Paper Confines

vi. Tell Me a Rhyme

PAPER CONFINES.
06. / Tell Me a Rhyme

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       When Colette dreamed, she dreamed in counts of eight. It was the same each night. The strings snapped, her fingertips bruised, the composition went awry, and she woke in a sweat. All the very same, the count; a coronet of snow in her hair, a pine hearth on a stained glass window, the lilting echo of her laugh. Sacred Faustine with her strawberry hair spilling from her coat, her shoelaces untied, her socks full of mud. They'd hide in the crescent of a narrow alley. They'd kiss against the cobblestone—and this was how Colette knew it was a dream—until dizziness spun Colette into something new. She knew what it was. Seven and the sonata swelled with the heavy notes of her heart.

Eight was lovely and ruinous.

Shadows struck the apples of brown cheeks, thick black hair blew wild in the snow, and firewhisky-stained lips parted in beautiful awe.

Faustine was gone, and Nadya was like a mirror. Silver. Sparkling. The whole world shone through her.

It bled, through and through: a world on fire.

Colette couldn't see the bodies, but they were always there. The count had frozen on eight; a flat note stuck spinning forever like she'd spun into a thousand invented kisses.

Dazedly conscious, she tried to reach for Nadya, but there was only storming wind and the lingering, broken sonata. She was alone. The world turned, fire to snow, snow to ash, and only Colette remained.

She shot out of bed with her head pounding, wondering how much longer she would be made to dream such things.

Light poured into the Hufflepuff dormitory. Colette granted herself five deep breaths before she'd tuck the nightmare into a pocket and zip it shut for the rest of the day.

Her ears still rang from the discordant eighth note, but she propped her legs to the side of the bed and stretched, revelling in the soft rug under her feet. Five toes curled, and in the others there was a whispering ache of the surviving nerves.

When she'd first transferred to Hogwarts, all of her dreams had been of Bordeaux—the crescendo of long, elegant fingers dancing over the keys of her mother's piano, the wooden melody of the galoubet, a folksy rendition of some stiff classic. Real music. Cantatas. Music full of life, made with love.

Colette could think of a time when love was scattered in everything she knew. In marjoram and mutton on fine china. Papa's cigars snuffed on a century-old ash pan, spinning tales of Gévaudan between puffs of smoke. Maman and her long white curls, her fitted grey slacks and cuff-sleeves, so different from the girl painted in a pasture at nine that hung above the credenza. Her sister's flowers in the garden; nights of gifted song and supper and too much art too fit in fifty rooms.

The nostalgia of those dreams stung, but they soothed an unmendable wound, like gauze lovingly wrapped too tight.

Colette sighed, practicing Madame Codde's assigned stretches from heel to calf on the ottoman at the foot of her bed. She painted her toes pink and watched the sunlight through the high windows.

A few girls shuffled out of bed with yawned good mornings, the sheets on their empty beds tidying themselves after them. As Colette pulled her robe over her shoulders, her bedding did the same. Someone had told her once that that was a charm set in place by Helena Hufflepuff herself at Hogwarts' inception, but Colette was wary after the other stories they'd tried to fool her into believing when she first transferred.

Did you know that Peeves died after a run-in with a centaur in the forbidden forest? Peeves, annoying as he was, wouldn't be caught dead past the Gamekeeper's hut. Figuratively or literally.