Beautiful Lies

Beautiful Lies

She did not know exactly why she was here in front of this door. But she was and no matter how she stared at it, nothing changed. The door didn't tell her what to do; no sign was on it to lead her into making a decision. Not that she needed any, but some sort of occurrence would help.

But she was alone.

She was alone in this bitter cold, her hands wrapped around herself and her scarlet hair blowing into her eyes. The door seemed fragmented by slashes of dark red, like blood.

Not that there was anything special about this door, really. It was just a door, made of oak and metal hinges, snow dusting in the crevasses and on the bronze handle. What would happen if she just reached out and touched it, grabbed it in her hand, the material that never could live up to gold? Would the cold metal burn her fingers like fear burned her heart?

She tore her eyes away from the taunting barrier and looked up at the castle with its high windows and dark stone and shivered with embarrassment. She knew the whole castle was watching her. The walls eyed her closely; the windows peered through their glass with a critical gaze; the towers glared at her from on high, craning their foundations to observe her.

She scuffed the ground with her boot which made a faint scratching sound and she then knew, she knew, that not only the castle was watching, but everyone inside was as well. They were just staring with bated breath to see what she would do.

But she was so very much alone in this place.

The door was still in front of her, slightly scratched with some crude engravings carved by past students. She read: Kate + John=*, 1987grad, we don't suck! And below all this:

I lied, under the date, April 3^rd.

There was something so ironic about scribbling secrets into such public places, she thought. But the fact of the matter was that the secrets held no meaning without the people they were about. Those facts, about relationships and betrayal and who knew what else, meant nothing when she read them. What happened to Katie and John; was their romance a secret? Who lied 48 hours after a day whose purpose held nothing but deceit? She wondered if it did the people any good to spill their secrets to something that said nothing, but told everyone. Where secrets really secrets at all if everyone knew about them?

But no one had to know.

The door opened. Her hand was around the handle and she let it fall back to her side as she looked around. She knew he would be the only one in the changing rooms. She had seen only six players come out, looking dejected at yet another loss to their number one rival. All except one... and he was still inside.

The locker room was what she would have expected, if she ever gave a thought to it before. It had twelve tall metal lockers, presumably needed when more players had had seconds, and all of them had muggle locks with combinations. The showers were over on the right behind a curtain and she could just see a slash of yellow tiling. There were two wooden benches that were scuffed from over the years. The lighting was poor and the room was faintly eerie with only her there.

It was then that she noticed it.

A locker was open. The door of it was cracked and she saw a slit of darkness; the contents were impossible to make out. Curiosity overruled caution and she darted towards it, her boots making slopping sounds on the tiled floor; the snow had melted. She pulled the door open and it creaked on rusty hinges. It was several inches taller than she was and gray on the inside. There was a robe made for the game, all green fabric and silver lining with buttons in the shapes of serpents that twisted into the material, snagging it. She saw something gold on the one shelf near the top of the locker and she reached up to see what it was...

"What do you think you are doing?"

She spun around, her heart beating frantically. Momentary curiosity had overcome her sense of purpose and now she remembered why she had stood in front of that door so long.

He was standing in front of her, all pale hair and black clothing and an irritable expression on his face. Standing in front of the door marked CAPTAIN'S OFFICE, he looked her up and down critically, taking in everything from her snow covered boots to her red hair tied back and fastened at the nape of her neck.

"I..." She stuttered, her mind working frantically. She had always prided herself on her quick mind, her way to formulate excuses, lies, the way she could bend other's reality to suit her stories. That look in someone's eye when they came to her understanding pleased her and the she had perfected that sort of manipulation into an art. It might have been an art created at other's expenses with her colors obscuring the white truth like paint on a canvas, but there it was. And now she had nothing, no reason that could pass her lips that he would believe. Something about him robbed her of her quick explanations, of her beautiful lies. And so she just stood there, biting her lip and wondering if he would yell at her.

He grinned at her instead, stepping away from his office and moving towards the locker to peer into it. "I never fancied you a thief of Quiddich robes," he spoke sounding entertained, "but then again, I never fancied you much of anything."

She bristled. She hated the way he talked to her, as if he knew every word he spoke could cut her, the way he knew exactly how and where and why it made her bleed the way she did.

I never fancied you much of anything.

"How was the game?" she asked abruptly, knowing such a question would, with luck, cut him too.

His hands tensed at his sides, but he gave no other show that her remark mattered. So he raised an eyebrow and surveyed her with a look telling her, quite plainly, that he found her amusing.

"I would answer you, but then that would propose a universe in which either of us cared."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," he answered slightly impatiently, as if the answer was obvious, "that both of us know how the game went and this is either a pathetic excuse to get a rise out of me or an equally unsuccessful attempt to distract me from the fact that you are stealing from Blaise's locker." He leaned against it and looked at her insolently, expecting a response.

She resisted the urge to kick him in the ankle. "I was not stealing anything from Blaise's locker."

"Ah, so you just wanted to know what he wears under his Quiddich cords did you?"

She felt an unwilling heat rise up her neck. Forcing it back down, she glared at him.

