MARA WILLIAMS

I had a dream that I was back in my old house, in my old life, with my mother pouring over her favourite leather bound book. All in Russian, her native tongue, I had never been able to read it myself, though she'd told me many tales of the beauty that lay within the confines of that faded green cover.

She looked older than I remembered. Worn. Beaten down by the hardships of life. Her jet black hair held a single white streak that fell over her face as she read. Foreign lines marred her face, like rivers of worry carving their way from her downcast eyes.

"Mother?" I said softly, as if speaking too loudly would shatter this illusion and I would be sent crashing back to the land of the living. Though I knew it wasn't, I wished that this could all be real, that I could smell her lemongrass scent once more, feel the comforting embrace of her warm arms once more.

She tore her emerald eyes from her pages but said nothing. She looked frightened, her once kind eyes were wide and fearful.
I watched in horror as a deep blue bruise began to blossom around her right eye. A single scarlet tear crawled down her cheek, from a deep slash that suddenly appeared above her brow as if carved by an invisible blade.

"Mum!" I cried trying to reach her but strong arms held me from her, they wrapped around my waist so tightly I could hardly breathe. My lungs restricted and ached with the absence of oxygen. A strangled shout stifled in my throat as I felt fire coarse thick and bitter through my veins.

I was watching her die all over again.

"Stop!" I screamed till my throat was hoarse and I could taste copper on my tongue. I thrashed against the invisible restrains as her lip split in two, blood dripping down her chin and spilling onto the pages of her book.
"Make it stop!...Mum!"

A dark figure emerged from the blackness behind her and I instantly felt sick, bile rising in my throat. "Leave her alone!"

He rested his bloody hands on her shoulders, his familiar cold countenance glaring back at me with just as much hate as I gave him.
"Don't you touch her!" I spat, he inspired an unguarded rage within me like no other could. "You did this!"

My tears choked my words. "You're a monster."

• • •

I slammed my book down on the table a little harder than I'd indented too as it earned a hissing hush from the librarian, Madame Prince.
I winced and mouthed a small sorry, which did little to quell the impertinence in her mousy face as I sat down quietly, flicking through the pages of the wisened book trying to find the chapter about the properties of Gillyweed.

Professor Snape had already bollocked me once today for not even knowing what the strange thing was, and that was traumatic enough, I wasn't about to let it happen again anytime soon.
I could still feel the embarrassment burning in my cheeks at the thought of how he'd belittled me in front of the entire class, even going so far as to compare me to Neville Longbottom. Harsh.

Gillyweed is a magical plant that, when administered orally, allows a the individual to breathe underwater for a limited time. It is said to resemble a bundle of slimy, grey-green rat tails.
When eaten, the consumer will grow temporarily gills, allowing them to breathe underwater, and webbing between the fingers and toes, allowing them to swim underwater with ease...

I closed the book. It was useless. I couldn't concentrate, not when my skin felt as though it were crawling. I sent a heated glare straight to the source as he sat down across the desk from me.
"Do you mind?" I scowled.

"What?" He smirked in return, pulling out a thick brown book from his bag and setting it on the table.
"You act like I want to sit here."

"There's literally a free space right there." I said, nodding my head in the direction of an empty seat three desks over. "-So piss off."

"Yes..." He didn't even look at me as he began to flick through the pages of his book, his nose scrunched in disdain. "...But look who's sat there."

I did a double take, looking back across to see Hermione Granger scribbling fervently away at her parchment. Fair enough, I thought, I wouldn't want to sit next to her either.
-But still, every encounter we had ever had was either violent in words, or had violent intent which was even occasionally acted upon. "I thought you hated me?"

"Oh Mara." He said smoothly, turning his page in a way that made me irrationally angry, or maybe it was the way he said my name that triggered me or the way he refused to look at me, but either way I wanted to punch him right in his stupid, perfect face. "I really do, trust me... But Granger smells like old books and I hate her a lot more than I hate you."

"...Wow, thanks." I said sarcastically rolling my eyes. If I wanted to smack him before it was nothing compared to how I was feeling now. I wondered how he would react if I did strike him? Would he hit me back? I still had the fading purple bruise on my wrist as a reminder of last time I'd challenged him.

