Light in the Darkness

Chapter Twelve

Draco stared into her eyes, wide and broken. Slipping her hands from his, she said, "So whatever you think you felt for me -- don't, because we can't be --"

"Astoria --" His attention was too rapt with Astoria to glance at who had just burst through the doors.

Her gaze flickered from him to the door, him to the door. "I'm sorry --" she said, her voice laced with tears and uncertainty, and rushed through the door.

His gaze following her, he realized it was her sister, Daphne, who had called.

Daphne kept at a close clip behind Astoria as they hurried away.

He was left frozen for a moment, standing out there alone, her words swirling in a confusing muddle in his mind.

She didn't want to kiss him.

She wasn't engaged.

She was . . . sick.

He hadn't the slightest clue what this entailed. She was sick -- with what? She was dying -- how long did she have left? Why was it so imperative it be kept a secret? What could he do to save her?

He shook his head, getting a semblance of bearings again. His legs moving of their own accord, he made for the doors. "Astoria -- wait --!" he called. She didn't even look back, tugging her sister down the hallway.

He started after them, and kept calling her name, desperation flaring inside him when -- THUMP.

"Sorry --" he muttered absently to whoever he'd walked square into, already skirting around them, when the person pushed a hand to his chest.

"What are you doing?!" shrieked Pansy.

His eyes darted from down the hallway, where Astoria had just disappeared through a doorway, down to her. For a millisecond he didn't even recognize who he was looking at.

"Pansy could you just --" he was squirming away from her hand.

"Why are you chasing after Daphne's little sister?!" Her tone was anger, confusion, disgust and heartbreak wrapped in one desperate, shrill whine.

Remembering that, like it or not, this was his fianceé, he said "I just need to make sure she's alright -- you saw what happened in there --" and also the fact that I'm beginning to fall in love with her, he thought.

"You don't need to do anything for her." She jerked her thumb toward the doorway the Greengrasses escaped off to. "I'm your fianceé -- so whatever is going on here --"

Impatience was blurring his common sense, and as a hasty, ill-planned last resort he said, very hurriedly, "Pansy, you don't really love me, and I don't really love you, so why are we pretending? So just please move, and --" but his words caught when a hard slap burned across his face. His hand instinctively rose to the searing cheek, his touch only making the sting worse.

There were tears in Pansy's eyes, and she said, her voice breaking, "Forgive me for actually believing you did really love me." She jabbed her index finger hard into his chest with each word as she said, "All those years, all the times I've been there for you, all the rubbish I had to go through for you, all the times I stuck it out no matter how difficult," she took in a shaky breath, recomposing herself, if only a little bit. Tone icy, eyes stone solid, she said, "To be thrown away on some girl who won't even last a decade."

His eyes narrowed, his mouth parted -- did she mean a relationship wouldn't last or. . . did she somehow know. . . ?

She backed away from Draco, but only slightly. With a new, crazed cruelty in her narrowed eyes, she continued, "Didn't know? Oh, well, you see, it's in her blood -- her tainted, jaded blood -- a curse that'll kill her." A malicious grin curled around the words. Draco partially knew this, but he didn't interrupt, too frazzled to order coherent sentences.