Word Count: 657
Challenge/Competition: Quidditch European Cup
Prompts: Write a minimum 600 word story, using your given era and the prompts assigned to that era. Era: Trio, Prompts: Palm, fire, luck. Must be mainly the adventure, tragedy or friendship genre.
Warnings: Implied suicide and self harm.
Disclaimer: I don't claim to own Harry Potter, it's all JKR's.
Note: Thank you to my wonderful friend Tara, for helping me out with this at the last minute - you really are a star! Also just in case it isn't obvious for everyone, the italics are Astoria, all from their previous conversation. Also, a huge thanks to Schermionie for helping me out with this, you are officially a grammar god!
"Oh come on Daphne, cutting… really? And I thought your attention seeking couldn't get any more obvious." Her sister's spiteful words slice through her skull and tears sting the back of her eyes. Things are so bleak now, tears don't lend any sort of assistance to her pain… nothing does.
The capsules are right there in front of her, shiny white, enticing her with promises of nothing… of peace, of finality. Thirty-two of them and she's finished – gone forever.
"Your dirty little secrets are out. No more palming me off with your pathetic excuses – you're supposed to be a Slytherin."
She's been imprisoned in this universe of callous souls for far too long, and her bindings are just too constricting now… they've morphed from elastic bands into metal chains in the short space of sixteen years, carrying both her expectations and her labels. It's suffocating and toxic; it's heavy claws that find their way around her heart and just squeeze everything out of it until there's no way she can feel a thing.
Dangerously glittering obsidian eyes… "Wanted Daddy to care? Well, he still doesn't."
Maybe it was what she had wanted, but she had never expected to get it. In fact, she had never expected things to go this far. But it's a cycle, no beginning and no end, holding a dizzying repetitiveness.
Forcing herself to open and close her eyes, to take a moment, to live and to breathe, is challenging in itself. She slides along her plush bedspread, taking fast and shaky breaths as she does so.
"You can hardly be unhappy… you had it all. You're Lady Luck." Astoria's hiss echoes in her skull, dripping with malice. She can hardly shut it out now, the voice that's now driven Daphne to… this.
Daphne leans her thumping skull on the headboard, closing her sore eyes. Lady Luck is definitely not something she would use to define herself – pushover Daphne, too-pretty-for-her-own-good Daphne, strange Daphne, manipulative Daphne, secret whore Daphne, maybe one or all of these, just as everyone else had believed.
Or, a mother who died when she was young, being her father's biggest disappointment, a sister who despises her, and a boyfriend who cheats on her with her sister… yes, she smiles cynically, she's most certainly Lady Luck, she really has it all.
"When you play with fire, you always get burnt. Always."
This has never made any sense to Daphne - was it a hint at their shared interest in Draco? Was it something deeper than that? She is unsure on how she is supposed to know, if she's honest… but then again, Astoria has always been cryptic.
"If you're so damn depressed, why don't you just kill yourself? ... Exactly; you won't."
Oh, she has considered it. There was always that dark thought embedded in her twisted mind – who would care if you were gone? Why not? Gone works, she can be gone. All she's ever really wanted is to just disappear.
Her head isn't screwed on straight – okay, she knows that. All she wants now is to leave, transfer, and warp herself to another galaxy. For everything to be confessed, so she can hand over the guilt and error and resentment to someone else. In her gut there is a beast; she overhears it scraping away at the inside of her ribs. Even if she dumps the memories they will stay with her – stain her.
"I'm done with you. Done."
As if Astoria wasn't already done. Honestly, Daphne's done too… she's ready to leave, it doesn't scare her anymore. It promises something that life can't – peace.
One by one, she slips the pills into her mouth, swallowing without a second thought. Thirty-two on, she's on her way out. No one cared enough to notice she was drowning; no one will care now. This is it, no more incoherent beginnings and endings, no more cycle, no more repetitiveness, no more.
Done.
A/N- So hopefully you guys like this, I know I haven't written anything like it in a while. I was going to explore Daphne and Astoria's friendship, but I know I've hinted at this sort of relationship between the two of them in my Daphne/Blaise stories, so I ended up delving into that slightly more. Please review with your thoughts, but don't favourite without a review! Thank you :)