Highly triggering ED talk in this chapter. It's not a play-by-play how-to, but it's necessary. In order to face recovery and your disorder, you have to shed discomfort and face your triggers. Draco needed to hear all of this to understand, and so do all of you. There's a serious problem with people who do not understand EDs believing horrific misconceptions about it, and with this story, I fully plan to help shed light on how wrong a lot of those misconceptions are.

This story—as well as all of my work—is not supposed to do the healing for you—it's supposed to help you start your journey towards it.


Apricity – Chapter Twenty-Nine

Hermione was in the loo again.

Draco had returned from his last class of the day on Tuesday, hoping to change into casual clothing. He had planned on asking her to dinner at the Three Broomsticks, but when he saw the door shut and familiar golden light spilling out from beneath it, his heart sank.

It was going to be a while.

He went into his room and lit up, finding that he was too agitated to deal with this sober. He changed into a green shirt and denims, figuring that even if he was irritated, he still needed to be good to her. After he was dressed, he padded into the kitchen to put on some tea.

This wasn't surprising. Their conversation on Monday had made it very clear that she had no intention of getting better. He just didn't know how to feel about it or how to fix it.

"What are you making?" Her voice sounded hoarse.

He didn't look at her as he waved his wand and let the kettle pour itself into a mug for her. After setting the wand on the counter, he sifted through the tea bags and pulled out a chamomile one.

"Tea."

"What for?" She crept closer.

"For your throat."

"Oh."

She watched him stirring sugar into the hot drink. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw she had changed at some point, too. It was clear she'd skived off her last class, which was highly unlike her. She wore one of his black hooded jumpers and nothing else, her bare legs visible. The hood was up.

"Why?" she asked, as though she couldn't take the silence.

"Did you throw up?" he asked, finally glancing down at her. Her eyes were glassy and bloodshot. Her normally brown skin looked pale and splotchy. Her curls were as big as ever, though.

"Are you going to be angry? It's not like I broke any of the rules . . ."

"Did you throw up, Hermione?"

". . . Yeah."

His heart once again settled into his stomach. He didn't think he'd ever get used to hearing it. It made him so fucking sad, even when it made him angry.

"How many times?"

She looked a bit surprised. "What makes you think I'd do it more than once at a time?"

He looked at her again, this time really looking. Aside from her appearance, he could tell that she wasn't well. Her hands shook. Her eyes didn't seem all the way focused. She shifted her weight from one knee to the other, like her joints hurt too bad to be used at the same time. He wondered if her chest felt cold. One of the books had said that happened sometimes with electrolyte imbalance.

"How many?" he repeated.

"Four."

He walked over to the refrigerator, opened it, and pulled a banana out. He'd always thought it was strange that she kept the fruit in there, but he wasn't going to care about that right now. Walking back to the counter, he set it down beside her.

"Eat this. If you're still feeling shaky, eat another one." He held her gaze. "You can eat fruit. It's okay."

He watched her as she peeled and consumed the banana. When she was done, she narrowed her eyes, but it didn't seem malicious.

"How do you know so much about this?" she asked. "How do you know what to do?"

He gritted his teeth, not understanding why he didn't want her to know. But he was gonna tell her anyway.

"I did my reading," he said.

They gazed into each other's eyes for a moment. Draco didn't want to row with her. He really didn't, but he knew they needed to talk about what happened sooner or later. He just didn't know how to bring it up with her without her thinking she was a horrible person.

He was afraid of becoming who he used to be.

After another sip of her tea, she averted her eyes.

"I'm really sorry, but I had some of your . . . Um, your . . . Weed."

Draco raised one eyebrow. "You smoked my weed?"

She looked sheepish and nodded.

"I thought you didn't want to. How'd you know how to roll it?"

"I figured it out," she said, biting her lower lip. "I am me, you know."

His lips twitched up at that. With a sigh, he lifted the cup, turned to face her, and leaned his hip against the counter. He handed her the cup and their fingers brushed. Draco felt a jolt.

"You are you," he murmured. "That's for sure."

"Thank you," she said, and then she took a sip.

"So, why'd you smoke it?"

"I was anxious and the last time we did it, it really calmed me down. And it wasn't as hard as I thought. It burned the first time, but then it got easier."

"Why were you anxious?"

She held the cup between both hands, her toes turned in towards each other a bit as she stared at the floor in her guilt. The sleeves were too long for her.

"Because I knew you'd be angry with me."

Draco sighed again. It was when she said things like that, that he couldn't ignore the fact that she clearly didn't want to be sick. The real her was somewhere inside of her—somewhere that cared about his feelings.

He wondered if she felt trapped.

"I'm not angry with you," he said softly. "I'm just disappointed."

