Juliana Leffoy de Marigny (standingwave) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2008-09-05 10:55:00 |
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Current mood: | morose |
Tuesday morning, 15 September 1942, at Malfoy Manor in Tintagel...
Liane Malfoy was a little nervous as she walked into the parlour where Isabella and the other girls did their sewing; Dracaena was at work in her study just past the open door. The way things were done here was utterly foreign to Liane, who was used to the workings of the state being far less transparent; but she was too curious to be judgemental, and wandered in with a distracted look. “Tante Dracaena said you wanted to speak to me?”
Bella looked up from the fabric in her lap and smiled a little, just as distracted as Liane. “Mamma says you need clothes made, and I have your measurements, I just don’t know what you want. We can make over things from the attics, if you like,” she offered, a little uncertainly. Liane’s blouse and trousers looked entirely mundane to her, and she hoped that it was a result of circumstance, not choice.
Liane settled down at other end of the couch, uncomfortably aware of the fact that Bella’s younger sister Aelia was watching her, and had been, ever since she’d taught Jenny to do the logic problems the night before in order to keep her out of the way. There was no-one else in the room except for the three of them, but Dracaena had other people in the room where she was working: Lucius, and a little girl his age named Dory, and Melina, and worst of all, Nat Pritchard, who had known her in France. Thinking about it wouldn’t help; she decided to apply herself to the problem. After all, fashion was something she liked.
“Tell me,” she said quietly, “will I be spending all my time here, or will we be going back to school? Because at Beauxbatons we had a uniform, long blue and white dresses, except when we wore breeches for duelling and flying. But no-one in France dressed the way you do here, except at court.” She swallowed. Long, heavy dresses and skirts held no appeal for her, but she knew how dangerous it could be to stand out. “I’ve never lived at court. When we lived in Brocéliande, I dressed for flying and working. When we lived in Paris…well, it wouldn’t have done to be anything less than up-to-the-minute.” She hoped that was politic enough. It wouldn’t do to ask, does everyone here wear fancy dress all the time, or is it mostly you and Lucius, but that was what she wondered. The Queen, it seemed, wore anything.
Bella made a thoughtful little face. “I don’t know. There’s uniforms for school, if you go there, but I don’t know if they’re sending anyone back. There should be uniforms floating around, if Mamma does decide you’re to go. But for everyday…I suppose it depends on what you do, if you want to train with the Company like Charis.”
Liane cocked her head to one side. “I can fight if I have to. But I’m an artificer and a harmonicist. I was going to go on, when I finished at the lycée, and study at Durmstrang, or at the Sorbonne. Before the war, anyway.” She swallowed. “If we don’t go back to school, I don’t know what I’ll do. Perhaps the Guild will decide for me, now that I’ve sent them my thesis.” She supposed she could continue to work and study at home, but there were hardly any journals still in publication, and where would she do her practical work? The leys were like the ones in Brocéliande, more powerful, more dangerous and more delicate. “I should speak to Tante Dracaena. They put me off forever, at the Parkinsons’.”
Bella nodded. “Mamma will know,” she said. “She knows how to put everyone to use. She’ll certainly be able to figure out what would be best for you, too.”
Liane smiled, a little relieved. “They do seem determined here, to use everyone’s talents. Even the little ones.” She relaxed a little, although she felt sorry for Lucius. “I suppose everything I have is quite outgrown and worn out; we’ve had so little money since we escaped, and the Parkinsons would pay Papa well, but always for work I’d rather he not have done. We were beholden to them, though. I’m not as special as Michael Charteris believed I was, or something like that, or at least in not the same way.” She shrugged. “I used to be so vain, in Paris. The Malfoys—” she began, and then she winced. “Monsieur Alphonse,” she corrected herself, “and the de Marignys, they sent us money to absolve themselves of guilt.”
“I would love to see Paris,” said Bella; the rest of it made little sense to her, though she understood the feeling of being a supplicant and a poor relation. “I mean, not now, not with the war, of course, but…someday. When things are normal again.”
“I hope it’s still standing,” Liane breathed, and smiled at the thought of it, of Paris, with its shops and museums and history. “I loved it so, and Beauxbatons was so beautiful, too, in Ker-Ys. I cannot say I was very happy there at all times, because a lot of the girls resented me so, but I had teachers I loved, and there was always more to learn. And Paris…well, we lived in the Latin Quarter, where Lutetia and the mundane city meet, and the best of both worlds is at hand.”
