Masquerade, Every Face A Different Shade -- Cecelia

[Irina Rose Krum]

Irina was dreaming. Dreaming of a Masquerade Ball.  She didn't recognize anyone with the elaborately detailed masks, but for some reason she didn't care. She danced with the strangers, laughing and having a rather good time. She noticed an intricately carved wooden door, and her curiosity moved her almost like an invisible hand was pushing her towards it.  She reached out a hand and pushed it open to find streaming sunlight.  Shading her eyes with a hand, she realized that she was standing on the sidelines of a Quidditch pitch.  There was someone flying high above her, people in the stands.  She recognized the vibrant red hair and canary yellow robs; her sister, Ripley.  This must be a practice or something.  As Irina watched, she saw a bludger hit towards Ripley, but her sister wasn't moving out of the way.  She opened her mouth to yell something, to tell her to look out, but she found her voice was gone.  The Bludger made contact with Ripley's side and she was knocked clean off her broom.  As if in slow motion, she watched her sister fall, her hair fanning out in front of her, limbs flailing as she came closer to the ground.  Why wasn't anyone helping?  Why was nobody going to get her?  It was as if they were frozen in place.  Irina plunged her hands into her gown, groping for her wand to only find it wasn't there.  She began to run, but it was too late; Ripleys body made contact with the ground, and though it made no sound, the pit of Irina's stomach felt as though it had been dropped away.  Time sped back up again; she reached her sister and fell to the ground beside her.  She turned her from her side gently, only to see Ripley's eyes staring back at her; there was no life there, that had been extinguished.  Irina drew a shaking hand back to see it covered in blood.  Ripley's.  She opened her mouth, and the screams that came out were full of a haunting grief she'd never felt.


"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"  Irina bolted awake, aware that she was screaming bloody murder.  She heard a glass shatter; the water glass next to her bed.  She didn't care right then and there; it had been a nightmare a terrible nightmare.  But Irina lived in a world where her dreams would come true.  Ripley was in mortal danger, a fate Irina knew if she saw she'd be powerless to stop.  Irina's breaths came in ragged half sobs half hyperventilations. She clutched her knees to her chest as someone wrenched back the curtains.


@cecelia

[Deleted]

Cecelia Rousseau fancied herself an expert on nightmares. She had them just as many nights as she didn't, and in the end, Cece had decided that it wasn't worth the pain and effort to rehash all of her nightmares in hopes of finding out what had caused them. She had thought that, following Desirae's death, the nightmare situation would resolve itself, since her sister had been the subject of most of her nightmares, but that hadn't happened. If anything, the nightmares had gotten worse, because the little voice in her head that had whispered Desirae won't do that had been extinguished. Normally, Cecelia just sat in her bed and waited for her breathing to calm before returning to sleep. Tonight was supposed to be no different, except for that, as Cecelia waited for her heart to stop racing, the silence around her was broken by a scream. The first thing Cece did was clap her hands over her own mouth, just in case the scream had been hers, and she just hadn't realized it. But no, Cecelia hadn't been the one screaming. She lifted herself off of the bed mechanically, grabbing her want to cast Muffliato on the other girls in her dormitory so that she wouldn't disturb anyone when talking to the screamer. Cecelia opened the curtain to the bed next to hers, blinking down at Irina. It was pointless to ask if everything was alright, since obviously it wasn't, so Cecelia just stood, waiting for Irina to say something.

Irina Rose Krum

[Irina Rose Krum]

Irina was surprised to see Cecelia Rousseau was the one who wrenched back the curtains hanging around her four poster bed, but then again who else would it have been?  She knew the other girl suffered nightmares as well, and with Andromeda in the hospital it was only the four of them.  Ironic, wasn't it, that the girl who had lost both her sisters was awoken by the girl who'd just seen her own sister die in a nightmare.  She couldn't speak yet though - her breaths were still coming in short rapid hysterics.  But she looked up at Cecelia and didn't break eye contact.  Slowly but surely the hysterics began to subside.  "So...it was so real," she said faintly.

She squeezed her arms around her legs and looked away.  "I saw my sister get hit with a Bludger and fall off her broom.  She was dead before I could reach her.  I couldn't save her, I should have been able to save her,"  Irina trailed off, wondering if Cecelia knew exactly how she was feeling right in that moment.  The answer was, most likely. 


"I should have saved her."


