Slytherin had won the top two positions in the first trial of the Quadrivial Tournament, and although it was under negative pretenses that both Draco Malfoy and Theodore Nott has placed as such, the entire House was rambunctious beyond belief that evening.
Large wooden barrels of Boogeyman's beer had been rolled illicitly into the common room by the eldest boys in their twenties. Drugs and pumpkin bongs were scattered all over the ebony counters, and Peeves - attracted by the termagant music - had set up shop in the dark alcoves above to drop hideous fuzzy spiders onto people's hair by sticky web strings.
And one particular, showstopping blond wizard stood at the center of everyone's attention.
Draco was at the receiving end of so many compliments, flirty gestures and free drinks, that Audette fell subject to an overwhelming, bubbling burden of jealousy and nervousness. Ergo she was then compelled to step up her game for her newly approved of and extremely popular suitor.
She left him in the common room in his tight black suit and glowing lavender medal which shimmered around his neck, but she was not alone dressing up in the eighth level female quarters.
"Has anyone seen my lucky golden eyeliner?" Guy bellowed in nothing but his mismatched socks and pink boxers, running around the room slipping on things with his hands shaking in fury.
The cramped area was filled with sparkling perfume aerosols, drunken girls, and one very distraught gay boy. Cosmos kicked Daphne's trunk to centralize attention on himself, "I need it fess up you snakes, this is the party of the century! Rummaging in my makeup trunk is total Mooncalf dung!"
Audette was currently attempting to collapse her ribcage, squeezing herself into the tightest dress she owned. It was arguably intended for a club scene and practically illegal for her to have sneakily purchased behind her parent's backs.
She paused with the white textile suffocating her just above her heaving breasts.
Millicent guiltily held out the eye liner, and Guy snagged it back in a huff, "You've mangled it, you brute! I'll be setting a jinx on my trunk from now on!"
Pansy tittered at him with a cool smile from her bed, as always in a sleek black dress of some posh design, "Please do, seeing as you will be the only moron to set it off."
Managing to get her arms through the long sleeves, Audette had to jump on the spot to wiggle the rest of the dress over her breasts and down to her upper thighs. She held a hand to her chest where a deep V cut ended at her bedazzled pink bra, breathless from the fabric battle.
She was already very drunk from the excess drinks that Malfoy had been passing at her politely, and it was not serving her well.
The entire room turned their faces sideways in nihilistic wonderment of what their most uptight resident was cladding.
Pansy's eyebrows threatened to leave her skull fully as Audette yanked on tiny pink kitten heels that were bound to see her take a washing machine-level tumble down the stairs, "See Malfoy's been rubbing off on you - have you identified yet as his favourite little slut, or are you still in blistering denial?"
Guy reactively blasted across the room to stab a sticky finger into Pansy's nose, who leaned dramatically away in disgust, "Threatened that Audette can beat you at both princess and diva looks, Parkinson? Shall I transform into you, and we can laugh our pussy's off at how ridiculous you'd appear in one of her formal dresses?"
"Fucking mad hatter," Pansy hissed in quiet, intimidated repulsion, crossing her arms in moderated defeat.
Audette couldn't care less. She'd never seen herself so shapely in a garment with each curve accentuated, twirling in front of a tall mirror, her fluffy blond waves bouncing. Although it was elating to dress for the age, in the back of her mind she was dreadfully nervous that showing off so many inches of cleavage was a daring shot from prudent to jezebel in one single go.
Luckily the judgiest Slytherin - Theodore Nott - was locked up in the hospital wing for the night.
Cosmos fanned his face, finally in pants to everyone's relief and pulling on a black shirt to match, "You can kiss your bet goodbye because that boy is doomed tonight and so are you. I'll be getting drunk on Wednesday evenings while you write my grubby Transfig parchments."
"And how do you know that I haven't already been fully intimate with him?" Audette raised an eyebrow teasingly, a sly smile spreading across her face.
Guy's eyes shot mysteriously quickly to Pansy before landing back on Audette.
He shrugged nonchalantly, "Well...Draco Malfoy is well known for kissing and telling isn't he? I'd think we'd all bloody well know if he'd porked you. Besides, I've had a little help from a fellow Ravenclaw putting together a nifty device that will tell me precisely when you lose."
He sauntered over to her bed and tossed an everyday red Etch and Sketch onto her comforter.
Audette picked it up and laughed sweetly, "Are you planning to depict my failure with a rasterized drawing?"
"Sign your name you little prissy vixen. When you lose our bet it'll draw me an alert. I've got about as much trust for you as I do hair on my naked chest," Cosmos crossed his arms authoritatively, his lips puckering with sass.
