closed RP: Silas, Camilla, and a mostly-blank deck of cards
Even on a night without wind, it's cold atop the Astronomy Tower, this late at night and this early in the spring. Camilla doesn't care. She can't sleep -- again -- but though she knows insomniac Henry will doubtless be awake down in Slytherin, she doesn't want to go see him. He'll be working on something. Camilla doesn't feel like working on anything. Nor does she want to spend too much time where Henry can watch her closely, now. There are things she doesn't want him to ask about. He knows her too well to let her get away with a lie, expert liar though she is.
She has come here for a simple enough reason: to look at the stars. Isn't that what these ramparts are for? It's called the Astronomy Tower for a reason; and while no astronomy classes have been held here since well before Camilla's arrival, it's clear from the disposition of the space here that it's been used and designed for this purpose. The stars have a certain order that she wants to find soothing in its changelessness. She has found this a reassuring quality in Henry, too, this quality: a relentless inexorable progress, indifferent to petty human concerns. It is reassuring because it is infinitely reliable.
Lately, not much seems reliable at all.
She thinks of the days following Henry's resurrection as a short perfect halcyon time. Then the first of the headaches surfaced, worse than they ever had been in life, and in life they had been alarmingly bad to begin with. And next, like a bad penny, Charles turned up. And the omens are all bad, bad to worse.
She thinks of that word halcyon. She is no Alcyone, nor ever will be. She loves Henry, yes; she loves herself more.
Though she's watching the sky, at some point she has stopped really looking at the stars. She's distracted by something in her hands. It's something she's been carrying ever since the owl brought it (back) to her: a deck of cards, most of them blank, only eight of them standard playing cards. She shuffles the deck over and over, absently, gazing out into nothing.
She sent a full deck to her brother. He kept eight and sent the rest back to her. He knows it was she who sent them, then; of course he'd know. If he says anything, she'll deny it all. She'll pretend there was nothing to remember. But she knows he won't say anything.
The omens are all bad. Blank cards are best. Cardboard whirs against cardboard, deft fingers dividing the deck over and over.
It's so cold.