𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐃𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘 𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐓| 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐨 𝐌𝐚𝐥𝐟𝐨𝐲✔️

𝐅𝐈𝐅𝐓𝐘𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑|𝐀 𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐓 𝐂𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄

MARA WILLIAMS

There was a strange quiet about the air as I leaned against the railing of the astronomy tower. -A sanctity in the silence, a solace in the sense of being alone.

The night was inky black and endless, stars glinting against the winter veil, a rogue whisper of wind toying with my hair. My fingers ached to reach out and try to pluck the stars from the sky. My mother had once told me a story about a girl who'd stolen the stars and kept them in her pocket, because she had thought them beautiful, and yet though she harboured no ill intent she'd doomed the earth to an eternity of desolation.
-For without the stars there was no light to guide her home, no glimmer to guard the great or banish the nightmares from her bed.

In the end she'd begged the sky to take back the stars, thrust them into the air as hard as she could, only for them to tumble once more before her feet.
Her cries fell upon deaf ears, for the sky did not care, not for the hands that prayed or the knees that wept or the eyes that screamed without words for what no one could but someone must, and how one by one bodies faded away into foreign dust.
For it was already too late, the sky had learned to live without the stars, soul mates torn apart now repelled one another. And just like that the world was damned to die.

There was a shift in the air and all of a sudden I wasn't alone anymore, I could feel his warm presence lingering in the doorway. I could smell the intoxicating scent of him as it wrapped around me like a comforting embrace, like smoke and rain and sacrilegious sin.

"...You can't keep ignoring me forever." He said softly, shattering the silence just as easily as he'd shattered bone. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the images of him towering over a cowering and beaten Viktor, -The images of him standing over me in place of my father, fists bloodied and readied to strike a blow strong enough to shake the heavens.
"-Just say something, please... -Say anything,"

I didn't feel the cold biting my fingertips anymore. -Maybe I didn't feel anything at all. Pain had long ago surpassed the threshold of felt. "...You lied to me."

"Then tell me what to say, just tell me what I can do to fix this." Every syllable he spoke wept with the agony of a boy doomed never to love or be loved. "-I'll do whatever it takes, I'll do anything, -Mara please, I need you..."

Not for a single moment did I doubt him. I knew that without seconds thought if I asked he would fall to his knees before me and beg, so far removed from the arrogant and proud boy I'd once met in the forbidden forest.
-This is what I had done. I had single handedly destroyed him.

"I know." The whisper felt far away, almost as if spoken by someone else and I would've doubted it were my own if I hadn't felt him crumble a little more, if I hadn't felt the strike to the heart. The meaningless words faded to nothingness just as quickly as they had left my lips.

"What more do you want from me?... Mara you're breaking me," He didn't sound so strong anymore. All his walls tumbling down before us, reduced to nothing more than ash and dust. "-I don't know what to do other than to say I'm sorry..."

A tear slipped down my cheek and I struggled to keep my voice steady. "Sorry's just a word Draco."

He finally moved to stand beside me at the railing, staring out on the blackness of the land before us. We were quiet for a long time, and for a while I feared that was it, we would never speak again, only the wind would serve to soothe the jagged edges of the broken spaces between us.

"...You know I love you." He said so quietly I almost missed it, "-I always have."

And there it was, that glimmer of hope that I'd been searching to desperately for, the hope for our salvation. That was all I had ever wanted from him, the affirmation that I was not entirely alone in his wicked world. Tears blurred the land as I spoke. "...I know."

"So what? That's it?" Draco stared hopelessly down at his hands, knuckled bruised and split. Hands covered in the blood of a boy who begged for mercy but deserved none. "-Are we just done talking? ...Is this really where this ends?"

For a moment the thought of life after Draco flashed through my mind, the images of me sat alone beneath the stars, no soul besides my own to ward off the creeping cold, no hearts beating in sacred tandem. No forbidden kisses or cardinal sin, no danger. No love, no lust, just this all consuming emptiness for every second of every minute of every day.

"Swear to me..." A shuddering breath escaped my lips, curling in chill like smoke to the sky and carrying with it all the words I wished I could say to him. "-Swear that you'll never lie to me like that again... If you do, I'm gone, -You will never see me again."

Fingers suddenly deft in their eagerness curled around the railing, flexing and clenching as we watched the flight of a single lone bird as it carved its path across the winter night.

"I swear."

And then he pushed away from the railing, moving to leave and before I could even register what I was saying my voice had already called out what my heart cried so desperately for, "Don't go... Stay with me, just for a little while."

He didn't need to be asked twice, he was just as chronically lonely as I was. And yet still when he rejoined me he stayed away, so close yet so far, I knew the exact distance between us; Six inches. That was all that separated us, and yet why did it seem so far? Why did my soul still ache so deeply?

There was agony in loving Draco Malfoy, a beauty in the blasphemy. A kind so cardinal heaven would fall and hell would rise before we let it tear us apart again.
For the first time I turned to look at him and felt that all familiar clench in my chest, like a dagger to the heart. He was ethereal.

Pale hair seeming almost white in the moonlight, grey eyes staring straight ahead into the abyss. I had always thought that he'd looked cruel, in the most devilishly devastating kind of way, and it was only now I saw the boy before me for who he really was. -Just that, a boy. Nothing more, nothing less, and yet somehow he was enough to bring the devil himself to his knees and weep.

He was not a product of his father, he was something entirely different, something to be feared far more than a boy hell bent on his own destruction.

And yet I loved him, so much so that I would tear the stars from the sky if it meant one more moment alone with him. When I spoke it was scarcely a whisper, maybe he hadn't even heard it at all and in a way I hoped he hadn't. "...I love you."

We were a beautiful melody and this was our final cadence, a note to end all others and shatter the souls in shaking thrill.

He shifted closer, the warmth I'd missed so dearly seeping through my skin to soothe my aching bones, and slowly, piece by piece, we became something close to whole.
A small smile tugged at the edges of his lips as he covered my hand in his, and together we hurt a little less. "I know."