The Ichor and the Blood

She was at the train station and Hermione stood, alone. Harry and Ron had bid adieu for what would be at least a couple of months. She gazed across the room to Draco. He stood alone, and he looked at her and made his way over to her. He gave her a letter and she carried it under her arm as he expected. “I’ve never liked the manor. I will be gone for a couple of months. Will you write to me?” She nodded in answer. “I will miss you.”

She shook her head. “Will you now?”

He nodded, teasing her earlier response. “I will miss having a person to talk to.”

She nodded; she seemed to be doing that a lot lately. “I will miss you too.” She stood in front of him now. He was still so unknown to her. When she did know, it would be revealed whether she wished she had. She now wanted to know everything she knew he would never tell her. She could see her mother, Draco had not yet gone away, she had not noticed until just now. Her mother was there in front of them. She looked at Draco. He looked back and then gave a slight bow to please his friend.

“You must be Hermione’s mother, of course. She told me I should recognize you by your immense beauty. I’m afraid she has done your description very ill Madam. Well I best be off Hermione, Mrs. Granger; the sky is falling and I don’t want to miss the clouds, and send the rain my regards before he decides to rain harder, he’s jealous like that.” He turned to walk away, meeting the rain as an underperformed introduction to his life for the next two months. Where on earth was the thunder, why hadn’t it struck him? The omen still would not do his life justice. He carried his belongings and drifted into halls, but not before telling his friend something. “Let me pray you will catch a piece of blue sky, that the rain only performs to me.”

Hermione stood wearing a bemused smile that rivaled the wings of a gull in majestic semi-circles. It was so perfectly like him to leave such an impression as he left her mother, knowing full well he could control it. He did and when the two stepped out, and the sky bluer than the sea, her mother stood gaping. “Who is he dear?”

“Someone who needs to be less obvious.” She stepped out with her mother, trying to explain the handsome stranger as best she could.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ron looked to Ginny. She smiled at him; a simple smile. “I’m going to take a walk.” He nodded.

“Maybe I should come along?” She shook her head.

“I’ll be out for a couple of hours. I want to remember things, relive the memories.” He nodded thinking she wished to relive the memories of the surroundings she’d play in as a young girl, and he excused her. Indeed she remembered again, only now she was remembering something ever darker.

She walked until she came to the forest. She heard her name being called.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dear Hermione,

I am writing to you now as I ride a train that leads to a place within a few miles of the manor. I write to you now for reasons you shall never know because I will never tell you. How are you doing? How is your mother reacting to what I did? Send my apologies if I did anything wrong. Well I wish you all the happiness in the world, and all of the happiness I shall never have, now that I do not have you to bring any remnants of sanity in my mind. I write to you now, knowing I am your closest of friends. You will miss me. You shall miss my company. How long has it been that we are friends? Has it been perhaps two months since you told me I was your friend? Ever since that ridiculous day you were practicing your etherimagry, and decided to burn anything within a fifteen foot radius of Professor Snape, including his hair; we have been friends. How is your father? Is he still beating you up about not reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in their entirety? If you need to make a report or anything, I have read him, and so I can help you.

Draco Malfoy

The letter was sarcastic; she thought it funny that he would mention her father. He told her he was disappointed in her for not reading his favorite Russian authors. She stashed the letter away in her pocket, and turned to her mother. “So who was he? I’m still not quite sure.”

“I told you he is a friend. He stopped the raining because he’s powerful enough to do it.”

“He’s handsome,” replied her mother. “He’s uncommonly beautiful.”

“I’ve never cared. I know that he’s handsome but it has nothing to do with our friendship.” She smiled. “The letter I just got was from him, he offered to help me if I needed to tell dad about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.”

* * * * *

The black shadowed land struck with faces of black and purple, leading away from the sun. She came through in her best cloak; one that Harry had given her. She couldn’t see but she kept walking, oblivious to the dark.

Out of nowhere, her face was greeted by a wide expanse of light. She trudged on the damp earth, now crawling, as if trying to find the source. Then it was clear and a hand with long fingers cupped her face and brought it up. There he was.

