Tales From The Notes App - Tumblr Posts

@theartfuldodger26 Your post made me laugh (in a good way) so I had to write something based off it but I don't know if I'll ever finish it so I've decided to just post what I have instead of condemning it to Notes app purgatory.

OG post: “So, there're three options for the teenaged Bella/Tom dynamic. Bella is hideously bigoted towards him and he completely ignores her (until they fuck), OR Bella is hideously bigoted towards him and he is extremely cool with her (until they fuck), OR Bella is hideously bigoted towards him and they argue often (until they fuck).“

Bellatrix Black takes it upon herself to be hideously bigoted towards the sole half-blood (maybe Mudblood) in Slytherin House. Tom Riddle can’t risk detention, so he chooses the cloak-and-dagger method to get back at her. Why do they care so much about each other’s opinions, anyway?

Of course, the last thing Tom Riddle should be doing right now is messing with the blasted Head Girl.

For one, the whole school (except him) is terrified of her, and for very good reason. Bellatrix Black is a witch of formidable power, great intelligence and pride, and a furious temper. And if she catches him placing a very nasty and elaborate curse on her favourite quill, he’ll be the next subject of her ire. That will lead to a duel, and Tom can’t afford to have a detention on his perfect record. All the same, he can’t let her insults go unpunished.

She started it, Tom thinks, shaking his head. She always does. 

Last night, before they went on patrol, Tom accidentally knocked her bottle of ink over, and she took it upon herself to leap from her chair to call him a ‘filthy, lying, thieving Mudblood,’ in front of the whole common room no less. Red had swum before Tom’s eyes as she ranted about how disgusting and dirty he was, and how he didn’t deserve to be at Hogwarts, much less in Slytherin House, eyes flashing, and it had taken every ounce of his composure and even Occlumency to keep his lips pressed tightly together, bite his tongue, and ignore her. Oh, how he’d itched to tell her it was her own fault for leaving her ink unattended at the very edge of the table, or, better yet, to challenge her to a duel.

And then, he’d headed deep into the dungeons so no one could hear him, and screamed, just so he could blow off enough steam to have some patience left for their patrol.

One of Bellatrix’s younger sisters, Andromeda, had given him a sort of guilty look upon his return. But that did absolutely nothing to quell Tom’s fury.

And so, here he is, indulging in a fit of petty revenge, that scratches an itch neither Calming Draught nor nicotine ever can.

No one, not even Abraxas Malfoy, gets under Tom’s skin the way Bellatrix does, but he can’t let her know that she has that power over him. And given that Abraxas is three years Tom’s elder, attacked him at night, and made it his personal mission to make Tom’s life hell as soon as he suspected Tom to be Muggle-born, while Bellatrix has only gone as far as to be over-the-top verbally abusive, that doesn’t make sense.

Maybe it’s his increased exposure to Dark magic over the years. Irritability is the most well-known and common side effect.

No use pondering it. He speaks the last bit of the incantation, then stands up slowly and quietly. It’s three in the morning, and everyone in the girls’ dormitory is fast asleep. Tom, having grown up in an orphanage (thank God he doesn’t have to go back, ever again) is well-versed in the act of sneaking around without rousing anyone from their slumber. 

As he tiptoes towards her bookbag to replace the quill, Tom notices that the curtains around her bed are not fully shut. He glowers at her sleeping form — long, thick hair splayed out across the green pillowcase, a slight frown on her forehead, her mouth slightly open. The thought of hexing her in her sleep doesn’t cross his mind — cursing her items is one thing, but attacking an unconscious person is just cowardly and therefore utterly below him. Instead, Tom’s mind finds itself drawn to the surprising thought that, when she’s not insulting his supposed blood status, Bellatrix Black is actually quite beautiful. He has to confess that he never understood what Mulciber and the others were on about during their girl-crazy phase (upon reflection, they’re still in that phase). But now, he feels the cold-hot-cold fire of hatred mix with… something else unknowable, as he stares at her.

She stirs a little in her sleep, and Tom freezes. Why didn’t he think to use a Disillusionment Charm?

Luckily, she falls back into a deep sleep, and Tom hastily makes his escape. When he shuts the door between him, he’s sweaty and breathing hard, cold adrenaline racing through his veins. His legs feel shaky.

Silently, he makes his way back to the seventh-year boys’ dormitory, where the sound of Mulciber’s snoring instantly embraces him. It’s late, and he’s got N.E.W.T. Transfiguration with Dumbledore in the morning, so Tom gets into bed, pulls the sheets over his head, and hopes for dreamless sleep.

:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

The ambient sounds of the dormitory are the first thing to greet Bellatrix in the morning, before she even opens her eyes. For some reason, she had a strange dream last night, of a figure looming over her.

