Chapter Three
You're sitting in the Great Hall again, but hardly notice the hustle and bustle of dinner as it winds around you. The light-hearted chatter is just a roar in your ears, something you can tune out and pretend isn't even there. You feel the weight of glare on your back, but by now you are used to them and pay them no mind. You just sit there, staring at the piles of ash on your plate, that you piled on just for appearance's sake. Some Slytherin traits, you suppose, you can never shake.
McGonagall hates you even more this year – or perhaps, at least, she is free to show her hatred this year, as opposed to when you were still protected by Snape. You have four detentions so far, which is less than you had expected. You don't know why you have them; only that you do. You weren't listening to her during Transfiguration. Maybe the detentions were because of just that.
It's cold. You're cold.
You stand up to leave and feel the weight of the glares increase. Slowly, you move away from the table, disentangling your legs hesitantly. Once you are free, you walk briskly down the isle between Slytherin and Ravenclaw and exit quietly through the doors. Pillars of light are shining down from open windows high, high above you, and you think maybe that you'll take a walk around the lake. You haven't in a long, long time. Even if it is grey, you hope the water will shimmer.
It's sunny, but you don't really take it in. Instead you tuck your hands in your sleeves, lower your head. The wind is a breeze, but it cuts through you like ice. Frozen, dull ice. Trees are blowing, branches groaning, but the movement doesn't catch your eye. Like everything else, nature is just a blur, something that simply fades away from you. Like colour, like sound, like taste, like warmth. Like compassion.
You duck your head farther, until your chin hits your chest. All you watch is your feet, stepping hesitantly onwards. Any step you take might fail you, like everything else you've ever done. You might slip, fall, rush until you're nothing more to you but the grey swirling in your vision.
You watch, horrified, as one of your feet trip the other, and like you imagined, you fall to the ground, rolling down the incline – and the grey is swirling, lurching, tempting, reaching out with twisted limbs to grab at you, pull you tighter into its hold. You stop and gasp with shock. The water of the lake is cold and grey and – dull. It aches you where you've fallen in, up to your hips as you lie on your back. You shiver, drawing your arms close to cover your chest as you shake.
They're back. They kick your chin up, demanding that you look at them. Trying, you feel yourself willing your vision to focus, willing the grey to stop swirling as it does, rocking you and dizzying you. It doesn't work. You've failed again.
A kick lands on your side; you gasp with pain. They're yelling things at you, screaming angry, hateful things. You try to nod, try to tell them they're right to do so, that you deserve it, that you're a failure, because sometimes that's worked in the past and made things a little bit easier to handle. But you can't get anything through your mouth, can't make your lips form the words. They kick you again in your side, in the same spot, and all you can do is hide your face, hide yourself. Hide, like a coward – but that's all you've ever been. Just a coward and a failure.
Someone grabs your robe, bunching it around your neck. They drag you up, until they are breathing on your face. They say something meaningful. For once, you understand.
"Same time tomorrow, Death Eater. And the day after that, and the day after that – until we're sure you've learned your lesson. Or else we'll come find you, and you'll wish you'd never been born."
You want to tell them you already do, but they've thrown you back, splashing into the water. You go all the way under and you're panicking until you figure out which way is up and break through the surface, spluttering and shivering. You lie on your back in the water, floating and feeling the grey sloshing around your face, dragging heavily on your body.
Their harsh laughter rings in your head as you float there.
Not even for a moment do you consider defying them.
The first detention is that very night. You arrive exactly at 7:00pm, exactly when detention starts. Even she hasn't arrived yet, but as you walk in, your hair still damp even though you've changed your clothes, you see that she has left you instructions on the blackboard. She wants you to record the glossary of the first year textbook five times. Quickly you settle into the last desk in the last row, the farthest corner. You take out a quill and parchment, setting them up perfectly. It is a job, a job you deserved from being wrong, and you don't want to make her mad. If she gives you more detentions, you might not be able to meet with Them, and they swore they'd hunt you down if you fucked up again.
McGonagall arrives an hour or so later, and you are still working on the first copy of the glossary. You keep your eyes down on your paper as you write, not wanting her to punish you for not doing the work. You sense her stop to look around the classroom after she first walks in, and you can feel her getting annoyed. Your heart is beginning to pound with fear because you don't know why she is angry. Then her gaze lands on you, in the shadowy far corner, and you see her nod tersely out of the corner of your eye.
You breathe. You didn't even realize you had been holding your breath.
She sits at her desk at the front of the classroom, marking papers. Every so often she will look up to make sure you are doing what you are supposed to be doing, and your gut clenches with a different sort of shame that she expects – that she knows – that you are such a failure to merit such close inspections.
It takes a few hours that slide by you unnoticed, as time is difficult for you to keep, before you are finished copying the glossary. Your head hangs low as you slowly get up. She is watching you from the moment you began to move, and you fear that you might wince and alert her to your agonized side under that cat-like, level gaze. Once you get to her desk, you wait for her to say something.
"Mr. Malfoy."
It is good enough. You hold out the completed glossaries, not daring to look up. She takes them, but doesn't look at them. You follow her in your peripheral as she tosses all that work into her rubbish bin and flicks her wand. The papers are shredded. You feel something inside you shred along with them. She is speaking again but you can't hear; everything that you are and have is fixated on those tiny pieces of parchment that will rot and decay, despite all the effort you put into them. You had underlined, emphasized, paraphrased… everything. And yet now they were ripped up and useless. Completely, utterly useless.
"Mr. Malfoy, are you listening to me?"
The stern voice brings you back to yourself. You mumble something noncommittal and your gaze is once again on your shoes.
McGonagall is silent for a moment, and you can not feel what she is thinking. Then she does something unexpected.
Her hand reaches out towards your face and you are so taken by surprise that you wince and take a half-step back. Your body begins to tremble, but only slightly. You don't think she sees you shake. You can't believe she would slap you. You wait, terrified but resigned, for a blow that never comes. You open your eyes, curious, and stare as her hand, which had frozen, still in its reach, rests gently on your jaw. She turns your face to the side, and her features harden.
You realize, with a dread so encompassing it shakes the grey surrounding you into sharp focus, that she has seen the bruise, dark purple-yellow, stretching across your jaw from earlier.
"Mr. Malfoy, what has happened to your face?"
You curse yourself that you had forgotten. You had almost been late to detention and hadn't remembered to cover up the bruises.
"Fell," you whisper hoarsely, near-silently. It wasn't a lie – not a complete lie. You had fallen, tripped by a jinx. That was what started the whole thing.
She turns your head again and stares levelly at you. She doesn't believe you, but she only purses her lips. You deserved it, you whisper in your mind, half-hoping that she would hear your thoughts. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn't. Maybe she agrees, because she nods and says, "You may leave."
You nod and step away slowly, thinking maybe she would recant on hitting you. It was a stupid thought, for she only tidies her desk and moves to leave as well. As the door to her classroom closes behind you, you sink to the ground.
So stupid, so stupid. You're so stupid, so useless, so pathetic.
You jerk your head back to thud into the wall. You repeat this five times, repeating the mantra in your head the same amount. Finally, when the sharp grey begins to fade, you push yourself up. It is a long, cold walk back to the common room.