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Draco's POV
I jolt awake to searing pain in my back and chest. Sectumsempra leaves minimal physical damage when properly healed. However I still experience ghost pains when I've had a particularly tiring day. I have yet to tell Hermione, but I don't plan on doing so anytime soon. She spends so much time worrying about my health and wellbeing that I worry how much time she spends worrying about her own.
I shift into a sitting position and carefully pull my legs up to my chest. Using one hand to massage my back, I use the other to rub my forehead.
As I sit in the silence and darkness of my room, I try to remember my dream.
I'm sitting on the edge of a rock by the lake. The surface of the water has a crystalline look to it, and there are birds chirping all around me. I'm dangling my legs over the edge with relative ease. My legs feel so strong and pain-free. I reach down to touch the water and feel the cool edge to it. When I retract me hand I see the reflection of the sky turn to grey as clouds start form. They are dense and cast gloomy feel over everything.
I get up to leave before it rains, but suddenly the rock starts to shake as cracks form on the surface. They are deep and black, and the gaping lines start to move towards where I stand. I back up to the edge of the rock but slip and fall down into the water. It's bitterly cold and I can't tell which way is up or down. Rocks start to fall into the water and pin me down to the bottom of the lake. I start to drown and water starts to fill my lungs when I wake up.
It was really unsettling overall, but what really got me about the dream was how it felt to not have to deal with my problems. I didn't have to face the ever constant pain in my legs during my dream until the very end. Almost like when I chose to ignore all my pain and problems when I was younger. Then when I grew up, they hit me in the face and smashed me to the ground. They overwhelmed me and I was drowning. Someone saved me from the fate of actually drowning, but it's taken some time for me to realize that I was very close to not coming back out of the whole I'd dug for myself. Even now I find it hard to pull myself up and out every day.
I shake those thoughts away and look at my watch to see what time it is. It reads 3:29 and I groan. It's a little to early to wake up, but I also won't be able to sleep properly till morning. Then I realize that it's actually Saturday so I can afford to sleep in.
I pull out my phone and send a quick text to Hermione that I'll be waking up later and to go to breakfast without me. One of the great things of having a phone is that I can send a message to my friends without getting up and writing a letter and having it delivered via owl. I then place my phone on the table and fall into a dreamless sleep.
When I wake up later, I feel a lot calmer this time and I feel more rested than I have all week. I check the time and see that its 8:30. Most people would call that a normal morning, but for me that's a sleep in.
I go to the bathroom and brush my teeth quickly. While I'm there I decide to take my shower tonight instead of the morning since its later than usual. I get dressed in some more casual clothes, since it's the weekend, but of course they aren't scruffy either. I then grab my bag and walker and head down to the Great Hall.
I'm almost to the hall when I hear someone run up towards me. I turn around to see Pansy standing next to me. I groan inwardly but I also know that I've been avoiding talking to her for about 3 and a half weeks.
"Hi Pansy, did you want to talk to me about something?"
"Yeah actually I did. We never got to talk after that day when I asked if we could, if that makes any sense."
"It does."
"Okay, well I was wondering if we could talk now before we delay any further. It doesn't have to be for very long."
"Alright, as long it doesn't take too long."
"Do you mind if we talk in a more private place? I don't quite feel comfortable talking in this open hallway."
"As long as we keep the door open. I don't want either of us getting in trouble because someone made assumptions." We find an empty classroom and leave the door open a jar but cast a muffliato spell to prevent someone from listening on the conversation without our consent. I sit down on my walker and she leans sits on a desk across from me.
"So how are you doing Draco?"
"I'm doing okay, though I could be better. I can tell you're itching to ask about it so I'll just tell you. I got injured during the muggle studies trip at the airport which was worsened last week because Weasley ambushed me on the weekend."
"Oh no that's terrible Draco!" I'm glad she doesn't try to use a weird 'cute' nickname for me. "It's just so weird to see you as fragile as this. You usually send a very strong and powerful image." I give her a mock glare because she's bruising my ego, however she is right.
"Yes well, you wanted to ask me some other questions right?" I'm getting a little annoyed because I can't leave till she's done, but she's beating around the bush.
"Right, well I wanted to know why you're hanging around the Mudblood so much." Her tone of voice has a certain emotion in it that could only be described as jealousy.
