gold tie over one shoulder, and speared a few eggs below her sausage, which was already on her fork. They were in their usual spot, all the way at the end of the Gryffindor table right up near the doors. 

The table banged, Malka's silverware clattering for a brief moment. The two girls looked up, before looking back down, unamused. Sirius Black was doing some sort of feathery dance up on the other end of the table, stomping his feet and trying not to topple over a bread stand. Malka set aside her Italian magical newspaper, which she had just finished reading, and picked up the Daily Prophet instead. Not much; some Quidditch related advertisements, one about Ignatius Prewett's new book, and a couple more things.

"Okay. Erm- I'm gonna go sit with Lucinda and Alecto," Cass said, her watery blue eyes wide. She made an awkward, wiggle gesture with her wand. "If that's alright,"

"Oh- of course. I won't keep you," Malka said, blinking as she tried to clear her foggy, bored mind out. She could sense the uncomfortableness from Cass's mind in droves. 

Lucinda Talkalot was Quidditch Captain, though she wasn't very good. Emma Vanity appointed her in haste before she graduated, probably wanting the position to go to another girl. Though Malka couldn't see the appeal, especially when Talkalot was one of the worst Keepers in the school. Alecto Carrow was a whole other story: the pureblood princess. Malka had long decided not to bother Cass with why she chose to hang out with them even though they were the stupidest and rudest girls at Hogwarts. Cassana had always wanted to feel more like a pureblood. 

The Fortescue's were purebloods indeed, but their lines were diluted like the Talkalots, and Malka supposed that Cass felt closer to her heritage by being with a Carrow, one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Hanging out with a half-blood like Malka wouldn't do wonders for her image, even if  Malka's late mother was a Rowle. Perhaps that was why they were friends—both Malka and Cass were probably the least brave out of their House.

Melite Rowle had died when Malka was twelve, six months before she came back to school for her second year. Leonis Rowle, the late Rowle patriarch and Malka's grandfather, had not been the Head of the family when her mother fell pregnant with a mudblood's child, so he had not prevented her from being disowned. However, when the Headship fell to him, he decided to donate his teen daughter and her child a small portion of the Rowle fortune, including an Italian villa (the home they lived in), some gold, and two house elves. Two! Malka's uncle was livid as he read the man's will, when her grandfather, also kicked the bucket after a single year as Head. 

In fact, further down the Slytherin table sat Thorfinn Rowle, Malka's seventh-year cousin. She'd done a great job at avoiding him the past five years, and she hoped it would stay that way until he graduated next year. Malka thought he was too thick to even connect the dots that he was her cousin, the spawn of his disgraced aunt.

Malka's eyes drifted across the Great Hall up and down the Slytherin table. She could see Cass with Carrow and Talkalot. Cass was tapping Carrow's shoulder every now and then, but Carrow didn't pay attention to her. 

A few seats away, someone else was also picking at their food. Oh yes, him. Malka knew she couldn't keep pushing with Regulus Black, not when he was a pureblood prince and she was a halfblood no one knew, but she allowed herself this one fancy. It was very easy to fall into his charms, Malka mused, as he placed one elbow on the table, his pale and lithe forearms with veins scattered across them like lightning across a night sky. He'd gotten really, really  tall over the summer. Malka had caught his eyes once during Charms third year, and even then she was taller than him, but no, this year he changed. All the Quidditch certainly helped. Malka only went to Quidditch games when it was Gryffindor competing, since Cass was a beater, and during the few Gryffindor vs. Slytherin games, she did like to indulge and sneak a few glances at him.

Something screeched next to her. It was Tigress, her extremely undersized barn owl, with a letter in her beak. 

"Alright, I'll feed you," Malka sighed, grabbing a piece of toast even before Tigress could peck her hand in want. Tigress blinked her black eyes up at her, before letting her untie the letter and flying off. 

The letter actually had a small package next to it, which Malka set aside as she popped the letter's plain seal. There, in extremely bad handwriting, was:

For the young Mistress, from itsy and Bitsy

Happy birthday Miss. The villa is quiet without yous, and we are exited for your return at Christmas.

Malka grinned. It was actually her birthday a few days ago, but mail took a while coming from Italy. Itsy and Bitsy were the elves that she had exclusively lived with ever since her Mum died. She opened the package next, and it was jewelry. A ring, in fact. It was a simple gold band with a pounded flat top, and on the top plate were a few incoherent dents that probably were supposed to resemble some sort of circular design. Malka loved it, and slipped it on.

She let out a contented sigh, her hands smoothing over her collarbones. The table rang again as Sirius Black jumped off. Malka rolled her eyes, before something furry brushed up against her ankles. An extremely large, bushy white cat jumped up on the bench, translucent yellow eyes looking balefully at Malka.

"Go away, Fergus," Malka swatted at the cat with a spoon. The cat sat, its tail curling in front of its paws as a mrrow burst from its mouth. "Go away,"

Malka had never gotten along with Cass's cat. Fergus looked at her as if she was a speck of dirt, before Malka picked up the fork instead of the spoon. Though she did so with some trepidation, knowing how Cass never cut Fergus's claws ("They're a part of him!").

