The Art of Shadow Boxing

 

                                                                                                                      Chapter 14 

                                                                                                                   I'm Your Tragedy







When I arrive at the park the next morning, Granger's already there, sitting beneath a tree with a cup of steaming tea in one hand and a book in the other. She looks peaceful, lost in the pages beneath her nose, her head tipping back just barely enough to lift the cup to her lips, her eyes never breaking from the words as she sips.

I push the hood from my head and pop the ear buds out of my ears, the sudden end of the pumping music replaced by the gentle breeze blowing across the pond. I feel a knot of tension loosen in my shoulders as I slow my jog, relieved and yet pained that she showed. I wasn't confident that she would. Rubbing a hand over my face, I brush away the slight sheen of sweat and blink my eyes back into focus.

Last night was another long night filled with painful memories, mixed with cruel taunting’s of what my life could have been if things were different. It was a new tactic, almost like Bella wasn't happy enough to simply let me relive my old torture anymore but instead took delight in weaving new ones as well. I know perfectly well Potter says she's dead, know that's most likely true, but...maybe there's a bit of me she latched herself onto, lying dormant until the time was right to reenter my life.

She spoke enough of what lays in my soul for it not to be a completely farfetched premise.

I haven't mentioned this to him of course, haven't brought her up again, but I know he knows she's on my mind, I can see it in the way he looks at me. And I could have sworn I heard him cursing her grave at some point last night as he held me spooned against him with his lips pressed against the back of my neck.

"You came." I shove the headphones into my sweatshirt pocket and offer her a small smile as I stop before her.

Her eyes flicker up once then back down, quickly scanning and finishing her sentence before snapping the book shut. "I almost didn't." She informs me, a slight frown on her lips as she shoves the novel in her bag and moves to her feet. "Your note was rather...short." 

"I wanted to speak in person." I tell her and she nods in understanding, falling easily in step beside me as we begin to wonder in a loop around the pond.

"It was not easy getting away from Ron, I don't like having to lie to him, especially about something I have no inclining of." She sips her tea and watches the soft surface of the water before turning her gaze on me.

I chuckle, kicking at a rock and listening to it ping against the ground. "Potter wasn't any easier this morning." I mutter, remembering the heavy stare he leveled me with when I scrambled out of bed, stumbling uncharacteristically over my words before running out the door. Of course it wouldn't have been so difficult if I wasn't so bloody tired and twitchy from my nightmares...and if his arms didn't feel so damn amazing.

"He's living with you?" She probes, shifting her eyes up and down me like she'll be able to formulate the nature of our relationship just by studying my appearance.

"Staying with me, yes." I correct carefully. "That's part of what I need to talk to you about."

"I see." Granger draws in a breath and stops in her tracks, pinning me with a look that makes me feel like one of her books, creased open with all my secrets laid bare for her to read at will. "Go on then?"

"There's this woman, Madame Safiya, she's an...investor of sorts." I lift my eyes heavenwards, seeking the soft morning's lights help, trying to organize my thoughts into a weave-able story that will convince her of what I need to.

"An investor of yours? She makes money off your fights?"

"Partly yes, she's very powerful, someone you don't cross."

"And you crossed her I assume?" Granger lifts an eyebrow, brushing the hair from her face that the breeze keeps whipping around her. Her tone is familiar, so all-knowing - I used to hate it, despised it to my very core even - but now, hearing it again, it's almost comforting. Somethings never change and I like the little reminds of the truth of that.

I chuckle darkly, remembering that ill-fated night that I first saw Potter's eyes again, when his magic touched me so powerfully that it nearly stole my very life. "In a way I suppose. I lost a fight and she lost a fortune because of it."

"Still falling in with the wrong people then?" She shakes her head and drinks her tea thoughtfully as I remain silent.

"Old habits." I don't deny it but also not bothering to bring up the fact that Muay Thai and meeting Donnie - and subsequently Madame Safiya -  saved me from a very dark path.

 "What does this have to do with Harry?"

"I've asked him to leave, I don't want him mixed up with her. I'm...I'm worried..." I trail off, gazing at my feet, the gray and red trainers covered in dust and growing worn in the toes. I sigh heavily and press forward, determined to get it all out into the open. "He won't though and she's set her sights on him." I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my noise, Safiya's sly smile when first learning of what he means to me flitting in my mind, closely followed by Graces inquiries of him. "She's not to be messed with Granger and she's far too interested in Potter for my liking."