Bella smiled a little. “I can’t imagine what that would be like. Even when we were in Roma, we stayed in the household, it wasn’t safe outside the walls.”
“Is that why you always stay in?” Liane frowned at herself, because she shouldn’t have mentioned that, and then sighed. “Jenny said you never go outside; she thinks it’s very strange, but she is very prone to judge, and I told her that there are parts of the world where it isn’t safe to go out.”
“Jenny,” Bella said with a sigh, rolling her eyes—she couldn’t help it, really. “I just…feel safer here. That’s all.”
“It’s lovely in the Bois,” Liane said, taking her hand impulsively. Bella looked like a lot of the girls she’d known in France, after the Occupation: afraid of her own shadow. “If you’d rather not go alone, I’d like to show you sometime. I can follow the safe leys.”
“I don’t know how to see where we’re supposed to stay,” Bella tried to explain.
“I know,” said Liane. “I can help.” Something about the way Bella looked at her made her feel that Bella would understand some of the things she wanted to say, which was ridiculous, given that she’d first thought Bella the sort of girl who ran in terror from dirt and maths, and she’d seen no evidence of any academic interests; but she liked her anyway.
Bella smiled, and demurred: “And things have been rather mad here, there’ve been weddings and now with last night…”
“That was awful. But I thought there was only the one wedding. Melina and Marco. Or were you thinking of the engagement that was announced at breakfast?” Liane smiled when she thought of her uncle, whom her father had hated so. He was Sevvie’s older brother, and Sevvie, whom Liane had thought the world of, had loved him. “They seem to be deeply in love.”
“Alessio was originally supposed to marry Valeria, she and Melina were going to share the day, but then he went back to Yvon, not that it’s any surprise. I feel badly for her, though, I do. It wasn’t her fault, she didn’t really know, and how could any of us tell her?” Bella said with a little shake of her head. “But Alessio and Yvon have always been together, they’re just…supposed to be.”
Liane frowned; the duplicity bothered her a little. “Was there some reason not to tell her? Why would he ever have agreed to it? I hadn’t thought the Zabinis—your family—were short on heirs. And it’s so obvious.”
“No-one knew if Yvon and Alessio were going to get back together until they did it,” Bella explained. “They’d been fighting for so long, it was hard to know what would happen.”
“Oh,” said Liane. “I hope they won’t start again, then.” Things like that always puzzled her; she could never manage to reduce it to a predictive algorithm, but she hated the way that one day, you could be close to someone, in perfect harmony, working together as if you were one, and then suddenly, everything changed and you found yourself feeling rebellious, argumentative, irritated and overwhelmed.
Bella shook her head. “They won’t,” she said, not entirely sure where her certainty came from. Things were going to turn out right somehow; they had to. And they couldn’t if Yvon and Alessio separated again. “They love each other, they’ve figured things out. They’ll be happy now, I’m sure. They deserve to be.”
“Not everyone gets what they deserve,” said Liane, “but if they’ve figured it out they should be fine. People get what they make for themselves.” She sighed. “I can’t get my father to understand that though; he’s so determined to take what he thinks he should have that he always ignores the things he could make for himself.”
Bella frowned a little. She didn’t know what to say to that. “Then maybe it’s best you’re here, with us,” she suggested.
“It is,” Liane agreed. “I still don’t know what sort of clothes I should have. I want to look proper at court, while I’m here, but when we’re out in the world again, I don’t want to be a heartbeat behind what’s in style, not if I can avoid it…but why should your family do that for me? This is a lot to ask you to do. It’s not all just you doing this, is it? There are other women who help?”
“Of course there are,” said Aelia, who was apparently tired of watching her. “We have servants, and the wives of the men in the Company. Everyone helps, it’s just everyone’s tired this morning, there was a siege, after all. But Bella’s in charge of it all; she’s the best seamstress of everyone.”
“It’s what I’m good at,” Bella said with a little shrug, embarrassed at being so firmly praised. “I like to do it.”
“Of course you like to do what you are good at doing,” said Liane. She could not imagine life without work, and it had been hard to work in secret and hide it so long when she had grown used to guidance and praise from her teachers and friends. “I didn’t mean…” She sighed. “I just don’t want to impose too much upon you, particularly when your brother, or cousin, whatever Alessio is, and my uncle are also about to get married.”
“It’s all right. I can’t get it all done at once, but I can get at least a few things for you, at least,” Bella said. “Especially if there’s going to be another wedding.”
