Lying on the Backstreets, Bleeding

Lying in the Backstreets, Bleeding

Are you ready? Should I start?

Draco Malfoy was my partner. That day, June the eighth, was our one-year anniversary. I asked him out in Hogsmeade, at The Three Broomsticks. It was the celebratory Hogsmeade weekend for the end of NEWTs and OWLs. We had been flirting with each other for quite a while before that - my brother loathed it. I had finally become sick of the whole house prejudice thing and had asked him the blunt question. He said yes.

Draco left school soon after that but we kept in touch and I found myself falling for him - hard. He was so unpredictable, so intense, so unlike what my mother had wanted for me.

He used to meet me at every Hogsmeade weekend, without fail. Then, we'd go to the Three Broomsticks and warm ourselves by the fire, or play chess at one of the round tables, or look around the village, buying candy and junk that we would never buy alone...

You want me to cut to the chase. Okay.

On that day, we were celebrating again. I had just finished my NEWTs and we had been together for one year. We were at Madam Puddifoots, drinking coffee and eating sweet cakes. Draco was wearing the badge.

What badge? You know the badge. You all do. You all despise it.

His society's badge. I can hardly bear to say its name. It's ghastly. The Society for the promotion of Pureblood Lineage, S.P.P.L. I always hated it. However, Draco was so excited about being accepted. He had never really felt like he belonged at Hogwarts.

How could I look at him and say that he couldn't join? It made him so much happier. Our relationship became stronger. We had been going through some rough patches but after his induction, he became much more pleasant. He never lost his intensity but he was no longer cold and silent at times, no longer spent days in his cage of ice and stone. He got permission from Professor Dumbledore to take me dancing one night. He sent me letters. He told me ... told me that he loved me. I wish he was here.

Draco popped out of Madam Puddifoots to get something. A surprise, he said. He said he would only be five minutes. I waited.

Ten minutes passed and I became impatient.

At twenty minutes, I knew something was wrong. He would never normally leave me like that. I went out to look for him.

It was raining outside but the streets were full of students and they jostled and shoved as I tried to see his blond head bobbing through the crowd. I didn't.

I noticed the alley to the side of the main road. I pulled my robes closer to me and shivered. The rain worsened.

I lit my wand and walked slowly down the alley. There was a dark shape on the ground. I rushed to it. He was bruised and battered. His eye was swollen shut and he couldn't talk through his fat lip.

He told me not to worry, that he was fine. He made me laugh by saying 'tis merely a flesh wound. He knew that Monty Python, the quirky videos that I had watched in Muggle Studies, would make me laugh. It was then that I noticed the blood at his chest.

Some bastards, some pathetic bastards, had knifed him. They had stolen his wallet and left him lying in the back streets, bleeding.

I rushed out onto the street to get help. Professor Snape walked past and, nearly hysterical, I told him what had happened. He followed me down the alley.

Draco's breathing was thick and torn. His eyes were frantic, searching for something that I couldn't see. It was too dark, I told him. A bubble of blood escaped his lips. He scared me.

Snape did what he could but Draco died a few moments later. He had lost too much blood and had internal injuries, I was told at Saint Mungo's.

These past few days have been vague, as if I was seeing the world through a grubby lens. I don't know what happened. I didn't see who attacked him. But I know why. Because he was in that society. They saw his badge and thought he'd be easy money, that he was a highbred buffoon with too much money and a dreadful right hook.

Why did he have to wear it?

Is that all? Should I leave now?