𝕋𝕙𝕖 ℙ𝕦𝕣𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕋𝕣𝕚𝕒𝕝𝕤 | 𝔻.𝕄.

༻﴾ 4 | Pretty Girls With Pretty Minds ﴿༺

The walk back from Malfoy Manor was a b l u r r y whirlwind for poor Genevieve, who's heart felt terribly broken and who's spirit masterfully wilted.

Without her trusty goggles, the maturing sun made it damn near impossible to decipher the outline of anything beyond an illegible blob. And the intoxicating effects of the dozen or so healing potions she'd been shooed off with only exacerbated the problem.

Like a kidnapped windchime the glass vials filled with bioluminescent pink liquid were all making themselves known in the dragonhide satchel they'd come in, now hanging loosely from her shoulder.

She found herself humming along to their palaver tintinnabulation, blindly running straight into trees.

Narcissa had firmly warned her not to exceed ingesting more than two per hour, as the drams were of the highest possible pedigree afforded on the market and tended to produce a euphoric, drunken stupor when abused.

Lady Malfoy had obviously had a much better start to her day, foolishly overlooking the reality that to Genevieve - who'd been mocked, robbed, and lacerated in the span of sixty satanic minutes - it was a decidedly perfect opportunity to render oneself day drunk by ten in the morning.

Four of the concentrated brews might've now been downed...

...possibly five...

Well...who was counting...

This was her first time experiencing the lofty haze of fermented spirits, and counting on her fingers was not at the forefront of her priorities. Instead, it was holding together her sloppy footing amongst the tumultuous tree roots.

Her right hand throbbed ferociously as she flexed the wound there on repeat, hoping that the powerful potions would work at a rapid pace.

She'd heard a great many tales of indignities occurring during the trials, but nothing could have prepared her for the venomous delight in Draco's eyes when he'd slashed through the hand she'd specifically asked him not to.

She wondered if it was all witches that he despised and mistrusted so keenly, or if it was merely a personal issue he'd picked with her.

But if that was the case, it was a conundrum as to why.

If anything, Draco's clownish behavior presented to Genevieve's critical acumen as the actions of a young man secretly paranoid, immature and insecure deep down.

It was stupidly unclear if he took the trials seriously or unseriously. 

And the same diametric signals were being sent as to whether he fancied her in some boyish delight, or wished to rip her skull clean off for defying his authority as the imminent Duke of Wiltshire.

"It is Lord Malfoy from youuuu," she imitated him in a singsong voice, hiccupping obnoxiously. Tiny, cartoonish bubbles seemed to be leaping out of her throat to fly away in the wind...or perhaps that was a figment of drunken imagination.

The train of her funereal dress caught upon all manner of hateful woodland underbrush as she consistently deviated from the pathway in a jagged crisscross.

"Not nearly as magnanimous as me...Absolute hogwash," she scoffed, discarding two more glasses with a whimsical flick of her wrist. 

Draco would find them later like breadcrumbs leading to her cottage, when he came calling for his first 'visitation'.

Ah yes...there it was, the real reason Genevieve sought to escape her noisy mind for the day: she was frightened sick of ending up all alone with the beast of a beautiful boy.