Pick Your Poison | Tom Riddle |

Chapter Twenty Three: Stepping Out

||

"The best things in life are often waiting for you at the exit ramp of your comfort zone."
-Karen Salmansohn

||

○○○

May 4, 1944

The tip of the morning sun made its climb over the mountains and peaked through the curtains that were fully drawn open, the slightest shade of a white wine ray beaming down on Eleanor's face.
An instant groan passed through her lips, soft and non-human like, and she had lost track of how many times she woke up like this.

But as she rolled on her back and inhaled a deep breath of fresh air, Eleanor realized that this time was different and when her eyes opened again, she saw the constellations on the ceiling, shimmering faintly from the morning light.

They were fading though, the stars closer to the window losing their twinkle but the ones directly above Eleanor's head still glowing even as the blue atmosphere began to reveal the plain ceiling behind it.

"Happy Birthday" it spelled, faint lines connecting each glowing star.

A smile spread across Eleanor's lips and even as she was the first one up at the crack of dawn, the two beds beside her were made perfectly neat and not a single person in sight.
Marcella and Lillian were most definitely up to something. Since their first year, their tradition had never changed so Eleanor continued on with her morning shower and found herself too excited to be very tired.

When she had come from the bathroom and back to her dormitory, she was greeted with many sleepy sounding "happy birthdays" from the rest of the girls in the dormitory who were getting ready for the morning.

But it wasn't until she made it back to her bed that she had her real treat waiting.

"Happy Sassy Seventeen!" Marcella shrieked, already dressed and ready, running up to her with a tight embrace that Lillian joined in.

"Never heard that one before." Eleanor chuckled, clutching her silky robe around her more as she was lead to sit at the edge of her bed.

"We made you a breakfast cake by the way. It'll be waiting in the Great Hall for everyone at our table along with plenty of other cards and gifts." Lillian excitedly proclaimed.

Eleanor then sat through the birthday tradition where Lillian did her hair and Marcella did her make up for the day. By the end of the hour, she had victory roles curled up to her shoulders and a face of make up that illuminated her eyes and overall appearance. But then, Marcella held a thing of red lipstick and Eleanor immediately leaned back.

"Absolutely not. Are you trying to make me look like a girl thirsty for more attention than she's got?" Eleanor asked, a grimace on her face. "You know I hate lipstick."

Wearing bold red lips on a normal school day-- well, a birthday school day-- was like asking to be seen in the most tacky way possible. At least that's how Eleanor felt when she ever put it on. Some girls wore tiaras or bows in their hair on their birthday. Not lipstick. Either way, all of the above were terrible in her mind.

"A birthday is a given reason to be an extraordinary person for a day. Technically, you didn't ask to become a Champion or a Seeker so those are additional perks to the life of Eleanor Parkinson." Lillian shrugged, earning a nod from her other friend.

"That does not justify it simply because no other person will see it that way." Eleanor shrugged, hating to seem as if she was referring to her school as a place filled with illogical imbeciles.

Only most of them of them were.

But nonetheless, she felt as if she were being vain if she chose to wear the lipstick. Some of the awful thoughts she heard both before and after becoming the Champion of Hogwarts were enough to appall her sometimes. The other students would have thought she must be gloating at this point if I were to act too entitled on her birthday.