Monty is pretending nothing has happened. Or maybe he isn't pretending and has really forgotten, for we have not exchanged a single word about the incident. It is nothing but a blip in his perfect life. 

     Our perfect life.

     Sometimes I forget about it too. Caught up in the daze of homework, classes, and trying not to look at Hannah and Susan laughing at their end of the table. There are even times I have accidentally taken a shower with it on and then wonder why there's such a sagging weight against my collarbone and reach a hand up only to realise the waterlogged material there.

     Part of the reason is that I have avoided looking at myself in the mirror. I can't remember the last time I've leaned over the counter to line my eyes or dab lipstick on my cheeks. When I brush my teeth, I take to staring at the silver knobs of the sink, choosing to let my mind scroll through the components of a Wolfsbane Potion lest it wanders off into more undesirable territories.

     And sometimes I think of Draco.

     The Incident On The Porch — that is what I've committed to calling it — still floods me with embarrassment every time I think about it. Not that he'd seen the bruise — I don't think he cares — but that he'd caught me in yet another vulnerable moment after The Incident In The Library.

     I know why he does it. The truth is so painfully obvious from Day One that I don't have to ask him: He wants to feel powerful. After years of being beaten down and brainwashed into thinking he isn't good enough, he hungers for the tiniest morsel of amour propre, a sense of self-worth. A troubled boy who has never gotten a single drop of validation from his parents and projects its emotional repercussions onto others he deems inferior. Such is the malicious cycle of the Malfoys. A curse more sinister than those that wither earthly bodies.

     And I refuse to be a victim of it; to indulge, entertain, break down. I'm certain Draco must've derived a sick, twisted joy from seeing me cry in the library. Never again.

     And then I consider the fact he might just be looking for someone to share his hurt with. It must be terribly lonely being him. He never asked to be born into the Malfoy name, or to suffer so greatly behind their façade of gilded ballrooms and marble busts. Either way, becoming his friend is an option too far-fetched, even if I want to.

     Fortunately, it seems he has no need for that. He has begun to return into favour with the Slytherins, and the entire school in general. More and more people have started speaking to him. They nod hello to him before class and the Quidditch teams laud him as one of the best Seekers in a long time — alongside Harry, of course — while I take dignity's parting gift of a permanent necklace of amethyst around my neck.

     At least he has begun to smile more. I see him joking with Monty, the whole lot bantering at the dinner table over their roast chicken and goblets of pumpkin juice. He actually picks up his fork and knife, puts food into his mouth — something I don't think I've actually seen him do in the past months.

     I spend my free time in the empty silence of the library. In the odd hours, it is often just Madam Pince and me, which suits the both of us just fine. She's no bother, and neither am I. I wonder what her story is. I might have to strike up a conversation with her some time, though she might just hit her lips with her pointer and snap and me to hush.

     But it would be a lie to say my daily trips to the library are simply in the interest of advancing my academic career. No matter what intriguing story or textbook I have splayed out before me, I find my eyes constantly lifting from the pages to scan the aisles, hoping to catch a movement of quiet elegance or flash of starfire hair.

     Funnily enough, it is the Slytherins who have not started treating me differently. I find myself walking to classes with Blaise or exchanging clever quips with Vaisey whenever he's with Monty, and Pansy is surprisingly chatty once she has warmed up to me. I've spent so much more time with them I might even dare to call them close acquaintances.

     I'm studying with Monty in the Slytherin common room one stormy Thursday afternoon when Blaise, Pansy, Vaisey, and Draco enter. Seeing us, Blaise closes his fingers around his eyes like a pair of binoculars. "And spotted is a Montague out of his natural habitat," he says loudly in a mock narrator voice. "He appears to be performing a mating ritual with a female by pretending to study when all he really wants to do is snog her! Will she take to him? Let's watch."

     Monty flips him the finger while chortling along in amusement. "Got to have a brain to match these, right?" He puts down his quill and flexes both arms. Everyone laughs except Draco, who has fixated on something off to the side.

     "Don't happen to have finished with the Transfig essay, have you?" says Monty. "We've only gotten 'bout two paragraphs down. What are the differences and resulting societal impacts between Animagi and werewolves?"

     "Old 'Gonnie's just assigned it to us, actually!" Pansy exclaims excitedly. "Are you working on that right now? We can do it together!"

     Blaise is only too eager to potentially copy off someone else and readily agrees. Monty and I shift as he drags more chairs to the table. Heat creeps into my face as Draco drops into the chair to Pansy's right. She reaches over the table to clasp my hand. "This bracelet is so pretty! Where'd you get it?" she says, pinching the black and yellow cord that encircled my wrist.

     "Oh, Hannah made it for me in Third Year."

     "Shame," she pouts. "Bet I could make a better one. It'd be green and silver, though, since you're practically a Slytherin now!"

      I laugh nervously and we go back to work. Pansy is distracted the entire time, plucking at the plume of her quill, then at Vaisey's to her left, then picking the label off her ink pot with her nails.

     At some point, I dare a look at Draco. He's hunched over his essay in great concentration, lips pressed together in a thin grim line. I note the way his quill sits in his slender grip, the nib pointing through his pointer and middle finger instead of pinched between the first three. A lick of blond kisses his blinking eyelashes but he makes no effort to smooth it back.

     How can chaos be so deafeningly still and violently beautiful at the same time?

     Monty nudges my elbow and slides a shred of parchment to me.

