Dear Terry, Annabel wrote.
How are things? It’s pretty boring here. No one my age for miles around. Hope you’re having fun at your aunt’s.
I looked up that rune when I got back and I was right, it means ‘Danger.’ So now I’ve saved your life if you’re ever wandering in an abandoned crypt, and you owe me an ice cream. Come by and pay up any time - we’re on the Floo. Like I said before, my schedule is totally and miserably free.
Annabel.
She folded the note into a neat square and placed it on the bed beside her. Her owl, Callipygia, looked up hopefully. –Hang on,†Annabel said. –I’ve got to write a couple more.â€
Dear Mum,
--help--come--save--aargh--
Okay, just kidding. I’m doing fine here. Dad and the goons are treating me well. They decorated my room just for me, it’s really --
How to describe the room? It had started off as a standard Death Mansion bedroom: bruise colors, indiscriminate taxidermy, torture apparatus. Someone (probably Crabbe) had apparently been ordered to go up and make it fit for teenage female habitation, and had accomplished this by turning everything in the room pink, with a light blanketing of glitter. The general effect was executioner chic: Barbie Townhouse meets Guantanamo Bay. The owl stand on which Callipygia was distastefully perched was a severed human hand, with each of its horny fingernails painted a cheery bubblegum pink.
--interesting, she finished. Please send me sweets disguised as something else, he’s turned out to be a complete health weirdo and wants me to eat quinoa. How are Batsy and the pups? Tell them I say hi. Love, Annabel.
She hesitated before picking up the pen again, not just because it had a dead Pygmy Puff bobbing on its end but because she wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted to say in this letter. After a minute she wrote,
Dear Harry,
How are you? I hope your holiday is going well. As you know, I am spending mine with someone whom I believe you would be interested in tormenting a bit. I think it would be very entertaining if you came over here to take me on a date this Friday.
What do you think?
Annabel Curry.
Callipygia, seeing Annabel roll up the third piece of parchment, hopped off the hand with every evidence of relief. Annabel had never known that her owl was such a design critic, or that a face that was mostly beak could express such disgust, but it was clear that Callipygia could not wait to shake the glitter of this room from her talons. She was aloft almost before Annabel finished clipping Harry’s note on.
–Fine!†Annabel shouted after her. –Go without your Owl Treats!â€
Better a dish of herbs in the open air, Callipygia’s parting hoot implied, than Owl Treats in a room with an Iron Maiden wearing a plastic tiara. Annabel supposed she couldn’t blame her.
Annabel sat back down on her four-poster bed (each post was topped by a long hank of human hair, apparently for her braiding pleasure) and thought about how living with her evil dad was bringing out her latent evil genes. Lying to your mother was the definition of evil, and Annabel had lied so much in her letter to her mother she was surprised her hand hadn’t fallen off.
Poor Mum. Poor worried Mum, sitting in her flat with one hand on her wand and the other on her broomstick, just waiting for that letter from Annabel that would tell her whether or not she would have to fly over to Death Eater headquarters and invert her ex-boyfriend's face. "Owl me," was the last thing she'd said to Annabel, urgently. "Owl me first thing to let me know you're okay. And if you're not, so help me, I'll give that sorry hippogriff a nose job that will make this one look professional."
This was important to her mother. Annabel was important to her mother. And what had she written? No worries, Mum, I'm doing fine. Fine! LIES LIES LIES.
Voldemort had cheerfully burst into her room at 5 that morning, wearing sky blue running shorts and a skimpy singlet. "Boundaries, Dad!" Annabel had shrieked, but he had torn open all the curtains and started singing army songs while jogging in place. It had emerged that he was here for her morning workout, and when she had flatly refused to put in trainers and go down with him to the Death Eater gym, he had scowled fearsomely and stormed out. Four hours later, when she'd felt more ready to face the day, she'd discovered that the door was locked. She was a prisoner in the Barbie chamber.
At some point, the quinoa had appeared on her dresser. An accompanying note said, "Eat this or starve. Love, Dad."
She'd been locked in for two hours now. She still hadn't touched the quinoa, but she was beginning to seriously consider eating the note.
But, in a way, she was doing fine. This was what too many wizards these days were missing, a chance for quiet reflection and stock-taking. To get to know oneself, maybe contemplate the beyond. What with the Floo, Patroni, and the new smartOwls, she really should be asking someone to lock her in her bedroom for an hour or two each morning.
Besides, what was she missing out on right now? Cards with Crabbe? Potions review with Snape?
The lack of an en suite bathroom was really becoming a problem, though.
–Alohomora!†she shouted, just in case anything had changed in the past five minutes. The nail-studded door leered at her. –Conflagio!†She could have sworn she heard the blasted thing snigger.
Wait -- she had heard something. But it wasn’t a snigger, and it wasn’t the door. Someone out in the hall was whispering, –Miss Annabel?†as loudly as he could.
She went to the door. –What?â€
The blackened wood warped open into a kind of service window. Crabbe’s big, dumb worried face looked through. –Shh!†he hissed.
–I didn’t say--â€
–Here.†He shoved something through the window into her hands. –Don’t tell your dad.†The wood snapped back into place.
Annabel looked down. She was really touched. The overgrown lout had baked her a pie with a file in it.
She ate the pie. She wiped off the file. She went over to the door and shouted, –Crabbe!â€
Feet pounded outside her door, and the service window reappeared. –Not so loud!â€
–Thank you for the pie,†Annabel said. –I was starting to eye the Owl Treats. But I can’t file the lock off; it’s on the other side. Can you do it for me?â€
–Of course,†said Crabbe paternally. –We can’t have a little girl like you locked up on a bright day like today.â€
–Thank you,†said Annabel, ignoring the –little girl,†because she really did like Crabbe, and passing him the file. Then she sat on her bed, wincing occasionally at the sounds of rasping metal coming from the other side of the door, and thought about her morning’s correspondence.
She had first noticed Terry Boot in Potions second year. There were not a lot of bright sparks among the Slytherin second-years, so it had been a real pleasure to meet someone who knew the difference between a bezoar and a Bludger. They had been casually friendly for a while, and then this year, after months of sitting next to him in Ancient Runes, she had come to the decision that this was the future Mr. Annabel. He was cute. He was smart. He was not an idiot. (Plenty of the smart boys she knew were unfortunately also idiots.) He was IT.
Taking a kinda-friendship to the next level is never easy, and bikinis had featured largely in Annabel’s master plan. That, of course, was back when she had been expecting to spend the summer in her mum’s flat, next door to Terry’s aunt and just minutes from the beach. But her evil father had killed that plan, as was his wont, and now she had to ensnare Terry without the benefit of propinquity.
That was item number one on her to-do list for this summer. The only other item on it was to make Voldemort miserable, which would be a lot of fun as well as a service to humanity. She didn’t know Harry well, but she had high hopes about an alliance with him. Voldemort would rue the day he hauled her off to the Death Mansion.
There was a loud bang outside her door, and a cry of pain. She heard Voldemort shout, –What do you think you’re doing, you overdeveloped protein pack?†She quickly took the bowl of quinoa and emptied it out the window.
–Dad, stop!†she called. –The quinoa is gone.â€
The door banged open. Voldemort looked suspicious. –You ate it?â€
Annabel lifted her chin. –I forced my owl to eat it.â€
Voldemort’s lip curled. –That’s evil,†he admitted.
–Thank you,†said Annabel, and swept past him into the hall.
Heiress of Evil by voldiexx
Chapter Notes: Standoff, correspondence, compromise.