TRIGGER WARNING: Toxicity that I would consider abuse. Force-feeding. ED content.
It crosses a line. What Draco does is NOT okay. To many women, it would be unforgivable. The point is to show you what is NOT okay in ED recovery.
The sad thing is MANY, MANY boyfriends, husbands, and fathers do this to their eating disordered family members when they are put in charge of their recovery. It is WRONG, and that is what I'm trying to showcase.
You WILL hate Draco for a while, I'm sorry.
Apricity – Chapter Thirty-Six
"I haven't cleaned yet. No, I—I haven't cleaned yet."
Hermione scrambled to her feet, spilling the crisps everywhere as she started trying to gather the bags up by the handle. She picked one up and it broke on the bottom, spilling its contents out all over the carpet. The already rancid smell in the room intensified, growing acrid. They both stared at it, then at each other as though it were neither of their faults.
Draco stood there, indecision rooting him to the spot. Should he grab his wand and vanish it all? Should he wait and watch while she did it herself with her own wand? Should he clean it himself with his bare hands just to force her to face it?
The anger running through his veins told him to make her do it.
Somehow, they both spotted her wand on the dresser at the same time. She whirled around and made a mad dash for it, but Draco was faster.
He was better at wandless spells, too.
"Immobulus," he hissed, vibrating with rage as he accioed her wand and stuck it in his back pocket. "When I nix this spell, Granger, do not even try to get your wand back. Do you hear me?"
Frozen where she stood, he could see the look of absolute terror on her face. He knew that this was why she had requested extra time to clean her room. He should have known the reason was more sinister than a simple "mess."
Puzzle pieces were starting to shift in his mind, rearranging themselves to fit together.
Draco nixed the spell and turned, feeling his stomach lurch with nausea. He didn't know whether to walk back out into the hall or stay right where he was. The fact that he hadn't stepped in anything or knocked anything over was pure good fortune.
He didn't have any experience with this. His mother was messy, but not intentionally. Any time he cleaned up after her, it was the remnants that she had missed. He had found it odd that Narcissa always cleaned by hand and now, he wondered if there was some connection to the way Hermione had let the state of her room devolve into . . . This. The contrast of her neatly-made bed, clean dresser, and pristine vanity decorated with make-up and perfume bottles, to the filth that littered and soaked into her floor?
It was taking everything he had in him not to gag.
"Can I—I need to explain." She wrung her hands, standing there with a pile of empty chocolate bar wrappers on the floor next to her left foot and the bowl into where she'd rid herself of them next to her right.
"Granger, I'm going to be fucking sick," he growled. The air was thick—so thick that he felt like he could taste it. "There's nothing you can possibly say that could explain this."
"You don't understand," she whispered, her eyes wild in her head. "This is why I asked for a few days. I knew I had to clean it, and I knew it was going to take time, and I know I could have vanished it, but . . . But . . . I have to leave it so I—so I don't think it's okay."
Draco lowered his chin, giving her an incredulous look. "So . . . You know it's not okay, so you leave it?"
"Yes," she said, the hint of a whine lining her tone with desperation. "I have to face it. If I don't face it, then I'll think it's okay and I'll never . . ." She took a couple of deep breaths. Her hand trembled as she held it to her mouth. The other arm moved to cover her bare stomach.
Her bare stomach.
Draco's eyes widened as he took in the sight of her body. His heart stopped in his chest. Disturbing was the only word he could come up with.
As he stared at her, watching the tears filling her downcast eyes, his mind betrayed him. It presented him with horrifying scenarios, one right after the other, like an onslaught of attack spells. Hermione, keeling over in class, dead. Hermione, passing out in the Great Hall and never waking up. Hermione, falling asleep beside him in bed and him being unable to wake her the next morning no matter how hard he shook her.
He was disturbed and he just—he needed—
Spinning to face the dresser and the wall, he slammed his hands down on top of it. His chest heaved as he struggled to keep his supper down. This was almost too much. This was right at the limit for him.
She was going to die if he didn't fix this. Now. Like, now now.
"You'll never what?" he asked, suppressing a shudder as the smell started to overwhelm him.
"Get better."
He stopped, letting the words sink in. "Okay. What does that mean?"
