tw: anxiety, racial slander (kind of), mentions of a breakdown, mentions of an abortion (very briefly) this is an emotionally sensitive chapter, but nothing dark......at least, not compared to chapter twenty, which i'll publish later today
𝐅𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟓
"I-I DON'T KNOW"
For the first time since he's met her, Maya Rajesh looks thrown, completely bewildered. Her mouth opens, then closes again, stuttering, as if she can't even form words. Draco Malfoy doesn't know how to feel about this — on one hand, he's enjoying being the one doing the throwing, but a small part of him is unnerved by her cluelessness and clear discomfort.
"What do you mean, you don't know?" he questions, tone slightly less abraisive.
She shoots him an annoyed look.
"I mean" replies Maya Rajesh, gritting her teeth, "There isn't.......a word.....for what I am"
"Well, what do you call yourself?"
"A warlock" she replies, hands running through her hair as a small groan erupts from the back of her throat, "But that's not accurate either — wait a minute. Why the sudden change of heart? Are you trying to lure me into another one of your brilliant schemes again, Malfoy?"
"As much fun as it would be to do that, " replies Draco, sarcasm dripping from his tone, "I don't want anything from you. I just want to know what you are, for......research purposes"
She raises an eyebrow. Draco feels an inexplicable pang go through his abdomen.
"Research purposes?"
"You know what I mean," he replies, irritation cutting through his tone at the way she's deliberately prolonging his question, "Quit stalling and give me the answer."
"Ask nicely and maybe I'll consider it" she replies, taunting him. Draco raises his eyebrows, internally groaning at having no choice but to rise to the bait. He's the one who's usually playing the games — Draco admits this truthfully, with no remorse — but he didn't expect her to dish it right back to him. A Gryffindor, of all people, coming down to his level.
She's definitely less righteous than he thought.
"Fine" replies Draco, fists clenching as he growls the word out, "Please, Rajesh — "
"Maya" she corrects, the taunting expression slightly vanishing from her face. Draco frowns — why is she suddenly asking him to use her first name? He searches for the answer in her eyes, but they're hardened, glazed-over in a way that makes seeing beyond them impossible.
"Please, Maya" he corrects himself, somehow liking the sound of her name on his tongue, "Would it be possible for you to kindly tell me what you really are?"
"There," she replies, smugly, "That wasn't so hard, was it?"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake — "
"Alright, fine, fine" she replies, exasperated, throwing her hands up in surrender, "I'll tell you. Though it's a bit of a long story — "
"I have time"
She narrows her eyes at him, sighing for a brief moment before she speaks.
"On my birth certificate, it says 'witch'," she replies, voice lowering, "But when I was born, the healers had no clue what I was. So they basically just wrote that as a fill-in. As I got older, I realized that I could do things that other kids my age couldn't — "
"Didn't you grow up around Shadowhunters?" he questions, as she shoots him a glare.
"I was getting to that" replies Rajesh — Maya, Draco corrects himself — , "Anyway, my mother quickly realized that I could Change — another word for the ability to shapeshift — " she adds, seeing his confused expression, " into anyone I wanted, as long as I had a piece of their clothing, or anything that they touched for a long period of time. She told me the truth — my dad - Arjun, obviously - wasn't my biological father. It was someone else, a Eidolon demon she'd met before the wedding —"
"A demon?" Draco questions, shocked. Maya Rajesh looks vaguely uncomfortable, squirming slightly in her spot before answering.
"Yeah, a demon" she replies, somewhat discomfited, "She doesn't like to talk about it. But I've been learning how to control them ever since I was four, and I'm pretty decent at it now."
Draco stands there for a few moments, trying to process what he just heard. His brain has gone kaput, completely refusing to work at the new information that has entered his ears. He feels overwhelmed, a confusing mix of feelings scattered through his mind. They fog up his rational thinking like steam on a window, like someone has just cast a confundus charm and left him there.
When he asked her what she was, he certainly didn't expect this. In fact, Draco isn't even sure what he expected. But the fact that she's demon spawn, normal-looking, hiding in plain sight among the other students all this time — it scares him, more than he'd like to admit.
"Malfoy?"
