Breath Mints / Battle Scars

Chapter 22: XXII

December 1st, 1998

Ginny returns with two pints of Firewhiskey, and if that doesn't explain how she feels about it, nothing does.

Without any breakfast, it affects them quickly, and it makes telling the truth so much easier.

Hermione finds the words just pouring out of her, like ink from a broken well.

"It's...it's hard to explain. It's like - d'you know what splatter art is? It's a Muggle thing, it's strange. Abstract. It's taking paint and just throwing it against a canvas. Staining everything. Just letting it hit where it hits. And it's violent and messy and it has no rules or patterns or intentions. Bright, vicious colors thrown everywhere. Some people think it's just a disaster on paper. That it's the act of making art by ruining art. Other people adore it. But it's - it's just that you can't undo it. Can't erase anything once it's there, you know? Can't even try to aim or make it look a certain way. It's just this collision course - this clash of paint and canvas that someway, somehow makes something. And that...that's what happened with Malfoy. Draco. We just sort of collided with each other - stained each other with all of our problems and just sort of bled out all over the place. But I...I like the way it looks? I think? I don't know, Gin. I don't. I absolutely do not know. I don't know if I'm making a mistake or reading things wrong or hurting people but I don't feel normal unless I'm with him. It started with the Lake. I kept accidentally finding him there, or I don't even know if it was accidental, but I kept finding him there and he's just such a prick. All the time. He doesn't care. He says what's in his mouth, he doesn't swallow it or change it or hold it in. And I know, I know who he is and what he's done and who he used to be. I remember what he used to call me. I remember all of it. But then he just - he sits there and he tells me he couldn't watch me scream like he did before. And he spends all of his time writing in that bright purple journal and just looking so out of place. Like me. So much like me. We - we're so similar. And I've spent so much time thinking it should be Ron. Growing up thinking it. Waiting for it to feel right. To sit right in my stomach. But it's wrong. It's so, so wrong, and when Ron kissed me I was numb. I was nothing. And then - then fucking Malfoy kisses me and it just absolutely shatters all those hopes I used to write down in my thirteen-year-old diary and I just had to sit there and try to make sense of it. Of how that could be. How the one person I'm supposed to hate unconditionally is the only one I want to let touch me. And my thoughts have been so impossibly loud, all trapped in there at once, bickering and arguing and switching sides. Because I couldn't just go and tell you, like I could if it were some other boy. I couldn't sit with you and Parvati and Luna and gush over how it made me feel and where he touched me because it's fucking Malfoy and I'm not allowed to feel that way about him - and...and because every time anyone sees him touch me they think he's trying to kill me. It's fucking prejudice. And it's too strong. It's too fresh. So I let you all believe it was Zacharias because at least that was safe, but it hurt him. It fucking hurt him. And it hurt me and I wanted so badly to have you know the truth. To have you all know. But how could I? How could I? Knowing what you'd think? What some of you might do? What Ron would do? So I lied. I lied. I felt like I had to. I've been lying for months. But then - last night, I...we...it's gone too far. It's gone too far and I can't lie about it to you anymore. My first time was supposed to be with Ron. Everyone told me that. I told me that. But no - no, my first time - mine, me, Gryffindor's bloody princess, or whatever bollocks they call me in the Prophet - was with Malfoy. Death Eater. Pariah. War criminal. Slytherin's disgraced fucking prince. It was with him, in a hospital bed and I wanted it to be. I didn't waste it. In my heart I know I didn't waste it. And I had to tell you because it was so absolutely, ridiculously right. He and I are paint splattered all over the place and we're staining everything and maybe we absolutely don't go together, but to me - to me we're a fucking Jackson Pollock."