A Night the Stars Didn't Shine

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The rain thundered on top of the train car, and the lights in the corridor flickered on and off. But the Slytherin standing on the side of the hall gave no interest, nor did he gripe about the noise and unreliability. He was numb and cold. No longer did Draco feel like living, he felt empty and soulless. The train tracks were no longer irritating, they became rhythmic and soothing.

"Draco!" A voice cried from behind him. He turned slowly, not to find Ginny, but Pansy Parkinson, and behind her, Blaise Zabini. Pansy's brown hair was in a high ponytail, with small curly tendrils around her oval-shaped face. Her pale skin was dotted with dark freckles from cheek to cheek, and the reflection of the light from her soft pink lip gloss shone smooth in the golden light. Her doe brown eyes shone under lids of light blue eyeshadow. She was curvy and short, certainly pretty by anybody's standards. She was still wearing her uniform, which was somehow dry even though the rain was pouring down in sheets.

Blaise's hair was down in a river of pure black that trailed well past her shoulders, and it glowed purple in the light. She had a dragon ornament on one side of her head, holding back her hair. She was leaning on the wall, one leg casually crossed over the other, her arms folded. She nodded in his direction. She was still a little damp, with small pieces of hair framing her face.

"Hullo Pansy, Blaise," he said dully. He looked down at his future fiancée and their eyes met. Pansy's eyes held insignificance and vanity, there was no depth like the brown pools of Ginny's eyes. Draco looked away quickly.

Pansy's interest in men strayed from Roger Davis, a former Ravenclaw captain, to Marcus Flint, the former Slytherin Quidditch captain, and then to him. She didn't believe in something as eternal or as powerful as love, she had laughed when he had asked her one night while they were studying for finals. She admitted that she was only marrying him because he was rich, as she was, and that her parents had ordered her to. Men her age and younger, she mentioned airily, bored her. Draco, at the time, hadn't cared that she didn't believe in love; at that time, he didn't either. But he had changed dramatically, quickly, and love had touched his heart, broke it, and then left him. But he believed in it.

Pansy couldn't love what she didn't believe in.

Blaise studied Draco carefully. She hadn't talked to him since wintertime, and he had become more reserved than ever, absorbing himself in studying, or in Quidditch. She knew something had happened that night she had talked to him, but she didn't know what. Draco seemed tired, worn out. He didn't say much to anyone, and when he did, it seemed so fake and insincere. He would laugh without humor, joke without comedy, speak without meaning, listen without hearing. She resolved to ask him what was wrong.

"I can't wait 'til we get married," Pansy said without enthusiasm, twirling a strand of hair from her ponytail. "Mum showed me the dress and it's absolutely gorgeous," she gushed, warming up with excitement. "It's a light pink, since pink compliments my skin tone, and it's strapless with layers of translucent... stuff over it. Oh Draco, it's absolutely beautiful." He nodded, half listening. He knew why she was so excited; Marcus Flint would be there, he had overheard in a conversation with one of her friends - she was wearing the dress for him.

Pansy went on describing everything from her hair to her veil to her necklace to her makeup to her shoes. Draco almost expected her to describe the bra and panties she would wear, if she were planning on wearing any. Pansy rambled on, thoughts of Marcus' 'appreciation' of the dress, the torn pink strips of it on the floor in front of the honeymoon bed.

"Oh, look at the time!" Pansy exclaimed, looking down at her metal wristwatch. Draco nodded again and leaned down to kiss her on her lips. She didn't kiss back but waited impatiently for it to be over. He held her hand and squeezed it a little and she jerked back without squeezing. "Bye Draco!" she said bouncily, walking away. She swayed her hips from side to side with effort the way that Ginny's hips swayed naturally, he noticed.

"Malfoy, is everything ok?" Blaise asked, walking behind him.

"Yes," he said, his heart pounding faster. She looked at him with sharp violet eyes, hair swaying over her shoulders. "No," he admitted.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing," he replied. Blaise was silent, as voices filled the carpeted hallway. They looked down from the side of the wall to where they had come from.

