Note: Despite the fact I have been so poor at updating regularly, I do have this whole story mapped out. I know where it's going and let me say, it is starting to get to the interesting bits. For those of you who read this because you think it's a "Death Eater" story, I'm sorry. It's really a story of redemption. Hope we can keep you along!
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, unfortunately.
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We Floo from Gigi's back home—it seemed weird to think of it like that at all. Gigi's felt like home, not the Bennett Mansion; it felt cold and desolate with too many secrets hiding in plain sight. I didn't even want to think about what lurked in corners and under beds.
My mother doted on the dress, even if she felt it was too light coloured overall, she approved of the heavy dramatics of it all. I was quick to run from her, escaping to my room. The open window lets in a soft breeze, where a brown and speckled owl rested along the window frame.
I recognized it on sight—Draco's own Merlin (one of the most famous Slytherins to ever live), whom I'd helped pick out ages ago…
"They're all the same," ten-year-old Draco cursed things I shouldn't repeat. "Dark feathered, tawny feathered. Common barn, common tawny, common gray—I want something unique."
"Draco, look at this one!" I wanted to put my fingers through the bars, stroke it's feathers but I don't want it to nip at my fingertips the way father's owl did. "It's so cute."
"An owl shouldn't be cute, it should be fearsome. Majestic."
"But look at this owl—those eyes are huge, doll like." The tiny bird couldn't be more than six inches tall with a round head and little red-brown and white covered body. Giant, round yellow eyes peeked out from the fuzzy form. "I need this owl."
"It could hardly carry a letter, much less a package."
"I don't need to send packages. Just letters. Besides, it's a pet, too." I leaned forward, staring at the tiny placard beneath the cage, "Northern Saw-whet. It's only eight galleons!"
Draco rolled his eyes, "It's the perfect owl for you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Bug-eyed and fluffy."
"Yeah, well then you should get that mean old owl over there," I point to a cage I'd leaned too close to earlier, the huge speckled owl had tried to nip my hair. Draco followed my finger to the creature, his demeanor shifting.
Steady feet marched across the emporium, stopping before the Eagle Owl's cage. "You're the best," he tells the owl, "And Malfoys can only have the best. Father?" Draco straightened. "We've picked our owls."
Lucious perked up from the display of treats, turning to the two of us, standing ten feet apart. "Already?"
We nod in unison. We take them back to Malfoy Manor where we get them out of their cages. Draco takes his owl to the perch he's set up in his room while I coddle my own owl.
"What are you going to name the pipsqueak?"
"Elfidora, because she reminds me of a golden snidget."
Merlin cooed, breaking my memory. I snapped from the fog, striding across the room to where he impatiently sticks out his leg, scraggly scrap of parchment affixed. Grabbing a treat from Elfie's post and offering it to Merlin in exchange for the letter. While he's chomping on the biscuit, I untied the note.
"Hayley," it began in Draco's unmistakable looping script, "I need to see you. I have to see you. As soon as you get this, come at once. Our spot. X"
There's only one place he could mean—the gazebo, just out of the protective bubble that surrounds Malfoy Manor and keeps unwanted visitors off the grounds. I folded the piece of parchment and slipped it into my pocket, closing my eyes to see the lawn sloping before me.
The only sound is a crack as I jet from this space of time into a different one.
The sun has just started to slip beneath the edge of the earth, casting the Malfoy's gardens in this glow that makes me feel warm and breezy. Fireflies start to poke from the earth, tiny gold glows speckling the lawn.
I turned where I was standing, my skirt swishing with the breeze, scanning the far edges of the garden for the familiar white-blonde topped head. My fingers felt jittery, my breath catching. And then I saw him and all of that multiplied. With his head tipped back, Draco stood at the entrance to the gazebo, leaning in a sort of way that made me think the only thing holding him up in that moment was the arches of its structure.
The grass was uneven, little valleys and hills made me have to focus on my footing but I couldn't take my eyes off him.
"Draco." It came out almost like a coo, too much like Pansy's voice for my comfort. I fidgeted, embarrassed, waiting for him to reply but he didn't.
Finally, he looked up, eyes as stormy as a hurricane.
"I thought, after the states, things were different."
"They are different—"
He held up a piece of acid green parchment, "I take it you know what this is?"
I shook my head, afraid to step forward. Draco stepped down from the gazebo, meeting me in the grass. He handed the paper over.
A black velvet ribbon tied four points together and I tugged the messy bow free too forcefully, ripping the paper. The points unfolded to reveal a square piece of parchment on the inside, in neat black calligraphy: Join us to celebrate the betrothal of Aphrodite Morgana Hayley Bennet and Marcus Thomas Flint.
I didn't have to read any more.
"You understand what this is, don't you?" Draco's voice had turned as cold as his eyes.
"Draco, please—you know I don't want this."
"Are you just toying with my affections? Waltzing back into my life with your swaying hips, dangling my feelings as your play thing?"
"You know me. You know I wouldn't do that." My voice started to rise in volume and I knew it was unladylike, but I didn't care.
"You haven't made an effort to see me. Haven't written to me. Haven't anything. And it's all because you've been cavorting with this fool, is it not?"
