It was late enough into the evening that the hallways only contained a few whispering students. The first floor had a warm and quiet atmosphere to it, and somewhere in an adjacent hallway the muted melody of a flute danced about. Candles flickered dangerously low on their wicks, dripping wax down onto the stone floors as they came to a slow death.
Draco and I on the other hand were making a poor show of blending into the sleepy castle. We were painstakingly drunk and kept shoving each other playfully on our way to the Astronomy Tower. He had not only given into my jovial and goofy demeanor but actually matched it. I was shocked by how wonderful and fun he could be, and by how much he had changed in that instance from an angry and scared boy to a normal human being. We were ranting about meaningless memories from our childhood's as we walked close together.
My feet were starting to ache, so I stopped to remove my high heels which were evidently unsuitable for the trip up so many levels. I was clinging to his jacket as I yanked at one, "My brother Éduin actually told me dat muggles can fly too because dey 'ave brooms in deir 'ouses."
Draco laughed arrogantly while gently swaying from the weight of my tugging hand, "That's obviously ridiculous."
"I know," I agreed, "But I believed 'im because I was six!" I got the second shoe off and stood up sighing heavily in relief, smiling at him.
He grinned back at me patronizingly, "Sounds about right. I personally love my plastic broom. It's lightweight, it's durable, it doesn't give me splinters..." He counted on his fingers. I giggled at the sarcasm and smacked him with one of my shoes lightly.
He raised his eyebrows at the offence, looking like a lion that had suddenly discovered a sleeping deer. A glint in his eye caught my attention, "Good thing your shoes are off, because you better run."
His face was teasing and I laughed taking a few steps back towards the tower stairs, "You wouldn't dare chase a lady in dis dress."
He shrugged playfully, "I don't see a lady anywhere, do you?" That garnished another smack with my high heel and he smirked, tilting his head to the side, "I'll count to three."
I stepped back again, still laughing hysterically and holding my hand up as if it could do anything to protect me. "Non, don't - "
"One." His voice was calm and his face was smug.
"Two." The tone eerily jumped up several tones with a hint of warning. I turned around to run in my bare feet towards the stairs. The heal of my foot had just left the second stair when he said, "Three." And I heard him take off.
The stairs were designed in a tightly wound circle, the brick cylinder that formed the walls of the vertical passageway produced dizzying echoes of our excited shrieking and clamoring up the wooden steps. The sounds of hands grabbing metal bars and feet pushing off of steps haphazardly dominated along side my high pitched squeals of excited terror. He was never far behind me and I was screaming at the top of my lungs from the thrill of being chased and the goosebumps it left on my neck.
We had reached the last twenty or so stairs when he caught me, grabbing me around my waist from behind and peeling my feet off of the ground. He buried his face in my neck while tickling me, "Got you," he whispered tauntingly and I turned my face to push my lips into his. It was a breathy kiss as we were both so winded, but the feeling of his arms around me was so incredible and organic that it was a while before we finally pulled apart.
I was suddenly overwhelmed by the intense feeling burgeoning in my heart and he must have felt it too. Never before in my life had something felt so polarizing. It was as though I had to take two paths ahead and divide myself in half. My feelings for him were out of control and I was allowing everything that I shouldn't have been.
The wind on the observation deck was less awful than usual, but it still had a biting sting for anyone planning to linger there for more than a few minutes. The night sky was a collage of blacks and blues and the stars were brighter than normal. Below at the base of the castle and stretching far into the Forbidden woods a thick fog was hung low to the ground casting a ghostly mood over the frozen landscape.
We drifted to the metal bar that wrapped around it and Draco leaned off of it, peering down below at the faraway courtyard. Beside him I was doing small ballet spins while reaching my fingers up to the stars. Even though it was making me dizzy I was too hyper and drunk to control my instincts to move and dance. I could see him glancing at me and humorously rolling his eyes at the ridiculous behavior.
After a few minutes his icy fingers suddenly steadied my twirling and he straightened me to face him, "Come here, there's something I want to make right." He slipped his hand into my right one and pulled me closer with his left hand on my waist, looking intently down into my eyes. I looked up at his face which had a hint of sadness on it. He wanted us to dance.
