The Girl Who Lied || Draco Malfoy

Every Kiss Begins With Existential Dread

October 26, 1996

26/10.3PM.SS.

Harry leaned back in the repaired couch of the dust-free Shrieking Shack, as Hyacinth couldn't allow the disarray of their meeting place to go on any longer. She paced the floor like a caged animal, still in her Quidditch robes from practice, feeling like she was in trouble. Harry was staring at her like she was in trouble.

"Malfoy cursed Katie," Harry insisted. "He Imperiused her and told her to deliver that necklace to Dumbledore."

Hyacinth pictured the burnt hand of the frail headmaster. He wouldn't have survived a curse like the one on that necklace. Katie Bell barely survived a curse like the one on that necklace.

"Have you learned anything?"

She hadn't. Malfoy was the master at slipping away. He was barely around anymore. He no longer came to his patrols and half the time he didn't show up to dinner either. He wouldn't look her in the eye or acknowledge her. Aai Sometimes he had both of his bodyguards with him and sometimes he only had one. That gave her the opening she needed to do the unthinkable.

"I've befriended Crabbe when the others are away. He's interested in dark magic but too stupid to read about it, so I tell him incorrect information about hexes and he lets a few things slip. I know they're acting as lookouts but I don't know where. He called whatever Malfoy's doing 'work' once. 'I have to go, Draco has more work to do.' And lately his breath has smelled like polyjuice. Just faintly - like it's the real him, but he took the potion hours ago and never brushed his teeth after it wore off. And the others, Parkinson and Nott, act like he's dying of some terminal disease the way they talk about him when he's not around."

Harry nodded at the information. "He hasn't been on the map when I look. I think he's sneaking out; that's how he got that necklace."

Hyacinth nodded. "I'd like the map so that I could better keep an eye on it. If I see an opening to address something, I have a better shot at getting information. You'll just get spells thrown at you."

Asking for the map back from Harry was like asking for him to cut off his arm. He had both of their prized possessions too long. He got the cloak back during the Department of Mysteries but he never gave her the map back. It was only right. He dug it out of his knapsack reluctantly.

"We discussed Riddle's personality in my meeting with Dumbledore," Harry changed the subject with a sour face. "I saw a memory of when Dumbledore collected him from the orphanage and then another memory... one of yours."

Hyacinth's nose scrunched. "Which one?"

You know which one.

Tom sucked her into the diary that day back in 1992. Her eyes were blotchy red after the screaming match she had with Parkinson; even back then, she didn't get along with the pig-faced girl. The memory he showed her, real or fake she'll never know, showed a younger him crying in the loo. His tears were more subtle, slowly slipping down his face as his head bowed down in the mirror. He was only thirteen in this memory, unlike the others he showed her where he was sixteen. This version of him had leftover baby cheeks and wide brown eyes that she could stare into for hours if he let her. The younger Hyacinth's cheeks burned at the thought.

"They'll never respect me," Tom muttered. To her or himself she didn't know. "I'm just a filthy halfblood to them."

He kicked the sink hard, breaking the pipe below it in his violence. Water went everywhere, soaking the both of them. "Bullied for being different before. Bullied for being different now. Never good enough."