“There are enough hands to do everything,” said Aelia. “Don’t be a Bolshevik, Juliana. We’ve had enough of that, haven’t we?”
Bella laughed. “More than enough, thank you.”
“Nobody calls me that. Juliana, not a Bolshevik.” Liane shook her head. This happened all the time; they were having a conversation with her, and another conversation as well, with people who weren’t even there. Liane hated that; she was always afraid of agreeing with whoever it was wasn’t there, and setting herself up to fall. “What’s going on here? I’m not good at these subtleties. What’s going on, with Jenny and you and the other girls? What side is it your sister is afraid I’m taking when she looks at me like that?” Liane asked Bella, warily.
Bella hesitated, looking at Aelia, shrugging one shoulder. “Jenny’s just difficult,” she said noncommittally.
Aelia snorted. “She doesn’t know her place.”
“Then you’ll understand if I wish to know mine,” Liane replied in a deadly-soft voice, tired of the sarcasm dripping from Aelia’s voice. “I know that you’re not Tante Dracaena’s child, and neither is Jenny, and neither am I, but…”
“The Lady tolerates too much,” said Aelia glumly. “So much so that I do not know her limits, and it frightens me, because I do not want to put a foot across.”
“She loves children,” said Bella, shaking her head. “She wouldn’t turn us out, Aelia, you know that. Mamma wouldn’t turn us out unless we did something so horrible…it’s not even worth thinking about.”
“And yet she did turn Dalton out,” said Aelia. “I thought I understood that, ‘til she took in the Crockford girl.” She glanced over her shoulder, in the direction of the child who was pouring Lady Dracaena’s tea and listening to her and Lucius discuss a letter they had received. Liane watched them. She had worked with adults as a child, and it made her feel sadly nostalgic for the days when Professor Rosenthal had let her see some of the things he was working on, and Séverine and Professor de Valois and Professor Giraud had allowed her to sit in their meetings.
But Aelia was still talking: “Jenny and Alastor are kin to her somehow, and we are Pappa’s children, even if I was not hers the way you were. Juliana is Yvon’s kin, whom she loves, and so it does not matter that her father is Domitian, who would have murdered him—”
“Because I would not have!” Liane said sharply, startled out of the memory. “And because I would have tried to stop him, if I’d known. And perhaps he did not know either,” she said, more softly.
“All you have to do is be loyal, she’ll love you,” Bella said to Liane. “If you’re innocent in everything that happened, then that’s all. That Dalton attacked Luce, he’s a foul little beast, of course she couldn’t keep him here after that! And the Crockford girl is something else entirely, Aelia, you can’t compare it.”
“Jenny said you and Dory were friends once,” Liane said, glancing at Aelia. She remembered the story now; Jenny had been very upset that Dory was being put to work, although Liane thought she’d mostly been jealous.
“We were,” said Aelia. “But now she’s a bondservant.” She glanced in through the open door again at them. Dracaena was speaking to them both, and to Nat and Melina, in a low, but clearly passionate voice.
Liane shrugged. “If I say it doesn’t matter, you’ll call me a Bolshevik,” she said with a sigh, “or compare me to Jenny. And I wouldn’t say that, but perhaps she needs her friends and so do you. Don’t shut her out.”
Aelia made a face. “Why do you dress like a Muggle?”
Liane gave her a long, searching look, clearly confused and unhappy. She wasn’t sure what wearing the latest styles had to do with her lineage, or why she should care; she simply felt freer in shorter dresses and trousers.
Bella shook her head. “That doesn’t matter if it makes her happy, Aelia,” she said decisively. She liked Liane. She didn’t know why, exactly, but she did. “If that’s what she likes, that’s what I’ll make. Once I figure out how.”
“I don’t want to outdo the Queen,” Liane replied, coming to the conclusion that her status here would be what she decided it was. “That would be impolitic, I understand that, and you wouldn’t do it anyway. But I think I must think like she does about it. You cannot say that I am dressing like a Muggle if I’m dressing like Tante Dracaena, can you, Aelia?” She smiled at Bella, just then catching the tone of the other girl’s words. Bella liked her, too, and that was a new thing, to be liked, by a girl who did not share her intellectual passions.
Bella smiled back. “We’ll figure out the perfect things for you.”
“I am going to be someone important myself, someday,” Liane told Aelia, more gently. “But so can you. It’s not because of my blood. Don’t be like my father and worry yourself to death about who deserves what. Make for yourself what you will, what you want.”
