The Other Side

5. Tracey Davis- Acceptance

Tracey Davis, just as all the other children in her father's world, had received her Hogwarts letter at the age of eleven. Her mother had been firmly against her going and had insisted that she did not want her daughter to be a part of the magical world.

Her father, who was a very submissive man, had agreed to his wife's demands and had almost confirmed their refusal of her seat at Hogwarts, when Tracey had thrown a fit, insisting that magic and blood ran through her veins in equal parts.

Her tantrum not having been enough to convince her mother, her emotions ran out of control, resulting in a burst of angry accidental magic so strong that it brought the roof down and burnt the uppermost floor of their summer mansion.

That had caused her mother, her own mother, to be so completely afraid of her that she shipped her off to Hogwarts as soon as she could. In fact, she spent most of her Christmas and summer holidays at her father's sister's house because her mother couldn't stand to be around her, frightened that, the next time, her daughter wouldn't damage just the house but, rather, would target her magic at her mother.

Their relationship would never be the same.

That was why, when Tracey had finally gone to Hogwarts and had been Sorted into Slytherin, her only wish had been to be accepted.

She had followed Pansy Parkinson around like a lost, desperate little puppy, doing as she did, behaving as she did, even adjusting her personality to match the other girl's slightly bitchier, more distant nature.

Tracey had been one of those Slytherins who believed in the Dark Lord. This was quite largely due to her mother.

Her mother was a Muggle and her mother was a simple, rather idiotic woman who had turned her back on her own daughter. This had led her to the conclusion that all Muggles were of the same ilk, of the same foolish, uninformed, unworthy kind.

But, more than any other factor, it had been the fact that everyone else seemed to believe in the Dark Lord that had caused Tracey to believe.

Some members of that illogical group, Dumbledore's Army, had approached her in her seventh year, wondering if she'd like to join because she was a half-blood.

She had turned them away the moment she had heard that term. On the inside, she couldn't claim to passionately believe and nor was she completely and utterly faithful to the cause for she had certain doubts about it, unlike the most steadfast followers, but, on the outside, she had to magnify the beliefs she did have and make it bigger, make it seem as if she was as firm a believer as Bellatrix Lestrange herself, who was considered the epitome of faithful. She had to quash whatever doubts she had and remind herself that they were insignificant, that the cause was true.

It did not matter much to the others that she was a half-blood-- if the master himself was one, then there was no need for the persecution of the servant for the same. As long as she believed and as long as she wanted to preserve the sanctity of magical blood, then she was accepted.

Acceptance was the loveliest feeling she had ever felt.

Acceptance was a feeling that made you seem as if you were a part of something bigger, something greater than yourself, that you had people on your side who you could trust and who trusted you.

Yes, acceptance was sweet and there was nothing she wouldn't do for acceptance. She was willing to go gladly to the lengths of torture and killing because it meant that she was accepted by the Dark Lord's cult, the members of which she wanted acceptance from.

In the beginning, during her first and second years, she had been the odd one out, the one the girls in her dorm hadn't really acknowledged due to her blood status. Then, Pansy, noticing her prowess had stopped Millicent Bulstrode from bullying her, stating that Tracey's blood hadn't been tainted much by Muggles. Pansy had later told her that she liked Tracey and it hadn't been her mastery of magic that had drawn Pansy to her, but she had just used it as an excuse to get to know her.

Despite all of Pansy's faults and her odd obsession with the, admittedly, very handsome Draco Malfoy, Tracey owed Pansy so much. Pansy had been the first to accept her, to treat her as if she was ordinary and not some creature below them all.

Pansy Parkinson had taught her what it felt like to not only be accepted, but also to be admired by almost everyone else, all of the younger and less popular Slytherins.

The fact of the matter, the reason Tracey was the way she was was because Pansy had raised her self-confidence from non-existent to higher than that of most others.

The Dark Lord had been most Slytherins' escape, their escape from being hated due to their infamous history. Although they showed a certain amount of prejudice to other Houses, they were probably the most hated House, the House that everyone was prejudiced against, the House that was considered dark. All witches and wizards that Slytherin produced were expected to be evil, so they gave the world what it wanted.

As awful as it seemed, everything that had ever happened, everything that her generation of Slytherins had done had, mostly, been a defence mechanism. Slytherins had been treated as creatures of the dark, so they came back as everyone's worst nightmare.

And Tracey was glad enough to join the pack.

She did it to spite her mother by becoming what her mother had expected of her, but had hoped she wouldn't become. She was molded by the other Houses' impression of Slytherins, willing to become just what they thought she would so that she could walk past them with her head held high, looking down on them with complete complacence.

After all, if she could do it, then that meant that, finally after so many years of striving and believing and hoping and wanting, she would have received the acceptance that she wanted and that she deserved.