Chapter Thirteen

oOo

My skin is white as the day I was born now, flawless once again, not a single trace of you still written on my body. No bruise remains where your teeth once bit into me, where you sucked my pulse into your mouth, coaxed the blood away from my heart and into my skin, though it sorely wanted to go elsewhere. There is not a scratch left on my body where your fingers dug into me, where your ragged nails raked across my back or bit into the flesh of my arse to get me just a fraction closer. The rash on the skin of my thigh from your unshaven cheek was the first mark to disappear. And now they are all gone, all but the mark that drove you away from me.

The glamour I put on every night before I go to bed now does not cover the evidence of our passion as it once did, but rather counterfeits it. I sit for hours in front of a mirror trying to capture the exact impression your teeth would leave on my throat, the exact red with hints of purple the depressions would be and the inverse purple mottled with red the bruise around it would be when you had just taken your mouth away, much to the horror of the mirror. But it didn't matter. I could never get it right, because what I remember isn't the marks I covered up, but the feeling they gave me, the little shock of pain, the reminder of you every time I turned my neck.

And yet, I can't stop trying. I need to see myself the way you saw me right after that last soul searing kiss before we had to go our separate ways for the night all those nights we were together that seem so long ago and nothing more than a happy dream. I ache because, like a dream, it seems the longer I am awake the harder it is to recall the exact details, melting all into vague impressions and half memories.

Are there flecks of gold in with the green of your eyes? I can't quite recall. And even if I could bring myself to look again to see for myself, you would never let me close enough to see the gold in your tie, let alone your eyes. You haven't looked my way in so long I can no longer bear to look in yours. I cannot watch you move on where I cannot, forget while I cannot, be happy where I cannot.

All I have left to prove to myself that there was once an us, not a me longing for you and you happy without me, is the ring you sent. That horrible, wonderful ring that I have never even worn. I've held it in my hand a thousand times, rubbed it between my fingers in the pocket of my robes during class to ward off the cold truth of your indifference, pressed it to my lips every night before I go to sleep because I can no longer kiss you. But it doesn't matter now. My father calls me home, and I have not the strength, nor the incentive to fight him. I can't take your ring with me where I am going and that is the worst torture I can imagine, because it really will leave me with nothing.

All I can hope is that when you get it, you will hold on to it and remember that you once loved me, and that you won't toss it in the bin as casually as you tossed me.

oOo

It is easier to forget you here where I don't have to see you every day, or be constantly confronted by memories of you. I have gone almost an entire day without a sharp pain in my chest reminding me that you don't want me anymore. The Death Eaters are training us in earnest now and they take up all my days with it. I work hard because I know that when they are done with me, when they finally let me go to bed, I will stay awake all night thinking of you if I am not so exhausted my body drops into sleep the moment my head hits the pillow.

I don't miss you while I am learning curses that make even my stomach turn. I don't miss you while I am fending off the attacks of my peers. And I don't miss you while I'm locked away in a potions lab that has never been graced with your incompetent fumbling. The ache in my muscles at the end of the day sometimes eclipses the ache of my yearning for you. Sometimes. Sometimes I can even forget you long enough to laugh with my friends at dinner, or get up to some mischief with them in the few hours we are left to ourselves.

But at night, gods, at night those terrible nights when sleep eludes me, I see your face on the back of my eyelids from that night, that first night we were together. Your mouth, as always was chapped and rough, and your eyes had this luminous quality out there in the dark. You loved me then, I know you did. But I can never see that look on your face long enough. As soon as I start to feel, remember that you loved me, the picture changes and all I can see is that look of horror on your face the night I told you I loved you and you saw the mark on my arm. I don't want to think about you that way anymore, either way. It is driving me mad.

It is easier to hate you here, too. Everyone hates you here, not just me in my more petty moments. I hate you for hurting me; it makes me feel foolish that I trusted you enough to make that even possible. I hate that you get to be the hero, while I am ever the villain, even though you were the one who used me, broke my heart and discarded me for something I had no control of, something you could have saved me from if you were truly the hero everyone makes you out to be. I hate you for not trusting me when I was willing to stay with you, for you, fight next to you, even die for you.

And so now I am here, a million miles from where I wish I was, but am glad I am not, missing you and hating you in equal measures.

oOo

I was thinking about you last night. Again. It seems that I cannot stop thinking of you, no matter how much I want to forget you. Forgetting anything about you is impossible, though, and I should have known that, but I needed to believe I could get over you. I wish I could get over you. I wish I didn't think about you constantly whenever my mind isn't specifically occupied by something else. But I wanted to remember last night. Some memories of you are worth keeping, even if they do chain me to you in a way I doubt I shall ever escape.

I was remembering the first time we were together, that night in the graveyard. Do you remember that night? The term had just started and you were driving me crazy, talking to me like nothing had happened, like we were friends and you hadn't ignored me all summer to be with your girlfriend the Weaslette. You were even being nice to Blaise, which was wrong on so many levels I can scarcely count them. But that night the Weasley bitch was nowhere to be found, and neither was Blaise, or anybody else for that matter. Actually, they probably would have been easy to find if we had wanted to see anyone else, but we didn't so we just started walking to get away from everyone and everything, because being alone in a room with you was too confining.