“Like Nicodemo did.” Aelia’s frown set deeper.
Bella didn’t know what to say about Nico, so she stayed quiet, looking down at the fabric in her lap.
“Thank you, Bella,” Liane said hurriedly, clasping Bella’s hand again, and then, in a softer voice: “I like Don Nicodemo, should I not? The Parkinsons hated him, but they seem to have been very wrong, about so many things. I know they think he deceived them, and maybe he did deceive Portia, but…”
“He deceived our father too,” Aelia said quietly, “and yet, we would all be dead if he hadn’t.”
“He did, it’s true. But he makes Mamma so happy,” Bella said softly.
“I think you can’t win a war without deceiving people,” said Liane after a long moment, looking from one sister to the other. “And that you get into the habit. Maybe they would have been honest if there had been no war. But we would be scattered all over the world then, and whether we would be happier like that, I do not know.” Liane shook her head. “There is no point agonising about it, Aelia. There are people I cared so much about, and I don’t even know if they are alive or dead. Friends, family…isn’t it true of you too? It’s better to be alive than honest, I think, sometimes.”
“Pappa’s not well, we need Nicodemo to take care of us all,” Bella said. “That’s just the truth.”
Liane looked at her with sympathy. She hadn’t realised that Nicodemo wasn’t their father before this conversation.
“But if it’s better to be alive than honest, why be loyal to anyone?” Aelia wondered aloud. “Why not just give your loyalty to whoever comes along and makes the best promises? I was loyal to Pappa all my life and I paid for it! None of you know, our stepfather hated us, and then Mercutio cocked up, the way he always does, and now we’re here, and I tell him to keep his head down and he won’t, he has to have his petty rivalry with her, even though she’s Nicodemo’s daughter and we know that now, and I could have been Corrino’s pet, he would have loved me, if I hadn’t loved Pappa…”
Liane almost reacted out of instinct, but she stopped herself. “Listen,” she said, as much to herself as to the other girl. “People don’t keep their promises. You have to judge them by the promises they make, but also by the ones they keep.” She sighed. “If you knew what kind of people we were fighting…”
“Some people keep their promises,” Bella said softly. “Some people do. Not many. But some.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Liane said to Bella, a little more gently, less angrily. “Some people try very hard to keep their promises, and to stay loyal. But I think for everyone there comes a time when they have to choose between loyalties, or go back on their word because something has changed, broken beyond repair.” She swallowed, desperate not to lose the other girl’s regard. It shocked her, how much she could care what another girl thought of her, when it had always been girls who made her life miserable. “And what they choose shows who they are. It’s a child’s conception of honour, never to lie or break promises—it can’t be done, in times like these. But it’s all in how you choose. I wish things could always be simple, like arithmancy and harmonics. Numbers don’t lie. Proofs are right or they’re wrong, and there’s more than one way to prove things sometimes, but facts are facts and truth is truth. The rest of life is so difficult. Honour is impossible to quantify, and yet I know it when I see it.” She swallowed, hard. “I do try to be honourable, Bella. But I also don’t judge people. I used to. Before I understood that people are different.”
Bella nodded a little, understanding her somehow even though she was clearly much smarter—but then, who wasn’t? “There’s a difference between being loyal and being blindly foolish,” she said. “And being foolish these days is a good way to end up dead. Or worse.”
Liane squeezed Bella’s hand. “Exactly so,” she said, and swallowed again. She would not think about that.
“Who was it?” Aelia said after a long moment. “Who is it you were loyal to? Not your father, obviously, not the way you talk about him. Was it because of those Jews you were talking about at breakfast? Was one of them your lover?”
Liane’s cheeks flared red with sudden fury. “I don’t understand why people always have to be so sordid,” she said. “I’ve never been in love. I’ve had boyfriends, who hasn’t? Well, not till you’re at least fourteen, and I guess you’re not. But I’ve never been in love.”
Bella managed a soft laugh. “I think we’re supposed to be positively sordid at our age.”
“That would explain a great deal,” Liane said, with a heavy sigh that was almost but not quite relief. “The girls at Beauxbatons used to say I was having an affair with my teacher, and it wasn’t true,” she confessed. “In fact I don’t even think he liked me any more the last year I was there; suddenly he would never let me stay in his office too long, and he set me to tutor the other girls, especially the ones who simpered at him constantly. Of course they were the worst.” She made a face.
“You would have slept with him, though, if he’d wanted you,” said Aelia shrewdly.
