| Puffskein
Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Canada
Posts: 2,438
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Chapter 31
The Locket
The make-up homework I had for my time in the hospital wing was absolutely brutal. I spent all my time in the library – the one place Draco never found me but Harry always did – catching up and studying. As a result, it was insanely stressful for the rest of the rest of April. Once it hit May, though, things seemed to ease down thanks to the making-up of a full week and a half of coursework being over and being behind in everything else overall finally being finished.
It was like Hogwarts knew when I’d be done, because the first Saturday I was liberated from the shackles of make-up schoolwork was a trip to Hogsmeade. I took that day off from my general studying to take a break. Harry and I celebrated my newfound freedom by going to The Three Broomsticks and Honeydukes.
It was nearing the end of the day and Harry and I, alone, were heading back to the castle. Just as we passed the last of the village’s buildings behind us, a group of three people were walking towards us. Even at the distance, I recognized the white-blonde head of the leader.
“Come on...” I sighed, turning around.
“Rosa, it’s not that bad...” Harry turned around and grabbed my arm, stopping me.
I scoffed. “Wait and see...”
“Oi, Potter!”
I turned back around and crossed my arms, watching Draco make his way towards us, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle.
“Still colour-blind?”
“Still a pompous ferret?” Harry retorted.
“Come on...” I tried pulling Harry away again. I didn’t want to be near Draco right now, especially with Harry. He just pulled out of my hold.
“Do all your attempts of solving a problem include dragging some goons along?” he jeered further.
“Watch it,” Goyle growled.
“Don’t bother,” Draco said to Goyle, waving it off.
“You’re so weak you can’t do anything yourself?” Harry continued, pressing the matter further.
Draco pulled out his wand, holding it up at Harry threateningly. “Watch me literally tie your knickers in a knot by myself.”
If got myself in the middle of this I’d end up back in the hospital wing, I have no doubt, but that didn’t stop me from stepping in and trying to interfere. I summoned Draco’s wand the same way he attempted to do to me at Christmas and it landed in my hand.
“The only person who is getting their knickers in a knot is me,” I snapped. Draco tried to summon back his wand but I shielded it.
“Perfect...” The tip of Harry’s wand started to light up, but I summoned his wand too, taking it in the same hand while I held my own in my other hand.
“I give this back and you keep going into Hogsmeade,” I ordered, looking Draco in the eye. I then turned to Harry and said, “No matter what happens, after I give you back this, we keep going towards the castle. Alright?”
The two stood totally still while Crabbe and Goyle shifted awkwardly by Draco’s side. Draco then held out his hand and I let him summon his wand back. Harry came up to me and took his wand back into his hand. Draco and his two goons walked up and past us, but Draco just far enough away to shoulder Harry but not enough to have to slow down. I grabbed Harry’s open hand and dragged him off. I let him go when we were in the castle, but he only took my hand again and we continued on in silence until we were at our table in the library. He pulled out my chair and I sat down. I waited until he sat down across from me.
“We really have to stop meeting in the library,” I said jokingly, smiling slightly.
“I have a question.”
“Ok...” My stomach dropped and my mind beginning to race, thinking of any generic lies I could use to cover up any question he would ask.
“Why... does Malfoy care so much?”
My eyebrow rose, taken aback by his choice of words. “How do you mean?”
“Normally we ignore each other. Every time you’re around or... well heck, in general he’s been acting... pushier. More in-your-face. Why is that?”
I shrugged. “How should I know? He’s been ignoring me.”
He looked mildly suspicious. “He seemed just fine to oblige to what you said.”
I didn’t really notice or think about that. Did he give in easily to my request? Coming from a guy who hit me because I wouldn’t give into his request, I found that hard to believe.
“Last time we had a fight between who gets control of whose wand, it didn’t end well for him,” I responded, smiling at the memory.
Harry’s expression broke and he smiled, remembering what I told him about how Draco got grounded for how he ‘duelled me unfairly’ because he tried to take my wand from me at his family’s Christmas party.
“So there’s nothing going on between...?”
“Please don’t finish that sentence,” I cut in, eyes wide. “I’d have to be clinically insane before I let anything of the sort happen.”
He chuckled and reached across the table to take my hand. “Ok.”
Silence began to grow. I began to think about Kreacher again, and the horcruxes. I looked through mum’s library during Christmas break and found a book with a bit on information in a chapter about them. Now that I knew for sure how the Dark Lord’s power of staying alive worked, I was curious about what Harry would do about it. They sounded nearly impossible to destroy and just imagining what trials he’d have to go through to do it... as much as I didn’t like to think of what could happen to me or mum because of what he might do, I didn’t want him killed either. There was no way to ask, though.