"It wasn't a compliment."

My fingers twitched, and I clenched my fists to resist the urge to slap him. Shaking my head as I stared down at my chapter on Gillyweed, I tried to make the nonsense words sink in. "Whatever Malfoy."

"Don't do that." He snapped, and when I looked up again he had finally torn his eyes from his book.
Grey eyes, cold as stone and sharp as silver pierced into me with a bitter malice.
They were pale as the moon yet far more haunting in their austerity, but for a brief moment I thought I saw something slip through the cracks of his empty mask.
A foreign emotion, a frustration. A sadness.

"Do what?"

The Slytherin boy's lips curled into a snarl, revealing a flash of white teeth as he spoke his daggered words meant to hurt. "Don't call me that."

There came a deathly silence for a while, the frigid atmosphere worked its way down my throat as I tried to comprehend what he'd just said.
I spoke slowly, as if I were talking to a child which I may as well have been, "Well then, what should I call you?... Bellend? Wanker? -Because those work just as well for me."

"Nothing. Don't call me anything."

"Great." I scoffed in disbelief of his own grandiose sense of self worth. Seriously, what was his problem?

The conversation was over and I tried to return to my book, blocking out all thought of the Slytherin boy, but a minute later I found myself slamming it shut again.

"Seriously!" I growled, and his pale eyes widened in an infuriatingly cocky way. He knew exactly what he was doing to me. "What do you want!"

He still hadn't looked away. He raised an eyebrow at me bemused, "Excuse me?"

"You clearly want something." I snarled, "Didn't daddy ever tell you it was rude to stare?"

He'd said something similar to me the first time we'd met and it filled me with immense satisfaction to use his own words against him.
Malfoy let out a short, sharp, and entirely humourless laugh. "You really think you're something special, don't you?"

"What are you on about!" I said in exasperation, dragging a palm down my face as if that would help me see where he was coming from. It didn't. He was still just as deluded as before.

His angular features contorted in disgust, and every word that fled his lips dripped with a pointed malice. "-What with Diggery practically drooling after you."

"He is not." I ground out from between clenched teeth. My fists balled beneath the desk so hard I felt a small trickle of warmth run down my wrists as my nails dug into my palms.

Some sick part of me liked the pain, it helped keep me grounded. -But then again that was the same sick part of me that secretly enjoyed Malfoy and I's exchanges, as much as I hated to admit it.

"Oh please," He drawled and I watched as a muscle in his jaw ticked, placing his arms on the desk and leaning closer on his forearms so that he could speak quietly. Scarcely a whisper.
To anyone watching from the outside, this moment would've seemed beyond intimate. Two bodies leaning close as not to miss a single word. Malfoy whispering sweet nothings, and the new girl hanging off his every word.

Only we knew the bitterness behind our words. Malfoy bit his lip for a moment, as if trying to hold back all the horrid things that came to mind when he looked at me. "I can tell by the way he looks at you... It's disgusting."

"Careful Draco," I scoffed, "You almost sound jealous."

He shrugged. "Maybe I am."

I didn't even try to hide the shock that registered in my face. Did he actually just admit that?... To me of all people. Not even five minutes ago he said that he hated me, and now he was what?... Jealous? Of Cedric Diggery?

"Don't look so surprised Mara." He leaned in closer still, and I could feel my heart pounding in my throat, blood rushing to my face as he looked around, tilting his head towards a group of fifth year Gryffindor boys that had been blatantly staring at us the entire time. "Every guy in here's dying to fuck you."

As I looked over, the group of boys instantly turned their heads back to their studies. "You're not funny."

"I'm serious." Cedric's words echoed in my mind. Deadly serious.

An acrid feeling curled in my chest. "A minute ago you said you hated me, and now what? You want to fuck me?"

His lips tugged upwards into a lopsided smirk that made my already fumbling heart skip a beat.
"Can't I do both?"

I had no words. Handfuls of letters fell from my fingertips and scattered irretrievably across the floor. What little I had left in my palms made no sense. Maybe I should just learn to live with the fact that nothing in this world seemed to make any sense anymore.

***
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-TFOA