"I hang around Hermione" I say as I shoot a pointed look at her but she pretends to not notice it. "because she's my girlfriend and even if she wasn't she's my best friend as well. She is my peer, and she deserves to be respected like everyone else. She is a wonderful person and has been very kind and patient with me and my many problems."
Pansy doesn't even bother to hide the look of disgust on her face despite what I just told her about my opinions.
"How can she be nice though, she's scum! She doesn't deserve her magic. She certainly doesn't deserve your love…" She realizes then, that she revealed a little bit too much of her motives. I wait for a bit then ask her something.
"Pansy, be honest with me. Are you jealous of her? I don't mean in terms of brains or looks or anything like that, I mean in terms of love. Are you jealous because I haven't spent a lot of time with you, because I ignore you and hang around her all the time?" She doesn't answer immediately, but after a few moments.
"I loved you, you know? I still do." She's looking at her hands now and fiddling with them. Her voice is really quiet. "Do you know what it's like loving someone with all of your soul and heart, but not having any of that affection returned? Do you know what it's like to love someone and have them slam all the doors in your face? Do you know what it's like to care for someone and have them ignore you and then spend time with another person instead of you? Do you? I've loved you since we first met Draco, I've loved you ever since you let me into your elite circle of friends in first year, but you still shut me out."
By this point I can see tears brimming in her eyes, and she's starting to choke up. I can tell she isn't faking it or something, this is obviously rooted in something very deep and it's going to be awful trying to sort this out.
"I'm so sorry Pansy, I really am but I don't love you. I won't deny that I don't even really like you very much, because I believe that you deserve to know where my feelings for you lie. You deserve to know exactly where I stand on this matter. You'll hurt a lot after this, trust me, but please understand that if I had known about this before I would have done my best to avoid leading you on. I'm sorry I hurt you like this. Maybe at some point we can become friends again, but I don't think we'll ever become more than that."
She's now choking on her sobs and I reach my hand over to give her a handkerchief. She grabs it with one hand and latches onto my arm with the other. She cries into my sleeve so I try as hard as I can to walk over to her and sit next to her. She leans on my arm and lets it all out. I try to comfort her, but soon just give up and let her relieve her battered emotions. She slowly calms down a bit and just breathes slowly with the occasional hiccup every now and then.
"Draco, thank you for being honest with me. I can at least appreciate that. It'll take some time to get over this, but I'm glad you were honest and weren't mean about it. Thank you for waiting for me to calm down, this means a lot to me. Maybe I'll see you around." She then gets up and leaves the room. I'm left feeling a little confused in all honesty about what just happened. I accio my walker and get up to see if I can grab any leftover food from the Great Hall. As I walk over I bump into Hermione.
"Oh there you are! I was wondering where you'd gotten to. I saved you a roll and some butter as well as a lemon scone." She then places them in my bag for me and makes sure they are well wrapped in napkins to avoid getting my stuff dirty.
"Thanks Hermione. I just had to talk to Pansy for a bit and sort some stuff out between us."
"Really? How'd that go?" I notice she becomes a little suspicious and tense when she says this so I try and alleviate any concerns that she has.
"Don't worry, we didn't do anything. I just explained that I wasn't interested in her and made sure she was okay before she eventually left. We sorted out the mess between us that I didn't even know existed."
"Oh okay." She relaxes a bit, but still seems a bit upset.
"So what do you want to do today? We have relatively few things to do since we don't have much homework and there's no Hogsmeade today."
"How about just going back to our room and playing some games. Just the two of us. We can play the card games and board games from last week, or we could also take a nap at some point to recover from this week."
"That's a great idea. I can eat my food there as well." We then head back to our room and enter through the portrait like usual. I sit down on the couch and she goes to grab a couple games. She comes down with them, but also with a small blue box thing and her phone.
"I figured we could listen to some music at the same time. It won't be very loud, but will add a bit of background noise so it doesn't get ridiculously silent at random points."I nod and open up the box for Monopoly. I set up the board while she selects a playlist on her phone.
"I call banker." I say. I like being in charge of the money and property cards because it means I have to pay attention to everything that's going on and it makes it easier to make decisions on my turn.
We spend about an hour and a half going back and forth in our game of Monopoly. It gets pretty intense and there are many close calls. However, in the end I win with $5,043 and Hermione is bankrupt.