Well, not upfront...
“Harry?”
He turned to look at me, holding my eyes. “Yeah?”
“I know this was awhile ago, but I haven’t been able to completely forget it...”
His other took my hand, covering the hand he already held. “What would that be?”
“Something Kreacher brought up but couldn’t say.”
His eyebrows furrowed together in confusion and he looked down at the table in thought. A look of realization hit him and he looked back up at me.
“All he could say is it had something to do with my uncle...?”
“I... don’t think that’s information you’d really want to know.” His eyes told me clearly what he was really thinking; ‘don’t you dare press the matter’. That tempted me to do just that.
“No, the thing is I started going through my mum’s books during Christmas and I found some information about something that sounds... rather horrible. I went back to Kreacher about it and he told me the story about how Regulus died.”
There was a glimmer of confusion in Harry’s eyes. “What did he tell you?”
I looked back at him, feigning a look of mystification. “Don’t you already know?”
“He refuses to bring up anything about him to me.”
“He also mentioned something about a Slytherin locket.”
His eyes widened. “What did he say?” his voice lowered into an urgent whisper.
“He mentioned a fake locket. Do you still have it?” My heart was racing; what if he did have it? This was hard enough to bring up as is. What if I reacted badly and couldn’t keep it in?
For that matter, why do I doubt myself so much nowadays? I’m a great liar, there’s no question or doubt about it. I can keep it all in, I’ve had practice.
While I was mentally reinforcing the good truth about myself, Harry let one hand go from mine and dug into his pocket. Surely enough, he pulled out a locket with a green S emblazoned on it. I took it with my spare hand and took my hand from his. I opened it and there was a folded note inside, just like Kreacher said.
“What’re you doing?”
I pulled out and opened the parchment, reading the words scrawled neatly on the parchment.
To the Dark Lord
I know I will be dead long before you
read this, but I want you to know that it was
I who discovered your secret. I have stolen
the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as
soon as I can. I face death in the hope that
when you meet your match you will be mortal
once more.
R.A.B.
The hand trembled slightly while the other softly grazed over the cleanly-written cursive writing. The aged, inky letters made my fingers tingle, as if I was actually touching the writer’s skin. Regulus Arcturus Black... R.A.B. I knew he was killed by the Dark Lord, or someone associated with him, and that he probably didn’t much care for the Dark Lord by the end of his life, but I denied it. Now the truth was before me. He wanted the Dark Lord to ‘meet his match’... to die. My father died for the sake of the Dark Lord being killed. It wasn’t purely for the blasted house elf after all.
“What’s wrong?”
My hands continued to tremble as I memorized ever word and folded the note back to the size it was and put it inside the opened locket. After I shut it, my hand clasped over it and my head dropped before it, my black-and-blue hair shielding my face from Harry, letting my tears fall. A liar’s life has been nothing but a lie.
I dropped the locket back onto the table. It clattered loudly, rolling back towards the middle of the table awkwardly as I got up.
“Rosa, where’re you going?”
All that came out of my mouth was a choked sob. I ran through the maze of shelves, avoiding the books that hovered and flew from shelf to shelf to organize themselves. I kept running after the librarian yelled at me not to run in the library. There were still few people in the castle as most of the students were either in their common rooms or out in Hogsmeade. I ran down the stairs and into the dungeons, only slowing to give the password to open the Slytherin house door. After that I bolted through the common room, avoiding the stares, and up into the dormitories. I threw the bedroom door open and slammed it shut.
“Rosa?”
I couldn’t even escape to the bedroom?!
“What happened?” Aurelia got up from her bed slowly.
My entire body was trembling as I stood inches before the door, my tears still falling.
“Did Potter...?”
“No...”
I fell against the door and slid down until I was sitting on the floor. I hugged my legs closer to me and dropped my head into my knees. I tried to push Aurelia off, desperately trying to cut myself off from the outside world, but she refused to budge. I had no choice but to fall against her and let her hug me in my fetal position.
It was so ironic; I lied to everyone I could that was around me. I thought it would be a good way to protect them from the truth, to protect myself from them. I even liked thinking that my life was as great as I let them believe; I enjoyed lying to them. That’s so sick...
But now that I’m the one that has been lied to, I hated this feeling. I’ve never felt so thick, not even noticing the obvious truth... yet this is how I have made people feel for my benefit and, sometimes, enjoyment. I’m so perverse for thinking for a second this was fun, watching people fall apart and knowing I inflicted it.
Am I really a horrible, selfish, arrogant person that lacks self-awareness as Draco had said after all?
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Last edited by MalfoyzBeloved; 09-28-2010 at 10:27 PM.
Reason: deleting un-story-related comment
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