A Harry Potter Fanfiction
By Jewel
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and its characters were created by JK Rowling and are copyrighted to their rightful owners.
Summary: "Sometimes when his midnight blue eyes are fixed on her face, and he thinks she's asleep, she imagines that he's in love with her."
Rated PG-13 for themes.
Word Count: 1552 words
A/N: Title and inspiration from the Sylvia Plath poem "Mad Girl's Love Song." (For the record, FFN likes to fuck with my spacing. Blame them for any such problems.)
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Mad Girl's Love Song (1/1)
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The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sun me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up in inside my head.)
- Sylvia Plath, "Mad Girl's Love Song"
Angelina knocks back two vials of the pain suppressant potion before she realizes that it's probably not a good idea. There are already five empty bottles of fire whiskey cluttering her bedroom floor. Except she hates today more than any other day of the year. And she always wants to forget today by means necessary. And if it's only ten in the morning, then all the better because the she doesn't have to take anymore of this miserable day.
x ? x
She hates when he stares at her. He looks when he thinks she's too preoccupied to notice his dark eyes burning into her. Staring through her like he can see inside of her. Like he knows who she really is. Like he knows more than just the sound she makes when she has an orgasm.
Sometimes when his midnight blue eyes are fixed on her face, and he thinks she's asleep, she imagines that he's in love with her.
The idea sickens her. And probably she's dead wrong. But all the same she pushes him out of her bed and demands that he disapparate away.
Montage will scowl at her, and grumble, and sometimes call her rude names, but always he complies.
And that's the part of their arrangement that she likes best.
x ? x
He doesn't come to her today. Even though it's a Sunday, and he likes to spend the lazy afternoons in the green drawing room of the sprawling mansion that she inherited upon her parents' deaths. It's not larger or smaller than the one he owns, but he likes to sit near her, reading a book or a newspaper while she catches up on her own reading, or her correspondences.
But then, it's not afternoon yet.
It's just past lunch time. The firewhiskey's kicked in. And although she's taken another vial of the blue potion, the pain won't dim.
x ? x
He's too familiar with her. Keeping changes of clothing in her house. Ordering her house elves around. Draping an arm over her while they read silently together.
Montague acts like he's her husband. Like it's his ring on her finger. Like it's his pictures she keeps scattered throughout her suite of rooms.
She hates the formal events she gets invited to. She hates that she feels obliged to go to them all. Hates that he's always there, too.
Hates that he always insists on dancing with her. Hates how close he holds her during a waltz.
Angelina doesn't like the way Ron looks at her, disgust etched on his freckled face. She looks at Hermione, who looks dazzling in pale pink robes. Hermione doesn't look like she thinks Angelina betrayed the Weasleys. But then, Hermione of all people should understand.
Ron, standing there, so condemningly, has no idea. His brother, his poor, dead brother, doesn't know either.
It's because of her lover, who smiles charmingly at the other people on the dance floor, it's because of him that she knows any of this. And it's because of that mark on his arm that Fred, her one true love, isn't here to save her from it.
x ? x
The afternoon sun lights the sky in bold streaks of red, and the golden glow reflects back from all the shiny tombstones.
Her black dress robes, so different from the amber ones she wore last night, flutter on the strong wind that shakes the last remaining leaves from the trees surrounding the cemetery.
The roses in her hand, their thorns carefully removed by florists, they don't mean anything. Fred hated roses.
She doesn't put them on his grave. They're all perfectly black. They're the only kind that Montague ever sends her. Because he knows how much she loves pink roses.
If she's standing upright (after all the firewhiskey she wouldn't know anymore), it's by sheer force of will.
Angelina's not the only one crowding his grave. Under the weight of the long braids intricately knotted on her head, she sees his family.
His mother doesn't look at her. His father offers a small smile. His older brothers haven't come. Two are already lying beside him, and the other is nervously waiting for his son to be born. His twin is absent as well. Ron glares at her. He hates her, of course. No one hates the Death Eaters and their supporters like Ron does. Not after Harry. Ginny's not there. It doesn't surprise Angelina.
