Fairytale Lost

I should have listened to Ron.

He was only trying to protect me. He always has. Our family seems to come in pairs: Bill and Charlie, Fred and George, Ron and I. Poor Percy. Well, I don't suppose he'd want one of us anyway. We're always in his way as it is. But as for the rest of us, we've formed closer bonds within our family than I've ever found outside our home.

But this time I resented Ron for his interference in my life. He said you were a dirty Slytherin and weren't capable of change. When he told me I shouldn't see you, I ignored him. When he said you'd only bring me grief, I laughed at him. I laughed, but he was right. You were the worst thing that ever happened to me.

The worst... and the best.

I did know grief. You brought me pain in a way I didn't think anyone could. But pain was only one part of the infinite spectrum of emotion you stirred in me. I'll never be able to say I didn't love you, or that I didn't think you loved me. Whether or not you did is a different question. I can no longer convince myself that the words you spoke were true. I could hardly believe it then, you were so perfect, so unlike anything I'd ever known you to be. You were more magic than the power that flows through my veins. It makes little sense to me now, why you would have lowered yourself to be with me, given up years of scorn and rivalry that began before either of us was born. You soiled your family name with me. The Malfoy I knew would never have done that.

But I still believed in fairytales. You seemed so genuine. I stared into your eyes, the color of starlight on still waters, and I believed. I let myself drown in those waters.

And if I were faced with that choice again, I'd dive in head first, knowing well the icy shock that came before the ecstasy.

You were like an addiction, a drug in my system from that very first kiss by the lake with only the eye of the full moon to see us. I was a slave to you then, and you knew it. I was drowning, and you did nothing to save me. Yet you were the only thing keeping me breathing. You pulsed through my veins, my life force, as steady and strong as my own heartbeat. But while you were holding me up, you tore me down.

My love for you became as much a part of me as Ron's hatred of you was ingrained in him, and it tortured me even more. It became such a deep-seated need that it took over my every thought. There was nothing left to me but the silver of your eyes, the silver that could be as sweet as starlight or as biting as a knife blade. I never could read those eyes. I'd seen for six years how well you could hide your feelings, how much of your humanity had been lost in your upbringing. Lost, or stolen. Blind faith alone whispered that you would never lie about your feelings for me. It never occurred to me that you could. It never occurred to me that this dream would not come true; the thought never reached me, because I was bound to you.

I feel it even now, the sting of your absence. I haven't felt whole since I was in your arms.

I doubt that I will feel whole again.

But I'm still addicted. I can't rid myself of you now. You're too much a part of me; your intoxication still thrives in my blood. It probably always will. Even now, even after you've left me here in this half-existence, if you came back and took me in your arms, I would be yours. I can't resist you. Where you once gave me strength, you are now my weakness.

No, you always were my weakness. I should never have been with you. It was Ron's rage when he found out, Hermione's shock, Harry's attention that came too little too late. They drove me to you. I wanted them to see me as something besides Ron's helpless little sister that was always hanging on the outskirts of their secret plans and discreet conversations. Petty jealousy brought me to you. A weak longing to believe I was first in someone's life bound me there. I never should have believed you.

I never could read your eyes.

They showed me everything I wanted. I saw my own desires fulfilled in your gaze as it shone back at me. You were everything Harry had never cared to show me, every craving that no other could satisfy. The rest of the world was bleak and barren when I wasn't with you.

And then you left me. The desolation was all I could see.

I should have expected it. Not many couples last when one graduates and moves on, and the other is left behind, still a child rushing about to classes and worrying more about grades than the issues you've faced living in the real world. But it still hurts to think of you, of our last night at Hogwarts. It hurt then, too, but at least you were there to take away the sting with the sweetness of knowing you. You could kiss me while you were tearing out my heart.

Our relationship was nothing but a tangle of wants and regrets, pain for pleasure. For me, that night was no different. I shouldn't have given in. Now there's nothing I want more than to know the fire of your skin against mine once more.

Like every choice we make, there are consequences. Some can be erased. Mine cannot. I have been stained by you. That was my fault, and I can survive it. My only regret now is for our son.

No one knows yet. I refused to tell anyone at first. I thought that by ignoring the possibility it might just go away. But after a while it became obvious to me, though not the others. I'll have to tell mum and dad soon. Otherwise I'll go to school no different than the last six years, and in a month or two they'll get an owl from Professor McGonagall, or maybe even the headmaster. They might manage to be supportive if I'm just honest with them to begin with. Ron will rant about how he always knew you were a bastard. He'll be murderous, but nothing serious will come from it. I know my brother.

