cruel | d.m.

02.livingdeath

September 1998 | H E R

Quinn moves the food around on the plate.

Theo put it there. It wasn't her doing and now she has to stare at it. Deal with it.

She won't.

Two and a half bites of scrambled eggs is what she was able to manage. By the third, the smell repulsed her so bad, she scooted the plate away a bit. Though Quinn is subconsciously refusing to eat anything nutritious for her body, it's the eggs themselves that repel her. You go for them everytime and then realise. . . yuck.

And what's that texture anyway? Almost rubber like—

"Aww, look at her," Safa's voice brings Quinn back to reality. "Davina is possibly the most adorable girl I have ever seen."

Indeed, her little sister is the picture of sweet as she talks with another girl her age at her respective table. Objectively sweet. Quinn doesn't buy it, though.

"First year's are in general adorable," Daphne says, waving a piece of cantaloupe pierced on her fork around. Her shoulders slump with a nostalgic smile. "So young and innocent. Got no idea what's ahead of them."

Blaise makes a humming sound as he looks out to the other long tables, lost in his own train of thought. "Got Grimaldi's represented in every house."

"Not for long." The words slip, mysteriously so, that it makes Blaise raise a single, cautious brow.

"You mean because we graduate this year."

That'll do. "Yeah, sure." Her shoulder lifts carelessly. "Whatever you say."

From the side of her eye, she can see Theo shoot her a look that says how much he disapproves of her joke. She does it a lot, joke about death, but he never approves. He's too tight-knitted. It's funny.

But it is true. Grimaldi's you'll find on every table. The one right next to hers, the Ravenclaw one, at the far end to the door, she finds her brother Elio. Cloudy hair that is slightly overgrown and a few shades darker than his skin wafts as he switches from eating and reading. A loner himself, very quiet. Shy, is what Theo labeled him once, but that doesn't quite fit. He's just turned into his shell.

Quinn can relate.

The table after that, Gryffindor, there sits Ruby, her ginger hair as fierce as her personality which her friends are happy to indulge in. She is too cool to be associated with her bigger sister, which in all honesty, is for the better. Her sixteen-year-old attitude is something Quinn has no fucking patience for.

And then, yes, Davina at the far end of the Hall, new to the world of magic and fascinated to the max.

From the outside, you would never assume them all to carry the same last name. The name given by the only person they have in common. The person that does not deserve her title mother.

"I raise those bitches," Quinn mumbles with little emotion, breaking her gaze from Ruby, whose face break out into a gaping grin when a friend of hers whispers gossip or something in her ear.

The rings in Safa's braids clink together when she whips her head around. "Quinn."

"Safa," she echoes dryly. "If I wake up in the middle of the night as a five-year-old to change my crying baby brother's diaper full of shit, I'm very well allowed to call them what I want." Raising the goblet filled with water, she speaks over the rim, feeling her lids hanging low. "Besides, they don't hear me. I'm not that cruel."

Safa sighs resigningly. As much as she tries to put herself in Quinn's shoes, they would never fit.

"How many are here now?" Blaise tries to distract but does a terrible job of it. "Three?"