"Draco, please. I can explain." I tried again, pausing to see him actually look at me. I let my emotions play on my face, hoping that would make him understand I was being authentic. "I think you should sit down."
"I don't want to sit down. I want an explanation."
"You're being insufferable, do you know that?" I cut my eyes to him, scowling. "You've heard the rumors that my Mother attempted to magically persuade Emma back to our side? Away from the Weasley boy?"
"What does Emma have to do with that?"
"Apparently, that's normal."
"Are you saying…?"
"From what I'm piecing together from the snippets I've been told, Dad and Mum recognized Emma's spirit in me and were terrified I'd be the same. They picked Flint, I can only assume, because their family has forever been known as boring and does what they're told in the hopes that I would be that, too. Both Mrs. Flint and my own mother have been charming, bewitching me to love him."
Draco's face seemed paler than usual, a tough feat, "That's…that's…well, I would like to say that I'm surprised but I'm not. We're monsters in fancy clothes, wolves wearing masks. Everything was easier before he—"
Seeming to understand where his thoughts ran, Draco stopped himself before he said anything else. Still, his half-statement hung in the air between us, his words opened up a part of me I'd been trying so hard to keep shut the last few weeks I'd been home.
Everything was easier before the Dark Lord returned.
"We can run away. Go to France, back to the states. Hide things out before—"
"We can't do that."
"When we were in the states we had a normal life where it was just me and you without the cloud hanging over of what we'd left behind. We got to just be—"
"That isn't our life," Draco interrupted.
"It could be."
"No, it can't. Like it or not, we're in the middle of this war. Like it or not, we're fighting for the Dark Lord. If we ran, we'd have the cloud of knowing that we ran hanging over our heads and when he won—if he won, he'd hunt us down and kill us himself, laughing."
A shiver ran down my spine. I noticed that he doesn't call us Death Eaters—which we were. The marks on our arms hadn't been there for very long—Draco's for almost a year, mine for a few weeks. Did he not use that term on purpose or a minor oversight?
I was raised to embrace blood purity and I did, but is Voldemort's plan for ensuring that worth it? A conversation between Draco and I floated back—he didn't kill Dumbledore because he couldn't do it, and I'd said he just wasn't ready—but did I believe that? Are you ever ready to kill a person? Do muggles deserve to die?
I didn't know, couldn't form the answer myself because I wasn't raised to have my own opinion but to be proper and do what I was told…
"Why did you get your mark?" I was surprised at the calmness in my voice. Inside, my stomach was raging a war against my nervous system.
"Repentance—my father had failed. It was the only option presented to us. I join. My work could clear our name."
To refuse would have meant death, he doesn't have to say it.
"If you weren't cornered, do you think you would have?"
"It doesn't matter," Draco shook his head, "It doesn't matter because I made the choice I did and here I stand and there's no undoing that. Adapt to survive."
Adapt to survive—I couldn't argue with that. Especially not in our world. If you wanted to survive, you couldn't question things. I didn't and look where that's gotten me. But maybe it's time I started.
"How did it happen for you?"
I fixed my eyes on an edge of the gazebo, a corner of the roof has a piece of straw sticking out like some sort of bird must have created a nest in the supports.
"It had been years since I'd stepped foot in my home. My mother asked me to come home two summers ago but I refused. She strongly encouraged me to come home last summer and everything was lined up, but, at the last moment my grandmummy planned the most extensive holiday for us in Greece that started the day after term and ended two days before the next term started. There was no time to come home, and my mother couldn't argue with the rich history of my ancestors—after all, she'd named us all for the Gods she most adored.
"But she did make sure my grandmummy wouldn't pull anything like that the next summer. They got into an awful row about it, writing back and forth. I thought it would escalate to Howlers. But then…grandmummy stopped fighting it. I would return home that summer, to my childhood abode. See my parents for the first time in any expanse in years.
"Everything had changed, all the touches of Greek architecture had been removed—the columns, the wine colored drapes. It was dark, it was dingy. It looked like a sort of high class place you'd find in Knockturn Alley, like she'd outfitted it with Borgin and Burkes nicest antiques.
"As soon as I walked in I knew something was wrong. 'Come join us on the terrace,' she said, 'there's someone who wants to see you, darling.' And being the silly sixteen year old girl that I am, I automatically thought, 'It'll be my Draco. To see Draco at last! I wonder if he turned out as tall as I thought he would.' I gave my trunks to the house elves I'd forgotten and followed my mother down the corridor.
"Only, it wasn't you sitting on the terrace, sipping a cup of tea like it was the most normal thing in the world to having do so. It was him, the Dark Lord. His red eyes tightened in on me and he said, 'I've heard wonderful things about you, my child. Please sit.' And so I sat, what other choice did I have?
"He went on and on, asking me about my studies. Discussing my marks on exams. He knew all of these details about my life. You're taking the highest ranked classed, he'd said. You're excelling in all of your subjects, he'd said. Your OWL results are remarkable, he'd said. I need you fighting for me, he'd said.
"And there, on my terrace, with my mother and father I was sworn in, so to speak. It all happened so fast, every bit of it. There was no time to think, no time to question. No time to do anything but try not to displease the Dark Lord and wind up killed. I was ambushed."