"I just—" She sounded like she was on the verge of hyperventilation. "Sometimes, I—sometimes, I want to do it in the middle of the night and I'm too tired to walk. So, I get out of bed, sit on the floor, and do it in here. And then I—I just—leave it. I leave it so I have to l-look at it, and smell it, and face it—and—and—and—"
"This is unacceptable," he said, turned to face her and slicing a hand through the air. "This is unac-fucking-ceptable, Granger. Why didn't you just vanish it? Isn't the fact that you—" He gestured to her entire body. "—isn't that enough to make you face it?!"
The words left his mouth and he didn't see anything wrong with them. He really didn't. His vision was clear.
He'd just forgotten that hers wasn't.
Hermione's face fell further into the Earth than it already had. Both of her arms wrapped around her stomach, as if it could hide her indecency and she hung her head. The last time Draco had seen her look so defeated and broken was in Paris.
Gods, his heart was breaking.
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, embracing herself tight. "Why do you have to be so cruel to me? Why can't you have at least a little compassion?"
Draco thought he might go completely fucking mental.
"Are you stupid?!" he shouted, holding his hands to his temples and then spreading his arms wide. "Do you not see what I'm fucking standing in?! Your dorm room is covered in vomit, Hermione! It smells like Thestral shite in here and some of this seems like it's weeks old! Why do you not see a problem with this?!"
"I told you I needed a few days!" she cried, a tear slipping down her cheek that she quickly swiped away. "I didn't want anyone to see this, and that's why I asked for more time! You shouldn't have come into my room!"
"I'm the one that's taking care of you, so this room—this entire fucking dorm—is mine!"
"No one asked you to take care of me!" she shrieked, hands in fists at her sides. "I don't want you to!"
"Well that's too damn bad!"
Hermione let out a cry of frustration and stormed across the room, barely looking below her. It was clear some of these containers and bags had been there for so long that she had the route memorized. She ripped her closet door open and yanked something off of a hanger. As she shoved it on over her head and the hem fell to the middle of her thighs, he recognized it as his hooded jumper.
"Oh, lovely," he snarled with vehemence, throwing his hand up. "And you've stolen my clothing."
"You never seemed to have a problem with it before."
"Well, now I'm wondering what else you've stolen."
She glared at him, pushing the long sleeves of the jumper up to her elbows. "I don't want to row anymore. Can you leave, so I can clean?"
"Absolutely not. You're cleaning this right now, right in front of me." He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the dresser. "Get going."
Her jaw dropped, but then she snapped it shut and replaced her facial expression with one of haughtiness. She presented her right hand, palm-side up.
"Then I want my wand."
"No," he said. "You're doing it by hand."
"You want me to try to carry all of these . . . To where? It's not as if Hogwarts has dumpsters, Malfoy!"
Gritting his teeth, he pulled out his own wand and gave it a begrudging wave. A rubbish bin appeared near the open door. He crossed his arms again and jerked his chin toward it.
"You know how to throw things away, don't you?"
She glared at him. "There's no need to be unnecessarily rude on top of everything else. This is humiliating for me."
"Then maybe you shouldn't have done it."
"It's not that simple."
He bit his tongue. Hard. The urge to scream, "Why not?!" burned so bright and hot inside of him that it felt like the sun was expanding inside of his chest.
Hermione began to move about the room, picking up bags by the handles and carrying them away from her body to the bin. There was a sour expression on her face, which he had no sympathy for. Why would she be revolted by something she'd done? If she could let it get this bad, then she needed to be the one to clean it. After all, she'd said she wanted to face it . . .
Wait.
The puzzle pieces clicked into place and suddenly, Draco saw the whole picture. He lifted his gaze from the floor, locking eyes with her as she dropped another container in with the others.
"This is why you put the wrappers into the couch, isn't it? And why you left the dirty dishes out?"
Her brow furrowed and she averted her gaze. "I don't know how to explain it."
"Try to," he said, holding his hands palm side down with fingers splayed. "Because I need to understand this, all right? I need to understand it, or I'm going to go fucking mental."
She took a deep breath, like she was pulling all of the emotions to the surface where they could start to churn. Then, she let it out, pulling those emotions back down inside of her where they couldn't take her under.
"The reason why I put the wrappers into the couch was so that every time you or I sat down on the cushions, I would know they were there. The reason why I left the dirty dishes everywhere is because it made you so angry that you treated me poorly, and I deserved it. The reason why I left all of this in the room is because no matter where you or I were in the dorm, I would know it was here.