"You want this? No? Then go," Malka hissed at the cat, which hissed back. It glared at her as it stalked away, tail up in the air and ears perked. A shiver of distaste ran through Malka's spine; she barely tolerated Fergus in their room, seeing him out of it was rather strange.

With a huff, she stood up and walked to class, tired of the day already. Herbology was a bore, and Malka looked mournfully down at her fingernails, caked with the blue dirt from Shrivelfigs. A few other Gryffindors walked behind her, and she kept a moderately quick pace to not have them be stuck behind her and have to pass. She went to the library next, where she spent a good hour on her star charts for the Sun and Mercury, and the different times they'd be visible for the rest of the semester. 

Finally, she finished her star charts, and set out for her daily mission: to find tickly brambleberries for her personal project. For up on the seventh floor, she'd had a Potion brewing for the past two fortnights, and at the next half-moon, she would need to add partially decomposed Fool's Gold to it in order to help the Potion solidify into powder form. However, she would've needed to time the melting process of Fool's Gold down to the last millisecond, since pyrite did not melt like other metals—it would thermally decompose. Thus, she needed the berries, since the small amounts of cyanide, once distilled, would bind to the pyrite and melt it instead of decomposing it. 

She trotted down to where the patch of brambleberries were, near the shoreline to the Black Lake, but further tucked away in a patch that was not sandy but rocky, closer to the Slytherin dorms. The Lake rippled in the distance, the giant squid calling out lowly before sinking further under the gray waters, a black tentacle lazily falling in with a splash. Malka looked away, swallowing her fear and revulsion. She would totally swim in the Black Lake recreationally if it weren't for the giant monster inside it. Picking up her robes to navigate the jagged rocks, she noticed the stream of gorse-looking leaves entwined between the stones. She eagerly followed it to small clumps of berry bushes growing low to the ground. Tickly Brambleberries were either purple, orange, or yellow, halfway the size between a date and a blueberry, and had softly swaying stems that wouldn't hesitate to tickle if disturbed.

Kneeling down, she brushed her red cardigan away from her hands as she tried to reach for the berries. It was rather tough, as the ticklish stems surrounded them at all sides. She needed at least six, and with a small slice of her pocket knife, two fell onto her palm. Malka let out a small breath before pocketing them. She tried to get a variety of colors, but the purple ones were all at the back. Hissing in discomfort, she came back up before squatting down, hunched over and reaching for the small purple berries.

She was so close to a branch with four of them. Malka reached forward, leaning extremely off balance to nick at them, her arm reaching out, dangerously brushing past the tickly stems, before—

"No! Come back, you-" someone shouted behind her, and Malka shrieked in shock, dropping her knife into the tickly stems and falling to her side.

There was a sloshing of water behind her, but Malka's heartbeat sped up to a million beats per second as her arms briefly failed around, trying to get her back onto her feet. Before she realized she had fallen onto the stems, and let out another scream at what was coming. For the brambleberry stems, disturbed by the girl falling onto them, whipped around as if they were puppets, lunging for her stomach and neck. She was screwed. For if there was one thing she wasn't immune to, it was tickling. 

The stems attacked her stomach first, before realizing it was covered by her cardigan, then going for her neck. They were bright green and covered with little hairs, and Malka felt like bugs were crawling on her as she yelled, choking on something akin to a laugh of horror as she frantically looked for her wand.

"Diminuendi Ventus!" The same person behind her called, and instead of stems covering her vision, Malka found her own long, straight black hair billowing about her eyesight and peripheries, making it even harder to find her wand. She let out a hey! in protest, swiping hair out of her face roughly before sitting up in the grass to find the stems gone, blown over and smashed against the ground. Malka's wand was finally in her hand, but the tickling was over, and she hadn't gotten her purple berries.

There weren't many things that could get on Malka's nerves, but let there be known that surprises was one of them. 

"You-" She said furiously, whipping her head around before faltering. 

For standing- or more like, swimming, in the water, was Regulus Black, the very person she'd been admiring just at breakfast that morning. Only his head and shoulders were above water, and it was clear he was treading with his legs, his wand raised from where he just cast the Windy Spell. 

"A word of gratitude would be nice," he said next, and it was then that Malka realized she'd never actually heard his voice before. 

She stammered at his words, before anger sparked again. "What? What- you made me fall over!"

"Ah. And I rescued you from those brambleberry stems, didn't I?"

"I-" Malka blinked, pausing where she was getting up to stand again, dirt all over her skirt. "Well, you could still acknowledge that I fell. What're you doing in the water, anyway?"

It was rather lame what she said, but, one—that was the first conversation she'd had all of that sleepy morning, other than the breakfast chatter with Cass. And two— it was the first time she'd been tickled, tripped over something, yelled, and talked back at someone in forever. 

