... A Requiem for Sadness ...

- III -

So Broken

He was trembling by the time he reached his refuge. He slipped into the unused washroom and leaned back against the door. His breathing was heavy and irregular. The boy balled his fists at his sides as muttered a short mantra under his breath.

"Stop crying. Stop crying. Stop crying." The words echoed against the tiles of the room and distorted his words. Those words came back at him as a twisted sound of agony. The tall lanky blond closed his eyes.

"Stop crying, stop crying, stopcrying, stopcring." The words began to fumble out of his mouth. He turned to the wall to his right. Both fists slammed against the stark white tiles.

"STOP IT!" Draco screamed through clenched teeth. "Stop stop STOP," he continued, while banging his fists with each word into the wall near his head. "Why-did-that-bastard…" The emotions pulsed through him, pulling at him, tearing him inside out. He was sobbing now, openly and loudly. "BLOODY HELL!" He pummeled the wall again as he cursed. A couple of the tiles were loose now, and one fell to the Slytherin's feet shattering to pieces..

"Why did he say … those things?" Draco croaked. His voice was strained.

"Crying does you good. I know from experience." A hollow voice resonated behind him.

He gritted his teeth and reached for his wand.

"Get out now." Draco growled. "I know how to banish a ghost permanently. I can send you to a place where no one will ever hear you, Myrtle – dead or alive."

"Hmpf!"

The girl's ghost took the threat seriously enough that she wasn't visible when he finally did turn around. What he did see was his reflection. He saw a tall young man reduced to tears like a little boy throwing a tantrum. His face was reddened and swollen and still producing moisture. At least he stopped sobbing like child. His body felt weak, his long arms hung at his side in defeat. Defeated. That is exactly how his parents looked when he betrayed them. Betrayed.

He stared long and hard at his reflection. His grey eyes were so much like his father's when he had seen them last. Lucius had looked upon his son for the very last time full of contempt and disgust. That was the hardest blow Draco had been dealt during the war.

"I know what I did was right, father. It just feels so wrong now that it hurts. It hurts!" His voice began to rise again. He took a shaky deep breath.

"It hurts more than anything, daddy." Draco's voice cracked.

He stepped towards the mirror above the sinks. He took another step.

Draco remembered suddenly his mother's face in that final moment of her life, a life that he ended. Her fine features once so beautiful that even he loved to look at her. She had turned to him twisted with confusion, and fear. What had pulled at his heart the most was the loss of hope and the loss of love for him his mother showed in that one moment at the very end.

He saw her in him now, that delicate jaw line, the proud nose, and that stubborn mouth. Now that he was crying he looked even more like her somehow. Maybe it was how hurt she looked when he finally turned on her and father. He stepped toward the mirror again.

"I'm so sorry, mum. I never wanted to hurt you." He was only a few steps away from the mirror now. "It hurts so much."

Another step.

"It hurts too much." Tears began to well up in his eyes again. He leaned and grabbed the edge of the sink while not looking away from what he was in the mirror. His fingers gripped hard enough that his knuckles turned white.

In a flash, something surfaced in his mind. His body tensed suddenly. His grip on the sink loosened it noticeably. He pulled. The sinks in this washroom were old, the plumbing didn't really work. As it was the taps in here were in the wall not in the sink itself. So when Draco yanked on it a second time the fixture actually came loose from both the wall and the drain pipe.

The blond teen staggered backwards a step and stared blankly at what he now held in his hands, a little shocked.

Draco looked back into the mirror with a hardened expression now. He took another step back and hefted the sink above his head.

"Fuck love." He told himself.

Shattered glass and cracked porcelain exploded, spilling shards around his feet and across the floor in all directions. His shoes crunched with each step as he turned and left.

"Fuck everything."