“Hey bitch, it’s breakfast time.” Something hard hit Lucifer between her shoulder blades, and she jerked awake, nearly falling out of her emerald-blanketed bed as she sat up a little too quickly. Lucifer blinked her brown eyes, trying to focus on her surroundings. One of her roommates, a blonde girl by the name of Sylvia, had thrown a shoe at Lucifer and was just leaving the room. Lucifer let out her breath in a huff of annoyance and rolled out of the tangled covers, rolling her shoulders with a grimace. At least Sylvia had woken her up this morning.
Sylvia hadn’t been remotely friendly from the start. But surprisingly, she seemed to have thawed some since Lucifer had broken up with Clayton. Sylvia had dated Clayton in third year, a friend of Lucifer’s had told her. Seeing another girl realize the depths of venom in that boy had softened her a little.
The girl still wasn’t friendly, Lucifer acknowledged as she stripped to her underclothes, checking out the forming bruise. But she could deal with coldness. The Death Eaters were colder to her than Sylvia was sometimes.
The Death Eaters, Lucifer thought with a sigh, seeing her eyes tighten in the mirror in front of her. The thought of that organization brought a mixture of fear and frustration; she just wanted to wail, “I never wanted to be a Death Eater!”
She thought she had, at first. But now…it was a matter of being accepted. And no one backed out of the Dark Lord’s army.
She had been a member for over a year now, and there were plenty of them that didn’t trust her. Of course they didn’t. It was mistrust that saved their lives.
Yet Lucius and Bella did trust her. Lucius and Bella had brought her aboard, and they were keeping her. They were the two that watched her back when the others got rambunctious and made her smile, sometimes laugh.
But Lucifer did not consider them friends. Anyone who could be pleasant one day and stick a knife in your back the next was no friend of hers. A metaphorical knife. Wizards used wands, she corrected herself as she pulled on her emerald-trimmed robes.
Within a few minutes, Lucifer was descending the staircase from her dorm, slipping noiselessly through the mostly empty common room, then ascending the staircase towards the Great Hall.
“That’s really all I do,” she muttered to herself. “Climb stairs.” Of course, that was one of the perks of being a Slytherin.
~*~
“Who’re you looking for?”
Lucifer blinked, focusing on the blonde sitting across from her at the breakfast table. Kimberly Eyrle was a roommate of hers whose sunny appearance contrasted starkly with fierce senses of pride and ambition.
“Um, no one,” Lucifer replied lamely, caught off guard.
“Who is it? Is it a guy?” Kimberly wiggled her eyebrows with a knowing smile.
Lucifer snorted, vaguely appreciating the fact that she wasn’t currently drinking anything. “Yeah, sure. Like you haven’t heard the rumors.”
“Clayton spreads rumors like warm butter on toast, but that doesn’t mean I believe them,” Kimberly replied sharply, a glint slipping into her blue eyes.
Lucifer paused, considering her response as she made a show of examining her fork. “She’s a Gryffindor, our year,” she replied after a moment or so. “I’ve been seeing her around, and I was surprised I hadn’t - I don’t know “ run into her before.”
“Why would you care about a Gryffindor?” Kimberly’s tone changed to match her eyes: steely.
The words came straight from the mind of Slytherin, Lucifer mused. The phrase was common practice, which is why these new thoughts in her head were so troubling. Bellatrix and Lucius would surely not appreciate their recruit fraternizing with the enemy.
“I don’t,” Lucifer shot back, setting down her fork and twining a strand of her dark hair around her finger, a sign that she was thinking. Kimberly rolled her eyes.
“Whatever. Just watch who you admit to be looking out for. There’s nothing wrong with digging girls, as long as they’re from a decent bloodline.”
Any further conversation was brought to a halt as the morning post flooded in through the eaves. Owls plunged to their recipients, keenly dodging others as they swooped downwards nearly on top of the plates of food. Lucifer glanced up to see an ash-colored screech owl diving towards her and felt her heart sink.
“Looks like you’ve got mail,” Kimberly remarked, taking a letter from her scrawny elf owl before he took off in a flurry of wings. Lucifer didn’t respond, only removed the scroll as the owl landed and offered his leg.
A tattered navy ribbon fell from the note into Lucifer’s lap, revealing the neatly lettered phrase “Don’t forget.”
Lucifer swallowed and folded the note, carefully tying the small ribbon around it. She wouldn’t have forgotten tonight, but Bellatrix’s note was more of a warning than a reminder. Death Eaters who skipped meeting soon found themselves in trouble with the Dark Lord.
“Lu, snap out of it. It’s about time for first class,” Kimberly’s voice cut into her thoughts. Lucifer blinked.
“We have potions, right?” She slipped the note in her pocket and stood with Kimberly, following her down towards the dungeons to grab their bags. Kimberly made a sound of acknowledgement.
“What are you doing tonight?” Kimberly called up over her shoulder as they descended the nearest stairwell. “Maureen and I were going to have a study party, because she’s way better at Transfiguration, and I--”
“I’m busy,” Lucifer replied shortly. She heard Kimberly snort in disbelief over the echo of their soft-soled shoes in the enclosed area.
“What, out chasing that Gryff--” she broke off and yelped as Lucifer quickly skipped a step, colliding with her back and slamming her into the wall
“Okay, okay, I get it.” Kimberly stepped back, holding a hand over her bleeding nose.
“You’ll want to go see Madame Pomfrey for that,” Lucifer remarked casually, passing by her roommate and easily ducking the spray of sparks from Kimberly’s wand.
“Sure as hell I will,” the blonde muttered rebelliously, shaking crimson droplets of blood from her free hand.