"Hardly."

He looked down at her with a slightly exasperated expression on his features.

"Then what," he asked, "are you doing here?"

She looked at the tiles that made patterns at her feet, suddenly horribly aware of her predicament. This was not how it was supposed to happen at all, not that she had a plan for anything to happen in any way, really. But this was just going all wrong. He was not supposed to be standing here, leaning against the locker with his black sweater hanging just so and looking at her as if she was nothing more than an annoying, yet mildly amusing television program. She wasn't supposed to be feeling how cold her feet were, how the snow had melted in her boots, burning through her skin or how her heart was beating faster just looking at him. And that feeling of wrongness, as if everyone could see her sin, pressed in on her so she couldn't breathe. She looked at him, at the upswept plane of cheek, the aristocratic nose, the eyes liked diamonds in melted silver, and no words came to her. Just him being here made her nervous, and when she felt nervous, the world seemed blurred at the edges. The lockers were now uneven waters of grey and the floor began to swirl slowly beneath her. Everything was a suffocating weight that smothered her, cutting off her breath. And something told her, whispered in her ear, what to do to breathe again. She never thought she could breathe just by knowing, never thought she could drown by just feeling.

Something in his expression changed when he looked at her. Something shifted in his eyes and his chest began to rise and fall slightly faster, his pulse beating rapidly in his throat. His iced over eyes darkened to the color of the sky before a storm breaks and she felt herself falling.

And then she was running.

She pushed past him, wrenching open the door and sprinting hard over the iced over snow, her footfalls breaking its bones.

He was leaning against the wall looking bored. "Head Girl breaking curfew?" he asked before she even drew breath to announce her presence.

"I'm making rounds."

He raised an eyebrow. "Going to give me a detention?"

She grinned. "I might let you off with a warning this time."

"Special treatment?" he asked, returning the smirk.

"You wish."

He detached himself from the wall and moved until he was right in front of her. Pushing back her hair, he whispered in her ear before walking away, "No," he whispered, his breath hot on her ear and neck. "You wish."

She ran through the castle, racing around corridors, moving so fast she was flying.

"Breuvages magiques... Breuvages magiques...." she murmured, her eyes scanning the book spines on the shelves near the stone floor.

"Say that five times fast."

She grinned, not turning around. "I could try."

"Ah," he smirked, right beside her now, "but how could I get you to stop?"

She stood up, and looked at him mischievously. "I'm sure you have your ways."

She was at the stairs now, and racing up them, her arms working furiously, propelling her upwards, away from everything.

"He seems utterly boring if you ask me." His tone was unconcerned as she turned the corner.

His remark didn't stop her way to the Great Hall. "He's not; he's great." Her mind was working out reasons for them talking if anyone noticed.

"You can stop looking around. No one's going to see us." His hands were deep in his pockets as he walked alongside her.

"Everyone can see us."

"No unless they're hiding." He was amused by her. "The only person I can see is you."

"I can't hide."

"No," he remarked as he fell away so she could walk into the Hall first, "you can't."

She was on the seventh floor now, her breath coming short. The paintings flew past her, a blur of colors and lives lost to history. She turned corners with a reckless abandon and felt air whip around her like a hurricane of her own emotions. She ran past more classrooms and didn't stop until the world righted itself back to reality and she realized something.

She hadn't moved at all.

She was still in that room surrounded by metal lockers; her feet still felt frozen to the floor and her heart was beating, if it were possible, even harder. She could smell him, that faint peppery smell of spice, zest, and sickly sweet sweat that clung to him and it surrounded her as she breathed him in. And when she snapped her gaze from being drugged to being present, his eyes locked onto hers.

She was not aware of the steady drip of the showers, or the hum of the wind past the trees outside. She was not aware that that door was not locked or that her hair was a mess. What she did notice was that her feet no longer felt cold as her body heated up rapidly, that the lockers were hard against her back as he pressed her against them.

His hands moved from her arms to her shoulders to her hair, tangling in it. His lips were smooth and warm and made her mind spin with the emptiness of thought. His heart hammered in his chest and she felt it through the thin cotton of his shirt when she put her hand there.

She wasn't sure who initiated the kiss, but it didn't really matter now. What mattered were his lips against hers, his body warming hers, his hands tracing patterns of cold fire on her skin as they moved from her hair to the immeasurable space between them to work the buttons of her shirt.

It was then that she noticed it.

Her necklace was tangled in the fabric of his shirt. Somehow, it had snagged in between one of the many minuscule seams; it had caught on and held on. He made a frustrated noise and quickly untangled it with his swift seeker's hands.

She pulled away a bit and leaned even more into the locker, holding the pendant in her hand. It had been a Christmas present from this year, a silver rose on a thin string. She remembered him saying that the string was very delicate and would she like if he fastened it for her? She had agreed and his hands had been smooth on the nape of her neck.

She looked at him, who she now noticed, had been watching her.

"It just got tangled," he told her, his voice slightly horse from the cold outside and perhaps something else. "It's not broken."

Isn't though, she thought desperately. Isn't it?

