(1) 𝐍𝐄𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐇𝐄 | d. m

Chapter twenty-five

When I was seventeen, I learned what love truly meant. Love is waking up in the morning for your first thought to be of that one person. Love is that feeling in your stomach that you get whenever he or she looks at you from across the room. It's the take and give, the warm embrace. It's feeling safe and enough. Love is giving yourself to someone completely.

Love is not what I felt for Draco Malfoy.

No. That was something else entirely. What I felt for him, was pity. Pity for the boy whose family had him live a dangerous life, for the boy with the broken soul and unruly heart. The lonesome boy, trapped in complete darkness. Someone who was beyond saving.

"What is going on inside that head of yours?". His voice was low and devious, making me question the decision to ever get in his bed.  I had fooled him into thinking he could trust me, at least that is what I believed at the time. There was only one problem – Draco wasn't the only one I had managed to fool. This game of cat and mouse had started to get out of hand. I had convinced myself that what I had done was the right thing, and that I would never be able to save my friends, had it not been for my rash decision to jump into bed with my arch-enemy turned lover. But I was also starting to question my own thoughts and feelings, and as the sun rose and the moon retired, my own conscience started to falter.

"I don't know. I guess I'm just tired. We haven't been doing a lot of sleeping the past few nights. Or did you forget?", I winked, putting on my best impression of a femme fatale. I placed a tiny kiss on his forehead. Standing up from the bed in which we had spent the last couple of days, I reached for the photograph I had examined only the night before. It stood on the dresser where I had left it, seemingly untouched. I hadn't been able to get the picture out of my head. The idea that my parents were once loyal Death Eaters had everything but escaped my mind, and I had almost grown used to the notion, when I found out something else about their past. They had apparently been close friends with Draco's parents Lucius and Narcissa as well as with Bellatrix, the person I hated most in this world. This knowledge only gave me another reason to nearly despise my deceased mother and father, which then made me hate myself for ever thinking about them in such a way. I held a firm grip around the photo frame, staring intensely on the figures within it. There was a moments silence, then I braced myself in preparation for what I was about to ask him.

"Draco?", I said, in a more serious tone this time. "Do you know who these people are?". I showed him the photograph, and he sat up, seemingly curious to see what I was referring to. He examined the photo, scanning for the people I was asking about. There was a slight pause, and then the said;

"Yeah, I recognise them. Apparently they were quite close with my parents, especially when they were younger and before they had me. I've only heard Lucius and Narcissa talk about them a few times before, but they didn't seem as happy at the thought of them as I had understood it from this picture. I don't think I ever heard them mentioning them by name, though". He straightened his back while looking to me with his big, blue eyes. I wasn't especially happy with the answer he had given me, I wanted to know exactly what my parents relationship with the Malfoys was like. They seemed to have been close, but the fact that they never mentioned them by name around Draco, had me questioning everything about it. Maybe they knew of my parents plans to leave the Dark Side, maybe they despised them for it?

"Why do you ask?", whispered Draco, a slight wrinkle forming above his eyebrow, making him appear worried. "Do you know who they are?".

I put the framed photo back on the dresser, slowly, and without losing sight of it. I could feel Dracos arms wrapping themselves around my waist, as he crouched closer towards where I was standing. He held me like that for a few seconds, before pulling me back into bed. "Draco! What are you doing?!", I said, trying to keep from laughing hysterically, which I failed miserably at.

I hated myself for laughing, even smiling, in his presence. The way he made me feel had resulted in me almost forgetting what was going on downstairs. I was disgusted, angry, I wanted to be free of the feeling I was having and just walk out of here. The time I had spent with Draco the past couple of days, had somehow pulled the sanity out of my body, leaving me to believe that the room we were in, was the entirety of the world. That nothing outside of these four walls mattered, except for the people we were and wanted to be.

But I couldn't go on with it anymore. I had to do something about my feelings, before everything got even worse than it already was. Draco still held a tight grip around my body, forcing me to give in to the temptation that was pulling him even closer. Finally, I managed to pull myself free, but to the cost of having him notice my sudden realisation. He let go off me, reluctantly, but without any other choice.

"What happened? What's going on?", he cried, sitting up again, as I stood with my back to him, refusing to look him in the eyes. I knew that, if I surrendered myself to his arms and gaze one more, I would surely be lost forever. Instead, I stood there, frozen and with no idea what to do next. All I could think about, was how to get him let me go.

"I was wrong...", I said, after the silence between us made the air run cold. "I don't want this. At first I thought I did, but I don't".  I felt my voice shake and my heart almost heaping out of my chest like a cannonball. The distance between us seemed to grow once more, and even though I wasn't entirely sure of my own feelings, that was what needed to happen. Then he stood up as well, cold-faced and static. He seemed to be baffled by my sudden change in demeanour and appeared just as motionless as I.

"What do you mean?", he asked quietly, moving closer to me. I could feel the heat from his body behind me, and he started tracing his hand up and down my arm. But I was too strong-willed to give in to him again. I had to stay cold, I couldn't answer his touch. The wall he had somehow managed to tear down around me, had started to build up once more. It didn't matter if, or how much I wanted to turn around and throw my arms around his neck.  I couldn't go back. And I knew that.

"I MEAN, I can't do this anymore". I paused, breathing in heavily. "It was all an attempt to fool you into releasing Luna and Neville. And now that I see that it's not going to happen, now that I see that my feelings we're never real, — I can leave. Whether you choose to throw me back in the dungeons with my friends, or hand me over to Voldemort, it doesn't matter. Because I know the truth of what you are. You're just a pathetic, vile, little boy, who no one could ever love". The words rolled off my tongue like marbles on to the the floor. I felt conflicted. In one way, my mind was telling me to run, to get away from all of it, but there was something else inside me saying I should've stayed. If not for my own sake, then for the sake of my two best friends.

It was almost as if the temperature in the room suddenly dropped, making the hairs on my arms and legs stand. It was still dark outside, reflecting what I was feeling inside. I could feel Draco taking a few agitated steps back, even though I still wasn't facing him. He didn't say a word to my speech. Frankly, he didn't have to. The silence, coming from someone like him, said it all.