wires → draco malfoy

chapter twenty seven: simplicity is scary

Something about the mountainous Hogwarts air had always felt so attractive to Beatrice Bitterwood. Unlike other muggleborns or half-blood, she had known her entire life where she was going to end up. Under which roof, and even which specific dorm. As she had always been a beacon of her own mother, no matter the case.

Sure, she had cried the night she was sorted into Slytherin. It was a moment filled with realization and drought. Questions swirled around her for the very first time and it's almost as if nowadays she could remember swearing to herself she wouldn't get used to them. 

Still, for as many troublesome memories she could recount in her present days, Beatrice always knew it was this air that kept her up. Kept her dreaming while she was away, longing to go back. It was as magical to her as it was to anybody else, pulling her in while visions were all so enthralling. There was literally magic in this air. From the way it smelt to the way it felt. Breezy and thin in her hands, combing through her hair. Leaving it in an array of straight wisps rather than rough tangles. Best of all, the way it looked. Beatrice always remembered the sights. They were green in her eyes, all the time.

Although, right now, green was the last thing on her mind. As she sat lonely on a chipped concrete bench under a hidden arch, toeing with the scraps of dirt beneath her. Simply to breathe, in and out, was all she came to do. To perhaps get away from a certain someone, a fear of hers. However, it did not once dawn on her until what was left of a four-leaf clover made itself painfully visible, that the air was gone. And Beatrice was not breathing at all.

Reality had always looked like something two-faced. Visually, literally. Beatrice could take to draw pictures of it if she truly wanted. But luckily no one had wanted any sort of explanation yet. All that was left was a sheer map of the thing inside her head. Because truth truly was, Beatrice Bitterwood felt everything. Even when she tried to make it stop, it was so unmistakably obvious that she never stopped feeling, and most of all hurting. Oftentimes the pull back to Hogwarts felt like a release from that. Like the push on her back in the halls after a long exam. A secretly cherished moment. A moment for last day's thought, or a moment for ponderings on a cobblestone bench.

Though it seemed that this particular pull was gone. And the picture of reality had been coming slowly to surface.

Looking down at her legs, Beatrice tried to decide exactly what this meant. A sensation she had been suppressing from the time the first of her tears had touched the school's pillow.

It meant she was growing up.

And growing up could apparently also mean facades were starting to exist. Like Paris. Paris was a facade, Beatrice thought so clearly inside her mind. In fact, she had been thinking this for weeks now, since being back. Without the enchanting pull of Hogwarts' magic and mischievous fun awaiting, it instead left her alone with the second side of reality's face. And on that face was a disturbing picture of Draco Malfoy.

Little promises and his indistinct whispers on top of yet again, another magic tower, had not been real after all. She hadn't told Pansy yet, although it has been a week since she had been feeling more than much now. The other girl was off in the nose of her own, perfect boy. Her biggest problem being the attempt to re-align the friend group now that romance was something prevalent. But why couldn't romance be just as easy for her?

Otis was on her mind all the time as well, slipping away after every mention of himself. He was supposed to be the easy one. But perhaps regarding him in such a way is what made the deities of Hogwarts decide Beatrice did not deserve him. Instead, she deserved the dire complications of Draco Malfoy.

It didn't seem as easy as his declarations in Paris had once said. Stepping foot back on this ground again had made Beatrice understand that she had never quite witnessed a first for the boy. She was simply just next in line for him. And that there'd surely be someone else that came after her, as there was someone that did before. As selfish as it seemed, Beatrice simply detested the idea of being on this prized shelf of all the girls Draco Malfoy bothered to sleep with in his time at school. Before he goes off. Into a job he'll regret. With a woman his mother will pick out. And he'll regret her too. Worst comes to worst, he may regret the child they'll inevitably end up having too.