Chapter 14: Enough

AN: Haha, you really should have seen this coming.

Draco had had enough. Christmas break had been over for two weeks and he was tired of waiting for Harry to answer him, to be ready for him, he had waited long enough. Surely the boy would have an answer by now. He was tired of watching Blaise and Theo sitting by the fire together, waiting for Pansy to talk to him, reading books in the Library with Hermione. He was sick of it all.

He didn't want to love Harry anymore. He didn't. He had decided it. And he was right in his mindset, Harry had almost killed him for Christ's sake! Why should he love a man who almost killed him!? Surely that was a form of abuse or something. He was goddamn tired of waiting for a boy who would never love him back, for someone who made him wait for almost a month while he "sorted out his feelings." Sorting out feelings just didn't take that long! It took maybe a week, maybe another day or two, but never three and a half weeks! That was just too goddamn long.

Harry didn't love him. He was just going to have to accept that and move on with his life. But first, of course, he was going to tell him this. Just because he felt like he needed to see the look on his face. Definitely not because he wanted Harry to just get out with it.

All week he had been caught up in his thoughts, thinking about all the possibilities, constantly worrying about whether Harry would say yes or no and his love faded. The amount of times he saw Harry dwindled. The words they said got smaller. Their lingering touches stopped lingering. Until eventually Draco had come to this conclusion: love didn't matter.

Nothing mattered. Draco was a small piece of dirt in a large field full of beautiful flowers. He had no friends anymore, no one who loved him, no family, no place to belong. At one point, after he and Harry had kissed that first time, he thought maybe he was a seed. Maybe he just hadn't had his chance to bloom yet. Everything seemed perfect. But it wasn't. It never was. Perfect didn't exist. Love was pointless. Love was pointless if no one ever returned what you gave.

Maybe it was the season. Maybe the cold darkness outside had sunken into himself, penetrating his very core, but it felt like more than that. The people around him had stopped bullying him, but now everyone just kind of ignored him instead. At first he was pleased, but then he began to feel the utter terror of being alone. When no one noticed you, when no one even gave you the time of day, said "bless you" when you sneezed, or even waved in the hallway, did you really exist?

These thoughts plagues him. All the people he had once considered friends were all caught up in their own lives or despised him. He had nowhere to go, no hope but for the small light inside his heart being kept by Harry Potter. But that light was gone now. And he needed to get rid of the lantern, so that it could never return.

He walked quickly and angrily over to Harry as the period they were in ended.

"Hello, Potter," he said with great malice, enjoying the way that Potter flinched.

"Uh, hi, Draco, it's been a while," He said meekly.

"Really? I hadn't noticed. Would you like to take a walk?"

"Uh, sure?" He sounded very concerned, but followed Draco as he went down to the lake.

When they got there, Draco stopped in front of the tree where Harry had pushed him in the water earlier that year.

"I've been thinking, and I thought that I'm done waiting. I'm done waiting for some sort of answer from you. So I've decided that whatever you decide doesn't matter, I'm not going to be with you."

"Wh—what? Look, Draco, I'm sorry for making you wait it's just that I'm so busy in the evenings with Dumbledore and Hermione is acting weird and with all that and homework I don't really have time for this kind of thing—I'm just, ugh, I can't do it."

"So, you're saying you don't even want to be together? Well, that certainly makes my life a lot easier—"

"NO! I'm not saying that at all. I want to be with you, Draco. I want to be your boyfriend and hold you and kiss you, and love you… I love you, Draco, I really do." Draco's body went rigid. He really hadn't expected that at all. But, still, he had to stick with this.

"Well that's too bad, Potter, because I don't love you. Not anymore." He hissed, all the pain and anger he could gather going into the words. Harry looked shocked, as he well should be. Draco turned and walked away. "Goodbye, Harry," he said as an angry tear rolled down his face.

He wanted to cry. That had been so much harder than he thought it would be, but if he was going to stop himself from disappearing, it needed to be done, he couldn't stand waiting anymore. He needed to find a new place to cry. His alcove wouldn't work, Harry would just find him, and he would almost definitely come looking for him. Instead he went up to his room and charmed his curtains to hide him.