Draco jumps backward, quite violently, as Maya's — he still can't believe he's calling her that — eyes widen with shock. She's standing closer to him than before — a little too close, some would say. The air around them suddenly feels warm, charged with something he can't explain. It's like the Yule ball all over again, he can feel the heat of the magic underneath her skin, seeping out, trying to touch him. It should put him off, make him want to increase the distance between the two of them — but, oddly, it draws him in further, and Draco has to physically force himself to step back so he doesn't come off as touchy.
"Are you okay?" she questions, genuinely looking concerned, "I know it was a lot of information.....but you look like you've seen a ghost?"
"I'm fine" Draco replies, uncharacteristically nervous, running a sweaty hand through his hair, "I-I just needed a moment"
Maya Rajesh sighs, still looking at him oddly for a moment before she speaks again.
"Okay, well I should probably go," she states, somewhat awkwardly, "Diana will probably be wondering where I am, and I don't want to feed the rumor mill by coming back without an explanation. Remember, this stays between us."
Draco scoffs, all previous feelings vanishing and being replaced by annoyance.
"D'you really think I'm stupid enough to go around running my mouth about this to other people?"
She gives him an appraising look, coolly, from head to toe, in a way that makes a strange shiver go down the back of his spine.
"I wouldn't put it past you"
Draco rolls his eyes as she walks away, a few moments later, a strange feeling brewing in the pit of his stomach..
Maya Rajesh may be irritating, but you can't deny that she's something else entirely.
And he's amazed that he didn't figure out how literal that statement was before.
"But I had my wand hidden up my sleeve," Ron assures Padma Patil, a few days later in the common room, who seems to be a lot keener on Ron now that he's getting so much attention and is making a point of talking to him every time they pass each other in the corridors. "I could've taken those mer-idiots any time I wanted."
"What were you going to do, snore at them?" says, Hermione waspishly. People have been teasing her so much about being the thing that Viktor Krum would most miss that she's in a rather tetchy mood.
Ron's ears go red, and thereafter, he reverts to the bewitched sleep version of events.
Maya tries to hide her amusement at their new dynamic.
As they enter March, the weather becomes drier, but cruel winds skin their hands and faces every time they go out onto the grounds. There are delays in the post because the owls keep getting blown off course. The brown owl that Harry sent to Sirius with the dates of the Hogsmeade weekend turns up at breakfast on Friday morning, with half its feathers sticking up the wrong way; Harry no sooner tears off Sirius's reply than it takes flight, clearly afraid that it's going to be sent outside again. Maya doesn't pay attention to the contents of the letter, stirring her bowl of cornflakes with no appetite; it's that time of the month for her, and cramps are doubly worse, stealing away her appetite and forcing a constant grimace onto her face.
"He hasn't come back to Hogsmeade?" says, Ron incredulously.
"It looks like it, doesn't it?" says Hermione.
"I can't believe him," says Harry tensely, "if he's caught . . ."
"Made it so far, though, hasn't he?" says Ron. "And it's not like the place is swarming with dementors anymore."
Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle are standing in a huddle outside the classroom door with Pansy Parkinson's gang of Slytherin girls, when they all go down for their last lesson of the day, Double Potions. All of them are looking at something Maya can't see and sniggering heartily. Pansy's pug-like face peers excitedly around Goyle's broad back as the four of them approach. Malfoy just looks oddly tense, and when their eyes meet, she immediately knows something's wrong.
"There they are, there they are!" giggles Parkinson, and the knot of Slytherins break apart. Maya sees that Pansy has a magazine in her hands — Witch Weekly. The moving picture on the front shows a curly-haired witch, who's smiling toothily and pointing at a large sponge cake with her wand.
"You might find something to interest you in there, Granger, Rajesh!" Pansy says loudly, and she throws the magazine at them, Hermione
catches it, looking startled. At that moment, the dungeon door opens, and Snape beckons them all inside.
