Cherry Lips // s. black

-DECEMBER. 3.-

Ace had gone up to their dorm after a massive dinner to do her hair.

Charlie was with his dormmates. Or the ones he liked, at least. Carmilla didn't know their names. He didn't like talking about them very much. Apparently, he would much rather talk about how exactly Carmilla physically turned into a bat [she hadn't even realised there were different types of transformations]. She had explained every aspect of being a knock off vampire to him before she was left to wander the corridors by herself.

It had stopped snowing quite as much outside, but it hadn't melted, so the stars glowed as brightly as the grounds through the window Carmilla was sitting on the sill of.

Tinsel lined the hallways, and the smell of dinner was wafting through the castle. The food served at the Christmas feast really was the best. Carmilla squashed herself into the stone groove, pressing the side of her head against the cold frosty glass.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and picked at her nails. It was a bad habit.

It was tempting to open the arched glass window and fly through the snowflakes until she should be feelings something. Anything, really. She wanted her body to ache after too much flapping around and she wanted to feel the cold biting at her toes.

Carmilla wanted her heart to beat. She wanted her lungs to breathe. She wanted to cry out all of the numbness.

She wanted to not have to be still inside and outside at every moment of everyday.

Footsteps echoed from a hallway away, the ringing sound of shoes on carpet reaching her ears easily. She also wanted to not hear absolutely fucking everything. Unfortunately, whoever it was, was headed in her direction.

Maybe Carmilla could pretend to be a dead bat. Then she'd be left alone.

"...Good Christmas?"

Carmilla smiled. "Hello Catfoot."

"Merlins balls, no one is giving up on that nickname, are they?" Sirius muttered, and squashed himself onto the windowsill opposite her. He shivered. He was wearing his pyjamas. Strangely, she didn't quite know how to answer the question.

It was a simple one, obviously, but what did he expect her to say? That Hogwarts was amazing, it the best Christmas she'd ever had. All of its rich foods she wanted to steal away and send back to her hungry sisters at the home and the sparkling tinsel that blurred in her eyeline.

That it made her feel sick to her stomach? How there was mountains of decorations and expensive presents that could've sent her and every girl at the home to primary school. That with one table of the feast she could feed families for days with.

That she was so very, very selfish, because she loved it so very, very much?

She shrugged instead of pouring her heart out, "Its different."

Sirius nodded.

It didn't take a lot of work to put together that he hated his family and anything to do with them. Carmilla assumed he was a pureblood then, with businesses built on hatred and greed to inherit, along with the expensive paintings and grand pianos in the summer holidays dotted around the coasts of different countries.

All of the good people she knew with bad parents were.

"It doesn't really feel like actual Christmas," Carmilla said quietly. She brought her knees to her chest and held them. The snow thickened on the flattened grass below.