Harry, Ron, and Hermoine appeared down the hall, Ron's and Hermoine's hands happily folded together in a tight squeeze. They were still wet from the rain and didn't care. They were laughing as they walked past, ignoring the silent Slytherins, though Harry's head turned to glare at them. Draco glared back at his arch-enemy, and Blaise stared on, then looked away. They walked to the next car and disappeared. Draco was puzzled over Blaise's lack of defiance to glare at the Boy-Who-Lived.

"You like him," he said vaguely, looking at the torchlight in front of him. Blaise's back stiffened slightly and her pale cheeks became red.

"Don't tell anyone," she warned shakily, looking up at him. "Please," she begged quietly.

Draco felt strange that something so odd and unheard of, yet so close to the situation was happening again, to the person that he would least expect it to.

"I only wanted to talk to you that night 'cause I understood what you were going through. I can't help it, Malfoy. I hate myself for liking him and yet I love it and I can't stop it from happening. I thought that I could help you out a little, but I see that it's only killing you too."

Draco waved her off, muttering something under his breath. Blaise looked at her watch. "I need to change," she said awkwardly. "See you 'round, then?" He nodded and she walked down the corridor.

For a while, Draco wandered around aimlessly, trying to think up something to do. He couldn't and finally gave up. He opened an empty compartment and stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. Taking his wand out of his bag, he waved it half-heartedly, magically drying himself off. He slicked his hair back with his hands and opened his bag to put his wand away when his hand brushed up against a piece of cloth. His invisibility cloak lay at the bottom of the monstrous bag his mother had given him. He sat the bag down and pulled it out, careful not to rip the material on the seams of his bag. The material was smooth and watery, like he was swimming in a still lake. It was also very thin, and he was chilled when it touched his skin.

Draco yawned and rubbed his eyes. He had been getting very little sleep for the last few months of school while he prepared for graduation, and the weather was depressing him. Sleep was just what he needed. Pushing his bag over to one side of the long padded seat, the side closest to the window, he lay down and used the cloak as a blanket. A very, very thin blanket. His bag would serve as a rather lumpy pillow.

He lay down yawning, and closed his eyes. He fell asleep silently to the rhythmic sounds of the train tracks.

He was walking down an aisle in a lovely white church, with a woman in a pink dress by his side. She was clutching his arm and a pink veil hid her face. All around him, people in black robes smiled at them and muttered things to their neighbors, things that he couldn't hear. Together, they walked up to the front of the church. He couldn't keep his mind focused on what was going on. All he could think about was the pain in his arm; the throbbing and soreness it was ailing him with. Nobody would notice if he checked it out. Slowly, he dropped her hand, but he could tell that she didn't care. He rolled the sleeve of his black robe up while the minister drowned on and on about something he couldn't hear. He gave a sharp intake of breath when he realized what it was.

A dark green skull was embedded on his arm, a serpent coming out of its mouth. Its eyeless sockets looked up at him eerily, as a million needles pierced him and his arm. He cried out and gripped it, bent over in pain. Tears of agony welled in his eyes, as a man with hair as dark as his robe jumped up from his seat in the congregation. He leapt over the bent figure and began kissing the woman passionately, forgetting about him. A white duck wandered out in front of him and the people disappeared. The duck looked at him and said 'AFLAC.' And a scream was heard, a high-pitched, delicate screaming. A woman in a darned black robe and a dark green dress, with straight red hair that fell around her shoulders. She had a hand over her mouth in a petrified scream. She had seen his Dark Mark.

The woman with the red hair ran out of the church, not looking back at him. The doors slammed with a loud crash, as the dream world threatened to close in on him. The pain tore into his heart and his head felt as if it was going to explode. The woman at the alter, whose legs were now wrapped around the man with the black hair's waist, turned to look at him, wearing nothing but a lingerie set, the man licking her throat and collar bone savagely.

"I didn't believe in love and you lost me," she said smugly as the man's hands fumbled to unhook the bra strap. "She believed in love and you lost her."

The door to the corridor opened and Draco groggily opened his eyes as he tried to process his dream. It slammed shut and his eyes jolted. He shifted the cloak to let more light in and tried to make out the person. Wet red hair and a pale freckled face. It was none other than Ginny Weasley that he was sharing his compartment with.

For a moment, he feared that she'd sit on him, but she placed her older brother's bag down on the other side and sat next to it, sighing loudly and rubbing her eyes. Her hair was still wet and her clothes dripped water on the covered seat, but she took no notice. She just sat down, chin resting on the heel of her hand, and stared out of the window.

