I was fully unprepared for seeing that skirt again. Especially with the nosy reporter hanging around.
It was my school skirt. Judging by its length, my second or third year. Draco and I joke about how they got shorter every year. But, it was more than that.
Almost all of the Hogwarts girls despised those skirts. Their stiff material, required to brush our knee. They were hemmed considerably over the years. Once in awhile we received retribution from a head of house, but it didn't seem to matter much.
Maybe that skirt had given me some sort of sense of security, that I wouldn't be thrust into the real world too fast as I wore the frumpy schoolgirl outfit. But, that seemed to change, all too fast. He came back, and the skirt got shorter. As if somehow I needed to prove I was older, more mature. That I wasn't as scared as I really was.
Then, in my fourth year my father died and all hell broke loose. My mother never had enough time with me and I never really cared. I had what I needed. I had gold. I had status.
Years later bruises appeared on my thighs, on my arms. Where skin hit skin too hard.
Draco and I had never known love, affection was absent. And somehow, how we repeatedly, subtly broke the rules was a substitute for that.
And again that skirt got shorter there was just barely two inches or so between the tops of my stockings and the hem of my skirt. The purple of the bruises that coated my alabaster skin tone were visible.
I know why I did it. It was my way of showing, I was capable of emotion. I wasn't the shell of a person that everyone perceived me too be. Or maybe that I belonged to Draco Malfoy. It was that simple. Only I could make him happy like that. I forget why I found that so important.
Could you say that skirt defined me, during the six years I attended Hogwarts? Could you be any more naive?