Throughout her younger teenage years Audette's darling, derpy brain had been caught up on Guy Cosmos, her cutesy teddy Think-Think, and obtaining every blip of freedom she could afford under the habitat suns.
She had been kept preoccupied - as all courtly and aristocratic ontogenies are - with absorbing idiotic knowledge such as matching the blush of her hand gloves to the tone of her expensive hair ribbons. She had perfected her waltz skills, learned to paint balanced portraiture, and mastered attractive gala qualifications ranging from pianoforte to delicate ballet.
Audette had done everything she was asked to do - over time, and by the hand of force; from imbedding hazardously sharp crystals into her stylized hair to accepting the suffocation of outdated corsets which depressed her lung capacity.
Yes, no doubt meeting steep requirements as the sole offspring to her noble parents was taxing on Audette, and as such she was the saddest belle of each nauseating pureblood ball, hardly sure of who the girl beneath the ornamental bonnets and bows actually was.
She'd might as well be contained to a music box in a tutu, pulled out and wound up from behind at the request of some august purchaser. She had spent years feeling like a plastic version of herself; presenting as she was expected to - spine straight, polished hair, gloves to her wrists, behaviour in check...whilst the goofy and giggly uncouth girl within was drowning in nothing deeper than a shallow puddle.
She was about as in control of her own life as a headless chicken.
Naturally, when the brooding storm that was Theodore Nott had offered his support and care she had caved immediately; stricken with his long brown hair, depressing gaze and limitless intellectual perception.
There was something so absorbing and spellbinding about his dreary and desolate ennui that she stood virtually no chance at dejecting his company; those rainy eyes devouring her with reserved analysis.
But the truth of the matter was, even he could not tackle her loneliness.
Despite his deceiving acumen and staggering beauty, Theodore Nott proved to dependably function like a perfectly tuned robot, distracting and charming, but effectively placing Audette even farther into a regulated cage.
Glittery dresses, perfect hair ribbons, spine straight, perfect marks...glittery dresses...glittery dresses...Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.
By the time she was eighteen Audette wanted to rip her perfect face off, a mental breakdown boiling just below the surface of her porcelain skin.
On the other end of the scale was Draco Malfoy, an irascible friend who taunted and teased her, yet...he was intriguing, oppositional, raw and unbinding...encouraging her to step out of the glittery dresses and let her hair down.
Well...he'd just as gladly go too far and shove her in a pile of mud as well.
That jaw-dropping devilish boy which swept through the chilly halls of Hogwarts like a dream in strikingly tight obsidian suits had won her over finally, and for the first time, she was not lonely. His pearly hair tended to flow in exceptionally quaft rifts, sporting a pitch black wand and arctic blue orbs which could melt a hole straight through an awestruck victim.
Yes, that boy.
She could suddenly see Draco in the background of her memories; polar blue eyes shifting with her every move, desperation lining the ring of each caustically glacial iris - all the while too proud to chase after her for many years following Audette's barbaric rejections.
That complicated, loathsome, snarky and arrogant breeze of an enigmatic socialite who tended to plant fires in Audette's heart and make her feel at odds with him constantly was - and had always been - positively hypnotic, and very much prohibited.
Over the years they had shifted by one another, passing sarcasm and criticism in captivatingly noxious commentary, and the thrill of it had been volcanic - hot as magma stewing below the crust of the Earth.
How she had not observed it with such clarity before was a decalenscent mystery to Audette, seeing now that they had always been magnetically inclined even when arguing.
And somehow they had found a path around the stabbing altercations, rebellious stares and prickly provocation, and the amelioration could not be more gratifying.
Well it was to be no more contained by stares; they were to be married after all, someday, and contrary to his suggestion she really was not terrified but actually blessed with blossoming romantic anticipation.
By god she was the luckiest girl on the planet - he was nothing short of intellectually abstract, physically dripping, exceptionally wealthy, and promisingly lethal on a good day...
And the orgasms he gave her were positively mind altering. The minute they were out of the arena she was going to make wild love to him, even if she had to strap him down to her four-poster bed until he gave in.
I love you Audette, his whispers from the night before echoed greedily in her mind as she slept, but unfortunately she was stricken with a terrible headache.
And come to think of it the tip of Audette's button nose had a tickle, a tickle in which she could irritatingly not scratch despite her best efforts.
