Escaping Darkness || Theodore Nott

Introduction

Pandora Riddle had been living with her uncle, Lucius Malfoy, as long as she could remember. She was with him because her mother, Bellatrix Lestrange, was in Azkaban, and her father, Tom Riddle, had been missing for eleven years now.

Pandora had no problem with living with the Malfoys, but she often wondered what her life would have been like if she had been able to stay with Bellatrix and Voldemort.
Would they have had house-elves like Dobby?
Would she have had a younger sibling?
But most of all:
Would she have been hit as often?

At fist, the beatings had left Pandora aching and weeping. Later she got used to them.
It was the same for Draco, and they went through it together, holding and comforting each other afterwards.

Then, Lucius had started using magic to punish them.

Apparently, the sudden switch in Lucius's form of punishment was because of something Bellatrix had communicated to him. Lucius said she had told him Pandora needed more rigorous, more frequent, and more painful punishment.

So Lucius started using magic. He used forms of the cruciatus curse that he made less unbearable by not intending to have the recipient experience the full torture. He did this with Draco too. Maybe to prove his child was just as strong as the Dark Lord's, maybe to prove he had no fear of hurting Draco. Maybe both.

Sometimes when he did this, Pandora only got the feeling that she was in burning hot water. Sometimes she felt like she was being stabbed by one hundred knives. Sometimes it felt like one thousand gunshots. On and on the list went.

If this is every part of the full curse, but seperate,Pandora had thought one day, then I hope Mother doesn't decide to have him use the curse on me with more intention.

What Pandora hadn't known at the time was that Bellatrix had actually told Lucius to use the curse with full intention two months ago, but Narcissa had convinced him to go easy on his niece and son.

After Bellatrix told him to use the cruciatus curse a second time, Lucius buckled and did. He didn't want to get in trouble with Bellatrix, after all.

Narcissa tried to convince him countless times not to torture his own family, but only managed to keep him from using the curse on his son.

So the endless road of Pandora's torture and loneliness began.

---*---

Although Narcissa tried her best to include Pandora in everything the Malfoys did, Pandora couldn't help but feel like an outsider. While Draco and his father had light, blond hair, Pandora had large dark brown curls in her hair. Pandora also had very light blue eyes, almost like ice. It made her stand out from the Malfoys. It reminded her that she didn't belong there, no matter how Narcissa tried to make her feel included.

It didn't help that she had a very unwelcoming aura. Others became afraid when she walked by. It intensified when she was angry and was very subtle otherwise, but it was still very inconvenient.

Kids her age didn't want to talk to her. On bad days, she would walk through a crowd and everyone would clear out until she was alone in the streets.

The cherry on top was that no one would took her in the eyes. She knew someone's greatest fear when she made eye contact with them, almost like a boggart. She didn't transform into that fear, though. It was more like she saw their boggart, their greatest fear as an image, before her inner eye. If she made eye contact with someone who had a fear of bears, a picture of a bear would flash in front of her eyes.

It was similar with their desires, except she had to see their open palm to know their desires. People on the streets would often either forget that that was a part of her ability or underestimate how much damage could be done with that information. She saw heaps of gold in her mind surprisingly often.

Luckily the Malfoys had gotten used to the nagging fear that came with being within a five meter radius of Pandora. They had accepted the fact that Pandora knew their fears and their desires. They didn't mind it anymore.

So Pandora stayed inside a lot, or on the Malfoy's property. She felt safe there, and she didn't like the feeling that everyone wanted to get away from her.

Everyone but Death Eaters shunned her, too. They shunned her for being You-Know-Who's daughter, they shunned her for being evil and being so powerful, and they shunned her for knowing what they feared and knowing what they wanted. They shunned her for existing.

They knew about the spell Bellatrix had cast upon Pandora.
The spell that gave her those icy blue eyes.
The spell that made everyone afraid of her.
The spell that let her see people's desires and fears.
The spell that made her so powerful.
The spell that bound her to her Father's side, her Father's beliefs.

Lucius had always said it was a gift, and Pandora believed him. He knew best - he had made that very clear from early on.

--*--

Lucius had been taking his niece and son to Death Eater meetings for 5 years now, starting when they were 6 years old. He bragged with how they were punished. They congratulated him on how well he was raising them - teaching them to hate muggles and half-bloods. Teaching them what the dark arts were and who was on their side. Teaching them that the Death Eaters who had abandoned the Dark Lord were just as bad as Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix.

Pandora was always quite the spectacle at these meetings. The Death Eaters tried to suck up to her. They believed that she would be their new leader, when she was old enough.

Meanwhile the other kids were allowed to run around and play. Often, Pandora envied them, even though she knew what a gift it was to be regarded so highly by the adults.

Over the years Pandora and Draco had become best friends. They spent the mornings together in school and the afternoons playing on the grounds of the manor, when they weren't being punished or at meetings. Through all their struggles, they had become inseparable. It was them against the world, and the world against them.

--
I'm trying my best to stay true to the original, but some things have to be changed, i.e. it's never said that the Death Eaters had meetings during the 1st book, and Draco's first best friends are Crabbe and Goyle. Obviously the big change is that there's another character, but you knew that already.
The point is that I'm sorry if something is wrong and doesn't stay true to J.K Rowling's Originals. If you point out anything that bothers you, I can see if I can change it.
Thanks for reading,

Emms