entanglements | d.m.

09.nightvisit

Summer '94 | H E R

Devyn taps her pen on the half-written notebook page, her lips pursed in thought.

She feels like something is lacking. Some part missing. It lays right before her, but she can't put her finger on it. Clearly, she has a long way to go. So far, it's only random ideas spewed, incohesive and hardly attuned to the characters behaviours.

The only reason Devyn hasn't given up yet with the writing is that she has fun stringing the lives together. To make them up and have them under her control, their every breath and thinking pattern. Even when they don't make much sense thus far. She'll give herself some time, seeing that she only just started to put her daydreams to paper.

Though she hardly believes anything will ever lead to something remotely official.

An owl hooting outside her window, the sound so crisp in the dead of night, Devyn's gaze drifts to her bookshelf, overflowing with books ranging from tattered old pieces her mother brought home from patrons of the bar she works at every evening, to brand new ones that her family gifts her.

Books. Devyn only wants books as presents. Whatever it is, she'll devour it. The range in recommendations are what brings a light to her heart—her grandfather might suggest a sci-fi novel that Devyn can't live without having read, and her aunt has contributed a good portion of historic fiction that is squeezed between autobiographies of muggles and wizards, thanks to her grandmother. But the romance novels, they have always been easiest to wolf down.

Who doesn't crave even a little of that special bond authors describe, of two people falling endlessly in love. Of withstanding stipulations. It's all fiction, obviously. Words have the great power of embellishing.

And Devyn—well, the longer she stares at her modest collection of books, the more she reads and reads, the more she couldn't ever see her own work standing amongst it.

Heaving a sigh, she caps her pen and with it lying in the crease, shuts the notebook. The future can hold anything. Fixating on anything specific won't do her any favors. Options—those are good.

Oliver would disagree. Heartily. Her cousin has been Quidditch obssessed for as long as she can remember. He played for his house Gryffindor, has been captain and led the team to victory in the Quidditch Cup just a few months ago. What a way to end his schoolish career, and what a way to promise hard work for the Puddlemere United, which he is joining now that he graduated. Reserve player, but Devyn has no doubt he'll prove himself quickly enough.

Tomorrow, he'll be attending the Quidditch World Cup with his father, Devyn's uncle. Oliver even invited her, but she declined, rather wanting to watch it at home her mother on the new television they splurged. At home, where snacks are endless and no judgement will arise for stuffing her nose in a book instead.

On her desk just three feet away, her heart stutters for just a second as her eyes lay upon the framed photo. The moving, wizard kind, where a male figure holds a baby, Devyn, swaddled in a blanket in his arms. Her father smiles, completely mesmerized, before leaning down to press a kiss on her forehead.

More than anything, she would love to not just look at the photograph, but remember the moment, savor the press of his lips, so full of love, against her vulnerable head. For it is one of counted times he got to do it.

Devyn had quickly learned that nothing about her father is ordinary. Not when Oliver can laugh with and hug his father. When they have inside jokes and moments of pride like the graduation party his parents threw.

No, Devyn won't ever have that.

Couldn't have that, because her father died when she was less than two years old. He was twenty at the time, her mother told her. His body remains buried at Azkaban. He had been imprisoned not long before for having a hand in a crime that is most unforgivable.