MARA WILLIAMS

"I heard about Peaves this morning." Harry said, spooning a generous helping of potatoes onto his already brimming plate. "Just ignore him, we all do."

"He's an idiot." Ron said with a mouthful of roast dinner, his words garbled by the food and a trail of gravy dripping down his chin. "One time he set fire to the curtains in the Ravenclaw common room, Flitwick nearly killed him..."

"—He's a ghost." Hermione interjected matter of factly, shooting a disgusted look at Ron's gravy trail. "He's already dead you can't kill a ghost again."

Ron thought about it for a long moment, swallowing his food and wiping his chin with the back of his sleeve, earning another glare from Hermione before saying, "Yeah but I'd like to give it a good go, he's such a pain in the ass."
I shook my head dejectedly, "Me too."

Something hit the back of my head and bounced off. Instinctively I went to turn around but Parvati quickly grabbed my arm. "Don't."

  "It's them." Hermione hissed, her voice dripping with a foreign malice and her face just as sour. "Don't turn around, they just want your attention."

A second object hit my right shoulder. "What are they throwing?" I asked.

"Broccoli."

  It was too late, I couldn't help myself. I could hear their muffled laughs and the thought of them all sat there, laughing at me, was enough to boil my blood.
I turned in my seat to face them right as a third piece collided with the centre my forehead, sending the entire group into uncontrollable hysterics.
  —Even Blaise, who I thought was better than the rest of them struggled to stifle a snigger, burying his face in his robe and refusing to look at me. But the concealment of his black robe failed to hide his shoulders that shook with barely controlled laughter.

"I always knew you were a screamer." Malfoy drawled, his trademark smirk making my heart sink.
A second, rotund boy with a piggy face and blotchy red cheeks pretended to scream, leaning against his friend and pressing the back of his hand to his forehead as he mocked fainting. "Stop! Stop!"

I felt heat rise in my cheeks. Crimson blush letting them know just how much their words affected me.
He knew exactly which buttons to press to get me to react. Malfoy's piercing eyes were unrelenting as he bore holes into my skin, and yet I couldn't look away, glaring back at him with just as much fervour as he gave me.
As if he knew exactly was he was doing to me he ran his tongue along his porcelain teeth, like a predator eyeing up it's prey. "Come on Mara, don't be shy... Scream for me."

"That's quite enough." Hermione snapped, spinning to glare at the Slytherins and snapping me out of my daze. "Leave her alone."

  Why was she of all people sticking up for me? Shouldn't she hate me just as I hated her?
  —Or did he never tell her about his girlfriend back home before came and took her as his own. A small pang struck in my chest.

"Ooo..." The table of boys whistled and a brutish boy with a thick nose and fat forehead spoke up from besides Blaise. "Pipe down, Mudblood."

  "They're pathetic." Hermione sneered as we turned our backs on them. My skin still burned with the heat of his eyes, stop looking at me.

  Harry shrugged, pushing his round glasses up his nose with his index finger. "Just ignore them like you would Peaves, as you said, they just want attention. We've known that since the start."

The start. Before me. Sometimes I forgot that Harry, Ron, Hermione and Parvati all had a life here at Hogwarts before me, even Draco. It was strange to think, that before I'd came they had all been friends for many years.
I tried not to think about it too much, intrusive thoughts like that tended to settle a little too deeply in your unconscious and plant tiny seeds of doubt that would one day blossom into thick rooted insecurities if left unchecked. Better to kill them off at the shoot, before they had a change to live.

  "Easier said than done." Hermione said between gritted teeth. "As if they didn't have it out for us enough already without Mara-..." She caught herself before she finished her sentence it but the damage was already done, the foundations of an implication already laid and consolidated within the lines of guilt that marred her face and we all knew it.

  —There it was, I thought, there's the nastiness I expected from a girl like her.

  "So it's my fault then is it?" I couldn't hide the hurt in my voice. Both Ron and Harry refused to meet my eye, instead staring down at their plates and toying with their food, their appetites suddenly lost and only confirming my worst fears.
The new girl, the burden.

  "No." Hermione said quickly, "That's not what I meant I—"

  "I didn't ask for this you know," I said, motioning to our surroundings. "I didn't ask for any of this."

Still some part of me no matter how small longed to be the other side of the ocean, back at Dermstrang. At least there was familiar, at least there danger came from head on, if someone had an issue it was sorted with fists and violent intent. Here the bad blood only stewed beneath the surface, occasionally rearing its ugly head in snide comments.
No one ever said what they really meant here, afraid of breaking the surface calm.

  "I never said that!" Hermione exclaimed, raising her lip in disgust, "Don't make me out to be the bad guy when you're the one sneaking around in the middle of the night with Draco Malfoy!"

  A deathly silence fell over the table, a suffocating weight that pushed its cruel fingers down my throat, forcing bitter words from me like bile with a splutter. "What did you just say?"
  It took a minute to register what the mousy haired girl had said, but when it did I found myself standing abruptly and storming from the hall.
  Good thing too because if I'd have stayed any longer my fingers would've been her new necklace.

  Who did she think she was? Even if she did hate me how dare she try and turn the others against me. She knew just how much they all hated Draco, and for good reason. Was this her way of trying to edge me out of the group?

  —The new girl, the freak, the imposter.
  The snake amongst the lions, and we all damn well knew it.

  You'll regret it. That was what the Sorting Hat had said to me wasn't it? Well that old leather lump was right. Never for a second I had wished to be in Slytherin but I did regret not begging for a different house. I should've been a Ravenclaw, the sorting had said itself that I was a prime candidate for Flitwick's house.

  The most infuriating part was that it wasn't like that. She made it sound as though I had deliberately met up with Draco in the dead of night, as if I wanted to see him, but that wasn't the case at all.

  I practically threw myself into the common room after gritting out the password to the portrait of The Fat Lady who swung open with hardly a moments hesitation after seeing the storm clouds practically hanging over me.

  This was all I had. Beyond these castle walls I had nothing and no one left. Yet what little I did possess was being taken from me. She was trying to take it from me.
  First she'd taken my childhood sweetheart and yet somehow that still wasn't enough for her, now she wanted my friends to hate me too. She just kept taking and taking and taking and she wouldn't stop until I had nothing left. Until I was alone.

  —Maybe I was crazy... Maybe all this was just me being paranoid... But what if it wasn't?

   I stewed in my room all evening, drawing the curtains across my bed so that even when the others eventually came to rest I didn't have to see them.
  That night I dreamed of thousands of emerald snakes that coiled round my legs and arms like ropes until I was paralysed by their thick bodies.
I screamed and thrashed like a wild thing yet every moment only caused them to constrict further, forcing the air from my lungs and the salt from my eyes.
  I couldn't breathe. I tried to cry out for someone, anyone, to help me but the second my lips parted one of the vile creatures slid down my throat, scorching my insides with a trail of wicked intent as it whispered it's cruel secrets to my heart.

I sat up quickly in bed as I tore from my nightmare, my hands still around my throat as if to pull away an invisible body.

After that I hadn't slept much, tossing and turning all night. In the end giving up and just staring at the canopy above me bed until a thin glimmer of gold peaked through the scarlet curtains, and with it came another morning, the weekend, and a date.

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