MARA WILLIAMS

Draco Malfoy was a dick.

I lay awake in bed that night, sexually frustrated beyond belief and filled with hate towards the boy with blonde hair. How dare he? Who the hell did he think he was to lead me on like that? Take me right to the edge and then drop me like a ton of bricks before I could even finish?

He was every bit as cruel as they said he was and worse. He pretended to care about me, he did things to me no one had ever done before, and for what? All because of some jealous grudge against some Weasley boy I didn't even know?
-Well I was done being a pawn in his loosing game, and it was about time I stopped letting him shove me around too, not just metaphorically.

I would make him pay.

That night I dreamed of a life I once lived, what seemed like many years ago, in a foreign land, far, far away from here.
My mother had died not long before, her loss still wreaked havoc on my broken soul.
Everyday I cried, everyday I screamed, begging for her to come back. If a God did exist he was just as merciless as I feared, he didn't listen. He didn't care.

I cried out into the empty abyss beyond the sky but my grief fell deaf ears. Only the angels wept for me, raindrops falling on my face in the cold night air.

My lungs burned and my skin seared despite the cold, a wicked rage manifesting inside of me, a hatred for my own flesh and blood. He had done this.

I dared not even call him my father anymore, not after what he had done. He was nothing to me now.

He was a selfish man and a cowardly one at that, everything he ever did was purely to save his own skin, even at the expense of his family. He hadn't always been that way though, if I closed my eyes and thought hard enough I had memories of what was once a good man, not yet tainted by the clutches of the dark side.

But then he started to disappear, for nights on end, and people around us began to go missing. A coincidence we called it, but only at first. After a while it became undeniable, people from the ministry, anyone with afflictions that were good and pure, all vanishing as if plucked from the night by the devil himself.
-All people that had crossed the dark one who could not be named. An evil we feared above all else.

I stared up at the stars, bright and proud, like a thousand godly eyes staring back at me. The cowardly moon quivered behind the wisps of inky black clouds, even he knew to fear a woman scorned.

I couldn't tear my eyes away, even when a thick voice appeared behind me. "Mara? What are you doing out here, it's raining?"

I couldn't even look at him as I quickly wiped my tears from my eyes with the back of my sleeve, hoping that under the thick cloak of nightfall he wouldn't notice my puffy eyes. "I... I just needed some fresh air."

"Well come back inside, it's late and my parents are beginning to worry." A thick hand snaked around my wrist, "Come Solnyshko."

-Solnyshko. His name for me, meaning little sun, but I much preferred the stars.

The sun was a beautiful coward, desperate for scourge and damned to ruin us all for it's vanity.
He sought his own reflection in every river, lake and ocean, blinding us with his light just so we would all know just how proud he stood above us, that he had given us life in a moment, and he could just as easily take it away.

But the stars were a constant. Always there, even when they couldn't be seen past the sun's imperious glare. They only appeared when all was quite and dark, they had no one to impress, only those to watch over.

I found comfort in the stars embrace. My mother had once told my a tale of a girl who sought to touch the stars, she said when we are born we are sent from them, and when we die we return. All life had a balance, all life was only borrowed, and one day it had to be given back.
She said that the moment the girl laid her hand upon the heavenly body the heavens opened up and the Lord spoke to her. She never finished telling me that story... My father had came in, furious, I could still hear his yells and my mother's screams. He did not believe in a God, and why should he? He was a devilish man, instinctively blasphemous in his ways.

After my mother's death and my fathers disappearance I had nowhere and no one to go to. My house had been burned to the ground by the Dark Ones, the only place left was to live his house.

At first I came to enjoy this sense of surrogate family, but as the tide time went on on it gradually began to wear away at their facades, and they became cruel and unkind.

His mother would never accept me as her own, she wanted better for her prized son than some halfwit with blood as pure as puddle water... At least that's what she'd told me many times.
-And as for his father, he was just as hard headed as his son. There was no conflict that couldn't be resolved with a closed fist, in that way he reminded me of my own.

It was a house, but it never felt like home.

"Just a few more minutes, please." I whispered breathlessly, my eyes caught on one star that stood proud against the rest. My mother's star, that's what I called it. Every night I scoured the sky in search of the illusive orb.

"Fine." He said begrudgingly, wrapping his thick arms around me from behind, holding me flush to him and his warmth. "You must be freezing."

