Thally.
Thalassa stood upon the bathroom sink, glaring at herself in the mirror for the first time in her life. Seeing your own sparkling eyes get wetter and wetter as you stare your ugly face down? Maybe Bellatrix was right. Maybe mirrors were a curse.
Was she ever going to recover from her bedrotting stage? She felt like a maggot, wriggling and feeding off of everyone’s pity.
Every step she took, she feared someone would judge her for it. Maybe she had too much bounce in her walk. Maybe her steps weren’t long enough. Did it make her look like a baby? Did she waddle? Did her hips sway too much?
Or what about her lips? Were they too small? And her nose, it was crooked and hooked just like that damned dark Professor Snape. Maybe she looked a little too much like him. Where was her father figure all her life?
Was he her father?
Thalassa thought long and hard about it. They had the same eye shape. The same lips that curled into a sneer every time she was disgusted with someone. Two hours of standing in the Hogwarts washroom practicing different facial expressions in the mirror did not help her case. She couldn’t stop thinking about similarities between herself and her stupid Potions professor.
Thalassa’s irises were a dark brown. Hadn’t they been under the dim bathroom light, they would look black. Her hair was black and pin-straight and her cheeks curved inwards, displaying the result of her avoidance of food. Her jaw was also strong and her chin was relatively pointed. The earrings her mother had pierced her lobes with five years ago were dirty and dull, no longer shining like they did before: An indicator of her innocence shriveling away.
Fairly malnourished, her ribcage protruded underneath her robes. Her arms had a small amount of meat on them and her legs had a little more. They were weak and quivered with every step she took. She carried on with a weak body and sunken eyes towards the Slytherin Commons.
A group of short-haired Slytherin girls that loomed over in the corner, sitting in the booth chairs along the wall next to the bookshelf, glared up at Thalassa when she walked in.
“Old meat, ‘eh?” Darlene Ohlin waltzed up to the dark girl. “You smell fockin’ rancid.”
Thalassa said nothing. She stood there. She took the insult like a good girl. That’s what her mother told her. Mother knows best, doesn’t she? That’s what her mother told her. ‘Don’t ever be afraid to hurt their feelings.’ Bellatrix always said. Mother knows best.
Mother knows best. Thalassa repeated the phrase in her head, zoning out at the girl’s attempted words of destruction. To no avail. Thalassa didn’t respond with words like Darlene wanted. Thalassa shoved her.
“Aye, fuck off, you whore.” The little fourth year grumbled, staring up at the sixth year girl she’d just shoved. She knew she’d probably fucked up just now. Classic bullying. It had been happening to Thalassa since she got on the Hogwarts Express for the first time. Maybe it was her first impression with her matted hair and sopping wet eyelashes. Maybe it was the fact that she’d only spoken five times in an actual conversation since her first year.
Or maybe it was the fact that she looked like a harlot in a suit. She’d been known for wearing the male uniform. Blaise thought it was funny. Crabbe had told her all the time that she didn’t deserve to wear men’s clothing. And Draco, well, he never batted an eye at her. He was the boy Thalassa longed for.
She’d gotten his attention once, for such a stupid reason. That was because her heel had tracked a strip of toilet paper down the hallway. And the only reason she’d never used the mirrors in front of the sinks were because of her intense fear of being cursed. It was like believing everything your parents told you. If your mom raised you by telling you every Christmas that the Elf-On-A-Shelf moved by itself, you’d believe it. If you grew up with the belief that Santa was real because your papa told you he was, you’d believe it.
That’s why she’d finally looked in the mirror and faced her fear.
She was growing up.