The Ecstasy of St. Theresa

I have known Ginevra Molly Weasley for five years.

I hate her.

She was eleven when I met her. I was twelve. She stood out from the crowd even then, her Weasley hair shining like copper and reaching in gentle waves a few inches past her shoulders. She had innocent eyes, wide and the color of chocolate. She was not pretty then, surrounded by blondes and brunettes with lush skin and already developing figures. I remember the chaste smile she gave when her brothers cheered her Sorting, the childish glow on her equally youthful features.

She had a round face, pale, and pin prick freckles all across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. She had a slight form, figureless really, and walked the way children do.

She has always hated me.

I do not suppose I blame her, for she has endured five years of taunts and sneers and disgust on my part and my best friend‘s, and even I cannot expect someone like her to care for my own hatred. Somehow, I expected in the back of my mind that this was how it ought to be, the way fate had guided us.

At twelve, I looked no further than the day ahead.

                        ~

We have been back at school for two weeks.

When I met her, Ginevra had long hair. She must have cut it over the summer; now it falls, straight, to her chin, turning under around her face and flipping out in the back. The years have burnished her hair from copper to a vivid red unto itself, and her face has changed. Time has been good to her, not wondrous but good. Her face is long now, oval, with a long, slim nose. Her eyes are close together, as wide and bright as ever, framed in black lashes against white skin. Five more summers have widened her tiny freckles into big coffee spots across her nose; August has burnt the tip of her nose and the indentations around her nose and below her eyes. When she smiles, which is often and intoxicating, her thin upper lip and pouty lower one part to reveal a set of oversized white teeth. Her mouth casts a sheer grey shadow just above her chin, and when she smiles, that mouth pushes her freckled cheeks up.

She has a figure now, a nice one, with a full chest and wide hips and only a bit of a belly. I have seen her laughing this year too many times to count, and I watch her sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, while Draco taunts her family and she flushes.

Last year, the enmity between us reached the breaking point. We yelled, insulted, fought as little children do, but over the summer something changed.

This year, everything is different.

                        ~

Now, I catch her after classes, in the dead of night. She looks perfect by moonlight, somehow, with the pale luminescence bleaching half of her face and charring the rest. She does not smile when she sees me but nods, her features condescending and cold. She wears her school clothes each time, and no shoes at night.

The first time was during my free period and hers. She was in the library, still, standing facing one shelf and resting her forehead against it. She did not look up when I entered but somehow sensed my prescense. She looked perfect then too. Perfectly remote, that is, with her hair hanging around her face and frizzing out near the top of her head. She laughed slightly to herself, remembering.

Her laugh is intoxicating, I would say if questioned, but I know that that is neither here nor there. I took a step towards her, and another and another and another, until I could smell her. She has a faint scent, fresh and like rain, and each breath of mine caught in my own throat like swallowed chalk. She laughed again, louder this time, and all my hatred spilled from my mind and welled in my heart and mouth and fingers, and I would have punched her had I had the nerve. I didn’t. I found another way to break her.

I placed one hand on each of her hips, feeling the way her shirt rode up under my touch to reveal creamy white skin. She tensed, her head still against the books, and another wave of anger and despair broke in my mind. I turned her to face me, sharply, brutally, and the back of her head hit the shelf behind her. She only smiled, that coldly smirking smile, that dared me to go another step.

I did. I kissed her, bruising her lips against mine, feeling her tongue snake between my teeth and polish the inside of my mouth. I pulled back and mocked her grin, another dare. She kissed me this time, the burning in my throat stronger than ever. She forced her knee between my legs, and I winced with the strength of my own arousal.

That was the first time.

                        ~

I have lost count of the times.

We meet without arrangements, understood. No notes, no scrawled, “Tonight, Midnight, the Dungeons”. Instead there are odd glances and icy grins and single raised eyebrows, which at the right point can mean, “1 am, same place”.

On the ninth day I secretly owled her a package, a box wrapped in brown paper with her name inked across the top in black. Inside was a statue, a miniature statue. I meant it as a gag, a joke, but the next night I found half of it upon my pillow. My half was the same white marble as hers; she broke it cleanly in two, with only a bit of jaggedness along the base. My half is an angel, a nude angel with a spear above his head. A set of white toes are attached along the bottom of the statue at an angle to his own feet. I set it on my bedside table anyway, beside the candle.

I am watching it now, watching the yellow light of the last candle gild the indentations of the piece. The angel has a curious expression on it’s face; an bemused grin of satisfaction, I imagine, and I hate her.

Her half is a saint, a naked saint on her back. The white marble legs bend up and feet are missing nine of their toes. Her head is thrown back in rapture, her hair fanning behind her, and I wonder where that lone saint is now. I thought of us when I bought it, but I am no angel and she is no saint, and what we have can be found down a wishing well.

I hate her.

                        ~

Blaise Zabini stood silently from his seat on the stone steps down to the dungeons, and watched her. She was unsmiling but smirking fiendishly, the moon pouring into her features and smoking out one half of her face.

She had not seen him yet, her hair glowing like rose gold in the night luminescence. His clear blue eyes sparkling in the white light, he stretched his hand before him, imagining his long dark fingers snaking over her creamy flesh. He winced at the thought then clenched his fist, watching her stare out of the window and onto the grounds. The anger and hate welled up inside him but was rebuked by a distant feeling of beatific empathy.

He watched her eyes, glowing like liquid chocolate but unseeing of him, and turned from her fair skin.

With a sigh, he turned, silently treading in his socks across the cold stone steps.