Smile Like You Mean It

Hey Guys!

I know, I know, I'm a terrible person for making you wait so long, but hey! Things are getting interesting!

Enjoy!
xxx


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Chapter 33 - Dubious Disclosures


“I need to talk to you, Harry. It’s important.”

Harry looked up from his game of Exploding Snap with Ron, his expression quizzical. Both their Potion’s essays lay discarded beside them. He must have read the urgency on Aera’s face because he immediately set down his cards and stood up.

“We could go up to my room?” he suggested, motioning towards the spiral staircase. Aera nodded and followed after him, her hands twisting at her skirt.

Once inside the empty dorm, Aera took a seat on Harry’s bed. He sat down beside her, waiting for her to start. She gazed at the floor for a long moment.

After finally discovering what the Order of Uller was, Aera had returned to her own bed, spending that night deep in thought. All through the next day she had argued with herself, trying to decide what to do. She already knew she would have to tell Harry about Draco’s looming initiation and Voldemort’s suspicions. What she had been unsure about was telling Harry about the Order. She wanted to tell him, to allow him to take this frightening piece of valuable information out of her hands. But her dream had been clear. It was she who invoked the spell, her who had challenged Voldemort to the duel. And she knew in her heart that if she revealed what she had foreseen, Harry would take it upon himself to duel the Dark wizard in her place.

She couldn’t let that happen. However unsure she was about it all, she was not prepared to stray a single step from the given path. The dream had predicted that Harry would fail is she was not present and that if she were, it would be she who challenged Voldemort.

“I managed to get some information out of Draco Malfoy.” she said quietly. She heard the sharp intake of breath. “His father expects him to become a Death Eater soon.”

She looked up in time to see pity in Harry’s eyes though it was quickly hidden behind his customary disgust for all things Malfoy-related. It would appear that Harry still felt some compassion for his enemy.

“How did you find that out?” he asked, though he sounded like he’d rather not know the answer.

Aera hid the small smile that threatened to creep across her lips. She’d thought long and hard about how to convey the impression to Harry that she had seduced Draco. “I met him in the library a few days ago.” Well, that was as close to the truth as you could get. “He seemed angry about something and I . . . well, I think he would have been suspicious of my reasons for being there if he weren’t so angry at the time. I managed to get him to talk.”

“Just like that?” Harry’s tone was incredulous.

She fixed a long, hard stare on him. “Yes, Harry, just like that. If you don’t include all the work I’ve been putting in over the last few weeks, that is.”

Harry gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Yeah, of course. I suppose he would’ve opened up to you a little by this stage.”

Aera felt the bile rising in her throat. However much she loved being with Draco and feared the thought of losing him, she loathed having to lie to Harry. While what she had told him was the truth in every respect, it was still leading Harry on in a way she hated herself for.

“There’s more.” she continued with a sigh. This part she wasn’t so happy to reveal. “Malfoy Senior is showing interest in me. Malfoy thinks it might be because no one knows who my parents are and why I turned up in Hogwarts at such a weird time. He was trying to find out more about me.”

Harry’s eyes were wide and she could easily read the protective fear there. So, he was quick to realise exactly what she was saying. She hadn’t been sure that she would be able to get the message across without spelling it out for him. Besides, it wasn’t like she was going to work too hard at persuading him she was in some danger.

“Well then.” Aera could tell by the tone of her brother’s voice that she was not going to like what he said next. “If the Malfoy’s are getting too interested in you, you’ll have to keep away from them. That puts a stop to you . . . ah, ‘seducing’ the ferret.”

The statement caught Aera unawares and she was completely thrown. Unprepared, she hesitated a moment too long before her face relaxed into an expression of relief. “Thank Merlin for that.” she said, hiding the panic in her voice. “I was getting sick of his arrogance anyway.”

Harry gave her a weird look before nodded. “Excellent. Okay, so I need to go tell Hermione and Ron about all this.”

“I think I might go to bed anyway.” Aera said quietly, taking her leave with a quick goodnight.


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Back in her own room, Aera pulled the curtains around her bed with shaking hands. She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t expected Harry to suggest cutting their dubious plan of seduction short and so had had no idea how to react. Rather than being able to come up with some reason to keep up her relationship with Draco, she had agreed on the spur of the moment.

Finding time to meet with him was going to become so much more difficult.

“Aera?”

The unfamiliar voice pulled her out of her reflections and she slid the curtain back. Lavander Brown stood there, a girl from her year who Aera viewed as slightly dull and girlish. Thus they had never actually held a proper conversation. She was surprised and a little bit confused to see Lavander.