Hermione, Harry, Maya and Ron head for a table at the back of the dungeon as usual. Once Snape has turned his back on them to
write up the ingredients of today's potion on the blackboard, Hermione hastily rifles through the magazine under the desk. At last, in the center pages, she finds what they're looking for. Harry and Ron lean in closer. A color photograph of Harry heads a short piece entitled:
Harry Potter's Secret Heartache (s)
A boy like no other, perhaps — yet a boy suffering all the usual pangs of adolescence, writes Rita Skeeter. Deprived of love since the tragic demise of his parents, fourteen-year-old Harry Potter thought he had found solace in his steady girlfriend at Hogwarts, Muggle-born Hermione Granger. Little did he know that he would shortly be suffering yet another emotional blow in a life already littered with personal loss.
Miss Granger, a plain but ambitious girl, seems to have a taste for famous wizards that Harry alone cannot satisfy. Since the arrival at Hogwarts of Viktor Krum, Bulgarian Seeker and hero of the last World Quidditch Cup, Miss Granger has been toying with both boys' affections. Krum, who is openly smitten with the devious Miss Granger, has already invited her to visit him in Bulgaria over the summer holidays, and insists that he has "never felt this way about any other girl."
However, it might not be Miss Granger's doubtful natural charms that have captured these unfortunate boys' interest.
"She's really ugly," says Pansy Parkinson, a pretty and vivacious fourth-year student, "but she'd be well up to making a Love Potion, she's quite brainy. I think that's how she's doing it."
Love Potions are, of course, banned at Hogwarts, and no doubt Albus Dumbledore will want to investigate these claims. But all is not lost, however — Mr. Potter may have a second chance in the near future. Maya Rajesh, the illegitimate product of the Nephilim scandal that rocked the Indian pureblood community fourteen years ago, is often seen hanging around Harry and his friends, according to an inside source at Hogwarts.
"They're quite close," adds Pansy, yet again, "Even though she just transferred from America last year, she's managed to make a few friends in Gryffindor — how, I don't know. She's okay-looking — severely lacking in the height department — but none of us really know anything about her. Kind of cold, though — she's got a nasty mouth on her when provoked."
And this holds true. When asked for an interview to address the speculation around the whereabouts of her mother, Rajesh shouted something not permissible to print. The young witch certainly has a short temper, more so than that of her late father, who was known for his disdain towards the press. For Harry's sake, let's hope she hasn't inherited the manipulative streak present in Mrs. Subramanian — though at this point, even that is doubtful.
"I told you!" Ron hisses at Hermione as she stares down at the article. "I told you not to annoy Rita Skeeter! She's made you two out to be some sort of — of scarlet women!"
Hermione stopped looking astonished and snorted with laughter. Maya however, feels something prickling at her eyes. Her chest tightens, jaw clenching with pure fury as her nails dig into the wood of the bench.
"Scarlet woman?" repeats Hermione shaking with suppressed giggles as she looks around at Ron.
"It's what my mum calls them," Ron mutters, his ears going red.
"If that's the best Rita can do, she's losing her touch," says Hermione, still giggling, as she throws Witch Weekly onto the empty chair beside her. "What a pile of old rubbish."
Maya wants to agree with her, but finds herself struggling to breathe instead, the breaths she can manage coming out shaky and uneven. A white-hot wave of anxiety washes over her, and she suddenly finds her hands shaking slightly.
What has she done?
As much as Maya hates to admit it — Ron was right; Pissing off Rita Skeeter has brought consequences she couldn't have even imagined. Her plan to lay low is practically dead at this point — what, with the way everyone's looking at her. She left New York to escape this kind of scrutiny, but now that the secret of her parentage is out for everyone, there's bound to be backlash — especially from the pureblood students, who already look down upon her because she's friends with the Trio.
And she can only imagine how bad it's going to be for Hermione.
Maya suddenly feels a violent lurch in her stomach and claps her hand over her mouth.
Why can't she just keep her fucking mouth shut?
"Maya?" questions Harry, looking very concerned, "You alright?"
A fresh wave of cold sweeps over her. Suddenly, Maya feels suffocated in the room full of people. She can't breathe at all, like something heavy is pressing down on her ribcage, the painful pressure radiating throughout the fragile bones.
"I-I need to go" she stammers, quietly, as Snape's back is turned. Maya ignores the protests of her friends, silently snatching her bag and slipping out of the open dungeon door. She walks as fast as she can, striding far away from the classroom. Maya knows this will get her in loads of trouble later, perhaps even landing herself in detention, but she can't. She physically can't think straight like this.