She was forced to twist the two cracking white knobs for a full minute, awkwardly spelling her name at a bizarre angle and barely legibly. Then the calligraphy magically disappeared, erased all on it's own, and the knobs swirled independently to spell a digitally symmetrical thank you that put her own work to shame.
Guy ripped back the Etch and Sketch, "No way you're making it to Christmas, Bella. I don't know how you've stretched it this long without railing that heavenly hunk. I might even be tempted to steal him away seeing as you're so defiant."
"In your dreams," Audette blew a kiss at him mockingly then spun.
And knocked her forehead clean off of the sharp stone edge of the open doorway.
The entire room broke out in hollering laughter as she blinked away whorling stars.
After the humbling smack to her third eye Audette left the giggling quarters at a snail's pace down the stairs, every muscle in her slender legs working at two-hundred percent capacity to prevent a fatal spill down the slimy egress.
She might've passed for holding in a nasty fart from the strange bent angle of her bare knees in the petite heels, already snickering at herself drunkenly as she took up the entire width of the well with her arms clumsily outstretched.
Finally at the bottom she was just about bulldozed by the thickness of the crowd. Not only had the entire Slytherin population showed up in the thirty minutes since she'd departed, but also multiple smatterings of Hufflepuffs and foreign visiting students.
Audette brought her sleeve to her nose. The common room was rank and putrid from smoke, human body odour, and multiple cauldrons boiling with bizarre alcoholic nightmares.
If the slab floor collapsing from the raging, bouncing partiers wasn't the biggest concern, then Severus Snape coming across the vast calamity certainly was.
Thankfully the gorgeous boy she sought imbedded in the madness was darning a luminous medal around his neck, it's wordly shine reaching into the arched ceilings in beacon force.
She located him in a hellish social circle with many of the Durmstrang champions, and regrettably some of Audette's very least preferred Slytherin company; Montague, Pucey, Flint and Warrington.
They represented the monsters that inhabited the tenth level with Theodore, who was somehow and miraculously withstanding their gory and rakish conversation topics.
Audette had to stick her arm out between moshing dancers in an attempt to split the crowd, and the amount of time it took for her to get there provided unfortunate clips of the conversation. She ended up freezing in place to eavesdrop, thrown for a loop by what she was hearing.
Montague snorted at Draco grotesquely, having been the poor sucker to switch bunks with Theodore Nott and evidently passing information between both floors like the flu, "You know Zabini has quite the gift for gab, only when it comes to destructive gossip. Been informing Nott of all those evenings you've been entertaining with Bellarose behind your curtains."
Cassius Warrington jeered at Montague over his dripping goblet, "Said she stripped in front of the whole room last week, lucky bastards. Got her wrapped around your finger already, Malfoy."
Draco shrugged coyly, stuffing his hand into his pocket which prompted the face of his huge watch to hum with a cerulean glow, "Anything you might've seen last week had better be erased from your filthy mind, Montague. Audette belongs to me now, and so does the exclusive right to her virtue."
"Nott doesn't see it that way," Adrian raised an eyebrow immediately, "He's willing to kill for the bitch's virtue. Just about had your head rolling like a bowling ball out there today."
Draco shook his face, a very disconcerted expression overtaking his pointy features, "Yes well he's aware that I haven't claimed her yet...complete nutter. His responsibilities are evidently sidetracked. There will be no forgiveness should he cost the guild everything by damaging my placement in this tournament."
Audette wasn't sure if she'd heard that correctly - what guild?
Malfoy sipped from a large crystal glass, his nose crinkling in masculine arrogance, "He should be asking himself whose fault it is he chose Monaco over her. He chose the guild, he ought to act like it or there will be unspeakable consequences."
A light went off in Audette's mind as she ignored the horrible splash of a spilling drink colliding with her shoulder.
There it was again; Monaco. One of the words she had subconsciously added to her vocabulary list of most despised terminologies. Now she was certain that a society existed in which both Theodore and Draco - including several of the other Slytherin boys - were enrolled in.
Excetra was a guild of magicals likely located in Monaco; it had to be, but for what purpose? Whatever it's background was, access to the club was more important to Theodore than his pre-existing relationship with Audette, yet still; she had just arrived at the conclusion that it was a decision made with extreme controversy.
"Yeah those terms for his entry, mighty slick wouldn't you say?" Adrian slapped a hand across Draco's back roughly, causing him to choke on his liquor mid-swallow, "I reckon that's precisely why he wants your head on a spike - what with your reputation we all figured it'd be over with week one. You're torturing the bloke."
