The Houses Competition Round Nine
House: Gryffindor
Class: Herbology
Standard
Prompt: hurt/comfort
Word Count: 2,078 (wordcounter .net)
Platform Nine and Three Quarters feels like it is full to bursting at its seams with luggage and children, families and pets. It is a big, moving, living thing, and Tracy is just one girl with no one there to help her with her stuff or tell her where to go.
There are too many people here, the ball of sickness lodged in Tracy's chest whispers to her, like a twisted little conscience. There are too many people here, and you don't know any of them. What are you even doing here?
She doesn't have an answer for the whispers, so she doesn't even try to find one. She just promises herself that she'll make it onto the train before any breakdown starts. She can at least get that far.
Still though, she feels like the crowd itself is trying to keep her away, pushing and shoving her tiny eleven year old body around easily, like a mouse to a tiger. She only reaches where she wants to be after a lot of struggling, and already her lungs ache with the effort.
There are so many people, and she is just alone.
She is early enough to beat most of the other children onto the train, but not early enough to easily find the empty compartment she needs to properly relax, so instead she sits and smiles awkwardly at the light-haired, pale purple-robed girl who sits with her, and then she stares out the window for the entire ride to Scotland.
xXx
"Slytherin!" the hat yells after Tracey tells it she wants to be like the Pureblood children she sees on the streets in Diagon, who have both their parents and wear pretty clothes and never have to worry about food or who will see them out of school at midday on a weekday.
She wants to be that happy, to have that power over others, to demand happiness instead of just accepting whatever she can get.
She sits beside girls who already know one another and who never bother to tell her their names. She learns them only by listening to their conversations.
xXx
"I've known a few half-bloods. They're better than mudbloods," Pansy says at the breakfast table, side-eyeing Tracey, and it's all Tracey can do not to eat everything in sight. She's starving. She always is.
"Don't use that word, Pansy," a girl named Daphne says, like it's the word that is the problem, like anyone here cares. There's not a mudblood at their table. Tracey is the closest they have, and she is only half abomination.
"It's just a word," she says, quiet but clear, so only a few can hear her.
Pansy nods and gives her an approving sort of smile, while Daphne stays silent.
Tracey smiles back and tries not to think of all the people behind her who she can't see, and all of the things they might do to her if she ever lets her guard down.
xXx
"They'll hate you," her father whispers behind her, voice cracking. "They'll hate you, but I never will. Only I can ever love you, Tracey. You're cursed to be unlovable, but here I am."
She shouldn't have let him sneak up on her like that. She'd been sitting at the kitchen table, trying to feed herself, and distracted. Now his fingers are digging into her shoulders like knives pinning her in place.
"Stay with me, Tracey. You look so much like your mother. Don't leave like her." The comparison is like a sharp accusation.
Her mother had died. She didn't leave willingly. But Tracey would.
xXx
"That mudblood is so annoying!" Pansy spits in the dorm room after classes end for the day, face still sour since the Granger girl had once again stolen all the attention in class.
Tracey doesn't hate the other girl. She draws the teachers' attention so that it rarely focuses on other students, and for that, Tracey is grateful. However she is frustrating to listen to because she just keeps talking, and she steals too many points that could have gone to Slytherin. So Tracey makes a soft noise of agreement, and out of habit checks her bed before lying down.
Nothing sharp. Nothing poisonous. No one under the sheets waiting to grab her and call her Martha.
"Language," Daphne corrects, even though no one is there with them. Millicent is still downstairs, and Polyphemus has detention for starting a fight in Herbology.
"I think we need to teach her a lesson." Pansy says, ignoring Daphne completely. "Besides, Tracey's getting affected by this! She needs help from the teachers. You know she doesn't know as much as she should. No offense, Trace. I know you're trying."
"None taken," she mumbles and decides to think of how nice it is that Pansy is using her shortcomings as ammunition towards another girl who isn't Tracey, and not to think of why she's so far behind her peers in the first place.
It had been hard to get ready for Hogwarts when she had to hide that she was going from her father.
xXx
"Tracey, if you touch that pudding without first using the napkin in your lap, I will stop speaking to you," Daphne says over dinner, and Tracey obeys.
She'd never technically asked Daphne to teach her manners, but she's relieved that Daphne's decided to do it anyways. She's learned more of table manners from Daphne's soft scolding in her half year at Hogwarts than the rest of her life combined. And she's learned to braid her hair, too.
She can't remember if her mother ever had. But she'd never willingly let her father touch her hair for that long. Besides, a braid would be an easy thing to grab onto around him. Tied up hair is a luxury only allowed at Hogwarts.
xXx
"You can stop following them around like a dog, you know. No one will ever like you no matter how much you listen to them if you never bother to grow a personality. You're like a copy of a person," Granger spits at Tracey one day after she has stood there watching Pansy bully the other girl, and Tracey can't help it.
She flinches.
She's not a copy. She's not her mother. She's not Martha.
