"Regret" by Fiona Apple
"What are you doing letting him in, you'll blow this entire operation!" Neville yelled as he saw Draco nearly passed out on a hospital bed.
"Calm down! I'll just erase his fucking memory! Anyway, the door only opens if the person has no intentions to rat us out." She spat back at her almost lover. "He's obviously very hurt!"
"I DON'T CARE IF HE'S DYING! HE'LL BLOW YOUR BLOODY COVER!"
"HE WON'T REMEMBER THIS ALTERCATION! IT DOESN'T MATTER!"
"HE KILLED DUMBLEDORE!"
Leia didn't have a response to that, and instead whispered "Vulnera Sanentur" to heal a wound coming from his shoulder. He opened his eyes after a moment and looked at Leia with a face she couldn't read. It was a mixture of bliss and crippling sadness.
"What happened?" She whispered.
"I wasn't doing very well in a private torcher lesson with Amycus Carrow, and he-" Draco said before wincing again.
"Dark magic on the shoulder?"
He nodded.
"He kicked me too... here." He said clutching his stomach as Leia summoned over some blood replenishing potion and a cup.
"Jesus." Leia whispered, noticing that Neville had become silent. "Drink." She added, holding the cup up to him while the bottle magically flew back to its spot in the cabinet.
"When can he leave?" Neville asked, angry.
"In an hour or so. His body needs to calm down." She said watching her former love suck down the potion. "I'm going to do a body scan on you, to make sure you aren't hurt anywhere else."
Draco looked at her confused, but nodded.
"I can't stand here and watch you help him." Neville spat.
"I can't have you distracting me. This spell takes a lot of fucking concentration. Either shut up or get out."
"Fine." He said walking towards the door.
"See you tomorrow." Leia said softly as he shook his head at her. The door slammed and she turned to Draco, her wand at the ready.
"You two seem to get on." Draco said thoughtlessly.
"Be quiet, if you distract me during this spell I could potentially twist your arteries together and kill you instantly. I'm not kidding."
"It's not my fault if you find my body distracting."
"I just said shut up or I could kill you instantly, remember?" She said trying to cover a smile.
"Point taken. Begin when you're ready." He nodded.
"Close your eyes, you'll probably fall asleep. I'll start at your feet. Don't move and say a word." She said as she moved to the end of the bed. He nodded and closed his eyes.
She took a deep breath. She had done a few of these now, but they always made her scared when she started. The spell itself causes the caster to physically rake through the entire body to make sure everything is functioning correctly. With this scan, a caster can detect everything from broken bones to pulled muscles, tumors, past injuries and illnesses, pregnancies, and more. It was most important to keep complete concentration, especially at the beginning. Once the caster was past the knee, the likelihood of the caster further injuring the patient is only 8.7%. She sighed.
"Videre Corpus." She said clearly.
His toes were intact, feet were normal aside his high arches. He had a blister on his left ankle, a miniscule crack in his right fibula that was probably from Quidditch, which was directly below his right ACL that showed signed that it had torn several years ago. His upper leg muscles were slightly overworked, and he had been treated chlamydia a few months prior. His liver's cell structure was damaged, and that meant he had been drinking more than normal. He had a two broken ribs on his left side, probably where Amycus Carrow had kicked him. His arms were normal, although he was probably going to have severe arthritis in his hands. The wound in his right shoulder had healed, but his neck and shoulder muscles were incredibly tense, probably from stress. He had a cavity in a molar, and he had not gotten his wisdom teeth removed. Lastly, there were chemical imbalances in his brain that were common in people with depression.
"Done" she said as he opened his eyes. He hadn't fallen asleep as most people do. Apparently it's an extremely calming sensation.
"So?" He said calmly.
"I better not have chlamydia."
"Do I still have chlamydia?"
"No, but I see it was treated a few months ago."
"I got it from Pansy in October, who said she got it from some Ravenclaw. So you probably don't have chlamydia." He said sighing. Leia rolled her eyes angrily.
"Episkey." Leia cast, healing his broken ribs.
"Ahh." He said in a high-pitched voice. "That feels much better."
"You had two broken ribs."
"That makes sense."
"You've drinking a lot lately and you're liver has taken a beating from it, you're going to get arthritis in your hands, and you have a cavity." Leia didn't mention the depression part. He probably already knew about that.
"Do you do dental?"
"No. Talk to Hermione's parents." She said summoning some calming drought. She poured it into his cup. "Your muscles are so tense. Drink this."
"I have a high tolerance for Calming Drought." He said.
"Why? How do you know?"
"My mom gave it to me a lot as a kid, and since I've built up a strong tolerance. I'll drink it, but it won't do much."
"I've already poured it."
He took it like a shot and looked back at her.
"I've heard rumors that you were hiding in the castle, helping students, and that no one could prove it."
"No one can. Anyone who wants to turn me in doesn't gain entrance."
"I messed up that private session on purpose so I would have a reason to find out."
"Draco! He broke two of your ribs! What if you were seriously injured and no one could get to you?"
"Then I'd know you weren't here."
"You realized I'm going to have to erase your memory anyway."
"Then I might be back tomorrow."