"Why would she be interested in him though Draco?" She asks softly and isn't that the question of the year? Why indeed.

"Because she knows...she knows that I..." I bite my lip and shrug, unable to voice it aloud to her, like the little words will carry on the wind and end everything. It would surely shatter our tentative illusion.

She nods, her lips pursed as she sets her mind against all I've said, reading between each word, each line, fixing it all up into neat little columns to be analyzed. "She'll use him to force your hand in some way." She states flatly, like it's a fact as plain as day.

I don't have to answer or even nod in response, she already knows she's right. "That's not all. She came over to my flat while I was gone the other day and took a vial of Potter's blood." I mutter, recounting the event turning my stomach sour and my throat dry. If I look close enough I can still see the marks on his wrists from his binds.

Granger stops dead in her tracks, her eyes widening at the revelation. "His blood? Whatever for?"

"That's just it, I have no idea." I growl and drag a hand through my hair again, a tick I can't seem to stop today. "She's not a witch and I can't fathom what she could possibly do with it. It doesn't make any sense, it's completely mental, but there she was. In my bloody kitchen, tying up Harry, and forcing a needle into his arm!" I end in an almost shouted hiss that sounds unreal and unnerving even to my ears as I feel all the anxiety bubble back to the surface that Bellatrix has been occupying. "I can't have him here Granger, I can't have him hurt."

She watches me evenly through my growing rant and nods very slowly, purposefully. "You want us to take him back home with us don't you?"

I force myself to hold her gaze as I nod, feeling like my hearts leaking out beneath my feet as I do so. He'll be gone soon, just as I wanted all along...right? Even if I don't, even if I've shifted in my desire towards him it doesn't matter. Not with Safiya preying on him and especially now with Bella's warning lurking in my head and around every darkened corner.

"And that's really what you want? To never see him again?" She presses and I suck in a sharp breath as she mirrors my own inner war.

"It doesn't matter what I want." I reply, knowing my voice and face are cold and distant. Detached. A perfect Malfoy mask.

"I want to know something first."

"What is that?" I ask skeptically.

She draws from her bag a thick stack of postcards, tied together with a small yellow ribbon. She stares down at them for a moment, contemplating them in her own time. "When you left, Harry..." She states after a long silent pause. "Harry stopped living. He was a shell of himself, no one could get through to him, he just wondered around like a ghost. Lost in his own little world." I feel her words hit like she's slicked me in tar and doused me in flames - my eyes are going dry and sticky and watery all at once.

Because...that can't be true there had to have been something else that sent him over the edge. It couldn't have been me leaving! I open my mouth to rebut but she holds a hand up, clutching the stack to her chest. "I don't want to hear why, it was your decision and it's in the past now."

"Alright...then what do you want to know?" I somehow manage to get the words out through my dry throat as she thumbs the topmost postcard - a faded, curling picture of St. Petersburg.

"He spent a few months in a daze and then one night he just showed up at my door." She heaves a sigh and slips her eyes closed, propelling herself back in time. "He had this spark in his eye that I thought he'd lost forever, with this horribly tattered bag over his shoulder. He didn't say anything really but I somehow knew what he was planning, so I let him kiss my cheek, let him pretend he'd be back soon...when I asked where he was going he just shrugged and smiled then he twirled and was gone. We didn't hear from him for a whole year."

"Granger..." I try to stop her from continuing, her story filling ever little pore in my body with a prickling sensation that runs both hot and cold. I don't want to hear this.

"When he finally wrote," she continues, ignoring me completely. "It was a postcard from Russia, written very quickly, just a note to let us know he was alright and that he wasn't planning on coming home. Ron didn't want to believe it but I knew it all along and I knew why." Granger stops again, pinning me with her weighted eyes – eyes that are filled with years of meaning and untold stories that I want to push as far away from me as possible.

"We started our yearly visits shortly after that but he was always preoccupied, always eager to be moving on. Then last night he was...you two seemed...connected. Like you used to be but different somehow." She sounds more like she's taking to herself than to me now as her mind whirls with different kinds of scenarios. "Harry's my friend, my brother Draco. All this time and distance hasn't changed that, no matter how much space he puts between us."

"I know." I say quietly at her pause.