Riddle

She gasped, too paralyzed to do anything. “Hello Virginia.”

His hand touched her shoulder and he smiled. She looked up, trying to express the waves of emotion that flooded her being. She felt first anger and pushed him away, she noticed how young he looked. He was beautiful.

Then she knew fear, and she again stood frozen, her eyes wide but feeling a sort of recognition. Her eyes betrayed a love deeply engulfed in her mind. He sat next to her, his hands around her waist. “Do you remember me?” he asked, his voice soft. “ Beautiful child, you’ve been away from me.”

 

She felt bound to an obsession that was him. “Tom,” she said, her voice as thin as paper. His long thin hand came to her neck and she thought he was going to jugulate her, but he didn’t. Instead he stroked it, his fingers grazing it like the wind sweeps the sand in a cloud of dust in an Arabian desert. He was making her sense a cloud.

The voice in her head told her to do what was most insensible. He mustn’t have been the beautiful Tom she knew. He must have had snakeskin. She didn’t see it. She saw Tom, her Tom. She kissed him, and she was transported beyond the realm of the now, and into a land where forgotten memories, and things she was glad to have forgotten surfaced and ran rampant; and brought her to her knees. She fought against her love for him, and voices in her head that screamed bloody murderer.

He smiled, and she knew he controlled this. He wanted to wound her. He was a toxin, running wild in her veins. The cure of reason and sensibility lay forgotten under a shroud of sub-consciousness. They tried to surface, but in vain, and she remained on the ground.

Had he even touched her? It was a reality of sorts, like a mirror’s sketch on it; the past and the future synonymous with the present.

She had kept her eyes to the ground, hiding her tears with them. She looked up, and she saw a thing in his hands. The hourglass shape held in it the sands of time expanded. She took it from his hand and placed it on her neck, while his hands began to tear away at her garments. She gave herself to the shelter of night.

How had it felt, with his breathing and gentle caresses? It was so real, she had to think that it was not real.

When morning came, with it’s welcome smell of dew and the unwelcome notion of leaving him, she dressed and turned the hourglass how many times on its side? She only knew she was away from his body and closer to his mind.

When she came into the Burrow, her brother had watched her in fascination, trembling at the sight of her cold expression.

 

* * *

It was midday, but his house and everything in it seemed like grisaille, a Dutch painter’s view of the world in all its dark wonder. Everything was grey and colorless, meaningless. He did not know the day, only a random day in the middle of summer.

What else was he to do but walk around? What he had seen next would be of constant shock. At least it would’ve been had it not been wiped out from his memory.

 

What happened later was not.

 

It was amazing, the trials he had gone through. He’d insulted people for all of those years, in disgust. He never could do it right, he’d remember his father and shrink back, giving them something so purely juvenile. Memories would call at the worst of times it seemed. When he had been in the Forbidden Forest, he had been scared; scared of the creatures he’d been subjected to. Was it good for him?

 

He silently apologized to the memories that flickered in ominous clouds, fuliginous and gargantuan.

Draco stood by the window, a book in his hands, staring into the crepuscular colors of the clouds. They were blue, grey, and black rolling along each other, like a foreign world beckoning. Such colors were always there. Narcissa sat across from him, her gaze fixed on him. He then thought of how the time would seem so aeonian.

He cautiously sauntered over to her, at last meeting her eyes. "What do you do all day, Mother? Do you sit here all day to look at the colors of the heavens at night and the clouds at day?" He took one of her delicate hands and tried to rub in some warmth. "Why can’t you speak?"

"No," she said, turning her face away from his stare. He slowly brought her face so she could see him. Lucius was gone; he sat in the wizarding jail, Azkaban.

"I wrote to you, Mother. I wrote a great deal to you. You replied once, or did you have Faunia do it?"

He walked back to the window and stared, thinking of her; he had done everything he could to get Lucius out of prison. He had done so, believing it would make his mother happy. He didn’t care it would wound him.

