SCREAM | ginny w.

SCREAM | ten

Vera slept like a baby that night.

That is to say, very poorly and eventually awakened by her own crying. She had thought she could sleep without her switchblade pressed neatly into the palm of her hand. At first, she had been too exhausted to care. But when she had woken with a start two hours later and had gone to open it in a panic, she had forgotten that she hadn't fallen asleep with it. In the midst of her panic attack, she had been convinced that he had escaped Azkaban and broken into Hogwarts just to steal her switchblade, as another method of torturous mind games.

When she had escaped the grasp of her quick shallow breaths, she realized that thought was silly. She saw the blade on the table next to her and even if someone had taken it, it couldn't have been him. That wasn't his style. If it had been him, the throats of everyone else in the room would have been slit by the time Vera would have awoken and that would be the only evidence of him ever being there.

He hadn't snuck into her room to torment her, but the way he still lingered in her mind was torturous enough, Vera realized. And as desperately as she wanted to point her wand at herself and obliviate him from her thoughts, her fear of him had always kept her alive. Behind the hard shell that she had spent years building, she had always been driven by her fear. Of him, of what would happen to her, of what she was. And though she could be told that she was safe now, that she wouldn't be touched now, that she was free from her old life, she could never truly be free from it, not until she could detach a part of herself that for most of her life was the only part of herself.

They could Vera from the fight, but the fight would never leave Vera.

Many hours later, when the sun was finally starting to lighten the room, Vera decided she could no longer lay in the aftermaths of her panic attack and readied herself for the day. Just as she was about to leave, she turned to look at Arson, who was still deeply asleep. A pang of jealousy ran through her, as did the guilt of leaving them alone in the room with no explanation. Vera turned back to her bed, grabbing a piece of parchment, a quill, and some ink from her bedside drawer, and scrawled a quick note.

As she left the note on her neatly made bed, she decided to take the writing materials with her for her morning walk, shoving them into her pocket to make room in her hands to grip her switchblade. The thought crossed her mind that perhaps one day, her wand would replace it, and the thought scared her.

She set out on her walk, now with a destination and purpose in mind- she was going to write a letter to Remus. She had found that she missed him, strangely, even after only knowing him for a few weeks. It was the same sort of ache that she felt for her parents when she thought about them. Unlike her parents, Remus was a letter away, and the ache could be somewhat cured.

She wandered the mostly empty castle for a good half hour before she found the owlery, and as she suspected, it was also empty, save for the owls. Finding a spot that hadn't been completely taken over by the owls, Vera found a surface to write her note on.

Remus,

It is only my second day here at Hogwarts, but I thought I should write to you nonetheless. I have been sorted into Slytherin, and have graciously been accepted by a friend who is, so far, not evil, though the rest I cannot attest for. I had an encounter with Draco Malfoy last night- I am sure you remember him from your teaching days and if not, I have a feeling you know of his father. He was handled- though I am sure you weren't worried.

I will write to you again when I can. I am struggling to adjust to this life and such an environment, but I hope this will not last. I hope to see a letter from you soon and await my time with you for the winter break.

Vera.

Vera stared at the letter. She was aware that it was overly formal but to be entirely frank with herself, she was not confident in her English writing skills outside of what she knew, and she knew formal writing like the back of her hand. There was no crucial information that she was giving away that she needed to cross out and code, there was nothing, in particular, that would lend an outside eye to anything much more than why these two characters were communicating at all.

She snapped her eyes away from the letter before she over scrutinized it and decided not to send it. She tied the letter around the owl's leg, giving the bird its final destination before finally sending it off to Remus. She quickly set back off to the common room, her knowledge of the path from the owlery and back much better than it had been when she had come before.

There was one person in the common room when she reentered. Vera had to hold in a sigh when she saw the mop of light blonde hair from above the ledge of the leather couch. Steeling herself silently, she began to walk, hoping that he would not notice her or bother to talk to her. She was wrong.

"Smirnova, right?" he asked from behind her. She turned around slowly, seeing that he had stood. She nodded, smiling politely at him.

"Malfoy," she greeted, if only for the politics of it.

"You're up early," he noted.

"I rise with the sun," Vera smiled dryly. "And the same could be said of you."

He shrugged. "Up early, up late, these are the hours they blend together."

Vera frowned internally, the mystery of Draco Malfoy only deepening. She only found herself more curiously infuriated the more time she spent with him. Not meaning to, her thoughts drifted to Ginny, thinking of how there were no secrets with the redhead- Ginny said what she meant and always meant what she said. "Perhaps you will find better sleep tonight, then," she replied, offering him a smile, though her mind was a thousand miles away.

"You're very polite," he remarked. "I thought Russians were supposed to be blunt and rude."

Vera smiled at him, not worried if it was threatening this time. He was starting to get on her nerves. "Would you prefer I be?"

"No," he shrugged. "I just think you're a bit strange, that's all."

"The same could be said of you, Mister Malfoy," Vera widened her poison smile. "Good morning." With that, she did not wait to continue the conversation and retreated back into her dorm, her smile dropping along with her attitude. Under her breath, so whispered that Malfoy might not have heard it had he been standing next to her, she let a curse in her mother tongue slip through her lips. As the word passed through her teeth, her mind moved away from the infuriating boy, and onto a redheaded Gryffindor once more.

Perhaps Vera would find her today and ask if they could still be friends, despite the centuries-old rivalry that now drove them apart.

a/n: hello my loves, hope you enjoyed the chapter. I'm really trying to be better at posting- i just moved for uni and i'm pretty settled into my routine at this point with plenty of time to write worked into my schedule :)

on that note- let me know what you want to see! i have so many ideas for where this story should go so go ahead and throw a few out there!

with that, xoxo, go piss girl <3