A Burden's Beginning.
I bet you didn't know this: You take 20,000 breaths a day on average. How many breaths does it take to look down at the bloody mess you created on the mattress and think to yourself, "Why haven't I killed myself yet?" None. You hold your breath until you no longer can. You sit there, hoping it kills you, but you're too exhausted to keep up the goal and you let yourself breathe again.
The girl pondered her existence for the 3287th day. Exactly nine years. She was fifteen now, but she felt one hundred. She lay in the same room she always had, staring at the ceiling in utter melancholic harmony with the sounds and feelings around her. It seemed like a thousand decades had gone by in just one little hour. Her headphones laid not upon her head but rather beside her, playing ‘Dancing Queen’ by ABBA over and over and over again on repeat.
Quite frankly, she’d forgotten that it had been playing. It was drowned out by the sound of the backboard in the room to the right of her banging against the wall. Those moans, grunts, and guttural screams. She never once paid any mind to it. She didn’t know exactly what it was either. Torture, sex, or the fine line in between? She stared down at the dried blood on her left wrist, scraping it off with her fingernails and itching that all-too-familiar sting that still lingered on her skin with a slight smile on her face. It felt so fucking amazing. The itching, aching, and stinging seemed to be her last true gateway to feeling anything natural.
She hadn’t ever seen herself in the mirror. What was there to be sad about? Her appearance? Maybe failing the Defense Against the Dark Arts quiz? She wasn’t necessarily known for spectacular grades…or talking. She was only known by the name ‘Thalassa Black’. That’s all she was to the students and teachers around her. A measly name that floated around, sulking in loneliness all the time. That god-awful song changed now to ‘Mamma Mia’, once again, by ABBA. When is life going to end? Is it going to end? Is there an afterlife? The girl questioned herself as if she hadn’t been taught all of that already in Divination class. She didn’t listen to a single one of Professor Trelawney’s lessons. That’s why her grades were treacherous. She’d almost been kicked out of Hogwarts on two different occasions purely for bad grades.
She raised her head as her mother barged into her room. “Thally, are you ever going to eat?” Bellatrix whined, giving her daughter the puppy eyes. She was trying to convince her to eat for the first time in a week. Thalassa’s brows furrowed as she looked up at her mother. “No. I’m not hungry.”
“Thalassa, you’re killing yourself.” Bella sat down next to her daughter. She moved her overgrown bangs from her eyes. “You’ve got to stop it with those wrists. It makes our entire family look–”
“Mum, get out.”
Thalassa sat up, pulling her sleeve down.
“Excuse me? Thalassa, you do not talk to your mother like that. You’re lucky you don’t have a father. Surely he’d beat you.” Bellatrix stood up, staring down at her daughter with a hint of contempt. "And killing yourself isn't an option. Get up, go wash your robes for tomorrow, and get downstairs to the dinner table you ungrateful little brat. You're eating the dinner I made. I'm sick of you trying to earn pity from me. It's not working!" Thalassa's mother stormed through the doorway, leaving and heading over to her room to clean it after the mess Snape had left had tattered the green satin sheets.
Thalassa stopped in her tracks like a deer in headlights and witnessed a dark-haired man hurry out of the bedroom next to her as she left her room to wash her robes. "Professor Snape?" She said in sheer disbelief. The man's head shot over in Thalassa's direction. He barely even had a cover over himself. He had a wrinkled cloak over his nude crotch. Snape said nothing, he just turned in the other direction and ran down the hallway, trying to avoid Thally. Seriously, what the fuck. The Potions professor was sleeping with her mother—the professor everyone hated. He could have chosen anyone, but he chose Bellatrix Lestrange out of all people. Then she thought back to the dark mark her mother had. She had only caught a glimpse of Snape's. Merlin, were the Death Eaters a sex cult? That's what it seemed like. The only people Thalassa's mummy had brought home had that mark.
Thalassa worried that someday, she might end up with the mark. She didn't like her life now. The girl thought for a brief moment. Maybe she might like it then, you know, having something to do. She stared down at her wrists, hoping her good wrist wasn't going to be soon tainted with that dark mark that everyone she knew had. She was, after all, a disgrace to her own family. When she cut herself, she let sacred and pure blood fall. That's another thing everyone knew her for. Her name, and being overly dramatic to the point she was bleeding from the wrists or the tummy. Would the side the dark mark ended up on be up to her? Or would the dark lord take advantage of her life and make her his newest recruit?