"Good, don't forget it." She fixes me with a withering stare that eats up all my bravado in coming here, all my confidence, and leaving me shifting nervously. "So where does that leave you?"

I furrow my brow, not quite following her line of questioning. "How do you mean?"

"I mean what do want from him? Because so help me Malfoy if you leave him broken again I will kill you." Granger threatens with perfect calm, the icy even tone somehow more chilling and frightening than any shouted threat she could have made. And this is my opening, the perfect way to launch into my plea to take him far away from here before it's too late, I couldn't have asked for better and yet...

As I stare into her deep brown eyes that have seen so much, that knows so intimately my relationship with Potter and all it's terrible lows and earth shaking highs, I can't seem to form the words, can't resume the augment I came here to make - not with her story ringing in my head. Instead my mouth is opening on its own, my answer a breath from my heart that floats thickly through me. "He's not mine to break anymore."

"If only that were true." She says sadly and I have to turn my head sharply from her, lest I completely degrade myself and dissolve into tears.

I can picture him so clearly, with his shoddy backpack and his hair growing unmanageably long with no one around to remind him to care for himself. I can picture him entering new towns with his goofy smile and approachable projection of kindness, picture him alone in hotel room after hotel room all over the world - repeating the process until the smile starts to fade, till the joy begins to rot, till the hotel rooms grow dingy and dirty, till his feet grow weary with all the dust beneath him and nothing to show for it.

It's not the life he was meant to lead and neither is curling up on a little cot in my little flat in an abandoned corner of the world.

I don't know what to say, don't know how to convey the extent of my feelings for him and how much I need him safe and away from me for his own good. So I keep my mouth shut, staring right back at her and almost wishing she would simply take the liberty to probe my mind, prying from me the answers I can't freely give.

We stand silently facing each other for a long time before she sighs and looks away. "I won't be able to convince him, not if you stay behind."

I let out a frustrated growl, screwing my eyes shut. "Why is that?"

"Have you not listened to a word I said?" She huffs.

"Of course I have but surely you can change his mind, there must be some way!" I bark, starting to feel panicky that they won't be able to help me.

"Draco he won't leave you." She glances at the stack of postcards once more before flinging them at me, hitting me in the chest with the frayed edges scratching across my fingers. "Not when he's spent all these years looking for you."

"I - what?" I choke out, all the air in the immediate vicinity sucked out into the void in one frozen second, leaving my lungs to ignite and burn as my brain threatens to collapse under the torrent pushing through it. "Why?" I plead, my voice hoarse and horribly scratchy, my fingers pulling at the collar of my shirt in a futile attempt to relieve the pressure building in every single one of my nerve endings.

"I don't think it's me you need to be asking." Granger sends me one last meaningful glance before turning and strolling away, her light footed steps taking her further and further away with ease like she didn't just drop an anvil on my heart.







****







"Why were you in Brazil?"

Potter's head snaps up as I barge into the room, the door swinging shut behind me with an ominous thud that vibrates and entwines itself with my question. He's kneeling in the middle of the floor, his journal laying open on his left, a large map with little smudged black markings defiling it in every little square inch, denting into the carpet with the press of his fingers.

"What?" He sits back on his heels, staring up at me with eyes wide in puzzlement.

"Brazil." I repeat, my heart thumping as thought after thought chase themselves through his green eyes. "Why...when were you there?"

He swallows thickly, his gaze snapping to his open notebook. "Did you read my journal?" Potter's tone is lit with a tinge of panic but it's barely noticeable when compared with the dark shadows swirling through his gaze as he slowly and stiffly stands to his feet.

"No, I didn't read it." I bite out, Granger's proclamation that he's spent the last several years traipsing after me for god knows why, pinging like little spiked balls through my heart, each carrying their own theory and all too heavy to fully wrap my head around.

He glances at his notebook again before blinking up at me once more, stalking towards me with a predatory gleam. "But you looked through it?" It's an accusation that doesn't really need a confession but he waits silently for one anyway.

I tighten my fist, watching his progression towards me with a hard won detachment. "A little." I concede and plant my feet slightly apart to keep myself from backing up and running away.

"A little." His jaw clenches as he mimics me and rubs at his forehead. "What the hell Draco?!"

"I could say the same thing." I shoot back at him because who does that? Who wastes their life chasing after someone who doesn't want to be found? "What were you doing in Brazil?" I demand again, shocking myself when it comes out in a near yell.

