Chapter 21
Once the four of them were back at school, the usual stares they got in the hallways and the mean comments that were thrown in Scorpius's direction by Damon and Dave had started up again.
Scorpius continued to get beaten up every other day. He didn't want to let Albus (or the others, for that matter) know about this, so he always went straight too Madam Valderrama, whom he had convinced not to tell anyone. Not Professor Kellington, not Professor Vector and certainly not Albus.
She had reluctantly agreed, much to her own dismay.
Besides helping Scorpius with his wounds, she had also started functioning as his psychiatrist.
Apparently, Scorpius's parents had informed Professor Kellington of what had happened at home during Christmas break and they felt it was unsafe to send Scorpius back to school so soon after. Professor Kellington had told them that, even though she was not certified, Madam Valderrama was a great psychiatrist. They had agreed to let Scorpius return, under the condition that he would visit the school nurse at least once a week.
During these sessions, a lot of crying was done.
Madam Valderrama herself also had some trouble blinking her tears away, but Scorpius cried every session at least for 30 minutes (a session lasted for about an hour).
During the first two sessions he had told her about how he came to be so depressed, why he had started self-harming. He had also told her about the two times he had tried to kill himself by overdosing on sleeping pills and about how his parents had never noticed because, somehow, he woke up the morning after without any problems.
The sessions after that were each spent by discussing one subject.
The third session was about Elizabeth.
Scorpius had cried most during this session.
He had told Madam Valderrama the complete story. The story of how it had really happened, which no one except Scorpius and Elizabeth knew about.
You see, on the train in their first year, Scorpius had met Elizabeth when he was looking for a compartment to sit in.
Not everyone had forgiven the Malfoys for what they had done during the War, so Scorpius wasn't really welcome anywhere.
When he reached the last compartment, the one containing Elizabeth, he was relieved when she told him he could sit here.
Elizabeth was a Muggle-born, so she didn't know anything about the Wizarding War.
While Elizabeth was almost immediately Sorted in Ravenclaw, Scorpius had, as you have been told already, been sitting on the chair a little longer. The Hat simply couldn't choose between Ravenclaw and Slytherin. However, his Malfoy-genes had won and he became the umpteenth Slytherin in the Malfoy family.
Both kids had no problems with being in different Houses. They made the library and the little park behind the greenhouses their spot and they spent most of their free time there.
They could've been brother and sister, seeing the way they protected each other and the way they acted around each other.
It didn't last long, though.
Elizabeth met Scorpius's fellow-Slytherin, Damon, and took a huge liking to him.
A very huge liking.
They started dating and Elizabeth had less and less time to spend with Scorpius. She was too occupied with Damon.
She started missing their meet-ups, causing Scorpius to feel more and more alone and miserable.
What also didn't help, was the fact that Damon took an instant dislike towards Scorpius as soon as they had met.
The bullying came later, but he sometimes made mean comments about Scorpius's style of clothing, which he thought was gay, Scorpius's family background and more.
At first Elizabeth stood up for Scorpius, telling Damon to shut up or else she would stick his wand up his ass, but after Damon didn't stop, she eventually gave up trying to make him stop insulting her best friend. Soon after that she started to laugh with her boyfriend.
Scorpius became so insecure, that he started wearing hoodies, so that he could hide himself in the bigness of the things. Elizabeth, on the contrary, started wearing very short shorts and slutty tops.
When Scorpius had asked her about what was going on with her, she became furious. She started accusing him of not supporting her choices and forgetting that she had feelings, too.
Then, after a rough History of Magic lesson about the War (in which the Potters, Weasleys, Grangers and Malfoys were recurring names) Elizabeth told Scorpius they shouldn't be friends any longer.
She couldn't be friends with someone who had a family that had done so much wrong to her kind, among other things.
Just like that, she broke off a friendship that meant so much to Scorpius.
The break-up and the bullying of Damon and his then-still-bully friend Ricky were what caused Scorpius to become depressed.
He had called in sick to class the next day and stayed in bed the whole day, crying his eyes out. He just couldn't stop. He was in so much pain.
At the end of the day, he got out of bed to go to the bathroom to pee. But, he tripped over a book laying on the ground. He scratched his arm open on a nail that stuck out of the bed next to his.
At first it had hurt, but then it felt amazing. He finally felt relieved of that tremendous pain he felt. However, the relief had gone as soon as it had appeared.
Scorpius, longing to feel that sense of relief again, searched for something he could use to feel like that again. He stopped searching, though, when he thought of something.
How sick would a person be to want to feel pain. Not wanting to acknowledge another thing that was wrong with him, he went to pee and then went back to crying in his bed.
He hadn't thought about that scratch he had got then until, in his fourth year, he accidentally cut himself with his knife at dinner.
That feeling of relief, that which he had felt in his first year, came back. He wanted more.
Even if it made him more of a freak, he wanted it. He needed it.
Right after dinner, he went up to his dormitory, and started looking for a razor of some kind. He had multiple because he needed to shave often, so he found one easily.
He put it at his wrist and then cut himself. It had felt amazing.
When he had told this story to Madam Valderrama, she had trouble not crying.
Scorpius felt guilty, but was relieved to finally have told someone this story.
He didn't know why, but Madam Valderrama had this aura surrounding her. An aura that made him feel safe.