She wriggled it like a small child refusing to clean up her scattered wooden toys, but the sensation would not dismiss itself from the surface of her skin.
Bollocks, those stupid boys had apparently wrapped her up again in a cocoon of flight robes.
Tightly strapped to her outer thighs was both of her flattened palms. Sunlight was streaming in through the cave, and Audette wrinkled her eyelids in hungover protest after her sickening near run-in with death the night before, shocked that all three snippy Slytherin men had overslept.
"Pssst, PSSST!" someone hissed in the cave, as if silence were dreadfully necessary.
Audette opened a single sleepy eyeball, only to discover that the floor was the ceiling, and the ceiling was the floor.
She was strung up like a sprig of drying rosemary clippings.
"VERY whimsical..." Audette started to sarcastically whine at what she thought was surely a classic prank, before her eyes adjusted and she caught her breath.
Across from her, deeper in the shadows of the cave, was a white silk pod. It was at least six feet in length and metastasized to the ceiling by a few very strong braided strands, slowly rotating. The pod was filled with something living that was squirming within, only increasing the velocity of the orbiting motion.
As soon as it rotated all the way around, and Blaise's face appeared in a perfect circle, angry and snarling and also upside down, Audette absolutely lost her cool.
She was afterall, the type to laugh at a funeral simply because it made her uncomfortable. But this imagery, this was too much.
"Ahahahahah," Audette wheezed at his violently contorting face. He was attempting to call to her under his breath to be quiet even though that request was highly expensive and positively impossible.
His desperate efforts to escape his pod meant that within a few short seconds he was gone again on the other side of his three-hundred and sixty-degree cycle, leaving Audette wheezing and giggling maniacally in her own pod. She hadn't laughed that hard in ages, breathless with tears running down into her hairline.
"Blaise, Blaise," Audette tried pathetically to slow down her madness, but the moment his grumpy face had returned she shot straight back into a cackling hysteria.
Now, due to her sniggering she too was swinging and rotating, and it became a hilarious game of them randomly meeting now and again like strange out of tune animatronics in a dilapidating stage band at a freaky pizza restaurant.
No, it should not have been funny in the slightest that all four of them had been stung and victimized in their sleep by what was obviously a resident Acromantula that lived deeper in the bowls of the cave, but Audette was a different breed of eccentric altogether - there existed no limit to what absurdity might be considered farcical.
Her psychotic laughing had finally woken the entire gang, who all looked nothing short of a set of thumbs with their hair wrapped up behind silk, only their faces left out in messy circles for the sake of keeping them alive long enough for tempered consumption.
Due to the lingering sedative neurological effects of the venomous sting each of them was arguably drowsy, save of course for Audette who was feeling fantastic thanks to the Deville's Dram coursing through her veins.
"Glad you're feeling better enough to mock this extremely funereal circumstance, Audette," Theo glared from his pod, one brown curl distending down the middle of his forehead like a handsome Charlie Brown.
Audette was now finding the plasticity of her cocoon incredibly playful, bending in her pod to face each of them with comical enthusiasm and nearly blinded by her laugh attack.
The only other person who seemed to be meeting her in the middle was Draco, also starting to snort on her left, one huge vein pulsing on his forehead from gravitational demand and a swath of ivory hair spiking out above his eyes, "Good lord Bellarose, don't piss yourself or it'll run straight up your nose."
"Quiet, it was just here," Blaise seethed, spinning at a nauseating rate directly next to where the tunnel grew darker and banked downwards into the mountain.
Behind him, sure enough, there was a mess of sticky webbing fading into the shadows.
Theodore ignored Audette and Draco's combined cackling, his calculative eyes scanning the floor where bloody clothing articles, empty glass vials, and candy wrappers were scattered about. Their broomsticks were propped up by the doorway, and his blade remained by the site of Audette's brutal emergency medical treatment hours prior, "It must have been drawn by the blood. I've left my dagger on the floor - Malfoy, once you come to your senses and cease encouraging Audette's instability, can you reach yours on your belt?"
Draco raised his eyebrows at Theodore who was directly across from him - or more like, lowered them, given he was upside down - his pretty face going red from the tandem snickering, "From where my hands are strapped down the only thing I can reach is quite inappropriate, unless you're into public masterbation Nott."
"How fitting for you, Malfoy, you sick bastard, I'm sure it would not be a first for you," Theodore scowled, having to raise his voice over Audette's insanity.
