The Vanishing Cabinet...Black

eighteen. alphard black

tw: death

"I THINK MALKA THINKS WE'RE BEING GROSS,"

"Malka, do you think we're being gross?" Cass turned to Malka, her pink lipstick smudged all over her face.

"Hm? Oh, I wasn't paying attention," Malka said, looking away from her letter from Bitsy.

"Right, then," Clorfan said, his face pink, as he planted a kiss on Cass's nose as she sat on his lap.

Bitsy was writing of new updates back in Como, and how Itsy's tomato plants were beginning to bud again. One of their closest neighbors in the Muggle section of the town had a new baby, and the water in Lake Como was slowly warming.

Cass giggled, and Malka turned her head towards the couple again. The past few weeks had been very kind to Cassana Fortescue. Malka had known the whole time she was in love with Clorfan, but she had been too bent under the influence of Carrow and Talkalot to admit it and step up. But after she'd officially ended her friendship (more like allyship) with the two popular Slytherin girls, she'd been able to find the boy she liked once more. Her cheeks were beginning to be filled in with the love she'd recieved, and she no longer had to cover up dark circles from stress in the mornings. They were now well into February, and things were going well.

A small brown Prophet owl dropped a newspaper in front of Malka, and she took a brief glance at the headlines, before her eyes widened and she rapidly snatched it up, setting her fork down.

ALPHARD BLACK, SON OF POLLUX BLACK, DEAD AT 51

Fifty-one? That was an extraordinarily young age for a wizard to due of natural causes. Was this becoming a trend? Malka's heart seized in fright. She hoped Regulus didn't have to hear the news first from a reporting paper, but she had a feeling no one bothered to communicate with him.

There was a scraping sound and a loud thud as over by the Gryffindor table as Sirius Black knocked over a few ceramic plates, which smashed as he ran out of the Great Hall, long dark hair flowing behind him. Malka looked behind him, concerned as a sandy-haired boy hesitated before deciding to pursue him, along with James Potter and another boy.

Worried, she looked to Reg. But before she could find him, the sounds found her first, as he, too, knocked his chair back as he stumbled before hurrying out of the Great Hall. The people around them buzzed with gossip, wondering what could've gotten both Black brothers in a twist.

Malka hesitated, too, implicitly deciding to go after him, but timing when it was right so she would not get anyone's attention. People were beginning to file out the Great Hall, anyway, for their whatever they had to do on a weekend.

In his panic, Reg had let down his Occlumency in a flash of a moment. Normal Legilimens would not be able to take advantage of it, but Malka was not a normal Legilimens. It wasn't even voluntary, it was as if she was sitting in a room with people and a tiger sprung out, there was no way to not notice. His thoughts were frantic, he hadn't even registered his brother sprinting from the room, and Malka could tell he was devastated.

By the time Malka made it out of the Hall, Reg was nowhere to be seen. Retreating back into the hum of her own mind, Malka recalled the lessons she'd learn at the knee of her mother. 

Think of fireflies in a gentle forest; each light represents a person- the presence of a mind in Como. Picture it in your head, and feel how you can hear the whirring of each of their thoughts. There is a limit to our radius, of course, but with practice, it can be elongated quite a bit.

It certainly helped that only two people were feeling grief, sadness, and anger at an extreme scale; at that one of them was in Gryffindor Tower. So it was nearly easy for Malka to locate the other, a moving firefly heading towards the Black Loch.