Penelope Jace was Professor Dumbledores gravest mistake. A little girl, like so many others, dreaming of her Hogwarts letters. However, unlike other witches, hers never came. And her magic, buried deep through years of suppression, had nowhere to go...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
18th August 1994
PENELOPE JACE DESPISED CROWDS. They were the bane of her existence, her darkness clawing eagerly under her skin, hungry to devour each and every rowdy witch or wizard she passed. It was like having a dementor in her skin-- a dementor furious that the world was in a state of such enjoyment. It did not help that Igor-- a man so tall, it should have been physically impossible to lose sight of him, kept ducking his head in the crowd ahead to speak to people.
She was impossibly tempted to shoot out a snap of darkness and have the thick crowd scattering. It likely would not have ended well for anybody involved so instead, she schooled her scarred face into an expression of distaste and the result was almost as effective, her dark embroidered coat and low-tipped fedora scattering them as though she dropped a rock in a school of fish, as though she was a dementor herself. At least she knew where she was heading.
A year ago, Penelope Jace had made her escape from The Everly and she had been punishing herself for it for just as many months. Almost twelve months and she was just as much a slave as ever before, just as miserable as before. Making her way to their private box, Penelope allowed her mind to wonder-- she supposed, freedom did come with some advantages. She was seeing the world, learning magic, such petty dreams that she had once had and now attained but none of it seemed to matter now. She was as dark and miserable as she had been since her sister passed. Polly's death had been her tether to happiness and it was irreversibly damaged.
As anticipated, she found an eager Igor exactly where he was supposed to be and he stood proud at the railing, glaring out over the stadium. If she did not know him better, she would think that he was angry but after so many months of following him wherever he ventured, she knew that this was his happy face. He was proud to be there and a part of her was too. Though the demon in her skin continued to writhe, an itchy tsunami in her veins.
Penelope rested her back against the pillar, away from the group that had congregated in the box-- wealthy people, impossibly wealthy but she did not analyse them. They were mere inconveniences, her magic eager to destroy them. It was so dangerous for her to be there-- if she finally, irrevocably shattered as her sister had all those years ago, there would be no telling of the danger. Igor, as always did not care. Penelope may have been one of the worlds most dangerous weapons but as long as she was in his hands, it did not matter.
Scanning the crowds, she caught a flicker of orange in the corner of her vision, somehow standing out among all those millions of people but when she turned to it-- it vanished. Likely, it had just been somebody waving a banner though the glare of it had been bright as fire. Shaking herself from her reverie, Penelope put on a good show of guarding Igor-- which only meant standing to the right of his chair and glaring at those around them.
She was saved from the daunting task of actually speaking to Igor by brooms racing into the stadium, chased by tails of emerald and silver steam, fireworks shattering above into a dancing leprechaun that earned a chant of 'Irish, Irish.' Penelope felt not even a slither of the joy that palpitated through the crowd, every small flurry of excitement swallowed and drowned in the darkness. And she was not there for the Irish at all.
