White Lies

White Lies - 2/18/07

#47 White

Word Count: 765

When the time came for her to throw off her childhood, she became an expert at lies. She hid herself from the world with a plastic smile in place to ward off unwanted questions. She buried herself in her schoolwork, immersing herself in books and hoping to learn a secret in them about what life actually meant. She kept her heart under lock and key so as not to have it broken.

But the irony was that, in the end, her heart was broken anyway.

She had spent the last years of her childhood in love with Ronald Weasley, or so she had thought. She had become accustomed to the thought that he was too dimwitted to notice her affection. However, despite her efforts at caging her emotions, she still lashed out when she saw him kissing Lavender.

"Ron can kiss whomever he wants." That was the first white lie.

Only, over the next few days, she began to realize that despite the pain of Ron and Lavender's relationship, her heart was still whole. She was still standing. She was still strong.

But even the strong can cry.

That was how he found her, curled up on the Astronomy Tower with Harry's cloak lying beside her, cursing the world with her tears. She had been scared when she heard his footsteps, so sure he was a teacher, so sure she was in trouble. She couldn't jeopardize her dream of being Head Girl.

Instead of a teacher, however, it was Draco Malfoy. He stood in the moonlight and stared at her, just stared almost seeming to look through her. Then he stumbled a bit as he walked toward her, her eyes noticing the crimson bottle in his hand. He collapsed next to her, curling his legs up against his body and letting his arms rest across his knees.

He didn't seem to mind her staring. He didn't even make a scathing remark about her tears, just sat beside her and sipped his whiskey. It took her hours to realize that he was crying too. When she began to shiver slightly in the cold, he looked at her with his vacant eyes and conjured a blanket. She murmured a thank you to him and again fell silent. They simply ignored each other for the most part until her sobs became too loud and his soft sniffles too frequent.

She wasn't aware that he was holding her hand until he pulled it from hers, standing up, swaying and tipsy. He held his hand down to her and she took it silently, letting him pull her up beside him.

He didn't move away from her, nor pull his hand from hers. He looked at her, like he had never seen her before.

"How can something so wrong be so beautiful?" She tried to blame his words on the alcohol. She tried to tell herself that he was delusional. She convinced herself that she wasn't scared. That was the second white lie.

Slowly, his hands traveled along her body, slowly, gently. She couldn't stop the shivers or the electrifying shocks in her skin through her clothes. She couldn't move. She couldn't touch him back. She convinced herself that she didn't want to. That was the third white lie.

He kissed her then. She didn't even register that it was her first kiss. She didn't even register how close he pulled her to him. She didn't even register how his hands became fisted in her hair. Her knees became so weak that he held her up. Her heart was beating so fast she wondered if it would just explode from overexertion.

After they broke apart, they just stood together, holding each other. He smirked at her and gathered the cloak, the blanket and his bottle from the ground. He held her hand and walked her to her portrait hole. Then he walked away.

The next night, it occurred again and the same for the night after that. For months this carried on until the night of the attack, the night he turned traitor like she had known all along he had to be. At the funeral, she found she couldn't cry for Dumbledore. She found that all she could cry for was a boy who changed everything she had ever known to be true.

She tried to tell herself that he hadn't shattered her glass façade but she couldn't convince herself of her own white lies anymore.

Yes, the truth was that Draco Malfoy broke her heart. Yet, she found that she could still love him with all the little pieces.