Draco turned from looking at her and stared at the ceiling through the flimsy cloth, pondering over the meaning of his dream. Obviously, the woman with the red hair was none other than Ginny, and the woman in the pink dress was Pansy. The man with the black hair who was snogging her would've been Flint, and he was the one with the Dark Mark in his arm. The Dark Mark. The thought of it ran through his mind over and over again as he struggled to make sense of it.

Lucius had made it clear to his son that he would receive his mark after graduation. Draco had silently dreaded this day while the other students in his house anticipated it eagerly. He knew that it would hurt and he knew he would scream and whimper in pain and clutch his sore and scarred arm. He also knew that the Death Eaters would take it as a weakness and he would be scoffed at and abused by the Death Eaters. His mother had told him that it didn't hurt as much as it would if he was sober and suggested a 'beer celebration' before the ceremony. Draco declined, repulsed at the suggestion and more afraid of the initiation than ever.

He thought of Ginny. What if she saw his Mark, glowing green on his arm? She might think that he had been playing with her emotions, and believe him to be a traitor.

That is, if they ever saw each other again.

A rough scraping sound broke his introspection. Ginny was scribbling something down on the parchment, biting her lower lip in concentration. She glanced out the window and back to her parchment. Every once and a while, she would glance up in his direction, looking almost as if she saw him. He would shift uncomfortably under her gaze, sometimes forgetting that he was invisible.

Draco longed to see what she was scribbling down and finally stole a peek when she left the compartment to use the loo. He hid his bag under the seat and wrapped the thin cloak around him. He walked across the niche and skimmed the piece of parchment that she had left on the seat.

He smirked at her thoughts, but then it vanished. She was right to wonder about him, he figured; he probably could be strayed by a prettier girl or a smarter woman, if he ever saw one that was smarter or prettier than Ginny. And would he leave her to cry? He already had, hadn't he? Draco had thought that he loved her and that the feeling was real, but now he wasn't so sure. The Malfoy clan was infamous for taking love lightly; did the same notion of it run through him? It certainly ran through Pansy and Flint. Would his emotions change when he received his Mark? Was he really that weak?

Draco jumped when the sliding door sounded, as it nosily slid open and then shut. Ginny stepped back in and looked straight through him, out the window. She brushed some loose red strands out of her eyes and glanced down at the parchment, blushing furiously. She quickly snatched it up and stuffed it into her open purse, nearly colliding with Draco as he jumped around the room, trying to avoid her.

He sat back down on his seat, making sure that his entire body had been covered with the material. Ideas and thoughts of how to escape the Dark Mark were tossed around in his head, each one more crazed than the last. Hide under the invisibility cloak and follow Ginny home to escape the Mark. Learn how to apparate, receive the mark, and then vanish. He knew that they would never work, each one had faults so large that were easy to see. People could still be tracked under invisibility cloaks using powerful Dark magic spells, and the Dark Mark could be detected almost anywhere where the signal was strong enough. The only way that the Mark could become non-active, really, was to die, when they no longer cared about your Mark. But Draco didn't really feel like committing a suicide anytime soon, so he left the idea and tried to think of wilder one. But it kept bugging him, the idea of a murder scene running through his mind. The bloody sheets on the messed up bed, a broken wand halves lying discarded on the floor, a trashed room with drawers hanging open and the closet door broken, shredded clothes everywhere, and a crimson stained knife laying in the middle of the mess, complete with a trail of little blood spots for the Ministry to follow. All the scene was missing was a body.

All that's missing is a body... Course! The answer was so simple. Draco didn't have to die, he just had to make everyone else in the wizarding world think he had. He had to make it look like something happened somewhere, a murder maybe - in his bedroom - and that a body was dragged and hidden somewhere else. He could adopt an identity of a dead nobody, change his appearance, and move somewhere where nobody would ask too many questions and start over.

But when would he have his 'pseudo-death'? Where? Who should he point at for suspects? More importantly, who would help him and who was against him? Draco's heart began to speed up with adrenaline; finally, he could escape his dreaded karma, if only he could plan it out well enough.

Draco had always wondered what he would look like with black hair.