✓ WE NEVER SLEEP, draco malfoy

T W E N T Y - T W O

"Yearning for you, no trace of me remains."

— Amir Khusrau, from "Ghazal 249" in the Bazaar of Love

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She dreamt of her life before him. Before the strange darkness settled all around her like a versatile hug. Both evil and pure. In these dreams, she saw him, her golden boy who only loved her in secret, like they all do. 

It wasn't his fault, she would think as he would caress her, touch her in sacred places, kissing against that sweet spot on her neck and down to her legs. She knew that his love went to Cho, to that brilliantly beautiful girl. She had seen the hold the girl had on even people like Harry, there was no escaping it. 

But, in their dark moments of love, she knew Cedric would've been the one. In the future, when they had careers and lives outside of this growing war, they would've found each other in solace and loved until death. It would've been a happy ending, one where even her sister wouldn't be present.

In all her fantasies, her sister was long dead. Taken swiftly from this earth the way god steals all his children. 

Cedric would hold her and speak to her in these dreams, where they would either been in beautiful fields or cuddled in soft beds, to even speaking softly between shelves in the library. It would be soft, never demanding, but it would be painful. When the first glimpses of life would start to shatter her perfect realm, she would watch his fade away and she would wake, forcing her mind to think of him and not forget the love they'd shared with her eyes closed.

Today was no different.

She woke with her mind to him and a soft wetness under her eyes. People would never understand what had happened, what they had shared for so long. They had been friends first, but they always forget. 

They always forget.

Rowan slipped out of the warmth of her bed that felt like the body of another, and dressed silently as the girls in the room began to as well. She readied herself, not bothering with fixing her hair as she grabbed her books and waited for Hermione to be ready in the common room.

They had Potions together and it seemed, so would Harry and Ron after some gentle persuasion. 

She knew he would be there, as always with his clique. She noted how tired he looked as they filed into the room and waited for their new professor. Slughorn was a Slytherin back in his day, and a damn good Potions Master too. Harry had told her about the photographs he'd seen when him and Dumbledore went to fetch him towards the end of the summer. The one he had seen of his mother and one of Regulus Black, and the mention of the Black family struck hard and fast at Rowan's heart.

She hadn't known Sirus as well as Harry, no one did except even more so by Lupin, but she enjoyed him. Came to care for him as well. He had wit and had stories about his friends when they were younger that she couldn't help but eat up. 

She only wished things had gone differently, that he had lived.

But not all good men were meant to survive.

Harry joined Rowan by her side when he and Ron arrived, grabbing their books from the cabinet. Rowan, of course, nudged the boy and murmured, "At least smile a bit, Harry, it won't be all bad."

"Says you," he grumbled back and she smiled and murmured to him, "I'm just as terrible at Potions as you, we'll suffer together, yeah?"

She thought to her summer moments with him when he smiled back. There hadn't been much to do besides ride the subway and eat at little diners like they weren't secretly being hunted down. They pretended to be other people, happy couples in love, siblings, and their favorites, confused tourists.