On the other hand, he thought he knew me as well.

Hermione will be shocked, and then she'll retreat into her orderliness and begin planning how the child can be cared for while I continue my education. Giving up school won't even occur to her. She'll help me, of course, be a good friend in every way she knows how from all her years of studious habits and logical thinking. But every once in a while I'll catch her looking at me, her big brown eyes full of pity. I don't want their pity. But they won't know that. All they'll see in me is a timid, scared little girl. They don't know me at all. I'm a stranger to them.

And Harry.

What can I say about Harry? I'll admit I wanted him. For years I watched him, too impressed to speak, stunned that that celebrity could have been my own brother's best friend. He spent the summers at my house and the rest of the year in my school. I was infatuated.

It was nothing compared to my infatuation with you.

And while I no longer expect to marry Harry Potter and live a little fairytale life, I still know him nearly as fully as I know myself. I know exactly what he will do when he finds out that I'm going to have your baby. He will be furious, storm and stew with Ron for a while, and then he'll forget about me.

Harry always forgets about me.

I don't know how to tell you. You really should know, but I don't think I can find the words. Having a child at eighteen will only drag you down. Just like you drag me down. But you have already had such a troubled life. You've seen more darkness than most ever will. I know you hate your father, even if you've never spoken the words. He'd go mad if he knew you'd fathered a child with some poor, filthy witch. It couldn't be worse if I was a Muggle, and it's obvious how he hates them. He raised you to hate them. He raised you in a way no child should have to live. I know you hate him, but you have no choice but to respect him, despite the hurt. You can go through life denying it, but he does hurt you. He's vicious with you. I can read the pain in your stiffness just as easily as I see it in Harry's gentleness.

Maybe I can read your eyes.

Maybe you did love me.

But my love for you was never in doubt, and I won't put you through this. I'll save you from it. I'll carry this burden alone.

Without you, I'm always alone.

I'm just starting to show beneath my robes. No one else can tell. It will be six months still, maybe less. Six months, and I'll have my son. Our son. It will be a boy; I know it. He'll have my red hair, fainter and finer for the fusion of your own white-blonde. I'll see your face whenever I look into his, but I will see it light up, as yours never did. He'll have your silver eyes. I've always loved your eyes.

He'll be my link to you, now that you are gone from me. His feelings for me, his mother, will be genuine. I don't know if yours ever were.

Maybe someday you'll know him too. I may find a way to tell you, or perhaps you'll just happen to see us someday, out in Diagon Alley, and you'll know. You'll have to know. He'll look so much like you.

I don't want the boy to grow up without his father. Not for me. I have already lost. I want him to know you, to see the man in you that I saw once. You don't let anyone else see what I found in you. It was so faint that sometimes I think I imagined the man that I saw beneath your mask of stone.

You had to love me to let me see through that mask.

No you didn't. You don't know what love means.

How can you? You never knew love until it was too late. You were fed hatred, a black poison that gripped your heart little by little, hardened it. Now it is stone. You do not know love.

But I can't bear to think you didn't love me.

Your son will not grow up that way. He will be loved the way I was loved. He will be loved even more, so much that he will never have to doubt as I did. He will never know the emptiness I feel.

The pain I cannot save him from is that of never knowing his father.

But I can't tell you. You will resent him for it. You will hate me for it. You won't want anything to do with a silly pregnant girl who can't let go. You have enough things to deal with. You are caught up in the battle between light and dark, in yourself as well as in the world around us. You don't need a feeble girlfriend.

I will raise our child. My parents will help me when I need it. He may not know the riches his father will always have, but he will be loved. That is a treasure you took for granted. I won't give him up, be resigned to let another woman raise him. He is all I have left of you. I can't stand to think of you with another woman.

Pain for pleasure. I hate you for everything, but I love you still for all that you are, all that you could be, all that I was when I was with you. I am still intoxicated. With every breath my need for you grows more painful. Our son will not know this pain. I will start to feel him soon, his heart beating with mine. Your heart beat with mine once. It was magic.

They're right when they say magic can't solve everything.

I should have listened to Ron. You are a dirty Slytherin. You'll never change. You're poisoned.

You are poison.

You were never right for me.

I love you anyway.

I still want to know you.

I want you here with me.

I'll love you forever, even if you aren't my fairytale prince.