Howl

I move away from the pub after a few moments and pull my hood up from the snow fluttering down. I am used to snow and after a few years, its beauty wears off. I start heading back to school because there was nothing left for me in Hogsmeade.

I keep my head down as I trudge through the snow alone. I do not want to speak to anyone. I try to keep to myself but I know better than anyone else does that discretion is not always granted by sheer will power.

Then the screaming starts.

I stop walking and freeze as the shrieks meet my ears. I don’t turn around but I can hear the commotion a little way away from me. I jump as my fingers begin tingling and a hand wraps around my upper arm.

I follow the curves of the long slender fingers to a strong arm clad in black up to pale skin of a neck and the white blond hair that I knew so well.

My heart jerks because I know, I just know that Draco is behind this, and that is why he’s dragging me towards school and away from the howling girl. I scamper behind him as my heart rate slows. If I don’t stop running—

“Lyall, look at me!” Draco exclaims as I tear my hand away from his and stop to calm my breathing. My eyes flicker up to meet his blue ones which look down at me with love and beg me to understand. “I’ll tell you everything, please just come with me!”

I don’t know why I follow him through the snowy lanes or why I allow him to lead me through the castle to the left and up seven floors, I don’t know why I wait quietly outside a wall until an intricately designed door shoves it way through the fading bricks of the castle exterior. I don’t why I follow me.

But I do.

Without speaking, Draco leads me to a worn looking sofa and pushes me down gently. He begins to pace in front me and, anxiously, I follow him with my ceaselessly changing irises.

Finally, after a few minutes of deliberated silence, Draco drops to his knees in front of me and reaches for my hands. I allow him to hold them but I do not grip him back, not yet.

“There are a lot of things that I need to say.” Draco tells me. “Please don’t stop me. I have so many things I’ve been dying to tell you… It’s been killing me, Lyall!”

I nod to let him know I’m listening.

“First I have to ask—You knew I was up to something bad and you still didn’t run to Potter or anyone, you ran to me and told me to get myself together. I just… Why?”

“Whatever it is,” I tell him. “I hazard you can’t stop even though you may want to.”

He nods to tell me I’m right. I take a deep breath and let my eyes dance around the room before bringing them back to look down at him.

“If you’re going to do something dangerous, it wouldn’t hurt to keep you as safe as I can.”
His blue eyes warmed and I figured that, if he asked me to, then I would help him. Draco begins to tell me everything and I have to remind myself incessantly not to interrupt.

“My father—He—he messed everything up, Ly. He ruined everything for us. That is, my mother and I. He just messed up royally and we had to make up for the mistake so I-I-I had to do something to keep us safe.” Draco rakes a hand through his hair and takes a shaky his breath. His blue eyes are shining with liquid and I hope he doesn’t cry. “It’s so hard to say. I don’t know how you’ll look at me—I don’t want you to stop caring—”

Sticking to my promise not to open my mouth, I gingerly lift my hand from under his and reach for his shoulders. I keep my eyes trained on his and I’m sure he can see the millions of emotions flickering in and out of my eyes right now. I slowly push his suit jacket back from his shoulders and we let it fall to the ground. I hear his throat catch in his breath as I trail my fingers over his left hand.

“Lyall, I—”

I shake my head and he closes his mouth.

I let my eyes fall to his arm as I begin to roll the sleeve of his black shirt up his arm delicately. I hold my breath, a part of me still hoping—

The mark slithers and shakes within his skin and I press my lips together tightly before pulling his sleeve down again until the top of his forearm is once more concealed.

“I wanted to tell you.” His voice tremors and he sits beside me. This time, when he takes my hand, I tighten my in fingers around his. “I needed to tell you, but I was so scared something would happen to you so I wanted to keep you close but I wanted to hold you at arm’s length. You’re the only person I feel like I could be myself with, but being myself has become more difficult as time goes—”

“What did you do to that girl, Draco?” I say, recalling the shrieks that had set all of this in motion.

He dropped his head to my lap and I tugged gently on his blond locks until he looked at me. “She wasn’t supposed to touch it! It wasn’t meant for Katie.”

“If not for her, then who?”