     I turn it over and begin scribbling something back when Pansy's voice interrupts me. "I love your ribbon, by the way! Where'd you get it?"

     For a moment I'm confused. "What ribbon?"

     "The one on your neck!" she points. "You've been wearing it like that a lot recently. Très chic!"

     The whole table stops what they're doing to look at the ribbon in question. Monty tenses up beside me.

     "Oh, I got it from Dervish and Banges. Lucky find, I guess," I chuckle nervously.

     "It's adorable! Is it silk?" asks Pansy.

     "I believe so."

     "It could be fake. You never know with these shops," she says, shaking her head. "My mum says you can tell if the silk is real or not by picking out a thread at the end and burning it. You'll know it's real if it burns to soot. Let's try it!" She stretches out her hand expectantly, the other going to pull her wand from her pocket.

     "Oh, it doesn't matter."

     "No, don't worry! I won't ruin it. Just a little flame at the end to see if it burns."

     "I'd rather not. Paid quite a lot for it!" I lie, trying to sound lighthearted as my chest grows tight with an inexplicable terror, as if someone had put a rubber band around my lungs. Why isn't Monty saying something to stop her?

     "Pleeease!" Pansy whines childishly, bouncing up and down in her seat. "It'll be so interesting!"

     "No, it's fine, Pansy, really."

     "Oh, come on! Don't be such a spoilsport! It's just one thread. I promise I won't ruin it. If I do, I'll buy you a whole new roll of the real deal."

     A wild panic washes over me. I'd have to take off the ribbon. They'd see the bruise. They'd ask questions. I'd have to lie. Lie and lie and lie because I can't give Monty away because he doesn't deserve to have his entire life ruined because he didn't ask to have his mind messed up by that  wretched cabinet all those years ago.

     Because I love him.

     What would I say then? That I had fallen? Yes, that could work. I'd fallen and hit my neck on the edge of the table. This very table, in fact! I haven't gone to Pomfrey because I haven't found the time, what with all this homework. Yes. That's what I'd say.

     Why won't Monty just bloody say something?

     "She said no."

     Draco is still writing, his gaze switching from the parchment to the textbook placed between him and Blaise and seemingly oblivious to the surprised looks from everyone at the table, but there's no doubt it is he who had spoken.

     Pansy pouts fully this time. "Why not?"

     Draco looks up then. "Because she said no, or have you suddenly lost your ability to understand English?" he growls. "Should we put it in simpler terms for you? I believe what Ainsley's trying to tell you is to 'fuck right off'."

     "Alright, calm down, it's not like I'm asking her to take off all her clothes!" Pansy gestures to me crudely in heated indignation.

     "Ch'yeah you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" Vaisey sniggers.

     "Yeah and you'd be lucky if any girl does that for you!" she shoots back

     "Alright, everyone shut up," says Blaise. "This essay isn't going to write itself."

     Vaisey jerks his eyebrows at Pansy, she sticks out her tongue at him, and we all go back to work. I steal another glance at Draco, hoping to catch his eye so I could mouth a 'thank you', he is absorbed in his essay. Very busy.

     I don't return Monty's note.

༻⚜༺

     I should not have stopped Pansy.

     I should've let Ainsley take that ribbon off so the whole world will know what Montague has done to her. He must have enjoyed seeing her being tormented, for he had done absolutely nothing to help her except to just shut up and sit there like the big oafish coward he is.

     I should not have stopped Pansy.

     But something had happened to Ainsley at the study table. There was a fear in her eyes I have never seen before. Not when I questioned her about Cedric, or when I screamed my head off at her in the Entrance Hall. Not even during the war.

     I remember her. The memory came to me last night, unlocked by hours and hours of her plaguing my thoughts. It was right after I escaped the Room of Requirement. I had been so terrified, so shaken, that I had gotten up and ran away from Harry and Ron and Hermione. I collided with somebody. I stumbled, fell, got up, and kept running. In my blind desperation to get away, my mind had not registered who it was.

     Now I realise it did. It was Hannah Abbott. She had been holding another girl's hand. Their bodies were caked in grime and dust, as if they'd just come out of a coal mine. When I fell, the other girl had stopped, tried to help me up. She said something to me, a garbled echo that nestled in the far and unreachable crevices of my psyche.

     I remember now. Like pulling open the curtains in the morning, the words hit me in the face like a hot, searing slap. The girl had said: "Draco, are you alright?"

     Four words. Four simple words, and yet, they were a combination of alphabets and sounds I have never had said to me in the entire eighteen years of my life. Not until that day.

     I remember her voice. It sounded like the end of a rushing waterfall: loud and throaty and full-bodied. It was hard to tell her eyes and hair apart from the dirt that coated her face and body, and she might have been distressed, panicked; lost, even. But she was not scared.

     Not like she had been at the table. Her body froze over like she was struck by the Petrificus spell; her shoulders stopped the imperceptible up-and-down movements that indicated she was breathing. It was a deep, innate fear that surged from the pits of her belly to the back of her mouth, new and writhing within her being.

     After I shut Pansy down, we had returned to our homework. After a minute of silence, she had politely excused herself to the lavatory. Nobody noticed, but when she came back, her breaths were short and her hands were trembling.

     I think she had a panic attack. Mother got like that sometimes, especially on those days when the media had been banging our gates down, although she does a worse job at hiding it than the Hufflepuff witch with the waterfall voice and silk leash around her neck.

     And just as with Mother, nobody had noticed.

     I noticed.

     Ainsley, are you alright?