Poison

Hate is a poison. You cannot touch it, taste it, or smell it like most poisons, but it's there all the same. Some forms of hate are more visible than others, in that if one looks very carefully you can see it, and when you touch it...it burns. It is one of the most deadly of poisons, turning the gentlest men into cold-blooded killers and bringing civil turmoil to countries that formerly had peace.

However, there is a poison even more potent that hate, more dangerously subtle. It works on a personal level, coursing like fire through the veins and burning up the heart even as it freezes it. It can rarely be cleansed from the body, the heart, or the soul; once afflicted, one is never again the same. It event has a life of its own,, and when wronged, it exacts terrible vengeance.

It is love.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

~*~

I told her that this would last forever, that we would never be separated. I told her that our love was one immortal, undying, an example to last throughout the centuries. My love for her was a bittersweet liquor, and I was intoxicated beyond recall. It was passion, it was lust, it was true...it was everything I had ever asked for and more. It was perfect. I believed every word I said, that first night, and I wanted to believe that she did, too. And for a long while after that, nothing changed.

I do not believe in such a thing as heaven on earth. But our love seemed to come close, and the illusion was the most beautiful I had ever seen.

Until the day I got the letter from my father.

And I told myself that it would not last, no matter what he said. But deep down, I think the fool in me believed him...

It was the first day of exams, and I knew from the moment I picked it up that

the rich, cream-colored parchment with the heavily-impressed green wax seal had been sent from Malfoy Manor. Letters from my family came rarely, and never brought glad tidings; there is little joy in a family immersed in the Dark Arts. Just expectations and disappointment, lust for power and craving for wealth. Final glory in death.

Perhaps the encounter I had with Tom Riddle in my first year at Hogwarts changed me, made me more vulnerable to the sweet danger of loving a Dark wizard. All I know, however, is that my life was not my own from that first night onward. And I hated him for it, because I enjoyed the feel of my will crumbling into dust every time I swore I would not meet him the next night, or the night after that...and met him anyway. Was that love?

I think my hands were shaking as I opened the letter; I know they began to when it finally dawned on me what the aristocratic calligraphy was saying.

I remember watching him from across the Great Hall during meals...watching him pass in the corridor between classes...raising my eyes to meet his as I dressed in his Prefect's room, preparing to become a Gryffindor once more...

I think I memorized every angle and plane of his face in the flickering shadows of the single candle he always kept lit while we were together.

He knew. My father knew what I had been doing for the past four months, had known from the beginning. He had hoped that I would come to my senses quickly and put the girl aside, but apparently four months is too long for this sort of stain upon the Malfoy family name to last. If I didn't stop soon, he said, he would be forced to take action.

Who told him?

I don't know. I don't care; all that mattered was that I knew what kind of action he meant.

One night, however, I came to his room and he would not look at me.

That night, she asked me what was wrong. She said there was a distance in my eyes that she hadn't seen since the time...before. Before her, when I was alone and struggling under the burden of expectation. She told me not to forget that I was not alone any more.

I thought perhaps it had something to do with the Dark Mark he had recently been awarded. I was wrong.

But how could I tell her that love had given me a burden far more ponderous than anything I had ever dreamed? To defy my father would be to lose her permanently, so I defied myself and simply prayed that someday I would be able to explain.

The first thing I felt when the change came over his face was a coldness as deep and sharp as the winter solstice. It was a blessed numbness, and I was thankful for the inability to feel. But it did not last long, for later came the pain.

I told her I had had enough of her, enough of our secret trysts after dark and stolen moments of bliss. I told her that I had used her body to gain relief, that she was nothing more than an object, a dirtied rag I was now disposing of. A whore. I told her she was ugly.

I imagined that I drew blood with my words, lashing out at her with seventeen years of learned cruelty. I still was, after all, a Malfoy, although it took every shred of my willpower to stop myself from biting off my own tongue to prevent the words that spilled forth, bringing drops of clear crystal to the eyes of the girl who at first unbelievingly searched my eyes for signs of a lie, and, apparently finding none, was forced to save her dignity with a cold retreat.

The loathing I felt for myself as she left my room cannot be described, but that night I dreamt I found her sleeping in my father's arms, deep red strands of hair interspersed with pale blond, and I tried to tear her from his grasp...only to find that she was dead.

The night that he rejected me, I detachedly considered killing myself. But then it came to me that perhaps I was not the one who should be punished for what had just happened. He was the one who had ripped my soul into bloody pieces and force-fed me the remains.

Perhaps he should be the one to pay.

I did not eat for days; I rarely slept. The knowledge of what I had done seemed to leech away at my very humanity, leaving me empty and emotionless. I put all of my energies into my schoolwork and the tormenting of Harry Potter, whom I had been able to ignore while I had her, but whose very existence and shining perfection once more grated on my already-raw nerves. I tried to make him feel what I felt, even though I knew he didn't deserve it. She never said anything, just walked past our altercations, her eyes artfully blank and the freckles, which I still found beautiful, standing out starkly against the pale white of her face. For some reason, however, I only wanted to hurt Harry when I knew that she was there to see. In a twisted way, the insults and curses I aimed at Potter were a demonstration of what I felt for her. My love. My longing. My need.

I knew what he was doing when he started fights with Harry: trying to hurt me. He knew, everyone knew, about what I had felt for Harry when I was younger. I suppose he thought I would go back to him, and he wasn't content with simply stabbing me - he had to try to twist the knife as well. But I didn't care what he said to Gryffindor's Golden Boy, as long as he didn't say anything to me.

Almost two weeks after I drove her away, I received another letter from my father. He told me that he thought I was putting on a beautiful act, but that he was still doubtful of my obedience. He stated quite clearly that his informant would be watching Ginevra and I closely, and at the slightest sign of inappropriate contact between us, the aforementioned action would take place. I felt I had nothing left to lose. If he liked, he could kill us both. I didn't care any more. I went to see her.

The day he came to see me, the midwinter ice that I had been so thankful for melted into a flood of torrid fire that swept away any pretense of numbness I had previously been able to hide in. He found me alone at dusk on the thirteenth day, crying at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Weak, defenseless, even though it wasn't really as if I had ever had any defense against him anyway. For the first time I saw the dark circles under his eyes, the nearly-translucent skin of his face bruised and wan. I was consumed by hatred for his fragility...and desire for his strength to be mine once more.

Because of him, I had lost my being to a love I never intended to embrace, simply because I loved him still. Loved him through the pain that writhed and screamed in my veins.

***

Father, if love is poison, than I drink from this cup of my own accord.

I cannot live with this pain. My love for him was poison, and it can only be cleansed from my veins in one way. I will not sacrifice my sanity for him, and I will not allow him to hurt me any more. He has come out here to finish what he started two weeks ago. I will not let him use me again.

She is wild-eyed, backed up against the trunk of a tree. Why is her wand out? All I want is to explain to her why I had to hurt her, and ask her forgiveness on my knees. I want to be free to love her for however long we have until my father finds out.

I believed in his love, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that it was false. I deemed my instincts wrong, and look how I have atoned for it.