Please note that this chapter and this story contains triggers for anorexia, bulimia, self-injury, and other eating disorders. Please don't read this is it will trigger you. Please be safe.
Chapter Thirteen - Played
Sleep did not come easily to Professor Severus Snape; he had only just barely dozed off when he awoke to the sun shining into his room. The way the dew was settling on the grass and the crisp leaves were sighing across the ground promised it would be a nice day - probably the last nice day in a long time; winter was quickly setting in. He readied himself with haste, feeling a hard lump in his throat that, if he hadn't known any better, he would have called fear or nervousness. He wanted - no, he needed - to find Draco today. That morning. Immediately. His other students be damned.
He whisked out of his rooms and down the dungeon corridors. He stopped outside the entrance to the Slytherin common rooms and waited. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, eyes intent on the door, his eyes skimming the faces jostling on out until he caught sight of one dark face.
"Zabini," he barked.
The dark boy turned and moved toward his professor, trepidation writing across his brow. "Sir?"
"Malfoy. Have you seen him?" Severus clenched his fists to hide the shaking of his fingertips.
"'Course," the Slytherin looked baffled. "He was still asleep when we left just now."
Severus closed his eyes for a moment, relief sweeping through him. He turned back to the tall boy. "Thank you. Now go."
Blaise paused, "Sir. Draco is my friend. I care about him too."
Severus paused for a beat, then another, and another. "Well, good on you, boy. He needs more people like you."
The Potions Professor waited until the trickle of students in the hallway slowed then stopped completely. Then, without ceremony, he marched in to the Slytherin common rooms and down the room Draco and the other seventh year boys shared. Although, Severus mused, technically they were eighth years, but really that was just a technicality as they were learning the seventh year curriculum.
He paused for a breath and a second to ready himself outside of Draco's room, tried to steady his heart rate, then swung the door open, confident as hell.
Draco was a small, huddled lump beneath mounds of blankets. His eyes twitched nervously beneath his lids and his breathing was ragged and shallow. Dark hollows rested below his cheekbones and under his eyes, his lips were thin, tense, and chapped.
"Draco," Severus intoned, trying to draw him slowly from his slumber. "Draco, you need to wake up."
With a jerk, the boy's eyes flew open and swept rapidly about the room. He blinked hard when he saw Severus and slurred, "What're you doing here?"
Severus planted his feet, "Where were you yesterday?"
"Around," there was something like venom - or betrayal - in Draco's eyes.
"You need to go back to the Hospital Wing. Your body is not well."
The figure beneath the blankets shrunk away from Severus's voice, curling around some small, central point of warmth and life and anger.
"Sod off!" Draco's voice was like a crack of lightning on a dark night. "I saw you yesterday. I saw you with him! Were they going to tell me? Were you going to tell me?"
Severus swore and sat down heavily on the corner of Draco's bed, his head in his hands. "I'm sorry. I would have told you."
"No, I know how these things work. If I hadn't gone missing and you had to come here, you just would have avoided me all day until I found it out through some dumbs student. And then you would have come to find me with some fantastical bullshit about how you had meant to be the first one to tell me." Draco shook his head. "I've been played before, old man, I know how it goes down."
"You just want an excuse to hate me," Severus sneered.
"Don't make this about you. Why the hell are you here anyway?"
"You just vanished yesterday! I had to make sure you were still alive! Please understand I was - and am - actually worried about you," Severus implored, flattening out the palms of his hand, empty, nonthreatening.
"Bollocks." Draco laid back down and pulled his blankets back over his head.
Severus reached over and hauled Draco out by his neck, shoving him out of the bed and towards the dresser. "Put your robes on. You have class in twenty minutes. I expect to see you there."
The door slammed shut behind the professor, making a sound like a little-used church bell. Draco stood on the floor, leaning hard against the dresser. The hatred that had warmed his body was weakening, the anger was slipping, the malice was losing its hold. Another feeling started to emanate from his bones, his belly, his brain, his heart. Craving.
He yanked open the dresser.
As Severus prepared his lesson he suddenly felt old. He had felt tired before, and sick, but never old. This feeling seeped from the very marrow of his bones. It tore through his body and he sat aching, wishing he had never cast a second glance at the boy. He wished he was just waiting a few more years at an old, easy teaching job before a good, old retirement. But no, he had to be dragged into this boy's web of problems. He had to care.
He felt alive as well, though. Shaking fingertips, sweating, nervousness, his heartbeat constantly accelerated, it all made him feel alive, but oh so old.
His students began to file in sometime later and he passed a weary hand over his eyes. Ribbons of tension connected his two shoulder blades and his knuckles were white, veins and spider-thin bones peeping through his skin. He checked off students in his head, some with regret, most with indifference.
The bell was about to toll when he walked in. No, walked would have been the wrong word. He sauntered. That was it. A saunter. In his hand was a large, bloodred apple - a gaping hole revealed soft, pale flesh. The boy's hand carried the apple gracefully to his mouth again, his teeth sank into the fruit's flesh, and Severus could have sworn the entire class moved slightly at the sound of the crunch. The ribbons in Severus's back snapped, the furrows on his brow relaxed, and he waved his wand at the board, easily bringing up the class notes, turning his back to the boy as he settled himself in his seat.
Author's Note: Thanks to my awesome beta, WickedTorchwoodFan. Please review!