My head was leaning back slightly and I stared at him through drunken hooded eyes. I could feel something awful rapidly rising in my chest but I swallowed it down. I slowly nodded, willing to try and correct the painful memory. He delicately turned me around while keeping his head tilted closely to mine, watching my eyes. I closed them, not wanting the tantric confrontation and swayed back letting the motion guide me. I could feel my hair hanging low down my back and for a moment there was peace and it was just us and the stars.
My vision shortly became blurred and then I felt my heart start to race as the cloudy image of his Death Eater mask stared down at me in my mind. The spin of the dancing had brought me right back to the ballroom and I had no strength to banish the terrifying memory of being forced to waltz with the gory mask billowing in front of me. I started instantaneously sobbing, my arms and my legs became weak as I slid down. He panicked but failed to catch me before my knees hit the ground where I covered my face with my hands, letting the tears fall out through the cracks of my fingers. My long hair swam around my face and shoulders like a warm blanket.
He was kneeling in front of me on one knee trying vainly to pull my hands away from my face, "Madelyn...I'm-"
I cut him off with brute force, having lost control of all of my manners hours ago, "How will we dance at our wedding?" The ridiculous question hung in the air, coming out in a desperate shriek. I heard him inhale with uncertainty and confusion.
Dancing at our wedding was an item that absolutely no one had prioritized up until that moment. The wedding topic had become slightly taboo between the two of us under the basic understanding that neither of us wanted it in such a forced way. I slumped over onto my side and removed my hands from my face to lean on the ground, lifting my chin to meet his guilty gaze, "Will you be wearing dat horrible mask den too?" Hot tears ebbed from my eyes as I cried up at him childishly. I knew it was ridiculous but the alcohol in my veins had words coming out of my mouth that surprised even myself.
His eyebrows were knitted together and his face was distraught. I could tell he had no idea what to say at all, just kept reaching for my hands slowly only for me to swat him away with aggression. Finally he sighed and rested his chin on knee, squinting at the ground and eventually shrugging, "It's my wedding. I'm sure I can arrange to have it my own way, without the mask on." He looked up at me knowing it was a weak answer.
"So you don' even know? I cannot do et again!" I bellowed, trying to avoid the growing burning of my moist cheeks in the dry, cold air, "I know I will die if we don' do dis. We 'ave to get married, I know. But I want it to be no masks!" Images of my parents happy at the wedding swam through my mind. Images of their horror joined the first one; their faces suddenly shocked and horrified, the disappointment, the resentment...
He faltered and almost lost his stance. His eyes were suddenly wide with shock, "How did you find that out?"
''ermione Granger!" I sneered, my bottom lip trembling, "So tell me, 'ow much time do I 'ave?"
He closed his eyes looking suddenly defeated. I'd seen him do it a dozen times by then, "Fucking Granger," he whispered in irritation. The look on his face as he said her name spoke a thousand silent words to testify his hatred for the girl. He swallowed hard acknowledging that he was backed into a corner, "You have a hundred days to fulfill the unbreakable vow."
I gaped at him. He slowly opened his eyes to look at me with burning remorse.
"Dat's in like three weeks." My voice trembled, coming out as a whisper. His mouth twitched and he nodded. At that moment I became aware of how frozen I felt up on the gusty tower. I brought my knees up to wrap my arms around them and fought to prevent my teeth from chattering. I buried my face in my lap and surrendered to the flood of emotions and growing impending doom. I had run out of time.
There was a sound of shuffling fabric as he removed his jacket and placed it around my arms which did provide some relief. He sat next to me on his knees and fiddled with his ring in his lap, leaving me to my own space.
The wind had picked up and I continued to sit in a ball, refusing to move or stop crying. I was acutely aware that Draco was probably freezing next to me. We stayed like that for a long time while I tried desperately to imagine how I was going to be married in a few weeks or less, who would be attending, and if it would be permanent.
"I love you," he whispered in such a small voice I thought it had surely been the wind. When I looked up abruptly I was convinced it had been the gale forces around us. He hadn't moved, just kept twirling his ring around, his hair blowing down across his face.
"Do you want to keep staying here?" He asked when he noticed my gaze had lifted. He was shaking uncontrollably in his white dress shirt. His breath was coming out in short puffs of white smoke and his nose and cheeks were pink. Just like Jack from the Titanic. This was the sinking, I thought. And all I had to do was wait for him to die from the cold and push him over the edge in his shackles, let him sink into the abyss of sweet death.
