The Reader of Books
Disclaimer: I own all!!!! (Except Harry Potter, and all adjoining statures,
from a story based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is
being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended)
A/N: AH-HEM!!! BIG THINGS TO SAY!!! OK, GO BACK AND RE-READ chapter 2. I'VE
REWRITTEN IT A BIT (JUST THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN THEM) IT'S KIND OF
IMPORTANT. SORRY!!!
ok, lots of POV switch in this one. PLEASE REVIEW! My ego is starting to deflate. please, please, PLEASE!!! Anyway. like the title for this one. Kinda more depth to Ethany. ummm. REVIEW!!! C'mon. anyway, this is back at Hogwarts, same time Wormtail's being eaten. and yeah.
PS. Can someone help me with my summary? Right now it's
She was always alone, hidden by a book... But who is she? And why is Draco so obsessed... suicide, depression murder and more!
But I've gotten nearly no reviews! Please help me!!! As far as everyone says, my story is good. isn't it?
~^~^~Chapter Five - Something or Other~^~^~
Draco sat on the rooftop, his mind swimming from her hand in his. He didn't dare look up, afraid of. something. Of looking up into her eyes to see they weren't there. Or maybe looking up into them to see she wasn't there.
So he just sat, his legs lost somewhere between leaping up, running off the tower, coward as he was, and sitting, of finally staring up into her eyes.
He did neither. Instead he just found himself, once again, lost between something.
As always. At this point, it was hard to say if the coward was winning. It usually did.
He seemed to never finish anything, always so afraid of the end, whatever it was.
He could have almost laughed, if it wasn't quite so hideously depressing.
This was the great evil of Slytherin.
Slowly he tried raise his head, repeating half-formed sentences hysterically over in his mind, reassuring himself to the point of panic, his mind churning as always with half-formed ghosts of his father, reminders of what he was, by blood, by name.
Malfoy.
He barely even felt her hand leave his own, barely felt her presence leave.
Prick by agonizing prick air crept over his hand, stabbing cold into the tender skin where she had been, less than moments ago.
She was gone.
All ghosts floating about his mind forgotten, Draco's mind escaped its prison, looking up to see a last brown lock of hair disappear over the tower roof.
Barely thinking he leapt forward, not noticing his chest crushed against the withered stone of the castle, his mind still blacking out at her hand in his, even though it had left.
What the hell was going on?
He didn't even notice his fingers slipping. It was almost minutes before he even realised he was falling.
Hours later, the ghosts of Draco's mind laughed over his oblivious form, unconscious on the stone roof of the charms corridor as clouds gathered over the clear sky above.
__________
Draco woke up 8 and a half hours later to his heart pounding through his ears, rain prancing over his face. He checked his watch.
1:48
5 hours late for class.
Great. Another detention to add to the list.
He had the strangest feeling by the end of this week he would be doing at least three consecutive life sentences of detention.
He had missed transfiguration. Again. McGonagall wouldn't take that.
This was his something like his 4th day late this week. He didn't even bother trying to keep track anymore. For the amount he was learning at this point he might as well just skip transfiguration anyway. Might as well skip everything.
He would get perfect marks anyway. For 6 years now Snape had been fixing his grades, attendance, conduct records.
I mean, come on. He had beaten the crap out of Dumbledore's glory boy how many times now?
What was even the point of his going to school if nothing he did mattered?
He was just a cheap form of surveillance at this point. But then, the Malfoy equivalent to cheap was far higher than most.
And of course he had the wonderful job of exuding the Malfoy menace. Acting evil. Generally pissing off anybody "good". Saving his place in the monarchy early.
It was funny at least, though not exactly a hell of a lot of fun.
He gradually peeled himself off the roof, still groggily stumbling about, his eyes bleary with sleep. He knew he should go to the hospital wing. He had just spent 8 hours knocked out after falling off a tower onto a stone rooftop and waking up soaked with rain, barely able to see.
Instead Draco found himself minutes later, huddling for shelter under a gargoyle, chain-smoking damp cigarettes, staring blankly into the impossible depths of the sky.
He probably wasn't allowed to smoke at school. He really didn't care. What was the point of forbidding it when everything was curable?
Cancer wasn't a big deal when all it took was a potion to clear your lungs, tidy up your heart with a few charms, clean off everything else with a cleansing hex.
Nothing much was a big deal when magic wiped it all away, leaving everything shiny and clean.
Eventually his trembling hands steadied, clearing his mind.
What the hell had happened?
Had it happened?
About two corridors away and three floors up, a green-eyed girl called Ethany's mind ran over the same things.
____
Divination.
