Disclaimer: Draco Malfoy and Co. are not mine, whatsoever. Neither is quidditch, nor any of the Hogwarts houses and that lot. They belong to J.K. Rowling or Scholastic or whoever the fuck owns the copyright these days – I do not know exactly. But I repeat, they are not mine. However, the plot is and is fact very personal to me. You head will be on a platter if I find you've stolen from me explicitly, although I understand similar themes. After all, there are most probably very similar fics out there to mine, and this resembles yours greatly, it is not on purpose. Do forgive me.
Warning: This is potentially a very dark fic depending on your personal views. It deals with heavy angst, suicidal tendencies, and heavy self-mutilation. That means cutting people, or self-injury. Also be warned for a wide and slightly colorful variety of language.
A/N: This story is about cutting. If you feel there is a lack of a cause to Draco's actions, I am sorry. It is about cutting: not what causes people to start cutting. Hopefully his reasons are spelled out enough for you. I am very sorry if this offends you, but I refuse to condemn cutting. No, it is not good for you. Please do not start. In my experiences, it is addicting. Draco's story honestly is my own in several respects: what I've done, why I have, how I've felt. Not a day goes by still when I don't want to cut, and it's been a month and a half since I last cut. Don't let yourself do that – please. But as I was saying, I won't condemn. It feels good, and for some people cutting is even healthy- the only way to prevent worse damage. Anyway, please return the favor to me and not flame because like I said: it hits very close to home. It practically is home, really, aside from the whole Millicent thing. I didn't have a Millicent with a cutting sister: I had a grandfather who was a WWII POW who died in December. I felt terrible about wasting his sacrifices, so stopped. Anyway, review if you want, don't if you want- just please don't flame. Enjoy, and I hope this helps someone. It certainly has helped me exorcise my rampaging little demons.
The pain
is pleasurable after a certain point. It builds and builds and builds, taking
years, until one day you suddenly realize something that will change
everything: it will always hurt, and you might as well enjoy it. And if you're
empty, filling only with others' emotions and your own blood, it's a damn good
way to feel whole again.
It was
like that for me. I'd fear being hurt, was afraid of the blood, until one day I
noticed: damn, it burns. But holy fuck, I feel like me again.
Maybe it
was a result of a slowly rising depression, or maybe of no self-worth. People
always say I can do anything, I'm perfect, but I'm not. I'm nothing. And even
if I know I really am something, I
can't bring myself to believe it. Maybe it's all a mask. I don't know anymore.
I don't know who I am.
But it
was that one night, leaning over an essay in the middle of the night – cold and
tired and fuck, will this ever end? – when she
scratched me, hard and deep. The cat had spectacularly sharp claws, and had
just managed to tear a line from the base of the palm down two inches, right
above the vein. If she only knew the gift, or maybe it's a curse, that she had
given me.
It hurt,
oh gods it hurt, but it burned. It burned and I felt alive. I was alive: I
could see and feel that in the strong pulsing of the torn flesh, the beauty of
dripping ruby blood. I savored it. I savored it, but I didn't think of going
further – not yet.
I got the
idea of cutting during the next few days back in classes.
"Holy shit, Draco! What did you do?"
It was Blaise who first noticed- quiet little dark-haired Blaise, observant and utterly Slytherin
in his own way.
"That kneazle of Jason's – the fourth year's – scratched me last
night."
My other
classmates leaned over the breakfast table and peered at the raw pink wound. It
was just starting to heal over and still burned hotly.
"Draco!"
Pansy squealed. It was just like her really: loud and so very melodramatic. At
least she cared, I suppose: it wasn't gossip like it probably was to that third
year that turned her head and gazed at it. "You weren't trying to kill
yourself, right Draco?"
I blinked
slowly. I wasn't suicidal then. Sure, I thought of the peace the afterworld
must bring, but I never considered sending myself there. That didn't come until
much later and even then I never thought to act upon my musings.
"No,
Pansy: it was a cat."
"My older
sister slit her wrists once," Millicent murmured as she traced the scratch
gently. "You need to cut much deeper, though, and farther. She didn't cut deep
enough and only passed out from blood loss."
"It was a
cat."
No one
believed me, or maybe they were only joking. I don't know at this point anymore.
