MARA WILLIAMS

My fingers still shook as I ran to my room, tearing my clothes from the wardrobes and ripping my possessions from every draw. I hurriedly shoved everything I could into my bag, but Draco had put away my main trunks somewhere else and I didn't have time to search for them now.
-I needed to get out of here, and fast.

My eyes stung with tears that blurred my vision but I held them back, I would remain strong, I was no longer the frightened little girl I once was and I had already cried a river of tears for my father after he'd left, he didn't deserve a single more.

I moved into the bathroom, grabbing every perfume, deodorant and lipgloss in sight and when I returned to the bedroom, Draco stood by the door, looking just as dishevelled as I felt, chest heaving wildly.

Blood trailed from his split lip and his eyes were wide and fearful in a way I'd never seen before as he breathed, "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like?" I spat, not looking up at him as I forced the jumper Hermione had given me into the bag. "-I'm leaving."

"No you're not." He positioned himself in the doorway, firmly blocking my only exit as I went to leave. "You can't!" His eyes searched mine in desperation, agony creeping in to cloud the pale irises. "-I won't let you!"

"Watch me." I said darkly, shoving my wand into my back pocket and hoisting the weighty bag onto my shoulder.

"You have nowhere else to go!" He hissed, turning cold but I was not about to back down, he didn't frighten me anymore now that I knew it was all just an act. Anger burned like a bitter fire within my chest, coursing thick through my veins to scorch my lungs with wicked breath.

I pushed my face close to his, and in his eyes I could see every secret he never dared to speak, I could see right through to his greatest fears; the fear of being alone, abandonment, the fear of love.
I didn't need to shout as I spoke, I could've whispered and it would've still been enough to destroy him, completely and utterly. And in this moment, I only wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to feel pain, just as I had. "...Anywhere's better than spending another second here with you."

-And there it was. The agony I had hoped for, that aching breaking feeling as his heart shattered before my feet. He pleaded with his eyes, crying out without words to say what no one could but someone must, as what had once been our feelings were carried away in the wind like foreign dust.

"Mara please," Draco begged, and I could've sworn I'd seen a tear crawl down his pale cheek, glistening like a star in the dim light. "I'm not like them..."

"-Not like them? Draco you're fucking one of them!" I shoved him back hard against the doorframe, and for once he didn't fight back, he didn't do anything, he just looked broken. A shaking shell of the boy he once was. "I don't even know who you are any more... You lied to me, you're not who I thought you were..."

His face contorted with every stab of every syllable I spoke, "I'm exactly who you think I am, please just listen to me!"

I grabbed his forearm, tearing the bandage from his wrist and holding it up to the light. I knew what I expected to see, but it didn't make it hurt any less.
My heart tore itself in two over and over again with every crestfallen glance. "-Are you? Because this is not the boy I knew!" Tears blurred my vision and I could've sworn I'd felt something within me break at the sight of him looking so tormented by his own demons. "...Who have you been all this time that I've been living a lie?"

"I'm nothing like any of them!" He sneered, tearing his wrist from my grasp taking a menacing step to tower over me, but his hurt seeped through the cracks of his facade, resonating in the hollows of his words. It was not what he said, it was more what he didn't.
I could see his grief, even almost feel it, devastating enough to bring heaven to its knees. "-You know me better than anyone else, you of all people should know that!"

He was begging. He was pleading, practically on his knees and crying out for me to understand that this wasn't him.
-That he was more than just a product of his father, for beneath this cloak of armour there was a goodness about him. A sanctity. A solace in this world of darkness.

But it was too late. The damage was already done.
-The lines between us already so irreversibly blurred, so much so that even he struggled to tell the lies from the truth anymore. There was no saving us now.

"You're so full of shit..." My throat constricted and my voice came out a hoarse shadow of what I hoped it to be. "You can't keep playing house forever draco, someday you've got to grow up!"

And with that I shoved past him, down the hall to the locked room where I knew my trunk would be, and he followed after in silence, as the true weight of my words settled upon his shoulders along with the realisation that would never be the same again.

Before the door that for so many nights I'd dreamed about, I turned to the boy with a broken glare, "Give me the key."
But he only shook his head, vying for one last chance at redemption. "-Not until you hear me out..."

Enough was enough. Pulling my wand from my back pocket I pointed it at the lock. "Alohamora."

"Mara no-!" But it was already too late, the door had already flown open, I had already seen what lay hidden inside.

"Percy?" At once I ran inside and pulled him from his cage where he lay sleeping, he hardly even stirred as I held him close to my chest. "...Oh my god Percy!"

There was a moment where the relief clouded the rage, a softness to dull the harsh edges, but it didn't last long, soon the smoke faded and the red returned, malicious and violent as ever as I slipped Percy back into his cage and turned on Malfoy with a fire raging in my chest.
In that moment, I could've killed him, and part of me wanted to, the sick and twisted parts of me that I buried deep beneath the surface.

"You've had him this entire fucking time!" I shoved him again with all my might, but this time the only emotion to register on his face was confusion as I cried. "-How could you? I thought he was dead!"

"-That's Percy?" The words slipped through his lips and I couldn't help but feel like they weren't meant for me. He shook his head and regained some semblance of composure. "I thought you were fucking a Weasley!"

He had done this to us. We were good, we were better than good, and he had been the one to ruin us.
I had known from the very moment I'd first laid eyes upon Draco Malfoy that only anarchy would come from him, but I could never have predicted the betrayal and the lies and the agony of loving him.

My fist flew out and I struck him square across the face. We both knew damn well he could've stopped me if he had wanted to, but he didn't, he knew just as well as I did that he deserved this and worse.
"So that's all you care about then? That's what this is really all about? -Who I sleep with?" My hands tore at my hair in frustration as I paced back and forth. "Draco, why did you bring me here?"

"...You had nowhere else to go." He said quietly, unable to even look at me.

"No." I snarled through gritted teeth. "Why did you bring me here?"

"-Because..." He tried to take a step closer but I blanched back, "Get the fuck away from me!"

"Mara..." He looked so hurt, and it killed me inside, but I could not forget what I could not forgive. "...I know it's not what you want to hear right now but believe it or not I care about you!"

He was a liar.

I shook my head with a sob as my body failed me, and I felt the warmth of a tear as it crawled down my cheek. My legs felt weak, like at any moment they'd buckle and I'd fall to the earth in heap of tears and angst and grief. "...That's not good enough."

Why was I never good enough? I couldn't help but wonder if maybe it was me all along. Maybe I just wasn't worthy of loving.

I grabbed my trunk, I grabbed Percy's cage. I took everything and I pushed past him, only this time he didn't try to stop me, he didn't even follow. He'd given up on the very idea of love. I wasn't worth fighting for.

I was so desperate to be proven wrong that when he called out after me I hesitated, pleading for him to say the one thing that could bring me back to him.

All I ever wanted was to be loved...

"-Mara..."
But he couldn't bring himself to say it. Three words, eight letters, that was all it took to render him speechless. It was what he feared most of all, above the loneliness, above the fear of abandonment, he feared love. He feared the weakness of making himself vulnerable to another, exposing every aching inch of his marred heart. He would never let me close enough to say the words I needed him to.

My voice broke as the shards of my fractured heart lay at his feet, and yet he did nothing to salvage them. To salvage us.
"...You're a fucking coward."
-That was the last thing I said to him before I left the manor for good, leaving no piece of me behind, except the all consuming emptiness in his chest.

***
QOTD-Is there anything at all about the plot that you're confused about so far/ do you guys have any questions? If so comment them down below and I'll try my best to answer them!
-TFOA