“Don’t be disgusting,” Liane shot back, unable to believe this was happening even here. “We were colleagues!” That wasn’t true, not precisely…but it had felt that way, until her final year at school, when she’d begun to walk out with boys, and he’d become so irritated with her.
“Was he good looking?” Bella asked, ignoring the sniping. “Brilliant? I mean, it’s not so dreadful a thought if he was one or the other, or both, even better.”
“Both,” said Liane without even thinking about it, “though not everyone thought he was very good-looking, because his looks are not in fashion at the moment. In fact they have probably been the death of him, because he was brilliant…but foolish.”
Bella frowned. “Maybe he’ll prove you wrong. Sometimes, even fools get lucky.” She couldn’t tell if it was an emotional passion or an intellectual one, but she suspected Liane didn’t know, either.
“I hope so,” Liane said, hugging herself.
“No, you’re not in love, not even a little bit,” Aelia said under her breath.
Liane glared at her. “Don’t be ridiculous, the man was infuriating.”
“Men usually are at first,” Bella said with a soft laugh. “But then they improve, if they’re worth keeping.”
Liane smiled at her, almost indecently grateful. “Isn’t that the truth? So far I haven’t had one yet that did.”
Bella smiled back. “I know it’s possible, I have first-hand knowledge.”
“She does,” said Aelia, grinning. “We hear all about Jamie. And they’re even going to let her marry him.”
Liane laughed a little, although the idea that one might have to be allowed to marry the man one loved was still disturbing. “Congratulations.”
Bella beamed at them. “He’s a good man. He’s serving in France now, but he has to come home, I won’t even think of anything else.”
“We’ll all pray for that,” said Liane, and wondered why she’d said it even as she spoke the words; she didn’t believe in God. “Or whatever you do when you run out of gods. I’m afraid I’ve become a Pythagorean mystic by attrition. The war is so awful that if I believed in any of the gods I’ve ever heard about I’d have to say they were evil, yet as wizards and witches, we know there is more than the flesh.”
Bella didn’t say anything, thinking about the dark man again, about what Mercutio had said about his mother calling him a household god, about the yellow birds, her expression going distant.
“Sorry,” said Liane, squeezing her hand again. “I should try to make lighter conversation. Mrs Parkinson says I’m too sombre, and I’ll almost certainly never get married if I don’t learn to lighten up. My last boyfriend said the same thing, so perhaps she was right about that…” Well, maybe Saint-Germain hadn’t been her last. But she didn’t think of Ernst as a lover, only something to be put up with because of the information he spilled, and Austin didn’t count.
“It’s all right,” Bella said, snapping out of her thoughts. “It’s hard, these days. We know.”
“I don’t actually care that much if I get married,” said Aelia lightly.
“Neither do I,” said Liane, “but I’d like to be in love someday.” She wasn’t sure she meant it, though. Love always made people sad. Something always happened. Maybe it was better to be like Sevvie, and not get too close.
Aelia gave her a sceptical look and picked up her embroidery frame. She started to say, you mean you want to be in love with someone who loves you back, but what came out was, “I actually don’t think I like men at all, sometimes.”
“Maybe that will change when you meet the right one,” Bella said. “It sometimes does.”
“Maybe you don’t like boys,” said Liane teasingly. “They are fairly dire. If you wait a few years…”
Aelia sucked her lip halfway into her mouth. There were so many things she wanted to say, like ‘what if I’d rather kiss Princess Ximena, not that she would,’ and ‘you’re not in love with that teacher at all,’ but it didn’t seem wise to say any of them.
“Boys are generally good for one thing only, and even then, they’re not terribly useful. They get better, though,” Bella said in agreement.
Liane giggled. “The last one was pretty good,” she said, because the sex with Austin had been good, when she’d allowed herself to feel it. “But he wouldn’t admit he liked me, he was so afraid of his grandmother. Oh, God, if we do go to school, and I hope we do…he’ll be there.”
Bella smiled. “Is that a good thing?” She hoped it was. Liane needed to have some fun in her life. They all did.
“Not really,” said Liane. “I was getting tired of him. I always do.” She shrugged. “Austin’s very pretty, but not as pretty as he thinks he is. I’m sure you know him; he was in the serpent’s house, weren’t you?”
“Austin Parkinson? Oh, yes, I know him,” Bella said with a nod. “We’re in the same house, Slytherin. I didn’t have much use for him, really.”
