𝒜𝒻𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓂𝒶𝓉𝒽 | 𝒟.𝑀.

19 | ﴾ Never Forget ﴿

I stared, frozen in complete shock, at the blood running down my arm from the burning cut. I now had a third mark on my skin from some other being that claimed to own me. It looked like someone had carved the name from the inside of my skin outwards. She was like a parasite that wanted to keep me all to herself, to channel me into a dark lord, and I was undoubtedly in serious trouble.

Draco looked like he was about to hurl, his face bending down into a disgusted frown, "Is that it's name? Ascelin?" He had to keep coughing against the water that was lingering in his lungs. He'd nearly drowned and I was certain that Ascelin had planned it on purpose. She loathed him on a cellular level, with the belief that he was weak hearted and a distraction from my "true purpose". She must have used my knowledge of his inability to swim against him.

Draco wobbled to his feet and shook out his muddy, soaked hair. We both were covered in grime and matted clothing. His crystal eyes appeared especially pronounced in the moonlight with the dirt all over his face. "Well?" he prodded impatiently.

I shivered in the breeze, standing as well, and yanked the sleeve of my wet night slip down. The blood running below blossomed in red patches through the silk. "Yes, dat is 'er name," I feebly replied, crossing my arms in embarrassment of how naked I looked under the drenched material.

He put his hands in his sweatpants awkwardly but didn't bother to stop his eyes wandering rudely, "Can you stop the bleeding?"

I clamped my hand down crookedly over my scorching forearm and nodded my head. He raised an eyebrow at me as if expecting me to do something else scary. "Alright, let's walk back. I need to shake this off first." He took careful steps through the muddy riparian zone of the bank, and once back on the path he removed his socks entirely and threw them away. I watched as he winced in botheration from the inhospitable hardscape.

"I need to know what thing was," he said in his dark British accent as we picked our way along, both in bare feet on the gravel trails. He resigned from trying to remove the mud from his shirt and yanked up the sleeves, glancing sideways at me.

I walked closely to him feeling dizzy, and continuously bumping into him with an ataxic gait. He was warm, tall and inviting. "Apparently another Veela. She 'as been visiting me, since I...woke up." I didn't really want to describe everything that was happening to me. Draco was in a way, precious.

His mother had explicitly asked me to minimize the volume of details from our past that I shared with him, preferring instead that they be meticulously and delicately distributed to him over time in order to avoid a full blown break down. While what was occurring to me in the contemporary did not fall in that category, I also wanted to protect his ideals of me. If he knew what kind of evil coursed through my veins, or visited me in that realm, he would perhaps turn away from me.

His eyes flickered towards me rapidly but he remained stoic with a clinical expression, "Sounds like you should get that checked out. I'm serious..." He could probably tell that I wasn't open to the interrogation as his sentence trailed away into a wisp.

I looked away feeling like he was judging me. It was quiet for another ten minutes as we both disappeared into our own thoughts to digest what had just happened. Draco kept shaking out his filthy hair, only causing it to stand up even more. The gardens were filled with the sounds of buzzing insects, amphibians, and nocturnal fowl. I had to keep swatting at my skin, wondering why we were electing to "walk it off" when we could've just disapparated inside.

My experience that night had evidently been very different than his. I had wandered through the hybrid realm having been coaxed to the bridge for another secret discussion, when I had sensed something or someone hanging out behind me. That same warmth in the air had been there, reaching out for me. I had immediately come to the conclusion that it was my elf, or one of the Malfoy's, based on Ascelin's instantaneous rage. As soon as I had turned around to warn them she had somehow taken control of my vision and I was left alone in the realm, twirling on the spot in my own mind. Then after what felt like an eternity, I had come to consciousness nearly drowning while the bridge collapsed into the pond.