ABBAABBAABBAABBAABBA

He quickly hurried after the pale boy, trying to catch up, but he was already far gone by the time Harry had gone after him. He broke down onto his knees in the middle of the hallway, putting his head in his hands he screamed.

Why did he have to be so slow? Why couldn't he just accept it? Why was he just so goddamn stupid? He'd had such a good thing right in his hands and he'd just blown it all away. So stupid. What an idiot. He couldn't have just goddamn fucking accepted it. Looked Draco right in the eyes that day and just blurted out any thought he'd had, about how beautiful he was, how funny, how smart and perfect and amazing and gods he was so stupid. No, he hadn't done that, he hadn't said a single thing, just let him go.

Honestly, it was probably better this way. Someone as stupid and awful as him didn't deserve such an amazing partner. No, otherwise he would just go out to war, get himself killed, and leave Draco alone anyway, he deserved better than that. He deserved someone who would always be there for him and not just make him wait for fucking ever. Someone who didn't have fucking Voldemort in his head and fuck. He was so messed up. He was such a messed up person. He didn't even deserve to be alive. Maybe he should just deliver himself on a silver platter to Voldemort. That was starting to sound like a good idea.

He lightly felt something tapping on his shoulder and turned around to see a younger student, god knows what grade, looking at him with a worried expression. Then he realized what he was doing. He was sitting in the middle of the hallway screaming and crying in front of Professor Snape's classroom. Students were gathered around the doorway and Snape was giving his usual cold stare.

"Pott—" the other student began to say, but Harry glared at them and ran off. He walked up to the Astronomy tower, hoping Ms. Sinistra wasn't teaching any classes right now. He could go and look for Draco, but what was really the point? He didn't want to see him right now. He just want to be alone so he could soak in his misery.

Over the next few days, Harry's friends became increasingly worried about him as he rarely talked to anyone, ate as little as possible to stay alive. He was tired constantly, as if he hadn't been tired enough already. Everyone was always trying to ask him what was wrong, but he would just ignore them in favor of staring at whatever was in front of him.

He didn't really pay attention to what was going on in class and when he, Hermione, and Draco had their study sessions. Anyone who saw those study sessions, probably would have called them brooding sessions as each of them was hiding behind their books and listlessly looking at anything but the words. Draco would flip through the pages aimlessly, Hermione would stare down at the same page for hours, and Harry would try to look anywhere at Draco (usually failing miserably).

Harry never noticed Hermione and Pansy hanging out more often and leaving together, going to strange places, doing things no one should know of. He barely even noticed that she didn't notice his own misery, too caught up in her own. One day he watched her, after Ron had mentioned to him she seemed off. She was off. Way off. The look in her eyes was almost always one of fear or desperation.

He didn't go anywhere, didn't think about Hogsmeade, didn't think about Quidditch, not even about Katie Bell. To put it short, he was depressed. It was as if he had lost his parents. Oh wait, that had already happened. He had just lost the greatest love of his life. You could say he was a bit bitter.

He didn't try to talk to Draco; that was pointless. Draco definitely didn't say a word to him. They ignored each other as best they could.

ABBAABBAABBAABBAABBA

Harry hadn't come to the day's study session, so it was just Draco and Hermione there to mope today. Draco occasionally wrote on his Defence essay, but mostly just stared at the seat where Harry usually sat. He couldn't say he was happy without Harry, nor could he say he didn't love him. He most definitely still did. But he wouldn't give into Harry's lost puppy stare or his moping about. He had lived without Harry's love for 16 years now and he was determined to prove he could go 80 more.

Hermione did not look good. She looked absolutely horrible in fact, maybe worse than Harry. Currently she was laid back in her chair staring at the ceiling and twirling her pencil. It was very un-Hermione-like.

"Hermione, are you okay?" He asked, his voiced tinged with concern.

"Have you had a look at yourself recently?" She said lazily, making Draco flinch. She hadn't moved at all to make the observation, meaning she had already noticed his current state. This was a good sign as it meant that behind this… uh… somber façade she was still her perky and loveable self.

"Well, you know, you and Pansy have been… gone, for increasing amounts of time and Blaise and Theo make me feel like a third wheel, then there's the thing with Harry…. Simply put, what's even the point in trying to put effort into things if no one's ever going to notice anything about you?" He stared down at his lap, fidgeting with the end of his sleeve.