"It's humiliating. I knew it would absolutely mortify me if you ever caught me, and that's why I did it." She held her upper left arm with her right hand. "Knowing that I would be humiliated if you ever saw me leaving this all here reminds me that it's not normal. I leave it so that no matter how sick I get, I'll always have something to remind me to that I don't want to be."
Draco stared at her.
In a weird way, it made perfect sense. It was a reminder. A fail-safe. Something to keep her aware of the fact that what she was doing wasn't right. That it was dangerous and that at its core, she was ashamed of it. And while he wanted to think that it was in some way a good thing that she wanted to have that last thing to protect her from herself, he didn't want to feel anything positive. Not for this, and not anymore.
But it felt like another milestone. A milestone where there otherwise shouldn't have been.
This was the first time he'd ever heard her say she wanted to get better.
"Okay," he said, placing his hands on the front edge of the dresser by his hips, his elbows bent from the way he was leaning against it. "Finish up."
She nodded, her face uncharacteristically blank as she continued to clean up the remnants of her shame. It was hard for him to watch her picking it up, getting tired from the effort, and stopping to catch her breath. She looked and sounded like she was about to fall apart, but he wasn't going to let her. Whether it was because he cared or because he was angry, he wasn't sure.
When the floor was finally clean, he pulled her wand out of his pocket and held it out to her. His facial expression remained stern, his eyes narrowed in suspicion as she drew closer. Then, when she was right in front of him, he pulled the wand back.
"This?" he said, eyebrows rising up. "Never happening again. You hear me?"
"Yes."
"You can vanish the—it off of the floor."
He gave her the wand and watched as she cast the spell. After another charm to remove the pungent smell, the carpet was as pristine as the rest of the room. Then, she turned to face him, lifting her chin so she could look him in the eyes.
"Are you angry with me?" she asked.
"Very."
She hung her head and whispered, "I'm so ashamed."
He frowned. She needed to feel this, this shame. She needed to feel it so that she could really understand what was wrong with the way she'd let everything go in her room. But somewhere beneath the anger he felt, he could feel something else. Something that ran deeper.
"Granger," he said.
She looked up at him again.
"I'm proud of you," he said. "I'm proud that you recognize you don't want to be sick. I . . . I thought that—"
"That I enjoyed this?" Her voice was as bitter as the air in the room had felt not ten minutes ago. "No. I don't enjoy this. If I could go back to the girl I was before everything got so bad, then I would. I just don't know how."
Draco took a step closer, lifting a hand with hesitancy. Then, he brushed the backs of his forefingers across her cheekbone, sinking them into the depths of her twists. Her eyelids fluttered, like it was painful or filled her with an ache that nothing could satisfy.
"Stop trying to get someone back who doesn't exist anymore," he said. "You've gotta learn how to be okay with the person you are now, and the person you're gonna be."
"What's the point?" she whispered. "I don't want to mourn myself. I'm not dead. I don't want to feel that way."
"Maybe you have to. Maybe that's just the way it is, and you have to learn how to accept that. Maybe you have to mourn the person you were before Paris."
She didn't say anything, but it wasn't necessary. Draco knew what she was terrified of. He knew what the dirty dishes and the bags full of sick and the wrappers in the couch represented. He knew they were the only reminder she had that it wasn't normal to feel so empty. He knew that if she accepted herself now, that would mean giving up the only barrier she had protecting her from the memory of that alleyway. It would mean taking what she knew and ripping it into shreds that she could actually stomach. Small pieces she could eat one-by-one that wouldn't overwhelm her into wanting to get rid of them.
His mother had left a mess behind, with her dishes and her own mistakes in the loo. He'd thought it was because they had House Elves. He'd even thought she'd somehow figured out that he was the one cleaning it up. Now, he wondered if maybe his mother had trouble accepting her lot in life, too. The hardest part was knowing that he would never receive an answer to that question, no matter how badly he wanted it.
Draco had to decide if he wanted to help Hermione rip her pieces up, or if he wanted to stand there and watch her fight to remain empty.
Sometimes, I don't even want to watch.
Sometimes, I just want to walk away.
He turned away and left the room, his fingers sliding along her soft skin as though they couldn't bear to be apart until the last moment.
Thursday dawned on Draco's surly disposition.
