The Girl Who Lied || Draco Malfoy

Starting The School Year Is Like Looking For Landmines

September 1, 1996

'Did you see the Prophet? They said she killed a muggle.'

'You know, when I joked that Potters could get away with murder, I didn't mean it literally.'

'I heard she joined the Death Eaters and had to kill a muggle to prove herself.'

Hyacinth wanted it to stop. She wanted to clamp her ears closed and sink into a ball on the floor. She wanted to burst into tears.

Let them fear you.

Her plan was to spend the train ride hiding in the loo, avoiding everything and everyone. But things didn't always go her way, did it?

Before she even got on the train, she was hugging a very much human and very much free Sirius Black. Her head turned both ways, looking for other Slytherins before she accepted the affection.

"Afraid to be seen with me?" Sirius joked, but she could hear the insecurity behind his words. She held him tighter.

"Never."

"I get it, I'm an ex-convict. I don't want to ruin your goody-goody Prefect reputation."

Tom snorted in the back of her head. Sirius didn't realize just how wrong he was, but he wasn't a Slytherin. She didn't think he'd get it. "I think getting locked up myself is enough to ruin my reputation."

Sirius rolled his eyes. "'Locked up'? Oh please, talk to me when you've been to an actual prison."

Remus, who stood next to them with his arm sling around Harry's shoulders, shook his head. "Can we stop joking about this?"

"But it's my coping mechanism," Hyacinth pouted.

Sirius shoved Remus playfully. "You can't complain; you get locked up more than the rest of us."

Remus gasped at the werewolf joke and pinched his boyfriend (boyfriend? She was still unclear) in retaliation. "How very dare you."

Promises were made to write weekly, now that the hassle of Umbridge was gone. Hyacinth pictured the woman in St. Mungo's that she had considered suffocating with a pillow as she waved her parents goodbye.

It was all downhill from there.

The train ride started with a happy-go-lucky Parvati skipping into the Prefect compartment with her new badge and plopping down next to Ron.

"Hello!" the girl greeted everyone. "This is a bit weird, isn't it? I'm so glad to be here! I thought Hermione would die before she gave up this badge."

Ron yanked his own Prefect badge from his chest and dropped it at the feet of their Head Girl, a seventh year Hufflepuff named Stacy.

"What did I say?" Parvati wondered as the group watched Ron Weasley leave.

Hyacinth shifted uncomfortably, her shoulder brushing against the rigid figure of Draco Malfoy. Everything about him seemed completely off but she hadn't registered that yet. She'd been on the train for a total of three minutes now and everything already went to shit.

"You mean you don't know?" She knew it hadn't been in the paper. She knew Dumbledore never made a big grand speech about the sacrifice of a friend or some rot. But she still expected the Gryffindors would know. Did they see Harry and Ron come back last year bloody and broken, sans Hermione, and think nothing of it?

"Know what?"

Funny how everyone cares less when it's a mudblood.

She swallowed that observation with a politely sympathetic face. "Hermione died fighting at the Ministry in June."