Memory Of A Dear Place

42. The Potion

September, 1996

~\~ Bella Huxley ~\~

''SHUT UP BELLA!" Draco yells loudly, making all me jump as his voice echos through the bathroom. "Don't make this anymore difficult."

Draco slowly inhales through his nose and exhales through his mouth. His face turns dark en emotionless. Like he just switched a button to let go of everything that he feels.

I close my eyes.

And there it is. The incantation of one of the unbreakable vows, leaving Draco's lips. Crucio.

I fall onto the hard cold tiles, the feeling of thousands of knives stabbing me inside and outside of my body. Fire seeping through my veins and my blood boiling. My brain being torn apart.

Screams leaving my throat, but I'm unable to hear them. Tears rolling over my cheeks, but I'm unable to feel them.

Everything just disappears around me and the only thing I can focus on is the pain ruining my body without damaging it.

I don't even know how long it went on for. It felt like ages before the pain started to finally fade into numbness. I'm unable to move, just soullessly staring at Draco's shoes in front of me as the after effect of the curse slowly leaves my body.

Silence.

''Well shit." I hear Pansy's voice snicker. "Now we definitely know you have nothing going on with her...''

Some footsteps. And then Pansy crouching in front of me, hear malicious face just in my eyesight. "Hopefully you think twice, the next time you try to get Malfoy in your pants again. Filthy whore."

I open my eyes with a gasp, my hands patting around me to feel my surroundings. I'm in my room. I'm in my bed. I'm safe. And I better fucking hope this just was a dream and not a flashback in which Draco used a the Cruciatus Curse on me.

But I know it wasn't a dream. It was and felt bloody fucking real. It felt like it had happened. It's a memory finding its way back into my fragile mind.

He really did that. He tortured me. But why?

'Now we definitely know you have nothing going on with her.' Pansy's voice echos through my mind. What the fuck was he trying to prove?

You can't fucking convince me there was an excuse to do that to me. That I did something so severe that he decided he needed me to torture for it. To make his friends watch when he did it. Is he really that cold? Is he really that fucking ruthless and merciless?

Using an Unforgivable Curse like that is in no way pretending. You have to either really mean it or have to be very desperate about something. It looked like he meant it. His face showed nothing. There wasn't any remorse. No guilt. No pain. Just a body and a soul using a curse without feeling anything.

I can't fucking believe him and I feel myself getting angrier and angrier as the images play themselves in front of me again.

He's going to pay for this one.

What did he fucking think? Was he hoping that I wouldn't remember this and then never going to tell me?

I hate the fact that everyone gets to fucking choose what they want to tell me or hide from me. It's fucking cruel to play with my mind like that. I know you can't just tell everything that happened in such a short time, but torturing someone is a pretty important detail if you ask me. Especially if I let you fuck me only a few days ago, thinking it couldn't get any worse than what I have remembered until now.