Jack was taken aback when Chase suddenly hugged her and she did not respond at first, but kept her arms stuck to her sides. Jack had never been the sort of person you ran up and hugged, no matter who you were, and the hug reminded her that she had had friends over the summer, and it made their loss now even more unsettling. She awkwardly lifted her arms, but Chase sat back down before she could respond.
Andrew said to fire away and Jack took a deep breath. This was going to be interesting. “Okay... So at the beginning of summer, by the time we were all hanging out, everything was okay. I mean, you should have told me you guys were dating... I mean I would have been okay with it, but that's beside the point. That's not my main concern.”
She was stumbling through this. It was weird, letting go of the little things that had convinced her that she was not all to blame. “You guys are mad at me for a series of events that you have not heard the full story of and I think it's about time I clear everything up, clarify it so you can at least understand what's going on.”
She took a breath. And now she came to the point she was dreading. How did you bring up such a subject? Perhaps it was like a band aid, and it just needed to be ripped off, as quickly and painlessly as possible. So she tried it.
“Vito.”
Ouch. Still hurt.
She quickly began to explain. “This is what a lot of our troubles have been focusing on and I need to explain to you why. I have known Vito for awhile now. We've been rivals for longer than I've been friends with you guys. We were always trying to get to each other, piss each other off, but that was it. I did not know the full extent of what he did. I had clues, but at the point, I didn't care. We weren't pals or anything. We were rivals, enemies. It was a game to us, this messing with each other, a stupid game and we were opponents. But the point is, that was how we were at the beginning of the summer. But then, I called one of his bluffs when we were in Diagon Alley and I went to Satin's with him. He slipped me a drink, which I didn't know about. And we got to talking. I think we both had our own motives, we were trying to get dirt on the other, or whatever. But we had both been drinking and he slipped up first...”
She paused. She knew they would want to know what had caused her to pity a murderer. But here was the problem. She had promised him she would never tell, and so, she wouldn't.
“He told me about some of the bleaker parts of his life, by accident, and I sympathized with him. He got mad at me and stormed off, but I followed him. I was curious. I wanted to know more about it. To figure out why he was the way he was.” She hesitated. She decided that they did not need to know about his outburst. His “tantrum.” She, again, had sworn not to tell. “He got mad at me and then went back downstairs to drink. I went down too and tried to act like nothing had happened. He told me he had spiked my drink, and now I got mad at him. I started yelling at him and he started pushing my buttons. So, I pushed back, and I insulted him. He grabbed me by the throat and started to excuse me of hating him and how he thrived on hate. Everything he told me, only made me feel worse for him, and it made me realize something. That, for some reason, I didn't hate him. He released me and I told him so, and then I left.”
She took a breath. “I didn't know why and neither did he. Neither of us could understand it, so when I saw him walking around in London a few days later, I caught up to him. We both wanted answers. By then, I had figured it out. He asked me why I didn't hate him and I explained because what would that prove by hating him. He already hated, the Death Eaters hate... Why add me to the mix? And he was created in hate. Why would I want to contribute to that cause?” She stopped and she turned her eyes to Andrew and Chase. In an earnest voice, she asked, “You can understand that, can't you?”
She sighed, closing her eyes momentarily and continuing on. She had to say it all or she never would. “I don't know if he understood or not, but something I said affected him. We continued on and he started mouthing off about something, pretending to threaten me and whatnot. I told him off and I left.”
She continued more slowly now, recognizing she was in dangerous waters. There was a lot here she could not reveal. “Then Andrew told me about what he had done. I had it in my mind to yell at him the next time I saw him... But the next time I found him, he was drinking... a lot. I thought he was going to die if he drank anymore. So I got him up to his room and convinced him to sleep it off. We fell asleep, and when we woke up, he flipped out on me, and...” Again, she paused, remembering the entailing argument. Where she angered him, he reduced her to tears, she yelled back and he hit the wall. She hat patched him up and gone to change. She had heard him breaking down and had rushed out to stop him. And he had collapsed against her, and she had sat there and rested her head against his. There was no way she could tell them that. She could not break whatever trust Vito had in her.