What am I doing? Why am I pressing this, pressing him? Do I really want to know the answer? I can't imagine either possibility agreeing with me but I can't seem to back down, all the repressed emotions that had lain unused and forgotten for so long surging forward and demanding its fill. It's completely pointless, won't change anything, but I need to know if what she said was true.

Her single sentence was like a killing blow to any walls I had managed to still keep erect between us and I can't rid myself of her voice repeating it over and over again - even after she was long gone. I couldn't wash it away in the showers at the gym, it wouldn't be shaken free as I trudged back home. It had spiked and swelled as I had paused before my door somehow knowing that he'd be behind it. I feel like she's awoken a beast that won't be chained and abated without the truth from his lips.

He glares at me, his arms crossed, defiance written so clearly across every line of his body.

"No explanation huh?" I take a step towards him and he tenses. "Fine, how about Nepal then? Or maybe Italy?" I take another step but he doesn't back away, just continues glowering silently at me. "Not going to answer? I wonder, if I flip back five years will I find some entries about Iceland?" The tip of my shoe presses into his open journal and I have a fleeting urge to reach down and scoop it up, to tear through it for its own answers in the way I had refused to do last time.

"That's none of your business." He finally hisses out but there's a trembling starting in his hand that's clenched firmly around his forearm.

And instead of it cooling me down and allowing me to return to a natural logical course of action I find it only adding cinder to the fire. "You've been prying into my life since the moment you showed up Potter but you haven't said shit about yourself!" I feel a dam break within me as I take three swift strides until he backs into the desk behind him.

He's completely turned my life upside down, more has changed in my day to day life, hell more has changed inside of me, in the short amount of time he's been here. He's continually forced me to face things I never wanted to, he's pushed his way through my walls and masks and god I'm going to implode if he continues on in this manner.

I barely recognize myself. It wasn't long ago I hadn't lost a fight, wasn't in deep with the Madame, had a routine, was marginally happy, perfectly content in my lack of really living. I didn't have to worry about these bursts of unwanted emotions, had barely even thought of Draco Malfoy. And now, now I find out he's been searching for me, turning this globe over on his own two feet seeking me out and damn him!

I don't know how to handle this.

I grasp his arm, prying his shaking hand from where it's latched onto. "Were you ever going to tell me about this?" I wrap my fingers tightly around his wrist, leeching the trembling into my own limb. "Or were you just going to sleep on my damn floor forever and never tell me the fucking truth!"

"What do you want from me?" He grinds his teeth and glares through slits. "You want me to flaunt my problems? So I have some damn anxiety issues who the fuck cares!"

"I care!" The words are out before I can stop them, his eyes snapping wide. "And that's just rich coming from you."

"Sod off Draco, I have my thing under control, you were bloody drowning under yours!" He wrenches his hand free, yanking his cigarettes out of his pocket violently. I growl and swipe the pack from him, crumbling it in my hands in a fit of anger before tossing it aside. "What the hell!? What has gotten into you?" He shouts, vying for furious but coming out more panic stricken than anything as he watches them fly through the air and away from him.

And that is a very good question, one I can't fully face the answer to right now as I fist a hand in his shirt as he tries to launch himself away from me and towards his vice. He stretches against my hold before being dragged harshly back, nearly throwing him onto the desk in the process, as he gasps - trying to drag in breaths that are coming far too sporadically .

"You have Potter, you've gotten into me and I can't bloody take it!" I lean towards him, hissing in his face and feeling the waves of his magic trying to pull at me, trying to shake me and sicken me. "You've been nearly everywhere I have, all over this god forsaken planet, and you're going to tell me why. Right now." I demand of him, ignoring the web of pain pealing through the ferocity overtaking me at the touch of his power and the sound of his wheezing lungs.

"I was...I was just..." he braces his hands against the wooden top, tilting his head back to stare open mouthed at the ceiling as he heaves. His emerald eyes are swimming, in tears from pain or fear or some unknown emotion I don't know but I find myself wanting to press the heels of my palms to his eyes - brushing the moister away, to suck away the water that's making his green irises standout too vividly.

"You were what? Tell me!" I scream at him instead.

"I was looking for you, you prick!" He finally spits out, his jaw thrust forward like revealing the truth was physically painful.