Most people chose classes they were good at, or things that interested them. Those few who could be bothered chose classes that challenged them, those who couldn't copied their friends.
Ethany did none of these things. She was good at most things, but wasn't allowed to be. You cannot know hell if you have never felt the pain of knowing and pretending not to. She had acted. well not stupid, but so excruciatingly average, for nearly two years now.
She couldn't choose those classes that interested her, hating the pain of loving something so much, but never being able to surpass at it too much to hurt herself that way. Except for astronomy. She never could quit astronomy.
Nothing much was a challenge anymore. Her mind just figured things out in it's own demented way, leaving nothing left to wonder.
She didn't have anybody to copy.
So she chose the classes that were funniest. Or at least had potential.
Nothing beat potions. So many people had dropped it that the whole class had been cluttered together, those few Gryffindors forced into the class by parents or ambition, those fewer Hufflepuffs who actually qualified for advanced potions and a hell of a lot of Slytherins. The class had started to become popular for Ravenclaw too, their merging with Slytherin making them semi-acceptable to Professor Snape.
Potions came less now that Snape took up Defence Against the Dark Arts, held only on Friday afternoons, annihilating all hope of the weekend within minutes of class. That in itself was funny enough.
Nothing could really compare to all four houses battling each other while Neville Longbottom blew up cauldrons and melted their shoes. A lot of fun for an observer.
Not so fun if your shoes were being melted. But Ethany had learned long ago to keep out of range.
It was amazing that Neville had even gotten into advanced potions, but he hadn't done as badly as suspected in his OWL's, and his grandmother had good connections with the school board.
And of course his father had excelled in potions.
Neville's grandmother never did really admit that he wasn't his father. She had forced him to stay in potions, despite his completely inept ability, and tendencies to light people on fire.
At this point even Hermione feared too much for her life to help him much.
But Ethany didn't pity him. He received far too much of that.
She respected him.sort of. He had power. No one saw it, but he had power.
He was far more than anybody could ever expect of him. His magic. She could see it so clearly now, feel it in the air around him.
His veins were charged with magic.
This was her curse.
She was a Silverblood. A creature supposedly made of magic itself. Supremely powerful. Only one ever existed.
She was the last Silverblood, to be exact.
Ethany's mother died, so the blood was passed to her. She didn't really know how it worked. All she know was she saw her mother die, and woke up the most powerful being known to magic.
It kinda sucked.
Ethany wasn't a power person. She didn't have it, and didn't particularly want it.
Well, until yesterday at least. Now she had power, and didn't particularly want it.
And it still sucked.
She was in Divination, hiding behind yet another book, not meeting anybody's eyes. It was so easy to hide.
No one had even noticed her yet. She had been at this school for 2 years, and no-one had noticed her.
Ethany's mind froze on that thought, cursing the words again, and again. He had found her.
Draco Malfoy.
She had offered him her hand, on the tower. What would he do but take it? She hadn't even thought.
When he touched her. It. burned. She couldn't describe it. It happened when anyone touched her. She couldn't imagine what he thought. She had just ran. She wasn't even sure if he was alive.
She had seen him fall. She should have saved him.
____________
"Fuck!" Draco cursed, trying to ignite his wand, flicking the burnt stub of his cigarette over the castle's edge as he struggled to pull a new one out of his waterlogged pocket. Rain was pouring down around him, the gargoyle hovering above barely defending him from the endless barrage of rain. He didn't bother with a waterproofing spell.
He didn't seem to bother with much anymore. Maybe he never did. It was kind of hard to remember. And he didn't particularly want to.
It was getting harder to remember things after 17 years of trying to lose them. They were all baggage, and they were far too heavy to carry around. He had lost nearly every memory he could, stuffing them away somewhere.
Draco sighed, slamming his head back into the gargoyle, its uncanny skull floating menacingly above him, skeleton arms cradling around him. It was hugging him.
He shuddered at the thought and stood up, stumbling away from the stone demon. He was too tired to deal with this, whatever it was.
It was only two o'clock. He knew he should probably go to class. What did he have now, anyway? Thursday. double Herbology.
He sighed, remembering he was to meet with his father tonight. It had to be in the dungeons, it was the only secure fireplace. He would have to use his invisibility cloak.
Oh shit.
Where did he leave the cloak?
He had taken it last night.
He couldn't get down to the dungeons without it. Teachers patrolled the nights now, not everywhere, but around the outer corridors, and dungeons. The patrols were pretty pointless, but they weren't really there for much of a reason other than a show. They were there to discourage, not to actually enforce.
He should have panicked, or something. But it just didn't seem to matter anymore. Nothing did.