"I didn’t get any letters, Draco." Those were the most words he had ever heard from her. He breathed; the tears they had caused now rolled down his cheek. He breathed that sort of desperate breath one makes when one cries. His eyes focused on her; he looked so different then. His eyes revealed the secrets of his past; his voice was the sound of the winter wind as it cries; his gaze full of the hurt of the world, a desperate need. His eyes were the truth of his sacrifice.

"Mother," he said.

" Draco," she said.

She looked at him, she was not crying. "Mother? Have you really spoken? Don’t hurt me."

"You always were sort of a weeper." He sat next to her, his skin even white against the eburnean furniture. She kissed his head, and he leaned against her, wrapping his arms around her as if she were made of glass. He fell into her lap and he wept. He wept as she stroked his hair; he knew it was going to kill him.

“I love you Mother.” The words passed from him, and he looked up at her, his eyes wide. He wanted her to say it, to say the thing noone had ever said to him. He didn’t care that he had been trained, hadn’t cared that he was a powerful sorcerer. He just wanted to be loved. Snape and Dumbledore had taught him how to make the most of his magical talents, life had taught him that it is fruitless to love those who did not love. Indeed, he loved his father for he was his father, it could be said Draco loved duty.

The time passed on like that, holding each other as he could no longer weep. He’d lost the will to cry.

He slept in her arms now, her hand sliding in underneath his pants, coming to the bulge that revealed his sex. Narcissa remembered Snape. She remembered what he made her do, she began to do that now to her sleeping son. Her hand went underneath the layer of clothing that protected him, and stroked one of his fundament. She began to then go to his genitals, slowly getting ever closer. He awoke, his eyes steely in horror and shock. She was about to touch the flesh of his privates, but he jumped. He gave her one last look, and ran away, up the countless number of stairs to the area of his room. He barred every door in the wing with every spell he knew. He wouldn’t come out during the time he spent.

He decided he was going to stay inside the area, living as he always did by the dithyramb that flooded from his quill. He then began to draw pictures, working tirelessly by the mirror. His drawings evolved from undefined pieces of dark and light making crossing shadows, to defined features that he began to recognize as himself. They were his drawings. They evolved into him, he was naked in some, writhing in pain. In another, he was flying off a bridge. He gazed to the skies, and he saw crows. Using augury, he determined the auspices were pointing to grim memories.

The light was almost nonexistent, fugacious light only serving the purpose of deepening the shadows. The clouds surrounded them in various shades of grey. A figure stood, white skin emitting a flickering glow. He slept unadorned, the whole of his privates shown clearly. It was bright against what else was mostly dark. Another figure, on which the first rested stood, skin normally pale darkened by the shadows that overtook it. A hand inched in trying to meet the lamp that lay beneath his hips, it inched towards it. All the while, the boy was asleep.

He felt a rock in the pit of his stomach; he felt disgust. He lowered his eye away from the drawing, his eyes now going where he himself had never touched. Had he been taken? Had he been forced to give up the thing that made him feel at all superior? Was he still pure? He positioned his hand in front of his destination, muttering words that were strange and different. His skin began to glow, he looked down, and found it to be white. He collapsed on his bed, naked and relieved, wrapping himself in his sheets. He was glad to fall asleep. Sleep took him easily, and he rested, oblivious to the violent knocks at his doors, and the sounds of her screams. He was still pure, and he just slept.

Sleep in itself was a welcome escape from the present. The present showed no ruth to him.

* * * * * *

Ron had been walking around the Burrow, when he had heard voices. Startled, he began to knock at the door, where he could hear each voice.

“You’ve been away from me my dear.”

“Yes, and the days have been long.”

“Virginia, it is not good to stay away from me, I have eyes everywhere. Surely you haven’t told our secret. I am your angel of mercy.”

“Angel, I’m sorry, it was escaping from my mouth. I could not stop it, when all I have longed for is you.”

“Child, do not fear me, I am your only friend. I give you love, and take you away from the truth, the truth is that the world has never been beautiful, but it exists. I will be your mirror, the truth is reversed so that ugliness is beauty.”

“What is your world?”

“Ginny, whose is that voice, what are you doing in there?” Ron bellowed.

