The Dragon Variation

Chapter Nineteen

Trigger warnings: Violence and graphic scenes.

Disclaimer: This is a long chapter, longer than my usual chapters. This will be the case for the next few chapters. I contemplated splitting things into two parts but feel as though it is best to keep it altogether. That being said, take your time and read at your own pace :)

Make Them Rue The Fucking Day.

September 2002

Olli can't think back to a time when she could actually call somewhere a home. Not now, not ever. There is no consistency in her life. Only her uncle and Draco.

The Orchard, adjacent to Malfoy Manor, was her home, but not for very long.

When she moved away, her home there was strife with dysfunctionality and bad memories.

During her time at Ilvermorny, she had a handful of friends, but one best friend. Haley. Olli always said she'd come back and visit and keep in-touch, but life seemed to move on without warning, like being swept out with the tide, dragging her further away from land and everything that she knew was safe, until she's stuck in a doldrum. A windless sea, and no land in sight.

She thinks about Haley often, wondering what she might be doing in America; wondering what life is like over there, can't be worse than here, she thinks. I hope you're okay, Haley. She said one night to herself, aimlessly staring out the window at the sky.

The next week, the week of the Opera, her nerves are unshakeable.

It takes an unfathomable strength to not break down. So she feels nothing at all.

Draco made sure that Astoria gave her at least a week off for the Opera, and the events to follow, otherwise he would see to it that Astoria regrets the day she was born.

In turn, Astoria gave her two weeks off, to Olli's dismay. Two weeks to do nothing but sit in a pit of possible spiralling despair. Two weeks to overthink. Two weeks to panic. Two weeks with no routine. Two weeks of a living, lonely hell.

The night of the Opera comes quickly, until it descends right upon her. Crushing her.

Tonight, she will confront her father—finally—and for good.

She tries to think of it as some cathartic revenge, and closure.

But in reality, she is petrified and panicking.

In the shower, she spends a rather lengthy time contemplating just sitting on the shower floor and staying there under the heated spray of water. She runs her fingers through her hair, working in the shampoo and then her vanilla conditioner.

She drags her fingers out her hair and pulls a thick lock of hair with it.

It's happening again. Is what she thinks to herself, trying not to cry looking at the fallen hair from her head.

Her hair is falling again, and it only started now her father is back in the equation.

Olli intends to destroy the equation one day. Obliterate it completely.

After sitting at her mirror and staring at herself in the reflection and hates the fact that all she can see is her mother staring back at her, but more relieved that she looks nothing like her father. She sighs, and gathers herself together and apparates to the cottage, just as they agreed to meet.

She visited Cordelia to put something together for her, the way she did for the Commemoration galas. Cordelia was always good to Olli, but they never spoke during the fittings. It seemed too raw, the only thing they had in common was Narcissa, back when she made Olli's dress for the Commemoration at the Manor, back in her school days—when somehow, life didn't seem so bad.