SLITHER IN! → S. MALFOY

ACT III, SCENE IX: CONSOLE ME

C H A P T E R  T H I R T Y - S I X

"YOU CAME."

  Rose stared at the body in front of Malfoy absentmindedly. Her next words were the merest flutter of a butterfly in front of a wolf.

  "Of course I would come, Malfoy. You asked me to."

  Malfoy laughed. Except for it wasn't a laugh, no, — it was a choked up imitation of something, a scene which an actor had forgotten how to perform. "No, I told you to."

  Rose swallowed down a scream. No matter how many dead bodies she'd seen this year, each one stole a scream, made her following words rougher and her nightmares far more real.

  "Why tell me to? Are they— dead?" She whispered. Her legs— they seemed to be a dissonance with her thoughts lately— drew her closer, as one would do a double take of a gruesome painting in a museum.

  There it was again, on his face. The imitation of a smile. Even though his face was in the shadows, Rose could fathom out the faint lines of his profile. It seemed as though it took everything in him not to scowl.

  Not to break.

   He watched her as a hunter might watch a deer, with caution and bloodlust.

"Yes, he is," he finally said. Rose didn't look at him as he did so.

"Did you—"

   "Yes."

  And Rose stormed up to him, her face a crumpling facade, those few steps cracking it, filling it to the brim with pain and confusion and poorly obscured adoration, and she faced the only murderer in the room, as if looking into a mirror.

   "Why?"

   Malfoy's eyes seemed to search for something in her face — if only she'd known that he was searching for the glittering constellations he saw in her eyes every time she uttered a genuine laugh — his gaze dropping to her lips as if he was in a trance.

  "Because I had to," he uttered, his eyes on her slightly parted lips.

   How beautiful is was, standing in the shadows, the thought rushed through Rosie's inflamed mind before she could catch it— and how deadly.

   A smile cracked his stony features.

"Well, why invite me?" Rose asked, each word like a gemstone. "I've seen too much death because of you, Scorpius."

   "You make me feel— better."

   She seemed to forget about the presence of a corpse right next to her, a body which once breathed and moved, now the forgotten carcass of a soul.

  "What do you mean?"

Malfoy rose his gaze from her lips and somewhere behind her. "Less of a monster."

  It seemed as though everything she'd wanted to rant out at him had deflated like a balloon. In Scorpius, she saw nothing but a human with too little choice and too much venom. A killing machine for some.