“Come with me and I will take you there. We must go, your brother is knocking.”

Ron had came in, forcing the door to give way. He encountered nothing but the dust.

********

She was there in a world she didn’t know. Yet it seemed so familiar. The surroundings were like her Tom.” The way they breathed was like her Tom. Why was she here? What did he want?

She was here because he wanted her, she believed it.

She came to him and reached her hand out to his cheek, giving it an affectionate stroke. He looked at her, with his piercing eyes and leaned down. His mouth was on hers and it was soft. Leaning in, she kissed him back, letting him carry her for some time until she hit a bed.

What resulted was beyond the realm of anything.

During the night he had whispered her name, and intoxicated her so that her modesty lay forgotten in the darkness that served its purpose like wine. With her name she had heard queen. She was to be queen.

Knowing his body, tasting and feeling it was like knowing power and flame and flower, and he had been the object of her love, hate, desire, want, and fear. His touches were gentle, and soft. They were intoxicating, and loving, he could both threaten and love her. To him, she was beauty. She was beauty lost and spent, and wasted. No, it was not her physical beauty, but the beauty of her innocence and the beauty of her love for him. Too long he’d wandered in a sea of puppets, and resisted the prostitutes, and the bodies. She gave him her innocence, and he took it, and he took it without hesitation.

He wanted her, and he had her in the night. Night was always the time when everything was properly hidden. His evil nature was hidden in the night. She still knew, but he had his young face and the piercing stares, and the gift of such intellect. He was powerful, like the flame and the sword, and flowering intellect that gave rise to the dark. He was the only good and the only evil she had ever known. The nights of the summers were spent together. He fed her information, while she showed him how to love her. Slowly the plans he had told her , that he had used to prove his love, gave way to tender words and gentle caresses. Love was so new, and so sacred, and she could love him in the shadows. There was no harm to see in their love then.

* * * * *

Draco picked up a book and started to read.

I am now in the company of boys, who I find myself happy to teach the truth of religion and its moral blessings, they are fond of me and I of them. Although I am happy, I am at times insecure and scared. I’m naive I think. I love to sacrifice in the name of God, much too my fellow priests disappointment. I also love to watch the sun and its beautiful colors.

Life is good, but I see things happening to me down the road leading to my ruin.

‘Should you like to take my life?’ thought Draco.

The shadows walked the earth at dawn,
The light's only purpose is to bring out the dark.
Even the last beautiful moments it lives as a fawn,
Fading and bringing down prisms of resplendent color's mark,
It dies to bring life to shadows gone.

The shadow plays like a harp, as the sun is dead and it too will sleep.
It sleeps and covers the heavens with all the fire in on little star alight.
There is a shadow that lives and dies as the sun fading into the deep.
It walks on the celestial strings of the moon, and black against white,
And the moon is white against the blackness the night still will keep.

In the night you hear the shadow, it's voice a gentle flute,
laughing in its joyful whistling soprano notes.
Then there are ghosts, ghosts that turn on your every route
They are the only ones that do not sleep or float.
Nor do they die in a regretful last hoot.

She can see his figure, his proud bearing and gentle features.
She runs from him, but not for what is today.
Not from one of the nights most beautiful creatures.
His piano tunes with the flute will softly play.
A shadow boy singing with the voice of his teacher's

The ghost he now asks her why as she looks to the skies.
She replies in a whisper that can haunt even the dead,
"For I could not stand the pain of your begging cries."
Memories flew out of the words she had so cruelly said.
She could see his image wander in the corner of her eyes.

She hears forgiveness in his sweet music's tongue,
he leads her to a night bath of river water's surrounding lick
Into its wetness and depth he had his naked body flung.
She never had seen him nude before and so stared in a way sick.
His eyes bore forgiveness and love gently strung.

Into the water her body did go, giving into his sweet intimidation.
He kissed her once again and with hands going down.
He caressed her once more and with little trepidation.
The water did cause her body to swiftly drown.
His ghost had been a fragment of her twisted imagination.

She'd killed him without mercy and without guilt.
Yet it was guilt that brought down the walls she had built.

