Fistula

Fistula

Elise. Ay-lees, it bleeds off my tongue with the elusive fluidity of Parseltongue and the allure of French, the tip of it just touching the back of my top teeth. I love you, I tell her and I think I almost mean it, I want to anyway and they always told me it's the thought that counts.

She cries when she comes, her eyes filling up with either ecstasy or pain, I convince myself it is the former. I squeeze my eyes shut and I can't bear to look at her, blocking out her whimpers with the words I love you, I love you as if they could change the way things are.

I lay my head against her breasts. She has a boyish figure, flat chested and narrow hipped when I hold them; they are barely the span of both my hands. She refuses to eat and when I forced her too, she looked pained and started to cry again. I can't bear the sound of her crying, the rasping wheeze and high pitched sighs that saw against my breastbone like an expertly crafted knife, made solely for the purpose of hurting me. It feels like roaches are crawling beneath my skin, like I've seen Lestrange, clawing his arm until it bled and bled all over his open textbook.

Elise strokes my hair and I hear her breathing, frantic breaths slowing into a drugged calm. I love you, I tell her again, willing it to come true. I love you.

Her fingers continue fingering my hair, long fragile fingers I can break like sticks of hard candy. You love me, she murmurs again and again as if she too is trying to convince herself of something, as if it means something. Her eyes remain unfocused on the graffiti scrawled wall, seeing other dimensions great and majestic, where she will make love on a tropical beach, the palm fronds weaving in and out of sultry breeze, and months of warm, salty nights. Instead, we are shivering in an ancient room where all rites of passage are performed, the one many of few know about.

The other six and seventh years smoke pot in here, they call it Russian Roulette or just Roulette for short, an old rumor. They say a boy died in here from an escaped Muggle madman. Some fifth years tried to find his body and found what they claimed was a finger bone.

Either way, the place has a sinister air to it, I expect to see glassy-eyed corpses, their finger rolling their last joint of cannabis lying in the opaque dusk. It is a place to die, they say. A place to suck in your last sin, a place to suck off your last vice.

* * *

"Come on, Barty, stop doing your homework for once." Evan pulls away Barty's parchment, he has to restrain himself from hexing him.

Evan is clearly enjoying himself. They love to play on his perfectionism, the way he arranges his toothbrush just so in the holder, the way he furiously attacks every last wrinkle. "And Slytherins are supposed to be ambitious," Barty mutters.

"Now, that wasn't very nice," he says coldly, his grin taking on a mischievous tilt. "Wouldn't want to make anymore enemies, Barty, that's my advice..."

And maybe he is right for once. Like any good Slytherin, he knows the winning side, the quick slide-step of changing positions and the calculated eye for potential. You're too soft, a pimpled Slytherin prefect tells him, leering from a few feet above. They all tell him that and he wonders if the Sorting Hat is playing some sort of horrible joke, the kind where you think you're dreaming until somebody pops out and says, "Ha! Fooled you!" except nobody does for poor, poor Barty. Nobody does.

They have Herbology with the Hufflepuffs, a plodding, methodic lot, much like donkeys and about as bright as them, Barty thinks. Chubby, rosy cheeked, do-gooders for the most part, except for Bertha Jorkins and Hector Svelte. Hector, as Hufflepuffs go, is a not a bad fellow, good looking, not that Barty is gay or anything, and lent out his collection of enchanted saws to Augie so he is on acquaintance terms with the other house. Bertha, though extraordinarily dim, is her own gossip column.

Professor Sprout takes them outside. It's a nice enough day though the ground is soaked through from last night's rains and mini showers erupt when the wind disturbs the collected water on the trees. Jenna and Florence stand there under the falling dew, as if this is some new novelty.

Sprout hands them all giant, nasty looking clippers and sends them off to trim the hedges. Avery makes a rude gesture with his right hand behind her back, an almost childish sign of defiance and a few of the Hufflepuffs titter but they ignore him. When Slytherins do things behind other's backs, they should be impressive.

Avery, Augustus, Evan and most of the Slytherin boys take to the south side. Barty clips away to the hedge closest and stares intently at the greenhouse wall, willing himself to go join them but he is afraid he will look stupid, so stupid indeed. You're too soft, he hears again, maybe he bloody is and Barty wants to fix it. A hot burst of yearning breaks through.

