Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
How goddamn sad was it, that Morag had read The Standard Book of Spells, Year 7 cover-to-cover now, a few times over? And the Transfiguration textbook, and Advanced Potion-Making. No other year had she actually sat down and read any of the textbooks cover-to-cover. It had always been a matter of flipping through them for the relevant information, studying the sections that pertained to the particular spells or potions that they were covering in class at the time. She bought the books as expected, used them as reference, but never sat down and read them like a novel.
Until now.
Hiding in the Room of Requirement, safe from the Carrows, with nothing to do. Oh, of course the D.A. still practiced, and there were often lengthy discussions regarding the potential strategies that they might use if it did come down to a real fight. And sure, she was surrounded by people - people that she had come to think of as friends, over the year - but talking to people wasn't the same as being busy.
And Morag craved being busy. She had had a full schedule as a seventh-year - especially with Muggle Studies thrown into the mix, a class which she had not previously had in her roster. Breakfast, a full day of classes, homework and studying, dinner, D.A. practice, often more schoolwork, and then falling into an exhausted sleep, sometimes with her robes still on, before waking up barely six hours later to do it all over again. But her marks were high, and if she was perfectly honest, she thrived in that type of environment.
It stopped her from having to think too much. She didn't like having to think too much. When she did, she was thrown back - thrown back into that dungeon back in November, experiencing the Cruciatus Curse for the first time, over and over until she thought she was going to die from the sheer agony of it. She was thrown back into winter break, when her parents found out about her detention and blamed her for causing trouble and making waves that could affect them, instead of being shocked and angry about what the Carrows had done to her. She was thrown back into the moments when she realized Lisa and Stephen weren't returning to Hogwarts, that Muggle-borns were being rounded up. The rage, the terror, the pain - she could tame this all when she was busy.
Not here. There were no more assignments, no more deadlines, no more classes - it was just here, the Room of Requirement, these same four walls day in and day out. No sunlight. No breeze - oh, and it was April now, it was probably finally starting to warm up outside, even though it was probably rainy as all hell. No essays to write, no assigned questions to answer, no spells to prove proficiency in.
She missed it. She craved that routine as though she had been addicted to it - and in a way, she supposed, she had been. It had been her escape, her coping mechanism through all the horrors, just like it was a drug. And in its absence, she craved anything that could fill the same void - which had led to her reading those textbooks over and over again, for some semblance of order.
She sat there, and she thought of a night back in September - oh, that had had to be the first weekend after they had returned to school. They had had a miserable week, with the absence of all Muggle-borns, the harsh classes of the Carrows, the realization that their world had turned completely on its head. Kevin had brought the remaining seventh-year Ravenclaws (eight now, she had thought sadly, when it had always been ten) up to the dormitory, and revealed that he had bought a couple bottles of Firewhiskey and packed them in his luggage. They broke into the bottles, passing them around and eventually finishing them both. She remembered the feeling - lightheaded, almost euphoric, like the chaos of the world had been pushed to the back of her mind, at least for a moment.
And she remembered raising the bottle one of the times it had been passed to her, and saying, "Here's to the end of the world, everybody," before she drank. The warmth of the alcohol as it slid down her throat. And oh, that feeling, like nothing mattered for a little while. Relaxing into oblivion. She craved it now, craved the thought of pushing all of the awful shit away, if only for a few minutes, an hour.
Morag wasn't the only one - petitioning Aberforth for Firewhiskey had already occurred many times over, but he remained staunch on the fact that there were plenty of underage witches and wizards hiding in the Room, and he had a business to run.
So she was here, with her thoughts, and that was it. No more distractions, no more escapes - it was just this endless time to think about all the awful things that had happened, to her and to her friends and out in the world. Restlessness clawed at her like a caged animal. There was this drive, this desire - to run, to scream, to get out her wand and just make something freaking explode, just to ease some of the pressure inside her mind.
"I hate this," she said to Padma one day, shortly after Padma had joined them.
"It's the safest thing," Padma said kindly, but with a hint of sternness. "Carrow was threatening you with over a week's detention. Nobody's had the curse that many days in a row, Mor. It's not worth it."
"I can still hate it," she said to Padma.
She rested her chin on her hands. Maybe I could have taken it, she thought stubbornly. It was a stupid, cocky thought, from the safety of the Room. She had had detention four days in a row before, her stupid stunt with Michael back in November, and that time - a brief session each afternoon - had been awful. She had had a moment of weakness on the third day, when she and Michael had been on their way to report to the dungeons; she had stopped and freaked out in the middle of a staircase, telling him that she was going to run to Madam Hooch's shed and steal a broom and just get the hell out. And she had seen the sorrow in her best friend's eyes as he realized that he had to convince her, drag her, down into indescribable agony, because it was safer than trying to escape.
And Michael, just last month, ending up back down in the dungeons after helping Morag free a first-year. The Carrows had kept him down there for two full days, straight through. He didn't talk about it, not really, but she could still see the darkness and pain in his eyes.
Could she have really lasted over a week? Of knowing what was coming every afternoon, day in and day out? It had been too much, she knew that logically - and so she had gone with her instinctual reaction, to flee to the safety of the Room right away and barricade herself with the others. Over a week of going down to the dungeons would have been a lot to ask of her body, her mind.
(Confinement, she supposed, was only a lot to ask of her mind. Her body was perfectly content with the whole situation. Which, she supposed, was an improvement - in the choice between a combination of mental and physical hell, and a solely mental hell, she supposed the solely-mental hell was preferable. But that was the way she was thinking of it, really - that this wasn't an escape or a time to relax, but the lesser choice between two evils.)
Author's Note: Welp, there it is. This kind of idea regarding the Room, that going there was not necessarily an idyllic choice for all the D.A., has occurred to me before, but current circumstances kind of drove this idea forward. Like Morag, I fully realize that staying inside is the smartest and safest option, but that doesn't mean I'm enjoying it.
I tend to write a lot of DH-era minor characters, so if you enjoyed those aspects, there's plenty more to choose from! Favs and reviews are always greatly appreciated, thanks for reading, and stay safe~