“Well, like you said, good for one thing only, and I’m sure he felt the same about me,” said Liane. “I don’t know that I’d have even considered it if we hadn’t owed his family so much, or if I’d ever seen anyone else even close to our age on a regular basis.” At that she winced, but it was true; she had felt a little obligated, and mostly what she had liked about Austin had been that he wasn’t a soldier; she was tired of violent men, and she had never really liked them.
“If you go to school, there are more options, you won’t have to worry about that,” Bella said encouragingly. She knew what it was like to feel obligated. All too well. “I think you might like it. School, I mean. More than I did, anyway.”
“I loved school, in spite of those girls,” said Liane firmly. “Anyway I always out-dressed them and made better marks. And had lots more boyfriends, even if I never kept them.” She sighed; she’d kept Saint-Germain the longest, but then, she’d gone to bed with him. “You didn’t like school?”
Bella shook her head. “Not really. I like being here better.”
“Well, this is your home,” said Liane, and tried to smile; she wanted Bella to come to school with her, so she’d be sure of at least one friend outside of the faculty. “I suppose I didn’t miss my home much, when I was away. That was another way I was different.”
Aelia shrugged. “It’s easy to see why you were so popular,” she said cheerily. “But you should fit in just fine, if you sort Slytherin, and you’re a Malfoy so you will.”
“Just what exactly do you mean?” Liane said, frowning.
“Out-dressing everyone, having more boyfriends, getting better marks, and topping it off by losing your mind whenever you’re oh-so-falsely accused of having a crush on a teacher? Girls love that,” said Aelia.
Liane’s eyes went narrow.
“You obviously thought you were better than they were,” Aelia continued.
Of course I was! They were all stupid! Liane thought, but she managed to hold her tongue.
Aelia laughed at the look on her face. “It’s all right. You probably were.”
“She just hasn’t found the right friends yet,” Bella said, rushing to Liane’s defence. Why was her little sister being such a bitch? “But that’s all right. At least on the first two, she and I are just alike, and if other girls are jealous, then they just have to try harder, don’t they?” Bella smiled at Liane.
Liane smiled back at her. “Absolutely,” she said in a soft voice.
Aelia shrugged. “I suppose. I myself don’t intend to enter those games.”
“Slytherin’s different. We’re excellent at that sort of thing. And I think you would be one,” Bella told Liane with an approving nod.
“I hope so,” said Liane. “It seems…the place to be.” She glanced at Aelia. “Everyone who doesn’t have an interest yet says they’re not going to enter those games. I said that once. And for the most part I didn’t, because I don’t take boys seriously, which is why they always liked me.” She swallowed. “But it does draw you in. Because everyone wants to have friends.”
“I suppose,” said Aelia, and shrugged. “No offence, but you’re easy to tease, and Slytherins usually aren’t.”
“And Ravenclaws don’t care about playing the game, so it’s not like she’d end up there,” Bella said.
“That’s true. You care a lot about a lot of things,” said Aelia to Liane. “And you’re terrible at hiding that, so try another strategy.”
“I just…dislike being accused of caring about things for the most acutely selfish and personal reasons,” said Liane in a soft voice, glancing at her hands in an attempt to sound dispassionate. “There are other reasons to care when someone disappears, particularly someone very brilliant, but anyone, really, and certainly a whole class of people who haven’t done anything wrong.” She shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter why you care,” said Aelia flatly. “If you make a big fuss about things, people will always assume that it’s personal, and if you’ve made yourself a great big target, they’ll use it to tear you down. Particularly if it works for them.” She glanced at Bella, smiling wryly. “It’s very Gryffindor to think it matters why people care. Do you think she’d look good in red?”
“Ugh, don’t even mention Gryffindor, look how horrible they’ve been there to Arianwen’s brother and Jamie’s cousin. She wouldn’t do there at all,” Bella said with a shake of her head.
“She’s trying to get me to rise to the bait,” said Liane.
“Which proves you can stop yourself, when it isn’t at least a little bit true,” said Aelia smugly. “You’d probably hate it in Gryffindor, but you do remind me of Mr Delgardie, and he is a Gryffindor.”
Liane did not remember who Delgardie was, though she'd heard the name, and had no intention of rising to Aelia’s latest volley of bait.
“I don’t think she’d end up there, you should really stop, Aelia, it’s getting irritating,” Bella said, frowning.
Aelia chuckled. “Is it?” She sighed. “Well, find something to tease me about, then.”
aeliana, bellissima, doryatschool, dracaena, luxserpentis, nat_pritchard, thanatopsist and standingwave