Malfoy's Moon

dark mark

The air is saturated with something dark, the ghost of something dire and forbidding, and it clenches at her throat. Class is long forgotten; the corridors are empty of students. She knows Filch must be lurking around somewhere near, determined to catch students out of class. 

But that thought has long since banished to the far, trivial niches of her mind, just an unimportant blur.

What's more pressing are the etches of coal black lines and curls staining the otherwise pale skin of Draco's forearm. Twisting, irksome streams of an ink-like substance that spits out foul daggers towards the dense air. Although, she knows it's not ink. No, it's the mark of something more tearing, a mark of loyalty and sacrifice. Menacing slashes of black that tear his skin and what's underneath it, too. 

"You done staring at it?" Draco spits out, keeping his own eyes averted from his mark, as though he finds it repugnant and gruesome as well. 

Her gaze returns to his face, her throat tightening. He's leaning against the corridor wall, shirt still unbuttoned with his sleeve riding up to reveal that horrendous mark. 

He shakes his sleeve, letting it fall back down to cover it and he makes a move as though to stand up. She finds it in herself to grasp at his shirt, pulling him back down. 

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Away from you." His voice is sharp, cutting through the air. 

"You're not going to leave like this, not now," she says, tugging harder at his shirt to keep him down. 

"You don't get to decide what I do - "

"Just listen to me, Draco - " 

"You think I'm going to listen to you now? You think I'm going to listen to a word you have to say? I don't want your pity or your regret," he shouts, his face just mere inches from hers. "And I'm not going to have you sit there and watch, knowing that this, this is my mark now!" 

"I don't intend to pity you," she says loudly. "And you are going to listen to what I say!"

"What do you know?" He hisses out. "Do you even know half of it? Do you even know that by the end of this year, my hands will be stained with blood too? Dumbledore's, to be exact."

Her breath hitches, heart thudding violently, pounding earthquakes. "I didn't - "

" - expect it?" He interrupts. "Or maybe you did, maybe you knew it that I was just as foul as the rest of them!"

"Listen to me, Draco," she says, desperately, "I've heard... theories - "

"Yeah? From who?"

She hesitates, pausing as she lets the words revolve on her tongue for a moment before letting them out. "Harry - he suspected that you'd become one of them - "

He knocks his head back onto the wall, letting out a laugh. It's a harsh laugh, cruel and jarring. "Well they don't have a clue, they don't know anything. Potter and his stupid friends - "

"Don't, Draco," she says, shaking her head frantically. "You don't have to do this - "

"He chose me." He suddenly interrupts. The change in his voice causes her head to jerk upwards, swallowing hard. His tone is quiet now, brooding with a low rasp. "He trusted me to do it. Me."

By now, her stomach is in knots and her heartbeat has become frenzied and wild. "That's - that's not trust, Draco. Your father is in Azkaban - "

"As I'm very well aware." He says, teeth gritted. 

"Then, you'd know that that's not trust - that's punishment. He's - he's punishing your father and he's using you to do it. And you know that."

His jaw clenches, a vein in his neck twitching. "You think I hardly have a choice?"

"We could go to Dumbledore - I'm sure he'd understand if we told him before, he'd help us - "

"We?" He says, quirking an eyebrow up. For a moment, he looks lost in her eyes, his expression gone completely blank and slack. 

"Yes - we," she says. She reaches her hand out, pulling at his fingers to intertwine in hers, but he barely responds. 

And then the harsh silver glint in his eyes are back and he's tugging his hand out of her grip. "No - don't try to fix this - "

"My parents," she suddenly says, voice breathless. "We could tell them, they could hide you - they have connections - "

"My mother?" He says, his expression rapt with focus. "If they couldn't find me - if they heard I ran away, they would go for her - "

"We can protect her too, we can hide both of you," she says, keeping her voice steady and firm. "I know my parents are disappointed that - that I couldn't - "

"Kill me?" He says, his voice tearing through the air. "Yeah, you couldn't kill me, they're disappointed they couldn't get their money back and now you want to - what? Ask them to protect me? Ask them to hide the death eater's son?"

"They'd understand," she says, her tone breaking up slightly as her hands shake in her lap. "I know they would. If I talked to them - they would listen to me, I'm sure."

He closes his eyes, stretching out an arm to place his hand behind his head as he bites down hard on his lip, lost in thought. "What makes you think they'd want to help me?"

"They're not terrible people, Draco," she says quietly. "They might not be willing at first - but I could convince them."

"And what would they think about this?"

"They'd still do it - let me talk to them first - "

"I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about us." He says, forcefully.

"Us?" She says, hesitating. 

"But there'd be no 'us' because I'm one of them now - "

"You can't be serious," she cuts through. "Please just trust me."

"You want me to trust you?" He says, almost mockingly. "After you'd just been assigned the task to kill me?"

She pauses, taking a deep breath and trying to keep calm although his words hurt. They gouge at her breath, making her mind swirl with heavy, dark thoughts. "Yes."

He drops his head into his arms, his hands fisting into his icy-blonde hair. "Even if your family did hide me - they'd still find us. The death eaters. And then they would kill me and my mother - and - and you," his voice fractures at this, "and your entire family, too." 

She ignores his piercing words as she speaks. "I've told you - my family have connections. They'll put up protection. The death eaters wouldn't know."

He falls into cold silence. Finally, she says, "That's our only choice right now."

"It's not my only choice," he says softly and his arm - the one adorning the mark - twitches just barely. 

"But you wouldn't - " she says, her breath heavy. "You wouldn't go through all of that."

"Maybe I deserve it."

She can't help it - the drop escapes her eyelid, cascading down across her bottom eyelashes onto her cheek. "You don't deserve that. No one - no one deserves that."

His head is still in his arms and she reaches out, taking his arm and unravelling his tangled limbs. He blinks quickly, as though fighting something inside him.  

"And I - I wouldn't bare to see you like that."

He stretches out an arm, tugging a lock of her hair and twisting it around his finger. "For you, then." He looks up, his finger still hooked around the strand of her hair. "I'll do it for you."

a/n: writing this while listening to rosyln - bon iver almost made me cry lol

what do you think of this chapter?