the girl with all of the choices

e i g h t y - o n e

7618 words

june thirtieth- time ran out

~ Addison ~

We hadn't left the Room of Requirement since we first arrived. It had taken me a while to stop crying. 

It was a strange existence, mine with his. 

He was a Death Eater, one who was charged with the task of not only making Hogwarts unsafe to those who resided there, but also of killing the beloved Headmaster, a man who could make his magic bend and snap under the slightest ounce of resistance. I was a mudblood, a person of lesser status in the world where we lived, one who wanted nothing more than the evils to be torn out of the ground so that everyone could live their lives to the fullest. 

Our relationship was the essence of juxtaposition. We were paradoxical.

Yet the only thing that scared me about his task was what it would do to him. My Slytherin, contrary to popular belief, was not uncaring or unempathetic. He had so much compassion; he had just been trained his whole life to stifle it, to not give in to its whispers. He cared so much about the people he loved; he would do anything for them, his ambition associating itself with his loyalty. Sure, he might have been an absolute git in his younger years, but he had changed, grown up, left behind the days of meaningless jeers and taunts, save for when it came to Harry of course.

But his responses and actions in regards to Harry and the other Gryffindors, particularly Hermione and Ron, were ones of jealousy. He confessed to me a while ago, during one of our rendezvous in the Room of Requirement, that he had always been jealous of them when we were younger. He wanted the attention that the Golden Trio seemed to get on an everyday basis. And now, that feeling had festered in him for so long that it was just always there. It didn't help that they had been the reason his father was imprisoned in Azkaban and therefore also the reason he was forced to get the mark. Nor did it make matters better than Harry had almost killed him that day in April. Draco had started the fight, but Harry was the one persisting on staying while he was upset. He wouldn't leave no matter how many times I asked him to. 

Regardless of his immaturity and patterns of taunting, he was not a bad person. Anyone could see that if they looked close enough. He was just misguided. The same way that Harry had been raised to be the champion of the Wizarding World, Draco had a hand extended to him to lead him into the darkness at all times. But the fact that he was forced to take that hand didn't mean he was a bad person.

I was extremely worried about what his task would do to him. The weight on one's conscience from knowing that they took a life? That would be enough to break him. He wasn't a bad person.

He couldn't be a bad person. He loved so intensely, so possessively, as if every ounce of compassion someone else showed him had to be stowed away in a jar and kept with him forever for fear of losing it. He made the funniest jokes, not as funny as Theo, but a close second. His touch was soft, gentle as if he was afraid to break everything he laid a finger on. His eyes were full of light any time the prospect of a future beyond the war was brought up. He was intelligent, only paralleled by Hermione in his studies, and he genuinely loved to learn.

Yet here he was, having to murder our Headmaster.

To avoid his own death.

To avoid being responsible for his mother's death.

For my death, even.

The Christmas holiday that we spent at my parent's house was blissful. That was when I introduced him to Romeo and Juliet. He was so unnerved by the similarities between our stories.