“Oh, hey. What’s up?” Aera asked, wishing the girl would bugger off so she could go back to her dark musings.

Lavander gave Aera a shifty eyed look, clearly trying to convey that she had some enormous secret and wasn’t sure if she should say it out loud. Aera sighed inwardly and patted the bed beside her as an invitation. Lavander was known as a gossip and that was not something Aera entirely liked.

Lavander took the offered seat eagerly, turning to face Aera with a lit-up expression. “Okay, so I wasn’t sure if I should say anything to you, but honestly, I never really liked the Weasley girl and I always thought she had a bit of a . . . well, you know, slutty side-”

“What do you mean?” Aera cut her off, totally confused. The girl’s ramblings were giving her no hint as to what she was going on about. Aera liked Ginny for Merlin’s sake.

Lavander gave her a look that made her look slightly pained, though Aera figured she was going for deep and condoling. “Harry’s with Ginny.”

Aera waited for the Grand Revealing but Lavander was silent now. Aera ran back through the last few sentences and tried to understand what the hell she was saying. She came up blank. Of course Harry and Ginny were together. You could hardly enter a room with the two of them in it and not realise.

“I wanted to tell you that I think you and Harry would be way better suited for each other. And I promise I won’t tell anyone that you’ve been meeting up.” Lavander blurted out in a rush.

Aera gaped at her. Finally the last few minutes sank in with their new meaning. Lavander had been watching how Harry had become closer to her during the last few weeks, the way they linked arms, the way he whispered in her ear to make fun of their friends. A private joke between twins. And the way she had just followed him up to his room while everyone else was in the common room.

Lavander thinks Harry’s cheating on Ginny with me!

Aera let out a gale of laughter. Lavander jumped, her eyes widening and clearly thinking Aera had lost her mind. It was a while before Aera calmed down enough to speak.

“Lavander, Harry and I aren’t seeing each other. He’s happy with Ginny. And she’s not a slut, by the way. Harry’s like a brother to me. We’re just close friends.” She couldn’t help giggling again as she finished. Lavander was looking crestfallen. This would have probably been the juiciest piece of gossip to pass through Hogwart’s walls in years.

After Lavander had left, with a chill ‘goodnight’, Aera lay back on her pillows. Her earlier mirth at Lavander’s suspicions had faded. She was left with an uncomfortable feeling of dismay. She could understand how Lavander had come to that conclusion, after all, it was unusual enough for guys and girls to be platonic friends in this school.

These thoughts, joined quickly with her previous ones concerning the new difficulties in her relationship with Draco, made Aera groan loudly. Sleep would be long coming and tinged with despairing dreams.


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It was a few days later and Aera was out in the castle grounds, sitting on the shore of the lake. She had found a magnificent weeping willow tree whose sweeping branches touched the surface of the water, making it ripple with each breeze and had leaned up against the trunk, determined to enjoy the last few rays of sunlight.

Her reasons for going down to the lake were no more than a deep sense of melancholy. Endless essays and potions had reminded her how pointless the whole school thing was. It seemed so useless to be sitting in a classroom when things of such import were happening in the world.

That morning news had come in about a fire in Diagon Alley. Three wizards had died in it and the Dark Mark had been scorched across the sky. One of the wizards who had perished was the father of a boy in second-year.

He hadn’t turned up for breakfast that morning.

After classes had finished for the day, Aera had been unable to keep up the pretence in front of her class-mates and had fled outside. She felt set adrift in the midst of the school’s mourning. She hadn’t wanted to face it.

So here she was, sitting with her back against the hard, rough bark, her eyes fixed unseeing on a point far across the lake. It was uncommonly cold for an evening in late autumn. She had her robe wrapped tight around her, hands stuffed into the material.

Since finding out about Uller, she had been making plans, figuring out what the best course of action would be when the time came. She already knew that it was important to get those she cared about out of danger.

She already knew that it was fairly certain she would lose against Voldemort.

Yet the realisation of this fact hadn’t disheartened her. After hearing about those three senseless deaths, she felt more calm than before. It was all for a reason, all of this. If she could save others, maybe even hundreds of others, it would not be a pointless sacrifice. When the time came, she would face it unafraid.

She began to hear footsteps, just on the edge of hearing. Not wanting to be disturbed, she ignored them. Hopefully whoever it was would go away and leave her be. She was comfortable here and had a little while longer before the sunlight began to fade.

“May I join you?” The voice was familiar, deep and silky. The one person she didn’t mind interrupting her solitude.

As she looked up she realised the voice was too deep, too polished in its enunciation.

She met the cold, hard gaze of Lucius Malfoy.


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xxx Aera