The embrace was meant as a comforting one, to bring heat and protection. I didn't dare tell him to leave me, he was not half as kind in anger, but his arms around me only served as a reminder, that I was completely and utterly trapped in this life.

No way out. No solace, no peace for the wicked.

I'd never thought I was a bad child, despite what my father told me, but I must've been to deserve this life I'd been given.

A single tear crawled down my cheek, mingling with the rain as he whispered in my ear. "I love you, Solnyshko."

Lies. For I knew exactly what he did last summer, I'd found the copy of the English newspaper The Daily Prophet in his luggage when he'd returned. I'd read those pages, did he ever even love me?

On the front page was a moving picture of him, with another girl wrapped in his arms, they span and smiled as the ball around them raged. The bold headline flared back at me with just as much hate as I gave it.

QUIDDITCH STAR, VICTOR KRUM, WINS HEARTS AT HOGWARTS.
-Turn to page 4 to read more on Viktor Krum and the star crossed lovers from across the globe.

• • •

The rising of the sun felt bitter sweet to me as I stared out the window at the rising sun that sat nestled amongst a throne of bronze baked clouds.

I'd put Hermione's salve on my wounds the previous night and by the morning they'd almost entirely healed, on my face all that remained were three pale pink lines that would continue to fade with time. Though on my hand the words I will not talk back still stood proud, permanently etched into my skin by magic.

The entire way to potions I dragged my heels, hoping that maybe if I went slow enough and was late enough Snape wouldn't let me in the class. Alas I still arrived at the same time as everyone else as we filed in to take our seats.

"Well you look decidedly miserable." Blaise Zabini smirked as he sat down besides me, slamming his book down on the table. "What's up?"

"Fucks sake." I palmed my face as the realisation hit me. "...I forgot my book, Snape's going to beat me."

"Just share mine?" He replied as if it were an obvious answer, which come to think of it... It was.

"Turn to page one hundred and eighty two..." Snape began to drone and I quickly shut it out as I shuffled closer to Zabini. We were so close I could smell his rich cologne, like cedar and pine with a subtle edge of something sweet.

Blaise leaned in close to me, keeping his voice low so that Snape wouldn't notice. "I heard about your date with Diggery last weekend. Are you and him like a thing now?"

I raised an eyebrow, "So you're stalking me now are you?"

He chuckled, a certain brightness dancing in his eyes, the corners crinkling with a genuine smile. "Something like that." He joked. "It's not exactly a secret, the Cedric Diggery fan club's been talking about it non-stop all week."

My eyes widened, "Fan club?" I said cautiously.

"Mara, are you serious? You didn't know?" Blaise's grin grew. "Damn I know you're new and all but come on, everyone knows..."

"Knows what?" I demanded in a whisper, throwing a quick look to the front of class but Snape's back was turned firmly to the board.

"Basically every girl in Hogwarts creams themselves over him... And by the sounds of things you're no different." He shrugged, turning to the correct page in his book. "You've pissed off a lot of people by going out with him, the Ravenclaw fifth years especially..."

He discretely tilted his head over to the small table of girls in the far corner that were glaring over at us and whispering amongst themselves.
-Jesus. If looks could kill I'd be able to taste the earth by now.

"But he was the one that asked me!"

Come to think of it he didn't really ask me, more told me that we were going to go out, after all I had to make it up to him after Percy pillaged his snacks.

"Doesn't matter," Blaise deadpanned, "They're still out for blood."

"Oh god..." I held my head in my hands. "I didn't realise he had already been claimed by half the school."

"Nah, don't worry about it." He gave me a slightly nudge and a flash of pearly white teeth. "They're just jealous, he's never actually asked anyone out before and suddenly he's all over the hot new girl."

I pursed my lips into a thin line to surprise a smirk, "The hot new girl?"

"Shut up." He snapped, cheeks burning red as he glared down at the pages of his book pretending to read so that he didn't have to look at me.

Out of the corner of my eye I spied a pair of ghostly pale eyes staring directly at me. I turned briefly only to glare at Malfoy before I got an idea as Blaise mumbled an apology after his hand brushed mine as he went to grab his quill.

Blaise Zabini was one of his best friends right?...
-I think I'd just found the perfect way to make him pay.

***
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-TFOA