Lovelight

Knowing Me, Knowing You

Maia's plan to keep the storms at bay with nothing but the brilliance of the light around her, of the light inside her, had been foiled. It had barely lasted a day, crumbling to her feet almost immediately after she had left the safe haven of her room.

She had made a list of what she knew to be true, every bit of information she had gathered on the two men, between whom she was left to determine her paternity.

She knew that Draco currently loved Hermione. She also knew that Hermione loved, or used to love, Draco, although she only knew it because there was more written in her diary about Draco than anyone else. Did that mean that he was her father? Or was that just because of the relationship that her mother had had with him before finding out about his betrothal? They had been together on 20 November 1998. Hermione and Theo were together on 1 December 1998. Draco and Maia had similar skills of playing the piano, and Hermione had taught her the song that apparently Draco had taught to Hermione years earlier. But she and Theo had just felt good whenever they were around each other...

While the habitual scratching of her pen against the parchment had lulled her into contentment, everything seeming to glow bright around her, the source of the light seeming to be her, her bubble of light burst, plunging her into immediate darkness as soon as she crossed the threshold from her room into the corridor.

Maia heard shouting. Commotion. Rage. Chaos. It took everything in her to not immediately run towards the source of the uproar.

She practically flew down the stairs, bounding down them without a care, as if she was atop the broomstick she had learned to fly on all those years ago. The first thing she heard when she reached the ground floor of the inn were the quieted whispers of gossip. The second, as she neared the courtyard, was the far off cries of the chickens that her mother had insisted on getting when Maia was ten. The third was the exchange of growled words, soft yet intense and filled with anger.

As she stepped out into the grass of the courtyard, one of the subjects of her earlier questioning appeared, his hair so bright under the midday Mediterranean sun that she thought for a moment that it was the planet standing in front of her instead of a real human. But the light that the first thoughts and sights of the sun provided quickly dimmed when she realized what was truly happening, who was in the grasp of the metaphorical darkness.

"What the fuck, Weaselbee?!" Draco fumed, stalking closer to the man who Maia had just left not three hours earlier.

Oh no. Get out of here. This doesn't look good, Maia's mind told her, imploring her to do something other than just standing and staring at the inevitable doom that was going to meet her possible-father and not-father. Fortunately enough, her self-preservation took control, pulling her behind one of the columns holding up the balcony on the second floor of the establishment while also compelling her to cast a disillusionment charm on herself so that nobody would see her as she hid.

The expression on Ron's face was one of pure confusion, even tainting his stance as he held his hands up in surrender and backed away from the approaching man. "What the hell are you doing, Malfoy?"

Draco didn't seem to care about his apparent surrender, encroaching upon his space without hesitation, leering down into his eyes as one finger poked at Ron's chest, his other hand grasping his wand like a vice at his side. "What the fuck is your problem, Weasley?! Why the ever-loving fuck would you do that, huh?! Where do you think you get off?!!"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Malfoy," Ron sneered, removing Draco's finger from his chest and attempting once more to back away slowly. "If you want to talk about whatever this is, like adults , I will be here. Otherwise, you can stop attacking me as if I'm the devil incarnate—"