House: Ravenclaw
Year: 3rd Year
Category: Short
Prompt: Don't Let Me Get Me – P!NK
W/C: 650
TW: Mentions of alcohol abuse and self-harm, only in passing with absolutely no details of those acts.
Notes: I am obligated to notate ahead of my story that it is AU material.
Everyday I fight a war against the mirror.
After my family fled the war and were pardoned by the Ministry, I ran away. It's funny, I guess, because I never considered that I could give up magic. I spent my whole life hating – no, pitying, those without magic and especially those without pureblood magic in their veins. Suddenly, I couldn't take the person staring back at me in the mirror after the war, and I just left it behind.
Magic causes nothing but trouble. Having magic made me a hazard to myself, and everyone else around me.
London was too obvious of a place to go, so I went overseas. New York seemed like a decent city, a place where I could blend in pretty easily. I didn't know what to do or where to start so I just stayed in mediocre hotels until I decided to work in a library. What better way to learn about Muggle culture than a place surrounded with texts about it? It wasn't much but it helped me get by. It kept me distracted so I wouldn't get myself down.
I'm my own worst enemy, though. I hate the company of myself. I'm annoying and irritating, and I'm left wondering how I had any friends in my life. I don't even want to my friend anymore. There was nothing I wouldn't give to be somebody else.
I guess that's how I got into counseling with you, Doctor. Depression has got ahold of me, what with being away from my life of magic and my ridiculous family, and all of the bad reputations following me around in London. Awful as it was, at least I had people I knew. Technology and cars, it's all so far beyond me, and yet my peers are so at peace with it all that I feel even more like an outsider. Of course, I am, aren't I?
Now I'm sitting here staring across the room from you in my awkward chaise lounger, while you're perched in a gray armchair that looks far more comfortable. Things are at a peak now, what with my self-harm and reliance on alcohol. There's not a day that doesn't go by that I don't walk through the streets and consider whether drugs would be any help. All I want to do is forget – just for a little bit.
"Doctor," I say softly, pleading in my voice. This is our third or fourth visit. I expected to have medication by now, or something to ease the pain a little bit. I don't want to be worse. Fucking hell, I don't want to be worse than this, but I can't see an end. "Doctor, won't you please prescribe something? Anything?"
"Well, Draco, do you think that would help?" I supposed I should've guessed that you'd reply to my question with a question, that's how these meetings tend to go. We're just "talking," you that say to me all the time. You need time to "figure out" the right diagnosis. I don't remember it being this hard with magic. I miss magic so much. I miss everything.
But I hate everything.
"I just want to be someone else. I want to spend a day in the life of someone else."
You sit there like I've just said something funny, a smile on your thinly aged lips. Don't other people feel this way? Surely this isn't some unheard of fantasy. Other people have to want the same thing sometimes. You set down your notebook and come to sit next to me on the couch. "Draco."
That's what gets me. You said my name in your scratchy voice, sounding like a loving parent and all, and it – gets – me. My hands come to my face and I start crying. It's not the soft sort of cry, either.
I'm sobbing.
I'm shaking.
And I'm screaming, "I'm a hazard to myself."