well from what happened in the last chapter, i'm sure people are shocked as to what happened between Isabell and Harry. Well, this chapter will bring her back into that bitchy, sneaky canon that everyone loved. hope you guys like this! please review at the end, you know how much i love responding to them and hearing your thoughts! much love! ;) ~nomikkin Chapter 25: Dirty Little Secret
The school was closing in on them, like a dreaded hawk closing in on its prey. Isabell continued to stare out the window, her spine tingling with currents and waves of chills as Harry ran the tips of fingers up and down her slender arm. She didn’t want this forbidden romance to end; it seemed too soon. She pushed back a piece of hair behind her ear and turned around in his arms, averting her gaze towards his shimmering emerald eyes. He passed her a small smile, which made the situation even more pathetic that it had started out as.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“We go back to our lives. I will continue of searching for Voldemort so that I may destroy him and you will go back to screwing Malfoy or whatever it was you were doing before,” he answered.
“I’m not screwing him,” she mumbled, looking down at her nails. “I’m far from screwing him. I made him promise to stop having sex in fact while I stayed at the manor.”
“Did he keep it?”
“No.”
“Typical Malfoy.”
“Only in your eyes,” Isabell sighed. “I’ve known him my whole life and he’s always been so good at keep his promises to me. That is until now. He promised he would try being civil with his parents … that didn’t work out. And then he went back on his word and had a fanciful, romping night with Pansy.”
Harry’s facial expression dropped down into a disgusted look as though he had just smelled rotting cheese. Isabell laughed, wondering just how much she was going to miss this moment. How much would she miss a time filled with happiness? Without fear, pain, depression, and all of the things that usually came along with the package called Malfoy.
“This thing we have will be our little secret. Our dirty little secret,” Harry whispered, leaning in to kiss her, which she didn’t decline.
It was wrong. It was beyond wrong. But it felt right, like an adventure. Why should she pine away for Draco when she knew that they would be nothing more than friends? She made a promise to herself when she was young that that’s all they would ever be and, unlike Draco, she kept her promises. Isabell wrapped her arms around Harry’s neck, tugging him closer to her body. She was, once again, thrown back into the passion that they both held in for each other.
When the train pulled up to a stop in front of the school, Isabell told Harry to take out his invisibility cloak and hide himself so that no one saw him walk out of her compartment. He grinned, doing as he was told, and removed the balled up cloak from his pocket. He threw it over his body, leaving only his face visible so that she was able to give him a quick kiss goodbye. She smiled, watching his footprints exit the car and out into the hallway.
Isabell snatched up her robes which she had idiotically thrown onto the bench and then sat on. Now they were all wrinkled. With a swish of her wand, she undid the creases and the strolled out of the train car. When she walked outside to where there were supposed to be hundreds carriages being held by invisible creatures, she only found there to be one. Harry stood beside the opened up door, holding out a hand for her as she trudged across the crunchy snow. She examined the premises as she clutched onto his hand, feeling him haul her up to the small stepladder. The area was deserted.
“Where is everyone?” she asked, climbing into the seated area.
Harry followed her, “Where else but at home? No one is going to leave their families, not during the holidays. Hell, some of them might not even come back to finish the year.”
She studied his façade as they felt the carriage pull them away, “Where are your friends? Usually they’re glued to you.”
“I did exactly what you did.”
“Which was what?”
“I snuck away.”
“WHAT?!” she howled, her voice masked with laughter. “The Harry Potter, Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes, snuck away from his best friends? Oh my god! This is shaping up to be a very strange day!”
“I couldn’t take it anymore. All of the fake smiles and stuff,” he replied with a shrug.
“Welcome to my life,” Isabell retorted. Harry laughed, but she shot him a disapproving look, signaling that she was being serious. She narrowed her blue orbs slightly, “Close your eyes.”
“What?”
“Close your eyes,” she repeated. “I want you to see what I go through everyday…” He did as he was told and shut his eyes, following the memory she was splashing against him like paint onto a canvas.
Isabell sat on the comfortable couch, basked in the fire’s glow. She had been enduring the rays of Draco’s disapproval for sometime now and she wondered how much more he could take of their parents acting like everything was alright. She glanced across the Indian made coffee table and stared at the laughing Narcissa and Marie who had been ignoring the young, scowling boy. The two men were casually sipping their fire whisky, talking in low voices about dark things no doubt.
“This is a bunch of rubbish,” Draco whispered, throwing himself off of the couch.
“Draco.”
The young girl followed him, trailing his every move as he ran out of the living room where fake happiness was being chuck about like potatoes in a food fight. He couldn’t take it any longer, the way that the adults pretended like everything was alright. Draco slammed down on the bottom step of the staircase and ran his hands through his hair, an old habit he picked up from his father. Isabell plopped down next to him, placing her hands over her bents knees as she studied his distressed face.
He faced her with pleading grey eyes, “Do you think it’s always going to be like this?”
“Like what?” she replied.
“Like this!” he gestured to the lavish decorations that were draped all about the house. “I hate this! We’re expected to be something that we’re not! We’re expected to feel something we don’t.”
“Draco-”
“He was going to be sent to the bad place! Mum was crying! She was afraid that he wouldn’t come back! Now it’s like it never happened! Why can’t we be normal?!” he asked, his voice cracking as an enraged tear dropped down his face.
Isabell reached out to wipe it away, but he smacked her hand away violently. She gasped at his sudden aggression and watched him stand up, trying to get away from her. The tiny blonde boy gave her a final shove, causing her to almost fall onto the floor as he ran up the stairs, slapping his hand against the wooden banister with each step. Her eyes were glued to him until he rounded the corner to his room, leaving her on the steps. The adults strolled out into the foyer, their forged smiles chiseled across their lips. But the beaming grins fell away the moment Draco slammed the door, making the loud sound echo throughout the house.