I quickly banished the bizarre, dark imagery and ignored his question. I watched through puffy eyes as he nodded in understanding. He lifted his wand from his pocket with a wobbly hand and drew in an arched formation, whispering an incantation through chattering teeth. Slowly, a barely visible golden globe expanded outwards from the tip. When it passed through my body and kept on expanding I felt immense calming warmth. It stopped growing at a large enough radius to encompass both of us in what looked like a filmy, golden bubble which operated like an igloo, keeping us warm. Little specks of snow landed on the top and remained on the crust as though suspended in time.
He sighed deeply and sat back, bending his knees to the sky and lowering himself on his back. His cheeks were so rosy he looked suntanned and his white hair fanned out loosely around his head against the stone floor of the tower. He tilted his head to look at me, "There won't be any masks. You have my word."
I leaned back to match his position and moved his expensive jacket onto my body as a blanket. We looked at each other sideways, and I was reminded of the first night I slept in his bed at the Malfoy Manor. Thoughts I'd had came flooding back,
True partners were always honest and supported each other.
As though we were in it together, fighting through that horrible house and experience side by side.
I looked into his light blue eyes, filled with torment from watching me grieve the loss he had imposed upon me. He had human remorse and guilt in his expression. He was being honest. He was staying with me on a freezing tower, keeping me warm. He'd promised to ban the Death Eater masks from the wedding, I dreaded to consider what that would cost him. He'd defended me from his family, from his friends time and time again. He'd made plenty of mistakes, but there was good in him. For the first time I saw him as someone who could potentially be a partner. Someone who would support me and fight through all of the upcoming experiences with me.
There was no way I could use his emotions against him now. It wasn't him versus me anymore, that much was clear. I wiped my tears and gave him a sad smile which he hardly returned, appearing weary and exhausted.
The snow was coming down quicker now and the bubble over our heads dotted with fluffy freckles. I searched his eyes intently for a second and felt nervous anticipation with the next question I had. He looked at me calmly and I felt safe enough to ask, "Can-can I see it? The mark..." I trailed off quietly, breaking my finger tips away from the safety of his warm jacket and pointing at his left arm with a quivering finger.
His face contorted and he looked sick. Without a word he brought his arm up between us, and carefully opened the buttons, yanking up the white sleeve over his toned forearm. With gradual invitation the ink began to blossom into his pale skin, faded at first and then solidifying into a black ghastly skull with a snake escaping from the jaw in a twisted, morbid display. It wavered over his skin the way my crest waved on my neck, as if alive and upraised. He loudly grimaced and I noticed his face had a look of pain on it.
"It burns, doesn't it?" I asked in a frail, empathetic voice.
He nodded and ripped his sleeve back down, squeezing his eyes shut. "I understand more than you know what it's like to bare a mark."
I thought for a moment, watching the stars from within the protective globe, "Is dat why mine burns worse when you're coming for me?"
He sent me a puzzled look, "It does?"
I smiled weakly, "Yep. It can be blinding. It's so painful."
It was silent for a moment as we watch snow gently floating down. He looked faraway. "I feel a burning in my heart when I need to find you. I can't explain it. The mark on your neck calls to me, and then I know exactly where to go," he said quietly.
He rolled onto his elbow to face me seriously, "Madeleine, I know this was hard to hear tonight, but we do need to be prepared for this wedding. My father wants an answer; now. I need to let him know, before he takes matters into his own hands." He said it warningly, worry was very clearly laced into his words.
I exhaled in aggravation. I did not want to set a solid date - it felt like if I did than that would be game over, even though my life literally depended on it, "Can I sleep on et?" I begged.
"Fine," was all he said as he pushed onto his feet and reached his hand out to pull me up, "We should go to bed now. The sun is going to come up soon."
As we made our way back down the winding stairs of the Astronomy Tower, I remarked at how much our moods had changed in comparison to the hyperactive way up. The innocence of the night had been lost, burdened now by the heavy road ahead.
When we reached the wall of the Slytherin Common room he reached his arm around my neck and pulled me towards him, kissing me on the forehead. I wrapped my arms sleepily around his waist and buried my face in his shirt, his jacket still hanging onto my shoulders.