PRECEDENT : Draco Malfoy prequel

64

I didn't ever think of myself as an adventurous person, but as September ends, I realize how much I've screwed up in hiding. The Daily Prophet doesn't come, and so I try to survive on the books Draco bought me, as well as rice and canned soups. The tomato is my favourite since it lasts the longest. By the end of the month, most of the other food he brought, the ramen, canned tuna, pasta and sauce, is running in low supply since the more it gets duplicated, even the original, the worst it seems to taste. The tomato soup seems to keep the best, although it does get grainier. Almost sandy particles clump together through it. It's even smaller than rice.

Every day, I continue to do the workout I have planned for myself. I think it's every day. I lose track of the days after September ends. Sometimes I wake up and the sun is setting, and other times I wake up in the middle of the day.

Eventually, I take to reading the books Draco brought me aloud. My voice hurts when I do. I didn't use it much for the first few weeks, except to hum while I cooked, or to scream through my nightmares. I don't have the ingredients to brew potions, and probably not the skills to correctly make one that would prevent my nightmares anyway. If I don't read the books Draco bought me out loud, I worry I might forget how to talk. I'm even more worried I won't understand words anymore if they are spoken to me.

There is no mirror here, but I realize I've started to lose weight far too into it. My clothes don't fit me well. The skirts aren't tight enough, I stitch them smaller with charms. It's terrible, rotten. I try to keep eating more, and then the modified crackers start to become slimy from the duplication charm, and sometimes I don't eat but all I do is hunger. If I do eat, I can't keep the food down. After a week of my body protesting, it acclimates.

If and when Draco comes back, I'm going to have gone crazy. So, I research mind spells, begin to do activities that will help me in my solitude. I spend what I think is a two week straight doing nothing but the bare minimum of biological functions and modifying the pendant neckleace that Draco got me. Now more than ever and I glad I invented the Noctum. It would be so much easier to accomplish this charm him here, which is why it takes so long. There are so many of his things in here though, including some on his hair on his pillowcase. It's not perfect, but it works.

I've been cleaning the sheets, but not his pillowcase. At night, I lie next to it, careful not to rest my own head on it or else my smell will wear off on it.

Eventually, I modify the pendant. It produces a way for his mind to reach out, tell me what he thinks of me in the moment. That is what makes it difficult. I intentionally avoid surface thoughts. I don't want to know what he's doing out there, what he's seeing. In some ways, this prison is nice like that. The war is happening all around me, but I'm not actually in it. And so late at night, when I hope he is sleeping, I'll touch the locket and hear his most recent thought about me.

I hope you're okay.

I miss you.

At breakfast I drank apple juice again today. I don't even like the sweetness, but the taste lingers on my teeth.

Then, I use a charm on my own mind so that the thoughts sound auditory. They aren't really outside my head, but it sounds like they are coming from within the room rather than my own mind. I'd make them actually voice aloud, but I'm worried someone could overhear it. There's no one here. Not event ghosts.

At some point, I start touching the charm every few minutes, over and over. Between gulps of gritty soup, between every word in a book I'm reading. Evey time I breathe in. I don't think he feels the connection I've created. He never tells me to stop. If he did, I'm not sure I could. It's the only sound I hear created by another person.

For a week, at least, I close the windows. At some point, the abnormal state of day and night in this room becomes unbearable. It feels like it's teasing me. I don't know what day it is. It might still be the first week of October, it might be days before Christmas break and Draco's supposed arrival. Draco brought a single bottle of firewhiskey, and that week I start to duplicate it. And duplicate it. And duplicate it, and unlike the soup it doesn't get grainy. The liquid thickens, like molasses, and I swallow it anyway. I lie on the ground, my hair has split ends and it's sprawled around me, and I'm nursing the bottle. I don't think about being attacked anymore. Instead, I think about this. This is the newest horror, the thing for me.