My Enigmatic Enemy

I wasn’t sure whether I should’ve been more worried about Crabbe or Goyle…the one who shoved or the one who…erm…knuckle-cracked?

“Erm…is there something I can help you with?” I managed, but I squeaked.

Okay, here’s the truth: I don’t know who the hell decided that I could and would be a Gryffindor. Okay, I know it was the Sorting Hat, obviously. But I’m not brave. I’m the shy, stay-out-of-trouble kind of girl who won’t stand up for anyone, let along herself. I am that type of girl.

So, just what did I do to deserve being cornered by these two thugs?!

“Hello?” I asked, squeakily once more, waving my hand in front of Goyle’s face.

“Shut up,” he grunted. “Trying to think.”

I snorted, but he didn’t notice.

“What should we do with her?” Crabbe grunted under his breath to Goyle.

“I dunno! You’re the one who said she had to be punished…”

I was surprised to know they could speak, let alone think independently. Okay, so that was mean. But they were keeping me here, and even worse was that class had started five minutes ago now!

Then I smirked evilly. I may not be the bravest, but I had to do something to interrupt their evil plotting!

So…

I started whistling. Just whistling, and Crabbe looked around like someone was trying to curse him, whipping his wand out. I felt my heart leap in fright, but I just kept whistling, then changed my mind and started humming. Then I noticed that Crabbe had realized where it was coming from. He moved quickly for a great lug like him, and I found myself pinned to the wall by his hand clutching the front of my robes. I squealed, unable to hold it.

“Shut up!” he hissed.

“Let go!” I finally raised my voice to a normal speaking tone. “What did I do to deserve this, huh?! Just let me go! We’re late for class!”

I squeaked again as he pushed me against the wall even more firmly. I shut my mouth, and I knew I seemed like a frightened little mouse. He seemed to notice the same thing, as well as Goyle, for they both laughed like the idiots they are and went back to talking in their loud undertones.

Finally they seemed to come to a decision, and without saying anything, Crabbe started dragging me along with them. I didn’t even dare to speak up this time, I just allowed myself to be forcefully dragged through the corridors and up the stairs. I lost track of where we were, until we reached a tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, and I immediately recognized the blank stretch of wall that housed the Room of Requirement. D.A. meetings last year had brought me here several times. Goyle did the walk by three times, and yanked open the door when it appeared, for Crabbe to pull me through. My right shoulder got rather painfully banged on the doorframe, but Crabbe just grunted and yanked me through even more forcefully. I winced and let out a cry of pain, which actually got me slapped across the back of my head, bringing a tear to my eye.

“I think it’s this way,” Goyle said and Crabbe nodded. I knew better than to open my mouth at this point. That is, until I saw it.

“What the hell is that?!” I shrieked.

It looked eerily like a human skeleton, but then I noticed it had waaay too many bones.

“It’s a skeleton,” Crabbe replied dumbly, and he shoved me to what I deduced was the skeleton of a merman.

I bumped it and turned to face them, about to shout at them, when I felt something seize me from behind. I screamed, and stumbled enough to fall on my butt. With one look to the right, seeing the bones of the tail, I had a horrible wrenching feeling in my gut, so I looked to where, halfway between my shoulders and elbows, bone forearms were hugging me…quite tightly. I screamed again, and felt a cloth going in my open mouth, muffling my cries. I shouted obscenities at Crabbe and Goyle that they couldn’t understand, and they turned and left me there.

I wriggled and screamed through the gag (that, as I discovered, was not tied behind my head, but held in the grinning jaws of the skeleton, just as tightly as I was held in the arms), to no avail. My bag, I realized, had been left in a passage somewhere on the way, and in it my wand. I hadn’t bothered to take it out yet, so it wasn’t on my person. How stupid of me!

Don’t be so hard on yourself, I thought wryly. How were you supposed to know you were going to get kidnapped by dumb and dumber and left in the Room of Requirement to rot?
To try to calm myself down, I started running through Ancient Runes translations in my head. Somehow, this tactic did not work. Problem one: the first rune that came to my mind was ‘Mermaid’. The next was ‘gag’. Then ‘trapped’, ‘imprisoned’, and ‘death’. Needless to say, these were not the type of words I wanted running through my head at this time. So, reluctantly but exhaustedly, I lay my head back into a more comfortable position (or as comfortable as was possible, being given a bear hug by a super-creepy skeleton) and await whatever fate that fate brought upon me.

I must have dozed, because when I came to, my stomach was rumbling and my tears were dried. Then it struck me that I would die here if no one happened upon this room, and I felt the tears stream down my cheeks. From there, it went to full-on sobbing, using my hands to pull uselessly upon the bones that held me there. They scared me, and always had, but they were suddenly that much more frightening. And this is why I shouldn’t be in Gryffindor. I should be a Hufflepuff, not a single trait to my name but loyalty to my friends and okay grades.

I heard a noise, like something falling or closing in the distance, but I continued to sob. I didn’t care, it was probably just something that had somehow survived in here for who knows how long and wanted to eat me. It wasn’t fair that I, Ami Carson, shy-girl extraordinaire, had been placed in this situation. It wasn’t fair that I could be hated so much for just looking at Draco Malfoy! For snapping at him to watch where he was going. So why did it have to be me, here, and now?

But I wouldn’t wish anyone else in this situation, either. I wouldn’t want anyone to be in a situation like this. I don’t even like that Harry has to go through all he’s been through, and what Draco’s going through is not, in any way, the type of person he really is. So why do we all get thrown into things like this, things we never asked for, and things that we can’t get out of?

