Female Robbery

Davina had been pacing back and forth in her dorm room as she awaited teach of Jasper's replies. The stifling dungeon air was making it difficult to breathe freely, exacerbating the panic that was creeping up her spine. After Jasper agreed to meet her, Davina went to the girl's bathroom to wash her face. The mirror showed her a haggard reflection with haunted, brown eyes and stray strands of hair. She had avoided sleep at all cost that night; sleep meant dreaming, and dreaming meant the worst nightmares she hadn't had in a few years. A circular motion of her wand brought her hair back in place and touched her cheeks with a bit of color, revitalizing her appearance. She didn't need anyone to see her look like shit just because she felt it.

After dressing quickly, Davina took the stairs one foot at a time trying to recall every moment of the igloo party. Nothing was unimportant and anything or anyone could be the culprit. Her mind could only hold the memories for a second before it scrambled for the next, trying to determine what had happened. As she neared the second floor, she shook her head and gave up. This was why she had asked Jasper for help. She couldn't think straight and it was an unsettling condition to have at any time, especially one like this one. If Jasper had not been her friend, and certainly one of her best, she would have been much more disturbed. There was no one else in this forsaken castle that she trusted to even lend her quill.

Take the last few steps two at a time, the Slytherin turned the last corner when a familiar voice inquired after her. She let out a gasp of breath in relieve to be in proximity of her friend. "Shitty," she admitted with shame. After all these years of discipline and study, her mind was in shambles. It was embarrassing to admit as much even to her closest friend, and she instinctively crossed her arms, giving him a shrug. "I didn't sleep, just... thinking." The rest she would rather not say. She had only vaguely described to him of Thornton's experiments on her, it wasn't anything she wanted to repeat or allude to if she didn't have to. This was a sensory overload that made her uncomfortable on the most basic level. 'Where's the entrance? I've never actually used this passage before."

It was no surprise to Jasper that Davina could still look rather striking even within her current condition. There was always something so fascinating about people who managed to look completely unperturbed even under ridiculous stress. His brother was a bit like that, so solemnly well defined at all times. Even Jasper had moments of being ruffled, his hair needing a brushing, his glasses askew. But Jasper wasn't as wary as Davina at times, where she knew even the smallest flaw would tip someone off about how she felt. It was respectable. Admirable. Especially since, he could imagine, that feminine aesthetics were much harder to maintain on a societal standard.

He wondered if, at times, the reason he respected this attribute so much was simply because his mother was the opposite. Open and raw. It frightened him at times. It seemed childish to say he wished he was more like his friend, but he did. He wanted to lose that rawness he had. But Davina was likely thinking the same thing at that moment, her conscious probed by unknown forces. She did not feel in control. She did not feel poised and hidden within herself. He would have to remind himself: Neither of them were perfect. Neither of them were in flawless control. They were here tonight for a reason.

"Sometimes sleep can be one's worst enemy in times like this," Jasper adjusted the strap of his bag, knowing fully well how hard it could be. Sleep was elusive. Sleep wasn't kind. He found himself often awake at night, listening to the radio. Studying. He could pin it on the ambiguous entity that was anxiety. But... The nightmares. He couldn't imagine the nightmares she had.

When Jasper found out who, or what, did this to her... Well. He would have to think very hard how to get even.

"Where's the entrance? I've never actually used this passage before."

Beside him, against the wall, he lifted the aged threads of a tapestry that held no notable characteristics in comparison to the rest of the corridor. However, this one was the closet tapestry to the armor he had hid behind, and that was how one could find it without pause. There beneath it was the entrance to the stairway, and he pointed inward for her to walk ahead of him, if she so wished. "There's a trick step halfway down," He was quick to inform her, as he'd hate to see her fall when she was already so far down in spirit.

As he closed the tapestry behind him, engulfing them in darkness, and procured his wand for light, before descending quietly; hardly a sound came from his tempered steps. "Would you mind telling me exactly what you did tonight? All the details," Jasper knew it was a bit of pressure, but without every key, not all the locks could be opened. The bigger picture was there, he simply needed something to see it. While he wasn't sure if he could figure this out in a night, he would surely at least try to ease her mind.

Curiosity was rewarded as Jasper revealed the entrance to the passage, which Davina filed the location in her mind for a later time. Her wand appeared at the same time as his, joining his light to illuminate their way down. Sighing audibly, she squared her shoulders at the expected query, trying to calm her mind and go back to the beginning of the night. Hopefully he could discern something strange, a discrepancy, anything that had wriggled past her guard. “After I got dressed, I walked towards the Lake,” she started calmly, remembering the remarkable decorations. “I’m sure there was plenty of magic just to get the igloo up, enchant the decorations or whatever, but I didn’t really notice anything.” Maybe she should have, damn it.