He wasn't sure exactly how to pinpoint why he was angry with Hermione. He knew he had good reason to be revolted by what he'd seen and he'd managed to stay relatively calm during her explanations, but now that he'd had a chance to sleep on it, he wasn't sure he could remain that way.
It had been months. Months that she'd let that shite sit in there, rotting and sinking into the soul of that room. Though it was now clean, it would forever have the imprint of the ghost of Hermione's self-destruction. It had probably witnessed her breaking down again and again and again. Watched her open the lid to that large wooden chest, sit down with a snack of some sort, and binge in front of the mirror.
He wanted to be angry for a reason, but he couldn't think of one. Her leaving the food there was disgusting, but it was her room—he'd never asked for permission to enter. Her body was her own, and her binging and purging was not something he could be inherently angry at.
Draco had every right to be livid with her for whatever it was she'd manipulated him with or for, but did he have the right to be angry with her for feeling so lonely that she purged into containers in her room? Was he within his rights to be angry that she hadn't cleaned it up? It wasn't like he'd smelled it or had any idea it was there. At least, not until he barged into her room uninvited.
Is that how far they'd fallen in such a short time? Him setting rules, taking her doors away, invading her privacy? Yelling at her, giving her things to cry about, plating her meals for her? Watching her. Following her. Controlling her.
Like a parent.
He sat up shirtless in bed, hunched over with his head hung between his hands. His stomach roiled with a nausea that he couldn't quite place. A bit of disgust with himself mixed with his overwhelming desire to force her to live. To force her to live to see a life with him where she was happy and healthy, with the memory of Paris far in her past.
It was all about him, wasn't it?
Maybe he was just angry with himself.
After doing one more search for his elusive bag of weed and finding nothing, he threw on a hooded jumper colored dark grey, black denims with rips in the knees, and his boots. He absolutely had not one single fuck to give about the dress code and would not be wearing his robes today. He couldn't be arsed when school rules and the possibility of detention paled in comparison to the level of stress he was under.
Grabbing his satchel, he walked out into the common room to wait for Hermione, who he could hear in the bathroom. His bag hanging off of his left shoulder, he slipped his forefingers into his front pockets and perched on the back of the couch with one leg outstretched. His shoulders slouched, the exhaustion pulling him downward. His hair fell into his eyes.
He was desperate for today to be as calm as possible.
Hermione exited the loo, flicking off the light as she went. Draco, who was in the process of rubbing his right eye, looked at her. She'd taken her twists out and used magic to do a new hairstyle—hundreds of tiny braids that cascaded out of her scalp, with her edges laid and the same silver beads that she'd had before adorning them. The braids swung to her hips. She looked beautiful.
But at the same time, there was something dark and hideous twisting beneath her appearance. It was in the hollowness of her cheeks and the emptiness of her eyes. The slow way she moved that ached of something much deeper than weakness. She looked like the person she was—the person she was trying so desperately to get back—had already wasted away.
She glanced down the hallway, then did a double take.
"You're already ready?"
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak lest he betray his morbid thoughts. Looking at her, it felt like he could still smell her room.
"Oh," she said. "Well, let me just get out of my pyjamas, and then we can go to breakfast. Seems like we both woke up late."
"Yeah."
She bit her lower lip, her gaze scrutinizing him, and then she disappeared into her dorm room. She left the door open.
Draco cursed under his breath and turned his face to the right, toward the portrait. How was he supposed to act around her now that he'd seen her at her worst? How was he supposed to talk to her without thinking about the fact that she could exist within the confines of a room for months while her sick festered around her, rotting into the carpet? Anyone who could do that . . . Anyone who could simply let that go?
Someone like that might be too far gone to help.
She exited her dorm, braids whipping out as she spun to turn off her light. As she came down the hallway, wearing her robes closed, he saw that they trailed on the ground behind her just a tad too much. It was almost like she was wearing a dress.
Was that because they were too big for her?
"Ready?" she asked, hugging her arms around her books. Her eyebrow arched. "Are you in pain?"
He flinched. "Wait . . . What?"
"Your brows look like this." She scrunched her face up like she was angry and pinched. It was cute, but Draco felt too conflicted to do much more than let his lips twitch upward. "You look churlish."
"Oh, churlish, huh?" He huffed and lowered his gaze. He hadn't felt this much discomfort creeping under his skin since the Dark Lord walked the halls of the Manor. It didn't feel right, not where Hermione was concerned. His hand clenched some of her robes, tugging. "Come here."
