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chapter forty four
a peacock named paracelsus
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It didn't take long for my name and face to infest the headlines and front pages of British Wizarding publications.
My family didn't get Witch Weekly, or any of the other gossip magazines, but I saw them on newsstands in the Atrium of the Ministry. I could only imagine they were much worse than what appeared in the Daily Prophet.
Mum thought it was very funny—Dad did not.
As for me, I thought it was a good excuse to change my name and move to a different country. Maybe I could live with Aunt Gracie's side of the family in America and work for NASA.
All of the stories were plastered with variations of the same picture of Draco and me. In it, my eyes are wider than I thought was possible, and I look as though I'm seconds away from getting mauled by a bear or something.
Draco appears much less flustered, though his jaw is tight with frustration as he reaches out to grab my hand, and he's fiercely avoiding looking into any cameras.
It's clear in the picture that he grew used to it all after a year and a half of him and his parents being constantly hounded by reporters. In the same way, it's clear that I am not.
I look pathetic—and guilty, somehow.
I couldn't force myself to read the articles, because they made me dizzy with dread to even look at them. So, eventually, Mum read them to me at the breakfast table while I buried my head in my arms and wished for it all to disappear.
The prevailing interpretation was this: Draco and I had been dating in secret since Hogwarts (I guess they'd forgotten about Pansy), and had kept it so covert because we were on opposite sides of the war and feared condemnation. A star-crossed lovers sort of thing. Most wizards didn't read Shakespeare, but I just knew the articles would be riddled with hackneyed references to Romeo and Juliet if they did.
The tone of most of the articles was an odd mix of voyeuristic interest and scandalized derision. Clearly, they were fascinated by our forbiddenlove (their words, not mine), but also slightly sickened by us.
Well, actually, they weren't sickened by us. They were sickened by me.
None suggested it explicitly, but the articles were imbued with the notion that I'd betrayed my friends and my father. Some even suggested that I'd been secretly working for the Death Eaters all along—giving my friendship with Theo (how they knew about that, I had no idea) as evidence. The particularly lurid publications raised doubts about whether I was really held in Malfoy Manor against my will.