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Draco guffawed, the typical impish glint in his icy blue eyes now reinstated, "Your fascination with painting a deplorable picture of me is starting to become concerning. Would you perhaps classify yourself as obsessed with my sanctity, Nott?"
"Will you whisper?" Blaise hissed again, clearly very concerned having been the only one to actually witness the gigantic spider responsible for their conundrum, "Bellarose, snap out of it."
Audette and Draco grinned devilishly at each other, and Audette inhaled a heavy tug of air to anticlimactically calm the frothing bubbles in her chest.
"You two are insufferably immature," Theodore sneered between their shared amusement resentfully.
"Feel free to hurl Nott, perhaps from that angle you'll choke on it and be put out of your misery," Draco jabbed back. They both had begun to also spin, now all four of them rotating in place, forcing the conversation to consistently clip and line up unnaturally due to mismatching velocities.
Just then a light went off in Audette's mind, and she began to painstakingly twist her palms outwards to face her silk netting under the incredibly tight pod, the boys bickering in the background about what to do.
She closed her eyes and focused on her wandless speciality, first producing pink handprints on the strings and then intensifying the heat until a carcinogenic stench and white smoke indicated it had worked - she was effectively burning her way to freedom.
After less than a minute the silk enclosure lost all integrity, evolving into a disgusting slimy consistency.
Once she'd scalded enough material Audette shot straight to the floor and slammed the crown of her head off of the hard granite bedrock. It ought to have resulted in an instantaneous concussion of horrifying magnitude, however the Deville's Dram left her standing casually and brushing herself off as if she'd only slipped on a banana peel.
"Ow, ow! First one out is Bellarose," Draco hooted boyishly, jeering at Blaise as if he would appreciate the circumstances, who only rolled his eyes like chocolate dice in his skull, disinterested and maladroit.
Now from an upright position, the three normally haughty Slytherin boys hanging like bats sent Audette careening once more into tumultuous disorder, heaving with one hand balancing off of the cave's entrance, the other wrapped around her clenching abs.
"Not to be flippant, but I do desperately hope this is displaying live in the Great Hall," she wheezed through tears.
"You misplace all womanly comportment Audette, cut us lose before that beast returns and you are left defenseless," Theodore demanded with a frown - or a smile from Audette's planetary orientation - spinning away from her once again.
Audette wiped her beady forehead and lackadaisically removed the final straggles of silk strands from her torn excuse for a dress, still humming through crumbs of giggles, "And how would you suggest I do that Theodore? Seeing as you are so high of hat and I am nothing more than a damsel in distress who predictably has never handled anything more complex than a hair ribbon..."
"This is no time for attitude, mind your place and get the dagger," Theo rasped at her, his nose crinkling with judgment at what he would likely deem to be courtly misconduct.
She picked up the baroque Slytherin dagger from the cool stone floor which was ornately carved with a green snake around the silver handle, flipping it around dangerously with zero skill or athletic charm.
It was an actual miracle that she did not stab out her own eyeball in the braggart process, running her pastel pink nail along the point of his blade, "Oh don't be a bitter old curmudgeon, Theodore. My place happens to be in charge if you hadn't noticed."
"Do you think she's uh, meaning to pull your strings Nott? Feeling a bit, strung up?" Draco chimed in sarcastically as Audette loyally approached his pod first and began scrupulously sawing him loose.
She had just cut Malfoy down with hostile grace, and was slicing through the cords tying his feet together, when a very extreme panic overtook the cave.
"Bellarose!" a rare shout from Zabini drew her eyes around.
A chaotic scuttling and a high-pitched, monstrous screech monopolized the rocky interior of the cave as an Acromantula the size of a school bus popped out of the opening of the wide-mouthed tunnel at the back, eight glassy brown eyes glued to it's dinner which had freed itself and was attempting to free the other dishes on the menu. All of it's woolly legs were splayed out in a wide array, each the beefy diameter of a common Jack-O-Lantern.
The spider released a nasty shriek before shoving Blaise aside into a vile spin and clambering hair-raisingly along the stalactile ceiling, jabbing it's legs down at Audette which terminated in razor sharp blades as it did so.