Hermione was pulled to stand between his legs. She leaned over to balance her books on the back of the couch next to Draco's hip. Then, her hand pressed flat to his chest. Her teeth pressed into her lower lip as she searched his eyes.
"I'd dream forever if you were here with me."
Here she was, that beautiful girl with the braids, standing before him. They weren't dreaming, but every time he looked at her, his heart leapt to the stars. He wished they could go into his dream world—the world where her smile reached her eyes and she laughed like she was happy—and stay.
Draco tilted his chin up, his lips meeting hers as his hands found her waist through her robes. He hardly moved, barely touched her at all as she threw herself into the kiss with a gusto that he hadn't expected from her. Hermione placed one hand on his shoulder and wrapped the other around his neck. Pulling her body tight to his where he sat on the back of the couch, he felt her tongue dipping into his mouth. It was neither exploratory nor familiar. She was just tasting him.
His right hand slid up the back of her robes.
Fuck.
He felt so strange.
Gods. Kissing her hurt. It hurt so fucking badly that it felt like a demon was squeezing his lungs.
It just didn't feel . . . Right.
He turned his face away, his hand sliding down her arm as he stood up straight. "Why don't we just eat breakfast here? We're already late. By the time we get there, it'll be half over."
"Are you sure?" she asked, patting the side of her head with the heel of her palm. It looked like it itched. "Do you really want to cook?"
"No, but I'm tired," he said in a monotone. He let his bag fall to the floor and then moved past her to the kitchenette. "I don't feel like being around all those people."
She went to the table and sat down. The silence that stretched between them while he used his wand to cook the food was almost awkward in the way it seemed as thin and as strong as a spider's silvery webbing. It would hold, provided something didn't destroy it.
He floated their plates to the round table and took his seat across from her. After conjuring forks with a wave of his hand, he began to eat. After he was onto his third bite, he realized she hadn't picked up her fork yet.
This was beyond exhausting.
"Eat," he said without looking up.
"But . . . You cooked it in butter."
His head pulled back on his shoulders. "What does that matter?"
"It's just . . ." Her fingernails tapped on the table. "I usually cook them in olive oil."
"And that's my problem, how?"
"I can't have butter."
Draco could feel it coming—the ire. It was always there now, lurking underneath him. This was just another one of her stupid excuses. This was the fourth day that he'd been trying to take control of the situation, and it felt like it had been months. He couldn't do this forever.
"Granger," he said, closing his eyes against his ire-filled countenance. "You do not want me to come to your side of the table."
She bristled at that. "Or else, what? What are you gonna do? Hit me?"
Draco was over it. He'd had enough. Hermione had taken him to the edge of his limit. He couldn't take another second of this shite.
Slamming his fork down, he scooted his chair back, rising to his feet. She glared up at him as he leaned over the table with his hands flat on top of it. He held her gaze, his face calm.
"Eat your breakfast. I'm not going to do this every single day with you. You're going to eat three meals a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Those are your meals—that's the way it's gonna be. You don't get to walk to class alone. You don't get to have the doors shut. You don't get to purge. That's your life now. So, eat."
She pursed her lips, the panic and thoughts swirling together in her eyes. He could tell that she was hunting through her mind for something—anything she could use to get out of this. Any excuse.
He was so fucking tired.
Draco rounded the table, his right hand lashing out and wrapping in the braids at the back of her head. She cried out, looking frightened as he snatched up her fork and speared a large bite of scrambled eggs with it. He could already feel her shaking, trying to escape. Her hands moved up near her shoulders in a defensive pose.
"Wait—wait, I don't—"
Draco cut her off, holding the fork up near her lips.
"Open your fucking mouth."
"No."
"Open your fucking mouth!" he shouted.
"No!" she cried, looking simultaneously bewildered and nauseous.
"Open it, or I'm going to imperio you and make you eat until you're so fucking full you can't even breathe." He tightened his hold on her hair to punctuate, his mind completely white.
She closed her eyes and kept her mouth firmly sewn shut.
Draco snapped.
Twisting her braids around his hand until she screamed in pain, he shoved the fork into her mouth. She closed her lips around it on instinct, looking up at him with eyes that implored him to stop. She whimpered. Whether from the pain on her scalp or the feeling of the food on her tongue, he didn't know.
Her eyes were starting to water, but how could he care?
They could be fake.
