hey there... dahlia? | george weasley

still on that tightrope - delilah

One would imagine that the verb "bored" couldn't possibly exist in Delilah's vocabulary, not only was she friends with three of the biggest pranksters of her generation, but she herself had a spark of mischief that gave George and Fred Weasley a run for their money.

Yet, she couldn't find any other reason behind her current dreadfulness. She was very familiar with that word, that was all she knew for the first 11 years of her life, and even now, she couldn't escape it. In the days between the second half of July and the end of August, she would've liked to think that she was sucked into a black hole of boredom and despair, stuck between the dull four walls of her poorly furnished bedroom, but actually, she spent the vast majority of her life stuck here that she knew it would be more accurate to call the days between September and June a utopic lucid dream, as she always would have to come back to reality, where she belongs, not a black hole, but planet Earth.

White holes, on the other hand, are a bizarre cosmic presence, they are said to be the opposite of a black hole, a place where matter is gushing rather than disappearing. While on Earth she was an outcast, Hogwarts was another universe, a white hole existing independently from her reality. She had been given a new opportunity, tabula rasa, to become a newly perfected version of herself, one she called Dahlia. Dahlia was the embodiment of a common clique, the people-pleaser, she was so desperate to leave her status as an outcast behind that she would rather put on a show in front of everyone, to please them. However, white holes don't exist, or at least they haven't been discovered, and just like there is the possibility that they aren't real, Dahlia wasn't real. Even now, with no one to please, no one to put up a show for, Delilah was balancing herself, still on that tightrope, and she didn't know how much longer she could keep performing before losing balance and falling.

She didn't want to admit that the reason she was always down wasn't just summer boredom, which would go away the second she stepped on the famous train on the 1st of September, but loneliness, an everlasting feeling that always disturbed her thoughts. While she could afford to ignore this suffocating presence when distracted by the waves of laughter and giggles of her peers, here, with no one and nothing to fight it off with, her loneliness was not only suffocating her but attempting to strangle Delilah alive.

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Delilah imagined a lazy Sunday, one where she could let the sun wake her up, and get up feeling tired because she slept way too much. In this scenario, she decided she would be living in a cottage house in Italy. Her name was Darla, she had plump and slightly fleshy cheeks, and she would smile so often that apple of her cheeks would always be visible and blushing. Light and summery clothes, in linen and cotton, were bursting from her messy wardrobe, and when she opened its doors she was met with an explosion of whites and pastels. That morning, Darla picked a cotton white sundress, one her mom bought from the local market for her. It was really simple except for the embroidered cherries her grandma sewed on using red and green thread.

Delilah would've continued to torture herself, imagining Darla's happy family having breakfast with the fresh bread she made the day before, laughing and watching Television, hadn't she been interrupted by someone knocking on her door. She knew she couldn't ignore her, so she lazily walked towards her bedroom door.

Mrs Moore was a widow, she was an old woman of French origin who migrated to London during WW2, Delilah found it hard to believe she had once been a woman able to experience joy, as she never once smiled during Delilah's 13 years of life, but she knew Mrs Moore lived a lifetime of smiles and giggles she shared with her husband. After he died in the early 70s, Margaret Moore simply lost all reasons to experience joy.

Don't be fooled though, Margaret isn't one to feel sorry for.

After inheriting her mother-in-law's orphanage in London, near Soho, Margaret, now widowed, decided that the best way to cope with her loss and pain was to inflict even more pain and psychologically abuse innocent children like Delilah, with no parent to care for them, children abandoned by the people that should love and cherish you the most.

How could she not constantly hear loneliness being whispered through her ears and echoing all the way to her brain when that's all she has known for the first few years of her life? Not only her orphan status made her an outcast to outsiders, she became an outcast among the outcast the second she started to show signs of magic. When you're just a little girl who knows no better, and your deeply religious guardian tells other children to avoid you because you are a demonic entity, you can't help but actually start believing them and drown even more profoundly in your isolation.

"Why did you not come down for Dinner?" despite her seemingly neutral face there was a lot of passive aggressiveness in Mrs Moore's tone.

"I was not feeling well, I... I wasn't hungry"

The truth was I completely forgot about dinner because of Darla and her stupid life, and I was indeed hungry. I shouldn't have hesitated when speaking. Everyone knows that you get 3 meals at the orphanage and you are obligated to eat all 3 meals, otherwise, you get punished by being starved for the following day. Occasionally, if you can fake being ill, or genuinely look like you were on the verge of extreme sickness, Mrs Moore would let the skipped meal slide, however, Delilah could've been bleeding for all she cared about, as her favourite target, she learned that she would always be scolded and punished by the cruel lady.

Delilah had a lot of built-up frustration and anger, and Moore's hatred was well reciprocated as she was the victim of our girl's most terrible insults and threats... well, only in her head because she wouldn't be alive and able to tell this if she acted accordingly.

"Since you are not feeling well enough to eat, I'm sure you won't be able to eat breakfast and lunch tomorrow either" was her response, as she walked away with a smug expression, and Delilah almost forgot that she wasn't allowed to use magic outside of school as she wished to use the most unforgivable curses on that lady.

She considered herself to be an individual with high morality, she knew she could never willingly harm Mrs Moore, even if she was given the chance to do so and remain unpunished, however being Delilah is really tiring,  tired of interpreting Dahlia's role, she had to found an outlet for all of her frustrations, and Mrs Moore easily was the best fit for the job. Though Professor Snape came a close second.

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The 'François Dubois Orphanage' used to be called 'Moore Orphanage and Convent', that was the name Delilah's mother knew and saw when she reached the building with her 3 days old daughter in her arms. She walked 6 kilometres on foot in the cold, it was a late night in January 1978, and she was kicked out of her small and damp apartment by her landlord. She became homeless in the course of a few hours but she knew this would happen, she could've changed houses and found another apartment but she stubbornly stayed in that apartment. Although she didn't have the chance of telling the baby's father about her pregnancy as he just disappeared, she still believed in their relationship and love, enough that she hoped he would show up at her apartment, but not only he didn't but presumably the struggle was so unbearable, that she decided to end her life.

That's what Delilah presumed since all Mrs Moore told her is that she was left on the porch of the orphanage and almost died frozen to death. Her mother left a letter apologising for leaving this world, addressed to her full name, Delilah Amara Young, explaining her story, but Mrs Moore threw the letter away after reading it thinking it was rubbish. She didn't know her mother's name, her face, or how old she was, she only knew about these details through what she said in the letter read by Mrs Moore.

Delilah carried this burden all by herself, no one in the world other than Mrs Moore knew about her true self, they only knew the act she put on as Dahlia.

Author's note

Please, please, please leave a star and a comment, as it would really motivate me. I will shortly publish Fred, Lee and George's introduction chapters too, in this respective order. The plot will start after these 3 chapters, so this is not the first chapter. Loads of love.