Taking the steps carefully, she tried to feel for the trick step before she injured herself as she continued recollecting everything she could. “When I walked inside, there were a few people already there, but I didn’t talk to anyone right away, I was just… kind of surprised I was invited, I guess.” The admission made her blush a little, and she was glad it was too dark for anyone, even Jasper,to notice. “Eventually, I found Davina and we started talking. Mostly about the library because that was the last time I had seen here where Dale Roberts was being an idiot. We were just talking and drinking a bit, about nothing serious. People starting dancing, and then…” As Davina started to remember other people’s faces, she realized it was a bit out of place, which made her brow crease in concentration “I don’t know Olive looked really mad, but she’s always really intense about something. But then Cadence was crying?” Had that been important? How did she think that it was nothing out of the ordinary at the time? Reaching the landing, she looked at Jasper with a little shake of her head. “I should have known something was off,” she accused herself. She felt shame and panic rising again in her chest, her knuckles turning white from gripping her wand.

Jasper listened to Davina carefully, analyzing each line spoken. Clearly, nothing happened in between her leaving and the arriving at the party. He pointed picked his gaze up, broken from his thought, as she commented that her invitation was strange. Instinctively, he wanted to say that she was, well, kind of mysterious and interesting, the type that Daniyah seemed rather interested in. The Ravenclaw was friends with both girls, and knew them both to an extent, and the more he thought on her comment, how she was genuinely questioning Daniyah's intent... Well, this definitely meant something, did it not? If she felt like Daniyah wouldn't have invited her, Daniyah was obviously suspicious within herself.

The thing about Daniyah was that, as kind and well meaning as she was, there were plenty of people who would want to sabotage her party. Take, for example, a certain professor whom was too old to be prowling around a sixteen year old's get together. And it was because of this fact, that one could deduce that Daniyah herself was a questionable person. Would she sabotage her own party, though? That didn't seem quite right. Through the thick persona of misdirection she donned, he doubted she would work hard on something simply to tear it down.

When they tiptoed over the trick step, Jasper sat himself down a few steps below it. There, he dug through his bag, deep in thought. Did Olive and Cadence have anything to do with it? Did either of them talk to Davina? In truth, it sounded like they were all just shit drunks, but... "So, you spoke to Dani? Anyone else?" He began, "You mentioned drinking. How much did you consume at this party? Did you... Pay attention to your drink at all times?" Inwardly, he was starting to cringe at himself. His questions were the invasive type, the cruel and hurtful type, one would ask a girl after she was... Well... In a very scary situation.

But, the first piece of any mystery started at consumption. He would narrow it down from there, hone in what it could have possibly been. If someone pushed into her mind, it was likely someone she came into close contact with. His checklist, so far, was as follows: Professor Travis, Daniyah herself, and then possibly Olive and Cadence. Every person counted, and he would ultimately look into each of them. He never heard of any of these people being adept at mind manipulation, but he knew very little about the majority of them, because they didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

"It's hard to tell when something is off, when everyone is drinking. Magic is such a... questionable, consequential thing to exist around," He added, still rummaging through the caverns of his bag, but it was an attempt to reassure her. None of this was her fault, there was no way she would have known. But Jasper wasn't known for soft words, no matter how hard he tried.

Jasper’s questions made Davina force her thoughts to slow down and concentrate on a few series of interactions at a time. The Slytherin tumbled through her memories, trying to remember them in the order that they occurred. Taking a seat next to Jasper, she paused before continuing. “There was a bowl of blue punch everyone was drinking from,” she recalled, rubbing her eyes. “Daniyah gave me the first round and after that I refilled my own.” Had she watched the Ravenclaw actually serve her the drink, or had she already had it in hand? “It was tequila,” she added, admitting to drinking alcohol. It wasn’t something she did often, as she was not fond of any mind altering substances for obvious reasons, but she did indulge every once in awhile. She now felt the lack of wisdom in partaking with someone she didn’t explicitly trust. “ I only had two drinks total,” she did recall as she was very careful in not going overboard. The second one was while Daniyah was distracted by the Professor randomly showing up to the party.

The first part of her attendance was clear enough, and Davina was confident she didn’t miss anything important. Or had she? Rolling her neck to try to relieve the tension that had been building up, she hated the fact that she felt like something wrong happened and she hadn’t noticed, let alone stop it or protect herself. It was the next part that had made her realize that something was amiss, making her leave the party immediately. “While Daniyah was confronting the Professor, that’s kind of when I noticed Cadence crying, and then Llewellyn came over to talk to me. I hadn’t seen him all night, but if he had been there all along I’m sure it was with Kai.” Davina stared at the wall across from her, trying to remember everything she could about the Hufflepuff. “It didn’t sound like anything important… he just asked if it was OK to stand there with me, and said he was going to get really drunk.” It wasn’t surprising since the curly haired boy had a reputation of liking a good time. The Slytherin hadn’t really found his comment to be any kind of revelation.

