I Must Not Tell Lies

I Must Not Tell Lies

Two

Faraway Is Too Near

Ginny was waiting outside for him the next afternoon, just as his Potions lesson had been dismissed. When he saw her, he avoided his eyes, but her hand hung onto his wrist so firmly that he was forced to look down and walk beside her. They stopped at a deserted corridor and she ordered him to hold out his hand. He obeyed relentlessly.

Her fingertips brushed against the glowing words before she looked up, and that question escaped from her lips and flowered like sunlight beaming across grass. "Why did you bleed me yesterday?"

The question wavered in the air, waiting to be answered. Her hair was falling upon her face, and he restrained himself from distracting her and pushing the locks away tenderly. He knew it would work, but found he could not step forward, for his legs were far too stone. 'Why did you bleed me yesterday?'.

"Because - I had to know," he told her, his voice regretful.

"You had to know what? It pained me," she notified him. "It hurt a lot."

"I had to know if our blood is the same," he finally replied. He expected her to stare at him, he expected her to slap him, call him crazy, anything. But her face made no change in their features, appearance nor expression. A timid smile was the only change that erupted into her lips.

"And is it?" she whispered softly, her eyes glittering as if to say, 'I already know.'

His voice was similar to snowflakes rising in the air. "Yes," Draco answered in a finalized tone. "Yes, it is."

There was such a long pause that Draco wondered if Ginny would ever stop looking at him - it made him uncomfortable, as if she was unwrapping him like a present, one by one, trying to reveal the bare, raw, naked side of him. Her eyes unfolded him as the smile faltered slightly by each precious second. Draco did not want to be standing in front of a Weasley and become naked to himself, he did not want every second to go by knowing he could be walking and trying to breathe instead.

"Walk with me," she told him.

And amazingly, he felt his chest rise with emotion - a helpless, calculatingly curious emotion of what it would feel like to walk with her. It was a different gnawing at his flesh. His blood had thickened from it's ice corpse and unfurled itself into a liquid amber.

***

"Put your hand in this," Ginny told him gently as he settled into the warmth of the auburn armchair. His hand slid inflexibly digging into the sticky formula that Ginny told him was called 'pickled murtlap tentacles'. It was a yellowish, greenish horrible color that mocked his eyes, impaired his vision but relieved his hand. It's smooth, suave water ran through his flesh and relaxed his rigid fracture in a slow, wistful process.

"Thanks," he told her, his eyes raising to meet hers. She watched him carefully, never leaving his gaze. He was still marking him as her own, still leaving him naked, still making him feel raw.

"Stop it," Draco said in a pleading voice.

Ginny glanced at him, surprised. "Stop what?"

"Stop looking at me," he told her, squirming.

Her lips parted in an inexplicable manner, but he did not give her a chance this time. He pulled his hand out with mere difficulty and rose from his seat. "I'll be going now," he told her.

She nodded slowly, as if to show that she acknowledged it, as if she had known all along that even when he was naked and marked, she would have to let him go.

***

Professor Umbridge's detention was a terrible, mindless time-wasting moment of pain. She shed his blood profusely, ruthless that it was pure.

"I'll tell father about this," he muttered to her as he winced inwardly at the pain surfacing his skin. The grimacing was forced to stop as he looked her straight in the eyes.

A cruel, ugly smile filled her mouth with turmoil and satisfaction. "Your father already knows, boy. I have notified him, and he is less than pleased with you than me."

Draco's heart raced but he could not identify the lights rushing through his vision at the particular moment. He let himself bleed, the trickling copper sliding crossways into his wrists and his fingers, watching it drip into the table. His eyes watched every drip as red poured over brown, and needless to say, he never did look at her straight in the eyes again.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she called in a sing-song voice. It was unexpected that detention would continue for him, but he did not question her as he exited the room, loathing her and his own blood. He hoped the blood would stain the table forever.

***

His hand sunk into the tentacles and he felt a fresh wave of nausea fill him. He didn't feel uncomfortable anymore, with Ginny across from him, watchful of his actions, but it did not matter, because the pain would never leave if detentions continued. He had been well known of Potter's detentions, it had been spread throughout the whole school. And yet, he had suffered more than Potter would ever had. He had faced the truth. And it was raw. And naked. Just like him when he was around her.

He found himself watching her as well. She had matured her face, her features more recollected, more mesmerizing , and her hair had been cut so that it brushed against her shoulder blades. Her arms were thin, her body slender, her legs scrawny. She was petite but she could defend herself well. She rocked herself back and forth in her seat as she sat across, every so often saying something that meant nothing to him or made no sense. It gave him a sense of peaceful poise.

"Did your father ever hit you?" she would ask. She would always ask questions out of midair. He never looked at her when he answered, because whenever she asked a question, her eyelashes would flutter, which made her look dead. And Draco didn't like death.

"Of course," he retorted. "Whenever I displeased him."

"How many times did you displease him?" she would ask next.

"Well, it was my favorite hobby," he would mutter, and she would laugh. No girl had ever laughed at him before. But it wasn't done in a mean way. It was as if she was amused by him, as if she enjoyed his company. It unnerved him greatly, and he would leave as hurriedly as possible when these moments came.

He knew what exposed itself into his chest whenever she did something that seemed connected to likeability, like the way her hair was messy and tangled, how careless she was, but how caring and gentle. It was called fear, and he had never been so afraid in his life.

***

The days passed by without Draco acknowledging them by numbers. Detention after detention, he bled, but relieved the pain whenever he saw Ginny. He didn't need the murtlap tentacles to soften his agony, he merely needed to see the strands of her hair and an unfamiliar bliss would surround him, like a lazy happiness that would refuse to dissolve.

"We'll get rid of Umbridge, don't worry," Ginny had told him the following afternoon brightly.

"How do you figure that? My father and the Ministry won't let her get out of Hogwarts without getting Dumbledore out of here. That's why she's here. It's their goal," he told her in an undertone.

"Well," Ginny told him with an atmosphere of dismissive pause. "She's not affecting us much anymore."

Draco widened his eyes and removed his hand from the bowl, clenching and unclenching it to remove the numb feeling of frozen bones. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Ginny said, looking reluctant to tell him more than he needed to know. "We Gryffindors...and some Ravenclaws. And some Hufflepuffs," she added, her voice increasing enthusiasm. "Are - we're learning Dark Arts by ourselves."

"You are?" He looked at her doubtfully. "How do you manage that?"

"We have a teacher," she told him indifferently.

"Ah," he muttered, and asked no more.

But it was that night that Draco woke up from a small rest that he headed to the Gryffindor Common Room, almost sure that nobody would be there. He had an ache, an urge, a sensation to see Ginny again and plead for more murtlap tentacles so they could sit and talk. He liked her voice and how it sounded timid when she spoke to him. But when he entered, Ginny was already sitting across from someone.

It was obviously her boyfriend, as he was teasing her about something and she was replying jokingly. His name's Michael something, his subconscious spoke to him. He left quietly as possible, and when he stepped out of the portrait hole noisily. What right did Michael have to barge into the Gryffindor Common Room? He wasn't even a Gryffindor.

You aren't either, said a small voice from the back of his mind. His hand was asking to be relieved by the sweet murtlap. He chose to ignore both of them.

But when he slept uneasily and woke up the next morning, blood had stained three quarters of his sheets.

***