Florence is standing close, clipping more air than bush. She looks over at him and he can't help but look back. She has a pensive look on her face that takes away the inflated, blank grin she usually wears. She rather pretty, he realizes for the first time, comparing every inch of her to Elise. More full figured, white wrists and clipped fingernails, rather ordinary eyes. But she has graceful calves and a softer mouth; she turns away and mumbles something.

"What did you say?"

"How come you aren't with your friends?"

Cold drips down over him, from his forehead to his chest and to his knees. They notice? "I dunno," Barty replies, trying to sound nonchalant about it, like some white-jacketed Casanova. "You tell me." And suddenly, he is filled with the idea that they are all watching. Ever action is carefully being recorded to be discussed over free pastries, ever mess up, ever time he is Poor Barty.

Barty, they say, sipping pumpkin juice, consulting a fresh sheet of parchment with detailed notes on it, didn't work with the other Slytherin boys in Herbology, stood all by himself looking pathetic. And the congregation's face are broken with shadows but they wear horrible smiles. Weedy, gutless fellow, isn't he? one of them says. No small wonder he doesn't have a friend among them. It is Elise's voice, not cut through with tears and breathy, bit-back screams, but oddly cold and resolute.

They are watching you.

"Are you okay?" Florence asks. She has the blank, concerned smile on her face again, her lips twisted in a mockery of him.

"Where are all your friends?" Barty asks, rather nastily and pushes a pair of pair of nonexistent glasses up his nose. He regrets it immediately.

Florence turns her attention back to the bush, a hot flush spreading up form the open collar of her robes, up her neck and burning in her cheeks.

He places a hand on her arm. She looks up. "I- I- didn't mean that. I was just being stupid." Oh god, he is stupid. Barty thinks. Slytherins don't apologize; Slytherins don't turn their heads to look back. Soft.

She sighs but she doesn't shake his hand off for some reason, she looks up and sees the regret. "You Slyths... all the same, aren't you?"

He knows what she means. "What do you mean?"

Florence is very close to him, he can breathe her breath and if he leaned in, Barty can kiss her. She almost seems to be expecting something and racks his brain for what a Slytherin would do. Would Evan back away? Not likely, they say. She he leans in and kisses her.

It is not too different from Elise, but kissing Elise is like kissing the lips of younger sister. Kissing Florence is physically the same, he presses his mouth against her and hopes for the best. But her lips are softer, fuller, her breath of peppermint chewing gum, the kind all the Hufflepuff girls buy in cartons from Honeydukes. One arm goes behind her waist; it is like being high, a giddy ecstatic euphoria.

There is a little squeal and sound of somebody running way. They break apart, Florence with her hand on her hips. "Slytherin!" she says, sounding disgusted. "You're just a bunch of smarmy little gits who'll take advantage of anybody."

"You kissed me back!" Barty thinks there is something wrong, he thinks this means something, but he should know better, after all, he tells Elise he loves her. "Whore," he mutters, then realizing Evan would not be discreet about this, "Whore," Barty repeats, more loudly.

"Fuck you," Florence hisses and Barty wonders vaguely whoever said Hufflepuff girls were boring do-gooders were very, very wrong.

Barty shrugs, pleased with himself. He is in this little soap opera, where the devastating womanizer has just pulled the girl into a searing kiss only to scorn her. It is a very Slytherin thing to do, he decides. Florence stomps off to a different hedge and Barty is all-alone again, so alone.

Class is almost over, he can hear Professor telling the others to clean up. Bertha skins in, her hands clasped being her back.

"I saw you."

"So?" Secretly, Barty is rather pleased about it.

Bertha is confused but she doesn't let it show. "So you don't mind if I tell Elise?"

This had not occurred to Barty.

Bertha grins, she has square teeth with a large expanse of gum showing above, rather like a horse. "Didn't think of that, did you Barty, Elise won't be too pleased about it, will she?" She takes son a high falsetto, a parody of a parody. "'Elise? D'you have a minute? I saw the oddest thing today in Herbology - Bartermius Crouch was kissing Florence behind the greenhouse on Thursday...'"

"Don't," he says.

"Oh, but Barty, don't you think Elise should know if her boyfriend is a two timing snake?"

"Don't, or else I'll- I'll-" he fumbles for something drastic enough. He cannot hear her cry again, he will rip his eyes out and squeeze them to jelly between his fingers before he submits him to that.

"You'll what?" Bertha is still grinning.