"I hardly think you need to criticise Tracey's personality for being a pet!" Pansy spits in front of her, all puffed up like an angry bird. "Have you ever even had a normal relationship with an adult, or is it always sucking up? Tracey's just respectful, which the likes of you wouldn't recognise, mudblood!"
Daphne makes her usual shushing gesture at the word, but it seems like a half-hearted habit, like she's not actually trying to stop Pansy now.
Polyphemus looks both amused and eager to turn this into a bigger spectacle than anyone else wants it to be. "Also I think she's got you beat in the personality department. Her interests don't stop at ink on paper. Ever try looking up, Granger? Eye contact helps with the whole finding friends thing, since unlike Trace, you're severely lacking in that department."
Granger has friends. She, Ronald Weasley, and Harry Potter have been inseparable since their first year. But Tracey still feels strangely happy to listen to her own friends verbally attack someone in her name.
xXx
"Get back here, Martha," her father snarls, and his hand barely misses her head. Instead she feels a yank at her hair, but she rips away easily. The suitcase bangs against her scrabbling legs and then into the tray of ash, sending it billowing into the air. She doesn't need to see anymore; she's already got the floo powder in her other fist.
She's only done this once. She barely leaves the house. She doesn't have any friends, doesn't know anyone, doesn't entirely know where she's going.
But she really needs to go.
"Bye," she hisses back, malicious, savouring the look of fury and grief on her father's face, barely visible through the smoke, as she drops the powder. His screams ring in her ears as the floo system works, and she disappears.
She's out. She has at least a year. She doesn't know what she's doing, but she's out, and she's going to keep it that way, no matter what she has to do or what price she has to pay.
She won't die in that house too.
xXx
"Do you want to come home with me again this time?" Pansy asks, as their OWLs come to an end and the end of the school year approaches.
"Or me," Millicent says. She's not too subtly staring at Polyphemus' cousin Opodiphthera across the room, and Polly swats her with a quill.
"Please, choose Millie. I don't want her coming over to spy on him." Polly begs, and Tracey laughs.
"Sorry, I think I'll stick with Pansy," she says, and it's not just because Pansy is the one with her fingers in Tracey's hair, her head in Pansy's lap as her friend puts tiny braids into Tracey's brown hair.
Pansy is the only one who knows why she can't go home. Pansy knows everything.
"You'll have me all summer, then," Millicent tells Polyphemus.
xXx
Tracey, the letter begins, but Tracey can see where it originally said another name before her father erased it.
She doesn't read the rest of it. She knows what it says. Her father says the same things every time. Threats, pleas, bargains, promises. He'll die without her. He'll hurt her. He'll choke her. He'll let her come back if she promises to never leave again, if she agrees to a punishment of his choosing. He'll never touch her again. He'll kill her and put her out of her unhappy, unlovable misery.
"Burn it," Pansy says the moment she sees the handwriting on the envelope. She has has comforted Tracey when she's crying because of that handwriting many times before. They all have.
Christmas break is always the hardest. He thinks they should be together for Christmas.
Polyphemus actually does burn it. She snatches the letter like Tracey doesn't have a death grip on the thick parchment, and a quick incendio later, she swishes the ashes of it into the fireplace with her wand.
"I have to go," Polly says then, actually looking sad about it. Six years ago, Tracey couldn't have imagined someone being sad to leave her presence. No one sane, at least. "Leo and I made plans for Christmas eve. We're going out to dinner."
"Go. Have fun kissing your boyfriend in dark corners."
Polly makes a face but denies nothing. "You guys too. Don't get Pansy pregnant," she tells Tracey, and darts from the room before Pansy can land a curse.
It's quiet. Awkward, but not quite uncomfortable. Pansy is sitting cross legged on her bed, and Tracey is still standing by the window that the letter had come from. But she closes the distance to sit next to Pansy, who moves to lean against her. Both of them are completely comfortable around one another. Before she went to Hogwarts, Tracey couldn't have imagined feel so relaxed around another person. She could barely stay in her own skin as a child. Now she never wants to move from by Pansy's side.
"You're better than him," Pansy whispers into the silence, and Tracey's heart tightens like it's dying without her. "You're not him, you're not your mother, and you're not unlovable. I love you. I'm safe."
"I know," Tracey says, and she actually does. Pansy may hurt others, but she will never try to hurt her.
None of them will.
xXx
"Live with me," Millie says the day before they graduate.
Tracey still isn't sure where she will go. She doesn't want to just freeload off her girlfriend forever. Millie's offer is perfect.
"Daddy's paying for my first place, and I can count on you to lie to his face and tell him no, no boys have been around at all. Also I'll be lonely and need a pet to keep me company," Millicent explains, as she paws through her clothes, looking for something to wear tomorrow so she can pack the rest.
"She's moved up from pet. Shared group familiar, now., Pansy yells from the bathroom, where she's packing her many, many things in there.
"Perfect. Now you're magic-bound to lie for me."
Tracey laughs. "It sounds perfect."
"Good. No scratching up the furniture though, or you're out."