She didn't have a lot to work off of. And by the way Black's eyebrows scrunched in thought, he either thought what she said was pathetic or expected something more fiery out of the Gryffindor girl. Probably both.

"I'll have you know, I was with a kelpie. One of the inhabitants of the Lake, and I was in the process of training it," he sniffed, and Malka felt the small bits of attraction she had for him melt into mild irritatedness. 

"Training it? Kepies can't be trained," Malka said, confused. She dusted off the dirt on herself, straightening her cardigan and looking imperiously down at Black in the lakewater.

"Don't think so narrow, Miss Arslan," Black said, eyes squinting at her to avoid the sunlight. "And might I add it was the silver glint from your pocket knife that startled her to swim away in the first place, which is why I expressed my shock and you, in turn, did yours." said Regulus Black.

"...Oh," Well, to be fair, Malka didn't take Care of Magical Creatures as a class, so she wouldn't know. "Well then, apologies, I guess,"

"Very well," Black said, slowly coming to shore and indicating he was to get out of the water. Malka waited for a moment for his own apology, but it never came. Ugh, Slytherins. Well, she wasn't going to get fired up over one person not saying sorry to her in such a roundabout turn of events. She wasn't that brave, nor proud, nor energetic. "And what, pray tell, were you doing with those brambleberries?"

'None of your business', Malka wanted to say in a snooty tone. Instead, she said: "I have a personal potions brew that requires six,"

"Ah. And you did not use the Severing Charm to cut the berries away?" Black got out of the water, and it occurred to Malka that he was wearing a sopping wet black dress shirt which clung to his figure, toned by Quidditch.

She turned away from him and didn't answer, partially because she didn't want to look, but mostly because she didn't want spell it out that she'd never truly perfected the fourth-year charm. Merlin, he was rude. It's good she wasn't.

"You should probably dry off, Mister Black," Malka snipped, keeping her tone under control as she kneeled down for what felt like the fifth time. "Wingardium Leviosa,"

Her pocket knife gently rose from the ticklish stems into the air, and she placed it back in the inside pouch of her red knitted cardigan. Behind her, she heard a gentle rush of air and a murmued incantation—the drying spell. Strange, she reflected, that Regulus Black would be swimming in the Lake, already getting colder with the seasons. And for a kelpie? Kelpies were vicious creatures with jaws that could swallow a human whole. She'd heard that someone down in Rome had tamed one, but that was only one wizard out of all of her mother's old friends in Italy. Besides, while she was walking out of the castle just earlier, and fifth year Slytherin had bundled past her with stress ringing so loud, and something about a Chimaera project as her most coherent thought.

Malka hesitated, not wanting to crouch awkwardly and inappropriately in front of Black again, especially if it was with her back turned. Whatever, it wasn't like she'd talk to him again. She knelt, and tried to reach forward again, since her previous berries were squished in multicolored blobs on the ground.

"Are you sure you're a Gryffindor?" Black said behind her. "You're much too well-mannered,"

"It's quite rude to make assumptions of an entire House," Malka said stiffly, for his words had hit one of her biggest insecurities indeed. When the Sorting Hat had landed on her head and screamed GRYFFINDOR, she'd been too frozen on the sorting stool to even get up and walk to her House table. It was Professor McGonagall's hand on her back that guided her there after two minutes. 

"Hm. I suppose you're somewhat tolerable, at the least,"

Malka stood up. Perhaps her Gryffindor spark was not extinct, after all. "I do not wish to listen to your remarks any longer, Mister Black. Good day,"

She turned, ready to forgo her brambleberry search, before Black knelt down and drew his wand. Pale white holly, he made a counterclockwise swishing motion. His dress shirt and pants were all dry now, and the brindle he'd used for the kelpie was set on the pebbly shore.

"Diffindo," he murmured in his high accent, holding one hand under the brambleberries to cup them as they fell. And fall they did, gently, one by one as six perfect brambleberries of various colors landed in his open palm. He rose and handed them to her with a bit of a cheeky expression. 

"Is this a trick?"

"Oh. You're really unlike your House, aren't you, Miss Arslan?" Black said, and the way he said her name, with curiosity and a bit of mocking, made a shiver go down her spine. "Not blindly trusting? You should have been a Slytherin,"

Malka straightened her spine, and let all of her mother's icy resolve fill her up. "I think not, Mister Black. I am, as you've said before, a 'filthy half-blood',"

She slapped her hand onto his, rolling the berries onto her own palm as she strode away, without bothering to wait for a farewell. Her head thrummed with the intensity of the interaction, but she'd be damned if she forgot her manners. She could call him a prick as many times as she wanted up in her dorm room in a rant to Cassana.

"Good luck with your pyrite," Black called behind her in that tone.

Malka stopped in her tracks, turned, and gave him a bit of a jerky, sharp nod. Cheeky bastard. 

━━author's note ━━

3000 words?? my chapters are normally gonna be around 1500 words, this one's an outlier haha. or maybe not, i'll write my chapters as long as i need them.