WILDFLOWER, hermione granger.

ooxi. house of cards

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OOXI. HOUSE OF CARDS
eleven

       IVY HAD HAD ENOUGH. She was broken, overcome by severe paranoia and anxiety so much that she slept with a knife under her pillow. The mark burned her arm as tears pooled in her eyes, before snatching out the knife and storming into the bathroom.

      She ripped her sleeve open, her chest heaving with sobs that she didn't bother to keep down as the point of the knife pierced her skin.

      And dear god, it burned. It burned so fucking bad that Ivy was reminded of why she prefers the cold better.

      "Ivy!" Ron yelled, running into the bathroom. It's too late though, because blood was running down her wrist, staining the floors, her skin, the sink. Ron knocked the knife out of her hands, his gaze registering faintly on the Dark Mark on her arm. "Ivy, bloody hell, what were you thinking?!"

     "I want it off!" Ivy snapped, trying to grab the knife again only for it to be kicked away by Ron, out of the bathroom and startling Harry, who was just passing by. "I WAS THINKING THAT I WANTED IT OFF BECAUSE I NEVER WANTED IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!"

      "Not like this!" Ron snapped back, grabbing her arms. "Ivy, don't do this! LET ME HELP YOU!"

      "WHAT IS THERE TO HELP?" Ivy screams at him as Harry ran in, grabbing a towel to press to her arm. "I'M JUST BROKEN—LET ME GO!"

       Ron holds her there, letting her scream and cry as he and Harry winced, but they needed her to let it out, until she calms down enough. And when she was much, much calmer—by calm, her angry sobs had dissolved into whimpers as Hermione holds her now, shushing her.

      Harry was still staring at her arm in disbelief, and then her distraught state, then to the bloody knife that she used to try and carve it out.

       It was upsetting, and unnerving, that the one person in their quartet really break, because in all six years of being friends with her, they'd never seen her cry like that. She hid it so good that they never knew of her own, personal, silent suffering—god, was this what she sometimes disappeared for?

       "What did they do to you?" Hermione whimpers quietly, tears pooling in her eyes as she imagined all the horrors that Ivy must've faced. "Ivy... God, they—they broke you."

       "I killed Dolohov."

       "You were forced to,"

       "I still killed him," Ivy says harshly. "They were hard on me because they thought I had the stomach—they..." She lets out an uncharacteristic whimper, shoving her face in her hands. "The mark, it's—it's there because I'm just leverage. Because of my father's goddamn mistake."

       "I'm already broken before you met me," Ivy mutters quietly. "Guess I was just so good at acting like nothing was happening, huh?" Her eyes hardened again. "I want the mark gone."

       So here she was, in the kitchen with another knife, and she's holding it in the flames, the mark in full view—except she was wearing a loose tshirt, some of the scars on her back exposed because it was cropped. The other ones on her arms too... bloody hell, what was the point of hiding it anymore? She'll hide them at school instead.