Probably nothing. Bellatrix doesn’t go in for all that Divination nonsense, anyway. Her N.E.W.T.’s are coming up; it’s expected that she would experience some symptoms of stress.

As long as I do the House of Black proud, she thinks, sitting up, locating her hairbrush, and attending to the knots her hair has accumulated from tossing and turning all night. 

By the time she is done with her toilette, her hair is glowing with a glossy sheen, her tie has been done up, and her Head Girl badge neatly pinned to her robes. She points her wand at her perfume bottle, lifting her hair from behind her ears as it hovers there, dousing her in a light cloud of scent. 

She’s the first to leave the dormitory, some of the other girls still asleep, their curtains still drawn shut. No matter, she can take points later if necessary.

The seventh-year Slytherin boys are just ahead of her as she slips out of the common room and into the dark dungeon hallway — the Head Boy, Tom Riddle’s soft, silky tenor carries further than the deeper voices of the others, and Bellatrix sneers at his unpleasant accent besmirching the halls of Hogwarts. He sounds like a barrow-boy, and when they pass the group of boys, she makes sure to tell him exactly that.

“Who do we have here?” Bellatrix places her hands on her hips, and advances forward, everyone but Riddle shrinking back. “Riddle, I was thinking,”  she adds sweetly, “with the way you sound— don’t you have apples to sell in a wheelbarrow?”

Some of the boys behind him titter, hurrying to suppress their laughter.

But Riddle ignores her, as usual, not even blinking, the corners of his mouth and his eyebrows perfectly steady, though he shifts his feet uncomfortably, as if to attempt to hide his shabby but nicely-polished shoes. Bellatrix looks him up and down again, scanning him for more faults — she has no idea why riling him up amuses her so, but she’s not one for self-denial.

She can’t fault the rest of his appearance — his robes, like his books, may be secondhand, but everything is folded and creased and ironed impeccably; even the Head Boy badge is immaculately polished and gleams in the light. Not a strand of his jet-black hair is out of place, neatly gelled back, and not a hint of five o’clock shadow is visible, which is more than she can say for most of the seventh-year boys.

It is then that Bellatrix realises she has effectively been ogling Tom Riddle, who stares back at her impassively. How she hates that impassive, cold stare, made even worse by the innocent sloe-eyes. 

“Nothing to say?”

He shakes his head slowly and deliberately, and then breezes past her without a word. Bellatrix turns on her heel as she watches his retreating back, her blood boiling. 

She will make him break. She knows how to push everyone’s buttons (but not his, apparently). She will make him snap, like when he duelled Abraxas in their common room in the fourth year, his glorious rage and (though she loathes to admit it) sheer power intrigued Bellatrix, and, by Morgana, she will see Tom Riddle’s composure break again, and she will be the cause and witness.

Yes, she thinks, as she enters the Great Hall. She will push Tom Riddle, that hateful, dirty Mudblood, right to the edge, and find the true source of his mysterious power, that he definitely shouldn’t have.

no masters // what's a jedi to an empress?

Rey Palpatine has been raised in the ways of the Sith since childhood by her grandfather’s cultists, the Sith Eternal. When she hears whispers of the true reason she exists — to act as a vessel for the Emperor’s spirit — Rey begins to question everything she ever knew. 

The man sitting cross-legged is not really there. He flickers and blurs around the edges into pure light.

“What are you?” Rey snarls, a hand on her lightsabers.

“A concerned party.”

She pokes him curiously, with the Force. His presence is not really there either, indistinct and fluid, blurring at the edges, like a nebula rather than a star. Something from her teachings comes to mind.

“Jedi trickery.”

“Something like that,” says the man. She’s right.

More Jedi. The Emperor had them all destroyed a long time ago. They shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here.

“What do you want from me, Jedi?” Rey spits.

“I tried to reach you on Exegol, but I didn’t think you’d listen, not while you were surrounded by those who serve the Emperor.”

“What would you know about serving the Emperor?”

“More than you know.”

The man’s blue gaze bores into the back of her head. With a jolt, she realizes the gaze is familiar. Those are Luke Skywalker’s eyes. If she imagines what Skywalker looked like in his youth, this is it, more or less — sandy-haired, slightly sun-weathered. But sharper. Crueler. Intensified. If Skywalker is a bonfire, this man is a blaze that turns forests to ash.

So this must be… “Darth Vader?”

He doesn’t deserve that name, the name of a Sith Lord, not after dealing the blow that destroyed the Empire — her Empire. But her fighting style is modeled on Form V, which everyone agrees he mastered. Rey manages to drudge up a speck of respect, for his skill if little else.

