Draco stood numbly in the middle of the room. The sound of the door slamming shut was still echoing off the caverns of his skull. He had seen more in the past day than he even knew how to begin to process. He became vaguely aware of a small, frilly bed in the corner of the room, and – without really feeling his legs – he moved to sit on it.

He felt unreal. Not 24 hours ago, he had sat at the long, handsome, formal dining table in the halls of Malfoy Manor, attempting to tune out the sounds of his father going on about the Dark Lord and his plans for his future. He recalled feeling nauseous, continually. Vomiting nearly every time tried to eat anything at all. He had begun losing weight so fast that – as he sat on the bed – his trousers hung loosely around his hips.

Of course, his father had taken this as a sign of weakness. Dinnertime became a torturous occasion, as Lucius Malfoy insisted that he must eat his full share – a man's share, if he ever expected to become a useful servant to the Dark Lord. He had sat upright in his large, ornately carved four-poster bed every night for so long that exhaustion had over taken every muscle in his body. He couldn't force himself to sleep, and on the rare occasions that he did, he was plagued with nightmares that were even worse than the things which he witnessed when awake.

Draco licked his lips. His mouth was dry. His head pounded a drumbeat in his skill, and it seemed like could feel his blood rush from one end of his body to the other. The now familiar feeling of nausea hung, a dull, droning presence, which hummed quietly in the background like cicadas on a summer day.

He had been drunk, he thought, dully. His father had made him knock back a few shots of whisky after dinner.

"Like a man, Draco." He had said. And Draco, whom had kept little in his system for at least a fortnight, had lost control more quickly than he had ever expected. Even now, as he sat on the pink bedspread in Harry Potter's house, his memory of the night before rose in thick, unclear, cloud-like pieces. The only thing of the event that Draco could remember clearly was that he had shouted at his father. And somewhere in all the shouting, he had announced to everyone in the dining room that he did not want to be a Death Eater. And that was that. There was a whir of more shouting, a couple bright flashes of curses being thrown, a few moments or a few hours of extreme pain, and then oblivion. He awoke in a St. Mungo's cot and Albus Dumbledore was staring down at him in concern.

Draco looked around and took in his surroundings fully for the first time. He was sitting in a small, girlishly decorated room, with a greenish-blue carpet, pink baseboards, and a wall, which was painted a greyish-blue that he couldn't quite find a word for. The furniture looked antique, with pale-pink and blue flowers painted ornately on the wooden sides. The was an old lamp with a shade made of colored glass, a pink circular woven rug, a few floral paintings, and tall standing vase in the corner. Aside from the digital alarm clock on one of the end tables, he could be sitting in the guest room of a 1950s housewife. The color scheme made him gag, but everything else about the place was positively cozy, compared with the cold, cavernous chambers of Malfoy Manor.

He thought about Potter's aunt and uncle; some of the most unpleasant people whom Draco had ever met. Potter's cousin, who picked him up and threw him around like a ragdoll. The cupboard in which Potter had supposedly lived in for ten long years. His head was spinning. Draco had always assumed that Potter had lived a charmed life. Sure, he had known his parents were dead, obviously, but it had never occurred to him that the muggles with whom Harry lived would be so terrible. He had always been so jealous of Potter, without ever realizing that his home life was only scarcely better than his own. A vague sense of guilt washed through him at this thought.

And what did this mean for him? For a brief moment, he had been excited to leave the Manor, to escape from the hands of his father and his constant threats. Until Dumbledore rang the doorbell of Number 4, Privet Drive, he had thought he was going somewhere where he would be treated kindly. He thought maybe, perhaps, Dumbledore was taking him someplace where the sight of him wouldn't be a disgust or disappointment to every person he came across. Instead, he was here. Trapped in a muggle house, with muggle occupants who clearly hated the sight of him, the very idea of him. And the only other wizard in the house, the only person who could do something to alleviate his loneliness, was the person who hated him most of all. Harry fucking Potter.

A dark, heavy gloom settled over Draco like a thick, wet blanket, sending an invasive chill through his body that had little to do with the temperature of the room. He sat on the edge of the bed and stared down at his shoes. He tried to think of something positive, like the return to school, but thoughts of his housemates swam into view, and the heavy feeling only increased. Something wet hit his hand. He was crying.

Draco wiped the moisture onto the back of his hand and stared at it. It slowly went out of focus as his grey eyes filled with a fresh wave of tears. It was an odd sight. He couldn't remember the last time that he had actually cried. Crying was for the weak. Father would never stand for it.

Something about this thought hit Draco like a brick. An almost panicked sense of despair blossomed in his gut and traveled slowly up his throat, escaping through his mouth in the form of a sob. More sobs soon followed and Draco collapsed sideways onto the bed, burying his crumpled face in the frilly pink pillow. The last time he had cried like this, he had been 7 years old. He had fallen off his broomstick, and while he wailed, his mother had sat beside him and gently rubbed his back. Draco remembered it clearly, because after he had calmed down his father had taken him aside and admonished him, explaining that he was far too old to cry like that again. It was the last time he allowed his mother to comfort him, and it was the last time she ever did.