“And then… I just couldn’t stop talking.” Looking up again, Davina gave Jasper the look of anxiety she was trying her best to hold back. “I told him I was a liar and an actress, that I didn’t like drinking too much because it messed with my mind,” she continued, her words coming out quickly as her panic traveled up to her heart again and made her voice tremble. “I even said someone had messed with me already, thank Merlin I didn’t say more.” It was incredulous that she would ever say something like that to a practical stranger, harmless as he was, or was he? She didn’t even know anymore. This freaking castle was supposed to be a safe haven; it had already failed her once, why was she surprised when it happened again? She gave laughed at herself in self deprecation and rubbed her eyes again.

“That’s when I left.”

As Davina spoke, out emerged a case from Jasper's bag. It was a bit of a makeshift chemistry set, though obviously with a magical twist to it. After all, magic provided him with advantages that even modern science could not, and Jasper was all about taking advantage of everything he could. He continued to listen as she spoke, but fiddled with the innards of the case passively. At first, he nudged away questionable vials and cylinders, but revealed an insignificant looking rectangle of padded gauze. He had quite a bit of these, but he needed only one.

"So... Everyone was acting strangely, and everyone was drinking..." He nodded, clearly understanding the situation now, and feeling a little less awkward for questioning her in such a manner. Because it got him the exact answers he needed. "Someone put something in punch then." There was no questioning it, but it opened up a whole new flood of questions in itself. He offered her the gauze with extended fingers then, eyes tilted to the side as he considered what this could mean.

"Just put it on your tongue for a bit. It won't tell us what it was, but it'll certainly test my theory," It was similar to those pieces of paper one can drip their drink onto and see if someone spiked it. But this was different, in the sense that it picked up on a whole lot more than just insidious muggle drugs. But it would only show that something happened, turning a vibrant purple if so, and the rest would be up to them to piece together.

But, he felt a tug on his heartstrings as she mentioned what she said to Llewellyn. Jasper doubted the guy had anything to do with it, though he wouldn't put it past him. After all, the nicest and dumbest of people could potentially be dangerous. There were no limitations. But, Jasper already had an idea of who did it, and that was a bit concerning.

If Daniyah invited Davina, and if Davina felt like that was strange, and if she put the glass in Davina's hands... Well, that was all quite incriminating, wasn't it? And it certainly left a bad taste in his mouth. Daniyah was definitely one of his better friends, and she was always up to something. But why would she be interested in Davina? That was the question. How unfortunate it was that Daniyah would pick someone so traumatized by the literal thing she was doing. Forcing someone to speak when all they wanted was to hide within themselves.

Could he blame her for not knowing? Possibly. He would have to speak to her first.

"If it's any consolation, I highly doubt the likes of Ludlow would even retain the slightest bit of information, serious or not," He offered, though he knew that wasn't necessarily the point. He knew little about Kaimana and Llewellyn, only vaguely aware of their existence due to Daniyah. But those types were always the same, hopping from trip to trip and remaining in place within their circle. That being said, if Daniyah proved innocent, he'd definitely go for the mop headed stoner next. "I'm sorry this happened to you... I'm glad you came to me," He told her plainly then, eyes closed and fingers resting on his temple. Jasper never said things like that lightly, and this was not a situation that could be taken lightly. But he ached for her, even if his expression remained calm and detached. He certainly was not detached.

The Slytherin watched her friend take out his ridiculous looking collection with suspicion. Sure it looked funny, but Davina knew that Jasper was a meticulous student. If he hadn’t learned the fundamentals of research in the hundreds, or thousands, of books he’d read, he would have figured it out on his own. Davina nodded when the Ravenclaw confirmed that, yes, the drink had been spiked. It was frustrating to know that she had needed someone to say so for her to be sure. Since she had left the party, she had lost all sense of certainty about anything, even though she usually trusted her own judgment. It had apparently failed her, since she had allowed herself to walk into this mess.

Frowning at the little piece of gauze, she suddenly felt like the subject of yet another experiment. Of course, Jasper would never do something like Thornton had, at least not to her, but the sensation of being the subject of anything was always uneasy. Regardless, she did as she was instructed and placed it on her tongue for a few moments before picked it up again at the very edge and offering it to to Jasper. It was kind of gross, but apparently helpful for him. Davina had a feeling she knew what he was going to do, but couldn’t quite summon the curiosity she would usually have. She listened to Jasper reassure her that Llewellyn wouldn’t remember what she had said. Davina had a similar feeling, but she was tinkering with the idea of talking to him to see what he remembered. What would she do if she did? The brunette didn’t know yet, but there might be some time before she had to decide.