"Okay," she said sadly. "How can I fix it?"

Get better.

"I don't think it's something you can fix," he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

The air itself felt sad. Changed. Wrong.

Without another word to him, she drank the last of her tea and left the kitchenette. She went into her dorm room, shutting the door behind her. It was the first time he'd seen her go into it since the week after Christmas, as she'd been in his room anytime they were at the dorm.

He knew she had snacks in there.

Draco went into his bedroom and laid on his bed. He lifted one knee and intertwined his fingers behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

Ten minutes after she'd gone into her dorm, she came out and went into the loo.

He almost cried.

When she was done, Hermione came into his dorm room without knocking. She laid down next to him in the bed and pulled her knees up to her body, pillowing her head on his chest as she curled up.

He wanted to be angry. He really did.

But his heart ached.

Draco turned to face her, slipping one arm beneath her to gather her close. He could feel her trembling, and he knew it wasn't from fear. He knew exactly what it was from, and he was terrified. He used the fingers of his other hand to tuck her hair behind her ear.

She lifted her gaze to him. There were no tears, but he saw his own despair mirrored back in her eyes.

There was a new ache in his heart now. One that frightened him in its depth and viscousness. An ache that he knew it was too soon for yet feared returning to a time where he didn't feel it. An ache that should have felt warm and not as cold as snow beneath sunlight.

All this effort, taking care of her, watching over her, protecting her. All this effort, to make sure he could see her chest rise and fall at night when he woke in the dark and feared it may be still. All this effort, just to keep her alive. He looked at her and realized what he'd been denying all along.

He knew what he was fighting for.

"Please," he whispered, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against hers. His thumb caressed her cheek as though she were made of porcelain. "Please stop hurting yourself."

The pad of his thumb passed through a tear track that had appeared.

"I'm trying," she said.

He wanted to tell her to try harder. He wanted to tell her like he wished he could have told his mother.

"You know you don't have to do everything alone anymore, don't you?" His voice quivered. Why did it feel like he was dangling off of a precipice?

"Let me deal with this. I can fight my own battles. I'm not weak."

He opened his eyes, his hand trailing to curve around the side of her neck and jaw. "But what if I want to protect you?"

"I don't need protection." A whispered breath.

"Yes," he said, leaning closer. "You do."

Draco kissed her because he wanted to. Needed to as much as he needed to breathe the air that sustained them. He knew he would never tire of it—could never tire of her. And that was why he was so terrified.

Because even if he could barely stand to watch her wither, he would water her roots until she could no longer absorb him.

He rolled on top of her.

"I don't want you to fight your own battles," he murmured against her skin as he brushed his mouth along her jawline and down to her pulse. He loved the feeling of it pounding against his tongue. He heard her expel a short, harsh breath. "I want to fight them for you. I'm going to fight them for you."

Her body was limp beneath him, just the mere touch of his lips enough to render her a crumbling mess. As he continued to trace designs with the tip of his tongue upon her neck, her breaths burst out of her chest as though he were uprooting them from the soil of her lungs. He felt her hands coming to rest first on his shoulders, then moving to the sides of his head. Her fingernails tickled through his hair.

"Draco," she said, and her voice was barely stronger than a breeze. "I don't want you to fight for me."

His kisses moved down to her shoulder, where he tugged aside the collar of the hooded jumper. The hood was still up, but because she was lying on her back, it didn't come off. He planted kisses like seeds along the sharp line of her collarbone, and he watered them with his tongue so they would grow into desire.

"Then what do you want me to do?" he breathed, suckling her flesh and slipping his hand beneath the jumper. Her legs, which bracketed his hips, widened.

"Whatever you want," she moaned when his fingers sought beneath her knickers.

"And if I wanted to taste you?"

She bit her lip to stifle a cry as his fingers slipped inside of her body and twisted. Curled like they were calling her closer. Pressed against the spot behind her pelvis and pulled her through the cosmos. He felt her hips grinding up from below, her body desperate as he trapped her between his own and the mattress.

Her eyes rolled and her mouth fell open.

"Y-Yes," she managed to choke out.

Draco felt an intense emotion washing over him as she sighed. There was something poignant in the way she always told him yes, in the way she trusted him so completely now that one suggestion was all she needed. To go from the girl who tried to stay strong in Paris to the girl who let herself be raw was almost too much to bear. It was the bond yet it wasn't. It was fucking beautiful. She was fucking beautiful.

Why had she wanted him to degrade her when it was so much nicer filling her with praise?

He slipped down her body, taking her knickers with him. The heady scent of her arousal sent blood rushing down to his loins as his hands stroked up the insides of her thighs. He spread her, pulled her open for him, prepared to show her how much he cherished what he was fighting for. This was the first time they'd done this, but after yesterday, what did it matter?

