Poison Ivy [Sirius Black]

IVY AND THE EXPERIMENTAL MAGIC

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𝕚𝕧𝕪 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕖𝕩𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕝 𝕞𝕒𝕘𝕚𝕔

 𝙹𝚞𝚕𝚢 𝟷, 𝟷𝟿𝟽𝟷

IVY AND LILY had practically nothing in common. Where Lily was drawn to flare jeans and platform shoes, Ivy was more inclined towards crop tops paired with high-waisted long skirts. Growing up, whatever Lily did, she did better than her sisters. Whether it was joining the spelling bees or making friends, Lily outshone her fraternal twin. They gravitated towards opposite sides of everything: the playground, public pools, and even the dinner table.

In class, Lily's hand would shoot up to ask questions, write down every word the teachers said as if she were practising to be an Official Courtroom Reporter. Ivy could barely listen long enough to ask a question, her leg vibrating with the frequency of microwaves. Yet Ivy wasn't stupid. She was bored. And she shouldn't care that her sister was the better liked of the two, even by the teachers, but she did. The other students seemed to shy away from her—laughing, calling her a 'bitter bitch'.

When they decided to set up a garden when they were eight, despite it being Ivy's idea, Lily showed off an unexpected green thumb while her sister could only watch on helplessly as anything she touched died almost immediately. She'd have to hear each of her failures in her mother's pointed silence. "What a waste," she'd then say, "Why can't you be more like your sister?"

Since her parents would find anything Ivy did to be inadequate, what was the point of trying?

When the Hogwarts letter came, it came for Lily.

"It's probably a hoax," Ivy had said from the background, Petunia nodding her head as if that were the only possibility. As if Lily hadn't been showing signs of magic for years. After all, the flowers she grew always bloomed. A daisy should take, at minimum, ten days to grow, but when Lily planted one, it grew in full bloom by the next day. It had been Lily who made the cats around the neighbourhood suddenly dance. It had been Lily who complained about the blue-painted walls in the sitting room, only for everyone to awaken the next morning to see them a perfect and vibrant red.