Rushing through the hallway, Hermione sobs before tripping and falling to the ground a slight ways' away from the hospital wing. "You can never let anyone know. Draco can't know. No one can know, do you want to be found out? Do you want them to take this away from you? Why are you so careless?"
Draco stalks through the hallway, away from the hospital wing, fuming. He doesn't know why he's so mad, but he is. He wishes that girl would just own up to her mistakes sometimes.
Hermione presses a hand into her face, angrily scratching at her right leg. "Stupid, careless, annoying…" she keeps up a steady chant of self-hatred as she scratches her very pale calf.
Draco rounds a corner, not even caring where he's going or what class he's supposed to be at, when suddenly in front of him is Granger again. He stands there, mystified, as he witnesses her furiously scratching at her leg.
Hermione looks up, alarmed. "Damn fabric softener, I must have an allergic reaction. Quite common, you know, my mum can't use it at all!"
"Spare me that Mudblood talk, Granger," he snaps at her. Really, he's just embarrassed that he doesn't have the slightest clue what 'fabric softener' is, but he can't let her know that.
"Why are you following me everywhere? We're both very late for class!" exclaims Hermione, attempting to get to her feet and tripping again. Involuntarily, Draco reaches out and grabs her hand.
"I'm not following you!" he yells at her. "Why'd you run away from the hospital wing if you didn't want to be followed? What's wrong with you, Granger?"
"IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!" shouts Hermione. "I JUST WANT TO GET AWAY FROM YOU! AND EVERYONE!" she screams, bursting into tears and sinking to the ground again.
His jaw drops as he stands in front of her, unsure of what to do. He decides to try a different tack, however difficult it may be. "Hey... I'm sorry. I meant... what's wrong?"
"Oh go away!" she says loudly, "You don't care anyways! I'm sure you'll just go back to your common room and tell everyone about how CRAZY I am or something! Fine! Go! I don't even care."
"Look, I tried to be nice to you!" He exclaims angrily. "Have you ever seen me be nice to another student, all these years?" He knows that she and Potter and the weasel have thought he was the world's biggest ass ever since they met, maybe using this tactic will get her to tell him what happened. Maybe in a different time he would've laughed about how insane she was, but now he knows he won't.
"No, which is why I don't believe you! Do you just want to know all my secrets? Do you want to find out what's 'wrong' with me? There's nothing wrong!" she says, sobbing again, which quite obviously reveals that there is something wrong.
"Ugh. You're impossible!" he shouts, throwing his hands up and walking away. Then he stops and turns around. "I never said I wanted to know your 'secrets'. I just asked what was wrong. Honestly. And even if you had told me, I wouldn't have told a single soul as long as I lived," he says bitterly.
Hermione sobs again. "Fine, you want to know what's wrong? Come here, come and see what's wrong."
He walks back toward her, palms up, showing her that he's not going to hex her or anything. He is actually quite interested now, in addition to the admittedly irrational concern he felt originally.
Hermione looks into his eyes as she rolls back her sleeves. Flipping her forearms up, she reveals a tangled mass of deep cuts, scabbed wounds and white scars that covered her entire forearm. "This." she says, more tears rolling down her face. "This is what's wrong."
At first, Draco is utterly distracted by how her eyes seem to burn into his, a fact he had never noticed before, but he forces himself to look down at what she is showing him. He stands in shock for a few moments and finally says, "And you didn't want to go to the hospital wing?"
"How could I? How could I let other people know? I've never told anyone, never, not my parents, not Ron, not even Harry. I'm scared, I'm scared of what's happening and I'm scared of what I'm going to do, but I don't want to stop, I want to cut deeper and deeper, I want to die some days." Hermione bites her lip, memorizing Draco's face at this moment. It felt like he was the first person who'd ever cared enough to find out.
Draco abandons all pretenses and sits down cross-legged next to her. "You should tell them," he says, "They have a right to know about their friend, or their daughter, or whatever." He swallows with difficulty and continues, "Why do you even feel this way? You're the brightest witch in the entire school. You never look like you have anything wrong with you."
"NO!" she exclaims. "I can't tell them! No." Hermione scratches roughly at the back of her hand. This conversation was the most helpful thing to her, and it was still stressing her out far too much. "I, I don't know, there's just… there's so much pressure." she adds. She wishes that she could be held, or hugged, or something, but it was odd enough that Draco was talking to her that it was unlikely she'd be embraced. She continues to scratch at her arm, not knowing if she wanted him to notice or not.
"Well... you know... there's a lot of pressure in my family too," he admits to her. He wants to put his arm around her or something, but he knows that she will just shrug him off. "I always have to be perfect for my parents and if I do one little thing wrong, I get the whole 'purebloods are supposed to be perfect' treatment..."
"But, but… that's terrible!" she exclaims, staring at her ruined wrist. One of these days, her hand was going to fall off or something. "How could they?" Hermione buries her face in her hands.
"My father thinks it's normal. It was the way he was raised," he says. "I'm sure one of these days he's just going to hex me off the face of the earth or something."
"I'm the one who puts the pressure on myself. If I'm not the best student, if I'm not… perfect, I just can't handle it. I can't handle anything!" she says, knocking the back of her head against the wall. Hermione had never hurt herself in FRONT of someone before… what was she trying to do? "This is a secret!" she thought to herself.