A swish of his platinum hair to the side and Draco smirked verduously, his voice now pitching, "Week one? You have no sense of marination, Pucey. Sadly that same assumption of myself is what landed Nott exactly in the conundrum he faces today. There are things in this world worth waiting for, especially with the ambition to establish concrete foundations. Bellarose is a permanent endeavour, you see."
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"Little doll is worth zis battle?" one of the confused Durmstrang's raised a bushy eyebrow, proceeding to guzzle from his Boogeyman's beer tankard. He'd unfortunately been very close by when Theodore had tackled Draco in the caldera with murder in his eyes and a sword comprised of deadly ice locked onto his enemy's throat.
"Oh yeah, she's worth it," Draco nodded, his eyes unnecessarily serious.
Warrington huffed in hilarious conclusion, "Sounds like Malfoy's in love and doesn't want his turn up." He made a theatrically pouty face and the boys, including the nasty Durmstrang female champion, glanced at each other wickedly.
Marcus Flint boyishly imitated shooting an arrow at Draco's chest, "Better watch out Malfoy, seems like you've fallen for the princess of petticoats and parasols!"
Audette had long ago stopped fighting to access the insulting conversation. Instead a frown filled with indignation had formed on her face, watching as Flint and Warrington pranced around pretending to be her petting an invisible bear, popping umbrellas, and calling out I would never!
Draco narrowed his eyes, starting to scowl defensively at all of the comments bantering in his direction, "Piss off. Any of you freaks would be so lucky." He swished his liquor in a small vortex within the glass in his clasp, rolling his eyes at the boorish group.
A burly Irish wizard moved several feet and in result Audette slipped out from her hiding spot, right before the group of mean Slytherin boys like a pearl from it's gooey oyster shell.
Warrington ran his brown eyes down her unusually highlighted body, "No need to take your word for it mate."
"What?-" Draco started, turning to glance down at Audette once before having to double take.
Audette straightened her spine, doing her best to mask her shy trembling. She ran her hand over Draco's shoulder seductively, batting her eyes up at him as he glued his astounded frosty gaze onto her supple cleavage, "I'm seeking the first place champion, know where he might be?"
Draco grinned crookedly, instant searing lust dominating in his pale piercing eyes as he rotated to run a veiny hand down her emphasized waist, "And I'm searching for my girlfriend, have you seen her? She's usually wearing uh, Queen Elizabeth's moth-ridden frocks if I knew any better."
Audette continued to play along, gasping animatedly, "She must be dreadfully antediluvian, how ever do you manage?"
He laughed flirtatiously, "Well I spend most days in miserable mystery of her sheathed beauty, but you have total confirmation that I enjoy this particular ensemble in raging enthusiasm." Biting his lower lip, the glass in his fingers was abruptly deposited on a low nearby table before he drove her backwards into the crowd to a private space in the bustling floor.
She wrapped her arms around his neck as they backed away, staring up at Draco with big emerald eyes, "What did you mean about Monaco and a guild, Draco? I must know."
He spun her on her heel in the middle of the riot, and it was a sincere phenomenon that Audette only stumbled once before he pulled her up against him from behind, "You're very snoopy, Bellarose. Don't worry about that; it's classified."
Everything was always classified.
Her father's work, her boyfriend's enlistments, the argument ensuing between her prior lover and her current lover...Audette was in a total whiteout in her own reality, as if she had a pointless map to her current world with no information aside from a baffling engraved 'X' which represented a final destination.
His lips found her jaw to kiss her face at a forcibly deep slant, then his fingers went on to strip down the top of her already revealing dress so that her bare shoulder was open to the air.
"But I do worry. I was of the impression we needed to make progress on our secrets," she trilled as his hands then slid down and interlaced with hers, guiding her to hike up the hem of her own dress and rolling it up several inches to stop just below her panties.
After diligently defiling her already questionable attire, he flattened his hands on her hips and pulled her back into him to guide her movements over his swelling member, whispering ticklishly in her ear, "Mmm. I'm very high right now, Audette, and this dress on you is...torture. Especially after the scold I received today from your father. You test me unjustifiably."
"Then I wish you would fail already," she hushed seductively back at him.
"I've never failed at anything, but for you I'd consider it," Draco tilted his face tauntingly, and a gigantic puddle of silence ensued for a solid minute as they exchanged thoughtful gazes.
Thankfully the environment was tempting enough to draw them both away from the desperate awkwardness. Pheromones bloomed between them cancerously, and Audette permitted him to grip and squeeze her absolutely everywhere.
For the first time in her life she sank against a boy to slow grind, suddenly a fan of the stimulating sensation. Her head fell loose upon his shoulder as rap music blared obnoxiously throughout the room and adrenaline coursed through her veins in his arms.