The kindness in Jasper was a truth Davina had always known. It wasn’t something he shared with everyone, and was a trait they actually had in common. But even with their long history together, it was still comforting to feel his regard for her. Davina would have rejected anyone else’s sympathy, but Jasper was sincere and for that she was grateful. ‘I don’t have anyone else to go to,” she answered simply, her voice small, she tried to hide her fear. “But I’m glad you’re the one I can trust.” She failed to smile, but didn’t bother to excuse herself, knowing that her friend didn’t expect it. “I just don’t… I don’t like feeling like I can’t control my own mind when something like this happens.” She exhaled in frustration. “First it was the boggart,” she continued as she recalled Thornton appearing to her in the Forbidden Forest. “And now… whatever this was.” Davina’s eyes were pleading at Jasper. “Even if it never happens again, I will always be in doubt. And fear.”

Holding his wrist up, eyes on his watch, he waited patiently as Davina held the gauze in her mouth. This was something he had picked up from his brother, whom started hoarding weird things in their medicine cabinets ever since... the thing with their mom. It was a tad ridiculous, but it came from somewhere understandable. And when she pulled it out of her mouth, he curtly took it with a pair of tweezers and placed it in a small beaker. This wasn't a necessary step, but he wanted to, well, not touch it, nor let it touch absolutely anything on his person or his possessions.

There would be a small wait, which they filled with soft spoken confessions of hurt. Jasper's eyebrows fell, and he felt the urge to protect Davina. From whatever this was. From whomever was bothering her. He didn't know how to show this, or how to express his feelings cleanly. It was hard. It was awkward. But he grinned at her, in appreciation of her words. But it dropped once she continued, speaking of her fears and horrors and trauma.

This was why Ren hoarded strange medicines and supplies. This was why Jasper fell into places he knew he shouldn't. No matter what, they would never feel okay. Things would never be the same. And while Davina may never know a life without the fear riding on her back, waiting to strike, he could at least lighten the burden. That's what he would do for her. That's how he could show he appreciated her friendship.

"Well," He bit his lip, "You're not alone. Someday it'll be easier, and we'll be here, together, even when it's not. We'll figure this out, and it'll pass." And all he wanted was to snap Thornton's neck now; he wanted that fear to subside, know healing. It wasn't the perfect solution, but it was an easy solution. It would not be the first time he had blood on his hands. And with the love he felt for his family and his friend, it wouldn't be the last. There was fury beneath his complacent expression.

Turning back to the gauze, now nearly dried, he raised it with the tweezers in front of him. It was purple, albeit a bit faintly due to the time lapse. But magic was magic. It told them all they needed to know.

"So. Someone spiked the punch at the party. What should we do with their corpse once I'm through with them?" He dropped the swatch back into the beaker, the tweezers clanging against the glass helplessly. He rested his chin on his knuckles, sighing deeply. In a way, he was glad that this was all it was. He didn't want to assume that she was targeted in this tiny attempt at terror, but he would act like it until he was well at the bottom of it. If that gauze hadn't changed color, he wondered what he would have possibly done to figure it all out.

The only consolation the world could give Davina at a time like this was the company of her closest friend. In that respect, the world was looking after her. If that was the case, it was only the beginning to making things right by her if that was even the plan to begin with. It made her uncomfortable that he would want to endure something like this with her, but for now she would appreciate the sentiment.

Hazel eyes followed the gauze Jasper was experimenting on, afraid of the results would be. In her heart, she knew the answer but her mind and fear had been corrupting her own resolve, her sense of judgment. As the spectacled Ravenclaw lifted his tweezer, the faint purple hue was also apparent to Davina. He confirmed their suspicions and offered a consolation prize. Davina’s features shone with appreciation, her lips parting to expel the breath she had been holding in. “You’re assuming there would be a corpse to handle,” she quipped, feeling the tightening in her chest. She didn’t want to joke about something like that for too long. She knew that for Jasper, it could very well be serious. She wasn’t privy to the details, but Davina knew enough of his life to know that it was something that he meant quite seriously. “It was Daniyah, wasn’t it?” she asked, this time a little more certain than she had felt before. “From the beginning. I said it myself… I’d never expected her to invite me to her party.” Friendship was hard enough Davina, little Ravenclaw bitches manipulating her certainly didn’t help.

“But why?” She stood up, and picked a path at random to start pacing, hands on her hips. Jasper giving her concrete evidence, and the knowledge that Thornton really wasn’t anywhere nearby, had lubricated the wheels of her mind. They had stalled with panic and anger, but were starting to turn again, picking apart the information she did have. “Does it even matter, now?”