So I was literally just looking through my fanfic (1/11/21) when I noticed that instead of posting chapter 14, I just posted chapter 13 . . . twice. *slow clap* Oops. Yeah, sorry about that. Hopefully the story will make a lot more sense now without such a large plot hole.
Chapter Fourteen: A World Apart
The Room of Requirement has morphed significantly, for there's now a white and cloud-like rug thrown across most of the floor with two purple couches that can justifiably be called fat positioned at angles next to a roaring fireplace, its heat stretching across the room in waves. The wall against the door is bare, but across from it are two beds made up with equally fat purple material and a canopy to match. There's a sink in the corner farthest from the fireplace to the right of the door and a toilet hidden by a shimmery purple drape. This will do quite nicely, but I'm still terribly nervous.
"What if it doesn't work?" I know I'm being a baby, but I'm tired of facing my nightmares and the idea of finding them almost on purpose is beyond mental.
"Hey, it will work." Hermione offers me a soft smile from her bed, and I slip into mine.
"Thanks . . ." is the last thing I can murmur before my eyelids droop. I'm far too tired to fight sleep anymore as I've done the past few days.
As soon as my eyes shut, it happens. Draco's steely grey eyes glint. They're gigantic through the window and I'm surrounded.
"Zabini . . ." he hisses menacingly, and I see a finger caress the window, dried blood covering every inch of his skin.
"Zabini . . ." I stand to run, but there is no door, though I search desperately for one. The stone of the tower I'm sitting in seems to move, pulsating like some forcefield. Suddenly the walls turn a deep black and I'm immersed in shadows, the menacing Draco literally breathing on my spine. I turn to face him, but he's not there, though I can still hear his voice.
"You're going to fail, Zabini . . ." he calls softly, "I'm happy with the Dark Lord, and you can be too. Just take my hand . . ." His giant hand forces its way into the window, but instead of fingernails he now has five crimson knives, dried blood flaking off them. Suddenly the ends of the knives seem to be covered in fresh blood, trickling onto the floor beneath me. It begins to fill like a pool and I'm now ankle-deep in blood.
"You are a traitor, Zabini . . ." the hissing sounds close, as though Draco has his face pressed against mine. I can feel the warmth of his breath inside my ear.
"You deserve what you have." I look at the sword-like fingers and notice that there's no more blood dripping from them; but still the room continues to fill. I feel a sharp pain in my side, and I look down to see that I've been sliced open, blood gushing out of me like a waterfall.
Somewhere outside the window I hear the scuffing noise of a match being lit. The sound fills my ears and my brain until I can focus on nothing else. Then the match is thrown in and the blood—my blood—ignites like gasoline, the smell horrible like death itself. I am being cooked alive. I begin to scream from the pain, unable to hold out any longer. I look at my side and the blood is still flowing freely, but it's licked up with fire the instant it leaves my body, causing the flames to build towards my face. I lift my fingers to see them blacken and fall off like charcoal.
I fall to the ground and writhe around in agony, trying to ignore the searing pain that threatens to blind me. I need to be conscious for my last few moments. The flames build and build, but suddenly they turn black, and rather than heat I feel a cutting cold. My breath catches in my lungs and suddenly I'm holding it, waiting for what's next. The blackness begins to move and all at once I'm surrounded by Dementors, their skeletal fingers reaching for me.
"Expecto Patronum!" I shout, but the cry comes out as a whisper, and I can't think of anything happy to push them away with. One of them grabs my throat and I can feel suction, as though something important is being stolen from me.
"This is what you deserve . . ." Draco begins to laugh, and I begin to scream, waiting for the end.
"Blaise . . ." I hear a voice calling me, a different voice than the menacing one of Draco's I've been hearing. I feel my shoulders shake, and the Dementors begin to peel away from me. I open my eyes to see Hermione staring at me, her face full of concern. She rubs my back in circles, which makes me almost cry. My father used to rub my back just like Hermione is now before he left. It's now that I realize that I'm screaming, my throat raw and dry. I quickly stop myself and begin panting instead as Hermione wipes at my forehead with a cool cloth.
"You want to talk about it?" she asks so gently that I suddenly miss the love my mother used to give me, back when she cared.
"No . . ." I stammer out, "I just . . . want to forget it. How long was I asleep for?"