All through the day my housemates would steal a quick glance when they thought
I wasn't looking, or even stare openly, as Pansy did, with her characteristic
worried frown. In Herbology, a Hufflepuff
Blaise and I were partnered with openly stared at it
with wide innocent dark brown eyes, sickly fascinated. After all: who'd ever
imagine Draco "I-am-God" Malfoy to off himself? I surely wouldn't, and I'd know
best.
It was
the day the wound truly started healing in earnest that I contemplated cutting.
The pulsating burn reminding me that, yes, I am alive, was gone, leaving behind
a steady itching sensation as the skin started to grow again. Once again I felt
empty, full with only Pansy and Millicent's soft giggling, Blaise's
quiet pondering. I'd sit near Granger and Potter in the library and feel
content, their friendship radiating peaceful vibes. But I'm not a people person
and I never will be, no matter charismatic I may be when I choose to. I didn't
want to stick around people just to feel happy. So I didn't, simple as that.
I didn't
start straight off with cutting. I was afraid: what if I hit a vein again? What
if it bled too much? So I started with pain.
I'd run
my perfectly manicured fingernail down the flesh of the arm, pressing hard. It
would burn for a few seconds before faintly flickering away, leaving me empty
and with ugly white scratch marks down pale white arms. It gave me little
satisfaction and no lasting happiness: on to the next step.
I moved
on with my ways to feel pain, utilizing a bobby pin I had once stole out of the
girls' bathroom when Blaise and Greg and Vincent were
taking absolutely forever getting ready one morning. So I stole into my female yearmates' bathroom and for once received no odd looks as I
perfected my hair or gazed appraisingly at my face. That had been the day I
made the decision to go further, and I was oddly happy for once.
Soon the
tickling scratches of dulled metal on skin weren't satisfying enough either.
The wrist wound had finally healed completely, leaving me with a beautiful
peach colored scar. I loved it. I still love my scars. I love my scars like I
crave pain.
Lying in
bed one Sunday night, reading text for a class the next morning, I reached
another turning point. Even the itching was better than nothing; I had to make
another cut. Idly I glanced around my bedside. On the shelf built into the
dungeon wall beside my bed, I saw a pair of tweezers: lovely metal things with
terrifically sharp points. In other words, they were my next step to
self-destruction.
I drew my
curtains closed around my large four-poster bed and picked up the silver
tweezers, caressing them with soft pale fingers. I tugged off my shirt and
gazed down at my body; where wouldn't anyone notice? Sod all, I chose to mark
my arm, dragging sharp points squeezed together lightly across my skin.
Pressing down harder, I relished in the delightful pricks of pain I felt as I
carved away skin. I made no long scratches this time, instead digging only as
deep enough to draw a thin line of hot crimson blood from the centimeter long
wound, smiling in the burning and the feeling of being alive.
Yes, it
hurt. Yes, I knew it was stupid. But really, so was I, right? And it felt so
damn good…
I fell
asleep contented that night.
The next
morning when I woke it was with a smile and then a frown. I was alive, as was
made obvious from the burn I felt and the bright red mark on my arm I saw. Oh
yes, I was alive, but for how long?
I felt
disgusted with myself and guilty as hell. Was I so weak that I had to cut to
feel alive? And what would Mother say, whose father had just recently died and
who had previously been an auror working to save all
of our lives. Was I just a waste of life? Was I wasting life? My self-esteem
dropped lower, and with it, my self-worth. I was nothing. Alive,
yes, but nothing.
But the
shame and disgust didn't stop my little weakness. Two nights later there were
two little screaming red lines against my pale skin, marring the perfect
surface. After all, I wasn't perfect: why should my arm be? It shouldn't. They
were the proof of my failure to be perfect, secretly manifested at night with
silver tweezers.
It felt
so good, so damn good to feel alive again. For a while it was to hell with the guilt
and the negative feelings; I could live with being nothing. But could I live
without being alive? I didn't want to.
It wasn't
until the next week when there were three cuts lying side by side of the
surface of my inner left forearm that anyone noticed, or at least noticed and
said something. I was sitting in Divination, and we were studying palmistry.
Pansy, my
partner in that class as Blaise had instead taken Muggle Studies, grabbed hold of my left arm roughly and
pulled it sharply forward. She shoved back the dangling sleeve of my black
robes and her eyes swept over my forearm. Frowning again, she looked back up
and searched my eyes looking for a reason in unfathomable silver-gray irises.