“We got into a bad argument, one of our worst. But... he proved to me afterwards that he wasn't all bad. It hadn't been his intention, but he had. I was convinced he was going to change...” She felt her hands begin to shake slightly so she grabbed another tuft of grass and began shredding it, staring down at her hands. “The next time I saw him was that day in London...With Chase... I had heard her screams... We faced off, and I challenged him. The thing about Vito and I... we don't back down from challenges. Once he left, I helped Chase to the hospital and... and I felt the worse I had ever felt. I tracked you guys down to apologize, but Chase, your sympathy, and Andrew, your anger... It didn't help. I just felt defiant when you started to make me make more promises, Andrew... And I was so mad that you didn't hate me Chase. I hated myself and I was so angry you would not hate me back. And... I began to realize.”
She did not know if she would be able to choke out the words. It seemed like she could not admit it to them, her best friends, what she had discovered. But she had to. Slowly, in a strained voice, she said, “I realized I was like Vito. Never wanted people around because they had never done me good, and when I did have people like that around, I was expecting the biggest disappointment of my life. And I blamed myself for so many things and when they refused to hate me for the things I hated myself for... I snapped.”
She sighed. “And then... that's when you went to Satin's...” She looked at Chase. “And you.” She turned her eyes to Andrew. “But I'm not going to go into that. You two can worry about what happened there, I don't want to involve myself in that. But around that time, I wasn't going home. I stayed in the tree fort, and in places I could find. I didn't even go to any of my uncle's homes. I couldn't face anybody. I broke into homes of vacationing muggles and whatnot. And one day I found myself in a bar, and before I knew it, I was drinking... A lot. I was trying to forget.”
She shook her head slightly and continued, “Vito found me. He has a knack for it. He joined me and I tried to send him away. But he... he convinced me that he did have the capacity to care.” She could not tell them about the dream he had told her about. “He, in his own way, apologized for his actions. And then he helped me. He got me to Satin's and gave me a room to sleep it off. And the next day, I explained to him what had caused me to get so upset. What I had realized... How I understood how he felt, because my mind worked the same way, for the most part.”
She remembered back to the conversation and gave a lame summary. “We had a nice chat. I had remembered everything he had done for me the night before, and that had convinced me that there was still hope. We left there as close to the word friends as it gets when it comes to Vito.”
“And then came the summer party, and I-I... I had to choose.” She felt her voice crack. Crap. She had not wanted to get emotional. That was not what she had wanted, but she knew she had to talk this through, explain why she had done what she had done. The only problem, was that the wounds were fresh. She closed her eyes, and said in a strained quiet voice, more to herself than anyone. “You shouldn't have made me choose... It hurt so bad... But how could you have known...” She forced back the tears that were pressing against her eyelids and looked up.
“How could I turn my back on Vito, after he had gone from my enemy to my confidant? After all of the progress I was sure he had made? If I had turned my back, he would just revert to his old ways, only now, with a reason to seek revenge on you guys. He would have no one to care for him, no reason to try and change. And you guys had each other. He had no one.”
She shoved her shaking hands under her knees and said in a small voice, “We went to Satin's afterwards. He comforted me, we made jokes, acted like nothing had happened. We drank, we tried to forget. And, I poured my sorrow at losing my only friends into that.”
She looked up at them. “Then we came back to school, and I had no idea what to expect from you guys. On the train, you guys tried to be nice to me, but I was too sick with myself to allow you too. And then the demon attack, and I got worried... and I said some things that I probably should not have.” Her eyes met Chase's momentarily. “And then, at school, I just figured you all hated me anyway. I was not expecting anything different. I wasn't ignoring or avoiding you guys. I just wanted to allow you your distance from me, because I'm... What I've done is unforgivable, and I'm sorry.”
She stopped. There it was. There was everything she could tell them without betraying Vito too. It was all the truth, even where parts were missing, and it was one of the most revealing things she had ever done. She had admitted she was wrong, even where she was not sure that she was. She knew it would not make it up, but she just wanted them to understand. “I just wanted you guys to know that. That I am sorry, and why I did everything. It's not a justification, or a plea for reconciliation, it's just... my story.” She nodded. “That's my story.”
(Longest post! 2020 says PA, Word says 2041!)