DRACO
Everything seemed unreal. I didn't have the words to say anything, and I didn't have the thoughts to think about anything.
I stared blankly at the seat that was now empty after she left, and I was still trying to make sense of what had happened. I could see people leaving their seats, and I sat motionless, as if glued to a chair.
"Good job, Draco," Bellatrix's hand rested on my shoulder and her almost singsong voice brought me out of my reverie, "It turned out even better than I expected."
"What?" My voice was muffled, barely audible— I hadn't dared to make a sound for so long that now I just wanted to scream.
"To be honest, I didn't think she would be so quick-tempered and come running here as soon as she received your letter." Bellatrix chuckled as she sat back down, twirling a curl in her fingers.
"How do you know about—"
"A letter?" She finished for me, laughing a deep, vicious laugh, throwing her head back, letting her hair fall over the back of the chair.
"Draco, everything worked out perfectly. We've been looking for her for so many years, and she came to us all by herself, and all thanks to you."
"Explain." I didn't know what she meant, but I already felt that what she was about to say would have startled me even more.
"Well, her worthless father was stupid enough to send her to Hogwarts, and also to Slytherin, where she met you."
"And do you remember when you asked about her two years ago?" My father's voice came from the other side of me, causing my head to turn to his cheerful face, "At first I didn't understand, but then I realized it could have been her. And I wasn't wrong."
He and Bellatrix exchanged a conspiratorial look that made me feel sick. I started it. If I hadn't been climbing into this abyss called "Violet's secrets", then maybe none of this would have ever happened.
"Well, then the matter remained small, we decided to try this idea with a letter and, surprisingly, it worked. She came and as soon as I saw her on the stairs and you said her name, we called the Lord."
They kept talking, but I couldn't listen to it anymore, I couldn't take it anymore, it was all too much for me. And I couldn't even imagine how Violet felt when she found out that her whole life had been a lie.
I wrote the letter, I said her name, I let her get close to me — there was a share of my fault, and I didn't know how to deal with the feeling that was gnawing at me from the inside out.
VIOLET
Everything felt different now. The chair in the living room, where I spent cozy evenings, seemed stiff and uncomfortable, the dim light seemed even darker, and I — I felt different, not myself.
I desperately didn't want to believe it, and for the umpteenth time, I covered my eyes with my hands, pressing them so tightly that bright flashes appeared behind my closed lids, but every time my eyes opened again, it was the same. I was sitting in the same chair, next to my father, who was still unconscious, lying motionless on the couch, and the man who had accompanied me there was standing at the exit of the room, waiting for me to finish all this and return to the manor, to the Dark Lord.
"Violet?" My eyes flew open as I heard my father's faint, quiet voice, sitting up on the couch, looking at me hopefully.
But what was the hope in his sad brown eyes? Maybe he, like me, hoped that all this did not really happen, that it was all a dream, a flight of fantasy.
But it was time to believe already. Everything was real, more real than anything that had ever happened before in my life, even more real than me.
"And you? Who are you?" My firm voice shattered that hope, leaving only the agony and pain I knew so well.
"Are you okay? He let you go?" He didn't despair, probably thinking that we had a carload of time to explain and a lifetime to catch up, to get things right. But again, I had to destroy everything he had hoped for and believed in, I had to destroy him, just to save him.
"I'll go back to him. But first I want to know everything from the beginning." I put my elbows on my knees, leaning my face closer, looking into his once-so-familiar eyes, which now seemed so lying.
"Violet, don't."
"It's already decided, you can't influence it. Tell me everything, or I'll leave right now."
His gaze faded again as his slightly trembling hands cupped his head in a gesture full of desperation.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't protect you." I saw a single drop of his stingy tear fall to the floor, and gathering my last remaining strength, I took a deep breath, forbidding myself to give in to my feelings, and to support him, to tell him that everything was fine, that everything would be fine. These were false, empty hopes that would not lead to anything good and right.
"I couldn't do the one thing she asked me to do. I couldn't keep my promise."
"Start telling me, I don't have much time."
Even though I already knew my life story, I wanted to hear it from him.
"This is complicated, but I'll try to explain the main thing," He cleared his throat, and nervously ran a hand through his hair as he began to speak again, "Your mother was in such a state because of him. He ruined her life, he ruined it, leaving her without a family or a loved one, and he wanted to kill her as soon as you were born, but she managed to escape. With me."
I'd always thought my life was terrible, but the thought that I could have been around Voldemort from the moment I was born gave me a shudder that went through me from head to toe.
"It would seem that everyone thought he was dead, defeated, and we — you, were safe, but your mother didn't think so. It was not enough for her that we ran away so far, that we changed our names and never showed up in public, she was insanely afraid and it drove her crazy. Fear."
Fear.
Fear ruled everything, it drove people crazy, forced them to commit rash actions that could lead to serious consequences; fear could destroy people's lives, just because they succumbed to it; and fear never spared.