***********************

She wept for the men and hurried her night along. Tears were soft and songs whispered in the wine. She looked to wine and forgot.

The previous day, Snape had come back to her, newly determined and happy that Lucius was in jail. He had sent Draco off to Europe and he stayed with Narcissa.

It was hell.

*********

 

Misery lies in his every breath, and he breathes despair and sacrifices. What is it for? For the puppets of men that have nothing but the cold lump in their hearts they call fear? What is it for? It is for life, and what it is and what it means.

 

The poem represented well enough his views on life and love

 

 

He lived by writing.

He lived by reading, no reading kept him alive.

He did not have a book to discover,

to learn,

to anticipate the roses that bloomed in the summer,

to think,

never for truth, which he knew only to well.

He read to feel, to imagine the love of a wife and the vigor of sailors. He read to know the history of the real, to imagine he was one of them in a journey. He wished when he read.

Magic swelled from these transporting journeys. He would visit the monuments of Europe, yes, the kind he had read about and stare. He could build and discover, to talk with other intellectuals and read some more.

The wonders of Europe brought books, and they brought joy, and memories he tried to block, the kind where he’d relive them as he remembered in his vivid memory. The clouds and the sun were so much a part of him.

He had both of their beauties. Clouds were black and yellow and drops of blue mixing to create rolling prisms of air, and the sun made the moon beautifully pallid and radiant.

He was beautiful in that sense. He was amazing ly beautiful. He had a mind, a face, and a heart.

There was a tinge of red on his cheeks, and on his lips. His eyes were grey and Prussian blue.

He would walk the streets of Venice or Rome or Paris or Copenhagen, and he’d simply stare and ponder.

In his walk now in was it Vienna, he had run into the last person he had wanted to see. It was Hermione, and she was beautiful and happy. She was with her family and he had felt like crying at the day’s events.

She had hugged him and kissed his cheek. It was in the Wizarding part of Vienna, and he felt it must’ve been extremely akward for her parents to let her go alone. “Oh Draco, I’ve missed you.”

“Have you now?” he asked softly.

“Yes. I’m here with my parents. Who are you with?”

“Are you now?”

“Oh Draco, stop saying _you now, it’s not productive. I’ll have to introduce you to my parents, now that you are here. Are you here with your mother?” Hermione asked.

“No, she’s at home. She must miss my father.”

“Oh, but he’s such an awful man..”

“That doesn’t stop people from loving Hermione. I love him very much, and she’s his wife, we have to love him. Even after all the things he’s done, I love him. Don’t you understand?” he asked of her pleadingly.

“You look so weary, and sad.”

“Have you never noticed before?”

“Don’t be cold. I have noticed, and I figured it might be school. Perhaps summer might have happiered you?” she suggested. “It didn’t?”

“I’m happier when I’m alone, Hermione. School is free from- from life, and free from my situation.” He expressed this heart fully.

She was tall, and close to his height. She moved to him. “Do you like to be without me? Do I bother you?” she implored.

“Immensely, Hermione.”

“I’m sorry.” She turned and began to walk away. His arms grabbed her though.

“You’re my friend, that bothers me.” He tried to make her understand. “You have always been a friend and I can have you that way, but never even as much as a good friend.” He pulled her to him. “I realize I don’t know you.”

She pulled herself up and gently met her lips with the corner of his mouth.

He pulled back and ran, remembering what sleep had given to him, what his mother had done to him. He came to his hotel and sat on the bed and wept.

He wept and he wrote.

 

They were content to deceive and kill, snatch from happiness. He put his arm to his head and thought.

**********************

 

Gentle audience,

It's not good to see what is about to be brutally shown to you. Like poison fangs, warm vapors invited my young body to lie in its embrace as they rose and covered the mirror.