She barely managed to scramble aside from the slicing thrusts multiple times before the adrenaline in her body escalated astronomically and Audette - educated by her Magizoologist father and entirely outside of her own body - rotated upwards and drove the Slytherin blade directly into it's hairy opisthosoma, a segment of the insect's thorax containing vital functions.
She heaved in breath in utter shock that she had delivered any successful combat tactic, her entire body buzzing with foreign power.
An odious, golden, repugnant goo began to ooze out of the tremendous injury she had jaggedly carved down it's fused, ovular abdomen, slapping onto the floor in large globs and running down Audette's squirrelly arm in hot nast.
She backed away against the wall, hoping that the Acromantula would retract it's charge, but instead it seemed to jump into hyperdrive.
"Youuuuu....willlllll....sufffffffffer......" it growled in a ferociously sonorous, gravelly tone, backing into the tunnel entrance so that it might face her with octadic, visual completion - all of it's spindly bewhiskered limbs bent with horrific justification.
Audette had spent her entire life trained to act like a princess in a fairy tale, taught foolishly to expect that at some point a knight in shining armour would rescue her from the glass jungle nightmare that was the famous Bellarose Biome. Yet ironically in all of that time spent living in that endless dome she had gained more skill in dealing with monsters than she was provided credit for, spying on the groups of tourists who were frequent and curious.
"The eyes," Montgomery's incredibly green gaze flooded her mind as she recalled his instruction to a group of visiting French students, all crowded at the riparian zone of the Acromantula habitat, the magical monocle glinting from the sunshine filtering in through the panes above, "The eyes are their weakness. The two central nerve cell clusters which comprise of their notably simplistic brains are located directly behind the ocular interface."
Audette backed up, her deteriorating slippers scraping on the dusty granite below, until she had aligned herself with Draco's premium broomstick and Theodore's assigned Hogwarts training broomstick. She snagged Theo's splintery broom without looking, honing her concentration to a fine sharded point on her opponent.
The spider bounced in place, promising to pounce at lightning speed any second, and Audette heaved in brave breaths by the mouth of the cave with the rickety broom cast sideways across her disheveled dress.
She would have one chance, just one, and she had to nail it.
The second it did pounce the world slowed to one tenth of it's prior speed. She raised the broom over her head with both spindly arms, and drove it into the left largest gelatinous eyeball of the beast as it clamped down excruciatingly sharp fangs into her arm.
The spider scrambled backwards, squealing in agony with the wooden substitute sword remaining impaled in it's cranium, simultaneously leaving Audette with a monstrous gouge on her petite arm.
Audette covered her face with both hands in horror, scraping backwards from the riveting scene of the gigantic insect slowly, morbidly, writhing on the floor until it was nothing but a convulsing mass of hair and dissertation, a dismal hiss indicating that it had drawn it's final breath.
"Oh...oh...oh my..." Audette gasped through her fingers, circling around the murder scene in disbelief of her own brutish accomplishment and the arachnid that continued to twitch in place disgustingly.
Draco whistled from the floor, both he and Blaise beginning to release tense laughs in each other's directions, "Sweet Merlin, remind me never to piss you off Bellarose."
"Are you injured, Audette?" Theodore inquired from his swaying capsule, his navy eyes glued to the blood running down her dress.
Audette watched in incredulity as the ugly laceration on her twiggy arm left by the insidious fangs of the Acromantula healed and retreated into a threadbare remark. Deville's Dram - what a potion.
"Fit as a fiddle," she gushed breathlessly, first proceeding to free Draco, then Theo, and finally a very disturbed and unfriendly Blaise Zabini who stormed out of the cave without pause, muttering under his breath that he was sick and tired of participating in the tournament and kicking glass vials like soccer balls.
With that collective grouchy mood they took off through the woods.
Theodore being the smartest determined their course from the location of the sun in the sky alone, "Well, it's approximately fifty degrees above the horizon in the east so I would peg the hour at roughly ten in the morning. We need to move as fast as Audette can bare to go, baring in mind that her longevity is tied to a countdown terminating this afternoon."
"Oh well thank you for that Teletubby explanation, but I am a functional person with a fucking watch. And you are incorrect - it is nearly half past," Draco remarked, not needing to be asked twice to blast at full speed through the trees.
"You won't place first, Malfoy - we'll be lucky to even complete the task in general," Theodore pointed out from where he was walking rather patiently next to Audette who was already winded and out of breath trying to keep up with the boys who were basically an entire twelve inches taller than her, "She's wearing slippers, show some cordiality."
