aut inveniam viam aut faciam ; i shall either find a way or make one

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OPHELIA'S LIFE CHANGED IN A NUMBER OF WAYS, very quickly - alarmingly so - at the end of her sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And for the majority of it, she should have known it was coming.

When she saw the dead body of Cedric Diggory return to the stands during the third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament, Harry Potter clinging, crying, to his yellow and black jersey, Ophelia had cursed herself for not seeing it sooner. Not when her estranged grandfather's dead body turned up on school grounds, not when her father began to discuss aforementioned grandfather plenty more, and not when his letters stopped for lengthier periods of time.

She should have noticed that Professor Moody... or at least who she believed to be Professor Moody was not being friendly to her because of her family name, and those brief moments when she saw his tongue flicking over his lip like a snake before he excused himself was not something she had made up. And she should have known better than to simply accept the fact that her grandmother going missing and Barty Crouch Jr.'s death occurring so close to one another was no simply a coincidence.

But she knew, her friends and housemates (at least those with any significance whatsoever to their family names) knew what happened. And they knew Harry Potter was not lying.

So when she finished her sixth year at Hogwarts and returned to the family manor being empty, Ophelia knew what she had to do.

She was seventeen, a legal adult, and so, she knew she had to take care of things.

The very next morning, she Apparated to the Ministry to report her father as missing, panicked and near tears. Two investigators came back with her, both well aware of the Crouch family situation and eager to soothe the young girl's worries. They returned to officially pronounce Caspar Crouch as missing and, not three days after the posters announcing his disappearance made the rounds in all newspapers - he was a prominent man, after all - Ophelia contacted the Ministry again.

All evidence pointed to there being some kind of fight, his wand left broken near the edge of the property and splatters of blood. A lot of blood. And that title of missing soon became, after a quick investigation, presumed dead.

Ophelia was the last living Crouch, and that was how she wanted it to be. She had control of everything now as intended and she would do her best to uphold the family name. It wouldn't be difficult, it was what she had been brought up to do. Every second had been preparing her for that. The good grades at school, the behaviour, the beliefs, it had all been built to prepare her to continue what her father and grandfather had done, despite what her Uncle Barty had done.

She would go into her seventh year at Hogwarts with the intention of graduating with 'Outstanding' in each of her five N.E.W.T.s subjects; Defence Against the Dark Arts, Charms, Transfiguration, Potions and Ancient Runes and then she would go on to work in her chosen field. Which she still had to decide upon, but hoped that year she could figure out that year.

By the first week of the summer holidays, Ophelia had been left completely alone and she knew exactly what she would have to do to maintain that.

It wasn't the first time she had been left alone. Her mother died when she was five and her father was a busy man. When she wasn't being tutored, or befriending the children of Caspar Crouch's Pureblood peers, Ophelia was alone, free to make her own fun and keep herself entertained. Reading, chess, walks in the garden, letter-writing; everything and anything she could get her hands on.

By the time it came to Hogwarts, it was more than clear where Ophelia would end up. She was a Slytherin, through and through, ambitious, proud and intelligent beyond belief for her age. The loneliness had turned her to learning and as such, she intended to achieve great things regardless of anything that happened to her. Ophelia wanted to excel in everything she could manage.

She made friends with the correct people, a small group of Slytherins in her year; Adrian Pucey, Charlotte Flint, Cassius Warrington and Damien Rowle and would remain friends with them as she progressed through the years, achieving the highest grades in each of her classes through her O.W.L.s. In her second year, with Adrian Pucey, they joined the Quidditch team as Chasers, and she did well in that too.

Everything she did would be perfect. It had to be, she was the only child of the Crouch name and she had a reputation to uphold. A reputation that one day would be hers alone, as it was by the beginning of her seventh year.

But alas, despite her consistently high grades, the prefect title given to her in her fifth year, the perfect Quidditch games she played, the approval from the teachers, there was one blemish on her perfect record. One long, continuous, six-year-long, annoying blemish.

That blemish came in the form of the Weasley twins. They annoyed plenty of people, certainly, but a lot of the time their pranks were not severe enough to warrant annoyance beyond a few looks and most definitely a lot of laughs, but when it came to the Slytherins there was a closer focus upon them than anyone else, beyond teachers who pissed them off and Filch and Mrs Norris.  

Ophelia had found, over the years, that the Weasley twins had taken something of a liking to her. She knew exactly why it was; the amounts of time she had told them to shut up, giving into the comments they made simply to get a rise out of her. The swearing and the pranks, missing ties, her school jumpers turning up pink or, even worse - red - missing Quidditch uniform, taunts in Quidditch matches, everything. Oddly, they seemed to enjoy it, the back and forth, but Ophelia didn't. 

She just wanted to focus on her school work and ensuring that nothing went awry. Ophelia was perfectly happy with her life as it was. She didn't want anything to be different, nor anything to change, and when it did it was expected and she took it under her wing. 

The Weasley twins' behaviour was entirely unpredictable, and she hated that. 

But by the summer following her sixth year at Hogwarts, Ophelia Crouch's life had never been so unpredictable and available to change. That would only be proven further in the coming months.

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