Violet had woke the previous morning to buckets of rain thrashing against the tiny window in her one-room apartment. It was adjacent to her office and very near to the library, so it was usually a fairly quiet area in the castle. With the storm that had rolled in overnight, the thunder and lightning rattled the window pane constantly. With a sigh, she had risen while it was still dark out. Puck, her tiny pygmy owl, sat soaking wet in his cage. Next to it, lay a very wet issue of the Daily Prophet. Violet read it every morning and Puck was quite devoted to getting it to her before she woke. She gave him an extra treat for having gone out in such bad weather, and then waved her wand over the paper to dry it. The words were still smeared, but she was able to make out the article.



The realization that there was someone dangerous out there in the rain terrified her, and she had spent the remainder of the day trying to be around people. She wandered about the castle wherever students or staff were, rather than being alone. When it had been time to go back to sleep that evening, she had tossed and turned and kept her wand in her hand the entire time. Defense Against the Dark Arts had not been her strongest subject, but she at least was comfortable with her stunning spell.



The next morning was just as dreary and stormy as the one before. She had not slept well. The bags under her eyes were deep and looked like bruises against her pale freckled skin. She dressed in her usual plain gray dress that she wore for working in the library and moved rather quickly (almost running when others weren't around her) to the Great Hall for breakfast. Most often, she chose to eat her meals in her office - but today she wanted to be far from alone. There was safety in numbers.



She was a half an hour early and only a few people milled about. Thanks to the weather, the student body seemed to not want to rise from their beds. The ceiling of the Great Hall mimicked the storm outdoors, and it didn't do much to comfort her. The candles had had to remain lit in order for there to be enough light to see. Too shy to try to start a conversation with one of the Professors, she took a parchment and a quill from the folds of her dress and seated herself at one of the tables. Dear Mister Havisham, she began in her neat writing. What was there to say? What could she tell him about Cage?



The sudden clang of someone dropping a great number of somethings on the stone floor caused her to jump, and she spun around to look at what had cause the commotion without realizing that she had brought her fingers too quickly along the edge of the parchment. With the realization of her new injury, which stung like no other, Violet's attention turned to it quickly enough to see a bead of blood form upon the knuckle of her right hand.