So we walked. We walked and walked until there was no castle left and we were on the grounds and we tried the Quidditch pitch, but it didn't feel right, and so we kept walking right on by it until we came to the graveyard and then we just stopped. I don't know why we stopped there, but we did. We sat in between two headstones, the grass was damp, and the air was warm and humid and you could still smell the rain from that evening, but we didn't care. You sat in front of me, facing me, but not touching, your legs crossed under you so adorably.

I wanted you to kiss me again, like you had that day in the hall, but you didn't. You just sat there and talked to me and got imperceptibly closer to me every minute that passed with us staring into each other's eyes, not touching. Would you ever have kissed me? If I had waited for you to make the first move, would we still be out there sitting on someone's grave and aching with the longing to touch? Probably. Hard to blame you for that when it always went so well when you made your move in the past.

The little black kitten bounded out of the darkness at us like it was being chased, but it nothing came after it. His little body was all gawky and he clearly hadn't grown into it just yet, but there was something entrancing about it as it circled me. I felt like prey, which is not something I usually like, but it amused me that I was being stalked by tiny creature, and gave me something to look at besides your eyes. He kept circling me and rubbing up against my knee and making the most pitiful yowling sound I have ever heard, and I had no idea what he wanted.

"He wants you to touch him," you told me, and the kitten meowed in agreement and started pawing at my lap.

I told you that I couldn't, that it would scare him away, and that I rather liked him and didn't want him to go. You leaned forward and pet the kitten, your hand nearly brushing my thigh as you stroked its little head. My chest clenched up and my hands started to sweat and I wasn't sure if we were talking about the kitten anymore, and you were so close, I didn't remember you being that close. I could barely breathe.

And then you looked up from my lap into my eyes and said, "He'll think you don't want him if you never touch him."

Something in my chest burst and warm liquid oozed all over my insides and for a moment I was brave and I brushed my hand against yours on the kitten, and leaned in and kissed you all at once. I don't know if the kitten was purring or if it was me, but it was the best thing I had ever felt before. My whole body felt like hot and rubbery, except my lips and my mouth on yours, and I thought if it never stopped it would be too soon. But it didn't stop. We kissed and kissed and kissed for what seemed like forever and then somehow we were lying in the grass and you were on top of me and pushing my robes away and touching my skin and making me shake all over.

You weren't the first to touch me there, but it felt like it, like you were the first and you'd be the last and I wanted it that way. And then your mouth was on me and I knew you'd be the last because I was going to die right then and they wouldn't even have to move my body because we were already in the graveyard. Every part of me was throbbing in time with your mouth on my cock and I was moaning wantonly and then I was screaming and coming down your throat and you were kissing me again.

All I could think was that I needed to touch your skin, so I started rucking up your shirt and running my hands over your belly and then biting your nipples. You were hard and grinding into me and biting my throat and snarling and perfect. Every time you ground yourself against my thigh your belly brushed my cock and I was getting hard again and you were moaning my name between bites and then your hand was on me and stroking and I screamed again and we both came and then collapsed in the wet grass. The kitten purred somewhere near my head and started playing with our hair. You said he was your familiar. He followed us all the way to the rickety iron gate, but never left the graveyard.

I was remembering that night and I was touching myself because you were not there to do it for me this time, and I was moaning and I forgot the silencing charm. Blaise came into my room about the time that my cock went into your mouth and I couldn't stop. I knew he was there in the room, watching me do it, but I couldn't stop, and when he crawled onto the bed and swallowed me whole I screamed for him the way I screamed for you, and I couldn't stop myself. You haven't touched me in so long, and he was there with his mouth and his hands and his cock and I couldn't say no, even if I wanted to.

oOo

Blaise says he loves me. It doesn't feel as threatening when he says it. He never used to say it, not last summer when we were carrying on, not after we got back to school and I dropped him for you without even a word, not when you left me and I was alone and miserable. But he says it now. He tells me he loves me every night when he climbs into my bed and kisses me all over and I'm lonely here where I can't even see your face accidentally during dinner, and so I let him. I let him do what he wants, let him use my body and call it making love, but more pathetically, I let him hold me and caress me when he's done, let him stay the night in my bed. All the things I never let you do. It doesn't matter anymore.

If I'm lucky I'll die young and never have to see you look through me as if I'm not there ever again, and if I'm not, then I'll get to see you over the point of your wand. I don't care either way. I don't care about anything any more. I'm a complete failure as a Death Eater, and I don't care. I can't even get up the will to curse anyone. You have to mean it, you know. And I don't, because I don't care enough to hate, not even you. I don't hate you anymore, but I don't love you anymore either. I don't feel anything, and I don't want to ever again. Everything hurts too much if you let yourself care, and I've had enough of hurting for a lifetime.

oOo

A/N: I'm sorry this took so long. I hurt my shoulder and couldn't type very well for a while. Thank you to everyone who left a review!