NO MORE A PRETENDER~ {The Lestrange Daughter #3}

𝟏𝟎. Status-Quo

Valentine honestly wasn't sure if she was dreading returning to Hogwarts or if she wanted to do nothing more. Hogwarts had always meant something to her, even back in the days before she met Dumbledore and started this journey. It was a place full of children like her, a place where she could learn and finally use her magic. And most importantly, it was someplace away from Lucius. She always thought that it would be the perfect opportunity to show Draco how horrid his father really was but then her life and its circumstances took over. 

She was able to do some small things. Lucius hadn't laid a hand on Draco in years and she wouldn't take that for granted but it wasn't enough. Draco still looked to him, still idolized him even though he was practically a pariah amongst the Death Eaters and awful human being. It made her want this all over even quicker. Then she could get rid of Lucius for good. 

But this wasn't the time to be thinking of Lucius Malfoy. She and Draco would be off to Kings Cross Station in due time and while she felt divided on the subject, Draco was damn near desperate. 

He sat on the fine couch in the main sitting room, hands gripping the cushions beside him, eyes on his lap. He had barely spoken all morning and had followed Valentine around like a lost dog. She had to get dressed in her bathroom because she didn't have the heart to tell him to get lost. Liam had left the day before last, staying with the Zambini's who would meet them at the station. 

It was so normal, so pedestrian that it hardly seemed real. Standing by their trunks, uniforms, and school books inside. In the middle of a war. To return to a school that would very likely be a world away from the one they left or rather ran from. Valentine could still see the flash of light, the skull, and serpent in the sky, and the sight of Hagrid's burning hut. It was so clear like it had only happened moments ago, like she and Draco were still running hand and hand through the Forbidden Forest, changing the course of everything. 

She had been pacing back and forth as Draco sat, too far trapped in his own mind to take much notice when she slumped into the spot beside him. She nudged his knee with hers and he jumped. 

"If you don't stop clenching your jaw like that, you're going to give yourself a toothache." She warned offhandedly.

"I don't care." Draco sighed and leaned back beside her. 

"Well, I do. Who do you think will have to listen to you complain?" 

"I'll try not to." He shrugged unhelpfully.

"Right," Valentine scoffed. "Draco, you've never been capable of such a thing in your life."

"I suppose."

Valentine suppressed a sigh of her own and glanced over at their trunks. Over the summer, Draco had eventually managed to find a sort of complacency towards everything going on around him, adapting to their current situation. The others had done the same. It's was amazing how humans could acclimate themselves to even worse scenarios than this. They weren't happy about it, they weren't thriving, they weren't coming out of this unscathed, but it certainly wasn't killing them. Not yet, anyway. But returning to Hogwarts changed all of that. It meant reacclimating themselves all over again in a place so familiar yet so predictably foreign. 

For Valentine, it was just one more hurdle and nowhere the most difficult she had scaled. She could handle this, but she worried about the others. She wondered briefly if she had ever not been worried about them, even from the day they met, knowing what she did. 

A fat lot worrying ever did for me. It's a miracle I'm not completely grey with enough wrinkles to put McGonagall to shame. 

"Alright, do you two have everything?" Narcissa asked as she entered.