*TW: vivid description of violence/domestic abuse
Please do not read this chapter if you're sensitive to such content.  

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Okay, ready? Let's go.

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     Monty slams the paper down, creating such an ear-splitting sound that for a moment I thought the table had cracked in two.

     "What the fuck were you thinking?"

     My picture is splashed across the front page. Gabriella Ainsley, screaming her head off in the office of the Daily Prophet, tears streaming down her cheeks. She looks positively mental. The headlines gloat back at me.

     "I- um— "

     "Do you know how hard I worked to get this job for you?" Monty roars, his bloodshot eyes bulging from their sockets. "Do you know how many people I've had to convince?"

     "Please, Monty, you'll wake everyone up," I hiss urgently, glancing around the green-tinged room. "I swear upon Merlin it's not what it looks like."

     "Isn't it? Tell me, then! Tell me why you broke into the office of Britain's most respectable newspaper, accused them of misprinting, then proceeded to chuck private property out a fucking window?"

     "I didn't! Rita was the one who threw them out, I was trying to get them back!"

     "Oh, come off it, Ains!"

     "And it wasn't a misprint," I add. "The entire article was completely embellished! Barely half of it is even true!"

     "But it is true! You told me yourself!"

     "Not the bit about Draco."

     He throws his hands up in the air. "Again with Draco! Draco, Draco, Draco. What is it about him that has made you completely lose your mind? Has he got you under a spell? Is that it? Has he hexed you like he did Madam Rosmerta?"

     "Monty— "

     "No, tell me. What has he done to you that compelled you to waltz into the Daily Prophet and assault somebody? Assault, Ains! You could be charged! What would people say- what would my parents say? Do you know how absolutely humiliating this is for me?"

     Storm. Tree. Unmoving.

     I shut my mouth, sink further into the couch.

     Why does everybody keep asking me questions they don't seem to want the answer to?

     Just earlier today, the team of the Hogwarts Digest had ambushed me, demanding that I tell them the truth. So you've been lying to us? asked Hermione when I did. I began to explain but she cut me off, saying she should never have trusted me. None of them should have. I looked to Susan for help, but she could only stare helplessly back at me. Ernie stared at his camera resting on his chest like a great drooping flower stalk and Sue Li was frowning so spitefully one would think I had just shown them the Dark Mark on my own arm.

     "I don't know what to say," I tell him.

     "No, you will explain to me, right here, right now. I want to know what the fuck you were thinking, and you will stay here until you can give me a bloody answer!"

     I expect Monty to keep going on by himself as he always does, but this time he stands over me with his arm crossed, acute blue eyes boring into mine as he waits.

     Sorry, Mum. I'm a girl, not a tree.

     I take a deep breath. "Okay," I say. "Here's my answer: I wanted to be a journalist, Rita provided me an opportunity, I took it. I did the job, I interviewed the Malfoys. Surprise, surprise, Draco happens to be a Malfoy, so I interviewed him as well. He told me something and said it was a secret. I kept the bloody secret. Rita stole the tapes from me and published lies that'll ruin the livelihood of three people. Three people who, as it happens, aren't as bad as everyone says. If this drives them over the edge, that's blood on my hands. My hands, Monty. Not yours or Rita's or McGonagall's or the Prophet's. Mine.

     "When I asked her to take it down, she refused and said the most disgusting things! Did you think I was just going to sit there and take it? Absolutely not! Which I suppose brings the both of us here, in the Slytherin common room, and you asking me what the fuck I was thinking. 

     "You know what I was thinking, Monty? I was thinking about how they kept banging on about kindness and goodness and having both light and dark within us before the war, and now everyone's seemed to have tossed it right out the window. I was only trying to do what was right and if you have a shred of moral integrity left, you would have done the same."

     "'Do what's right'?" Monty leans in menacingly. "In case you've forgotten, I wasn't the one who tried to murder the Headmaster three times! I wasn't the one who let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts with the very cabinet I told him about, that made me who I am now, and I don't have a fucking skull slapped onto my skin like some cheap, ugly, botched tattoo!"

     Exhaustion drops on me like an anvil. I suddenly feel so, so tired. Tired of doing things and having them go wrong and of all the questions and explaining and explaining and explaining and getting interrupted and spoken over and misunderstood. 

     If no one wants to listen to me, for what should I continue to speak?

     I crave my bed. Not the one in the Hufflepuff dorm, but my own bed at home; the one in my room that had walls through which I could hear my parents' laughter; the one with the old wool blanket with rainbow flowers embroidered on. I just want to curl up and sleep, to close my eyes and never wake up from this nightmare.

     That bed is probably rotting along with the rest of my house.

     I'm going to cry.

     "I'm going to sleep."

     Monty draws back and I get up. Everything that happens next happens so fast it is all a blur.

     A vice-like grip catches hold of my arm; I barely have time to stumble before Monty drags me from the sitting area and slams me against the wall, knocking the breath out of my body. My gasp of surprise is cut short - Monty has clamped his large bear hand around my throat, thumb and middle finger squeezing.

     He's saying something; asking me if this is how I repay him after everything he's done for me; insisting that I answer him - Why, Ains? I'm not the Death Eater, HE is! Why would you do this? -throttling me tighter; pleading that I answer him this instant. 

    I cannot breathe. I cannot think. One word swirls round and round in my mind: Monty. I want to scream for his help, scream at him to stop.

     Monty.

