Beguiled

Escape from Azkaban

Heavy waves crashing against the exteriors of Azkaban's fortress woke her. Slowly sitting up, Dahlia lifted a grimy, ash-covered hand to her face  and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She looked around at the rubble surrounding her, the crumbling walls of the fortress she was confined to, and stood up shakily. She walked towards her cell door at the edge of the building, and looked out. 

Dark, slate grey clouds ensnared her. Hundreds of soulless, unforgiving and unremorseful Dementors floated above her, their cloaked figures surrounding the building, ready to suck any trace of happiness out of any victim that dared cross their paths. Below, thirty or-so storeys down, deep blue waves crashed against the concrete. Raging, ferocious. Vengeful. 

For sixteen years, Dahlia had been trapped in this prison, for a crime she did not commit. Her mother was a pure-blood, her father a half-blood. Dahlia's mother worked as a healer - she took care of witches and wizards with all sorts of magical ailments, from artefact accidents and spell damage, to potion and plant poisoning. Her father worked in the Ministry of Magic, in the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Her mother used  to recall fondly to Dahlia how much he loved Quidditch, and how he wished he could've been a professional player for the Chudley Canons, had he been any good. 

The years they lived in were dark times. Back then, the Dark Lord, Voldemort, was still at large, and pure-blood Death Eaters were killing any witch or wizard they deemed below them - half-bloods and Muggle-borns - for sheer enjoyment, and out of cold spite. 

Dahlia's father fell victim to this, at the hands of notorious Death Eater and one of Lord Voldemort's most loyal followers, Lucius Malfoy. Malfoy worked in the Ministry alongside her father, and upon the day of the Ministry riots, wherein Death Eaters flooded in to do Lord Voldemort's evil bidding, killed him in cold-blooded murder. 

Dahlia's mother always told her the riots and killings were because Death Eaters, such as Malfoy, were pure-blood supremacists, following the beliefs of Lord Voldemort, despite he himself being a half-blood: that any witch or wizard besides pure-bloods were of less worth, and undeserving of magic. Lucius Malfoy had been particularly disgusted with Dahlia's mother's choice to marry a half-blood, as he believed her to be tainting the pure-blood image, a shame to her pure-blood heritage. Her decision seemed to be more treacherous as she was one of the last descendants of Salazar Slytherin himself, and the last living member of the Gaunt family. The last, as far as she revealed to Dahlia, as she would soon come to realise. Alas, there was another. 

Lord Voldemort was defeated a year later, by the only person to ever survive the Killing Curse, 'Avadakedavra'. Harry Potter. He himself, having lost both his parents to Voldemort, was left with only a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, evidencing his survival. Whilst Voldemort's reign of terror was over, and most of his devoted Death Eaters were sent to Azkaban, the wizard prison, the ravaging pain had only just begun to settle within the wizarding world.  

St. Mungo's hospital was overflowing with patients for months after Voldemort's defeat, taking in the injured, the traumatised, those mourning countless losses. The wounds inflicted upon the witches and wizards in that time cut too deep to be mended by Healers, the trauma cast a cloud of despair nobody seemed to be able to escape, the pain surrounding them would not leave for years to come. 

Dahlia's mother's job was to tend to those people. Those in especially fragile states. Not only having to bear the agony of having lost her husband, she had to bear the grief of others, mourning for their loved ones who were in irreparable states. Until one day, something changed. The Daily Prophet, London's wizarding newspaper, had revealed that certain witches and wizards accused of being Death Eaters were not to be serving time in Azkaban as a result of defecting from their positions as Death Eaters and followers of Lord Voldemort. Lucius Malfoy was to be pardoned for his crimes. Upon reading this, something snapped inside of her mother. She, who had been hiding her misery, bottling it in for the sake of her job, had finally let it ensnare her, and transform into something terrifying, something which created in her a vengeful ferocity she had never quite experienced. A pure, great loathing for Lucius Malfoy, the murderer of the man she loved.