"Do you want to play UNO now?" She asks me. I'm a little confused at first because I can't quite remember which game that one is. "The card game with the four colours and the numbers and actions?"
"Oh right, sure." She then deals out the cards and I organize mine be colour then value.
"Do you want to play with points? That way we can do a tournament."
"Sure, what's the point system?"
"Whoever wins gets the other person's cards. The number cards have the face value, the three coloured action cards are worth 20 points, and the black switch the colour cards are worth 50 points each."
"Okay. Are you starting or am I?" I ask.
"You can start." I then play a blue 2 on top of the first card which is a red 2. We play for quite a bit, but in the end Hermione wins with 705 points. I lost with 698 points. It was an extremely close tournament and we spent a good hour or so playing. While she was counting out her points for the last round I start to yawn quite a bit.
"Are you feeling tired?" She asks me.
"A little bit, what about you?" In truth I'm actually very tired, but I don't want to make her feel like I'm not interested in spending time with her.
"I'm kind of tired since I haven't gotten too much sleep recently. I've spent a lot of time stressing about this muggle studies project. I don't want anyone to fail this class." I understand her concerns and I know that she'll stress over it even more than most people because she's Hermione.
"How about we take a nap? Just sleep on the couches since they're pretty big. We can keep your playlist running quietly in the background as opposed to us both listening to playlist with our earbuds. That way we'll use less battery and there's less of a chance of our phones falling off the couch. We have quite a bit of time till dinner anyway and breakfast was kind of later today."
"Sure, I'll just switch to a less peppy playlist." She reaches over to her phone and switches it, then she puts it down on the table between us. We both lie down on our couches and I adjust my cushions under my head and knees to support my legs properly. I close my eyes and focus on the song that's playing. It's actually a really nice song so I quietly reach over to her phone to see what it's called and who it's by so I can find it later. It's called Autopilot by Kodaline.
Tell me
Tell me that you want me
And I'll be your completely
For better or for worse
I know
We'll have our disagreements
Be fighting for no reason
I wouldn't change it for the world
'Cause I know
The first day that I met you
I was never gonna let you
Let you slip away
And I Still
Remember feeling nervous
Trying to find the words to
Get you here today
'Cause you make my heart feel like it's summer
When the rain is pouring down
You make my whole world feel so right when it's wrong
That's why I know you are the one
That's how I know you are the one
In life
It's easy to get scared oh
But with you I am prepared for
What has yet to come
'Cause our two
Hearts will make it easy
Joining up the pieces
Together making life
'Cause you make my heart feel like it's summer
When the rain is pouring down
You make my whole world feel so right when it's wrong
That's why I know you are the one
That's how I know you are the one
When we are together you make me feel like my mind is free and my dreams are reachable
Woah
You know I never ever believed in love, I believed one day you were gonna come along
Free me
'Cause you make my heart feel like it's summer
When the rain is pouring down
You make my whole world feel so right when it's wrong
That's why I know you are the one
That's why I know you are the one
That's why I know you are the one
That's why I know you are the one
I try to sleep as much as possible, but I just can't relax enough to do it. Instead I just lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling trying to make shapes and patterns with lines that appear when you look at something for too long. I soon fall into a bit of a mindless trance, but not quite anything restful. After about an hour, Hermione wakes up and I roll over to get up.
"How did you sleep?" I ask.
"Pretty well. How about you?"
"It was okay." I can tell she doesn't believe me but she doesn't press any further.
"I was wondering if you wanted to go down to the lake? I know it won't be so easy with your legs but it's really nice weather tonight and we're allowed to do it as Heads."
"Sure, it's not too far. Though we should probably stop by the kitchens on the way there and grab some sandwiches or something to eat dinner down there."
"That's a great idea, I'll head down and grab the food. How about we meet in the foyer?"
"Okay, I'll see you there." She then leaves the room and shuts the portrait behind her. I grab my bag and unshrink my walker. When I get near the exit of our room I turn around and summon a fairly large blanket from the common room area. I place it in my bag after shrinking it to the size of a handkerchief. I then get out through the portrait and walk down to the front entrance. Somehow I manage to get there before Hermione, so I sit on the stairs while waiting. She soon arrives and we walk out together with her holding a small basket of food and me following behind her.