"That's bullshit." I close my eyes against the onslaught of conflicting denial and hope. "Why?! God damn it why would you do that?" I feel the floor sway beneath me as he confirms Granger's suspicions and I claw at any footing I can get because I don't want to fall right now, I can't give into the panic and the fear and the desire that's all vying for a piece of me.

Something in Potter's eyes snap, clouding over quickly like a rising storm and I can't help but wonder if he feels it too - if perhaps it's not just me but it's the room, the world tilting on its creaky hinges intent to throw us off this twisted existence - as he curls his shaking fingers into my shirt, holding me in the same violent embrace I am. "Because you just left, you didn't even say goodbye!" He pauses, breathing through the hitch that's demanding him to inhale his smoke. "You just vanished in the middle of the bloody night without a word. I spent three fucking months tracking you down and then you...you just!" His jaw quakes as he jostles the hand in my shirt back and forth, his back leaning away until he's perched precariously on the edge of the desk.

"Oh like you even noticed! How long did it take for it to sink in that I was even gone?" I fume, all the time I spent lying in that damn hospital bed flooding back to me.

"What?!" He snarls, his fingernails scrapping across my skin as he opens and shuts his fist.

"I was in the hospital for months and you didn't come see me once Potter." I feel my heart plummet to my feet all over again as I relieve those days, each day and night coming and going with no change - just pain and confusion and nightmares and solitude. "Not a damn word, not even a letter!" The only light I had for the three months I was held captive was Potter's face, the memory of his smile and the touch of his kiss, only to resurface - miraculously alive - and he didn't come near me with a ten foot pole.

"I couldn't!" He fist loosens and drops flat against my chest, his voice laced with pain and his gaze distraught.

"Like hell you couldn't, you're Harry bloody Potter, you just didn't!" My lip curls up into a foul snarl as I feel the bitterness I hadn't realized I was still holding onto poison my voice. "Couldn't take it Potter? Didn't want to soil yourself with looking at me again?"

"I tried, they wouldn't let me!" He presses a hand into his face, his fingers scrapping across his cheekbone. "I-I tried..."

"You must think I'm daft." I seethe, his denial hitting me harder than I expected. Why can't he just say it? Why can't he admit to abandoning me? Not that I didn't, don't, deserve it but still...it's like having someone take a grater to my already shredded heart and scrapping it into a bloody unrepairable pulp.

"It's true! They were...I couldn't...I was..." He stammers, his hands reaching for me and retreating in the next breath as his eyes dart around.

"You were what?"

"I was in the Psych Ward." He cringes into himself, tipping away till he nearly falls completely backwards before his hands catch far behind him.

I pull my hand back, clutching at the back of my neck as I stare down at him, his gaze troubled and blinking with a twitchy fear. "What? Why?" I croak, my throat suddenly painful to speak through.

"Because..." He doesn't finish, just sinks his teeth sharply into his bottom lip and looks down. 

"From the battle?" I hear unwarranted tenderness reach alongside the explosive of anger and confusion and watch with a strange sort of detachment as I take the last step towards him - my legs forcing his knees apart like there's a yarn twining between us, reeling me in. "Because of Voldemort?"

He breathes shallowly as he shakes his head. "No Draco...I found you." I furrow my brow as he looks back up at me, trying to catch onto his line of thought and failing. "Not with the Aurors, it was just me." Realization hits like a bell tolling over my spent life and I move to back away, only to find myself stuck in place as he reaches out and grabs my forearms in a death grip. "I tracked you down to this little house in the mountains and when I found you...strung up on that disgusting wall, you were barely alive. Your eyes were like glass, I don't think you even knew I was there as I released your chains. You just...babbled nonsense and..." He blinks a tear down his cheek as I feel myself pale with no blood left in my face, like it's pumping completely outside my body. "You wouldn't stop scratching and digging your fingernails into your flayed skin until you passed out."

Shame so deep it rattles my bones rakes through me at knowing he saw me in such a condition, knowing Amycus liked to keep me naked with my wounds exposed to the dank air with puddles of blood forming beneath me. Potter wasn't supposed to have seen me, he wasn't supposed to have witnessed that and I know I should have put it together sooner that he had but for some reason I had managed to block it out and ignore it.