She wouldn't find one.
"A kneazle, Draco: like hell a kneazle!"
Her dark blue eyes slipped shut for a few seconds before opening again,
exposing a thin veneer of tears. "Why?" she whispered quietly, a contrast to
her earlier angry tone.
I liked
her angry tone better. How did you explain to a friend you'd known since
childhood you just didn't feel alive again?
"I don't
know." I hesitated. "It feels good."
Her eyes
became sharp again, piercing indigo glaring down at my arm and then up again.
"It feels good? It fucking feels good, Draco?"
I
remember sighing. She'd never understand, and I was thankful for that. She
shouldn't have to feel the emptiness. "Yeah, it does Pansy. And it really was a
fucking kneazle on my wrist, okay?" I could tell my
own tone had become cold and spiteful.
Her mood
suddenly shifted again. I had hurt her with my attitude. "Right, Draco," she
whispered turning down her eyes once more and focusing on my palm. A tear
slipped out of them. "Right." She started her reading.
However,
even Pansy's reaction didn't stop me. It brought more self-loathing and less
self-worth. So worthless; why did I deserve to live?
My
thoughts often turned to cutting and suicide in the coming week, but I never
did anything besides scratch new designs and marks onto my left arm. I had a
rather striking rose carved into my upper bicep for a while until it healed.
Unlike my scratches on my forearm, that did not scar.
Like
everything seemingly, things got worse before they got better. I found a pair
of scissors in a store located with Hogsmeade one
weekend and bought them on the spur of the moment, admiring the sharp steel
blades. Those scissors became my new best friend.
Night
after night I would draw them down my arm with enough force to draw blood over
and over again. Come morning I would have dozens of burning lines down my
forearm, bright red against a white background, looking as if my arm had been
mauled. They hurt more than anything I had done so far had, and they were by
far my favorite.
They were
also the most uniquely healing cuts I had ever seen. While my normal scratches
and wounds would go through a cycle of burning, then itching, and then healing,
leaving peach colored scars or dug out scars, their process was entirely new. I
noted it with a strange sort of fascination, not unlike the Hufflepuff's
interest in my first cut. This wound would burn for days and not fade to a
quieter pink tone for a week. They remained loud and bright for as long as they
hurt, proving to me I was alive, oh yes I was. They would eventually heal to
soft pink scars after a few weeks, before those scars disappeared completely in
a few more weeks. They were interesting.
But
these, my favorite and most rewarding, would be the bane of my addiction.
Millicent
noted them one day in Ancient Runes and sighed. Unlike Pansy, she wasn't angry
or accusing, just gloomy.
"My
sister cut her wrists again last week, you know."
I looked
up at her and drew an eyebrow up. "Is she okay?"
Millicent's
green-gray eyes became downcast, becoming immeasurably sad. "No. No, she isn't.
She cut deeper this time. Her funeral was Sunday."
I
couldn't help but be terribly struck by her sorrow and suddenly I felt sick to
my stomach. I was so stupid, so horribly stupid. I was tossing my mortality
around like a quaffle, not caring if it someday
broke. I didn't deserve the pleasure
of cutting, the reward of feeling alive. Not if I didn't respect life. "I'm
sorry, Millicent. I'm so sorry," I whispered softly, sorry for her loss and
sorry for my actions. So stupid.
"It's okay, Draco. She's happier now: finally in the afterworld
with her baby and husband." She caught my hidden meaning and smiled faintly but
didn't remark upon it, just as I could count on her to. "Life goes on."
"Yes, yes
it does."
That
night I made a vow to myself. I would never cut again, and I listed out my
reasons in the journal I had made of my cuts and their dates, why I did them. I
have kept that vow this past month, but it has been a struggle. Multiple times
I've found myself running a knife lovingly across my stomach or digging into my
skin with whatever I can find. I've resorted to biting my flesh occasionally to
relieve the urge, but I know it will never go away. Everyday I think about
cutting, how I miss it or how stupid I was to ever do it. I'm happy I stopped,
but I crave it with my every being. To feel alive is a wonderful thing, and on
the days when that is impossible for me, it is a
terrible struggle not to reach for the scissors and draw a few drops of blood:
just enough to make a scratch.
I miss it
so much.
So damn much.
