Butterfly

Butterfly
Chapter One: The Forbidden Forest
By: Labrys

‘Without order nothing can exist - without chaos nothing can evolve.’

She really did think they hated her. They tended to pass by her without a second glance until they were well across the room, where they whispered and snickered behind their hands, staring at her with their accusing eyes. Well, she hated them. Every. Single. One.

She sneered at them and sunk lower into the black leather arm chair that sat farthest from the grill with no trace of a fire. On the leather couch sat Draco Malfoy, leaning casually back onto it as if he owned it. Next to him, sitting primly on the edge of the sofa, was Pansy Parkinson, the driveling little gold digger.

Wrinkling her nose, Gillette Palmer turned from them and nearly ripped open her Arithmancy book. Not that she cared for the book; it was all meaningless words and numbers to her. Useless, that's what it was.

‘Arithmancy (from the Greek arithmo, meaning 'number,' and mance, meaning 'prophecy') has been used by magicians and wizards for more than two thousand years to help people analyze and develop their strengths and talents....’

Develop strengths and talents? Psh, what a load of bull, it certainly hadn't helped her analyze and develop anything. Well, maybe the inside of her eyelids, but that was pretty much it. Nothing good could come from Arithmancy or Divination.

‘...overcome obstacles, and chart their future paths. Also known as 'numerology,' Arithmancy is based on two very old ideas. The first is that a person's name contains important clues to their character and destiny.’

Her name contained clues to her destiny? That couldn't be possible because a name was a name given at birth, it had, according to her, nothing to do with the person themselves. They could be named Hades, leader of everything evil, and be approached by a unicorn, the epitome of innocence. Names don't matter; it's what's inside that counts. Though most of the people she knew didn't seem to have much there but cobwebs and dust mites.

‘The second, advanced more than 2,500 years ago by the Greek sage Pythagorus, is that each of the numbers between 1 and 9 has a unique meaning that can contribute to the understand of all things.’

Now what, excuse her, does that have to do with anything at all? Who cared what meaning those people placed in numbers thousands of years ago? For all she knew, or anyone for that matter, they could have just played mad lib.

Gillette skimmed down the page until she reached the charts for the letters and numbers. Quickly, she dipped her quill in the ink pot and scratched her name, spaces included, on the top of the parchment.

G I L L E T T E - P A L M E R

Pausing, she browsed farther down and decided, upon reasoning and deduction, that she was to write the number below her letter. So in the end, she ended up with:

G I L L E T T E - P A L M E R
7 9 3 3 5 2 2 5 - - -7 1 3 4 5 9

All right, now that she had that down, she was supposed to 'analyze' herself.

Apparently, according to the book, she's imaginative, creative and sweat natured, something she most definitely was not. Although...she does introduce the idea of conflict, and is moody, self conscious, and indecisive...oh, and can't forget withdrawn. The book had a few right ideas about her, but it wasn't completely right.

Gillette shut the book with the parchment inside and set it down next to her rucksack, leaning back into the chair with a sigh.

Arithmancy wasn't supposed to be right, and it wasn't...for the most part. It was right with the moody and indecisive, but she wasn't ‘sweat natured.’ She could live with the rest, but that just stuck with her.

Maybe those ancient Arithmancer's had used a bit of guess work...

Shaking her head, Gillette decided that Arithmancy wasn't worth the headache, and decided to move onto better homework...like Transfiguration. Ah, something she understood with a passion.

Grinning, Gillette pulled the red, hard cover book with yellowed pages from the brown, sack and was about to open it when someone stopped in front of her.

"Why do you do that?" A young man, a dark blonde with hazel eyes was staring at her with his arms crossed.

"Do what?" She twitched her nose and sniffed, opting to put the book back and stare innocently back at him. "I'm not doing anything."

"Oh?" He seemed confident that she had been, and continued to smirk down at her. "That's precisely my point, Gill, and you know it."

"What, that I'm not bothering anyone? That I'm doing my homework like a good little girl?" She asked, shrugging her shoulders as if it didn't matter.

"Gill, it's Friday, you don't need to do your homework. You've got the whole weekend, why don't you be normal for one second and act like a seventeen year old." The boy seemed quite positive that he was right and she was wrong, and Gillette thought that maybe, just maybe, he was right.

"How do you know what a seventeen year old acts like? You're only fifteen." She asked accusingly, eyeing him as he shrugged.

"I've got friends. Besides, I think I do a better job of it than you do."

"That's for sure," Gillette muttered, glaring at him.

"Listen, why don't you come down to the lake with Pritchard and me?" Marius offered, smiling slightly as she sighed resolutely and gathered her bags.

"Fine. Fine, you win." She seemed rather put out as she trudged up the stairs, but really, her heart fluttered in her chest.