"I took you to St. Mungos." He continues, the tears in his eyes falling unheeded and unobstructed, a ghost flitting through him like he's seeing me there again, with the lines of the whip in my flesh, and the screws in my fingers... "And when I went back, Carrow was there, standing dumbfounded and just staring at the thing I freed you from. He had this twisted smile when he saw me and started ranting on and on about all that he..." He chokes and gags on his own tongue and I feel equally compelled to wrap my arms around him and shove him out the damn window to get the phantoms he's conjuring to leave with him.

"So you killed him." I fill in for him, already knowing the end of the story and not wanting to hear it again.

"No...I...snapped." He releases me quickly like my skin has burnt him, his hands curling into fists and pressing into his stomach. "I could see everything, like I had been there the whole time...I didn't just kill him Draco, I destroyed him for what he did and then slit his throat with a piece of broken glass and let him bleed to death like the vermin he was." He hisses like a snake curling inside him, his eyes flashing with a manic gleam that sets the tears alight with a fierce spark.

I recoil from him, stepping back once, twice, three times with my feet nearly shaking in my shoes. It's not from disgust at what he did, not really, because Amycus deserved it - fitting revenge even. But he's Harry Potter, everyone's hero, and he murdered my Death Eater tormentor with cruelty and apparently lost hold of his mind because of it. All because of me. All because of the demon inside that wants to be released, that called to my captors.

He danced too close to evil and allowed it to leech into himself. He danced to close to me.

I press a hand to my heart, almost expecting to feel it stilled, no longer beating my life but shattered into a million little pieces. But the pulse is there, fast and erratic, a mocking drum that speaks to the things I try to deny and run from.

"I went back to you." He watches me, unmoving from his spot perched on the desk, his knees still splayed wide from where I was lodged moments ago - his voice wavering. "But I was...and you were...there was a fight and they wouldn't let me and then they locked me up." He clucks his tongue and shakes his head. "A bloody danger to myself and others, was their reasoning I think."

"How long?" I whisper, feeling the stretch of time and unspoken truths that were laden with hurtful lies pull between us, a tug-a-war over a vast and endless canyon.

“Time was...” He shrugs tiredly. "You were gone when I got out." He answers and I feel the thread snip and snap, sending me careening.

I swallow the sharp edge in my throat and clench my fingers until the nails dig into my palm. "No."

"What?"

"No." I repeat, uselessly and stubbornly defiant, a part of me unwilling to believe it - desperate to cling to what I had thought had happened for all these long years.

"What do you mean no?" Potter snaps.

"I mean you can't do this Potter." I narrow my eyes, my nostrils flaring with a touch of my long neglected magic sparking around me. "You can't have spent all these years chasing me. And you can't just come here and tell me all this fucking shit and expect me to...what?! What am I supposed to do now?!" I shout at him with the anger simmering anew in my veins.

I know anger, anger is better than the other thing trying to open me up.

He glares back at me, dropping to his feet and shoving his glasses back up his nose like they are the reason we're fighting. "It's the truth Draco, you asked for it."

"I don't bloody care! You can't just turn everything upside down like this. I was perfectly fine and then you just had to show up and now...fuck it!" I tug a hand through my hair, the severed string tying up my heart squeezing and pulling and raveling tighter and tighter till I fear it will dissolve in a burst of flame if not dealt with.

"I'm sorry I needed to see you again, I'm sorry I spent all this damn time searching for you but I needed to Draco. Okay, I just fucking needed to!" Potter bites out.

"Why couldn't you leave it alone?!" I press my thumbs into my eyes till the white chases away the taunting confusion. I don't know what to do with all of this, don't know how to process it. I don't know how to ignore the fact that he was looking for me, that he saved me, that he bloodily killed Amycus, that he didn't see me in the hospital because he was having a psychotic breakdown and not because he didn't want to like I thought.

Because above all I have to remember he's not for me, I can't have him, and my entire being is starting to scream to just the opposite of that - which is truly terrifying.

He growls deeply in his throat and if I were to look up, I'm sure I would see him fisting his curls and screwing his face up with visible frustration. "Because it's you and I can't." He states so plainly, so simply, and yet with complete defeat - casting himself off the edge with his confession that thrills through me, lighting the flame I've been desperately keeping doused with icy necessity.

It yanks me from my spot, forcing my eyes open, his own gaze widening uneasily as I stalk towards him suddenly. "Damn it Potter." I hiss and grab him, pressing him to me and sinking him back into the wood at the same moment - silencing his squawk on my lips as I crash my mouth to his furiously.