𝐀 𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋 𝐎𝐅 𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐋𝐄𝐒 | h. potter

16 | Iron Wills

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: IRON WILLS

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Maya lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling in the darkness. She was in her room — the room Dumbledore had assigned to her for the summer, and felt twisted sense of glee mixed with shame as she remembered exactly why she had been shunted off there instead of the Gryffindor dorms.

Lavender Brown was afraid of her. The way that she should have been from the very beginning, a part of her whispered darkly.

The girl had demanded and screamed and thrown up such a fuss, using her anger to hide her fear of the girl, as she spat and pointed and jeered, "I am not sleeping in the same room as a girl who can talk to snakes."

Maya had felt it then; the same sick desire she had felt in the Great Hall rising up in her chest like bile as she licked her lips and twisted them to form the ghost of a grin. She had wanted to make her scared, wanted everyone to know exactly what she was capable of - hadn't they heard the rumours? She was a Witch with the blood of the Dark Lord running through her paper veins; rightful Heir to the Slytherin tongue and an army of power at her disposal.

And they had seen her lose control.

Harry had seen her lose control, as she stood shaking outside of the Great Hall as shame and revolt and anger ran through her all at once, that her hair had trouble deciding what colour to settle on. She had been faintly aware of Harry telling her to breathe — but how could she? Her lungs weren't working, her chest was caving in and her heart shook with the effort to remain conscious.

How could he tell her to breathe when everything around her was devoid of air?

She felt sick to her bones. She enjoyed the power running rampant through her far too much; she felt alive when she hissed commands in the snake's tongue and it had physically hurt when she had forced herself to change the command to kill into a command to scare.

She had wanted to kill so badly.

Maya's palms stung as the stale air blew over the crescent-shaped rips in her skin. She had dug her fingers into her flesh to ground herself as Dumbledore had interrogated her over the events of the duel. 

A part of her wanted to tell him the truth; that she was becoming dangerous and he needed to subdue her before she did something terrible — before the voices made her do something terrible — but the other, more selfish part of her which snarled 'survival is more important than anything' reminded her of exactly what was waiting for her outside the castle walls in the form of a soul-taking Kiss, and pulled her mouth open and forced lies through her teeth.

"I was trying to stop the snake, Professor. I promise."

But Dumbledore didn't believe her. She knew he didn't, even if his words told her that he did — after all, he had sent her far away from everyone else, hadn't he?

And she was so tired. So, so tired of having to hold herself back from retorting, trying to prove she was not the evil person they thought she was. She was good, why couldn't anyone see that? Why couldn't anyone see that she was just trying to survive? She felt anger and shame and rage swell in her chest, and she felt her magic pour out in tendrils as the windows rattled and the bedside table shook with the gust of wind she had summoned, and she heard the black thing hooked onto her heart squeal with glee-

—With a start she forced everything to a halt.

No, this is what they wanted. They wanted her to become the person they all thought she was, just so they can throw her into Azkaban and force her through a Dementor's Kiss. They wanted her to lose herself and become the next threat so they could justify their prejudice against her, make a statement to all those left of the Dark Lord's supporters. But they forgot — or rather, didn't bother to learn — one very important thing.