Murder to Malfoy - D.MALFOY

[11]

The poison lived in a vial necklace that her brother had given her for Christmas one year. Young Ivy had a thing for keeping a general antidote to a poison on her at all times, the era that began her trust issues. But now, it housed the most toxic poison she could concoct without it being sour or masking the coffee flavour. She just had to wait for the perfect opportunity to slip it into his coffee mug at breakfast.

But for now, Ivy walked alone through autumn swept Hogsmeade. She had avoided Fin and Blaise that morning, choosing to skip breakfast in order to get to the village before anyone else would so she did not have to wait around in a mile-long queue of people trying to contact their parents via the telephone box at the very end of one of the streets. The box itself was a typical phone box found in London, bright red and plastered with advertising posters and hundreds and thousands of random inked phone numbers or notes that people needed to remember while on the phone. Some of them dated back as far as the seventies. This phone however required no payment, so that everyone could keep in touch without having to pay a single coin.

Ivy pulled down her hood as she stamped inside the spacious phone box, double-checking that no one had seen her before she closed the door. She hesitated for a moment, trying to decide whether she actually wanted to reach out or whether it was just a sadness spell that had overtaken her body for the past few days. She just needed someone to talk to, someone she could just ramble to without having to revive advice or anything. Someone she could tell of her plans.

She dialled the phone and listened to it ring three times before it was picked up on the other end, "Maman," she half-whispered as a shadow walked past the door. The box was supposedly soundproof but she didn't really trust it.

"Mon Cherie? What's wrong?" She could hear her mother's concerned frown crystal clear, despite the crackly line.

She cleared her throat of all sadness, all grief or confusion, then continued with a slightly tighter grip on the phone, "Nothing... Can you write to Dumbledore and get me permission to come home for an evening... I want to visit Ant."

"Of course Ivy, I'll write straight away."

"Merci."

"You know you can talk to me or your father about Antony if you need to," her mother paused as she clicked her tongue, a nervous habit that Ivy had picked up at around age five. "I don't want you to think that you can't because it'll hurt us too much."

"I know Maman, there are just certain things I want to talk to Ant about is all. Look I have to go, Fin wants to go to the sweet shop," she lied in order to avoid upsetting her mother. She knew that the topic still held a certain heart-wrenching factor and she hated the look that she knew was most certainly on her mother's face as she spoke into the phone. Pity mixed with such concern that it probably kept her up at night. But if she had the knowledge of Ivy's brain and its interworkings, she would never sleep again. She had convinced herself that this was better for her mother but she knew it wasn't better for herself. That's why she wanted to see Ant, to get the thoughts that thickened guilt and dread into her stomach to dissipate as her happiness had.

"Je Vous Aime."

"Love you too," Ivy replied with as much love in her voice s she could muster up. Then she heard her mother go to put the phone down (her bracelets clattering down her arm due to the shift in position) so she hung up too. She walked out of the phone box and continued through the village, taking random paths alone in order to avoid the major crowds of people that had begun to congregate at shopfronts. She headed down a particular path that looked out onto the shrieking shack and stopped for a moment. She sat down on a short wall that housed a bank covered in trees and just let her mind still for as long as possible. It lasted three seconds before thoughts of murder or Antony flooded through her mind. So she pulled her box of cigarettes from her pocket, lighting one of them after a few days of not smoking -per Fin's request. She just couldn't handle it anymore, the pain in her mind.