Limerence; Draco Malfoy

Chapter Sixty-One: Hiraeth

Hiraeth -- a Welsh word for longing or nostalgia, an earnest longing or desire, or a sense of regret. The feeling of longing for a home that no longer exists or never was. A deep and irrational bond felt with a time, era, place or person.

Violet

The ocean had stirred up something viscious tonight: obsidion waves slammed into the wooden barriers of the pier, spitting their white sea-foam, clamouring, frothing, swirling and sloshing around the rocks below. Icy winds drilled into my skull, and at some point, all the frenzied thoughts that'd been trapped inside of it had slipped out, sailing away across the choppy waters.

I had been sobbing, choking, panicking when I first ran out here. Now, a perfect calm had embraced me. Because I knew what I had to do: all it would take is one step into thin air. One small step -- and then the cruel ocean would drag me down under its dark depths, and I'd be gone.

Dead.

Nothing.

It was my only option. I'd read my old journal. My memories had come back in waves and waves, quick, vivid, painful and sharp. I remembered who I was. Where I came from.

A pain had throbbed in my temples -- a telltale sign that I was running out of time, and that I was being ripped away from this reality and worst of all, from Draco.

I couldn't bare to wake him, to tell him. I didn't even have the strength to say goodbye. I just pulled some more clothes on, then ran out into the night.

Something, call it an unknown force or even my own caustic instinct, led me down one twisted, cobblestone street. My shoes slapped against the rain-soaked grounds as I'd sprinted towards the pier. And for the first time in so many months it was just me, alone, steadily nearing my own end. The end of the pier awaited me like a last pit stop before hell.

Now, I stared out to sea and waited in vain for a mircale to fall out of the darkened clouds.

No such miracle came. Nothing nothing nothing. And very quickly my thoughts became as hopelessly flat and weatherbeaten as the planks I stood on. Drawing in courage through deep, icy breaths, I stepped fowards, readying myself.

And I pictured his face in my mind, because if I was going to fall into an eternal sleep and let my credits roll, what could bring more closure than seeing a pair of flinty blue eyes one last time before the curtains to such a tale were drawn? I wanted to listen to his voice, slyly whispering my name over the wind, chanting in time with my pulse like a longing backing track: Violet Violet Violet Violet Violet--

Something shoved at my side, slamming my back into the railings of the pier, knocking the breath out my lungs.

My heart nearly stalled.

He pinned me in place by pressing his chest into mine, and through the gloom and blur of rain Draco's face became visible. He was breathing heavily with wild, darting eyes.

I gripped onto his shoulders; he gripped mine right back.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing! Trying to drown yourself!" He yelled harshly.

"I -- I," Didn't have the strength to deny it. I was too disturbed by the expression he wore: it was haunted. Heart-wrenching.

"You're not going to kill yourself, oh no - you don't get to fucking kill yourself, Lockwood! Why would you even consider that as an option?!" He was furious, his voice at one with the rumble of thunder in the distance.

"You've read it, haven't you?" I shook my head hopelessly. "Draco I had no idea, I didn't know about this!"

He blinked at me, stricken. A raindrop slid down his cheek like a tear, slipping down his pale neck and into the collar of his soaked shirt.