Once she's safely out of sight, away from any — more accurately, all people — Maya finally allows herself to let go.
A choked cry emanates from her lips, and she gasps, stumbling and falling against a wall in the process. Air rapidly fills and exits her lungs; Maya realizes too late that she's hyperventilating, the cracks that were always beneath her footing falling away and giving life to a chasm. One that feels like it's swallowing her whole as the tears stream down her face, making Maya's eyeliner run down her skin in navy-blue trails.
Everything has gone to shit.
And for once in her life, Maya Rajesh has no idea how to fix what she's gotten herself into.
It's an hour or so after classes have ended, and Draco's in the library. His fingers skim over the titles stacked on the bookshelves in the Transfiguration aisle, looking for one particular encyclopedia that contains the definitions needed to finish his essay. He can't remember the name for the life of him, but knows what the spine looks like, considering it's on his bedroom shelf back at home. Draco swears he saw it somewhere in this aisle, but for some reason, he can't remember where.
Then again, his memory has never been that reliable.
However, these thoughts soon leave his head, as he hears a strange sound reverberating from around the corner. Draco can't discern exactly what it is; he ignores the disturbance and goes on searching for the book.
But when it happens again, distinctly louder, Draco recognizes it as a sniffle, someone wiping away their tears to mask the fact that they're crying. He doesn't know why, but it sends a strange pang through his chest — the voice of the person sounds vaguely familiar. Against his usual behaviour, Draco furrows an eyebrow, quietly walking towards the source of the sound. It's in the aisle next to him, he realizes, with mingled curiosity and hesitance.
His eyes fly wide in shock at the sight in front of him.
Maya Rajesh is slumped against the other bookshelf, knees drawn up to her chest. Her dark hair is messily strewn over it's shoulders, fallen out of it's usual neat ponytail. Her bag is haphazardly scattered next to her, a few books falling out. She's breathing heavily, and the cries that escape her lips between her breaths make something hurt inside him — and for the life of himself, Draco can't figure out why that is.
The words escape his lips before he has a chance to stop himself.
"Maya?"
Her name feels interesting on his lips, foreign, a hint of something deeper. Maya's head abruptly snaps up. Draco's stomach lurches. Her eyes are reddened, and she sucks in a shaky breath. He can see the black-ish trails going down her cheeks, the way her wet lashes brush against the tips of her cheekbones, which are somehow more defined by the way the light hits them.
Then her face abruptly fills with cold horror, and they both freeze.
For a single moment, neither of them know what to say.
She breaks the silence first.
"Fancy seeing you here" states Maya Rajesh, though it sounds breathless, with a hint of fear, lacking the usual sass that so easily rolls off of her tongue, "Were you....following me or something?"
Against his will, Draco's face flushes.
"N-no" he stammers, ashamed at the sudden stutter in his voices, "I was — I was doing homework."
Even in her disheveled state, she still manages to raise a sardonic eyebrow.
"A likely story"
Draco sighs, momentarily closing his eyes as he runs a hand through her hair. A part of him is sick of the constant games that come with their interactions — for some reason, he wants to know why she's spending her Friday evening sulking in the library. He sits down in his place, a safe distance away from her, but the position still feels oddly intimate.
"You saw the Prophet, didn't you, Malfoy?" she questions, dryly, as if she's read his mind. There's a hint of vulnerability in her tone, hinting that there's more that lies beneath her cold, indifferent exterior, "Skeeter's decide to give me my fifteen minutes of fame — for all the wrong reasons, of course."
Something prickles in him at her words. Draco isn't exactly sensitive — he just pretends not to care — but the way she bites her lip, quietly staring down at the bottom shelf with tears in her eyes, it pricks something inside of him, a spot that, up until now, Draco wasn't even aware existed.
"Are you - " he tries, tone somewhat softer, " Are you okay?"
Something changes in her expression, some wall that falls at the impact of her words. The previous arrogance is gone, and replaced with a blank slate. Her expression is emotionless, betraying a hint of surprise, but otherwise, he can't tell what she's thinking.
"I-" she states, tone somewhat quieter and smaller, "I don't know"
Oh.