Pathetic little Crouch the congregation says. Bit off more than he could chew. Couldn't even intimidate the school gossip. Gutted candles dangle from the high above, the participants cast in an orange glow, like sunken jack-o-lanterns left out to rot. Pansy ass excuse for a Slytherin, another sneers and Batty recognizes it as Lucius, a slippery, damning voice. Lucius... his silver hair is a fluorescent in the light, his citrus toned fingers toying with the pendant around his neck.

"I'll hex you. Not just give you fangs or rabbit ears, Jorkins, real hexes. Nasty ones that Pomfrey'll have a bitch of time undoing. Think about that."

Bertha scoffs but it a touch façade that must be torn down, soon or later, before she is at wand point. "Slytherin," she spits and Barty wonders what exactly being called that means. It the second time today, maybe he should be proud.

She looks sulky, angry even. "How did it feel?"

"What?"

"Kissing Florence. Cheating on Elise."

Barty does not say anything but Bertha seems to feel she has won, perversely somehow. She walks away, clippers in one hand, a triumphant swagger in her hips. He looks at her tangled blond hair, teasing him in the spring air and begins bringing his pair back to Professor Sprout.

Soft.

"Betha!"

She peeks from behind the corner, the smile fading into a suspicious line. "What?"

"Bucca Abolescere!" Bertha claps her hands over her mouth, which has disappeared.

* * *

Fullham Mulciber is biting his nails down to the quick. "So," he says, "What are we here for?"

Augie speaks, his back eyes glittering. "I want to practice spells, Heavy, useful stuff... not the kind we learn in class." He is the leader tonight; Lucius is pissed off about this. Barty can tell by the way his voice is soft and dangerous, the calm before the storm.

"How do we go about this, Rookwood?" he tears off his own nail off the middle finger and spits it out. A few beads of blood form at the edge and he sucks them. Lucius jerks his chin toward Severus, a tiny sallow figure sitting cross-legged on a moth eaten couch. "We know a lot already and what we don't, just ask ask Sevvie here, eh?"

Everybody is in Roulette, including Marisa. Selpher is fascinated by her, thinks she is a reincarnation of Aphrodite, Cleopatra and Hera all in one. We may be evil, torture your children and play with Dark Magic but we aren't sexist. Barty think and has the sudden urge to giggle.

"Not to mention the fucking place has wards up in every mouse hole," adds Avery. "We'd probably set off alarms like we did last time. I don't feel like explaining that again..."

"Yeah," Barty says, "Don't want to set off the wards," Instead of looking grateful, Avery shoots him a dirty glare. Ooh, Barty is shamed.

Hyper sensitive, that's our Barty, Florence's hands press deeply into the woods of the table. Everyone sitting there nods, like a macabre puppet show controlled by 600 silk strings. A little look, that's all you need to set him off, quite amusing, really... Everyone's fingers suddenly hold black quills, making a dry scratch on parchment, taking notes. She smiles, those lips he had kissed scorning him, taunting him. Her eyes are black holes in the deep pockets of shadow on her face.

"I have that solved," Augie continues importantly. "We can practice in the Forbidden Forest. I had books from my dad's private collection owled over." He draws several nasty looking tomes out his book bag, spotted in what looks like blood and skin but he cannot be sure in the dim, smoky air of Roulette.

Evan's hand snaps out. Augie slaps his hand. Evan pulls it back. A wet guilt. A hand in the cookie jar. His eyes downcast. Lucius spits out another nail. So does Mulciber. Severus licks his teeth. His tongue makes its way underneath his lip.

"So," Lucius says, regarding the books with bored interest. Barty wonders how Lucius can always sound bored, even when he isn't. "What kind of spells?"

"There's a good one, called Timiditas Positura, I think." Augie's hands flip through tissue thin pages, inked with truly gruesome sketches, deformities in all sorts of places Barty would rather not think about. Fistula- he catches his word, a vagrant plague, willing himself not to look it up later. "Found it. It's for putting them in their most feared situation, except it's completely real, like a temporary dimension."

Lucius snorts. "An over glorified Boggart, Rookwood."

Augie looks disappointed, perhaps he wanted some revenge. "All right, what then? What do you want? Unless you fancy putting a really bad case of acne on Potter and friends, the rest of this book is too black."

Marisa laughs, Barty had almost forgotten she was there until now and her presence is so heavily pronounced even Lucius boredom.

"Too black?" She lounges on her chair like a queen. Selpher's face is full of adoration, adoration of the blackness he wants to possess.

Barty wonders if he wants to possess that blackness, too.