A/N: Written partially to blow off some stress from my psychiatric placement (paediatric eating disorders), and for the following challenges:
The Most in a Month Competition
Another Mega Prompt Challenge, writing prompts #58 - collection containing fics of exactly 1000 words
Favourite Era Boot Camp, #015 - nurturing
psychodynamic
1. anorexia
.
He is not ill, simply starved.
It's not the same thing. If someone put a deluxe hamburger in front of him, he'd scarf it all down until his stomach screamed. And if they'd done that back when his stomach was a bouncy, stretchy thing instead of the stiff little sac it was now, he'd have managed it all too. He can't now but that's because his stomach hasn't stretched for so long it's forgotten how.
It's like riding a bicycle, probably. It just needs to loosen up a little. Maybe a nice warm bath with the salts that athletes use.
.
He eats. There's food a plenty for the first time in his life and he eats and eats and eats, until his far too small stomach screams, and then the next time has him eating again.
Of course, he empties in between because he overfills and it climbs back up his throat dragging acid along with it. He learns where all the bathrooms are quickly enough, but that doesn't stop him. Doesn't make him slow down. Except the meals he can't get to at all because his throat and stomach are screaming: "no more".
Next time, he gives it more.
.
He's small and scrawny and he's not putting on the weight in the right places and everyone tells him to eat more.
He does eat more. He also throws up more.
The fat goes to his stomach instead of to his thighs. They don't fill out his hollowed cheeks, or his twigs for arms. He's cute, some say. He's unhealthy, say the rest, and his friends (new, like the food, but that's another tale) tell him his hands are far too cold.
It's fine. Cold hands means the wind doesn't bother them. Small body means he can chase the snitch.
.
It's only when he falls from his broom that the nurse sees him.
She's the authority on all things health, related, after all.
She's horrified. Turns out the majority muttering "unhealthy" are right. And they don't even know it.
He shouldn't throw up every meal, she says. She looks queasy at the thought. He also shouldn't eat so little… which is funny because he can't seem to eat more.
So she pokes and pokes and they talk about how much he'd eat before: earlier in the year, when he first arrived, back at home.
It's far too little, she says.
.
He doesn't get down to the Great Hall for a week after that. He drinks potions instead. Lots of them. And the first two days are overnight and it's through a tube in his nose and it tastes vile. It makes him shudder. But his whole body is cold and his heart is doing something funny – an odd sort of gallop – that was apparently the cause of him falling off his broom.
He watches Madame Pomfrey's wand dance as she tries to explain. It only confuses him more. If the heart runs on electricity, how does it work at Hogwarts?
.
Madame Pomfrey gives him a strict diet.
He wants to follow it. He does. But he also knows he can't.
"It's okay," Madame Pomfrey says. "We'll work up to it."
That was the problem last time. So they work up to it. He's eating right and putting on weight by the time the year draws to a close.
His relatives look at his diet, tear it up, and throw the shreds in the bin.
His stomach begins to scream again. A different song. And he's back to his old habits far too quickly, taking all the food he can get.
.
Year two starts the same as year one. There's a feast and he eats everything he can take and throws it up back in the dormitory, but it's okay because he remembers last year's diet and he can get that weight back, right? And he wouldn't have lost too much in the summer holidays, right?
He's dragged straight back to Madame Pomfrey in the morning and started a few steps back.
The diet has steps. He learnt that last year. First, only potions. Then some broths added on. Then solid foods. Then the unhealthy stuff to pack on some weight.
.
Hermione clicks her tongue whenever he reaches for something unhealthy.
She can't help it. Her parents are dentists. And she rarely touches that stuff but her weight's fine. She doesn't have random fainting spells. Her hands aren't as cold as ice.
Her knuckles don't look something awful either, and her hair isn't limp and dry, and her eyes don't burn behind her glasses. She doesn't even wear glasses.
And of course her teeth weren't ugly. A little uneven, maybe, but all pearly whites.
He's always been like that, he thinks. Always small and ugly but that's just him.
It's not.
.
Things connect to other things. He didn't see it before. He doesn't really see it now either but Madame Pomfrey tells him that's how it is. One thing leads to another – but that means he can fix it all by just fixing that one thing and that's motivation if he ever saw it.
It's also a stopper if he ever saw it, because he can't go back home a new person. Whatever would his family say? What if he got too tall, too slow, too eye-catching and he couldn't tuck himself into the shadows even more?
He can't do that.
.
His weight and health fluctuate and Madame Pomfrey compensates by adding more potions he can't throw out (another habit of old, hoarding every scrap of fluid and food) and then there's summer holidays.
By the time they're chasing hocruxes, he's a slave to what he's fed. Or maybe it's before.
Thank goodness they all know. Not his family who hadn't cared. But Ron and Hermione. They knew, and maybe they couldn't be perfect but they made sure he was, and kept at it.
And he could finally grow into himself, unhindered – and clinging, because he couldn't afford to let go.