Still.
He should have felt something.
The strange thing was, he knew what he should feel. He knew all the reasons for every feeling he should have had.
He didn't feel a damn thing.
Slowly Draco walked over to the edge, staring down into the turbid puddles storeys below, muddy ground stomped with shoe prints.
He still had time for Herbology. Swinging himself down over the edge and through a window, shaking his head agitatedly, trying to clear his mind of Ethany. He could agonise over her later.
________
A couple of tables away, Padma Patil stuck her hand up in the air, waving it manically, trying to signal Professor Trelawney. It seemed she couldn't see very well through those shiny, oversized glasses of hers.
Over her book Ethany saw the scene, amazed that anybody other than her had even chosen this class. But then again, they made good camouflage.
Ethany's eyes lingered for a moment on Padma's back, remembering her words to Draco the other night, thinking of the face on the other side. Padma had changed so much over the years. Her mouth was firmer, her hair straighter. She didn't bother with make-up anymore. Her sister, Parvarti, had left months ago, running to America with their mother, hiding. Padma had refused to hide. Ethany didn't know the details. But Padma left her family, and she changed. Ethany still didn't like her. She was still a giggling twit.
But it was nevertheless strange. Padma had never seemed the type to defy, well, anyone. But then maybe that was the core of her story. Defiance. Why she looked so different, why she did things differently.
Maybe it mattered, maybe it didn't. That wasn't the point. Why did there even have to be a point?
Ethany shook her head. She couldn't stand another minute in this stupid, stuffy room.
She could sneak out. It wasn't hard. Actually it didn't involve a lot of sneaking. It consisted of standing up, walking over to the stupid trap door, and jumping down.
Hiding wasn't even fun anymore. She was too good at it.
Maybe not, her mind hinted, Draco Malfoy's scowling face swimming to the surface.
She slammed her mind shut again.
Trelawney was saying something about " the mystic forces came to me last night, children", arms waving around her mystical way.
Ok, no alternative. She was leaving.
A/N. Any good? Seriously, I have no idea. (my friend Sophia couldn't proofread this one, she goes to a different school, and she's in exams, so she's not allowed on the computer!
ok, no one got the last chapter. It'll make sense later. Ok? (Come on. Put the clues together. girl called Ethany died 17 years ago. 17 year old girl called Ethany is still alive.)
Disclaimer: I own all!!!! (Except Harry Potter, and all adjoining statures,
from a story based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is
being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended)
A/N: AH-HEM!!! BIG THINGS TO SAY!!! OK, GO BACK AND RE-READ chapter 2. I'VE
REWRITTEN IT A BIT (JUST THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN THEM) IT'S KIND OF
IMPORTANT. SORRY!!!
ok, lots of POV switch in this one. PLEASE REVIEW! My ego is starting to deflate. please, please, PLEASE!!! Anyway. like the title for this one. Kinda more depth to Ethany. ummm. REVIEW!!! C'mon. anyway, this is back at Hogwarts, same time Wormtail's being eaten. and yeah.
PS. Can someone help me with my summary? Right now it's
She was always alone, hidden by a book... But who is she? And why is Draco so obsessed... suicide, depression murder and more!
But I've gotten nearly no reviews! Please help me!!! As far as everyone says, my story is good. isn't it?
~^~^~Chapter Five - Something or Other~^~^~
Draco sat on the rooftop, his mind swimming from her hand in his. He didn't dare look up, afraid of. something. Of looking up into her eyes to see they weren't there. Or maybe looking up into them to see she wasn't there.
So he just sat, his legs lost somewhere between leaping up, running off the tower, coward as he was, and sitting, of finally staring up into her eyes.
He did neither. Instead he just found himself, once again, lost between something.
As always. At this point, it was hard to say if the coward was winning. It usually did.
He seemed to never finish anything, always so afraid of the end, whatever it was.
He could have almost laughed, if it wasn't quite so hideously depressing.
This was the great evil of Slytherin.
Slowly he tried raise his head, repeating half-formed sentences hysterically over in his mind, reassuring himself to the point of panic, his mind churning as always with half-formed ghosts of his father, reminders of what he was, by blood, by name.
Malfoy.
He barely even felt her hand leave his own, barely felt her presence leave.
Prick by agonizing prick air crept over his hand, stabbing cold into the tender skin where she had been, less than moments ago.
She was gone.
All ghosts floating about his mind forgotten, Draco's mind escaped its prison, looking up to see a last brown lock of hair disappear over the tower roof.
Barely thinking he leapt forward, not noticing his chest crushed against the withered stone of the castle, his mind still blacking out at her hand in his, even though it had left.