"She believed that one day he would show up on the doorstep again and he would still be able to separate you. And every day I promised her that nothing would happen to you or her. But I couldn't keep that promise, making the biggest mistake of my life, when I let you go to Hogwarts."
What he called his biggest mistake was my biggest salvation.
I thought about all the moments that had pleased me for two years there, in another world that was so far from mine, which was the opposite of light compared to my dark, another world in which I felt that I lived, and not just existed. Maybe it was a mistake, but it was the most beautiful and necessary mistake for me.
"And Violet," He brought my floating consciousness back to him, "Your birthday is in August, the fourth."
I closed my eyes tightly, fighting the urge to laugh at the absurdity, even my birthday wasn't true.
August... Just a month and I would have been useless in the hands of Voldemort, just a month and I would have lived an ordinary life, with ordinary parents, or maybe I would not have been born at all. Just a month and everything happened as it happened.
I remembered well that on the fourth of August of that year, Draco came to see me because Mariel had called him. I remember this day because two months after I came home from Hogwarts in an emergency, I was able to breathe again.
Of course, Mariel was involved, too, even though I didn't want to believe it. She always supported me, she was always there for me in difficult times, she was my friend, and it turned out that she was lying to me, too. And I didn't even know if her name was really Mariel.
"What about Mariel's real name?" That was the last thing I wanted to know before I left this place that was now so difficult for me to be in.
"Mariel is her real name. Since she didn't go to Hogwarts, almost no one knew her. When she appeared among other wizards, she just put on a wig."
I've been blind, deaf, and stupid for so many years, and I've never even thought about why my aunt only wore wigs when I started going to Hogwarts.
"Violet, please, don't come back. We can fix it, everything will be—"
"No, there's nothing to fix here," I stood up from the chair, towering over his figure, which seemed to droop, "You know, if you'd just told me everything, even yesterday, even a year ago, it wouldn't have been like this. I would understand the danger and I wouldn't do such stupid things."
I chuckled bitterly as I walked past him, turning away from his pleading gaze, filled with a pain I hadn't seen before — and I left, I found the strength to leave him, just so that he would be saved, at least him.
DRACO
"How long she's been there." Bellatrix groaned, raising her eyes to the ceiling. "Maybe she changed her mind. Or she lied and they're already in a new place." No one said anything, so she got up from the chair and started walking back and forth, her shoes clattering.
It had been about three hours since Violet had left, I didn't think she'd lied or changed her mind, her father's life was on the line, and there was no way she would have put him in mortal danger.
Although I would like her to be in a new place, safe, I knew she'd come back.
And to confirm my words, a couple of minutes later, Violet appeared in the room— at first she did not notice our presence, God, we did not leave our seats at the table for a second.
There wasn't a single emotion on her face, even when she raised her blue eyes to look at me, my mother, and Bellatrix in turn.
"Hello?" She said more questioningly, after a few seconds of tense silence. Her voice sounded strained, and as soon as she spoke, I thought I saw that her face looked strained, too pale, too downcast, she was feeling bad, exhausted, I knew it just by looking into her eyes.
"Do you want to rest? Come on, I'll take you to the room you're staying in." My mother spoke with a reassuring smile, and as Violet gave a curt nod, they walked past Bellatrix and me to the stairs, going up to the second floor.
"It's not as much fun as I expected," Bellatrix shrugged, rolling her eyes, "Anyway, I've got better things to do than mess around with this girl, so I'm leaving." She walked past me, in the opposite direction from the stairs, leaving me alone in the middle of the living room, completely at a loss. I didn't know if I should have gone to Violet, I didn't know if she wanted to see me — maybe she really just needed to rest.
"She said she wanted to be alone." That's what my mother said when I finally got to the door of the room Violet was supposed to be living in.
She wanted to be alone, and I had no choice but to wait.
"Did you know that the day you first came to see me at Mariel's house was my birthday?"
She asked me that night when she was ready to talk to me.
I shook my head as I sat down next to her on the edge of the bed, and the memory of her birthday being in April popped into my head. But that, like so much else, was also untrue.
"Why didn't you tell me you were one of them?"
She asked, tracing the lines of the dark mark with her cool finger.
And I couldn't say anything. She was good, and I was on the dark side, I had to commit a murder, the murder of someone who helped her. I knew that this would be an absolute horror for her and something unacceptable, so I kept quiet.
"Do you still want us to break up?"
She asked the same question I had asked myself, looking through her eyes as if straight into my soul.
Of course not, of course I didn't want to, how could I want something like that.
"I never wanted to."
Her relieved breath touched my hand, her lips touched mine, my heart touched hers again.
Our broken souls were bleeding, and only we could stop the pain, if only for one night.
It was the first time I saw the scar on the soft skin around her ribs, the first time I touched it, the first time I realized how broken the girl in my arms was. I was afraid of hurting her that night, but she said that physical pain was nothing compared to mental one.
And for the first time I felt that I would have done anything to ease her mental pain — to kill, to betray, to die... if it would only have helped.