"Chew," he ordered.
She did, her eyes squeezing shut. A tear escaped.
He slid the fork out of her mouth and grabbed some more.
"Please," she begged. "Draco, please. I'll eat it. Just don't—not again."
He held the fork up to her, his heart cold and done. "Open."
"Please."
"Open."
Trembling as though she were stuck outside in the snow, she opened her mouth with slow reluctance. He slid it into her mouth again and this time, she chewed.
"I can do it myself," she whispered, her head pulling against his hold. "Please. Draco, please."
Her pleas fell upon deaf ears. They had to. He couldn't let her control this anymore. He couldn't let her get away with anything. She'd had her chance to do this her way, and she'd fucked it up. She'd had her chance to prove she could be trustworthy, and she'd fucked it up.
I'm so fucking tired.
The fork returned to her mouth.
The tears continued to fall down to splash against the table. Her trembling grew more violent, until her legs were shaking. Something about the way she was breathing seemed distant yet familiar.
"Come on," he said, holding up the next bite. "Open up and eat it."
"Why are you doing this to me?" she cried, her hand knuckle-white as it wrapped around his wrist, trying to stop him. "What did I do wrong? Draco—"
Hermione's sobs overwhelmed her, and the fork in her mouth shut her up.
Draco managed to get her to eat two more bites before she tried to turn her face toward him. She gasped out apologies, apologies that chipped away at the ice cage that surrounded him.
"I'm so sorry," she kept saying, her lashes clinging together with tears. "I'll eat. I'll eat. I'm so, so sorry."
He looked into her eyes, seeing a depth of emotion there that he'd only ever seen before in . . . In . . .
"Draco, please. I'll do anything." She was crying so hard that she was on the verge of hyperventilation. He'd never felt her shake this badly. "I'll do anything, just please let me do it myself. I'm begging you."
. . . The shower at Paris.
Distant. Yet familiar.
His heart shattered, the way it should have five minutes ago. The way it always did around her. The way it deserved to now that he'd effectively violated the sanctity of her body just to get her to eat. There was no excuse. There was no excuse, but he'd just been so fucking tired.
And he hated himself.
He dropped the fork and stumbled back a step, rubbing his temples with his fingers. He didn't feel like himself. It was more than toxicity. It was wrong. It was dark. The way she sat there, hugging her arms around herself, chin to chest as she sobbed like a small child. The way she looked as broken as she did in that hotel room.
Who did he think he was?
Who had her disorder turned him into?
What had she done to his heart?
"I'll do anything. I'm begging you.'
Draco had never wanted to hear words like that directed at him from anyone's lips. Especially not hers.
He slammed back against the edge of the stove, scrubbing his face violently with his hands. He felt like a shadow. A shell of a monster who didn't deserve to function or breathe. And she was just sitting there, sobbing as she picked up the fork and failed thrice to pick eggs up with it.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, cringing away when he took a step closer. She couldn't look at him. "I'm sorry. I'm doing it. I'm trying."
He watched in somber silence while she ate the rest of the eggs and nibbled at the bacon. She was as pale as taupe, her face splotched red from how hard she was crying. Her hands shook hard enough that she looked like she was hypothermic. He'd traumatized her.
These tears weren't fake.
Draco couldn't look at her when he only saw his own mistakes. All the wrong choices, combined into one crying witch. He was such a fucking failure.
He sat on the couch while she sobbed halfway through their first period.
And he hated himself.
Draco couldn't focus on any of his classes for the rest of the day.
He couldn't stand himself. He couldn't stand the person he was, nor the person he'd become. He was disgusting. Worse than disgusting. He couldn't get the sounds of her weeping out of his head.
What he'd done was wrong. Forcing her to eat, shoving it down her throat. Treating her like property, like she had no say over her own body. Taking her autonomy away.
He couldn't understand why he'd let himself lose control that way, and he didn't know how to cope with the intense amount of self-hatred that coursed through his veins for hours. It felt like it would never ebb. It was suffocating him.
In Charms, he couldn't even make it all the way through. With her sitting next to Pansy at the front of the room with her back slouched and head down, he was forced to see how viscerally he'd affected her. It was like he'd broken her into nothing.
He had to get up to hide in the loo for fifteen solid minutes while he broke down in a stall and sobbed into his hands.