What the hell was going on?
He didn't even notice his fingers slipping. It was almost minutes before he even realised he was falling.
Hours later, the ghosts of Draco's mind laughed over his oblivious form, unconscious on the stone roof of the charms corridor as clouds gathered over the clear sky above.
__________
Draco woke up 8 and a half hours later to his heart pounding through his ears, rain prancing over his face. He checked his watch.
1:48
5 hours late for class.
Great. Another detention to add to the list.
He had the strangest feeling by the end of this week he would be doing at least three consecutive life sentences of detention.
He had missed transfiguration. Again. McGonagall wouldn't take that.
This was his something like his 4th day late this week. He didn't even bother trying to keep track anymore. For the amount he was learning at this point he might as well just skip transfiguration anyway. Might as well skip everything.
He would get perfect marks anyway. For 6 years now Snape had been fixing his grades, attendance, conduct records.
I mean, come on. He had beaten the crap out of Dumbledore's glory boy how many times now?
What was even the point of his going to school if nothing he did mattered?
He was just a cheap form of surveillance at this point. But then, the Malfoy equivalent to cheap was far higher than most.
And of course he had the wonderful job of exuding the Malfoy menace. Acting evil. Generally pissing off anybody "good". Saving his place in the monarchy early.
It was funny at least, though not exactly a hell of a lot of fun.
He gradually peeled himself off the roof, still groggily stumbling about, his eyes bleary with sleep. He knew he should go to the hospital wing. He had just spent 8 hours knocked out after falling off a tower onto a stone rooftop and waking up soaked with rain, barely able to see.
Instead Draco found himself minutes later, huddling for shelter under a gargoyle, chain-smoking damp cigarettes, staring blankly into the impossible depths of the sky.
He probably wasn't allowed to smoke at school. He really didn't care. What was the point of forbidding it when everything was curable?
Cancer wasn't a big deal when all it took was a potion to clear your lungs, tidy up your heart with a few charms, clean off everything else with a cleansing hex.
Nothing much was a big deal when magic wiped it all away, leaving everything shiny and clean.
Eventually his trembling hands steadied, clearing his mind.
What the hell had happened?
Had it happened?
About two corridors away and three floors up, a green-eyed girl called Ethany's mind ran over the same things.
____
Divination.
Most people chose classes they were good at, or things that interested them. Those few who could be bothered chose classes that challenged them, those who couldn't copied their friends.
Ethany did none of these things. She was good at most things, but wasn't allowed to be. You cannot know hell if you have never felt the pain of knowing and pretending not to. She had acted. well not stupid, but so excruciatingly average, for nearly two years now.
She couldn't choose those classes that interested her, hating the pain of loving something so much, but never being able to surpass at it too much to hurt herself that way. Except for astronomy. She never could quit astronomy.
Nothing much was a challenge anymore. Her mind just figured things out in it's own demented way, leaving nothing left to wonder.
She didn't have anybody to copy.
So she chose the classes that were funniest. Or at least had potential.
Nothing beat potions. So many people had dropped it that the whole class had been cluttered together, those few Gryffindors forced into the class by parents or ambition, those fewer Hufflepuffs who actually qualified for advanced potions and a hell of a lot of Slytherins. The class had started to become popular for Ravenclaw too, their merging with Slytherin making them semi-acceptable to Professor Snape.
Potions came less now that Snape took up Defence Against the Dark Arts, held only on Friday afternoons, annihilating all hope of the weekend within minutes of class. That in itself was funny enough.
Nothing could really compare to all four houses battling each other while Neville Longbottom blew up cauldrons and melted their shoes. A lot of fun for an observer.
Not so fun if your shoes were being melted. But Ethany had learned long ago to keep out of range.
It was amazing that Neville had even gotten into advanced potions, but he hadn't done as badly as suspected in his OWL's, and his grandmother had good connections with the school board.
And of course his father had excelled in potions.
Neville's grandmother never did really admit that he wasn't his father. She had forced him to stay in potions, despite his completely inept ability, and tendencies to light people on fire.
At this point even Hermione feared too much for her life to help him much.
But Ethany didn't pity him. He received far too much of that.
She respected him.sort of. He had power. No one saw it, but he had power.
He was far more than anybody could ever expect of him. His magic. She could see it so clearly now, feel it in the air around him.
His veins were charged with magic.
This was her curse.
She was a Silverblood. A creature supposedly made of magic itself. Supremely powerful. Only one ever existed.
She was the last Silverblood, to be exact.
Ethany's mother died, so the blood was passed to her. She didn't really know how it worked. All she know was she saw her mother die, and woke up the most powerful being known to magic.
