Halfway through April.
It was as if a Dementor had followed Draco into the bathroom, Myrtle thought.
A Dementor: she had once heard the word mentioned in her presence when she had been alive; given to a Ravenclaw's thirst for knowledge, she had sought its meaning in the library. And when she had found it, she had instantly regretted her curiosity.
A Dementor: grey, slimy, scabrous and cold; so cold. With its very presence draining the rests of Draco's happiness and peace of mind, and leaving behind only the pain and anguish in which a Dementor is; for the Dementor is never happy, never satisfied. It only is.
Myrtle fluttered about, chattering nonsensically, trying to ward the Dementor off, trying to protect Draco; but, in the end, all her efforts were useless. The Dementor was still there; not in the least because it had never been there.
---
"I can't do it!"
He couldn't do it.
He couldn't do it: not because he did not want to, because, of course, he did, he had to; but because he physically couldn't do it. There was something missing, something constantly missing, and whatever he tried, the Cabinet simply wouldn't mend; spells which he knew should work, must work, all failed to settle. The small, nagging sensation which had accompanied him since the Weasel's near-death had bloomed into a full-scale feeling of wrongness, of lack, of deficiency–
He couldn't do it.
He commanded the Room to supply him everything he needed; and, of course, the magic binding the Room to give him whatever he required did give him all that he required. The only conclusion was that it was he who was deficient, lacking in skill, lacking in acumen, not good enough, never good enough; he was never good enough, was he? He was never good enough, always coming in second, always second to– to that Mudblood; even now, he was only using her ideas, the coin and the poison which had almost killed the Weasel, he wasn't capable of doing anything well on his own, Father was right, and Father was now in Azkaban, and Father would die, and Mother would die, and he would die, because he thought that he would be good enough but of course he wasn't good enough and Mother had known this all along and everyone had known this all along and the Dark Lord had known this all along and the Dark Lord would kill him
---
A Dementor is despair physically manifest; but despair need not necessarily be physically manifest.