All That Lasts Forever

Chapter 3: The Art of Self Punishment

Trigger Warning: This chapter covers the following topics - anxiety disorders, panic attacks, self-harm, emetophobia.

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When she sat at dinner on her usual spot at the Gryffindor table, her thoughts were only back in the broom closet.

The fact that he took her there - no, dragged here there - and said those words to her brought unpleasant chills to go down her spine.

If you want me dead so bad Granger...

She tried to brainstorm everything, trying to calculate the exact situation she put herself into. She wasn't involving herself with him, no, but the situation was definitely surreal.

... do it before someone else does.

Yeah, definitely surreal.

This exchange of words between them brought one thought into her head.

Did he want to die?

Certainly not, who in their right mind would want that?

This boy was intelligent, she new that and she could admit that. She's seen how he's been in classes these past few years, they were going head to head with their marks.

But they could never be compared. Never.

"What time is it?" she went out of her thoughts, remembering something, she should never forget to do.

"Almost seven." Parvati answered, not looking up from her magazine she was reading while eating.

Those tacky, pathetic magazines, she thought.

She took her last three bites of her food and got to her feet, hurrying back to the common room. Her mind was full of things she couldn't quite place, they made her shiver and put a lot of stressing pressure on her sternum. She always felt this terror even though, nothing bad was happening.

When she got to her dorm, she opened her trunk to find a box that was tucked deep within the stuff she had stashed there. She went to the shared bathroom and opened the box that revealed 4 leaves of small, white pills, half of them already gone. She popped two out of the package and into her mouth before washing it down with water from the sink tap.

That was something she was new to. After the war, her mind was clustered with fear from within that she couldn't quite place. It made her wake up at night drenched in cold sweat, trying to catch her breath, feeling sick to her stomach. She would sit next to the toilet for what felt like hours, fearing she would throw up, since she had this fear of vomiting. Her body shaking every time she felt something was wrong, even though nothing was happening.

It was all in her head, she told herself. She tried to push those thoughts away, calming herself down, keeping herself from waking up her mother back when she was at home, scared that she would make her mad for waking her up at four in the morning.

She's just waiting for the day she can just put this memories back. Write it down in one of many books and put them into place in her mental library.

The pills made her feel...

Well, nothing.

They had this weird numbing effect on emotions, that she thought she could probably watch someone die on the spot and she wouldn't place it in her brain up until the effects of the pills wore off.

Studying was hard. She didn't know these were the side effects. The lack of concentration was infuriating. She always read every single book she had for the upcoming term beforehand. But now because of the pills, the tiredness, she couldn't go through half of the first one. And she didn't even feel like it was a big deal at the end.