It had been a while since Marius had actually sought her out, brotherly love didn't seem to be what it was made out to be lately, but apparently something must've worked out right. Marius, otherwise known as Mari to her but only in private, was her younger brother and her favorite sibling by far. Dina, her twelve year old sister, was an evil little miscreant that took most of the family glory with her 'wondrous, and seemingly infinite intelligence.'

She wasn't sure if it was just her, but wasn't the eldest supposed to get the attention? Here she is, attentionless and left in the cold by her oh-so-loving parents who mooned over Dina, the Wonder Child.

Scowling, Gillette shoved her bag under her bed and slipped on her black boots. If she was going outside, she wasn't ruining the new shoes that her father bought her for her birthday. Although she believed he would deserve a pair of dirty, mud caked, scuffed shoes in the mail, she rather liked them and kept them clean.

Changing her thin, cotton cloak for a warm wool one, she glanced in the mirror on the opposite wall, making sure her nearly brown blonde hair hadn't escaped it's pony tail. When she came down, she found her brother talking to Graham

Pritchard, a handsome young man who seemed to be asexual. He expressed no interest in girls or even boys, and didn't even react to flirting. Believe her, she'd tried.

"Hey Palmer," Graham said, smiling gently at her, though his dark eyes were hard. She had learned fast that many of the happy greetings that Slytherins greeted each other with were mostly false, and only used for show.

"Hello," Gillette said, giving him a frosty smile before turning to look expectantly at Marius. "Don't expect me to like this, because I'm not going to."

"Of course,"Marius agreed, nodding and looking agreeable as they headed out of the common room. Sliding shut behind them, the stone serpent statue that sat next to their entrance stared resolutely at them.

"You were saying, Palmer?" Graham asked, looking at Marius as if Gillette didn't exist.

Frowning, she contented herself with looking at the paintings that littered the walls; many smiled and waved, a few frowned, and quite a few jabbered at her to mind her own business.

"Excuse me," Gillette frowned at a rather rude painting, who shook it’s tiny fists at her retreating figure.

"What?"

"Huh?" Gillette turned to stare at her brother, who was looking at her curiously.

"You said something, I merely wondered what the Oh Great Silent One had to say for a change." He grinned at her even though she frowned disapprovingly.

"Nothing," Gillette responded, wrinkling her nose at him.

"Hear you were in double Potions today with Gryffindor," Graham said from across Marius, who looked interested.

"I am every time I have Potions class," Gillette said, eyeing them both.

"Then you must've seen the accident." Graham seemed rather keen on it, and her brother had a mysterious glint in his eye.

"Sure, along with thirty other people, what's so great about it?" She was on guard now, and warily tried to change the subject. "So, any interests lately, Pritchard?"

"Who started it?" Not to be deterred, Graham went on with his questioning as if she hadn't said a word.

"I don't know,"

"Sure you do, it was right next to you."

"So what,"

"Then you'd know, right?"

"No."

"Don't be a liar, Palmer, I know you know." Graham seemed to be getting angry over the whole thing, and they hadn't even reached the front doors yet.

"Look, I don't know why you want to know, but I really don't know. I was to busy trying to finish my potion." She glared at them both, turning to walk faster down the hall. "So lay off."

"We only want names," pressed Graham.

"I told you, lay off." Graham didn't seem the least bit intimidated.

"Or what?"

"Or I'll curse your arm off and feed it to the Giant Squid while I circumcise you...slowly," she snarled at him, before speeding off down the hallway, turning the corner in time to see her brother whisper fiercely in his ear. Good.

For some reason, the boys liked to think of her as some sort of thing with no feelings. They used her for her money mostly, and the ones that wanted to share a butterbeer with her at the Leaky Cauldron always grinned impishly.

So lately, she'd been pushing them all by her. She didn't want a man from this school, or boy really, considering all the 'men' in the school where professors. She wanted someone who would appreciate her for who she was, not how much money was in her bank account or her looks or her family. She wanted an honest man, someone who she could share things with. Though her family didn't agree with this one bit.

No, oh no, they wanted her to marry a man of wealth and power, and had on occasion mentioned the Malfoys in passing during dinner. She had stared at them in utter horror, there was no possible way she was going to marry a Malfoy when she couldn't even be in the same room with one without feeling like throwing up.

They had tossed that idea to the wind, and told her that since Narcissa was a part of the Black family, and since the Black family had seemed to lose their touch with their youngest, Sirius, that it wasn't worth it anyway. She could tell by the angry stares her mother would send her when she thought Gillette wasn't looking, and when her father approached her to say something and ended shaking his head and walking away, that they really didn't feel that way at all.

She couldn't help but feel rather useless within in her family, she didn't do anything at parties her family either threw or attended, she only sat and looked pretty. Something she could at least do nicely; she'd certainly had enough practice.
It also seemed to be a part of their evening conversations that she join the Dark Lord, like any self respecting Palmer. She thought her family had finally lost their marbles. The Palmer family was anything but creditable. They pilfered, raped and scavenged in the lower ranks. That was somewhere she definitely didn't want to be.