"The minute that rainbow is in view you had better back the fuck off. And stop informing me how to manage my relationship," Draco snarled.
Audette was quite certain if he could drag her on a collar he would. Thankfully, he was not forcing her to walk next to him, but in no time at all he was about to lose her in the rear if his pace was not mitigated as Theodore suggested.
"How can you tell how many hours are left in the day?" Audette whispered eagerly to Theodore.
"Well, see here little rose. It can be summarized first by respecting perspective terminology," Theo launched into a rant, his long fingers splaying at his sides as he spoke. For a second she was struck by just how calm and familiar speaking to him felt, staring up at his brightening brilliant eyes, "The Earth is rotating around the sun, gyroscopically. And it is important to retain this perspective, much as the majority forget that the tide does not flow independently but rather is generated by the Earth rotating within two gravitationally produced pockets of water, created by the alignment of the sun and moon-"
"Little rose...Break my neck already as promised - you're more dull than Droopy," Draco called backwards from where he was swinging his broomstick in front of himself to clear a path through the understory.
Blaise was not much farther behind, having removed his dress shirt and wrapped it around his head dismissively, now in a foul mood after the spider and determined to be left alone.
Audette mildly speculated that perhaps he and Ronald Weasley shared the same Arachnophobia, although she had not been paying attention in their third year DADA course to Blaise's experience with the gripping boggart.
Ha. Or perhaps it was public speaking.
"Here," Theodore stopped Audette, standing behind her to hold her hands up to the blue sky above. He leaned his face close to hers, just about digging his nose into her cheek to hush in her ear, "Much like an architectural scale, it is possible to measure the time left in the day through relativity. Flatten your hands, and utilize your fingers as a set of units."
This seemingly innocent instruction was viciously cut off by the introduction of the shiny end of Draco's black broomstick in their faces, "Just wait until you see what my fingers will do to your esophagus if you don't piss off, Nott. You think I am deaf? You think I am unaware of what you're doing back here? You and I both know that a crash course in elemental physics will never be sensibly absorbed by Audette, no offence Bellarose."
"Come on Nott, don't set Malfoy off," Blaise rolled his eyes, his foot tapping and his arms crossed.
Theodore dropped Audette and marched around all three of them in silent defeat. Draco waited a moment before stepping closer to Audette, driving the handle of his broom into her chest slowly and painfully.
His eyes narrowed threateningly, "I have not forgotten about your dirty little secret from last night, little rose. If you so much as look at him in front of me again, I will kill him. And rest assured unlike Nott's pathetic bluffs, that is a promise I will honour once issued."
He nodded curtly at her, his eyes filled with flames that left her speechless, and horrified, and for hours she walked with her head down and her lips shut tight, wondering just how dangerous Draco Malfoy truly was.
By the early afternoon there was only one thing playing on the sky screen, and that was the pack of disheveled Slytherins, indicating that they truly were the last of the contenders remaining in the arena. A few more hours slid by, and with each passing minute Audette started to feel sick once again as the Deville's Dram was metabolized out of her system.
"You've failed, Malfoy. Bravo, dead last," Theodore menacingly golf clapped in Draco's face when they finally, achingly, passed below the huge glittering rainbow at the top of the valley where the four Headmasters and the Simulation Architect were waiting calmly.
Draco was now carrying Audette who had begun to bleed from her wounds which had reinstated in a hellish attack, her body trembling and freezing, and this was likely the only reason he did not react aggressively. He had started to frown down at her deterioration, his eyes glistening in worry.
"She needs to be taken straight to the hospital wing. Now," he passed her off to the waiting medical team, and Audette was shocked with what she overheard come from the Simulation Architect who was theatrically wagging his finger.
"That could not be farther from the truth, young Mr. Nott. The purpose of this trial was to survive and place through the exhibit of teamwork, not to race to the finish line. As such, you two retain your positions in first and second, followed now by the Beauxbatons, who demonstrated equal coordination."
No way.
Audette's vision was going black and dim as she was handled and strapped to a gurney which had been charmed to levitate without any support, but she could not help recalling Harry Potter's ominous comments from the chase down by the river, "- they have total control, and I'm convinced they need Draco to place first..."
Had they simply been unfathomably lucky to place as they did, or was it by some conniving design? Who had total control, and why?