Gilded Guilt PV:Archer

interaction: @archer duncan wc: 593 dialogue thoughts
date:16th October 2025

Victoria hated Potions.

Let's be clear—her hatred was not some mild distaste or childish annoyance. No, what she felt bordered on loathing, the kind that settled in her bones and made her stomach churn the very moment she set foot inside the dungeon classroom. The thick, oppressive air of the underground chamber pressed in on her lungs, making each breath shallow and ragged. Her pale fingers, already trembling from nerves, would shake uncontrollably until she had to fold them beneath her robes to hide the evidence.

It was for this reason that, from the beginning of her second year onward, Victoria Blythe had found herself incapable of concentrating in Potions at all. Her heart would thunder as though it meant to betray her, and every scrap of focus she possessed was wasted on willing herself not to faint, not to panic, not to appear as foolish as she felt. Listening to Professor's precise, sharp-edged explanations while her pulse roared in her ears was nearly impossible.

And so she had done something she should never have done. Something she regretted bitterly.

Yes, Victoria Blythe had borrowed—no, not stolen, never stolen—the answers to a Potions assignment. She told herself it was only borrowing, because stolen things were not returned, and she had every intention of putting them back exactly where she had found them. But that distinction was little comfort when she awoke in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, her mind haunted by visions of discovery, of expulsion, of disgrace.

Worse still, someone had seen her. A Slytherin boy, green-trimmed robes catching the candlelight, had caught her in the act of slipping the parchment into her satchel. The memory made her stomach twist even now. Her only consolation was that he had said nothing—yet.

Tonight, she had resolved to make it right. She would return the answers to their place, smooth and silent, and no one would be the wiser. A Blythe did not cheat, not truly. A Blythe corrected her mistakes.

But she had also—perhaps foolishly—conscripted her cat into this scheme. Isolde, a small, silken creature with fur soft as midnight velvet, sat primly in her mistress’s arms as Victoria crouched before the Potions classroom door. The plan, laughable though it seemed in hindsight, had been to tuck the incriminating parchment between the cat’s jaws and let her slink unseen to the professor’s desk. If Victoria were caught, she could claim her cat had been the mischievous culprit all along.

It was a terrible plan. She knew it. She was not proud of it. But desperation seldom bred genius.

Now, with the corridor silent around her and the flickering torchlight throwing uneasy shadows against the stone walls, Victoria stroked Isolde’s fur in trembling apology. “...Go on, darling,” she whispered, slipping the roll of parchment toward the cat’s mouth. “Right by the desk. You can do that, can’t you?”

Isolde blinked up at her with wide, unbothered eyes, then promptly refused to move.

Victoria sighed, heart hammering harder. Perhaps it would be simpler if she went in herself—slid the parchment back into its rightful place before anyone noticed it missing. Surely she could manage that, just this once. Surely she wouldn’t be caught.

She rose carefully, parchment clutched in her hand, her thoughts a frantic swirl of possibility and fear. So wrapped up was she in her own racing mind that she did not at first register the faint echo of footsteps approaching down the corridor.

Too late, perhaps, to remind herself that she ought to have been more careful.