     My top and bottom lips strain to meet, my tongue lays at the bottom of my mouth, my lungs send up air to my throat, my throat wants to push it out. But I cannot speak at all; not even an enfeebled gurgling.

     I'm going to die.

     I cannot breathe and I'm going to die.

     I claw futilely at his hand, but my limbs flail like those of a newborn baby. Tighter and tighter, Monty is closing his fist around my throat, sealing up my airways. Pressure shoots to my head, filling my brain like a balloon. Every nerve in my body is screaming on behalf of my larynx. Spots appear in my vision, and then the murky glass windows disappear and the fireplace disappears, and the couch and the table and the newspaper on the table and Monty's eyes disappear and everything becomes a sheet of white.

     They say, store your weapon somewhere safe where you can draw it easily. 

     I feel my wand in my back pocket; its end is being driven through my jumper and into my spine, but my arms do the only thing they know: they need to help me breathe: grasping- beating- tearing- at Monty's greedy talons. He takes and takes and takes my air, my life, turning me into dandelion hair; limp as reeds knocking against a boulder. 

     They say, if your attacker is a male, aim low and kick. 

     Monty's torso is just inches from mine. I could draw back my knee, let it loose like a bow and the arrow would find its target. But I cannot breathe. I cannot see. I cannot think. 

     Or, they say, scream for help.

     Scream.

     And I hear the scream in my belly. I feel it. It pounds on the walls of my lungs and reverberates in the lining of my stomach and up my throat where it is squeezed into nothingness by Monty's large hands and no one will hear me and I will die and Monty will cover it up and get away scot-free because his parents know people in the Ministry and the Wizengamot and the Daily Prophet and I will be buried as the mad girl who rampaged their office and destroyed their property and assaulted a journalist.

     But I'm not thinking of any of these things.

     I'm thinking that I'm going to die.

     Through my slipping consciousness, one last image blooms like a marigold in Spring: Draco, with his starlight hair and eyes of smoke and fire. 

     He laughs and the sound is glass and wind-kissed flowers and the slow-dancing cosmos. 

     He's laughing at something I'd said - something stupid like Hufflepuffs and Slytherins make a good pairing, or how a dreamer needs a realist and a realist needs a dreamer.

     He laughs and a river of golden light explodes around us, picking me up in its waves; drowning. I'm sinking. Down, down, down. Its ambrosiac waters fill my lungs and spread across every single vein in my body, suspending me in the centre of its brilliance; holding me. Warm. Safe.

     I stop struggling.

     Draco is still looking at me, an entire August sky trapped behind his gaze and the joy of summer blazing golden hot in his smile. "And you will never love anyone but him?" he asks me.

     I cannot speak, but I know my answer.

     Yes, I will.

     He leans in, caressing my cheek. "Who?"

     My soul splinters and I'm crying. He touches the tips of his fingers under my jaw and swipes a thumb over my cheekbone. I close my eyes to his velvet touch. "Gabriella Ainsley," he says, "The Swan. Who will you love?"

     Y—

     The surface of the floor jolts me back into consciousness. My nose and chin slam against the stone and my hair snags between the wall and my shoulder blades.

     Oxygen rushes back into my body cold and sweet. I gasp like I've never known what it is like to breathe. The air crackles in my wet, damaged throat as I cough and hack and heave.

     "Ains? Ains!"

     I'm swung back upright as if I weigh no heavier than a piece of parchment. Two Montys dance in front of me. No, three. He grips my cheeks, his calloused palms scraping the place where Draco had smoothed.

     "Ains, you're alright." Whether he's asking or telling me, I do not know, but I'm unable to respond.

     "I'm so sorry, Ains," Monty whispers in distress. He hugs me and like magic, all the doubles merge back into one. Over his shoulder, the Black Lake glimmers eerily through the windows and the fire crackles and the couch and table are still there and the pages of the Daily Prophet flutter gently.

     "I'm so sorry Ains, it's— "

     It's that fucking cabinet, I narrate with him in my mind. It's changed me. I just can't help it. I'm so sorry, Ains. I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm —

     "— sorry."

     He holds me away, checks me again. "I'm so sorry," he keeps repeating. "I could have killed you. I almost killed you."

     I sit in stunned silence and let him hold and hug me and cry a little bit before he finally calms down and helps me stand up.

     The bricked door opens for us. With my arm around his shoulder and the other on the wall to steady myself, we fumble along the gloomy passageway, now shrouded in a dingy black except for the dancing flames of light from the torches.

      Once we reach the stairs, I take my arm off his neck. "I can- myself-" I croak, gesturing. "Are you sure?" he asks and I nod. He studies me for a moment before letting go. I take one step up.

     "Ains."

     I pause.

     "You... you won't tell anyone, will you? 'Cause I honestly hadn't meant to hurt you. It was that cabinet, it was—"

     I nod. Anything, anything to get out of this dungeon. I clamber up the stairs. My arms and legs tingle. A great, spiked metal clamp had shut its jaws around my brain, digging its teeth deeper with every little jostle I made.

     But the worst pain of all resides in my throat. Every time I swallow, the insides burn like a skewer had been wedged in there and the outsides ache like I've taken a Bludger to the neck. I eventually make it back out to the foyer of the Entrance Hall, trembling like a wintered leaf.

      The November wind is unforgiving as it flushes through the castle, threatening the flaming torches and instilling itself into the walls, blowing my hair into my face. I reach out to brush it back and it is then I realise my cheeks and eyes are completely dry. I had not cried at all.

      Mum, are you proud of me?