It kinda sucked.
Ethany wasn't a power person. She didn't have it, and didn't particularly want it.
Well, until yesterday at least. Now she had power, and didn't particularly want it.
And it still sucked.
She was in Divination, hiding behind yet another book, not meeting anybody's eyes. It was so easy to hide.
No one had even noticed her yet. She had been at this school for 2 years, and no-one had noticed her.
Ethany's mind froze on that thought, cursing the words again, and again. He had found her.
Draco Malfoy.
She had offered him her hand, on the tower. What would he do but take it? She hadn't even thought.
When he touched her. It. burned. She couldn't describe it. It happened when anyone touched her. She couldn't imagine what he thought. She had just ran. She wasn't even sure if he was alive.
She had seen him fall. She should have saved him.
____________
"Fuck!" Draco cursed, trying to ignite his wand, flicking the burnt stub of his cigarette over the castle's edge as he struggled to pull a new one out of his waterlogged pocket. Rain was pouring down around him, the gargoyle hovering above barely defending him from the endless barrage of rain. He didn't bother with a waterproofing spell.
He didn't seem to bother with much anymore. Maybe he never did. It was kind of hard to remember. And he didn't particularly want to.
It was getting harder to remember things after 17 years of trying to lose them. They were all baggage, and they were far too heavy to carry around. He had lost nearly every memory he could, stuffing them away somewhere.
Draco sighed, slamming his head back into the gargoyle, its uncanny skull floating menacingly above him, skeleton arms cradling around him. It was hugging him.
He shuddered at the thought and stood up, stumbling away from the stone demon. He was too tired to deal with this, whatever it was.
It was only two o'clock. He knew he should probably go to class. What did he have now, anyway? Thursday. double Herbology.
He sighed, remembering he was to meet with his father tonight. It had to be in the dungeons, it was the only secure fireplace. He would have to use his invisibility cloak.
Oh shit.
Where did he leave the cloak?
He had taken it last night.
He couldn't get down to the dungeons without it. Teachers patrolled the nights now, not everywhere, but around the outer corridors, and dungeons. The patrols were pretty pointless, but they weren't really there for much of a reason other than a show. They were there to discourage, not to actually enforce.
He should have panicked, or something. But it just didn't seem to matter anymore. Nothing did.
Still.
He should have felt something.
The strange thing was, he knew what he should feel. He knew all the reasons for every feeling he should have had.
He didn't feel a damn thing.
Slowly Draco walked over to the edge, staring down into the turbid puddles storeys below, muddy ground stomped with shoe prints.
He still had time for Herbology. Swinging himself down over the edge and through a window, shaking his head agitatedly, trying to clear his mind of Ethany. He could agonise over her later.
________
A couple of tables away, Padma Patil stuck her hand up in the air, waving it manically, trying to signal Professor Trelawney. It seemed she couldn't see very well through those shiny, oversized glasses of hers.
Over her book Ethany saw the scene, amazed that anybody other than her had even chosen this class. But then again, they made good camouflage.
Ethany's eyes lingered for a moment on Padma's back, remembering her words to Draco the other night, thinking of the face on the other side. Padma had changed so much over the years. Her mouth was firmer, her hair straighter. She didn't bother with make-up anymore. Her sister, Parvarti, had left months ago, running to America with their mother, hiding. Padma had refused to hide. Ethany didn't know the details. But Padma left her family, and she changed. Ethany still didn't like her. She was still a giggling twit.
But it was nevertheless strange. Padma had never seemed the type to defy, well, anyone. But then maybe that was the core of her story. Defiance. Why she looked so different, why she did things differently.
Maybe it mattered, maybe it didn't. That wasn't the point. Why did there even have to be a point?
Ethany shook her head. She couldn't stand another minute in this stupid, stuffy room.
She could sneak out. It wasn't hard. Actually it didn't involve a lot of sneaking. It consisted of standing up, walking over to the stupid trap door, and jumping down.
Hiding wasn't even fun anymore. She was too good at it.
Maybe not, her mind hinted, Draco Malfoy's scowling face swimming to the surface.
She slammed her mind shut again.
Trelawney was saying something about " the mystic forces came to me last night, children", arms waving around her mystical way.
Ok, no alternative. She was leaving.
A/N. Any good? Seriously, I have no idea. (my friend Sophia couldn't proofread this one, she goes to a different school, and she's in exams, so she's not allowed on the computer!
ok, no one got the last chapter. It'll make sense later. Ok? (Come on. Put the clues together. girl called Ethany died 17 years ago. 17 year old girl called Ethany is still alive.)