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Ever since the times of Rowena, the Great Hall was conceived as a temple of splendid illusions; yet, on the eve of the Celestial Ball, it debased into a full tyranny of artifice.
A pliable mob of students replaced candles with faux-stars upon the vaulted sky, emboldened by their very teachers, who had spurned lessons in favour of a school-sanctioned circus. Always the master of theatre, Flitwick spearheaded the deed, launching nine-and-ten gleaming ribbons like astral-fairies on a spurious voyage. Spectacle over substance.
A Ravenclaw-clad figure stood by the oaken-doors, playing the part of an eavesdropper. They did not join the others, nor did they look at the floating stars with a youngster's vulgar awe. They observed with languid caution, keeping safe distance from the cosmic triteness.
Who could blame them for shunning the general eagerness? It was cardboard magic moulded by cardboard intentions. Amidst the whole batch, only Nymphadora Tonks held a speck of authenticity, sailing overindulgent chatter without drowning. Few could laugh with such unbothered indifference, fewer still could command their flesh at whim, matching whatever colour suited their soul.
The watcher took a step back. Lingering would turn craving to envy, and that was unseemly; so they turned under a Gothic arch and departed.
Before they had walked far, chatter reduced to whispers. They reached open-air, descending fern-lined lawns to the lake, where Scottish-light had started painting the sky in bruised-orange. Up in the towers, the blathering of teenagers had surely begun, panicking over which waistcoats to wear or which jewelry to borrow. But down by the lakeside, twilight was unpretentiously silent.
Until a voice stopped their march.
"It is exhausting, is it not? To watch frivolity being built with such enthusiasm."
The Ravenclaw was not startled. In a castle where every stone harboured an opinion, Chiara had always been sanctuary.
"You know Haywood—her supercilious committees have the energy and delicacy of a niffler-in-heat."
Chiara hugged her denim jacket, hands deep-in-pockets. "Surely you would allow them one night of harmless mummery?"
They settled onto damp grass, and a carefully held pretense crumbled under the pause.
"I know, I know… I am entirely unreasonable today." The Ravenclaw watched light dance on the water. "A ball is a superfluous affair, of course, but it shouldn't distress me so thoroughly. Caught in a bad farce, one ought to laugh at the script, not resent the actors."
It wasn't proper to begrudge others how openly they could rejoice in frippery.
Sunset bounced off Chiara's silver hair, mirroring the meaning of her name. And what was a name's meaning but a reflection of essence? The Ravenclaw wondered what their own name might be, had they the freedom to choose.
"Such disdain for balls… what would your mother say?"
"That I have an inalienable right to party," they replied with momentary amusement, "and that I ought to exercise that right in a way that wouldn't look undignified in the Daily Prophet."
The smile lingered for a second before twilight claimed it.
"The public is wonderfully unforgiving," Chiara said. "They have dreadful terror of anything that does not stay within the neat little boxes they've built. They discover a secret? they call it scandal; a truth they can't possibly comprehend? they name it monstrosity. Narrow minds in grand heads. We must be very careful, you and I. When you're deemed unacceptable, the world tends to bring out its cages."
"You are no monster, Chiara. For that matter, neither am I."
"Still we hide."
The Ravenclaw's hands brushed over the wildflowers. When they spoke, their voice painfully echoed with familiar unfamiliarity. "What can we do then, if not accept our fates? You cannot take a moonlight walk, any more than I can dance to my heart's content—both prisoners of our own skins."
"So you do admit you'd want to attend the ball?"
To be cursed with such capricious tongue...
The remnants of silence were suffocated by faint music—the band's first rehearsals. The castle had become a manufactured game within a mountain of bricks. A stacked hand of Vingt-Et-Un.
"Wants are irrelevant."
"Repressed wants catch more hastily than fiendfyre."
The Ravenclaw's voice grew acute. "And how do you propose I navigate such matters? Should I secure a dance-partner and garb myself in fine Gallic-silks? Pretend to be a creature I am not?"
"I'll take that for a confession."
Admitting hypocrisy was shameful, but so were denials this late in the day. "Forget I spoke. I had hoped you, of all people, would understand."
They made a sudden motion to stand, but Chiara's hand caught their arm. "Yet I do understand, my dear. I wasn't suggesting you attended as someone else, you see."
"Then how? The ball is no mascarade."
Chiara suddenly pulled out a book—a grimoire.
"An ancient relic," she said, patting the cracked leather binding. "Not the sweet-little-spells you'd find in your everyday Transfiguration. There is older, more obscure sorcery within these pages. My father acquired it under the tragic delusion that it might contain a cure—alas, the curse-of-the-moon has silvergrip. Your particular affliction, however... there is a passage here for it."
The Ravenclaw stiffened. "My affliction? You speak as though it were a brief illness—a bad colour to be hid by some clever cosmetic charm."
Chiara merely smiled. "I am not speaking of the trivial illusions that dissolve the moment one bats an eyelash. Had I wished to offer such passing reprieve, any standard text would have sufficed. No, this magic is thorough. It alters bones and inwards to match the soul. Permanent—if you dare stop faltering. All is prepared."
The word permanent lingered in the cool air.
They thought of their mother. The public scandal that would be seen not as an awakening, but as an act of absolute sabotage. They thought of Hogwarts. The weight of a hundred staring eyes demanding they returned to their little box.
Yet, beneath the terror, possibility loomed. If the grimoire truly possessed the power to crack their armor, who would emerge underneath? Would it be freedom at last, or throbbing disappointment?