Draco feels very tetchy around her — he's not exactly experienced with comforting crying people, in fact, he's mostly uncomfortable around them. With Diana, a few quiet words and a pat on the back seem to do the trick, but with her......Draco isn't sure what to do. In fact, he doesn't even know why this affects him, why he wants to comfort Maya Rajesh of all people.
"I never said anything — wrong — to her" replies Maya, a little shocked at her own words, then narrowing her eyes at his "oh really?" expression, "Okay, I might have snapped at her for a few seconds. But I didn't curse at that woman, like she said. She - she kept going on and on about my mother — horrible, nasty things about how she was a gold digger" — her voice gets slightly choked up at this, "She called me illegitimate. Like I wasn't even a person anymore."
She scoffs, continuing.
"It's not that different from what the Clave thinks of me, really." her voice drops lower, getting somewhat insecure, "...They wanted my mother to have an abortion when she found out that she was pregnant with me. Said I was a "danger to society". But she refused. She didn't want them to have jurisdiction over her body. She wanted me to grow up away from the spotlight, from reporters, as normal as I possibly could be. And now....."
Maya trails off, another tear running down her cheek as she makes an empty hand gesture.
"I feel like I've ruined everything for her. Before, it didn't really matter to me who my parents were. I didn't know about all of.......this. Shadowhunters aren't exactly welcoming, but they aren't openly racist either. According to the laws of the Clave, I'm not supposed to exist. I'm not allowed to exist. The only reason they haven't done anything to sabotage my mother's job is because I haven't done anything to hurt their agenda, ruin their image. But if they see this article — which they probably will — we could lose everything. All because I forgot to think before I spoke"
There's a few moments of silence. Maya wipes away the tears that have accumulated on her face, vanishing the black streaks with a snap of her fingers as Draco absorbs the information he just heard.
Draco isn't really familiar with Shadowhunter government — the Clave — as Maya Rajesh like to call them. He didn't know it was like this for her. Oppression, to him, is silent, mere words that never get put into action. To Draco, you can say whatever the hell you want, but in truth, there's a very small chance it's actually going to come true.
Apparently, he's wrong.
He sighs, placing his head back against the bookshelf.
"I don't think you're a danger to society" he breathes out. Maya freezes, in the middle of tying her long locks back into a ponytail.
"What?" she whispers, shocked.
Draco resists the urge to groan at her sheer cluelessness. How in one second, she can go from talking about injustice to being utterly oblivious, he'll never know.
"Sure, you're a bit — annoying " he bites the word out as she rolls her eyes, "Bossy. And way too angry for someone your size. But calling you a danger to society is a bit much. Are they really stupid enough to sack your mother over one article?"
"They — could." she fires back, now looking doubtful. Draco frowns, having never seen that expression on her face before - an eyebrow lifted up in thought, nose slightly scrunched. It's — becoming, he'll give her that. Some would even go so far as to call it 'cute'
But not him. Definitely not him.
"Overthinking seems to be your speciality, Rajesh" Draco replies, less smoothly than he intended, "Tell me, has there ever been a day where that brain of yours hasn't blown things out of proportion?"
"Are you trying to insult me or compliment me?" she questions, usual sass back in place, with a hint of playfulness this time, "You can't do both....Draco"
Oh Bloody Hell.
He might as well be turning into Weaselbee with the amount of cursing he's doing.
Draco doesn't know why — probably not the first time today — but the sound of his name on her lips is........he doesn't know how to describe it. It feels wrong and right all at once, contradictions woven into the syllables themselves. He doesn't know why she manages to unsettle him so often, so easily. He's not the type of person who gets thrown easily — in fact, Draco prides himself on his ability to keep his cool around girls.
Well, normal girls. Not ones who spew fire any chance they get.
There's something different about her; nothing to do with the fact that she's a hybrid of god-knows-what. Like it or not, Draco is intrigued as to what lies behind her indifferent exterior.
And now that he's gotten a glimpse of it, Draco can't help but want more.
"Draco..." comes her voice, out of nowhere again, "Are you okay? You've been staring at that book for a while, and I doubt household spells are going to be of any use to you..."
He snaps back to reality within in an instant, shaking his head to remind himself where he is.
Who he's with.
"I'm fine."