feeding in, falling out

She had to eat.

The moon had been brutal, as usual, and she was still paying the price. She knew the pain potions weren't good, not in the amount she was taking, but it hurt. It all hurt. Her body, shrouded in a shame she couldn't share or explain, and the hope everyone seemed to have for her. Teddy's hope was an anchor around her neck, dragging her down, her fingers scrambling for purchase. She couldn't let go, couldn't let herself trust and sink. The water was right at her chin, lapping against her lips, and she was terrified she would choke...

So she took the potions. They made her hazy. They put her head underwater but let her breathe. It felt good to breathe. It also felt good to not have to feel. She kept getting these odd... flashes. Of the summer. Flashes of mistakes, of dumb decisions she should probably regret more. But she felt so... trapped. Trapped in a home with a mother who didn't get it, with brothers who didn't see, in a body that wouldn't stop punishing her, trapped within expectations she had not agreed to or could meet.

She wanted to feel like a normal teenager. She didn't want her mistakes to be losing a prefect hood, making her mother cry. She wanted to break curfew, drink too much, kiss the wrong boy.

So she had. Those summer exploits were far and mostly forgotten in the haze of cheap rum, but sometimes they hit her, and they hit her hard, bile rising in her chest and cracking her ribs. And that was when she reached for another potion. It would be fine. She was young, she was tired, she was under stress. It would get better later.

Her stomach was hurting, though. Too much on an empty stomach, so she slipped out of the library, where she had been since the end of classes. She had lost control everywhere else, so she'd at least study, at least try to catch up. But she couldn't see the words, couldn't make sense of the dates. Her notes were abysmal. It would have done her better to just catch up on sleep. Why couldn't she just sleep well?

That was abandoned, though, so she crawled from the library and headed towards the kitchen, the cool of the pain potion pooling in her stomach as she reached the kitchen. She felt light, numb, her eyes felt fuzzy, her lips tingled.

The elves bowed and bowed and bowed, and finally one asked, "What can we get the missus."

She didn't know. Something. Everything.

"Anything," she said, with a small, placid smile.

Apollo couldn't sleep. He'd tried to do so a bit early that night, having grown tired of studying with Christian, who really just wanted to talk to Ace, so the elder twin had abandoned the other in favor of heading to his dorm, but his restlessness had set in again. He couldn't seem to sit still this year, as early on as things were, but he did think he knew why, now. It was really settling in, since the past summer, that he didn't want the life he was supposed to lead. He wanted more, and with the looming factors of his father and the OWLs and the fact that it had to be Christian if it wasn't him -- Apollo just wasn't sure of himself like he usually pretended to be.

So he sat up, frustrated by himself nearly as much as with his situation. He gave up on the idea of sleep, but thought perhaps a little walk or a snack would tire him enough that when he returned, things would be a bit better. Or perhaps sleep would at least come a bit easier.

After a few moments of consideration, he wandered down to the kitchens, rather lost in his thoughts. He didn't expect to see someone else there as well. Or for them to sound so thoroughly out of sorts. Then again, he saw that it was Lily Potter and was immediately a bit less surprised. It wasn't that he wasn't concerned, so much as just that people had come to realize that something was different about her this year.

"Ought to be more specific than that," he pointed out as the door shut behind him.  "If you're going to sneak all the way down here, you may as well get something good."

The elves stared at her in confusion and she was struck by how strange they looked. Little nymphs with big ears and knobbly little joints. They looked like little twigs. Twigs with great big eyes and great wing-y ears. They were the picture of innocence. It amazed her that, before her aunt, these little creatures were tossed about and abused and no one thought to advocate for them. They were like little children, little baby aliens... And people used to beat them, deny them choice, keep them as slaves.

Why was she continually surprised for people's capacity for cruelty? By now, she should have been well aware.

She heard a voice and she turned her head, the scenery taking a second to catch up as her eyes latched onto the face of Apollo Zabini. He was always... there. In the background, right on the edge of her vision, perched on the edge of her awareness, somehow intruding her understanding at all times.

When did he worm his way there?

"Everything's good," she said, her eyes sliding towards the small elf who was now holding up a vanilla pumpkin muffin. She reached out and took it, taking a bite, eyes fluttered closed in surrender to the taste.

Her eyes slid open again, fixing on his. "Now that you've come all this way, what are you going to get?"

Dark eyebrows pulled down just slightly over even darker eyes as her attention turned on him. Maybe it was his imagination, but her movements and replies seemed a little slower than usual. Surely that was just his interpretation from not knowing her as well as others probably did. Or at least thought they did. Apollo suspected that no one really knew much at all about Lily, and considering that no one could know everything about anyone, that really narrowed down the number of actual, solid facts that anyone knew about her.

One thing Apollo, ironically, felt sure of, however: Lily Potter wanted everybody to believe that she was just fine. And when people wanted that sort of thing, it was almost never because they actually were.

His head tilted slightly at her assurances, but it wasn't until her question that he shook his head and walked over to pull up a chair beside hers. "You do realize what house I'm in, don't you?" He asked quite seriously, gazing at her with an openly curious expression now that he could do so from up close. He focused in on her eyes more than anything else, trying to see if they looked different than he expected them to, based on her odd behavior. "I didn't have to come very far at all."

She stared at him, eyebrows stretching towards each other. Right. A Slytherin. He didn't seem like one. Not really. He fit the bill of that broody type, the one who would stew in silence, but she suspected that had less to do with his natural tendencies and more to do with the role that was expected of him. Besides, living in the dungeon seemed to do that to them. Albus hadn't been nearly as broody before he was sorted. She could remember him being goofy, ears sticking out, emotions flying out easily. Something in the House drew out secrecy and withdrawal.

Which, of course, she knew nothing about.

Maybe they should switch places. She could pass as a snake.

"It's a..." she sighed, a strange sigh that almost sounded contended, as warmth crept into her bones. "Metaphor. Y'know? It's a long path to here from... wherever."

She didn't know anything about his life. She probably shouldn't presume.

"Trust goes a long way. This was good," she said, indicating her muffin. "Could we get another?"

Immediately, an elf tripped towards Zabini and held out a muffin.