He bit at her jugular like a velociraptor, "What I want to do to you, darling Audette..."
Audette started to sweat as he slapped her backside harshly, swimming in the ecstasy of the feeling but scared that people in the vicinity would notice. She pawed at his cheek over her shoulder, "Draco, stop, that's too exposing in public."
"Let's go for a walk, then," he shouted impatiently over the music.
"Where? To do what?" she squinted into his wild blue eyes over her shoulder.
He was without a shred of a doubt rolling on something magical or synthetic, and Audette was certain that in conjunction with his surreal win, the drugs that he'd obviously dropped were only adding to his inflated egotism that evening.
"What do you think?" he popped his eyebrows at her suggestively, his sweaty fingers travelling around her jaw to command her face into his. His other arm crossed over her midriff to plaster her body against his throbbing boner.
Suddenly her tongue was assaulted with a landslide of insidious flavours including cigars, brandy, and some sort of sour chemical taste. She wrapped her arms around his and fell into a deep moan against his sweaty obsidian suit.
Was this the night? Could it be?
That Etch and Sketch was about to go off like a firework.
Audette nuzzled her nose against his, completely lost to the moment, "My father approves of our courtship, Draco. It's official, you and I."
Once more he pulled back to shout in her ear, his eyes on her the entire time, "Yes, and come the morning we should review his futuristic terms, Audette. Here. This is yours to hold onto, seeing as you're officially my duchess to-be."
Wait. Duchess to-be? Was he of the impression that they were destined for marriage already?
Her nose bent in fleeting worry as she was bombarded then by cold, vibrant metal slipping around her neck, her eyes driven to adjust momentarily to the phosphorescence of his champion medal landing on her cleavage. It must've weighed ten monstrous pounds, spanning the diameter of an advertisement cheeseburger.
She lifted it in awe in her hands, and the fascination of the rewarding object threw her concentration off from the concerning terror of her father permissing an engagement on her behalf.
She nodded back to him, and he turned his face to the side, leaning down so she could belt out an answer, "Alright. What shall we do on this so-called walk?"
Draco dropped his pointy nose to her collarbone to kiss her sensually along her shoulder, his eyes mischievously hidden behind silky strands of white hair.
The interaction shot from zero to one hundred when he brought up two long fingers and forced them in her mouth so that Audette was suddenly sucking on them, his voice in her eardrum a gravelly spade, "I enjoyed what we did last night, and my perspective has shifted on such delights shared between us, do you know what I mean?"
She gagged as his nails hit her uvula, and he bit her neck again with a dark moan in her ear.
After making clear his point he removed the invasive prodding, leaving her gasping, and Audette's eyes blasted wide, wide open in understanding that he was asking her to drop onto her knees for him, "I have no objection to that."
He kissed her cheek once, slow and drawn out, "And I'd like to try it on you as well, love, should you have no objection to my returning the favour."
Just picturing his pretty face buried between her legs left her buzzing electrically. Audette just about collapsed in his arms there in the common room.
Yes PLEASE.
She giggled sheepishly in his ear, dragging him in close, "You absolute barbarian. I suppose my father's scold holds no bearings."
He planted another saucy set of kisses on her lips, his voice breathy and savage, "Oh yes it does, but we're entitled to some revelry. I won't blab if you don't."
Detangling from him, Audette turned to smile up at him with his hands in hers, "Wait here. I'll warn Cosmos of my departure first."
She giddily took off with her high heels slamming directly down into the alcohol infused brick floors so she would not trip, but the flail of her arms drilled several people in the head regardless of the safety effort.
It didn't aid functionality that she had a ten pound medal around her neck, but she didn't dare remove it for the world. The jealous stares from other females as she climbed the treads was so deeply rewarding, there existed nothing so satisfying in prelude.
She left the eighth level in an elated mood, finding that a nice little perk of the Quadrivial medal turned out to be the ease of parting people like the Red Sea with it's blinding light.
After only one minute off the bottom stair she found him, and her world froze to a near halt.
The beat of the music, the flashing of lights, and the stench of inebriation set the background for disaster. Her eyes landed on Draco standing with Anastasia Fedorov's arms around his neck, his fingers tingling on her waist line.
Anastasia pushed up and brazenly snogged him, and although his hands were just hovering off of her body he did nothing to stop it. In fact Audette was certain he was kissing back as he tilted his head to accommodate the embraces.
Oh.
OH.
Ohhh.
The rage that stood her hair on end ought to have been bottled as a military weapon.
For a split second she lifted the heavy medal and considered bashing his head in with it to cause a permanent, vegetative state. But then she recognized the great odds of unathletically missing her mark and becoming a random manslaughter murderer to some uninvolved bystander.