"Before you started screaming? I'd say about an hour." I sigh audibly and Hermione cracks a slight smile that's probably supposed to be reassuring except that she doesn't know if it will be okay or not. All either of us can do is hope. I'm shaking, a little bit of the last nightmare running through my brain. I don't want to try and sleep again.
Hermione gently pushes me back down onto my pillow and I ever so slightly shake my head, my refusal to try to sleep again.
"Blaise, you have to try." She pulls the blanket up to my chin. "We're both going to have to do things we don't want to do, and this is just another of yours. You. Can. Do. This."
I close my eyes and allow sleep to overtake me.
I'm running down a deep, dark hallway, stumbling over objects that I can't see and slamming into the wall as I go, trying to get out. There's a tiny white beam of light in the distance, and I have an overwhelming urge to run to it. Behind me is a creeping and growing cold, the kind that makes you want to admit defeat and die. I'm very tempted to do just that, trust me, but I can hear a rustling and clanking behind me. There's a hoard of Dementors following me, their numbers so many that they clank boney arms together as they attempt to reach me and suck my soul.
Suddenly my feet no longer move me, and I'm stuck. I'm suspended in the air by some strange force, floating slowly until I'm upside down. It's now that I feel fingers in my hair, gently caressing my scalp, comforting words whispered into my ears.
"Blaise, baby . . ." It's my mother. "Blaise, I love you! Your father loves you! We just want you to come home!"
"NO!" I scream so loudly that the force—most likely known as my mother—drops me at once. I fall for what feels like an eternity . . . straight into the Dementor's arms. I feel horribly weak, unable to even try to fight off the Dementors as they suck my soul and I receive the Dementor's kiss. Now I'm looking down at myself, as though I'm not in my own body. I see my body beneath me, crawling around like a cat, drool dripping down my chin, a lopsided grin and an empty stare overcoming my features.
Again, the shaking begins, and my vision is so blurred that I can't make out my own face anymore. This time when I feel fingers in my scalp, I jerk upright and raise my hand to slap the fingers away.
"Blaise!" a stern voice shakes me to my senses. It's Hermione. I stop my hand inches from her face and drop it uselessly at my side.
"Hermione . . ." I breathe. I flop onto my bed, preparing myself for another terrible dream.
"Stop!" she commands in a tone that makes me freeze, biting through my grogginess and the remnants of the dream.
"What?"
"I said, stop. We have to calm you down, or you and I are never going to get any real sleep. You better start talking, because whatever you tried last time clearly didn't work."
"Okay," I agree, "I'm in a dark hallway this time, a little light somewhere near the end of it. I'm running and there's this cold behind me that makes me want to quit, but I can hear these Dementors behind me, scrambling to try and grab me. Then I'm suddenly flipped upside down and floating. My mother starts telling me that her and my father love me, that they want me home. I scream at her, and she drops me . . . right into the waiting arms of the Dementors. Then I'm watching myself from afar. The Dementors suck my soul away and my body is crawling around the ground like some demented cat. Then you woke me up."
"Well, tell me about the Dementors."
I feel like I'm in a psych ward, but Hermione isn't crazy, and I'm getting desperate: desperate enough to give it a try.
"I'm . . . I'm afraid of them," I admit, though she already knew that. "They scare me more than anything in the world. In third year when Draco pulled that trick on Potter where he dressed up like one, I was so scared that I hid in my bedroom for the rest of the afternoon, putting the best wards I knew of on my bed. I . . . think about my plan to go to Azkaban and I know I'm going to be okay, but they still scare the bloody hell out of me. I mean, I don't want to go mental. If saving me would mean that I'd live like that—like a mindless bloke—well, I'd rather die."
"And your mother?
I take in a deep breath. I need to tell her, but the list of people who know about everything is quite short, and I kind of wanted it to stay that way.
"She's . . . she's pretty much the worst mother in the history of mothers. She almost always has someone over in her bedroom . . . and there's these rules, these thousands of rules I used to have to follow, but one day she suddenly stopped caring. I broke every one of her rules and she didn't even notice. She never even looks at me, you know . . . it's like I'm not even there. Sometimes she actually acknowledges me, but during those times I usually lie my face off and she can't even tell. I'm a terrible liar! All I can do to get her to even notice is make snide remarks about her nightly companions . . . and I just . . . I hate her.