I choked on more sobs, and thought I heard slow, curious footsteps. It must be the creature that’s going to eat me.

I paid it no heed, letting my sorrow pour down my cheeks in wet, salty streaks. The sound grew closer, and I saw a blurred dark shadow through my tears, and I closed my eyes. I tried to reach my hands up high enough to cover them, when I heard a furious voice say some sort of incantations, and the gag literally disintegrated. The arms of bone shattered, but left me unscathed, and a hand - ice cold on my wrist - pulled me up. I kept my eyes closed and threw my hands up over them, letting my tears fall into my own hands.

“Ami?” the voice said, and I froze, although I was still sobbing.

I nodded.

“It is you,” his voice seemed shocked. “What are you doing here?! Are you okay?”

He seemed genuinely concerned, but I shoved him away.

“W-w-what are you doing here, M-Malfoy?” I retorted, the tears in my eyes still blurring my vision.

“It doesn’t matter, does it? I’m here and I found you, you’re safe.”

I felt his cold hand on my cheek and I flinched away from the touch.

“I won’t hurt you, Ami,” he said, sounding exasperated. “I won’t.”

I just shook my head, wanting to trust that but not allowing myself to. After all, it was Draco Malfoy, a Slytherin. An enemy of any student in Gryffindor. An heir to a family known for dark magic. I couldn’t trust him…I just couldn’t. Even with as much as I wanted to.

“Who did this to you?” he asked suddenly, and ignoring my flinching away, gently ran his fingertips along a bruise across my cheekbone. I realized it must have been from Goyle, when I was too noisy on the fifth floor…however, I just shook my head.

“N…none of your b-business, Malfoy,” I choked.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Ami! I just said tha---what is this?!”

My eyes widened as I felt the cold touch of his fingertips along the side of my neck at the base, where I knew a symbol he would recognize was burned into the skin. As he drew my robes over the inch that it would take to see the whole design, I cried, “No!” and covered his hand with my own.

By the look on his face, however, I knew he’d already seen it. Or, at least enough of it to know what it was.

“No! No, no, no, no, no!” I choked out in quick succession, clawing at the back of his hand.

He glanced at me, and moved the other hand I’d thrown up to cover it. He hissed in recognition. Then he looked at me, a whole new look in his eyes.

“It was you,” he said, staring at me. “It was you who saved me that time.”

‘That time’ was in Diagon Alley, right before the school year last year. I had mistakenly stumbled into Knockturn Ally, and came across Draco and his father. For some reason, his father had been extremely angry, and I, being disguised with a potion at the time that gave me straight light brown hair and tweaked the shape of my nose slightly, had stepped in. It wasn’t something I normally did. Which, at the time, seeing as I wasn’t technically me, shouldn’t have given me away.

As a punishment for getting in the way, Lucius had given me a special reminder, that would be there until I found a way to remove it or until I died.

About an inch tall, it was a miniature Dark Mark, on the right side of my neck at a level where it could just, and only just, be covered by my robes and most of my t-shirts.

“This…is a secret between us,” Lucius had hissed to me, while looking at Draco. “It’s a way of saying that I will find you again, and you will pay for interrupting me.”
I snapped back to the present when Draco whispered, “Why?”

“It w-was cruel!” I managed, not budging him with my rather half-hearted attempt to shove him away. “He was going to torture you, right there, and I…I didn’t want to see it…” I choked off at the end, changing it from ‘I didn’t want to see you hurt’, but he seemed to find that hidden meaning.

“But that meant you would get hurt in return!” He cried. “Why would you do that for me?! You being hurt and branded like that is worse than me getting hurt!”

I stared up at him defiantly, and stated, “I don’t like seeing others hurt. I don’t wish that kind of thing on other people.”

His gaze seemed to soften somehow, and he replied, “I don’t like seeing you hurt.”

With that, we both cast a glance at the shattered skeleton that I’m sure had been cursed.

“You’re j-just saying that,” I scowled at him, stumbling back. “Go away! You’re just here to g-gloat about h-how your cronies got m-me here without any trouble at all and how I c-could get dragged here and left to die any other t-time they pleased!”

“Crabbe and Goyle did this to you?!”

His expression darkened.

“What d’you care?” I said, slightly hysterically. “They’re your friends, I bet you fancied a bit of a j-joke and told them to throw me in here!”

“I wouldn’t do that!” he yelled, throwing me completely off as he grabbed my shoulders, at which I winced at the jolt of pain through the shoulder that had caught the door. He pulled the hand away as if it had been burned. “I wouldn’t,” he said softly, staring at my shoulder, as if trying to see through the robes to see the problem.

“Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t,” I scoffed, trying to get over the moment.

“I wouldn’t,” he said even more firmly, using a hand to grab my chin so I would look him in the eyes. “Not to you.”

“And why not to me?”

“I suspected,” he said, and his tone was even softer, “I suspected it was you. The whole time, and I’ve been watching, but you never showed any signs! You never gave me any reason to know for sure that it was you who saved me. You never…you never looked at me.”

I snorted, thinking about what I’ve been doing all year, but then froze.

He’d been watching me?!

“You’ve been watching…?” I voiced my question.

“Of course! And now, now…I know…” he started out strong with this sentence, but his voice faltered. “I know, and I have no more reason to talk to you…to associate myself with you…but I…” his hands came up to either side of my face, cupping it in them. “Now I can’t stay away.” He said in less than a whisper.

And then he leaned in the last few inches to touch his lips to mine, sending an electric current all through my body.

I didn’t push him away.