Fingers dared brush the book, Chiara's kind eyes followed. The last enemy to defeat was temptation.
"Permanence." The word tasted of revolution. "I'm done with armor. Show me the passage."
Walter Bagnold had oftentimes dreamed of a girl. Not one of singular or ravishing beauty, nor endowed with a presence worthy of devotion, but a girl nonetheless.
It was a dream made flesh for her to now look upon that girl in the mirror—for she was a 'she', and had always been; the 'they' of her past had been nothing but a fragile mask, a temporary starved compromise.
"How beautifully distressing," Chiara murmured, "Who would have imagined that by finally becoming yourself, you came to look so frightfully like your mother?"
The Ravenclaw caressed her cheek, fingertips tracing down to the birthmark on her neck. Chiara joined their cheeks, staring at the same reflection.
"And by what name am I to know you now?"
Which name indeed?
Once, in the quietude of her own mind, she had considered Carmilla or Amelia, but they had lacked resonance. Then Euphemia, the celebrated name of The-Girl-Who-Lived, yet it had a sterile academic quality, and a backstory with needless baggage. Names possessed a binding essence, did they not? She required one that reflected all she had to give—all she had never been free to offer—while casting definitive distance from her mother's beloved Britannia.
"Amour," she whispered the velvety syllables. "Amour Bagnold."
"Well then, Amour," Chiara said, adopting a theatrical gravity, "a ball awaits."
"But I possess no gown, and my appearance is that of a banshee."
"Thankfully, you enjoy the acquaintance of one Andre Egwu," Chiara reminded. "The boy is a positive menace. Our best magi-tailor, and the swiftest. He could weave a masterpiece out of ruined drapery in an hour's time and call it high fashion."
Amour stared at the vanity with proper dread. She'd never done makeup before.
Chiara followed her look. "That part would be my honour, of course."
A sudden breathlessness seized Amour. Reality solidfied. During the fleetingness of her dreams, she had always envisioned this as an abstract tomorrow. It had never occurred to her that the future would demand her attendance this very evening.
"I have no partner. Who would even have me?"
"You silly girl. Am I painting upon a wall?" she asked. "You shall take me, naturally."
"Would you have me?"
"Isn't that my line?" There was a vulnerable edge to Chiara's smile. "Am I not the cursed one? The lion, you the lamb?"
"I am not afraid of you, I am only afraid of losing you." Amour's voice sank to a whisper. "Is there no one else you love?"
"My dear Amour," Chiara said, her face a breath away. "I have been in love with no one, and never shall, unless it should be with you."
There was a moment of evanescent fragility before the frantic crudeness of pessimism took over.
"There will be questions, judgments," Amour's heart hammered. "A hundred cruel interrogations. How would we fare? What am I supposed to do?"
Chiara took her hands with feral serenity. "Be yourself, my dear."
Time lost its footing when Amour Bagnold stepped into the Great Hall, dazzling in a glorious-cosmic-blue gown. Eyes turned, unable to grasp the monumentality of such breathless moment.
Amour's insticts demanded she flee. Ultimately, hadn't she decried this setting? What right did she have now to revel in theatre?
"Show them," Chiara whispered in her ear, with a love that was both fierce and strange. "Show them the you I already know."
Amour faced the crowd. She was on the verge of collapse, and yet for the first time, she no longer felt like a spectator of her own life. At four-and-ten, she was finally the person she was born to be. She had, at long last, reached the very beginning of living.
Penny Haywood—who had poorly-chosen to arrive on the arm of Diego Caplan—inquired into the crowd for the identity of the newcomer. The name Bagnold rippled, and Gemma Farley announced unawareness of any sister of Walter. Someone soon spotted Amour's birthmark, and appalled confusion spread.
Whoever said ill-talk was preferable to not being talked at all was a complete muttonhead.
Then Chiara—beautiful, tender Chiara—sliced through the whispers. "This is Amour Bagnold," she announced, tightening her grip upon Amour's arm. "She has undergone a rather magnificent metamorphosis, and has no intention of returning to the chrysalis. Anyone who finds themselves distressed, may take the matter up with me."
Commotion grew, and Janmay Drutadhvanih hissed like a viper, his eyes on the joined arms.
"Walter? Was there need to play dressup to escort a girl?"
As if they could understand that attraction was orthogonal to the self. That loving Chiara as a male may have been simpler, but a betrayal to who Amour truly was.
"Abomination, I say. Shame upon our house," Janmay sneered. "I do not know why you are here. You clearly cannot distinguish right from wrong."
The words were a physical-blow. Amour had finally shattered her cage, yet the world pushed back. She couldn't take more hurt.
Rowan Khanna stepped forth, wand drawn. A muffled curse sent Janmay reeling into an ennead of classmates, who dragged him out.
Nymphadora Tonks approached. "Pay no heed to the simple-minded, my dear. What you have done is not only right, but profoundly beautiful."
Amour's shoulders, however, felt burdened. Her ears still rang from the bile. Would she ever be able to rejoice in her chosen self? Or had freedom been the most beautifully lethal of illusions?
She succumbed to tears, and space-time continuum broke. Chiara and Talbott Winger reached out, but time came to a halt. Across the hall, Trinity Lynn froze pouring a drink, liquid suspended mid-air.
A spotlight flashed, and a fabulois space-fae descended from the stars. Turning her gaze directly to you, gentle Reader, said-fae smiled.
"One of these is not like the others. One of these does not belong." Her words danced. "Can you guess?"