The light of the medal as she crossed behind the snogging, cheating pair to charge out the wall must've been distracting, drawing attention to the unfolding catastrophe. Several boys hooted low and ominously, shouting out lines including Malfoy's dead and Princess parasol is pissed, and Draco's face finally popped up.
His expression flattened in horror when their eyes squared, Audette's filled with resentment and tears. The seriousness of the crime seemed to hit him all at once, and the panic in his voice went undetected, "Audette! No, stop Audette-"
He tried to detach from the Russian beauty but she had a bear grip around his neck, her dark eyes ferociously pleased as she watched Audette evacuate the scene in dissolving tears.
Out in the hallway Audette tossed off her high heels and carried them in her fingers so that she might run, encumbered with the knowledge that he'd pointlessly follow her to embark on a useless argument.
She bolted through the expansive megalithic castle; as if running in any direction would place her apart from her collapsing reality which was impossible to evade.
Reaching the first floor she couldn't bare moving another step, blindly shoving open the nearest door only to find herself in a revolting janitor's closet.
It didn't matter; it was time for the fetal position.
A dreadful degree of time passed in that musty, cobwebbed broom cupboard, hosting the glittery girl who's world was imploding for a second time that year.
Gradually the halls beyond became silent and eerie, and only the meows of nocturnal felines and the hushed conversations of floating packs of ghosts who did not require sleep could be heard through the cracked wooden door.
She was surrounded by the stench of archaic cleaning supplies and a mop that kept twitching in place with leftover smatterings of magic, typically bewitched to cleanse the stone floors independently.
A familiar, bleeding heartbreak seeped back into her chest at full force. Audette sobbed into the sequined sleeve of her pearly dress with the glow of the Quadrivial Tournament medal casting scintillating light into her eyes, feeling that she was the world's biggest idiot for falling in love with a verified player.
Yes, she was in love with Draco Malfoy. It was suddenly crystal clear to her in the shadows of that glum, filthy closet.
They'd just been having the best of nights together, they'd just been cleared to court - why he'd even risk cheating was so far beyond her comprehension it was microcosmic in scale.
"Oh god," Audette choked into her hands, an endless stream of tears dribbling on the surface of her arms and by force of gravity making it's way below the sleeves of her dress. The moisture soaking into the fabric was uncomfortable, but all she could focus on was how it would be another year of mental recovery before she truly felt herself again.
Not to mention the humility of her father's judgement when she had to backtrack.
She'd might as well have fallen to her death in the Quidditch Pitch during their first kiss - as Lee Jordan had so brazenly suggested; at least it would hurt less than having her heart ripped out of her chest while still pumping.
Infact, she decided with intensifying melancholy, the outcome of that night had only ever been inevitable and it was a miracle such a damaging instance hadn't occurred earlier.
Perhaps it had, she thought with flaring misery, perhaps he'd just been sneaky with his endeavours over the past few weeks.
Audette's mind went off to the races in full blown hysteria, incapable in such a state of inhibiting her worst and most irrational imaginations.
Of course he hadn't slept with Audette, who was in all likelihood too innocent to properly please him. Merlin knew who he was getting it from - Anastasia Fedorov?
Her fists balled up resentfully, following the tangential madness that was her train of thought.
Of course he'd allowed her to shove her tongue down his throat. Something had to have been operating between them behind the scenes of Audette's moronically blind trust. All of the signs were there.
Of course because Anastasia was probably a better kisser, and splendidly providing Draco with a simultaneous boost in social status amongst the cheering boys.
Unlike Princess of the Petticoats and Parasols, keeper of invisible bears and snooty to the nines.
Audette could hardly breathe as acid bubbled through her veins, causing her to hyperventilate at the notion that the entire common room was at that very moment in hilarious congregation of her victimization. No doubt each of the older Slytherin boys was laughing at her reaction and planning some sort of devastating display for her to return to.
Theodore's planetary stare at the beginning of the semester mocked her racing thoughts, his voice echoing in her skull;
Surely you recall the nature of his relationships with women, and you are not one of those indecent females.
He will destroy you...
I beseech you to avoid irreversibly damaging your self concept before it is too late.
Audette's uneven breath snagged in her throat. Below the crippling pain a fire began to blaze in the pit of her stomach, where there lay a blossoming, uncontrollable rage towards both boys who had taken swinging stabs at her sensitive soul.
More than owed answers, Audette was about to get some. At least one of the boys in question was bedridden and Audette had absolutely zero clemency left over her self control.
Theodore Nott was going to bloody well explain.