Gillette glanced at her left forearm, her clean left forearm. She didn't intend to get the Dark Mark any time soon, but she knew that if she lived with her parents any longer, they'd force her to. Hold her down if they had to.

Sneering at her arm, she quickly tucked her arms together and hurried down the hall she knew led to the Charms classroom and many other empty ones. She passed by one of her favorite classrooms slowly, pausing only a second to see if she could see through the frosted, rectangular window that adorned the old, cedar wood door. She couldn't.

From them on, she watched the cracks in the flagstone wander and turn, cut off and become new. She rather thought it was like her life, those cracks. There were times when she felt like ending it all, and becoming one of those abruptly cut off cracks. And than there were times where she felt a whole life ahead of her existed.

It was late afternoon on a Friday, what was she doing wandering the hallways in the Charms corridor thinking of her life by comparing them to the cracks in the floor?

Obviously what every sane person does. Mourns for their non-existent life. The little voice in her head was mocking, echoing painfully across her forehead.

My life isn't non-existent. I'm alive, aren't I? I'm here. I exist. She argued, thinking that little voice of consciousness was absolutely wrong.

For what purpose? To look worse in your parents eyes when Dina brings home another perfect report, and you, only average? Now there was a point.
It's true. She realized, looking up at the passing window in brief wonder. I've nothing in my life but to fail, and even when I fail it's miserable. I can't even fail gracefully.

Gillette stopped by the next window, gazing out past the land and into the Forbidden Forest. What if she were to just...disappear? Maybe her brother might feel a bit angry with her, but who would cry over it?

No one in my family, that's for sure. Certainly no one in the school either. Shaking her head, she wondered what it would be like to just walk into the Forest and never return. To disappear without a trace, if anyone would notice. Sure, her professors might after a while, and finally her brother would. Her sister wouldn't notice even if someone told her, she would only notice when she went home for Summer break and found there was no one to terrorize with her perfect grades.

I could just walk, who would be the wiser? No one would even think to look there. I'd be dead before the week was over, some creature would find a helpless human and gobble me up. Eat me alive and spit me back out.

They'd probably just say 'oh well, too bad for her family' as they found out she was gone. As they found her mangled, regurgitated remains. Probably wouldn't even have a service.

My family certainly wouldn't pay for it. Maybe Auntie Ruth would, but I doubt it.
She was just about to imagine what she would do for the first few days, if she would just starve herself, or try to stay alive.

"Miss Palmer," A soft, questioning voice came from behind. An involuntary noise of surprise escaped her lips and she spun and nearly fell on her twisting heel.

"Oh, Professor Holmes." Gillette sounded surprised, if a bit relieved. Her Runes professor was in the Charms corridor, a place where she most certainly wasn't normally to be found. "What brings you here?"

"I'm meeting Filius for tea, and what are you doing here? Day dreaming, Miss Palmer?" Gillette had always liked Holmes, she never picked sides and treated everyone the way they were supposed to be treated; the same way they treat everyone around them. So really, Gillette felt a little bit of pity for Draco Malfoy.

"Just taking a walk," Gillette replied, shrugging and glancing ruefully out the window. Holmes must have seen her look, for she also glanced out the window.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Holmes was still looking out the window. When Gillette didn't reply, she must have felt the urge to explain. "The Forest, it's beautiful from here, but it's horrible when you get there. You see if from a distance and believe 'What's so forbidding about it? It's harmless,' but that's just what it wants you to think, you see?"

"No, not really Professor." Holmes smiled at her.

"It wants to draw people, or animals, or whatever, to it. It wants to populate itself; so it makes itself look enticing, enchanting, but when you finally reach it...you find not what you were expecting. A dead forest with dark foliage, the noises that went bump in the night when you were just a child." Her voice had gotten so much quieter as she spoke, her mood seemed to darken.

"Have - have you been in there?" Gillette wasn't sure if that was proper, but her Professor merely gave her a half smile.

"Yes, when I was younger than you. I was...drawn to it, you could say. I was lost for two days, and was never the same. But that was years ago." She took a deep breath and flashed Gillette a false smile. "Well, I'd better be going. Filius will have my head if I'm late again."

With that she walked down the corridor, wrapping her cloak a little tighter to herself. Gillette watched her go with a sense of amazement.

Her teachers, after she had entered the seventh year, suddenly seemed to respect her. They would talk of their experiences in passing, speak to her as if she were already an adult. She found she rather liked it, but knew that they were only doing it to teach her a lesson; To not do what they did.

She'd end up doing it eventually, she knew, for one can only learn from their own experiences. Rubbing her nose, she turned and started back for the dungeons.