5 - future nostalgia
Venus Black didn’t have an anxiety attack in months. Last time was when the massive break out from Azkaban happened and her deranged cousin Bellatrix ran away. She was used to having them, knew what to do, and almost always had a friend around her when it happened. Usually, one of the twins. Bellatrix and her didn’t have good history together, Venus doubts Bella has a good history with anyone really.
Venus was used to people comparing her to her father’s family, she spent her entire life hearing people say just how alike they were, her and her father, people tended to hyperfocus on the Black side of her, and forgot she had a mother.
She never forgot though, what happened that night, she was maybe 3/ 4 years old, it was July of 1981, just three months before more of her life fell apart, when Bellatrix Lestrange and some other Death Eaters killed her mother along side her family. She was there, she saw it all, she was the only survivor of the attack. Then she got taken to live with the Malfoys. Boo.
Venus has what people know as Survivors Guilt, she just spent so long wondering why had she not been killed alongside her family, when the world clearly had barely anything good left for her. It made her furious. Furious because what good was she to the world all alone, a world that didn’t like her, a world that expected the worst from her?
She also, for the longest time, hated being compared to her father, she knew the crimes he had been accused of, knew what he had (allegedly) done and the consequences of it. To her it sounded like everyone though she was going to end up mad and locked up just like the majority of her relatives. So, she resented her father for years. Living with Narcissa and Lucius clearly didn't help her form a good image of her father.
Finding out he was actually innocent was the biggest relief she ever felt in her life, a partially selfish relief. Sure, she was so happy her father was away from that place and that he could finally be an innocent man once more, but the biggest relief came from herself, if people kept telling her she was just like him, and he was innocent, he hadn’t done those things, that meant she had a chance to prove everyone wrong, she would not end up mad and a killer, because he was never one.
Her mother was beautiful in every picture Venus saw of her, but they looked nothing alike, her mother looked like an angel. Blond, tall and beautiful. People tended to also not talk about her mother that much, but when they did, their face lit up. She understood it now. A little too much. Which is why she had to ignore the two girls and bolt out of the classroom, had she spent one more second in her mother’s presence she would lose it.
She felt as if she couldn’t taker a breath in, felt like someone put a hand through her chest and squeezed her heart in their hand, felt like she had to keep herself alive by will power alone, like her heart wasn’t beating on its own anymore, there was not enough oxygen going to her brain. She ran as fast as she could to the only room that had the power to be whatever she wanted it to be. So, her feet took her to the Room of Requirement.
That room had been the best thing in this castle for the entirety of her seventh year (the first time around), having been Dumbledore’s Army safe haven, the room was extremely convenient. And as she paced back and forth thrice, she could only think about home. It was no surprise when the door opened to the Twins room in the Burrow. It felt like an eternity until she came to her senses and calmed down, then looking around the room with tear streaks down her cheek made reality hit her like a punch to the gut.
Being in this room felt like calming ripples of water through her anxiety storm, but now that she was left with nothing but soft waves, she felt like she was drowning, in pain, in sorrow, in grief. Her being sent here was an accident of catastrophic proportions, and she was a realist, she knew she might never go back to her original time, her mere presence had chanced too much already. So yes, she was grieving, she lost everyone again, she was alone in this school again, and this time there will be no stupid little 11-year-old red-head twins to make her see the best of this school. No one to rescue her from feeling unwanted and unlucky.
The Twins were the best thing that ever happened to her, their friendship saved her in ways she never told them, they were the golden amongst the perpetual black and white that was her existence. When she, after two months at Hogwarts and no friends, was considering to beg Dumbledore to transfer her somewhere else, they made her go prank Filch with them, they made her change her mind. As she, Fred and George ran like idiots covered in firework powder laughing until their entire body hurt, she saw the world in bright technicolor for the first time.
Now she felt on her own shoulders, the weight she saw her father and Remus carry in theirs in the future, the heartbreak and the raw grief of losing their best friends, she really was just like her father. In more ways than she’d like.
It was very unsettling to be so close but so far away from home, the castle was the same, so were most of the teachers and the headmaster, but everything else was unfamiliar to her, she wasn’t even in her own house anymore, didn’t have the noise and the constant chaos of the Gryffindor common room to keep her own at bay, now she only had the quiet talking of the Ravenclaws to make her chaos even more disruptive.
Honestly this whole attack she had was a long time coming, and she only had been here for two fucking days. Even the war was unfamiliar to her, she knew what everyone knew about the First Wizarding War against Voldemort, and it was not much, not nearly as much for her to just be here and be okay with it.
Hogwarts felt like a graveyard, she only met a few people and most of them, in her time, were either dead or in prison, so that made her feel not the best. She had to calm down again, she had to get out of this room and do something that made her feel better about herself or else, she wouldn’t be much help, dead people can’t help.
She, however, ended up falling asleep in Fred’s bed and when she woke up it was dinner time. Fantastic, first day in and I not only had a panic attack but also missed most of my classes. She did think about one thing though, and that was that tomorrow is Saturday, Hogsmead day. So, she got out of the bed and instead of going to the Great Hall, she found herself in the Kitchens.
She has loved the Kitchens since she found it, it was noisy and cramped with house-elves running left and right, and delicious food. She ate in peace, with no one bothering her about where the hell had she been the entire day, and after dinner time was over, she went to Dumbledore’s Office. Thank Merlin the password was still the same.
As the door to his office opened, Dumbledore regarded her little surprise, word of her missing most of her classes clearly got to him, “Miss Black, thought I’d see you today.”
“Hello Headmaster, I apologize for today, its just,” she took a moment to gather her own, “I’ve met a lot of people in a very short period of time and it overwhelmed me, I’ll try not let it happen again.”
“I understand dear, do not fret. Your friends were worried, you might want to reassure them later.” Dumbledore, as weird as he could very well be, has a calming vibe to him that made people feel more at ease, she was grateful for it now. “Friends?” Venus asked puzzled.
“Well, yes, Miss Evans and Miss Bradley were looking for you. Now, you came here for something else, am I right?” Damn him andhis damn good guesses. “Yes sir, about the trip to Hogsmead this weekend, would it be possible for me to go?”
“I reckoned that would come up sooner than later, I take it you are of age already? If yes you do not need the permit signed, seeing as you are already an adult, I took the liberty however of getting a little something from my own vault.” He said, taking a small pouch in hand and giving it to her.
“Sir- is this money?” she was truthfully speechless; she hadn’t really thought about money. “Of course, Miss Black, can’t go to Hogsmead and not thoughtfully enjoy it now, can you? It was really no bother at all, you are going through enormous stress already.” Venus felt touched, she and the headmaster weren’t really close back in her time, his focus was on Harry.
Venus thanked him, and left to go to sleep again, thinking about what she was going to buy, she needed some things of her own, clothes, shoes, music. She wants it all, and she could not wait to get her hands on some 70’s muggle vinyl’s. She always loved music from this time period, so at least this isn’t complete shit.
Instead of going to her dorms though, she made her way back to the RoR, she still wasn’t in the mood to justify her actions today. And as she entered the room again, noticing how this time, it transformed into her father’s room at Grimmauld Place, she just took her uniform off and put on the pj’s the room offered her, and went to sleep feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders again.