Depths of Despair ✶ Theodore Nott

fifty four. three steps forward

Valerie Leclere was seven years old when first taking interest in stargazing. As prisoner in a world crashing and burning, there was a certain calamity in the recognition of tranquility: unlike anything she was used to, the stars were constant. Stable. Always there, scattered across the sky to only become visible at night.

Overlooking the strange patterns of glimmering light had been a form of escape to the child longing for a sense of security. After sneaking out through her bedroom window and climbing to the rooftop of the mansion she once called home, there was no noise. No chaos. No voices, no thoughts that were not her own disrupting her sanity. Valerie had always treasured silence, as it was a luxury she — due to her abilities — rarely got to experience.

However, as much else in the twisted irony that is human existence, positivity is easily tarnished. She had been quite the imaginative child, her mind more exposed to outward influences than others. What had begun with innocent admiration for the tranquility to which she was a stranger, soon transpired into envy. The stars grew into reminder of what she could never have, for wherever she went, Valerie Leclere was haunted. Her mother's deeds were cuts closing up into scars, and her mind was a beacon for knowledge she wished not to have.

When stepping inside a room, she could hear what people expected her to become. After all, the child easily becomes a reflection of the parent, and unlike the stars, a person cannot remain embraced with tranquility if life spirals into volatility.

Admiration into envy. At nine years old, Valerie Leclere had dreamt of security, venturing outside at night to escape. Dreams are crushed, and although succeeding to flee — finding refuge in her best friend and his family who welcomed her with open arms — it was almost ironic how easily she ended up right back where she started.

After all, the past never remains forgotten, and tranquility seemed not to accept her.

Cuts into scars. Olenna Leclere was Valerie's greatest enemy and greatest ally all at once. Although a blueprint of what not to become, the mother's footsteps were easier to follow than what the daughter might have initially imagined. The mother was enemy in the sense of making it a life mission to pull daughter along into depths of despair of her own creation. It was an intricate dynamic, for Valerie was to Olenna what the stars were to the teenager having lost direction. Valerie had something Olenna envied, hence why hostility brewed like potion in a cauldron.

Still, Valerie had befriended said hostility and made it an ally. Her mother was the reason she grew to disregard the stars, the reason why tranquility refused to accept her. The mother took the role of a guideline, for while Valerie was forced to follow right in her footsteps, she knew what not to become. She was her mother's mirror, yet the reflection mismatched: similar in so many ways, yet different in all aspects that mattered.

Her mother embraced cruelty and allowed it to consume her, whilst Valerie used it as a front. Still, depths of despair are difficult to navigate, and when venturing to the Astronomy tower alongside Theodore Nott with a mission of nurturing the dark side of a war she wished not to partake in, she could do no else than wonder if she perhaps had gotten lost.

As usual, the pathway through the castle at night had been easily cleared, sneaking past Filch with little difficulty. Their friends had been evaded as well — Blaise, Pansy and Draco already asleep, Kieran (much to Valerie's amusement) sat alongside Daphne Greengrass in the common room, sunken too deeply into her presence to notice them passing by.

The Astronomy tower was silent. Tranquil. With Theodore's thoughts sealed behind barriers of Occlumency, the setting was everything Valerie had once sought after, however when seating herself near the edge, her skin itched with discomfort. The security that had once been was now yet another reminder of what she could not have — the reason for their presence proof enough as it was. Stability was a dream long forgotten.