"You ass." She said grumbling. He reached out and touched her hand. He sniffed in the air, then leaned in closer and sniffed her again.
"You smell like foreplay..." He said before he gasped, "you were about to fuck Neville Longbottom, weren't you?!"
"He's grown into himself in the last year." She said defensively.
"You've gotten to the point where you have to fuck Shlong-bottom?"
Draco actually seemed amused, rather than angry like Leia would have expected.
"I could do worse."
"Is his butt weird?"
"What?"
"I just always wondered if his butt was really long."
"Normal butt as far as I could tell. We didn't get very far."
"Were you about to take his virginity?"
"Uh, maybe…" She said looking away.
"I feel so bad! Longbottom must really hate me now. I mean, I've been an arse to him for my entire life, I'm a death-eater, and now I'm a cockblocker! Ugh, I pity him."
Leia laughed at how casually Draco called himself a death-eater.
"He might just come back in here and kill you."
"I would kill me if I were him." He said chuckling, before he leaned in to whisper in her ear. "It really turns me on to hear how frustrated you are that you would throw yourself at him."
Leia leaned back and was quiet for a moment. She looked around the room vacantly, as if the words were written on some arbitrary part of the room. It was odd how up to this point everything felt like nothing had changed. They were back to where they were a year ago, whispering jokes to each other on the Slytherin couch. But things had changed. Their eyes met, but in almost an aggressive way.
"You hurt me so badly, Draco. You caused my family to go into hiding, and I have to fear for their lives every day. You realize that, other than me, only a three people know where my family is right now. And my family has no way of contacting me. So if they were to die, I wouldn't know. I would only find out years later, if I survive the war." His eyes were filling with guilty tears. "If they have to move, I might never find out. Then I might never see them again. I'm so scared, Draco. You've made me become so scared. I haven't been outside this room in six weeks. There is no way I'm going to have sex with you. I don't find you sexy anymore."
Draco looked more hurt than she had ever seen him before. Intimacy was so important to both of them.
"Leia, I warned you that I would do something horrible-"
"You warned me I would hate you, not that you were going to fucking assassinate someone. How the fuck was I supposed to predict that?"
"You did, a few times. Theo had to erase your memory."
"You knew?"
Both were silent. Leia was trying out the Occumentcy lessons that Neville and Ginny had been giving her.
"It's working. I can't get in your head." He said frustrated. "I'm so sorry, Leia. I-I love you so much."
"You let me date an assassin, you let me have my memory be altered without my knowledge, and then you put my family and I into a position where we have to go into hiding, and now you say you love me? You're full of shit."
"You said you wouldn't hate me until I hated you-"
"That was before I found out about this shit." She said, starting to shout.
"What the bloody hell did you expect? I have the death eater tattoo, and I warned you that you were going to hate me! Was that not obvious?"
"I thought you were the death eater's letter carrier or something. I didn't expect You-Know-Who to put all of his trust in a 16 year old. And when the other attempts happened, I assumed it wasn't you because I thought you were too smart to try those pathetic excuses for assassination attempts. I was wrong."
"He was going to kill everyone! Me, my family, and YOU." He said standing up and shouting the last word.
"Yeah, you put me in that situation. They would have killed me because you let me get that close to you. That first fucking night, when Pansy put mud in my bed, you could have ended it there and I would be living with my family right now. How could you drag me into this?"
"BECAUSE I AM A SELFISH AND I LOVE YOU." He bellowed. They were both quiet after that. Both searing with rage and staring into each other's faces. Leia noticed Draco was resisting the urge to pounce on her.
"Did you mean it when you said you loved me?" Draco finally asked, taking a step back.
"I don't know."
He turned to exit the room.
"Wait." Leia said against her better judgement.
Draco stood with his back facing her. They were both quiet for a moment. Leia hadn't planned on saying anything. She had thought she would let him go, but she couldn't.
"I feel so alone." She said. Draco could have said the same thing. She hated being this vulnerable in front of him.
He turned and walked to her. He leaned his forehead on hers.
"Please let me." Draco said.
Leia knew she would regret this. She knew she'd hate herself. She knew Neville would find out and hold it against her. Everyone might find out. But she hadn't felt like a real person in a long time.
She kissed him.
They crumbled to the floor and pealed the clothes off each other and made sure to touch every part of each other. She pretended like they were in a different place and a different time, like they were in their own bubble where nothing else could touch them. She came, too quickly, and her body shook pressed against his. He finished and they tried to stick together as long as possible.
When Leia looked up to see his face, she cried. She hid her face in his chest so he wouldn't have to see her own fear and shame.
Draco pushed away from her when he felt her tears. He refused to look at her as he dressed and she sobbed.
"You always managed to make me feel like shit for who I am." he said "Don't worry about me coming back."
When Draco reached the door, he waited a moment for her to grab her wand. Leia put on her tshirt and scrambled for her wand and pointed it at his back.
"Obliviate." She whispered as she quickly opened the door and pushed Draco out before closing it. She knew he would be a little loopy for a few minutes, so he wouldn't remember being pushed out. She stood staring at the door for a long while. She hadn't wanted it to happen this way. She rubbed tears off her cheeks.
Her eyes wandered to the calendar that hung next to the door. Of course it was Valentine's Day.
