Trillium

Chapter One

By Mell8

I can still feel their skin against my fingers, soft with youth and taut with beauty. I can still see their hair as it is blown by the wind. The opposite colors, pale white and deep black, looked so striking when their heads were bent together.

I used to watch them for hours as they lay together in the clearing. I found it refreshing to see two people just lay there in the snowdrifts, autumn leaves, or spring flowers; especially since none of my brothers were ever able to stay in place with such perfect stillness, such serenity to themselves.

I wanted to know what their peace felt like but I couldn't intrude. I didn't want to destroy it and I feared that my presence would shatter the air and they would hate me for it.

After weeks of my staring one of them finally caught on that they were not alone. I watched from my hiding place amongst the roots under the large fir tree as they strolled into the clearing, hand in hand, and took their usual spot in the center. There was a slight drizzle that day, I remember, and water had dripped into my eyes.

I suppose I might have moved too fast and one of them caught my movement, but perhaps it was something else. Either way, when I looked back up from my sleeve my eyes were met with their own. The bright blue was so startling in the dusky skin and the dark grey reflected the flash of lightning that sang through the air at the moment; a portent that the world had just changed in that instant, perhaps?

They stood as one and walked over to me as I scurried deeper into my little hole. Even in my fright I had marveled then, as I still do now, at how they can move with perfect synchrony yet never even glace at the other. They were just that in tune with their bodies, even at such a young age, that they could move together without the slightest aid from the other. It's beautiful to see when all three of us move like that.

They found me where I hid, gently pulled me out, and had me join them in that clearing. I learned from them, about the beauty of nature and how it should be revered for the magnificent gift it is. I learned of the wonders of our own bodies, about how my limbs and theirs could move with perfect grace, of how a tilt of the head or the crook of an eyebrow could mean so much if one were to only look.

I was only eight at the time and they nine so any pleasures we might have had were simply from the mere act of sharing in the wonder surrounding us. But despite our age and therefore lack of carnal knowledge and, of course, lack of the growth of hormones that would prerequisite such things, I still learned their bodies as they learned mine. I was able to move with the same synchrony as they and I did it with pleasure.

Then came the day I was discovered. My mum had found some extra chores for me to do in one of her attempts to keep me occupied while all of my older brothers, except Ron, were at Hogwarts. Ron disliked playing with girls when he was ten years of age (he still does now but for different reasons) so wouldn't play with me. But my mother couldn't find me anywhere in the house or the yard, so when I returned from the clearing that day she was terribly displeased.

We met one last time, in our clearing, and the jarring note of disharmony that met us told me all I needed to know. He was leaving for another country, my dark skinned companion, while my pale skinned one was being forced to accompany others in his daily life, leaving no time to escape to us. Even my own pain of having to escape from a watcher every time I wished to venture out to meet them caused a pall to fall over the clearing.

We left that day with heavy hearts and pain in our souls. I had never learned their names and had never told them mine, true, but we knew each other so much more deeply than names could conjure.

I never saw them again until Hogwarts and the differences were so grating that I spent my first year wallowing in the company of the filth that was Tom Riddle. I wanted someone else to invade my mind and to take away my will because if I wasn't in control I could not think of what we had lost when we left that clearing for the last time.

In my second year I began to watch them again. I had to find them separately because they were never in the others company. My pale friend was cruel and cold. His two hulking brutes he called friends and his pug-nosed girlfriend and soon to be fiancé had changed him into a creature I did not know nor like.

My dusky friend had grown introverted and reclusive. He was by himself mostly but every once in a while I would see him gaze after our pale friend in longing. He was alone by choice as he waited in the shadows like me for our third to find us again.

I soon learned their names, Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zabini, and it gave me pause. It was interesting to note just who shared a portion of the Weasley forest, miles and miles apart of course, but still close enough for us to have met.

The Malfoys were a hard lot, self-aggrandizing and evil. It spoke of who Draco had become once his father had taken him under his wing. It was nothing like the true Draco I remembered.

The Zabinis were a less well-known lot but were no less wealthy than the Malfoys. I think, perhaps, that the reason Lucius Malfoy did not wish for his son to associate with Blaise was because of fear of usurpment of their position in power in society. Still, all that was truly known about Blaise is that his mother is the most prominent black widow ever to commit multiple perfect crimes, thereby leaving her out of prison and with much of her various deceased husbands' wealth in her coffers. Of Blaise himself, nothing is truly known.

But the day is coming when we will be forced back together, I can feel it. One day soon we will again walk together with perfect synchrony.

I can only hope it is not to our deaths.

III

Ginny put down her diary and quill with a sigh. She had been writing that first entry for hours, trying to get it perfectly right. Now her hand was cramping and her inkwell dry.

"Ginny, your brother's looking for you," Hermione said as she stuck her head into Ginny's sixth year dorm. "He said something about dinner. I think he wants to head down if you want to join us."

"Yeah, thanks," Ginny smiled back and tucked her journal into her robes. Her stomach gave an audible rumble and Ginny blushed at Hermione's laughter.

"I guess you really are hungry, Gin," she giggled and led they way down the stairs into the Gryffindor common room.

"I don't think I've eaten since breakfast," Ginny said. "I was busy writing all day."

"Homework?" Hermione asked.

Ginny stroked her journal and smiled behind Hermione's back. "Mmm, something like that."

"Oi! Ginny, there you are," Ron called from across the room. Harry shook his head at Ron's side and his eyes apologized for Ron's boisterous behavior to everyone who looked up from their homework and scowled at Ron.

"Let's go eat," Ginny grinned and looped her arm through Ron's. "I'm starving."

They made their way downstairs, down the marble staircase and into the Entrance Hall, and were headed towards the Great Hall, when Malfoy stopped them.

"Well look what we have here," he sneered coldly. "Incest from the two youngest Weasleys? How crass. But then I suppose it's something you should expect from someone of such low class background."

Ron turned purple and would have leapt at Malfoy, fists flying in rage, if Harry and Hermione had not grabbed the back of his robes.

"You take that back, Malfoy!" Ron snarled as he struggled to get free.

Ginny was ignored by the trio and by Malfoy. He had wanted to get a rise out of Ron for entertainment, and had done so easily, so had not been aiming his comments towards Ginny. Still, the comment stung her. He should have known just where her heart lay. She had given it to both him and Blaise back in the woods all those years ago.

She walked slowly forwards, unnoticed by everyone as Ron had now progressed to swearing and was dangerously close to ripping his robes. Malfoy finally noticed her when she stepped into his line of sight. Ginny raised one hand with all the grace he had taught her and caught that familiar look in his eyes as she brought her palm stinging across his cheek.

The corners of his eyes had bent ever so slightly in confusion, as if he didn't quite remember where he knew her from, as if the memory was just beyond his recollection.

Ginny cursed his father again as she turned away amid the shocked silence. Even Ron had grown silent as the slap echoed through the Hall.

Ginny walked toward the Great Hall doors, ignoring Parkinson's screeches of promised pain in return for daring to harm "her Draco" and Ron's laughter.

She reached into her robes and pulled out her journal as she grew even with the dark recess just to the side of the open door and dropped it. As she walked into the Great Hall, Ginny could see a dusky hand carefully reach out of the shadows and pick up the book.

She smiled.