We walk down to the lake and it feels kind of weird since I had a dream about the lake just this morning. We choose to sit on one of the tree covered patches and watch the sunset. The water has a beautiful golden colour as it reflects the sun and it reminds me of the golden flecks in Hermione's hair and eyes when the sun is just right. We lean against each other in the shade of our tree and start to eat some of the sandwiches Hermione brought down from the kitchens. We watch as a flock of geese swoop down and start to swim in the lake. Suddenly they fly away squawking and we see a tentacle reach up from below the water. We both start to laugh at this, and Hermione almost chokes on a small piece of a tuna sandwich because of this.
"That was hilarious, we rarely see any action from the squid most of the time." Hermione says. I nod at her with a grin on my face. We watch the sun fade behind the hills as the last rays of light melt away into the darkness of the night sky. The sky soon changes again as the stars start to appear and with the moon, illuminate the darkness around us. Since the sun went down a while ago, it's gotten chilly so I pull out the blanket and wrap it around both of us. We sit there and watch the stars twinkle and the lake shimmer in the moonlight.
"Have you thought about what you're doing for the Christmas break?" I ask Hermione at some point.
"No, not too much. I'm probably just going to stay here at the castle since there's no one waiting for me back home." She keeps her voice steady and her face neutral, but I can see the tears starting to well up behind her eyes and the pain hiding inside.
"I'm probably going to stay here as well. I don't really want to stay by myself at the Manor with just Bipsy for company. Even though my parents never spent much time with me, at least they were still there during my time away from Hogwarts. They were in the building and I knew it wasn't just me. This however would be too much for me."
"Yeah, I couldn't bear it being alone on Christmas after all the years I had celebrating tradition with my mum and dad."
"What did you guys have for your Christmas Eve dinner?" I ask her.
"We usually had a turkey, but it was pretty special the way we did it. My dad had this weird recipe that he would make every year. He would stuff it with stuffing and bacon bits. Then he'd layer bacon on top, several layer of it mind you, and then drizzle honey all over it. Then he'd cook it at a lower setting for a longer period of time so that the flavour would all seep in. Then we'd usually have it with asparagus since I really dislike brussel sprouts, and mashed potatoes with onion. Sometimes if my mom had time, she'd also make her special cream cheese topped portobello mushrooms. They were so juicy. What about you?"
"Well, Dobby used to make a really nice ham stuffed with mashed potatoes and covered in stuffing. It was pretty cool and I remember one time he also made Yorkshire pudding and I took my food and stuffed it inside of it to make a kind of sandwich. I got in trouble with my father because it wasn't polite and I touched my food with my hands instead of cutlery. Then Dobby would also make an apple pie and vanilla ice cream."
"That's pretty cool. It sounds like Dobby was pretty nice to have around."
"Yeah he was great. Sometimes he was really fun and used to get the job of babysitting me. We used to play lots of games and he thought it was great. Then one day my father decided to re-assign him to being his personal servant and I lost one of my best friends."
"Wow, I didn't know that."
"What happened to Dobby anyway? Last I saw, he got you guys out of the manor back in our seventh year." I say.
"Well… when he got us out, he got hit by Bellatrix's dagger just when he disapparated. When we got to our destination he'd started losing a lot of blood and he died before we could heal him."
Her reply shocks me.
"Oh. I was hoping he was still alive somewhere."
"Yeah he was great." Says Hermione.
We lapse into silence for a little bit before Hermione gets up and pushes off the blanket. She then packs up the basket of food and grabs her purse.
"We should probably pack up and head back to the castle before rounds." I nod and get up after rolling up the blanket. We walk back to the castle together and do a quick patrol instead of just one of us doing it. We get back to our room and being to head to our own bedrooms.
"Good night Hermione." I say.
"Good night Draco, try to get some sleep." She says to me.
"I will, don't worry." I then walk up the stairs to my bedroom and shut the door behind me as quietly as possible.
Author's Note: I'm sorry for the late update again, this is becoming a habit now. The turkey recipe that Hermione's dad uses is actually this one I head in a sermon. It was really funny at the time because the guy also used to name his turkey's based on how they tasted. Thans for your support guys, it means a lot to me. Please review and give feedback. Have a great week, till next time.