Davina | hp. ✓

36 | Unlike Thy Parents

DRACO AND THEO had witnessed Davina do many bizarre, nefarious, and hilarious things throughout the years. She had teamed up with Potter and his friends on numerous occasions in order to serve the greater good. She had thrown a wild, party for the sixth and seventh years when she was only twelve years old and skyrocketed to the top of every popularity list in each of the houses. She had set off glitter bombs in Professor Flitwick's office, jinxed all of the brooms on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team to plummet into the black lake, and befriended a few centaurs in the Forbidden Forest during her many stints in detention. Her hilarious, mischievous streak had evolved into risking-taking and nefarious illegal activities in her later years, and she often kept those around her on their toes because of it. Draco and Theo thought that they had seen all of it -- everything that could ever possibly impress them -- but they were sorely mistaken. 

They had seen Davina fight countless battles, endure horrid torture that would cripple any person, and commit the most substantial sacrifices in the name of love and morality. None of that compared to the defiance, cunning, and strength of character she displayed on the night they returned to Malfoy Manor with Lucius in tow. 

They stood with their backs to the windows as Narcissa knelt in front of a seated Lucius. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she rested her hand on his lap, trying to get something out of him, and Draco glowered down on the scene with disdain and contempt. He figured that he should have expected it by now. His mother was devoted to their father to a fault, even when he raised his hand to strike her or treated her like shit most of the time. She was weak. He used to wonder if perhaps he inherited her weakness,  but Davina showed him otherwise. Her faith in him never wavered, and he was not only a strong wizard but a skilled deatheater -- as horrible as the title was, it meant that he was advanced in the dark arts, experienced on the battlefield and in covert operations, and so much more which they often didn't get credit for. Davina showed him that her could become powerful and resilient, but he got there on his own -- without corrupting himself as his father had. 

Theo stood with a hardened, impassive expression. He watched the almost non-existent exchange between Lucius and Narcissa with a different kind of contempt. Davina and Draco were raised by their toxicity and abuse, but he witnessed firsthand who Davina was before they sought to ruin her. He saw what the years of abuse, neglect, and imprisonment had done to the spunky girl he once knew. Sure, she had never lost herself, but she now came with sharp edges and molten eyes that she wouldn't have ever needed otherwise. 

Davina sat sideways in an armchair with her stiletto boots angled towards the fireplace, nursing a glass of bourbon that she had snatched up on the way in. She stared at the burning embers in the fireplace as the light cast strange, dark shadows across her face. Her eyes gleamed with a sort of nostalgic madness her parents could not see, but Theo could. Of course he could. No one -- except perhaps Draco -- could see what all of this shit was doing to her behind the facade she put up. Sure, it was authentic, but it also hid plenty of other authentic emotions that she couldn't help but feel: betrayal, pain, frustration, hatred. However, she spent years upon years perfecting the expressions of impassivity and developing the hard shell of steel that eventually molded into her skin. 

Lucius was paying no attention to Narcissa because he was staring at Davina the entire time -- or rather, at the side of her. She refused to look at or speak to any of them since she walked into the vicinity with her cuffed father in tow. He stared at her with disdain in his eyes and a slight scowl on his lips, but the apprehension that marred the rest of his body prevented him from making the first move. 

She seemed to sense his incessant glaring because she lowered the rim of the glass from her lips and laughed with amusement. Lucius balled his fist on the arm of the sofa, popping his knuckles. Theo took one look at the masked discomfort on Draco face, and it took all he had not to beat the shit out of the man right there. He wondered how many times he had done that before he readied himself to strike one of his kids or his wife.