They don't approach, not while she's there.
Still clutching the roses, she apparates away.
x ? x
It sun has already set when she appears in his bedroom.
She can't say if the firewhiskey has worn off or not, but she quickly sheds her robes and disposes of the dead roses.
He appears beside her before she has time to kick back another potion. The frown on his face belies his otherwise calm exterior.
If he's shocked when her hands immediately reach for the buttons on his robes, he doesn't show it.
Montague allows her to push him down on the bed. His robes aren't even off when she rips away his boxers.
He tries to kiss her, but she moves too quickly for him to catch her. Her movements are frantic and hurried when she impales herself on him.
He lets her take complete control because he knows what this means to her. Knows that desperate illusions are the only things she clings to these days.
He keeps his eyes open because she shuts her. Out of the corner of her eye he can see a tear creep out. But she doesn't wipe it away, or open her eyes, or stop. Angelina just goes on and on. And after a while he doesn't know if the tears are out of grief or frustration.
He rolls them over, taking up the rhythm. Finally she opens her eyes. And he doesn't see her in them.
Her nails against his arms and chest are going to leave marks. Her ring, with its large diamond, cuts into his skin.
When she kisses him, he can taste the firewhiskey and the potions and tears. And when she bites him, he can taste blood, too.
She comes violently, raking her nails against his back. When he falls on top of her, his blood smears on them both.
As quickly as she grabbed him she pushes him away. Angelina rolls out of bed, naked and glistening with sweat, his blood on her face and breasts.
Just as quickly as she stands, she falls to knees and begins to throw up.
He props himself up on an elbow, watching her. She rips at her hair, pulling the dark braids around her like a curtain.
Blindly she gropes on the floor for her wand. Finding it under her discarded robe, she disapparates.
Montague falls back onto his bed. Breathing heavily, he shouts for a house elf.
x ? x
For five days she doesn't leave her room. She doesn't touch the food that the house elves bring. Or use the baths they draw.
On the sixth day she can longer stand her own stench, and her stomach is trying to chew its way through her spine.
It's not until the seventh day, a week since she ran from him, that all the liquor and potions wear off.
And when they're gone, the memories swamp her and she wants to take comfort in a good bottle of firewhiskey again.
Except that she remembers everything that happened with crystal clarity, and she's so embarrassed she doesn't want to ever have a repeat of it.
Decked out in fresh turquoise robes and smelling of lavender, she tells her house elves to fix breakfast in the green parlor. After she finishes eating, it's nearly mid afternoon and she has an astonishing amount of business to attend to. She takes a moment to marvel at how her mother managed to deal with it all, but when she sits down to sort it all out, Montague arrives.
He simply nods at her and then settles into his favorite arm chair beside the large windows.
For a second Angelina wonders if last Sunday was just a figment of her imagination, conjured by her alcohol soaked brain. But she's missing her favorite black dress robes and she remembers washing away stale sweat and blood just yesterday.
It's not until the late evening that she has all her affairs back in order. By then he's closed his book and ordered the house elves to prepare dinner in the formal dinning room.
They have dinner at a table meant to sit twenty people. She sits at the head of the table and he sits at the foot. Several candles on the long table are all that illuminates the room.
This is what she hates most about him. When he tries to pretend like they have a real relationship. A future together. He's trying (oh, he's really trying, she thinks), to pretend like maybe they're married.
And, maybe in a way, they are. They eat in silence and when they're done they retire to her room.
When she wakes up in the morning, he's gone. Mattie, her personal house elf, bustles in with an arrangement on black roses.
x ? x
And Montague, reclining in his own bed, miles and miles away, wonders why of all the women in the world he had to fall in love with his own poison.
Reviews would be greatly appreciated.
Jewel
08.19.2005