@cecelia

[Deleted]

In listening what Irina had to say, Cecelia wondered if the other Gryffindor remember anything about Cecelia’s past. If anyone with half a brain remembered who they were talking to, they wouldn’t have complained about how her sister’s death in her dream felt ‘so real’. Cecelia had no pity for dreamed up deaths, since very few had pitied her for deaths that were real. When Irina had the nerve to say that she ought to have saved her sister in her dreams, Cecelia closed her eyes, and forced herself to take a deep breath. How many times since April had she thought those words to herself? They had been her constant companion for the last nine months, the litany of ‘I should have…’. But she hadn’t. And neither had Irina. The only thing was that Cecelia’s loss was permanent. Irina could go see her sister right now, if she wanted to. In the absence of anything nice to say, Cecelia decided to invoke the old adage, and say nothing at all.

Irina Rose Krum

[Irina Rose Krum]

Irina sat in silence for a few moments, and then it hit her. In the flurry of waking from the sort of nightmare you never wanted to remember, she realized that Cecelia Rousseau had lived that nightmare not once but twice.  A new feeling crashed over her, nudging into the terror and fear - guilt.  "I'm...I'm so sorry," she whispered quietly.  The words describing her nightmare had flown out of her before it truly registered how it would have sounded to Cecelia.  She pulled the blankets up more securely around herself, feeling a little vulnerable.  "The thing is....my nightmares, they come true," she added, not looking over at the other girl.  "Kings Cross....my brothers stabbing...Andromeda....." she trailed off, biting down on her lip and taking another deep breath.  She let it out with a soft sigh and looked back over at Cecelia.  "I'm a Seer, and what I see in my nightmares, the death, the destruction.  They come true - all of them do," she finally said, looking away again.  She fumbled open the door of her nightstand and pulled out her dream diary.  She opened to a fresh page, noting that the visions were coming monthly now.  She shuddered, then began to write out what she had seen.


@cecelia

[Deleted]

Cecelia didn’t care about apologies. People wore apologies like clothes, taking them on and off and mixing and matching to suit whatever style they thought would be best received. She had long since learned that actions spoke louder than words, and right now, Irina’s actions were saying that she couldn’t give a single damn about Cecelia, because in the same breath as she had apologized for talking about her nightmare, she continued to rub it in. “You have plenty of time to change it.” Cece said, not even caring that her voice sounded cold. “Or do you mean to tell me that you are a clairvoyant who can do nothing more than say that the future is set and watch it come to pass?” What, then, was the point of having an Inner Eye? There wasn’t one. She didn’t have time to change anything, because it was already done, and if Irina was just going to whine that her nightmares always came true, then Cecelia was going to lose patience extremely quickly.

Irina Rose Krum

[Irina Rose Krum]

Irina couldn't help but narrow her eyes a little at Cecelia's tone. She realized that she'd hit a sore spot with her dormmate, however it was very evident to her that Cecelia did not study the practice of Divination.  If Irina hadn't had her Clairvoyance woken this past May, she would still be in the same boat as the other girl.  Before then she hadn't bothered with Divination; it had been a subject of such imprecise magic that it seemed foolish to study at the time.  But now?  It had thrown her entire sense of everything into a different perspective.  "Because I really could have prevented Kings Cross," Irina said sarcastically, then sighed.  "It's not as simple as 'I see something, therefore now I know how to prevent it.'  I tried that when my brother got stabbed at Club Indigo and nothing changed, the events transpired exactly how I saw it.  Whatever the future has set for someone, it'll find a way to happen, no matter what anyone does to stop it," she scoffed slightly, then looked back at the other girl.  "While for the Gryffindor team I'm sure would be perfectly fine with my sister prematurely retiring from the Hufflepuff team, anything I say won't stop her from getting on that broom.  You're welcome to try though."  Irina lifted the covers off her bed; she reached into her nightstand and clutched the note from the Divination professor in her hand.  "I appreciate you ensuring our other dormmates did not wake from my screaming, but I think it would be best for both of us if I spend tonight in the Hospital Wing," she said, a little stiffly.


@cecelia

[Deleted]

Cecelia wasn’t going to argue with Irina. It was the middle of the night, and she was sick of arguing with people who thought that they knew more than she did for absolutely no reason. How was she supposed to know anything about Irina’s history with her visions? She had literally just learned the other girl was a clairvoyant. Cecelia needed to sleep. “I’ll write you a pass.” She said stiffly. They didn’t just allow students to go traipsing through the corridors after all. When Cece was done scrawling the note, she handed the parchment to Irina, and then promptly returned to her own bed. Irina wasn’t the only one who had nightmares to return to.

Irina Rose Krum
(end Cece)