The Malfoy Project

𝟐𝟒 - 𝐀 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠

     Draco doesn't return for three days.

     I float through classes lifelessly. The walls turn, the corridors twist, rivers of students stream around me; they sit down, get up, and are replaced by different faces.

     In each lesson, I sit frozen in my chair, my mind out the window and anxiety clawing at my throat. My hands are perpetually clammy and the quill attempts to slip from my grasp each time I tremble it across the parchment.

     When the moon chases the sun from the sky, I lie in bed staring into the empty darkness. Hannah snores, the communal fire crackles, and on Wednesday night another storm rages outside the circular windows above my head. The lashes of lightning illuminate the images I've been trying to stop seeing: 

     Draco as he held my elbow through the hedge tunnel. Draco as he sat across me on the swing. Draco as he laughed. Draco as he said, 'he'd better'.

     On Thursday, I'm stumbling sore-eyed and exhausted from Defense back to the Hufflepuff Common Room when I spot him amongst the throng - a drop of sunlight amongst the shadows of black robes. He hangs slightly behind Blaise, who stands facing Pansy as she leans against a column of the courtyard cloister.

     He spots me from the distance and spins away. I run after him, calling his name. He ignores me, taking long, brisk strides down the sheltered passageway. "Draco, wait, please," I beg as I struggle to keep up. "Draco, the article, it wasn't me."

     Draco continues marching on in silence. "It wasn't me, I swear! I said I wouldn't tell, and I didn't! I didn't give the tape to Rita. I didn't even write it down in my- "

     "They took down the garden," he says, keeping his eyes straight ahead. I skid to a halt. "What?"

     He doesn't wait for me, and I have to run to catch up with him again. "It was her," I say. "It was Rita! Her Animagus is a beetle, she must've been spying on me- on us- she must've seen us in the garden."

     "It seems you love lying as much as talking. It's just second nature at this point for you, isn't it?"        

     "You're not listening!" I cry as I bumble alongside him. "I said it wasn't me. I would never in my life- look, I really am sorry!"

     "I don't want your apology. Because of you, I lost the last good thing I have left."

     The accusation prompts a spurt of indignation within me and I stop, purposefully. "Maybe that wouldn't have happened if your parents weren't such arseholes," I say after him.

     Draco pauses in his tracks for a beat, then turns back around and stalks right up to my face. "My parents?" he explodes. "At least my parents have the guts to own their actions, however fucked up they might've been. At least that's worthy of some respect! But you? You hide behind this pretense of kindness and- and self-righteousness, of being a fucking Hufflepuff!"

     He carries on before I have the chance to interrupt. "You call yourself a dreamer?" he spits scornfully. "Well, I hate to break it to you, but you're not a dreamer, Ainsley, and you're not a realist, either. No, what you really are, is a fucking bitch who whores herself out to get what she wants. You are the most selfish, irritating, most painfully boring girl I've ever met. I suppose it's a good thing Cedric died after all. I can't imagine how he - or anyone, for that matter - could ever  put up with you for the rest of their life!"

     Draco's pallid skin had gone quite red, his grey irises so filled with unbridled fury they turned almost transparent. A vein pulses at his right temple and his chest heaves so heavily that for a moment I think he might hit me. He might as well have.

     But instead of backing away, I ignore the hotness gathering in my eyes and raise them to meet his resentful glare.

     Because in a storm, you do as a tree does. You root yourself and you stand, unmoving.

     Draco lets his final words settle for a few seconds, then he whips around and storms away. His robes billow behind him, diminishing his figure until it disappears down the narrow staircase that leads into the dungeons, and I find myself alone in the foyer.

     I feel winded, like I had just been sucker-punched in the chest. Sobs threaten to overcome me, and I swallow them down with great difficulty. Slowly and very calmly, I make my way to the girls' lavatory.

     Thankfully, it's empty as well. I unclasp my robe and let the heavy fabric pool around my feet. I grip the edge of the sink and hang my head over it, not daring to look at my reflection.

     Do not cry.

     Slow breaths. Breathe in, two, three, four; breathe out, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

     My thundering heart begin to steady. The voice of my mother asks in my head: When the storm blows over, will you still be standing?

     I look up. Gabriella Ainsley stares back at me, her eyes and nose have reddened with the effort to keep from crying, but still she is Gabriella Ainsley. And Gabriella Ainsley decides: she will do the storm one better.

     She will go to bargain with Zeus himself.

༻⚜༺

     I don't know Gabriella Ainsley very well or for very long, but I don't need to. She is innocent. The only person who should be blamed for all this is Rita Skeeter.

     I don't want to be angry with her. But the very moment I saw her face, I was reminded of the time she sat next to me on the swing; how she had held onto the machine when she asked if she could, like it would have shielded her from my disparaging remark. I made none, for I had wanted her to sit beside me.

     I was reminded of how close our hands had been - what I might have done if I hadn't hidden them in my pockets.

     I was reminded of when she laughed. Her smile had lifted off her face and imprinted itself all over the garden, wrapping around the metal of the swing, kissing each petal of every flower, infusing itself into the scent of the honeysuckles. It had lingered long in the garden after she left. That night, I had gone back by myself, just to remember.

     I was reminded of when I had laughed. The sound of it surprised me, coating my throat in honey and warmth as it climbed its way out of my mouth. I had forgotten how it sounded.

     It was the first time in a long time that I've felt safe; like I had a place in this world. And now I have nothing left of it. I will never be able to bring Ainsley back there. We would never again sit side by side as I spill all the secrets I can never find the words for.

     I will never be able to know if I would take her hands if I'm given a second chance.

     She hurt me. I wanted to hurt her back. She deserved it. She deserves to fail her stupid assignment. Rita Skeeter is a hateful gnat of a woman and Ainsley was a fool for taking on this project from her.

     But I recall the look on her face when I said what I did about Cedric, the way her stone-walled gaze crumbled before she hurriedly built it back up thinking I wouldn't see. Her mouth, how her plump, pink lips had twitched when I was screaming at her, so imperceptible I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been looking at them. She didn't notice - she was too busy pretending to be brave in front of me. I know it was taking her everything not to cry.

     I wish she had. Maybe then I would feel guilty for saying such horrid things that I can never take back.

     But right now, I choose to be angry. I choose to be so fucking angry because anger is tolerable.

     Anger is better than tears; better than guilt.

     Better than grief.