“Please sit.” Vader points at the floor opposite him.

She won’t sit on the floor like a peasant, least of all by a Jedi-ghost-thing. She is the Empress, whether the Republic or the Sith Eternal like it or not. She stands, glaring down at Vader and crossing her arms.

“What are you afraid of?” He stares up at her, uncompromising.

Bile rises at the back of her throat. She regrets even coming here. “More Jedi mind tricks!” 

A flick of her wrist, almost without thought, and a lightsaber burns blood-red in front of his throat. Vader does not blink, his steady gaze crueler yet in the red glare. His voice is cold. Unyielding.

“This is a conversation, and not one that you can win with your lightsabers. Put them away.” 

Scowling, she does. 

“You are here because you want to be here; otherwise you would have left. What are you afraid of? Why have you left your castle in Exegol for a Jedi temple, of all places?”

Rey thinks about Coronation Day. About how it feels to have the floor ripped from underneath her feet, and how she wants it to never happen again. How good it would feel to destroy them all, her grandfather included. How badly she yearns for the sweetness of revenge and the warmly of safety. But most of all, she thinks of the yawning emptiness in her that will never be filled.

“I’m afraid of nothing,” she snaps. This is but a temporary setback. She is Empress. She will sit on the throne. She will make them pay.

“You can still come back to the light. There is always a choice.”

“There is no light in me to come back to! There never was!” And she’s proud of it. She doesn’t live in fear, in weakness. Rey is no Jedi, fallen or not. She is nothing like Vader. Where he is weak, she is strong.

“Why are you fighting?”

“I am fighting for my Empire!”

“I said the same, once. What then, once you have your Empire? Will you rule it alone as immortal Empress?”

“Yes.” Rey doesn’t flinch.

“You might win,” says Vader, “but you won’t enjoy it for long.”

“It’s about what is fate, what is right, not enjoyment.”

“No, for you, it’s about suffering.”

“I am not you,” Rey says. “I am not suffering.” Suffering is a pathetic word. She is not a mewing whelp.

“You are suffering, and if you continue down this path, the pain will multiply.”

“Pain makes you strong.”

“Pain makes you weak! There is no need for anyone else to walk this path!” Vader isn’t angry. Jedi aren’t supposed to be angry. Still, something in his voice is… bitter. 

He softens a little, quieter now, but there’s still danger threading through his tone. “There are no good dictators… someone once told me that. You will not be good for your Empire, despite what you have been led to believe. The future you wish to create is one in which everyone suffers.”

“I will bring peace.”

“You started a war,” Vader says, bitterly. 

“To undo your mistake! If you want to blame anyone for this war, blame yourself!”

“Destroying Palpatine was the first good thing I did in my life for a very long time. But yes, you are right, this war is my mistake. I was the one who allowed Palpatine to rise. I could have strangled the Empire in its crib.” His voice grows to a crescendo, gaze burning, blue fire. “And the best I can do now is to try to stave off the darkness.”

“You will try,” says Rey coldly, drawing herself up to her full height. The and fail is implied. 

With that, she turns and stalks out of the temple atrium.

“We will meet again, Empress!” calls Vader, matching her cold, imperious tone. It is a threat. 

She ignores it.

the bad luck trio

Ruby = blackthorn and dragon heartstring, = ‘straif’, Halloween (The inevitability of death, protection, revenge, strife and war, balance between light and darkness, long associated with witches’ wands and staffs and witches and heretics were burned on blackthorn pyres, seen as sinister from Christianity, spines can cause septic wounds but the berries are edible and sweetest after a hard frost)

Tom = yew and phoenix feather, = ‘iodhadh’, winter solstice (divination, death and rebirth, graveyards, the Christian Church, the oldest trees in Britain, can be thousands of years old since they can regenerate themselves and are practically immortal, every part of the tree is poisonous, used to make medieval English and Scottish longbows)

Harry = holly and phoenix feather, = ‘tinne’, summer solstice (also has Christian symbolism - ‘crown of thorns’, protection, sacrifice, hope, the spiny leaves act as mini-conductors which protect the tree from lightning and believed to ward off evil spirits, berries are poisonous to humans but not birds)

“”It is almost impossible to cut lengths of Blackthorn bare-handed without pricking oneself and shedding blood… Quite often there will be patches of red or deep orange areas, which look almost like natural blood-stains.”

“ Like Yew and Blackthorn (both also known for their protective qualities) Holly timber is very dense and difficult to manipulate…. . The bark of Holly is a lovely, waxy, deep green and its heartwood ranges from light cream to pale gold, and occasionally olive green. When the bark is left un-removed but polished it has a metallic appearance making it even lovelier to handle and admire.”