𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐔𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐔𝐍 ☆ᵈʳᵃᶜᵒ ᵐᵃˡᶠᵒʸ☆

16. "Draco Malfoy is a dick."

Draco and Sophia kept all contact to a minimum.

When in class they gave the other a slight smile to try to ease the awkward tension between them.

When in the great hall for meals they never directly spoke.

When passing in the halls they did not make any eye contact, they were two ships passing in the night, both aware of the presence of the other but neither willing to blink first and acknowledge them. For if they acknowledged the person they feared they would need to speak about the events of the Yule Ball.

Sophia was now curled up in her book nook with her hardcopy of the invisible life of Addie LaRue. The nook in their dorm room had a window looking out at the depths of the Black Lake. Schools of fish swam swiftly past her and three fish had tried to venture into the room, hitting their heads on the thick glass that separated them.

Sophia relished the seldom trice where her two dorm mates were out, leaving her to find peace in the atypical silence of her dorm room. She loved her friends more than life itself, but they were each a different type of pain in her ass.

Sophia found herself in an understanding with the fictional character in her book. The character was cursed, you see? What was sold to her as a benevolent gift of immortality became a curse where her extended existence became idle and erased altogether.

Sophia feared speaking out about her distaste for the status she was given for being born into her family legacy. She did not want to seem ungrateful nor disconcerted. But she hated the pressure it gave her. In the eyes of the public, she was a walking fairy tale, a princess with a fortune under her name and not a single scar to go with it.

The very fortune she despised bought her the book in her hands, the hands that looked like they had never done a single days work. They hadn't.

She felt cursed.

She often felt as though she was cut from a different fabric than the rest of her family. They all seemed to blissfully fulfil their duties and smile for the cameras. They thrived in the spotlight. Sophia, however, drowned silently for fear that calling out for help would be a nuisance to others. 

She felt embarrassed at her failure to swim like the rest of her family. She felt foolish for not enjoying her status like them. She hated herself for her unnatural desires; her desire to be something less than she was born into.

She hated this shell of a person she had become. A person she had to polish into something beautiful and presentable for the peering eyes of the public. Heaven forbid they ever find anything mundane about her. May Merlin show her mercy and disallow anyone to see that she too is a human and not a cyborg coded to smile and wave and the adoring crowds she would elicit for something as ludicrous as a name and bloodline. 

Her blood bled the same crimson shade as anyone and yet here she was being crowned pure when anyone else's would paint the same tint of roses on a canvas with their blood as she would. What made her flesh so special? What did she do to accomplish this honorary title? 

Whoever she was in her past life must have been a fucking saint because this reincarnation of her is a lucky ass bitch. She came into this world and was given everything on a silver platter for escaping the womb, like every other baby, except unlike others, she was given everything. 

Well, almost everything.

She was given all of this luxury at the expense of never having the freedom of marrying anyone her heart desired. At the expense of never being able to befriend people without a respectable title or status. She paid for her extravagant jewels and gowns with her freedom.