QLFC Round 3
Appleby Arrows
Seeker
Prompt: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: Write about someone whose work or ambition overtakes all other aspects of their life
An Impossible Task
Draco sat alone on the dusty floor in the Room of Requirement as he stared at the empty cabinet. For how long, he wasn't sure. His stomach growled but he paid it no mind. It had been days since he had been able to keep anything down anyway.
He was running out of time.
He had to get this blasted thing fixed. He didn't want to think of what would happen if he didn't. Draco looked down at the dead bird that lay on the floor and felt his stomach roll. He took a deep breath, willing himself not to be sick again.
Think! A voice inside his head screamed at him. What are you missing?!
But Draco couldn't think. He couldn't concentrate even a single second more on this or any other thing. He'd spent weeks and months trying to figure out a solution to his problem and yet he was still no closer to solving it, no closer to gaining any favor from the Dark Lord. Not that he gave favor to anyone, much less Draco Malfoy.
His whole family may as well have been deemed lower than dirt since his father's fall from grace. Now it was up to Draco. It was up to him to set everything right.
Draco looked down at his left forearm, his sleeve rolled up to his elbow to reveal the ugly tattoo: the Dark Mark. Draco huffed and shoved his shirt sleeve back down, the sight of the mark nearly making him sick again.
He pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his elbows atop them before dropping his head into his hands. He roughly tugged at his hair, feeling the tangles as his hands carded through the white-blond locks.
He was a mess. He knew he was, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He looked nearly as bad as his father had the last time he had seen him. They both had dark circles underneath their eyes, standing out starkly against their pale skin. Draco's face appeared hollow and it was apparent to anyone that paid him half a mind that the teenager was losing weight. But no one paid him any mind at all.
Except for maybe Snape. Draco rolled his eyes. Snape simultaneously seemed to be trying to help Draco and keep him from achieving his goal all at the same time. What was he playing at? Didn't he realize how important this was for Draco to accomplish? Didn't he see that it was the only way Draco could restore his family's honor?
Snape had called him into his office that very morning under the pretense of talking to him about his Defense Against the Dark Arts grade, but then he had questioned him for nearly an hour about how he was doing with the Vanishing Cabinet, reminding him that time was running out. Draco eventually told him to sod off before running out of his office. He had been up here ever since.
His friends, if you could call them that, had also been asking about it. Oh, they didn't know the exact task that the Dark Lord had set before Draco, but they knew enough to know that it was of the utmost importance. It was life or death. The task was keeping him up at all hours of the night, tossing and turning in his four-poster bed until he would finally give up on sleep altogether. He would sneak out of the Common Room and back up to the Room of Requirement where he would work for hours, sometimes missing breakfast, occasionally not emerging out of the dark room until the sun was already high in the sky. Not that he cared about that either. It wasn't as if anyone could expect him to concentrate on his classes while the very real threat of the killing curse, courtesy of Voldemort himself, hung over his head.
No, Draco could not expect himself to do much of anything until he worked out how to fix the cabinet. He just had to be missing something. Draco was certain that it was right under his nose. He only had to try a little harder! Surely, if he just worked harder he could figure this out!
His stomach growled again but he continued to ignore it in favor of getting up to pace back and forth in front of the cabinet. He thought over everything he had tried so far but he was still stuck. The brother cabinet, as he had taken to calling it, back in Borgin and Burkes seemed to be just fine. For that matter, this cabinet seemed to be just fine, though if it was, it would have been working by now. There just had to be something else that he hadn't thought of yet.
He briefly considered taking Snape up on his offer to help but swiftly pushed that thought from his mind. He had to do this himself. It was the only way!
No one can help you, the voice in his head taunted him. No one cares about you or your family. It's all up to you, Draco! You have to do this yourself! Because if you don't, if you fail, he will kill you!
Draco stopped pacing as he stared at the cabinet. It too seemed to be taunting him: reminding him of what to expect should he fail in his task; reminding him that he wasn't worthy. He wasn't worthy of the Malfoy name. He took a great, heaving breath as he felt tears begin to roll down his face. He cried so hard that he could barely see through the tears.
He tried to regain control, to get the tears to stop, but he couldn't bring himself to care enough. It didn't matter anymore. He couldn't do this.
Draco dropped back down to the floor and buried his head in his arms as he rocked back and forth and sobbed. His face was a mess of snot and tears but he reckoned that it couldn't make him look any worse than he already did. He was a mess but he was too tired to care anymore. He didn't want to care about anything anymore. Not Voldemort, not his father nor Snape. None of it mattered now. This was it. This was where Draco Malfoy gave up.