SLITHER IN! → S. MALFOY

ACT IV, PART IV: TEST HIM

 C H A P T E R   T H I R T Y - T H R E E 

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SHE'D NEVER FELT IT BEFORE. 

Sweetness.

Warmth pooling somewhere in her throat like dulcet blood.

A wave of toxic electricity running down her arm in rivulets of prickles and reaching Scorpius Malfoy's erratically beating heart.

She watched, with surprising serenity, as he clenched his teeth and duh his knees into the ground. He wasn't uttering a sound, but she didn't need him to. It was like watching a film noir on torture. The only thing heard was the rushing of blood in her ears.

           Blood. It started dripping from his nose and onto the virgin white snow. In the darkness, it was as dark as ichor, black like the starless sky on top of them.

He looked her in the eyes the whole time. In a moment of weakness, when her hand started shaking, he'd smiled, and the blood from his nose gleamed on his teeth as if it was him who was the monster, not her. She saw his lips moving. She didn't hear a thing.

           "Crucio," she'd said again. And again, his smile morphed into a scowl, and his hands clenched into fists on the ground, and his hollow cheekbones were bitten by his gleaming teeth, and she was sure that if she'd kissed him, she'd feel the taste of pain and blood and lust.

But she didn't. She didn't stop.

            She didn't want to.

            And then, he stood up — with pleasure, she saw the way his spine was bent to keep him from crumbling back to the ground, and he walked up to her, slowly, looking into her eyes — as if what she was doing was to him a deep kiss — and pointed the wand in her hand down, towards the senseless snow.

           She blinked. It was as if the world flooded her ears: her own ragged breathing, the snow falling softly around them, Malfoy, like Death itself, standing in front of her, his eyes a haunting emerald.

           All of a sudden, he inched to the right and fell back to his knees, retches tearing him apart, and Rose watched him expunge more blood onto the snow. Horror, cold as the snow melting under her, dripped into Rose's soul as she stood, paralysed. With a shaking hand, Malfoy wiped the back of his mouth and rolled over to lay on his back, stars reflecting in his eyes.

( Rose had long forgotten that there were no stars that night. )

            She only realised that he was breathing as heavily as herself when he spoke. "I underestimated you, kitten," he breathed.

Rose threw his wand onto the snow beside him. "You're a sick monster."

                "You just tortured me," he turned his sullen, pale face to her. Even in the darkness, she could see the feverish flush on his cheeks.

Rose shuddered. She knew what she needed to do. To apologise.

But she couldn't.

"I have to go back. Albus and John are probably worried sick."