This was like Sixth Year. A nearly-unsolvable problem with no clear-cut path to the solution. Him making random stabs in the dark, hitting flesh every time, and turning on the light to find he'd stabbed the ones he cared about over and over and over. He was so overwhelmed.
It was her room. It had to be. Seeing the state of it had forced him to face just how unwell she was. All this time, he'd thought she was getting somewhere. That he was helping her.
Instead, she'd just been hiding a graveyard beneath her skirts. It was the reason why she wouldn't let him sweep her around the ballroom.
It would have exposed the truth.
"I can't fucking do this," he whispered to himself in the stall as he rocked back and forth, his fingers deep in his hair and tears leaking off of the tip of his nose. "I can't do this. I can't fucking—"
He broke off into more sobs. Sobs that took a hook and wrenched his gut out through his mouth, leaving him emptier than the black expanse that stretched between stars. He didn't even have the energy to cast a muffliato, a silencio, anything. There was nothing left of him.
When he sucked everything back inside of him and went to the mirrors, he hunched over one sink with his hands braced along its porcelain edges. Taking several deep, gasping breaths, he looked at himself. When his silver eyes locked with themselves in his reflection, rimmed in red from weeping and bloodshot from exhaustion, he felt like he couldn't recognize himself.
He saw his tattoos peeking over the collar of his shirt, seeming to creep up his neck like tendrils of shadow. The roses and chains that signified just how trapped he'd felt watching her burn on his Drawing Room floor. How he felt now, watching her burn herself alive every time she purged. How he would feel for the rest of his life, watching her continue to burn as she did everything in her power to maintain that control.
It felt like the chains were alive, wrapping around to strangle him.
Pulling his hood up onto his head, he went back to class. Flitwick was at his desk while the rest of the class practiced a new charm with one another.
"You seem to have forgotten the dress code today, Mr. Malfoy," Flitwick said, peering up over his glasses at him. "Borderline Muggle clothing and holes in the knees of your trousers? Unacceptable."
Draco glanced over at Hermione, who wasn't doing anything. Her wand still laid on her desk. She merely watched Pansy perform the spell. Pansy, who had a perturbed expression on her face as she studied Hermione while twirling her wand.
Salazar, Hermione looked so hollow.
Pansy's head snapped to the right. She raised one eyebrow to Draco and shook her head.
'What's wrong with her?' she mouthed. 'Did you guys break up?'
Draco ignored her, turning to Flitwick. "How many points are you taking?"
"Well, I'm going to have to take the standard dress code infraction amount, I'm afraid. Fifty from Slytherin. You may take your seat. Oh, and Mr. Malfoy?"
Draco fought the urge to scowl, rolling his head a bit to look back at the professor so his hood wouldn't fall off.
Flitwick's facial expression was knowing and stern. "Next time you go to the loo and come back with red eyes, I'm going to send you to Madam Pomfrey. Better to send you there to double check, than to jump and tell Headmistress McGonagall that you've got Muggle narcotics on Hogwarts grounds."
Draco walked past Pansy's seat, his gaze meeting hers one final time. Her jaw went slack and her eyebrows rose.
She could tell he'd been crying.
Instead of taking Hermione to the Great Hall for lunch, he walked them back to the common room. He didn't want Pansy asking questions, and it felt like he needed to be inside of their own world. Things were very, very fragile with Hermione, if they weren't already destroyed. He couldn't deal with everyone intruding.
Hermione said nothing to him. She didn't even look like herself. She simply walked into the kitchenette and prepared them both a balanced meal from the refrigerator and pantry. He didn't dare look at her, even when she set his plate in front of him.
As they both ate in silence, he realized he was no better than Ron.
By the time dinner rolled around, he felt like his brain had completely dissolved. Divination had been a nightmare. Not only had Blaise and Pansy tried to send him note after note, begging him to talk to them and tell them what happened, but he turned each one to ash and kept his eyes on Trelawney.
During Demonstration, things got worse.
Apparently, Trelawney wanted them to try magical core soul connections that day. That meant that with their table partners, they were supposed to hold hands, look deep into one another's eyes, and open their magical cores.
The point of the exercise was to understand how though everyone had their own core, magic as an element of the universe was cosmic in nature. No matter the blood status, any being with a magical core could find commonality amongst their souls. Having a taste of what it felt like to tandem cast was only a bonus.
