Disclaimer [that applies to whole story]: None of this belongs to me. The Harry Potter world belongs to one J.K. Rowling, and the characters and what little plot there might appear to be, belongs to Tara Gilespie, who has spawned an entire following with her My Immortal.
Warnings: This fiction contains a borderline/blatant Mary Sue and a generally patchy plot padded with a lot of angst and some dubious explanations to make sense of some things that just didn't make sense in the original. As with the original, there is a lot of swearing, there will be scenes where thingies are put in you-know-what's but described in a manner appropriate to the seventeen year old protagonist, seemingly random male/male relationships and bouts of torture, implied rape and scenes of self harm without steaks. Hence why the rating is an M.
But this is slightly better written. Enjoy!
Chapter 1.
Ebony woke up on her bathroom floor.
Steely blue eyes stared out onto the black and white tiled surface as she willed herself to move. She felt as if she had been repeatedly battered by a mountain troll, who had then proceeded to fill her mouth with bat dung and then used a Fiendfyre spell on her throat before filling her stomach with some sort of unknown slosh. She knew that these were supposed signs of a good night, but at that particular moment in time, she couldn't quite fathom how anyone could think this torture was "fun".
"Ebony Dementia, you open this door right this minute!" Especially not when there was the scary old lady that she called her grandmother banging on the door. "Ebony! Ebony!"
"I'm a little busy here!" Merlin, her throat hurt.
"Ebony!"
"What?"
Ebony was not surprised when her bathroom door blasted open, revealing a very angry Persephone Dementia on the other side, brandishing her wand in a manner that brought comparison to a mental house escapee, a contrast to the prim midnight blue robes she donned. Ebony had often questioned her grandmother's sanity, especially in instances such as these when her grey streaked chestnut hair found its way out its tight bun, framing a wizened face with crazed slate grey eyes that never promised any good - like a lion's mane on a serpent's face.
"I should have known," she began, pulling her granddaughter up with little grace or sympathy by the cuff of the black oversized Weird Sisters t-shirt she had worn the night before. Or earlier...what time was it? "Gallivanting around town with that muck you dare to call decent make up, coming home at all hours dressed like a common whore."
Ebony did not even bother arguing with her that the t-shirt was so large it almost reached her knees, and she was wearing tights so thick they might as well have been trousers. She was busy trying to wrench herself out of the madwoman's hold. "Grandmother, let go of me."
"I'll let go of you when I'm finished with you and not a moment sooner."
Though the woman was old, she had the strength that was not at all uncommon amongst the Pureblood matriarchs who had buried sons, daughters and husbands much too early. Ebony winced as she stumbled into the shower Persephone had just pushed her in, the pain in her ankle adding to the general dull throbbing engulfing her body. She inhaled sharply when a stream of cold water hit her head, shivering when she felt her clothes vanishing from her body. This was certainly one way to sober up.
"W-what...w-what are you doing?" Ebony asked as she watched her grandmother rummaging through the bathroom cupboard, not daring to move from her icy punishment. Her wand was not in reach whereas Persephone's was.
"Ridding you of your impurity."
Ebony cried out in pain as the water turned scalding, but Persephone was on a mission, pushing her granddaughter back as she attempted to escape the burning droplets showering upon her person and brandishing the stiff bristled brush, the kind that she had once scrubbed the halls of Hogwarts with as a teen. Now she would scrub Ebony clean.
"Argh! Grandmother, you're hurting me!" Ebony tried to move away, but her grandmother held her in place, the bristles, though they were soaping under the spray of the water, scraping at her skin. "Please, stop!"
"And let you leave this house reeking of debauchery? You are a Dementia – we are Purebloods, emphasis on the pure." She grabbed Ebony's arm, scrubbing at the teenage doodles of _ loves Ebony that would have easily disappeared with a simple Scourgify, but this was more satisfying. Perhaps then her granddaughter would finally heed her words. Maybe for once, Ebony would learn her lesson.
"You take after the scum that sired you, no doubt. A Mudblood or a blood-traitor at best. You were lucky your father did not have you sent away, taking you as one of his own. And this-" Ebony gasped as she dragged the brush sharply over her painted nails as if wanting to remove the black nail polish by sheer force. "-is how you repay his kindness."
"I didn't-" Ebony was cut off as Persephone abruptly grabbed her other arm, satisfied with her bleeding fingertips. She grit her teeth, swallowing all the hatred she held for the woman who had raised her for the past ten years, if raised was the right word. "I haven't done anything wrong."
"Your breath reeks of Firewhiskey, of course you've done something wrong. Don't think I don't hear about these parties, wayward Pureblood children too busy getting drunk to realise there is a war brewing and that they have duties to fulfil. I hear of the depravity that occurs at those gatherings. I tell them that I have raised you better, that you have already been through your phase and yet here you are."
"Stop it! You're hurting me!" Ebony could no longer tell whether she was crying from the pain, from the harsh words directed at her, because the make up running down her face was stinging her eyes or all of the above. She just wanted it to end.
"I'm hurting you, am I?" Persephone taunted, pulling Ebony's raven locks so she was close to her. "And tell me, dear, what is the difference between this and that sick habit of yours?" Ebony tried to look away as her grandmother lifted one of her arms, where even the red blotches could not hide the intersecting red and white lines, some newer, deeper, longer, than others. "Tell me!"
"Just leave me alone!"
"Not until I'm done." She let go of Ebony's arm and continued to scrub. "Not until I am done."
