The Amortentia Addict ⚡️ Marauders Era⚡️

P R O L O G U E

you look just like your mother

i guess i do carry her tenderness well

you both have the same eyes

cause we are both exhausted

and the hands

we share the same wilting fingers

but that rage your mother doesn't wear that rage

you're right
this rage is the one thing
i get from my father

-Rupi Kaur

Valerie had grown up hearing the saying that death didn't separate you from the ones you loved as long as you kept them alive in your heart.

She had alterations of it repeated to her countless times at her mother's funeral from strangers with eyes full of sympathy that she didn't understand.

"Pathetic!" her mother would say if she could see her daughter now, bawling her eyes out on her bedroom floor, clutching a rusty hand-mirror to her chest.

Valerie could hear her voice clearly in her head, she could hear the venomous edge, the mocking, all of it  and it made her laugh.

"She's gone," she whispered to herself, smiling in the mirror, a lopsided smile that she despised so deeply. "She's gone."

Valerie didn't understand if she was celebrating or grieving, maybe a messy mixture. She was happy she wouldn't hear the taunting voice pierce into her everyday. She was happy she wouldn't hear the screaming, the shattering glass, the words that left her aching for days.

But then what about the smiles they shared? All the apologies and promises she meant but never bothered to keep? What about the rare moments they shared, definitely not pure bliss but rare rays of sunshine in the gloom her life had become? What about all the little yet present love amidst the hate and anger? She would miss it.

"Gone? No I don't think so."

Valerie dropped the mirror to the floor with an earsplitting scream, just as a pearly translucent version of her mother rose from it.

"Wha--how?"

The lopsided smile she had seen in the mirror merely seconds ago found its way to her mother's lips and she spoke, in the same mocking voice that was stuck in her head:

"Death doesn't separate you from the ones you love, as long as you keep them alive in your heart."

It made Valerie wish she didn't have a heart. Maybe then, maybe just then she could get rid of her mother or   even just the ugly words that came with her. Words that didn't stop haunting her long after the pearl-white ghost had sunken into the depths of the mirror she hated so much. Yet she couldn't let go of it. Just like she couldn't let go of her mother.

If she could choose which member of her family would come back as a ghost, she would definitely have chosen her father. But perhaps there wouldn't be much difference. Even in his life, he had been a frail, tired man with skin pale enough for a ghost and eyes that looked at everything in the same dull way. He spoke in a withery sort of voice and his words, they didn't linger in the air afterwards. They barely even came out when his mouth was open.

At least he wouldn't talk much, he wouldn't tell her everything that was wrong with her. He wouldn't laugh at her insecurities.

Maybe he would just listen to her ramble on like he did in his life, with the stoic expression on his face and no comfort to offer. She liked it that way, she liked not having to fake a smile and say yes he was right, yes everything would get better. And sometimes, she would stare deeply into his tired eyes and pretend, just pretend she saw compassion lingering there. It would make her feel better.

After being orphaned, she was sent to live with some distant relatives of her mother's. They shared the same pureblood supremacist beliefs as her. They imposed the same rules and values on their other two children, one of which had the makings of a rebel.

Valerie admired his bravery, she admired how he told his mother she was wrong, how he let everything she said bounce off his skin.

Then, the other one. He was the dream child, the sort of child Valerie's mother had so fruitlessly tried to mould her into.

Both of them were so different yet everything she wanted to be.

••••••
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