Draco blanches at my words. He says one word and it’s enough to make me want to throw up. “Dumbledore.” He tells me and I resist the urge to shy away from him. “I’m not strong enough, Lyall, I can’t do this! I never wanted any of this… I was chosen.”

“We are all chosen for something we can’t control, Draco.”

“I can’t be a killer.”

I stare in front of me. Perhaps, now that all of his cards were on the table, then I should show him mine, which I had so carefully tucked into my chest. “Draco, I…”

“Say something to make it all better.”

“I can’t.” I hate that my voice breaks. I hate that I can’t make it all disappear. I hate that we can’t run away and leave it all behind. “I’m so sorry, I can’t do anything.”

Draco sits up, takes a deep breath, and offers me an uncertain smile. “Were you going to say something there?”

I bring my knees up to my chest and stare anywhere but at his face. In a low voice, I say. “I’m not so perfect either.”

Draco waits for me to open my mouth.

“Look what you’ve done, Lyall.” My father growled at me as I phased back to skin and clothes. I clutched my head in my hand, ignoring the blood splattered over my hands and caked beneath my nails. “Look at the mess you’ve made!”

“It wasn’t me!” I screamed. I held my hands out in front of me and begin to shake. I crawl towards my parents but he pushed me away. “It wasn’t me!”

“This is all your fault. This is all your fault.” My father rocked back and forth with her in his arms and I cried into the wet, bloody ground beneath my knees.

Seconds later, but it lift like years, I lifted my younger eyes to look at her. My mother—

“No,” I smile at him and shake my head. I smile at him as though I can promise him the world. “We don’t have to deal with anything anymore at this time. We need to figure this out before anything else.”

“W-we?”

I smirk at him and his eyes light up as they did before any of this became known. “You didn’t think I’d leave you on your own did you, rakkain ystäväni?”



Hours later, Draco and I sneak back into the Slytherin dungeons unnoticed. Draco leads me to the sofa we would usually curl up on. He pulls me closer to him and I lean against him.

“Do you ever want to run away?” he asks me. I close my eyes and nod.

“I wanted to finish school and get off the island and travel and have a life full of mistake and regrets and I wanted to fall in and out love a hundred times. I wanted to live.” I tell him. I think it is the first time I ever let something like this slip.

“You still can, Lyall.”

“You can’t.” I snap at him. I wondered, when was he going to get it through the bleached head of his? I didn’t plan to leave his side. Especially not now: he needed me.

“I think I’m almost done with the cabinet.” Draco sighs and runs his fingers up my face and into my hair. He told me all about his task earlier. “Then there’s just the other thing.”

I ignore it for now because it does not do well to dwell on the inevitable.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

So he does.

He tells me about his mother and his father and he tells me about his home. He tells me about his owl and his brooms, he tells me about the stables at his home, and he tells me that he’s never been more comfortable with a person than he is with me. Draco tells me how he hopes the whole world will be at peace one day and how he’s sick of pretending he’s something. He tells me that he hates the morals his father had drilled into his brain and that he wants to escape with me more than anything in the world.

When he has run out of beautiful things to tell me, he asks me. “Do you miss your home?”

“Sometimes kyllä and sometimes ei.” I say because life would be much simpler if I had never have come to Britain but never would it have been as full.

“Se on mitä se on.” I say quietly and that is all because I have nothing more to say.

“It is what it is,” Draco agrees and I cannot help but laugh at him. “Don’t laugh!”

He was beautiful. He was beautiful for learning my language. He was beautiful because even if he couldn’t see it, he was so strong and I was so proud of him for holding himself together.

Eventually we have to go to bed.

Before the fork in the staircase, Draco gently takes a hold of my hand and pulls me to him and I bury my face in my chest as he does with my hair. We stay locked in each other’s arms for a long moment before we pull away and he drops my hand as I step out of reach.

“Oh, and Lyall?” Draco smiles at me. “I forgot to tell you one thing… I am utterly and hopelessly in love with you.”

Before I have the chance to reply, Draco slips up the steps and leaves me to my own thoughts.
I didn’t want to be left alone with my thoughts – not after that bombshell.

Paska, I was in love with that boy.