It had taken Hermione thirty seconds of hesitation to shakily place her hands in his. They felt frail and tense, like she wanted to yank them back at any second. He was the second one to lift their gaze from the table, his shame having tried to keep it cast downward. Looking across the small table at her, hearing the drone of Trelawney asking them to open their hearts, minds, and magic, Draco realized that something had been irreparably damaged between them.
I hate myself, he said with his eyes. I fucking hate myself.
Her eyes showed nothing but a void, but when they opened their cores to one another, it caused them both to gasp. Her back straightened, going rigid. Draco felt magic thrumming up through his core and through their fingers, bounding back and forth between the two of them like a Patronus weaving them together. His hands tightened around hers as the intensity of it coiled his muscles tight.
They were the only two in the room to manage a successful connection.
"We need to talk," he said to her when class was over and everyone was packing up to leave. "In the common room."
She averted her eyes from his and nodded, dead silent.
"Hey, are you two coming to the Great Hall?" Pansy appeared in front of them both, Blaise flanking her.
"No, we're going back to our dorms tonight," Draco drawled, his hood still up as he slung his bag over his shoulder.
Blaise narrowed his eyes, studying Draco in a way that told him he could sense something was really, really off. As if he couldn't tell by the way Hermione-the-Golden-Girl-Granger was staring at the floor with her arms hugging her books like a shy schoolgirl. But Draco didn't want to look at him or talk to him. He didn't want to do anything except go back to the common room.
"Well, are you two still coming to London?" Pansy asked, her gaze washing up and down Hermione's body. "The Hogwarts Express comes in at eleven tomorrow morning."
Draco didn't say anything for a second. It was so painfully normal that it didn't quite fit in their abnormal world. After what he'd done to her this morning, they were just going to go to London? With Theo there? As if they needed that drama.
But when he looked over at Hermione, saw how she sort-of perked up at the reminder, his heart squeezed.
"Yeah," he said. "We're going."
"Oh, excellent." Pansy clapped her hands together. "It's going to be so much fun. We're staying at The Savoy, and Blaise got you two your own suite next to ours.
The Savoy, Draco knew about. It was a Muggle hotel, but it had a second lobby and three entire floors at the top that were only visible to the wizarding world. He'd stayed there with his parents multiple times.
"You didn't need to do that," Draco drawled to Blaise. "I'm not destitute."
"No, but I remember you telling me you were trying to stretch things out." Blaise placed a hand on his shoulder as they stood in the now-empty classroom. "Think of it like an early graduation present, or a late Christmas gift. Whichever."
The friendliness in his eyes was enough to pull Draco's lips into a slight smile. He didn't have the energy to be snarky.
"Thanks, mate."
Blaise gave him a strange look, apparently able to tell that something was wrong. "Uh . . . You're welcome."
Pansy cut in. "The two of you can take all of Friday after lunch to spend alone together, but we'll all get together in the morning on Saturday for breakfast. Then, we're going to a wizarding museum that details the complete history of the wizarding world's relationship with the fey. It was McGonagall's stipulation—we had to make some part of the trip educational. After dinner, we're finally going to that nightclub we never went to before Christmas."
"That sounds interesting." Hermione's voice came from the left, quiet and unsure. "The museum."
"Oh, I'm sure it will be," Pansy said. "Circe knows my family never let me learn anything outside of school about them. Blood purism and all."
"What about Theo?" Draco asked, not looking at her. "Is he still coming?"
"He's got his own room, and he's coming on Saturday," Blaise explained, exchanging a knowing glance with Draco. He apparently shared the same sentiments about him that Draco did. "He didn't want to miss school."
As the four of them started walking toward the door to leave, the girls in front and boys at the back, Draco felt his mouth going dry with dread. He didn't know which was worse: an entire day in London alone with Hermione when she could barely look at him, or an entire day in London with Theo tagging along after the horrid things they'd said to one another.
"I can't believe McGonagall's letting us go on a school day, anyway," Pansy said when they were in the stairwell, heading down. "It pays to be Eighth Years, I suppose."
"It may also have been Granger's name on your request form," Blaise said with a smirk. He looked ahead at Hermione. "Hope you don't mind there, Miss Quiet."
"Huh?" Hermione looked back over her shoulder, sounding almost as dazed as Luna Lovegood. "Oh, yes. That'll do the trick."
Pansy and Blaise both laughed, but Draco didn't. He couldn't.
Everything was so beyond fucked up.
