It can never be the same

Chapter 1

A/n I've already started posting this story on Ao3 and I remembered that I have this account so I decided to also post it here.

Anyways, enjoy :)

There he stood, wide-eyed and frantic, his raised hand shaking as he pointed his wand at her face. He knew he wasn't actually going to fire a spell. How could he? This was her.

The girl who he had slowly become friends with over the first four years of their schooling. The girl who had changed the course of his life when she had given him a good scolding, telling him that he would never understand. The girl that had been his girlfriend just last year. The girl that he had to break up with over the summer. He had to because he had become a death eater and she was one of Harry Potter's best friends. They were destined to be on opposite sides of a war still to come. Yet, this was the girl that he had been in love with since first year. He could never bring himself to hurt her. He had raised his wand more out of reflex than anything else. They both knew he wouldn't actually do anything.

"Show me your left arm," she demanded cooly.

There she stood with her own wand pointed at his face. Unlike him, she had a cold expression across her face. Her eyebrows scrunched slightly in suspicion and her eyes like steel. Her hands, which usually had a slight tremor from anxiety, were perfectly still. She looked like she would fire a spell at any moment.

There was no way that she could possibly know. Unless she believed what Potter had been saying about him, but that couldn't be. His friends had said that she and her best friend had been at odds about that this whole year. So what could have raised her suspicions? Draco thought back to how they had ended up in this position.

He had been walking down the corridor near the courtyard with Pansy and Blaise, barely paying attention to his surroundings. The two had basically forced him to go outside with them. Draco's friends weren't stupid. They had noticed his strange behaviour this year but they assumed that it was just because of his break-up with Y/n. All of his friends had been concerned for him but Pansy and Blaise were the least subtle with their concern.

They had asked him over and over again why he had broken up with her but he never answered. It was soon learned that Y/n was a taboo subject when around Draco. (He knew they were all still friends with her though.) He wasn't quite sure what his friends were talking about when she approached him from the courtyard. It had shocked him, of course, since returning to Hogwarts for their sixth year she had refused to acknowledge his presence, but what had shocked him more was the almost timid, sweet smile on her face.

"Draco," she had said sweetly. "Can we talk?"

She had been looking at him expectantly with big doe eyes and he felt his heart leap in his chest. He knew he should've declined but his emotions were all over the place. Shock, longing, apprehension, and a tiny bit of hope. He had followed her, dumbfounded, into an empty classroom where she had whirled on him with her wand in hand. He had noticed the movement of her hand and pulled his own wand out.

"Malfoy," she called, snapping him out of his thoughts.

He hated that she called him that. She had only ever called him Draco, even before they became friends. She had claimed that he had been given a name for a reason. It had made him oddly happy in first year and then it wasn't so odd when he had realised he had developed a crush on her. He liked the way she said his name. More than that, when he had begun to distance himself from his family's beliefs and ideals, her calling him Draco made him feel as if she recognised that he was more than just the Malfoy name. She saw him for who he really was. So the fact that she was calling him Malfoy was like a slap to the face. It made him feel like the girl he adored thought all he'd ever be was an evil, prejudiced Malfoy.

"Show me your left arm," she repeated.

She was looking at him so coldly. It was a stark contrast to the way she used to look at him. Still, he found her beautiful. She reminded him of an angel, there to deliver his punishment for his sins and he found that, for her, he would gladly drop to his knees and beg for mercy and forgiveness. He lowered his arm resigning himself to his fate. Her expression didn't falter. He wished that she would smile at him. He wished that she would call him Draco and look at him with kind eyes. He wished that he had been given the chance to have her love him as much as he loved her.

The reality though was that she didn't love him. And he knew that he wasn't prepared for whatever would come next. The look that she would give him when he showed her his left arm and confirmed her suspicions would surely destroy him. He was tempted to actually drop to his knees before her. His heart twisted painfully in his chest. Yet, there was a tiny part of him that was relieved to be sharing this secret with her. A selfish part of him that had wanted to seek her comfort from the start. After another beat passed, he slowly started to lift the sleeve of his sweater. He noticed her tightening her grip on her wand.

Dread filled his chest and he clenched his jaw. He could feel the shame crawling up his throat as tears pricked his eyes. He dropped his gaze to the floor, unable to look at her any longer.

He heard her sharp intake of breath as his dark mark was revealed.