Now, as he laid in this frilly bed in this frilly house, he wished more strongly than he ever had that she could comfort him like that he again. He ached for it, longed for it, and he knew, deep within himself, that it would never happen. And so he cried. He cried until exhaustion overtook him, and he fell into a deep and heavy sleep.

Draco awoke as feeling as though his eyes had been crusted and swollen shut. Dried, salty trails on his cheeks made it so that scrunching up has face caused a pulling sensation on his skin. His hair stuck to his forehead, which glistened with sweat, and he could feel with his fingers that that his face was marred by creases from the frilly pillowcase. He looked around the small room, feeling disoriented. The light had changed, and the clock on the nightstand told him that several hours had passed since he fallen asleep. It was now late afternoon, and he could hear sounds coming from the living room downstairs.

He remained frozen on the bed for a long time. He was dirty and sweaty and thirsty, and yet the idea of approaching any of the Dursleys about these complaints terrified him. If Potter had made anything clear about living here, it was that the Dursleys were to be left alone as much as possible. As far as Draco saw it, this left him with only one option, and that option scared him only slightly less than the alternative.

Walking carefully as though he would wake up some kind of beast, Draco traveled down the end of the hallway to the door with the cat flap. He stopped outside the door and spent a considerable amount of time staring it down, trying to gather up the courage to do what he was about to do. As he stood there, Draco noticed that this door appeared to lock from the outside, and a horrible thought stuck him. Had Potter been locked in this room, the way he had been locked in the cupboard downstairs? Is that why Potter had squirmed when he had asked him about the flap?

"What do you want, Malfoy?" Draco nearly jumped out of his skin. He reeled around to see Potter standing behind him, looking irritated.

"P-Potter!" He stammered. "I thought you were –" Potter raised his eyebrows.

"What, I can't go to the loo in my own bloody house? What are you doing here, Malfoy?" Suddenly all the words in the English language seemed to escape him.

"I… well, I –" Potters eyebrows moved even further up his forehead, so they hid mostly behind his fringe.

"Out with it, Malfoy. What do you want?" Anxiety clutched him by his stomach. He wished he would turn invisible.

"Could I use your shower?" He finally spit out. He felt as though he were pushing the words past a physical obstruction in his throat. Potter's face took on a vaguely surprised expression, as though this was not what he had been expecting to hear.

"Oh. Uh, yeah, Malfoy. Sure. Follow me." Draco followed Potter back down the hallway to the restroom, and tried not to daze out as he walked him through how to adjust the temperature on the shower. After a brief explanation, Potter tossed a towel at him, and then disappeared behind the door. Draco felt another surge of intense loneliness, and swallowed past the lump that had suddenly lodged in his throat.

For the first time, he turned to face the mirror. He wished he hadn't. His hair, which he generally took much pride in keeping neat and tidy, was greasy, stringy, and all over the place. It stuck up in places at the back where in the front it laid flat, plastered to his forehead. His pale skin, milk-white and prone to showing even the slightest blemish, was red and blotchy, with his grey eyes lined with red and swollen, obvious testaments to the time he had spent crying not long ago. Draco wondered, briefly, whether Potter had noticed this.

Averting his eyes, Draco shrugged the robe from his shoulders. Beneath it, he wore an expensive, Slytherin green jumper sweater. He tore it off, tossing it into the corner as though it had done something to offend him. Exposing his arms to the open air, Draco sat on the closed lid of the toilet seat, and examined the dozens of lacerations on his pale wrists, which extended up the length of his forearms. They were all in various degrees of healing and served as physical evidence of the pain he had endured for the past 3 or so years. From his trouser pocket, he produced a razorblade.

He couldn't quite remember when he had begun his little habit, but the first vivid memory that Draco held of his now-regular self-harm was in 3rd year, following professor Lupin's lesson with the boggart. He had hid in the far back of the classroom, terrified of being chosen to battle the beast. Thanks to the chaos caused by Potter's dementor, he was spared of ever having to do so. This still did little to satiate the humiliation and shame that Draco had felt in his fear of the confrontation, and so he found himself later on locked in the stall of a restroom, potions knife in hand. To this day, Draco could not tell you exactly what possessed him to place the edge of the blade against his skin, but he had done so, and he had not stopped ever since.

Now, in the frilly bathroom of this frilly house at Number 4 Privet Drive, Draco set to work, adding line after line of evident misery to the milk-white flesh of his wrists. Slowly, scarlet beads of life began to surface, one droplet at a time, growing until they burst and trailed swiftly down his skin, forming a small pool at the crook of his elbow. Draco's breathing began to slow, allowing him to take fuller, more relaxing breaths. The lump, which had until now taken residence in his throat, looming with the constant threat of further tears, began to shrink and ebb away. He began to feel truly calm for the first time in more than 24 long hours.

When he was properly satisfied with the damage done, Draco shoved the blade back into his trouser pocket and shed the remainder of his clothes. His stomach growled, though from hunger or nausea he wasn't sure. Turning the tap, Draco started up the shower, and waited for the water to warm as he stared down at the fresh bloodshed on his arm. Then he stepped inside, and began to wash away what little memory he still had of the awful night before.