The Malfoy Project

𝟑𝟖 - 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐅𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐂𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐭 𝐈𝐈𝐈 (*TW)

*TW: domestic abuse, manipulation 
Please do not read this chapter if you're sensitive to such content.  

This chapter contains scenes of emotional and mental manipulation. These are forms of abuse.

If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic abuse, please know that help is available. Call your country's domestic abuse hotline — it's confidential and most of them run 24/7. 

You are not alone. 💜

༻❁༺

     It's Hannah.

     Draco loves Hannah. He loves her and without a doubt she loves him back. Now he will tell her that he does and she will forgive me and we could go on weekend double-dates to Hogsmeade because I'm right about Hufflepuffs and Slytherins making a good pairing.

     So why do I feel like the ceiling of the library has collapsed upon me, burying me in the rubble forever and leaving me lost and forgotten?

     Why does it feel like kneeling by my parents' bed as my mother inhaled her last, and then by the starched sheets of St. Mungo's as the healer in white robes told me that my father was dead?

     Why does it feel like waiting in the spectator stands in the torch-lit darkness for hours and then hearing the air snap and seeing Harry crying and dragging Cedric's stiff, unmoving body?

     I try not to think of Draco's face, the way his eyes had ignited when he was speaking, the way his shoulders squared with sudden confidence, the way he had been smiling without even knowing.

     I try not to wonder when was the exact time he realised he loved her; if it was before or after the night Monty had put his hands around my throat; if my silly question in the garden had played any part.

     Perhaps if I hadn't asked, he wouldn't have gone and thought about it at all. Me and my big mouth. For a split second I consider what it would be like to have my tongue cut out, so I would not have asked and Draco would not know he loved Hannah and I could...

     Could what?

     Have him for myself? The unpleasant, bigoted boy with flaxen hair and haunting silver eyes and marked arm. Why would I want to be with someone like that?

     More importantly, why would I want to be with someone like that when I have someone like Monty? Graham Montague is smart, kind, good-natured, sometimes funny, with a jawline cut to the gods. And above all, he takes care of me.

     Doesn't he?

༻❁༺

     It has started snowing by the time I arrive back at Hogwarts. Puffs of white fluff drift lazily from the open sky, curtaining the distant castle in a translucent sheet of white. I spend so much of winter indoors that I have almost forgotten how it looks from the outside.

     I think: This is what everyone else sees when they walk further from the castle and closer towards Hogsmeade where the Express would be waiting to take them home to their smiling families and houses lit up like rainbows.

     The air is hard and cold, numbing the edge of my nose when I inhale. I lift my eyes heavenward into the cascading waterfall of early winter flurry, watching them pirouette down onto my hair and outstretched palm.