Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark violation is intended.

Added note/disclaimer: I also use quotes from other places. If you find a quote that wasn't cited, please notify me.

"Life is full of strange experiences, and if you're looking for explanations, you can usually find them."

XIX

Fade

It felt like every day lasted years. I felt like I was just barely holding on to everything I knew. It was a chore to open my eyes and watch people. I couldn't do anything anymore. Before, I'd been too tired, but now it was obvious that I really couldn't move. I couldn't walk.

It's funny that it's gotten to this point. I never thought it would get here. I was thirteen when I started my food rituals. Thirteen years old and I needed a method of control. Besides, my father said I needed to get good marks. I felt like I wasn't worth anything. I needed some control and so one day, I refused to eat meat. I guess I became a vegetarian. I remember that I wouldn't eat meat. I wasn't unhealthy – I was very healthy, I suppose since I exercised daily with Quidditch. I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner and everything in between those meals. Then I slowly started cutting back on certain things.

When I was fourteen I wouldn't eat a few things, but I still ate. I don't when exactly, but at some point between the ages of fourteen and fifteen, I started limiting myself. I refused to eat between meals. I'd eat three meals a day and that was it. Six months into that I decided I needed more time to study, so I'd skip dinner. Of course, hardly anyone noticed that since I showed up to dinner because Snape made me, but I didn't eat.

At sixteen it was one meal a day. That meal consisted of a salad. I wouldn't eat anything else. But things were happening in my life when I was sixteen, and the stress made me lose my appetite. I skipped more meals than I ate. And toward the disastrous end of my sixth year, I was eating an apple and that was my meal. I'd drink pumpkin juice and other drinks, though.

Then Dumbledore was killed in front of my eyes. I watched him die and I ran the moment I could get away.

Seeing as I ran into the Muggle world and I had no money and my knowledge was impaired in the Muggle world as it was limited to what the old Muggle Studies professor taught us… I couldn't get a job, I couldn't get money and therefore I could not eat.

I guess I really stopped eating when I was seventeen – but it began simply. I became a vegetarian when I was thirteen years old and it careened out of control as I grew older. Up until now that I am eighteen years old.

Nearly five years since I began… it ends here.

"Draco?" It was Harry who whispered my name.

It was a struggle to open my eyes but I managed it. I was too tired to do anything else other than smile at him and curl my fingers into his hand when he picked my hand up.

He was warm and I was so very cold. I was always cold.

Before I'd been put in the infirmary here at the school, my illness hadn't had a name. Now it did. I knew what it was. It was an eating disorder. I was anorexic.

But eating disorders, Hermione Granger told me, sitting at my bedside, tend to be a combination of many eating disorders. Mine just happened to be anorexia and bulimia. I was almost exclusively anorexic, but I did have the tendency of sometimes acting bulimic. When I ate – that's when I was bulimic.

But now Harry was here. I needed to be strong for him. I needed to stay awake and keep trying no matter how hard it was.

"Draco," Harry said softly. He touched my check gently, almost like he was afraid that if he touched me any harder than that feather-light touch on my face, he'd break me. We'd never gone further than heavy kissing and some groping and I guess I was regretting it then.

There were so many things I wanted to tell him, but could not. I wondered if I'd ever get the chance to tell him what he meant to me. I wondered if I could tell him everything I thought of him now.

We hadn't been together long enough and I wished I had more time to spend it with him.

I was dying. I knew I was because I could feel it. My heart wasn't anywhere near where a healthy person's heart was. I could no longer get out of bed if I tried. Even if I tried getting out of bed, I'd collapse before I got far. My body was too weak to support me any longer. It was all I could do to keep breathing.

And I wanted to live… but not like this. I wanted to be healthy again, but the chances of my health ever being normal again were not high.

"We've got a new Healer for you," Harry told me softly. "She says that it might take a really long time and it's gonna be really hard for you, but if you hang on… we might be able to help you."

I smiled at him and murmured softly, "Have I told you that I love you, Harry Potter?"

He shook his head, the expression on his face looked like he'd just been punched hard and unexpectedly.

"Well," I told him softly, "I do love you, you know."

He looked like he was going to cry. "Draco," he began shakily, but I was too tired to stay awake. I needed to go to sleep.

"I'm tired, Harry," I told him. I looked at him again. I wanted to memorize his face in case this was the last time I saw him. "Will you stay with me?"

He nodded as he sat down in the chair next to my bed, holding my hand in his. I smiled at him and closed my eyes.

xxx

It was very strange, but I did wake up, briefly when there was such a huge commotion over something.

"She what?" I heard Madam Pomfrey asking sharply.

"What's going on?" Harry demanded and I could hear someone crying. Someone was yelling something.

Even in the state I was, so tired I could barely open my eyes now, I could hear the words and I understood something.

Someone had committed suicide and I wondered how stupid that was. Then I realized how hypocritical that was. I mean, I was dying at my own hands. I'd caused this. I'd let myself get this sick by refusing to eat. Their suicide was little faster than mine. Mine was a slow, painful, but suicidal death. No one would say it was suicide when I died – they'd all say I was sick. I'd died of my disease, they'd all say. But I knew better. I was killing myself very slowly.

And I wondered, briefly if this was a sign…

I was meant to go.

– Claire McKenzie

A/N: Well, I didn't quite plan for this to turn out the way it did. Hope you enjoy it anyway. I know I said that you had Pansy next, instead of Draco, but I decided to re-add this chapter. It was rejected from the final version before, but… I was thinking you might want to see what is feeling at the moment. So, think of it as an extra chapter! I'm also posting Pansy's chapter as promised with this. So review here, or next chapter, which ever, and if you want.

Citation/Disclaimer(s)/Reference:

1. The chapter quote! It comes from a book called What happened to Lani Garver. Claire is the character in the book who narrates the story – I have no idea who wrote the book. It's a very curious little book. Very odd, very strange and the ending… ah, well, that's a mystery!

Review Response:

See next chapter. I'm posting this up along with Pansy's chapter.