She was almost his.

She might already be.

By the time he was searching the depths of her core, she was already a trembling, convulsing heap on the bed. Her fingers curled into the coverlet beneath her and she rolled her hips with slow back and forth movements, riding his tongue in her journey up to the skies. Her whines were strangled, choked—like vines had wrapped around her throat to try to squeeze them into silence.

"Tell me what you feel," he whispered after pulling back for a moment. He kissed around the area that brought her the most pleasure, causing her to shiver. "When I do this."

The tip of his tongue caressed her clit.

Her back arched up off of his bed. She gasped as though she'd just come up from the depths of the sea. Her hips jerked so violently that his hands were forced to press her down and hold her in place. She squirmed when he repeated the movement, tasting her.

"Good!" she cried. "Please—it's good. Please—let me—let me m-move."

He ignored her, continuing his torturous assault. Her hand slapped against the bed.

"Draco." Another whine. "Please let me."

"What will you do for me?" He laved with the flat of his tongue and she inhaled so loud through her mouth that it sounded like her breath had been stolen away.

"I'll do a-anything. Please."

He kissed her in the same spot and she moaned. "Will you come on my tongue?

"Yeah," she said. "I will, I will! Just—please."

"Say it." His lips closed over it, suckling and drawing a whimpering moan out of her. "Be sweet and say it. You know how to do that, don't you?"

She was silent for as long as she could bear before she let out a sob.

"I'll c-come on your t-tongue for you, Draco. I will—I s-swear. Just—oh—please, please. Just—"

He rewarded her. Without warning, he latched his mouth to the apex of her core and rubbed her clit with his tongue until she slapped a hand over her mouth and screamed into her palm. The thigh he held pinned flexed beneath his hand; her other thigh rose, pressing hard against the side of his head. She convulsed, her chest arching higher. He felt her hips twitching.

She was gonna come.

Draco let go of her thigh and reached beneath his mouth. He found her entrance and sunk two fingers inside of her.

And then he fucked her with them. Hard and fast. Without giving her a chance to function, let alone moan. All she could do was gasp and sob.

Her hands flew to cover her face, muffling her telltale wails—the wails she made when he hit the spot inside of her that she liked best. After multiple times touching her this past week, Draco knew just how to make her sing to the stars.

And sing to the stars she did.

She came on his tongue seconds later, her entire body going rigid for a suspended moment before the trembling set in. He tasted her even through it, groaning at the feeling of her muscles contracting around his fingers, clamping down on him tight and hot.

He crawled back up her body and kissed her. Her hands were curled into tight fists by her head, like she couldn't manage to keep them from closing. Draco wrapped his hands around her wrists to keep them there, his kiss allowing her to taste herself in a way that made her moan.

He pulled back, let go of her, and pressed his forehead against hers as she caught her breath.

"Hermione, I don't care if you want me to fight for you or not," he said. "I'm going to."

She placed a trembling hand against his cheek and when he opened his eyes this time, he caught a glimpse of the reason why things were so distant between them today.

Regret. Fear. Worry.

She thought yesterday was a mistake, too.

"Do you want me to—"

He cut her off with a kiss. "No. I just want to lay with you."

She curled up against his side again, and her head fit neatly against the front of his shoulder. He felt her eyelashes brushing his neck with every blink.

The silence felt too loud.

"Why four times?"

She cleared her throat. "What?"

"Why the need to purge four times?" He frowned up at the ceiling. "Why not just eat it all and do it once?"

She was quiet for a second before saying, "Well, because it hurts. I have to split my sessions into categories. If I'm going to eat crisps, cookies, and—I dunno, say . . . Chicken? Then I have to eat each thing in full, and then go to the loo. If I do it all at once, then it takes me too long."

"And do you plan what you're gonna binge on?" He'd done his reading—he couldn't mince words anymore.

"Sort-of. If I eat during meals in the Great Hall, I'll rush back here or to the public loo. Sometimes, I crave certain things for hours while I'm in class, but usually I know what I'm gonna like, want for the next week or so. I go to Hogsmeade or ask Harry to send me Muggle snacks I like. Then, I put them in a chest in my room and pull them out when I crave. There's times where I eat the whole thing or an entire package, but most times I just eat until I'm bored of the taste, get rid of it, and then move on to the next thing."

So Draco wasn't the only one with a wooden chest full of painful secrets.

"It's actually fairly easy for me when I do it in small increments this way. Takes me maybe five minutes to get it all up." She held up her right hand where he could see it. He took it and inspected it. There were darker umber spots on the knuckles of her first three fingers. "It's easier and faster if I do it this way. I've heard of other girls using potions or Puking Pastilles to get it up, but I don't like the feeling of nausea."