I entered the porcelain tub awaiting the steam to overtake the uselessness of life, and wrap me in it's fog so that mist may be known. It will be known as I bleed and make the water I'm in cherise as the sun that blazes on the earth with heat and death. My doctors say it's damaging to cut myself, but they're wrong. They say the fact I'm having an affair with my knife is not good. Hell, as I cut my wrists, it's better than anything I've ever known. It's a beautiful feeling to experience as you watch your arm become white and see this black-red liquid seep out. It fulfills a need in me. It's great you know, to watch as you punish yourself and take punishment for the crimes of humanity. It makes me feel... special. A person lets themself get punished by these people and they add to it. They're completing a course of action in a vicious cycle.

I used to be afraid of them. No, not anymore. I used to be a good person, I used to cry and forgive them and help them. That was before they took away everything I had. I've lost the ability to feel and I've lost the ability to want.

I could feel and pray for all of them, Ask God to forgive them and I'd say that it was only right that they feel happiness. I'm not like that anymore, they stole my goodness, my soul, they took my soul and made it a toy. I can't even find happiness anymore in being better than they are, can't feel better in the fact that I could be a good person. It's not that they stole my life, they can take my body and make it a pillow, they can hit me all they want, but not one of them has the right to take a soul, they don't have the right to kill a dream. They didn't kill it, they murdered it with so many things, with words and pictures and trips to doctors that told me I had these diseases and told me I was wrong, and I didn't know the truth and couldn't decide for me what was to be done.

Do you know how it feels to be told you are diseased and have this infection of the mind? Do you know how it feels to be locked in this world where I'm told such things and left to myself? That was how I killed my soul, by reacting to their books and their diagnoses. So only I could stab my soul, only I could heal it, but they took that away too. So now I stab myself like I stabbed my soul all those years ago, and it's sort of sick to realize that it's the only way to live. They took someone with a mind that had this enormous potential and a soul that had all the love to give in the world, and they turned me into a useless body that's plundered by the trails of scars I've created.

They destroyed me by telling me I was diseased. I can't handle that. I have to believe I'm good, that I'm better than the whole of humanity. Telling me I'm diseased, they are letting me destroy myself. I have to destroy any imperfection, and it was only too late I realized my soul was my imperfection. I didn't have an imperfection, I realized the truth, and in so doing, I was branded. They branded me with a mark saying I was diseased. I had potential, and now I can't use it, because I can't cope. I can't live.

I'm not saying that my mind has gone totally to waste, there are books I've written, from when I could feel, and though they'll never be appreciated, they exist. They make me feel accomplished, I've sketched so much of it too.

I'm again surrounded by steam in the tub, a situation I've found myself in quite a lot, and I take out my knife. I let my hand glide across my smooth skin and cut it, as if being pulled by some spirit of the vapors. I don't do anything on purpose when cutting, but it's nice to think I create pictures that tell in hushed voices the truth of the people that have destroyed me. Puppets are being pulled on these strings, and these voices and hands controlling and contorting them. They are my prison guards.

This knife is my judge, and my executioner as it glides over my skin, and hates me for crimes I can't remember committing. The judge's cry of punishment is like the bark of hounds as they tear at a poor fox, and the knife I place so gently onto my skin is like the tearing of that fox. It's strange to know after all of this that I am amused, just like the way God is amused. The only way for me to live is through self-destruction of a body. I hold onto my pain, and get a certain dignity, and it makes me believe I'm still better than humanity.

The waters in the tub are red and my soul is gone, and I'm wrapped in these arms of these ghosts that lie in the steam and are the ghosts of every tormentor I've ever known. I like their embrace, I like it, I like everything having to do with wrong when I lie without a soul.

Beauty exists in blood and want now. I was beautiul back in the hours of my real life.

The blade opens up my skin and produces these flowers that bloom in rouge shades, and erupt into these wine-colored petals breathing through the red. They breathe through their petals like orchids and I'm transfixed to their dance.

Maybe in time I can feel again. Maybe there will be hope and love that are like cherry blossoms arising in spring, and they will bloom and grow each day. I've learned not to expect it, and I don't expect it, but should it come, I'll be there to feel its soothing rains.

Now I cope through this knife that I pray will get some reaction from me.

Tom Riddle

Ginny looked over the entry he had shown to her, and she smiled. He wasn’t evil, the world was evil.

Draco’s world was just as evil. Really, it was.