Lying on my bed, protected

Lying on my bed, protected by velvet curtains

Lying on my bed, protected by velvet curtains, I stare at the ceiling. And I think about her. It's one of the last nights I'm going to spend here. Soon enough there will be the exams, the leaving ceremony... and then? The future is uncertain but before long everything will be resolved. Not necessarily for the better, at least in my point of view. I'm not a dreamer. In all my life reading the clues has been my only anchor. Comprehending when it was safe to go to my mother or when it was better to take refuge in the library and read rather than bump into my father.

I've read the clues, I've analysed them. The result is not the best. I have a plan in case things end badly; after all I've been careful not to stain my hands. Or mark my arms.

I tried to analyse also the clues that concerned her. This time the result has been perfectly clear, and quite satisfying.

It's weird how people tend to search for the good in what hurts them, in what harms them. They idealize the pain until they convince themselves that it's right. That they deserve it. Stupid but true. I had fallen in this trap too, years ago.

She had been hurt for long in the past, and in a moment in which she was very vulnerable. The person who hurt her had done it in the deepest way, slowly becoming her friend, gaining her trust and then using her without scruples.

She still isn't over it, and I sincerely doubt she will ever be able to leave it all behind. A possessed person brings with her more scars than someone tormented with the Cruciatus. Those scars are simply less perceptible.

In the beginning I thought it was involuntary. I believed she wasn't conscious of it. She didn't talk much, but her eyes burned. She was offering herself. She was offering me a power that I longed to have. I accepted it. Tom had used her, but with him she felt loved and wanted.

And if she concentrated on that thought, on his words, then the pain dissolved. I tried to do the same, to hurt her like him. I don't think I ever reached his level, in any case. Did I hurt her? Yes, certainly. Although, looking at things from another point of view, I had simply given her what she wanted.

Nevertheless, I must say that I have never hurt her physically; I have never even twisted her hair. Never. I have some principles, too. Not the same as most people, probably, but I have principles that I follow strictly.

The first kiss happened by mistake, and left us both shocked. Thanks to a mutual confession I know that we both remained awake all night long thinking about it. We avoided each other for a week. It was an evolution of our relationship that caught us by surprise, even if, thinking about it with hindsight, it couldn't have been otherwise.

She was the most shocked. If our relationship before could resemble what she had with Tom, now the kiss brought everything to another level. Ours has been a silent relationship, because the mere presence of the other was of comfort. We tried to return to the precedent level, but it didn't work. I wanted to kiss her again, and she... I don't know. But she was the first to hug me that Friday night, shy and unsure. I, I didn't need anything else.

They have been three wonderful months, and if it wouldn't sound clichéd, I'd say they have been magic. It never ceased to surprise me how she could become estranged from a conversation, from a quarrel, and smile to herself like a silly little girl just because "look, it's the first star of the night!". In her previous life she must have been a confectioner of Montmartre, the girl whose hair smells like apricots and who accepts a portrait from a penniless impressionist as payment for a considerable debt. She and her way of squeezing your hand in the strangest moments, as to say, "I'm here", and I still haven't understood if it was to reassure me or her. She and her memory, that causes a smile to rise on my face, with only the darkness as witness of how her memory is for me pure and inviolable, in spite of everything.

But it's over. Now that some time has passed I can look at the causes with more clarity, they are extremely simple, we were too different and we didn't love each other enough not to care about it. It ended with a row made of yells from her and cutting remarks from me. She knew that it irritated me to hear her yell, and I knew she detested my omnipresent self-control. She was just a poor Weasley, I wasn't anything more than an evil Slytherin Malfoy. Funny how she insulted me with the name of my House, considering that she herself is more ambitious than Zabini.

Now I think she's with that Creevey, and it doesn't seem strange. He's more deeply infatuated with her than she is with him, but than maybe she's searching for something different from what we had. I don't criticize her; she's simply gone on.

I? No, I'm not with Pansy or with anyone else, but this doesn't mean anything, I just happen to have other plans. I'm nothing more than an evil Slytherin Malfoy, after all.