The Trial ; D.M

7

23rd September 2002

There has been an ongoing storm in the North West now for three days. Every rumble of thunder shakes and shivers through the Manor like a ghostly spectre passing through the soul of the home.

Except this home doesn't seem to have a soul.

It never has. Not like Hogwarts had. Geneva came to terms with the bleak personality of Nott Manor from the moment she stepped inside. The only thing that makes it home for her is the person she shares it with. If she hadn't had Theodore from the beginning, she'd certainly have nothing now. To Geneva, like most, home is the person, not the place.

But when this so called person that makes you feel at home is absent all day and leaves you in its empty shell with a ghastly stranger who happens to be a villainous version of a boy you once knew, Nott Manor has never felt more unsettling.

She's been floating around aimlessly for the past few days. Feeling as if her life hasn't got a purpose. She sometimes thinks about getting a job, she'd quite like that, but anytime she mentions it to Theodore he reminds her that she certainly doesn't have to. Only then does she feel quite silly for desiring it.

After all, her life is purely luxurious. No work, no real responsibility except acting the part as Lady of the Manor. Who wouldn't want it?

Initially, she enjoyed having nothing. Because she felt she had everything. Set for life, she'd tell herself.

But sometimes, only sometimes does she feel like a child again, reminded of the summers spent trapped within the walls of the care home she couldn't escape from until September rolled around and she'd find herself back in Hogwarts.

No more stingy rooms that smelled of the other girls, suffocating her until she was practically choking on their cheap perfumes. The aged, cream-coloured walls printed with strips of floral decorum just to appear pleasing to the eye, hoping to remind every resident that it wasn't such a bad thing that their parents didn't want them anymore.

Geneva knew she ought to have been grateful. After all, she'd only spend two months there each year. The muggle girls had to stick around for much longer. They had envied her. Despised her for it. Called her a freak because they could tell she was different.

Eventually, to make them feel better so they'd stop spitting at Geneva's feet and tugging her hair, the matron informed them all that it was an extremely strict school where the kids were beaten.

They'd held some sympathy for her after that. They shouldn't have.

And now here she is, intrusively thinking she's gone from one prison to another. She scolds herself whenever these thoughts occur, considering how fortunate she knows she is.

While she hasn't been able to go outside in the past few days because of the storm, she's avoided Malfoy at all costs. And she's succeeded.

Until today when he's apparently taken it to his amusement to follow her around the Manor.

At first, she doesn't care. She just ignores him as usual. But when she finds him in the kitchen with her for the fifth time in several hours, after having passed by him in various corridors and stumbled into him when exiting the bathroom, she grows suspicious.

"So is this how you're choosing to taunt me today?" She breaks their silence, earning his glance away from the Prophet that he's quite obviously pretending to read.

"What?"

There's a smile threatening to curve up on the corner of his lips, but he folds them into a line, maintaining a sharp posture.