"I didn't always, but she wasn't the same after I was born, I guess . . . she just got more and more distant, more and more busy . . . too busy for her bloody own son. That's around the time my father left. I guess I didn't blame him for leaving her, but he left me too! He said he loved me, and then he left me! Neither of them care at all and I hate them both for it."
I dare a glance at Hermione. Her eyes are full of tears . . . what a softy. Draco would've told me to suck it up. Hell, I tell myself to suck it up. I'd be fine, or at least I could pretend I was . . . except these blasted bloody nightmares.
"It still hurts, doesn't it? All of it still hurts." Hermione asks the question without looking at me, staring at her lap instead as she rubs her hands together.
"What?" I ask her. Why would she make such an obvious statement? Of course it hurts!
"Sorry . . . what I mean is that everything hurts. It still hurts me that Harry and Ron hated me for so long, it hurts that Malfoy called me a mudblood, and it hurts that my parents are slowly slipping away from my world, our lives drifting. You never get over pain . . . not really. I guess . . . I guess you just have to embrace it, feel it. Wounds fester unless you treat them . . . pain festers unless you embrace it."
"If only it were that simple . . ."
"It is that simple! Just do what I do. I tell myself that yes, it hurts to be called a mudblood. It should hurt to be called such names, but I am hurt and healing, because I accept that I'm feeling that hurt and am willing to take a step away from it.
Blaise, what your parents have done is unacceptable. You should be hurt by their actions. You are hurt by their actions, but their actions aren't going to hurt you anymore because you are feeling that hurt and you're ready to step away from it. Understand?"
"Sort of . . . but Hermione, you don't just move on from your parents sucking. I still . . . I still catch myself caring from time to time, and every time I'm just hurt all over again by how horrid they are. Most of the time I wish them dead and the remainder I wish that they would just love me like they should. They don't even bother faking it! Hell, my father hasn't even seen me since the day he walked out, my seventh birthday. He literally walked out the door . . . on my birthday! He broke my heart that day. I've never been the same, and how could I be? He. Left. Me."
"Blaise . . ." Hermione has this desperate look in her eyes as though she's searching, trying to understand me.
"Look, Hermione, the Dark Lord has killed scores of people, right?"
"Right . . ."
"Dumbledore has saved scores of people, right?"
"Right . . . Blaise, I don't see where you're going with this . . ."
"It's about the expectations, Hermione. I expect that the Dark Lord will kill because he is the Dark Lord. I expect Dumbledore to be heroic because he's Dumbledore. I even expect Harry Potter to keep fighting because he's Harry-Bloody-Potter. I expected my father to stay and to love me because he is my father. It's like the Dark Lord suddenly kissing babies, or Dumbledore taking candy from them: it doesn't make sense. And to a seven-year-old boy . . . it hurt a lot, and it still does. Maybe I should have gotten over it—maybe it shouldn't bother me anymore—but it does. I wasn't good enough for my father, and I have absolutely no idea why: I'll never know why. For all I know he's probably dead somewhere."
"Blaise, I think you need to forgive him." Hermione sets her hand on my wrist and looks into my eyes as though trying to pull meaning from their murky brown depths.
"Hermione, I'm a Slytherin, I don't exactly do so hot with the whole . . . forgiveness . . . thing."
"What is it with you blaming everything on your House?"
"I'm only saying that I've never in my entire life forgiven anyone for anything, at least nothing big, nothing like screwing your own son over."
"So then you learn! You don't forgive someone overnight, but you need to be willing to try. And if you ever need to talk about it, you've got me. I'll always be there to listen if you need it."
"Not in Azkaban . . ." I mutter.
Hermione glares at me and then places her hands on my shoulders and twists me so that I face her. "You listen to me. You are not a bad person. You are strong and brave; I've seen it before. You can do this."
I sigh and relent. "Okay. Okay, I'll try to forgive him, to forgive them . . . but I can't promise that it will actually happen," I warn.
"Well, at least trying is better than holding onto it. Blaise, trust me when I tell you that it's hard to move into the future when you keep clinging to the past."
"If only it were as easy said as done," I sigh.
Hermione smiles. "Goodnight Blaise."
"Goodnight Hermione." With that, I manage to fall asleep and only wake a few more times throughout the night, visions of my parents and Dementors at least free from my dreams. In the morning, I see Hermione slipping out of the room, presumably to head for class. I feel much better after my likely ten or eleven hours of sleep, but I'm still not going to class. As Hermione cautiously opens the door, I call out to her.
"Hermione?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."