PRECEDENT : Draco Malfoy II

57

"Mopsy, stop it," I hiss. No one is home at this time of day, but I would rather not have a neighbour walking by hear the sounds of Draco's house elf slamming a drawer on her hand. "Just give it to me."

Mopsy stops. She passes me the letter.

She will not leave until I open it and read it aloud. I shouldn't have expected this week to be any different.

I had thought the anti-apparition runes I'd placed all over my room, and then in my house, and then on the fence surrounding it, would keep her out. It doesn't matter. If it weren't for Hermione, I probably would assume I was doing the runes incorrectly, but I know how they work now. I suspect anti-apparition jinxes are ineffective against the magic of house elves.

I take the letter from Mopsy and open it.

"Marty," I pause, looking at Mopsy.

She sits on the ground, cradling her hand. The first two letters I got away with hiding under my pillowcase. They were not the end; there were three the first week that I arrived home. None since then until now. The last one Mospy made me read. That was when I really started trying with the apparition runes. I had thought they had worked until tonight. I didn't even like the letter; it was just lies about how much he loved me and how sorry he was, and of course how I am in danger and he can help me. A bunch of nonsense.

"Marty Turner.

"Sometimes I think I know you. I know I don't, but sometimes I'm not clever enough to notice it. Recently, I found out you were a hat stall. I made the mistake of saying there were none in our year in front of my friends, and Blaise corrected me. He didn't say it was you specifically, of course, but he said it was after Harry Potter was chosen for Gryffindor, and that the girl was put in Ravenclaw. It could have been Lisa Turpin, I suppose, but it wasn't. I may have lost you in that moment, but I'm not going to lose what little I can know about you now.

"I'm sure sometimes, you think you don't know me. You do. You know me more than anyone else does. I think if I wasn't sure about something about myself, I could ask you, and you'd know the answer," I take in a deep breath, trying not to pause to long for Mopsy's sake. "Of course, I'm sure you didn't need anyone to tell you I was a Death Eater. As soon as you knew what had happened, you knew what I was hiding on my arm, didn't you? I don't regret lying to you. I'd do it again.

"I like to think I know you, and so I think I'd know how you'd react. You'd give me shit for if for the rest of my life, you'd never forgive me, and you'd say you understand but you be lying at least to me. Maybe you'd even be lying to yourself. I wish I had a choice. He would have killed me if I had refused. He would have killed my mother too.

"I wasn't lying about my aunt torturing me. She saw a moment between us, where you were sitting on a desk in the Ancient Runes classroom, and I don't know how she knew I was in love with you just from that moment so long ago, but she knew. After that, I got really good at occlumency. She has seen every other thing in my life, but she's never seen another part of you. When she went through my mind my aunt found every thought of mine, every terrible moment I've lived through, all of my life besides you. She's seen everything and yet, she could never know me because she doesn't know you."

I grit my teeth. It goes on. The parchment feels coarse between my fingers.

"I didn't kill Dumbledore," I stop then, for a second. It's clear it's from him. Anyone could have seen it. In the letters he sends me he never sends his name, never a detail specific enough that it could be identified as him. Here is the proof. In my hands, if I gave this to someone, they would never doubt that he loved me.

Or, at least he claimed to love me.

My voice breaks when I continue. "I was supposed to do it. I wanted to kill Dumbledore. He gave you the Sagum, which almost killed you. He tried to recruit you to join a war you have no business trying to fight. Snape did it in the end, because I stood there, pointing my wand at him, and I just couldn't make myself.