The Malfoy Project

𝟒𝟑 - 𝐑𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐞

     ✼¹

     The next day, Monty and Draco are discharged from the Hospital Wing.

     On Wednesday, Monty proposes to me.

     He stands by the fireplace, regaling me with a play-by-play of the practice session earlier with the Ravenclaw team. Cho Chang nearly got the Snitch, but Urquhart's Bludger promptly put a stop to that. Cho played alright but she seems to be losing her form. Blah, blah, blah.

     He doesn't mention Draco at all.

     I watch him pace and prance and pantomime what happened, listening quietly because I know he doesn't like to be interrupted when talking about Quidditch.

     "Ainsley," his voice snaps me out of my daydream. "You know, something just came to mind. Forgive me if this sounds crazy, but... have you been going around saying I— I strangled you or something?"

     I stiffen. He waits for my answer, lips drawn, face glowering darkly in front of the blazing fire. I can't tell if he's testing me, or if the thought had come to him as a subconscious memory of sorts. Either way, I decide to take my chances. "No!" I try to sound incredulous. "Why would I do that?"

     "Dunno," he shrugs. "Good to know you haven't, though. I'd be very, very upset if I found that to be true." He looks at me, deducing.

     My palms break into a sweat. "Don't be silly, Monty. I'd never do that."

     He walks over to me, ocean breeze and marshmallows. But the scent is now foreign, like the smell of a place I have never been before. "About what I said on Sunday," he adds, "in the Hospital Wing. You know, about marriage?"

     A spark of hope. Yes, Monty, it's much too soon! We're only nineteen and twenty, after all. We'll have plenty of time to talk about it later. Don't worry, I didn't think you meant it entirely!

     "I meant it."

     Monty gets down on one knee on the carpet before me. From the depths of his robes, he retrieves a small velvet box and holds it out to me. "I know it's not much, and obviously we're not going to get married this instant, but will you promise me, at least?"

     He pops open the lid to reveal a ring nestled in a puffy satin cushion: a thin gold band with no face, just a letter 'M' in the same gold. Wedged between its two peaks is a small, dainty round-cut emerald.

     "It's my mother's," he says. "My dad proposed to her with it, and now you shall be the next one to have it."

     I stare down the ring in the box and the hand that cups it. Thick fingers, all tendon, strengthened from years of gripping broomstick handles and catching and beating. Fingers that could, at any moment, drop the box and wrap around my throat.

     You can't marry him.

     I look around the room for a distraction, but there's nothing. It is a Wednesday night; the common rooms are never empty on weekdays. Yet, here I am, in the very empty, almost-never-empty-on-a-weekday Slytherin common room, Monty on his knees before me, holding the gleaming shackle he presents as an honourific gift.

     "Ains?"

     "Monty, I— I don't know what to say." 

     He grins as if I had already accepted, but his eyes belied a firm warning. He shakes the box at me. "Say yes."

     Or else.

     "Y— yes."

     Pleased, he plucks the ring from its seat, takes my wrist, and pushes it onto my finger.

     It fits perfectly.

     "Now no one else can claim you," he jokes, kissing my fingers. I smile, because he wants me to. I throw my arms around him, because he wants me to. "I love you, Ains," he says.

     "I love you, too."

     Because he wants me to.

༻❁༺

     Ernie sees the ring during Potions on Thursday and shoots me an alarmed look from two seats away. I return an equally urgent look that warned him not to ask.

     Professors drone on and students bustle by, drowning me in a buzz of constant voices. Monty becomes more clingy than ever, wanting to see me nearly every moment outside of class. In between it all, I strain for Draco. In the Common Room, the library, the hallways, my eyes would sweep over the heads, searching. Sometimes I'd catch sight of a flash of blond, but that was all they were. Flashes — there one second and gone the next. He was a ghost; a phantom that did not want to be found.

     Saturday finally tumbles around, bringing with it frigid wind and gusting snow. Monty's ring weighs heavy as an iron ball as I trudge up the Manor driveway. Its sharp points dig into my skin when I flex my fingers straight as an ever-present reminder that it is there. 

     It's not a marriage proposal, it's not a marriage proposal, I utter to myself like an incantation, hoping it would somehow magick away the little gold anchor. Monty is not the be-all-end-all.

     By the time I reach the front porch, I have worked myself up so much that when Narcissa opens the door, I need to restrain myself from leaping into her arms. She starts towards the second drawing room when I stop her. "Is it alright if we did it in the library?"

     She raises her eyebrows but concedes without question. She ducks into the drawing room to retrieve the tea tray she had prepared and we head towards the library.

     Hemmed in by the pelting snow outside, our footsteps echo loudly in the vast chamber, the sound ringing all the way up to the unreachable ceiling. The room in the corner of the second floor is in darkness, and the windows are too high up to make out anything beyond.

     Narcissa watches patiently as I set up the recorder, tracking the glinting emerald as it moves. The reels click, the wire jack pops, the microphone crackles, the needle jerks. Ready.

     "Mrs.— I mean, Narcissa, can I ask you something?"

     "Yes, I suppose that's the point of all this, isn't it?" Her smile is wide and warm, but I can't find the strength in me to return it.

     "Did you love Bas very much?"

     "Of course," she says, fingers flying to her pendant. I clamp my palms together between my thighs, running my thumb over the points of the 'M'. "And— and did you want to marry him?"

     Silence.

     "Yes."

     "So why did you hesitate when he asked at the ball?"

     There's a glimmer of guilt behind her crystal blue eyes. "Gabriella, I have to confess something," she says, glancing down at the floor. "I lied. When you asked me how I felt when Lucius kissed me. It was true I was shocked, and I did push him away. But it also... confused me. He was doing everything he could to win my affection, so when he gave me that cheque, well, I... I was young. And foolish. Greedy. I let myself be swayed by gifts, even gifts not meant for me." Her flashing eyes meet mine briefly. "Now, it's so painfully obvious he had only done those things for himself. I wasn't the prize. I was the bonus. But I suppose that's what you get when you only choose to see what you want to see."

     "And what did you see in Lucius?"

     If Narcissa can see something in Lucius worth marrying, maybe there is something in Monty as well — something to convince me I hadn't thrown myself into the pits of Tartarus with one single word. 

     She straightens her neck, her eyes the same blue as the pendant on her chest. "Everything. What he was. And what he wasn't." 

     These words come as a warning; a foretelling of woe and desolation. For her or me, I cannot tell. Perhaps both. 

     The pad of my thumb grows wet as the ring draws blood.