She noticed his sweater. It was black, which was not surprising, as he almost always wore black, but the odd thing was that there was nothing on it. There were no pendants, no zippers, no buttons; nothing was on it. How could something so delicate become so tangled in something that wasn't even there?

She laid her head on his shoulder and breathed him in, letting the necklace fall to the place right over her heart. She kissed him again, a long, slow, unhurried kiss.

Then she relinquished all control.

Logic is a faraway country that you can't reach. Sometimes, it doesn't matter. You're not there, on that land of consciousness, breathing in the fact that you made a smart decision. Sometimes your drowning in the waters around it. Sometimes you don't care.

The necklace no longer mattered. The fact that she was not supposed to be here no longer mattered. His hands clutching her so bruises bloomed on her skin mattered. That he wanted to mark her like that, like a canvas, mattered. The kisses that shocked her nerve endings and the fact that she was no longer cold were the facts that registered in her mind.

Everything became better when she turned off her mind, her conscious. Thinking was an act she didn't want to do. Logic was a place she didn't want to go. The facts faded like watercolors, blurred by the confusing droplets of desire and impulsion.

***

The walk back was like going through hell and thinking it couldn't break you down, but that it would destroy you.

She walked slowly, breathing in the cold air, feeling it sear her lungs, burning her heart. She wondered if it could make it stop. The snow didn't break under her feet and every step she took made her wonder when it would. And that apprehension, of when it would shatter like glass, made her heart speed up.

He was laughing into her neck as he took the pins from her hair and let it fall like fire into both their eyes, blinding them to the rest of the world.

She opened the door to the empty entrance hall and walked cautiously, her eyes roaming from the giant glaring hour glasses to the staircase in front of her, a wide expanse of shining marble between them so glazed it looked like water and she wanted to drown in it.

Her hands were in his and he was holding them above her head and releasing them to have them fall back to her sides, and then to his hair where she pulled him closer and he smelled her perfume that made him dizzy and so he clutched at her more fiercely.

She moved from the staircase to the hallway that would lead her to even more landings. It was a never ending walk that made her wonder if she could be lost forever in a place she knew so well.

His skin was cold to the touch at first, then warming to the temperature of her own blood wherever her fingers moved until the heat danced without bounds and they were consumed by it and he burned her with a mark that would never fade.

She did not count the steps as she took them, but climbed them steadily. She did not use the railing, did not grasp it in her hand. It would not stop her if she fell.

Her eyes were closed because if they were open then the rest of the world could see her, but when he told her, gently, to look at him, she realized that he could see her all along.

She did not look at the portraits when she passed them, but kept her eyes straight ahead. She did not want to see those other lives, so imperfectly captured in colors and lines. Who chose that fate for them- that two dimensional fate that had them painted for the world to see as they wished? She wondered what would happen to her if she had to be on display like that. She might just scratch the colors right off herself as if she had never been there at all.

She thought that just by looking at him she was drowning, but she had been wrong. That had been like the breath before the plunge. But this, this feeling that made her body shake when he kissed her and cut off her breath when he touched her: this was drowning.

She was in front of the Fat Lady now, staring up at her and feeling very small. She cleared her throat as the large woman looked at her wonderingly.

"You're missing the celebration, dear! What on earth have you been doing?"

"Proditio." Her voice sounded far away. Blinking, she thought that there must be something that might look odd about her- something that might give her secret away like a gift.

Shh... it's a secret...

Tell everyone....

She wondered if her hair was tangled or if she smelled like him. She wondered if, unknowingly, she had lost her secret. Was it a secret anymore if even one person knew it? She wondered if that door had held more secrets, if it would have told them to her.

If she would have listened.

Everything felt very real; she had imagined what it might be like before now, like a haze of smoke, enveloping her, but it felt sharper than she would have expected, more direct: his hands branding her, his mouth on her, slightly chapped, and burning. She ran her hands up his arms and realized, not without surprise, that she was marking him too.

The crowd of people surrounding her were talking excitedly, questioning her late arrival and shoving drinks into her hands. She heard herself telling them about leaving her scarf up in the stands and having to double back for it. Another lie, but she was always good with excuses and no one questioned her.

A familiar face sought her out and she smiled when their eyes met, brown and green catching at each other and mixing together.

"Hey," he greeted, dropping a kiss on her forehead as lightly as bird wings. "I was wondering where you were."

She lied simply and he believed her just as easily.

"Did you see the game?" he asked excitedly, his eyes alighting with a kind of childlike innocence. "It was good, wasn't it?"

She put her drink on the nearest table and kissed him, a quick, thorough kiss.

It was like a dance, she realized with a sort of unfocused and dizzy certainly. The whole thing really: a dance of kisses and burns and desires where nothing went wrong. And if things got tangled, they could be made right. If things were broken, they could be fixed. If secrets got out, they could be caught and put back into the cage of her heart. You see, it wasn't that she wasn't thinking rational, logical thoughts; it was that she really just wanted to drown instead in that game where logic is swept away and thoughts have no meaning. A game where winners are the only players and lies are the only prize.