"That's what my father WISHES I was like," he retorts bitterly. "He cares more about me getting a respectable job than me actually being happy. Not that I could ever be happy while he's breathing down my neck, but of course he never thinks of that." He doesn't even know why he's confiding in her, but somehow it's nice to finally tell someone.
"H-how do you cope with it? You don't cut, I know that, and you eat fine, what's the alternative?" asks Hermione. The conversation was stressing her out too much again. Hermione grabs her bag and starts to search through it for the salvation that she desperately needs.
Should he really tell her? "Well... it's part of the reason I'm always so rude." That's part of it, but not all. "And... and I cry more often than people think," he says quietly. "I put a Silencing Charm on myself so my roommates don't hear."
Hermione finds what she is looking for- a small bag. "It would be lovely to cry, but I can never cry enough to get everything out, it barely even takes the edge off."
"Well... yes, sometimes that's a problem too," he says. "Other than that, I... I really don't know."
"It's funny to think t-that people use normal methods of coping, instead of what I do, instead of… that." she says, unzipping the bag. It was filled with bloody razorblades, a small pocket mirror (carefully shattered) and a few plasters. Hermione removed one of the blades and held it, trying to get Draco to notice, trying to get him to not let her. She didn't know why she wanted him to stop her, it wouldn't make much of a difference, but it felt like something she needed.
"There are no 'normal' coping methods," he says. "My own methods, if you can call them that, they don't seem normal to me. At all. Maybe this is more normal than what I do." He grabs the blade from her hand. "But that still doesn't mean that you get to do it."
"But at least you aren't destroying yourself. I can't ever be pretty now, not now, not ever." Hermione lets go of another sob, trying to grab her blade back. "Please, just… let me cut."
"No." He throws the blade down the hall and hears it clatter against the floor. "And you ARE pretty."
"Why not? I have my nails!" she exclaims, taking hold of her left arm and raking down it with her nails. "I'm not pretty. Look at these scars and say that they're beautiful. Look at my cut throat when I'm dead and say that was the best way. Look at my bushy hair and say it's pretty. I'm ugly, I'm not even worthy of living."
He grabs her hand and pulls it away from her arm. He knows he's being irrational now, but he can't help it. He gestures to her arms. "Hermione, look. Your scars are beautiful. They represent everything you've been through. They represent a part of you. And I LIKE your hair. It's soft." He leans in and kisses her roughly.
Hermione is surprised by his action and pulls away, unwilling to let him touch her even though she craved it worse than anything else. "They're awful. I'M awful."
"Did you even hear what I just said?" He is disappointed that she reacted this way, he was hoping that she would kiss him back, although he knows why she didn't. "You don't need this. No one needs this. You don't have to be perfect all the time.
"Yes I do!" she exclaims, more tears running down her face. "All you see is the good, you don't see how awful I really am, you don't see how afraid I am to let you touch me even though all I want is a hug, you don't see how I freak if I don't get the highest score, you don't see what happens if I lose a point."
"Well, maybe I only see the good because there IS only good, Hermione!" He exclaims. Why can't she see this? "These things take time, and if you can do these things to yourself, then there's time to UN-do them! And since you wanted a hug-" He pulls her in close into a bear hug.
Hermione sobs into his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him. She whispers, just loud enough for him to hear her, "I'm afraid to undo them."
"You don't have to be afraid," he whispers back, "We can do this together."
"No!" she exclaims, standing up. "No, no, no, no, this is all wrong! No!" She rushes towards her blade, making a deep cut in her left arm. Tears run down her face as she stares at Draco, swiping the blade past again and again as her arm is covering with blood. "I'm by myself! Everyone betrays me. You'll betray me, I know it, I have to stay by myself." she says bitterly, unsure if she believes her own words.
Draco pulls out his wand, blasting the blade from her hand. It lands next to her and he swipes it up, placing it in his back pocket. His wand clatters to the floor. "Don't you think, if I wanted to betray you, I would've done it by now?"
"Draco! Give me my blade! I need it! It's not as though I don't have loads more!" she says loudly, "I don't know if you'd betray me, I don't know, I don't KNOW!" Hermione watches the blood leak out of her arm, wanting it to be everything, wanting to die, wanting to faint even.
He grabs her bag with the blades in it and throws it aside. He sits down again next to her and says, "If you don't know, then can I tell you how it's going to happen?"
"Fine, how's it going to happen?" snaps Hermione.
"What's going to happen is, right now you and I are going to the hospital wing. After that, you are going to tell Madam Pomfrey everything. Everything, Hermione. And Potter and Weasley, they should know too. You can keep it from your parents if you want, I don't know. But you are going to tell them. And you're going to get help. And I'm going to be there with you every step of the way." He sighs. "I know you're scared. I'm scared too. I'm scared for you. But we can make this work. I know we can."
Hermione gasps, shaking her head. "No, I can't tell them, I can't tell anyone. I can't believe I told you!" she exclaims, pulling down her sleeves and grabbing her bag. She runs towards Gryffindor Tower, arriving breathlessly with a gasped password of "Ursa Minor". Once inside the empty common room, she walks quickly into the girls' dormitories, trying to forget about what had happened.
She's crazy if she thinks she's going to get away so easily from him. Does she think he'll just forget about everything and act like he hates her again tomorrow? He doesn't hate her. He's always liked her, from the very first moment, but he's been lying to himself all this time. Maybe that's another way he copes. He lies. But he's not anymore, and his father can go fuck himself.