"I noticed," Hermione said gruffly, making Draco jump a little with her tone.

"Well, that's—uh, you're Hermione… you notice everything…."

"Everything, huh? Well, I certainly notice more than you." He looked up at her and was suddenly a bit afraid. She had this look in her eyes, a look Draco had seen before, but didn't particularly like. It was one of frustration, on the brink of anger, so bottled up in a tumble of emotions that it was bound to come out much worse than one or any other would like. He was treading in dangerous territory, and he had to step around her cautiously so she wouldn't explode, but he was pretty sure he'd already hit a pressure plate.

"Uh, Hermione? I didn't—I didn't mean—" He tried, but there was no escaping her wrath at this point.

"You didn't mean to? Didn't mean to what? To break my best friend's heart? To break your best friend's heart? Your own damn heart? I swear to god the three of you are all so useless, you can't figure anything out by yourself. And whenever you mess up, you just come running over to me all 'Hermione, Hermione, help me! I can't handle any of my own problems so I'll just put them all on you!'

"And god, I used to love it, I used to thrive in it, hell, I even brought myself into other people's problems. Used to think 'oh, I can help everyone! I can do anything! Solve any problem!' What a fool I was, helping you all. Thinking that helping you would solve anything. No, when I solve one problem, there will always be another, much larger problem behind. You want my help? You want me to fix you? Well, go fix yourself, I'm sure you won't be able to, but who gives a damn anyway!" She slammed her book shut, got up and marched off in anger.

"WILL YOU SHUT UP!" She yelled at a distraught Madam Pince, who was trying to get her to quiet down. Draco just stared off in her direction in awe, he had never seen her so upset. He grit his teeth and looked back down at his lap. Something was definitely up with her and he was going to dig up his best Harry potter curiosity and find out what it was.

ABBAABBAABBAABBAABBA

Harry was very late to the study session. He hadn't meant to be, but he had got caught up in… himself, really. He just hoped Hermione wasn't too mad, but with the way she'd been acting lately, he wasn't sure she would even notice he hadn't been there. Speaking of Hermione, she was coming straight towards him, very quickly, and very… angrily? What the hell had happened to make her that mad? He thought he might have even seen tears falling down her face. Yep, there was no denying the wetness of her cheeks.

"Hermione! What's—" She cut him off with a glare and continued her angry march. That was strange. Well, the only way to figure this out was to find out from what appeared to be the source of her anger. It was time to enter the Lion's Den, or, well, the Snake's in this instance.

He hadn't talked to Draco in weeks, and after having seen Hermione like that, he couldn't be sure Draco was in a much better mood, but he had to give it a try. He walked in to the Library and sat at his usual spot across from Draco. It appeared as though Draco hadn't even noticed him at first as he just looked down at his lap, biting his lip in a way that Harry would not admit he thought was cute and fidgeting with the edge of his sleeve.

"Draco," he started. Said boy jumped and looked at him with what appeared to be fear in his eyes. He stopped biting his lip and brought his hands above the table as he tried to look at the shelf behind Harry. "Look, I know we haven't said a word to each other in weeks, and this might not be the best time, but could you please explain to me what is wrong with Hermione? She's my best friend, and I'm really worried about her."

Draco looked to the chair where Hermione always sat and mumbled something incoherent.

"What?" Harry asked. Draco looked back at him sharply, a sudden look of determination mingling with the fear still tinging his eyes.

"Harry, we need to talk."

AN: So that was a rollercoaster of emotions, among other things. Don't worry, their conversation is not what you're hoping it will be about. Probably. Well, it had to happen. You have to thank one special AO3 commenter for inspiring this chapter. Thank you for pointing out that I gave Draco many challenges to face but not Harry. Haha! Harry will face many challenges in the coming chapters. That being said, I originally thought this story would be over 20 chapters, but now I think it will be about 18, and chapter 16 will be told completely from Pansy and Hermione's point of view, so that's something to look forward (if you look forward to that kind of thing, but it's very useful and for me as the author, so I look forward to writing it). Thank you all again so very much and I hope for you continued support and comments!