#and is fuckin people in her common room sldkfgndfgsfgs

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Shadows:

So I didn't want it two, but I guess this is going to be four parts lmao. Onyx is going to kill me when they open tumblr. I'm unafraid. I'll die like a man. @bokketo also I should edit this before I go eat lunch and move on to the last bits, but I'm not going to. Hot ppl have typos.

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Rán sighed irritably as the limp, sweaty body next to her snored loudly. For the third time since he’d succumbed to the bliss of oblivion, she pinched his meaty finger between two of her own and used it to peel his arm off of her. It fell to the bed beside his face with a muffled fwump. 

She reached over into the drawer of the nightstand and fished around for her cigarette case. It was still open. This was her third one in the last two hours. Not that they were helping. She held the cigarette between her lips and summoned fire to the tip of her finger with a wordless spell. To the right of her, something moved, and it wasn’t the man beside her.

Rán took a deep drag and shut her fist, cutting off the light.

No part of her was going to miss Hogwarts when the term ended in a couple of months. She hadn’t wanted to come when she was eleven, and she hadn’t wanted to return any year after that. Quidditch had been the only thing she’d ever really enjoyed at Hogwarts, and now she had four professional teams beating down her door, begging for her to sign their contracts. There was no point in playing school yard matches with teams that had literal children flying around the pitch with all the grace of obese bumblebees. 

Thank Merlin the season was over.

It had left her painfully bored, though, and there weren’t many people capable of entertaining her here. The idiot snoring beside her was proof of that. Rán cut her eyes in his direction. The only light in the room came from the occasional glow at the tip of her cigarette, but she knew just where his arm was. She had to resist the urge to press the glowing ember against his skin.

The closest he’d gotten to getting her off was pissing her off. Boring. Disappointing. Useless. Just like half the other idiots in the school. How pathetic not even to be good for a quick shag. Her finger twitched, itching to take her irritation out on him, but she resisted.

Just a couple more months. She’d take her N.E.W.T.s and never look back. 

Rán snapped her fingers, and the flame returned. This time, she bid it to travel down the length of her finger and settle in her palm. Its light was meager, but enough to illuminate the room. The door to the wardrobe had been left askew, and their clothes were strewn all over the floor, but other than that it was perfectly tidy. 

There it was again.

Something in the corner of her eye was moving.

This time, Rán turned her head slowly to face it. Beside her, behind the useless lump of man-flesh was his shadow. Only unlike him, the shadow was not sleeping. It mimicked his position on the bed exactly, but carved from the darkness, two yellow eyes were open and looking at her. When she stared into them, its mouth split open in a smile filled with jagged teeth.

She exhaled a plume of smoke—unbothered. Strange that her own shadow was not cast beside it. Rán moved her free hand, twisting it in front of the flame, but she couldn’t force her own spindly finger to touch the thing. 

“Interesting.” Perhaps the first interesting thing to happen to her in months. Her head tilted to its side. “Do you see me?”

The thing nodded its head.

“Can you speak?” 

It nodded again, and then its toothy grin was ripped open as its mouth spread wide. All she heard were whispers, far too faint to form intelligible words. It droned on and on until the jaws of the creature snapped closed like a bear trap. 

Curious, she reached down and took the limp arm of the sleeping man and slowly moved it one way and then the other. Still, there was a sliver of impossible light between the shadows where they should have melted together, but it obediently raised its hand and flopped back and forth. When her grip loosened, it dropped like a stone.

If she pressed the last few embers of her cigarette to his arm, would the thing scream in pain? 

Instead of asking, she reached over for her wand. The wood thrilled at her touch, ever eager, ever hungry. Just like her.

“Dornröschen.” She whispered, twisting her wand over the prone form beside her, pushing him further and further into the realm of dreams and pinning him there like a mounted insect. The air in his chest stuttered and stilled as he froze entirely. 

There were no pupils in the eyes of the thing staring back at her, but she felt its presence around her trembling. Was it with fright or frustration? Her fingers delicately stroked the hand that she lifted back up into the air, tickling along the flesh. She got the distinct feeling that the thing did not want to, there was a tug against her own spirit as if it meant to shove her back, but still it raised up its hand.

“Are you afraid? Do you feel?” She hummed. She bid the flame to float in the air before her, and held the hand by the palm. With her free hand, she flattened out his fingers and took hold of the one closest to his thumb. The thing on the wall hissed at her, but it was helpless to stop her as she wrenched the extremity to the side abruptly with a sickening crack.

The shadow figure’s finger mirrored the flesh and blood one in front of her, but it still grinned. No scream of pain, no angry flare of magic pressing against her own spirit. She jerked the finger back into place. It’d still be broken in the morning, but he wouldn’t know how.

“Not afraid then.” She still didn’t release her hold. Her eyes were trained on the strange splinter of light that somehow separated them. “Maybe you just don’t like being told what to do.”

Rán considered the being for another long moment, and it never tired of watching her. Why was it watching her? 

Its mouth began to move and it whispered again, but it was with a thousand voices, each piling on top of the other, none in sync. Whatever it said, it said it again and again. Rán tried to read the non-existent lips, mirroring them with her own. Nothing. Nothing. She could understand nothing.

Frustrated, she propped his arm against the side of the bed and decided to try something else. There was an ornate pocket knife in the still-ajar drawer of her nightstand, and she took it out and flicked it open.

Hogwarts didn’t teach blood magic, but she’d seen her mother use it many, many times over the course of her life.

The blade was cold on her own palm, and when she drew it back the slender wound wept blood. She tossed back the covers, cupping her hand and letting it gather in a tiny pool along her palm. When enough had gathered, she held it up to the wall where the shadow was cast and tilted it down to flow across the figure’s razor teeth. It was still talking. Whispering and whispering. It sputtered against the liquid on its lips.

“I know you.” A thousand voices lilted. “I know you. I know you.”

The sliver of light around her own shadow faded away, and she could feel it now. All she could see was the shadow, but it was bigger than that. It curled around her, rubbing against her naked legs, over her hip, across her breast. She shuddered, but not from fear. 

“Fuck!” Teeth sunk into the bleeding wound. They were sharp like an animal, and they split open her flesh further. The presence curled tighter against her, and it felt like the very air was shivering. Across her breast, along her neck, pressing between her thighs. It took far too much will power to step away and return to the bed.

It was laughing at her. Wispy little giggles. Rán, breathless and exhilarated, found herself laughing back. The thing was still there, still close enough to touch, and she reached her blooded hand out and snatched it. She jerked, just to see what would happen, and it yielded to her. So did the body beside her, mirroring the shadow’s actions like a puppet on a string. Rán laughed again, perched on her knees.

“I know you.” It kept singing. “I know you. I know you.”

She let go, and watched them both fall back into the bed. “Good.”