Disclaimer: I still don't own Harry Potter.
Gringotts Prompt Bank: Tom Riddle, Murder mystery, sharp, moist (bonus), no word 'said' (bonus)
Byzantium
Prologue
That summer seemed to last forever. Before the media frenzy which had marked us all like rabbits, that summer was both the best and the worst I had experienced in my short life. Sunlight, Draco's kisses, darkness. Always that darkness.
The simple plan I proposed had unfolded even better than I imagined. Tom's body had dropped weightless, graceful, down, down, down to the bottom of the lake. It was to float in the murky depths, till the spring festivities caused it to wash ashore and cause uproar.
I remember Ginny trembling as she gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles taut and white. The rest of us had stared out the window, at the sheeting rain and the roses blooming in the hedgerows.
Afterwards, it was always the scent of roses and rain and that drive towards freedom which came to my mind whenever I recalled that night.
Are we all set? Tom had asked when he found us waiting for him.
Yes, Tom, Draco had replied. Everything's ready.
After, as we ensured that we left not a trace behind - Got your keys, Harry? - it was Draco who had kept calm enough to force us all to hustle into the car and, Just drive!
They say that the mind is so much more interesting than the body. Tom had mentioned it one day, as Draco smoked and I sat next to him. Thought patterns, the twisting waves of ideas in progress, fleeting brainwaves which flash and then vanish.
I disagreed to a certain length. They've never seen the beauty of crisp sharp folds of bones. Or the subtle elegance of eyelashes fluttering against a woman's cheek. Or even the sinewy velvet and the moist texture of skin on skin.
But the mind always makes up for it. It takes years to mould the mind but just one second to destroy it.
Don't go there, Granger; Draco warned me. But had I listened? No.
But true beauty is terror. It can cost you on so many levels, in so many ways. It can burn you, like it burned me. Perhaps that's why we quiver before it.
We were only children. Fragile to the point of extinction.
That is until the day it all changed and we had blood on our hands.