"Ebony, you are going to be late!"
"I'm almost finished!"
Rolling her eyes, Ebony continued brushing out her hair, contemplating her grandmother's face if she chopped off her waist length black locks and appeared at her graduation with short, cropped hair. Sure, magic could grow it back but magic-grown hair never had the same lustre as natural hair, especially not after one of Persephone's purification attacks. Rinse, lather, repeat was on another level when her grandmother was adamant that she was not clean enough. Besides, even if her grandmother promised to have a heart attack if she cut her hair, Ebony never would. It was the one thing she had inherited from her father – her biological father.
"At least you don't look like a lobster anymore," her reflection offered as Ebony sighed at a persistent red patch on her neck and the decidedly ruddy glow that had settled on her usually translucent skin. "And you can't be mistaken for a filthy blood sucker."
"I'm not going to miss you," Ebony replied, pulling her hair into an acceptable bun and straightening the spring green robes with royal blue lining her grandmother had picked out for her. She hated robes – they did not flatter her slim physique, always in need of something more fitted or perhaps covering up a little less, but perhaps that was why her grandmother insisted she wore them. Who would want to engage in depravity with her when she looked like she was wearing a potato sack? At least the loose material let her skin breathe.
"Ebony!"
"Coming!" Ebony shouted back, wishing her grandmother would just fuck off back to her own Wing and die of old age, well away from her. For a woman who said shouting was uncouth behaviour, she sure did a lot of yelling.
Shrinking her trunk and making sure she was in possession of her wand and money bag, Ebony waved an unnecessary goodbye to the bedroom that was hers during the summer months, wishing that this time next year she would be out of her grandmother's bony grasp. Too bad the only way to do so was turn twenty-one when she would come into half her inheritance, a birthday still three years away, join the grovelling ranks of the Dark Lord and/or marry into a loveless marriage or kill her, because Ebony had her suspicions Persephone was the kind of witch who lived well into her hundreds. Forcing herself to kiss the woman she hated goodbye, making false promises to write regularly, Ebony hoped someone would take pity on humanity and wipe her from the face of the Earth.
The woman was bloody crazy.
After the deafening silence of the Manor punctuated only by her grandmother's screams, Platform 9 ¾ was another world. Moving quickly out of the Apparition Perimeters to avoid collisions, Ebony looked through the crowds of students, both new and returning, and their families there to wish them a good year, searching for a familiar face. Members of her House were creatures of habit, and so Ebony wasn't surprised to find that her fellow seventh year Slytherins were gathered near the carriages towards the end, but never right at the end. It would never do to seem too suspicious by being the furthest away from the Prefect carriages. If she hadn't known them for the past decade, it would still astound her how different her classmates were in public and how they were in private. A smile flitted across Ebony's face as flashes of the night before came back to her.
Before she had decided that she was going to Apparate home, splinching be damned, Blaise Zabini had been holding back Pansy Parkinson's hair as she used one of the expensive vases littered around the Nott family manor to empty the contents of her stomach, and Blaise was never one to be seen coming to anybody's aid nor was Pansy the kind to admit that she could not hold her Firewhiskey. Theodore Nott and Tracey Davis who were now acting as indifferently to each other as they always did, as if they had not disappeared somewhere after an interesting game of Veritas Vel Ausus, and it did not take Hermione Granger to figure out where they could have possibly have gone. Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, now back to being seen and not heard, had been loudly reciting Shakespeare, laughing at how Muggles could even think that they could produce such a literary genius, arguing that he must have been a Squib. And Draco-
"Hi."
Draco had followed her out to the Apparition point on the Nott Estate, at first reasoning that she could not possibly Apparate in her state, that he would fly her home even though he was pretty trolled himself, but then they had spoken of other things as people were inclined to do with alcohol in their blood and stared at the stars out in the sky. What she remembered clearly was that the silver eyes that had looked at her then had not been cold and controlled, they had shone with drunken abandon and the warmth of being with a friend.
"Hi," Ebony replied. Unable to maintain eye contact with the intense Malfoy gaze, she nodded or smiled a small greeting to the group of acquaintances. Theo, Draco and Millicent were the only ones who sometimes swung towards being actual friends. Speaking of Millicent- "Where's Millie?"
"On the train, retching up her breakfast," Pansy answered, almost gleeful of the other girl's misery. "I'm surprised you're still in one piece. Most of us were betting on you getting splinched."
"I didn't pass the Apparition Exam with flying colours by accident."
Pansy rolled her eyes. "The state you were in?"
"Ladies, we'll be here all day if we start comparing the right states you were all in last night," Draco interrupted, his lazy drawl indicating he was bored, before Ebony could even start to defend her levels of sobriety. "I suggest we all get on the train. I can smell Weasley with a hint of Potter."
The group filed in, spreading out in the usual two compartments that they usually occupied. Ebony was the second to last to climb onto the train, Draco insisting that ladies were first, innocently placing a hand on her back as a gentleman-like gesture of aid. He retracted his hand as sharply as the wince Ebony let out at the action. Persephone was also not one for healing her handiwork.
Draco frowned. "Ebony..."
"What?" It came out sharper than intended, and she wished to swallow back the words as his face hardened in response.
"Nothing."
Without so much as another glance, he gracefully slipped into to the compartment housing Pansy, knowing full well that she would never sit there. Ebony would rather spend another month with her grandmother. With a sigh, she decided instead to walk down the length of the train hoping to catch sight of her best friend, who had had the audacity not to be Sorted into Slytherin.