For the One Character Competition:
A Three Shot with the following requirements:
Made of Miracles
You will write a story with an OC who plays an important role
Your character has an eating disorder
Optional:
"I've never been so disappointed in my life."
Knitting
Your character must be injured in some way
Total word count: 1134
i.
It all starts during her seventh year at Hogwarts.
The world she's known is gone, and everything is falling apart. Once, the school had been her sanctuary. Now, it's little more than a prison.
Sleep goes first. Closing her eyes means letting the demons in, and she cannot handle another nightmare. Padma stays up at night instead, struggling to regain control of her thoughts, trying desperately to remember what peace feels like.
Her grades are next. She's always been so clever. Parvati is the brave one, but that's okay because Padma prefers knowledge to combat. But even that begins to slip away. Acceptable isn't the best, but it's not nearly as bad as the Dreadful marks that she's become more and more familiar with as the year drags on.
Her breaking point is when her friends begin to keep their distance. All of them are suffering at the Carrows' hands, but some are better at hiding the damage. Padma, for all her cleverness and wit, has never learned how to hide her emotions, how to craft a mask that's convincing enough to make others believe she's okay. No one wants to be the one who willingly stays with the weak, broken one. They're all fighting their battles, and there's no time to stop because war waits for no one.
She doesn't know how it begins, really. Had there been some conscious decision to stop eating? She isn't sure anymore; she only remembers the downward spiral, the pain, the tears, and that nagging voice in her head that screamed at her to find something in her life that she could control.
When the first hunger pang sets in, when she feels that tight ache in her stomach, she almost laughs in spite of her misery. The world has gone to hell, but everything is okay. She is invincible; she is made of more than flesh and bone. She is made of power.