She turned back around, facing the coupled parents who were expecting an answer from her. Marie’s red-heeled foot tapped, signaling that Isabell should explain Draco’s actions immediately. But how was she supposed to tell the Malfoys that their own son could see straight through them? So she did the one thing that she knew would get her out of this; she cried.
Marie rushed towards her suddenly crying daughter and scooped her up into her arms, glancing at her husband who was dumbfounded as to what to do. The little Vartier continued to keep the automatic tears rolling down her face and shrieked out loud, speaking to her parents yet they never seemed to understand what she said. Through the harsh tone brought in by the young girl, Marie told Narcissa that it was time they took their leave. The Malfoy wife didn’t stop her; she encouraged her to get the small Isabell into bed. They left the manor with brisk goodbye and the two men departed with promises of continuing their discussion later.
The red-head was escorted out into the hailing storm out side, her father shielding them with a spell cast around them as they trotted over to the car. Marie exhaled deeply as she collapsed into the warm car. Marcus followed his two lovely girls and sat down next to his wife. Isabell crawled out of her mother’s arms, clambering over to the other window that faced the manor. She gazed out of the fogged up glass and looked up at the second floor window to find the same little blonde brat staring back at her. He lifted his hand, pressing it against the window. She did the same, wondering if this held any significance, which is must’ve seeing as how her tears were still rolling down her cheeks, this time uncontrolled.
Her mother crept over to the other seating, placing herself next to the little girl. She smiled down at her, her intoxicated eyes only seeing that Isabell had stopped crying. Isabell looked over at her mother, studying her features for a few minutes. Then she snapped her eyesight back to the window where the scenery was now flashing by and droplets of water were being whisked off to the side.
“What do you see darling?” Marie asked, placing her chin on Isabell’s shoulder.
“Just the rain mother,” she whispered. “Just the rain.”
Harry opened up his eyes slowly, examining his surroundings almost as though he expected to be inside the car with the depressed little girl and counterfeit parents. He, instead, found that he was still in the bouncing carriage where the threstrals were taking him and this complicated Slytherin girl back to Hogwarts. She passed him a weak smile, wondering if it would cover up for all of the pain she felt behind her bright blue eyes.
It didn’t.
“So Draco was able to see through everything that your parents had put up?” he asked.
She nodded, “He was pretty smart when he was younger. He knew that his father had just barely escaped going to Azkaban, for reasons unknown to both him and I, but he knew. His mother had been crying for a week straight, never removing herself from the master bedroom. She would send him away to my house during those dark days and with my father rushing about, trying to get Lucius exonerated and my mother acting like nothing was happening … well it was too much for him come Christmas.”
“I hope you’re not expecting me to show sympathy towards Lucius or his son,” Harry stated. “Neither Malfoy will be on my good side.”
“I never expected you to react to it that way. I just wanted you to understand what I had gone through most of my childhood,” Isabell replied.
“Most?”
“My parents deserted me at the independent age of fourteen,” she answered.
“So you’ve been on your own since then? No letters or anything?” he said, baffled by the sheer ignorance of her parents.
“I used to get a letter on my birthday and on the holidays. But they've seemed to stop sending them in the past two years. I've deemed them as being dead to me,” she responded.
The two felt the car come to a slow halt. They were there, at school, ready to be educated in all forms or witchcraft and wizardry. Isabell was beginning to grow uncomfortable; she didn’t know what was going to happen beyond this point and she didn’t like that feeling. She had always been in control … always. Now, thanks to Harry, she had been twirled into a strange situation, one where she didn’t know what was to become of her. She sighed, pushing herself out of her seat and throwing open the doorway to the outside. Before she was able to step one foot onto the snow, Isabell felt his hand wrap itself around her upper, fur-covered arm.
“Don’t leave yet,” he begged quietly. “I wouldn’t want you to depart from me without leaving me one of your kisses.”
She grinned, leaning into his lips and pressing against them. When she pulled away, her eyes scanned his morphed visage; he was smiling at her.
“Meet me in the library,” he pleaded.
“When?”
“Tomorrow night, at seven,” he announced. “I want to see one more time before you go back into Malfoy’s world.”
“Draco and I are friends and nothing more,” she explained, jumping down onto the crunchy snow that sat before the castle entrance.
“If that’s so,” Harry retorted, following her move, “then why do you have to repeat it all the time?”
She ignored him, well, she tried to ignore him. Harry’s comment continued to bounce throughout her mind as she parted ways with him, walking down the vacant corridors. Her feet seemed to know where she was going, yet she didn’t seem to notice that it wasn’t the Slytherin common room. Isabell sighed, finding herself in front of the painting with the wolves on it; the Head House “paradise”. She gulped back the lump that she felt forming in her throat. She couldn’t get away from him … or her own background for that matter.
As Isabell back away from the growling picture before her, she wondered what drew her to the boy behind the emerald green eyes. She guessed it was the fact that he was not only a listening ear to her troubled times, but he was a way to get back at Draco secretly. But she had come to a conclusion that it wasn’t really getting back at him if it was kept a secret. Isabell then decided, as she ascended the staircase leading up to the Slytherin common room, that she would let Draco find out about her little love affair all on his own. She sighed in front of the Slytherin painting, knowing that it was cruel to use Harry like a little pawn in her vengeance against her best friend, but a Vartier has to do what a Vartier has to do. Maybe she could have some control in this situation after all …
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