The Malfoy Project

𝟓𝟕 - 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐰𝐚𝐧

 ✼¹

     At some point in the story I had risen away from Draco. His words claw at me with strangeness, like jigsaw pieces that won't fit, or hearing a Mandrake's scream through ear muffs. 

     He lifts his eyes to mine. They are wide and sorrowful. Scared. "Ainsley," he says. "I did something really wrong."

     I can only stare at him as I struggle to understand. "What're you saying?"

     "I— I was... frustrated with Potter winning all the time—"     

      "Draco." His name snaps off my tongue. "What are you saying?"

     He mumbles something. Something about paying Cedric to enter the Tournament. My laugh cuts him off mid-sentence, shrill and loud and slightly deranged. "Don't be silly," I caw. "It was me. I told him to put his name in."

     "You did. Because I told him to convince you. I told him to tell you he wanted to do it for his father's approval." 

     I don't feel in control of my body. I know from the dull ache in my cheeks that I'm smiling, or trying to. Some part of me still thinks this is all a joke, a jape to make light of a depressing situation. Cedric enjoyed practical jokes like this. He would have laughed.

     "But— but that day in the library," I insist. "You asked me questions— you said Cedric was telling the boys that— that he didn't want to, in the locker rooms. You... you blamed me." 

     He looked away in guilt. "I wanted to hurt you. I was angry with Rita and you for the book." 

     "So... so all the things Cedric told me. About being afraid to waste his life away, that he was afraid to disappoint his dad. It was... it was all a lie?"

     "Maybe not all of it," he admits. "But it was mostly because he wanted to give the money to you." 

      No. No no no.

     "You're lying."

     I know he isn't. I know it from the way he is looking at me. Like he's afraid to lose me. Like he knows he will.

     "No," he says, "I'm not."

     "You're lying," I repeat, a little louder, as if my words would somehow gain the power to change reality. "You're lying. You're lying. You're lying."

     "I stopped doing that long ago."

     The world shifts. My lungs collapse into themselves like deflated balloons that will no longer take in air. Bile rises in my throat. I stand, and so does he. His arms extends just a fraction to steady me, but I recoil as if I've been scalded. "No," I breathe. "No."

     He watches helplessly as I stumble off the swing, hand on my chest in a futile effort to keep my breathing steady. I blink my eyes, but the garden had warped into a blur, a smudged painting of greens, blues, and purples. Where am I?

     Blindly, I make my way towards the hedge tunnel. In the distance, a feeble voice calls after me. Who? I have forgotten. My first name. Again and again, louder and louder, until it is behind me. A hand brushes my elbow. I whip around, coming face to face with a blond boy I do not recognise. He's pleading my name, a dozen 'sorry's tumbling clumsily from his mouth. Please, he is saying. Please forgive me.

     "Touch me again and I'll scream." My voice sounds garbled, like we are ten feet underwater. In some part of my brain where my memories are stored, a little receptor sends a signal to remind me this place had been cast with Muffliato. No one will hear me. But I don't care. I want to scream.