Sleeping

Gabrielle is beautiful. Or so they tell her; men staring shamelessly, eyes dull, hands fumbling around for money in dirty robes her sister would have scoffed at. She lets them tell her this, of course, despite the fact that it’s far from the truth; Gabrielle isn’t blind, knows the Veela blood in her sister ran stronger, knows the years of hunger and fear and filth haven’t been kind to her.

Back at the beginning of the War in her idealistic teen years, she’d been eager to join the fight against the Dark. Eager to join the winning side, the Light side. Fleur and Bill, lovely, brave. A fairytale couple in a fairytale battle - side-by-side with heroes like Harry Potter who already saved her life once. How could she have known? No one whose parents sang you lullabies and brushed your hair twice a day and fed you fairy pudding whenever you liked could possibly have known the truth.

She knows it now.

In the first Great Battle, Gabrielle watched as Fleur who had once cradled her to sleep fell under Cruciatus and screamed and writhed in agony until a more merciful Death Eater sent her to her eternal rest. A lullabye - Avada Kedavra. Listen to it slide off the tongue like a childrens’ rhyme. Soothing green light. She watched it without emotion. When Amos Diggory grabbed her along with a pair of dead Muggle twins as the Light Side retreated, all she could think was She’s sleeping, she’s sleeping .

She grew up in six hours. War, she realized, means pain. Death, sacrifices no one should make. Watching children die confused, knowing nothing but the pain. Watching - because to save them would be pointless. This first Great Battle; Fleur’s last. Hermione Granger’s last. Remus Lupin’s last. Read the death lists loud and clear, hold the names close to you. Don’t forget.

And she doesn’t. She remembers all of it. It replays in her head every night - overandoverandoverandover and along with the deaths she remembers her first snort, her first hopeless swallow, a dreamy high. She knows she has always been weak. Gabrielle’s shame has long since faded, though; since she first knew what it was to kill out of hunger, to steal a dead man’s cloak because you are too cold to be squeamish, to close your eyes and wait for the thrusting to finish so you can take the money and find a place to sleep for the night. She has survived, and it is more than most can say in this terrible War. Knockturn Alley - refuge of the damned. Along with the shame she clutches a strange and terrible pride - because all of them are alive and so many others are not.

When the day of Victory finally comes, Gabrielle finds she can not smile. Instead she stares down a fat man in shabby robes and lets him fuck her for seventeen Sickles.

“You’re beautiful,” he tells her, afterwards.
Maybe, once upon a time, it was true.