Silver and Gold // Dramione

An Obscurus?

6th Year, October 11th

Draco woke up screaming in the dead of night every evening that week. Hermione did not. Or if she had, she hadn't left her room and made it known.

He liked the silence and tranquility that midnight provided. It was as if the world had stopped in its tracks, leaving him to contemple his thoughts as if they were of another world.

He didn't go for a walk the rest of the week. Even under the possibility that Hermione was sound asleep in her bed, he was sure if he opened the door to the common room that she would walk out and ask to go with him.

She had made another comment about midnight walks in potions class on Tuesday. Her comment was the reason he wasn't sure if she was awake or not when he woke up at night.

- "Next time knock on my door if you leave the common room for a walk, I said I wanted to go"

- "We're not exactly friends Granger"- he didn't look up as they, all the students, gathered around Slughorn's main table to give a demonstration.

She had switched places with Aurie to stand beside him and whisper. Clearly he wasn't the only one who wasn't eager to announce to the student population they could act civil and decently nice to one another. Even if he did sometimes want to slam the door in her face or...

- "But we don't hate each other either"- she whispered back, he could almost feel her smile next to him.

- "That's a bold assumption to make"- he scoffed, leaning in further to look at how slughorn moved his wand over the cauldron.

- "Perhaps" - she started again, nudging his side with her elbow. He couldn't smell her shampoo for the first time, and he wondered if she had taken up her own offer to change it out for him, - " but I don't think I'm wrong. Just knock on the damn door Draco" -.

He told himself that because of her words on tuesday he wouldn't even try to go for a walk. Instead he settled himself on the window seat between their room and looked up at the stars.

They were more calming than he realized. He had memorized the constellations when he was young, and his Mother would often take him out to the Manor Garden at night and point at the stars to quiz him. She would make jokes about her family members when she pointed to a star that they were named after.

He missed that. She stopped when he started going to Hogwarts.

He tried his best not to think of his Mother, or least not very much. If he left his mind wonder too far into anything the whispers would return. He even found that if he focussed on a certain person who would appear in his dream as a whisper, their voice would be the most present that evening once he had sunk into the mattress.

As he sat in the window seat every night he would periodically look at Hermione's door. She hadn't come out once, and he didn't know if she was asleep or not. She had never mentioned warding her door, and if she hadn't warded it he presumed he would have heard the thrashing and screams.

She was either finding a peaceful sleep, or incredibly good at hiding as he was awake. He never heard a peep.

Once it came to Thursday night, Draco found that he couldn't even pull himself back into sleep after waking up at 5am screaming and thrashing after images of his Mother when he came home after 5th year flooded his nightmares.

He didn't particularly want to sleep again, knowing the images and whispers would only resurface, but he knew his meeting with Snape that evening wasn't going to be easy. Snape had pulled him into the corner the previous day and asked him to come with his fully fleshed-out plan on parchment.