Death has always seemed to me an obscure and abstract concept, a daunting and lonely darkness following us all in shadows and echo traces left behind our every footstep. But, in all honesty, I have never spared much time to ponder the philosophy of demise, although it has tailed me for a lifetime, seeming to reside around every corner, coming to rest feather light on the soul of each person I love, turning heavy as stone at the crucial moment and coming to weigh opaque and cold on one age-worn shoulder. I never cry, tears frozen into glassy shards that are not cold but burn and scorch my every fibre. Thinking too much has never been good, driving me to murky corners of my mind that are altogether best left untouched and alien. And anyway, I have never seemed to have much time to spend contemplating the unchangeable, rationalising the irrational with dark eternity lurking forever only a footstep behind me. Nevertheless recently, I have had more time to reflect, and plenty more reason to.
I have always strayed far from the shadows and fought every fleeting impulse that drew me towards them, but now with almost nothing left standing between me and toxic oblivion, the longings are not so fleeting and they call to me every night in pale skin and blond hair and whispered desire.
I have been seeing Draco Malfoy for almost a year now, and I still don't know how it started. I know even less of how and why it continues; all I do know is that I am inexplicably bound in inky threads to him and every time teeth meet lip I am lost and desperate. I am constantly trapped in a web of answered questions begging relief, tearing through skin and bone, penetrating muscle and organ: Why can't I stop? What is happening to me? Why does everyone leave me? Yet the only liberation I find is of shared, heated breathes and grazing nails.
Each time it is the same; he finds me or occasionally I find him and then we both discover ourselves breaking slowly apart in a bed, a disused classroom, the astronomy tower. My mind is finally startlingly clear, lucid as polished glass, setting me free from the pain and guilt and hunger that constantly makes battlefield of my mind. The clarity bathes me in simplicity for a little while, until the roaring whispers of discontent consume me once more and the world seems dimmer and leaden in contrast. And each day he produces a cigarette and I gaze on in unfathomable fascination as he inhales deep lungfuls of lethal smoke. I linger motionless on the bed and gaze, slack-jawed at the smouldering end of Draco's cigarette, trailing smoky tongues and death in grey curls that lick against my skin and stain black on pale lips. Again and again, the loop continues, I watch and he exhales spectral smoke the colour of his eyes, pupils pirouetting around mine yet never quite meeting, an ageless dance of no conclusion.
Often I am captivated by his lips, ashen yet seamless- sculpted and soft forming a perfect "o" while slowly filling the room with his irresistible poison. Other times, I permit my eyes to drift, down the narrow, curving line of his neck, the shadowed hollow of his throat and past the jutting bone of his shoulder, thinly veiled in white satin skin, all the way down his arms, muscles pulled taut each time his raises his hand to take another drag. My gaze comes to rest on his forearm, just above his wrist on the winding tattoo, snaking around his arm like a black handcuff separating the two of us in an irremovable stain, discolouring his unblemished skin and branding him. It is an undying and optical reminder that he has already been claimed. The smell of smoke and his breathe is the only barrier left between transparency and opaque, wandering thought.
Yet everything must come to an end and when it has finally burnt down to his fingers, he stubs out the glowing embers against the bedpost or stamps them on the floor into sifting ash the colour of coal. I stare at the dead residue as he puts his robes back on, glowing red balanced between thin fingers still imprinted in vibrant flashes on my eyes, but I drag them reluctantly away as he leaves and this is the only time our eyes meet. A silent yet deafeningly lurid goodbye shared beneath long, pale lashes and silver irises interrupted only by widening sockets telling of unspoken oaths to secrecy and promise of more. Every time he leaves I feel the tide going out and every time he leaves I remain for hours, waiting for a return he never makes, imaging the next time I will be intercepted.
This is what I remember on a constant coil of retention as we separate once again, savouring in the sudden vivacity of my world yet he stands and there is no cigarette. He looks down at me, still sitting against the tower wall and his stare suddenly shifts and my eyes widen as he lets me look deep into his silvery gaze, laced with longing and fear and regret. The vulnerability disappears almost as soon as it comes to be and I am left with only confusion grazing against the lungs and disbelief colouring my eyes to know that I didn't imagine it as he pulls on his robes and strides from the room, not sparing me another glance.
There was no cigarette. This is the only thought that devours my mind as I follow minutes later. It is the only thought that pounds with every heartbeat as I am called to Dumbledore's office the next day. It is the only thought that slowly consumes me and stains each piece of me in red and smoky grey as my professor falls from the tower that I had filled with primal want and desperation mere hours before.
There was no cigarette. My brain refuses to be shut out and my eyes burn hot as that slowly drifting smoke, yet my cheeks are frozen in searing drops of icy tears.