Monster

By Bohemian Storm

He watches her gathering up her quills and scrolls, packing them into a shoulder bag that is already filled with books and parchments. He watches the seam split just a little and wonders if he'll be there to laugh when it break in the hallway and her things go rolling across the floor. She's always silly like this, he thinks, pushing things further into the bag when there was no possible way it can hold anymore. Yet, somehow it always manages not to split.
She isn't quite as childish as she was years earlier. He'll certainly admit that she's grown up quite a bit, going from a giggling and awkward little girl to a young woman who can curse you to Hell and back if she wants to. He tried to see how angry he could make her once and he had suffered through boils and scabs for three weeks before Madame Pomfrey would set him right. She had smirked every single time she'd walked past him in the halls and he had done his best to glare at her.
Silly little bint, he'd thought.
He doesn't think that now and it is only because he knows better. He was angry when she had cursed him, but he knew he deserved it. He had called one of her brothers (he can't remember which one now) some kind of horrible name. He told her that Percy deserved to die. He remembers this insult because he said it only days after the incident.
She still calls it the incident. What else do you call it when your brother gets caught in the line of fire between a secret order and Death Eaters while trying to protect his little sister? She slapped him when he had said that. He still feels her hand on his cheek and rubs it every so often, wondering why it still feels so fresh.
That was a year ago.
He'll be gone at the end of this year and he can't really imagine what his days will be like without watching her. At first she was something different and now she's part of his routine. He can't give her up.
He supposes he'll have to. He's a Malfoy, after all. She'll forever look at him as some sort of monster.
He finds that he doesn't mind that so much, but he just wishes he could have taken back some of those things he said. He wonders if she would have seen him differently if he hadn't said half the things he said. He wonders if things would have been different if he had comforted her after Percy died rather than making scathing remarks and laughing at her.
He wonders if she would be letting him help her gather her things.

End