Tainted Love

Peacock

DRACO

The air was thick with steam, heavy vapors pooling in drops of water down Draco's face. He couldn't see more than two feet past the cauldron he was methodically stirring.

It was better that way. He liked the forced claustrophobia of the basement. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't look up to the door Iris used to lean through. He couldn't see the wall of jars that he had gone to after they visited his mother, the vials he had picked out.

He was supposed to see his mother later today. He shouldn't have started brewing this particular potion -- it was complex, took hours to get right. More than that if he fucked up. Which he wouldn't. But still.

He looked up for a moment, his hair slick with moisture. The steam moved across the ceiling like fog. Early mornings, rolling down from the mountain, abandoned by the clouds. Too heavy to stay in the sky for too long.

He felt heavy too. His broomstick was out there somewhere, leaning up against the back of the house, but he didn't want to see it. He wasn't sure if Iris had taken hers with her when she left. If she hadn't, the sight of them next to each other might be too much to bear.

But at least he could work again. He could come down, use his hands without thinking of her too much. He had enough control over his mind that he was no longer fucking up everything he touched. Maybe that was the lack of alcohol.

Or maybe it was something else, some semblance of routine. Outside of the basement, it was still there. She was still there. It was almost all-consuming.

There were times Draco caught himself standing in the same position in their room -- his room -- or the kitchen for minutes on end, his mind caught in playing out hundreds of versions of the night she left him. Fixing it.

If only he could have found some way to disarm her, to show her that he was being honest, to stop her being angry at him for one moment so that he could explain. If only he had sought her out, told her first.

Then, maybe. Then.

He had fucked up long before that night, though. Two weeks before, when he got home from the island and opened the liquor cabinet, when he tried to hide his mind from her the way he used to hide his Mark. A subtle turn away from her. Maybe not so subtle.

Long before those two weeks, he had dug his own grave. On the day he met her, narrow eyes and a keen sense of superiority. The way he fucked her at the beginning, like he wanted to hurt her. He used to hate her -- did he? He wasn't sure. What bothered him more than the thought of hating her was the thought of not caring for her at all.

He would rather do anything than that. He would rather hurt her than make her believe that he didn't feel anything. And she would rather be hurt. He knew that. Whether or not it was good for her, whether or not she was trying to grow out of that particular habit -- that was less clear.

Iris always had to leave at some point. He had a chance before the end to make her come back. Now, he wasn't sure he'd ever see her again -- not in any ways that counted. There were glimpses of her in the Prophet sometimes with her new boyfriend and he hated it. If she wanted to hurt him, she was.

She was quiet. Silence from her was not something Draco ever thought he'd be used to. He could call her if he wanted, or send her a letter, but he knew she wouldn't reply. And that would be worse, the knowledge that his words were somewhere in the world, lying around in a desk drawer in anticipation of their death.

Speaking of letters, he had burned all of Pansy's. He felt a little sad at the loss. It wasn't Pansy he was losing so much as the iteration of himself that had loved Pansy. The old him. In many ways, the worse version of him. Back when he had hidden his feelings, though, things had been easier to stomach. He spent some time missing that.