Power and Persecution [1] || Harry Potter x OC x Draco Malfoy

89. Exhausted

DISCLAIMER

I do not own Harry Potter ... but I'm so sick and tired of my part time job rn it sucks

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A week had passed.

That week was the first of the Christmas holidays.

A time meant to spend with family and friends, laughing, exchanging gifts, both receiving and spreading love and joy.

But Harry Potter and Bel Whitlock had experienced the total opposite in those seven days.

They were both in a very bad way. For very different reasons.

Harry's physical state was a true reflection of his mental one.

He had large bags hanging under his eyes, lines forming on his forehead from constant scowling, cracks on his lips from dehydration, and a noticeably thinner frame from lack of food.

The lack of sleep, scowling in anger, rejection of food and water had all come from his consistent thoughts about Sirius Black.

Harry had always thought he truly hated Draco Malfoy.

And he did hate him, but the levels of hatred that Sirius Black reached in his mind were new.

He was always angry, always irritated, always snapping at Ron and Hermione who had tried time and time again to speak to him.

To tell him to see reason.

To warn him against going after Sirius Black because he would get himself killed.

But their words hadn't reached him.

Because they hadn't come out of her mouth.

Bel hadn't spoken to Harry for the entirety of that week.

It was another thing that combined with his anger, making him even more spiteful.

But when he had really thought about it, remembering the way she had run off that day in the woods, he had felt guilty.

Maybe he had broken the news to her insensitively, too harshly.

Maybe he had scared her, not been there for her in the way he expected her to be there for him.

Harry had just blindly assumed Bel would be yelling with him, angry with him at those new levels of hatred, wanting revenge and begging him to help her find Black.

But he cursed himself when he really thought it through. It was as if he had totally forgotten who she was.

Bel would never do those things.

And he had cornered her in with no way out.

Asking her to join him when he was in a state to refuse any other response than one that matched his own.

It was unfair and selfish and went against her nature.

A nature that he was very fond of.

Dare he say ... loved.

His guilt was the only thing that forced him out of his dorm and to the Great Hall for meals.

Hoping to see her sat there reading some sort of spell book, her mind being sorted and having words to say to him that would sort everything out.

But for that entire week, she hadn't been there.

And that was because Bel was also in a very bad way.