Chapter 4- The Psychological Complexities of Dawn
Everything Belongs to J.K Rowling, not me.
From Dawn Parkinson's position at the enormous Beauxbatons table, she could see almost everyone's face. Those she couldn't see were all Beauxbatons students, so she therefore assumed that they looked the exact same as all the other strangers around her, happy and beautiful. Of course, this was the exact opposite of what she usually was surrounded by. On any normal occasion, she had people like Malcolm Baddock or her sister, Pansy and her friends around.
Pansy's friends had caused Dawn a lot of trouble during the summer. Pansy, her boyfriend, Draco Malfoy, and his two cronies, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, were all Death Eaters. One night, they had decided to take Dawn on a raid of a Muggle populated area. During this particular raid, the Dark Lord himself had joined them.
Half way through the raid, the Order of the Phoenix appeared to stop them. Dawn, realizing the danger, quickly climbed the nearest tree and watched the battle. She was amazed at how experienced even the youngest members of the Order were, but the Death Eaters continued to hold their ground. She had not known why they were raiding that area until one of the front doors of the nearby houses opened and Colin Creevey came out. During his last year at Hogwarts, he had proved to be one of the best Defense Against the Dark Arts students, aside from Harry Potter the year before, for almost a half century and she knew the Dark Lord had plans to kill him and anyone else who tried to protect him.
Colin, who had a rather odd body, being tall and very skinny, did not look like a threat. He was still known to goof off, and to treat Harry like a God. In fact, Colin had only just graduated that June from Hogwarts and probably did not know his N.E.W.T. scores yet.
Dawn noticed Colin turn for a second in the doorway and say something, but she could neither see the other person nor hear what Colin yelled. Colin closed the door and jumped into the battle.
Dawn could no longer tell what Death Eaters were fighting whom. The hoods and masks made everything very difficult. The one duel she could see was Harry Potter and the Dark Lord. This seemed it could go on forever; it had already been going on for quite a few hours. Finally, a great turn of events arrived in the form of a red stun beam, which hit the Dark Lord in the chest. This had come from Colin, looking quite ridiculous standing all bruised and apparently about to collapse under his weight.
"My Lord," Dawn immediately recognized this voice as her sister's. Pansy pulled off her mask and did the unthinkable; she pointed her wand at Colin, whose back was turned to her, and yelled "Avada Kadavra!"
Colin fell; so did the Dark Lord. Harry had had just enough time with the distraction to shoot the Killing Curse at him.
Fear filled the heads of the Death Eaters. All of them Disapparated, leaving Dawn in a tree. She stayed there for hours, until after all the clean up and after all the Order had left. Dumbledore, weakened from a fight years earlier, had come to inform Colin's family of what happened, and all the bodies, five others had died in the fight were taken away.
Dawn had been in the tree for a total of 12 hours when she finally let herself down. She pulled off the mask she had been wearing and dropped it on the ground. She had never wanted to go on the raid, but Pansy, Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle had insisted she see the final battle of the war. She saw it, and she was on the losing side.
Dawn had never been near a death before that. She did not know how sheltered her life had been until then. She checked to make sure no one was looking, and she held her wand in the air for a moment. Within seconds, the purple Knight Bus pulled up to the curb and she climbed in.
"Hello?" Dawn called entering her house after the bus finally dropped her off. "Is anyone home?"
"Dawny," Pansy cried running down the stairs. She had changed into her nightclothes as if she hadn't even realized that Dawn had not come home until that moment, which was probably exactly what happened.
"Thank you for leaving me in a tree," Dawn said as she saw Malfoy poke his head out of Pansy's bedroom door.
"I don't remember ever telling you to go into a tree," Pansy said.
"I figured I might like to stay out of the fight once the Order arrived," Dawn said, "did you think I should fight? I would have gotten killed."
"It would have been an honorable death," Malfoy said coming out of the room wearing only boxers. "No one would have marked you as a chicken for hiding in a tree."
"Maybe I don't want to die yet," Dawn yelled. "Maybe I don't want to be evil either. Maybe I'm fine not on any side."