Other girls? He supposed that made sense. Draco had never heard of an eating disorder before reading the books Rose gave him. Maybe the other girls didn't realize they had a serious underlying issue.

Maybe they didn't realize how ill Hermione really was.

"Don't you need to be nauseous for it to work?" He closed his fingers around her hand and held it to his chest. This was all difficult for him to hear, but in a strange way, better understanding calmed him.

"No. It's like breathing or using the toilet for me. Just second nature by now. I mean, it's been years of me doing this, Draco. I don't even cry anymore. Unless something stops me before I can get rid of it. I eat whatever I'm craving and then I go use the loo. Then I move onto the next thing. If you're here, I just take it all into the loo with me and eat on the floor."

Gods, she sounded so nonchalant.

"So . . . Then why are you in the loo for so long every time you do it?"

"It's embarrassing."

"This entire thing is embarrassing. Tell me anyway."

"Because I'm looking at my body in the mirror. Looking for changes."

He felt the anxiety clawing at him. If it hurt, then why did she do it? If it hurt, then wasn't that a bad sign?

If it hurt, then was he going to lose her?

"Why does it hurt?" he asked, his hand rubbing her upper arm in an absentminded manner.

"I don't know why," she replied. "It just does. It's like a . . . Like a sharp pain that I get in my diaphragm whenever I eat too much and purge it. It usually hurts so bad that I have to stop and wait for it to pass."

He stiffened, panic blooming in his chest. "And then you purge anyway?"

"Well, yeah," she said. "It's not like I can just let it stay in me."

Of course you can! He wanted to scream. It's just fucking food! It's supposed to stay in there!

But he knew better. It wouldn't help—it would only push her further into the disorder. If he told her that, she'd feel unintelligent, and that would only breed more negativity and self-hatred. Draco wasn't going to be the type of person to make someone sicker just because it was inconvenient for him to have to cope.

She was the one who was ill—not him.

"Are you planning on doing it again today?"

"Not if we're going to the Great Hall after this." There was a hint of attitude to her tone. "Basically, I wake up every day planning not to eat anything. Sometimes, I can make it until bed. Sometimes, I can only make it to lunch. Otherwise, there's purging. At least then I can get the taste in my mouth without absorbing any of the calories."

He closed his eyes. "How is this not about weight?"

"The weight loss is just a symptom," she said. "All of these things I've told you . . . They exist like separate entities in my head. I don't really connect them to the weight loss. It all just . . . Is."

He agreed with that. He'd read it in the books—the behaviors of purging or starving were a symptom of the disorder, not the disorder itself. She was trying to control her environment, and she was trying to make something make sense.

Why did it feel like the mountain was even more insurmountable now?

"Will you try?" he asked. "Will you try to at least not purge again tonight? We can go to dinner in Hogsmeade, and then come back here and read together."

"I don't want to." She waved a hand. "I mean, I don't want to eat anything. I don't mind going to dinner and reading."

Dismay mingled with sadness, but he didn't show her. "Can I at least ask why?"

"Because I feel dirty after Ron kissed me. And an empty stomach makes me feel clean. Until I don't feel like that anymore, I'm not eating."

Draco closed his eyes as the hatred and fury reverberated through his body. After everything Hermione had been through, she hadn't needed the Weaselbee's filth, too.

He vowed to watch him burn.

"How can I take you to dinner if I know you're just going to get sick?" he asked.

"Pretend you don't know." She sat up on her elbow, her gaze flickering up and down his face. "It's a lot less stressful if you stop caring."

He gazed up at her, up at the face in which she couldn't seem to see the beauty that he could, and he shook his head.

"I can't."

She frowned and laid back down.

They laid there in the quiet for a while, each with their own thoughts.

Draco certainly knew a lot more now. He knew a lot about how her mind worked and how the disorder was affecting her. He didn't know how he was going to be able to fix her, but he knew he was going to try his hardest. Whatever he was doing wasn't working.

He needed to do more.

"If we fucked up yesterday and find out from Trelawney that we did," he said, "then I promise you it's gonna be all right. We have until eternity to figure things out. And if we figure them out and you still don't wanna be with me, then I'll go. I'll go, but I'll do everything I can to take care of you. There's no going back for me."

Her hand plucked at the fabric of his shirt. "Even if I keep disappointing you?"

"Do you plan to keep disappointing me?"

"That's the one thing I don't plan."

"Then don't worry about it. Don't worry about anything ever again. I'm here." And there's nothing for me to go back to.

She didn't answer him, but she allowed him to gather her up in his arms and hold her.

They skipped dinner.