𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐃𝐎𝐖 | Draco Malfoy

TWENTY- NINE | vengeance is mine

A/N: it's important you only read this chapter after figuring out the identity of the blackmailer. The letter Blair wrote is full of secret messages. But if you don't care to figure it out yourself, then by all means: keep reading.

____________________________
BLAIR

The secret messages I left in the letter were only obvious to two people and two people alone. Draco taught me this way of coding when he and I exchanged letters regularly during my seventh year at Hogwarts, the year that he wasn't my teacher yet. At first it was for fun, then he'd use the technique to send me secret messages no one would be able to notice, not if they looked too closely.

He said that he didn't want Atlas ever accidentally reading the letters when he'd stumbled upon them in my room and find something that wasn't meant for his eyes. Even if Draco and I weren't romantically involved with each other back then, despite of our feelings, we had our secrets, too.

But my captor, who was too busy reading the letter over and over and gritting his teeth at the amount of love in it, didn't notice a thing.

He finally owls the letter to Draco after his rereading for the third time, then takes a seat next to me on the mattress when he returns from upstairs. I stare at the wall infront of me. My fever has gone down a little bit, thanks to the pill he gave me. I can't find it in my heart to be grateful.

"Why?" One word, one question, yet it will be the answer to almost everything.

"Because you made all the wrong choices." He says simply, his voice so familiar, so painful to listen to when I know it used to be one of my favorites, one to lull me back to sleep when he was present during once of my nightmares.

"I love him." I whisper fiercely, silent tears running down my face.

"And it's killing you."

I shake my head. He doesn't get to tell me what's killing me and what isn't. I've thought something would kill me thousands of times, yet I'm alive, yet I am breathing, even if it's becoming impossible. "How did you know everything about me? How did you always know everything I was doing?"

I see him from the corner of my eye, lowering his head. His legs are pulled up to his chest. "My family is very skilled in Legilimency, I taught myself last year with the help of loads of research and practice," He says, his voice calm, tired. "I hacked your phone that night when I slept in your dorm. I always knew everything, every conversation with him." He hisses the last word like it's a curse.

I shut my eyes for a moment. I should've known, should've realized when my phone wasn't in the spot where I left it— and when his hate towards Draco was growing. Everything happened right under my nose and I never knew a thing.

"How could you, Atlas?" I ask, finally turning my head to look at him, at the face I once loved. I wish love would instantly fade away after betrayal. I wish it wouldn't linger like a scar, like my mistake of loving yet another cruel man has been put on my skin to make me remember it for eternity.

He looks at me, with those light brown eyes that used to hold so much warmth in them, so much kindness. "He took everything from me," Atlas says. "And you let him."

I know what he's talking about, and I hate that he's right about it, too. There's no excusing to what he's done, but there's a reason. Always a reason.

"You could've stopped it, Blair. You could've walked away before he had you wrapped around his finger," Atlas says, his voice growing harsher with pain. "You wanted a different life, but it was my life, too. Everything I ever loved and wanted— stripped away just like that. The question is not how could I, the question is; how could you."