"You don't mean that, Dawn," Pansy cried. "It's just the shock of the loss."
"It isn't," Dawn yelled, "and you killed a wizard who had his back turned to you. Do you call that honorable? You'll be sent to Azkaban for that for life. Everyone saw it was you."
"Dawn, that's quite enough," Pansy whimpered.
"No, it's not enough," Dawn said, her voice a little louder and higher than before. Dawn was about to cry. "You're a murderer now, Pansy. And all in the name of a dead man, or, no, he's not even a man…"
"Shut up," Malfoy yelled. "Stupefy!"
Dawn screamed as the red beam flew out of his wand and hit her. She didn't remember anything between getting hit and waking up a few days later in her bed. Pansy was sitting in the corner of the room writing a parchment and hushing the owl on her shoulder.
"Take that to Draco," Pansy said rolling up the parchment and tying it to the owl's leg.
"I hope that's a letter to tell him not to come around here anymore," Dawn said.
"Of course not, Sweetie," Pansy said, hardly realizing that Dawn was just waking up. "Why would I tell him not to come round anymore?"
"He stunned me," Dawn yelled.
"You did say some cruel things Dawn," Pansy replied.
"What I said was true," Dawn yelled. "It wasn't any of those bloody lies the Dark Lord was feeding you."
"Dawn," Pansy yelled, but the door slowly opened and a rather squat house elf walked in with a tray of breakfast for Dawn.
"Get out of here you bloody elf," Pansy yelled, "we're not finished talking."
"Yes we are," Dawn said, "and I want my breakfast, Squanders. Bring it here."
"Dawn, I'm your older sister."
"And I haven't eaten in a while," Dawn said. "I'm hungry. Get out of my room."
"You don't ever eat," Pansy yelled. "Look at you."
"Just because the fat genes run through some of the family doesn't mean I got them," Dawn said.
Pansy screamed for a moment and threw a vase of flowers across the room so it crashed against the wall. She then stomped out of the room.
"Don't just stand there," Dawn yelled at the scared looking house elf, "clean it up. That's what we keep you for."
Dawn, who hadn't eaten anything in a few days, finished eating before the house elf was ready to take the tray away. To spare having to watch Squanders clean, Dawn left the room, then the house all together. She walked down the block to the house of a fellow Slytherin, Leo Pasts.
Leo had just shaved his head, and Dawn could hardly catch herself and keep from laughing when Leo opened the door. Now, more than ever before, he would not fit in with the other Slytherins who he so loved to torment and laugh at.
"Where did your hair go?" Dawn asked before any sort of greeting.
"Long didn't suit me," Leo replied. "I chopped it off, but the little I had left didn't suit me either, so I got a razor and shaved it off in the sink. Me mum wasn't too happy about that either."
"Has there been any news lately?" Dawn asked. "I've been incapacitated the last few days and I have finally realized that I live a horribly sheltered life."
"There was the downfall of the Dark Lord," Leo said. "So nothing big."
Dawn smiled. It was so like him to pretend that the downfall of the strongest dark wizard of all time was something that could just be waved off and ignored.
"Are you going to be trying to get into the Triwizard Tournament?" Leo asked. "I hear it's at Beauxbatons, which is in France. You can finally connect with your…"
"My bastard of a father?" Dawn asked. "No way. He left me to live with my mother and her husband, no reason for me to seek him out, even if I happen to be in France."
"You learned French so you could seek him out and call on him," Leo reminded her.
"That was before certain events of the last few days," Dawn said. "I don't need to know him to know I'm not truly loved by anyone I'm related to."
"Your family adores you," Leo was shocked she said such a thing. "Everyone in the world adores you, including your sister and mum. If you need me to prove it, I can."
"No thank you," Dawn said, afraid of what he would do. "Just let me believe what I want for once, okay?"
"What ever you want, Princess," Leo said as he stood up from the ground he had been sitting on. He smiled down on her, and Dawn knew that he would somehow prove to her that her family would jump in front of a rampaging dragon to protect her…
They just wouldn't climb a tree and help her down.
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