𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐃𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐓| 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐨 𝐌𝐚𝐥𝐟𝐨𝐲✔️

𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐘𝐎𝐍𝐄|𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑

MARA WILLIAMS

The train ride back to Hogwarts was desolate. My only company came in the soft snores emanating from Percy's cage. Only one other student had boarded the train, a Ravenclaw girl who judging by the way she'd swayed around the platform, and the pair of furry pink sunglasses she wore, could only have been Luna Lovegood.

She sat nowhere near me after that though, we'd exchanged polite smiles as we had stepped onto the train and then parted ways to sit in separate carriages, living in separate worlds.

I'd stared out the window for the entirety of the journey, thinking about everything that had happened. The hurt was just as raw as it had been the previous day.

After Viktor, I swore I'd never let my guard down again... I tried to build my walls so high that nobody would ever surpass them, and yet somehow, one look at him and everything I'd worked to had to prevent came crashing down, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. All good things must come to an end.

With Viktor I'd been so blind sighted by his love I didn't have chance to realise the damage he was doing to me. Breaking my body. Slowly shattering my soul, piece by piece.

By the time I noticed just how fractured we'd become it was already too late, he'd already been with another, he'd already struck me one too many times. Realisation wouldn't fix my broken bones, it wouldn't save us, for nothing could.

-But with Draco I knew right from the start that this was a love that would only end badly, after all he was incapable of real feelings, only anger and angst and lust. Yet still I yearned for him, even now my body cried out for the warmth he gave.

I'd loved him in the same way I'd once loved fire. Devastatingly beautiful, and destined to wreak havoc upon us all. It was always just a matter of time before I got burned, and I threw myself into that fire willingly, over and over and over again.
Each time hoping that the result would be different than the last but it never was. It still hurt. I still cried. I was still left wanting something more.

It seemed like everybody I'd ever cared for was destined to leave me or hurt me. Sometimes both. My body was a mess of scars, one for every agony I'd ever felt, Draco was the only one who hadn't given me a permanent reminder, only the bruises on my hips and wrists that still lingered. I stared down at the faded white lines on the back of my left hand, I must not talk back, even Umbridge had left her mark.

Pansy and Millicent's scars were not so kind, jagged and unruly they had settled to pale and uneven, just as ugly and vile as the girls themselves.

The castle seemed almost eerily empty as I returned to the dorms, only a few stragglers wandering the castle like ghosts.

I'd laid splayed out on my back on the bed, staring at the red canopy ceiling and at some point I must have fallen asleep.
-For when I opened my eyes I was back in my old house, in my old life, not yet torn my fire and destroyed by hate.

My father hadn't always been the monster that had sat opposite me just a few days ago, ravaged by the Lycanthrope curse. The man I'd once known had been kind, long before he'd been controlled by the moon. But he'd feel upon hard times, and in that darkness he'd found what he deemed to be a greater cause, something worth fighting for.

He sold his soul to the devil himself, and in return he let him live, his only ask was dedication. My father had never much been one for loyalty, he was known as such, by the strange women that warmed my mother's side of the bed, and the friends he'd loved and left behind, spreading their secrets to the wind like foreign dust.

To prove his loyalty to The Dark Side he'd cut all ties to anything good a pure. He'd murdered my mother and then deliberately gone and gotten himself bitten by a werewolf, a permanent curse pulsing through his wicked veins.

He'd forever bound himself to be a slave to the moon, and in doing so proved his worth to The Dark Lord. A man willing to damn his own life for the greater cause, to make himself stronger than the rest, was a man worth having on his side.

My mother held on to my fathers arm, clinging desperately to the shirt that was rolled up to his elbow, exposing the dark mark on his forearm. I didn't know exactly what it meant back then, but my God I knew now.
She held on so tightly, as if clutching at the last remaining shreds of the man she once knew, the man she once loved, and if she let him go, she'd lose him forever. "-You're tearing this family apart Fenrir!"

But my father was already gone. You could see it in his eyes, he'd lost the little love he'd once felt for us, what seemed like so many moons ago. Now all that remained was hollow and empty and cold. He was nothing more than a shell of the man he once was.

My father tore his arm from my mother's grasp, pressing his face close to hers as he snarled, "He wants you Nora, he knows you're both here, you can't deny him much longer!"

"You told him?" She cried, eyes suddenly wide with fear, "Please... Please tell me you didn't turn your own family in to him!"

I edged to peer a little more around the door frame to keep them in my view as my father backed my mother up against the wall. "No one evades The Dark Lord forever, he wants you to join us, both of you..."

"-But she's just a child! What use could she possibly be to him!..." She shook her head, glaring fiercely up at him, "No, I will not let her become apart of that, I won't!"

"-You will." My father growled, yet still my mother refused to yield. She was stronger than he would ever be. "He's beginning questioning my loyalty to the dark side... And you know damn well what he does to traitors!"

"So what? You want to hand over your daughter just to save your own skin?" She yelled, a fiery fury raging in her eyes. "You're a fucking coward!"

The weight of his strike echoed throughout the night, like a stab through my heart, I watched in horror as her head flew back with the force and she was thrown to the floor. I didn't mean for the cry to escape my lips, I couldn't help it. "-Mother!"

The monsterous man's eyes were instantly on me as I ran to her side and she was already fumbling to her feet as she whispered to me. "I'm okay Mara, but pack your things, we're leaving."

She ushered me from the room, but right as we levelled with the doorway there was a shout.
"I won't let you take my daughter away from me!" My father thundered, yanking my mother away from me by her wrist. She turned on him, undefeated and defiant as ever. "-And I won't let you ruin her with your ways!"

I could see his thick hand tightening around her wrist like a manacle, but she refused to so much a wince. "She will be one of us... Just you wait and see."

"Over my dead body." She hissed through gritted teeth as she ripped her arm from his grasp, and to which he let out a sickening laugh. "...If you wish."

***
QOTD- HELP ME DECIDE THE MC'S NAME IN MY NEXT T.R FIC ~ THE AGONY OF LOVING YOU
Vote in the comments below which name you like the most, or comment one of your own (Must begin with N or have some way of her Nickname being Nagini-you see where I'm going w this ;)
1) Nora-Gene
2)Niaomi-Grace
-TFOA